Helene

Yes and yes -- Macbeth, for the witches, and for Il Trovatore, in the gypsy camp! In the Seattle Opera production from a couple of years ago, the witches were dressed in black and white, as brides and widows. If I remember correctly, there were a few dancer witches, but I don't remember any purses

I just learned in an opera-related debate about cuts in opera, that Verdi's Macbeth and Il Trovatore both have ballet music that is almost always cut. I don't know about early Verdi.

I've seen sponsors listed on opera supertitles screens at many performances, including ballet that is performed in an opera house, where one fades into the other, and with the "Turn off your @%^&&&& cellphones, pagers, beepers" warning interspersed. I don't think this happens at the Met with in-seat Met Titles. I only remember the turn on/off message, and then the libretto. But maybe I turned them on too soon before the performance began when I was there in December.

According to Rachel Howard's preview, Helgi Tomasson's new production of "Swan Lake" for his San Francisco Ballet will have a prologue: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../PKTK15ND2S.DTL

I remember being a poor college student in London in the summer of 1977 when ABT did a tour. I really wanted to see Baryshnikov, but the only tickets for performances in which he was cast were way beyond my budget; I saw three opera and recital performances for the same cost. That was only a few years after he defected, and he may have been the latest flavor, but from that, I thought he was the draw of the tour.

Green is the new yellow. Hopefully this will be less jarring for those who gave feedback.

Do you mean they play the written overture with the curtain (or front scrim) down?

I don't know why banana arches are considered that attractive. From the side, there was little line to McBride's feet, for example. Probably a minority opinion, but the thing I like most about Suzanne Farrell physically -- apart from musicality and her energy and sense of risk -- was her feet, the only dancer who could make me unaware that she was wearing pointe shoes, and her feet couldn't have been more different than McBrides. I could watch her feet in Chaconne -- especially with the emphasis on walking in the role -- or Mozartiana all day long.

If I had my druthers, it would be black, white, and beige, so I'm trying to be gentle

Are you talking about actual social dancing or competitive social dancing? Ballet dancers are trained to pull up, to turn out, to point their toes, and to carry their upper bodies high off their waist. That does not always translate easily into other dance forms. Maybe someone can remind me where I read this, but when one of the NYCB corps woman who had just danced the Rosenkavalier section noted that it was not easy to then lead a social waltz at a NYCB gala party: performing it onstage and with "civilians" wasn't easy, and (officially) non-competitive social dancing is the realm of civilians, no matter how practiced. I know that when PNB did a Quijado piece with a lot of hip hop influence, only one of the women did not look balletic, and several described in post-performance Q&A's how difficult it was to absorb the style in such a short period of time. There are a number of aspects that help, like extension and holding one's center in lifts. I just read an article by Eurosport commentator Nicky Slater, who competed with Karen Barber in ice dance and were Britain's #2 to Torvill and Dean, and he wrote that because Jayne Torvill was a championship level pairs skater before she swtiched to ice dance and partnered with Dean, she knew how to hold herself in lifts and to jump, because she could do a modified jump entry into them and could hold her body through intricate positions, it allowed Torvill and Dean to do innovative lifts ahead of their time. I would think those aspects would translate from ballet. However, there are also issues of timing and carriage, and the way ballet dancers hold themselves, particularly their upper bodies, doesn't always transfer directly into social dancing.

Wow, what charisma Chaboukiani had!

Thank you I managed to find many more colors, which seem to work on IE and Firefox, at least for the PC, and found some paler versions of the yellow and green.

Not the look I was going for I'm afraid I'm limited to 216 HTML colors, and I'm looking for one more that will make the home page distinctive. Unforunately, there's white, and there's bright, and it's just a matter of degree of bright.

I'm tweaking it to see what happens.

No, it's not your eyesight Ballet Talk and Ballet Talk for Dancers are confused for one another quite often, and this has caused confusion and churn for our Moderation team. We're tweaking the appearance of Ballet Talk to make it more distinguishable from Ballet Talk for Dancers. We're trying to avoid the usual suspects: blinding colors, drastic changes, and colors that are difficult to distinguish for people who are color blind. Things may shift around as we test how effective the changes are.

I would define an international star as a dancer who has name recognition as a dancer of major roles, usually someone whose performances would be a draw by themselves, without the draw of the company with which they were dancing. Would average London balletgoers know Gomes the way New York balletgoers know Cojacaru or Acosta, or the way we knew Hilaire, Guillem, and Legris after the mid-80's tour, or Bolle, who seems to be everywhere, or Lopatkina and Vishneva? Or for past generations, Fonteyn and Soames, then Fonteyn and Nureyev, Natalia Makarova and Baryshnikov, Galina Ulanova, Maya Plisetskaya, and Vladimir Vassiliev?

Ferri performed with La Scala Ballet for many years as well, and it is not one of the best companies in the world unless the number of "best" is quite large. Nureyev did a lot of guesting with companies that would have been considered, if not second-, third-, and fourth-rate, second-, third-, and fourth-tier, at least in their times. Dancers have many considerations when dancing with a company; reputation is only one: funding, salary, schedule, rep, location, theatre, company atmosphere are others. Vishneva and Ananiashvili were, in many ways, unofficial guest stars with ABT. Ferri and Bocca are no longer on the roster. Kent had been out on maternity leave, and Carreno is dancing less and less. What names on the roster in London should Londoners recognize to draw them to performances? Ananiashvili has one performance of "Swan Lake" in DC, Careno one Albrecht. In London, Carreno has a "Swan Lake" and a "Corsaire". Corella has a "Swan Lake". Murphy, Reyes, Wiles, Herrera, Hallberg, Gomes, Stiefel, et. al. may be wonderful dancers, but international stars? I'm not so sure about that or their ability to draw crowds on their own, at least advance crowds. Word-of-mouth could drive some more sales after the fact. It wouldn't matter if every US balletgoer knew the name of Vishneva or Lopatkina; if the Mariinsky tours without them, what is there to draw in the casual balletgoer?

New York City Ballet doesn't have a lot of roles in which to age gracefully or to turn to character work, a natural progression that is built into Bournonville, for example. So many of the works demand such a high level of technical excellence, that it's as if the rep is a gang plank.

Given what toe shoes do to toes, it's hard for me, a civilian, to imagine how adding something padded would be more uncomfortable.

Former PNB co-AD Kent Stowell has been host at his son Ethan's restaurant on Upper Queen Anne, How to Cook A Wolf.

How lovely! Thank you, rg, and a Happy Valentine's Day to you and all Ballet Talkers.

Only if the film or video credits are rolling, so they don't roll over the start of Act I.

"Swan Lake" I understand, I'm not sure what would make Londoners want to see ABT. Perhaps casual balletgoers still associate ABT with Baryshnikov and Makarova, and that would account for it, but I don't see ABT having an internationally known, compelling roster at the moment. Royal Ballet, sure -- Cojocaru, Rojo, for example -- but ABT? As fine as the male roster is, I don't think it's the men who sell ballet, unless there's a superstar like Baryshnikov, and the men rarely sell "Swan Lake". I'm in Seattle, so I would see the Podunk Ballet if it toured to my city, assuming it wasn't the Podunk Contemporary Ballet , but Londoners are spoiled, at least recently, by all of the touring Russian companies, as well as the Eurostar to Paris.

I think NYCB is a famous company for its tie with Balanchine. As Balanchine becomes more important and sought after, NYCB becomes more famous, as the audience for any other company that performs his work, with rare exceptions, is interested in seeing how their company's performances stack up against Balanchine's company's. Of course, bringing Balanchine to NYC and getting the approval of NY critics is often a pre-requisite for believing in one's home company.

I pictured a hard taco shell, which looks like the letter "U". So the description of picking up the tutu by the sides made sense to me.