Birdsall

Is everyone's favorite Raymonda variation the final Hungarian dance with the clapping? It is a show stopper, I think. I like them all though. I love one of the variations of one of her friends either Clemence or Henriette in Act 2. I will have to find out which one it is. YouTube has Dorothee Gilbert dancing this particular variation, and it is lovely!

Hope you'll post your impressions on the MCB forum. We have a small but very dedicated MCB contingent on Ballet Alert and are lucky to have a company of this caliber in our part of the country. Square Dance and Ballet Imperial are the works I'm most excited about this season. Plus Robbins' In the Night and Afternoon of a Faun. With those 4 works, and the Great Performances telecast on PBS on October 28 (including Square Dance and Western Symphony), we'll have the chance to see some of the core NYCBallet repertoire that Villella grew up with and which expresses MCB's character best. Giselle and Coppelia should be well worth seeing, especially in a real opera house (layout and style) like the Kravis. By the way, it is funny to see another Bart!!! I never run into Barts!!!!

Hope you'll post your impressions on the MCB forum. We have a small but very dedicated MCB contingent on Ballet Alert and are lucky to have a company of this caliber in our part of the country. Square Dance and Ballet Imperial are the works I'm most excited about this season. Plus Robbins' In the Night and Afternoon of a Faun. With those 4 works, and the Great Performances telecast on PBS on October 28 (including Square Dance and Western Symphony), we'll have the chance to see some of the core NYCBallet repertoire that Villella grew up with and which expresses MCB's character best. Giselle and Coppelia should be well worth seeing, especially in a real opera house (layout and style) like the Kravis. I was wondering why most ballet companies today do Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun and never the original Nijinsky version that I've read about until I saw clips of the Nijinsky version on YouTube (Nureyev's fairly tame recreation and also a very vivid re-enactment from a movie)! LOL I imagine it is still too bold to stage a dancer doing that on stage. LOL I saw MCB's Giselle a few years ago when they did it, and I look forward to seeing it again. I've seen Coppelia before in Gainesville and on dvd, and I find it charming. I am also excited about learning the modern rep. My personality loves the Romantic 19th century stuff (literature, opera, and ballet), but I plan to force myself to go see anything I can and gain more appreciation for modern repetoire. I have gone to see Momix twice, and that company is a fun company although mixing illusion with dance and gymnastics, etc.

I didn't know she was a sculpture. That makes more sense why she appears. In the Kirov/Mariinsky version they omit her for some reason and instead Raymonda falls asleep and I think she enters the tapestry or Jean de Brienne comes out of the tapestry portrait that was given to Raymonda earlier in the night, and she dreams of being with him and all the dances take place until the end of the dream when it is Abderakhman which scares her. The White Lady is nowhere to be seen. This ballet seems very Freudian! LOL I have heard the Paris Opera Ballet's Raymonda was videotaped in 2008 and is supposed to come out eventually on dvd. I hope so. That production looks beautiful. I've read that people don't think Marie Agnes Gillot is right as Raymonda. I have seen some clips of her on YouTube and she is a great dancer but does not have the presence of a young girl to me. I just think Lopatkina embodies Raymonda.

I first viewed a full-length YouTube video of Raymonda with Lopatkina (google for it and watch). I think it is in 15 or 16 parts. I fell in love with both Raymonda and Lopatkina. I thought she was so fabulous. That was the Kirov/Mariinsky ballet. Then, I saw a Netflix video of Raymonda from the Bolshoi in the 80s with Semenyaka and got so confused, because in the Kirov Abderakhman enters in the first act, and in the Bolshoi, Jean De Brienne enters in Act 1, and I didn't realize this until later viewings of both (comparing and contrasting). I was so confused, b/c while watching the Bolshoi I assumed Jean de Brienne was Abderakham but then he looked different later on! LOL It was so confusing only because I had seen the Kirov version first which was very easy to follow. If you watch the Kirov and then the Bolshoi right after, you get very confused, b/c there are many differences. The Kirov also omits the White Lady for some reason. I wonder why. I thought the Bolshoi's handling of Jean de Brienne by giving him a lengthier role was nice, and they made Abderakhman a more acrobatic role. However, there is also something touching and beautiful about the Kirov's version. Maybe it is because I felt Lopatkina embodied a young, pretty girl so well yet had strength and presence for the wedding finale. I have watched both versions about 5 times each, b/c I enjoyed them both so much, but I have to say I like Lopatkina the best. However, the Bolshoi's version is more acrobatic. The Kirov's seems gentler and daintier. Both are good for me. I am not sure what the White Lady's role is. Have you seen Les Trockaderos do Raymonda's wedding? I have only seen it on dvd. Raymonda does the clap and the lights go out! I thought that was funny!

So try to make it to Vikharev's upcoming reconstruction at Alla Scala...! Now, THAT will be worth a trip... http://www.teatroallascala.org/en/season/opera-ballet/2010-2011/raymonda_cnt_15362.html I wish I could!!!! I just came back from a trip to San Francisco seeing Wagner's Ring Cycle, so I need to save up. I might be going back to SF and the wine country in the spring and might be able to time it with SF Ballet's Act 3 of Raymonda (and two other ballets that night).

I guess over the years different versions are staged, and then some versions become the traditional version, etc. I know some operas like Boris Godunov have a muddled history so there are different versions that are staged. Even Verdi's Don Carlo (in Italian) or Don Carlos (in French) has a very complicated history. Composed to French, but became more popular as the Italian version and the first act is rarely staged but adds to the whole work, so they sometimes stage it with all 5 acts but in Italian which is not really correct, but traditional! LOL Ballets seem to be even more complicated in their history of performances! But at least I am familiar with this type of thing going on in some operas also! LOL Yes, it is fun to try to figure things out. I don't know why I love Raymonda so much. I will probably never get a chance to see it live in person, since it is rarely done.

I have come to love Raymonda and have watched it on dvd from the Bolshoi and a full length Mariinsky version on YouTube (watched both multiple times). I also watched excerpts on YouTube from the Paris Ballet's Raymonda. On Wikipedia the structure of the ballet is listed with the dances, and I noticed that the Mariinsky YouTube video omits the "Danse orientale de Raymonda" that would normally come after the Spanish dance (Panderos). On the Bolshoi dvd with Semenyaka, they keep the music and dance, although it is changed into a sort of pdd between Raymonda and Abderakhman if I remember correctly (sent the dvd back to Netflix). I also watched a documentary about the Paris Opera Ballet's Raymonda by Nureyev, and the dancers tell how Nureyev always teased the ballerina who had the title role, "You have 7 variations!!!" in order to make them nervous in a teasing way. Well, if the Wikipedia listing of the dances is accurate I only count 6 possible variations for Raymonda plus her entrance which I assume Nureyev must have counted as a variation to come up with the idea that there are 7 variations. So here is my question: I see that Wikipedia shows that some of the variations were cut from the original performance and some interpolations were made through the years. But when one of the variations is cut (like in the Mariinsky's Raymonda on YouTube) is this a dancer's decision, artistic director's decision, company's decision, etc? Does anyone know? Is it common to cut one of Raymonda's variations?

Oh, how perceptive you are (she's my favorite, too) I hope you purchase her complete Swan Lake soon. Welcome to BalletAlert. Thanks! Yes, I bought the full Swan Lake and love it. I have seen Swan Lake live in Orlando before and I have the Paris Opera Ballet Swan Lake on dvd. But the Lopatkina Swan Lake really opened my eyes to why people love Swan Lake. She was magical to me. I thought Swan Lake was one ballet I would never "love" until I bought her version. Now I love Swan Lake! I am hoping the Mariinsky releases a few more dvds with Lopatkina in the future.

I loved Giselle, Jewels, and Romeo and Juliet (Cranko's version). Since I am new to all this and was never a dancer, I was amazed. I think some of the reviews were not as enthusiastic, but I loved everything that I saw. I have practiced yoga for years although I fell off the wagon in the past two years, and so I know how difficult it is to move the body into certain positions so my past yoga practice helps me appreciate how hard the things they are doing on stage are!!!!

I have seen Giselle and Jewels during previous seasons, and Romeo and Juliet just last season. As a Mother's Day gift I bought my mother and me a subscription to next season, because she lives in Jupiter, and that is 20 minutes from the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach where Miami City Ballet also performs. I can't wait. So far I love the full-length classical ballets and they will be doing Coppelia and Giselle. I have seen short modern ballets in the past, and do enjoy them a lot, but my personal taste leans more toward the full-length ballets.

My name is Bart Birdsall and live in Florida. I am 44 years old. I have been an opera fanatic for 20 years, and I have always wanted to form an equal appreciation of ballet, but it simply escaped me. I would go to a ballet live here and there through the years, and I loved what I saw, but opera was my true love, and money and time tended to go toward traveling to see operas. Ballet took a back seat. But recently I have had a change of life (leave of absence from job), and I took time out to watch many ballets and read about ballet terms, etc. online. Now I can say that I find ballet just as fulfilling to my soul as opera. Since it is a new love it is actually more exciting. I am glad to find a forum where I can meet other ballet lovers and learn from them. So far my favorite ballets are Sleeping Beauty and Raymonda. I also love Giselle. My favorite ballerina right now is Uliana Lopatkina (Swan Lake dvd and Raymonda on YouTube). I don't know why, but I simply love how she acts and dances. I wish she had more dvds available. I also love Aurelie Dupont in the Paris Opera Ballet's dvds. Dorothee Gilbert is someone new to me, and I love what I have seen on YouTube!