nanushka

Now, I have been going to the ballet for close to half a century and one thing I never focused on during a performance was the bottom of dancers' shoes nor their toe boxes. However, I found myself distracted by the coal black bottoms and toe boxes of practically all of the dancers. It looked like they had all just been dancing in tar pits. It was not a nice look. I was in Row B of the Second Ring and, even without binoculars, thought they looked like "dirty shoes." I've never seen this at NYCB or ABT or any other visiting company. And, on a slightly different topic, the Bolshoi really does love bling, doesn't it?

I had that exact same experience! I've noticed it before with Russian companies -- it seems to be a national idiosyncrasy. Does anyone know what's behind that? Even David Hallberg seems to have "gone over to the dark side," as the bottoms of his feet on Thursday night were nearly black as well.

The Mariinsky Ballet administrators will weep when they see what they lost in Veronika Part.

now we all better hope they don't try to get her back!

That would be a tragedy for those of us in the US who adore her. I must say that among her many accomplishments, for me she is still the world's reigning Swan Queen.

The only possible consolation for that would be the fact that we'd be far more likely to finally get some good video recordings while she's still in her prime. It's a tough call: 5-7 more years of live performances in NYC, or a lifetime of being able to watch her onscreen in a few of her signature roles. I really don't know which I'd choose!

I love this sentence from her bio, especially the 2nd and 3rd clauses:

"Veronika Part has appeared in projects run by the Kennedy Center and the Metropolitan Opera; has appeared with Roberto Bolle, Gustavo Dudamel, David Letterman and Marcelo Gomes; has collaborated with Suzanne Farrell, Judith Jamison and Chita Rivera."

(And when did she collaborate with Chita Rivera?!)

Can I get a visa in time for Aug. 1?

No Giselle last year at ABT, right? So we're thinking maybe 2015? (They seem to do it two years on, one year off.) And she recently danced in in Baltimore as well. So maybe she's ready to bring it home to NYC??

I have asked several Japanese people and they have said that Yuriko's name is pronounced YUR - EE - KO with the stress on the first syllable. Her last name is pronounced

KA - JEE - AH with the stress on the second syllable.

Russian speakers have told me that Osipova's name is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable - AW - SEE PO- VA.

JEE just like the first word in "gee whiz"?

Thanks for the helpful info!

Osipova?

Daniil Simkin?

Yuriko Kajiya?

Also, the NYT says Hee Seo's last name is simply pronounced "SUH." Is that correct? When she was announced as filling in for Gillian Murphy in the second half of SL at the Met recently, the woman making the announcement said something more like "SO" (though after a slight hesitation, so I didn't get the sense that was definitive).

I really think ABT could have given Seven Sonatas a rest...

Haven't they done it in NYC only twice before this?

As always, the real annoyance is that it takes so long to get casting info for the Fall season -- so much longer than for the Met season. Wonder why this is?

I just saw some photos on another website of Saturday night's perf. Did Gillian replace Paloma (who is still listed on ABT's site)? She's seen in the pix taking her bows with Jared.

Could the photos have been from the earlier performance with Jared and Gillian? The NYT review of this weekends performances listed Paloma as having danced.

No argument there. I don't really care for the music to The Tempest either, but it is growing on me on repeated hearings. The first time I saw the Tempest I wondered what drew Ratmansky to the music in the first place. To my ear, the majority of the score does not cry out as music to be danced to.

I wouldn't be surprised if it were the subject that initially interested him rather than the music. The music may then have presented itself as a natural option for a Tempest ballet, despite its unusual style. Just a guess, though.

She did something beyond that, though, too. She did fouettes without the fouette -- where the working leg wasn't even working (whipping). What was that?! The propulsion was coming completely from the standing leg. I don't know that I've ever seen anything like that.

You mean her turns similar to the a la seconde turns the men do?

Not exactly -- see fondoffouette's description and accompanying YouTube video toward the bottom of page 1 of this thread.

...in the final act Yuriko rotated the direction of her fouettes. (She also did this when she played Kitri a few years ago.) I think that's called a four corner turn, but I'm not sure. Not many people attempt it because it is very difficult, and I'm not sure if most of the audience even understood what they were seeing.

She did something beyond that, though, too. She did fouettes without the fouette -- where the working leg wasn't even working (whipping). What was that?! The propulsion was coming completely from the standing leg. I don't know that I've ever seen anything like that.

I agree with Drew and sandik, and I, for one, actually really loved The Tempest. I thought it captured perfectly the tone of Shakespearean "romance." I can see how, without a detailed knowledge of the play, one would feel lost in the narrative, and I think that's a fault. But having that knowledge, I could see what Ratmansky meant in aiming to create "at once a fragmented narrative as well as a meditation." Evocations of narrative moments from the play were simultaneously precise and subtle -- the ballet seemed basically a collection of such moments conveyed in distilled essence. This was in keeping with the form of the music: incidental music written to accompany key moments from the play in actual performance. I found the music to be quite beautiful. I agree that it doesn't sound as if it lends itself well to dance, but I felt that Ratmansky found inventive ways of drawing "danceability" out of it. He created a vast range of characters and styles of movement, for a story that has distinct yet overlapping clusters of characters. Caliban in this version does not strike one as a conventionally impressive dance role -- I can see why people were disappointed seeing Cornejo in this part -- and yet the challenges of movement and character were, I think, just as great. Caliban is earth-bound, unlike Ariel, and so his range and style of movement needs to reflect that. (And I'd like to imagine that Cornejo appreciated the challenge of a very different sort of part from the one in which he's usually cast, or even type-cast. Whiteside, too, made much of this role in Monday's performance.)

The one part that really didn't work for me was the long portion about 2/3 through when the island spirits are tormenting the shipwrecked nobles. In general, I found the corps spirits to be the least inspired roles in the piece.

But otherwise, I was quite enchanted by the work. I'm sad that I possibly won't get a chance to see it again, given the general reception it's received.

No. Not for her retirement. Because there are very few roles Kent can still perform. The Merry Widow is an easy role that she can perform twice in one week.

Why retire when you can go on dancing a handful of nights each season and making $187k per year?

WOW! Congrats to them all! Very glad to see Zhurbin get a promotion; didn't see that one coming.

BUT....not Eric Tamm??? He should have been promoted with all of the soloist/principal parts he's been dancing for a few years now. Am very unhappy he was left out.

It seemed like they were trying him out for awhile but more recently he hasn't been given as many of those roles.

I'm thinking that Bolle and Vishneva are their best guests. Are those the two you are thinking of?

Bolle and Vishneva are both listed as company principals, not guest artists.

The Royal Ballet's DVD with Alina Cojocaru and Frederico Bonelli is excellent and the RB Sleeping Beauty considered to be a gold standard in terms of mime and authenticity of notation and steps.

Thanks. Is the same true (production-wise) of the earlier Durante/Solymosi/Dowell RB version, do you know?

Could anyone recommend particularly good SBs on either DVD or YouTube? I've only ever seen ABT's, and I have my own sense of certain ways in which it falls short, but I'd like to get a better sense of how some other companies have made more of the piece's potential so that I have a basis for comparison once I see Ratmansky's next spring.

mussel: When can we expect you to look into your crystal ball for ABT's 2015 Met season? I see last year it happened as early as June 11! I'm dying to hear what you see.

Here is Cojocaru dancing while it rains !

What a great setting against the lake,,,

I've never found Cojocaru's dancing to my taste, but this video kind of makes me want to see her in Swan Lake. I agree with vipa above, I think she'd do some potentially interesting things with the role. Too bad she never dances it in New York!

Why don't they just let Veronika danced Saturday night with Roberto?Unless they don't want to dance with each other.

I can only hope the reason is that she's not available -- rather than that Kevin McKenzie thinks it's a better idea to have Hee Seo dance two nights in a row. Seo's really been pushed these last few years, while Part has been languishing in matinees with Stearns (and Whiteside, who's a stronger actor but a lesser dancer). It really makes me upset.

I see that Stearns is also now replacing Hallberg in The Dream next week.

So he's doing The Dream on Mon eve and Wed mat, and The Tempest on Tue and Wed eves. Crazy!

Makes you wonder if they will wait until after 5 pm on Friday to announce Hallberg's substitute on Saturday -- Whiteside or Stearns? I can't imagine they would put Gomes in again, what with his 3-day marathon the next week!

Stearns is now listed for Saturday matinee with Semionova.

I have my finger permanently attached to the refresh key, waiting for the other pointe shoe to drop -- Veronika and Roberto do the Saturday night SL? One can dream!

"Pensive" only really works in Act I, though. Acts II through IV require a range of other modes, and Cory lacked the necessary complexity and variety of characterization, in my eyes. While "playing to the crowd" can certainly be taken to an extreme, the fact remains that there is a crowd, and communication has to happen for a performance to be fully successful.

That said, I completely agree with angelica regarding Cory's beautifully proportioned body, beautiful line, and handsome visage.

I have to say I'm with those who found Cory's performance today singularly disappointing. He was a blank, really. There was nothing. This was not subtlety, it was emptiness. Perhaps the most characteristic moment came when his mother asked him to choose a wife from among the 4 princesses. There was simply no interest. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was in (new, passionate, confusing) love with another woman. He just didn't happen to find anyone there who struck his fancy.

I was in Orchestra row H on the aisle. I believe that if there was anything to be seen in his acting, I would have seen it. There was next to nothing. I agree with everything angelica has written about the technical side of his dancing. In particular, the high arcs he achieved in his leaps during the Black Swan PDD were striking and gorgeous, and he was an exceptional partner in the sense of supporting and showcasing his ballerina. (The lifts were among the best I've seen of Veronika, who is admittedly difficult to lift with seemingly effortless grace. The supported pirouettes, though, I have to say were reminiscent of those three or four years ago.)

But dramatically, there was simply nothing there. He took no opportunity to make anything special out of any particular moment. This was on the borderline of acceptable in Act I, when Siegfried is supposed to be an uncomfortable outsider on the action of the court. But once he becomes enchanted by this fascinating foreign creature, there has to be something there, and there was simply nothing.

Veronika and Cory have been paired together in SL for at least the past three years, and last year I was delighted to see real growth in this partnership. Unfortunately, today's performance marks a substantial step back. I can only hope that this is a result of the fact that Cory has not been performing much in recent months, due to his injury. But what I really hope is that ABT's management will finally realize that this is not a working partnership and will give Veronika the partner she deserves: Gomes, or Bolle, or, heck, even Whiteside. She deserves better! She is a dancer of such vitality and passion and depth of feeling. She cannot achieve her greatest potential in the arms (however capable) of a crash test dummy.