Drew

1 hour ago, California said:

I did not stay for the Zoom discussion -- now I need to go back and listen to that! From Nancy Reynolds on this ballet, it seems there were several things that are now left out.

I wondered about the black costumes, which is how I've seen it in the theater -- reportedly, Balanchine was asked: why the black? He said only that "there are black swans, too." (Sorry I can't remember the source on that.) I seem to remember that another report said they had a lot of black fabric around that he thought they should use. (I always wonder about the use of some black swans in the last act by some companies -- is that mourning?)

I thought the patterns and steps for the corps in the Chicago performance were really impressive -- so Balanchine! Very glad I can go back and study this now.

Balanchine may have been asked about the costumes, but the black-clad corps de ballet was added in 1986 -- after his death. On the company website, when they talk about this redesign they offer speculation that he was planning something of the kind and include the quote you mention: "In 1986 the production was redesigned once more by Alain Vaes who created an icy landscape instead of the traditional Gothic lakeside, and dressed the corps of swans in black, which Balanchine may have been planning in 1981 when he mysteriously ordered 400 yards of black tarlatan. When asked to justify this odd request, Balanchine merely said, 'There are black swans as well.'"

I remember very much enjoying the Vaes designed version on the occasions I've seen it, but this anecdote seems to me rather thin evidence that Balanchine himself planned on dressing the corps of swans in black.  (Since apparently he wasn't being asked specifically about this ballet, he could have had all kinds of things in mind including teasing and putting off the questioner. )

Thanks for the heads up...

I have not been keeping up with most Covid-era digital ballet offerings, but saw something appealing tonight. Recently Atlanta Ballet posted two "live"  programs (shot live that is) performed at the Rialto Theater in Atlanta albeit in front of an empty auditorium. (The Rialto is attached to Georgia State and regularly features some dance in its rather eclectic programming--however it is not a usual venue for Atlanta Ballet.) The programs feature premiers choreographed by the Atlanta Ballet dancers themselves, most or all of whom are first-time choreographers. The second of the programs also includes a premier by Atlanta Ballet choreographer-in-residence Claudia Schreier. After her terrific premier for the company "First Impulse" -- which I saw at the last live ballet performance I attended pre-pandemic--the company hired her for a three year stint as choreographer in residence.

The new work is titled Pleiades Dances and is set to (quite wonderful) piano music by  Takashi Yoshimatsu. To my eyes the choreography seemed more eclectic/contemporary than First Impulse with modern dance technique and yoga poses melded together with ballet technique.  I'm a bit of a skeptic about this kind of blend, though I guess I had better come round since it is pervasive in the ballet world. What made Schreier's approach more interesting to me than similarly contemporary work was how often and how fluidly the dancers took unexpectedly curving and tilting but graceful shapes that made me think of art-deco ornaments and statues -- and, also, especially, the ballet's musicality. I've only watched Pleiades Dances once on video but I'd say that at this point I am more than interested in anything  Schreier does.

The work, by the way, was created initially via Zoom --which seems rather amazing to me given its group dynamics and its musical responsiveness--though the choreographer and dancers did come together in the studio for the final weeks of rehearsal.  It's still up on youtube. The Schreier piece begins with her saying a few words about it  25 minutes and 55 seconds into the video that I have linked below. (I haven't watched the rest of the program yet.)

3 minutes ago, pherank said:

I've forgotten - was the behind the scenes interview part of the same video, or was it a separate video? For some reason the interview has been removed from YouTube (makes more sense to leave those up indefinitely).

It was a separate video. It does seem to be down now...

Finally had a chance to catch up with the Stravinsky Violin Concerto--just under the wire too. I had, maybe not exactly reservations but questions about one or two elements in the second aria, but overall enjoyed it very much. Of the three featured Balanchine works they have shown, this is the one I've seen least (by far) in the theater, and for that reason I was especially pleased they included it in the digital programming...I also watched the 'behind the scenes' feature and was interested in hearing what Krohn and Mearns had to say about Von Aroldingen and her roles...

I thought it extremely unlikely Bruhn had been honored with a stamp. Maybe one day....Happy to hear about the other stamps...

Wonderful that Sylphide is being honored....thank you for the link.

(Please let us know if they ever create -- or have created) -- a stamp with Erik Bruhn on it!)

It's a fascinating question for discussion but I'm not sure very many people are qualified to answer it because there has been so MUCH programming from so many companies. 

I was unfamiliar with this company but the news still makes me sad....Here's hoping the dancers and staff have found -- or will find -- other great projects.

Very happy to learn about this--thank you @Buddy-- I have just had time to watch the adagio. I thought it was a lovely performance (and that music!!!) and agree with the spirit of @Jack Reed's earlier comments, the ones to which he linked; Messmer gives an unshowy and for that reason all the more beautiful and effective performance (at least as best one can judge on this less-than-ideal video).  To my eyes, she has always been a genuinely compelling ballerina....here, the same.

Dupond was a ravishing dancer! Very sad news...May he rest in peace.

8 hours ago, ECat said:

Thank you for the link @Buddy   WOW!  Maria Iliushkina has a big debut as Raymonda.  Hopefully lots of videos will be posted.   She will surely be delightful in this role.

I was intrigued to see the Raymonda debut as well. Hope it goes well!

For me, the digital season's Theme and Variations really hit the spot...Bravo to everybody. I will allow I thought the performance [stitched together as it may have been] gave the impression of picking up steam as it went along, but it feels entirely appropriate for the energy and  emotion to build to a climax here.  My internalized recording of T&V is still probably the live Kirkland/Baryshnikov broadcast, but this--with its crisp HD-quality images--was a joy to see.

I also very much enjoyed Russell Janzen's introduction--but when he admitted that when doing his at-home ballet class/practice listening to Tchaikovsky's music he found himself tearing up as the Polonaise began even though, as he said 'that's not usually an emotional moment,' I mentally began shouting at the television 'of course it's an emotional moment! At any halfway decent performance of Theme and Variations, I always tear up--or, at least, shiver with excitement--when the Polonaise begins!"
 

15 minutes ago, pherank said:

"My bad" as they say. I agree that Nedvigin is now also a good contender. But I think AB needs him to stay, as well. They need the stability, especially during this pandemic period. But I think AB needs some artistic stability as well - a vision that plays out over 10 years at least.

I, too, think it would be better for Atlanta if Nedvigin stayed, but he has been here for a few years and I don’t think he is under an obligation not to put his hat in the ring for an opportunity like this, especially with a company (San Francisco) with which he has a long history. Especially when the CEO he has been working with here in Atlanta is retiring. I hope he doesn’t, and there are plenty of other contenders for the job anyway, but I would understand if he did. 

21 hours ago, pherank said:

I'll stir things up with a list of possibles - each having their own particular strengths and weaknesses.

Sofiane Sylve
Gonzalo Garcia
Val Caniparoli
Christopher Stowell

Christopher Wheeldon
Yuan Yuan Tan
Yuri Possokhov

Benjamin Millepied
James Sofranko

The choreographers in my list likely prefer to keep that job and not add to the headaches - but you never know.

I think everyone wants to avoid a polarizing personality, and a situation in which a good number of dancers jump ship. That certainly would look bad given that SFB now touts a 'school to company' approach. It needs to continue to be a stable environment for artists and staff.

I'm an outsider too, and find myself curious why Gennadi Nedvigin isn't on your list. In addition to his long career at San Francisco Ballet he now has directorial experience at Atlanta Ballet (a company with a school attached) and where he has been involved in mounting major new productions/commissions and involved in major diversity initiatives. He also has a long-standing relationship with Possokhov so a Nedvigin/Possokhov pairing of sorts would be quite workable assuming the San Francisco board didn't find that too much of a Russian take-over.

I'll add that there is a changing of the guard on the administrative end in Atlanta (the company's chief executive/ceo, who also used to work for San Francisco Ballet) is stepping down. So--again, just speculating as an outsider--perhaps Nedvigin would be all the more interested.

On the whole I'd be sorry to lose Nedvigin from Atlanta. So I guess I hope I'm wrong...but he kind of seems like a potential candidate to me...

Thank you @Sebastianfor the heads up—

7 hours ago, pizzasoprano said:

 

I was a student at the School of the Pennsylvania Ballet through the 1960s and early 1970s. To remember the ballet is to remember Barbara Weisberger. ...

Unlike duffster, I never did have a career in ballet. With the humility of age, I’m amazed that I ever thought I could. When, after many years, I finally screwed up the courage to ask Weisberger about my prospects, she gently told me it wasn’t in the cards. I tried for a while longer, and then gave it up and went on to other things. Nonetheless, those years of movement and of music will always remain the happiest of my life. 

What a wonderful tribute--thank you....

Thanks for writing.  And it's good to be hopeful. (Well, in this case...) I don't know if I will see anything live before 2022 but I'm hoping for mid-to-late Fall 2021...

I remember first hearing about her from my mother who very much admired her accomplishments! What an impressive figure --what great contributions to ballet.

May she rest in peace...

On 1/3/2021 at 4:59 PM, On Pointe said:

 But she has been given an extraordinary number of big roles for someone so young,  and while it's unfair to judge her strictly by her Youtube excerpts,  she strikes me as just scratching the surface of most of them.

I've seen her twice in the theater (two Kennedy Center appearances) and I agree with this assessment.  Though I should add that I saw her in roles that at least don't demand much depth of characterization (Corsaire and a few months later Paquita) and I did enjoy the performances, especially the Paquita. In particular, I saw a lot of growth in terms of stage presence between the Corsaire and the Paquita. I also very much appreciated how easy and unforced her dancing looked. 

Of course the way she has been shot out of a cannon by the Mariinsky can't help but raise eyebrows, but I think I'm willing to call myself ...not yet a fan ...but a very well disposed member of the audience.

6 hours ago, Novice123 said:

 Would I be correct to assume then that you don't like Bourne's Swan Lake for the same reason, it modernizes and switched to all male struggles?

 

 

 

I haven't seen Bourne's Swan Lake except an excerpt done as a "guest" performance on a mixed bill--the lake scene pas de deux. 

But in principle, it doesn't seem analogous to me.  The Petipa/Ivanov libretto has Siegfried's actions and moral choices at its center even when Odette/Odile is the "dance" center of the ballet. (One of several reasons I am not a big fan of adding a prologue to Swan Lake in which we see Odette transformed into a Swan -- it seems to me to miss how much her entrance gains from the audience sharing Siegfried's startled point of view.) I guess I still don't think of Swan Lake as having simply a male-centric story, as the lake scenes' choreography for Odette and the swans --Ivanov's as it has come down to us--seems to me the ballet's greatest expression of the quest for freedom...but yeah...I don't think of it quite as I think of Nutcracker...

Actually, many modern productions of Swan Lake--even ones that are quite traditional overall--make the ballet even more fundamentally about Siegfried (he hates his mother, he hates his life, he gets additional solos etc.). That seems more analogous to those Nutcracker productions that become very explicit about Clara's psychic development (she is becoming an adolescent, she is learning about love, she--and not the Sugar Plum Fairy--dances the big pas de deux etc. etc.)  instead of leaving it as subtext in what appears to be a children's story. (In Bourne's Swan Lake, as I gather from my reading and the excerpt I have seen,  there is a still more radical re-conception of the nineteenth-century story and the choreography altogether--though...uh...surely the original has something of a gay subtext which he is picking up on.) 

Anyway, mileages vary--and, also theatrical experiences sometimes make a big difference. What I don't like on paper, the Nutcracker description that began this discussion, I might like in the theater...and vice versa: something that sounded interesting on paper might prove disappointing in the theater.

1 hour ago, California said:

The Royal Ballet just announced that several dancers (soloists and first artists) are leaving the company under a "voluntary redundancy" program during COVID. I wonder how many dancers will be leaving other companies around the world:

https://www.roh.org.uk/news/the-royal-ballet-announces-news-of-dancers-leaving-the-company-in-2020

Wow! And not in a good way.

Wishing the dancers and the company the best. 

1 hour ago, Novice123 said:

Did Clara struggle?

In a traditional production, she has to cope with the breaking of her Nutcracker doll  (a big deal to a child with all kinds of potential meanings), a dream with nightmarish elements including the battle of mice and soldiers—in which she intervenes—the journey through the snow to land of sweets and, though I don’t recall if this belongs to the original, waking up from out of her dream.

It is not a realistic story, and it’s not presented as kitchen-sink tale of angst, but it suggests, in a fantastical way a whole psychic world of learning about oneself and the world and some of the pains and pleasures of that process...I am not a super fan of modernized productions that make her psychic development too explicit (though I do like scary rats and I don’t mind a pas de deux for Clara on pointe with a come-to-life romantic Nutcracker) but I find them at least to be based on something in the traditional ballet libretto and in the music

I always take fantasy stories and fairy tales quite seriously. I think the music suggests that Tchaikovsky did too.

8 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

Starting tomorrow Goh Ballet will stream a film titled The Nutcracker, Beyond the Stage: Fallen Prince. Advance registration is required.

https://www.gohnutcracker.com/

In the classic fairy-tale of Clara and the Nutcracker Prince, she rescues him from the sword of the evil Mouse King. But, in 2020, evil is all the uncertainties that torment a fallen prince in pursuit of a career in the world of ballet. Separated from his family during the lockdown, Alex, a 20-year-old struggling dancer, spends the cold, pandemic ridden winter in isolation and is forced to re-examine everything that was once familiar and is no longer, until he meets his Clara. Will he find the resolve to continue on his journey?

This made me sigh --not because it isn't traditional but because it takes a story about Clara and her struggles to grow up and 'modernizes' it into a story about a male dancer and his struggles.

32 minutes ago, canbelto said:

It's really interesting that the Royal Danish version of the Balanchine Nutcracker restores the Cavalier's solo and puts the SPF solo back in the grand pas de deux after the Cavalier solo.

Well, given that they are--or ought to be--the Balanchine standard-bearer, NYCB does right to stay true to Balanchine, but I can't help but admit that both of these decisions seem like excellent ones to me.