Kathleen O'Connell

Gathering the data (and keeping it up-to-date) would probably be a heavier lift than building the app! Also, dancer buy-in would be a MUST simply as a matter of respect, leaving aside whatever rights (to images, e.g.) and AGMA issues might be lurking out there. I'd pitch it as an audience development tool rather than a money-making opportunity. But it could be done.

Head shots, staged studio portraits, or performance photos? Physical cards or eCards that one flips through in an app on one's phone? If the latter, there's no need to truncate anything: disclosure triangles, tabs, and hamburgers are a thing. Since I'm all for sharing the joy of the art form, I think I'd forgo engineering the kind of scarcity built into the baseball card market, not to mention predatory in-app purchases. Next on the list: fantasy ballet. Pick your roster and your repertory and watch your season crash and burn as injuries mount -- or soar to new heights with unexpected promotions ... I really do have half a mind to do the cards ...

Ballet Baseball Cards ...

Me too! That's my clue that she's either transformed the role or really plumbed its full potential. Maria Korowski has also danced the Rubies Tall Girl, although I don't know if it was when she was in the corps, or as a soloist or principal. She was a soloist for something like five minutes before being promoted to principal, so who knows ...

Indeed, she wasn't - so here's a nice 1967 Martha Swope studio portrait of her in her Rubies togs, courtesy of the NYPL: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/841285b0-9f98-0130-3e79-58d385a7bbd0 Balanchine did create challenging and iconic Tall Girl roles, but I don't think they were privileged roles in quite the same way that say, Symphony in C's second movement ballerina's is. To me the Rubies Tall Girl is akin to the second ballerina in Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 - a big deal, but not the biggest deal. Edited to add: Just for fun, here's a page full of Swope's 1967 publicity photos for Jewels. There are quite a few of Neary, but she's always solo. (Again, the photos are from the NYPL's digital archives.)

“I’m weirdly possessive of it. That’s my ballet!” This quote from a recent NY Times piece on the Lincoln Center Festival's presentation of Jewels suggests that Reichlen isn't necessarily eager to give up the role. I'd also suggest that her great performance of it has either given the role principal status, or perhaps restored it. Balanchine created the Tall Girl role on Patricia Neary; I think she may have left the company while still a soloist, but she did perform many principal roles. I think it's notable that both the Times and NYCB have showcased Reichlen's Tall Girl rather than the principal couple in their promotional pieces about the ballet. (Here is NYCB's: http://www.nycballet.com/ballets/j/jewels.aspx)

Not weird at all! I'm loathe to say "best Rubies tall girl ever," but facts are facts. In all seriousness, Reichlen's Rubies tall girl just about walks off with the show. Treasure every chance you get to see her in the role.

Congrats to all, and well-deserved.

One of my favorite lines from Wordsworth: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven! I pull it out as a reminder every time someone (ahem ... including me) gets cranky about how much better the artists were when it was the golden age and they were young.

It really is just ... oh, I can't even. There has always been patronage and always will be, but this smacks of treating your artists like fund-raising commodities.

It's roughly equivalent to naming rights on a part of a building. The donation didn't pay for the elevator lobby (e.g., the Schwartz East Elevators at NYU's Tisch Hospital) or the refreshment bar (e.g., the Metropolitan Opera's Grand Tier Revlon Bar) but that's where the donor's name is prominently displayed. Similarly, Mr. & Mrs. Buck McBling get to see their name next to Sheezno Fontaine's photo in the program. I find the whole "Here's my money, now where will we put my name" thing unseemly, frankly, but then we do have Carnegie Hall ...

I haven't done a deep dive into the relevant Federal, State, and Local law, but on the face of it directly funding specific dancers' salaries with earmarked donor contributions would likely run afoul of any number of labor and non-profit rules and regulations. For instance, would a dancer meet the definition of "employee" if his or her salary were entirely and explicitly covered by a given donor's (or coalition of donors) contributions? Would the dancer then be deemed an "independent contractor" or the legal agent of the donor? Would that dancer then be disqualified for labor protections under the relevant law and/or union contracts? (No overtime for you, sponsored dancer! You must rehearse until you drop and we won't pay you a penny more!) Would the sponsored salaries even be considered a tax deductible donation since they were in effect payments to an individual and not to a tax-exempt organization. Etc. Etc. Etc. There's a whole 'nother basket of risks for the dance company: what if the sponsored dancer is injured and can't perform? Does he or she loose their sponsored salary? (And would they qualify for worker's comp?) What if the sponsor doesn't let you allocate it to another dancer? What if a sponsored dancer decides that they don't have to do what the AD, or the ballet mistress, or the coach, or the choreographer asks because he or she believes they are only answerable to their sponsor? Etc. Etc. Etc.

Just to be clear, I don't think it's a given that a shorter dancer can't deliver a satisfying Gigue - Anthony Huxley certainly has done so, for instance. I just think a shorter dancer is at a greater risk of looking cutesy or puckish -- or at least of being perceived that way -- than a taller dancer might be.

Anderson and Castelli were "slight" in the sense of ... hmmm ... "reedy" maybe, but neither was short in the way that Simkin, say, is short. I remember Anderson and Castelli as being approximately the same height, and Anderson was tall enough to partner Farrell quite comfortably.

Murphy may in fact make more than the Marketing Director on a weekly basis. It would depend on the length of her contract in weeks and whether or not the Marketing Director position is a full-time, full year job.

ABT's fiscal year ends on December 31, which means its 990 must be filed with the IRS by May 15 of the following year, unless it files for a three month extension. The PDF version is usually made available some period of time after the filing date. Either ABT filed for an extension or the PDF version of the 990 hasn't been posted anywhere yet. (To its great credit, ABT makes its 990s available on its own website - not a lot of arts organizations do that.) Note that the IRS does not itself publish PDFs of a given organization's Form 990 - that's usually done by organizations such as The Foundation Center or Guidestar. It is now possible to download 990 data directly from the IRS in XML format via the open data resources on Amazon Web Services. A number of organizations have started working on tools to parse this information and make it readily available.

Per its 2015 IRS 990, ABT's highest paid dancer in 2105 was Gillian Murphy, whose base compensation was $173,340. (Scroll down to pages 10 and 46 in the linked PDF.) In 2014, the highest paid dancer was Paloma Herrera. Is Copeland being paid more than that now? We won't know until ABT files its 2017 990, which won't be until sometime in 2018.

Although Balanchine created the role on a tall dancer (Victor Castelli), it has become a thing on both sides of the plaza to cast shorter male dancers (Simkin, Scott, Ulbricht, etc) in the Gigue -- and I think they start off at something of a disadvantage. A lot of the off-axis accents and flourishes simply read better on a taller dancer, as do the little fillips of casual aristocratic insouciance Balanchine built into all three of the lead roles. (The ballerina's variations are just loaded with these little touches.)

Boylston was today's matinee Aurora. I would just like to say that she has one of the most beautiful, radiant stage smiles I have ever seen - mostly because it looks like her real-life smile.

I can't remember if the changes to Aurora's Wedding got detailed elsewhere in this thread, but here's what we got at today's matinee: 1) Opening promenade 2) Precious Stones 3) White Cat & Puss-in-Boots 4) Porcelain Princesses & Mandarin (Nijinska) 5) Princess Florine & Bluebird 6) Red Riding Hood & the Wolf 7) Three Ivans (De Valois) 8) Grand Pas de Deux for Aurora and Désiré 9) Mazurka Note that the Lilac Fairy, Carabosse, Bluebeard & Ariana, and The Shah, his Brother & Scheherazade are walk-ons. (Actually, Lilac and Carabosse are carry-ons - they get toted around in their palanquins ...) No Hop o'My Thumb or Cinderella. Editorial: I didn't miss Hop one bit, but I'd happily trade the Porcelain Princesses to get Cinderella back. Yes, it's Nijinska, but it's mostly made up of the kind of tiresome ethnic and cultural stereotypes that I think we can safely leave behind.

Please do! We'd love to hear your take on the program and the dancing!

They do! First, go to the Repertory page on the company's website: http://www.nycballet.com/Discover/The-Repertory.aspx Then click on the ballet you're interested in. For example, here is the listing for In Creases: http://www.nycballet.com/ballets/i/new-j-peck-glass.aspx The repertory page for a given ballet normally provides details regarding the music used, the date it was premiered, the date of its NYCB premiere, the original cast, its length, and the design team. Often as not, you'll also get a short video clip and / or a slideshow.

Oh man, those stem changes ... that being said, Russian spelling and pronunciation at least makes sense once you know the rules – as opposed to English, where the orthography is more or less archeological rather than logical. By the way, I believe the cyrillic spelling of Semionova's name is Семионова - i.e, no ё.

It can be maddening for us non-native speakers! Russians aren't sticklers for using ё in print, and will happily substitute plain old е, which often as not gets transliterated as English "e," which isn't pronounced like the Russian е in any event. And of course the Russian letter о is pronounced more like a cross between "ah" and "uh" than "oh" when it's unstressed — as in Sem-YAWN-uh-va — but if you don't know where the stress falls how do you know how to pronounce that pesky Russian о! I gather I have been mispronouncing Osipova's name for lo these many years. I think it's something like OH-si-puh-va, but if someone could tell me, I'd be mighty grateful!

Диа́на Ви́кторовна Вишнёва The Russian syllable нё is pronounced approximately like the American English "nyo" as in "canyon" but with a long rather than short "o." Or even "yo" as in "YO!" – but not "ee-o" as in "Eeyore." In addition, the syllable containing ё is almost always the syllable that is stressed, so, VishNYOva.