canbelto

Wow, things do move quickly. Good luck to Natasha and Ivan, I guess.

One thing I'm surprised they're not considering is that while the Bolshoi might pay less. and be a bit more rigid in terms of dancing schedules, they get a lot of exposure because the Bolshoi is looked upon as a cultural center in a way the Mikh is not. The Bolshoi's cinema-casts in HD are broadcast across the world, and both Osipova and Vasiliev have been featured in the latest Bolshoi DVD releases. They tour a lot internationally. It's doubtful O&V will get the same opportunities at the Mikh.

A new clip:

I saw the HD and was overall kind of disappointed in the ballet. Act One I found very tedious, and there was a mass exodus of people at the first intermission. I say a third of the theater left. Too bad because Act Two had much more substantial choreography. Alexandrova was very disappointing though -- not at all lyrical. The pas de six was a letdown.

When I watched this the first thing I thought was how much this resembled Odette's mime of her mother's tears. Sniffle.

I attended last night's performance as well. I thought Lopatkina was a better Carmen than Vishneva, partly because so much of the ballet is really just showing off how great a ballerina's legs look, and Lopatkina has a better body line than Vishneva. Lopatkina's legs are mile-long and she enhanced this look by dancing without tights. Vishneva, much more petite, with a more compact frame, looked less comfortable in the endlessly repeated move of having Carmen kick up her legs to Don Jose's shoulders and then being dragged across the stage. The elegant Yevgany Ivanchenko looked mortified both nights preening and prancing as the Toreador, Last night's Symphony in C was also stronger. Tereshkina was a huge improvement over Somova in the first movement. I also liked Kondaurova's second movement better -- it wasn't taken at such a funereal pace as Lopatkina, and the overall approach was softer and I thought more musical, although Lopatkina was good too. Vladimir Shklyarov was the highlight of the piece -- he really *does* have the non-stop energy for Balanchine, and incredible elevation. I thought he and Obraztsova weren't really coordinated in the third movement though -- she seemed unable to keep up with him. The fourth movement still had some synchronization problems between the corps de ballet and the orchestra, although less than last night. Still, a great end to what was a very successful week for the Mariinsky.

I wouldn't call Carmen trash so much as just a really bad ballet. Familiarity with the opera makes it hard for me to appreciate this kind of tripe. I thought Symphony in C had its moments (the second and third movement) but overall it lacked the snap and rigor that this ballet should have. The first and fourth movements were very off. The Mariinsky dancers seemed either ahead or behind the music, never on the beat. Lopatkina was excellent in the second movement though, and even did the knee-grazing penchee. Obraztsova and Shklyarov were also excellent in the third movement, both of them are great allegro dancers.

My favorite thing about LHH was that it allowed the Mariinsky to showcase it's great roster of character and demi-charactere dancers that I feel are often left off a tour or relegated to one variation in Swan Lake. LHH has so many opportunities for these types of dancers to shine. Vasily Tkachenko or Andrei Ivanov aren't the "faces" of the Mariinsky but they were absolutely wonderful and I'll remember the energy and humor they brought to the performance for a long time.

I bought the DVD and watched it last night. I was surprised at some of the musical rearrangements in Les Sylphides. Always a pleasure to see Beriosova and Markova in anything. The Nerina/Fadeyechev Giselle was the real surprise. Myrtha's part is butchered, but most of Giselle's dances are intact, which is more than I can say of the famous 1956 Czinner film with Ulanova. Nerina is a very strong dancer with great technique -- secure balances, lightning fast turns, just lacking that last bit of ethereal mystery. Biggest surprise is Fadeyechev -- dumpy toupee and incomplete turnout aside, his technique would also hold up today. Before Mikhail Baryshnikov wowed people with the traveling diagonal brises Fadeyechev was adding a turn in the air in the middle of the brises. I was also surprised to see the Soviet-style overhead lifts.

Anonymous sources are part of academic studies. All clinical trials are anonymous, in fact, any study that features the medical statuses of subjects must be anonymous because of the issues of medical privacy. In this study it seems as if there was an investigation that would concern the medical status of several of the dancers, so therefore, the dancers in question would have to remain anonymous. That shouldn't be a reason to dismiss the claims of the dancers.

\ Doing lines of coke on their own time is one thing. That I agree is a dancer's business and while I don't think it's the healthiest choice, whatever. The thing that's being alleged is another kettle of fish entirely. It's the Big Boss creating a hostile work environment. It's on the level with sexual harassment -- it's one thing, for instance, to have a dancer make the personal choice to have intimate relations with the ballet master, it's another for the ballet master to threaten the dancer with "put out or get out", to phrase it crudely. I can't believe you don't see the difference here -- what's being alleged is that Hubbe is pressuring dancers to snort coke as an obvious power trip.

Nikolaj Hubbe is a big boy, and very capable, I'm sure, of handling allegations, whether they're true or not. If they're not, then he should have nothing to hide. If they are, then it needs to be brought to light, because it would not be a healthy work environment for anyone, Hubbe included. Respect/veneration for any institution shouldn't make people blind to the potential dark side of anyone. Leonid and SimonG seem to think that there shouldn't even be an investigation about this matter. That's a point of view I don't really get. If dancers in any company, anonymous or not, are complaining about work conditions, don't you think that whether it's the Queen of England or a teacher in a public school, that these complaints should be investigated to see whether there's validity or not? There are no sacred cows in life. Just to point out a parallel in real life, a couple years ago a student accused me of stalking her through social media. It was completely false, I didn't even know the student in question, but turns out the student had created a ghost account under my name. If it weren't for an investigation, people would have continued to believe her. As a result of the investigation that was made into the matter, this deeply troubled young lady was able to get the help she needed and my name was cleared.

I went to the Wednesday matinee performance and thought the whole ballet was just so charming. Very funny. I loved how Ratmansky parodied the classical variations in the final pas de deux. I fell instantly in love with Vladimir Shklyarov as Ivan the Fool. So good-looking, such a beautiful elegant way of dancing. And funny too. Not just ballet-funny, but laugh out loud funny. I was a little disappointed with Obraztsova's Tsar Maiden. It's my first time ever seeing her live, after having heard so much about her. She was very sweet and a doll, but people who had seen Tereshkina the night before told me Tereshkina made the Tsar Maiden much more of a goofy tomboy, which is how I think the choreography is supposed to look. I thought Obraztsova did too much of the ingenue smiling. People also told me that Tereshkina was much stronger in the variations. I thought the character dancers like Vasily Tkachenko (Little Humpbacked Horse) and Andrei Ivanov (Tsar) absolutely made the afternoon, they were so funny and had such great timing. The sets were disappointing, as were some of the costumes. I liked Ivan's soccer shorts and the Tsar's red Santa-like pajamas but thought the gypsy t-shirts were too much.

I saw the 3-D and for the first 15 minutes it was completely greenish, dark, and blurry. Someone complained to the theater manager and it was fixed. But there was still this weird, blurry look much of the time. The camera-work was horrific, often cutting dancers off at the feet or knees, or worse, top of the face. Osipova's Giselle was as I remembered it live, I was really unimpressed with Sarafanov. Completely emotionally blank. Great technique, but just nothing emotionally.

Making employees do lines of coke doesn't seem that out of the blue. If it actually happened, it'd be a very cruel power trip, and I've known first-hand of fashion designers doing the same or very similar to models.

Um ... remember when no one could believe Watergate? If this study was an academic study, all findings would have to be from anonymous sources, as all subjects are anonymous in such studies. So the four dancers you're so angry at might not have had a choice but to speak on the condition of anonymity. Besides, if privacy is valued, why do they have to endanger their jobs and reputations? Making anonymous whistleblowing complaints is fine, there's nothing inherently immoral about that. And I'll go out on a limb and say that if a boss has alienated a lot of his employees, this kind of thing is natural, and inevitable, and that's the boss's fault. Managers aren't supposed to be divisive or alienating to the point where people are taking their complaints to the press, and if they are, then it's a failure of management. Failure of management style, and failure of controlling morale within a company. Effective leaders know how to keep internal problems internal. I would say that's true whether the person is Hubbe or the Queen of Denmark or any CEO of any large corporation.

Well I'm American, and I find jacking up the price of a ticket that you're trying to sell tacky. I don't ever do it and that has nothing to do with culture, but personal values.

I've tried to sell a ticket in front of the Met (I always give a discount) and have been spirited away by police, even threatened to be arrested by some police. I usually then walk to Avery Fischer Hall to complete the transaction. So I find this story somewhat unbelievable, that you were holding a mini-auction. And even then, why the gratuitous comments about Russians? Many of them have been in the U.S. for many years and it's a stretch to think that they're all stuck in this "communist" mentality.

Well ... to play devil's advocate here I'd say that the RDB is a dance company who has to put on presentable performances of revered ballets, and that cocaine has well known health effects that impede a dancer's ability to perform at the highest level. Tragic cases in point would be Gelsey Kirkland and Patrick Bissell. So if a whole company is snorting then eventually the quality of the performances will go down. So the public in that sense does have the right to know.

More videos are popping up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tx1UESLu7Y&feature=feedu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bujZyhmH7MY&feature=related

How about "promising debut"? "Polished and professional"? "Pleasing"? Also, every star of a certain age becomes "beloved."

I think in dance, "charming" is the one biggest overused cliche, especially to describe a not-spectacular but not-bad performance. "Long-limbed" is another one. "Beautiful feet." "Brittle." "Expressive."

I find the husband's behavior in that article to be very creepy.

I feel as if the ABT has more of a problem with its female principals, as many have noted. I feel as if Paloma Herrera and Irina Dvorovenko at this point just "get the job done" and no more. Michele Wiles apparently left, but she was really stalled artistically. Julie Kent is aging and limited in what she can dance. Xiomara Reyes and Veronika Part are both limited by height and emploi in different ways. Gillian Murphy can't dance every night. It's nice to have Alina Cojocaru, Natalia Osipova, Diana Vishneva, and Polina Semionova guest but they have major commitments in other companies. Vishneva seems to dance less at the ABT every season and that's a shame. I'm with nyususan in that I don't think Sarah Lane, Maria Riccetto, and Stella Abrera are real solutions either. Abrera isn't young, and she's had a whole bunch of injuries. Lane and Riccetto I've seen make almost novice mistakes in the middle of variations this season. I think there's more hope with Hee Seo, Isabella Boylston and Simone Messmer.

I hated the pointe shoe Act 3 dances, but what I hated more was the cutting of the apotheosis in Act 4 (some of Tchaikovsky's greatest music) and other musical arrangements/cuts that disfigured the ballet completely, the weird non-entrance of Odette/the swans in the lakeside scene, and the constant presence of the hammy Evil Genius that robbed the scenes between Odette/Siegfried of all romance. This is a Swan Lake with no lake, no love, no poetry. I can't believe that it's such a popular production in Russia.