Drew

May she rest in peace....

2 hours ago, Chballetfan said:

 

- Laracey would be my first choice, but in her absence,

Absence? I'm puzzled...Her posts on Instagram show her dancing in Nutcracker. (Actually I was hoping to read about some of these performances.)

Welcome--and thanks for telling your story. It's great you have been able to choreograph in recent years in addition to everything else! You have probably seen this site has a number of ballet history discussions...

Nice to hear from you again Buddy--hope you have been well.  Some other video of the Illiushkina/Caixeta Bayadere debut has been floating around on Instagram and youtube. Much of what I saw looked lovely--I'm very much looking forward to seeing these dancers develop. (Or, more likely in my case, reading about their development.)

11 hours ago, cubanmiamiboy said:

 

The ballet starts with a prologue to the score’s overture. Alas…I’ve never been a fan of re imagined prologues to overtures.  Choreographers usually get too carried away with them, and this is no exception.  Here we get a glimpse of Herr Drosselmayer and his nephew preparing their visit to the Silberhaus home, and getting all the toys ready.  I would gladly send the prologue to time out in the corner to make company to McKenzie’s Swan Lake one. There the Drosselmayer's Nutcracker toy can make friends with Von Rothbart's stuffed swan.

 

In addition to everything else these prologues undermine the mystery of the characters' actual entrances as traditionally staged...I can't say the Nutcracker prologues irritate me as much as the Swan Lake ones do because...well, I'm not as invested in the Nutcracker, but still....Glad you are seeing a lot of great ballet.

I don't think it's realistic to expect most children to sit for the whole thing without a break.

Sounds like a great performance. Looking forward to reading about the other casts you get to see...

THANK YOU! I am rushing from one work crisis to another but watched the first few minutes and can't wait to see the rest. I hope they leave it up for the rest of the day....

Very cute...But that mouse must be hot...

2 hours ago, pherank said:

Scarlett worked with a number of international dance companies (aside from the RB) and I've yet to hear any corroborative evidence from those organizations.

It wouldn't be extraordinary if someone, as a guest at another company, behaved very differently than at his or her home company. However, as has already been mentioned, in Scarlett's particular case there was a pretty strong statement from the Royal Danish Ballet addressing his behavior when working at their theater. As I have written before, the Danes are not exactly known for their puritanism.

Because so much about the Scarlett case is unknown to the general public one may well feel it unfolded very unfairly to him; it is, unfortunately, just as possible that the silence has protected him. It's an unknown unknown...

I myself don't find it plausible that the Royal Ballet got rid of someone they had anointed (a little prematurely) as a superstar choreographer merely on an "anonymous tip." Obviously there was an investigation and, moreover, one that was kept out of the public eye for some time.  In fact, they had a lot invested in Scarlett as the next-in-succession great British classical choreographer. Despite some caveats about that assessment (and dear God I wish he had not lit his own ballets as if he didn't want people to see them) I had myself rather been hoping that in time Scarlett would get another chance to rebuild his career and reputation--and indeed develop his obvious gifts.

The ballet world as a whole...well...you know, one can quickly fall down the rumor rabbit hole and of course one tries not to do so...but it would be no shocker if, as Jennings' source seems to suggest, someone who was the victim of such abuses were to become their perpetrator. 

On 10/29/2021 at 10:16 AM, bluejean said:

@BalanchineFan, I was wondering if you would clarify what you mean by this?

I hope @BalanchineFandoesn't mind my jumping in about the fight to get gynecologists to wash their hands (see above post)--I'm not a historian, but loosely: in the early to mid 19th-century gynecologists (at that time all men and modern "professionals") started to replace midwives (women) in handling births etc.  It was a shift in terms of increasing male control of women's bodies--the topic being addressed in the earlier post. About mid 19th century, it was discovered that the male doctors had WORSE mortality rates among their patients giving birth than the old-fashioned midwives did. Eventually the difference was determined to involve hygiene -- Doctors were spreading infections to the women. (Unlike midwives they often treated women after treating other diseases or doing autopsies.) Getting the doctors to wash their hands before treating women made a difference but seems not to have happened without a fight. That is, it took a while to convince people this is what needed to be done. Here is a short, non-scholarly article that goes into more detail:

https://theconversation.com/ignaz-semmelweis-the-doctor-who-discovered-the-disease-fighting-power-of-hand-washing-in-1847-135528

Thank you @Barbara--I have been eager to read about Forster's debut.

Congratulations to Misty Copeland!  I hope she will be dancing again soon....

I didn't see the sugarplum gate performance, but when I DID see Ringer in Nutcracker she was, hands down, the best sugarplum fairy I ever saw. In my personal pantheon the best sugarplum fairy ever (allowing that Marilyn Burr in the National Ballet production has a special place since I saw her as a child). I even liked Ringer better than Farrell in that particular role and, come to think of it, better than Zakharova who, unlikely as it sounds, made a guest appearance in the NYCB Nutcracker and, as I remember, was quite charming too. 

Now to return to topic, I always loved Ringer whatever shape she was in, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't greatly prefer her in what I thought of as "ballet" shape. I put that sentence in past tense because "ballet shape" is just what people are rethinking and re-imagining nowadays (or at least, maybe we are) and I feel I should too. But @vipa seems to me to raise honest and important questions. That said, I don't think any slack should be cut whatsoever for someone capable of writing, as Macaulay has in his reflections, the equivalent of "some of my best friends are anorexic." Some passages almost read like deliberate self-parody -- I mean wow! he really answered the door for people who were overweight so they could meet with each other?! Award the guy a sugarplum....

7 minutes ago, Marta said:

You're so right!  Baryshnikov's brises were  beautiful as well as dramatically potent.  I believe I saw Corella do them at his last Giselle with Vishneva.

Completely agree about Baryshnikov. I believe I saw that Vishneva-Corella performance and, for my taste, neither then (nor at one other performance of Giselle that I saw him dance) did his brisés hold a candle to Baryshnikov's....(I usually liked Corella a lot when I saw him dance, but all the same....)

Excited to read about Brandt's debut....

The backdrops seem kind of ravishing as gigantic drawings, and I think I understand what Lacotte said about the characters-emerging-from-book effect he wanted but I did find myself wondering how the black and white look actually worked in the theater.  (I have read some French comments about the production now...not a lot though.)

Well, so far I have watched a big chunk of Australian ballet's World Ballet Day footage, a smaller chunk of the Bolshoi's and smaller still of Royal Ballet's (mostly just the Kaneko and Bracewell R&J balcony scene coached by Edward Watson  and Leslie Collier). Plus all of the shorter POB offering  and some of the Universal Ballet offering. And now I am deeply (and only a little bit ironically) disappointed not to be able to come onto this website and find outraged responses to Vaziev. Some may remember that most years I half-heartedly defend him, but this year I was going to join the chorus of outrage as I think he out-did himself in singling out a new company member for humiliation in footage that he has to have known would be used (and must later have approved) for International transmission. (According to the subtitles "Shameful! ...She should be ashamed! ...I could do a better arabesque than that...." etc.) Indeed the footage of the rehearsal was so brief I almost suspect the company of having included it just to thumb the nose at Vaziev's critics. 

As postscript to Russian Martinet ballet tropes for this World Ballet Day, I'll also mention listening to a young male dancer at the Universal ballet talk about his experiences with a Russian teacher at the Kirov Academy in D.C. -- which included crying through the night as he repeatedly wrote out exercises as a "punishment" and throwing up mid-class--even though he concluded his stories up with remarks to the effect of "it made me a better dancer...it helped me..." and the like.

Happier highlights from what I have seen: definitely the Australian Ballet rehearsal of the Pas Des Alouettes from the Ratmansky-Petipa Harlequinade and their company class led by former company principal and now coach Fiona Tonkin. (I hope I have identified her correctly--because WOW! watching her demonstrate steps was a pleasure). I also very much enjoyed the Royal Ballet R&J rehearsal, for a lot of reasons, but partly because I'm so happy that Fumi Kaneko is coming off a successful debut as Juliet which, whatever I think of the ballet, is a huge landmark for her career.

I hope eventually to watch more of the footage--usually I watch the RB class and I'd like to watch the Mariinsky class that was posted this go round as well. But my paying job is rather in the way....

21 hours ago, silvermash said:

Up to me, it’s a beautiful production with gorgeous set (painted canvases  in trompe l'oeil technic, a very beautiful know-how of the opera house) and great costumes. However the ballet is too long, ill constructed with too much scenes and characters. It needs a stricter editing… I'm not a big fan of the choreography either, it's sometimes too repetitive, presumably to characterize the roles but during 3 hours, it becomes redundant...

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It sounds as if  some of the problems might be fixed with judicious editing...but not all...

I'd be grateful to read any reports/reactions to Lacotte's staging of Stendhal's novel at the POB. 

On 10/14/2021 at 9:44 AM, cubanmiamiboy said:

It is very nice hearing back from you, dear Drew! I really hope to meet you again in the future, for the Mariinsky DC performances or in NYC once something really good comes up. Please...read the book.  It goes really fast and has s very engaging structure.  Be well, dear!

Yes I hope so too. There is a lot of life getting in the way of ballet these days....Be well yourself!

Thank you for writing about this. I definitely weary of watching ballet on video even though in many ways I have depended on it even when there wasn't a pandemic as I don't live in a city with (what I consider) a major ballet company or that gets tours from other ballet companies.

I'd like to say I'm reading a lot about ballet and this work by/on Legat sounds very interesting....but I haven't been doing too much ballet reading either. (Other reading yes...developing some stay-at-home hobbies too. Also: work under present circumstances also just leaves me a lot more exhausted than it used to do.)

The last time I saw Stafford dance was a few years ago in the first movement of Symphony in C--and that was my first time seeing her in some years: I noticed that she had, in the years since I had first seen her, developed a subtle warmth I found quite appealing. I hope she enjoys being a lawyer and does a lot of good ... and/or makes a fortune.

I'm a little dismayed reading about both Jonathan Stafford and Wendy Whelan not being there for her final performance with the company. If there are going to be farewells for all retiring principals then I can't help but feel that the company leadership should show up for all of them--or none of them--whatever personal relationships are like behind the scenes. I guess I would understand people not showing if there were a legal dispute (to my knowledge there isn't) or if the retiring dancer had asked them not to be there. But farewells do seem to have a script of sorts and I guess it seems unfortunate to me--and even unprofessional--that everyone isn't able to rise to the occasion of following them. 

10 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

The U.S. will be accepting the six vaccines listed by the WHO: Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm and Sinovac (CoronaVac). That means that in November vaccinated travellers from the UK and EU will once again be able to visit the U.S.

It also means that Russian vaccines are excluded. (Little wonder that some Russians are engaging in vaccine tourism to Serbia and a few other neighboring countries.)

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-will-accept-who-approved-covid-19-vaccines-international-visitors-2021-10-08/

I find myself wondering if Mariinsky visit to D.C. will have to be cancelled then?

Louise Fishman (1939-2021) is an interesting figure to me--also linked to abstract expressionism and an explicitly feminist painter as well:

Her website: https://louisefishman.net/index.html

Obituary in ARTnews:  https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/louise-fishman-painter-dead-1234599995/

Wonderful to read about the promotions. Congratulations to all of the promoted dancers!