Drew

I love the Kirov 1980 film--I feel that the dancers are really dancing the choreography, not going through the steps. I also love the video of the La Scala reconstruction. LOVE. But I think that in a high quality performance of any reasonably good production (Sergeyev's is something more than that) the presence or absence of the 'White Lady' is unlikely to make a big difference to me. Perhaps if I knew the score as well as others it might...But the crusades are still present as a theme even without her--along with the threat by a Saracen of a European aristocrat. For good or ill, the White Lady also makes Jean De Brienne even more of a dramatic nonentity than he is in a standard production -- or, if you prefer, more of a merely symbolic character. I would just as soon keep ISIL out of this ballet--for me, in the theater, a good Abdurakhman is more like a good Shylock. Villain, but you may feel sympathy for him anyway.

Opening nights are often 'meh' especially for companies on tour and no matter what the cast.

Is there a good guide somewhere to some of the less frequently performed mime? Less frequently in the last 50 years that is. Everything I have found online shows the basics from any standard Swan Lake/ Giselle ca 1970 -- I don't need to learn the gesture for let's dance or I am royalty -- but when I see things like this video I realize there are a number of gestures I where I am forced back on guesswork.

Birdsall's plan is pretty much mine as well -- to head to Kennedy head Friday/Sat intermissions and hope that those I recognize will allow for a graceful hello to people I have yet to meet! That is, with the universe's cooperation and spitting to ward off the evil eye that I make it!

Thank you Swanilda. I was especially interested to learn what Vasiliev was saying. Overall, of the ballerinas, I am enjoying Batoeva, Bilash, and Terada the most, though it is fun to see all the dancers -- and the range of choreography they are presenting.

Thank you -- this kind of information is helpful when planning trips! The production looks lovely --

Thanks for these reports. Very nice to read about the productions/dancers -- and I'm always happy to learn about a venue "with steeply raked seating providing excellent sightlines."

Thank you for the report. Any sense of how Moscow fans are responding to another Vaganova/Petersburg dancer in their midst?

Thanks Natalia for detailed return to all of your questions. Very interesting to read about.

No blame at all surely--and no need to apologize. It's a discussion board!

Thank you for updates--

I'm not inclined to take Millepied or Alu as the final word on what happened and why, but I think the complaint about Millepied's focus on 30 dancers within the larger institution can be read in different ways. In fact, I originally thought it just sounded like a variant of other complaints one has read directed at other artistic directors (successful and unsuccessful): that their casting is perverse, unfair, illogical etc. etc. And when new directors come in, they often DO have dancers and looks they favor, often quite different from predecessors and leading to resentment justified or not. Of course Alu may be right about leadership failures...but he may just be (more or less covertly) complaining about Millepied's casting and hit on a clever one-liner about it. I missed Dupont's career as a ballerina--never saw her dance, alas. But am eager to read about--and, I hope, one day, see what she does as a director.

I had thought that distinguishing "rooted in reality" from the "true" (as Kathleen O'Connell did) was analogous to what you mean here not necessarily opposed. I would add that most timeless truths come with a temporal index, thought that doesn't mean they operate mimetically or realistically. The truth of La Sylphide is more rooted in nineteenth-century fantasies about Scotland than in Scottish history. It 'transcends' its time, as you say, but not by shedding that nineteenth-century specificity (though I infer Hübbe's recent production for the Royal Danish Ballet partly tries to do something of the kind--I'm curious to see it, but also dubious). For Balanchine of course, it made sense to shed some aspects of temporal indices in many works--"Raymonda Variations" not Raymonda and, within his own oeuvre, Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto no 2 replaced the more specifically situated Ballet Imperial (the first version of the former ballet and having a backdrop recalling St. Petersburg and other elements recalling the nineteenth century Imperial Ballet). But a straightforward argument could be made that that approach carries its own temporal index in 20th-century modernisms of various sorts or, in some cases, in practical exigencies facing his company. I'm not really disagreeing with you, just noting that what is often called art's transcendence is not an easy thing to characterize outside of its historicity. Especially as it's not exactly ideas that make an artwork great. Arlene Croce once wrote that Jerome Robbins was more universal when he was entirely local and specific ("Fiddler on the Roof") than in his attempts at making universal statements.

No kidding...I had plans to up-end my entire work week if she was dancing the opening. (As a fan I'm not happy and if I were Kennedy Center I would not be happy either...)

I have plans for dinner Sat but am hoping to meet people during intermission -- I suppose by Kennedy head? -- Friday & Sat. This is assuming health & weather cooperate for trip! The way the airlines work it's actually cheaper for me to fly from D.C. to NY than to take train since I am flying into D.C. As always with the airlines - ours not to reason why. But I do hope to be at BAM as well on Sunday night. I know I'm lucky to be able even to plan this kind of trip, but confess to a twinge of envy for those of you who live in cities that get great ballet regularly, touring companies and all. I am not a sanguine traveler.

I will be there on the weekend--and hope to meet some of you then.

Proportions aside, I agree completely about Peck's range...I found she was really able to show the more plangent, melancholy 'notes' in Divertimento from Baiser de La Fee (a Mcbride role). And she brought a sense of privacy and hidden depths to her role in Liebeslieder. She may not be right for every role--though I think I'd be happy to see her give any role a try--but for sure she can and has reached deeper and farther than soubrette in any number of roles.

Yes--I was just about to edit my comment to add that invoking the Mariinsky's resources could just as well refer to the theater as anything else. Very enjoyable reading about the production from those lucky enough to be there.

screw up--please delete

Its original name? The Imperial ballet? I assume you mean the ballet company reverted to the theater's original name. I tend to think fans can be forgiven for getting lost in this particular tangle. Though the New York Times probably should get it right. (But then again, as noted below "Mariinsky" in Macaulay's review could appropriately refer to the resources of the theater.) I loved the photo published with the Times review.

RIP Violette Verdy--a very special ballerina. I have never forgotten her wonderful performance in Emeralds. And always so gracious and kind in person too!!

When the Bolshoi appeared in NY in 2014, fans on this site complained (with reason) about the dirty--to the point of blackened--pointe shoe boxes and filthy bottoms of the shoes too. I fear the Bolshoi's Khokhlova wins the prize in this competition for filthiest pointe shoe boxes, all the more noticeable in the all white aristocratic 18th-century based garb of the pas de deux Tsvirko and she danced from Marco Spada this week--including white wigs. (I was watching on youtube, but I'm not sure the bottoms of his white slippers were in the best shape either, and his solos all featured beats.) This seems a very odd trait in leading dancers from the Bolshoi--do they have a smaller shoe budget than dancers from St. Petersburg...or Perm? It seems doubtful...I thought Khokhlova and Tsvirko didn't have the right lighly graceful aristocratic manner for this pas de deux in any case, but the shoes would have distracted me even if the dancers had looked like they stepped out of a Fragonard painting.

Happy to read you are having such a wonderful experience --

I agree--I wonder if they thought this image would 'read' to the general public better. Edited to add: I just realized there were two Skorik Raymonda posters--I was commenting on the one with her leg extended high up to the side. I think the one from the vision scene (in arabesque in a white tutu) is really quite beautiful and less generic even if not the hand-to-head Hungarian pose.