Mel Johnson

You may not agree, but I believe that you have just supported my point. A ballerina making a one-season guest appearance with partner and several changes of costume is one thing, but when the project reaches the compound/complex stage, as exemplified in the Beauty in Motion tour, then all that work has to be parceled out.

We should not infantilize dancers. They can do a lot of their own work before they have to ask for help!

As a matter of general principle, it is not really necessary for a dancer to have her/his own agent unless the career track is so complex that s/he can't manage it alone. In many situations, the dancer's own networking skills provide the right stuff for finding work.

Yes, do take a look at Ballet Talk for Dancers. Here's a link to the Nutrition and Health forum. Sort through that, and you may find a lot of helpful information already in place:

http://dancers.invisionzone.com/index.php?showforum=127

Pay particular attention to the "stickies".

Lengthy yes!

Our choir once thought it might be a cool idea to end the Easter service with the "Amen" as postlude. Then we realized that for most of our congregation, we'd still be in the church singing, while they were at coffee hour, and some of them already driving home by the time we'd finished!

A thought about the original photograph upon which this thread is built. Most black-and-white film today is panchromatic, that is, provides a fairly accurate record of the index of reflectivity of any given color. Many former films were orthochromatic, and did not read the colors the same as the eye does. The original Eastman Panchromatic film would read red as black, and the Ansco equivalent couldn't "see" yellow. I wonder if that would enter into the question of whether the "Magic Swan" were in black or not. If performed in Australia, black would be a natural, though, as black swans are indigenous there.

I like the image of the Sylphide on the BT4D site -- would look great on a t shirt or a mug. I'd wear it.

You mean the one from the Ballet Alert! site? I agree it's a pretty picture, but Alexandra got the rights to use it for that site alone, and further use would involve further rights-getting. Besides, there exists a body of thought that is scrupulous against the use of real people, living or dead, for Ballet Talk for Dancers. It is their right, and to be respected. That ought not to stop Ballet Talk from doing so, however, if there is no like body of thought here.

Thanks for the tip! Should move especially well on the Dancers' board, but we'll make it possible to do either/or depending on your preference.

Right, these are all ideas we've discussed and if member interest warrants, we'll extend the lines into baseball caps, magnets, totes, and so forth, trying to match a soft (cap) with a hard (magnet) product. And yes, identity would be a big plus for gatherings and lobby meetings!

If anybody picks up further information, I'd love to know about it!

Henry at full stature was a good six feet tall, and didn't carry the nom de guerre "Great Harry" for nothing! He stopped taking exercise in the form of tournament training after being unhorsed and knocked out, so after that, he filled out to the well-known later Holbein image we have of him today. A few years ago, the Royal Armourer at the Tower let a copy of his "standing suit" of armour be copied for a British-style "Candid Camera" sketch, where a modern six-footer stood, stock-still, in the exhibit until somebody said something like, "Wonder where's the lav?" At which he solemnly raised his arm and pointed, then returned to his former position. It was very funny.

See? Consumer interest already!

About the proposed product, I'll have to speak to Mr. Schmidlapkin, my neighboring potato farmer, to talk about next year's crop!

There having been no objection raised by Administrators or Moderators, I want to let you all in on a project we're working on at the other board, Ballet Talk for Dancers.

We're rounding the far turn on providing members with the opportunity to have site-dedicated articles, such as tee-shirts and coffee mugs available for order through a provider, either zazzle.com or cafepress.com. We will not have to maintain an inventory, and the provider will accord us a "finder's fee", very like the relationship this site has with amazon.com. There is no startup or design fee involved, and the member, or anyone who wants one can order through the site, and we'll be able to receive revenue for the order.

We're going to start easy, with just the masthead title, simple and dignified, as the art, but we will extend the line as consumer interest seems to dictate. Both Ballet Talk and Ballet Talk for Dancers will be represented.

What do you all think? Anybody with experience in dealing with either of these two firms? Any products you can give us a consumer report on? Suggestions (keep it clean! ) are welcome.

I spoke with Denise Jackson shortly after her retirement from Joffrey, and I observed that, "It was the right time to do it: When you say it's time, and nobody else."

Well, Wilkins has had a good run with the company, and I'm willing to take her statement that she is "at peace" with the decision at face value. That she and Michael will dance "Sea Shadow" as a farewell is a signal honor. It hearkens back to the days of the Robert Joffrey Ballet of the Harkness period, and is a very Joffreyan touch to the long history of the company brought down to the present day.

Good show in getting the Cambridge, now let's give the Oxonians equal time with Horst Koegler's Oxford Concise Dictionary of Ballet.

I know Orlando is all about gender-bending, but I did think it was egregious casting not to cast Swinton as Elizabeth in the film.

But Orlando DID have a great Elizabeth I in Quentin Crisp, the self-described "stately homo of England". He gave a whole new meaning and respectability to the epithet "old drag queen"!

Bonham Carter's Jane Grey was really a mishmash of bad history and presentism. Jane utterly loathed Dudley the Dud, and for his part, even though inflation was rife at the time, his little lecture on economics was completely outside his ken and character. Hordern was wasted and handed some awful lines, and untrue besides, about sixteenth-century differences between the Roman and Anglican Communions.

All I know is from years of accumulated doing, watching, listening, and reading. If I were to teach a General History of Ballet course, I think my basic text would have to be Robert Greskovic's excellent Ballet 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving the Ballet. It's available through Amazon.com via the banner at the masthead of this page, and all pages of Ballet Talk. You can even customize it to the Australian branch of the big online store.

That would be Zulma, the second of the two lead wilis. She was originally intended in the original production to be a bayadere, or Indian temple dancer. "Exotic" port de bras, therefore, would be correct for her. But, as almost all of what we know of Giselle comes down to us filtered by the 1884 Petipa revival in St. Petersburg, we can't tell whether these circling hands are original, from the 1884 revival, or are even a later interpolation. The "hand circles" don't have a formal name in ballet terminology, are derived from various national dances, but appear in quite a few of Petipa's ballets, even Swan Lake.

A general note about Chinese culture: If anything goes there, and develops a local following, whatever it is becomes Chinese. It holds with graphic arts, useful arts, ballet, and even economics. If Marx, Engels and Lenin were to visit the China of today, they would probably hide behind a tree in fright at what "Communism" has morphed into there. 'Twas ever thus, and holds for other countries, too, but it is so pronounced in China that it has its own particular branch of political, cultural, economic and social studies.

If it is Gibson, then it would have to be of the earlier production. He didn't return to Ballet Theatre after the war, in which he served in the Royal Canadian Navy. The US Soldiers' and Sailors' Relief Act didn't apply to him, as he was a Canadian citizen. I understood that he worked for Macy's in New York for awhile after the war, while looking for dance work, then went back to Vancouver.

In that production, Camacho/Gamache was danced by Victor Barbee.

Maybe they should just throw caution to the winds and rename themselves Robert Benchley's time-honored "Utica Drop Forge and Tool Co." I don't care which of them does it, just so somebody finds a name that gives a little more clarity as to identity.

And King Ludwig I of Bavaria went to the ballet for all the WRONG reasons. His affair with Lola Montez helped force his abdication.

Ditto Cassius Marcellus Clay, no, not THAT Cassius Marcellus Clay, the one who was American Minister to Russia during the American Civil War. He had assignations going with a woman in the corps of the Bolshoi, eventually having a child with her. He also "adopted" her son by another man, and put him on the US payroll as secretary, even though he couldn't understand a word of English.

And then, of course, there was Louis XIV. You couldn't keep him OFFstage. (It's good to be the king) He and Prince William III of Orange danced together in a "Ballet de la Paix" in 1668. I suppose that the only thing that kept King Charles II of England from being there too were all those girlfriends, oh, and being a relatively-recently-restored sovereign kept him pretty occupied, as well.

The Swan's character is originally dictated in Saint-Saëns' music in the suite "Carnival of the Animals". There is a poetic notion that swans remain silent during their lifetimes, and only sing when it is time to die, when they take off, and as they disappear from sight, they sing a melodious song. Now, I don't know where the medievals got this notion. The European swans are of two varieties, the Mute (which hisses) and the Trumpeter (which barks). Neither of them sing anything worth recording ever, so the "swan song" is just another version of "pathetic fallacy", where nature seems to match an emotional situation. What the particular swan is dying from is up to the ballerina. I have yet to see one die of ulcerative colitis, but it wouldn't be pretty!

...Boris Godunov...

Only shortly before my time. Alexander Godunov, now him I remember. God only help the company Boris supported!