California

I avoid the entire Orchestra section. The seats seem old with worn springs, so you sink way down into the seat - a big problem for short people! If you can swing it, aim for the Grand Tier or Balcony Circle. The front rows of the Dress Circle are also good. Here's a seating chart: http://sfwmpac.org/operahouse/oh_pdfs/oh_seatchart.pdf

The Museum of Performance and Design is worth a visit. It's just one block to the north of the Opera House on Van Ness. Hours are very limited, but they have some interesting displays. http://www.mpdsf.org/

You are right about the questionable environs, especially after dark. The city buses don't run very often late in the evening, so they're not a great option either. I recommend you take a cab back to your hotel. This can be as little as $5-10 and is worth it. I like this site for finding out ahead of time what fare to expect: http://www.taxifarefinder.com/ On the south side of the Opera House, there is a circle drive where the cabs pull up. Stop on your way into the theater and let the concierge know you will need a cab after the performance. He keeps a list and you won't have much of a wait. For travel during the day, including the trip to the Opera House, I'd strongly recommend buying a Muni Passport, which gives you unlimited rides on the buses, Muni (light rail trains), and cablecars. It's a great deal: http://www.sfmta.com/cms/mfares/passports.htm

Please don't overlook several outstanding men -- Gomes and Hallberg are my favorites. Great artists, technicians, and partners. But Cornejo and Bolles are also quite wonderful.

I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but there's word now that most of the Martha Graham sets and costumes were flooded in 6 feet of water in a basement in the West Village: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/martha-graham-sets-and-costumes-damaged-by-hurricane-sandy/#more-292711

Several months ago on another thread, we had a lengthy discussion along these lines. We have a long history in the U.S. of uber-wealthy industry titans who were despicable in many ways starting foundations that we now treasure for the enormous good they do. Andrew Carnegie was vicious to his workers, but he gave us the Carnegie libraries all over the country and a foundation doing great things today. Henry Ford was a terrible anti-Semite who promoted The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, yet the Ford Foundation in modern times has done enormous good (including important support to Balanchine). Yes, many of the good things happened later after the founders were long-deceased, but not all of them. Whether these people were simply trying to buy good will for their own legacies or genuinely cared about making amends, society at large has benefitted. The Pew Charitable Trust is a well-regarded moderate force for good today, but it started as a far right-wing family foundation (not unlike the Koch family activities). Koch seems to be following in a long line of wealthy Americans who have done some despicable things to society at large but also greatly benefitted that society. We all might wish that super-wealthy people only did good things with their money, but that seems a fantasy we can't have in reality.

Many BalletTalkers probably just received the same e-mail I just did, addressed to NYCB Friends:

I would love to see somebody (perhaps for a Master's thesis?) compare Stravinsky's Symphony in 3 Movements and Shostakovich's Symphony #9 and, in turn, how Balanchine and Ratmansky choreographed them so we could "see the music." Both pieces of music were written right after the end of WWII, although in dramatically different circumstances, of course. http://balanchine.com/symphony-in-three-movements/

I was also at this matinee and noticed the substitution. I wondered several times this week if there were problems with narrow wings and a slippery stage. I was sitting to the far right down in front this afternoon and could see a bit into the wings. At one exit for Gomes lifting Semionova in the Ratmansky, I thought I saw somebody else's hand in front of a metal structure to keep her head from hitting it. For a Bolles-Seo exit at about the same place during Leaves Thursday night, he seemed to slip twice. A corps member slipped and fell last night during the Ratmansky and I noticed a couple more slips in other ballets. In any event, Cornejo was so fabulous in the Ratmansky premiere, it ws sad that he couldn't return for bows Saturday. I hope it's nothing serious.

I seem to remember that the tutus were black in the early 80s. I could swear that they were black when I moved to the US/DC after university, 1983-84ish, and saw it in NY. There was an equally-odd "cave of ice" staging before then. Maybe NYCB regulars can help jar the mind. It was a big relief to see the traditional 'no gimmicks' Miami version in '08! At the very end of the summary on Swan Lake on the NYCB site, it says that the black swans were added after his death, based on his apparent thinking that he would like to add them. http://www.nycballet.com/ballets/s/swan-lake-(balanchine).aspx

A small correction: Festival Ballet actually performs in the new Barclay Theatre at the University of California, Irvine. It's a lovely theater, with great sightlines, far from a high school auditorium. And FTB has had some impressive guests in recent years, such as Marcelo Gomes and Gillian Murphy in the full-length Don Quixote.

Yes, it was taped live at the Paris Opera in 2004, but just released last year. Their La Sylphide is credited "choreography by Pierre Lacotte after Filippo Taglioni." It's a fascinating contrast with the more familiar Bournonville version. Principals are Aurelie Dupont and Mathieu Ganio.

Dance Channel TV has posted a few nice clips of those performances: I'm looking back at the Met schedules for 2010 and 2011. He did no Don Q's at all in 2011. In 2010, he did just the first act (with Herrera) at the Alonso birthday celebration. Perhaps ABT thinks they have enough strong principal men for the role and Gomes is needed elsewhere. Still, I'd love to see him in the ABT production some day.

When I saw that change in casting for the Barcelona engagement, I wondered if it might have something to do with his involvement in Kings of the Dance, which is performing at the Mikhailovsky November 2-3. Perhaps they wanted more rehearsal/prep time or something. http://www.mikhailovsky.ru/en/afisha/2012/11/

I'm guessing Cojocaru will be doing A Month in the Country in the same mixed bill, especially as she just debuted in the role at the Royal Ballet: http://www.theballetbag.com/2012/08/30/birthday-offering-month-les-noces-photo-gallery/ And also because (as discussed earlier in this thread), Dowell has not been overly generous in giving rights to do this work.

And it's intriguing that Gomes is not cast at all for Swan Lake, even though he's dancing the week before in R&J and the week after in Sylvia. He partnered her in Swan last spring at Mikhailovsky, so he might be under consideration for ABT. But I'd also love to see him again with Murphy on 6/20 in Swan.

I was intrigued by her R&J on Saturday, 6/15 with Bolle -- her last performance of the season. I wonder if that might be planned as a retirement performance. She's not cast in any Swan Lake's or Sleeping Beauty's later in the season.

Casting just appeared on the ABT web site: http://www.abt.org/calendar.aspx?startdate=5/1/2013

Let me add that they have 2-for-1 tickets now on-line: http://www.denver.org/events/2for1tix/special-offer?evid=726 Denver does not have a 1/2 price ticket booth like New York or other bigger cities, so this site is the main way to get bargain tickets and a lot of cultural activities show up here. (And I do remember seeing NYCB and NY Philharmonic tickets on the TDF site in the last year, so it happens.)

The Colorado Ballet has been aggressively discounting for a long time. For the 2011-12 season, subscribers paid 40% under face value of the subscription tickets and could buy an unlimited number of additional tickets at 40% off. The subscription consisted of four programs, including their Nutcracker. That was a big cut from the previous year's 25% discount, and I assumed they were trying to build up their subscriber base. For 2012-13, subscribers paid 25% less and again could buy an unlimited number of additional tickets at 25% off. Subscribers got that rate for buying just three of the four programs for the season. I assumed that was because the fourth program at University of Denver is Light/the Holocaust and Humanity Project, which is pretty heavy-duty for young children and also will be presented only over Easter weekend: http://www.coloradoballet.org/performances/seasonproductions I've been seeing promotions for the last month for 20-25% off single tickets for Sleeping Beauty and another for the first week of the Nutcracker. Those were pretty common last season, too. And they have long promoted various discounts through local social media. I was at all three performances last weekend, the opening of their Sleeping Beauty (which continues through October 21). All three Auroras were excellent, although Maria Mosina (the Russian-born, Bolshoi-trained veteran) remains my favorite. The orchestra and parterre were at least 75% full. The three upper tiers were more like 25% full. That includes a lot of discounted tickets, of course. The Ellie Caulkins Opera House seats 2100, so it's a heavy lift. I did notice that the Saturday matinee on the opening weekend for Beauty, as well as the February-March mixed bill has been omitted this year. They typically only do programs on the weekends (Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday matinee), with the lone exception of one Wednesday program at 6:30 p.m. The season in fall 2011 opened with Swan Lake and benefitted from the coattails of Natalie Portman's movie. I think Beauty was a good choice for the opening this year, but nothing will draw quite the way Swan Lake does. I'm a little nervous about the February mixed bill. Sacre (Tetley's version) will draw a little because of the 100-year anniversary of the music. The new piece by Val Caniparoli will draw afficionados. Theme and Variations (being set next month by Judith Fugate) is glorious, but probably not a big draw for novices. They are only doing seven performances over two weekends, though, so the ticket sales might be okay. They do use a live orchestra for all the Opera House performances, which is very important. I am reminded that NYCB performs in a 2544 seat theater and has found it necessary to close off the top two tiers for many (most?) performances -- in a city filled with ballet lovers and tourists and a long tradition of world-class art. It's a much steeper climb in a city like Denver, a metropolitan area of only 3 million. I just got tickets for the Don Giovanni by Opera Colorado next spring and was surprised that excellent seats throughout the house were available on the first day of single sales. The touring company of Book of Mormon sold out two weeks at the Opera house in five hours! West Side Story and Lion King sold out or close to it when they were here last year. As for the production, they are using sets and costumes rented from Ballet West which were fine. The orchestra was excellent. The choreography is drawn mainly from the Royal's and ABT's, by Gil Boggs and Sandra Brown, formerly with ABT. The company has 30 dancers on contract and fleshes out the roles with apprentices, students from their Academy, and retired dancers. I suppose it's no surprise that they have a deep bench on the female side, and are somewhat weaker among the males, although there are good performances all around. Let me pass along one anecdote that perhaps exemplifies the environment companies like Colorado Ballet work in. Last Friday morning, the day of the opening, Boggs and a couple of the dancers were on a local news show for interviews to promote the ballet. The young interviewer from the station started by saying that this wonderful ballet "traces all the way back to 1959 and Walt Disney's wonderful movie!" You could see Boggs smile and later diplomatically educated her to the fact that the ballet actually traces back to the nineteenth century. That's what we're dealing with in today's 20-somethings...

I'm one of several people who complain regularly about the inadequate distribution of important videos of ballet. I just discovered that the Ballet Russes documentary is available on iTunes for $9.99 download or $2.99 to rent. The same prices are available at Amazon in their "Instant Video" program. The actual DVD is $19.99! http://www.amazon.co...s=ballets+russe Let's hope the iTunes/Instant Video approach is adopted by more producers in the dance world! The download distribution eliminates the need to produce and store physical media for specialized works.

I do want to make a correction just passed along in a private message. Ashton choreographed the final solo for Browne and he is named in the credits. It was a very long time ago, but I have this memory of a choreographer balking when Kirkland was replaced (which was about August 1976). Perhaps Tudor dropped out entirely and Ashton replaced him? That final solo was the only newly choreographed work in the entire movie. (Even the contemporary piece at the "Gala" for Browne's character was actually an excerpt from an old Ailey piece, as I remember, but in any event, it was something previously choreographed.)

That reminds me of another Kirkland/Tudor anecdote I heard long ago and I wonder if anybody can confirm it. Tudor choreographed the solo at the very end of Turning Point (under the closing credits) specifically for Kirkland. When he learned she had dropped out of the film and would be replaced by Leslie Browne, he insisted that his name be taken off the credits. (I've also wondered if he wanted the choreography dropped, too, but wasn't allowed to under his contract with the filmmakers.)

Thank you! A word to the wise: I had tried just searching Amazon.com for: Sleeping Beauty Hallberg and nothing comes up. Maybe it's not yet in their database.

Alas, this has not been released in the U.S. I hope it is!