Kathleen O'Connell

I'm sure it will be up on the ABT site in due course.

Well, they did manage to get an announcement up on Facebook about 5 minutes ago.

I don't know what ABT's media and communications policy is, but I would have expected a FB post and a tweet to hit their feeds at the same time that the press release went out.

(I can't find the press release, so many thanks to Dale for posting.)

Misty Copeland just made the cover of TIME magazine!

Fonteyn...Kirkland...now Copeland! Any other ballerinas ever made the TIME cover?

Interestingly enough, I found out about this via Twitter - not from ABT's official feed (@ABTBallet), however, but rather, through Jonathan Capehart's (@CapehartJ) retweet of this tweet from Laverne Cox (@Lavernecox).

I think this speaks volumes about 1) the kind of reach and resonance Copeland's story has and 2) ABT's grasp (or lack thereof) of social media.

Kathleen, I wish I had remembered your advice when I booked my ticket early but online. I was assigned a seat in the last row of the 2nd Ring. I knew I would be in NYC last Sunday so phoned in advance to see if I could exchange my seat. (I had looked at the seating availability online and could see there were seats in Row A of the 3rd Ring though nothing closer up front in 2nd Ring) The ticket agent had to check with a supervisor but said yes, I could exchange the seat but not the date. I was sorely disappointed when the box office agent told me in emphatic terms that NO exchanges were possible and that this was a Royal Ballet decision. I pressed the point but to no avail. He also admitted that there were plenty of seats available but would not be swayed. I really don't see the necessity of such a strict exchange policy and I told him I thought it was a terrible example of customer relations. Grumble.

Ugh! It would be one thing if you were demanding all of your money back because you didn't like the casting or something. But if there are empty seats, I really don't see why they can't accommodate you. Plus, it sounds like the left hand (the ticket agent's supervisor) told you one thing and the right hand (the box office agent) told you something different, which is not a good thing for all kinds of reasons -- not the least of which is inconveniencing a valuable audience member such as you!

You can stream the full episode on line here: Mark Morris Dance Group: L’Allegro, Il Penseroso ed il Moderato

The video will be available online until March 26, 2018.

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.

Not strange at all!

Here's a reading of Евгений Онегин (Yevgeniy Onegin) in its entirety. The poem itself begins at around 2:15.

Several folks have superimposed selections from Pushkin's text onto extracts from Martha Fienne's English Language film Onegin, which stars her brother, Ralph Fiennes as Yevgeniy Onegin and Liv Tyler as Tatyana Larina. Here's an example: Письмо Татьяны к Онегину (Pis'mo Tat'yany k Oneginu - Tatyana's Letter to Onegin). You can follow along with the text here. ETA: here's the text in Russian with a parallel translation into English. And ... here's another reading superimposed onto cuts from Fienne's film.

You can find Fienne's film online -- including a version dubbed in Russian ...

I'm not suggesting quotas for anyone. Although outreach IS nice.

Its just seems strange that City ballet doesn't have any female dancers of East Asian heritage when practically everyone else does. It still seems strange even when you take into account the fact that City ballet likes Ballanchine ballerinas and the fact that Asians and Asian Americans stress the study of hard sciences for a career.

Even with all that, women with Asian heritage still become classical dancers. 'Cept at NYCB. Even if city ballet doesn't care one bit about diversity, you'd think someone would make their roster.

Lara Tong

All you have to do is look at the dancer rosters. You'd be hard-pressed to find any from the internationally known major companies to the regional companies in America's heartland that don't have two or more male and female East Asians dancers.

I thought you might have some hard data to hand since you seem interested in the topic of dance company diversity in general. I'm open to your case, but it would be helpful if you provided the data to support it rather than suggesting that I look at a couple of dozen company rosters myself.

What do you think an appropriate percentage of dancers of East Asian origin might be? Should we expect a dance company's diversity to roughly match that of the US in general? Of the company's geographic region in particular?

This looks strange when compared to practically every other major ballet company outside the old Soviet block.

At least those countries in eastern Europe have the excuse of having been culturally cut off from the West. What's NYC Ballet's excuse?

Where are the Asian Swans?

This is what I mean when i say that NYC Ballet looks like a 1950's new England boarding school.

Do you have data on the percentage of non-caucasian dancers in other ballet companies? I'd be interested to see it if you did.

I'm sorry to learn this. I didn't like everything Cedar Lake did, but I certainly appreciated the opportunity to see works by choreographers who aren't much showcased in New York. The company was polished and professional, and the dancers were often exceptional.

Arrghh! I'm already using the past tense!

Their building is located just off The High Line in a rapidly developing neighborhood; my guess is that it's a valuable asset, even if it's now worth more as a tear-down than as an existing structure.

I second tomorrow's concern regarding ballet companies chasing after the same few hot names for new ballets. I understand why they do so, and I understand why choreographers might grab at every commission they can get wherever and whenever they can get it. But it's a tricky thing balance the requirement for new ballets (and I think that requirement is absolute if the art form is to retain its vibrancy) against the risk of diluting everyone's brand, to put it in crass marketing terms.

And thank you, choriamb, for the Ashley Issacs link! She's one of my favorite dancers -- maybe someday she'll be one of my favorite choreographers, too ... or maybe one of my favorite ADs who hires women choreographers.

I think the last ballet commissioned at NYCB to a woman was Melissa Barak's Call Me Ben. It was one of the worst ballets I've ever seen, and it did not even last the whole season. It was replaced on subsequent programs during the very same season it premiered. Ouch. It was a very expensive debacle, with elaborate designer costumes by J. Mendel and scenerry by Calatrava.

That was the same Calatrava-themed season that gave us a fistful of expensive ballets* that ran the gamut from awful to disposable, with only one really good one, Ratmansky's "Namouna."

* For the record:

Melissa Barak - "Call Me Ben"

Peter Martins - "Mirage"

Benjamin Millepied - "Why am I not where you are"

Christopher Wheeldon - "Estancia"

ETA: Whoops! I forgot Mauro Bigonzetti's "Luce Nacosta"! I loved Calatrava's set and Marc Happel's costumes, but loathed the ballet.

"Call Me Ben" was a mess, but I give Barak props for struggling mightily to do something novel with a score she didn't want to use. (And I would kill to have that chic little tweed number Gilles Mendel whipped up for Jenifer Ringer.) Millipede's ballet showed the folly of building a ballet around a costume gimmick, although it was at least watchable once Janie Taylor returned to it. Who remembers "Mirage"? "Estancia" was just nonsense from the get-go -- it depends on a costume gimmick too, come to think of it. Watching Gina Pazcougin portray a beautiful creature whose spirit must be broken if our hero is to prevail just about ripped my heart out.

PS: Yes it all cost a fortune and there isn't a lot to show for it, but I'm still glad the company took a flyer on the project.

Unless it's Ratmansky, I can't think of any new work ABT has commissioned that I've seen beyond its first season. That's money not well spent. Years ago NYCB commissioned a new work by Miriam Mahdavani (I think that was her name?, she was a corps member) through the Diamond Project. Give it a little more time and it may come.

Not that I'm wild about sports analogies, but shots on goal is a thing. Even Balanchine and Robbins had their share of misses, and I think every dance company has to expect that only a relative handful of its commissioned works will live for the ages.

There are any number of women not named Twyla Tharp who are choreographing good work NOW. Why should a company that proudly trumpets its commitment to new commissions be given yet more time to hire one of them? NYCB seems happy to fund a disposable Martins ballet or two a year; would the company really be less well-served if it commissioned new ballets -- disposable or no as the case may be -- from someone with lady parts?

Ugh. Estancia. Because what a girl who lives in the middle of effin' nowhere really wants is a manly man who breaks horses and shuns decadent city folk.

SEVEN world premiers. FIVE choreographers announced. Not one a woman.

Just sayin' -

Sigh. Pam Tanowitz and Emery LeCrone could both give NYCB new works more closely aligned with its heritage and style than several of the male choreographers the company has turned to in the recent past -- Elo, Bigonzetti, or Preljocaj, e.g. And if the company wanted something more visceral / cinematic along the lines of those three, there's Crystal Pite.

Good for Mr. Geffen.

Yes indeed. It's a generous gift. I might grumble about the naming rights hoo-ha, but that hall is in need of more than cosmetic renovations and his donation will make them happen.

Looks like the Plaza will now have two theaters named David.

"I'm heading off to Lincoln Center now."

"Where to? the David K?"

"No, no - tonight's show is at the David G."

Maybe the Lincoln Center folks could persuade another billionaire David to throw some bucks the Met's way and give the Plaza a David three-peat or hat trick or whatever.

Perhaps David Tepper will step up to the plate. He's relatively small potatoes as billionaires go (with a net worth of $10.4 billion, he's only #121 in the Forbes rankings), but he does live nearby in Livingston NJ.

I suppose I understand the desire to have your name in big letters on the side of a marble building, but I wish that just once one of these guy would say "Oh, no, thanks! I'd like the building to be named after [fill in name of groundbreaking artist, eminent humanitarian, or inspiring leader here]."

Just to get us started, here's the biggies for opening night casting:

...

Plus what seemed to be an infinite supply of corps dancers, extras, and dancing children.

That seems to be standard for all productions of SB...

But not for ABT's previous version, which, despite its enormous, ripped-right-out-of-a-Thomas Kinkaid castle seemed oddly underpopulated! There were only two children and eight couples in the garland dance, for instance, and what looked to be about a 2-to-1 ratio of fairies to courtiers in the Prologue.

That wouldn't be the first time that people on the far right miss important action. Having sat in a right side parterre box during my early ABT years, I learned the hard way that you miss a great deal of the R&J balcony scene if you are too far right. Although I was at the performance, the closest I came to taking it in was the review a few days later that talked about how great the balcony scene was. Live and learn. Have never sat in a side box for the ballet since.

What irked me about ABT's soon-to-be previous version of SB was that I wasn't even really that far over to the side; I certainly would not have thought to describe it as far right. If a seat isn't labelled "partial view" one should be able to see everything, or at least everything important, especially if one is paying full price. I took it as a sign that either 1) the production team didn't care enough to make sure the set design actually worked in the theater or 2) management didn't care enough about giving their patrons good value for their money.

I like the arch upstage center -- a nice place to frame Aurora in her first entrance.

This seems to be the prologue, with the cradle.

I hope this set doesn't commit one of the errors of the current production, which is pushing too much of the action towards the wings -- including, crucially, the cradle in the prologue. At the Met, if you're anymore than halfway in on the house right side section of the orchestra it's almost impossible to see what's going on around the cradle.

Maybe we should go back to "Comrade." ;)

I like "citoyen" myself, except for being required to stipulate said citizen's gender ...

well, that, and the fact that the people in favour of "citoyen" had a tendency to lop people's heads off.

Details, details...

Oh, alright then, just call me Madam!

Maybe we should go back to "Comrade." ;)

I like "citoyen" myself, except for being required to stipulate said citizen's gender ...

Some languages / cultures simply don't bother with the whole Mr. / Miss / Mrs. / Ms. thing, Russian and Japanese being cases in point. They still have systems for indicating degrees of status and intimacy, but marital status doesn't really feature.

Here's an old article on getting to know Pushkin in translation.

The Nabokov translation was controversial. Haven't read it myself.

Douglas Hofstadter,the author of the linked article on Pushkin in translation, went on to write his own somewhat controversial translation of Onegin. I wasn't as put off as the Times' reviewer was, but parts of it struck me as a bit gimmicky in a post-modern sort of way. It's zesty, that's for sure.

That's a tough one!

The first version I read was Nabokov's more-or-less literal non-rhyming version. Nabokov maintained that it was absolutely impossible to render Pushkin's Russian verse into English verse in a way that's even remotely true to the original. Since his Russian is better than mine (and probably his English too, for that matter) I'm willing to take him at his word. That being said, his version and the accompanying volume of notes has its virtues, but also its peculiarities, and it's sometimes more than a little awkward on the page. I find it dry dry dry.

I've also dipped into three verse translations: James Falen's 1990 translation, Douglas Hofstadter's 1999 translation, and Stanley Mitchell's 2008 translation. Both Falen and Mitchell tried to render Pushkin in a contemporary idiom; both translations are well-regarded and highly readable.

Fortunately, Stephen Frug, a history professor at Hobart and William William Smith Colleges (in Geneva NY, near Ithaca) has posted samples from ten different translations online. You can check them out and see if there's one that suits your ear.

Tonight, February 23rd, at 7:30 PM there is a live webcast of the cast and creative team in performance and conversation at WXQR. Here's the link to the stream: http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/video-webcast-american-paris-preview/

Thanks for the link! As of 9:30 AM EST on 2/24/15, the video is still up.