Swanilda8

Yes, go! If only because I have to go back to the US before it premieres, and I really wish I could see it. So I need to live vicariously through you. I do agree that it will be interesting to see how they adapt the book into a ballet. I haven't read the whole thing (just excerpts for Russian class) but it seems kind of difficult to work with - how are they going to manage the multiple narrators?

I just got back from seeing the Bolshoi's new production of Hamlet (or rather new as of this March). I really enjoyed it! The score is two Shostakovich symphonies - 5 and 15, and when they work with the play, they really really work. The scene in Gertrude's bedchamber at the end of the first act is thrilling, as is a scene in which the new King Claudius wins over the court - depicted by him teaching them a twisted dance step. There were some dull moments in the second act, though, particularly with Ophelia, who was not particularly charismatic in my cast - Diana Kosyreva, a member of the corps who seems to be getting her first big shot with this work. Artem Ovcharenko was fantastic as Hamlet, though. (Which is good because it turns out that I have not one but three tickets to see him perform various roles this summer - ah, the vagaries of the Bolshoi's casting process). I hope the ballet gets to come back for a few seasons - it might be a fun one for the simulcasts. I have a longer review on my blog, if anyone's interested: http://itinerantballetomane.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-plays-thing-hamlet-at-bolshoi.html

Thanks! It's really nice of the forum to let us post our blogs here. My blog (http://itinerantballetomane.blogspot.com/) is called the Itinerant Balletomane because I get to travel a lot and watch ballet - lately there's been a lot of Boston (my home base) and New York, but next month I'm going to Moscow, so I'm going to review the Bolshoi and Stanislavsky, and next year I'll be based on Berlin, so hopefully I'll review many of the German companies.

Yes! The handbag scene is so uncomfortable. And, much as with the Concert (and I imagine Petrushka though I have not seen it live) the laughter feels coercive. It's very difficult not to laugh when other people are.

I agree about Vertiginous Thrill (though I liked the program overall) My issue was really that it didn't seem to have much to say about the Schubert. It was fun to see the dancers move so fast, and the Friday night cast was very good at that, but fast movement isn't really enough to make a work interesting. It was not nearly as resonant and memorable as The Second Detail. I loved fremd both times I saw it - I'd like to see the company perform it again in the coming seasons - and I really enjoyed Theme and Variations - one of my favorite Balanchines. I liked the Concert a lot, but on seeing it a second time with some friends, I really noticed how much disturbing sexism there is - even misogyny - that hasn't been dealt with at all in the 60 years since the ballet was first staged. The audience guffawed heartily when the short dancer knocked the ballerina unconscious and dragged her body offstage, which to me was the low point of the evening.

That actually really accords with how Yakobson viewed himself. He self-consciously aligned himself with Noverre - his memoirs/artistic statement is titled Letters to Noverre. In it, he claims that Noverre and Fokine are his two artistic inspirations and that the three of them (Noverre, Fokine, Yakobson) are the only three choreographers to have really made progress on the merging of dance and pantomime so that there is no divertissement in dance. (From the text of that book it seems like he was not burdened with a sense of false modesty either).

I'm also glad that people are rediscovering Yakobson (Boston Ballet will be performing his Pas de Quatre next season). The language used to describe him here is a little puzzling to me, though - I would find it difficult to pick a 20th century choreography whom I would be less likely to describe as "formalist." All of Yakobson's ballets drip with plot and character and real-world associations, and that seems to have been something that he was constantly striving to do better. I worry that "modernist" and "formalist" are being conflated. The first I would happily ascribe to Yakobson, the second I would not. Also, one more spelling that's sometimes used in English and might help on youtube - Iakobson.

Has Ratmansky done a Golden Age? I thought that Golden Age was the only Shostakovich ballet he hadn't done.

Hi! As I’ve explained in earlier posts, I am a music and dance historian working on a history of the early Cold War ballet exchange tours, particularly those of the Bolshoi in the US in 1959 and 1962. I’ve seen some tantalizing hints on this forum before indicating that some of you possibly saw the Bolshoi perform on those tours. If you did, I would love to interview you! One of the perils of a reception history is that it’s so much easier to get the opinions of newspaper critics than it is to get the opinions of anyone else in the audience. It would mean so much to me and to my work to be able to hear anything you remember of these tours. I’d be happy to conduct the interviews by phone or skype or simply by email. I’m also working on the tours of the Soviet Union by American Ballet Theatre in 1960 and New York City Ballet in 1962 - so if you were in the audience for those (or if you participated in them!!) I’d love to hear from you as well. I also may be expanding my work to include the 1966 tours by the Bolshoi in the United States and American Ballet Theatre in the Soviet Union, so information on those tours is also of interest to me. Please PM me, and/or write about some of your impressions of the Bolshoi in the comments section. I’d love to see a discussion going here as well. Thank you!

This might seem a strange suggestion, but it also might be worth trying to find a recording of someone reading a portion of the book in Russian (the opening or Tatiana's letter or something). I haven't looked but I assume youtube would have multiple recordings. One of the big problem with translations is that they can't make the thing rhyme and scan in English the way it does in Russian.

I couldn't disagree more about Ratmansky's Cinderella. This is one of my absolutely favorite ballet productions. I saw it once five years ago in St. Petersburg and loved it, and I loved it even more on Saturday night. To me, Ratmansky absolutely realizes Prokofiev's score in the most amazing and powerful manner. There's so much wickedness and darkness in the score, and Ratmansky, rather than relegating that to a corner of the ballet, allows it to expand and take up everything. It suggests that the high society that Cinderella and the Prince encounter is grotesque, and that perhaps they are too. The depiction of first love is exquisite and visceral, but not necessarily a promise of happiness ever after. It's a production that forces me to think about it for days, weeks, months afterwards. I'm surprised by the accusation that there's no dancing as well, since it seems to me that there is practically only dancing and very little pantomime. Ratmansky reacts to the score both as a formal structure and a narrative and emotional backdrop for his story. I also love the sets and costumes - to me the clock/chandelier effect with Prokofiev's midnight music is bone chilling. And I adore the four seasons and the Fairy godmother. There are a few elements of the production that don't work as well - the travelling scene in the third act isn't great, although I do appreciate the attempt to move away from the exoticist depiction of India and Spain there. Saturday night, Kondaurova was perfectly vicious as the stepmother and Vishneva exquisite as Cinderella. Gergiev's conducting was great for the music although it seemed a little frenetic in places for the choreography (the dancers dealt with it like pros, however, and there were no mistakes, just a couple of sections where I thought they looked frazzled). I would highly recommend this production to anyone - though that just goes to show that everyone's taste is different.

What's surprising is that Balanchine was warmly welcomed to the Soviet Union in 1962, as we saw in a clip on another thread. I would assume that Makarova was taboo after 1971, when she defected. Thanks for posting this! I heard about it and have been wanting to check the interview out. Explaining the difference between the Balanchine reception in 1962 and later is a bit difficult and something I'd love to actually work out. I don't really have an concrete evidence for it, but I would guess that the difference is related to the change in political climate in the Soviet Union during the late 1960s. Balanchine first appeared there during Khrushchev's era and the Thaw - so there was more space to discuss different artistic possibilities (think of the publication of Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich). But once Khrushchev was ousted and Brezhnev really established authority, things closed up again until the late 1980s.

Thank you a million times for posting this! This is the topic of my dissertation, and I've never seen this footage before. emilienne, do you know where that footage is being kept?

It's the only ballet I've ever walked out of during a performance - I just couldn't handle the blackface sections and the laughs they were getting. That said, the dancing was pretty and I'm still curious what was going to happen that I missed. As mentioned above, the music is pretty twiddly-twattily silly.

I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed the trip and the performances! And thank you for this review - I'm hoping to see the ballet sometime soon, preferably live but I'll settle for a broadcast version. I'm also glad you got to see Lantratov and Krysanova - two amazing performers! After seeing him as Crassus this summer, Lantratov is rapidly moving up my list of favorite dancers.

The word is also an "effective tool" for identifying a persistent discriminatory phenomenon for what it is. Agreed, it is often applied correctly. But sometimes, in my opinion, not. I would like, respectfully, to refute the assertion that the term "racist" should be used sparingly because it makes people feel uncomfortable. This assumes that the discomfort of some people is more important than the feelings of alienation and the often very practical consequences of job less and underpromotion of other people. In this instance, while calling ABT racist may make Kevin McKenzie and the board of ABT feel uncomfortable, surely that is a small price to pay for making them question their attitudes and practices regarding black women in their company. How can we worry more about upsetting this group of people than we worry about not giving jobs or roles to Misty Copeland, Michaela dePrince, or the legions of other talented black ballerinas?

It's been a while since I've been on this forum, so I haven't been around for this whole argument and thus do not have many specific points to argue. I would only like to add my voice to those who have been arguing that Copeland has been facing institutional racism all her life and that it is courageous of her to speak up about it. I am delighted that she has been given the role of O/O and to hear that the critic in Australia thought she did an excellent job. I hope she repeats O/O in New York so that I can have the opportunity to see her in the role.

ABT currently has a major archival collection that's housed at NYPL. Does this mean they're moving those documents to the Library of Congress? Or do they have a second collection that's going to the LC?

These arguments make a lot of sense to me. I also agree that Ratmansky was a huge loss for the theater, and that this loss is fueling some of Macauley's anger. At the same time, as I mentioned earlier, his articles play into a long heritage of Americans complaining about Bolshoi conservatism. I haven't seen the Maillot Taming of the Shrew, so I can't really comment on its quality. I do think, though, that it's great for the Bolshoi to be staging all different kinds of narrative, full-length ballets (as well as a smattering of shorter works, narrative and abstract alike). Restaging the Cranko Onegin was a great decision - and despite complaints that it's still too old, it's only two years older than Jewels, which is always cited as one of the signs that the Bolshoi has been modernizing. The one other thing that gets mentioned so rarely in Macauley, or in much other American writing on the subject, is that Grigorovich is actually an interesting choreographer. I know that few people in the US will agree with me, but it's certainly an opinion held by most Russian ballet experts (and not because they've been brainwashed). I agree that perhaps the Bolshoi should revise some of his 19th century productions - Swan Lake especially - but it would be a huge loss for ballet if they got rid of his originals like Spartacus.

He might add "The Bolt" to that, though that might be an earlier production. Anyway it's a loss for us. The problem with Macauley's reading of this programming is that, as many people on this forum have pointed out, the Lincoln Center Festival picked the ballets. Macauley's protest in this last article that it essentially doesn't matter who picked the programming is entirely wrong. If the Lincoln Center Festival picked the ballets, it says far more about how Americans view Russian ballet than it says about the Russians themselves. It speaks to decades of American reviewers accusing the Bolshoi of conservatism (as Macauley does here) and then only applauding the oldest ballets in the repertory. Macauley's reviews of this entire season have been biased (even to the point of bigotry in the Don Quixote review) and rude. After spending two weeks savaging the ballet company, his claims in this final article to be defending Sergei Filin, who in Macauley's words ought to look like a "tragic figure," from his "Soviet" attackers is so out of place I can only assume it to be an attempt at grotesque comedy.

I'm just curious. Do you remember what exactly he did? Obviously, I can't answer this for Ilya, but for my two cents I was also a little unsure of his performance Wednesday night. It was fun, but for the first time ever I thought, "Wow, maybe you can overdo Don Quixote." I thought his gestures with the cloak were a little much, like he had been tangled in a sheet and was trying to get out of it.

Thank you for the news- well deserved all around. And I'm excited that I'll hopefully get to see Precious Adams on stage.

I saw Don Quixote on Wednesday night and it was a really excellent performance. The corps and the character dancers were probably the best part - great technique and synchronization. The orchestra was also wonderful. I miss Russian ballet orchestras so much. It was good to be reminded of how great they are. I thought Kretova made a good Kitri - I was actually a little underwhelmed in the first act, but by the end she was on fire. She had excellent chemistry with Lobukhin, who was the comedic as well as athletic star of the production. I have a full review on my blog. http://itinerantballetomane.blogspot.com/2014/07/don-quixote-szaharova-mlobukhin.html

Agreed. I do think a critic should come out with strong opinions if they really believe in those opinions, but this review doesn't begin to address the superb dancers in the Boston Ballet. The only dancer he even mentions by name is Erica Cornejo, and he does so only to describe her costume. Possibly, he was having a hard time distinguishing the dancers from one another, since he doesn't know the company well? I also happen to strenuously disagree with him about the merits of The Second Detail and Cacti. I have seen Boston perform both works, and they are engaging, exciting pieces, both intellectually and viscerally. Cacti is very postmodern, and I wouldn't want every ballet to be so self-referential. But since it's actually a strikingly unusual work for the ballet world, particularly the ballet world in New York, I would have thought that it would be seen as refreshing and funny. I laughed so hard I almost cried. Since he seems to approve of the next program more (big surprise since it's anchored by a Balanchine work) maybe he's justifying this review by planning to praise the dancers in the next one. But it seems really unfair to review an out-of-town company and not comment on the quality of its performers at all. Though who knows how he'll react to Kylian.

I agree that Traviata is one of the most beautiful operas in the world. I strongly suggest, however, that you see it somewhere other than the Mariinsky. The opera company there is quite simply not very good. I saw them perform Traviata four years ago (a while, so granted things might have changed). It was massively underrehearsed in the orchestra and the chorus. The blocking had probably been patched together during intermission, and the staging, while lovely, was not exciting. Unless there are soloists performing that you really want to see I would skip the opera and see the ballet instead.