Helene

Quiggin, thank you so much for your reports! It's always great to hear descriptions of SFB performances, especially the younger dancers. Your description of Kochetkova and Nedvigin made me swoon.

Where is Scotty when you need him to beam you around the galaxy to see stuff?

I saw the performance Sunday afternoon, and it was superb! It's amazing the huge sound that 15 voices can make, and the setting of Town Hall was a beautiful one for such a thoughtful and integrated performance. The soloist work was remarkable. Lone among the "Messiah" performances I've seen, the soloists for the most part told a story instead of the more typical bunch of show-off arias, especially bass-baritone Douglas Williams, whom I'd love to hear in a song cycle, his approach is so text-based. Tenor Wesley Rogers, a former Seattle Opera Young Artist, has a brilliant and easy top. Soprano Robyn Driedger-Klassen had breath control to spare through all of the long phrases and ornamentation, and mezzo Sarah Mattox has a beautifully integrated voice. My favorite section was the third, with the duets between soprano and violin, tenor and mezzo, and bass-baritone and trumpet solo, played by the splendid Kris Kwapis. It was great to see former PNB dancer Manard Stewart in the bass section. According to the program, the Tudor Choir is performing "Christmas in Olde England" on Boxing Day, 26 December at 7:30pm at the Blessed Sacrament Church on 9th Avenue.

Doug Fullington's Tudor Choir will perform "The Messiah" with the Seattle Baroque Orchestra at Seattle's Town Hall 7:30pm tonight and 2pm tomorrow. doug was quoted in The Seattle Times: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/ente...messiahs12.html

That was "All My Children". It's moving to California Unlike "Another World", which moved to Brooklyn.

to Ms. Messmer! The official press release is here: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...c=30827&hl=

ETA: I fixed it so that I wouldn't mislead anyone else.

No more Erika Slezak would be very sad.

Thanks to a lead from a poster on the Figure Skating Universe website on the Katherine Healy thread, according to the site of the American Dance Theatre Workshop, Healy is on the ballet faculty.

Well, if Katherine Healy could go to Princeton for four years and then become a Principal at Vienna State Ballet, maybe Clarke, who will be under 30 when he graduates from college, will return to ballet, too.

Maybe my bank account is lucky that I'll be doing Olympics-related things in Vancouver in February, because it would be mega-tempting to travel to DC for a Merkuriev Crassus during a time when it will take a king's ransom to get in and out of the city.

May all of your Clara/Maries be as exquisite as this one from 1984: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooM0ow-7n1g

Welcome, hunterman! I visited Perth in 2002 and loved it, and I'm happy to know we have a member who lives there.

Melody Herrera, whom I saw do a wonderful, wonderful Sugar Plum Fairy with her home company, Houston Ballet, last winter will perform with PNB's Lucien Postlewaite for the Santa Cruz Ballet Theatre; both are alumni. The run is from 18-20 December. http://weekendsantacruz.com/2009/12/07/hol...ta-cruz-stages/

Thanks for the link, carbro! I think Stearns looks terrific.

Thank you, leonid, and happy birth to the Maestro.

Louise Nadeau would have been a knockout as Natalia with Lucien Postlewaite.

When did Martin write that? I'm wondering which version he used to make the comparison. In the original "Serenade" there were many solos. According to the Balanchine Catalogue, in 1936 a man was added to the waltz, and in 1940 for Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, all of the female solos were given to a single soloist, with a "supporting female dancer" and the Scherzo a la Russe was added. There were also multiple versions as the solos were redistributed: Although the steps have remained basically the same, solo measures have been allocated in various ways, most frequently to three ballerinas and two male dancers (New York City Ballet variations have included, among others, five ballerinas [1950, London], four ballerinas [1953, 1955, 1958], three ballerinas [1959]). http://balanchine.org/balanchine/display_r...rchMethod=exact The original version with changing soloists throughout might have seem less structured and coherent, while the single ballerina version may have imposed a hierarchy that the current version does not, especially when the current version ties together the three female leads in the last movement.

Thank you, Arizona Native! The way it ended, I thought Part 2 was coming

Ballet Arizona's Paola Hartley and Daniel Marshalsay are guesting with Tallahassee Ballet, and Anthony Morgan, who is a professor at FSU and who dance with Martha Graham and is a modern dance choreographer, will portray Herr Drosselmeyer. I've seen Morgan's choreography for the Vancouver company Dancers Dancing, and Hartley and Marshalsay in Phoenix. I think Floridians are in for a very big treat. http://www.tallahassee.com/article/2009120...040301/1005/ent

We appreciate your enthusiam, SFB's Head Cheerleader, but we are a discussion board, not a fan site. Expect to read criticism as well as praise here.

The search categories are dodgy at best. I've since found: Alberta Ballet 22-24 January, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. "The Fiddle and the Drum" (Grand-Maitre/Mitchell).

Natalia posted the news about Uliana Lopatkina's scheduled performance on 10 February in the Cultural Olympiad 2010 in Vancouver from January 22 to March 21. There are other dance events as well, and the other ballet event listed so far is: Dance Canada Dance: The National Ballet of Canada and The Royal Winnipeg Ballet. February 13-14, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. "24 Preludes by Chopin" (Chouinard) and "Hikarizatto" (Galili/??).

The contest entries are in, and you can see them by selecting each video from the following page: http://www.sfballet.org/contest/contestvote.asp Voting (from the same page) closes 13 December 7pm PST. They are all so creative. I'm having a very hard time choosing. There are links to several videos that weren't in the finals under the voting box.

"La Danse" is coming to Vancouver's Vancity Theatre from 21 December-3 January: http://www.viff.org/tixSYS/vifc/filmguide/...ventNumber=1728 Yeeehaaaa!