Marga

carbro, I believe you're right about "The Nurses". I only remember it vaguely. There's also Jenna Elfman (Dharma and Greg), who at 5'10", thought or was told that she was too tall for ballet. At least that's what the media kept reporting when her sitcom was new and she was a popular subject in entertainment news. edited to add: I googled Jenna Elfman and found this passage in an unofficial site about her:

Does anyone remember Zena Bethune? I thought it fascinating when I was young that a ballet dancer would become a soap opera actress. This was back in the 60s. She later went on to star in a TV show called "The Nurses". I seem to remember that after her television experiences, she went back to the performing arts in some capacity.

Perhaps the awards ribbon also looks better in person?

In Russian Nureyev is indeed pronounced as Brioche says. Dirac's pronounciation is what is most often heard in North America. Some folks, especially newscasters, have put the emphasis on the first syllable, saying NU-ray-ev. (And Russians pronounce Diana Vishneva's last name Vish-NYO-va, with the emphasis on the second syllable.) Here is an interesting website about Nureyev (it's the official umbrella site of his foundation for medical research). It has links to lists of all the videos and DVDs made of his dancing: Nureyev website

Thank you very much for that link, Corina, and welcome to Ballet Talk!

Go ahead and blush -- it IS pronounced "teat"! (In Estonian, the "Ts" are of the softer variety, though.) Tiit is quite a popular name, too, except that few Estonians in North America give the name to their little boys. Helimets (not Helimuts) translated is very pretty, since "Heli" means "sound" and "mets" is forest or woods: Sonorous forest, or Chiming woods. ("Helimüts" would be a Ringing hat!) Tiit Helimets arrived at San Francisco after several years with the Birmingham Royal Ballet where he and his wife Molly Smolen (originally from Pennsylvania) were principals. They occasionally guest-starred with his home company, the Estonian National Ballet, during their years in England. And, thanks, Helene! I finally returned home from Nutcrackering in Toronto, where I no longer live, and saw these interesting posts.

All I know is that when I studied Cunningham technique with Viola Farber at Adelphi University for 3 years back in the 1960s, it was as hard as Graham technique to master. And when you finally "get" it, and the movement feels right, (at least) the dancer is enjoying and appreciating and having fun with Cunningham. As far as "any natural movement is dance" -- we had to perfect the use of natural movements and integrate them into intricate steps which were not possible to do without training. I found Cunningham to be extremely exhilirating -- both while watching his company and while performing the choreography we were taught.

Here is his agent listing (with photo): Geon van der Wyst, Royal LePage Real Estate I've had it bookmarked since he joined Royal LePage, ready to give to friends who are looking for a house in Toronto!

If you mean The Latvian National Ballet, known as the Riga Ballet, you can find information on the dancers and repertoire, etc. on their website: Latvian National Ballet This is the company Baryshnikov started out in, as well as Maris Liepa and Aleksander Godunov, to drop a few names! It's a top-notch ballet company, one of the gems of the Baltic ballet world, along with the Estonian National Ballet and the Lithuanian National Ballet. The training in the school is strictly Vaganova and many of the dancers are Latvians of Russian background, due to the political migrations over 50 years ago. The same holds true in Estonia. This tends to give them the long-limbed, lean physiques we have come to identify with Russian dancers, as well as the facility of extension and the flexibility that is exciting to watch.

That has been the general concensus! Farrell left in 1969, though, not 1970. I know you know that! Thanks so much for the pronunciation. I'd always said "PamTag", not having any other clue.

Hi Juliet, and welcome to Ballet Talk! Yours is a question for our sister forum, Ballet Talk for Dancers. Look at the menu items at the top right of this page (they start with "CALENDAR") and click on the last item, "Ballet Talk for Dancers". I know you'll get a response to your query over there! (You'll have to register there as well, using the same screenname you registered with here, Juliet2417).

I was also an ardent admirer of Martha Swope. Today I most admire Nina Alovert who has captured brilliant ballet moments, both on and offstage. I think that our own Marc Haegeman is the supreme ballet portraitist. His closeups of faces and gorgeous studio shots are absolute works of photographic art. I find very interesting what amitava has written. Having been present at many ballet company and gala dress rehearsals, I have always been amused at the line of photographers skirting the stage, sounding like so many summer bugs as their cameras clicked away. There are the inexperienced-for-dance newspaper photogs who do, indeed, handle their cameras like machine guns, hoping for that one special shot to just happen to fall in among the hundreds their cameras take. How exciting it is to watch the genuine dance photographer who knows, as amitava does, to wait and be ready for those "money shots" by being aware of what the dancer is doing and by being poised at precisely the right instant to snap it.

Patricia Wilde

Natalia Dudinskaja!

I only have time to explain one of them, Solor: Grand Défilé The "a" in "grand" is pronounced "aah", with a silent "d", which becomes heard at the beginning of "défilé", of course. "Défilé" is pronounced "day-fee-lay". A défilé is, in basic terms, a row of people, a procession, a parade of sorts. The "grand" part makes it especially fancy, I think. "Grand" means "big" in French. In ballet, the grand défilé exhibits all the performers of the evening at the very end of the show (usually after the bows) each doing, in turn, a showy bit of dancing.

Yes, he was teaching at the ABT SI in Bermuda, but it was not last week. The intensive ran from August 15 – September 2, was the first time Bermuda was a satellite site, and will be held there again next year. It is the sixth location for ABT's SI's.

singing_medora, The address you gave renders the message: "The page cannot be found".

My daughter's ballet teacher was in and graduated from Alla Osipenko's (only) class at the Vaganova school. (There is a rare photo of Osipenko's class in Dance Magazine, January 1969, which shows Ms. Osipenko with her students, her arm around the waist of my daughter's teacher, who was 14 at the time!). A tribute ballet gala was mounted by my daughter's teacher for her in Toronto in 1994, which she attended and in which she coached her former student, my daughter's teacher Nadia Veselova-Tencer, for her performance of the Dying Swan. Many world ballet stars came to Toronto to dance in this tribute performance. Osipenko was a stellar dancer and, indeed, performed many modern ballets. Her direct competition at the Maryinsky was Irina Kolpakova. Politics being what they were, she had to flee the country because of her refusal to join the Communist Party. She went to France. She is in her early seventies now (73, if I remember correctly) and I believe she is back in France after living in America for awhile, where she taught primarily in Connecticut, but also in Florida, and other schools in the summer. She was also a judge at the first Youth America Grand Prix competition, both in the regional semi-finals and in the finals. She has suffered her fair share in life, both by being snubbed in the Russian ballet world because of her political views and, outside the ballet world, enduring the death of her son (in his early thirties) a few years ago. She is actually not tall, but about 5'4" (or even an inch shorter) in height. I think she continues to teach. She also appears in the 2002 movie, Russian Ark, made by director Aleksander Sokurov. Here is a picture taken when she was in Toronto 11½ years ago (scroll down): Alla Osipenko, Gennadi Selyutski, Nadia Tencer

Hi snowblow, and welcome to Ballet Talk. We actually have two boards, one for dancers and one for those who watch ballet and like to discuss it from an audience viewpoint. You are on the ballet-watcher board! Your question is one for our sister board, Ballet Talk for Dancers. You'll have to register there with the same screenname you used to register here. I know you'll get a response to your question there! Click here to go there: Ballet Talk for Dancers

The calendar is a huge achievement! Thank you carbro and Helene, for performing this feat. It's a wonderful resource.

Since in his bio it states that he won the cash prize at Prix de Lausanne in 1997 and the junior gold medal at the Prix de Luxembourg the same year, he has to be at least 23, since the youngest age for those competitions is 15. Since he joined Stuttgart Ballet when he finished school, in 1998, he would most likely be 24 or 25 now. I've seen him dance, too, and he is indeed a standout! Here is a longer biographical look at his very interesting life (scroll down to the middle of the article): Friedemann Vogel bio

sidebar But look at where he'll be dancing this coming season! He is joining Complexions*, the company of his main role model, Desmond Richardson**. I think he'll make a great addition to that company! source of info: * Danny Tidwell's website ("news" link) ** Dance Spirit Magazine interview, January 2003

bart, I want to thank you for the clarification. After I posted, I could see how this thread could become a list of good shorter dancers who command the stage as well as their good taller counterparts. I don't think this was Helene's intent in starting the thread. I was a passionate corps-watcher at City Ballet back in the 60s when I still lived in New York. Ironically, I was always on the lookout for Karin von Aroldingen! I posted on BT a year or two ago that I didn't really like watching her (with many posters in agreement in a thread that, unfortunately, wasn't too kind to her overall). Now I realize that she was compelling to me as I tried to figure her out. The fact that she was a "big" dancer in the corps (back then) was probably what made me "find" her in the first place, but that wasn't what kept me mesmerized by her. It was her peculiar angularity, her not being from the same mold as the typical female ballet dancer, the way her face looked as she danced, the way her foot was shaped, arched enough but with a wide side face. I don't mean the winged look which Balanchine adored, but the aspect from the top of the foot to the bottom which the viewer sees from the side. Her hips jutted in a different way during the Balanchine hip thrusts, her neck angled strangely when she presented her head to the side. She was so muscled throughout her body. There was much to see and, maybe, analyze about her body in motion. Hence, larger-than-life. I didn't spend half as much time in total fascination with any other corps dancer, although there were many whom I liked to watch. I made it my business to know everyone's name and sat in a front row seat for a few years so as to watch the individual dancers, not being quite as interested in the tableaus the choreography displayed. As for principals, Patricia Wilde was larger-than-life for me. She certainly did not have a typical dancer's body, either, but how she danced!! What a vivacious, daring, speedy dancer! She could do just about everything. She didn't have line, but she had pizazz!

It is a puzzlement, going by that picture! I've seen Lopatkina informally, and was told before I saw her that she was indeed at least 5'10", which I could attest to when I actually saw her. Zelensky is very tall, I'm not sure how much in feet and inches, but I've seen him informally, too. Yet, this picture indeed seems to "shorten" her.

The first to spring to mind is, naturally, Herman Cornejo, followed by Xiomara Reyes and Erica Cornejo. From Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Anik Bissonnette. I was surprised at how tiny she is. The first time I saw her dance I thought she was as big as Patricia Barker, who was also on the program that night. Backstage after another performance, I spoke with her. She is miniscule, short and tiny, with thinly boned feet and hands, small-boned head .... an overall birdlike structure. When she dances, she commands the stage with her full movements, her passion, her lyricism. A lovely, strong dancer.