Drew

I hope you are right, but I have decidedly mixed feelings about two of the best American ballet dancers--which is to say, two of the best ballet dancers in the world--taking off a year (or even a little less) to do Broadway. Peck and Fairchild are a big part of NYCB's current "renaissance" with fans and critics (I say "renaissance" because even Martins' naysayers have been taking note of how well the company is dancing) and ballet careers are short and unpredictable. Nor am I persuaded Broadway is the best way for them to develop as ballet dancers, even though they will presumably learn a lot from these projects. Obviously, they want to do the shows and I wish them all success etc.. I may even try to see at least one (though with limited budget for ballet trips to NY, I usually prioritize...well, ballet), but I have very mixed feelings about seeing Robert Fairchild and Tiler Peck depart for Broadway even temporarily.

This was the only ballet I saw Fonteyn and Nureyev dance together. I have only fragmentary, though precious, memories, but I decidedly remember being quite surprised when I realized it was being repeatedly revived at the Royal and elsewhere. Though it sounds cruel to say so, I had at first thought that perhaps it was due to its being seen as a quality vehicle for 'aging' star ballerinas, but in fact it is also danced by ballerinas at the height of their technical prowess. (For the Mariinsky, Tereshkina danced it in St. Petersburg, though not on this London tour.) That said, I must admit that if I had the chance to see it again, I would...

On the ROH website she is currently scheduled to dance Swan Lake Feb 21st, March 13th, and March 17th. Those performances have not yet gone on sale.

Thank you Amour and Meunier fan for your reports about the Balanchine evening (and to everyone writing about Mariinsky performances in London). Though she isn't my Balanchine-ideal as she is my Ivanov-ideal, still...I confess I would give much to see Lopatkina dance with a donkey-headed Bottom. In my mind's eye she is always "a most rare vision."

The Library of Congress has a number of major dance/theater archives including that of Oliver Smith--Lucia Chase's longtime collaborator, someone I have read described as a co-founder of ABT, though I don't think that's exactly right. And it hardly needs to be said that it is one of the world's great/important libraries. I would have no problem if ABT had decided to donate to the NYPL, but it seems to me entirely appropriate to have the collection housed in D.C., at what is the 'national' library. Moreover, having this kind of caring about dance in D.C. -- at a library that is indeed NOT exclusively about the performing arts, but about the national (and world) heritage of knowledge -- along with the exhibit etc. can only be a good thing in terms of contributing to the idea that the arts are important to the United States -- that we should have, for example, a National Endowment for the Arts -- and that they should be important to policy makers. (I realize it may only make a marginal difference, but still...I much prefer a Library of Congress that cares about these things and features them publically than one that doesn't.) Any serious ballet researcher may find that their researches take them all over the world even if they are working on ABT or NYCB. That's a given with archival work today. I work at an American university that has such an important collection of Irish literature materials that scholars living in Ireland regularly come over here to work at our archives. (Digitalization and coming trends in how things are housed/made available to public over the internet will in a few decades and despite institutional inertia ultimately make the particular site of collections less important than it is now. I say "internet" but who knows what new technologies will bring.)

Hear, hear...I do think the experience of video--and easily replayed video as is now available on youtube--is very different from the experience of theatrical performances and increases the tendency to make this kind of comparison. Of course, one can compare details based on live theater going as well, but video has really heightened the tendency and I think sometimes gets in the way of the big picture, which is the real picture, of classical ballet. (I don't think there is much disagreement about that even among people who love studying videos of performance.) Goodness knows I would never judge a Swan Lake on whether the ballerina did double or single fouettes in Act III, though I might certainly enjoy seeing doubles or other variants. (Now the dust has settled on the Bolshoi's trip to NY I realize one of the most vivid and lasting memories I carry is of Krysanova's fouettes which began with doubles (I think) and had 'Bolshoi' complications of arms and leg that were new to me and concluded with a speed that I have probably never seen -- maybe Semenyaka and maybe, too, at least once Kirkland in a different ballet, but maybe not -- though sacrificing leg height to achieve it. The sequence was thoroughly dazzling and greeted by a gigantic ROAR from the audience that seemed exactly right at that moment. But still, I don't think Krysanova gave what I would call a great performance as Odette-Odile.) However, I did think it was unfair of one of the British critics to compare ENB debuts in Coppelia to the Stepanova/Parish performance of Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House. Coppelia is a classic and Swanilda a major role and I think I understand the point that was being made, but even allowing for differences of genre etc., Swan Lake is just a far higher mountain for a dancer to climb, for the ballerina especially. I don't think I have ever seen a young dancer just beginning to dance Odette-Odile that I thought genuinely mastered the role--including Smirnova whom I liked very much. I also think Stepanova and Parish were under a lot of extraordinary pressure, pressure of different kinds, but still pressure; it can't be an "excuse"--no-one dancing principal parts at the Mariinsky should need excuses--but it's a reality. Of course, those who unequivocally admired their performances feel they rose above that pressure, which is great, but there is obviously no consensus. I can at least say from everything I have seen of Stepanova on video, including parts of her second Swan Lake performance in Petersburg--and bare glimpses of her in tertiary parts that I have seen live such as the Spanish dance in Swan Lake--that I would be happy to have the chance to see her dance Odette-Odile in the theater. I don't need to believe that she is already the peer or superior of Lopatkina to believe that she is worth seeing. My profound admiration of Lopatkina's Swan Queen is on record on this website...ad nauseam I suppose. Stepanova will be dancing Firebird later in the tour -- a role she has danced more often I think -- and it will be interesting to see how that performance is received across the spectrum. I hope it's a huge success!

My mother took me, along with my best friend from nursery school, to see a film of the Kirov dancing Sleeping Beauty. I was completely smitten...

I like Kirkland's, but for me, the P E R F E C T version ever being filmed is Fracci's. Everything is there. The highly technical accomplishment, the wonderful, but restrained port de bras-(not a fan of the all-over-the-place/twiggy arms/hands/wrists so in vogue today)-the turn of the century choreographic heritage, the never restrained face, even during the Spessivtzeva's diagonal, the so necessary attention to her surroundings and to Loys/Bruhn-(hate productions where he's not present during the pas). I mean...PERFECTION with capital letters. Edited to add: I realize we're getting off Part's topic. Sorry about that... Love Fracci's as well, but she has ways of ever so slightly modifying the 'finishes' of turns or coming off point from arabesque that make it easier to cover or elide or just plain avoid bobbles. Or so it seems to me (I'm not a technical expert). She doesn't bobble coming out of her first double pirouette, for example, but she does sort of come down in fourth position rather than fifth, and when she comes down from the opening arabesques she doesn't sink into arabesque penche. I actually applaud her intellegent approach and in terms of characterization -- wow! I also think this kind of "youtube" analysis doesn't exactly correspond to what happens in the theater where one would be watching the overall flow of dancing/interpretive quality at least as much as parsing a particular landing or finish. At least with an artist of Fracci's calaber one would. On video, I found Part's atypical Giselle 'look' sort of refreshing; it's not as if Giselle is supposed to be an ordinary peasant girl. But I did think her solo was marked by fudging/bobbling here and there. Almost every performance of Giselle's big Act I solo that I have seen has been marked by that to some extent--exceptions in this century would include performances I have seen by Vishneva & Osipova--so I don't judge it too harshly. But it's not ideal...

Of all the ballerinas in the world, the one who I would definitely stay for every second she was on stage would be Lopatkina in SL. I've never had the privilege of seeing her do the role live, but the video I've seen of her doing SL is incredible. Sorry you had to leave. I saw Lopatkina dance Swan Lake just over a year ago and I am still not over the experience--one of the greatest performances I have ever seen; I would say the most purely beautiful if one allows for the emotional and spiritual power of that kind of really transcendent beauty. But I can add that the "1st act" (that is, the lake scene or what I think of as Act II) was definitely at the core of that particular performance... Sounds wonderful! Wish I could be in London this summer...

I would have liked to see this performance--thank you for the report.

I have found the reviews below (I expect there may be more coming); all of them focus a great deal on Parish --for understandable reasons, but... http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/theatre/swan-lakemariinsky-ballet-royal-opera-house--dance-review-9645751.html http://dancetabs.com/2014/08/mariinsky-ballet-swan-lake-stepanova-parish-cast-london/ http://www.theartsdesk.com/dance/swan-lake-mariinsky-ballet-royal-opera-house-0 Video of curtain calls in London and some footage of Stepanova at the stage door: My thanks to everyone for posting about Stepanova's performance ... I have seen her in small roles, but look forward to seeing her one day in a major role.

You have probably bought your tickets by now. I was not quite sure how to answer since you say you have decided not to go to first ring, but then at end of post say you are open to first ring. I enjoy orchestra seats more than upstairs seats myself, but am more or less the same height as you and I have given up on the orchestra in most theaters. I almost always sit in First Ring in Koch theater and like it very much: you are not that far away by any means, though I sometimes bring opera glasses to study details (facial expressions, costumes etc.) more carefully. Unfortunately I don't remember exactly where banking of seats begins in the orchestra. I used to sit in row L and found those seats spectacular, so I think O-P would not be too bad if they are still left. I realize you may already have decided and made your purchase! Fortunately, it sounds as if all of your choices are still good ones.

The other Queen of the Dryads at the Koch Theater performances was Anna Nikulina...I don't know if she was in Saratoga. Also a brunette--I think a little more on the petite side...

I loved this picture too...

The pictures are great--I especially liked the one copied above. Would enjoy hearing your impressions of performances too...

Vasiliev only spoke about how much he wanted to dance Ivan the Terrible in the interview I read--it was his new "dream" after having danced Spartacus; but he spoke about it in a way that implied the role was already getting his attention which is why I thought it may have been in the works. I may have been reading too much between the lines. I think he left the company not long after, so...uh...however much he wanted to dance it, it was not enough to keep him from departing the only company that would ever likely dance it.

At the Lincoln Center public interview/discussion in NY, Filin responded to a question about Ratmansky by saying that the company was planning a "Ratmansky Festival" ... I hope that comes through. (What I would really love to see in any such festival would be the first Russian staging of the Shostakovich trilogy.) Of "Filin's choices" I infer that Macaulay approves of Jewels....I do too but it's hardly a ballet that is ever going to inform the company's profile and it is danced all around the world by companies of all shapes and sizes, some better suited to it than the Bolshoi. I do think New York would have appreciated a chance to see a complete Smirnova-Chudin Diamonds. But, partly to my own surprise, I had been thinking Maillot was a good choice to create a new work for the Bolshoi -- though I would never expect Macaulay to think so and I may just have been snowed by the performance he seems to have gotten from Krysanova (known to me only in video excerpt and by social media report). Still, based on his Romeo and Juliet, which I have seen live, and some video clips I would say Maillot's work is theatrical in a way that loosely corresponds to Bolshoi traditions -- certainly it calls on the dancers for power and personality, and choreographically at least it's something new and fresh for them in a mostly neoclassical idiom. Since Maillot hasn't created a work for a company other than his own, Taming of the Shrew also allows the Bolshoi to claim a 'first.' I want to see it for sure anyway... Regarding Ivan the Terrible (also mentioned in Volcanohunter's post, though not copied above): Ivan Vasiliev was talking about dancing the lead in that ballet in interviews he gave in 2010 or earlier, so that production too may have been in the works before Filin took over the company. (And Burlaka brought Spartacus along with the wonderful Coppelia to London in 2010). Based on the libretto, I'm totally in favor of a cinema broadcast of Legend of Love with Zakharova as Mekhmene Banu and Smirnova as Shirin ... (Actually I saw the ballet on tour decades ago, but don't have very clear memories of it.)

Filin's Bolshoi was, in one respect, at least partially on view in this tour: a number of the dancers (including the ballerina most praised by Macaulay, Smirnova) are dancers either brought to Bolshoi by Filin or promoted by him. Based on dates in the program, this would include Chudin who danced at the Stanislavsky when Filin was Director there. Uh...if I were the critic doing the overview of the season (and, for good reason, I'm not), I would bring that up especially since Filin's casting choices and favoring of certain dancers has been publically raised as an issue. Smirnova, Chudin, Hallberg, and Krysanova (who, I believe, has been promoted by Filin though of course she was already a prominent Bolshoi dancer when he became director) were among the most impressive dancers on the tour--at least in my eyes. They may not represent the "old" Bolshoi guard--but I'm very glad I got to see them. No-one wants the Bolshoi to become RussianBalletTheater, but I hardly think it would be a better company without the dancers I named. It certainly would not have been a better company on this tour. (Kretova who has been described on this website as a Filin protege was also good--certainly, a lot better than I expected. I assume there are others, including others we saw, whose development/prominence or being in the Bolshoi at all can be credited to Filin's leadership, but want to restrict myself to dancers I more or less know can be so.)

Mondrian a painter of "random squares"? I don't pretend to any profound understanding of his art--and even when it comes to crudely knowing-what-I-like, Malevich is my "square" guy--but Mondrian was hardly working at random and I'm dubious about the idea that his artistic importance is a matter of "marketing and public perception." How the art market got so inflated is a different topic--or whether it's all over with canvas painting; for sure, I don't believe it's all over with classical ballet. To go back to a much earlier part of this discussion: Whether or not Grigorovich created a "masterpiece"--my own tastes were formed on far other lines--he certainly put his stamp on Soviet and thus, too, on Russian Ballet and has to be reckoned with--by the Bolshoi if not really by 'Westerners,' at least not in the same way. That's the company's very real problem on all kinds of levels.

Thank you for posting. I would be a hypocrite not to feel for Royal Ballet goers who bought tickets planning to see her in A Month in the Country, but I, too, am just delighted by this news...(No guarantees of course for any performance, but at least now I'm not only scheduled to see her with Sarafanov in Giselle, but I don't feel like a chump.)

It's one of the pieces that I remember, if only a little, from his shows (I saw two of them)--I found it rather a highlight.

I don't think those are the only options -- although new media have been and presumably will continue to be created (film, video, digital) whether they have led or will lead to masterpieces that last for centuries or, what also may be the case, a different idea of art that isn't as oriented around the "masterpiece" per se; and older forms will continue to be imitated in fairly conservative ways. But art, and in particular an art form like ballet, lives by building on its past and transforming it. (And ballet as a medium is nothing I would ever want to lose....) That's what Balanchine did with Petipa; it's what Ratmansky is doing (in my opinion) with a broad spectrum of Russian/Soviet, Danish, and other influences. The word you used for that kind of process was "evolving"--I'm relatively comfortable with the word "tradition;" ballet lives as part of an ongoing tradition. Without arts that are very much in touch with the past in that way, I don't think much would be left even for what you referred to as revolutionary art or for the invention of new media. Creativity is also a relation to the past even when it claims otherwise. The Renaissance was in part fueled by a rediscovery of past traditions (though scholars argue to what degree those traditions had ever been entirely lost). To return to the Bolshoi: I hesitate to defend Grigorovich--and when choosing what I could manage to see during my time in NY opted for Swan Lake and Don Quixote rather than Spartacus which I saw for my first and only time four years ago--but I think that it would not be to the Bolshoi's benefit simply to toss its heritage aside. That is one reason I was so fascinated by Ratmansky's interest in a recreated, but also revised Flames of Paris and notably in contrast to the version the Mikhailovsky is bringing which, as I understand, attempts to be more of a recreation only. Anyway, I'm happy to have Spartacus remain an arrow in the Bolshoi's quiver: there may come a time--maybe not so far in the future after all--when they no longer believe in it enough to pull it off and it will look dutiful, which is to say unwatchable because it's not a ballet that can live in the twilight of dutiful. Already, based on reports, it doesn't seem as if any of the NY casts were all that close to 100 percent successful...though they do sound to me as if they were plenty entertaining. I do also think the Grigorovich productions of 19th-century classics that I have any knowledge of pose serious problems for the company. The Mariinsky Swan Lake, which is certainly a Soviet Swan Lake (happy ending, jester), is much better. Kind of wonderful actually. But I tend to think of Swan Lake being to the Mariinsky what Don Quixote is to the Bolshoi... (Filin, in a public discussion with Anna Kisselgoff that was part of the Lincoln Center festival, spoke in fairly predictable ways about balancing old and new at the Bolshoi, but some fire entered his voice when talking about the dancers putting their personal stamp on things and not just imitating the dancers of the past--I believe he named Vasiliev, Maximova and one or two others of the so-called "golden" age--and also, though he was speaking more indirectly, the importance of having their own roles created on them.)

Maybe in the past, but now at Mariinsky there are loads of talented dancers being pushed aside and rotting in the corps or in character roles, which never happened in Mariinsky history, even Soviet or Tsarist times.. Quoting Helene's whole sentence might be helpful here: "There were never great talents at the Mariinsky, Paris Opera Ballet, or Bolshoi who were pushed aside because of who was running the company, or, during Soviet Times, to which generals the others were married?" If I understand correctly, then the rhetorical point of the question is that such things have happened in the past, though I also understand that you judge the situation at Mariinsky to be worse than in the past. I can't weigh in on that as an independent observer, though I too am puzzled by some recent casting decisions. (None of us can really form independent opinions of what talented young dancers may have been pushed aside in Tsarist times, or even early Soviet times, for other than artistic reasons. We know careers in the Soviet era were damaged for reasons that had nothing to do with artistry. Add choreographers, librettists, and composers to the mix and it's even worse.)

Thanks for reports (my Bolshoi season is over--I am back home); am looking forward to reading about Sat. cast as well.

Distressing indeed. By the by, protesters were standing on Broadway in front of Lincoln Center the past few days with signs indicating opposition to ANY performance of Death of Klinghoffer and carrying posters in language that was, in my opinion, inappropriate whatever one's opinion of the merits of their case. They were handing fliers to Bolshoi Ballet-goers ...