California

Indeed! NBoC also co-produced The Tempest, which I sat through twice at ABT - never again. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the Canadians have ever staged it. Perhaps their company managers visited New York to see it at ABT. Given a choice between Tempest and Winter's Tale, they choose the lesser of two co-produced disappointments. http://www.abt.org/education/archive/ballets/tempest.html (San Francisco Ballet had much better luck with their co-production with ABT of Trilogy.) I saw the first two performances of Tale in London in April 2014 (same cast, alas). I enjoyed the second act, but doubt I will go out of my way to see it again, and I'm relieved to read Mashinka's commentary. The story is so complicated - and so unfamiliar to most audience members - that it seemed that an awful lot of energy went into trying to make the story clear. The ever-changing sets were clever, but those don't carry a full-evening ballet.

I'm as distressed as anyone about the near-disappearance of the classical arts from public television and the drastic cut-backs in arts education in the schools. But there is one bright spot: the wealth of quite wonderful regional ballet companies all over the country, encouraged in large measure in the 50s and 60s by the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the state arts councils. If you look at their web sites and Facebook pages, you see terrific outreach efforts to the schools -- dress rehearsals with audiences full of school children, live-streaming to outlying areas, etc., etc. Know hope!

If you take a look at recent issues of On Pointe or Dance Magazine, they are chock full of ads for summer intensives all over the country, in cities both big and small. It struck me that they must be serious money-makers for most affiliated companies and schools.

Michael M. Kaiser (the "fixer" for struggling arts organizations, from Pennsylvania Ballet and the Kennedy Center to the Royal Opera House) makes this point pretty clearly in his several books (which I highly recommend). If they have a lot of money, they're giving it elsewhere. And ordinary millennials don't have much money, especially with student loan debt. Yet I see most ballet companies (and other performing arts groups) forming Junior Members groups of various kinds. I think they probably have to do this, but the company's programming is awfully important to attract these audiences even to attend performances, let alone support them financially with donations.

I am so glad to see NYPL join what is becoming an important movement in the art world. They join the Getty Open Content Program and the National Gallery of Art Open Access program (and dozens of other smaller art museums), in which you can download and use (without permission or royalty payment) an enormous number of public domain works in their collections. As most know, it's normally not enough that the underlying work be in the public domain; there is additional copyright on the process of digitizing the work to display on-line. Getty has a wonderful rationale for their program: they want people to enjoy great art and dropping the old restrictions is a great way to do this. I wonder if the explosion of sites like YouTube has nudged the NYPL and others to get on board. Bravo to all of them! (Or is that bravi...?)

My memory from press reports at the time is that Kylian thought NDT had become too dependent on him as a choreographer and needed to nurture new talent. So he threw them into the deep end by withdrawing permission for a year for his own works. Fortunately, most of the important Kylian works are available on DVD. I hope other choreographers withdrawing their works first make archival tapes for the sake of dance history. I can understand why they don't trust others to stage their works appropriately, but they "owe" history authoritative records of their work.

Very strange: Here are links from the NEH site: http://www.neh.gov/humanities- to the Humanities home page http://www.neh.gov/humanities/back-issues/vol37/issue1 - to the specific issue http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2016/januaryfebruary/feature/george-balanchine-and-the-united-states-artist-in-love-his-adopted-country- to the Balanchine article

The January/February 2016 issue of Humanities, the bi-monthly publication of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has a very nice cover story on Balanchine: "George Balanchine and the United States: An Artist in Love with his Adopted Country" by Peter Tonguette. Please see links below. When the site condenses the full link, it's changing neh.gov to ngov...

I'm not a Copeland fan, but as she seems to be bringing in new audiences and wider press attention, that's good for the artform, so okay. As noted elsewhere on this site, the only two Nutcrackers to sell out at Segerstrom were her performances. What bothers me is the thought of a not-very-rich family struggling to buy tickets to see Copeland for the first time and discovering she's only on-stage for a matter of minutes in a secondary role. I hope the KenCen and the local press are making full disclosure so people know what they're buying. Ferri is making a one-time appearance in a lead role - apples and oranges, I think. I have to think that the Kennedy Center management has enough political savvy to make available some free appearances that all can enjoy -- perhaps on the millennium stage in the lobby or a school visit or perhaps bringing school kids to a dress rehearsal where they can see her. She did a fund-raiser for a neighborhood ballet school in SoCal and made some other appearances, so her new fans should have other opportunities to at least see her in DC.

I'm wondering how much this will impact the Met pricing. E.g., Copeland is scheduled to do Firebird on May 18 and 19 as part of the Ratmansky mixed bill - with the Ratmansky premiere that I really hope to see a few times. It would be ironic to charge more for a ballet that many serious balletomanes aren't so crazy about (I'm being polite) because of the casting.

I just noticed that Kochetkova opens Le Corsaire at the Met on May 31, although judging from her Instagram, she spends a lot of time jetting around the world.

It's a wonderful clip and I'm glad she gave permission to post on YouTube. The piano accompaniment was added for YouTube. The NYPL/Dance Collection does have the extended performance recording, from which this was taken, available for viewing at the Library, but it has no sound, so it's difficult to appreciate the performances. It seems to be part of their archival collection, never intended for public release or telecast. Baryshnikov is her partner in that performance, but you don't see him on the YouTube clip.

I have seen this several times over the years. (I have an ancient VHS tape of that episode.) Was this her only dramatic-speaking role? I can't think of any others. In her (in)famous autobiography she talks about plastic surgery, most notably injections to make her lips look more full. It's almost painful to watch in close-ups. But we can treasure those final moments of the TV show of Giselle in the rehearsal hall, even though she's in soft shoes and practice clothes. Brings back memories. How sad that we don't have a real recording of her performance in this ballet.

The National Endowment for the Humanities just announced a new round of grants. Of interest here: Wesleyan University Outright: $100,000 [Humanities Open Book Program] Project Director: Suzanna Tamminen Project Title: Reissue as free epubs 18 foundational books in dance and theater Project Description: The digitization and creation of freely-accessible ebooks for 18 essential texts from Wesleyan University Press on the history of dance and theater. Chicago Film Archives Outright: $6,000 [Preservation Assistance Grants] Project Director: Anne Wells Project Title: Assessment and Plan for Chicago Film Archive's Digital Collections Project Description: Hiring a consultant to assess the archives' digital collections and to provide recommendations for their care. Chicago Film Archives' audiovisual collections total 25,000 items including film and prints, videotapes, audiotapes, and ephemera reflecting life in the Midwest. Spanning almost the entire 20th century, they were produced between 1903 and the late 1990s. The visual materials encompass various genres, including documentaries, travelogues, educational and industrial films, dance, experimental films, student and art films as well as feature, foreign, and silent films, and home movies. At present, the collections are used for scholarly research and exhibitions and for educational and public programing in institutions across the United States. For the complete list: http://www.neh.gov/files/press-release/nehgrantsdecember2015.pdf

Stella posted a great video instagram of the torchlift. Note how she runs toward him and seems to help push off. Also note in the hastags that she calls it the torchlift. https://www.instagram.com/stellaabreradetsky/ (I can't figure out how to isolate the one clip - it's the one on the left, first row)

I thought it was interesting that the CT site says Part was injured "while performing." Not exactly. She cancelled before the first performance. More accurately, I suppose, "injured while rehearsing" or "injured while preparing to perform."

I'm sure that's true. Makes you wish Gorak had soldiered on, especially as he was able to do some soloist roles over the next few days. And given the sudden partner change, it might have made sense to change that one monster lift to a standard shoulder sit and just do a good job of that. Others mentioned that Boylston shows how upset she is after problems like that and it seems to hamper the rest of her performance. Reminds me of figure skaters who take a fall - some are able to keep going and put it behind them, while others just seem to unravel for the rest of the performance. She needs to learn how to keep it from ruining what comes next. Mistakes happen, even to the best of them (see above, Osipova and Murphy). Murphy/Whiteside and Seo/Gomes also did a good job on the torchlift.

Excellent suggestion: https://www.goldstar.com/venues/costa-mesa-ca/segerstrom-center-for-the-arts-segerstrom-hall They list tickets from $27.50-$50. From the original prices shown (39-69), it looks like everything is in the balcony, but the sightlines at Segerstrom are very good, so this would be a great way for people on a budget to see this production. When I've gotten Goldstar tickets in Denver for the Colorado Symphony, you don't get to pick your own seat, and I assume that's true elsewhere, but that's not a bad trade-off for big price reductions.

Thanks for the correction! When Stella fell, it immediately reminded me of Osipova's fall, which I also saw, and I didn't check dates.

I also saw the matinee today. I thought Stella's fall forward on her face was heart-stopping. Coming so early in the Act II PdD I wondered if it would spook them for the moves to come, but it didn't seem to. It was eerily similar to the fall that Osipova took in Giselle at the Met last May - which gave Stella her NY debut in Giselle. [EDIT: RUKen has correctly pointed out that Stella replaced a different injured dancer (probably Semionova?). I thought of the Osipova fall when I saw Stella's - hope I'm not jinxing these people!] I thought they had technical problems with the Torchlift -- her left leg, bent at the knee, was visible wobbling back and forth as he tried to push her up and I worried it would get worse, but fortunately it didn't. Otherwise, I kept thinking "liquid gold" - she is so fluent and expressive in this ballet - really lovely. The house has seemed only 60-70% to me at all five performances I've seen. It seats 3,034, so that's a lot of tickets to sell and they weren't cheap. Families on budgets had very good alternatives, with the Southland Academy at UC Irvine (with guest artists like Kochetkova and Mearns and top prices at $45) and LA Ballet. http://festivalballet.org/fbt/nutcracker.html Some of kind of deal or incentives to return do seem very much needed.

I saw that, too. It was right at the end, after they had done a gorgeous, secure torch-lift (or whatever we're calling it). It happened so fast all I noticed was that something seemed to have slipped during a turn and he had to grab to get things back. Not even so noticeable that the audience gasped or thought it was a big problem. On his Instagram this morning, he posted a picture thanking Hee Seo for trusting him as a partner. https://www.instagram.com/p/_OXJVWCuaK/?taken-by=marcelua We'll never know, but I wondered if this was also a subtle reference to Part for possibly not trusting him as a partner to get through her cancelled performances. The matinee with Boylston and Stearns did have a major disaster on the torch-lift, but I'm not sure the audience recognized that one either. He first turned on the diagonal to get into position and, near the end, slipped. He didn't fall, but it was noticeable and I wonder if that spooked both of them. When she ran toward him, she really slowed down as she approached. He tried to heave her upward (she was no help at all), got her as far as his shoulder where she just sat, while he had both arms wrapped around her legs in front. Very clumsy and awkward. If they had planned to simplify the lift, it would have looked better (just a standard shoulder sit), but this seemed to be a "save" to avoid catastrophe. I agree with Odinthor that the audience doesn't really know much about what it's seeing. I was ready to burst in with applause at the end of the Act I PdD with Murphy-Whiteside - but the audience was dead silent. I've been captivated by the flowers/bees -- so many interesting and surprising groupings. Waltz of the flowers is usually such tedium, but this version is genius. I have also been struck at how often Ratmansky finds a beat or accent in the music that was always there, but not noticed until he put a flourish on it. Some of that comes in the PdD - accents and cuteness which don't work at all if the dancers are not really committed to them. Gomes-Murphy and Whiteside-Murphy were best. Boylston-Stearns just slid through those and they looked sloppy. I really dislike the Russian trio. There are some nasty stereotypes about people of Slavic origin (Russians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks) being doofuses. Ratmansky surely knows that and I hated seeing it become the central motif of the Russian dance. (Americans are familiar with ugly Polish jokes. Hitler thought Slavs were a close second to the Jews in being lesser human beings...) Just gratuitous nastiness.

Hee Seo is now listed with Gomes for Saturday evening, instead of Part. As mentioned, Seo, in costume, rehearsed her variation at the Friends rehearsal Thursday afternoon, so perhaps they wanted her ready for Saturday, just in case. I saw Murphy and Whiteside Friday night. I am not really one of his fans, but his partnering was superb and Gillian was her usual radiant self. The house was about 75%. The OC Register this morning mentioned that both of Copeland's performances next week are sold out.

A thought about the sets: several people (including today's OC Register) have remarked on the cramped feeling of BAM, but the second act felt a little too sparse to me. Beautiful blue with gold painted "fences" plus some benches on the sides for the flowers to sit on. The variations seemed swallowed up in all that space, but at least they must have felt free to let go on things. .

I was also at opening night. Gillian was a nice surprise, and she's still scheduled for Friday night with Whiteside. No explanation for cast change that I have seen. House about 75%, but it's Thursday night. At Friends dress rehearsal of Act 2 this afternoon, leads were listed as Gorak and Boylston. I guess I don't know all the dancers well, but it looked like Stearns. Ratmansky himself was there, especially coaching Boylston. Kolpakova coached Seo in the sugar plum fairy variation, although she's not scheduled until next week. I didn't ever see this in Brooklyn. I was especially impressed by the way he moves groups around in surprising and interesting ways. Notably, the flowers with the bees, especially a sequence of throw lifts on the diagonal. Act 1 choreography for kids also very clever. Ditto the polichinelles in 2, especially their exit (which reminded me of the heathens in Prodigal Son). As for THE lift, Gillian runs toward Marcelo and very noticeably bends her supporting leg and pushes up, while Marcelo is pushing her other leg up at the knee into position. My language isn't very clear, but the dynamics look a lot closer to the Grigorovich version, and she's doing some of the work. Very disappointed that some old cultural stereotypes stayed in, especially those pointing fingers by the Chinese

Thanks, Drew. Pretty amazing clip. I wish we could see Marcelo (with anybody) do the lift that way instead of the dead weight version Ratmansky gave him. And it's clear this is where Maria and Alexei learned their version.