Helene

Or perhaps between the metal plate Serras at the Museum of Modern Art's new exhibit (running through 10 September).

At the New York State Theater, there are too many stairs to make scooting through the theater practical. At McCaw Hall, however, leaving a scooter near the coat-check, one could scoot right out of the lobby and down the ramp to Mercer...

On the Opera-L list, each day there is a post listing which major musical figures was born and died on that day, as well as major music premieres. In addition, there is a quote by one of the musicians. Today's quote is from pianist Emmanuel Ax, who was born 8 June 1949

Pacific Northwest Ballet performs "Ronald Hynd after Marius Petipa," with costumes and scenery by Peter Docherty.

At tonight's post-performance Q&A with Boal, Fenley, and Rachel Foster, who performed the role tonight, Fenley said that there will be two programs at the Joyce, with three performances of State of Darkness, in which Porretta will dance two and Foster one.

I not only used to live in NYC, but I used to drive in NYC and to NJ, Long Island, and Yonkers (work commute). My general observation (and projection) was that if someone signaled to move into another lane, drivers would block the space for kicks and giggles. Driving is a lot more cooperative in the Seattle area, although there's still a bit of self-righteous lack of cooperation when a driver needs to do something at the last minute. Plus, there's the standard, neverending complaints from drivers about bicyclists and bicyclists about drivers who don't think the other side should be allowed to exist. When I visited India -- and, no, they do not let foreigners rent cars and drive, unlike in Ireland or Britain or Australia, for everyone's safety -- I observed traffic. Sharing the road are trucks, minivans, small SUVs, cars, motorcycles -- many with a kid riding in front of the driver and a woman sitting side saddle holding a baby or toddler (on bumpy roads at 30 mph) -- bicycles, taxis that look like golf carts, and carts driven by cyclists and livestock, not to mention the livestock themselves. Most roads are single lane, or two-lane where there is a dotted line to demark lanes that are rarely observed, and appear to be customary, much like traffic lights. In the few weeks that I was there, my coworkers and I observed one accident. (Accidents are at least a weekly occurence in my commute to work.) When people drive, they obey the hierarchies of size and possible speed, anticipate what other vehicles need -- using horns and "body" language (although, rarely directionals) -- and they let people do what they need to do. If that means being in the far lane in one traffic circle needing to be in the far lane of the next traffic circle and crossing four lanes of traffic in ten seconds, the other drivers will let this happen. A friend of mine observed that traffic in India is like water: it parts and converges. Ever since I've been home, I've tried to put this principle to work -- not the driving along the center line part, but letting people do what they need to do -- and it makes life a lot calmer than wanting to rip other people's hearts out. I feel the same way about exit habits at theaters. That kind of emotion I need to save for people who ruin the actual performance.

There are several other issues with company-affiliated training schools: a dancer might not be temperamentally suited for a company, or might have had injuries as a student which make him/her less attractive when a company is choosing a small number to promote into apprenticeships or the main company. The dancer's type might be overrepresented in the parent company. The student may be high-maintainance as a teenager but grow out of it as a young adult. Ultimately, most pre-professional schools have the student for one-four years, in a narrow age range. While it might ultimately be the optimal period in which to predict professional success and to choose the greatest number of students who will fill all roles -- star, loyal corps member, demisoloist -- there will be exceptions, and some of the dancers who are skipped over thrive in smaller companies or bloom later. For the lucky ones who have the choice, the student must weigh the prestige of the company, living in NYC, dancing at least twice as many performances, and having a huge repertoire against dancing bigger roles in fewer performances in a smaller company and getting more personal attention from Edward Villella, Ib Andersen, or Peter Boal, for example.

This has been the conundrum since the company became large, in the 70's. Some soloists, especially in Spring seasons where there are a lot of accumulated injuries, dance constantly, but for soloists who aren't on a quick trajectory to Principal, they live in soloist limbo, performing relatively rarely. In smaller companies, like Pacific Northwest Ballet (46 dancers currently, I think), soloists tend to get at least one meaty role per program (staggione system), if they are healthy or not guesting, because there aren't enough dancers not to.

I'm a believer in the performance being over at the later of when 1. the curtain fall 2. the music stops. I have no problem with someone who wants to exit quickly, as long as they give me a minute to gather my things and stand to let them by, and they don't push and kick and step all over me in their haste (if it's not an emergency).

His assessment of Martins's Sleeping Beauty wasn't that bad -- or I should say wasn't that good. Gottlieb calls it "the best of his full-evening ventures" which could be seen as damning it with faint praise, since the other candidates are Swan Lake and Romeo + Juliet. Gottlieb was, in my opinion, almost right in his summary, that by comparison to McKenzie/Chernov/Kirkland's "concept," Martins's is "loyal to the text." I would say "loyal to the synopsis,"at least until the end, as its speed is, in my view, counter to its setting, and the "passing on" is counter to its point of restoration, not evolution.

You may be the first person who's tried to change profile information since the upgrade. (You're the first person who's brought this to our attention, in any case.) I looked on the help site, and this is a known bug with the software. Unfortunately, it needs a change to the source code, which I can't do. It will allow you to change the birthday in your profile, though, as long as there is a valid entry in each field (day/month/year) and not "---", the default selection. I entered Jan 1 1908, the oldest date in the list. Please feel free to enter junk data in the birthday field, if you need to change your profile, but please do not choose 1994 or later, since that would suggest you are under 13 years of age, which is in violation of COPPA, as I have no signed permission slips from anyone's parents (16 being the cut-off for membership) )

Thanks to volcanohunter's identification of the source music, I found the following info on Wikipedia: Henri IV's dates are 1553-1610, so the 16th century arrangement might be authentic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_France While the Restoration began in 1814 (Louis VIII), Charles X's reign began in 1824, the year before Rossini penned il Viaggo a Reims. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbon_Restoration It's very possible that Tchaikovsky would have been familiar with an "unofficial anthem of France" from many sources. Given the rather tepid history of the Bourbon Restoration, I wonder if using this music to represent the restoration of the monarchy after 100 years sleep at the end of Sleeping Beauty was as reassuring to the ruling classes at the premiere as it was allegedly meant to be. It also puts a slightly different light on Peter Martins's use of it to represent passing the torch to a post-Balanchine generation.

Many thanks, FauxPas

That was dangerous, TutuMaker -- now we'll want to hear all about it

I was just listening to the end of Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims (1825, 15 years before Tchaikovsky was born) on the radio, and the final chorus, depicting the coronation of Charles X, sounded more and more familiar. Finally, I realized that it sounded like the apotheosis from Sleeping Beauty. Is this coincidence? A deliberate quote of Rossini by Tchaikovsky? A deliberate quote of something else by both of them? I'm not having much luck with searching for this on the Internet.

That's great news, vissi d'arte! Congratulations to Ms. Dronina

Fenley created a world for the dancer, and Porretta inhabited it. I thought the piece a relatively gentle response to the music, enough "scope" for a soloist. Anything beyond that would have been overreaching, in my opinion, without the crowd to fuel the frenzy for sacrifice.

Actually she's six years and two weeks older, but who's counting? Juliet is two weeks short of 14: Aurora pricks her finger on her 16th birthday.

I'm glad I'm not Letterman having to rank those, Leigh. Why doesn't this happen, though, to a throwaway "ballet" instead of Petipa?

There's a full-page insert in the program in "In honor of Christophe Maraval's retirement from Pacific Northwest Ballet" for the 9 June performance. (Although he is scheduled to dance in the Patricia Barker performance as well.) On the front is a montage of photos by Angela Stirling. On the back is a short thank you in French from the company, a bio, and excerpts from reviews in which Maraval is praised. Maraval's retirement is also noted in Peter Boal's "Director's Notebook" in the "Stravinsky 125" program:

There will be a Molissa Fenley retrospective at the Joyce Theater from 11-16 December 2007. Pacific Northwest Ballet is now performing Fenley's 34-minute solo State of Darkness, choreographed to Rite of Spring, as part of the Company's season-closing "Stravinsky 125" program. Three dancers are performing the solo, until now only performed by Fenley herself and Peter Boal: Jonathan Porretta, Rachel Foster, and James Moore. I've yet to see Foster and Moore, but I can say that Porretta is astonishing in the role. According to the post-performance Q&A last night, with Boal, Fenley, and Porretta, Porretta will dance the role during the Fenley retrospective at the Joyce. I can't recommend this enough for our NYC contingent.

From James Wolcott's blog entry that Dale posted on the Veronika Part thread: Dancers like Kirkland and McBride, for example, can make one forget about actual height in majestic roles. (As Madeleine Eastoe is doing for the Australian Ballet.)

Saturday, June 2 deeAnn Nelson, a dancer with Streb Extreme Action, was severely injured in a performance with the Company. Gia Koulas reviews Koosil-ja's performance of "mech[a] OUTPUT" at the Japan Society for the New York Times. Jennifer Dunning reviews Hilary Easton's "It's All True" for the New York Times. Roslyn Sulcas reviews Ben Musiteri Dance Company for the New York Times. Ballet and Headstands, and Other Quirky Contrasts

The PNB A Midsummer Night's Dream video was filmed at Sadler's Wells. I wonder if ROH will produce videos of companies that perform at the Opera House. It would be good business for them to have the incentive to be able to offer to film visiting companies if they perform at the Royal Opera House, where the cameras are set up. Also, once they get the camera angles and lighting down in one venue, the overall quality of the videos should improve with experience. Another option is to film elsewhere in London, but give a better deal to ROH visitors as incentive. These are guesses, since none of the details have been announced.

ROH hasn't announced whether it will continue to produce productions outside the House. From what I've been reading, ROH has permanent cameras in the house, to which they add cameras when they are filming for DVD. It would have been more interesting, in my opinion, if Opus Arte had become a joint venture among the leading opera/ballet houses in Europe. It would have been great to get yearly productions from ROH, Paris Opera, Det Kongelige Teater, La Scala, etc.