Jayne

I saw the Saturday evening cast (Dec / Cruz) and have only wonderful things to say, but no time to write up my words until Monday night.

I don't have time to search for the youtube link, but in the Robbins documentary that I watched, the comment was made that Goldberg was heaven for some people and just dry as powder and awful for others. Your mileage may vary.

I think this thread is proof positive that dance-art is in the eye of the beholder. One person's cup of tea is another person's cup of gruel.

I saw "Boyhood" and thought they could have easily cut an hour out of the movie and it would have been fine. It ain't all that great, it's an interesting movie, but "Budapest" was a wonderful movie. I think it's going to be the new quotable movie in the same vein as "The Big Lebowski". I am looking forward to seeing "The Theory of Everything" and "Still Alice".

They could easily do 2 balanchine story ballets: Midsummer Night's Dream and Coppelia. They wouldn't have to build sets, they could rent them from Pennsylvania Ballet (Midsummer) or any variety of company for Coppelia.

http://www.timeout.com/newyork/dance/karen-keeler-talks-about-being-a-rockette Great interview from 2012 with a Dance Captain at Radio City Music Hall. Her past experiences at SAB, among other schools, and many extraordinary ballet instructors.

ooooh, please stay a while and tell us stories! We'll fix up some tea and tiny macaroons for you, linawil!!

hard to believe 1994 was 20+ years ago. But looking back, it was kind of a downer time after the cheeriness of the 1980's. I was in college at the time and remember Grunge music taking off (along with the copy cat fashions), how hopeless a diagnosis of HIV could be, and the job-less recovery of the early 90s' after the 1989 wall street crash. I first went to NYC in 1994 and tried to see ABT but couldn't afford tickets. I saw the Met Opera perform Madame Butterfly instead with a no-name matinee cast. Still a great experience seeing those chandeliers zip up before the music started. I think pre-internet, the critics had a lot more power over box office. Now with blogs, social media, etc people trust their friends more than they trust critics. I'm not sure about Bill T Jones' career, he still creates, and many choreographers do well, and then fade as the new choreographer of the moment gets the spotlight. Not everyone will have a Mark Morris type of career.

Mr T is an interesting character - he received nice reviews for performing the mother role in Ashton's Fille a few months back - and now he's denegrating the very "western" choreography that he chose to perform. I read an interview (maybe 5 years ago?) where he said his dream role (at that point he hadn't been asked to perform it) would be Des Grieux in Manon. So where does MacMillan fit into this rant? As for royalties, Russians are not paying royalties for 100+ year old dance/literary/musical masterworks that are played regularly in Russia (Bach, Mozart, etc). Anyway wouldn't royalties be paid to the descendants of the composers & choreographers? Those might not even live in Russia any longer. As for who dances Petipa the best, I think it makes sense for Russians to perform the old works well as they've invested in the instruction and schools to produce romantic / classical ballet. To turn it about, I'd say that American musicians still play the best jazz music - more so than the Russians at any rate. But there are plenty of wonderful jazz musicians all over the world. And American companies that focus on neoclassical Balanchine & Robbins still perform those works the best - more so than the Russians. But there are still wonderful international dancers who make neoclassical works look really great. I could make additional comparisons, but I think you get the idea. He's playing to his moneymakers, and we should all just ignore his politically tinged yelping. If quality dancers continue to emerge from Vagonova, I'm sure it has to do with the continuity of the teachers in place, rather than the rector in place.

Eddie looks so young here!

I don't know if Cuba could ever return to being the "American Riviera" but I would love to have a tropical cultural mecca to visit with fantastic music, ballet, art and theater. A girl can dream....

I'm awake with insomnia, just read Cubanaboy's updated review. Will be interesting to see what happens to Cuba in the new year with the new opening of US-Cuban government connections, via Pope Francis. Perhaps Christmas (at least the holy night) may return to Cuba. When I was in South America I found it wasn't nearly as big of a deal as the American version, it was celebrated more along the lines of the American 4th of July (family & friends got together for Asadas followed by nighttime fireworks). just too warm in December for much else. Cuba is already open to the rest of the world, but the local reforms haven't really come fast enough. Hopefully new blood in leadership (some day soon!) for both government and arts - especially ballet - will lead to fresh thinking in Cuba. Wouldn't it be great if the US State Dept gave MCB funds to tour Nut in Cuba? Feliz Navidad!

were any reasons given for the name change? Did he marry and take his partner's name?

14 pages on this topic. Amazing.

Since HBO is going to stream direct to computers with TV screens attached, I wonder if there might be some hope for The Dance Channel or a PBS Culture channel in the future to do the same? When I had cable, I realized I only watched about 12 channels out of the 200 available to me. It would have been cheaper for me to subscribe to individual channels, but cable doesn't offer that option. As I understand it, the big stumbling block is the sports channels - ESPN pays billions in Major Sports broadcast fees, and the packaging of various studio owned networks makes it impossible to design packages that keep the premium channels you want, but omit ESPN.

fashion is a big industry in NYC, giving up the park for a week doesn't seem to be the end of the world. I'm surprised that this became such a "thing".

Marquez already performed Fille in Cinemas, but I'd love to see Morera!

Are birthers a big audience at ballet performances? I have yet to meet one. I have met some birthers on occasion, but none of them were ballet fans. I am not sure McKenzie is anti-short women - he is willing to cast Natalia Osipova and Alina Cojucaru. I think he is looking for box office gold, and so Ms. Copeland is trying to develop her own fan-base so her shows sell out. Strong Box Office = more performance opportunities = likelihood of promotion. Perhaps Stella Abrera should try to market herself to the greater Pinoy-American community as well. And perhaps Veronika Part should do the same for the Russian-American community, especially her Vagonova Academy training and position as a former Mariinsky soloist with the Mariinsky.

I look at pictures of Misty Copeland and think she looks far more like the early 20c ballerinas before the "master race of string beans" took over. She's only 5'2" so she's not "big" but her muscle definition is proportioned differently that Svetlana Zakharova. As long as the dancer is fit, I am more inclined to pay attention to the quality of her dancing. I feel that men get a much bigger break in this regard. Carlos Acosta is proportioned very differently than Stephen MacRae and yet both have achieved laudatory reviews at RB. I don't think US national politics affects the chances of any soloist at ABT to be promoted to principal. Perhaps we should end the year agreeing to keep an open mind about Ms Copeland? Dancers do develop over time, and what someone may have seen 5 years ago may not be what she can put out on the stage in 2015. Here's to great performances in the new year (lifts a glass of sherry).

Russian ballet companies are turning into Major League Baseball teams dealing with free agents.

I threw up at my first nutcracker. It wasn't the dancers! I ate too many sweets at the party beforehand. It was a community production, and I made it through the sleigh arriving in the 2nd act, and then I was sick. My mom says she took me to see the old PNB Christensen production, but I don't have any memories of it. I adored the Stowell-Sendak production for years, then I was "too cool for school" and ballet (and hanging out with my mom) held little interest for me. Then about 7 years ago I went back to see PNB's production, had excellent seats and realized what a wonderful show it really was. I saw the NYCB 1993 version on PBS and it seemed so saccharine in comparison. I've watched Ovation's battle of Nutcrackers and all of them seem overly sweet. And I don't like the Mariinsky revised storyline, the original ETA Hoffman version is much more linear and interesting to me as an adult. Sad to say, but transplanting the Balanchine Nut to Seattle isn't that exciting to me from a choreography perspective either. It's been done. It's been overdone. It's been imitated by others. It's been "transformed" by Alvin Ailey, Mark Morris and other modernists. Call me bah humbug. That's fine. But I'd rather see fresh steps. I think I've just seen too much Nut and now I need to cleanse my palette. The Royal Ballet is doing "Alice in Wonderland" this December and I think it's so smart to alternate stories in December. Will there come a day when American audiences are saturated with Nuts and the market switches to something else?

I'm kind of hoping after the new version makes its money back, that PNB will alternate from year-to-year between Balanchine and Stowell versions (I've said this before in other threads, but I'll keep repeating it until Doug Fullerton whispers it into Peter Boal's ear). My only objection to the Stowell version is the lackluster choreography to the "Sugar Plum" music in the 2nd act.

Is the problem smoking for Mr. Vasiliev, or his muscular composition? His thick physical appearance reminds me of an Olympic sprinter. They are known for enormous musculature that is heavily fast twitch fiber. This small twitch fiber muscle allows for fast reflexes, jumping, etc. However, the fast twitch fiber fills the body with lactic acid, which tires the body quickly. This is why sprinters cannot be successful long distance runners. And the reverse is true as well. A long distance runner has a "lean" look, and if his muscles are measured, show extraordinary slow-twitch fiber. When exercising, the slow-twitch fiber doesn't produce lactic acid, and when the (minority) fast-twitch fiber muscle does produce lactic acid, the slow-twitch fiber converts it into energy which increases endurance. I suspect Mr. Vasiliev has "encouraged" his fast-twitch fiber muscles through his choices in training plans (probably lots of weight lifting), rather than any focus on "encouraging" slow-twitch fiber (swimming, erging, distance running, etc). That said, he could also be a smoker, which may will of course affect his stamina negatively.

Well to be fair he staged the well received "Bright Stream" and has taken risks with "Firebird" and "The Tempest". He will do a new "Sleeping Beauty" to debut next spring. If his "Nutcracker" does well in Orange County, then I think it will be considered a success. Do we judge Balanchine on his full length "Midsummer Night's Dream" or "Coppelia" alone? I don't think so. "Apollo", "Agon" and "The Four Temperments" are considered seminal works, but not box office "hits" on the same level as a full length story such as "Swan Lake". Ironically, NYCB has the Martins staging of "Swan Lake" and it is a big box office success....but would you judge the quality of Martins' choreography based on his "Swan Lake"? For Ratmansky, "On the Dnieper" seems to be very well received, and from what I've seen on Youtube, I've liked. My new year's resolution for 2015 is to get out of town more often to see more ballet. Since I'm on the west coast, that will probably mean seeing the Ratmansky SB in Orange County, and the Shostakovich Trilogy in San Francisco. Of course, much will depend on finances and airfare. But I will keep you apprised. You ballet-alerters inspire me with all your travel to NY, St Petersburg, Vienna, London, Miami and all ports in between. I feel like I need to up my game.

I don't know about that, it's so ghastly that it's good - in the same way Rocky Horror Picture Show is good. Still, not sure I want to pay $18 to see it at the theatre. After all, the Ovation TV Channel will probably have it in their Battle of the Nutcrackers again. Would rather waste $18 on gasoline (now that it's getting cheaper) and drive down to Portland to see the OBT Balanchine Nut.