tamicute

In addition to posting Onegin casts in October, the full Spartacus casts are visible and Lobukhin, not Ivan Vasiliev, will dance the movie version of Spartacus on October 20.

Maximova and Vasilev were famous for dancing ballets choreographed by Goleizovsky.

There are many Youtube videos of Onegin, recently performed at Bolshoi.

I only like ballet live performances, movies and videos. Photographs do little for me.

I have seen Yakobson Spartacus many times, but never Moiseyev..

Tereshkina dances Nikiya in Bayadere this week.

Giselle will be at the Marinsky when I visit in a few weeks. However, from what I've seen on youtube, it doesn't seem terribly exciting. Am I missing something?

The most important scene in Giselle is at the end of act 1, known as the mad scene. In my over 50 years of watching ballet, I never saw real tears as Galina Mezentseva showed in this mad scene by the Mariinsky Ballet, then Kirov Ballet, in 1983..

The video on Youtube is very poor video quality, but it shows the importance of a great actress in the role of Giselle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72pEjEjk-88

Anyone familiar with Ivan Zaytsev? He will be in Flame of Paris when I see it in a few weeks but I've found very little info about him.

He partnered Oksana Bondareva in this year's Moscow Competition. She was this year's only senior female gold medalist and by far, the best Oksana senior female ballerina in this year's competition. Come to think of it, she was the only senior ballerina in the competition with the first name of Oksana, because the Mariinsky version is not a ballerina, but a caricature, more appropriate to dancing ballerina roles for Ballet Trockadero.

Zaitsev is not spectacular, but a good dancer.

Giselle will be at the Marinsky when I visit in a few weeks. However, from what I've seen on youtube, it doesn't seem terribly exciting. Am I missing something?

It definitely is one of the greatest ballets ever, so my answer is that you are not missing something, you are missing a lot. What date or dates do you have tickets for Mariinsky Giselle?

Technically, it can't be called a stranglehold yet. This would be Zakharova's fourth appearance out of 16 broadcasts, the fifth if you add the Bolshoi re-opening gala. Maria Alexandrova and Nina Kaptsova have had more broadcasts.

That Zakharova's broadcasts tend to be fast-tracked for DVD release while more interesting performances are left waiting is another matter.

Maybe you can help me sort out the Bolshoi offerings.

I am unaware of much for Kaptsova

Here is my list (not in chronological order)

1. Flames of Paria - Osipova

2. Nutcracker - Kaptsova

3. Giselle, class Concert - Lunkina

4. Coppelia - Osipova

5. Don Quixote - Osipova

6. Esmeralda - Alexandrova

7. Swan Lake - Alexandrova

8. Raymonda - Alexandrova

9. Bayadere - Zakharova

10. Sleeping Beauty - Zakharova

11. Bright Stream - Lunkina, Alexandrova (only ballet on list which I feel 2 ballerinas can be counted as stars)

12. La sylphide - Krysanova

13. Corsaire - Lunkina

14. Pharaoh's Daughter - Zakharova

15. Romeo & Juliet - Nikulina

Based on this list, here is the order of performances

4 - Alexandrova

3 - Osipova, Zakharova, Lunkina

2 - none

1 - Kaptsova, Krysanova, Nikulina

This adds up to 16 out of 15 offerings, since Bright Stream has 2 ballerinas

Osipova was running away from everyone before she departed, with possibly 3 of the first 5 or 6 offerings.

This evening's TV Russian news program, Vremya, showed Sergei Filin arriving at Moscow airport with his wife, who looks very much like Evgenia Obraztsova at the airport, and others waiting to greet him, including Ekaterina Novikova and Darya Khokhlova. He has had 23 operations in Germany and will be at Bolshoi Theater on Monday. He talked about working with Pierre Lacotte, but I do not know when. He will return to Germany for more operations and plans on working permanently at Bolshoi Theater in February.

Glad to hear that she's dancing a bit more these days but when will they let her return to the classical canon?

When Plisetskaya danced Zarema on film, that role looked very classical to me, but it is not one of the recognized classics.

Pavlenko will dance Zarema on October 2.

http://ticket.tjgtheatre.org/ticketinfo.aspx?FID=0016AB6FA2B84BC7B44C52C46811C2F2

This is the Chinese site for the page for the first performance of Swan Lake on October 3.

If you go to this site

http://mariinsky.us/performances/mariinsky-ballet-performance-schedule/

for every date on that page, it will direct you to the official site of the theater where the performance will be held.

For the Chinese site, google translate does a terrible job with the Russian names for cast information, but a Chinese friend has translated it for me from the Chinese site.

The part in Chinese which gives the Swan Lake casts look like this

主要演员:
天鹅湖 10月3日 10月4日 10月5日
奥杰塔 / 奥杰利亚 欧克萨娜·斯科里科 乌里安娜·洛帕金娜 叶卡捷琳娜·康多洛娃
王子希格弗莱德 达利拉·科逊茨耶 叶甫盖尼·伊万钦科 提穆尔·阿斯克洛夫
王后 叶莲娜·巴热诺娃 叶莲娜·巴热诺娃 叶莲娜·巴热诺娃
王子导师 苏斯兰·库拉耶夫 安德烈·雅科夫列夫 苏斯兰·库拉耶夫
黑魔王 尤里·斯米耶卡洛夫 安德烈·叶尔玛科夫 安德烈·索洛夫约夫
小丑 瓦西里·特卡琴科 阿列克谢·涅德维迦 伊利亚·彼得罗夫

It shows the casts for October 3,4 and 5, however google translate has difficulty translating the names

My Chinese friend wrote me this

"欧 Kesa Na" is Oksana · "斯科里科" is Skorik

The first name shown google translates to Kesa Na which my friend says is Oksana and the other part is Skorik

My Chinese friend told me the casts properly translated are

Anna Karenina

September 30 Lopatkina - Smekalov

October 1 Kondaurova - Yermakov

Swan Lake

October 3 Skorik - Korsuntsev

October 4 Lopatkina - Ivanchenko

October 5 Kondaurova - Askerov

Regardless of circumstances such as Anna Karenina casts, Skorik seems to get first cast Odette/Odile on every tour.

Ulyana Lopatkina is not so young, so her body takes longer to recover. According to the Mariinsky schedule, she is dancing Raymonda on Sept 13 (Friday) in St Pete. I assume she then jets to Italy for a few days of rehearsal for the Sept 18 performance (Wednesday). She has had some major injuries over the years, so I hope she spaces out her performances and takes care of herself. Raymonda + Odette / Odile in a 6 day time span is hard on the body!

http://japanarts.co.jp/mariinsky_ballet2012/english.htm

This was the November/December 2012 Japan program.

Lopatkina opened on the 15th with Bayadere. Opening night Swan Lake on the 17th was Skorik which could be explained by not allowing Laopatkina to perform, 2 nights after Bayadere..

However, Lopatkina's remaining performances were

20th Swan Lake

23rd Anna Karenina with much dancing and a huge amount of emotions.

27th Swan Lake

Dec 2 Paquita

Dancing 2 Swan Lake and one Anna Karenina in a 7 day period, is much tougher than dancing Raymonda and then Swan Lake, 4 days later, if she danced opening night in Naples.

Maybe some will think that Lopatkina is a fragile old woman in need of many days rest, but i am sure Lopatkina, her coach, Chistyakova, and many others feel that Swan Lake, 4 days after Raymonda, is not asking too much from Lopatkina.

Also, opening night in Naples begins at 8:30 PM and Lopatkina does not appear until almost 45 minutes have passed, so she has plenty of time to recover from Raymonda.

This does not bode well for the Kennedy Center season in late January. Let's hope the KC management has some say about casting.

After throwing away money on 5 of my California performances , last October, I do not expect to go to the Kennedy Center in January.

http://www.teatrosancarlo.it/play/show/stagione20122013/il-lago-dei-cigni

The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Italy, has published on their official website, the list of leading dancers for the 5 performances of Swan Lake from September 17-22,2013.

This is a copy of what the theater posted on their site

Odette-Odille: Oksana Skorik (17 e 21 settembre) / Ul’jana Lopatkina (18 settembre) / Ol’ga Esina (20 e 22 settembre)
Principe Siegfried: Vladimir Škljarov (17 e 21 settembre) / Evgenij Ivančenko (18 settembre)/ Timur Askerov (20 e 22 settembre)

For me, and probably many, I feel this is an insult to Russian Ballet. Ulyana Lopatkina, within her home country of Russia, is considered the icon of Russian Ballet and the one active Russian dancer, regarded more highly than any other. For Lopatkina to be placed as second cast in the ballet most associated with her, Swan Lake, I feel is equivalent to a slap in her face.

I am over 70 years old and the first ballet performance that I ever saw, was the Kirov Ballet performing Swan Lake in 1961 in New York City. I do not remember who played Odette/Odile and I do not have the program of that performance, but in all my years of watching the Kirov perform Swan Lake, having seen over 100, my most horrifying experience was when I saw all Swan Lake performances at Costa Mesa and Berkeley, and 5 of the 13 performances, including opening night, were danced by the worst Odette/Odile who I have ever seen, Oksana Skorik, who will be opening night in Italy and not Ulyana Lopatkina.

I feel like I am witnessing a horror movie, where the queen of Swan Lake, Ulyana Lopatkina, is being tortured by an evil witch, Skorik. What is going on with the Mariinsky management? I cannot understand this.

Zagrebin was the Jester when I saw Swan Lake. He was good at all the jumps and spins, but it's hard to get a sense of a dancer's other abilities from that part.

Zagrebin won senior gold medal in the 2009 International Moscow Ballet Competition, so his technique must be strong.

For me, Duato's choreography is all wrong for classical ballets, such as what he staged at Mikhailovsky for Sleeping Beauty and Romeo & Juliet. The previous versions were vastly superior. I am not a fan of any of his choreography, but many like his contemporary choreography. I am old fashioned and over 70 years old.

Do you watch ViceTV? I love it just for the odd ball stories. It's not really investigative journalism, but rather dog-bites-man weird interviews and documentaries.

Yesterday I watched this: A Day with a Russian Billionaire

And I noticed that the wife mentioned she met him in the theatre. I ran a google search, and it turns out she was a Vagonova student, who married the Billionaire at 18, and later that year represented Russia to become Mrs World. That in and of itself is a drama of pageant proportions. Let me tell you, you don't see beauty queen announcements like this every day. To quote Mrs New Zealand: "FI-AS-CO" And the angel kid coming down on the cable, twice! Oh my.

Can anyone find out which class Sofia Arzhakovskaya belonged to at Vagonova? Who were her classmates? Are there any videos out there of her class dancing?

If you go to the Russian wikipedia site and use google chrome to translate the Russian, it is somewhat confusing as far as exact details, but it seems to indicate that she started at Vaganova at age 9, although age 10 is the normal starting age. Then it says that she spent 3 years learning modern or contemporary dance in the Russian theater. I do not know if the Russian theater means Vaganova school, but my guess is no, since modern dance is not in the first year curriculum. Then it says that at age 12, she went to Ufa, where Nureyev came from, and took ballet in Ufa.

It is difficult to know how long she trained at Vaganova and I am not certain from the confusing wording, that she ever was officially a student at Vaganova. It is possible that she auditioned for the school and was not accepted and went to some local theater for modern dance and at age 12, took up ballet in Ufa.

Maybe you can find more information, but clearly, she never was at Vaganova for the older groups.

But my favorite is Semenyaka -- the way she rotates and expands her arms from the shoulders in the clapping variation is one of the wonders of the world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8pmvZIcXfQ

I was fortunate to see that exact Raymonda performance, live at the Bolshoi Theatre. A Russian friend recorded it for me off Soviet TV and of course, a few years later when it became a commercial video, I bought the VHS and then later the DVD. I made a mistake by never keeping programs, but I think it was performed, after the final round of the 1985 Moscow Ballet Competition and the day before the awards ceremony and gala concert. Since I do not have programs to look at, my memory is that the Bolshoi Ballet performed 3 times during the competition, Nutcracker with Semenyaka and Andris Liepa, Golden Age with the same cast as the commercial video, made two years earlier and the Raymonda, which was the only one of the three which was televised, although Soviet TV did televise both nights of the final round and the awards and gala concert.

Welcome to Ballet Alert! tamicute.

Thank you very much.

I just signed onto Ballet Alert because I saw no topic on Yulia Stepanova. Being a ballet fan in my 70s, I was introduced to Ballet Alert by a friend, just as I was introduced by a friend to the marvelous Youtube videos which introduced me to an amazing young ballerina, Yulia Stepanova.

I had no ballet training, but before my 20th birthday in 1961, a friend invited me to my first ballet performance. It was the Kirov Ballet dancing Swan Lake in their first visit to the USA. I fell in love with ballet immediately and although I have seen many other ballet companies, for me, there is none to compare with the Kirov Ballet, now known as Mariinsky Ballet.

During Soviet times, I visited Leningrad several times and always watched the Kirov Ballet. However, since the fall of communism, i never returned, but have seen many Kirov tours in recent years with my last visits to Costa Mesa and Berkeley for last October's Swan Lake.

I was first introduced to Youtube in 2009 and I cannot remember if it was 2009 or 2010 when my eyes first saw a video of Yulia Stepanova, but I immediately saw a ballerina unlike any my eyes have ever seen. i am not talking about technique because today's dancers excel in technique, but every little movement from her finger tips to the top of her head, had special meaning, even better than all the great ballerinas who I saw at the Kirov Theatre many years ago.

I initially purchased tickets to the California Swan Lakes, hoping to see Yulia Stepanova dance Odette/Odile. Two of the three Swan Queens were vastly inferior to all the Swan Queens I have seen dancing as a Kirov ballerina and the one who i liked, was the lowest regarded of the three, Anastasia Kolegova. My biggest disappointment and a big shock, was that Yulia Stepanova did dance in every performance, but all she did was one of 4 Big Swans and in the Spanish dance, which is not a classical ballerina role.

I am bewildered. Why is Yulia Stepanova not a big star?