Helene

In this afternoon's post-performance Q&A, Jeffrey Stanton told us that he was going to perform Dr. Coppelius in the upcoming "Coppelia"! He spoke about how he was looking forward to the acting aspect of the role. This is great news!

I loved reading every word. She did the Russian Girl twice this weekend. I saw her with the Vinson (Waltz Girl)/Kitchens (Dark Angel) pairing last night, and she was on the cast list for the Friday night performance, with Korbes (Waltz Girl) and Dec (Dark Angel); Nakamura completed this cast this afternoon. I'm still not sure why the women are listed in the order of Waltz Girl/Dark Angel/Russian Girl, because the Russian Girl is the second principal to enter in the first movement, which was there before the "Scherzo a la Russe" movement was added, but it can be confusing. Both Vinson and Korbes were dramatic presences as Waltz Girl, Vinson with a dusky, mature quality in throughout the ballet. Korbes was sunny when partnered by Wevers in the "Waltz" and "Scherzo" movements -- they had wonderful chemistry together, from the moment he touched her arm at the end of the first movement -- but was more like a lost princess in the final movement. While her face is expressive, she created most of her dramatic impact through timing. In the Elegy (final) movement the dynamics between the Waltz Girl and Dark Angel and the way Russian Girl reacts to them were different and marked among the casts. Kitchens might not have debuted as Dark Angel in this run, but she danced as if she were a young soloist making her debut: it was a fresh and direct performance, and she was a messenger of the Elegy Man's fate rather than a catalyst. Despite joining the company just a year after Vinson, she was a more youthful presence. Not so with Lindsay Dec, who was more like Brunhilde, a full participant and eager to announce Siegmund's death to him. Sadly for Korbes' Waltz Girl, Bold doesn't respond with an argument to make her change her mind and her own fate; it was a struggle of two equals. Ariana Lallone didn't need a Wotan to send her: she was more Athenian and very powerful, against which Laura Gilbreath's gallant Waltz Girl had no chance, which made the latter's fate that much more poignant. When Carrie Imler or Kaori Nakamura swooned and fell in the first movement, it was an episode separate from the Elegy movement; when Lesley Rausch did, it was foreshadowing. Imler and Nakamura were temperamentally different through the third movement and in the Elegy: the stakes in the latter were higher, and they were more dramatic. I particularly loved the bit of swoon in Nakamura's pointes. There was something of a detached spirit to Rausch's presence in the Elegy, Romantic in the period sense. There's a section in which Waltz Girl dances and there are three corps members in the background. I'd always watched Waltz Girl, and may have been dimly aware of other women in the background, until today, when I noticed Leah O'Connor, and I was reminded of Jacques d'Amboise's description of the young Suzanne Farrell in the last row of the corps "dancing up a storm". It was great to see Sarah Ricard Orza, another of the three, in semi-featured corps parts of the ballet. The male "Square Dance" solo is daunting within the first phrase. It was created for a dancer who never stopped moving: he was still moving forward as he stepped back, and even in stillness, his breath was part of the movement, and he was always in opposition to the floor. That's what I hear in the music, too, in the extended legato phrasing of the adagio. This is one of the ballets in the 50's pre-Farrell years that was all about Ballet with a capital "B". It's not just about speed: of the two parts of the girl's solo in the finale, one emphasizes turnout, specifically the open thigh and the presentation of the foot -- seen earlier in the attitude front in plie pose in the adagio section, like the muses in Apollo -- and the other demands great strength of the feet to fully extend in the beats and echappes. Those are the givens from which to shape the role, and without them, the role doesn't take hold. Foster was more confident in the opening and the adagio last night than in her debut, but her fundamental approach is what you described; the ballets demands are not her strengths. Watching her again made me think of the difference between a meta approach and a broad approach. Foster's struck me as broad, because the underlying technical emphases in the piece weren't there. I hadn't seen Mara Vinson in an allegro role for a while, including this role in the last run, and I missed her Odile; I wasn't sure how she'd tackle this. She was spectacular, using her formidable technique to create a whole and infusing it with joy and wit. She looked like she could have fit more in the music, and she really went for the big pas de chat lifts: Seth Orza looked like he had to scamper to keep up with her. Orza isn't as refined as Lucien Postlewaite or as precise as Benjamin Griffiths; instead his approach was more athletic, using a lot of space with fine energy, and it worked. If Dec was a crabby Greek hero, Lallone was a crabby Greek god, and it was a great performance. Gilbreath had the energy, but, I agree, anger wasn't at the forefront. Brittany Reid danced Choleric Thursday night, and it looked like Lindsi Dec passed the cheerleader mantle to her, a bright presence more than a malevolent one. Reid looks a lot thinner, and to me looks like she has lost some power in the way she moves. Cruz performed last night, and it was still like a series of snapshots. There was not much time to develop this, with only two performances this run. Lucien Postlewaite danced Melancholic in the same cast, and when he stopped moving, he created friezes and continued the characterization, like the George Platt Lynes original cast portraits. I had never noticed the last arm gestures, from the abdomen and out until he did emphasized them, and they reminded me of Carabosse's rolling gesture that she's about to tell a wicked story and place a wicked curse, only Melancholic was offering his sorrow from his gut. Postlewaite replaced Jonathan Porretta in Melancholic -- in the Q&A we were told that Porretta is having trouble with his knee, and he is being rested to be ready for "Coppelia" -- and this afternoon, Benjamin Griffiths replaced Postlewaite. (There was a lot of murmuring about it, but no one asked why at the Q&A.) There were a lot of wonderful Theme couples, all of them giving a different spin: In First Theme, there was the geometric contrast among the very tall, sweeping Laura Gilbreath and William Lin-Yee, the mediums Sarah Ricard Orza and Josh Spell, dancing taller than they are, and the shorter pair of Amanda Clark and Eric Hipolito, Jr., each bringing different emphasis to their roles. In the Second Theme, Lindsi Dec and Kiyon Gaines made an unusual physical pairing -- Dec, tall with long limbs and Gaines a medium, muscular dancer -- while Lesley Rausch and Andrew Bartee have similar slender body types. It happened backwards, but I was able to see the Sanguinic in Rausch's Theme. The Third Theme has my favorite music and, along with the Devil's Dance section, is my favorite section of the ballet. Rachel Foster was wonderfully lyric, and she has strong chemistry with James Moore. Last night Sarah Ricard Orza and Jerome Tisserand did an elegant reading. The Devil's Dance was especially striking last night, with Ariana Lallone surrounded by Lindsi Dec, Sarah Ricard Orza, Laura Gilbreath, and Lesley Rausch. Christina Siemens was the piano soloist for "The Four Temperaments" and she would have done Mr. Balanchine more than proud. It was interesting to see the various audiences react. One night clapping began as soon as someone saw that there was a body coming through the curtain. Another night there was complete silence until he mentioned his name. Today was a blank audience, at least during the speech. I noticed that he often wore the same warm-up jacket that Russian Olympics team members wore, a white background with a red swirly pattern on the shoulders. I was almost expecting him to come out to ask us to donate to the Send-Allan-Dameron-To-A-Vacation-Location-Of-His-Choice-To-Enjoy-His-Favorite-Umbrella-Drink-Fund, because Dameron has been doing an incredible amount of work since Stewart Kershaw resigned unexpected after "Romeo et Juliette" last fall, and an extraordinary job with the orchestra, which has been superb in this program. Mr. Dameron. And to the orchestra that has been lead, too, by a number of guest conductors, including Alastair Willis, for whom the orchestra played beautifully last Saturday matinee. Jeffrey Stanton gave another wonderful performance of Phlegmatic, and he was the guest speaker at the Q&A today. He was very mellow, even when an audience member pretty much asked him to choose favorites among his partners. (Peter Boal, paraphrasing the question, wryly noted that the questioner offered a couple of suggestions.) While refusing the bait, Stanton spoke about his partnership with Patricia Barker, how it started -- she was established, and he was a "young pup" and eager to learn -- and that it was able to develop over the years to the point where they didn't have to talk much about the partnering specifics. He also talked about having joined SFB in 1988, dancing as a student and then company member until 1994, when he auditioned for PNB, having been told earlier by a teacher that PNB might be a good fit and after several of his SFB colleagues joined the company. Last night Ballet Master Otto Neubert moderated with Jerome Tisserand as Q&A guest. Unless there is a Pay-Otto-Neubert-A-Second-Salary-To-Moderate-Q&A's-Fund, I hope that this is immediately forgotten: Neubert is a great moderator. He starts by asking a few insightful questions and sets the standard, and he asks follow-up questions on interesting subjects. Last night he elicited more than the standard biography from Tisserand, and an interesting discussion of partnering. (This is one of the few Q&A's where no one asked how dancers learn roles.) Everyone thinks they know what Peter Boal does, and they rarely ask him, but someone did ask Neubert what a Ballet Master does. Neubert spoke about the difference in approaching partnering in Europe compared to when he joined NYCB, and after Tisserand mentioned that he had learned Romeo and was fourth cast Sanguinic -- he danced neither role -- Neubert spoke about how hard it was to have a limited number of performances: the last cast doesn't always get to perform, and when there are four casts, a lead might only get two performances, and it's hard to grow that way, especially when the ballet might not be staged again for three or more years. When someone asked if the reason there weren't more Principals and Soloists in the company because of money, he answered directly that incoming funds might not be spent that way, because the company can't have Principals and Soloists without having enough performances in which to cast them. (Next year, there will be seven subscription performances instead of eight.) When asked why there were so many foreign-born dancers in the company, Neubert said that foreign tours exposed PNB to a lot of dancers who didn't know about them and generated interest in the company. In response to questions about partnering, Tisserand spoke about the mechanics of partnering, including what the woman did to help, and how it became muscle memory to remember the difference between how to partner one woman versus another. He described having been trained for three years at Paris Opera Ballet School, then two years at a private school in Lyon, then at SAB where he met Peter Boal, and joining Miami City Ballet, which he said didn't go very well, before PNB. He said that in France there only is POB (for ballet), and that there, as a corps member, you're expected to dance and look like everyone else. He said that he wanted to join an American company for the freedom to "become your kind of dancer", but in answer to a later question, he said the hardest thing was standing out, "to become your kind of dancer." Tisserand is learning Franz in Coppelia, and I hope this gets to the stage. There's an extra matinee performance, and Neubert is teaching 20+ kids, which hopefully will mean bigger audiences -- it was hard seeing empty seats for this program -- and meet budget for the rep.

But what do Ballet Talkers have to say about the performance and/or Macaulay's review?

I would have had this on my list until PNB's recent "All Balanchine" rep, where though "Square Dance" and "Four Temperaments", the dancers that articulated through their torso gave the most illuminating reads on their parts. Watching the Mariinsky during the last City Center season a couple of springs ago, the quality I noticed most was how neutered many of the dancers looked, with emphasis on the upper back and leg extension and feet that made the waist through the upper thighs a bit of a no man's zone, regardless of the rep or costuming. That makes sense for tutus, but not leotard ballets or the men. With an emphasis on the entire torso, the logical place for that movement to go is the pelvis, which is what is the easiest thing to focus on. When a dancer doesn't rush and completes the entire ripple, it's a whole other story.

Pre-cast list casting gleans: Above, Kaori Nakamura and Seth Orza will speak at "Conversations at PNB". In a post-performance Q&A, Otto Neubert noted that Jerome Tisserand is learning Franz (yay!).

Here's the press release for "Coppelia"; please note that there an extra matinee performance on second weekend Saturday: June 3-13, 2010 Marion Oliver McCaw Hall 321 Mercer Street, Seattle Center Seattle, WA 98109 June 3-5 at 7:30 pm June 5 at 2:00 pm June 10-12 at 7:30 pm April 12 at 2:00 pm April 13 at 1:00 pm Special activities for children and families, including crafts and dance classes, begin one hour before all matinee performances. Children are invited to bring a special doll with them to matinee performances. SEATTLE, WA – PNB concludes its 2009-2010 Season, and realizes a long-time dream of Artistic Director Peter Boal, with a beautiful new production of George Balanchine’s classic comic ballet, Coppélia. Based on Balanchine’s memories of the Russian Imperial Ballet production, and staged in close collaboration with the great dancer Alexandra Danilova, Coppélia has been called one of the happiest ballets in existence. Much of its lasting appeal may be attributed to a melodiously beautiful score by French composer Léo Delibes, legendary for his ability to illustrate dance atmosphere and action. For its new production, which is being co-produced with San Francisco Ballet, PNB has commissioned Italian scenic and costume designer Roberta Guidi di Bagno, whose enchanting conceptions were last admired by audiences of PNB’s The Merry Widow. Based on the book by Charles Nuitter, Coppélia is considered a triumphant masterpiece of characterization and comic timing. Enlightened by the wit and wisdom of George Balanchine, Coppélia offers absolute delight to ballet newcomers and families, as well as PNB’s most seasoned patrons. Coppélia runs for nine performances only, from June 3 to 13 at Seattle Center’s Marion Oliver McCaw Hall. Tickets may be purchased by calling the PNB Box Office at 206.441.2424, online at pnb.org, or in person at the PNB Box Office at 301 Mercer St. ABOUT THE PRODUCTION Music: Léo Delibes (Coppélia, ou la Fille aux Yeux d'Émail, 1869–1870; with excerpts from Sylvia, ou la Nymphe de Diane, 1876, and La Source [Naïla], 1866) Book: Charles Nuitter, after E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann, 1815 Choreography: Choreography by Alexandra Danilova and George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust (after Marius Petipa) Staging: Judith Fugate and Garielle Whittle Scenic and Costume Design: Roberta Guidi di Bagno Lighting Design: Randall G. Chiarelli Running Time: 2 hours, 30 minutes Original Production Premiere: May 25, 1870; Paris Opera Ballet, choreography by Arthur Saint-Léon Petipa Production Premiere: November 25, 1884, Imperial Ballet, St. Petersburg, choreography by Marius Petipa after Arthur Saint- Léon; revised 1894 by Enrico Cecchetti Balanchine Production Premiere: July 17, 1974; New York City Ballet (Saratoga Springs, New York) PNB Premiere Drawn from ballet's Romantic period and informed by a 19th-century fascination with mechanical toys, Coppélia is the tale of cheerful young lovers, Swanilda and Franz, whose courtship is briefly interrupted when Doctor Coppelius, the village's eccentric inventor, creates a doll so life-like that Franz becomes infatuated. When her suitor attempts a clandestine rendezvous, Swanilda evens the score by dressing as the doll and pretending to come to life. Ultimately, the pair is reconciled, and Act III's effervescent wedding-day festivities offer an array of spectacular dances. Coppélia marked the passing of ballet supremacy from France to Russia. Originally choreographed by Arthur St. Léon in Paris in 1870, it was restaged by Marius Petipa in St. Petersburg in 1884 and revised by Enrico Cecchetti in 1894. Little, if any, of St. Léon’s choreography remains in today’s production, although Acts I and II retain his ideas and the story of mischievous young lovers. Balanchine provided entirely new choreography for Act III. Balanchine wrote, “In 1974, I decided we should stage Coppélia at the New York City Ballet and asked the ballerina and teacher Alexandra Danilova, celebrated for many years for her Swanilda, to collaborate with me on the choreography. I remember very well performances by the Russian Imperial Ballet of Coppélia and as a member of the company danced in the mazurka. “I have often said that Delibes is one of my favorite composers for dance. In our new Coppélia, we used the entire score of the three-act version. The first dance drama of really uniform excellence deserves no less! No part of the ballet is subordinate to any other; most important of all, ballet music in Coppélia participates in the dance drama as never before, Delibes’ charming, melodic music assisting the plot and unifying the music and dance. Tchaikovsky was directly inspired by Delibes’ score to write his own ballet music. Delibes is the first great ballet composer; Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky are his successors.” [Program notes by Doug Fullington.] SPECIAL EVENTS & OFFERS Coppélia Seminar Saturday, May 22, 2010, 3:00–5:30 pm The Phelps Center, 301 Mercer Street, Seattle PNB's new production of George Balanchine's Coppélia will be the focus of this seminar. Learn the history of Coppélia, the 19th-century’s best-loved comic ballet, and the classic French score by Léo Delibes, with its musical themes representing the ballet's characters. The seminar includes a preview glimpse at the production's sumptuous costume design and a rare look at some of the Coppélia choreography Balanchine remembered from his youth in St. Petersburg and how it informed his own version of the ballet. Tickets to this special event are $20 and may be purchased through the PNB Box Office. CONVERSATIONS WITH PNB — FREE Sunday, May 23, 2:00 pm Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 Tenth Avenue PNB's Sunday afternoon series features an hour-long discussion about George Balanchine’s Coppélia with principal dancer Kaori Nakamura, and soloist Seth Orza in the Elliott Bay Book Company at their new Capitol Hill location. All Conversations with PNB are FREE of charge. BALLET PREVIEW — FREE Tuesday, June 1, 12:00 noon Central Seattle Public Library, 1000 Fourth Avenue, Seattle Join PNB for a free lunchtime preview lecture at the Central Seattle Public Library. Education Programs Manager Doug Fullington will offer insights about George Balanchine’s Coppélia complete with video excerpts. FREE of charge. PNB LECTURE SERIES & DRESS REHEARSAL Wednesday, June 2, 2010 Lecture 6:00-6:50 pm, Nesholm Family Lecture Hall at McCaw Hall Dress Rehearsal 7:00-9:30 pm, McCaw Hall Join Designer Roberta Guidi di Bagno and stager Judith Fugate for an engaging conversation during the hour preceding the dress rehearsal of George Balanchine’s Coppélia. Attend the lecture only or stay for the dress rehearsal. Tickets are $12 for the lecture, or $25 for the lecture and dress rehearsal. Tickets may be purchased by calling PNB at 206.441.2424, online at www.pnb.org or in person at the PNB Box Office at 301 Mercer Street.

Could you expound upon this for me please? I enjoy that the dancers look different and are various heights and body types. They are all in sync, but I find different qualities in the different dancers in the corps and I relish exploring and identifying those qualities. Of course, maybe it's because I'm the mother of a lovely, young, talented, aspiring Asian dancer, and I loathe the thought that her dreams might be dashed because she doesn't fit the right type. Synchro teams are made of a wide range of body types; many of the skaters don't look like any skaters you'd expect to see at the Olympics: they can very tall -- they rarely jump or perform spins, for that matter -- very big (although in incredible shape), very muscular, and very busty. (Short is rarely a problem in figure skating.) Some teams have wider ranges than others, but there's always a fairly broad range: the Russian team, for example, is much more uniform in height than the French or Italian team, but when I looked closely at the skaters, there were some big girls in the group. The Bolshoi, Mariinsky, and POB corps seems to be chosen and bred to look identical, but the only great thing about one of my seats at Kennedy Center when the Bolshoi brought "Le Corsaire" was to see by sitting up close how diverse they really were within a type. However, they all learn to dance like one, which is different than being precise, and I didn't notice the differences unless I looked for them. It's a wonderful illusion of a bunch of dancers who blend into a beautiful whole. The "Square Dance" corps last Saturday afternoon didn't do this. That there were great height differences can make it more difficult, but by last night, mostly the same group of dancers with the same height range had that unity of movement that was lacking last week, and the difference was striking. Last night in "Square Dance" Imler gave one of the best performances of anything I've every seen. Ever. From the infinite unfolding in adagio to the clarity and logic of each movement to the incredible articulation of her torso and the impossible weight shifts in the girl's solo, she revealed the role. Well before she even took the turned-in pose in that solo, which usually gets smiles and some giggles, some women in the rows behind me were laughing in surprise and delight, and one of them even let out a squeal. Your reference to Moliere is dead on, and one of my favorite moments was when Imler stood at the side in profile, with such stage command, it was a real Mark Morris moment. Lucien Postlewaite was a bright presence, but mostly he was gracious and kept out of the way, because it was impossible not to watch her. His solo was quite beautiful in its contemplative quality and clarity. Lesley Rausch was a stronger presence as the Russian Girl in "Serenade" without losing any of the Romantic quality of movement, and also in Sanguinic without losing the fineness of articulation. Last night Jeffrey Stanton danced Phlegmatic, and what struck me most was the similarity in articulation through the torso that he showed, a string of "Four Temperaments" DNA that I had never noticed before. It was a beautiful performance. Benjamin Griffiths' Melancholic was more sad than angsty, a bit more finely wrought than most and maybe more introverted in character, but its relative quietness really drew me in. I particularly loved the repeated movement in which Griffiths' Melancholic drops his arms to the from and side first after the extreme back bends, a cross between resignation and an offering that had a touch of compelling sweetness.

There were four stalls for the entire top tier, on the theater left side, with the Men's on the theater right side. The upper lobby was long and narrow and filled with a bar that went along the long side opposite the tier entrances. It took about 10 people on each of four or five lines to block the entire lobby crosswise, and by the time a woman on theater right got from her seat, up the stairs, and across the lobby, and found the end of the line that snaked through people waiting to buy wine or chatting in groups, the intermission was 3/4 over. You can imaging what the line was like after the two-hour first act of "Gotterdammerung". I was once about six people away when they started ringing the bells. I and the two dozen women behind me who refused to disperse with the bells were lucky they delayed intermission by about ten minutes, because they would have lost at least one subscriber/donor otherwise. They also put up color xeroxes in the inside of each stall announcing the plans for the new hall with "96 Women's Bathrooms" prominently on them. It was a great segue to fund-raising. People were even asking if they could get naming rights to a stall, but enthusiasm ebbed when told that wouldn't guarantee them first dibs on it (although it really became unnecessary). My complaint is with the people who ignore the "Exit Only" signs because they are closer to the entrance, give you that "I know I'm being a jerk, but I'm going to anyway" smile, and insist on pushing through the line, only to find themselves at the wrong end of the corridor. (It is possible to be miffed at just about anything.) My long-time expectation, having attended the Met, NYST, Carnegie Hall, etc., was that food and drink were fine outside the auditorium, but verboten inside. (How else would they make money on booze, not to mention employ all those bartenders?) I remember being very surprised the first time water was allowed in the auditorium of a theater. I was shocked, shocked I tell you, when I went to an English National Opera performance at the London Coliseum, and not only was food allowed in the auditorium, but during intermissions, ENO sold its own brand of ice cream inside the auditoriums.

Ballet Arizona has posted its next season's programs to the website: November 5-7: "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (Mendelssohn/Andersen) December 10-26: "The Nutcracker" (Tchaikovsky/Andersen) February 11-13: "Don Quixote" (Minkus/Andersen) March 25-27: Mixed Rep (at the Orpheum Theatre) April 29-May 1: "Mosaik" (Eight composers, including Brahms, Chopin, Berlioz, Schubert, and Tchaikovsky/Andersen) June 3-5: All Balanchine: "La Valse", "Monumentum pro Gesualdo", TBA.

I've seen this work where it wasn't optional, ie, that's where parents with small children and babies were expected to sit. My favorite is thenopposite: mid-morning movie showings for parents, usually moms, where they can bring their babies with them, and baby noise is expected. If I remember correctly, there was a room at the back of Orchestra level at New York State Theatre that was sound-proofed, with sound piped in. I'm sure I heard at least one interview where someone in NYCB said they brought their child, so that the child wouldn't disturb anyone.

I should see you there for at least one of them, although it will take some moving around. I was hoping that "Giselle" would be a stand-alone, and that 2 and 3 would overlap, but, oh, well.

Perhaps Ms. Kaufman would be happy with New York Theatre Ballet's upcoming performances: Program One: April 23 & 24 at 7:00 pm * Soiree Musicale – Tudor * Capriol Suite – Ashton * Suite from Mazurkas – Limón * Three Virgins and A Devil – de Mille Program Two: May 14 & 15 at 7:00 pm * Trio Con Brio, Soiree Musicale, Judgment of Paris- Tudor * Suite from Mazurkas – Limón * Capriol Suite - Ashton I know I would.

They should borrow Oleg Gorboulev, who's still dancing and is tall enough.

RB has never cast Yanowsky in 2nd Movement? She's the first dancer I thought of. I would think she'd own the role.

This is why Mason is such a canny operator when it comes to programming triple bills - I'd love to see Scenes de Ballet, La Valse, Rhapsody - the pieces they're on with, not so much. But she knows that the Ashton lovers will risk the other pieces, maybe... though the Royal's treament of Ashton isn't exactly wonderful in the execution. Though it is great that Mason has programmed so much of it. Ah, but she programmed them first, so that unless you're dying to see "Theme" or Macmillan's "Rite of Spring", you can show up for the first ballet and then head out for dinner. (Or after "Voluntaries".) It's kind of a win/win: she gets the cash for the ticket, and you get to vote with your feet.

I didn't scroll down far enough, and ended up typing the whole thing out from the article

According to this article, SFB's 2010-11 season is as follows: Opening Gala: 26 Jan Program 1: "Giselle" Jan. 29, 30*, Feb. 1, 2, 4, 10 and 12*. Program 2: "Symphonic Variations" (Ashton), World Premiere (Possokhov), "Symphony in C" (Balanchine) Feb. 3, 5* and evening, 6*, 8, 9, 11. Program 3: "Nana's Lied" (Tomasson), "Classical Symphony" (Possokhov), "Artifact Suite" (Forsythe) Feb. 24, 26* and eve., March 1, 4, 6*, 9 Program 4: "Winter Dreams" (Macmillan), "Theme and Variations" (Balanchine), TBA Feb. 25, 27*, March 2, 3, 5* and eve., 8 Program 5: "Coppelia" (Balanchine) co-production with PNB March 19, 20*, 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26* Program 6: "Ghosts" (Wheeldon), "Chroma" (McGregor), "7 for Eight" (Tomasson) April 7, 9* and eve., 12, 15, 17*and 20 Program 7: World Premiere (Wheeldon), "Petrouchka" (Folkine), "Underskin" (Zanella)April 8, 10*, 13, 14, 16* and eve., 19 Program 8: "The Little Mermaid" (Neumeier) April 30, May 1*, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7* **It doesn't say explicitly in the article that these the following ballets from this season will be on Program 7, but the article states they'll be part of next season, and they aren't listed anywhere else: "Petrouchka" (Folkine), "Underskin" (Zanella)

I'm pretty sure that I remember the context correctly, and that he was speaking about the students who were at SAB at the creation, and it was those students for whom, after a year or so, Balanchine decided to make a ballet.

The problem with the photo is that to contemporary eyes, the women in it do look hopeless, as if random people with a vague interest in dance dropped into the school to check out what this ballet stuff was all about. In Doug Fullington's pre-performance lecture for PNB's "All Balanchine" program, he reminds us that many of the early students at SAB were professional dancers who were there to clean up their technique. They might not have been ballet dancers, and their bodies more like ballet dancers from earlier decades, if at all, but if they were paid to dance, it's likely they were used to being in the equivalent of the corps, they could move, and they were used to being given direction.

Alice Kaderlan writing in her Seattle P-I blog, said of PNB's current All-Balanchine program: Balanchine had a rich and wide-ranging vocabulary, and the ballet world might be a better place had his successors not focused on one or two extremes, illuminating little.

It's probably not your TV set. He's looked orange at skating competitions.

Carnegie Hall provides two flavors of Ricola cough drops at least on both sides of the first level.

hyperdog!

Peter Boal was steeped in Balanchine, but from the aesthetic and taste he's shown in his new works selections at PNB, I wonder if the few years he spent in Europe away from NYCB were more influential than the decades he spent at SAB and NYCB. Ulysses Dove, apart from "Red Angels"? Victor Quijada? Marco Goeke? Jiri Kylian? Jean-Christophe Maillot? Susan Stroman? Molissa Fenley? Sonia Dawkins? Mark Morris? Twyla Tharp? Those don't even take into account the modern choreographers from the Celebrate Seattle Festival, like Merce Cunningham and Trisha Brown.

I thought I saw the photo that sandik linked in a Ballet Russe article. Those costumes look quite dramatic. The dancers in the Chujoy look like a motley crew -- they were by no means the sleek dancers that Balanchine spent years to create -- but the reason I hesitated to say that the photo to which California linked shows that they were not uniform in performance is that it is possible for any group to learn to move in a uniform way; back to the synchronized skating example. Even the corps that are chosen for physical similarity -- Mariinsky, Bolshoi, Paris Opera -- contain more of a physical range that it first appears, because their style, training, and practice/practice/practice makes them look like they came from a mold. Because many of the dancers in 1934 were professional dancers from show dancing, it's possible that they had a similar performance quality.