Emma

I could've sworn I saw Mira Nadon in the back of Mearns' rehearsal photo for Walpurghisnacht.  She would be excellent.

Who is Dew Drop in the stream?

7 hours ago, naomikage said:

Many good dancers at Vienna State Ballet are moving on . Madison Young (originally from Utah) moves to Bayerische Staatsballett, James Stevens to Royal Danish Ballet, Scott McKenzie to National Ballet of Canada and so on. (about a half of the company members are leaving)

It's fascinating how much movement regularly happens in the European companies.

Hurlin does have an extensive presence in traditional dance media: she's had multiple covers in Pointe Magazine (one solo, one with Aran Bell) and was recently featured in a NY Times piece.  Her mother was also a Paul Taylor dancer and runs Dancers Responding to AIDS.  Not that that should detract from how outstanding a dancer she is!  But she is connected.

Nina Fernandez danced Firebird in the second cast (per MCB casting).  I greatly appreciated Morgan's video, and although I thought she walked a find line, didn't find her to be complaining or resentful, just disappointed.

She also posted on instagram about "humility" on the night of Cornejo's 20th anniversary performance, so I'm less surprised by the "shade" than the Hope Hicks quote since so many of her colleagues are members of groups targeted by the current administration.  I'll try to find that post when my wifi connection is better.

She's quoting Hope Hicks?  Oh boy. 

1 hour ago, BalanchineFan said:

I say this as a dancer who has performed on that stage, as someone who has been injured and gone through physical therapy with Marika Molnar and other therapists trained by her in order to resume performing. There's a protocol and Tiler is following it.

I appreciate your insight as well! From the article, I also understood that Tiler would only perform 10 fouttées and then do something else for the remainder of the music, even in performance.  Your explanation makes more sense.

22 minutes ago, cubanmiamiboy said:

They're really tweaking with the score. Many da capos are eliminated, and whole bars of music are gone.

From my understanding, the Lakeside scenes are adapted from Balanchine's one act version.  Has there been further changes from that?

Swan Lake Week 2 casting has been posted, and week 1 casting updated.  Still no pas de quatre.

I'm a bit late, but I thought I'd share my impressions from a few weeks ago.  All in all a great night at the ballet.

I’m Old Fashioned: This was fine.  It was a long piece, repetitive, and reminded me so much of Tharp’s Nine Sinatra Songs, which incidentally MCB will dance in the upcoming program, and Martins’ Thou Swell. My grandma loved it—it was far and away her favorite piece of the night, so I gather MCB knows its demographic.  A red headed man in a principal role really got the style, perhaps Alexander Peters.  This piece reminded my grandma of a scene in the movie Flying Down to Rio where women dance on the wings of the plane.  Lucky for us, I found it on Youtube.  I enjoyed the video very much so will share the link.

This Bitter Earth:  Mesmerizing.  I can’t say anything more, since I was basically entranced during the entire piece.  The dancers were Emily Bromberg and Rainer Krenstetter.

Tschai Pas:  Dynamic as always.  The fish dives were so daring it looked like Katia Carranza was at risk of falling out of Carlos Quenedit’s arms.  Carranza interspersed her fouttées with piqué soutenus, which looked particularly sparkly.

Symphonic Dances (Ratmansky): I may have ranted about Ratmansky’s choreography on this blog before.  If so, I apologize for the following.  Symphonic Dances has three parts: a drab first section, a carnival-esque middle, and a drab finale.  I couldn’t begin identify any dancers.  The first section was my favorite, if you can call it a favorite.  Least hated may be a more accurate description.  It had the most interesting, least twee, and least disturbing choreography, and didn’t seem to go on forever.  

The second section.  Oh my.  I never asked to see a ballet about long lost twins.  Well here it is!  The beginning has two woman in blue in the spotlight run to the middle of the stage, throw out an arm as if to embrace, but there’s this ~invisible force~ so they can’t touch.  The spotlight and twins disappear and the stage turns into a carnival of dancers in bright colors with a black background reminiscent of Moulin Rouge or Brazil.  Then that goes away and the twins come back, still separated by the invisible force.  The back and forth between Moulin Rouge and twins happens, I don’t know, five times.  At some point the twins break the force and hold hands and dance together. Yay them.  How lovely.  That was sarcasm.

Third section.  We’re back to drab costumes.  But now women are writhing on the floor in the fetal position with men standing above them holding one hand.  Multiple couples are doing this thing on stage simultaneously.  I have many questions, but particularly: why? Why is this happening? What am I seeing? In the program Ratmansky says he “want(s) the audience to leave with the images and feelings that the movement gives them.”  Well, I have a lot of images and feelings about this ballet.  I know I said it was a great night in the ballet, but honestly as many feelings as I have about Symphonic Dances, it certainly was entertaining!  It’s rare I still need to rant about anything artistic days let alone weeks after viewing.

1 hour ago, fondoffouettes said:

Yes!!! I felt the same way. It was amazing to see the difficulty of the demi-soloist choreography in isolation from the rest of the ballet.

Agreed. That choreography is so fast and complex I had to watch the clips about five times to even begin to understand it! I love seeing dance clips on Instagram and am glad Brandt posts frequently.

1 hour ago, NinaFan said:

My only gripe is that the same rep is being repeated way too much.   Starting with this fall season, I see them performing the same program as much as five times in a four week season.  In the past, a particular program was never danced more than three times per season.  So this may be why you're getting bored, and why the theater is less full this season.  

 

Agreed.  Coming from out of town, I was able to make it to a number of performances this fall (will write about them soon!), but Spring 2020 is slim pickings.  There's a few programs I'd like to see but they're not scheduled near enough together for a single trip.  

And it's only in response to c

41 minutes ago, Lena C. said:

I echo this 100 percent. 

Agreed.  Having now seen the her comments, I think the criticism is overblown.  Only in response to people asking her whether she will perform Giselle in DC does she say, "I hope!!"  I see no problem with that.  And I love seeing her rehearsal videos and wish more dancers posted them.

6 hours ago, Balletwannabe said:

I agree they are likely paying very close attention to social media posts.

I noticed she doesn't have Boston Ballet on her Instagram bio. Did she remove it or did she never add it?

Lovette is blonde-ish in her most recent instagram posts. It's disheartening to hear about SPAC ED's remarks and conduct.

Excellent. I loved reading her blog and was wondering what she up to post retirement.

On 5/12/2019 at 3:14 PM, uptowner said:

apologies for probably asking a real newbie question, but I have just gotten at TDF membership, what are the seats usually like for ABT? In the past two years I have had really good luck with rush tickets getting quite decent seats day of (and you can see what seats they are before you pay for them)-- for those who have used both, are they similar in terms of seating? 

The few times I've used TDF at ABT, I've been on the far sides of the orchestra. But both times there were plenty of open seats still in the orchestra sides, but much further center, so I (and everyone else around me) moved closer in.

I'm hopeful her blog will continue: MCB did cite that she has 152,000 instagram followers in its press release.

Sadly I wasn't able to catch the livestream. Is a recording available?

She is (was?) dating the movie star Ansel Elgort (well, apparently he's a movie star) and they met as children/teens at SAB. Can't speak to her dancing career but the relationship explains her amount of followers.

Whoops! This is what I get for posting too quickly—sorry for the confusion Pherank. My edit is more accurate.

I believe Wona Park posted a short video of her dancing in a tutu with a fishdive, saying "ready for Beauty." Unless Bluebird also does fishdives (can't remember), sounds like she's dancing Aurora as well.

31 minutes ago, canbelto said:

It's too bad she doesn't have a choreographer who can really choreograph for her strengths (her charm and beauty and lyricism).

Methinks she should choreograph for herself! To the dancers on this thread, why is it that professional dancer/choreographers don't typically choreograph for themselves? My only experience is amateur, but throughout my recreational dancing, if we were choreographing a piece, we always danced in them as well.

12 minutes ago, Drew said:

I think the Board has allowed a situation to develop that seems increasingly untenable, and THAT is where the heat should be directed. (Who can step gracefully amidst such an unpleasant tangle? All of the dancers are potentially in impossible situations.)

Agreed. That Jon Stafford told the Times that Martins expressly disregarded his request to not immediately go backstage shows, to me, that the Board has not fully empowered Stafford as the interim leader of the company. And if Stafford does not have real authority, then no one does. Which allows the leaderless state to continue....