silvermash

Well I think it's definitely poor planning. It's always the same in December and it can be worse as the winter is not so bad until now and illness has not yet added to injuries. But it's also bad luck because Bullion and Magnenet who were on Don Quichotte are usually injury free and very reliable on classics. They saved Swan Lake and Cinderella the two past years. Some Premiers danseurs are also injured. I think Thibault was supposed to dance at first...

However, no one really understand why only two Etoiles (Bullion and Paquette) were originally on Don Quichotte... They only called Ganio when Bullion was injured, to back up Paquette, I guess just in case to partner Gilbert for the live broadcast and Zakharova in the event of Paquette being unable to dance...

I don't think all the Etoiles are needed on this Brown/Forsythe bill... It's really a pity to see Le Riche, Bélingard or Moreau dancing about 10 minutes in Garnier while Paquette is labouring 2 hours on a half 12 times in Bastille... Well Nureyev Basilio is really hard to dance and some Etoiles might be too old or too fragile... or simply not willing to take the risk...

Regarding the topic, I don't feel Legris has proven much imagination in Vienna, it's more or less copying what has been done in Paris the past years... Perhaps someone outside the company will give a fresh input more than needed?

Can anyone comment on the Cunningham piece (Un jour ou deux)? It certainly looks striking and the Parisian dancers look striking in it.

I like it. I'm not familiar with Cunningham so I can't really comment on what's make its particularity but I like everything of if, the atmosphère, the costumes, the lighting,the music, the movements and the staging. The choreography was fluid and ethereal at time, dancers were flying in group... even if it was serious and quite obsessive...

I think it was critically acclaimed...

Sae Eun Park is very strong technically and naturally gifted. With those qualities, you often go fast in the 2/3 first ranks of the hierarchy, also because the system of the competition which requires in 2 variations to show what you can do. Once you are given small roles, you have to develop and show other qualities but she will have time to acquire the style because she is really talented. Does she have a talent to act, we will have to wait a little to know that.

Valentine Colasante is young and has risen fast in the hierarchy so she has not been given so much soloist roles but she’s strong technically and she has a way to get into the roles which has never disappointed me. She’s versatile and can be at ease in classics and in the contemporary rep, and it’s necessary with POB.

Axel Ibot made quite an impression during the POB's visit to New York a few months ago. I'm glad to see that he was "ranked". What exactly does it mean to be "ranked"?

I guess ,it is liked being a runner-up. Maybe, next year, he will do better.

Perhaps I didn't use the right word... the dancers are listed according to the mark they obtain during the competition. They are promoted according to the number of positions available. It's a satisfaction to be in the list but it doesn't bring any privileges.

Results from the men competition which happened today :

Promoted to Coryphées

1 Jérémie Loup Quer

2 Mathieu Contat

Ranked

3 Germain Louvet, 4 Hugo Marchand, 5 Alexandre Labrot, 6 Florent Melac

Promoted to Sujet

1 François Alu

2 Yann Chailloux

Ranked :

3 Maxime Thomas, 4 Axel Ibot, 5 Alexandre Gasse, 6 Mathieu Botto

Promoted to Premer Danseur

1 Audric Bezard

Ranked :

2 Pierre-Arthur Raveau, 3 Fabien Révillion, 4 Allister Madin, 5 Yannick Bittencourt, 6 Marc Moreau

Annual competition started yesterday November 8, with the women. Here are the results which will be effective January 1st, 2013

Promoted to Coryphées

1 Sae Eun Park

2 Emilie Hasboun

3 Marion Barbeau

Ranked :

4 Léonore Baulac, 5 Gwennaelle Vauthier , 6 Jennifer Visocchi

Promoted to Sujet

1 Marine Ganio

2 Eléonore Guérineau

3 Pauline Verdusen

Ranked

4 Laurène Lévy, 5 Charlotte Ranson, 6 Letizia Galloni

Promoted to Première danseuse

1 Valentine Colasante

Ranked

2 Amandine Albisson, 3 Aurélia Bellet, 4 Héloïse Bourdon, 5 Laura Hecquet, 6 Sarah Kora Dayanova

This is not exactly her first attempt of choreography and that's all the more "bizarre" as you said.

Well, I went to the Première. My own feeling is that it is not a success . The sum up of what I feel, heard and read after is that the Merce Cunningham piece is the real interest of the evening...

It will pop up some day as the evening will be recorded for a TV broadcast!

Casting is now online for the Sous Apparence/Un jour ou deux Programme

Only one cast for the Gillot : Vincent Chaillet, Laëtitia Pujol, Alice Renavand

Three casts for the Cunningham : Emilie Cozette/Hervé Moreau/Nicolas Paul -Stéphanie Romberg or Laurence Laffon/Florian Magnenet/Fabien Révillion

http://www.operadeparis.fr/saison_2012_2013/Ballets/gillot-cunningham/decouvrir/Distribution/

Last week, casting for Don Quixote was also released.

http://www.operadeparis.fr/saison_2012_2013/Ballets/don-quichotte-noureev/decouvrir/distribution-don-quichotte/

an excerpt of the public rehearsal

http://www.operadepa...ie-agnes-gillot

Thanks Silvermash. Very interesting. It gave me the idea that having a choreographer/director on stage with the dancers should be part of the choreography. ;)

I like those kinds of things. But I doubt that's what Gillot will end up with.

Yes, it was like a bit of a show in itself

an excerpt of the public rehearsal

http://www.operadepa...ie-agnes-gillot

Comments : We shall know soon how it turns... 20 dancers are involved I heard: 10 females and 10 males, all on pointes.

Thank you, Silvermash. I was wondering about the casting for this dance piece. I'm actually kind of shocked there will be pointe work. ;)

Here's hoping it goes well for Marie-Agnès and company.

Casting is still unknown (the Première is next week so it won't be long!!!) but only one Etoile, Laëtitia Pujol is involved with Premiers danseurs Vincent Chaillet and Alice Renavand. Laëtitia was due to participate to a public rehearsal last week but she was replaced by Aurélia Bellet, a very fine soloist, so perhaps she's still unsure? Usual soloists of comtemporary rep are involved too : names circulating are Amandine Albisson, Audric Bezard, Christelle Granier, Aurélien Houette, Laurence Laffon, Julien Meyzindi, Marc Moreau, Daniel Stokes...

From what I've seen during the public rehearsals, Wayne McGregor has been an inspiration so pointe work is not a surprise.

This may be asking too much, but can anyone provide an English translation of Gillot's comments on her upcoming choreographic debut?

Can be simplified, rather than word-for-word. ;)

http://gillot-cunnin.../sousapparence/

Hummm... Roughly and my own responsability for misunderstandings …

she said will explore the sentence “appearances are innocent of our mistakes”. Then , she’s talking about the set designer Olivier Mosset who has been very interested in knowing much about the ballet world. The main element of the set is a “pare-char” (bumper tank???) that she called “toblerone”[i’m sure everyone knows the Swiss chocolate bar ] . She is interested in working with a war object because dance is often war but to reach grace and not death… She said she will draw in the work the energy and emotions she had in her youth in Normandy and that she will explore pointe work, because she feels pointes are sacred. Finally, the dancers whom she had worked with all her life are still mysterious, always unreadable but in the meantime when they dance, she admires them and she’s moved by their bodies and she wants to discover more about their bodies and their personality

Comments : We shall know soon how it turns... 20 dancers are involved I heard: 10 females and 10 males, all on pointes.

Sorry to hear that the performance wasn't a particularly good one. I imagine different nights/casts did better than others. I can think of quite a few companies that could do with a little of the "academically correct" though.

I believe if you don't like POB style, the different casts all looks the same in Serenade.

POB dances Balanchine in its own way and you may like it or not. I think personally it's the way it should be when you "import" a choreography in a with a strong stylistic tradition.

I also think Agon fared better because the personality of the dancers gave a very interesting turn sometimes to the pas de deux, especially Aurélie Dupont/Nicolas Le Riche and Eve Grinsztajn/Stéphane Bullion.

Prodigal son was all Agnès Letestu...

A practical assumption : perhaps, if you have to call to a larger audience in cinemas, full length ballets are more appealing. As it has already been discussed, it doesn’t look like the broadcasts are systematically to become a DVD.

In any case, there are only 5 full length ballets this season, the others not filmed are Kaguyahime and Signes (this one is already on DVD, the other has a DVD by Nederlands Dans Theater).

Many other old performances haven't been released... among them a Nutcracker and a much desired Wuthering Heights (Kader Belarbi)

Enfants du Paradis have also been broadscasted widely in Europe with Mezzo HD recently. La Source and Caligula are still in the cinema's circuits., good news it will enter soon the TV one.

Psyche wasn’t filmed. As for Bayadère, perhaps it’s not so that a DVD already exists but that the 2012 show was of poorer quality.

Anyway, it would make sense to release unpublished works.

If Sasha Waltz wants to push Romeo and Juliet as it happened with Siddharta and Angelin Preljocaj, it could be easier.

More and more shows are filmed for live broadcasts and it’s not sure if they want to release them all afterwards. Caligula was filmed as well before the ones you mentioned (in 2011)

I have a question for our French posters about the upcoming defile. I saw the defile order at Dansomanie and I noticed that several etoiles were missing from the list. What are the circumstances under which an etoile doesn't participate in the defile? Injury? Leave-of-absence?? Not telling Madame Lefevre she's "the fairest of them all" enough???

Rules are quite clear and are those you have stated. As for the Etoiles, Isabelle Ciaravola and Mathias Heymann are on sick leave, Dorothée Gilbert has a leave of absence.

Hervé Moreau didn't retire, He's only 35. He suffered a very bad injury and it took time to recover but he came back on stage last season for Romeo & Juliet by Sasha Waltz.

Thats great... so my friend Jeremie Belingard danced Colas for the school perfortmance, I must ask him about it. As he has danced the Sir Fred version as well, it would be interesting to hear his comments.

When and where Bélingard danced Ashton version up to you? Can't remember seeing him in it in Paris.

POB doesn't comunicate on dancers' injuries but the casting has been updated today on Lincoln center festival web site http://www.lincolncenterfestival.org/pdfs/2012/2012-LCF-Orpheus-and-Eurydice.pdf and Stéphane Bullion is still on.

Up til now, yes. The casting on the web site is the old one before injuries happened...

Well Manuel Legris does seem conservative in a sense that what he is doing in Vienna is more or less a copy of what has been done by POB the past years... I wouldn't be surprised if Nicolas Le Riche or even Laurent Hilaire who is now in the management team would have more original ideas... But as you said, we don't know anything about who is in line for the position and I don't know how and why (we have to be cautious of intentions...) these three names have emerged from the discussion...

Yes, this was Aurélia as Myrtha this afternoon...