nanushka

Here are a bunch more for comparison (including a different Plisetskaya clip, at 8:26 on the second video):

Actually, I just found a bit more detail in Arlene Croce's Sight Lines that suggests it's more than that:

I've never seen Symphonie Concertante, but Nancy Reynolds' Repertory in Review suggests that the man dances in the third movement as well:

Yes, given current circumstances I don't fault them at all for making these changes (only perhaps for not making them before the original announcement). It's still a pretty impressive and exciting year of programming. (And yes, I think that's correct re: Liebeslieder. The one time I saw it was her farewell performance.)

Now I really wish ABT listed QofD for all shows, since both last year and this year there have been some split Mercedes/QofD casting. Teuscher's post notes that it's an "early debut" for Williams, which suggests she's scheduled for at least one other this week — as may be Trenary (noted above). Is Abrera the only Mercedes not dancing both roles? I'm hoping that Fang, especially, is getting to do both, since that would be a great and well-deserved opportunity for her.

I just did a comparison with the printouts I had from the original season announcement, and the three changes I found are all in spring: Tchaikovsky Suite 3 instead of Union Jack Diamonds instead of Brandenburg Dances at a Gathering instead of Liebeslieder Walzer (The "Classic NYCB II" program was originally two different programs, one with DaaG, Stars and Stripes and the new Fall 2018 ballet, the other with Liebeslieder instead of DaaG. Now they're both the same.) I'm particularly disappointed not to be able to see Liebeslieder Walzer again, since I've only seen it once and have heard it's a piece that can really grow on one over repeated viewings. What has been NYCB's recent practice in performing the individual Jewels ballets separately?

Fang is also dancing Mercedes (and, hopefully, the Queen of the Dryads — though it's been said on another thread that Cassandra Trenary is apparently rehearsing the latter, though she's not listed as Mercedes on any dates) for the Tuesday and Thursday Don Qs. (As background, last year Luciana Paris was listed for a Mercedes, but Veronika Part danced QofD that night.)

Speaking of that pirouette-attitude turn combination from the Black Swan variation (mentioned re: Shevchenko on an earlier page of this thread), Gillian currently has an IG video story up of her doing it after class as a triple-quad! She writes that it's "the most attitude(s) I've ever had."

And “those in the business” is similarly vague. I shared the first question.

Ah, got it. I thought that was a bit later.

There's also a difference between "intentional" and "anticipated." She may well have known that, given the current state of her technique, she was likely to travel forward and so made accommodations for that, but that's different from intentionally choosing to travel forward.

Anyone know what Hallberg might be rehearsing for here, which is perhaps why he pulled out of Whipped Cream? Edited to add: This is the only thing I see coming up for him there. Seems early for rehearsals, though.

See above, from the first post on this discussion thread. I don't think there's any indication that Trenary is leaving ABT.

Wow. He has not really been carrying (i.e. allowed to carry) a very full principal load while at ABT, but if he leaves the company, or reduces his commitment, this would still be a hit, given the current state of the male roster.

It certainly sounds like they cared quite a lot, once they saw it. I wonder if what Macaulay is really expressing when he writes (rather scornfully, it has always seemed to me) of "balletomanes" who "care more about dancers than choreography" is in fact mere frustration at the "basic ignorance" of those in the audience around him who have tastes (be they narrow or broad) without also having the requisite detailed knowledge of ballet history and terminology to describe or justify exactly what those tastes are. (I personally wouldn't use the term "balletomanes" to refer to those who have a "basic ignorance" of the art they are purportedly manic about — but that's just another point on which he and I differ, I suppose.)

There is a single post by @Ilovegiselle about it on the previous page of this thread.

I wonder if there's been a trade-off: in a season with so many dancers' debuts in leading roles and with two new ballets, the coaching staff may have been spread rather thin, and so they weren't able to prepare as many younger dancers for roles such as the three shades, the peasant PDD, the SL PDT, etc. Not an excuse (many on here have criticized the company for its rather shallow coaching roster), just a possible explanation.

That precisely illustrates the point I was trying to make: Again, I’m not talking about knowledge. Macaulay’s term was care. “Appalled” suggests they cared very much. The dancers whom ABT fans (or balletomanes) obsess over during R&J week are often not the same ones they obsess over during Swan Lake week or Don Q week. The difference? Choreography.

I understand what you're saying about ABT fans in particular, but I also don't think knowledge of choreography and interest in choreography are the same. I think even fans who don't know a lot of/about choreography are still very much aware of it in their experiences of performances, and care about it and have an interest in it. And I think such fans are likely to talk about the dancers more, partly (largely?) because of that difference between perception and knowledge. (We tend to talk about things that we both perceive and have a vocabulary for; but we can care very much about things we only perceive, even if we don't have the vocabulary to talk about them.)

Based on a good number of years of the same, I disagree. I still don’t understand why an interest in casting should indicate an interest in one more than the other. And do you mean to suggest that balletomanes and ABT fans are synonymous? Or are you making a point solely about the latter, not the former?

Macaulay's latest is a "Critic's Notebook" on a number of this week's R&J performances. I've never understood what the basis is for his frequent claim that "Balletomanes care more about dancers than choreography." (He often states it as if it's not a claim at all, but a definition.) I consider myself a balletomane, and I care deeply — and, I think, equally — about both. If his point rests on many balletomanes' obsessive interest in casting — well, casting involves two elements: a dancer, and a role. (And in ballet, a role is in large part, though not exclusively, defined by its choreography.) Personally, I care about casting because I have preferences for and interests in seeing certain dancers perform certain choreography. Perhaps his idea is based on the known aspects of word's late-19th century usage. I don't know enough about those to say, but if that's the case he might clarify that he's using the term in a particular historical sense. On a separate point, I raised my eyebrows at his use of the adjective crippled, then raised them higher at his subsequent use of the noun form. One doesn't often see those words used anymore in publications such as the Times. Perhaps he was evoking the time of the ballet's premiere, but his sentence did not at all make that clear to me.

Yes:

My point was precisely that I am making no assumptions, in either direction. It is simply not the case that I have made the assumptions you are attributing to me here. Please read what I have written. You'll see that I never said Johnsey had not experienced an identity crisis or that his 20-pound weight loss was not a problem. I simply try not to post guesses or assumptions — especially pathologizing ones, on sensitive issues such as gender identity and eating disorders — about dancers whose lives I do not know in detail.

How was Devon’s upper body flexibility? Some found it lacking in Bayadère. I don’t imagine her as a Nikiya or Juliet, though I’ve found her quite good in many other roles.

I agree with Drew's ideas about seating. Boulud Sud, right across the street, is quite good.