Helene

I know I should have expected this, but I grew up on Jennifer Dunning's writing (whcih makes us both old).

I saw a performance of "Apollo" with Wim Vanlessen in Gent. Because of his physical proportions, including high calf muscles that elongate his legs, I though he looked to be at least six feet tall on stage. He isn't. The next day, I saw him dance the lead in Michael Corder's "Orpheus," which starts with him kneeling at Euridice's dead body, and lifting her from a flat horizontal position to shoulder height, with his arms cradling under her, and then having to lift her from this position overhead. He did not have a single issue with performing this motif lift over and over, nor with any of the other intricate partnering -- and there's a lot of it -- in the rest of the ballet.

Team NYCB is participating in the AIDS Walk NY this coming Sunday, with proceeds going to Gay Men's Health Crisis. Here is their page: http://www.kintera.org/faf/search/searchTe...760397&cj=Y

The upgrade should happen on Friday morning. I'll post before it starts, and the board is in offline status.

This is a heads up that we've requested a version upgrade to the latest, most secure version of our board software, which will require downtime. Due to the odd nature of taking the board offline, it may be possible to post during the "offline" time, if you are logged in, but there's no guarantee that anything posted will be retained in the database. If you're not logged in or if you log out during this time, you will not be able to log back in. Since I'm not sure exactly how much of our customization will be retained after the upgrade, we may have to take the board down for a few hours after the upgrade to reset the UI. When I get a confirmation of the schedule, I'll post to this thread.

From rg's photos: Alicia and Fernando Alonso in Waltz Academy (left photo) to Mr. Alonso on receiving this honor.

GOODWILL TOUR FROM SILICON VALLEY Ballet San Jose has announced today a five-week, eight-city tour to China scheduled for May and June, 2008. The company, under the direction of Artistic/Executive Director Dennis Nahat will depart San Jose on May 17th (returning on June 24th) on a private 747 loaned to the ballet by Fry’s Electronics. The entire company of 44 dancers with a staff of 15 (including costumers, lighting designers, crew heads, and masseuse and doctors) will travel to Shanghai, Hangzhou, Dongguan, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Beijing, Shenyang, and Dalian. Special VIP sponsors and guests will accompany the dancers and staff on their travels. This is the company’s first international tour since it moved to San Jose from Cleveland in September, 2000 and only the second international tour in over 20 years. The tour, named “Goodwill Tour From Silicon Valley”, will include performances at the Grand Theater in Shanghai and the Poly Theater in Beijing. Programs will include fully staged productions of THE FIREBIRD and CARMINA BURANA plus additional ballets by George Balanchine and Dennis Nahat. “We will be the first American dance company to perform this extensively throughout China in it's newest and grandest theaters,” Nahat reports. ”In Shenzhen, the newest theater of them all, we will be the very first ballet company on that stage. These theaters are the centerpieces of their cities, where millions of people pass daily. We will be reaching out to the public with "Ballet by Day", a special educational program with dancers in our company from China acting as moderators. This is a new event that will help us reach many new audiences throughout China. We will also work with local schools and professional ballet companies incorporating young dancers into our productions. All rehearsals and classes will be open to the public. We want people to see how we work.” Nahat hopes that this will be only the first step in a series of tours not only to China but throughout the world. Tour requests for Ballet San Jose are coming from everywhere, including the United States. The Company has also established relationships with several Chinese dance companies and plans are being made to bring those companies to San Jose to perform. “Touring is life-blood in the theater”, says Nahat. “It challenges the dancers, it ‘sharpens their nails’ so to speak. It expands our audience and our artists’ abilities. And, it increases awareness of us at home. There are people in San Jose that do not realize that we are a full time company right here in their midst. But when international news services report on your travels...when major national publications do stories about you, suddenly, the man-on-the-street stands up and takes notice. Many times, that which is right in front of your eyes or in your own back-yard is not readily recognized. Touring helps change that.” In recognition of Ballet San Jose’s goodwill efforts and good business through the arts, the company has received a Certificate of Recognition from the California Legislature and a Commendation from the City of San Jose as well as formal recognition by the Beijing Polar Bear Culture Development Company. Major sponsors for the tour include American Express, Fry’s Electronics, Coca Cola, A-Data, EVGA Corporation, Swann, Memorex, Coby, Corsair, Linksys, Haier, Harman Kardon, JBL, Pandigital, YY Sports, City of San Jose and Shanghai Grand Theatre.

It sounds like a wondeful program, Cristian!

Many thanks for the heads up, Jack. I just ordered the DVD from the link. Just a couple of things about ordering: * When you click "Add to Cart" the shopping cart info and the "Go to Checkout" (not underlined) link to checkout is under the left menu. (I sat there waiting to be navigated to another page until I finally looked.) * The country list is pretty extensive. I tested UK, and the state box disappears after the country is selected (both at the top of the page and the bottom). * For the US there's a state field and a drop-down box for state. * Tax is calculated for Washington residents only. The 6.5% on the website wasn't the amount calculated and charged in: * PayPal, which is the only available payment method. * Shipping and Handling is $5 in both the US and UK, but doesn't appear until the PayPal intro page.

GOODWILL TOUR FROM SILICON VALLEY FEATURES 3 CHINESE BALLET DANCERS Ballet San Jose of Silicon Valley will feature three talented Chinese dancers in a May through June goodwill tour that will perform in eight cities; Shanghai, Hangzhou, Dongguan, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Beijing, Shenyang, and Ningbo. The three dancers, (Hao Bo of Beijing, Shuai Chen of Qingdao and Jing Zhang of Shanghai) are all returning home to China to dance in front of their families and friends for the first time since joining the professional dance company based in California. “This is so exciting for us to come back to our homeland and perform these wonderful dances,” said Jing Zhang, who joined the company in 2005. “It is a dream come true.” Zhang studied at Shanghai Dance School and Shanghai Theatre Academy before wining numerous competitions in China and the United States. Hoa Bo will star as the Prince in THE FIREBIRD. He studied dance at the Beijing Dance Academy and performed with National Ballet of China before joining BSJ in 2003. Shuai Chen joined Ballet San Jose just last season after spending a year at Tianjing Ballet Company and dancing for three years with Singapore Dance Theatre. Ballet San Jose of Silicon Valley is the eighth largest ballet company in the United States and performs seven months a year in one of the largest theaters on the West Coast, just south of San Francisco. This tour, named “Goodwill Tour From Silicon Valley”, will include performances at the Grand Theater in Shanghai and the Poly Theater in Beijing. Programs will include fully staged productions of some of the largest ballets in their repertory including THE FIREBIRD and CARMINA BURANA plus additional ballets by George Balanchine and Dennis Nahat. This is the first time the company will have been seen in Asia. “We will be the first American dance company to perform this extensively throughout China in the newest and grandest theaters,” said company Artistic Director Nahat. ”In Shenzhen, the newest theater of them all, we will be the very first ballet company on that stage. These theaters are the centerpieces of their cities, where millions of people pass daily. We will be reaching out to the public with "Ballet by Day", a special educational program with our Chinese dancers acting as moderators. We are very excited to showcase them in their own country. They are beautiful performers. We will also work with local schools and professional ballet companies incorporating young dancers into our productions. All rehearsals and classes will be open to the public. We want people to see how we work.” Ballet San Jose’s goodwill efforts have received formal recognition by the Beijing Polar Bear Culture Development Company. Major sponsors for the tour include A-Data, American Express, Fry’s Electronics, Coca Cola, EVGA Corporation, Swann, Memorex, Coby, Corsair, Linksys, Haier, Harman Kardon, JBL, Pandigital, YY Sports, and Shanghai Grand Theatre.

CHINA TOUR REPERTORY SCHEDULE (All Programs Subject to Change) SHANGHAI at Shanghai Grand Theatre May 22 and 23 at 7:30pm: SERENADE and CARMINA BURANA May 24 at 1:30pm: INTRODUCTION TO BALLET and THE FIREBIRD May 24 at 7:30pm: SERENADE with ONTOGENY and THE FIREBIRD HANGZHOU at Hangzhou Grand Theatre MAY 25 at 7:30: INTRODUCTION TO BALLET, Grand Pas De Deux from THE NUTCRACKER and Pas De Cinq from SWAN LAKE MAY 26 at 7:30: SERENADE and THE FIREBIRD DONGGUAN at Dongguan Yulan Theatre May 30 at 8:00: Grand Pas De Deux from THE NUTCRACKER and Pas De Cinq from SWAN LAKE with ONTOGENY and MENDELSSOHN SYMPHONY May 31 at 2:00: INTRODUCTION TO BALLET, Grand Pas De Deux from THE NUTCRACKER and Pas De Cinq from SWAN LAKE May 31 at 8:00: SERENADE and THE FIREBIRD SHENZHEN at Shenzhen Poly Theatre June 3 at 8:00: INTRODUCTION TO BALLET, Grand Pas De Deux from THE NUTCRACKER and Pas De Cinq from SWAN LAKE June 4 at 8:00: MENDELSSOHN SYMPHONY and THE FIREBIRD JUNE 5 AT 8:00: SERENADE and THE FIREBIRD WUHAN at Wuhan Qintai Grand Theatre June 7 at 2:00: INTRODUCTION TO BALLET, Grand Pas De Deux from THE NUTCRACKER and Pas De Cinq from SWAN LAKE June 7 at 7:30: Grand Pas De Deux from THE NUTCRACKER and Pas De Cinq from SWAN LAKE with ONTOGENY and MENDELSSOHN SYMPHONY June 9 at 7:30: MENDELSSOHN SYMPHONY and THE FIREBIRD June 10 at 7:30: SERENADE and THE FIREBIRD BEIJING at Poly Plaza Hotel and Theatre June 13 at 7:30: MENDELSSOHN SYMPHONY and THE FIREBIRD June 14 at 2:00: INTRODUCTION TO BALLET, Grand Pas De Deux from THE NUTCRACKER and Pas De Cinq from SWAN LAKE June 14 at 7:30: SERENADE and THE FIREBIRD SHENYANG at Liaoning Grand Theatre June 17 at 7:30: Grand Pas De Deux from THE NUTCRACKER and Pas De Cinq from SWAN LAKE with ONTOGENY and MENDELSSOHN SYMPHONY June 18 at 7:30: MENDELSSOHN SYMPHONY and THE FIREBIRD NINGBO at Ningbo Grand Theatre June 20 at 7:30: Grand Pas De Deux from THE NUTCRACKER and Pas De Cinq from SWAN LAKE with ONTOGENY and MENDELSSOHN SYMPHONY June 21 at 7:30: MENDELSSOHN SYMPHONY and THE FIREBIRD Please contact the individual theaters in each city for ticket sales.

The review is now available online, as posted in yesterday's Links as well. http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid60992.aspx An excerpt: I have another 100 pages to go to finish Collapse, and this book has moved its way to the head of the line as the next book to read.

After the RDB "La Sylphide" I would go with the Kolpatkova "Raymonda". The Dream Sequence Pas de Deux is one of the most wonderful things I've ever seen.

It sounds like your encounter with the Rodriguez's was delightful!

Mr. Leonard certainly has earned his retirement, but this makes me sad...

"Bring half the amount of clothes and twice the amount of money." Sage travel advice for Ballet Talk on Tour!

Just a note about the set. In the post-performance Q&A, Speight Jenkins said that once they decided not to use the Met's sets with the costumes, the director, Lina Brovsky had long discussions with designer Robert Dahlstrom, who said that what she was describing sounded like Piranesi, who used stairs to indicate madness. So far in reviews, I've heard the set referred to as "Escher-like," and Melinda Bargeen of The Seattle Times, when describing the stage picture on the set, mentioned Breughel. It's such a great set -- Jenkins said he could think of other operas he's doing in the future in which he could utilize the set, which, he mentioned, despite being so high up was unusually stable and didn't shake, even at the upper reaches with all those people on it -- that just about any interpretation can be put on it. but I find it remarkable that such a modern set could invoke references to so many different centuries of art.

Bellini's "I Puritani" opened last night with the Gold Cast, which includes Norah Amsellem, Lawrence Brownlee, Mariusz Kwiecien, and John Relyea. This afternoon I heard the first performance of the Silver Cast. For me the opera started out slowly, and I was considering leaving after the first act. I loved Morgan Smith's Don Giovanni last year, and he cut a fine figure as Riccardo, who was promised heroine Elvira's hand in marriage by her father, but who returned from war to find that he was un-promised her hand, since she, in the meantime, had fallen in love with a royalist, Arturo. He has a fine upper range, but his lower range sounded growly and unfocused. As Giorgio, Elvira's beloved uncle, and the force behind Elvira's father's change of plans for her, bass Denis Sedov started well, but then seemed to fade along with Eglise Guiterrez' in their opening scene together. Guiterrez has an amber, mezzo-like quality to her voice which I was afraid was going to be inflexible, and she was out-of-synch with the orchestra in the very beginning. (This happened intermittently with almost all of the principals and the chorus.) But then at the very end of the scene she floated a very non-flashy high note while twirling in circles with a dress, which gave me a smidgeon of hope, until tenor Bradley Williams made his entrance, and then I knew what I would miss if I left. According to Speight Jenkins in the post-performance Q&A, the original Silver Cast Arturo pulled out six weeks ago. Arturo is not the kind of role that can be cast overnight, and after talking to agents in Europe and the US, Jenkins said he remembered that Williams had auditioned for him seven years before with "te o cara," Arturo's opening aria, and that his notes said that he liked it. But Williams is teaching voice currently at the University of Oklahoma, which, Jenkins said, usually means that he probably hadn't been performing much. Williams has a high, light voice, one that I'd expect to hear in oratorios or religious singing. It's hard to invoke a lot of emotion with such a light tone, which doesn't have much color. However, Williams proved to be a wonderful stylist, which is how he imbued his performance with the color his voice lacked and with shading and nuance. He moved well on stage and was as believable acting-wise as a Bellini tenor can be. And if he can teach his students to go to high D and F as effortlessly as he did on stage, he will have proven himself to be a great teacher as well. The orchestral sound was very rich. According to Jenkins, there are five French horns alone, and they played beautifully and were especially evocative in the Act III storm overture. However, it were deceptively loud, and at one point or another, almost all of the singers were drowned out by the orchestra. The singers suffered too often from Eduardo Mueller's lead. Gutierrez was the exception; she could be easily heard throughout, although she didn't seem to have a noticeably larger voice than the other principals. Jenkins spoke about how the director, Linda Brovsky and Jonathan Dean, who did the subtitles, helped to make the plot credible. (Bellini had a fight with his regular librettist, and his choice of Count Carlo Pepoli as a replacement was less than ideal.) That may have been 50%, but the rest of the credit goes to Gutierrez. One approach to Elvira and her multiple mad scenes is to emphasize the madness and play outward, but Gutierrez took a different approach. In her Act I mad scene, when she is abandoned at the altar by Arturo, who has escaped with Queen Herietta (Enrichetta) to save her from execution, with Riccardo's self-interested help, she sounded like someone who has been deeply wounded, although not aware of how much so, going deep into herself. Through her voice, which had no girlishness whatsoever in it, she metaphorically made the audience see the blood run out of her body as she succumbed to physical shock. In her Act II mad scene, she went from delusional to deeper in grief as she became lucid. When in Act III Arturo returns and says he's been gone for three months, she replies that, no, it's been three centuries of torment, three centuries of horror, and her characterization of a woman who's heart had been torn out and was in deep mourning -- all through her voice -- made this no exaggeration. I'm very much looking forward to seeing her in the future. The costumes were by Peter J. Hall from the 1976 Metropolitan Opera production, deliberately mixing 17th and 19th century styles. The set was a time-neutral series of stairs and platforms which set off the costumes very well. There is a fun interview with Mr. Hall in the program, which I can't find a link to online. A small outtake: [speaking of people that Hall has worked with] Elizabeth Taylor, Placido Domingo, Luciano, Pavarotti, David Bowie. David Bowie was wonderful to work with. An intelligent, serious artist. I also did something for Mick Jagger who was quite different. Bowie kept the same sense of direction. What was it for? It was called Serious Moonlight. One of his tours. He'd been in Singapore, and he'd been rather fascinated by it, so we did it as a Singapore of the pre-war days. We had a Malaysian rubber planter, a Malaysian pirate, and English colonel. Each person in the band was one character. They weren't used to wearing cosumes, but they were very good--except one. Stevie Ray Vaughan. A Texan. He only wanted to wear his cowboy hat and jeans. I think we decided to make him a pirate. But he would not come to fittings. He lived in a strange little world of his own. I remember saying to David Bowie one day, "I cannot get him to fittings." And David Boiwe said, "Try getting him on a plane."

Given the subject matter, you were probably lucky that it was limited to 30 minutes Many thanks for your descriptions and reviews of these new works!

I've just re-read your reviews, chiapuris, having seen many of these dancers (live) for the first time during the last few performances of the Kirov in NYC. I now have the context to "see" them from your writing. Many thanks for your generous, detailed reviews

Many thanks for your review, JMcN. It's always great to hear news from the Royal Danish Ballet.

There will never be a shortage of dancers who are willing to be in the ABT corps. There are hundreds of kids graduating from pre-professional programs in the US each year and dancers from the rest of the world who want to work in NYC. The older corps dancers are the ones making the largest salaries, and almost all dancers are on year-to-year contracts. From a financial standpoint, it makes sense to not renew the contracts of older, more expensive corps dancers, and to hire younger dancers out of school. Younger dancers may not have the experience, but they are often eager to make their mark. No one forced any of the former principal dancers and soloists who took ABT corps contracts to do so. If they had the clout to join as soloists and principals, they would have, but they made the trade-off. That never guarantees that someone won't be hired directly into the company at higher levels, especially a company like ABT which has a history of doing so, and it doesn't guarantee that a younger dancer won't leap-frog over them from the corps, although ABT does not have a history of doing this. (NYCB does.)

Many thanks to PeggyR, who sent the following link to the 2008-9 season renewal brochure (.pdf file): http://www.sfballet.org/media/pdf/2009_renewalbrochure.pdf The programs are: 1: Prizm (Tomasson), New Possokhov premiere, Four Temperaments (Balanchine) 2: Naked (Welsh), Ibsen's House (Caniparoli), in the middle, somewhat elevated (Forsythe) 3: Swan Lake (Tomasson, after Petipa), world premiere 4: One Theme of Paganini (Tomasson), Jardin aux Lilacs (Tudor), The Concert (Robbins) 5: All-Morris: A Garden, Joyride, Sandpiper Ballet 6: Stravinsky Violin Concerto (Balanchine), Within the Golden Hour (Wheeldon), West Side Story Suite (Robbins) 7: Jewels (Balanchine) 8: Fusion (Possokhov), Russian Seasons (Ratmansky), Double Evil (Elo) The seasons runs from the end of January to the beginning of May.

It's funny, because my first thought when I read the review was, "Um, they can wear them more than once?"

New York Theatre Ballet sent out a message to its email list with a great picture of Wilson coaching from 2007 ("Photo of Sallie Wilson and Elena Zahlmann rehearsing Antony Tudor's Jardin aux Lilas in November 2007") and the following: "New York Theatre Ballet mourns with a heavy heart the loss of Sallie Wilson. We will keep you informed of our future efforts as we pay tribute to our mentor, colleague, collaborator, and friend."