kbarber

I believe so. It is the same distributor for both.

The international distributor for the Royal Opera House broadcasts this past year has been unable to reach an agreement with the ROH re next year, so unless and until the ROH finds a new one, everything is up in the air.

Seriously, for the most part i don't think the people who go to see the Royal Ballet cinemacasts of Nutcracker care all that much about who's dancing. those of us who do are, I think, a tiny minority.

the arts are much more subsidized in Quebec than in the rest of Canada.

The Canada Council used to have a touring budget. They nixed it. The drastic reduction in NBOC touring coincided (not coincidentally!) with this development.

Karen Kain today announced that Harrison James will be promoted to Principal Dancer in the 2016/17 season. Alexandra MacDonald will be promoted to First Soloist; Rui Huang and Donald Thom will be promoted to Second Soloist; and joining the Corps de Ballet from the RBC Apprentice Programme are Jeannine Haller, Clare Peterson and Andrew Tomlinson. Congrats to all!

you have to bear in mind that the NBOC's "galas" are not for the most part attended by people who know a lot about ballet. They are people whose corporations have bought tables for the event, and it's more about getting dressed up and having a party than about seeing what the company can do as a ballet company. I didn't go to the gala this year because it's really not about the dancing.

I have to agree with the reviews.

Livestream of mixed program from Amsterdam Dutch National Ballet will be livestreaming their stage rehearsal for their upcoming program https://youtu.be/PiUdVHWx1U4 https://youtu.be/n3RpbXw7S1Y Year of the Rabbit -Justin Peck Overture – Donald Dawson CRANE - George Williamson Merge - Ernst Meisner this Wednesday at 8 pm European Time, 2 pm Eastern Time, noon Mountain Time, 11 am Pacific Time. It will be on their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/HetNationaleBallet/timeline

I have now completed my list of possible ballet trips for 2016-17. Please see below. For more info, visit http://toursenlair.blogspot.ca/2016/06/2016-17-tours-en-lair-ballet-trips.html or message me. You can join a trip from anywhere in the world. 2016 August 10 - 13, 4 days, 2 performances Saint-Sauveur, Quebec BOOKING JUNE 2016 Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur Guillaume Côté and dancers of the National Ballet of Canada: The Story of us (Marcelo Gomes, World Premiere, with Heather Ogden) Venom (Côté) The Sleeping Beauty prince's solo Dance me to the end of love (Côté) Solos and pas de deux from the classical, neoclassical and contemporary repertoires Guillaume Côté – National Ballet of Canada Heather Ogden – National Ballet of Canada Misty Copeland – American Ballet Theatre Blaine Hoven - American Ballet Theatre Nehemiah Kish – The Royal Ballet Yuhui Choe – The Royal Ballet Anne Plamondon - Independent artist more dancers TBA Optional performance Louise Lecavalier and Frédéric Tavernini in So Blue October 14 -16 New York New York City Ballet New Lovette, New Peck 1, New Walker, New Lopez Ochoa, Everywhere We Go (Peck) Dances at a Gathering (Robbins), Firebird (Balanchine) Glass Pieces (Robbins), Thou Swell (Martins), Stars and Stripes (Balanchine) THIS WILL BE OUR ONLY NEW YORK TRIP IN 2016-17 2017 January 23 - February 2 (11 days) Budapest and Vienna Hungarian National Ballet Onegin (Cranko) Vienna State Ballet La Fille mal Gardée (Ashton) Cinderella (Malandain) Carmina Burana (Orlic), Bolero (Lukacs), Afternoon of a Faun (Nebyla) Ballet of the National Theatre of Brno Black and White (Radacovsky) BOOKING OCTOBER 2016 February 3 - 5 San Francisco San Francisco Ballet HAFFNER SYMPHONY (Tomasson), JIŘÍ BUBENÍČEK WORLD PREMIERE, IN THE COUNTENANCE OF KINGS (Peck) SEVEN SONATAS (Ratmansky), YURI POSSOKHOV WORLD PREMIERE, PAS/PARTS 2016 (Forsythe) BOOKING NOVEMBER 2016 February 24 - March 5 (10 days) Berlin and Dresden (day trip to Leipzig) Berlin State Ballet Onegin (Cranko) Castrati (Duato), Petite Mort (Kylian), Secus (Naharin) Multiplicity, Forms of Silence and Emptiness (Duato) Dresden Semperoper Ballet Swan Lake Leipzig Ballet Van Gogh (Schroder) March 8-12 (5 days) Sarasota and Fort Lauderdale Sarasota Ballet Scènes de ballet (American premiere), The Two Pigeons (both Ashton) Miami City Ballet The Fairy’s Kiss (Ratmansky), Walpurgisnacht Ballet (Balanchine), Polyphonia (Wheeldon) April 1 - 12 (12 days) Zurich and Munich Zurich Ballet Junior Company Un Ballo (Kylian), new Favre, new TBA Zurich Ballet Swan Lake (reconstruction of the original Petipa version by Alexei Ratmansky) Stanislavsky Ballet Mayerling (MacMillan) Bavarian State Ballet Spartacus (Grigorovich) Symphony in C (Balanchine), In the Night (Robbins), Adam Is (Barton) Romeo and Juliet (Cranko) La Fille mal Gardée (Ashton) Bavarian State Ballet Junior Company Mixed Program BOOKING JANUARY 2017 mid April Toulouse and Bordeaux Ballet du Capitole de Toulouse Don Quixote Ballet de l'Opéra National de Bordeaux TBA April 30 - May 10 (11 days) Amsterdam and Paris Dutch National Ballet Junior Company Mixed program Dutch National Ballet All Balanchine: Theme and Variations, Tarantella, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Apollo Paris Opera Ballet In G (Robbins), La Valse (Balanchine), Bolero (Cherkaoui) BOOKING AUGUST 2016 May 11 -19 (9 days) London An American in Paris (Wheeldon) Royal Ballet Mayerling (MacMillan) The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude (Forsythe), Tarantella (Balanchine), Strapless (Wheeldon), new Scarlett Northern Ballet Casanova (Tindall) plus possible other performances by other companies TBA BOOKING JANUARY 2017

Evan McKie has been replaced by McGee Maddox as Albrecht for the June 18th evening performance of Giselle. He was to have danced with Svetlana Lunkina.

I am so sorry to hear that.

I take the train all the time to Ottawa. I wouldn't call it romantic but it's pretty efficient and comfortable. Free Wifi! Once you calculate the time you have to be at the airport to get through security and board etc and then get in from the airport in Ottawa or Montreal to downtown, flying is not much faster. but considerably more expensive. If you book ahead, you can get a return train ticket to Montreal for about $120. Of course the companies don't plan their seasons to fit into each other's schedules. When the NBOC was in the now Sony Centre, the situation was pretty much the same as they also shared it with the opera: two programs in November, Nut iin December, two programs in February, two programs in May (which left an even longer drought before the next season started).

It's worth checking what the theatres in the suburbs are offering, especially Markham and Burliington. Les Grands Ballets will be in Burlington with Ohad Naharin's Minus One in May: http://www.burlingtonpac.ca/what-s-on/event_/les-grands-ballets-canadiens-de-montreal--minus-one_16594.html

In August you can go to the Festival des arts de Saint-Sauveur: http://festivaldesarts.ca/en/, and Saratoga Springs is manageable for a weekend as well.

or you can go to Ottawa, about an hour closer on the train. The National Arts Centre has visiting companies that don't make it to Toronto. But classical ballet seems to be a vanishing genre in Ottawa.

Shall we compare it to Boston, only 6 programs (NBOC has 7 including Nut), not in season May 27 - Oct 27, Houston, 7 programs including Nut, but nothing other than Nut from Oct 2 to March 2, March 26 to May 2, and mid-June to September Miami City Ballet, only 4 programs in addition to Nut, nothing from April 2 to October 21 NBOC is more typical than atypical of N American companies and is constrained by the COC's occupation of the opera house.

Toulouse's rep hasn't been "classical purist" so this is not a big change.

The gaps in the schedule are 2 months between the end of Nutcracker and beginning of March season, then another 2 months between the end of March season and beginning of June season, then a long drought between mid-June and early November (which is no worse than SFB's, as has been pointed out). The ballet is entirely dependent on the opera season. They are two different organizations, and the opera company owns the opera house so they have first dibs. In recent years the NBOC has managed to arrange some tour gigs during their Toronto downtime.

Rob Binet is the NBOC's choreographic associate. He's very young but quite talented, was mentored by Wayne McGregor at Royal B and John Neumeier in Hamburg.

I'm not even sure the "event space" for the gala this year has a stage. I think I heard there will be "pop-up" dance events as people wander around, possibly choreographed by Rob Binet? It is true that the NBOC is not being very forthcoming about what dance there will actually be at this event. This meaning of "gala" is not a Canadianism (I know this for a fact, as I wrote the Canadian dictionary!), it is just an NBOC weirdness. Even when NBOC has their "gala" in the theatre, they usually just repeat bits of stuff they've done during the season. It's not like a proper ballet gala at all. Its sole purpose is to rake in the big bucks from the socialites and the corporate entities that buy tables for it. And at that it is apparently very successful. I personally have seen ballet in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, and Bratislava in the last two months! Indeed, travelling is the only solution, other than the Ballet in Cinema showings.

not much dancing at all at NBOC's "gala". Also not much hobnobbing with dancers, although you may see a few of them in the post-performance party, but most are off having hors d'oeuvres with the big-ticket purchasers. And if you don't know any of the dancers who may be milling about, it's not likely you'll be able to go up to them in the crush and make small talk. Also this year it's at a very awkward location.

The festival (artistic director Guillaume Cote) has announced its program for August. Of particular interest to ballet lovers: Wednesday August 10 Guillaume Côté and dancers of the National Ballet of Canada: The Story of us (Marcelo Gomes, World Premiere, with Heather Ogden) Venom (Côté, danced by Greta Hodgkinson) The Sleeping Beauty prince's solo (Nureyev) Dance me to the end of love (Côté) Friday August 12- Saturday August 13 Solos and pas de deux from the classical, neoclassical and contemporary repertoires. Guillaume Côté – National Ballet of Canadao Heather Ogden – National Ballet of Canada Misty Copeland – American Ballet Theatre Blaine Hoven - American Ballet Theatre Nehemiah Kish – The Royal Ballet Yuhui Choe – The Royal Ballet Anne Plamondon - Independent artist more dancers TBA Saint-Sauveur is about an hour north of Montreal in the Laurentians. For full program: http://festivaldesarts.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/DOSSIER-PRESSE-EN_WEB.pdf

with those two as parents, the surprise would be if Alexey WEREN'T cute as a button

not to mention it's awful