Helene

That's it! I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Little Miss Sunshine was the first of five movies I saw on the two long flights. (The others were Babel, Borat, The Hours, and Walk the Line.)I did, though, love the scene in the diner where our heroine orders ice cream with her waffles.

Thank you Natalia! What a great description that is a fantastic resource for Ballet Talk.

And now that I've recovered, it's to say that this is no small task. I'm really happy to see the Breusenko has been given a lead in a full-length ballet. I've often enjoyed his dancing and hoped that he'd be given more opportunities.

Thank you, volcanohunter, for documenting The Fiddle and the Drum. It will be a great reference for a new piece of choreography.

I've encountered this comment on the musical reference more than once, and no doubt Petipa intended Odile's port de bras to mirror Odette's in the window. But it's worth remembering that Tchaikovsky wrote this adagio for the first act, when neither Odette nor Odile were on the scene yet. I may seem musically obvious to us, but Tchaikovsky didn't conceive it that way. Could Tchaikovsky have meant it as musical foreshadowing of characters that were to come later?

Many thanks for giving us the heads up from the Russian version of the site.

I always do, too, from any number of angles.

[ADMIN BEANIE ON] Just a reminder that links and references to You Tube on Ballet Talk are verboten. [ADMIN BEANIE OFF]

Both Weese in the Playbill interview (link and quote above), and Boal in the Director's Notes for the PNB Swan Lake program both talk appreciatively about their detailed collaboration during preparation for Peter Martins' Swan Lake. It sounds like the PNB approach and schedule is perfect fit for Weese.

Or, to quote Robert Farris Thompson, "To be white in America is to be very black. If you don't know how black you are, you don't know how American you are."In the most recent program for PNB's Swan Lake, the following appeared in Peter Boal's "Director's Notebook" :

As a dance mother, I'm sure there was no way to avoid this opinion survey (When I think now of the conversations to which I and my friends subjected my father on our yearly pilgrimages to Knick and Ranger games, I )

You may have to live in Seattle in the winter to truly understand what it means to choose to be in a windowless theater on a rare sunny weekend afternoon in February, but I wouldn't have missed Körbes's second Odette/Odile this afternoon for anything. She was equally ravishing this afternoon. Seeing a ballet a number of times in a short period reveals so many details that are difficult to grasp in one viewing, particularly in the mime. Maria Chapman, as the downstage right guest in the Act I sextet to the Waltz, gave dramatic focus to the Prince, who was seated feet away. As he partnered her intermittently, she was attentive to him in a way that she wasn't to her courtier partner. As he left her off to the side of the stage, she looked softly over her shoulder after him. Towards the end of the act, it was Laura Gilbreath's turn, and the same attention had a slightly different feel. A moment I had missed Friday is after Odile is introduced, and von Rothbart heads to the Queen Mother to great her: Carrie Imler dismissed him to his chair with a flick of her hand just before he reached her midstage, and the "we'll see" look that Otto Neubert gave her over his shoulder was priceless. Similarly, the "don't even think about it you worthless piece of lint" over-the-shoulder glance he gave to Herd's Siegfried at the end of Act II stopped the Prince in his tracks. Neubert and Christophe Maraval gave very different renditions of von Rothbart. Neubert was supremely confident and arrogant. He took up a great deal of space, whether moving or sprawled in his chair. Maraval was more quietly sinister with ice water running in his veins, and if "A Series of Unfortunate Events" were turned into a ballet, he'd be my choice to play Count Olaf. But artdish hit it right on the head when he wrote Both men had to fight the costume -- I think dropping the boots would do the trick -- as well as an a miscalculated moment in Act III: the vision of Odette appears between two open glass doors upstage center, and von Rothbart stands in front of her and spreads out his cape to hide her, eliciting giggles and laughs in all three performances I saw.In the Spring 2006 print edition of DanceView, in her review of Peter Martins's Swan Lake, Carol Pardo wrote "And by casting [Austin] Laurent [as the jester] with his long legs and long line, the part becomes more than the province of the short, bouncy demi-caractère men." I saw Lucien Postlewaite dance the jester role in Stowell's version for the first two performances and Benjamin Griffiths in this afternoon's. I always thought of Postlewaite as a tall dancer, until he was onstage with Herd/Milov, Cruz, and Gorboulev -- and even Gorboulev looked shorter than usual next to Herd/Milov and Cruz. (I think he is one of those dancers who can look tall or medium.) But his proportions are shortish torso and long legs, and he looked very different in the part than Griffiths, who has traditional jester proportions, and is as fast in allegro as any other man in the company. Yet while both interpretations were very bright and beautifully danced -- and the jester has a terrific solo in Act III -- neither dancer crossed that line into cloying show-off and applause machine. Another role in which proportions, both of the dancer and of the dancing, made a huge difference was the male role in the Act I Pas de Trois. In a Q&A last year, either Boal or one of the other dancers said that they refer to Batkhurel Bold as "Air Bold." Tall with very long legs, Bold's extension and ballon in jumps is huge, like the tour jetes in full split position. By contrast, Anton Pankevitch, who is more compact, did a more classically proportioned interpretation. (He did a beautiful double tours moving upstage during his variation.) Pankevitch's trio -- he danced with Johnston and Zimmerman -- was better balanced; Bold was much taller than Thomas and Eames, and he had to bend pretty far down for the supported pirouettes with Thomas. Pardo wrote of the jester, "That there should not be a jester in Swan Lake, that Tchaikovsky did not write any music for a jester, that the character is pushy and annoying are separate problems." In Stowell's version, the jester is a trusted servant of the Prince. He is dressed in if not quite livery, in the court servant's dress, not in half black/half white tights. (He wears a lovely red with gold trimmed long vest in Act I, and a gorgeous grey, silver, and gold costume in Act III.) He has as much mime as anyone in the ballet. I didn't realize until today that as the jester introduces the international guests to the Queen Mother in Act III, he does a tiny, short imitation of each. The center of Wolfgang's role, which is surrounded by a large amount of mime about his drinking -- the only part of the ballet I found annoying -- is a dance in which he leads the courtiers. The dramatic genius of this piece is that it is a court character dance. The passés are done at mid-calf, and the jumps are inches off the floor. It's like watching an older retired dancer demonstrating, and it steals your heart with its gentle elegance, and in it Oleg Gorboulev hit the exactly correct tone in it. The Pas de Trois this afternoon was a real joy. Rebecca Johnston has legs and feet to die for. In the allegro, though, I though her arms looked a little forced; as one of two big swans in the Act II adagio, her arms are expansive and graceful. Her diagonal of sissone jumps in the coda were superb. Zimmerman danced another beautiful performance, and it was all in the details: the roll-down into fourth in preparation for the pirouettes, regardless of the speed of the music, the articulate small developes out of pirouettes, and the precise placement. She gave the same attention to her role as one of the four cygnettes in Act II -- the cygnettes were terrific in all three performances -- with the roll in and out of the fast echappés, reaching top in each one, and the beautiful presentation of the foot in each of the little jumps at the end (emboîtés?). In the other cast, Chalnessa Eames danced her variations with her characteristic brightness and clarity. One of the highlights of the afternoon was Kari Brunson's Persian. With her snake-charmer arms, and very different phrasing than either Chapman or Lallone, she performed a dance of hypnotic seduction, which segued perfectly into the Black Swan Pas de Deux, in which Körbes's Odile was a little badder than on Thursday, to great effect. At the center of the ballet was Körbes's Odette and the beautiful corps of swans, led by Johnston and the wonderful Lesley Rausch. (Rausch and Johnston are quite different dancers, and it is an abundance of riches when they dance mirroring each other.) The emotional range Körbes showed in cinematic detail as she embraced Siegfried for the last time at the end of Act IV was astonishing, and it was a three-hankie conclusion.

Thank you so much for your detailed comparison of the Mann story and the ballet, especially for your cogent synopsis of the story and its meaning.

Stars and Stripes premiered in January 1958. That would have been after Balanchine was summoned by HUAC, and, while technically post-McCarthy, well within the shadow of McCarthyism. I wouldn't be surprised if Balanchine's motivations for creating the ballet were dual, at least.

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Thank you for the link to your review, artdish. Unfortunately, I was only able to see two of the five O/O's, Korbes last Thursday, and Barker's last night. It was a very charged audience, knowing this was Barker's last appearance in the role, and there were a number of explosive clapping moments. (I'm not sure how Barker kept up her concentration.) Her performance was very intense and magnified. Dynamically it was different from the interpretation in the 2003 production, in which her Odette had a quieter dignity and more tensile strength. Last night, the stakes were higher for Odette and her interpreter, and she pulled out all of the stops. Barker's Odile was just plain baaaaaaaaaaaaad. (In the best possible way.) Carrie Imler's Queen Mother is not one I'd like to cross, which normally would make me think that perhaps the Prince is getting an easier deal with Odile. Not last night. It may very well have been that the awareness of the great dancer leaving a canonic role at the height of her powers overwhelmed the overall sense I had of the drama as a whole.

Thank you for your review, its the mom. I wish I could have seen Larissa Ponomarenko's performance in my all-time favorite pas de deux. Bale starts with the premise that A Midsummer Night's Dream is a bad ballet, and, in that light, the rest of the review isn't surprising.

Wow, Kimmie Meissner, aka The Kimminator, did it, with a 9-point lead in the LP over second place Emily Hughes. All of her components scores were over 7, and her technical score was over 6 points higher than Hughes'. SP leader Rochette was 3rd in the LP and won the bronze medal. From the scores, Czisny did not have a strong skate. She had 3.0 in deductions, which would indicate at least two falls, and possibly three, if she didn't have a time deduction or lose part of her costume on the ice. (Her LP dress this year is a stunner.) Poor Yan Liu -- a 15th place in the LP and 9th overall, to place the lowest of the three Chinese women. Binshu Xu may not be polished, but she scored almost 13 points, or more than 40% more in the technical score than Liu. It's really not Liu's year, especially in the LP's. If Xu is sent to Jr. Worlds, China may send Dan Fang to Sr. Worlds. I clicked on some of the skater bios. Amy Parekh, who's skating for India, was born in Jersey City (LOL, just like me ) and top-ranked Mexican Lady, Emily Napthal, was born in Skokie. Jocelyn Ho, who skates for Taipei, was born and reared in Canada. Of the two women who didn't make the finals, Stephanie Gardner, who skated for Brazil, lives in California -- her ISU bio doesn't give birthplace -- and Kristine Lee, who skates for Hong Kong, was born in Worcester. (But she lists her hometown as Hong Kong, so it may mean that's her permanent home when she's not training in Simsbury. One of her coaches is Ilia Kulik, of Olympic God and Center Stage fame.)

I saw the role split once, but not for any philosophical reason: in a 1996 San Francisco Ballet performance, Anthony Randazzo was injured, and Tina LeBlanc and David Palmer completed Acts III and IV in place of Randazzo and Evelyn Cisneros. Tina LeBlanc is a blazing technical dancer, and back then emphatically so, and her Odile was something else. I do find it believable that Siegfried would believe that Odette and Odile are the same, for the same basic reason that Donna Anna allows Don Giovanni into her room as Don Ottavio, and why Maria does not expose Geraint Powell when he comes disguised as her husband Arthur in The Lyre of Orpheus: he wants it to be so, because he needs his reality to be different. He's at the brink of being forced into a decision to marry, and just in the nick of time, Odile shows up. (Maria wants a baby, which cannot have with the sterile Arthur, and Donna Anna needs for Don Ottavio to show some virility and not be a boring stiff with whom she'll be saddled for the rest of her life.) It has never occurred to me that he is attracted to a total, however dazzling, stranger, and I don't think this is indicated anywhere in the story. I don't think he is either Albrecht -- if he could marry anyone of his class and have girls on the side, he wouldn't be in his predicament -- or James, who abandons Effie for something more dazzling and poetic. (Who could be more poetic than Odile?) The intimate behavior with Odette would be completely inappropriate in a ballroom, and Siegfried would not expect that from her, and I doubt the Queen Mother would have approved of that, either. Dramatically, at the end of Act III, he's devastated that he's made the vow to the wrong person, not that he's been led astray by his hormones. Odile has to outshine the other princesses, usually in pale, flowy dresses. (Early costuming for the character was in red and gold, not slinky/evil black to further the black/white dichotomy.) She also has to impress the Queen Mother, and I believe this is through a sense of personal power, represented through her dancing, to show that they are on the same page. The Queen isn't exactly traditional; there's no King like in Sleeping Beauty representing male authority. Maybe some fresh blood in the kingdom is appealing. It's more fun for the audience when Odile is blatantly wicked and, therefore, vulgarly nouveau riche, but I prefer a more subtle approach, which I find more dramatically satisfying. I agree that the fouettes and turns in second for the man are a match, but I don't think they are the only alternative, and there are other matches. I've seen too many renditions that are danced with mediocre technique, although, like Siegfried, we're prepared to be dazzled by them, as long as the Odile says on pointe. I also don't think the fouettes are the equivalent of the supported balances in the Rose Adagio, because there is no equivalent feat that I can think of that a sheltered, well-brought-up young lady would do at her coming out party to music that isn't a waltz. The fouettes, for me, are a dazzling trick, and there are other pairs of tricks that are satisfying in the same way.

Saturday, 10 February From Toronto, Dancers seize the stage: Experimental artists stage their own events to showcase works Cuban dancers to ignite arts fest In New York, Stony Miens and Sad Hearts Walking on Eggshells in a World of Traumas

And Korbes did churn them out. That didn't add to the ballet or to the character. I've seen dozens of performances of Swan Lake and dozens of other ballets where fouettes have been featured, and I don't think I've seen more than a handful of dancers who could do fouettes at their most brilliant: a level sweep of the leg to second, lift of the knee into passe, repeated n times. (I feel the same way about turns in second done by men.)The fouettes are in Swan Lake because one dancer at that level could do them. It was a custom detail for a specific dancer. Swan Lake, in my opinion, is far deeper than a one-trick pony, but if tricks are needed, there are plenty of other ones I find equally dazzling and triumphant. There are also less dazzling tricks, like Plisetskaya's pique turns, but those turns defined her turf and influence and were a dramatic means of expressing Odile's power, and I found them very satisfying. The easy, perfectly centered quad pirouette with which Patricia Barker ended her final series of fouettes in her final performance of Swan Lake tonight were more thrilling than the fouettes themselves, at least to me.

I, too, saw last night's performance. I can't compare Korbes to any other dancer I've seen. My sense of her creation of character roles is much like Helen Mirren's -- I know that's not Helen Mirren's character I'm seeing in a movie, although it is informed by her spirit, experience, and imagination -- but I am convinced, totally, in the character. When I heard Samuel Ramey sing in his mid-30's, my greatest wish was to hear him sing King Philip's monologue in Don Carlos. I knew I'd have to wait a long time until that role was in his rep. 15 years later I heard it, and what was astonishing was how it met every expectation I had and beyond. Korbes' performance as Odette/Odile was so much beyond the promise she showed in the gala, and I couldn't imagine that being possible. (Or to think what she will make of this in a few years after the next revival.) I think Korbes has mother-of-pearl juice running in her veins: her Odette was so simultaneously soft, strong, expansive, and luminous. Or I should say her Odettes, because the vulnerable Odette in the second act was very different from the hope-shattered fourth act Odette, who despite the outcome, could show forgiveness in her sorrow. If the last gesture is the most affecting, I think in Korbes' case it is because it is the culmination of the arc of a story she has built throughout the ballet. Korbes' Odile was an unusual one. She's not a natural Odile, and my experience of other dancers for whom this is also true is that they tend to try to put on the wickedness. Korbes' Odile was calculated, but more measured: in a well-lit ballroom, in a little black dress, it would have been inappropriate for her to show an intimate, moonlit self, but she sprinkled enough innate softness throughout the Black Swan pas de deux, without the usual "wink-wink," to remind him, but also focused a laser beam of glamorous attention on Casey Herd's Prince. After all, he's a guy, and in front of the entire court, this sexy, strong creature, who's saved him from either marriage to a generic princess or a nasty confrontation with this mother, is treating him like the center of her universe. (The difference between Herd's approach in the elegant opening variation to his Black Act variation was light night and day; in the latter he was reborn and beamed charisma.) She doesn't have to wiggle to seduce him, and she gloats only at the very end of the Act. And she knows her role; she needs little reminder from von Rothbart, and the two interact lightly. Because at the same time, she's seducing the Queen Mother. QM can recognize a woman with personal power, and the son she knows, a little bit too much of a dreamer, is going to need one. One of the joys of Otto Neubert's portrayal of von Rothbart is the way he struts over to the downstage left chair that matches QM's one downstage right, and expands into it like a king, as if he is entitled to it. There obviously hasn't been a Man around the house in this family, and he fills the void. Korbes' fouettes were a strong argument for Maya Plisetsaya's pique turns. She did slip out on the landing of the last multiple pirouette, but that's almost beside the point: there's something angular and clipped about them, the only place in the entire ballet where she is not expansive. But that was the least important part of her performance. Kara Zimmerman was a standout in the first act Pas de Trois, dancing with delicacy and great detail, and in true classical style. Rebecca Johnston was a stunner as one of the two lead swans, with open, expressive arms and her beautiful trademark legs. Lesley Rausch caught and kept my eye as the one among six princesses in Acts I and III through the smallest, but most telling tilt of the head and neck. Among the guests in Act III, Kiyon Gaines was spectacular in the Czardas, creating a character with his proud carriage and theatricality. Brittany Reid gave a spirited and saucy rendition in the Spanish. Thomas's and Griffiths's energy were well-matched in the Neopolitan. And what an impression when Maria Chapman extended one glittery purple-clad leg from underneath her multi-colored skirt in the Persian: it explained why she is one fantastic Peacock in Nutcracker. The swans were superb and joy to watch. They weren't 24 dancers doing the same steps: they created a sisterhood of swans. Had it not been for Korbes's Odette/Odile, they would have been the first star of the night. The artists to which I instinctively compare Korbes are singers. I think she has the sheer beauty of instrument, the range of color, and the vast interpretive powers and fidelity to text of the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Thomas Quasthoff.

Thank you for the update on the Ladies SP, Natalia! I'm really glad to see Yan Liu has done so well. She's a lovely, lyrical skater who hadn't scored well this year until now. The bets were on tiny Binshu Xu, who from her performance at Skate Canada has more speed and attack than Liu, but doesn't finish her movements or interpret music nearly as well. Suguri's skating was made for 6.0/OBO. She generally started off strongly and fast, especially since the judges ignore the flutzes in the opening combo, and Suguri's was as obvious as Cohen's. She had a fantastic 3F. Then her programs would fade, and she would lose speed, with a double here, a landing without flow there, a double foot a little later. Her spiral is still the worst among the top 10 skaters, with bent knees and mediocre back position.; under OBO, she could hold the positions for a perfunctory amount of time, and the duration of CoP spirals has doubled-tripled, making a bigger impression, and in her case, not a good one. However, pre CoP, her last two-three elements would be a low-level circular footwork sequence at great speed, a simple spin, and a great low-mid-level combo spin ending in a blinding scratch. This was tailor made for the OBO system: make a big splash at the beginning and fast impression on the end. (Add some cognitive dissonance and stir.) It is not compatible with CoP, at least on the technical score, because each element is marked real-time, her 0's and -1's in the middle elements are hurting, and the complexity needed for the later elements to gain higher levels do not play to her strengths. Her strength has been consistency, but she is a workmanlike skater, in my opinion, the greatest disappointment I have ever had after seeing someone live for the first time. Arakawa had been inconsistent during her career, although she attempted much harder content by comparison, and the strength and depth of the Japanese women is a recent phenomenon of the last five years. I'm looking forward to seeing Sawada's program!

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Thank you Natalia! Oaks and Edur are also guesting. It will be a great opportunity for Bouder, whoever her partner is. And to be in Roma...