Alexandra

I'd much rather see Snow pas than any transformation scene I've been subjected to!!! I wish Ashton's version could be revived -- it was only Snow and Sweets, no muss, no fuss, no mice, no party, no Drosselmeyer.

Uh, Mel, we got it I was not disagreeing with you.

Yes, and that's available commercially now. He also did the Royal Ballet's Sleeping Beauty -- filmed over a ten year period, all his favorite dancers, their best performance (Fonteyn is 39 at the beginning of the Rose Adagio and 29 at the end of it, or something like that). Victor Jepsen, I think the name is. Danish, of course ;) Editing to add: The Sleeping Beauty film is now at the Dance Collection iin New York, but I've been told it's deteriorated badly and one needs "a scholarly purpose" and written permission from the family to view it.

There were also technical problems before video -- sound, for one. There are a lot of videos made by fans during performances, or members of the artistic staff of companies, but few have sound. Also, with the old 16 mm cameras, you could only take 45 second shots, so live performance filming wasn't possible. There are some patched together films. Shoot night 1 -- with Cast A, perhaps -- and then night 2 (perhaps with Cast B) starting a few seconds later, and cut the two together.

I thihk we need the Pina Bausches of the world AND ballet -- I think there's room for both. There should be people who are brave enough to work in the temporal -- make what you need to do, trends be damned, if it lasts, it lasts. It can be very exciting, it's fine. It's a personal expression created through a personal vocabulary. But we also need work that is created consciously to last and that uses a more common, infinitely expandable vocabulary, I think, and we need people to preserve those works that are for institutions -- because the very role of an institution is to preserve and protect as well as create.

I gather Robert La Fosse is your Man of the Year, then? Thanks for these, Manhattnik! Others, please feel free to make your own nominations!

Well said, Mel. Too much attention to foreign languages, perhaps, and not enough to the 3Rs, as it were

El,l did you try a google search, as citibob suggested above? If not, go to www.google.com and put in Rita Ferreira ballet in the search box (I'd suggest adding the word "ballet" in case there are other RFs). What he found does seem like a good bet! Again, good luck!

Hello, Elia -- We don't have anyone posting about them, unfortunately -- if we did, there'd be a forum! I've written this before, but it's good to repeat it every once in awhile. We have forums for companies where there is, or has been, enough posts about the company to justify it. If a company isn't here, we're not trying to slight it. If you're seeing English National Ballet performances, please post about them on Recent Performances -- if we have a couple of people seeing them regularly, then I'll put up a forum! Thanks for asking -- maybe you'll spur people to post about this company -- Birmingham Royal Ballet, too, please!

It is the same here, perhaps more so -- and I agree with everything you wrote. As a critic writing for a daily paper, everything is news driven. New ballet, new choreographer, new cast. Reflection is something left to someone else, except there isn't someone else any more. There's no long term view. They treat the public as though we're slobbering dogs lunging at red meat; and if we're treated that way long enough, that's what we'll become. (With apologies to dogs, of whom I am quite fond.) One of the several reasons I started Ballet Alert! is that, as an editor, I met several young dance crtiics who proposed articles about Improv Festivals, or Cutting Edge Choreography -- I'd take them; they need to be covered, too. But they'd be living in cities with a major, or undercovered, or otherwise interesting, ballet company, and I'd ask if they'd write about that. "Oh, I love classical ballet, even though I realize it's very old-fashioned," they'd say. When people are embarrased to say they are interested in ballet, we have a problem.

I'm posting this here and on About The Site. I've added two new forum, both on the What's New (formerly News) board: First, The Daily Digest I've set this up in the hopes that it will become a central gathering place -- please start your day here. If there's any site news, it will be here. If there's a breaking story -- like Monica Mason being named Director of the Royal Ballet, for example -- we'll post it here. There's also a list of threads, both the hot ones and some languishing ones that have gotten lost in the shuffle but that deserve debate. And occasionally there will be a Tip of the Day on some aspect of the software. Second, I've put up an end-of-the-year forum and moved into it about 50 of our most interesting discussions from 2002. I hope you'll browse through these -- feel free to activate one of them, if you missed it the first go-round, or have new thoughts. I'll leave it up for several months before moving it into an archive of its own. I hope that new people coming to the site will read through it -- it gives a good idea of what we do -- or can do -- here! 2002-Looking Back

Interesting summary of the two oeuvres, GWTW Just a note to say I've moved the Eifman Balanchine Bio Ballet material onto a thread of its own here: http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...67397#post67397

I've always wanted to write this: Me too!!!! Thank you, Diane -- you put it much more succinctly than I ever could, but that's exactly how I look at things

Did you check the Verdy interview? She lists the companies that the Indiana U students enter after graduation. Mid or lower level regional companies, all. Nothing wrong with that, and you can have a satisfying career, but it's highly unlikely you're going to get into ABT or NYCB. A few years ago, at Goucher College, which had an excellent ballet program, there was a girl named Pamela Croce who discovered ballet at 18. She was so good that for her graduation performance, Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, who was the artist in residence, not only made a ballet for her, but staged Rubies for her, and she was terrific. She could not get a job. At 22, she was "too old to train to our ways." The companies all wanted young kids -- 15, 17, 18. For some, 18 was too old. And, as Mel said, of course there are always exceptions. Another anecdote, this time a modern dance one, at D.C.'s Dance Place in the 1980s, a young man (and I cannot remember his name!) came to watch his girlfriend take class, became enchanted with it, decided to try it himself -- he was 26. Within two years he was dancing with several companies in New York, and dancing well. (This was in the minimalist phase of modern dance, though, where running and walking with elan could get you far!) As for the rents, I think the oil crisis years of the late 1970s were the turning point, weren't they? I remember stories of friends in college then desperately trying to get an apartment, and being forced to triple-up or taking filthy sublets with roaches and rats. But the Glory Days of New York dance, the '40s and '50s, that's when rents, both apartments and studios -- and tickets! -- were cheap. Listening to people talk about those times, it's as if the city were one big, happy commune. I'm sure that wasn't the view from the Upper East Side, but it sure sounds like it would have been fun to have been a dancer or a dance follower then.

So, how did we do??

Thank you for that, Katharine. I wonder if M. Lacotte has an internet connection? I found your description of Bournonville's construction of a variation very interesting, and applicable, since Paquita was originally a French, not a Russian, Romantic ballet -- but I have to say that I don't think the RDB is in any state to teach POB anything. The last time they were in Paris, with "Napoli," (3 years ago?) they were (metaphorically speaking) run out of town. And the year before that, they were scheduled to bring "Konservatoriet" and "Etudes" but there was a diplomatic tiff between Denmark and France. Every exchange was cancelled -- except the ballet. This caused such a furor in Copenhagen that there was a political cartoon picturing the Theater Chief saying, "Of course we're going. There's more than one way to show our contempt for the French!" (implyling that taking this program to Paris was worse than canceling it; eventually, though, they did.) Do go to "Sylvia" and tell us about it

Welcome to the best of the soon-to-be-Old Year -- original idea by Leigh Witchel, excessive moving by Alexandra Tomalonis. Leigh suggested we move some of the most interesting posts of the last year into a That Was The Year That Was type of forum. Originally we thought it would only be about a dozen, so that people might actually be able to read all of them. But alas, there were so many good discussions -- it would have been easy to move another 40 posts into a "best of" forum. This doesn't include performance reviews -- they're easy enough to find in the company-specific forums or in Recent Performances. And we decided to restrict this forum to the General and Subtexts boards -- no disrespect intended for our teens or special groups. We'd rather not have the world know about our teens, and the special groups forums topics tend to be of interest to the group members. I hope everyone will cast his or her eye over the topics, at least (it's only 2 pages!) and I hope that newer members, especially, will open some of the threads and read them. I think we'll leave this up for awhile, so that people, as they join, or think about joining, can turn here to see what this board is about. Eventually it will be moved into the Archives; our time capsule for 2002. All of these threads are active, so if you have anything to add, please feel free! We've had about 40,000 posts since we moved into the new software last March, and this represents about less than 4 percent of them I think you all did quite well! THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE, thank you for participating in our discussions, thank you for making this board lively and fun. And generally peaceful

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Manhattnik, what happened to the pas de trois with Father B and Brother B (the latter representing the Artist Scorned)? Did you cut it?

Liebs, the Mayor won't allow that Manhattnik, I thought the movement for "Orpheus" looked like simplified, coarsened Bausch (whom I actually like). But it was definitely before Forsythe's abstract, "cerebral" period. Editing to add an afterthought: wonder how Eifman would redo Orpheus?

Sleep easy, Manhattnik. I absolve thee of all guilt It's been so long now that I think the genesis of the Eifman Balanchine bio has gotten lost. The story that Eifman was going to do a ballet for NYCB first appeared in Dancing Times in autumn 2001. http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...fman+Balanchine This was later confirmed by Andrei after a trip to Russia. That was when you wrote your very funny suggestion for a libretto. http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...fman+Balanchine Joan Acocella wrote a piece in the New Yorker that mentioned Eifman had been commissioned to do two ballets for NYCB. I don't think she got into specifics. http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...fman+Balanchine http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...fman+Balanchine Were it not for this, I would have placed Forsythe with NYCB and Eifman with ABT in my Ballet Utopia of the Future, but paradigm shifts call for drastic rethinking (BTW, Manhattnik, I saw that Orpheus. It was for Stuttgart Ballet in the late 1970s. It was an early work, but not so early that you could excuse it as a learning piece. I thought it was absolutely awful, and was surprised when I saw later Forsythe which is, I think, structurally competent -- he can move bodies and he has a command of form. The Orpheus -- reinvented as an Elvis-like rock star, oh, how clever -- was just crass. Part of the audience booed (at the Ken Cen), part cheered, and Forsythe came out for a curtain call doing that cute little thing with his hands that boxers do when they've knocked someone's head off.)

No, actually, I'm quite serious. Many people would proffer either Mr. Forsythe or Mr. Eifman as THE great choreographer of the age. Whether or not one agrees with this, they are certainly popular and forces to be reckoned with. The thought that Forsythe would end up being resident choreographer at ABT and Eifman, if his reported two new ballets are hits, would become a force at NYCB is not beyond the realm of possibility. Oops. I should have made a third choice: Diamond Project. Next year. Living in the provinces, as I do, of course, such delights do not tempt me, but I can dream. And there are people on this board who admire either Forsythe or Eifman, too!

Bored with baking, shopping, relatives? Here's a divertissement for you. Forsythe is moving to New York [edting to add: or your Home Town]. Eifman is already here, at least once a year, and there are those persistent, delicious rumors that he's about to unleash a tribute to Mr. B in the form of a danced biography for 2004. Are we on the verge of another paradigm shift? It is five years in the future. There are two great companies in New York, one with Forsythe as resident choreographer, the other with Eifman. Ballet is so popular that subscriptions must be rationed and the new Mayor has issued an emergency executive order that each balletomane may only subscribe to One Company. Which would you choose? Do feel free to elaborate in the space below.

But history is personality!! Fascinating theory we're evolving -- Be a control freak, produce rebels = good for art. Be gentle, produce imitators = bad for art.