kbarber

For any balletalerters in the Toronto area, there is a public reading at High Park Library, March 15 at 7 pm. http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/events/eva-stachniak-high-park-library-228-roncesvalles-ave

almost ANYTHING has been performed in Toronto more recently than Coppelia, last seen 20 years ago. I don't know what the NBOC has against it.

send me an email as directed in the linked post, and good luck! :-)

will be announced Jan 28

Eva Stachniak, bestselling author of The Winter Palace and Empress of the Night, has plunged into the fascinating life story of Bronislava Nijinska with her latest novel The Chosen Maiden. I have two copies to give away. For more info please see here: http://toursenlair.blogspot.ca/2017/01/giveaway-bronislava-nijinska-historical.html (If referring to the giveaway violates the forum's guidelines in some way, admins please remove that part).

only for the mixed program of which there is only one out of 7 programs. When they announced the season they only had the Concert and Chroma listed for this program, so clearly something had to be added to flesh it out into a full evening.

Rob Binet was also Misha one year. It's true he went through a major growth spurt - he's now 6'4" or 6'5". With a mop of curly hair on top, as well. I happened to be sitting behind him at a performance once and tapped him on the shoulder to say "Could you please be a bit shorter?". (I've known Rob since he was 12).

He was promoted at the end of tonight's performance of Swan Lake in which he danced Siegfried.

the Art Gallery of Ontario is not Canada's National Gallery; that's in Ottawa. You're right that Kudelka's Nutcracker premiered on a larger stage, the Sony Centre.

whenever I try to click on BBC links they tell me they are not available outside the UK.

She debuted in the role during the November season in Toronto

I am 5 ' 4" and I've sat in various places in the orchestra level of the theatre and found them all pretty good.

Also Napoli, but the older Royal Danish Ballet video from about 15 years ago, not the one that came out a couple of years ago, where the camera angles are extremely annoying.

also The Dream. Really almost anything by Frederick Ashton will give you warm fuzzies. Les Patineurs. Rhapsody and Two Pigeons are just out on DVD. Coppelia (the Australian Ballet DVD has GORGEOUS costumes)

this was filmed in Toronto. The studio scenes are at Canada's National Ballet School. There are National Ballet dancers in the "company".

That;s an interesting suggestion, but in practical terms how do you strike up a conversation with "the couple stting next to me"? I find when I'm at the ballet surrounded by couples, they're all chatting amongst themselves and I don't see how I can muscle in on their conversation to say "By the way, do you know about the Bolshoi broadcasts?"

I am a huge admirer of Lunkina and McKie but I have to say when I saw Nut a couple of years ago I found Vanstone a better SPF than Lunkina, I suspect because Vanstone has grown up with Kudelka whereas for Lunkina it was a struggle adapting. However, Lunkina might have been having an off night and may have got the Kudelka choreography more in her body since then. I love Dronina but haven't seen her SPF yet.

please direct Dianna to me at toursenlair@gmail.com. I already promote the ballet broadcasts as much as I can on my website and to my mailing list. It would help if I could do giveaways for tickets. The Bloor Cinema in Toronto does that with me for Royal Ballet broadcasts, and I promote the contest draws heavily on my twitter feed and facebook page. If everyone of us who goes to these broadcasts shared them on our social media feeds that might help to spread the word. It certainly didn't help that cineplex rescheduled The Bright Stream so that was in competition with the National Ballet of Canada's Onegin. Now I am trying to organize a private screening of it in February for everyone in Toronto who missed it because they were at the live ballet. But it costs $2500 to do so and I have to find enough people to cover the costs.

The AD's who are the judges cannot vote for their own company dancers/choreographers. I don't believe the company's publicity department bothers to promote it much and doesn't really care whether it gets much coverage in the media, because after all it is only one performance to sell tickets to. The ballet aficionados will buy tix with or without publicity. I don't think people lose interest; I see the same people year after year at the Bruhn. It currently occurs about every second year. Usually it's in the March season but this year it was in November because the company will be totally occupied with mounting their new Pinocchio in March.

hear hear

is it available on dVD?

OK, SFB actually has 95 performances this year. I don't think 15 fewer performances than that qualifies as "so little". I was comparing apples and apples in terms of audience size when I chose Houston. Perhaps you could look up the numbers for PNB, Joffrey, Boston Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet... ABT has 85 performances on its schedule between now and next October, and even counting in their fall season , I don't see how they would get to the 170 you mention.

You will notice I stated "In North America". Of course European companies have more performances.

can we lay rest to the notion that the National Ballet of Canada "performs so little"? This year they have 53 performances of rep plus 3 on tour in Ottawa, plus 24 Nuts. Houston by comparison has 36 performances of non-Nuts. I'm not going to take the time to tally up all the other comparable ballet companies in N America, but I know they have typically fewer performances than NBOC. Yes, NBOC has fewer performances than NYCB, but so does everyone.