Hans

I see her as pretty but bland, although very good in the right role.

Try dancing Siegfried's Act III variation and then dancing to a coda and then dancing the coda for the pas de deux! I'd just as soon leave it out.

I love the first one. I think its structure is absolutely perfect.

All of Sleeping Beauty.

Greta Garbo as Odette Not really the same thing, but does anyone else think Julie Kent is the Julia Roberts of ballet?

I'd be interested to know the reason for this as well.

I always thought Asylmuratova was tall (even when seeing her in street clothes as a judge at the Prix de Lausanne) but she isn't!

Pamela, I feel exactly the same. I'm waiting for someone to merge Coppélia with the plot of the movie "Artificial Intelligence."

Mats Ek did a Sleeping Beauty in which Aurora was a drug addict. Yes, it was that kind of needle.

Carbro, I never heard it in my entire life, so maybe it's something that just stopped happening after a while as her fame as a ballerina eclipsed the squabbles over whether or not she was "Balanchine" (whatever that means) enough.

As far as Balanchine schooling goes, I don't think SAB is in much danger. Besides, Balanchine dancers have always come from various training backgrounds--Violette Verdy, for example, was French-trained, and no one says she wasn't "Balanchine."

Helene, I thought libraries were supposed to be a quiet room too. The one in my town has a separate children's room, which I think is rather more logical.

It should definitely change! Lower legs, fewer pirouettes, more mime, and a little acting every now and then would be a wonderful start.

Well...there's "different" or "eccentric" and then there's "rude" or even "abusive." I've had plenty of teachers who used unusual methods or had eccentric habits, but that's very different from screaming obscenities at one's students. I think dancers tend to be extremely tolerant of eccentricity because dancers are different from the majority of society.

I think they are, rather often. Some directors say "ladies" and "gentlemen," which I think is much more appropriate.

Yes! Thank you!

I noticed the omission of that variation as well and was quite disappointed, as I adore Lezhnina. I don't know why it was omitted, though. I'm not sure I know what you mean about the blanket...maybe I ought to watch the tape more closely.

UBA no longer trains beginners, and I don't think it allows students to live there before the age of 14. SAB's dorm also houses only those 14 and up during the year.

Even in the Question Authority Age (and indeed, even today) dancers often take it upon themselves (whether taught to or not by their teachers) to be martyrs who will suffer through just about anything. I say, good for Fugate--perhaps if more dancers had taken the same stance, Robbins would have been forced to change his behavior.

Will BI move its school, too?

Giselle was revised heavily by Petipa, which is probably one reason they're so different.

It's still there, in the Anything Goes forum.

Wasn't the choreography for the swans done by Ivanov?

I haven't heard the music for 4T's in a while, but I wonder if perhaps Hindemith called the different sections "variations" in the musical sense and then Balanchine kept that? :nixweiss: My initial thought is to say that a variation is a separate dance with its own music, but Bournonville variations flow in and out of the rest of his choreography. Maybe one could say there's a difference between what is generally thought of as a "classical variation" (the type that often occurs during a pas de deux) and a "solo"? I'm not sure there's really a clear-cut answer.

No surprises here--I often like Petipa's choreography the best, particularly the Kingdom of the Shades and Jardin Animé. In terms of importans, in my opinion if you have to get only one thing right choreographically, it had better be the corps. What the corps does is the base for the soloists and principals to stand on, so to speak. [Edit: I can't BELIEVE I forgot about GISELLE!!!]