mussel

Lincoln Center Festival POB trailers

More detail of fall season reported by NYT: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/a-new-ratmansky-work-to-debut-at-american-ballet-theaters-fall-city-center-season/?ref=dance New Ratmansky set to Symphony No. 9 by Dmitri Shostakovich as previously announced Agnes de Mille’s “Rodeo” José Limón’s “Moor’s Pavane” Mark Morris’s “Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes” Twyla Tharp’s “In the Upper Room" Antony Tudor’s “Leaves Are Fading”

Whoever stagehand closed the curtain too early at the end of Act II should be fired. It's the moment when Veronika's Odette turned her back against the audience en pointe and flipped her "wings" to "fly" away into wing. It's one of the most pivotal moments of the ballet, Odile repeated the same move during Act III, it's that moment Siegfried being duped into believing that Odile was his true love. What we needed was just another 10 sec. I was robbed one of the most beautiful moments. BTW, Veronika deserved a better partner.

Official video from Paris Opera: http://www.operadepa...iam-Ould-Braham However, she's not casted in the NYC tour.

Kristen, thanks for sharing your wonderful, fun, thrilling experience. If you left out anything please feel free to fill in, I want to read more. Thanks again!

NYT Macaulay's season recap of City Ballet: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/16/arts/dance/new-york-city-ballet-is-changing-but-questions-remain.html?ref=arts

I was disppointed without a Dancer's Choice too. I guess the surplus from the program was too little to justify all the time and effort. It's expensive to stage the program; musicians, stage hands, ushers... need to be paid, while the house's full but the prices were cheap. It's a great way to get people into the theater, that alone it's worth the time and effort.

Madame Alonzo is in her 90's and soon and later the company is going to need someone to succeed her. Does the company have a succession plan in place? Are there any candidates within the company? From outside the company I can think of 2 candidates: Jose Carreno and Carlos Acosta. Both are international stars, heavily immersed in Russian classics, the company staples. However, they don't have much experience in running a company. I anticipate a much more open Cuba post Fidel and hopefully a normalized relationship between the US and Cuba, in that case I think Jose may have an edge in establishing connections with wealthy donors in New York and Miami.

A NYT article featuring a lovely senior who goes to ballet and opera every night and then meets & greets the dancers at the stage door for more than 50 years. Serveral dancers were featured in the video: Kent, Bolle, Gomes, Riccetto, and Saveliev. There're glimpses of Onegin being performed. http://video.nytimes...ml?ref=nyregion http://www.nytimes.c...seats.html?_r=1

Big promotion for Big Red!! She's so deserved it. MB should have promoted her years ago. Absolutely beautiful inside and out.

Thanks for the clarification, I thought at one point BA anly allowed official video posted by companies. Now I can post them away. State Theater is very fetish in enforcing its no photo policy even during curtain calls to a point of being disruptive to other audence.

Mariinsky's MSND already showed up on a popular video site apparantly shoot by an audience member. I am not up to date with forum policy regarding posting links to such videos so I am not posting the links. It may be unfair to judge from such videos but from what I have seen its MSNB looked very odd compared with NYCB's. Tempo were too slow, dancing/acting were too mannered..., it didn't have the free flows that NYCB does. May be something were lost in translation, in a video posted by MT, the stager mentioned the dancers kept saying yes even though she had a feeling they did not completely understand the instructions. Act II looked very Petipa with those big pancake tutus. BTW what's the house policy regarding taking pictures and video at MT?

Was last night role debuts for Diana and Natasha?

Diana's red gown at the ball and the dark emerald one at the end were absolutely gorgeous. The act I pdd was rapturous, OMG. And Jared Matthews got to dance with two of the world's top prima, at the same time!! Tonight's cast really set the bar extremely high for the ones that follow. I wish Cranko would use the polonaise music from the opera for the ball scene. When was ABT doing this ballet last time?

Here's a clip of Kobborg rehearsing la sylph, he pulled off some quadruple turns!

Met has almost 4,000 seats & standing rooms, State almost 3,000 seats before the rennovation and about 2,800 seats after. I estimate ABT sold out or almost sold out about 20-25 performances each Met season. If ABT were to move across the plaze, it'd lose about 30,000 to 40,000 tickets. There would be headache in re-arranging subsrcription seats. Sets might need to be re-configured, ballets re-staged. As a point of reference, Covent Garden has 2,250 seats, Bolshoi & Mariinsky main stage each has about 1,800 - 2,000 seats. State Theater is humongous, and the Met stadium-size by European standard. What I find interesting is that I read that one of the reasons Makarova changed the number of Shades to 24 (from the original 32) is that the Met stage did not easily fit 32 unlike the Bolshoi or Mariinsky or Paris Opera Ballet. So I guess despite the Met's large size, the actual stage is more narrow. Is this true, Mussel? I notice it is much higher than most stages but it doesn't look much wider than most stages, so if what I read about the Shades is true, then the Met's stage is smaller. I wonder if the State Theater's stage is wider. The auditorium does feel wider to me even if it is smaller seat wise. I bet some productions would have to be reconfigured. I don't have the stage specs for the Met, State, Mariinksy, or Bolshoi... but the Met stage is definitely wide enough for 32 shades because I've seen it with Mariinsky doing the 32 shades (4 rows of eight shades wide) with the new old Bayadere reconstruction during the 2002 Met season. Even ABT configures the shades with 3 rows of 8 shades wide during the coda with plenty of room width wise to spare. So the width of Met stage was never an issue, it's just an excuse used by Makarova to downsize the shades. She also staged the same produciton with 24 shades for the Royal Ballet. I think the real reason for the downsizing is cost saving and company size. ABT has 36 female corps, so 32 shades would really push the company to the limit with a very thin margin to account for illness and injuries without taking into consideration of height disparity (the front row of shades is the shortest in height while the last row the tallest to give the illusion they have the uniform height).

Met has almost 4,000 seats & standing rooms, State almost 3,000 seats before the rennovation and about 2,800 seats after. I estimate ABT sold out or almost sold out about 20-25 performances each Met season. If ABT were to move across the plaze, it'd lose about 30,000 to 40,000 tickets. There would be headache in re-arranging subsrcription seats. Sets might need to be re-configured, ballets re-staged. As a point of reference, Covent Garden has 2,250 seats, Bolshoi & Mariinsky main stage each has about 1,800 - 2,000 seats. State Theater is humongous, and the Met stadium-size by European standard.

I think it's logical to perform the fall season at the State Theater. The State Theater has a much better sight line and bigger stage than City Center. But I can't imagine ABT would move its all important spring season from the Met to the State. ABT's identity and prestige are partially tied to its spring season at the Met. I suspect ABT is using State Theater as a leverage to negotiate a better term with the Met.

Natalia Makarova to talk about her career on the Leonard Lopate show on WNYC FM 93.9 & AM 820 tomorrow, the show lasts 2 hours between noon and 2pm and rebroadcasts at midnight, don't know which time slot she'll appear. For members living outside NYC area, WNYC can also be heard on internet streaming: http://www.wnyc.org/audio/hd_internet/ or in case you missed it, the show is archived: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/

May 13 Sunday matinee is a must see: Serenade, Fire Bird, and Symphony in C.

The dynamic pricing will be in effect on April 16, if you have tickets you want to buy, do so before then. I'd seen prices went up more than 50% last year.

Muntagirov is the most likely choice. I don't think Polunin is going to happen, didn't he say he's done or will be done with ballet? And he's unreliable, if he walked out on RB, there's a chance he'd probably do the the same with ABT. I agree with TIdwell is a fab idea, ABT could still claim he's a home grown talent. How about Denis Matvienko?

As reported in WSJ weekend edition: http://online.wsj.co...festyleArtEnt_4 Since you need to get thru the paywall to see the article, here's the summary. Sapphires will be a tribute to August Bournonville. Peter Martins will choreograph the ballet to a comissioned score by the Danish composer Louise Alenius based on Balanchine's blueprint of the ballet discovered at NYCB archive. The expanded Jewels will premier during the spring 2013 season with a completely new sets and costumes. Sapphires will be performed after the first intermission, the order of the new Jewels will be Emeralds - intermission - Sapphires - pause - Rubies - intermission - Diamonds. I don't have much confidents in Martines, if Sapphires turns out to be a dud, it is hard to avoid if you don't want to miss Rubies. Althought Balanchine Trust owns the rights to Jewels and it objects to the tinkering of the ballet, the Trust does not own the rights to the word "jewels", and as long as NYCB performs the original 3 sections to the Trust's standard, there is not much the Trust can do to stop NYCB calling the expanded Jewels "Jewels".

What happened to the castings link someone posted earlier today?

ABT only lists principals that dance in that particular engagement. Mariinsky did the same thing at the Met, it only listed principals that danced during the Met seaon in the programs last year.