Helene

Weight gain is a tricky thing: there are women who gain 25 pounds and spend months trying to get rid of 10-15 of them. My little sister, who got every good gene in the family, weighed 110lbs from high school on until she was pregnant with my nephew, and her idea of exercise is walking from the car and back. (I'm not bitter or anything...) She weighed 150 just before giving birth. A week later, she weighed 115lbs, and she dropped the other five in what seemed like seconds. I think it depends on the body, and having had children before would have given Fournier, at least, a benchmark, for how her body would handle weight.

It's worth it, she's so beautiful.

Moscow "If I'll capture Kiev, I'll take Russia by its feet, if I'll capture Petersburg, I'll take it by its head and if I'll capture Moscow, I'll destroy its heart". -- Napoleon Bonaparte 1900: Alexander Gorsky becomes Ballet Master of the Bolshoi Ballet 1902-4: Building of the Tretyakov Gallery 1915: Population: 1.8m 1917: The Bolsheviks take over the Kremlin 1918: Moscow becomes capital of Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, after the capital of Russia moved to St. Petersburg in 1712; Vladimir Lenin moves to the Kremlin, the historic fortified structure by the Moskva River 1922: Moscow becomes capital of the Soviet Union 1927: Stalin's rule begins 1928-32: First Five-Year-Plan, resulting in increased industrialization of Moscow and a sharp rise in the population 1935: The Metro opens 1936: The first Moscow Trial takes place during Stalin's Great Purge, population doubles to 3.6m 1941-2: The Battle of Moscow, in which the German army was stopped at the city limits and began its first major retreat of WWII. 1941-5: The Great Patriot War, in which one of three people killed during WWII was a Soviet citizen 1944: Leonid Lavrovsky becomes Artistic Director of the Bolshoi Ballet; Galina Ulanova transfers from the Mariinsky Ballet to the Bolshoi Ballet 1947: Moscow's 800th anniversary; Maya Plisetskaya debuts as Odette/Odile 1953: Stalin dies; Khrushchev succeeds him as First Secretary. 1955-end of the decade: 90 percent of Moscow's housing units are built in post-war development; population over 5m by 1959 1956: Khrushchev denounces Stalin at the Twentieth Party Congress, furthering de-Stalinization and initiating "Khrushchev's Thaw" 1957: Industrial ministries dissolved and replaced by regional economic councils; Sputnik launches 1961: The Palace of Congresses is completed in the Kremlin; Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space; construction of the Berlin Wall 1962: New York City Ballet tours Russia, including Moscow, marking George Balanchine's first return to Russian soil 1963: Cuban missile crisis 1964: Yuri Grigorovich becomes chief choreographer of the Bolshoi Ballet; Brezhnev becomes First Secretary 1965: Moscow becomes a "Hero City" for it's role in World War II 1968: Premiere of Yuri Grigorovich's "Spartacus" 1979: The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan; population is 7.8m 1980: Moscow hosts the Summer Olympics, which is boycotted by the United States 1982: Yuri Andropov becomes General Secretary 1984: Konstantin Chernenko becomes General Secretary 1985: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes Soviet head of state and begins to institute glasnost and perestroika 1991: A coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev fails; the Soviet Union is dissolved; Boris Yeltsin becomes the first President of the Russian Federation and institutes market reforms; Moscow once more becomes the capital of Russia 1993: First Constitutional crisis: Yeltsin dissolves the legislature and the military backs Yeltsin against protesters 1994-6: First Chechan War 1998: "Rouble crisis"; Aleksei Fadeyechev becomes Artistic Director of the Bolshoi Ballet; Galina Ulanova dies and is buried in the famed Novodevichye Cemetary 1999: Beginning of the Second Chechan War 2000: Vladimir Putin becomes second President of the Russian Federation; Boris Akimov becomes Artistic Director of the Bolshoi Ballet 2004: Beslan school hostage crisis; Putin restructures the government giving more authority to the Presidency; Alexei Ratmansky becomes Director of Ballet at the Bolshoi 2005: Bolshoi Theater begins major, multi-year renovations 2007: Vladimir Putin dissolves the government; population (official) is 10.4m, but doesn't include many immigrants from the former Soviet republics.

Many thanks bbea0202 for telling us about the highlights of the article on Solymosi, and welcome to Ballet Talk. We have been very lucky in North America and Western Europe that dancers from Eastern Europe and Russia have performed with our companies, and that we have been privileged to see their performances. But it is perfectly understandable when people return home. It's very good to hear that Mr. Solymosi will influence the next generation of Hungarian dancers through his teaching.

Many thanks, naomikage! (But I won't tell work about this, and hope they send me anyway )

I'm waiting for the, "I bumped into Bob Gottlieb at a party, and we shook hands and didn't scratch each other's eyes out or raise our voices, much to the chagrin of the petty onlookers" entry. (meow)

There was a "Talk of the Town" piece on him in The New Yorker, "Tough Guy", which made it sound like he was at the age where being honored was exhausting. Here is the Postscript by Louis Menard from the 10 November 07 issue of the magazine.

Depressing, innit?

That was a great review, Sandy! Rausch was awesome in the "Agon" Pas de Deux. Honestly, judging from the reaction of the crowd, there is a very, very small minority of curmudgeons who didn't like "In the Upper Room."

Kolpakova, but like the Sizova, it may break your heart when you see ABT's...

She should read Arlene Croce's review of Bill T. Jones' "Still/Here," (Has the teacher?) She might get extra credit for knowing what happens, including the fallout and controversy,when this is done by a major critic. (Of course, that may take the fun out of the project.)

Wow, a reprise of "The Turning Point," except that Anne Bancroft's Emma had little dogs.

In the Kirov "Bayadere" at Kennedy Center, Jan 2008 thread, naomikage wrote, (Now if I could only get work to send me to Japan on a DVD-buying spree...)

There is one DVD of Forsythe's work (released earlier this year), called "From a Classical Position," a work created for the camera, and a documentary called " Just Dancing Around" on amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Position-J...1944&sr=8-1 Has anyone here see this DVD?

I know that recitative is not in style, but I want mime in my 21st century classic! Balanchine knew that you can't have relentless Wagner-like end-to-end intense dancing for hours at a time. He knew how to pace. There is mime in every one of his more-than-one-act ballet except "Liebeslieder Walzer." (Which people have found boring.) And in his abstract ballets, he knew when to pull back, for maximum effect. I don't want to be pounded. As an aside, I brought two friends to "Giselle" last weekend. They were both worried they wouldn't understand the story. Having seen the matinee, I told them that without even reading the program, they wouldn't have problem, but I explained two things: the Mother's mime, just so they understood what a Wili was, and the gesture for "Let's dance!" Two days later, my Dallas friend and I were watching the Dallas Mavericks and Houston Rockets game. While the "travelling" call has almost become an endangered species, each time it was called, he would look at me and say,"Let's dance!" If a novice can catch onto the most ballet-specific piece of mime vocabulary, I don't think mime is that hard for someone with several "Nutcracker"s under his/her belt to get.

November 10, 2007 Pina Bausch has been awarded the Inamori Foundation Annual Kyoto Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Arts and Philosophy. Dance New Amsterdam performs revivals of Douglas Dunn's work, reviewed by Gia Kourlas for The New York Times. (Through 11 November) Roslyn Sulcas reviews Maria Hassabi's "Gloria" and Jennifer Dunning reviews Monica Bill Barnes in Dance in Review.

I think "Tristan und Isolde" could make a wonderful ballet, but a 21st century "Swan Lake" requires a corps, and the "Tristan" story doesn't support one.

What ballet company had the funds to commission Joni Mitchell to write ballet music? The project, by definition, would be a labor of love, even for those composers writing at union scale.

I don't think we're lacking great composers; I think we're lacking great ballet composers, who write what Balanchine described as "musique dansant." (Contrary to popular belief among contemporary choreographers, Arvo Part is not a ballet composer ) Almost all composers who are writing "by-the-yard" music these days are writing for film. If I wanted to do choreograph a narrative ballet, I would hire a film composer or Stuart Kershaw, who crafted a beautiful score for Kent Stowell's underrated "The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet" out of mostly obscure Tchaikovsky, and one that supported the story that Stowell wanted to tell.

BART rules! (I remember getting lost from the station the weekend of a big game, and just following the crowd towards the stadium and then around to Zellerbach.) Thank you so much for your review ggobob!

An article in Playbill notes Porretta's and Foster's upcoming (December) performances, but notes that on opening night (not a "State of Darkness" performance), Philip Glass "will play his original compositions for Dreaming Awake and another MFD work, Provenance..." http://www.playbillarts.com/news/article/7322.html

Rosie, thank you so much for posting your impressions!

Characters in Shakespeare speak in verse. The Scarlet Letter has Puritans in it, and its author was born decades after the Colonial Period in which it is set had ended. There's all of that recitative accompanied by that silly old harpsichord -- how 18th century -- not to mention noblemen and women in Don Giovanni. Charlie Chaplin and Jaques Tati made silent movies. We don't go to King Lear and expect Tom Stoppard. We don't read The Scarlet Letter and expect The Crucible. We don't go to Don Giovanni and expect Wagner. We don't go to M. Hulot's Holiday expecting to see Robin Williams. Of course he wouldn't ask us to just toss Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Mozart, and Chaplin into the trash bin, at least in print. Sadly, he gives no such respect to one of the great classics of ballet.