Helene

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I do too, but I also wish Balanchine had hewed more closely to the actual parable there, and had had the Father run to meet his son. In terms of the original story and its message that's more dramatic. In terms of choreography, it's hard to imagine a more dramatic ending than what Balanchine has actually given us, and I wonder if that's why he gave us what he did, or if he was working from memory and forgot that detail in the written story. The original parable makes sense because it was a different lesson of forgiveness: there was the older (?) brother who did what was expected in comparison to the Prodigal and couldn't understand why the father was so anxious to have him back and was so willing to forgive. Balanchine left that character out and made the relationship between the father and the Prodigal.

Here is the abridged press release for PNB's opening program of the 2010-2011 season, which features two company premieres, "Six Dances" and "Glass Pieces", and for which tickets go on sale next Monday, 19 July: PACIFIC NORTHWEST BALLET PRESENTS DIRECTOR'S CHOICE Featuring works by NACHO DUATO – JIRI KYLIAN – JEROME ROBBINS Tickets go on sale Monday, July 19 September 24-October 3, 2010 Marion Oliver McCaw Hall 321 Mercer Street, Seattle Center Seattle, WA 98109 September 24-25 at 7:30 pm September 25 at 2:00 pm September 30 / October 1-2 at 7:30 pm October 3 at 1:00 pm SEATTLE, WA — Pacific Northwest Ballet Artistic Director Peter Boal’s annual DIRECTOR’S CHOICE program highlights the addition of new works to the company repertory and the work of great choreographers of our time. The 2010-2011 season-opening DIRECTOR’S CHOICE program features the PNB premieres of master choreographers Jiri Kylian’s Six Dances, and Jerome Robbins’ Glass Pieces, the return of Nacho Duato’s Jardí Tancat, and a reprise of last season’s premiere, Kylian’s, Petite Mort. DIRECTOR’S CHOICE runs September 24 through October 3 at Seattle Center’s Marion Oliver McCaw Hall. Tickets start at $27 and may be purchased by calling 206.441.2424, online at www.pnb.org, or in person at the PNB Box Office at 301 Mercer St. The line-up for DIRECTOR’S CHOICE will include: Petite Mort Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Choreography: Jiri Kylian Staging: Roslyn Anderson Six Dances – PNB Premiere Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Choreography: Jiri Kylian Staging: Roslyn Anderson Jardí Tancat Music: María del Mar Bonet Choreography: Nacho Duato Staging: Hilde Koch Glass Pieces – PNB Premiere Music: Philip Glass Choreography: Jerome Robbins Staging: Jean-Pierre Frohlich TICKET INFORMATION: Tickets ($27-$165) go on sale Monday, July 19. (Money-saving season subscriptions starting at $162 are currently available.) Box Office Phone: 206.441.2424 (Mon.-Fri. 9am–6pm; Sat. 10am–5pm) Box Office Location: 301 Mercer Street, Seattle (Mon.-Fri. 10am–6pm; Sat. 10am–5pm) PNB Online: www.pnb.org (24 hours a day, seven days a week) Tickets are also available 90 minutes prior to each performance at McCaw Hall, located at 321 Mercer Street, subject to availability.

In the (minimum) 3-kilo, souvenir book that Vanoc produced after the Vancouver Olympics and which was delivered today, there is a two-page spread on gold medalists Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. The quote that is printed on the full-page photo of the Olympic champions is from Gia Kourlas: In the context of the article, Kourlas, who trained as a figure skater, uses the pair as a contrast to what she bemoans about lack of sophistication in the discipline. (The article is mainly a long moan about the demise of the sport.) Her quote appears at the end of page two: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/arts/dance/27skating.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

It sounds like a choice between Maria "Marcelo" Callas and Renata "David" Tebaldi. Or maybe Magic "Marcelo" Johnson and Larry "David" Bird.

Here's the link from Ismene Brown: http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1805:bolshoi-tour-prima-ballerina-pulls-out&Itemid=12 I've seen Stashkevich in a handful of soloist roles, and she was superb in all of them. While there's no guarantee that a soloist can make the transition to carrying a ballet, I think "Coppelia" would be a natural for her, based on what I've seen. I think the London lineup looks great -- I wish I could be there.

You might have already seen this, but Alex Ross reviewed some of the commissioned scores for the recent "Ballet and Architecture" festival in The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2010/06/28/100628crmu_music_ross Some of the historical composer/choreography relationships that should interest you are Petipa and Tchaikovsky, Minkus, Pugni, Delibes (student of Adolphe Adam, composer of "Giselle"), and Balanchine and Stravinsky. William Forsythe and Thom Willems are a more recent pair. Most ballets are choreographed to music already written, but sometimes there are commissions or edits to existing scores after a choreographer creates a work on an existing score. I believe this is how Martins and Torke began a collaboration. I see from your public profile that you are in Toronto. Upcoming at National Ballet of Canada in the 2010-11 season are: Don Quixote -- after Petipa and Minkus There's a great triple bill with Balanchine's "Theme and Variations" (4th movement, Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3) and "Apollo", which Balanchine choreographed in the 1920's for the Ballet Russe. Stravinsky was involved with the Ballet Russe, and the composer got to see what the young Balanchine could do with his music with this ballet. In so many ways it was the beginning. (Later Stravinsky would write commissioned works and request to the second how much music Balanchine wanted for a specific section.) The last work on that program is Alexei Ratmansky's "Russian Seasons", 2006 work for New York City Ballet, to a score by Desyatnikov. (Laura Jacobs called it an "original score" which I'm assuming meant it was made for the ballet, although the amount of collaboration isn't stated. Later there's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", and co-commission by NBoC and the Royal Ballet by Christopher Wheeldon, with music written for it by Joby Talbot. Wayne McGregor also used Talbot's music (and Jack White's) for "Chroma", which is in the first triple bill of the season, but I believe that was part compilation, part arrangement. The ballet won awards, but I haven't read much good about it. It's in the same program as Balanchine's "Serenade" -- oft cited as one of the most beautiful ballets -- to Tchaikovsky's "Serenade for Strings". Originally Balanchine used only the first three movements. He later add the third, but switched the third and fourth in the ballet. The third work is Crystal Pite's "Emergence", and the score for that work was an original commission from Owen Belton. In the last triple bill, Balanchine changed the order of the movements for "Mozartiana", Tchaikovsky based on Mozart. I'm not a great fan of Twyla Tharp's "In the Upper Room" to music by Glass, but I'm in the small minority, and a number of major companies will perform it next season. The last work, Bejart's "Songs of the Wayfarer" I've never seen, but I like Mahler's vocal works best of all.

Yes!

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Re-reading this thread after seeing Coppelia (new sets/costumes co-commissioned with San Francisco) perhaps lightning might strike twice, and we could get Vienna Waltzes too! I'm not sure it would be cost effective to make costumes for the 12-year-olds they'd have to recruit to fill out the corps.

I think an issue is that place in time where video recordings proliferated. In classical vocal music, there are prolific numbers of recordings from the beginning of the 20th century. While the range of voices recorded has been limited until a people started to pirate, and recently since it's so much easier to record off the radio and radio over the internet is worldwide and so many older, until recently out-of-print recordings are re-issued. Still, there is so much more available for so much longer than for dance videos, and hugely more available to the general public, even in the gray market. In dance, if "definitive" Balanchine was recorded in the 1970's, or most of the "Swan Lake" DVD's available on the market were recorded between 1995-2009, then the range of interpretation and technique is relatively small. It would be like only hearing Vargas through Kaufmann: not that there's anything amiss with either, but you wouldn't hear Caruso, Sobinov, Schipa, etc., let alone Pavarotti. That is one of the reasons why I get so angry when historical recordings are pulled off YouTube: they provide a range of interpretation and style, sometimes from the original dancers, to whom dancers -- and stagers -- are exposed. In vocal recordings there is such a range of style that a young singer could listen to. You can hear Leonid Sobinov, a singer Stanislawski described as one of the greatest performers on stage, from 1910-11 recordings sing Lenski's aria and compare it to any number of recordings over 100 years. You can see the stylistic changes and similarities over time. "Sleeping Beauty", not so much: there isn't as wide a range of recordings. Interviews with singers from the trainee to the Diva level show a wide range of dicta from teachers and coaches about listening to great singers, from "listen to everything you can" to "no listening to anyone else", with the underlying fear that the singer will copy instead of finding his/her own style. That's always going to be an issue with dancers using videotape as well. Do you copy Suzanne Farrell? Do you think she's hopefully old-fashioned and should be doing quadruple pirouettes in the middle of "Apollo"? With dance, there's rarely a way to go back to the score, the way the singer can to say, "That's nice that Tenor X belted out a gorgeous high note at the end of "Celeste Aida", but the score says 'piano', and I'm going to sing piano." Almost every one I've heard speak on the subject rely on videotape to one degree or another, with the exception of Tharp. (I can't remember if Molissa Fenley was asked.) Francia Russell primarily used her own copious notes, and nearly all the dancers who described working with her mention "Francia's notes". She mentioned referencing video with a huge caveat. Others rely on it much more, but the range of the use is very broad: some might use it to figure out how X in the corps gets to the other side of the side and to get general patterns. Others use it to be referenced when there's a conflict in memory or instruction or as a memory jog. (There could be different stagers in subsequent productions, and very frequently a stager in subsequent productions after the piece is originally choreographed.) In the PNB/Louisville Ballet co-production of "The Seasons", for example, Val Caniparoli could make edits, or changes could be made by his stager, inadvertently or deliberately, to accommodate a dancer or if the stage size is significantly different. (There isn't any info on the Louisville Ballet site about who will put it on stage.) If there are edits that are not dancer- or space-specific, which videotape is correct when/if PNB revives it? I think it's a matter of what the tape triggers. For a stager or a dancer for whom there is no context other than the tape, what you see is what you get, unless there is an intuitive insight. For a stager or dancer who was there at the creation, the tape triggers an entire world of aural and physical instruction.

Yes, there is, but at this point, it's been mainly spoken and not written. For example, one of the classic questions at Q&A's is "How do dancers learn the steps". Inevitably, every few dancers will say, "Oh, I just watched the videotape". Stagers will say that videotape is one way, particularly as a reminder, but is only one tool, because what's on tape is one performance and one performer of the role, and that it's dangerous to rely on it solely, as changes creep in. It's one thing when those stagers can identify the changes, because they know others or were taught the ballet by Balanchine or by the original dancers. (It's funny how they sometimes can't stop themselves from inadvertently rolling their eyes as they describe it.) It's another when the person looking at the tape as a reminder didn't know what the intention was and can't put that performance in context, when there's not much more to go on but the tape. For commercial videotapes, this is a snapshot in time. Given that most available Balanchine has been released on one official edition -- often the series that Balanchine made in the late '70's and shown on PBS -- what Merrill Ashley or Karin von Aroldingen did in "Emeralds" is the definitive version and interpretation most people know. That Balanchine stopped casting Ashley in the Verdy role, described by Croce as a failed experiment, isn't what's on the record. Even for companies that tape all of their performances, there isn't necessarily a great range, although looking carefully over time, differences might be apparent. Also, Balanchine made adjustments for dancers and to the ballets themselves. Francia Russell had permission from Balanchine when he was alive and now from the Trust to stage the versions she knew, where she could speak to intent. Maria Tallchief, in "Dancing for Mr. B" describes telling him that she staged his ballets for her company as she knew them, and he told her that was right. Then there are the change Balanchine made to "Apollo" by dropping the entire first scene. At least there are several videos with the full version, or it could have been lost. Like with classical vocal recordings, where a phrase is interpreted in a particularly beautiful way, it's easy to be disappointed at a live performance where the phrasing changes. For me, that's in Suzanne Farrell's performance in the "Apollo" pas de deux from the Balanchine biography. In it she does a supported turn and ends in a perfect fifth position on a little "pah" in the music. She doesn't quite pause there -- it's more of the contrast of the split-second stillness after the momentum of the turn. Every time I see "Apollo", I want to see that fifth position phrased the same way, and it's never happened.