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kbarber

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Posts posted by kbarber

  1. 10 hours ago, kylara7 said:

    will they continue along the old paths and cater to an aging audience that demands comfort

    how do you know that an "aging audience"  "demands comfort"? Seems like a pretty ageist assumption . I was just in San Francisco for Unbound. Looking around at the audience, it was pretty much the same proportion of white hair as at most ballet performances, and they responded VERY enthusiastically to everything.

  2. I think the point that most people make about women directors is not that they don't exist, but that they don't exist for the most part, at MAJOR companies, even though many of those were founded by women. NBOC, ENB, and Paris Opera are currently (and recent) exceptions.  So up against all the Charlottes and Memphises and Sacramentos, there are the following MAJOR companies run by men:

    San Francisco

    Pacific Northwest

    ABT

    Boston

    Houston

    Birmingham Royal
    Bolshoi

    Mariinsky

    Hamburg

    Stuttgart

    Berlin

    Dresden

    Munich

    Dutch National

    La Scala

    Vienna

    Czech National

    Australian

    NYCB (well, we'll see...)

     

    and maybe major-ish, or less well-known but nonetheless big companies

    Scottish

    Northern Ballet

    Sarasota

    Arizona

    Polish National

    Estonian National

    Hungarian National

    Toulouse

    Bordeaux

    Compania Nacional de Danza (Spain)

    etc.

     

  3. 1 hour ago, mnacenani said:

    Dear Volcano :  let's not forget that Millepied invited Kimin Kim to dance Solor when he staged Bayadere during his first (and only ?) season. When you get used to Rodkin and Lantratov and Chudin and Kim and at least a dozen other names in Russia the male leads in Paris and London really don't cut it (unless they are expat or guesting Russians !)  :wink::wink:

     

    Oh come ON!! Mathieu Ganio? Mathias Heyman? etc etc.

  4. off topic about Nijinsky DVD but on topic about Riabko... last year I was at a Hamburg Ballet performance of Neumeier's Shakespeare Dances in Vienna. I was in the second row and at one point Riabko came and stood on a little extension of the stage over the orchestra pit. I literally could have reached out and touched him. (No I didn't!!!) Major fan girling going on in row 2!!! Have been a fan of his since the first time I saw him, in Neumeier's Sleeping Beauty about 15 years ago.

  5. just posted on her FB page

    I will be leaving San Francisco Ballet after this season. Unbound festival will be my last shows with the company. I’m very lucky and grateful for the career I had with San Francisco Ballet. I want to thank the dancers I shared the stage with, all the choreographers and teachers that I worked with in the past 11 years who made me the dancer I am now. I’ll be forever grateful to Helgi for putting his trust in me, for taking a risk and giving me a principal contract. Thank you to the people in the audience for coming to see my performances and supporting me. Thank you to everyone who helps to make this company a special place.

    The time has come for me to move on to other opportunities. I don’t know what my next big step is going to be but I’m excited to see where it takes me.

  6. 27 minutes ago, Jane Simpson said:

    For those who don't know her and may be a little confused by this, Naghdi has a Belgian mother and an Iranian father. She was born and brought up in London, where her outstanding talent has been recognised for quite some time.

    and did all of her training at the Royal Ballet School. So much for "must be Russian". There are fantastic dancers in the world who aren't Russian.

  7. On 4/1/2018 at 10:54 PM, enpunto said:

    Not sure whether this is the right place to introduce myself. I remember a ballet school coming to my small town (mud roads, one car and one telephone in the whole town). My father took me and I saw the four swans dancing. I was 5 at the time, 1949. I have wanted to be a ballet dancer since then. Much water under the bridge and many moves to places with no schools and no teachers. Somehow the prime passed but not the passion. So here I am and glad I found you! I am still trying to wade through the information here. Thanks...enpunto

    Hello enpunto. I am sure you and I already know each other in real life.

  8. 2 hours ago, laurel said:

    Unfortunately, most of these dolls are not for sale.  It appears they were created as one-off prototypes just for this special promotion for Intl. Women's Day.  Four of the dolls, including Frida Kahlo and Gabby Douglas can be purchased online, but the rest, including Yuan Yuan Tan, are not available.  It seems like a kind of mean trick to play on kids or collectors who might actually want to purchase one of them after seeing all the publicity today.

     https://barbie.mattel.com/en-us/about/role-models.html

    I thought I read somewhere that they will all be available in due course.

  9. This is what the press release said:

    Crystal is an important voice and I greatly admire her work. I am so pleased to have secured this new commission from her,” said Ms. Kain. “Ever since she created her outstanding Emergence for the National Ballet in 2009, Crystal has been in such high demand around the world. I have wanted her to create another work for us for many years and it is now coming to fruition.

  10. Evan McKie is injured. He;s been off since January, when he had to be replaced in the Ottawa performances of Nijinsky.

    I'm not sure why people need convincing that Crystal Pite is and has been very busy and that it's hard to find time for her to create a new piece for the NBOC. For one thing, she had a baby in 2010, not long after Emergence premiered.  She also runs her own company, Kidd Pivot.

    In 2010, Kidd Pivot signed a two-year deal (which was later extended to three years) to become the resident company of Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt. As part of the deal the company changed their name to Kidd Pivot Frankfort RM and premiered new choreography by Pite.[24] This caused her to split her time between Frankfurt and her hometown of Vancouver. Kidd Pivot also increased their touring schedule that year as the company was invited to perform in various countries.[1]

    In 2011 Pite premiered Tempest Replica.

    In 2013 Sadler's Wells appointed Pite as an associated artist. The following year Sadler’s Wells performed Tempest Replica at its United Kingdom premiere.[30] Pite took this opportunity to rework and improve upon the piece, stating "it wasn’t done. It wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t what it was going to be. I knew that I would need more time and money to fix it."[27] This version of Tempest Replica won Pite the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance.[31]

    Polaris was Pite's first original work with Sadler's Wells.[2] Premiering in 2014, it was part of a larger program called Thomas Adès: See the Music, Hear the Dance to honor the music of Thomas Adès.[32] It was danced to Adès' song Polaris[33] played by 75 musicians placed throughout the theatre.[34] and featured 64 dancers from her company Kidd Pivot and the London Contemporary Dance School.[32]

    Pite premiered a new dance piece at Panamania during the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto. Betroffenheit is a collaboration between Pite and Jonathon Young, co-artistic director of Vancouver-based theatre group Electric Company Theatre, with dancers from Kidd Pivot.  It has been on tour widely since then. Here is the touring schedule for just the next four months:

    Santa Monica, California, USA

    Betroffenheit
    February 14 – 16, 2018 | The Broad Stage

    Taipei, Taiwan

    Betroffenheit
    February 23 – 25, 2018 | Taiwan International Festival of Arts

    Wellington, New Zealand

    Betroffenheit
    March 3 – 4, 2018 | New Zealand Festival

    Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Betroffenheit
    March 14 – 17, 2018 | DanceHouse

    Seattle, Washington, USA

    Betroffenheit
    March 23 – 24, 2018 | On The Boards // Seattle Theatre Group

    Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    Betroffenheit
    March 30 – April 1, 2018 | Citadel Theatre

    Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Betroffenheit
    April 6 – 7, 2018 | NAC Theatre

    Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Betroffenheit
    April 19 – 22, 2018 | Canadian Stage

    Zurich, Switzerland

    Betroffenheit
    April 28, 2018 | Dance Festival Steps

    Fribourg, Switzerland

    Betroffenheit
    May 2, 2018 | Dance Festival Steps

    Sevilla, Spain

    Betroffenheit
    May 11 – 12, 2018 | Teatro Central

    Turin, Italy

    Betroffenheit
    May 17 – 18, 2018 | Teatro Stabile Torino

    Bruges, Belgium

    Betroffenheit
    May 24, 2018 | Concertgebouw Brugge

    Oslo, Norway

    Betroffenheit
    May 29-30, 2018 | Vulkan Oslo

    Montreal, Québec, Canada

    Betroffenheit
    June 5-7, 2018 | FTA

     

    In 2016 she created The Season's Canon for Paris Opera Ballet. This is being brought back in May of this year.

    In 2017, the Royal Opera House commissioned a new piece from Pite, Flight Pattern; it premiered there in March 2017.

    Paris Opera Ballet has commissioned a new work from her for 2019.

    For Nederlands Dans Theater she has created since 2009 the following: Plot Point (2010, nominated for the prestigious Benois de La Dance award), Solo Echo (2012), Parade (2013), In the Event (2015), and The Statement (2016). In season 2017-2018 Pite will create a new piece for the NDT 1 programme Savoir Faire, which will premiere on May 17, 2018.

    In addition, Emergence has been staged by, among other companies, PNB, Scottish Ballet, and Zurich Ballet and presumably Pite visits those companies when the ballet is being staged.

     

  11. On 2/20/2018 at 6:36 PM, JumpFrog said:

     I would think particularly for PIte being Canadian and celebrated so unanimously internationally they would be eager to have her create more for the Canadian company.

    Clearly your wish is Karen Kain's command, as they have just announced a new Pite commission for 2019-20, apparently after years of asking because Pite is so busy.

  12. 1 hour ago, California said:

    Does anyone know dates of the Northern Fall for Dance? It just says "October 2018." Coincidentally, I have a meeting in Toronto in October and would love to see the Peck again. (But nothing else on their schedule is sufficiently intriguing to make me want to travel to Canada to see it.)

    https://national.ballet.ca/Productions/2018-19-Season/Fall-for-Dance

    exact dates haven't been announced but it's jusually a Wed Thurs Fri Sat the first week in October

  13. The National Ballet of Canada’s 2018/19 Season

    Touring

    The Dreamers Ever Leave You & The Man in Black & Emergence July 3 – 4, 2018, Großes Haus, Hamburg, Germany
    Paz de la Jolla & Apollo & The Dream January 31 – February 2, 2019, National Arts Centre, Ottawa

    Fall for Dance North Festival

    Paz de la Jolla October 2018, Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto

    Fall Season

    Anna Karenina North American Premiere A Ballet by John Neumeier
    November 10 – 18, 2018
    Inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s great prose masterwork, John Neumeier has adapted Anna Karenina in a two-act ballet set in present day rather than the 19th century, with music by Tchaikovsky, Alfred Schnittke and Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam. The work of a great literary artist meeting the imagination of a great interpretive choreographer, Anna Karenina is an unforgettable ballet experience.
    Being and Nothingness & The Dream
    November 21 – 25, 2018
    Choreographic Associate and Principal Dancer Guillaume Côté’s Being and Nothingness, is inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s landmark philosophical work of the same name. Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is one of the most universally admired ballet adaptations of the playwright’s work. 

    Holiday Season

    The NutcrackerDecember 8 – 30, 2018
    The beloved holiday classic, The Nutcracker, choreographed by James Kudelka, with sets and costumes by Santo Loquasto and lighting by Jennifer Tipton, sold out for the past three seasons and returns for 26 performances in 2018. 

    Winter Season

    Paquita & Apollo & The Sea Above, The Sky Below March 1 – 3 and 20 – 21, 2019
    Marius Petipa's Paquita dazzles with the panache and exoticism of 19th-century classicism and is a breathtaking example of technique. George Balanchine’s 1928 ballet, Apollo, almost singlehandedly established a new aesthetic that brought the language of classical ballet into a modern context, merging the past with the future in a way that would alter the conception of ballet forever. Choreographic Associate Robert Binet’s pas de trois The Sea Above, The Sky Below captivated audiences when it was performed at the 2017 MAD HOT BALLET Gala. 
    Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
    March 7 – 17, 2019
    Few children’s texts are as unique and have left such an imprint on the culture as Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Christopher Wheeldon brings his distinctive and imaginative sensibility to the work, creating a theatrical celebration like no other, with score by Joby Talbot, designs by Bob Crowley and lighting by Natasha Katz.   
    The Thirteenth International Competition for The Erik Bruhn Prize
    March 23, 2019
    See the future stars of ballet in one night! Dancers from companies around the world compete, performing classical and contemporary works. 

    Summer Season

    Physical Thinking Two Company Premieres
    William Forsythe Programme
    The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude & Approximate Sonata 2016 & The Second Detail
    June 1 – 8, 2019
    William Forsythe, provocateur, poet and master of anarchic beauty, has extended the reach of modern dance as few other contemporary choreographers have done. The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude is a short, but fiercely demanding work created in 1996, demonstrating the bracing excitement of pure classical technique. Approximate Sonata 2016 is more subdued Forsythe, a reflective assemblage of pas de deux, set to a hushed, minimalist piano score by Thom Willems. The Second Detail, an astonishing work that was created for The National Ballet of Canada in 1991, is in many ways quintessential Forsythe – slyly mischievous, athletic and, above all, exhilarating.

    MAD HOT BALLET Gala
    June 12, 2019 

     

    The Merry Widow
    June 19 – 23, 2019
    A frothy blend of comedy, romance and the delights of the Parisian Belle Époque in all its splendor, The Merry Widow entertains at every step. Based on the 1905 operetta of the same name by Franz Lehár, The Merry Widow, premiered by The Australian Ballet in 1974 with the great Dame Margot Fonteyn in the lead role of Hanna Glawari, entered the repertoire of The National Ballet of Canada in 1986. 
    Venue: Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen Street West, Toronto 
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