Drew

I'm not a Chicagoan but hope to attend some of these performances. If I had to choose between Kent-Gomez and Osipova-Hallberg, I would choose Osipova/Halberg--not just for her, but for him and for the partnership which they unfortunately do not have that many chances to develop now that she has left the Bolshoi. (For ABT's NY season, I believe they are scheduled to dance together twice.) In theory what Mussel says is correct, but whenever I have thought I had "plenty of opportunity" to see a great dancer, those opportunities ran into everything from geographical changes (mine or the dancer's), health problems (mine or the dancer's), and plain old bad luck (mine or the...well, you get the picture). I would add that there is no guarantee that Osipova or Hallberg will continue to appear with ABT on tour in Chicago: they are not company 'regulars.' In New York perhaps one might be more blasé... Basically, when I believe someone to be a great or historic dancer I take every chance I can to see them and I have never regretted that approach. I made a special trip to see what must have been one of Cojocaru's last Auroras before her neck injury--this, when she was still plenty young and I had no idea she would suffer anything like a "broken neck"--and although I have since seen her dance the role ravishingly twice, never with the same preternatural ease at every moment or unbelievably brilliant and classically 'finished' fish dives. (Of course, Kent, as you know, is a very lovely ballerina and presumably nearing retirement: I have not seen her Giselle, but remember reading raves on this board for a performance she danced in D.C. a number of years back. Gomez obviously is a huge favorite of pretty much everyone who sees him...so I don't think you will regret your decision either way.) Oh...another question for Chicagoans: The nearest hotels to the auditorium theater are either reportedly pretty bad (as in not clean) or involved in labor disputes or both, but there are some I would be happy to stay at that are listed an official 4-5 minute walk away (at my pace probably more like an 8-10 minute walk). Will that be reasonably safe for a woman alone at 10:30 pm on a weekend? Are there people around on the streets in that area etc.?

I never much liked the men's costumes -- and had mixed feelings about the tutus when I saw the ballet the first few times. However, I rather got used to the women's costumes and even came to like them. The men's costumes, I have also gotten used to...but never liked. I have mixed feelings about all black on male dancers and the rhinestone or sequins on the costumes seem sort of cheap looking and unappealing (to me at least). I guess I like their simple cut, but its value seems purely a negative one. Hard to believe the men's costumes could not be made more elegant even while being kept simple.

Diane--I suppose one might say in the spirit of Balanchine that there are no great-great-grandmothers in ballet. One only knows from the program exactly who the character is supposed to be. But someone with no access to a program but knowledge of other ballets or even just knowledge of fairy tale conventions, would still (I think) easily recognize the character as a kind of 'fairy godmother,' or 'Lilac Fairy' character through w/o being able to figure out the exact relation. The ballet does make it clear that she is not part of the everyday Kingdom and that only Irene can see her and there is even a very nice passage just after the escape from the goblins in which Irene has to 'teach' Curdie how to see her, when she helps lead them to safety. I thought the scene was fairly clear. (I have always thought that if I saw Swan Lake w/o knowing the story, I would not be able to make much sense out of key portions of it, and I have always been okay w. the need for some program notes and character/cast lists for most narrative ballets...)

I am very late writing about Tharp's The Princess and the Goblin which I saw almost three weeks ago--to make matters worse I have lost my program! This ballet is a joint production w. Royal Winnipeg Ballet, but received its premier in Atlanta. I found it enthralling. An affecting love letter to classical tradition that is also funny and just plain fun. I believe this may actually be my favorite Tharp ballet--though I will add that the "scale" might not translate to a larger, technically stronger company. It was perfect for the Atlanta ballet. (Tharp was clearly pushing the dancers, but not overloading them. Indeed I'm not at all sure that her consciousness of the company's strengths and weaknesses did not contribue to the ballet's success--these are wonderful dancers but Tharp could not just "WOW" the audience with daring-do physical prowess.) I gather the Royal Winnipeg Ballet will dance it in the Fall and Tharp may tweak it at that time. I highly recommend it and if the Atlanta Ballet revives the ballet in future would happily see it again. What follows below came out rather long--I think the ballet deserves the attention it has gotten and more. Brian Seibert wrote a mixed but overall good(ish) review in the Times, but I found myself in much stronger agreement with Susan Reiter's more positive review in Dance Magazine--she invoked Bournonville (A Folk Tale) as precedent and that seems to me quite right. At any rate, both ballets feature trolls! (Because of misplaced program, what I have written is from memory--hope no details are 'off.') The ballet is based on a Victorian children's novella that I have never read, but I gather is much loved and admired (I assume by many here at Ballet Talk too): neglected Princess Irene saves the children of kingdom who have been kidnapped by goblins while the adult, widowed King and his court fail to notice that their children have gone missing.. She does so with help of the spirit of her great-great grandmother (the ballet's Lilac Fairy figure) and a young non-aristocratic male friend Curdie...In the ballet version, the self-absorbed though not evil King/father is also king in the goblin world (or, at any rate, consort to its Queen) so the heroine's victory over the Goblins is allegorically a working out of a better relation to her father. Indeed the ballet's final scenes include all the formerly neglectful parents of the kingdom dancing joyfully with their children. It occurs to me that if I READ the above paragraph I would think the ballet sounded...well, sort of sappy and not my taste at all. In fact, except for Balanchine's Midsummer Night's Dream I can think of no choreography for children that I actually love--as opposed to tolerate or, at best, like well enough (the latter would be other Balanchine). But what makes Tharp's version of the story magical and almost perfect as a ballet--at least in my eyes--is that the reconciliation of generations is actually refracted through an allegory of ballet tradition. One generation passing on the glories of classical ballet to the next--from the ghosts of the past, that is, the great, great grandmother, to the children, but not leaving out the goblins (or, should one say, character dancers?). I really enjoyed the children here and my companion (even less of a fan of children on stage than I am-- refuses to see Nutcracker ever) -- well, he enjoyed them too. So, in this version of the story, the beauty of classical ballet conquers all--distant parents, evil goblins, lost children. It brings love, joy, and beauty to the Kingdom. Having the same dancer play the heroine's father AND the lead male of the goblin kingdom occasionally got confusing (my companion was somewhat puzzled), the shift from the one role to the other might have simply been better marked in the costume metamorphosis. The person sitting next to us said that the book makes more sense. At one point it looked as if the hero (Irene's friend Curdie) got so carried away enjoying himself dancing with the goblins that he got distracted from their mission of escape. But then that may have been Tharp's joke not my confusion. Early in the ballet, specifically Irene dances in soft ballet shoes, but then is taught by her spirit-great-great grandmother to dance on pointe. Once on pointe, Irene in turn wows the goblin world (where the goblin queen initially dances rather like a 'classic' Tharp modern dancer of the 70's--hard to describe: twitchy, at times sexy, shifting, twisting moves). The goblins become besotted by the possibilities of pointe work--at one point forming an ensemble where it appeared that they had one foot bare and one on pointe. I actually thought of Massine rather than Bournonville. The children likewise, though always dancing in a youthful easy manner, eventually take on balletic dimensions. They range from tiny to early teens and the two oldest, towards the very end, under Irene's impact, dance a brief purely classical pas-de-deux with the girl on pointe (the only time in ballet one of the children was on pointe). I guess I AM sappy when it comes to ballet because I found this unspeakably moving. There is also a lovely pas de trois for Irene, her friend/boyfriend and father towards the end--uh believe it or not this is entirely without creepiness and also sort of melds Tharps' contemporary, swooney Sinatra style with her more purely classical vision--it really does seem to be a dance about reconciliation and joy. The very lovely backdrop behind the pas de trois was a night sky covered with bright, bright stars. Indeed one of the pleasures of this ballet was too the way it brought together different Tharps (so to speak). At times, the dancing of goblins/children recalled her best early modern work -- only here the shifting, bumping, jokiness had a very precise role in the story telling--at others one felt in the more "musical theater" world of, say, her Sinatra work--but ultimately everything was reconciled in the glories of classical dancing. (I should say I have only limited familiarity with Tharp's work...but this work did seem to me to bring together threads in her career--though the two lead male goblins in particular seemed pretty distinctive too--they belong in this ballet and nowhere else.) Negatives? Well, honestly for the first few scenes I was decidedly unconvinced that this was for grown ups at all. The introduction of the main characters of the kingdom was very schematic--simple choreography, simple characterization, even to the point of simplistic, and the costumes looked cheap and uninteresting to me (in fact, my recollection is that, for the Atlanta Ballet, this was a very expensive production). I thought my only real pleasure all evening was going to be the wonderful dancing of Alessa Rogers as Irene--lovely clear and fluid phrasing, beautiful lines with nuanced shading of her upper body (exquisite épaulement). However, the childern were surprisingly enjoyable and by no means dominated the action and then the initial goofiness of the goblins started to win me over. Then, too, scene by scene the whole thing built momentum and once Irene was on pointe and the goblins were gobsmacked--well, as is obvious, I thought the ballet turned out to be wonderful. Other dancers I especially enjoyed included John Welker (the father/goblin king) and Jacob Bush as Curdie, Irene's (boy)friend. Bush studied with Lise Houlton--as I was delighted to read, since she was a favorite of mine at ABT--and seems very accomplished technically with an easy light manner on stage. I also was impressed by Tara Lee, though one might bring even more power to her role as Queen of the Goblins. (She and Welker have a "flashy" pas de deux when they first take on "ballet"-- as if they are the stars at a gala; they were very good, but flashier dancers could have done more with it.) Anyway, I found The Princess and the Goblin funny, goofy, exuberant, and also beautiful. (The music was Schubert adapted by Richard Burke.)

That sounds like the right approach though I would add explicitly (what you were probably assuming)--it also depends on the quality (better strong singles than sloppy doubles)...but I have come to miss brilliant, whipping, fast singles...

I regret that I don't remember Blood Wedding very well--other than as a work of great dramatic intensity--but I do remember being very, very impressed by it when the Cubans first brought it to the States and being very dazzled by Gades.

Absolutely! 32 singles brilliantly done make a stunning impression--in my experience much more exciting than anything I have ever seen replace it. (Semenyaka in Act III Swan Lake and Kirkland in Act III of Don Quixote are particularly charged memories) The doubles, triples and other tricks usually look slower and more mechanical to me (and I speak of doubles and triples done well without the uncontrolled travelling and grimacing they sometimes engender). Worse yet, doubles and triples are occasionally done with an air of seeming improvisation, as if the ballerina is not entirely in control of her effects--that is, a double alternates with a single steadily for the first 16 or so and then a triple is 'thrown in' etc. here and there, seemingly arbitrarily, or suddenly one gets two singles in a row as if the double did not come off etc. etc. Of course, it's fun gala fare to see the doubles/triples, but I have actually come to feel slightly frustrated that "top" virtuoso ballerinas now seem to disdain Legnani's specialty. What I would not give to see someone like Osipova just "whip off" 32 single fouettes at top speed. Too easy? I should like to see today's ballerinas show us just how easy it is to challenge the likes of Semenyaka and Kirkland for power, speed, and brilliance in fouettes. (I write as a passionate fan of today's ballerinas, including an exciting virtuoso--even, arguably, a bit of a showboater--like Osipova.) As far as flubbed fouettes goes: I thought the 'standard' fall back position for a ballerina unable to complete them was a series of piqué turns, which I think has also been a fall back for ballerinas who can't do the fouttes at all...Cinnamonswirl mentioned this above...

Although on the whole I had a mixed reaction to the Mariinsky's Symphony in C during their summer NY season, I quite liked Shirinkina in the fourth movement. She made me think of perfectly turning music box ballerinas--not mechanical but just so very, very pretty as well as centered and exact. I would love to have seen her in Les Sylphides...it seems an ideal role for her. Glad to read about it though.

Thank you...if anyone could make Taming of the Shrew sit-through-able for me post Haydee/Cragun it would be Osipova or, even better, Osipova/Vasiliev....

I only saw a handful of performances this year, most of them excellent -- or indeed better than excellent (including 2 Cojocaru performances of Aurora in ABT's Sleeping Beauty and Lopatkina making a stunning impression in the, as I think, absurd and trashy Carmen), but the performance that seared itself into my memory this year was Kondaurova in Ratmansky's Anna Karenina: to my eyes she not only made a case for her own performance but for the ballet as a whole. But as to her own performance: the way she looked out into the audience as the thought of suicide first comes to her mind...well, I still see it in MY mind's eye: a strange kind of ecstasy seemed to sieze her. But I was moved throughout by the concrete and differentiated emotion she brought to every scene, whether quiet or intense, domestic or erotic...and also moved (and dazzled) by the sheer dance power she conveyed through her legs shooting out to the side as she was lifted into the air. Throughout she conveyed the sense that a being of enormous intelligence, energy, and feeling was caught in a worldly trap with passionate rebellion turning into still another worldly trap...Which is why the suicide seemed like a flight to freedom, though a despairing one. So: Kondaurova as Anna Karenina: the absolute highlight of my (admitedly limited) ballet going year -- but also a highlight of my ballet-going across the years. Not a lot was said about this performance at the State Theater in the press or online: Kondaurova was "third cast" in New York. Obviously, I think it deserved and deserves attention -- as indeed it got in Russia where she won the "golden mask" for it. (For some context: I'm not a fan of the Cranko-Macmillan full length-story ballets--though I can appreciate the great performances they sometimes inspire--say, Haydee in Onegin. I found Ratmansky's approach to this "genre" rather interesting in its resistance to being a Cranko-Macmillan style crowd pleaser--in its speed, its use of pantomime and tableaux, and in its almost unremitting grimness. The scenic effects are stunning and in many ways carry the ballet almost as much as Kondaurova's performance does. Anyway, I would not mind seeing the ballet again for its own sake though I don't know that it would hold up. I would run to see it again with Kondaurova.)

I, too, will very much miss Ballet.co--and I don't think Facebook or Twitter can fill the same role as the forums, nor play the same "gathering" function even when it comes to information...But I do understand that the cost and work of maintenance is huge.

Colbert's interviews are always in a satirical and often goofy spirit; for one thing he is playing a character who is supposed to be an ego-maniacal buffoon. And he was not remotely MEAN-stupid (for which my model is Letterman interviewing Makarova well before 1989 and asking her why she does not ever go back to Russia very much as if that were a real option for her. She actually commented in some distress that she had been told that Letterman's show was supposed to be funny). My main complaint about Colbert was no video footage at all of Hallberg dancing to "show" what he does in a more effective way than the bit in the studio could and no explanation for the younger television audience of what the Bolshoi is. Just one sentence would have been helpful even if done in a satirical spirit ("Stalin's favorite ballet company"). I thought that in the comedy context David Hallberg "represented" ballet very well--came off as very nice and natural. Colbert's regular viewers also know that Colbert genuinely seems to like/respect the arts or at any rate that he is willing to give them some sort of popular platform. I will say that he seems to me especially interested in and, behind all the goofiness, serious about modern painting and that does not seem at all to be the case with classical ballet. But if you want a serious interview then watch Charlie Rose--though whatever his "seriousness" he can hardly be called knowledgeable. Ratmansky had to correct his confusion between the Kiev ballet and the Kirov ballet. Not making that up. I suppose the producers, or whoever prepares Rose's notes, should take some of the blame for that one. As a ballet fan, I found the slip at least as embarassing as anything on Colbert, but I'm still grateful to Rose for featuring dance artists on his show. Hallberg was excellent on CBS Sunday morning which was also "serious"--and included the story of his injuring himself during the Bolshoi film broadcast of Sleeping Beauty, not saying a word, and finishing the performance. Plus, as one might expect these days, several questions on bullying. The highlight for me, though...some lovely footage of him as a young student.

Thanks to everyone for information about the auditorium. It is very helpful. I definitely hope to see Osipova and Hallberg as well as Cornejo Reyes, but am still finalizing travel possibilities...

Miliosr: There is a possibility I may be able to make it to Chicago for some performances...Can you tell me anything about the theater--especially how good/strong the banking of the seats is downstairs (I am short), sight-lines and the best seats upstairs. Thank you...

Wish they would bring this production on tour--it looks quite lovely and though I'm not a huge fan of pastiche, the bits I watched seemed to have real flair and to capture the spirit of the music with some charm and wit. (Similarly, I'm a youtube skeptic when it comes to forming judgments of dancers, but at least preliminarily very impressed by Heymann--so much so I looked at some other videos of his dancing (Fille, Onegin, Sylphide) and...uh...if THAT is what comes across in the theater, plus what youtube can't capture, then...wow! I think I may be a little dizzy. Elegance, fluidity, ballon, line--where does one stop? delicious beats, gorgeous extensions, good looks--just, wow!)

At some of my very earliest ballet performances she was the star ballerina--partnered by Eugene Collins--with the National Ballet of Washington. Rest in peace.

Could not bring myself to watch Breaking the Waves consequently --too painful--so I just watched bits and pieces when it was on some cable station. I never even wanted to see a Von Trier movie since Breaking the Waves...until Melancholia. Watched it (On Demand rather than in the theater)--LOVED it. And thought Dunst and indeed the whole cast was stunning. As for wierdness...I would say that on the subject of depression many details in the movie were examples of spot-on realism, though of course the movie as a whole is something rather more than that. Dirac: I once read that hard-core Wagnerites were inclined to sneer at those who were all too fond of Lohengrin and not, by implication, say, Götterdämmerung. Perhaps the visually gorgeous and occasionally quite jokey Melancholia will be Von Trier's Lohengrin. (Of course the Wagner allusion is not incidental.) But...yes...absolutely loved it.

I am very wary of this move--I've seen the Mikhailovsky, though pre Duato, and . . . seriously??--but of course I hope for the best for these two extraordinary artists. Personally I enjoy seeing the greatest dancers in the greatest contexts. If the reports on this board are anything to go by, then Osipova's Swanilda, though excellent at ABT, did not have the same kind of impact it had with the Bolshoi, at least as seen in London. I say this not only because of my own enthusiasm for her two London Swanilda performances, but because of the uniform and, in my opinion, justified ecstasy of the London critics. (Though I enjoyed her so much in the role I can't resist noting that Robert Gottlieb described even her ABT Swanilda as being as satisfying as any Swanilda he had seen and he included Mcbride and Makarova.) I am also disappointed at the thought of how this must impact the development of a Hallberg-Osipova partnership. ABT does not cast Osipova and Hallberg that much together, and I had high hopes for their developing their partnership at the Bolshoi. Their partnership seems to me (based on the two performances I have seen) of major artistic caliber, truly inspiring to both artists, and arguably taking Hallberg to heights as a performer that he had not reached before, certainly that I had not seen in him. All in all, I'm a little discombobulated by the news...

maybe Engram with Federico Bonelli? Than sounds right--it was linked to his (Mcgregor's) work on studies of the brain and part of an Ashton tribute program...I think, though, that Cojocaru did something else with Kobborg on the same program...

This is long: call it making up for years of ignoring the company (of which "ignoring" I say something at the end). The Atlanta Ballet has put together a rather ambitious season this year including a Tharp world premier. The opening program took place last week at the Cobb Energy Center. It was made up of two ballets: Kudelka's Four Seasons -- which the company had danced two years ago -- and Mcgregor's Eden Eden. The former is set to Vivaldi (live music for these performances) and is a very engaging, though rather tonally predictable cycle-of-life allegory with a central male figure surrounded by a small and usually somewhat individuated ensemble (an effect Ratmansky was widely praised for in Concerto DSCH) and having a different 'love relationship' pas de deux to match each one of the four 'seasons' of his life. Spring innocence, summer sensuality, fall maturity, winter decay and death etc. (I did a search and it has been written about before on Ballet Alert!). The most unexpected choreographic detail was the rather literal approach to winter -- not only featuring older dancers including company director John Mcfall, but also someone wearing their everyday glasses. That's a "bravo" you hear from very-near-sighted and has-problems-with-contacts me.The male lead's dancing in Winter also includes rather literal gestures invoking back pain, chest pain etc. John Walker was the lead and it's a tribute to his poise that these gestures did not make the audience giggle. Perhaps the best thing about the performance I saw was the joyful and loving devotion brought to the choreography by every dancer on stage. The scenic projections were also lovely. Less appealing to me were the costumes. Program notes spoke generally of the ballet combining older baroque elements with contemporary ones and that is obviously what the costumes were trying to convey...but I found the effect very distracting. Several women in the spring ensemble had leotards with long sleeves cut to evoke pre-20th-century 'historical' styles and skirts, cut out in the front, also evidently suggestion older styles of dress, while other women wore only the leotards and historically themed sleeves: it looked for all the world as if the company had run out of money in the middle of preparing the production and had to skimp on the skirts. In other movements, some women wore slacks with yoga stripes but then had stylized blouses with high collars evoking the 'baroque.' For my taste, it just clashed. And not in an interesting way. As good as the dancers were, they were not always at ease negotiating the sudden speeding up of the choreography to match the shifts in the Vivaldi--and some of the more complex partnering looked as if everyone was concentrating very hard. That vitiated some of the erotic emotion of the ballet, but was I think largely made up for by the overall investment in the ballet by all of the dancers. I was sitting very close and noticed a number of them in the ensemble with distinctive, lovely qualities--one showed unusual ballon, another lush sensuality, another what I can only call delight. I am eager to get to know these dancers better. Still, given their slight difficulties with some of the challenges of the Kudelka in the choreography's faster passages I was a bit dubious the dancers could handle McGregor: but by and large they did what seemed to me a very good job--one small woman in particular danced with all of the appropriately cool and slightly aggressive 'attitude' that the choreography seems to call for. I do think they sometimes lacked the full musical and bodily precision that it needs. Eden Eden has McGregor's trademark very fast, very extreme, very rhythmically pounding choreography. (I believe it, too, has been reviewed on Ballet Alert before.) My companion, who has been going to the ballet for a few years now -- i.e. since meeting me -- did not like it at all and described the dancers as looking like "worms writhing in earth." I can't really argue with that, but will say that, for me, the jury is out on McGregor. Certainly compared with what has been on offer from the Atlanta ballet in recent seasons (Dracula), I will take it. That does not exactly mean I think it belongs at the Royal Ballet...Though, in fact, the only McGregor I had seen before was at a Linbury studio performance and the dancers were Cojocaru and (I think) Kobborg. Let's just say with Cojocaru it looked very, very, very good and nothing if not precise. Eden Eden is set to a Steve Reich opera on the theme of cloning and robotics. In fact, my companion criticized this as well as the dancing, objecting to the leap from clones to robots. I was prepared to defend that particular leap. However, the score's voice overs concerning the challenge posed by cloning and robotics to our understanding of the human (what the human 'is,' its relation to technology--or indeed its being as technology etc.) were, in their way, almost as predictable as Kudelka's cycle of life allegory. That is, they could have been more interesting, though I have to admit that had they gotten too interesting they might have become a distraction, instead of, as it were, simply 'framing' the choreography... There are four couples--each emerging from below the stage in stylized hairless quasi-nudity, and each growing into and beyond their own bodies and encountering each other in increasingly intense passages in the opening passages of the ballet; at a crucial point they assume clothing and hair (it's done very simply and effectively with tunics dropping from the ceiling) and presumably, therefore, as the program notes suggest, sexual identity. I found it pretty engrossing and then....a scrim came down and sort of wrecked my concentration. Why exactly? Well, I don't much care for dancing behind scrims but the real problem was that once the scrim came down I could not see the dancers below the top of their ankles which completely threw me out of the performance. I believe the purpose of the scrim was to permit an array of increasingly extreme lighting effects to be projected over the stage picture without, say, endangering the dancers and also to increase--as indeed did the mere fact of a scrim--the general image of dehumanization (or, as I would prefer to think, re-imagining of what humanization is). I can't quite say if it worked or not based on this one performance, especially having lost the dancers feet and thus, too, the sense of their contact with the floor--but Alwin Nikolais was way ahead on this sort of thing in any case. Nonetheless, I'm glad the Atlanta Ballet acquired Eden Eden and would not mind seeing them dance more McGregor. Indeed my one complaint about the program is that it was rather short. It could easily have fit another 20-25 minute ballet on the program and have stayed within the 2 1/2 hour mark. Perhaps there are economic considerations? Certainly I very much appreciated the live music for the Vivaldi. I also know just the choreographer who would have made a perfect fit with this program. Would it be too much to hope that the company would once again take seriously their early history as a Balanchine offshoot? When I first got to Atlanta I saw that they proudly posted on their website a critic's praise for McFall's leadership in getting rid of the "dusty" Balanchine repertory. For those wondering why I do not often show myself supportive of my local company on Ballet Alert, start there... Later this season the repertory includes Elo and Wheeldon as well as the new Tharp. I am pleased by these developments...Now, would one Balanchine ballet a season be too much to ask?

Thank you Alexandra...it's rather touching to see this being worked on by students--as if the vision scene were an allegory of ballet itself (which it sort of is anyway)...though perhaps that's not exactly the point of this thread.

Mutatis Mutandis, I don't think Sweden is alone in this respect...

Everyone sounds pretty irritated with Millepied and dismissive of the recent turns his career has taken. I agree that it was long past time for pretending he was a principal dancer at NYCB, but since he is retiring as a dancer, I'm up for some nice memories, too -- including the first time I saw him dance which was at an SAB workshop performance. He was dancing in a new Robbins work and made an excellent impression: one instantly saw that he was very talented and I felt nothing but giggling delight at the appropriateness of his name for a ballet dancer--a point that I vaguely remember Clive Barnes was not too high-minded to make. It seemed to me at the "height" of his dance career, he had the potential to become a go-to leading man for NYCB--especially as Woetzel's career was winding down. That is, he showed himself to be someone with presence who could impress technically and pair effectively with ballerinas. In recent years, I had given up thinking he would realize that potential or even return to his career as a dancer, but when he was dancing with NYCB I was pretty happy to see his name on a program. I certainly have never held his good looks against him. His choreography? I have not had the chance to see any of his ballets--and read mixed reports about them to say the least--but if he can find creative things to do with a musical about competitive standing-in-place that will be a triumph of sorts.

Big Oops...I just realized that the short program is the only portion of competition I watched, so that's what I thinking of in my earlier post comparing the skaters...Perhaps I will stick to posting on ballet in future...

Can't speak to technical issues--though I was under the impression Kostner's jump content was less than Czisny's?--but I loved Alissa Czisny and did not think she looked particularly tentative, certainly not in the context of her hardly forceful style; Kostner does have a more forceful (though, to my eyes, a somewhat all over the place) style and I think she will probably look even more 'out there' and so, in the context of her skating style, be more effective, later in the season. Czisny certainly won the costume competition over everyone else many times over... Completely agree with you about D/W. [edited much later to say that it turns out I was thinking of ladies short program not free skate...apologies...]