Mme. Hermine

Could be worse!

Was it very costly?

MadameP, please check your mail!

As far as I've been told on two conversations with PayPal, there isn't any reason they can't create an account. If they have some sort of official Charitable Donation code (don't know how it works) they could enter that information while creating their account. As it goes here, creating the account usually also involves entering bank information, and when money congregates in the PayPal balance, you can deposit it into the bank from there. Once it's set up, it's really simple. The only hurdle here is that there's a certain amount of suspicion (really, money to Russia) but quiet persistence usually pays off, and of course, people in Russia at least have the advantage of knowing who the Company and School are, so one doesn't have to explain. If there is no charitable designation available to them, I think the worst case scenario fee wise is something like 2.9 percent. On a 400 dollar donation (just as an example) that would be about 11 dollars. Also worth noting is that I don't know whether any type of fee is assessed by the bank on the Russian end for receiving. So there we are so far! And if I can do anything regarding this I'm glad to help. PayPal and I have been "buddies" for many years (I'm not an employee, just a user of the service) .

OK I talked to Paypal again, and had a few questions for them. Best case scenario would be if the school: a. Has a Paypal account already, and b. Has some sort of nonprofit status in Russia. (I know that sounds obvious, but bear with me). If that is the case, then they would provide an email address for the donations. There would still be some fee involved such as what they call a crossborder fee and/or currency conversion. However their usual fees for receiving money would be much less The transaction would be more secure and from our end much more simple. If the school doesn't already have an account, then they would have to create one, from their end, obviously in order to receive the money. I deal with Paypal a lot and their customer service is very helpful. So that is what I can find out right now.

I know this may sound strange, but PayPal operates in Russia as well, and if the school or someone were already set up with them, then the only thing anyone here would need is the official email they would have to designate to which they would like the money sent. I just checked this on the phone with PayPal. It would make things much simpler on this end anyway.

Old production? I thought it was the same production with new sets/costumes last time.

Oh my, Alexandra, though I thank you for giving us the sad news, how very sad it is. There is a Guest Book online for condolences. http://www.legacy.com/guestbooks/latimes/giannina-mooney-condolences/180107248

The first SFB performance I ever saw (c 1984) included Concerto Barocco, and in the ensuing 2 years or so, the rep I saw also included Ashton's Fille, Balanchine's Midsummer Night's Dream, as well as his Western Symphony and Agon, as well as ballets by Robbins. Most, if not all, of these were either planned or performed while Michael was still the director. And this is just off the top of my head, I'd have to work a little to remember what else I saw.

Very glad to have seen that cast!

I remember that, in the late 1980s. This is interesting, watch the whole thing - http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-videos/09000d5d8294a56e/Films-Encore-When-football-meets-ballet

... and 'sportswriters'!

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2016/russian-works-art-faberge-icons-l16113/lot.535.html

Sometimes there's more in what a newspaper doesn't say than there is in what it does!

Eldar Aliev named ballet master in chief at the Maryinsky: http://www.nuvo.net/indianapolis/carmel-resident-eldar-aliev-runs-choreography-at-russias-mariinsky-theatre/Content?oid=3966700

There are a number of programs like this now everywhere. But I was struck by the idea that few would have realized that this existed some 45 years ago.

As part of the archives at the Chicago Film Archives, this segment of a number of short interviews with Larry Long, done in 1985, has some interesting information on the school's early 1970s cultural initiatives for disadvantaged children in Chicago. http://www.chicagofilmarchives.org/collections/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/8923 Transcript of the relevant segment, found at 6:50 - Q: Describe, if you will, the growth pattern in the history of the school. A: Well, we started the school literally with nothing. We had a studio, we had banes and minors, and very few students. No children whatsoever. It finally got so bad that I talked to Miss Page, and with her agreement, I went to a group called Urban Gateways in Chicago, headed by a lady named Gertrude Guthman, a wonderful lady. And we made an anangement where I would go to various schools and audition children in the Chicago public school system, and select suitable children who showed an interest and some aptitude with no training whatsoever to come to the school, to the Loop, and study dance. They got two lessons a week: one modem class, one ballet class. We paid for all of their shoes and leotards and tights. We made sure that they had something for after the class -- a carton of milk and cookies or a graham cracker or something. And we also paid for an escort to bring them down. Now this was . . . I adored this program. To me this was, I think, one of the most stupendous things the school has ever done, because so many of these children had never -- none of them -- had ever seen a ballet before; that was taken for granted. But you'd be surprised at the number of them who'd never been downtown in the Loop before. Who'd never been on the subway before. Now, these are urban children, who spent their lives in the second largest city in the United States, I guess, and they've never been on the subway, they've never been on a bus, they've never been downtown in the Loop. So they were getting a wide range of cultural experiences -- not only to dance, but cultural, in the real sense of cultural, a real cultural experience in coming downtown and seeing what this place was all about. And they were the most wonderful children, the most incredible children I've ever seen in my life. So avid. For four years we picked, I think, we would pick about forty children. Naturally there'd be some attrition before the first class, but we usually ended up with about 25-26 children at the beginning of each season. The most fantastic children, the most open children, the most enthusiastic children. And strangely enough, from the very first group that we got, there were three wonderful children. Exceptionally talented children. One little girl, Annette Jackson was her name, stayed with us for about ten years, until she finally decided not to dance and go to college. But she turned out to be a lovely, lovely dancer. Then we had two wonderful young men, Donald Williams was one, and, for the life of me, I can't think of the other young man's name right now. One of those first years of Chicago Ballet we did a program in conjunction with the Dance Theatre of Harlem in a program called "Dances of Love and Death." The Harlem Ballet did Ruth's Carmen, which was a version especially made for their company, and we did Carmina Burana, and then we did a pas de deux of Ben Stevenson called Three Preludes. And while he [Arthur Mitchell] was here with his company doing that program, he came to watch the children's class and picked those three young people to go on a summer scholarship to his school in New York, which he just then started. Now one of those boys, the only one who's still dancing . . . but still one of those boys is the leading dancer, the leading male dancer with Dance Theatre of Harlem, Arthur Mitchell's Dance Theatre of Harlem -- Williams, Donald Williams. And he's coming back to Chicago this Christmas to dance the lead in the McCormick Place Nutcracker this year. Now that's . . . when you think, all right, that's a group of twenty-six, and out of that twenty-six, three had real promise, did something, and one made it, kind of. Sounds that the odds -- one out of twenty-five . . . not so hot. But for dancers, you can't imagine what a tremendous . . . . Q: Yeah, it's a big deal. A: It's a big deal. And he did it. And to kind of come full circle that way. That's the kind of joy, that's the kind of thing that has made this school, I hope, a special place and will continue to make the school a special place.

"Sorostitute" is evidently a label that, in at least one usage, offers comment on the morals of certain women who are members of college sororities. (And I did look it up).

All right then, five years before - https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1980/03/25/abt-dancer-fired/5a9b4585-201e-4e36-9196-bb68ea11f606/

I don't know anything about that, but at the time I was in California, Kirk was a principal dancer in San Francisco Ballet. The specific reference wasn't originally to anything about ABT, but to compare press coverage of the first year or so of Helgi's time in San Francisco to the coverage of Angel's first year in Philadelphia.

The more things change, the more they remain the same, it seems. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1985-08-11/entertainment/8502220148_1_helgi-tomasson-san-francisco-ballet-kirk-peterson

Joy Womack was interviewed in Russian, and the video is on line. I don't understand Russian at all, but her command of it appears fairly easy and fluent. http://www.gtrkmariel.ru/authors-tv/art-marie/art-marie-the-leading-soloist-of-the-kremlin-ballet-joy-womack/

Boston Ballet has had the complete "Bourree" but hasn't done it in some 25 or so years.

It's all fun to watch; I especially like the one of Violette with Conrad Ludlow about the Tchaikovsky PDD: