Helene

Many thanks, Stinger!

Here's the link: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/...rk-city-ballet/ I don't see the company often and don't know the work of many of them, but congratulations to them all, and I'm thrilled for Reichlen, whose Titania last spring was delightful.

I read his autobiography, "The Time of My Life", and there are numerous references to ballet, apart from his experiences in his mother's ballet studio. It's a very interesting read -- I would recommend it. I read it on Kindle, which doesn't have page numbers, but here are some of the ballet references: He received a scholarship to study at Harkness Ballet as a trainee, and he has nothing good to say about the Harkness pressure to lose weight: "...Harkness also put some of its dancers on a special diet aimed at virtually eliminating body fat. The Harkness diet allowed dancers to consume just five hundred calories a day -- basically, lettuce and a few bites of turkey, plus vitamin shots." "At this point, nobody had written an expose like Gelsey Kirkland's 1996* book Dancing on My Grave, which detailed the dark side of the professional ballet world. Gelsey was dancing with the New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre at the same time I was at Harkness, and I often partnered her at pas de deux class. The tales she told in her book of the rampant eating disorders, drug use, and emotional trauma that dancers faced matched what I saw during those years." *1996 was a paperback edition. The original hardcover was published ten years earlier. On the male ballet dancer: "I knew that on the most fundamental level, the purpose of the male dancer was to make the woman look beautiful, and my performances were geared toward exactly that. I aimed to look strong and masculine, and to present the female dancer in the best light I could." On a side project: "Mrs. Harkness had commissioned Spanish artist Enrique Senis-Oliver to paint a gigantic mural for the brand-new Harkness Theater then being built at Lincoln Center. Called "Homage to Terpsichore", the painting stretched from the stage to the very top of the proscenium and down both sides, and consisted mostly of what Time magazine would later call 'an agonized, thrusting morass of naked dancers.' "Well, those naked dancers were all me." On going to the doctor, from a letter his wife Lisa sent to her mother: "A Dr Hamilton, really, good, specialized with dancers and has written books on their injuries. The first of many, many doctors that Buddy felt he could trust." William Hamilton who works with New York City Ballet? On Eliot Feld, with whose company Swayze performed: "He also can be a hard-nosed bastard, quick to berate his dancers and stingy with praise. Eliot sometimes used ridicule as a motivator, but when he expressed pleasure at something you'd done, it was the greatest feeling in the world." "He started choreography on a new work that would have three company dancers -- including me -- dancing with none other than the great Mikhail Baryshnikov, who was coming in to perform as a guest star." Swayze had to quite ballet before he could perform it: "It's hard to describe how devastating this decision was for me. I had worked so hard and come so far, and just when it was all about to pay off I had to walk away. Even now, I get emotional thinking about it. With all the amazing experiences I've had as an actor, nothing really compares to the sense of joy and exhilaration dancing gives you. Leaving the ballet world created a void in me that I spent years trying to fill." On working in the acting field with former dancers: Swayze, his wife Lisa, and former Paul Taylor company member Nicholas Gunn co-wrote and performed the play "Without a Word". In it's film form, as "One Last Dance", George de la Pena played Gunn's role.

In street clothes? And it worked?? I guess that's the power of great choreography. And/or a great dancer. In the Delouche film about Monique Lourdieres ("Comme les oiseaux"), there's a scene with Vladimir Vasiliev coaching Lourdieres in "Giselle", in street clothes and black patent leather shoes. It is a dream.

The drop-down box cast list is truly disappointing. I await the Return of the Grid, but I'm not holding my breath. The downside of school is that I have to miss weeknight performances, so no Sar "Mopey" and no Postlewaite Riff, which he said he rehearsed last season, but didn't get to perform, and no Tisserand Tony, for that matter. Grrr...

We were privileged that he found us here. Rest in peace.

He was unselfconscious in the role. He was what he was, and if that bordered on narcissism, he didn't try to check it or stylize it. I never saw Martins be unselfconscious in any role, although he came close in some of the variations in the "Chaconne" video.

There's an unidentified woman speaking in the video starting at 1'17" starting with "I think performance is a very rewarding experience..." -- does anyone know who she is?

I have to admit to having gone because of Ratmansky's eight minutes (max) of choreography, but I am so glad I did. I've seen this production before live, where Irina Mishura's Amneris was the saving grace. I thought all three principals were superb vocally, and I'm glad that all three are getting the exposure of a worldwide general opera audience. Sadly, the transmission in Seattle broke 1/3 through Johan Botha's "Celeste Aida". I'm going to have to buy the DVD to see how it ended; the first part was so good. This was the first performance since my first -- 1971 with Arroyo and Bumbry -- where I liked the Aida (Violetta Urmana) as much, if not more than the Amneris, here Dolora Zajick, who owns the role at the Met. I wish they didn't whip the titles by so fast at the end. I'm not sure who the Amorasro was, but I love the way he built the scene with Aida in Act III. He had a lot of stateliness in his bearing. His approach wasn't as down-and-dirty manipulative as Richard Paul Fink's under-reviewed and under-appreciated performance in Seattle Opera's silver cast in summer 2008 -- that was worthy of his Alberich-- but it was beautifully paced. The men's chorus in the beginning of t he Act 1/Scene 2 Temple Scene was eerily and effectively soft. The entire scene, thankfully free of dancers in gauze, had a feeling of seriousness and ceremony. Although the conductor's approach could be ponderous at times, the strings played the atmospheric orchestration with delicacy and life, and there was some marvelous work by the flautist and oboist. The temple singer was disappointingly rough and off-pitch: she didn't seem to find the center of her voice. Renee Fleming is very entertaining, although probably not in the way she intends, but no one can accuse her of being a bad sport.

It's the second intermission of th HD broadcast of "Aida". Alexei Ratmansky, who did the choreography, was interviewed at the beginning of the break, and is, officially, my hero, having survived Renee Fleming with grace. When asked about the difference between choreographing for Verdi vs. Russian composers, he talked about the music's danceability and the melodies. He said there wasn't the need to count. She asked about the difference between re-working in an existing production and a new one, and he spoke about the challenge positively, but did mention using a lot more space in the studio, before someone came in and marked off actual space which was a lot less. The pas de deux in Amneris' chamber was fabulous, a real neoclassical pas. I have little sense of the piece in the Triumphal scene, due to the camera editing, where, apparently, someone was over-caffeinated. More later.

The arts are built on oil money, tobacco money, slave money, indentured servitude money, broken backs of labor money, serf money, etc. Why is this different?

My first thought was the same -- how could NYCB justify adding more performances? A seasonal switch may work, if that makes sense for the musicians, stagehands, etc. , and the union contracts can be worked out. In a recent "Opera News" article, I think it was Patricia Racette who said that the Met was dropping it's long book-ahead dates, and was starting to schedule not so far in advance, like in Europe. A season shift might not impact NYCO, if the global trend is booking later. I remember not only shifting between ballet performances, but also between NYCB and the Met Opera or Avery Fisher Hall.

I wish I could, but I can't get away because of school I loved the few seconds of Andersen coaching in the studio. Just to see the way he released the ballerina's hand was a pleasure.

Ballet Arizona has release a video on YouTube with focus on the upcoming "Swan Lake". There are clips of Astrit Zejnati partnering Natalia Magnicaballi (in costume) and Ib Andersen rehearsing Tzu-Chia Huang and newcomer Shea Johnson. http://www.youtube.com/user/balletarizona#p/a

It's a co-production already. If successful in Europe, there may be buyers if Gelb decides to jettison it and bring back the Zeffirelli monster.

to Ms. Kondaurova for her well-deserved promotion.

While I don't agree with censorship of much beyond preventing non-consenting beings from being abused in the process of creating or performing art, I do agree with wanting to know what I'm getting into before I buy/get a ticket and walk into the theater. This isn't always possible -- one time events, venues that aren't reviewed by anyone in print or on the Internet -- but many times it is, especially if the work is being presented by a known entity. For example, I have a fairly good idea of the range that an organization like On the Boards will present. While Lane Czaplinski tries to challenge his audience and expand our horizons, I would be truly shocked if OtB presented something two-three standard deviations (in either direction) from what I've seen so far, especially without warning. I assume, though, that it is my responsibility to check something out ahead of time or understand that I take my chances.

I heard Javier Perianes tonight in an all-Chopin program (except the last encore, unless Chopin wrote an exercise in sounding like Mozart/Beethoven/Haydn). If you have a chance to hear him, please go: his Chopin reflects a unique sensibility. It's not what you'd hear at "Dances at a Gathering", because his tempi often wouldn't work for dance, but the crystalline playing in the upper register was celestial, and he used the mid-range voices in the piano that many pianists gloss over. It was like hearing cellos and mezzos, particularly in the last piece on the program. For this all-Chopin concert that Vancouver Recital Society Artistic Director Leila Getz requested, Perianes played the Nocturnes in C minor, Op. 48 no.1 and in F sharp minor, Op. 48 no. 2, the Barcarolle in F sharp major, Op. 60, and the Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52 in the first half, and Mazurkas in A minor, Op. 17 no.4, in C major, Op. 24, no. 2, in C sharp minor, Op. 63 no. 3, and in A minor, Op. 67 no 4 and the Sonata No. 4 in B minor, Op. 58. For his first encore, he played my favorite piece by Chopin, the Nocturne in C sharp minor, Op. Post., which he dedicated to Getz.

Isn't this so not just for registered members, but everyone who uses the link on our pages? Yes. It never occured to me that wasn't registered would use the box.

We don't get commissions from amazon UK, but while we appreciate it anytime a BTer uses the search box at the top of this site or Ballet Talk for Dancers, if there's a cheaper, faster, better source, please use it, and that's almost always true for BTers outside the US.

Many thanks for the news, Rosa!

In Apollinaire Scherr's most recent blog entry on "foot in mouth" she writes More on online dance-video collections, and why the likes of the Balanchine Trust might need to shut them down... which answers a several questions that have been raised on this thread and elsewhere in the site.

While I don't believe that everything that Balanchine choreographed after "Agon" was a crowd-pleaser -- he did choreograph "Episodes" later, after all -- to me "Agon" is the clean geometry of Diana Adams' performance in the kinescope, and I don't think the bendy-twisty interpretations that came afterwards extended the modern ballerina any more than I think today's 180 degree extensions have extended the classical ballerina.

Has anyone extended the modern ballerina past "Agon"?

I don't think the criticism by artists is nearly exhausted. Just last week at the Vancouver International Film Festival, I saw Javier Fesser's "Camino", which takes a steamroller to Opus Dei. Given the number and enthusiasm of new converts particularly in Africa and inroads made in India, increasing the Rome's power at a time it has been diminishing in Europe and North America, and continued lawsuits and allegations of sexual abuse, it's not a subject I'd expect to go away any time soon.