Helene

What a shame. It's that aria that makes it worth it for me to sit through the Monastatos and moralizing scenes. There's a cinema across the lake that shows Bollywood movies, which often have intermissions. Its solution? Sell samosas. Works like a charm.

They didn't cut "Ach, Ich full'es" did they? If they did, argh!!!!! The Met wasn't able to get one of the Seattle area cinemas for this Magic Flute; the nearest theater was in Springfield, Oregon, over 250 miles away. But I'm hoping to see some of the other productions, which are playing closer to home, and I did get to hear about half of it on the radio. I hope this was a success for the cinemas. I would love to see the Met's experiment create an audience for worldwide opera and ballet. And YES! to live broadcasts of the ballet, too.

Thank you, Azulynn, for the suggestion -- I've changed the title. And many thanks for your review of the performances of Giselle that you saw. I would love to see POB perform the classical and romantic repertoire, but for now, I will appreciate the descriptions and impressions of those who do.

I can only think of a handful of Principal Dancers that came through the SAB ranks from the start: Fugate, Boal, and Somogyi. I believe that Leclerq started when she was 12. Michael Byars is a former Soloist that I can think of.

Congratulations to both! I have not had the pleasure of seeing Scheller yet, but I was lucky to have seen some snippets Peck as a student. I'm looking forward to seeing both of them one of these seasons.

It's a rare Farrell role in which I don't see the "Farrell bones," with the exception of Movements for Orchestra, in which there is a lot of Adams. That doesn't mean I don't/didn't see Nichols or Calegari or Watts as well, but the Farrell was always part of the essence. Before the relatively recent re-releases of film of Adams, Tallchief, and Leclerq, I spent performance after performance of Balanchine ballets trying to discern what Adams', Tallchief's, Verdy's, and Leclerq's dancing was like, and I learned that I had to watch carefully, not just assume that the dancer at the premiere was the inspiration or the dancer on whom the role had been primarily choreographed. Until I learned this, I always wondered why Hayden complained about not being Balanchine's muse, because she was, for example, the original Titania, but the role was envisioned for Adams, not her.

In "Dancing for Mr. B: Six Balanchine Ballerinas," Darci Kistler spoke about doing her first Odettes, coached by Balanchine. She expressed surprise when Balanchine said to her "Don't look at your partner" and "You're not in love with your partner." She then explained (paraphrase) that he knew she didn't have the life experience to express this properly onstage, and that by not asking her to attempt more than she could do successfully, "He was giving me myself." Of course, he was there to guide her to what he wanted by coaching her personally, and he would not have accepted a gymnastic approach to the role. Except when it makes us bitter, depressed, burdened, and blocked

Originally the Sugar Plum Fairy solo was in its usual place after the grand pas de deux, followed by the Cavalier's variation and the coda. Maria Tallchief spoke about how terrified she was coming on after the ovation Tanaquil Leclerq got as Dewdrop, when she was about to do her first real dancing. According to Choreography by George Balanchine in the "Revisions" section for "302: The Nutcracker": From Repertory in Review (p.157): For PNB Kent Stowell placed the solos for both Clara -- there's no Sugar Plum Fairy in his version -- and the Prince at the beginning of the second act, during the scenes in which they are introduced to Pasha and his court and in which they perform the mime to tell the court about the fight with the Mouse King's troops. The coda for the Grand Pas de Deux opens with the children from the Toy Theater (similar to the Polichinelles in Balanchine's version, but without Mother Ginger), who are joined by Clara and the Prince.

And PNB is bringing "an incredible variety of the best ballets ever made," including those by Twyla Tharp, William Forsythe and Nacho Duato, and of course, there was no Forsythe or Duato under Russell and Stowell, either, and they never toured with works by either of these choreographers. (Where's that sarcasm emoticon when you need it?)

I'm not so sure. MacMillan's ballet is British ballet. What it is not is in the classical style. With rare exception, Balanchine's dancers didn't dance the traditional classical works, which require proportion and restraint. This didn't seem to interest him in a context outside of the Imperial Theater in the structured make-believe world of the Czar and his riches and in the primacy of the Church -- and even then, as a teenager, he was experimenting outside the Petipa mold -- and after the ugliness and deprivation of two World Wars, the Depression, Modernism, and the different energy of his New World. Had Petipa been alive and productive when Balanchine was a student and young dancer in the theater, it might have been a different story. Balanchine's ballets might be an extension of the classical ballets, but they are not the same thing with the exact same demands. The question is whether contemporary dancers who take extreme extensions and positions should be dancing the classical ballets without regard to stylistic integrity or fidelity to the classical works when they are suited best to neoclassical or contemporary works. To give an example, should they be dancing Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, or Swan Lake in the style of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, which is another kettle of fish? In singing, it is usually considered a bad thing when someone tries to sing Handel as if it were the Ring Cycle (apart, perhaps, from the Wood Bird).

I've never seen Ms. Zakharova dance, although I would have hoped that her love of Guillem was more of an instance of "Do as I do, not as I say." (Ironically, my disenchantment with Guillem came not from her later performances, but from one of her earliest: I looked with great anticipation to her performances of the second movement of Palais de Cristal when Paris Opera Ballet visited New York in the 1980's, and it was the dullest and most lifeless performance of the work that I had ever seen. I could not believe that this was the young dancer who caught Balanchine's eye and whom he admired.) I think there are two ways to look at the "technique has improved" argument. I've always been struck by the number of dancer artists who look with astonishment at advanced students, apprentices, and corps members and comment that they wouldn't get a corps contract in these times. In Striking a Balance Christopher Gable said (in 1979), But he goes on the explain that Nureyev "raised the technical standard of the game way, way up, which was all to the good and the essential and had to happen," which shows the ambivalence toward technical advancement that comes in both arts and sports.The other side of the argument is that in specific ways technique has improved, and in other ways it hasn't and has gone backwards. In the last few months I remember that someone made the point that because Balanchine liked tall dancers and emphasized steps and movement they could do. (I apologize for not being able to find this post, and especially if I misunderstood the point.) Melissa Hayden was very vocal about how in her view Balanchine stopped giving jumps in class after Suzanne Farrell hurt her knee, and she asked outright, how could his dancers expect to keep up their technique when it wasn't used? Balanchine created a more romantic style in his Farrell ballets; while they were hardly technically easy, they emphasized different technical needs, and Balanchine was noted to use his classroom as a way to drill his dancers in what he needed for whatever he was working on at the time. Balanchine emphasize the technique that furthered his various neoclassical styles. One sports analogy I would make is that John Curry, who I considered the greatest figure skater ever, would not have made the top 10, or even the top 15 if the other skaters stood on their feet, in today's competition. Just about every top 20 male skater can do every triple, save, perhaps the triple axel. However, the preparations into most of the triples and quads involve so many cross-overs and so much telegraphing that would not have been acceptable in Curry's time. The refinement of steps and edges, the extraordinary posture, the glorious runout, and the ability to spin in both directions that were a hallmark of Curry's skating in his competitive years have been practically lost in triple/quad era, which requires more strenuous preparations in longer programs with seven-eight jumping passes in 4-4.5 minutes. I think in the argument about technique, the concept of technique as appropriate to style has been lost. An actor who performs MacBeth in a traditional production in the same style as he would a Mamet or Guare or Brecht play, especially if the rest of the company performed in a traditional style, would be completely out of place. A singer who sang Tosca in a baroque style or a pianist who added a cadenza to Schoenberg might be booed off the stage. A dancer who does the equivalent in a classical or romantic ballet is often lauded. Technique is like fire; in the wrong hands, it can burn down the house. In Gable's example, in the hands of Nureyev, it brought ballet to another plane, but Nureyev had the tempering aspects of tradition and style (and most would say, genius.)

Thank you, sandik! In a post-performance Q&A, when an audience member said it was great to see Gorboulev back in the corps in Theme and Variations, Peter Boal mentioned that he had a major injury, and was taking Company Class to test the waters; at that point it wasn't clear if he could get back to full strength. To be doing classical roles shows that he has recovered, which is great news.

Here's a link to an appreciation of James Brown, from The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6122500670.html

volcanohunter!

The top photo of Zakharova is especially lovely.

Also, after we split the boards, we did a "post recount" on Ballet Talk. The posts in forums that were moved to Ballet Talk for Dancers are not in this count.

The smart thing about what Gelb is doing with Netrebko is not all that groundbreaking: if you have a work that won't bring them into the house in droves, you pair that opera with a star. It just so happens that this star is young and gorgeous and appeals to both the "Voice is everything" and "Looks are everything" crowds. (Like, in the past, Ezio Pinza.) It's pretty traditional to build productions of little-known or medium-draw operas around stars: there was not a lot of Handel when Treigle/Sills co-starred in Giulio Cesare and who really knew these operas when the Donizetti Queen Trilogy (Roberto Devereux, Maria Stuarda, Anna Bolena) was staged for Sills, and that was 30-35 years ago. One of the things that is missing now that older stars in the past had were the opportunities to perform in movie musicals, which are rare now, and on the now-defunct Bell Telephone Hour, Ed Sullivan Show, and Firestone Theater in both classical and popular genres, and to appear on talk shows that weren't about one-liners: Mike Douglas, Dick Cavett, David Frost, Johnny Carson, etc. This created name recognition in the popular media that fed the opera house. You don't need Anna Netrebko, who did sing Mimi, to sell La Boheme, though. Likewise, Tosca sells itself, so that the Met can cast the wonderful Cynthia Lawrence, whose name won't fill a major house anywhere, but whose singing and fidelity to the text, should, in my opinion. The same with Carmen, La Traviata, Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto. Get to the recent Don Carlos, and the cast had three huge stars: Hvorostovsky, Pape, and Borodina, because not that many people are willing to risk attending performances of a four+ hour lesser-known late Verdi opera if there aren't a few compelling voices. Ballet shouldn't need Diana Vishneva to sell Swan Lake. But it may need Diana Vishneva to sell an ABT Apollo or Symphonie Concertante or some other ballet that is in a triple bill. I'm not suggesting that this is appropriate casting, but following the principle in opera, the draw is either the work or the performer. Likewise, as dancers get to the end of their careers, audiences take the chance to see the last Bocca Romeo and Juliet and the last Ferri Manon, and I suspect many NYCB audience members will go to see Weese's last performances of the Winter Season, regardless of what she is dancing. Given the dearth of original choreography at ABT, there aren't many productions that are built around any dancer, the way that Balanchine as an original choreographer created ballets around Suzanne Farrell, like Don Quixote or Chaconne. (There have been many comments by dancers who've said that Balanchine did not like to cast understudies in his new ballets, with descriptions of the mini-crises and program changes this caused.) Push Comes to Shove is one of the last I remember, a Tharp tour-de-force for Baryshnikov. I'm hoping that when Patricia Barker retires at the end of this PNB season with a special performance, she'll have the equivalent of "I made it for Melissa." But she could stand center stage with a paper bag on her head, and people would come to pay homage to her and her career.

To find the two photos, scroll down to "mercurio" from Dic 22 (December 22) 12:46am.

I think Woetzel is in that strange middle height range, where sometimes he looks tall and sometimes he doesn't. I noticed this about Ballet Arizona's Astrit Zejnati, who doesn't tower over Paola Hartley, and I think he must be short, but then when he partners the taller Natalia Magnicaballi, he looks to be in proportion to her, and I think he must be tall.

Thank you, cygneblanc, for your detailed review of the competition!

In another context, Leigh Witchel found an article in The New York Times about NYCB apprentices Kathryn Morgan and David Prottas. Unfortunately it has expired except for those have Times Select (paid), but I managed to find the full article in our Public Library database. Speaking of Prottas, the article says, The link to the abstract is: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.htm...DAB0994DE404482

What???? And no movie?

For our posters who celebrate Christmas on 25 December, we wish you and your families and friends a very Merry Christmas.

James Brown died yesterday, after being admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. From The New York Times: James Brown, the ‘Godfather of Soul’, Dies at 73 From The Associated Press: Legendary Singer James Brown Dies at 73 From The Telegraph: Obituary: James Brown

Many thanks, antoP, for the explanation.