Petra

dirac, it looks like Julia Roberts is very much aware that she is reaching the 'danger zone' and seems to be taking a very careful aproach to her career at the moment. For example, her current Broadway run in Three Days of Rain and her bowing out of the forthcoming Ocean's Thirteen show that she realizes she has to position herself differently. This has also coincided with her becoming a mother, but IMO it's more than merely reducing her work load.

bart, according to amazon.co.uk it will be available April 20, 2006.

I don't think that an observer of the Israeli modern dance scene woud seriously consider any of the prominent companies or choreographers to be propaganda tools for the perpetuation of the occupation of the West Bank/Palestinian Authority. Like many other artists in many other countries, Israeli choreographers and dancers are as a whole a left leaning bunch.

Some like Ohad Naharin (Bat Sheva) and Rami Beer (Kibbutz Dance Company) have made topical, relatively political work. Kyr, Ohad Naharin's first major work for Bat Sheva, and IMO a masterpice, is an incredible commentary on and analysis of Zionism and the State of Israel.

Others like Inbal Pinto work in their own remarkable fantasy world (although I haven't seen any of her most recent pieces).

Further more, the Israeli dance scene is very much an equal opportunities area, unlike many other fields of Israeli life. You don't have to be a native=born Israeli Jew in order to be fully accepted in the dance community.

Also, I'm no defender of many Israeli policies, but is Israel really the most evil of all the empires out there today? Is anyone saying they will boycott Sudanese companies until the Sudanese government is prepared to take action against the genocide currently taking place in Darfur?It's the pick and choose aspect of Dance Europe's decision that is incredibly obnoxious.

"As for Rhett and Scarlett, I've always known in my heart that they'll get back together. They are soulmates. It's too bad it took Scarlett 12 years to figure that out, but I have always been certain that they belong together and eventually Scarlett will win him back."

I totally agree

canbelto, it looks like all the dancers - both men and women - are wearing platinum wigs in Ballet Imperial.

Thank for the link. That gallery also has pics from Afternoon of a Faun, showing two dancers with very long hair - the blonde Sarah Lamb and the brunette Roberta Marquez. I wonder what conditioner Marquez uses. her hair is incredibly lustrous.

In recent interviews, Natalie Portman who shaved her head for her latest movie 'V for Vendetta' and is keeping it quite short has said similar things about feeling mature and not giving into feminine sterotypes, etc.

Thank you so much to chiapuris and Natalia for your detailed and evocative reviews.

I agree, sylphide. The lovely dancer is clearly a woman and not a 'girl'.

I'm also impressed that the Australian Ballet used a non-Caucasian dancer in the ad, given the current racial tensions in Australia.

Amy, this program is part of PA Ballet's Family Matinee series this year, and it was my son's first non-Nutcracker ballet. (Next month, we'll see Balanchine's Midsummer Night's Dream.) He loved the swim fins, the armonica and the decor. He danced to the music a little bit - there was no one directly behind us, so I think that was ok, but he did lose concentration during the Spark and Electricity sections.

He enjoyed the Firebird more. Interestingly, he was a bit scared by the Fokine version we saw on video, but not by the Kudelka version. I suppose you could say that Kudelka's Firebird is Disney-fied.

Amy, that must have been an amazing experience. To answer your questions: yes, they retained the armonica solo at the beginning and and the ghost house came together at the end - those are very magical and mysterious moments.

Regarding the dancers you asked about, Laura Bowman who led the Swim Fins section is very petite and bubbly. She always looks like she is having a great time on stage. I saw Julie Diana and James Ihde in Spark/Electricity. I'm not sure if you understand my meaning, but I would call them regal rather than sumptuous. My son (aged 4 this week) said they looked like they were from "the olden days".

bart, I honestly don't know how Kudelka, who I'm assuming is an accomplished choreographer, managed to mess things up so much. However, I don't think it's an easy ballet to remake or choreograph - the music is glorious but rigorous and the story is not that straightforward. Who and what is the Firebird and what is her relationship to Ivan and to Kastchei are complex questions in the Fokine version and, according to recent discussions on the NYCB threads, in the Balanchine version. Based on my single viewing, the Kudelka version doesn't even pose these questions.

I saw the Sat matinee. This program is very uneven - one half is wonderful and the other half is a complete dud (IMO, of course).

I loved Franklin Court. Christopher D'Amboise's starting point was to abstract some of Ben Franklin's inventions/discoveries (Bifocals, Spark, Swim Fins and Electricity), just as the present-day Franklin Court is an abstraction of Franklin's house. For those who haven't been bludgeoned by Philadelphia's propaganda machine celebrating the 300th year of Franklin's birth, the present-day Franklin Court has a "ghost" construction of steel girders over the location of Franklin's house. The decor for the ballet is a number of steel girders which hang above the stage and are moved (designed by Robert Venturi, who designed the "real" Franklin Court). At the end of the ballet, they form the shape of the "real" Franklin Court. The choreography is lovely and very fluent. Parts of it - mainly the ensembles and the Spark and Electricity - evoke an 18th century feel, as they combine formality with wit. I loved that the concepts of Spark and Electricty were illustrated by a couple falling in love (but I'm a sucker for those kind of literary conceits). The dancers were delightful - they danced with the abandon that I looked for and didn't find last month with the Balanchine program. Especially impressive were Matthew Neenan (he danced the Bifocals male lead and had a very difficult and lengthy solo. Up to now, I've known him mainly as a choreographer) and Abigail Mentzer (as the lead demi-soloist . She has a ton of charisma) Julie Diana was beautiful as the woman in Spark and Electricity - she manages to be both serene and witty at the same time. It helps that she looks like a Jane Austen heroine, of course.

James Kudelka's The Firebird, on the other hand, was dreadful. I rarely write bad reviews here but this time I just can't help it. I saw the original on DVD two weeks ago and the difference between the two versions is unbelievable. First of all, there is very little dancing in Kudelka's version. Even the Firebird doesn't seem to do much. The only ones who get more dancing in this version are those bizarre girls with Chinese straw hats, corn rows, crinoline skirts, pantaloons and pointe shoes Oh yes, those are the princesses Also, either the story doesn't make sense or it is told very poorly. For instance, Prince Ivan doesn't seem to have caught the Firebird because she keeps on dancing away from him, so why does she give him the feather and why does the Firebird dance with the other creatures who inhabit the forest. Isn't she supposed to be a kind of "untouchable"?The main reason I wa asking myself all these questions is because the ballet itself is boring, boring, boring. The lavish decor and costumes did nothing to distract me; in fact, I found them very irritating becuase I wish someone had taken the money invested in this production and put it somewhere else. Riolama Lorenzo, James Ihde and Amy Aldridge danced the leads, but the choreography did not allow them to shine.

Wow - the corps will be getting an intensive workout next season with Nutcracker, Serenade, Giselle and Sleeping Beauty.

Has anyone seen PA Ballet's Giselle and Sleeping Beauty?

I am happy to agree with the above. I've liked Colucci especially in Prodigal Son and Nine Sinatra Songs.

Also there are very few soloists on the roster.

Thanks.

Will NYCB be performing in Saratoga this summer? I couldn't find any info on either the NYCB or the SPAC websites.

I saw the Thursday night performance. I had never seen any of these ballets before. My main complaint is that each one of the ballets was too short. I would have been very happy to have seen the Third Movement of Western Symphony too.

To my great surprise, Theme and Variations was the ballet I least liked. The dancers looked like they were being very careful which wasn't what I had expected. The ballet also suffered IMO from a lack of scenery. The aura of grandeur that I was expecting just wasn't there. I wish the company could perform this again next year, so that they could work at it some more.

I loved The Prodigal Son. The aesthetic with the blazingly colorful Kandinsky-esque sets and costumes is very appealing and I also like the stylized movement. In a weird way, it reminded me of Martha Graham's ballets. Philip Colucci was outstanding as the title character. He has boyish looks, so he was a vulnerable and susceptible Prodigal. This is probably a breakout performance for Colucci.

Western Symphony looked like it was a lot of fun for audience and dancers alike. I can't single out any dancers as it was all I could do just to concentrate on the choreography. However it was definitely Riolama Lorenzo's night for outlandish headresses, as she was the Siren and then began the Fourth Movement in WS with a fancy sun bonnet.

I wish I could have seen this program again, but it was avery short run and unfortunately, the night I went, the theatre was not full at all.

Well, Brokeback Mountain is a very good movie, but ultimately the romance didn't move me the way it obviously moved others. I don't understand why Ennis and Jack were not prepared to risk everything and live together, why they weren't prepared to do what Romeo and Juliet did. At certain moments, I felt downright angry with Ennis and Jack, as they sacrificied other people's happiness as well as their own.

That said, the movie itself was masterfully done as were all the Ang Lee movies I've seen. (I didn't see the Hulk.)

A few comments on some of the links in this thread:

- I agree that the lovers only seem happy in the wide open, but the wide open is a place to escape to, not to actually live. The fact that they are only happy there doesn't emphasize the 'naturalness' of their love so much as it does the doomed nature of their love. Quite clearly, love which is outside the 'norm' can be accepted only in a heterogenous urban environment.

- The NYRB review was excellent but it also begs the question - is the audience too liberal for this movie? Are we so colorblind as not to notice that it is only about gay love and not about universal human behaviour? If so, isn't this a good thing?

- speaking of chauvinist tendencies, in the year 2005, I don't think that any movie wins a European film festival for representing the "heart of America", so I really don' think that BM is successful because it brings homosexuality into the "heart of America".

In the current USA Vogue (w/Drew Barrymore on the cover), Irina Dvorovenko is feautured in an ad for Lenscrafters. Rather odd to see a dancer wearing ballet clothes and glasses. If I recall correctly, Irina is quoted as saying somehting like "In ballet, the whole point is to see"...

I assume this ad is running in other magazines too.

Lovely interview - Sara Mearns must be such a gracious person.

The Academy sure does love me - I think the only three movies I saw in a cinema this year were Crash, Munich and Brokeback Mountain.

I'm still working out my thoughts about BM, but it isn't my favorite Ang Lee movie (The Ice Storm is probably my favorite of his more recent movies).

Munich OTOH exceeded my expectations and I would like to see it win.

I thought Crash was derivative - reminded me too much of Magnolia, Grand Canyon and a half dozen Robert Altman movies.

After being rather disappointed with Wheeldon's Swan Lake and missing Nutcracker this year, I'm really looking forward to this programme.

I'll be seeing the Thursday performance and I'm especially excited about Philip Colucci as the Prodigal Son - he was terrific in Tharps' Nine Sinatra Songs last season (I can't remember the name of his number off the top of my head, but I think it was the 'prom' dance). Also excited to see Ochoa in Theme and Variations - she never seems to be cast in the performances I go to.

I've only skimmed this thread as I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain yet, but based on tonight's Golden Globes awards, Brokeback hasn't suffered from any backlash.

People are all over the map on Munich for a variety of reasons. I have not seen it, but I suspect it’s one of those films where you can’t go by even the most ordinarily reliable judgment, you must see for yourself if you're interested....

Absolutely agree with this statement. My husband and I saw "Munich" last week and we had to agree to disagree about this movie, even though we usually enjoy the same movies. I think the last movie we disagreed so strongly about was Schindler's List...

I thought "Munich" was an incredibly impressive movie - cinematically, emotionally and intellectually. Have to say that my reaction is very unreliable - as a left-wing Zionist Israeli currently living in the US this movie hit very close to home. I was in tears within the first 5 minutes.

My husband OTOH couldn't get over the plot holes - there is a lot the viewer has to take on trust. Both of us were impressed by the 'period' details, and Spielberg certainly provided employment for every Israeli screen actor. The last shot is brilliant.

I am sitting Nutcracker out this season, but my husband and son (almost 4) went to the 11 a.m. matinee last Saturday (Dec 10). They both had an amazing time. This was my son's first real ballet and I am overjoyed that he was able to experience such a magical production! It even passed the ultimate pre-schooler's test - my son ate one 'snack' in the middle of the party scene, the rest of the time he was completely engrossed!

Damian for President  !

Or perhaps "merely" Ballet Master of NYCB...