Alexandra

Thanks for that post, Ambonnay! It sounds like an interesting program -- and it does make a difference what one sees when sitting close!

Did anyone else get to this event?

Thank you for this, cargill -- and to rg for related links. The book sounds fascinating. Even Alibris doesn't have a copy (I could find none on line).

I also have very fine memories of Raymond Serrano as a dancer. He was definitely a company stalwart, a very gracious, thoughtful dancer. He was one of those people whom you always found on stage, not because he drew attention to himself, but because his quiet, commanding presence drew your eye.

My deepest sympathies to his family. Christine Spizzo was also one of my favorite ABT dancers. I still miss her feet in the "Swan Lake" pas de trois.

"The Reliable Wife," by Robert Goolrick, which is oddly distasteful and extremely compelling at the same time. (To say it's about a mail order bride in the winter of 1907 isn't fair, but it's a start.)

I had half-finished "The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo" by Stieg Lasson, when a friend demanded I put it down and read "The Reliable Wife" right this minute. I was enjoying the Lasson and intend to go back to it. It's wonderfully written (translated), a real old-fashioned curl up by the fire book. It's been 100 degrees here most of the summer, though.

I haven't read about Confederate bushwhackers since "Rifles for Waitie" backs in high school, and hadn't heard of this one. Thanks, dirac!

I'm on summer break and read dance books all year, so I'm trying to avoid them this month I'll be eager to read what y'all are reading.

Thanks for posting that, cahill! That's terrific news.

Thanks for the post, Leonid. Of course, anyone would have been welcome to post birthday greetings to M. Petipa on the birthday, including you.

Happy birthday, Marius!

It's a time when several companies and artists are taking a look at what Petipa's enchainments were really like, and several reconstructions have been very interesting, if controversial. What is Petipa's role in today's ballet? Can we be complacent, and secure that his works will continue to be the rock of the ballet repertory? Two decades ago, every ambitious ballet company staged a Swan Lake, whether they could do it justice or not. Then they moved on to Sleeping Beauty. Is this a good thing? Is the current retrenchment, many companies realizing that a corps, and all those tutus, are too expensive and moving to other repertory, a passing trend or a new direction? If the latter, where will Petipa's ballets be twenty years from now?

Hans, I hope you're reading this!

Thank you very much for that, Marga. Do you know who this year's judges are? I could pick out a few from the photos on the link you posted, but couldn't see all of them.

Thank you, Cristian, and thanks to all who have sent by PayPal or check.

I'd like to add my voice to the begging We really do need to raise enough money to keep the site going, if there is to be a site. We only do one fundraiser a year, so we don't bother you every few months, but when we say "Fundraising time!" we would ask those who find this forum useful, either as readers or posters, to help foot the bill.

We stop the fundraiser the minute we have enough funds. We're not looking to get rich, just pay for the servers.

It's disappointing that so few people have donated something so far. A lot of people read this board, but only a few have helped out. Please help. We need your help to continue this site, and we also need to know it means something to more than a dozen people.

Thank you!

Great question! I'm writing on an iPad and will thus be brief, but a few thoughts. I hope others will add to this.

The short answer is --it varies, varies by conductor and by company and company tradition ( and finances; many companies now are forced to use taped music). Some conductors attend rehearsals and are very aware of dancers' individual tastes and talents. Other conductors don't seem to care and will gallop, or drag, through a score if that's what they want to do (conductors may well protest that). Some conductors follow the dancers, allowing for moment to moment inspiration. Some companies have several days of dress rehearsals with full orchestra; some performances sound, to me, like sight reading.

Hope that's a start.

Good question, and thank you for the link. I hope some of our dancers and teachers will chime in, but I don't think this is unusual. I've read interviews with ballerinas in which they've said they've used one pair per act. Sometimes they'll wear a softer, or more broken in, shoe for an act that requires that look and sound, and a harder one for an act with very crisp, demanding pointe work.

I was surprised she'd need 3pairs for "Onegin" though. I don't think of that ballet as being as demanding on the shoes as, say, "Sleeping Beauty." I remember reading that Cynthia Gregory used a new pair in each act of "Beauty," and that did not surprise me.

Long ago, the shoes were considered part of the costume, and changed as often as the dancers would change dresses or vests. The Lilac Fairy in "beauty" wore heeled shoes, changing into pointe shoes to dance her solo in the Prologue. Men would wear heeled shoes (Basil in Don Q, say) or boots, then change into slippers for the grand pas de deux.

I've waited until the end of the season to post this, but I'm going to close this thread.

In the future, if there's a specific review/article you wish to discuss, please post a new thread for each review. The same would apply to any other critic -- the point is to discuss the ARTICLE not smear or boost a particular writer.

The place to discuss articles is this forum, not on the specific company thread.

Thank you.

YES! That's it.

I was thinking about how we've had these hypertechnical eras -- at the end of the 18th century, again at the end of the 19th centuryl, and now (maybe it's part of fin de siecle malaise), and then there's a creative peirod. I'll add this goes to extremes, too -- removing dancing form the ballets (a la Fokine, and some of the serious pantomimes that Bournonville did, to name two) and then the technicians get restless and push forward again. Hard to find a balance.

I think a lot of people have said similar things. Fokine was rather impatient with teachers I remember Ctoce talking about the influence of teachers on dancers in Makarova's short-lived company, comparing her dancers with those of the past. That might be the one you're thinking of, dirac?

To repeat my post from above:

I think these things go in waves, or circles, or whatever cyclical metaphor one prefers. My take on it is that in during periods of high creativity, the choreographers say, "You're not in the classroom. you're on stage. Do something exciting. Make magic." Dancers who " only" do multiple pirouettes are not as favored as those who make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.

Then when the great choreographers are off playing golf -- or whatever they've been doing -- for a decade or three, someone has to take over, and it's the pedagogues and technicians. I think this is necessary. Technique can get pretty sloppy during the creative periods. It needs to be cleaned. That's good for about a decade, and then the Extreme Technicians step in and push everything else to the background, and we get fascinated with how high is the extension, how many are the turns. And then it stops, because the advances become so minute that they're not measurable, and people get sick of counting.

Exactly!

Thanks for your very interesting review, Kyeong, and welcome to the board.

Re Lady Capulet's anguish at Tybalt's death, I think the Sex! angle is something that's in a lot of recent productions. Neumeier's makes Lord Capulet impotent (I'm told) and therefore lady C turns for comfort and good times to Tybalt. ( Shakespeare might have been more highly regarded had he only thought of this....) I don't remember it being as obvious in the MacMillan, but there's at least a whiff of it.

I think the point in the play was that Tybalt was the last male Capulet, and she's mourning him as a dearly loved nephew as well as for the death of the Capulet name, and I think that today's dancers/coaches perhaps don't understand that.

I saw Hee Seo in "Dark Elegies" two years ago and was really stunned by how powerfully, and expressively, she danced. I also liked her in "Birthday Offering," and am looking forward to seeing more of her.

HEE SEO TO BE PROMOTED TO SOLOIST WITH

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE

Hee Seo is to be promoted to the rank of Soloist with American Ballet Theatre. The promotion, which becomes effective August 2010, was announced today by Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Hee Seo began her ballet training in her hometown at the Sun-hwa Arts Middle School. She was awarded a three-year full scholarship to continue her training at the Universal Ballet Academy in Washington, D. C. In 2003, Seo won a scholarship to train at the John Cranko Ballet Academy in Stuttgart. She is the recipient of the 2003 Prix de Lausanne Award and the 2003 Grand Prix at the Youth American Grand Prix in New York.

Seo joined the ABT Studio Company (now ABT II) in 2004. She was named an apprentice with the main Company in May 2005 and promoted to the corps de ballet in March 2006. Her repertoire with the Company includes Gamzatti in La Bayadère, Zulma in Giselle, Natalia in On the Dnieper, Olympia in Lady of the Camellias, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, the Fairy of Sincerity and Princess Florine in The Sleeping Beauty, the pas de trois, the Polish Princess and a big swan in Swan Lake, the Sylph in La Sylphide, Ceres in Sylvia and roles in Ballo della Regina, Birthday Offering, The Brahms-Haydn Variations, Dark Elegies, From Here On Out, The Leaves Are Fading, Overgrown Path and Seven Sonatas.

Hi Fran. Welcome to Ballet Talk!

I hope someone who's been going can tell you specifically -- and you might be able to find out by calling the box office -- but until you get a definitive answer, past performances I have attended have lasted three hours.

I'd like to echo all the thank you, Helene. At first the new look was a....surprise, but now I like it. It looks stunning on an iPad!

I'm very sorry you have so much work to do, though.

I'd vote for ballet dancers dancing ballet, too, but I can't imagine it would be accepted.

It's a good question, but oh, thank you, Stinger for your reply

I think there have been many eras where artistry was more valued than technique. Of course there have always been star dancers, and Taglioni caused a revolution in technique with her pointework, but she was admired for her lightness, the way she embodied the sylph, and she came after a couple of decades of pirouette competitions. Great technicians have often been artists. But in ages of extreme technique, there's an attitude of "if you can do the step you get the role." I see that a lot today.

I'd also note that there was very bad dancing in the ages where nontechnical values came to the fore. There's a lovely old movie in which Fonteyn makes a guest appearance (One of the many "Ballerinas", I think) and one of the girls in the school, who thinks she is a prima ballerina, is absolutely awful (deliberately so), a simpering mess of limply flailing limbs.

I think these things go in waves, or circles, or whatever cyclical metaphor one prefers. My take on it is that in during periods of high creativity, the choreographers say, "You're not in the classroom. you're on stage. Do something exciting. Make magic." Dancers who " only" do multiple pirouettes are not as favored as those who make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.

Then when the great choreographers are off playing golf -- or whatever they've been doing -- for a decade or three, someone has to take over, and it's the pedagogues and technicians. I think this is necessary. Technique can get pretty sloppy during the creative periods. It needs to be cleaned. That's good for about a decade, and then the Extreme Technicians step in and push everything else to the background, and we get fascinated with how high is the extension, how many are the turns. And then it stops, because the advances become so minute that they're not measurable, and people get sick of counting.

That's my take on it

Edited to correct typos, and to add: to complete the cycle, the choreographers move to the fore again, we keep some of the technical advances, but go back to caring about musicality, poetry, acting, richness of gesture, etc.

Vishneva was very busy in Washington. She visited at least one other school -- Kirov Academy of Ballet, whose summer sessions started this week. I got an email today from KAB with a photo of Vishneva, looking extrtemely gracious, surrounded by at least 80 very excited little girls. She dropped by last night. (I'd left earlier, so I missed her, alas.) What a great gift to the students at Ellington -- Vishneva AND the First Lady!