Laurent

Smirnova's hands are indeed bad, this is already manifest in the still cadre of the posted video, all those awkward "angles" have no right to be there. As I said earlier, this is nearly impossible to correct if it wasn't corrected at school. This is, by the way, the last thing that would be noticeable in "DQ". Other than that, her "Diamonds" are polished, they project a certain image and demonstrate that she put a lot of work into them. In my experience this is her most successful piece. Smirnova is generally recognized for the amount of thought and effort she puts in every role. I prefer a more natural, less laboured approach, yet her dedication and hard work must be acknowledged.

"Cheating through flawed technique", an so on : these outright lies are verifiable, links to complete recordings of the recent Odette/Odile and to an hour long HD recording were posted in this forum, everybody can see for himself.

I didn't attend Smirnova's "Don Quixote" in London but I know for sure that it could not be "embarrassingly bad", I also know that a uniquely gifted, and technically very refined, dancer cannot be the "nadir", "mediocre", etc. I know a couple of long term ballet goers in London, and they have a strong preference for finesse and refinement, not crudeness, not in-your-face acting, they prefer pure classical lines, not approximate. Talking about the ballerina as if she was ten years younger invites testimonies of those who saw her multiple times recently.

O.K., once again: untidy fouettés happen regularly even to the fouettés specialists, it seems you are not aware of that. Stable execution of the fouettés requires, beyond proper technique, constant practice which is dangerous for the feet. Last time I saw her fouettés, they were lousy, and the "technique" that you imagine to be "excellent" has markedly loosened up. Normal circumstances of ageing.

I also think that Alexandrova fully recovered, she is not going to dance any better. I saw her Legend of Love less than a year ago, I saw her Gamzatti a year ago, and also her Fée des lilas. She was consistent in all three performances. She was demonstrating her current best form. By my standards the stage presence and acting were great, the execution was on the crude side (mildly speaking), in the Legend of Love she was essentially dancing to her own tune, largely ignoring the musical accents that are strongly emphasized by the choreography, and with muffled, lacking crispness, articulation, as compared to the currently best performers of the same role in Bolshoi. I will continue attending her performances given a chance because she was and is an artiste (in February she will be dancing twice principal roles at Bolshoi). I refuse to order dancers on a linear scale and I am unable to sympathise with those who do, ballet is not one-dimensional. I have tender feelings for Osipova, who has been called vulgar more often than any other ballerina of her stature, who has no lines to talk about (unlike, for example, Smirnova, who has very pronounced lines, very mannered, yes, but she has lines, nevertheless), but I also hold Zakharova as the living canon of academism, tainted, but only slightly, by the corrupting influence of Guillem. When Zakharova was dancing a few years ago Aurore in Opéra Bastille, this created a commotion among the ballet people in Paris, she was representing an unattainable level compared to our own Aurores. The professeurs de danse present at that memorable representation had nothing but praise for Zakharova. Regarding Goudanov, another dancer mentioned. For Moscow connoisseurs, Goudanov was unique as being the only male dancer at Bolshoi representing what can be termed "the culture of dance", he was viewed by them to be their only true danseur noble. I saw him twice before his retirement, in Giselle with Nikulina, and as Prince Desiré, partnered by Kaptsova. On both occasions, he felt a spent force. He seemed to be little interested in what he was dancing, and who he was dancing with.

Horrible hands, lack of natural, harmonious movement. She has worked a lot trying to correct it, unfortunately such things are very difficult, often impossible to correct if they weren't corrected at school. I saw her recently twice, the worst is still there, the only thing she can do is to try to "mask it" through all of these elaborate mannerisms. I can't watch it.

"Strongly disagree" with what? With saying that "you have no chance observing all the nuances and details of their performance" if you decide to sit far from the stage?

Olga Smirnova is interesting. She is interesting because she has something to show. Most dancers, including some truly accomplished technically ballerinas, have not much to show besides being able to go through the prescribed text "without setting a foot wrong", with some tricks thrown in here and there, quite a number of them are, what we call, "empty". This sets Smirnova apart. She is most successful in the repertoire like Maillot or Cranko, where she is not forced to act through the medium of classical dance idiom. I mean "academically" classical, not "almost", "somehow", or "approximately", classical. You may not care about the canons of the classical dance, you may not know them, but they do exist. The dancers with natural flow of movement, who dance as they breathe, who don't need to constantly try to harness their hands and shoulders that refuse proper placement, have a significant advantage over those who do. The most ambitious of the latter category can, of course, with a lot of luck and enormous determination, have very successful careers. This is how I see her. I don't think she was successful, however, in drawing the audience "into the world of the play", as you say, in "Sleeping Beauty" or "Swan Lake", even as an actress, precisely because she was expressing herself. Every single ballerina who has anything to show always expresses herself in every piece she dances-acts. She is always willingly or not, drawing the audience into her world.

One needs to ask: "a target of anger and resentment" by whom? By fans of other dancers? This is completely irrelevant from the professional perspective, with their angry internet denunciations those fans may at most mislead not well informed ballet goers who spend too much time reading what others write. In the end, if a dancer in question is indeed exceptional, such denunciations will be later funny to read. Like the denunciations of Marie Taglioni by a certain jealous, toxic Parisian critic in the 1830-ies. More important is what other dancers in the troupe may think, and most of them are professional, unlike their fans they can easily determine who has huge talent and who owes his position due to somebody's strong backing. The promotion of Stepanova was "extraordinary" perhaps for some of the fans of Bolshoi, outside Russia this happens all the time and is considered to make a lot of sense when applied in exceptional cases, of course. Her promotion has also another side to it, there are situations that dancers accept employment at the rank significantly lower than what they represent, I have absolutely no doubt that her initial rank of "Soloist" was not reflecting what she actually represented, it was neither a result of her advancement within the company. It wasn't that she so "dramatically improved" within a half year that Vaziev was in charge, for anybody in the trade she was already exceptional before. The case of Somova was different. I am not sure, however, there would be much backlash today, because in the last 15 years the steady erosion of the classical danse in the West proceeded so far that to find a good classical ballerina nowadays anywhere in Europe or in America becomes increasingly difficult.

Post scriptum: I didn't say "I always sit close", I said "I always try to sit close". There is a big difference. Circumstances force me regularly to watch the performance from a certain distance, but after experiencing at Covent Garden what they call there "Amphitheatre", I will never-ever again sit there. You barely could see who was on the stage, with zero nuance visible, and it still cost me a lot of money. I would rather leave such pleasures to others.

If you don't sit close to the performing artists, you have no chance observing all the nuances and details of their performance. You can be "several rows away" and still be close. Or you may be watching from a box close to the stage. In every theatre it is possible to be close and not to have dancer's feet "cut off". Remember that in many older European theatres the stage is raked, making the stage floor perfectly visible even for those who sit in the front of the orchestra. High capacity new opera buildings are in general very ballet unfriendly, besides being ugly. Watching great classics at Bastille for me is a torture. I avoid the first two rows of orchestra for a different reason, I don't want to be distracted by what is going on in the orchestra pit, and by the lights in it. When you sit in the orchestra you lose, indeed, the patterns of ensembles, this is why I sit very often in the first balcony, secondly, I watch multiple representations of the same spectacle, I don't need to watch always from the same spot.

There are no "superstars" in Paris left, if we talk about female dancers. Pagliero is not a superstar, she is a great artist. The only one in the company. Before, there was Ciaravola who, when she was retiring, was the only true, not paper, étoile. Currently, O'Neill is, I think, the strongest. Unfortunately, she is afflicted with an exceptional even for today's standards, lack of understanding of great classics. In her Odette (the only representation she was allowed by Dupont, by the way), she made an impression of somebody watching Swan Lake, just once, and long ago, in childhood perhaps, and later completely forgetting what was it about, to the point of even bursting onto the stage too early and after realizing her mistake quickly running back into the wings. Her "La Sylphide" would be more aptly named "La Courtisane". In 19-th century it would be proper to show it at one of the "boulevard theatres", not at l'Opéra. I don't recall of ever feeling so disappointed. She at least has strong technique, the vast majority of others lack. I know most of younger girls in the company and I don't see anyone who could develop. The best trained dancers, like Guérineau, are getting older, not better, and their opportunities for artistic fulfilment under Dupont became extremely limited; Giezendanner, I think, already gave up, a wasted talent. I attend all public performances of l'École de danse, and the situation with females, especially when compared to the Vaganova, is simply depressing. Froustey left because she was approaching that age when you simply can't wait for the success to come. I saw her Giselles. They were good, I wasn't awe struck. For me Giselle must radiate some kind of inner innocence or at least inner tenderness. Bereft of either, she felt like somebody capable to be in love only with herself. What we are facing now in Paris is the total decline of the "ballerina". Courtesy of the combined efforts of Lefèvre and Dupont. Apparently, Aurélie Dupont wants to go in history as the last French ballerina...

The casting has been consistently erratic under Dupont's rule of the company. By now this is a common knowledge. Cranko's Onéguine however is not exactly Pouchkine or Russian in spirit, and the casting to me seems much less controversial than for the last remnants of classics in the repertoire. Great artists, like Pagliero, can be compelling in almost any role, including the ones for which they were not amply equipped by nature. I, for once, find Marchand, the current favourite of la directrice , to be a perfect choice for Onéguine, whose principal feature after all is that he was a young dandy, and Marchand is the dandy of the company. I am much less convinced that Bullion, who projects depth and sensitivity quite uncharacteristic of a dandy is cast as Onéguine too. Likewise for an unlikely Tatiana, Gilbert. We may be treated to surprises though, and I would certainly want to see Bullion in a major role again. On the other hand, Albisson and, yes, Park, seem to me to be well cast. I am much more inclined to see Albisson acting than dancing classics. Park may on the other hand project well naïve faith in love.

Genuine interest, not "admiration", it is way too early to talk about "admiration". I have been observing her for a while and my interest has not diminished. She is undeniably a "rara avis", it looks to me that Vaziev hit a jackpot with her. And with Tissi too. In French ballet circles he earned the reputation and respect for his ability to see the real talent early and nourish it, whoever those talented people may be. There was a time I had a similar interest for Smirnova, then very young, my interest diminished and, gradually, evaporated when I realized the permanent nature of her limitations. I am not inclined to discuss, really, concrete dancer's limitations in public, they are all human beings, working very hard, sacrificing often everything they have without any certainty of success. I feel what you take to be the signs of her "genius" is but her attempts to hide her inborn inability to produce a natural, harmonious flow of the upper body movement, of her shoulders, of her hands, and to present the underlying awkwardness to the audience as "plastique originale", as an artistic "solution", which it isn't. Also her approach to the roles, too rational, too calculated, she is unable to shed this "I have taken care of everything" image when she is on stage. Such is her Aurora, a business lady who planned her life before she was born, such is her Odette which is really more like Odile "en blanc", such was also her Carmen. I prefer the dancers who are capable of drawing me into their world because there is something magnetic and perhaps very pure in them.

Bastille is a terrible place for ballet, I am never really satisfied. In general, I know the theatres I frequent well enough to know which seats offer which limitations. I avoid seating where I don't see feet of the dancers. This is rarely a problem for me, I am considered to be a tall person. When watching representations with Pagliero at Bastille I was seating either slightly further back (and higher), or in the front of the first balcony. Otherwise, I am used to have seats with limited visibility of the stage one way or another. From a service box at Palais Garnier, you don't see a sizeable chunk of the stage at all, but you can see the tiniest detail of what you actually see. Not a problem for me, I know the pieces shown well, see them multiple times, observing a show from the wings gives you even more distorted view of the whole, but a lot of insight unavailable otherwise.

Bolshoi (which in Russian means "big" is not big, it was named this way, because there was next to it another theatre called Malyi, which means "small" (well, I always had great seats in the orchestra, I never climbed to the galleries high up). Bolshoi has a big stage but the size of the orchestra is small, as compared to many of the 20-th century opera theatre buildings, especially those modern simplistic ugly pile-ups of geometrically shaped stairs and balconies, like at Opéra Bastille. The interior of one of the most beautiful opera buildings, Palais Garnier, feels remarkably cozy, it is so modestly sized. Even there I prefer to be close to the artists, and when you are in one of the internal service boxes, you have the dancers sometimes next to your nose. For a general ballet goer sitting close has a distinct disadvantage, except for those really rare occasions when you face true artists, you will be seeing how prosaic and lacking in refinement is movement and acting of the majority of dancers. Then it is indeed better not to see it by choosing to be seated at a distance. I am definitely not a 'fan' type, this is why I am always ready to be surprised by somebody who I may not have any expectations about. And, yes, I regularly witness some truly notable performances by certain dancers from provincial or foreign troupes. Or by this or that, earlier unnoticeable, dancer from a company I may know well. It is remarkable, how many indeed truly interesting dancers live their whole careers practically unnoticed by the media, including all the countless people who write about dance online and they seem to be in constant need of subjects to wrote about. Seeing true artists performing means for me a lot more than whether they are considered "hot", "great", and so on. True artists, talented, if not always well schooled, may have all their careers completely passing unnoticed, while simultaneously a lot "dead wood" has guaranteed constant coverage in the dance trade journals. We live in the times when, it seems, the majority of people who write about dance really aren't certain whether what they write about has any merit, or has not, whether the dancers they feature are singularly talented or they are heavily promoted. Today, I am afraid, most people writing about ballet cannot determine whether a ballerina has beautiful or ugly lines, her épaulement is correct or considered a nightmare at Vaganova or l'École de danse. As a result, what they write becomes practically redundant, it has no information value. P.S. Concerning inability to see Osipova's feet - consider this to be a blessing in disguise, she's been afflicted with serious feet problems, as a result her pointes usually looked really off-putting, better not to be able to see them.

What age was Jenifer Ringer who made "her presence felt" to the most distant corners of the theatre? Getting on a few occasions to those distant places in various theatres, I must confess, I had hard time of even seeing clearly who was on stage, much less to be able to observe any detail of performance. I am not equipped with eyesight of an eagle, and I am used to see as much as possible. Experiencing only "presence felt" is for me like seeing somebody opening a bottle of some magnificent wine, "presence felt", sure, what interests me is to taste it, fully, myself, however. There can be several factors that often contribute to the audience behaviour described by you: the sudden beauty and solemnity of the corresponding number danced by whoever does it combined with a particularly beautiful and moving musical textures, the fame of the dancer in question, even if she is only an "étoile" of strictly local proportions, yet at a particular place she may have earned adulation to the point of every of her stage appearances causing a stir and waves of ready applause. This happens often with older "stars" of the company, but also happens to be the case with the newest "hot things". So many times I observed basic inability of people who proud themselves of "ballet going", sometimes for decades, to tell apart a major talent from a craftsman, a slick crowd pleaser, that I hold low expectations regarding the ability of the audience to discern the real thing entirely on their own. I noticed, by the way, a heated discussion developed elsewhere regarding the merits or the lack thereof, of Kovalyeva, with the name of Lopatkina inevitably repeatedly being mentioned as if Lopatkina was the ultimate touchstone of excellence. Lopatkina was a very singular ballerina, and she always represented only her own, very peculiar idiom that she has been perfecting for years with a zeal of a monk-hermite. I don't find it useful to compare anybody to Lopatkina. Kovalyeva, if she needs to be compared, could be compared rather to young Zakharova, except of a more tender type. Talking about "accomplishments" for a dancer of such a young age is a favourite pastime for balletomanes but has nothing to contribute to the question of presence or magnitude of talent and the prospects for the future. Great artistic directors are those who look and nourish talent, they don't look for "accomplishments". With proper coaching talented people can be taught almost everything. People with less talent can be taught also "nearly" everything, except for those few things that really matter (and the things that really matter are not: never setting a foot wrong, stable execution of 32 fouettés, breathtaking turns, mammoth jumps, or other circus tricks). Aurélie Dupont made a very young Germain Louvet an étoile even though on the night she was ready to enter the stage (I saw her in the wings dressed up for that occasion), and make an announcement, the young dancer made so many mistakes in his only solo variation, that even Dupont backed down. She made him an étoile two nights later. And she made a right decision. I was on both nights at l'Opéra, seating at the V.I.P. seats next to a noted expert on "la danse classique", visiting Paris for three days, who asserted the correctness of the decision by a simple and convincing remark: “it is obvious that the boy is immensely talented, the life of a dancer is too short, she is doing the right thing". In the face of such an authoritative pronouncement, I shut up.

I always try to sit close to the stage not to miss any nuances. I do this everywhere whenever possible. With some performers it doesn't matter much, since they project emptiness, with Stepanova it is simply a must, otherwise you'll miss a lot (you don't taste a superb Burgundy from cheap wine glasses). This recent bloc of "Swan Lakes" made me aware that Grigorovich's version has a lot to recommend if it is danced by the real artists, it has a conceptual and dramatic coherence that the Noureev's version danced in Paris lacks, it also has great character dancing, "on pointes". In comparison, character dancing is weak in Noureev's version. But it needs really great, soulful artists to make these qualities obvious. Noureev's version is longer, it uses practically all the music that is in Tchaikovsky's score and then some, unfortunately it also interpolates some dubious variations for Rothbart, and makes room for an even more dubious long Pas de deux for the Prince and his tutor, I am always barely able to withstand it, focusing exclusively on the studied elegance of Ganio or Heymann who even when they walk show what it means to be a danseur noble. This recent bloc of "Swan Lakes" demonstrates also that Bolshoi has currently two sensational ballerinas, Kovalyeva, fresh and alluring like a white lily, yet gracious and natural (unlike, e.g., Smirnova, who is, by contrast, an embodiment of studious artificiality, her classical ballerina craft contaminated by all sorts of mannerisms; I love Mannerism, on the walls of Château de Fontainebleau, not in classical ballet), and Stepanova, profound and refined classical purity personified, that grabs your heart. The Bolshoi also has a very promising and princely Tissi, who commands stage the way no other dancer of the Bolshoi does. Judging from the rapid development some young dancers show under Vaziev (Zhiganshina demonstrated what a marvelous par terre danseuse she is in the Pas de trois of the first act, she reminded me of what we know of legendary Amalia Ferraris), I expect both Kovalyeva, Tissi and, perhaps, others, to be soon contributing to rejuvenation of the art of ballet after the years of steady decline.

The video focused exclusively on Rothbart who, in this spectacle, was eclipsed by the protagonists to the point of being redundant. Neither menacing, nor evil, with not much stage presence, in comparison with the commanding presence of both Odette/Odile and the Prince. Tissi, still at the beginner stage as a partner, showed princely manners and, at times, great acting skills, like in the coda of the whole ballet. After pausing for three months, Stepanova's return to the stage was marked by never before seen emotional intensity, that was the most moving Odette I may have ever seen, including all the extant recordings of Ulanova that served for years for me as a touchstone of perfection. Most prominent ballerinas today either add foreign to the part of Odette inventions, "embellish" the classical idiom with personal "mannerisms" (these mannerisms are spreading like fire recently, I have seen the strangest, contorted, hands, arms, torso movements in the Odette's part done by a number of prominent dancers), or make it clear that they are just following some meaningless ritual, sacro-sanct to the classical ballerina craft. I don't know which is worse. If the latter convinces some western critics to proclaim "Swan Lake" to be a dead museum piece, the former convinces certain people in the audience that they are witnessing a "genius", a resurrected Anna Pavlova, while in reality they are watching somebody trying to mask how awkaward all that business of harmonious épaulement, cantilena, classical purity of lines, etc, feels to them. What do they see is, to quote Théophile Gautier, "the result of violent gymnastic exercises that a ballerina subjects her body to in a rehearsal room". And nothing else. Stepanova interests me primarily because, in contrast to all those ballerinas, her movement is uniquely effortlessly classical, as if she simply breathes this way, yet it feels absolutely alive. This is her vernacular language, she speaks it fluently and is, moreover, capable of making some very moving confessions. These were exactly my thoughts while watching this most recent, very unusual, "Swan Lake". Unusual, because the purity of classical idiom was matched by the intensity of the sentiments, lived through and conveyed to the audience. I am not aware of any other ballerina today who is capable of it. Not a single one.

@Gnossie Perhaps a more important reason than using a different score was that, in order to reproduce Filippo Taglioni's choreography, Bournonville would have needed to secure a permission to do that, in which case the production would bear the name of Taglioni, not of Bournonville (I am leaving aside how much this would have cost Bournonville). There is after all a reason why Bournonville's "Sylphide" is called this way. On the other hand, there are known precedents at that time of a ballet having the musical score changed while retaining the name of the choreographer.

I am afraid the only part true may be "It's not like the Bournonville version". I am not discussing personal opinions, I will be discussing facts. It's worth to remember that Bournonville left l'Opéra in 1830, while La Sylphide was produced in 1832. He couldn't dance it with Marie Taglioni. In fact, he never danced in Paris with Marie Taglioni. The two were dancers of entirely different rang. From the moment when Marie Taglioni debuted at l'Opéra, in April 1828, until Bournonville's departure from Paris, she was dancing exclusively with two stars of the company, celebrated danseurs, Monsieur Albert and Monsieur Paul, in the beginning she was also partnered by her brother, Paul Taglioni, and on a few, perhaps only three occasions, she was dancing with Lefebvre in the divertissement of the opera Le Rossignol. Bournonville, whose dancing career saw its peak in 1827 and was on a sharp decline already in 1828, and even more in 1829, was dancing with the likes of Mmes Athalie, Fourcisi, Hullin, Perceval, Vigneron, Louisa, Roland, i.e., with dancers of the second rang, like himself. Alluding to your post in another thread, if you wish you could see Bournonville dancing, I suggest that seeing either Albert or Paul would be much more rewarding. Concerning your unassailable proof "For instance there's no way Effie would have danced on pointe as she does in Lacotte's version.", where does your certainty come from ? Barely a month had passed since Marie Taglioni debuted as an artiste of l'Opéra, when the ballet critic of Le Figaro was writing in May 1828: And this was full four years before La Sylphide ! If "all these ladies, following the example of Mlle Taglioni, were proceeding only on pointes", do you think it possible that Lisa Noblet, the greatest star of l'Opéra of the day, second only to Taglioni, the Effie of the original La Sylphide, could proceed differently? Her name was listed in the programme of La Sylphide before the name of Taglioni. On lithographs preserved in the Opéra archives, Effie-Noblet is shown wearing pointes, as they looked at that time ! Thousands of people throughout Europe saw La Sylphide danced by Marie Taglioni. All the ballet personalities of the period 1832-1844. Bournonville was among them. In his own production of 1836, he was prevented from using the original music. Do you think he was allowed to use the original choreography? In 1861 Marius Petipa, who at that time was unknown outside Petersbourg (it will be nine more years before he finally becomes the chief maître de ballet there), used just one single pas de seul by Perrot in a ballet produced for his own wife. The scandal this created led to a court case in Paris, followed intently by the parisian press, and Marius Petipa was convicted guilty ! This is how he gained the notoriety before, almost 40 years later, gaining in Paris recognition also as a consummate choreographer. So, Bournonville was unable to use the music, very unlikely to be able to use the choreography, and certainly not having at his disposal stars like Mlle Noblet for the secondary roles like Effie. Which proves your case that Bournoville's Sylfiden was indeed very different. According to what I know, Pierre Lacotte's most valuable asset in his reconstitution of the original La Sylphide was the archive inherited from the heirs of Taglioni. My recollection is it's been kept at Louvre, uncatalogued, in an unknown location. It was a miracle that Locatte was able to locate it, finding the archive provided him with an enormous stimulus and, perhaps, an invaluable information about the ballet, not available from any other source. He also, of course, was perfectly familiar with everything that was preserved from Bournonville's work in toto, not just Sylfiden, plus all the testimonies and descriptions. By that time Lacotte was also uniquely equipped with all that he could have had learned directly from the great ballerinas steeped in the 19-th century ballet variations, like Carlotta Zambelli or Lioubov Egorova, who were still alive and active when he was young. Pierre Lacotte may be the last person in France who knows those variations. This knowledge will be irretrievably lost when he passes away, thanks to what has become of ballet in France during last 20 years. In the end, what counts is how successful is the result of his work. In my opinion, it is a chef-d'œuvre. Now, you can proceed and compare the result with some of the works presented to the public as reconstructions, "as faithful as possible", of the original versions of ballets. One of them was broadcast recently from Bolshoi. Then you have at least two versions of the "authentic Petipa" Swan Lake, Esmeralda, Raymonda, Ivanov's Nutcracker, and of course, two versions of the "authentic Petipa" Sleeping Beauty.

@Gnossie The problems you are writing about are very real. I share with you your highest opinion of Pierre Lacotte. I didn't think of him in your terms, but your idea that Lacotte should be for l'Opéra what Marius Petipa is for Mariinsky, and Grigorovich is for Bolshoi, a master choreographer whose work is associated with the artistic identity of the company, I find this idea fascinating, because whatever identity the ballet troupe of the Opéra had in the past, it has no identity anymore. A collection of dancers, many of whom, especially the youngest ones, don't know what are they doing in a work like, e.g., La Sylphide. I don't feel I can be as severe as you in my estimation of their ability when the passage of intimate knowledge from the greatest artists of one generation to the most talented ones of the next generation, which is the necessary mechanism for upholding excellence, has been severed, when the dancers are deprived of the daily contact with the classical idiom, when they are instead constantly occupied in works that could be perfectly fine at a place like Théâtre de Chaillot, but they are absolutely out of place on the stage of Grand Opéra. The presence of the great artists of the past in the company would make it simply impossible for Lefèvre, for Millepied, for Dupont, to carry out their repertoire and casting policies, therefore there cannot be any room at Opéra today for any of the legends of French ballet and the consequences are what they are.

Expect the Lac casting done according to the principle "the least suitable Odettes will be dancing it, even eight times, if necessary." In fact, there are currently no real Odettes left anymore in Paris. Pagliero is an exquisite ballerina, the only world class danseuse in the company at the moment, no Odette by physique, still by far the best interpreter of all who I saw the previous December (and I saw all, multiple times). The only interesting young female dancer in recent years with a chance to develop into grande artiste, Héloïse Bourdon, while not being supported either by Lefèvre or Millepied, not being coached by any étoile, not speaking about any ballet legend, like all those great artists of previous generations, yet Lefèvre and Millepied understood that Bourdon was the classical dancer par excellence, a profound artist with a soul, and they were accordingly giving her those great classical roles that their étoiles were not suited for. Under Dupont, Bourdon literally disappeared into nonexistence. Completely (I know about her injury last season, but that has nothing to do with the fact that she was sent to the back rows of corps de ballet by Dupont from the very beginning).

"SHAME" unfortunately is the right word. This is a complete betrayal of the troupe. The leanest years in the postwar history of ballet at Grand Opéra are to continue. After Lefèvre and her faithful disciple Dupont, united in their despicable grudge against la danse classique, will there be any decent classical dancers left in Paris at all? This is very far from certain. Who is going to rescue ballet in France this time? Shall we need to go to London, to Petersbourg, to Moscow, to see it, and to send our children there for them to learn it?

I apologize for a long post but, in order to properly answer, I must put certain things in their historical perspective. Giselle was last performed in Paris in 1868, there were plans for a reprise in 1870-ies, that came to nought, there was still a chance to preserve it from oblivion in 1880-ies when the original Albrecht, Lucien Petipa, was hired again as a professeur at l'Opéra, having been mercilessly kicked some twelve years earlier by Perrin. There were two beautiful representatives of the French school of dance who were considered worthy of the principal part, Léontine Beaugrand and, later, Julia Subra. Unfortunately, this didn't happen, the repertoire policies during ensuing 25 years of Gailhard, a man fundamentally hostile to ballet, at the helm of the Opéra, brought disastrous results for French ballet. The French ballet was then saved from extinction essentially by the Russians and a lucky coincidence of the miseries inflicted on them by the October Revolution, that sent many of their ballet luminaries to Paris as refugies. When Karsavina performed for the first time Giselle in 1910, the leading critics had to remind their readers what Giselle was about, by that time it was so irretrievably lost. Today Giselle danced, infrequently, at l'Opéra, descends from the Russian version, staged more than 40 years after the premiere in Paris. Coppélia was the only ballet staged in Paris that never disappeared from the affiche. Until it was removed by Mme Lefèvre. There was a precedence, in 1960-ies. When Michel Descombey became directeur du ballet in 1962, Coppélia saw its 710-th representation. Descombey had an idea that something so perfect choreographically and musically must be replaced by a modern, what I call, "plastic", version (this was the dawn of the "plastic era"), and he produced his own Coppélia, by discarding Saint-Léon's brilliant choreography. The new Coppélia had 64 representations. It was on the affiche as long as he was in charge of the ballet at l'Opéra. It was shelved right after he was replaced and, by the initiative of Claude Bessy or Raymond Franchetti, Pierre Lacotte was entrusted with bringing back the original Coppélia. In the first 2 acts, Lacotte is essentially faithfully adhering to the original choreography that was still "in the limbs" of many dancers in Paris, he was allowed to exercise some creativity in his "reconstruction" of the divertissement of the 3rd act, that stopped to be performed already in 1873, essentially because a 3-act long ballet, it was always shown after an opera, was ending very late, often after midnight. That was considered too tiring for the public. That the Lacotte's Coppélia was considered to be "bringing back" the classic work, not a new work, is reflected in the fact that the numbering of representations, recorded in the Opéra archives, was resumed from the last time the original Coppélia was performed in 1962, while Descombey's own Coppélia had its own representation numbering. I saw lots of photographs, I saw decorations from Descombey's production, I didn't see the work itself. I am not aware of any recording either. It still could be a lot better than Patrice Bart's "modernization" with which Mme Lefèvre replaced the original Coppélia. Thankfully, we have a glorious recording of the École de danse performance of the original 2 acts. I consider it to be the most valuable recording made during almost 20 years of Lefèvre's era, for which we must be thankful solely to Claude Bessy and Pierre Lacotte. This is a unique document of a great choreographic tradition and of the original French style. It is also a monument to the work of Claude Bessy as directrice de l'École de danse. The quality of the school badly deteriorated since then due to lack of discipline and a lack of vision what are the aims of the ballet education. Lacotte's recreation of La Sylphide has been done with such an incomparable taste, knowledge and feeling of the classical French idiom, it is impossible, in my opinion, to overestimate its importance. After 2001, we had only 3 times (!!) La Sylphide on the affiche, in 2004, in 2013, and last season, in July 2017, nine years apart, then four years apart ("only" four years, perhaps, because it happened after Lefèvre's removal). And no Coppélia in the repertoire of the company (it was shown twice by the school) since Noureev's complete désintéressment in French classics (which I ascribe to the misguidedly wrong idea instilled in him in 1950-ies in the USSR that the only worthy ballet works were Russian). So, three times in almost 17 years, a work emblematic to the French style, opening the golden era in the history of French and the world ballet, and zero times, of the other work, the only authentic document of that grand style, that closed the golden era for us in Paris.