Olga

13 hours ago, sappho said:

And here it's worth noting that Peck owes much of his success to the number of opportunities he's been given to 'get it right.' He's choreographed several good works (I like Rodeo and Pulcinella), but many bad ones (The Most Incredible Thing, Bright, Rotunda). (Just to editorialize, in general I find his choreography far too busy, especially in the arms and wrists. Many of his choreographic decisions read to me like glorified Tiler Peck speed challenges.)

As for other NYCB-trained choreographers, I think Lauren Lovette has a good eye for group work and could succeed with more opportunities and better music selections. I found Gianna Reisen impressive, too. And hasn't Silas Farley started choreographing?

I agree, except I think there is more to criticize about Justin Peck's choreo, And to cast him as Robbins' successor, as seems to be in vogue these days,  is to take an extremely limited view of Robbins. Peck is a lucky guy. 

Dorrance will be choreographing a show for Lincoln Center Theater in the Fall -- Flying over Sunset.

This is awful. Have there been other instances like this at PNB?

I give Ezra a very large portion of the credit for Colorforms. 

The calendars are back! They’re in the subscription section.

I really hope they restore the Calendar. It’s the easiest way to keep track of things, particularly if you have a lot of tickets. Also it’s a quicker look at what is running when. Huge omission! Please fix!

Many thanks to Fiddleback for alerting us to this and the other Arizona streams! Wonderful to see, and to learn about the company.

Her mother was an English teacher but then stayed home to raise children. Her  instagram is in fluent English. I have wondered if her English fluency is partly responsible for her freuquent pairing with Parish.

2 hours ago, Leah said:

I think it’s telling that she thanks everyone but the choreographer, but I’m probably reading too much into it.

I don’t think so. It’s a pretty obvious omission given that it’s a premiere of a ballet. And she knows and has worked with the choreographer. Strikes me as another one of her weird, indirectly hostile posts. I love her dancing but I’m getting turned off to her. 

Thanks for posting, California. 

50 minutes ago, Buddy said:

Watching the Bolshoi’s Maria Allash and legendary Boris Akimov coach, they seem to be very pleasant to work with.  I'm glad that we get a chance to take a look at their classes.

 

It was a treat to watch Boris Akimov. Fabulous. I didn’t see Maria Allash. 

4 minutes ago, aurora said:

we also have no idea whose choice it is not to dance with whom. It could be Cornejo who isn't comfortable dancing with her for personal reasons.

 

Let's keep in mind we have no idea if one of them treated the other badly or if this was a mutual decision.

All absolutely right Aurora.

My comment had nothing to do with my or anyone else’s viewing pleasure. It was a point made about the way Lane may POSSIBLY be managing her career. 

4 hours ago, MarzipanShepherdess said:

Wow. I don’t follow lane on Instagram but went to look at that post after you referenced it here. Posting a long caption beginning  “the greatest examples are those who have the courage to live in humility, who do not need to be puffed up...” on the day of Herman’s big anniversary extravaganza certainly seems like some serious shade directed at her former dance partner. Have to say I don’t think that was very classy or gracious of her, regardless of the current state of her feelings towards Herman. 

And with a biblical reference.

33 minutes ago, nanushka said:

Most people don't have to put their hands all over their coworkers, get their coworkers' sweat all over them, and entrust their coworkers with their physical well-being — the very thing a dancer depends upon for her career.

There are many kinds of jobs, many kinds of dangers, many kinds of intimacy, and many kinds of oppression. Some of them are far worse than ballet. We don’t know the facts here. Lane has a history of being impolitic. Just possibly (quoting myself) this was another instance. Maybe not. 

Just possibly someone in Lane’s position with the company should have done whatever it took to keep her partnership with Cornejo alive. There is nothing that suggests he is such an ogre that it would have entailed something truly odious. I too think Lane is one of the best female dancers on the ABT roster and we don’t know the facts but you have to wonder. Most people put up with a lot in their jobs. 

58 minutes ago, Kathleen O'Connell said:

Well, you would certainly have every right not to buy tickets for programs with Balanchine on them. And although I'd like to see some Tudor, deMille, or Ashton, I'm not going to begrudge Cornejo an Apollo (if he's in fact getting one). In any event, doing more Tudor doesn't mean they can't do some Balanchine too. But they have to pick their Balanchine carefully, of course. 

I do think that there are some ABT dancers on the roster right now who could do justice to at least a few of the Balanchine ballets in ABT's rep if they were given the challenge of learning and performing the right roles. For instance, I think the current roster might yield a couple of creditable casts for Ballo della Regina. (It would help if ABT could bring itself to abandon the seniority system when it comes to casting. I'd be perfectly delighted with the opportunity to see what Skylar Brandt could do with Ballo. If the company needed to find

And I don't consider performing something new or unfamiliar "practice"; the best dancers deepen their artistry the more they do something. Watching that process can be its own reward.

Practice waa a flippant and unfortunate choice of words, reflecting perhaps my skepticism and frustration with the company — and how far from performance ready I found the 2017 foray into Balanchine.  But I will be seeing both Balanchine ballets. I look forward to Cornejo’s Apollo and I hope Theme and Variations is better than the Balanchine performances  I saw two years ago. 

2 hours ago, Kathleen O'Connell said:

And the shame of it is that The Theater Formerly Known as State is the perfect venue to showcase some of their "heritage" treasures, e.g. Tudor (20 ballets in the rep) or deMille (14 ballets in the rep). Not to mention Ashton (13 ballets in the rep).

I really don't have a problem with ABT tackling Balanchine. T&V is rightly in their repertory since Balanchine choreographed it for them in 1947. (NYCB didn't perform it until 1960.) As far as I'm concerned, ABT has as much right to dance Apollo as NYCB has to dance La Sylphide. Balanchine is like Bournonville at this point: a signature choreographer who needn't (and shouldn't) be the property of one company. In any event, ABT isn't going to get better at dancing Balanchine unless they, you know, actually dance Balanchine. 

Agree, of course they have a right.  Too bad they don’t have the caliber of dancers they had for the premiere of Theme and Variations (relative to the respective time periods). Sure they might get better with practice but I would rather not watch and pay for the practice period. And as you said in your first paragraph, there are many other ballets which could have been programmed and would have made better use of the limited run. My guess is that ABT is so out of it they actually think programming Balanchine in NY will increase their audience. 

But I agree with others rhat many of the other ballets they are doing are less appealing. I am also very much looking forward to Seasons! 

15 minutes ago, JuliaJ said:

while T&V and Apollo are great, people in NYC don't need flock en masse to ABT for Balanchine when we have NYCB performing year-round. 

ABT’s  performance in 2017 of Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux was cringeworthy and the Mozartiana they did the same season was off the mark. I think Cornejo may have wanted to do Apollo, I think he will do well, and I plan to be there. But two Balanchines? I agree they are tone-deaf. And they have a major vision problem. 

McKenzie needs to go before the company is run so far into the ground that it can’t recoup. There may be others in top management who also need to go. Don’t they see from the half empty theater and the barebone male principal roster that something is very wrong? Adding a costume fee is foolishness. They need to be building good will, not destroying it. These sorts of charges are like regressive taxation in that they are borne in the same amount by expensive and cheap ticket holders. But in the end the costume fee, while indicative of their problems, is actually the least of them. There are other more urgent ones.

A memorable Lane/Cornejo performance in Manon last night. I agree another Giselle and Swan Lake would be great.

1 hour ago, ABT Fan said:

They do not list who is replacing who like at NYCB. Their calendar remains up on their website so you can always go back and see who performed what, but I don’t know for how far back it remains. I did check last year’s Met season recently and the casting was still there.

I see it now - under the Master Calendar. I kept noticing how the performances disappear elsewhere on the site. Thanks!

On 6/17/2019 at 1:10 AM, alexL said:

ABT website is a bit slow at updating casting changes. According to the Met website, Simkin has been replaced by Hoven in all Manon performances. Who knows how long it will take for them to update his substitute for SL (I suspect his sub will be Whiteside)

Is there a place on ABT’s website where they list who is being replaced? At NYCB they will say “Dancer B (replacing Dancer A).”  Also,  they keep the whole  casting sheet up on their website for the whole season and slightly more. So the information and its trajectory are clear. At ABT it seems once a dancer is replaced there is no record of him/her having been cast originally. Also, once the ballet is over there doesn’t seem to be a record of who danced it. Perhaps I am missing something?

On 6/14/2019 at 11:14 PM, annaewgn said:

I think part of NYCB’s ability to keep a larger Principal roster comes with NYCB’s rep. It’s mixed bills of short, 20-ish minute ballets on rotation for so many weeks. The occasional full length, like “Jewels”, or recently, Midsummer, which gets quite a few goes, and of course “Nutcracker”. I think simply due to the amount they dance and all of the ballet’s that go during a single season allows them to have such large Principal and Soloist ranks, whereas comparatively, ABT dances less. 

 

I don’t think there is much point in comparing any one aspect of City with ABT. It’s apples and oranges. The problems with ABT run much deeper than any of these points, valid as they may be individually. 

7 hours ago, meunier fan said:

Forgive me for intruding ... but I wondered if someone could help me.  I'm coming to NYC in February 2020 and wanted to spend the evenings at NYCB (of course)!!!  Can someone tell me when single tickets for the NYCB's Winter 2020 season go on sale.  I would like to get in on the ground floor so to speak 😉 I would be most grateful if someone could let me know.  Much, much thanks.  

Single tkts for most regular programming  go on sale Aug 4 at noon. Nutcracker and a few other tickets go on sale later.