Helene

I'm glad you posted this, because when I read Haglund's review, I thought of Merrill Ashley's memoir, in which she talked about not being a natural turner, and how for Who Cares?, when she danced the Morris "turning" solo, practicing more didn't help at all for that role with those turns. It must be incredibly frustrating to know that practicing/more work won't help, and that the results might be hit or miss.

Welcome to Ballet Talk, pas de chat! We hope you'll post here about impressions of ballet videos and performances you've seen, but we're sure you'll find our sister site, Ballet Talk for Dancers a great resource as an adult ballet student. There are two forums, "Adult Ballet Students," and "Adult Ballet Students Buddy Board" in the "Special Groups" section of the site. We have separate registrations. I couldn't find a "pas de chat" already on the members list for BT4D, so you should be able to use this name on both sites.

I find this a double-edged sword: in a limited rep season, with at least one full length, there are ballets that I'd love to see again that take years, if ever. And some I didn't really like or get the first time, but seeing them a few years later, sometimes with a different cast, can make all the difference.

We share a server and email with Ballet Talk for Dancers, and each year we have a fundraising campaign to raise the money to pay for our server, software modules, email, and the ballettalk.com domain. We are hoping that you'll show your support for the sites by donating for the upcoming year's expenses that aren't covered by the amazon.com commissions from your purchases through the sites. All funds go towards the maintenance of the site; the only operations expenses are the PayPal service fees. Our suggested contribution is $15, but any amount is appreciated. (We really mean that.) There are a couple of ways to donate: 1. Suggested contribution or any amount, from our "Support Us" page: http://www.ballettalk.com/supportus.htm There are instructions on the page, and a PayPal "payments" button. Because we don't have a business license, we can't deposit checks made out to "Ballet Talk" and "Ballet Talk for Dancers into personal accounts. If you want to pay by check instead of PayPal, the check must be made payable to me (Helene Kaplan) or Victoria Leigh; Ballet Talk or Ballet Talk for Dancers may be added to the "Memo" field. The address to which to send checks is on the "Support Us" page. 2. Suggested contribution by PayPal only: We are running an experiment on Ballet Talk. If you click the "My Controls" link, the first link under "Options" is "Donate to Ballet Talk." The pages are straightforward, but just as a heads up to our non-US Dollars customers: I haven't been able to figure out how to disable the other currency options, but the site will convert to US Dollars before you are navigated to PayPal, using a fixed, out-dated conversion rate. If you use this option, your Login Name is automatically logged, and you can reference it any time in "My Controls." ******** This year, we ask that you write your BT or BT4D Login Name on your check or enter it in the designated input box on the PayPal Confirm Page (second of two). This is one time you can't be anonymous As in the past, we'll close the fundraiser as soon as we can cover the next year's expenses. Thank you!

You made my morning, miliosr.

Welcome to Ballet Talk, On Pointe!

Satirist Anna Russell died earlier this week, at age 94. The New York Times has published a (not very well copy edited) obituary in today's edition: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/20/obituari...?ref=obituaries I know that "I'm not making this up, you know" was her signature line, but for me, her Ring of the Nibelungen piece is the funniest piece I've ever heard, and I'm torn between two co-favorite lines: "She's his aunt, you know," and "who's the only women he's ever met who isn't his aunt." (The latter is probably not word-for-word accurate, but my CD is at work.) Pace, Anna Russell.

The article also didn't even mention that doug is a pianist as well, which those of us who took adult classes at PNB when he was in graduate school were lucky enough to know and experience.

From The Washington Post, a wonderfully snide take on the ratings bonanza that was Sara Evans' interview: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6101801851.html

Maria Tallchief, who was a star by the time the viola role was made on her, and who was paired with the young Tanaquil LeClerq in the violin role, said that Balanchine created this ballet to teach her how to dance. Critics like Croce noted that it was to teach everyone in the ballet.Maybe it will have a similar, educational effect on Part and Wiles, after they've had a few attempts at it.

It's the end of an era.

To paraphrase an ex-President's War Room, "It's the rep, stupid."

As zerbinetta mentioned in the 2006 City Center season announcement, schedule thread, Danny Tidwell is dancing two performances of Christopher Wheeldon's ballet "Dance of the Hours" in the opera La Gioconda. He just danced his first. Even getting an acknowledgement on the opera list reviews that a ballet exists is an achievement, but he's been getting accolades for his performance as well.

In his memoir, Martins wrote that Tzigane was not supposed to have any men in it and described how he begged Balanchine to be in it. (If I'm remembering correctly, he offered to sweep the stage in back of the corps to be in it.)

There is a thread about the Plisetsky article here.

The interpretation depends on the source. While Prokofiev's relationship with his wife was troubled, in 1941 both Prokofiev and Mira Mendelson, who was a writer, were sent to the Caucasus, like many other cultural figures. They had already been close collaborators.There is at least one factual error in the Times review; Prokofiev was most certainly divorced from Lina Prokofiev, thanks to Stalinist law passed in the late 40's. That is why he was able to marry Mira Mendelson legally. Perhaps the reviewer shouldn't have dismissed the author's proposal that Prokofiev felt guilty about his wife, Lina. Unless he had still had feelings for her, it's hard to figure out why else the score of Cinderella was so sour. She was left alone to fend for herself, a foreign national, and her children in wartime Moscow. He had every reason to be anxious about his family's safety. Ironically, having survived the war without her husband, she was put into a labor camp a few years after it.

"Adin" will be performed in Seattle during the third week of PNB's Celebrate Seattle Festival. All of the choregraphers have roots in Seattle -- some of them professional, like Paul Gibson and Kiyon Gaines -- and Christopher Stowell was reared here, after his parents moved to Seattle from Germany.

It's odd that Possokhov gives that chronology for Lina Prokofiev's inprisonment. They were separated during the period of 1941-5 when S. Prokofiev intermittently wrote the music for the ballet, but she wasn't imprisoned until 1948. She was, however, left to fend on her own in Moscow during the war years, raising their two children.

Did anyone go?

The score for Cinderella was a commission from the Kirov Ballet, which explains the subject One thing I didn't mention was the pressure on Prokofiev and all known Soviet composers to write in a style that Stalin liked and which became part of the artistic ideology. There was pressure on Prokofiev to go backwards in his writing style. Historically he's portrayed as an outspoken, cranky guy in real life. I'm not sure if sarcasm was as much of his way of coping as it seemed to be with Shostakovich, who was portrayed by Rostropovich (in a talk I heard last spring), tried to say nothing and take no stands outside of his music.

Prokofiev wrote the Cinderella score over the course of five years in which soon after he had a heart attack in 1941, he was among the cultural prizes of the Soviet Union who were uprooted to live in the Caucasus for the duration of WWII, and he was separated from his wife, Lina, a Spaniard who returned to the Soviet Union with him, and children. (A post-war decree by Stalin made it illegal for a Soviet Citizen to be married to a foreign national, and, as a result, their marriage was annuled retroactively, leaving Lina stranded. Soon after Lina was arrested for espionage in 1948, he married his War and Peace librettist, Mira Mendelssohn.) The time period in which he wrote Cinderella was devastatingly brutal for the nation and for Prokofiev personally, which explains why the score is particularly gnarly, given its subject.

I think we've finally found a topic on which Mr. Martins and I agree Seriously, I don't think that anyone's interpretation of the truncated version is particularly interesting. I've been revelling in d'Amboise's performance of the modified (for a cast of four) full version.