canbelto

Corella is moving the company away from being a Balanchine satellite company and more of a mini-ABT. Lots of emphasis on the classics -- new productions of Don Quixote, Sleeping Beauty, Le Corsaire and Swan Lake. In corporate speak Nichols was "no longer a good fit for the company."

It's this mini-documentary about her. She says flat out that she leads a very solitary life and has few friends.

Don Draper would say "We're definitely not in Sterling Cooper" anymore.

Dancing is a pretty small world. And these people spend more time together than many married couples do in a lifetime. I think most dancers at least make an effort to get along with their colleagues. They only have to see them 10-11 hours every day ...

Hmm I've also seen working dresses with Peter and while I did notice the touchiness I also noticed that the women in general are very blase about it. Like they don't even seem to notice him. They go about their business as if he weren't there. So ... it might be a coping mechanism. Or it might be that the dance world is very touchy feely and the norms about personal space don't apply as much to dance. I have noticed in general that dancers are often very touchy with each other. I think that there's a difference between harassment and being a "ladies man." One is illegal, the other is simply immoral.

Kyra Nichols is now the head faculty at University Indiana - Bloomington. I think she got the position when Violette passed away. Lourdes Lopez seems to have a really good thing going in Miami and not sure she'd want to jump ship to run such a behemoth institution. Same for Peter Boal.

Ratmansky said that his experience managing the Bolshoi made him dislike the politics/administrative side of ballet, and made him want to focus on choreography.

I'm just shocked that spending time with your sister is considered a breach of work ethic.

Suspended indefinitely from all future performances. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/03/arts/music/james-levine-met-opera.html?action=Click&contentCollection=BreakingNews&contentID=66172272&pgtype=Multimedia

I did a double-header yesterday. Reichlen/Janzen/Lecrone in the afternoon and Mearns/J. Angle/Peck in the evening. I thought Tess Reichlen was amazing as the SPF. So beautiful and gracious. Maybe my favorite SPF apart from Sterling Hyltin. Janzen's solo needs a bit of work, and Lecrone's Dewdrop simply didn't have the jumps and freedom of movement to make an impact. In the evening the situation was reversed. Tiler Peck absolutely danced up a storm as Dewdrop, but I wasn't as taken with Sara Mearns and Jared Angle as the Sugarplum Fairy and Cavalier. Don't think Mearns has the delicacy and lightness to make this work for her.

Gomes also seems to be moving more and more into choreography.

I think Angel's eye is on the prize which is the successor to Kevin McKenzie. He wants to build up enough of a fanbase in NYC so if he takes over ABT he can bring over some PABallet dancers who NY audiences are familiar with.

And one of the things I love about going to Nut performances is hearing little kids insistently ask their parents when a beloved moment is coming up. One girl once said "but where are the candy canes? I want to see the candy canes!" the entire performance and shrieked in delight when they finally came on. Also heard love for the "big lady" and also "the couple in green." I think Balanchine's Nut is great because it engenders this kind of love in kids. Of all the Nuts I've ever seen this is still the most kid-friendly Nutcracker.

No if anything many people only show up for the second act because that's where most of the dancing occurs. And plenty of children are in the second act (the Angels, the Candy Canes, the Polichinelles) so there's just as many parents in the second act.

I attended the performance on Nov. 27. Sterling Hyltin and Andy Veyette were a wonderful SPF and Cavalier, Megan LeCrone was rather disappointing as Dewdrop, and Emily Kikta's Coffee was FINALLY the jolt of caffeine this variation needed after so many middling performances I've seen in recent years. She was sensuous and sexy and even did the harder bent leg pirouettes in the finale rather than the renverses. Her rather curvy body was a definite boost as was her height -- she most resembled Gloria Govrin. ETA: I actually have four more performances. Yeah, I know.

Well if finances are as dire as that report suggest then one can surmise that Angel is betting that NY'ers have deeper pockets?

Uh, not really trying to pry here, but why the mention of Vaziev and Gergiev's ethnicity?

Well it's possible that Odette/Odile just isn't one of Lane's better roles. This isn't a knock on her -- many petite ballerinas have struggled making their mark on this role. One thing about Lane's Odile when I watched her live (that I also noticed in this video) was despite a surfeit of black swan eye makeup she just didn't look very predatory. This is not considering the fouettes at all. But she was very outward-facing, very smiley, and didn't exude any siren appeal. I think her Giselle, Aurora, Juliet (when will that happen????), Colombine, Kitri, Nikya, Swanilda etc will all be better.

You don't have to be a human gyroscope to make those fouettes dazzling. For instance Natalia Makarova was thought to be a weak turner, but she cleverly accelerates her fouettes to hide the fact that they started off rather slow and listless and she also is a master of conveying triumphant body language:

I just came back from today's evening performance. Ashly Isaacs was out as Dewdrop -- hope everything is ok. Megan LeCrone was a rather constricted, tense Dewdrop. She got through the steps but the buoyant jumps, the reckless balances and the sense of fun weren't there the way they are when, say, Ashley Bouder or Tiler Peck dance the role. I loved Sterling Hyltin and Andie Veyette as the SPF and Cavalier. But the discovery of the day was Emily Kikta in Coffee. I've felt for a long time that the Coffee variation has gotten rather boring and stale, but Kikta really brought the sensuality back to this role. Her height and curves really help. And in the finale she's the first Coffee in a long time to really do those bent leg pirouettes. To see what I'm talking about go to 1:22:23 of this video:

I've uploaded a concert of Hvorostovsky and Jonas Kaufmann on my YT channel:

I think it's the expression on her face and upper body language: her face and shoulders are tense and she looks like she's powering through to the end so it doesn't look like a triumphant moment of victory for Odile. I think part of what makes the 32 fouettes so difficult in Swan Lake is that they have to be done with a sort of predatory arrogance. Odile is going in for the kill. But for many ballerinas who aren't natural human gyroscopes all you see on their faces is lactic acid buildup. Maybe I'm betraying my love for sports but I always think Odile's fouettes should be done with the expression Steph Curry has when he hits another three-pointer.

I saw Once On This Island the other night: http://poisonivywalloftext.blogspot.com/2017/11/once-on-this-island-rip-dmitri.html

I have. She has the power for the role and then some, but when I saw her last year she needed a lot of refinement. Was sort of sloppy.

In 2015 I saw him in one of his three Il Trovatore performances at the Met. During the curtain calls the orchestra members threw flowers at him and Anna Netrebko wept openly. It was a wonderful moment but when I saw how the other singers were crying I knew that the diagnosis had to be very serious. I wasn't wrong.