California

My apologies for introducing such a trivial point, but is the distinction between principal and principle now a completely lost cause? I was stunned reading the review by Robert Gottlieb, editor (and critic) extraordinaire, to see this used incorrectly and just assumed a well-intentioned copy editor made the mistake: http://observer.com/2013/05/30-years-of-peter-martins-balanchines-successor-has-had-his-ups-and-downs/ I've been seeing this used incorrectly in more and more places, including many supposedly professional outlets for writing. In grade school, we learned a simple rule for keeping them straight: "The principal is my pal." So, "principal" is for persons in a leading role. "Principle is like a rule, both end in 'le.'" It's never a person. I blame texting shortcuts for the decline in spelling, but I also blame spell-check. As long as the word matches a correct spelling, it goes through, even if it's the wrong one. Oh well...chalk this up to lost causes, I guess.

If I could expand slightly on Helene's comment: I daresay most of us have held non-arts-related jobs where we were stunned at the incompetence of certain people promoted far beyond what they deserved. Such notions as "failing upwards" and "the Peter Principle" have currency because this is so common. We like to delude ourselves into thinking we live in a meritocracy, but does anybody believe GWB would have been admitted to Yale with his middling to mediocre SATs and GPA if his last name had been "Smith"?

As an out-of-towner who visits NYC periodically, I never buy subscriptions, as I can't pick out my own seats, but I do pounce on single ticket sales as soon as they become available. Then you can pick out your own seat, which I much prefer. I've never had any trouble getting great seats that way. I agree with your wife about orchestra -- it's a disaster and very risky for shorter people. I aim for First tier or first row-Second tier. Occasionally, I've gotten orchestra first row-side section and it's great fun to see it up close as a contrast to the tiers. Unlike some theaters (e.g., Vail!), you easily can see all their feet from the first row at the State Theater. (For anybody visiting Vail, avoid the first two rows, unless you enjoy dance only from the calf upwards...)

"Chamber Symphony" is the second of the new Ratmansky's that premiere next Friday. Interesting - no Hallberg on the tour. Calvin Royal of the Corps seems to be replacing him.

Actually, I've been hoping for a few hints in the NY Times Arts Blog about the fall 2013 season at the State Theatre! They seem to get the first public information. I can't remember when the fall 2012 season was announced, and that was a few weeks earlier in the fall. I'm guessing it won't be released until July.

Her Facebook statement sounds pretty final to me! Perhaps she has been told that it's being retired from the ABT rep for a few years. It sounds like ticket sales haven't been great, so that's plausible. It's also possible she doesn't plan to renew her contract with ABT. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Diana-Vishneva/252826048061382?fref=ts

I heard a lecture-demo with Emery LeCrone last year and she mentioned that she had a "day job" at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet -- very important, she said, not only because it gave her a steady income, but also health benefits. It supported her while she tried to make her name as a choreographer. Those issues were discussed in this profile in Pointe magazine last year: http://www.pointemagazine.com/issues/junejuly-2012/company-life-choreographing-corps

I confess that I bought Brittany's mainly because she left on the ribbons, the kind with elastic insets. A year ago, I snagged a pair of Ana Sophia Scheller's with ribbons, also with elastic insets, in an unusual almost flesh-colored satin. But it's really hard to find any that leave on the ribbons nowadays. I asked the counter clerk if they had anything at all with ribbons and she brought out the Scheller shoes, so it's worth asking.

I think it's $100 (principals), $75 (soloists), $50 (corps), or something along those lines. I remember thinking I was lucky to buy a pair of Brittany Pollack's just before she was promoted to soloist. And they give you the 10% discount if you are a member of Friends (unlike ABT). At the end of the fall 2012 season at City Center, ABT had a big basket of shoes for $20 a pair, but they seemed to be things that weren't selling otherwise.

Excellent question, abatt! Long ago, PBS stopped broadcasting ballet for lack of funding. ABT could rally it's wealthy donors to fund recorded performances for DVD release. McKenzie should push this diligently. Think of all the great work that could be available to the general public? Not only the magnificent Vishneva-Gomes partnership, but so many from the past, such as the Ferri-Bocca partnership -- their R&J, Giselle, Bayadere. The list goes on and on. And if DVD release is too much, how about selling these as downloads on iTunes or something comparable. It galls me that we have such riches available on DVD from the European companies -- releases of recent recorded-live-in-performance (La Scala, Bolshoi, Royal Ballet, POB), but hardly anything from ABT or NYCB. And hardly anything from one of our very best male dancers, Marcelo Gomes.

My sister and I were in the first row of the balcony on Saturday night and had a very different experience. I wonder if there are issues with the acoustics/amplification in City Center. We loved Dvorovenko, could understand her perfectly (both accent and audio), and thought deLuz was hard to hear and failed to project appropriately. We loved the entire production, but had no basis for comparison, having never seen it on Broadway or the old film. I would have preferred seating in the first tier, but nothing remotely decent was available. The first row of the balcony has a major defect, namely, that the security bar in front of the seats cuts straight across your sightlines. So you have to either scooch down or sit up too high to catch the action. Second row looks like it would be much better, sightline-wise.

I don't know about the TKTS booth, but the TDF site (which often sells discounted NYCB tickets) seems to say that the revenue is funneled back to the theaters: http://www.tdf.org/TDF_ServicePage.aspx?id=85& do=v And it does seem that ABT could use the $$. I just assume they fear that if people know they can get cheap tickets that way, they'll never buy at list price from the Met. But it's a trade-off, I would think, of getting people into the theater who would not otherwise attend.

Does ABT do a 1/2 price student/senior/military rush an hour before performance? Does NYCB? That's another great way to fill seats, get a little more $$, and open up the artform to people on very tight budgets, especially the young audiences that should be cultivated for the future of the artform. Nobody has mentioned whether the house sold well for Vishneva-Gomes. That's the dream casting for balletomanes, but I wonder how many casual ballet goers or tourists knew that.

Why doesn't ABT sell tickets through the TDF/half price booth? NYCB regularly does. Indeed, they have Saturday matinee 5/18 listed right now. With so many tourists in town, why not at least fill the hall and avoid embarrassment?

It saddens me to read comments like Trieste's. Most ballet companies do have outreach programs with free programs in parks and public spaces, student rush tickets at bargain basement prices, etc. And, as we've discussed in other forums, ballet used to be widely available on free network television in the 1950s and we enjoyed a wealth of great PBS programs, especially in the 1970s and 1980s (Live from Lincoln Center, Great Performances, etc.). We still have some available on PBS and, increasingly, great things on the Internet (posted legitimately!). I've also noticed fabulous DVD collections of ballet at public libraries I've frequented. But before people seek out those free or cheap options, they first have to love or at least like ballet or just know what it is. So programs that bring school children to dress rehearsals (which I have noticed at several companies) and outreach programs to less-well-off children help and are important to support. I'm also glad to see local sports heroes endorse ballet (as we saw in Miami recently). I don't think we'll see another dance boom of the 70s, with its heady mix of Cold War politics, glamour, and excitement bringing newcomers into the theater. We're also dealing with dramatic declines in government funding at both the state and Federal level.

During the time of Lucia Chase, the arrival of Makarova, Barysnikov and other European guests(Dowell,Haydee,Seymour) caused a similar situation for the regular ABT dancers. Cynthia Gregory and Fernando Bujones were very vocal of their dissatisfaction.Fernando left the company for a while Ironically, perhaps, published sources also said Martine van Hamel was very unhappy about a sense of being pushed out.

The Ratmansky show that will air May 10 on WNET has now been posted on-line, for those of us who will not be in the NYC viewing area: http://pointemagazine.com/blogs/alexei-ratmansky/video-watch-ratmansky-rehearsal It's nice that PBS channels are posting these things on-line, if national distribution is not possible for whatever reason (finances? lack of local interest?). I'm thinking back to the Wendy Whelan show on Kentucky PBS a few months ago, along with the Vail documentary.

The National Gallery just sent out an e-mail announcing films and other events related to the exhibit: http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/exhibitions/2013/diaghilev.html If you're thinking about ordering the catalog, note that Amazon has it for $39.22. If you order it via the little Amazon box on this site, Ballet Alert gets $$ to help support this site: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1851777490/ref=oh_details_o06_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

They do post a lot of video, so it will be worth checking back after the broadcast. Damien Woetzel, of course, has directed the Festival in recent years, so with luck it will include an interview: http://rmpbs.org/home/

A 30-minute documentary on the Vail Dance Festival in 2011 and 2012 will be shown this Thursday, May 9, at 8:30 MDT on all Colorado public television stations. I don't know if they plan to distribute this nationwide or post it on their web site after showing, but I'll post additional information if they do. Here's the e-mail message announcement that I just got: On a humorous note, when I searched for this on my DirectTV Guide, I discovered that they have it listed as "The Attitude of Dance."

The announcement was made just 4 weeks before the scheduled premiere. But given his relentless work schedule all over the world, perhaps he's a fast worker, along the lines of Balanchine (although I suppose nobody could work as fast as he reportedly did). As much as he loves this composer, he surely knows the new music inside and out. So it's not unreasonable to think he's mostly starting over -- perhaps only using some movement ideas from the earlier attempt. I hope some of this will come out in interviews with Ratmansky and the dancers in the coming months. It's also worth remembering that he has a lot at stake in getting it "right." This is not a piece d'occasion that could flop and everybody would forget about it. This trio of works will also be performed next year by San Francisco Ballet, so it's going to get a lot of attention.

The new issue of ABT's print On Point for Spring 2013 has an interesting tidbit: Ric Burns is making a two-hour documentary on ABT which will be shown on PBS in 2015, the company's 75th anniversary. It will include interviews with Alonso, Barnes, Franklin, Kisselgoff, and Saddler, among others.

Like others on this board, my first exposure to classical ballet was on television in the 1950s, when Balanchine dancers regularly performed on shows like Ed Sullivan and the Sunday afternoon shows -- all live, on tiny B&W screens. When New Yorkers were seeing the Bolshoi live in the late 1950s, the rest of us (in small cities in the Midwest, e.g.) were going to the local movie theater on Sunday afternoons to see two feature-length films of the Bolshoi Ballet, distributed about the same time, as the Cold War began thawing somewhat. My memory is vague on what I saw, but I'm pretty sure it was Galina Ulanova in Swan Lake and Giselle. (I've never been able to reliably document the films circulating in that era and it could have been R&J, not Giselle.) Those viewing conditions were hardly ideal, yet for people who had never seen classical ballet, they were astonishing experiences. Those memories explain my never-ending frustration at choreographers like Jerome Robbins who were so reluctant to allow their work to be shown on "Live from Lincoln Center" or released on VHS/DVD. Some of his work is now available on DVD (performed by POB!), but two of his greatest works (Dances at a Gathering and Glass Pieces) remain unavailable after all these years. I hope the Robbins trust relents on this some day. So many people around the country (no, the world) have no opportunity to ever see his work in the theater for all sorts of reasons.

I thought the same, but if you search for him on YouTube, several short clips show up. I have always assumed these were faked somehow. Does anybody know?

Unusual, but not the first time a major choreographer has made a last-minute change of music. The best example I can think of is Bejart's Le Jeune Homme et la Morte. The company rehearsed it to jazz, but he made a last-minute substitution with the Bach Passacaglia. I don't know if he planned that all along to motivate the dancers or abruptly made the decision himself. Anybody know? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/11/arts/dance/roland-petit-choreographer-is-dead-at-87.html?_r=0 I don't know what happened with the Ratmansky, but let's hope we learn more in the coming weeks. Perhaps one piece was the wrong length or wrong "feel" for what he decided he wanted to do choreographically.