BLalo

Honestly I think the most shocking thing is that Gorak actually gets three principal performances...! 

Also to point out to everyone who believes matinee casting to be a slap in the face: Teuscher, Stearns, Shevchenko, Cornejo, Copeland, Murphy, Whiteside, Boylston and Simkin are all scheduled for at least one matinee. 

29 minutes ago, canbelto said:

Alessandra Ferri and Natalia Makarova have been brought back to coach certain roles, and for Harlequinade Eddie Villela was also brought to coach. The dancers are also free to go outside for coaching, which wasn't the case at NYCB when Peter Martins was there. Not saying the coaching situation is ideal at ABT but it's different than the Martins era at NYCB.

Not to mention Amanda McKerrow and John Gardner just coached ABT in Jardin aux Lilas for Vail and have just been coaching Some Assembly Required. 

1 hour ago, FauxPas said:

Lopez was only a soloist at ABT and not a great one.  

A great dancer does not automatically equal a great coach / teacher / director / stager / repetiteur / regisseur / choreographer / anything else.

Having experience as a dancer does not equip you for being a good coach which encompasses so much more than just “passing along things people have told me”. Not only is it having knowledge (and knowledge isn’t solely passed along from principal to principal), but it also means having a good eye and having a strong understanding of how to psychologically and emotionally get the best out of the dancer you are working with. 

Coaches don’t turn dancers into copies of themselves. 

Dying to hear about the new Tharp... 

Tharp-Kamali-Tipton dream team!

27 minutes ago, nanushka said:

Maybe just by me! (And Adrian, it would seem.) Thanks for the link.

I guess in my experience such names are common enough that I just wouldn't ever think to comment on them in the way Macaulay has, then.

I don’t think he was making any kind of comment. He finds AD-W’s name difficult to pronounce so instead he calls him Double-Barreled, probably because he thinks it’s witty because his surname is literally a double-barreled surname. 

20 minutes ago, nanushka said:

This is an idiom you’ve heard before?

Yes. I didn’t think it was unknown. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-barrelled_name

Honestly I don’t think “double-barreled” was meant as any kind of description for AD-W at all, I think “double-barreled” is just a term for that type of surname.

For example Jackson-Barrett is double-barreled surname. 

30 minutes ago, On Pointe said:

Because four out of five Broadway productions do not succeed. 

 

I'm speaking from a business point of view.  Like many a show before it,  the critics and a large segment of the public may consider it an artistic triumph,  but with its large cast,  it may be unsustainable over the long run.

If the critics and a “large segment of the public” consider it a triumph, is the show then not a success? Is longevity the only factor in determining something’s success? 

If that was the case, only a handful of shows would truly be successful. 

I agree, Cobweb. I also like the pleated skirts and I am also looking forward to the prologue and apotheosis which I feel add so much interest to the ballet. 

I’ve always found Apollo to be reliant on a group of intriguing individuals, rather than its success being the product of this company or that.

1 hour ago, Kathleen O'Connell said:

I tried that thought experiment myself. Then I went and watched some videos. I think there may be just too much recognizable Japonaiserie in the movement vocabulary to keep it from seeming like "a work that comments on a culture by someone who isn't a part of that culture," as On Pointe so aptly put it, even reduced to leotards without the wigs, costumes, and sets. (And the more I look at it, the cheesier it seems.)

Anyway, here are two clips to compare / contrast. The first is of Miami City Ballet with costumes and sets. The second is a clip from a Sarasota Ballet rehearsal in practice clothes with no sets. The clips are from different sections of the ballet, but some of the motifs from the first are repeated in the second. Note that the ballerina in the Sarasota clip is Asian. (I don't know the Sarasota dancers well enough to know for sure who she is - perhaps Ryoko Sadoshima, who was born in Japan.)

 

Definitely looks to me like something that should remain firmly in the past.

24 minutes ago, Kathleen O'Connell said:

Not every work by a genius is a work of genius. I think we have enough Balanchine to let Bugaku go.

Hear hear! 

9 hours ago, BalanchineFan said:

There is an argument to be made for retiring ballets once the original cast is gone.

Agreed. Sometimes it’s just not the same ballet without the right dancer chosen by the choreographer. 

1 hour ago, Marta said:

Certainly they have merit but what I also meant was being "right" for the roles rather than being cast solely on the basis of race. 

I feel it’s a pretty complex issue, but if a role has been designated a specific race (Madame Butterfly, Othello...) then that role should be given to a person of that race, rather than a white person masquerading as a person of that race. 

If you don’t have the dancers for a piece of repertoire, don’t programme that rep. 

1 minute ago, Balletwannabe said:

I wonder how Asian dancers feel about this... I'm genuinely curious if they enjoy, or loathe being cast specifically because of their race.  The one Asian dancer at the largest company in my local area is ALWAYS cast in Chinese in Nutcracker.  She will never even be considered for anything else, because, well...would it insult her if they cast a white dancer?  I have no idea.  

Definitely a big difference between casting an Asian dancer in an Asian role and casting Asian dancers only in Asian roles...

3 hours ago, cobweb said:

I would go rather in the direction of the Kammermusik corps guys not getting a front of curtain bow, to make it consistent with most other pieces. Front of curtain bows are for the principals. MHO. 

It’s my guess that this part is considered particularly vital and/or difficult which is why it merits a front-of-curtain bow. It is certainly out of the ordinary to have the corps now in front of the curtain. 

I don’t really see it as a problem. 

4 hours ago, fondoffouettes said:

Right, and the costumes just don't pop enough against the blue cyclorama; this is especially problematic with the men's dark blue tights. 

Very true. I think these designs show us why every other ballet costume has lighter tights than the top. 

46 minutes ago, nanushka said:

As for the Ballet Imperial costumes: I'll need to take another look next week, but my initial impression when they debuted was that the women's were totally off balance: light fluid skirts below valkyrie-weight bejeweled breastplates. The tops would have looked better with tutus, I think — and I'd love to see the piece in those again. And yeah, the men's vests looked silly.

Yeah the new costumes don’t work for me. It’s a beautiful color palette, but the wrong color palette for this ballet and almost nothing to distinguish the principals from the corps. 

Curious if anyone saw CoLab at Kaatsbaan this past weekend or if anyone is planning on seeing them next weekend at MMAC? I’m unable to go but would love to hear any reports.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, CoLab is directed by Lauren Post of ABT - her summer project. I believe they started last year. This year I think they had three new works by three female choreographers including Gemma Bond so I’d love to know how that went.

29 minutes ago, FauxPas said:

Sorry, but I distinctly remember Veronika Part doing a different variation the second time I saw her the Ratmansky production - but it was a later year.  It had unsupported pirouettes which the Marie Petipa II variation did not have.

I suppose you can ask Mr Ratmansky yourself on his FB page (he seems very open to answering questions) but only two notated versions of the Lilac Fairy Variation exist. 

I believe Part initially performed the variation currently performed by all other Lilac Fairies and at some point switched to the Marie Petipa variation. 

3 hours ago, FauxPas said:

@California Ratmansky has altered and revised this "Beauty" every season it has been revived.  The first year Part as the Lilac Fairy did a solo variation in the prologue that the Harvard collection Sergeyeff notations said was performed by Marie Petipa II from the 1890 premiere - it was mainly posing and minimal pointe work.  (the beauteous Marie Petipa II was mainly a character dancer who according to Ekaterina Vazem had not gone through the full training program at the Imperial Ballet School.)  Other ballerinas did a Lilac variation from the Sergeyeff notes credited to Lyubov Egorova that was more demanding.  Part did a different variation the next year when she returned as Lilac.  Also the revival season had new character dances in the Act III Wedding Scene that Bronislava Nijinska had devised for the Diaghilev production in London - one was a Russian Dance for the Five Ivans that used music from "The Nutcracker”

Yes, Ratmansky has made adjustments every time SB was presented but just to clarify - Part did the same Marie Petipa variation every time she performed. There have only been two versions of the Lilac Fairy variation in this production and Part was the only one who performed the Marie Petipa one. 

Three Ivans and Mandarin / Porcelain Princesses Dance was included ONLY for ABT’s presentation of “Aurora’s Wedding” in 2017 in place of Cinderella and Hop O’ My Thumb. These numbers were not performed as part of the full SB. 

Thank goodness for Daniil who injected some much-needed energy into last night’s performance. 

Skylar Brandt’s performance was pristine - practically perfect. 

11 hours ago, Fleurfairy said:

On Sarah Lane’s Instagram story, she posted a shot of counts for the Jane Eyre “wedding scene”. What part could she be playing at the wedding? I can only imagine some sort of corps part since none of the other major female characters in the book were at Jane’s wedding. 

As we know from other book-to-ballets, an epic book would require the condensing of many events into fewer, larger scenes and it is possible that Adele, Mrs Fairfax, Grace, Bertha, Blanche, among others appear at the wedding. We also have no idea at this point the choreographic weight the choreographer has prescribed to anyone in the novel. 

It seems quite strange to assume that a principal could only be doing a corps role based on the little information we have about the ballet. 

25 minutes ago, abatt said:

This makes the point that Aurora is being courted by the regal heads of state from around the world.   Referring to them as four suitors does not convey their high statures.

Yet in the program they are referred to as “Suitors” and then subsequently “Asia”, “Africa” etc. Nothing to indicate as in other productions that they are princes or have “high stature”. 

Regardless, the point I was trying to make was that their costumes are fairly nondescript and choreographically there is no difference between any of them (most royal Ballet productions have the French Prince do most of the “extra” partner work as Aurora would already probably be familiar with him - but at City Ballet they all take turns doing the extra stuff). They could easily be referred to as “Four Princes” (to convey their high stature).

This, combined with the news that ABT’s presence at the Met is being diminished would indicate to me that ABT may be in a pretty precarious position. I would also assume that this will be quite damaging for ABT’s brand. Do prestigious ballet companies perform on cruise ships? 

Is the Death Knell tolling? 

http://www.seatrade-cruise.com/news/news-headlines/celebrity-cruises-partnership-is-bringing-american-ballet-theatre-to-sea.html