Helene

There was a discussion on this video last fall on this thread, which didn't include Mofid's name. I've changed the original thread title to include his name. The link to the interview is on the second page of the thread.

Did the supers and fairies try to "kiss" it during performances? Indeed. Aren't there sewing forms (which I'm guessing means headless dummies) rolling around in one of Kylian's ballets? Yes!!!! -- in "Petite Mort" Kylian gives the men swords -- another whole genre of prop, although here the men and couples dance with them instead of fight -- and the women what look like the infrastructure of dresses with paniers on wheels. (You'd think I would have remembered this, having seen it this season at PNB...) Thank you for the link to the "Edward II" photo: I never would have known he was carrying a severed head in that case. Or maybe it was a gin bottle? Don't the Marzipan Shepherdesses carry pan pipe flutes, or do they just mime them?

We have a pretty specific protocol for links and double-posting: if something is posted in Links, it can only be duplicated in a thread if there's a discussion about it, although we don't always catch duplicates. We know posting a series of published review links is proper on other sites, including those like Arts Journal which compiles links as well, but we've taken a different tack to ask members discuss the performances (or reviews ) just as you just did, and I thank you for your description. (We have many members who have bookmarked the Links page and only read Links every day.) Unfortunately, we don't have a big contingent from Boston and reviews are sparse, usually from New Yorkers who travel. Some of us outside NYC () try to keep the flame going for companies in our neck of the woods -- Miami City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Ballet Arizona, Pacific Northwest Ballet -- and we hope to turn from Don Quixote into the Pied Piper. That's why it's really important to get impressions from Ballet Talkers and to know when a dancer performs a role that is atypical or makes a breakthrough or even when the performance is not so successful. I think we all have favorites for different reasons, some of them having nothing to do with being onstage, for better or worse. Direct conflict-of-interest -- reviewing a family member or a family member's partner, ex-partner , or professional nemeses -- require disclosure of the relationship. Plus, no one is required to review everyone in a program, and if you know the lead dancer is constantly harassing the ballet mistress' dog or is a horrible person and don't want to give the dancer any props, you can ignore him or her. (I don't know any dancers, so when I leave someone out, it's usually age showing...)

The "Garland Dance" garlands in "The Sleeping Beauty". The hoops in the "Candy Cane" section of Balanchine's "The Nutcracker". The costume and ribbons in "Chinese Tiger" section of Kent Stowell's "The Nutcracker". Fans, fans, fans in "Don Quixote". The sewing form in Olivier Wevers' "X stasis". Tambourines in "Neopolitan" dances in "Swan Lake", "Tarantella", etc. as well as in gypsy dances like "Esmeralda", etc. The Noguchi lyre in "Orpheus" and another small one in another Balanchine ballet, where I think it was a soloist who danced with a little lyre overhead. The baton in the "Corcoran Cadets" Regiment in "Stars and Stripes". The semaphore flags in the finale of "Union Jack". Pearly Queen's flask in the same ballet might be marginal. The Love Plant in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" makes a brief appearance during Puck's jetes in Balanchine's version. Is it "Pavanne" in which the dancer whooshes around a big scarf?

Reviews are posted in Links for people to read, and reading reviewers is good (or dirac wouldn't do all of that work), but what did you think of the program? (That's why we're here )

Here's a wonderful short video about the making of the logo: http://www.sfballet.org/interact/watch/ind...tid=83453125001

It will only stay up a day, but here's a link to the San Francisco Ballet blog site: http://www.sfballetblog.org/2010/05/commem...ky-with-google/

It wasn't easy to get through.

But critics rarely note when the high note is blasted, when it's supposed to be soft, although some do, like Mr. Loomis, which is a stronger point than use of the "alternative" ending: http://www.musicweb-international.com/Sand...08/aida0308.htm

Laura Jacobs loves Veronika Part; her husband, James Wolcott, does, too, and he's used his "Vanity Fair" space to promote Part and to snark at Alastair Macaulay, who has not been impressed with her. I don't think the generalization holds; Jacobs just isn't a proponent of circusy dancing, and is up balanchine's alley in disliking facial expressions in lieu of expressing drama through dance shapes.

I only heard her live one, in a gala performance, but I loved her from recordings. RIP Ms. Simionato.

to Ms. Osipova and Mr. Vasiliev!

According to this story from today's Links, Gavin Larsen is retiring at the end of this season, and her next step is to join the OBT school faculty full-time; she's been teaching there since 2003: http://www.oregonlive.com/performance/inde..._gavin_lar.html Larsen was wonderful at PNB, one of my favorite young dancers -- it was a real loss when she left Seattle -- and she was lovely in the several roles I saw her in at OBT. I'm sad to see her retiring, but for her wonderful performances and best of luck to her in her next career with the company.

I think Michael Apted's voice was pretty prominent as a voice in the "Up" documentaries.

PNB has published a post-show wrap-up video with clips from "Serenade" (Kaori Nakamura; Mara Vinson/Lucien Postlewaite) and "Square Dance" (Carrie Imler in the Girl's Solo and corps couple Liora Reshef and Josh Spell), each of which ends in an Angela Sterling snapshot.

For me it was the early Met HD broadcasts that made me want to crawl away.

Ew, ew, and ew. For the first two, I wouldn't have bothered, but the last one -- much better "before". They are the Tiger Woods' girlfriends' of calf implants.

I've been noticing that many of the latest reviews of "Dancing Across Borders" that I've been getting via Google alerts are highly critical of Anne Bass personally and her action to move him from his family and country. Three are from Sarah Kaufman in The Washington Post, Gary Kramer in San Francisco Bay Times, and Amanda Hay in The Tufts Daily. Some of them read like critiques of colonization; Ms. Hay asks "It fails to question ... whether ballet is really superior to Cambodian dance.", which misses the point, since Sar himself asserts that he, as a male, could not make a living as a professional dancer in Cambodian dance. Ms. Kaufman concludes "And here's a footnote to the success of Bass's project: Sar quit Pacific Northwest Ballet earlier this year. " but fails to mention that later in the season he realized he missed ballet and asked Peter Boal if he could rejoin the company, was denied, and is currently auditioning for other companies. I would call that a greater success: he left the standard career track and without it pulling him along, realized he wants back in. I seem to miss it no matter what city I'm in, and I'm interested in seeing it.

I don't think I'd recognize anything but breast implants. It never occurred to me that people would get any other kind except cheek implants, which I have heard but which sound horrid.

Ms. Messmer.

It was kind of like a series of lateral passes in touch football, except he was both the quarterback and the receiver.

Thank you for reporting, lillianna!

Here are the links to the rest of the documentary: . This is where she demonstrates the corp parts during the White Swan Pas de Deux. She has a lovely speaking voice.

I don't live a a big metro area. In Seattle we don't have trains to speak of. So I have a question for you big city folks......how do the train schedulers and the ballet managers coordinate such that the trains so often leave almost exactly the same number of minutes after the curtain goes down regardless of the program length? I would have thought that the 10:40 leaves at 10:40 regardless of whether "Sleeping Beauty" or a program of 3 short works has been programed. WARNING....I'm going to respond with no appreciation for facetiousness..... Unlike opera, especially at the Met where James Levine showers and changes between acts, most ballet programs last about the same amount of time. Peter Martins' "Sleeping Beauty" is taken at the speed of light and has one intermission. Most triple bills last between two and two and a half hours. Even the big full-lengths with multiple intermissions tend to last three hours, due to union time. There tends to be about an hour difference between the big full-lengths and the triple bills, and train and bus schedules tend to work on the hour. In Seattle, it's not unusual for all of the buses that go to a certain area, like Capitol Hill, to come in clusters instead of being spread out over the half hour or hour, giving people no choice but to stand around in the rain, and who wants to be hanging out in the rain at 11:00pm in downtown Seattle? I don't know how anyone is willing to come to NYC for a performance knowing that they face an all-nighter; they love the arts way more than I do. The issue with commuter trains is that many of them, especially with weekend service, switch to hourly after 10pm. When I lived in Freeport, LI, and had a Sunday night subscription to NYCB starting at 7pm, if I didn't get out of the theater, into the subway, on the subway, out of the subway and to the platform by 10:10pm, I was stuck in Penn Station until 11:10pm. In those years at least, there were enough muggings near the Freeport, LI train station after early evening to make it unsafe and no taxis even if I wanted one, and if I missed the 10:10pm train, the person picking me up had to be there at around midnight, which does not contribute to domestic bliss. Also in those days, Penn Station was not air-conditioned, there was no place to sit, and people chain-smoked anywhere they wanted in the station. Being there an extra 55 minutes simply sucked. There were times that for a long program, ending in "Vienna Waltzes" for example, that I wouldn't even bother. Would the dancers rather have empty seats? With commuter buses, many of them don't run after 10:30-11:00pm even during the week. That meant that when I was in graduate school, if I couldn't get the 10:40pm bus to my town, I had to wait until after 11 at Port Authority (before it was cleaned up) to catch a bus to the next town over, with an additional 25-minute walk. Yes, there were times I skipped performances rather than risk it. Commuters are locked into schedules. Those people rushing out after the performance on Saturday night may be rushing for the last ferry to Bainbridge for 1.5 hours, or they may face an hour commute to Tacoma. Seattle is a car city on the whole; my commute from Seattle Center -- to downtown and then back -- is almost two hours by bus, and 20 minutes by car. Without a long commute or ferry to catch, the answer is to attend post-performance Q&A's to avoid the parking garage and Mercer messes. I was reminded of how win/win this is when I tried to get out after "Sleeping Beauty" (after which there are no Q&A's), and sat in 20 minutes of fume-filled parking garage traffic, and that was before driving the Mercer Mess. But I don't have a ferry to catch or a long drive or a babysitter I have to pay $20 an hour or a babysitter I need to drive home before midnight or an elderly dog that needs to be walked or a puppy that's about to tear the house up or a baby to breastfeed or a pile of medications to take on schedule or an elderly parent I'm caring for or all kinds of things that keep people on schedules. There are plenty of opportunities in most ballets and after all but the last ballet/act to show appreciation to the dancers. I stopped counting after I think five applause interruptions during "Serenade" on Sunday afternoon. Dancers often say in Q&A's -- opera singers as well -- that they can feel the audiences energy (or lack thereof) throughout the performance.

^^What Dirac said, as long as the people leaving take the other people in the row into consideration, giving them time to stand up to let them by. I can't remember where I saw this recently, but some organization was selling aisle seats as a separate seating price/section (and not an airline ).