Helene

I think from photos 25 and 26, it looks like Imler is rehearsing the Nurse to Nakamura's Juliette.

I wondered if that was she in the back left corner of photo #1...

From the National Ballet of Canada September 2009 newsletter,

The Company is making it very difficult to do the detective work, but in some new rehearsal photos on the PNB Facebook site, Chalnessa Eames and Rachel Foster are seen rehearsing the Nurse -- I thought Eames was fantastic in the role last year -- and Carrie Imler is sitting on a bench in a photo rehearsing with Kaori Nakamura. There are a number of photos of the men, with Jonathan Porretta, Josh Spell, Seth Orza, James Moore, Lucien Postlewaite, Batkhurel Bold, I think Tisserand and maybe Kyle Davis (in the red shirt) rehearsing the fight scene in various combinations.

As announced in the September edition of "Ballet News", National Ballet of Canada dancers will be guesting with Dance Victoria and Ballet British Columbia in September: Dance Victoria, At the Royal Theatre, Victoria, 26 September 7:30pm, Musings (Kudelka/Mozart), Apollo (Balanchine/Stravinsky), Lady of the Camelias (Pas de Deux) (Caniparoli/Chopin), and Sleeping Beauty (Act III Pas de Deux) (Nureyev after Petipa/Tchaikovsky) with Xiao Nan Yu, Heather Ogden, Rebekah Rimsay, Jillian Vanstone, Aleksandar Antonijevic, Piotr Stanczyk, Etienne Lavigne, Sonia Rodriguez, Guillaume Côté, Stacey Shiori Minagawa. At Fort Theatre, Nanaimo, 28 September, 7:30pm Musings (Kudelka/Mozart), Apollo (Balanchine/Stravinsky), Lady of the Camelias (Pas de Deux) (Caniparoli/Chopin), and Sleeping Beauty (Act III Pas de Deux) (Nureyev after Petipa/Tchaikovsky) Ballet British Columbia (gala) At Playhouse Theatre, Vancouver, 30 September, 8pm Apollo (Balanchine/Stravinsky), Lady of the Camelias (Pas de Deux) (Caniparoli/Chopin), and Sleeping Beauty (Act III Pas de Deux) (Nureyev after Petipa/Tchaikovsky) (Ballet British Columbia will perform a new work by new Artistic Director Emily Molnar)

Thank you so much for posting this, Cristian! I especially loved the entire second part. I wish the PNB school would use this ballet for a graduation performance. I kept casting recent school standouts in it while I watched.

My final read of the summer was Hans Hotter's "Memoirs", which was a perfect book to accompany two cycles (first and third) of Seattle Opera's production of "The Ring of the Nibelungen". This volume is a translation and expansion of the German edition at the behest of the American publisher, who felt the original was missing the analysis that makes the English edition such a great read. It's a remarkable account of a career that spanned many decades, through the Weimar, Nazi, and post-War periods. (Now back to thirtysomething Season One.)

Here is a review from The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...ml?hpid=artslot

I've just joined a movie-by-mail club out of Winnipeg, and I had to make a wish list of at least 30 movies from which new ones will be auto-shipped when I return others. This thread has made it so easy, and I thank everyone who posted. Many of these movies are listed as having "High" availability on the site. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but I'll take it. I saw "Lorna's Silence" yesterday, the Dardenne Brothers' most recent film. While nearly every review says it isn't as good as their previous films, I thought it quite remarkable, if I agreed with one critic who said it was as if there was a missing reel. The lead actress, Arta Dobroshi, gave a stunning performance. (And I covet her haircut.)

But she was Irish. And in no clips of her or quotes from her would I have concluded that she was dainty.

There's a 2003 review of Suzanne Farrell Ballet in danceviewtimes[/i]. Clare Croft describes Peter Boal and Chan Hon Goh in the ballet. Natalia Magnicaballi was cast in 2007. I love her dancing, but this is one of the last roles in which I would cast her. Wasn't "Meditation" one of the few, if the only, ballet to which Balanchine willed the rights to Farrell? I don't know whether she turned the rights over to the Balanchine Foundation, as while most people did, not everyone did.

A brief bit of "Meditation" was, I think, in the Farrell film, with some film effects. I have to hold my stomach in agony when I see the lists of the performances on these (and the CBC) films, ones that we'll seemingly never get to see outside of visits to NYC libraries or the Museum of Television and Broadcasting.

I'm sure I'll read all about it here, though

Not at all. I have no interest in reading one commissioned by Deborah Macmillan, though.

Orza was scheduled to dance the pas de deux at Vail, with Carla Korbes. Boal didn't mention any more men in the role, but we may be surprised. I'd love to see Orza do it. I thought I saw Korbes listed multiple times in the Week 1 cast list before she was injured and casting was updated, but I could be hallucinating again. I'm looking forward to seeing both women this year. Countdown to the casting...

KUOW's Marcie Sillman did a piece on Brunson and her new career: http://kuow.org/program.php?id=18333 The text of interview (with just a few differences) is posted on the page with the link, but if you listen to it, you can hear Brunson's and Ethan Stowell's voices.

"[C]ommissioned by Deborah Macmillan" is all I need to know. Was the earlier bio not reverential enough?

The cast lists aren't up, but according to Alice Kaderlan, who spoke to Dave Beck on KUOW, one of the local Seattle public radio stations, Carla Korbes, who was cast in it last year but was injured, and Kaori Nakamura will dance Juliette. She said that Noelani Pantastico was in town to coach them. (I would have thought that Korbes, like Pantastico, was also coached by Maillot last year.) She also said that Korbes was supposed to dance only one performance in the last run, which doesn't make sense. I know Bernice Coppetiers, who originated the role and also coached, was supposed to dance one performance, the second Saturday matinee -- she was listed on casting page in the website -- but in a Q&A, Peter Boal said that there were visa issues. According to Boal in a Q&A at the end of last season, Lucien Postlewaite and James Moore, who both danced the role last year. http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=18332

I don't either, but, unfortunately, I've heard her dismissed too often. Her's is my favorite memoir, because she's got such a unique voice. As horrific as the "Romeo and Juliet" story ended up being particularly because of Macmillan, the one that left me chilled to the bone was her description of moving to post-war London to study at the school and being told to "pull up her socks".

I can't believe I didn't list "Lynn", Lynn Seymour's memoir.

It is a conundrum with bios, especially when the living have censorship power, explicit or implicit. By the time the relevant people have died, so have so many who could balance the record, instead of having a post-death waterfall of information, a lot of which can no longer be verified in first person. I've had a hard time taking Macmillan The Leader seriously after reading Seymour's book, and she wrote it in 1994 while nearly all of the parties were alive: Gable, de Valois, Ashton, Macmillan, Soames among the major ones. But she always could be dismissed as "Crazy Lynn".