Drew

At last the work will finally get people's attention... Dylan has been ignored for too long outside his own tiny country or, at best, only known to a small coterie of aficionados ...

I don't know the dancers of San Francisco ballet, but Lauren Strongin (thank you Apollosmuse) really drew my eye at several points - not just in the Cinderella rehearsal - and watching Yuan Yuan Tan work with Possokhov was (and not for the first time) one of the absolute highlights of my World Ballet Day viewing. I wish I could see all of these dancers live but especially Tan who really seems extraordinary.

I have only followed this from afar. Looking at the link, I wasn't able to read the whole of the Parsons letter ...but I confess the whole situation raises questions for me that extend beyond the particular case of Alberda and whether what he's doing happens to be good for the company or not. One could imagine dancers given free rein decidedly not being good ...

Sounds like a wonderful trip. Symphony in Three Movements is also one of my favorites!

Thank you Naomikage...I had an easier time watching live last year on youtube. But this year I only had a tiny window in which to watch anything live in any case -- some of the Bolshoi company class footage and part of the Netherlands Dance theater bit that was included in the Bolshoi segment. Hope to catch up on company youtube channels later this week.

Thank you....

If anyone has direct links--I'm trying to find channels and all I can find are ads and previews or old World Ballet day links -- even on the World Ballet Day website there isn't just some "click this" that gets me to the live action I had thought was underway...I know I must be being thick, but any help would be welcome.

Oh yes...Though I suspect Pavlova, Karsavina and other Russian dancers Haskell saw when younger remained a touchstone. Anyway, I hope it was clear that I was thinking about the larger issue that had been raised regarding Russian ballet in Russia after the revolution. Haskell wrote about that too--as a kind of dialogue of Vaganova and Petipa. As far as the more famous Haskell quote goes--"It is my firm belief that human society is divided into three distinct castes: Russian dancers, dancers, and very ordinary people"--it's charmingly epigrammatic and, probably for that very reason, lives on beyond its context, which is, I suppose, why it still serves as shorthand for some to express their love of Russian ballet in altogether different contexts. A good epigram has unexpected uses.

The Soviet Ballet story seems to me very complex and interesting especially vis-à-vis certain developments outside the Soviet Union. I only know a very little about it, but I'm under the impression that the early Soviet artistic and intellectual Avant-garde -- before Balanchine left -- already was thinking about the implications of Petipa's approach as having a strong formal dimension that played with and developed those forms in relation to the music and in relation to its own conventions. (I don't consider this mere "display" of dancing, but experiments in form.) I'm thinking of the Russian formalist Shklovsky who wrote an essay on ballet as well as the choreographer Lopukhov, at least as Balanchine describes his "symphonic" work. When Lopukhov said, as he is supposed to have done, "forward to Petipa" I don't think he was thinking merely of Petipa as story-teller or dramatist ... On the other hand, that avant-garde was soon largely destroyed and the dramballets that developed in the 30's and 40's seem to have really minimized a lot of classical display in any new works as merely formalist. I'm thinking of Christine Ezrahi's book Swans of the Kremlin: she argues that Grigorovich's new ballets, for all their faults (I'm adding the reference to faults; Ezrahi seems to admire him straightforwardly) in some ways helped restore the centrality of dance and musical form to what was fast losing touch with the those qualities. On the other hand both openly "pure dance" choreographers and choreographers who dealt with non-approved subject matter quickly fell out of favor and lost opportunities to work. Mime was stripped from productions of the older classics etc. It seems to me a very complicated, troubling, and yet intriguing picture. But not all one of loss. I admire tradition as a way of things being passed down and conserved, but not exactly fixed in place. In a general way, the Soviet/Russian emphasis on beautiful formal qualities of the older classics and more athletic and acrobatic approaches to classical pas de deux especially in 20th-century choreography seems to me not simply to have been against the grain of the earlier tradition but, on the contrary, drawing something out of it that was part of its genetic code. I believe this view is more contested now and will be more and more contested in coming years because of the important work of Ratmansky, Fullington, etc. Still, for my present taste, the great Russian companies at their best bring a grandeur and beauty to nineteenth-century choreography that does bring something out in it both unique and uniquely beautiful. It's not always just some wrong-headed take on what they inherited. It's always a different understanding than, say, Ratmanksy's but I'm not sure I think that makes it always a misunderstanding. I'm a rather eclectic ballet fan--over the years have loved a number of companies and I suppose NYCB is my "desert island" company ('if I had to pick one company to take with me...'). And when I used to hear people say that for them it's "Russian Ballet" or bust...well, I found it inexplicable -- Grigorovich...horrors! Swan Lake without the redemptive suicide...Boo! etc. etc. Even now I think I would be bored if restricted to a diet of Mariinsky and Bolshoi due to the repetitive character of the repertory. But I can't deny that I have increasingly come to understand why there are people who love Russian ballet above all other ballet. I certainly do love many Russian dancers and can't help but feel the seduction of the Vaganova upper body and also thrill at watching character dancing by people for whom character dancing appears a native language. And I certainly don't think the best Russian ballet is always just display or display for display's sake -- it can be a really profound vision of a certain kind of beauty or, on what is usually considered the Moscow side of things, an intensity and, indeed, drama that is unforgettable in its spirit (Vladimir Vasiliev or more recently Gennadi Yanin). Even when it comes to display...well, there is display and there is display. When it's full of life, charm, personality--that's very different from sheer gymnastics. When it's not, yes--that's dreary. In all ballet traditions.

You certainly seem to have seen a lot of great stuff...I wish I could have been at many of these performances. I'm noticing you got to see the Bolshoi Bayadere and with Alexandrova...I think that is something I would have liked to see especially. Even more I would have loved to see the Lopatkina Bayadere at Mariinsky! Perhaps, if you have time, you could talk about one or two performances you found especially memorable?

Very nice Helene you got to attend the gala unexpectedly. I often react exactly the same way to Mearns..."a goddess" as you wrote.

The Russian productions are, in the judgment of many Western fans (including myself) marred by Soviet accretions -- notably a happy ending. And they cut a great deal of the mime. However, ABT's production minimizes the fourth act and re-arranges the music so Odette gets Siegfried's glorious, "repentant" entrance music,and it has its own accretions mostly around the character of Rothbart. It is visually very lovely I think in a traditional vein. The Second Act set seems a touch pre-Raphaelite to me which seems exactly right for a nineteenth-century medieval fantasy. The current Grigorovich production at the Bolshoi has many unorthodox elements and lops off some of Tchaikovsky's most incredible music. I find it unbelievably dreary. Even the color schema of the sets and costumes is depressing. But if you simply want the essential poetry of the Lake scenes in particular and the full splendor and elegance of the choreography for the court/celebration scenes...I still don't think you can do better than the Mariinsky Sergeyev production. Yes, there's a happy ending at the close and in the first act a "jester" character that many Western fans also find annoying, but the sheer beauty of the dancing (including spectacular character dancing in Act III that no Western company I've ever seen approaches in quality) is unspeakably wonderful...and indeed much of the staging is fantastic as well. Sergeyev may give one a happy ending in Act IV but he also gives one an extraordinary storm and the Mariinsky corps de ballet conveys the sense of a sisterhood among the swans in a genuinely profound way. You feel their shared sorrow. (Credit to the Mariinsky dancers and the tradition they embody in this ballet--but it also reflects choices of the staging itself. The ABT staging of Act IV doesn't really allow all of the profundity of Act IV to surface in the same way whatever the quality of dancers. And the suicide of the lovers--which I like a lot--has almost become a "schtick" at ABT: which Siegfried can leap the most spectacularly into the Lake?! The audience sometimes cheers as if it were the Don Quixote pas de deux. Understandable when the dancers approach it that way, but...not good.) Even when the Sergeyev/Mariinsky production is 'true' to the Petipa/Ivanov inheritance it does not, in the manner of Ratmansky, try to accord to (what Ratmansky and his collaborators interpret as) a nineteenth-century style of dancing. This issue leads to other areas of debate among fans, but one could argue that with Tchaikovsky as inspiration Petipa and, especially, Ivanov were in fact discovering something new in what classical ballet can be and express with Swan Lake and much of the Soviet and more recent Russian approach develops--probably to the point of problematic exaggeration--that 'new' dimension in adagio especially. Personally, I hate the happy ending and am not crazy about the jester, but EVEN acknowledging that, I would vote for the Mariinsky as the production that I am most grateful to have seen in recent decades. The one that has moved me most profoundly even when I disagreed with its choices. I would be a bigger fan of ABT's production if they went back to a traditional Act IV and got rid of the prologue.

Oddly (that is, an odd coincidence for me) I have tickets to see her company this year for the first time in many years--I'm looking forward to it. If/as she wishes, I hope she continues staging Balanchine even once the company folds.

Thanks for this detailed report. The performance sounds like it certainly was well worth the trip!

Congratulations--fantastic news!

Some theaters have dedicated rows (not necessarily at the back either) or other spaces for people in wheelchairs. In any case, I would call the theater/box office directly--they will tell you all the options.

Taste in dancers varies. Agree about the pleasures of Ratmansky's Beauty--though I have not lost my taste for all other approaches-- but want to mention that I saw Bussell dance an absolutely radiant Aurora. The most memorable part of her performance was probably her beautiful smile. Nor was she any kind of mechanical technician when I saw her in ANY role, but always completely in the moment as a dancer. That is, her technique looked natural and spontaneous (which of course technique can't literally be). I found her radiant, but also extremely touching as Ashton's Cinderella as well. Lynn Seymour she wasn't and she was, say, miscast in A Month in the Country...but I don't think Bussell was ever a crude or graceless dancer. (Actually, though I have never seen Lane's Aurora, I would say that, though she is a very different dancer than Bussell, she has some of the same freshness of texture in her dancing.)

Whoever gets opening night, someone else does not. The seniority (and, I think, 'experience' and 'reliability') case would have been for Murphy to have gotten it. But it sounds like Trenary danced very successfully. And Paris got to see Lane -- and with Cornejo too! (Like all ballerinas, Copeland and Seo make stronger impressions in some roles than in others.)

Congratulations to Yulia Stepanova on her promotion --

I quite enjoyed Binet's ballet for NYCB a couple of seasons back (The Blue of Distance)--which I saw twice and which used the dancers in rather interesting and unexpected ways. I don't recall it making a huge splash but it was well-received and well reviewed by at least some portion of the audience. Opportunities given to young choreographers -- or even established ones -- are never a sure thing.

I am more disturbed and intrigued by what seems to me its vaguely libelous dishonesty. Reviewers for mainstream publications do get free tickets.

Whatever the organizers imagine, I hope one doesn't need guest artists to sell the Bolshoi at the Koch theater. Weren't they almost entirely sold out their last run? I'm not saying I wouldn't be intrigued to see, say, Ashley Bouder dance Rubies with the Bolshoi--and I would also love to see Taming of the Shrew in any case--but I wish NY would get the kind of Bolshoi (and Mariinsky) visits London does or, for that matter, the kind of NYCB visit Paris just got: three weeks of varied repertory and casting. Lincoln Center Festival doesn't seem designed for that kind of season and, I suppose, is not interested in it either. I guess one should just be grateful they are coming at all. I will certainly try to see them if I can...

A short French television feature on ABT Sleeping Beauty in Paris with some rehearsal footage and interviews with Ratmansky and Cassandra Trenary. He emphasizes the importance of the respecting the 'original' tempo of music in addition to going back to early sources on the choreography: http://www.lci.fr/culture/la-belle-au-bois-dormant-un-ballet-qui-remonte-le-temps-2001238.html

I find the Producers very uneven--some parts even seem unwatchable to me...but the parts I like -- I LOVE. The first time I saw it, they made me laugh uncontrollably. Sometimes still do... (The 'Puttin' on the Ritz' number in Young Frankenstein was my very favorite part of the movie and the only part I much remember today...) I remember seeing and really enjoying Start the Revolution without Me as a child...I just watched a few bits on youtube...and it still seemed pretty funny. Bummed about this news.

Thanks for posting these videos. Terekhova was my favorite Kirov ballerina when I first saw the company in the early eighties...But if I had never seen her dance, then I think these videos of her performance in Shurale would have been enough to make me a fan. She is just wonderful. Definitely "what a true ballerina is"!