California

Chandra Kuykendall is retiring at the end of the 2019-20 season: Chandra and her husband Rob have their own ballet school south of Denver, the Denver Academy of Ballet. http://www.denveracademyofballet.com/

Thank you for those dates. It is a shocking mistake, for sure, and one wonders how it got into the book. I've had the impression that Morris is well-informed about the universe of dance, but this makes me wonder.

This is actually a rather shocking mistake and I wonder if there's an explanation. Before Apollo (1928 - Balanchine's oldest surviving ballet), legend has it that he choreographed dozens of works that never survived. Is there evidence any of those support Morris' claim?

I don't have the new Morris book, but I'm curious if he knows about the Oakland Ballet's history of reconstructions, notably Nijinska and Massine. Unfortunately, they don't list dates, although we know they all happened after the company was founded in 1965. I have a vague memory of seeing them do Nijinska's Les Noces in 1982, but don't see it on their list for the 50th anniversary performance. I wonder if their reconstructions predated the Joffrey's. Nijinska herself worked with this company. http://oaklandballet.org/wp/performances/fivedecadesofdance/ http://oaklandballet.org/wp/about/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/05/26/oakland-ballets-flawed-but-compelling-les-noces/fcd733ed-0190-4030-8079-62be56a07341/

I will be very interested in learning how the Ratmansky version compares with the historic reconstruction for Pacific Northwest Ballet. Will the Bolshoi version be shown on film or released on DVD? I hope so. Most unfortunately, due to some other unavoidable commitments, I will once again miss the PNB version, alas!

I don't think this would explain why it isn't often performed, but Francis Schroeder, the primary funder of this ballet and a member of the NYCB Board, was charged with murder. I'm curious if they credit her for the funding nowadays when they perform it: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/22/us/note-on-will-cited-in-78-utah-murder.html

Very interesting! As I saw the reconstruction in Milan a couple of years ago, I think I can understand. In all the casting that I looked at, Bolle never performed the reconstruction, nor did they have any of their usual visiting artists (Hallberg, Osipova, Nunez, e.g.). As they are doing SL next summer, maybe they felt they needed those big names to bring in tourist dollars. And it would be quite a stretch for a visiting artist to learn the reconstruction. But I do remember that Miami City Ballet dropped some hints on social media that they were going to stage the reconstruction in their 2020-21 season. I haven't seen any more news about this. Has anybody else? I do wish there were a good recording for purchase - so much to learn. And this was a co-production with Zurich - any word on their plans?

Is this the balance by Tereshkina that you're talking about? Pretty amazing. It's at 1:47:20. I saw several performances at the Kennedy Center a couple of years ago, and she was the only one who could pull this off.

The Feb 16 Giselle at the Kennedy Center is still all TBA: https://www.abt.org/performances/master-calendar/

Anatomy of a Male Ballet Dancer is now playing on Amazon Prime.

I wasn't there, but the group photo noted that this was Melanie Hamrick's last performance

I would recommend Stephanie Jordan's Book: Mark Morris: Musician-Choreographer https://www.amazon.com/Mark-Morris-Choreographer-Stephanie-Jordan/dp/1852731753/ref=sr_1_5 His relationship to music is called "choreomusicality." It's a cousin to Balanchine's dictum: "See the Music"

Here's one thing she did right: You might remember that Ratmansky's The Tempest (2013) was a co-production with NBoC, but the latter never performed it. I thought it was a disastrous bore, even with a stellar cast. https://dancetabs.com/2013/11/american-ballet-theatre-opening-night-gala-tempest-premiere-and-others-new-york/ (Correct me if I'm wrong on this, please. I check the NBoC schedule each year because they do have a few interesting things in their rep and Toronto is a nice city to visit.)

I have been hoping Simkin might bring Lane to the Berlin State Opera for some guest visits, but they seem to be bringing Kochetkova a lot. Interesting that they are doing Giselle next May. https://www.staatsballett-berlin.de/en/spielplan/01-04-2020/

The master calendar is now "loaded" for May and June: https://www.abt.org/performances/master-calendar/