Treefrog

Yes, BW I do know the basic story, although you have set me up perfectly to retell about the date who came out of the film version exclaiming, "Gee, I never expected it to end like that!" :green: Thanks for pointing me to Ballet 101. I will reread that -- I'd forgotten it was in there. However, it refers to the MacMillan choreography, and you are correct, I'd like to hear what people have to say about the Cranko version.

We'll be going to see Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev/Cranko) in a few weeks. What can you tell me about this ballet?

Thanks for following up on the pas de ciseaux, Mel. My kids have spirited away both our copies of Gail Grant, but when I find it I'll read the technical description.

No, it's one of the Snow Prince's exits in Nutcracker. It's like a grand jeté or saut de chat -- I never know which is which, anyway, even if I could see it in slow motion -- but he seems to hover, pause, and relate to the audience for, oh, a good couple of seconds before landing upstage right into the wings. I think there might be a kind of scissors kick involved, too, but it's been a while. There's a picture of it gracing a billboard on the Kennedy Expressway -- it's been there ever since last season!

Aw, it's not often I get to make bilingual puns. Indulge me. (for those whose high school French is even worse than mine, "zut" is a mild swear or expression of dismay) In truth, I too am glad to know the distinction between en déhors and en dedans. This is going to be a really useful topic. Is there some way we can submit candidates for future elucidation? Should we PM you? The kinds of questions I'm thinking of are not "what's a _____________", but on the order of "what's that step I've seen Calvin Kitten of the Joffrey do, where he kind of leaps and kicks out his back leg, with one arm over his head and the other rounded"?

I'm wondering if maybe that's a pirouette avec ZUT allongée? or perhaps it's a zut chute? :shrug: :green: :party:

Funny at the beginning, but quite sad (poignant) towards the end.

On the other hand, it sounds like just the thing I want for the TOP of my stack! Thanks.

Alexandra, as vagansmom says, it IS worth hanging in to the end. But I agree, it wasn't nearly as captivating as, say, Bel Canto -- which is hands down the book I enjoyed most this summer.

vagansmom, we have to give out the full story. I'm reading "Positive Discipline" thanks to vagansmom's enthusiastic recommendation off-line (we're both teachers). Didn't want folks to think they'd missed the latest book club must-read

Personally, I'm planning on reading lots and lots of sheets of paper with titles like "Can you light the bulb?" and "Circuit circus". Also "Positive Discipline in the Classroom" (that's a book, not a sheet of paper). Actually, I am feeling a bit bereft right now, because I DON'T have any books on the bedside table. My furious summer reading pace dwindled. I'm looking forward to the suggestions everyone makes so I can find a new read. Or I might just take up the next Aubrey/Maturin; I 'm up to "The Reverse of the Medal". (This series is great if you never have time to scope out new books; I've been working on it off and on for about four years.)

Thank you, Marc and Alexandra. Since Ananiashvili did not dance with the Bolshoi last fall here in Chicago, but did dance the year before, I wondered if she had left the Bolshoi completely for ABT. I get it now.

Hmmmm, tough choice. I adored Maria Alexandrova when the Bolshoi toured here last year ... but I also fell in love with Nina Ananiashivili in ABT's Don Quixote. Which brings me to a newbie question, of sorts: Why is Nina Ananiashvili a "Bolshoi ballerina" when she dances with ABT?

The business plan sounds flawed. I thought it was axiomatic that arts organizations could not survive on ticket sales. In order to meet their $2.7 million budget, they will have to sell 108,000 $25 tickets (or twice as many of those discounted ones!). That means that each of their 93 performances will have to play to almost 1200 paid seats. Seems unlikely even for an established company. The moral here is ALWAYS DO THE MATH! This really is a life lesson. Unless all the artists were duped, they could have saved themselves a lot of disappointment by using the facts to question the claims.

Oh, that's okay ... sniff ... we're used to being forgotten

Hey! Are you foresaking Chicago in February, Giannina? Or are we doing a "Monotones compare and contrast" this season?

Oh, all 700 of us gather in a room .... I jest. One lunch is set aside during teachers' planning week for faculty discussions. Faculty are randomly assigned to a discussion group, so it's a good chance to meet and interact with colleagues from other areas of the school. Similarly, the HS students hold discussions sometime during the first week of school, in randomly assigned groups that cross all four classes. I'm pretty sure there is a faculty facilitator in each group as well. In the past, there has also been some associated "function". Two years ago, the book we read was "Mitchell and Ruff", which is about the lives of a jazz duo. It's a fascinating and good read, full of interesting observations and life lessons about passion and perseverence and the nature of learning. Mitchell and Ruff, now in their 70's or so, came to the school and gave two performances -- an interactive master-class kind of thing with the students, and an afterschool concert for the faculty. Last year's choice was "Einstein's Dreams" -- musings about the nature of time, which left pretty much everyone yawning. There was no faculty function for that one, and I think the students got a lecture from the HS physics teacher (which, apparently, left many of them yawning as well, although he's an engaging guy.) I don't know what the plans are for this year.

Funny face, I adore "Home Comforts"! (But then, I also liked to read Emily Post's etiquette books as a child.) I agree, LOTS of good ideas on how to keep house -- not fussy, just good common sense. I read "Devil in the White City", which I think BW wrote about earlier (many pages back -- I'm too lazy to check). It tells parallel stories, in alternating chapters, about the building of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1892-93 and the gruesome tale of a serial killer who set up shop a few miles from the fair and preyed on women who migrated to the city. All true. As the fair took place in my neighborhood -- my classroom window looks out on the fair's Midway -- I found it all particularly fascinating. Thanks, BW, for sharing this book with me! I also just finished "A Lesson Before Dying" by Ernest Gaines. It's told from the perspective of a black schoolteacher in 1940's Louisiana, who has been asked to "make a man" of his aunt's friend's godson in the weeks between his trial and execution (for a murder at which he was present but probably had no part in). The teacher has his own demons to confront, and by the end, we're not sure which lesson the title refers to, nor who learned it. This book was our school's summer reading selection. All 200 faculty members and all the high school students (my school is pre-K - 12) are expected to read this book and come to school on day 1 prepared to discuss it.

I've finally reunited with my copy of the book. Now I can continue the conversation. In the epilogue, Gen and Thibault lament how the newspapers got it all wrong. Gen says "Everything I've read says there were fifty-nine men and one woman" -- presumably Roxane -- but "Carmen and Beatriz are never mentioned." Thibault agreed, saying that in France there had been no mention of the girls either. So, I don't think the papers were talking about who lived or died. The count must have been the total number of inhabitants of the house. Thirty-nine male hostages, one female hostage, and twenty kidnappers -- all presumed to be male. That's the way I read it, anyway.

Paul, YOUR post is nothing short of poetic! I do not know these pieces at all, but now I can't wait to see them.

Yes indeedy, in Chicago at the Auditorium Theatre. Check out the dates on the Joffrey's website (www.joffrey.com). Congratulations on the grandbaby! :yes: :party: :hyper: :jump:

Yes, indeed, Alexandra, the Joffrey will be doing Monotones I and II in February, along with A Wedding Bouquet and Les Patineurs. Come see it! I'll treat. It would be but a small payback for all you do for us.

Oh, come now, it's not her fault if the role is badly written and she lacks an essential quality for it. :nopity: I can't speak to other on- or off-screen performances you might have witnessed. :shrug:

The latest entry in this category is "Uptown Girls", which just opened this weekend. (Basic plot: ditzy rich girl --I hesitate to use the word "woman", although she is 22-- suddenly loses her money, has to get a job, becomes nanny to an overly-stiff and precocious 8-year-old, and each person helps the other to shed her hangups and become, respectively, an adult and a child.) Ballet is supposedly the passion of the young girl, Rae, and we are treated to ballet class, a short practice session at the barre in her room, and two recitals. The only problem is, the young actress clearly has no ballet training. This makes the final scene -- a recital in which she dances a vampy and decidedly non-balletic solo in front of a corps of reasonably talented and well-trained girls -- rather distressing. This ballet mom kept thinking, "Okay, THERE'S favoritism in casting." :green: In short: don't go see this movie for the ballet. In fact, I don't recommend it in general. However, if you have a youngster, he or she might enjoy it as much as mine did (dd #2).

I took the quiz before reading through the possible outcomes. I'm another Petipa/Tchaikovsky, though I can't figure out how. I think I only matched one of the Petipa answers!