Helene

I think that Anne Eliot's extended sadness in Persuasion might look a bit like some of Jerome Robbins' choreography for Stephanie Saland, maybe from Ives Songs.

I agree about the Cygnets. I want to run out of live performances with the piece. Although I like Balanchine's Marzipan Shepherdesses (except for the costumes), I think the piece dies a little after two high-energy pieces in a row: Tea and Candy Canes. I always wished it would be between these two pieces, but that would put two kids sections (Candy Cane and Polichinelles) together. Likewise, I think the Handel variation in Union Jack looks tepid after the amazonian MacDonald of Sleat. I also think that Wrens is at least 1/3 too long for anyone else but its originator, Suzanne Farrell. My interest has petered out on everyone else who performs the role.

It took me several minutes before I realized that the "De Duva" was not in Swedish

No word yet. Le Yin has had knee surgeries, which both Russell and he discussed a few years ago in post-performance Q&A's, and Peter Boal described in an interview with Martha Ullman West in the Summer 2007 issue of Dance View that "we have one with a recurring knee injury" who wouldn't be back this coming season. He is a lovely dancer -- and, in my opinion, was the most physically beautiful man in the company -- whom I will miss a lot.

Then the appropriate forum is "Other Performing & Fine Arts: Performances, Exhibits, Films, and Events" to which I've moved this thread. (And I've changed the topic title.)

References to "guilty pleasure" can be found throughout Ballet Talk, but here are some past topics to start: Your Secret Ballet Guilty Pleasure What "bad ballets" do you really love? Guilty pleasures?

This is far harder than it was a decade or so ago before the EU. It can be done; it takes a connection or an established career. One way to get experience, exposure, and connections is through the Prix de Lausanne competition. http://www.prixdelausanne.org/e/prize/index.php According to the Prix website, Here's a link to a list of past winners and the schools they attended. The page includes a link to a .pdf with a spreadsheet of winners from 1973-2003 and what they're doing now.

From a review in today's Links, PNB performed both versions in Vail: http://origin.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_6517553

I was lucky to see Garcia's brilliant dancing when I travelled to see SFB. NYCB fans -- you're in luck! We west coasters will be expecting reports

Just in the short excerpt with Patricia Wilde (sigh ) in the Balanchine bio program, I think the choreography changed. When I see Square Dance live, I keep expecting it to look like the video (without the caller and hay )

Many thanks for the link, ami1436! I am so glad I'm audience when I read pointe shoe threads -- that the primary dependency for female ballet dancers is a shoe that is so difficult to get right and to learn to adapt or change, if needed, during different stages of development is mind-boggling. (not to mention I'm a real wuss when my feet hurt...)

Our policy is that no direct links to YouTube can be posted to the board, but instructions on how to find specific ballet-related content may, with the caveat that if we receive a request from an organization, we will remove references from Ballet Talk, which is only fair. Edited to add, 9 January 07: Direct links to YouTube that are ballet-related are now allowed, as long as they have a context: what the video contains, who's in it, etc. Please note that this is a double-edged sword: while Google owns YouTube and is responsible for content, there are organizations that are vigilant about protecting their intellectual property and take the position that versions on YouTube violate copyright, and any public "outing" of content on YouTube may get that video yanked from the site faster than a speeding bullet.

There are ardent opinions on both sides of the debate, which we've had on Ballet Talk before comingled in threads on other topics. Cojocaru has said that with her foot problems, she wouldn't be dancing without them. From the reviews I've read of her Aurora, I think that in itself would justify Gaynor Mindens.

We assume that company websites are correct in the list of rankings, unless changes are retracted. It's a toss-up whether the website or a press release is issued first, but in our experience, the bios are usually the last to be updated.

Saturday, July 21 Jennifer Dunning reviews Pam Tanowitz's Forevermore for The New York Times.

I just noticed that Adrienne Diaz and Sokvannara Sar, apprentices last season, are on the roster of the PNB corps. Miranda Weese's bio is up on the site, I think an update of her guest bio from last year. Le Yin is no longer listed on the roster of Principals. And how odd it is not to see Barker's and Maraval's name among them. (Denial rules.)

Limbrunner and Dmintrenko are no longer listed on the OBT website Source, please, for the apprentice news.

is it supposed to be? (moderators please edit as you see fit). That's between PBS and Google (youtube's owner). Like anything else on the site, could be here today and gone tomorrow.

I had ignored the chronology -- Orza's promotion was so recent. This makes a lot of sense, since there isn't much spare money at PNB.

I think it might depend on who the conductor is It's also more difficult for two dancers to find a company where there's a space for both, since apart from NYC, there are few areas in the US with more than one company. There are certainly trade-offs in moving between NYCB and PNB, but one thing Weese mentioned last season before she made the move to Seattle was that she wanted to dance on a schedule that was more condusive to prolonging her career. I assume that includes rehearsal time. While the total number of non-Nutcracker performances is far less at PNB than NYCB, the pace seems more human than at NYCB. Seattle is a city in which it is quite easy to have a family life.

In the past 13 seasons that I've attended PNB, it's been the rare dancer who was hired in directly as a Principal, even those who came from other companies where they were Principals. Many dancers who come from "outside" either have taken a step backwards rank-wise, or were at the same rank at a larger company. In this, Boal's hiring is similar to Russell's and Stowell's. Now that the school regularly has been producing and the company developing so many wonderful corps members, and with the nominal soloist ranks just a fraction of the number of corps members who perform soloist roles, I would think it would be demoralizing to them to have outside dancers come directly into the soloist ranks. I have no idea what Boal's motivation is, and lack of money was cited in the past both by Boal and by Russell and Stowell for lack or small number of promotions, but hiring into the corps must be better for morale as well as the bottom line.

I don't understand Russian, but he seemed like a delightful young man from the video. I wish I could be in London this summer to see him.

It's been a while since the PNB season ended, but this morning, I felt an impulse to "finish it!" and write about the season closer. So here it is. I don't have any programs (with notes) handy, which means I won't get to so many terrific performances. As a 30+ minute solo, State of Darkness was the centerpiece of the "Stravinsky 125" program. I saw Jonathan Porretta dance the work the first weekend; on the second weekend, I saw all three casts: Rachel Foster, James Moore, and Porretta again, I think in that order. Rachel Foster's was the most cerebral of the the three interpretations, and from listening to Fenley speak about the role, I would guess most akin to Fenley in terms of approach. Foster spoke in a post-performance Q&A, and she mentioned "self-discovery." What Foster showed on stage was not just physical self-discovery -- stamina, a new movement vocabulary -- but also mental self-discovery. If there was one of the three in which I could see the process as well as the movement, it was Foster's. In the case of this solo, anatomy is destiny. Foster, in a unitard, was vertical, more upright, with a higher center of gravity. James Moore, by contrast, in long black tights, was far more horizontal: his wide shoulders, eminating from a narrow waist, and expressive arms sculpted movement with both density and three-dimensional, spiraling fluidity. Each character at the same time tapped his strength and fortified him as he prepared for the final battle. Like julip, I wasn't sure what the outcome would be and whether he'd survive -- and even if survival was physical, what survival meant -- even though I'd seen the piece before and knew how it ended. If Moore encountered challenges along the way to the final battle, the closest analogy I can find for Porretta's performance is Native American mythology: it was as if he embodied the soul of each creature on the journey in sequence, so that, by the end, he brought the strength and cunning of each. Rather than acting in any way, he was the consummate shift-shaper, transforming right before our eyes. I think that gender may have to do with Sandy's and my preferences. I felt like I understood Foster's more, but was more fascinated by what the men did with the role, being so inconceivable. julip describes my favorite gesture in the entire piece: With each performance, the dramatic meaning was different for me, but the psychological impact was the same: it was a primal movement of both birthing in the legs and pelvis, and gathering, with the arms, shoulders, and torso. I'd never seen Fenley's work before, and had only a general context for it. I can't speak about any of her other pieces, but I can say I liked State of Darkness better each time I saw it. Peter Boal made three comments about casting in the post-performance Q&A's: he said he did not envision a tall dancer in the role, that he was looking for dancers who would come with open minds to the experience, and that he chose Foster, Moore, and Porretta (paraphrase) because they were so interesting to watch on stage. Porretta and Moore were already given more prominence in roles like Mopey. I am so glad Foster got the exposure -- in the Quijada piece last year, she was the only one of the women who embraced his movement vocabulary, and she was the first woman I would have thought of for this -- and while a massive achievement, she had already showed us why it wasn't unexpected. The program opener was Rubies; I saw three casts. The first (from weekend 1) was with Kaori Nakamura and Olivier Wevers. In many ballets, their constrasting styles is a strength; in this ballet, there seemed to be a disconnect. The weekend, Wevers partnered Jodie Thomas. Again, I didn't see a mesh or a fellowship. Thomas, though, particularly in her solos, showed some of McBride's "kick," which was a pleasure to see. By contrast, Nakamura's and Thomas's performances in Symphony in Three Movements were splendid, Nakamura's being the finest performance I've seen in the central woman's role, just dead on with the music, every phrase perfectly modulated and inevitable. Rubies may be indestructible, but The McBride role needs more perfect casting than I used to think. There's a fine line between the directness of the role and the gestures of seductiveness. Having seen two incredible and defining performances in Phoenix earlier this pring -- Natalia Magnicaballi's and Paola Hartley's -- the Trifecta was complete with Noelani Pantastico's performance with Lucien Postlewaite. She danced with lush intensity, the articulation of her limbs and torso providing all of the character she needed. What mainly set her apart, though, was the confidence she exuded. She went full-force across the stage space, fully expecting Postlewaite to be wherever she materialized, and he was, looking like he was loving it. In the Rubies pas de deux, that is about the most potent thing that can happen.

Congratulations to the Jungs

There are a number of people who would agree with you and a number who would not: How important are Odile's 32 fouettes?, and what do they add to the ballet?