California

Earlier today, Marcelo Gomes posted a picture of himself on Instagram in business class flying from London to Tokyo for the Festival. A comment from Vishneva says she can't wait to see him. Those two are worth the price of admission, to my mind, no matter what else they're showing. Do tell us what they perform. https://instagram.com/marcelua/

My thanks to birdsall for this report, and I'm glad he is recovering. I've never been to Russia, and probably will never go, much as I would love to see St. Petersburg and Moscow. Too many friends returning from group tours have come back with horrific warnings of street crime, unsafe water, unsafe food, etc. It's ironic, perhaps, because there is quite a bit of street crime in the US, but we're confident we know how to stay safe (rightly or wrongly). I have visited numerous cities throughout northern and eastern Europe and try to follow the advice in the tourist books. Pickpockets are the worst in Prague, but are a problem everywhere. News reports in recent years have reported gangs of gypsy ("roma") children stripping valuables from tourists in Paris, even inside the Louvre! And some advice is misguided. E.g., US travel writers like Rick Steeves sometimes advise taking overnight sleeper trains to save a night in a hotel, but friends I've talked to in eastern Europe think that's a horrible idea, as even the better overnight trains are very vulnerable to thieves. I suppose the message for all of us is to take reasonable, common sense precautions, no matter where we travel, but don't just stay home and miss out on life! As Mashinka points out, this kind of thing can happen anywhere.

Is it possible that some designers are loaning her clothes because of her celebrity? That's not so unusual for film & TV stars - free advertising for the designers!

Some of the people at that sales table at the Met during ABT's season have told me that the European dancers think the practice of selling autographed shoes is "creepy" (or some such). But I did notice they were selling shoes by Vishneva and Osipova in recent years at $500 -- I don't know if anybody paid that, but that's what they were asking. Men don't go through as many shoes as women, of course, so if you see some from a favored dancer, I'd suggest grabbing them! I have autographed shoes from Hallberg, Cornejo, and Gomes. Gomes even wrote the dates of his performance as Basilio, along with his autograph. Proceeds go to the dancer's emergency fund, so I think many dancers recognize the value of their donations.

The University has a massive budget shortfall of $40 million. 161 employees have been laid off, including the University Press, IT, multicultural center, registrar, along with the performing arts center. The situation has received extensive coverage in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which is subscription-only, but here's a recent story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/07/university_of_akron_layoffs_include_all_employees_in_multicultural_center_and_ua_press.html

I ordered some Royal Ballet tickets at the Royal Opera House for this fall and they don't add a service charge. They don't have print-at-home (at least for US customers); you pick up tickets at the box office. For the Colorado Ballet at the Caulkins Opera House, there is no service charge if you use the print-at-home option. I'm looking at my print-at-home ticket from Pennsylvania Ballet last spring (at the Academy of Music) and don't see any service charges there either. The Joyce Theatre adds a $6 "handling fee" if you order on-line, even though you pick up the ticket at the box office.

Oops - so sorry for the mistake -- so his current whereabouts are still a mystery, I guess.

Aran Bell is included in this new article in On Pointe (August-September). He seems to be living in the NYC area, with private coaching from Fabrice Herrault. No mention of a current ABT affiliation: http://pointemagazine.com/issues/augustseptember-2014/get-serious

It looks like they will premiere this at the Vail festival this week. You have to scroll down a bit on the Vail Facebook page to find it: https://www.facebook.com/VailDance

It looks like Marcelo Gomes is seriously dialing back in his performing, favoring more dramatic roles like Green Table. This doesn't bode well for the Met season next spring! Of course, several things are still TBA, and I suppose he might be featured in Monotones and/or the Morris premiere.

Once single tickets go on sale at NYCB, you can pick your own seats for Create-your-own on-line. I never buy anything until ABT announces their spring Met schedule and I figure out what trips I want to make. I don't even think I asked to do Create-your-own - the system seems to count up what you bought in one order and add that label. It's worth doing -- by the time spring rolls around, given all the casting changes at ABT by then, NYCB subscribers can do easy exchanges at the box office. (I've never bought NYCB Nutcracker tickets, so I don't know how that works.) BTW - according to Michael Kaiser's books (which I strongly recommend), performing arts groups used to sell 50% of their seats on subscription. Among other things, that meant they had major cash flow in the summer before the season started. Now, it's down to 20% nationally, although I assume that varies from company to company. People just have lives that are too complicated to count on predictable availability for the next year. I assume this shift explains why smart companies are doing so many things to keep subscribers happy -- free exchange privileges, discounts, etc. NYCB does a pretty good job at providing incentives - ABT, not so much.

I just got an e-mail from NYCB about this: PS: I can't use any of the functions, including quote, with Internet Explorer. Things work fine with Chrome.

This was such an unfortunate situation for all. I'm sure everybody is delighted that Corella landed in the US, directing the Pennsylvania Ballet. (I'm determined to find a way to see his new Don Q for them next spring!) And it sounds like several American ballet companies benefitted from the dancers who had to disperse. The Colorado Ballet got two wonderful dancers, Tracy Jones and Francisco Estevez (who also happen to be married). Both have a delightful stage presence and have been tearing through the rep here, with more to come this fall. Estevez was just promoted to soloist and, from the promotional photos just posted, it looks like he'll do James in La Sylphide. Tracy was a real treat last year in Fancy Free, Concerto Barocco, and Midsummer Night's Dream.

I wasn't thinking of any particular part. What I meant was simply that every writer benefits from having a good editor. From earlier posts here, it sounds like the editor on Mockingbird did yeoman's service through several drafts in making it a better book. As an aside, one of the complaints about so many blog postings today (whether dance criticism or anything else) is that they don't have the professional editing that was the hallmark of traditional publications (whether books, newspapers, or magazines). Imagine if Lee had simply self-published Watchman via Amazon. Would it have been quickly dismissed and forgotten? We have Mockingbird because professional editors at a traditional press brought the manuscript to the finished form that deserved to be praised. Which is not to demean the original author either...if there's nothing to work with, the editor wouldn't bother.

Rumors have abounded for many years that her friend Truman Capote had a big hand in the editing/revision of Mockingbird, but he always denied it. I'm hoping that a digital literary scholar will analyze the two texts to detect writing patterns and authorship. Of course, Mockingbird would have benefitted from professional editing (quite independently of Capote), but we might learn something about the styles of the two books and who really wrote what. Personally, I don't plan to read Watchman. There are just too many question swirling around about Lee's current mental situation and the financial benefits her estate will gain. Mockingbird is a treasure on its own, quite independently of its genesis.

Here's the chronology: fired in 1980 from ABT, rejoined in November 1982, left in May 1984. Never returned: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/06/nyregion/gelsey-kirkland-quits-ballet-theater-troupe.html

I wasn't present either. Somebody on this board mentioned this Q&A session and the future festival, and I can't seem to find it back.

My bad - so sorry! Some Royal Danish dancers were at the Joyce last winter. Apparently somebody -- their current director? - answered questions afterwards and referenced the Bournonville festival planned for....2017? 2018? Anybody present at that program who remembers?

I believe that people heard Bruhn make a few remarks at the Joyce Theatre earlier this year about a planned Bournonville festival in Copenhagen. I can't find anything more about this via Google. Do we know the year? dates? certainty?

The complete roster has now been posted for 2015-16: http://www.coloradoballet.org/company/dancers Principals: One new hire: Yosvani Ramos, a Cuban who was formerly a principal at Australia Ballet and ENB Soloists: No new hires. As noted earlier, Francisco Estevez was promoted in April from the corps. Corps: New hires: Mackenzie Dessens, Megan Dillon, Bryce Lee, Sarah Tryon Corps members in 2014-15 who are no longer on the roster: Casey Dalton, Klara Houdet

Thanks for this very detailed report. Baryshnikov did a piece called "Years Later," by Benjamin Mille piedmont in 2009, dancing with video of himself when very young. Sounds like Bolle has picked up on that theme. (The auto correct on this tablet refuses to let me spell the choreographer's name!)

For some reason, I thought ABT's fall schedule would be announced today. I've been checking the ABT site and the NYTimes dance page - so far, nothing. Any word on when we can expect this?

Very interesting - thanks! Is it possible that different Russian theaters have stages raked at different angles and Mikhailovsky is more extreme? In footage of classes at the Vaganova School, you can see the raked floors when you look at the baseboards in the rooms. They seem to learn on those angles from an early age. It's also possible that Gomes learned from the Mikhailovsky experience and has been able to adapt to those stages more carefully now.

In the rough cut of "Anatomy of a Male Dancer," which contributors got to see on-line last summer for about 48 hours, there is brief footage of that performance. But when he got home, he needed serious physical therapy, which they also show. He says that he wasn't used to the steeply raked stage at Mikhailovsky and he seems to have landed wrong on some leaps, which caused the injury. He also mentions that the Russian dancers train on that raked floor, even in their classrooms when young. The documentary hasn't been released yet and we have not been given a date when it will, so I can't provide a link here. We also won't know if that footage makes the final cut. (I hope some BAers here also saw that rough cut and can confirm my memory on this.) I think Gomes has danced in Russia since then with The Kings, but I'm not positive. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any other announcements of him performing in Russia, certainly nothing at Mikhailovsky. I've sometimes wondered if Hallberg's switching back and forth from flat American stages to Russian raked stages has contributed to his frequent injuries, but I've never seen him mention that in interviews.

I started a new topic, "Lincoln Center at the Movies" a few hours ago with this same information. Perhaps an administrator could combine? The "live" part is also dubious. NYCB is showing their 2011 broadcast of Nutcracker. Somebody else here said they were at an Ailey performance with signs "being recorded for broadcast." Is the SF Ballet "live" or is that a previous performance?