California

Although the current staging seems close to the Baryshnikov staging from 1978, he is not credited in the print programs. Choreography is credited to Petipa and Gorsky with staging credited to McKenzie and Jones. After Baryshnikov resigned as AD in 1989, there were some reports that he was taking his ballets with him, but perhaps others remember the exact details on this. Others might remember better than I do to what extent we're seeing the Baryshnikov staging. Another oddity about the Baryshnikov staging: several years ago, I stumbled onto a complete performance on YouTube of the Kirov in Japan doing the full-length DQ with Baryshnikov (before he defected, of course). It didn't stay on-line very long, though. My memory is that it was strikingly similar to the version he staged for ABT in 1978. Perhaps somebody realized the similarities were too close and demanded that the Kirov version be taken off-line. I wonder if others remember this. The red dress for Kitri was worn by Cynthia Harvey in the 1983 performance, still available on DVD. But in the premiere season, Gelsey wore a long purple dress in Act I. You could see brief glimpses of it on her web site at one point. And it's visible in the archival tapes you can see at the NYPL Performing Arts Library.

Did Abrera do BlueBird at the matinee and Lilac Fairy in the evening? What a trooper!

Curtain calls at the 7/6/13 matinee (Reyes/Lendorf) thanks to LaKarsavina: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD05yE81Utg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ly4IucdnBM

I assumed this was Puss 'n Boots. Are there other cats in this production?

Thank you Plisskin for posting this. Boylston looks fabulous! Vasiliev? Bent knees, feet not pointed, legs turned in. I don't understand. So what if he can jump as high as a skyscraper and turn like a tasmanian devil. He looks awful doing it. I would love to be a fly on the wall during his rehearsals. I wonder if KM and the rehearsal directors correct him for these persistent and unprofessional mistakes? Ratmansky, when he was director at the Bolshoi, plucked Vasiliev and Osipova out of some crowd (was it a school or a regional company?) and hired them at the Bolshoi. I wonder if/how he gives corrections when he choreographs, as he used both of them in the Trilogy. And I wonder if he pushed Vasiliev along as a way to get Osipova into the Bolshoi. I haven't noticed anything along these lines in his interviews to date.

Excellent point. Yes, good point. I'd forgotten that Gomes was doing Onegin in London. Still its a shame Part has to lose the performance. I think he's doing it in Moscow, which means adjusting to the raked stage, along with everything else: http://www.bolshoi.ru/en/performances/655/

The options for these casting changes might be more complicated than we realize. Gomes, e.g., is scheduled to do Onegin with Vishneva in Moscow on July 19, just 6 days after his Corsaire with Murphy in LA. He might not have been eager to delay his departure from LA by adding yet another performance.

Indeed! It also reflects a callous attitude toward fans who no doubt would like to see her anywhere, anytime. She should consider Sara Lane's approach in SB: take that performance and knock everybody's socks off!

I agree with mimsyb that all those full-length ballets at the Met contribute to the casting problems. And to fill such a big theater, those full-length warhorses seem to be a necessity with today's audiences. The two-week fall season, with nothing but mixed bills across the plaza in a smaller house, should help provide more opportunities for soloists and corps members. It will be a test case, as it were, to see if they can sell well. Let's hope they do. Did someone mention that the ABT contract with the Met only runs through 2015? Perhaps that will be the opportunity to move to the you-know-who Theatre for a summer season once NYCB closes -- most of June, all of July. That's not ideal either, but it might be more realistic financially, especially if fund-raising woes continue. I suppose a March-April season would be a possibility, but not great either.

I saw her as one of the goats in Sylvia last week and was struck at the similarities with the cat in SB -- especially the pawing hands.

I've really enjoyed reading these reports about SB -- thanks, everybody -- keep 'em coming! I'm curious if the houses look full. (Of course, the Wednesday night crowd was expecting Cojocaru...)

Curtain calls Wednesday, 7/3 evening, thanks to LaKarsavina (Kochetkova/Cornejo/Kajiya): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mh5o5fRioM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW5XkzoSsZM (Nothing posted for the 7/2 Hee Seo debut.)

Curtain calls Wednesday, 7/3 matinee, thanks to LaKarsavina (Lane/Simkin/Abrera): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx4wN989jAI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svLxcCVInHM

Major cast shuffling among principals, long after most people have bought tickets, seems to be the norm for the Bolshoi. At least that was my experience when they visited Orange County in spring 2010. I guess it's a warning to be prepared for this during their visit to New York in July 2014? Can Bolshoi experts let us know if this impression is correct? Or is this just a fluke.

"I think it's possible that balances in general might be a problem spot for her." I just had to chuckle when I read that. Casting Seo in a role famous for the balances is like somebody at ABT thinking: "Gee, she'd be a great black swan, but she can't do a fouette to save her life. Perhaps nobody will notice!" I wonder if Seo will have to wait five years before getting another shot at SB. I also wonder if the balances for the rest of the week will be super-extraordinary, as everybody surely knows about this episode by now. The other principals will want to show how great they are in that sequence -- sort of like the escalating competition in embellishments to the fouettes in SL and Don Q. Those of you fortunate enough to attend SB for the rest of the week will have to let us know.

It's almost painful to read these reports of Seo's Rose Adagio. This is the Met, after all, not a school recital. Yes, there is more to SB than balances, but they are so iconic, you have to wonder if anybody at ABT had second thoughts about handing her this role. Or perhaps somebody should have looked at her trying them before giving her the role. Not every dancer is suited for every role. When Colorado Ballet did SB last year, all three principal women did a good job with Rose, one was fabulous (Maria Mosina), and nobody fell off pointe in the numerous performances I saw. Adding to the bizarre evening others have described, you have to wonder what Stella Abrera was thinking as she did the Lilac Fairy. Ethan Stiefel liked her enough to give her SB a couple of years ago in New Zealand. With some help from Google, I found an old review that says Abrera has great technique, but the characterization could be improved. No mention of faltering balances: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10770177 You just have to wonder why McKenzie took a chance on Seo, when they must have had early indicators about these problems, and Abrera was right there. At least Lane gets to do SB, but is it true she's had to wait five years for another shot at it?

My nominee: any usher who seats people after the curtain goes up on a performance. They seem to think they are being nice to latecomers by breaking the rule about no late seating, and forget that they are disrupting the sightlines of many, many people. This is a HUGE problem at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House (where the Colorado Ballet performs), but it's happened to me in New York, too. I went to a Broadway show with a 7:00 curtain. At 8:00 sharp, the ushers let in a couple who had seats in center orchestra, front row, even though it was another 15 minutes to the intermission. Presumably, the couple mistakenly thought the performance started at 8, but that's no excuse for the usher. I don't recall this at NYCB or ABT performances in NYC, though.

I rummaged around (briefly) on the NYCB, Met, and ABT sites and couldn't find any rules on age minimums, although I'm sure they say somewhere that everybody must have their own ticket, regardless of age. We took my sister's 3-year-old grandson to last year's Nutcracker at the Colorado Ballet, but made a point of sitting on an aisle so we could make a quick get-away if he acted up. (He didn't.) Nobody should have to be told to do that! And a matinee Nutcracker is swarming with little kids anyway (unlike Swan Lake).

That does seem excessive -- like I said, it's tricky when a venue is both a theater and a tourist attraction -- think of all the photos people take outside the building with the Chagalls in the background... On my most recent visit, I did notice several tourists taking pictures in the theater before the performance without hindrance from ushers. I guess it depends on the ushers! The bigger problem in the closing weeks of the season seems to be crying babies. I was there when one screamed out at the beginning of Julie Kent's White Swan and someone else reported on screams during Reyes' Sylvia. There is a soundproof "baby room" at the back of the orchestra (they show it to you on the Lincoln Center tour) and I wonder how swiftly ushers try to move people into that at the first outburst.

I wonder if they figured that they just couldn't compete with Halloween for opening night (after the Gala). They are skipping the Fourth of July at the Met this month, possibly for the same reason.

The fall season is two weeks of mixed rep in a smaller house. I don't know what the attendance figures were for the Met's mixed bills, but it sounded as if those were harder tickets to sell. Splitting things up this way seems to make sense.

"First Position" is scheduled for broadcast on Bravo on basic cable Friday, July 5, very early morning.

Nobody has mentioned Ethan Stiefel, who performed with both ABT and NYCB. If he does a good job at New Zealand in the next year or two, might he be on a short list for companies like SFB or PNB? ABT seems a bit of a leap, assuming Ratmansky declines, but perhaps not.

Thanks for correcting that - it did seem odd.

This discussion reminds me of interviews with Marcelo Gomes, who started working on partnering at an early age in Brazil. Here's an interview from 2003 that discusses that: http://balletalert.com/dancers/interviews/Gomes.html Elsewhere, I've seen discussions of the fact that, at least in many (most?) American ballet classes, there are so few boys that they learn how to partner many different types of girls. As others have noted, it seems strange that Simkin's dancer parents didn't anticipate this during his "homeschooling" in ballet.