AB'sMom

From the Dutch National Ballet website: KAHLO’S SOUL AND DREAMS Already in 2016, Lopez Ochoa’s fascination with Kahlo led to Broken Wings, which she created for English National Ballet. At the request of Dutch National Ballet director Ted Brandsen, she developed this short ballet into a full-length production in 2020. Frida is not an A-to-Z story of Kahlo’s life. The most essential events are portrayed in a succession of impressive scenes in and around two black boxes, which symbolise her many bedridden days. In addition, Lopez Ochoa presents various alter egos, who reveal Kahlo’s soul and dreams, and ten male dancers bring Kahlo’s self-portraits to life. PERSONAL TRIUMPH Involving 49 dancers, Frida is the biggest production created to date by the Colombian-Flemish choreographer Lopez Ochoa. The title role was a personal triumph for principal dancer Maia Makhateli, who danced the world premiere. “Makhateli captures the spirit of the militant Kahlo in a formidable performance.”

The Dutch National Ballet is bringing Frida to the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion July 14-16.

The Dutch National Ballet is bringing Frida to the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion July 14-16.

The Dutch National Ballet is coming to Los Angeles in July… https://www.musiccenter.org/tickets-free-events/tmc-arts/dance/dutch-national-ballet/

I went to a production of Swan Lake last week but didn’t get to see Smirnova. Odette doesn’t die in this production, but Siegfried drowns at the end. My daughter is a student at the Dutch National Ballet Academy and is in the swan corp for some of the performances. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see her perform either. The shows sold out long before I knew any casting.

Wow! I have never seen this for an ABT performance at Segerstrom. Loge and Balcony both closed and the performances start in less than two weeks. There were plenty of seats available at a discount on GoldStar, too.

This is what I was referring to.

The argument could also be made that just because a female dancer is small doesn’t mean she is easy to partner. I know plenty of men who have struggled with particular dancers and it has nothing to do with their size. I’m sure she wouldn’t appreciate it if male dancers were publicly saying that she was difficult to partner, so it seems harsh of her to call them out.

They’re charging to hold tickets at the box office now? Do they also charge the service fee that’s included when you order tickets online? I have to say I liked their old website better than the new one.

Teuscher is with Ahn, Trenary is with Cornejo.

Thank you for posting. I wish I could combine parts of different casts together. I think I’ll probably see Trenary/Cornejo et al.

I can’t remember it ever taking this long for casting to be posted for Segerstrom performances. I’m not even sure which cast I most want to see, but I have some feelings about who I’m not particularly interested in seeing.

Didn’t he flirt with NYCB before signing a contract with ABT? If I remember correctly he went with ABT because they wouldn’t require him to choreograph exclusively for them. It sounds like this contract with NYCB is the same. It says one new work a year for them, but nothing about exclusivity.

I bought tickets for Swan Lake since I’ll be in Amsterdam this spring, but have no idea yet of the casting. Weekend performances are already selling out. Fingers crossed I get to see Olga Smirnova.

So great! I definitely feel like this was the last installment, but I hope they find a way to keep things going. Maybe with a “Season 2” and a new theme.

I’m wondering if it’s just the order of wording in Shayer’s bio that leads to confusion. Maybe he isn’t saying Guest Principal Artist @ ABT. Perhaps he’s listing them as separate things, like he is a dancer at ABT and a guest principal artist in outside productions? He hasn’t been dropped from the ABT website, which leads me to believe he is still with the company. Either way its unnecessarily confusing.

Weird. I didn’t get the email either and I usually get tons of email from them.

I’m not sure what Takumi Miyake has to do with Misty Copeland.

ABT Studio Company sure seems to have impressive dancers. A dancer everyone was raving about at Royal Ballet School’s year-end production, Takumi Miyake, is coming to the Studio Company next year.

Kind of surprised that Zimmi Coker wasn’t promoted. Misseldine is in her first full season, if I’m not mistaken.

Scout Forsythe just posted (on her Instagram story) that they have an important company meeting from 11:45-12:15 today with “IYKYK” in parentheses. Makes me think it’s the meeting where they will announce promotions.

The ABT school is in the middle of its student summer intensives, so it is likely that the large contingent of young people were attendees. A friend of my daughter’s posted that he was at the Shevchenko/Royal performance.

It’s crazy to me that ABT doesn’t have a single male soloist to understudy principal roles and step in if there is an injury. With both Sterns and Whiteside out, they are depending heavily on a guest dancer. Ahn and Bell were both promoted to soloist in the fall of 2019, never had a Met season to dance as soloists, and are now dancing as principals. Maybe I have an excessive need for order, but their current system is a mess. Are they going to continue with the pattern of giving promising corp members soloist roles, promote them for a year to soloist, and then rush them into principal while the same few men languish in soloist purgatory? Cornejo isn’t getting any younger, nor is Whiteside or Sterns.

Maybe ABT needs to follow the European example and have more than three main levels of dancers. There are soloists on track to be principal dancers, but others who are kind of clogging up the pipeline. I don’t mean that to sound as rude as it does. I just mean that there could be a category for dancers like Zhurbin and Paris, and another for dancers who are expected to continue to principal.

I think Camargo is at least 6’ tall. He’s significantly taller than Simkin.