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Thanks for the report Terez! Norika Matsuyama as the Snow Queen is a pretty big deal for her - she did have an injury period that impeded her progress. I can guess that Tomasson wants to ease Sheehan into things - she still has many things to learn about, and this is her first year as a professional dancer. She's gotten a lot of publicity for someone who hasn't even danced a season with a professional company. ;) [ EDIT: my mistake, this will be her second season with the company ] If she paces herself, she can hopefully have a long, long career. When you mentioned Davit being replaced at the last minute, that made me sad - we didn't know it at the time, but he had developed an issue with his back that would rush him into an early retirement.

Yes, I understood that. ;)

To be fair, there have always been females who pursue, and are 'grabby'. Though it's been a much smaller percentage of females who've shown this kind of behavior. With males, aggressive traits have been encouraged for centuries.

The documentary about Gomes has recently been making the rounds. Madison Keesler of SFB recently posted a nice tribute to Gomes on Instagram: madisonkeesler • M a r c e l o . G o m e s • A few weeks ago @Marcelua came to San Francisco to present “Marcelo Gomes: Anatomy of a Male Ballet Dancer” as part of the @sfdancefilmfest. . The documentary about Marcelo, from David Barba and James Pellerito, presented this beautiful artist in such a wonderful way. I highly recommend it! . The first time I met Marcelo was during a summer program when I was only 13. Since then, I have been enamored with this incredible artist. Whenever our paths have crossed over the years, I am always blown away by how kind, humble, and passionate he is as both a dancer and as a person. I'm sure there are many, many people who are quite taken aback by this turn of events.

It was definitely fortuitous having Greco and Scheller hired during the same era. Lucky us. ;) I'm definitely interested in seeing how Scheller develops (or doesn't) under new tutelage. I can't help but wonder if she is relieved to be away from the Martins regime (though coincidentally that is all changing now anyway).

It sucks to be dead wood. ;) At least Balanchine still found ways to help people out later in life (as I mentioned earlier). Very few people were totally written off by him. Martins may be more inflexible in his thinking.

And of course there was the whole "baby ballerina" episode, and Balanchine telling Danilova she was "too old" to dance for him with the de Basil Ballet Russes (I sort of remember she was 26 or 27 then). That sort of set the precedent. Yes, Balanchine could be loyal to certain people but he was mercurial too. Then there are the people like Richard Thomas, his wife Barbara Fallis, and Paul Mejia (married to Suzanne Farrell) who all had fallen out with Mr. B, but Balanchine later helped them out - sending Mejia to choreograph for Tallchief at the Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet, and offering the old SAB classrooms to Thomas for his own school when NYCB moved to Lincoln Center.

My ears pricked up at Gottlieb's assertion that [around 52:50] "Balanchine was very loyal to his dancers". "He didn't say, OK she' no longer very good in this - out! I'm replacing her with this gorgeous twenty-year-old". Like most pronouncements about 'how Balanchine was' there are always examples of very different behavior and experiences. I happened to re-read a lot of the I Remember Balanchine reminiscences not long ago, and there are dancers like Barbara Walczak who received different treatment: "Finally he reached a point where there were many young dancers coming up, like Patty McBride, who had just joined the company, Suzanne Farrell at the School, and Mimi Paul. He really wanted to get rid of the older dancers. We could feel it. He really made it clear by simply taking all of my roles away…" [there's more on this on p.257] I don't recall the names, but a number of male dancers reached a point where Balanchine kept hinting that it was time for them to leave the company (he may have been harder on men that he found uninteresting than he was on women, but that's debatable). Gottlieb appears to argue for shorter careers for principals because they can't maintain the same performance level over the years - and that is plainly controversial. The discussion of extinct Balanchine ballets, favorite Balanchine finales, and 'dessert island' lists was interesting for me [1:07:32]. I agree with Gottlieb that different ballets and different works of art are going to be important to us at different stages of our own lives and learning. The focus changes over time.

Thanks for the heads up, Helene. It's always fun to hear about how NYCB people are first introduced to the company and what their early jobs were like. Is Gottlieb referring to the Bolshoi soloist Alena Kovaleva (Алёна Ковалёва) performing Diamonds?

Masha performs fouettés en dedans with music by Ivor Cutler (Flim Flam Flum) Most Americans won't know who Ivor Cutler was, unless they happened to watch The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour film (he played Buster Bloodvessel).

Great report. For better or worse, Nedvigin may be using The Nutcracker performances to work on partnering skills/issues. Learning the choreography in rehearsals is all well and good, but performing the dances and partnering well - in front of a large audience - is another level to attain. I look forward to your future reports, KWalsh.

Thanks, KWalsh - that's interesting to hear.

Great find, SF_Herminator. Wei Wang continues to develop as a dancer and an artist. I'd like to see Tiit Helimets mentor Wang in partnering and overall strength training - that's the next step. How did the performance look overall? Any particularly great (or shaky) moments for the soloists/Corps? Have you seen Scheller dance yet? Her pairing with Greco should be exciting.

Side note from Festival Ballet Theatre: festivalballettheatre - The Nutcracker THIS WEEKEND! You don’t have to travel to San Francisco to see stars from the San Francisco Ballet perform in The Nutcracker because Festival Ballet Theatre is proud to present not one, not two but three guest artists from the company. Vitor Luiz returns to the @theirvinebarclay to dance with Festival Ballet dancer @taraghassemieh15 on December 15 (7pm). He will also perform with fellow SF Ballet dancers on December 16 with Frances Chung @franadian and December 17 with Maria Kochetkova. Fran preparing before the show:

Wow! How could all those children possibly fit in that one school? ;)

Something posted today by Mathilde Froustey: "This job is hard but man, but I missed it so much. Tonight is my 1st show of the Grand Pas de Deux and i’m seriously freaked out but so happy to be w[here] I belong." And she got a reply form Aaron Robison (now at ENB). It's nice that he's still paying attention to what happens at SFB. aaronrobison86 Merde! lapetitefrench_❤️ I miss you @aaronrobison86 ! Toi, toi, toi Mathilde! And welcome back.

That's essentially how I took it - socio-political commentary. The opening paragraph suggests that Brown wasn't actually there in person for the premiere: "'Members of the creative team took the curtain calls at the great colonnaded theatre by the Kremlin wearing T-shirts with the face of Kirill Serebrennikov on them, while spectators chanted “Kirill! Kirill!”, according to news reports.'" According to news reports. I though it was interesting that a synopsis of the ballet was provided at the end - sans commentary. That would actually be useful in a true review. ;)

That's possible. I got the impression that the writer, Cynthia Bond Perry, was just expressing her support for McFall and the work he did for the company, as well as challenging Nedvigin to be as good or better - that seems fair to me. I just know it's going to take a while to get the company to the level that Nedvigin is looking for. And he's brand new to the A.D. game so he has plenty to learn too. The Facebook posting made me think that the dancers are lucky to work with an A.D. who is still dancing as well as ever. He can actually demonstrate everything fully, and not just motion with this hands. ;)

Erik Tomasson got back in touch with me regarding UNBOUND images: "Just wanted to let you know that I reached an agreement with the dancers for three of the Unbound images. They are currently for sale at my website (www.eriktomasson.com) for a limited time under the 'store' link at the top of the page. The prints are available for purchase until May 1st 2018." http://www.eriktomasson.com/store/ One size only for all prints. Please allow 1-2 weeks for delivery. Last day to order prints is May 1st 2018. FYI: I sent Erik Tomasson an email reply asking if there will be any other UNBOUND images made available - if so I'll update this information.

Erik Tomasson got back in touch with me regarding UNBOUND images: "Just wanted to let you know that I reached an agreement with the dancers for three of the Unbound images. They are currently for sale at my website (www.eriktomasson.com) for a limited time under the 'store' link at the top of the page. The prints are available for purchase until May 1st 2018." http://www.eriktomasson.com/store/ One size only for all prints. Please allow 1-2 weeks for delivery. Last day to order prints is May 1st 2018. FYI: I sent Erik Tomasson an email reply asking if there will be any other UNBOUND images made available - if so I'll update this information. [I'll post this information in the UNBOUND Festival thread too.]

Yes, Lee's passing came as a shock. May he rest in peace. It's hard to believe, but he was the first Asian American to hold the office of mayor in San Francisco - a city in which a full third of the population is of Asian ancestry.

I just took a look at the company schedule for the dates - except for the overlap of Don Quixote and Beauty and the Beast (performed by Atlanta Ballet II) there's a gap of almost a month between the other programs. That will give the dancers and coaches extra time to prepare for roles, so that is hopeful. When Nedvigin was at SFB, the programs often overlapped. For example, the last few performances of Program 1 would overlap with the first few performances of Program 2. That was great for me when I moved and started flying back to SF to see the company - I could see two programs together very easily. But I'm sure it was very hard on the dancers. This next season at SFB has been scheduled with more gaps between programs. We'll hope for the best.

Thanks for the article link. I love this paragraph: "Overall, this operatically unfolding scenario could only occur in Russia. Such a bold and experimental enterprise, coupled with such extraordinarily poorly managed implementation, would be inconceivable at the Royal Ballet. (I don’t think we can compare Serebrennikov with, say, Wayne McGregor – Javier de Frutos, perhaps.) The defiant subject, the historical nest of worms, the daredevilry of the commissioning by the country’s flagship ballet company, the inept cancellations and interferings by state, church and theatre board, the arrest of the creator, the atmosphere of fevered social conflicts – there is a truly heroic incoherence to all the elements."

I happened to read this review of Atlanta Ballet's final performances of the McFall Nutcracker - Review: The final stand of “Atlanta Ballet’s Nutcracker” fails to cast its magical spell http://artsatl.com/review-atlanta-ballets-final-mcfall-nutcracker-fails-cast-usual-magical-spell/ "True to Nedvigin’s vision (shaped by his experience as a student at the Bolshoi Ballet school and principal dancer at San Francisco Ballet), every dancer has a beautiful body and excellent training. But they come from different backgrounds with training in different schools and styles, and with different ideas of what to go for as performers on stage. In general, their commonality appears to be medals and other accolades won in ballet competitions — McFall shied away from such competitions because he believed they missed the point, and they could ruin talent." >> It's pretty much impossible to create a wholly unified company - with so many dancers brand new to the company - in such a short period of time. The Nutcracker performance period is used by many North American companies to sort out the kinks, as it were, and get the company running on all cylinders after a long vacation period. I'm not at all surprised that things appear rough here at the beginning. I just hope they can find their groove before too long. "These standouts weren’t enough for the production to cast the spell that Atlanta audiences have come to expect. Ballet officials say a heavy fall rehearsal schedule, and the need to coordinate schedules of several in-demand choreographers, left the company only about three weeks to prepare the production. Since August, company dancers have learned eight ballets and have already begun work on choreographers Yuri Possokhov’s new Nutcracker that debuts in 2018." >> Sounds like they're on the SFB schedule if they're learning 8 ballets in 3 or so months. That is grueling, but it is also what the big companies sometimes have to deal with. Is Atlanta Ballet biting off more than they can chew? It may seem that way in the first year under Nedvigin given all the extra work that is going to have to be done to get the dancers used to one another and working as a unified group. "Nedvigin spent the ballet’s first weekend in Moscow to attend a world premiere performance there, rather than being present in Atlanta for the opening." >> Yeah, that's unfortunate. And I can guess that he was showing support for Yuri Possokhov at the premiere of Nureyev in Moscow, which has sparked all manner of controversy in Russia (whether or not it really deserves that much attention). The timing wasn't good, but scheduling conflicts are always going to be an issue. Don't be surprised if Nedvigin isn't also keeping an eye out for talent that might be interested in coming to the US...

I've been thinking a lot about these same things every time I watch one of the old Hollywood films on TCM - there's an extraordinary amount of scenes that depict sexual harassment of varying degrees. And it's often true that the female characters deal with these unwanted advances with a "smile" or a "giggle". Much of the plot content revolves around male and female "interaction" of course, and this interaction often has a nasty edge to it. However, the "hero", for example, a Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire, are usually rewarded for their unceasing harassment - 'because that's just what males do'. The films of the "swinging", "mod", "hip" 1960s are often creepily misogynist in focus. And that was 'just the way they made movies' then. I agree with these points, and hopefully those are exactly the things the board is giving real consideration too. I have to think Martins is too tainted to continue as the face of NYCB.