canbelto

Quick summer reading: a dishy biography of Johnny Carson by his former lawyer/friend. I think a lot of it is gossip but a lot of it rings very true as it's consistent with other accounts of Carson's personality (including Ed McMahon). It's weird how so many comedians seem to be extremely cold, unapproachable people when they're not telling jokes.

I just hope Corella plans to stick with PA Ballet and doesn't view this as a resume padder. Something to do for a few years before something bigger opens up.

I was reading an article about how Microsoft recently ended its "rank and yank" policy, in which every employee was "ranked" at the end of the year and then the lowest ranked were dismissed. However the policy is still popular at other corporations, including Amazon and Yahoo. Anyway, the scuttlebutt on the companies that have this "rank and yank" policy is that it creates a "death by slow drip" environment. Teams will often choose to target a certain person to avoid being ranked at the bottom, and that person will work the whole year knowing that the APPR will be bad. Morale supposedly suffers, and cronyism and favoritism run rampant, and office bullying occurs between the "top dogs" and the ones perceived to be lower on the totem pole. I kind of think these sudden mass dismissals are maybe better for the people being dismissed. Yes it might hurt right now but they can say "New regime, new people in charge, I still have skill sets and can take them elsewhere." Speaking from personal experience I think "dismissal via passive aggressive harassment" is the worst way to go, as not only do you leave with a pink slip, but often a trail of damaging "low ranked" paperwork. That kind of treatment is really soul-crushing. With that being said, I think Angel Corella might be having trouble moving from an environment where he had complete 100% authority because he was the founder (The Corella Ballet) to a well-established organization that has its own legacy and unwritten rules and culture.

I'd also add that for whatever reason Wheeldon and Ratmamsky have not replicated their early successes. Wheeldon's Polyphonia and After the Rain remain his iconic works, as does Ratmamsky's Bright Stream, LHH, Concerto DSCH and Russian Seasons. His stuff for ABT has been mostly miss. I doubt Tempest or Firebird will be brought back, and his Nutcracker had some interesting ideas but never seemed to take commercially. So it's also important to consider the quality of the dances a choreographer makes for a company.

Balanchine created what was said to be impossible in the US: a school and company that was uniformly trained to dance in his unique style. You can see the results of this training in the NYCB performances. Every major ballet company emphasizes the importance of uniformity in training. Companies like ABT are criticized because the differences in their training are obvious to even casual ballet goers. So ...

NYC Ballet reminds me of that movie Pleasantville. Everything there seems to be so insular and conformist. Actually several nycb dancers are pretty outspoken in their social media page about politics. Very strong minded and I wouldn't call those views "conformist" at all.

I think this was the same cast as London: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA8-9okYyqY

I wonder if her two early successes ended up harming her career. Hollywood didn't seem to know what to do with her after those two films, and she didn't have enough range and charm to really expand successfully into different roles. I also think that maybe she didn't have the motivation to do so -- I read her autobiography By Myself and she seemed very enamored of the Hollywood A-list life.

Here's more: The choreography does remind me a little bit of the folk/modern choreography that might have been presented in an "artistic" evening in the USSR. In those evenings I think artists were expected to drop the Don Quixotes and could choose a mixed bill of "modern" choreography.

Here is a clip from the O/V program, so people can decide whether this is their thing:

Most Apollo performances I've seen recently give me a toothache. Lots of cutesy flirting between Apollo and Terpischore. I hate it -- there should be some aloofness between Apollo and the muses. Old videos of Diana Adams or Suzanne Farrell show how it should be done. I haven't seen the Mariinsky dance Apollo but I hope it's not ruined by the Terpischore smiling her way through like its a beauty pageant.

The thing I like about the circular pique turns is that with the right ballerina, she can make it look like she's flying around the stage in a dancing frenzy and then slowing down and finally bowing as a sign of her weak heart. I think the Kirkland example is a really good one where she gives the sense of flying across the stage and finally sort of collapsing in exhaustion. The diagonal is trickier and there has to be steady momentum. But it really depends on the ballerina.

Ok here's a video from 1996, when Lopatkina was 23, which is about the same age as Stepanova now (might be slightly younger). A lot of the features of Lopatkina's Odette are there in 1996, especially the use of the arms and wrists to create the illusion of a flying bird.

Why? They're dancing together on the same tour. If Lopatkina is still dancing, and considered a standard of Mariinsky Odette/Odiles, that means London audiences can see them back to back on different nights. So it's not unreasonable to compare them and point out areas where Stepanova's interpretation is still lacking compared to Lopatkina's. This goes both ways. If Lopatkina's fouettes are not as strong as Stepanova's audiences can compare them too and prefer Stepanova. And some things are just a matter of aesthetics. For instance Lopatkina prefers a bent wrist in places where Stepanova prefers a stretched wrist. Those are all fair areas of comparison.

Ok well another point of comparison at 3:50 in the Lopatkina video she looks weightless and with the more extreme flap of the arms, she looks more like a bird almost flying out of Siegfried's hold before being caught again. Whereas at 9:10 in the Stepanova video the same movement doesn't look as wild and she can't quite pull off the illusion of weightlessness. This has nothing to do with actual weight (in fact Lopatkina is taller), but more about Lopatkina having perfected the timing of everything. Lopatkina's arms, hands, wrists, and legs all seem to be working together so when Siegfried lifts her, she looks like a bird about to fly out of his arms, replete with an extravagant flap of the swan wings.

Okay this must be the "doing a step very poorly in comparison with other Odettes" variant then. Here's Asylmuratova at 6:25: Alina Somova at 11:33: Very different dancers from different eras, but both clearly take the free leg/foot to create a gentle fluttering effect. Asylmuratova even speeds up the frappes after each supported pirouette, to create the impression of an ever more urgently fluttering heart. Neither of them let the free leg hang close to the ankle the way Stepanova does.

Well she doesn't delete the frappes, she just doesn't articulate them very well. If it's a variant, I must say it's a variant that no O/O I've ever seen has tried to delete from the choreography, so I don't know what you're getting at exactly.

No, just saying it's an iconic move in O/O that Stepanova hasn't mastered yet, so maybe criticisms of her performance aren't just out of ignorance or stupidity.

Well personally I like the penchee arabesque in the act one variation because it clearly mirrors the penchee arabesque she has to do in Act Two. So you can kind of connect how a movement that was an expression of joy in Act One becomes something totally different in Act Two. But I can see how some ballerinas prefer to contrast Giselle Act One and Two, so they choose not to do the penchee in the Act One variation. I think this variation can take a lot of, well, variation.

A comparison: and: Stepanova barely bothers to articulate the little beats of the leg in the final moments of the adagio (at 13:20), whereas Lopatkina clearly uses her free leg and foot in a beautiful fluttering movement (at 8:05).

But the program seems to indicate that Vishneva/Lopatkina are coming to Washington, because "The Swan" is a favorite for them. I've seen both of them do it. "Dying is an art, like everything else I do it exceptionally well" applies to their "Dying Swans," as both of them milk curtain calls while posing "dead" for like 10-15 min ...

I don't get why they're not bringing Sylvia or Marguerite and Armand. Those were two big-deal premieres in St. Petersburg this year and you'd think they'd want to take it abroad.

Robert Gottlieb's posted his review: http://observer.com/2014/07/from-russia-with-love-and-spectacle-the-bolshoi-arrives-at-lincoln-center/

I read that Lydia Ivanova was the first dancer to do this kind of jump.

Ok as I said before, and I'll say it again: everyone is free to self-promote. Instagrams, Facebooks, Twitter handles are often little more than self-promotion tools for many celebrities. The ultimate test is whether anyone buys into the self-promotion. I think Misty is an attractive dancer who is obviously proud of her body and maybe has a healthy self-regard. She's using the tools she has to promote her own career. ABT's mismanagement of talent is an altogether separate issue and we shouldn't blame Misty for promoting herself when the larger issue is that Kevin McKenzie repeatedly wastes a lot of talent. I don't find Misty's method of self-promotion any worse than what I've seen from other dancers. As I said, I recently read an interview with a Russian ballerina I greatly admired where she went on and on about her devoutness to the Russian Orthodox Church. Considering the harsh stances the Russian Orthodox Church has taken against various religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities in Russia, I found the comments rather distasteful/insensitive and also a rather obvious attempt at pandering. But I know enough people in Russia to know that celebrities often feel obligated to express their loyalty to the Church and to Putin. They've replaced the Communist Party. So I can't blame her. But it did make me disappointed.