Helene

I also thinks it's a perverse understanding of an audience that has been crushed by the lack of at least one choreographic genius successor to Balanchine.

There's nothing on the NBoC website, either. The only "Special Event" listed is a June gala fundraiser.

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We have our standard conundrum here: on the one hand, where the audience, or at least what the Marketing Department thinks the audience is, gets input into artistic decisions, and we get Draculas, and on the other, where Artistic Directors are in charge of maintaining the standards and trying to educate the audience to them. I think there's a reason why repertory is left off these surveys, and I don't know of many (aside from critics, perhaps) who would have assumed to question Balanchine's judgements in these matters in his time.What I think we tend to express here is that we want invested, educated, dedicated ballet fans (like us, for example) to be able to give input to companies, but I'm not sure many of us would want a democracy to decide programming or casting.

I see two distinctions being made: admitting to joining any political entity to survive as a performing artist vs. lying about it after the fact, and survival as an artist vs. using membership to obtain more acclaim, wealth, apartment, etc. I would say that there is a third flavor, which is usually associated with the mafia: take the goodies or we'll exile your family, but anyone who is associated with a party publicly doesn't have plausible deniability at having joined, regardless of the reason. I think the issue in Schwarzkopf's case is her denial, rather than her participation.

There's a bit of a ying/yang about whether they should care, particularly about casting. For example, I rarely attend opening Thursday nights at PNB, unless I'm booked for the entire second weekend. That's when Patricia Barker is usually cast, although not exclusively. (Kaori Nakamura danced opening night Aurora.) If there's once dancer in Seattle whose name is recognizable, it is hers. I can't even count the number of number of times I've heard the people around me at other performances comment and lament that she wasn't dancing that night or wasn't dancing in the opening night role in which she was reviewed. (Once in a while a companion will say, "But [dancer cast] is wonderful, too.") But Patricia Barker can't dance every night, for her own health and for the health of the company. Francia Russell once said in a Q&A something to the effect that not every young dancer she casts is going to be optimal every time, but she had to give dancers a chance to grow. Peter Boal said that the people would be able to say years from now, for example, "I saw Carla Körbes' debut in Emeralds." I know that my Saturday matinee casting will be different than Saturday night casting, as it was for my old NYCB Saturday subscriptions. On the other hand, I've read almost every NYCB review on this board, and I see patterns of casting that sound a bit unfortunate, and that are different than disliking a single dancer and avoiding him/her (the distant cousin of what a friend called "Irrational Celebrity Hatred," in which something about the person pushes a button, although their performances are not much worse or more mediocre than others'.) This isn't limited to Peter Martins' watch -- the "experiment" of casting Ashley in the Verdy role in Emeralds that Arlene Croce described in 1988 as "productive," was called over-long in her earlier review. I don't know how much feedback on casting, short of "I hate seeing a particular subset of dancers four Tuesdays in a row and missing everyone else," would be addressed, even if it would be a good thing for the company to know what audience attitudes are and what they are up against.

bart, I'm going to have nightmares tonight.

I'm still having a problem getting my head around the concept that the great classical standards are not something to which each generation should aspire to master and perform.

The current season's programming has a large number of Balanchine ballets, including many of the best-loved. As far as disappointing new ballets go, the biggest concentration of new ballets are produced during The Diamond Project (spring season), and on occasion, for galas (like openings), and with more Balanchine masterpieces, there's less room for the disappointing ones.I don't know enough about the internal workings of rehearsal scheduling to know whether the new approach to scheduling will help the programs to be rehearsed more thoroughly, performed better, or cast differently. The schedule does expose the company: I don't expect the mantra next year to be "great dancers dancing mediocre ballets." The big discounts the company provides now are student rush and The Fourth Ring Society. Is FRS an issue with the subscribers in the Fourth Ring you've spoken to? Do subscribers to the more expensive seats want an advance discount? (20% off on the day of the show is listed as a current benefit.)

He doesn't mention opera, whose repertoire is more firmly rooted in the 19th and early 20th centuries than ballet, with the exception of Richard Strauss. Who in opera is the 20th or 21st century equivalent of Ashton, Tudor, or Balanchine in terms of consistency and output?LA supports an opera, directed by Placido Domingo.

Girona is a convenient destination in Europe for countries that are serviced by the low-cost carriers for flights that are nominally to Barcelona, but which fly into the local Girona airport. Maybe some of our London readers will be able to attend.

Stiefel and Stars has a pretty snappy-looking website: http://www.stiefelandstars.com/ While it's possible there may be some contracts that prohibit dancers from touring in the off-season, there are none that I know that have been made public, and there have been many examples over the years of small touring companies comprised of dancers from major companies. It is possible that Corella takes this opportunity to spend time in his own country in the off-season. Does anyone remember if he talked about this in the Born to Be Wild DVD?

In this case, I think he was following the example of Baryshnikov, who found modern works which matched his skill.I think the issue with the camera wasn't his dancing, but that his facial expressions were more extreme than those of his cast members. In the audience, this might have read very differently.

If Mel is correct, then perhaps this could be called a win-win situation. It's not like the money is pouring in or costs are going down. Speight Jenkins said in a post-performance Q&A this past season that revenue rises 2% and that costs increase 8% (?) each year, and that we could do the math. There are only so many monetary benefits that NYCB can extend. Perhaps this is a creative approach to give a non-monetary benefit, much like Ernest Fleischmann at Los Angeles Symphony was known for. NYCB will evaluate the results. Buying or not buying subscriptions and/or single tickets is the power we do have, if we are not major donors, board members, or foundations.

I am lucky to have seen the Verdy-coached Carla Körbes in Emeralds, and am quite happy (over the moon), thank you. (Although I wish I had seen Verdy in the role, in her time.)But back to the topic at hand, bart is absolutely on target. This is a thread in which to discuss the programming changes, and response to the subject from all points of view are welcome here, as long as BT rules are followed in posting.

Napoli showed up which made me very happy. I have to watch it many more times (and undistracted) to really see it, but I couldn't resist replaying the pas de six and tarantella three times over. I don't recognize any of the dancers; the DVD cover lists copyright 1986. In the pas de six and tarantella, seven men besides Arne Villumsen, who danced Gennaro, are listed in the credits: Peter Bo Bendixen, Mogens Boesen, Johnny Eliasen, Bjarne Hecht, Ib Jeppesen, Alexander Kølpin, and Claus Schrøder. I really liked the dancer with the yellow tie who wasn't Villumsen. If anyone can identify the men in these two dances, I'd appreciate it very much.

One of my favorites is Theme and Variations, because the ballerina is not done after she's lifted onto the man's shoulders: she still has a port de bras to finish.

There is a far-too-short article in today's links, written by Sandra Kurtz, about the men in Pacific Northwest Ballet who were trained in other countries in general, and Stanko Milov in particular. (Please tell us this is only the first part in a series...) Pacific Northwest Ballet: Best Foreign Bodies Among the points in the article are: 1. How these men grew up in cultures where male dancers are respected 2. The richness these dancers bring, based on their training 3. The different stage presence they bring, especially, but not exclusively, to the classics The same could be said for a core of the men who dance for Ballet Arizona. Not every one of these dancers is a technical virtuoso, but there's a bone-deep stage presence and style they bring to their dancing, and an elegance that is rare among US-trained dancers. That adds to the richness of the performance. If they were women, we'd say they add a different perfume.

Clearly Natalia never saw MacMillan's "Isadora". I wouldn't be sure of that -- sometimes the discussions over the worst are a hard-argued as discussions over the best :blush:

Welcome to Ballet Talk, Charming_Lise. We hope you'll tell us about performances that you see.

This is another difference between training in the Royal Ballet and other state-sponsored ballet academies (formerly Royal-sponsored) and the US. In the state-sponsored academies, there are auditions to enter the program, with the expectation that the vast majority of the dancers who enter the corps of their related companies will come from the school, having been trained there from an early age. With recognition that this is changing, due to EU rules and the willingness of Russian academies to take on Western tuition-paying students, in the US, there are two types of training: from independent schools and from company-affiliated schools. Training in most of these schools is two-tiered: early training for mostly local children -- ex. Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka who studied at SAB -- and a pre-professional track from early teenage years. The expectation for companies in the US is that those dancers who are hired into the corps will come from pre-professional programs. Very few local children who start their early training in a school go on to the pre-professional track, let alone make it through the ranks of a ballet company. For SAB, considered the most important training ground in the US, I can think of three dancers who rose from training at SAB as a child through the pre-professional ranks to Principal at SAB: Fugate, Boal, Somogyi. (Please tell me if I've missed someone.) New Yorkers Calegari and Saland, for example, received early training from other schools and were accepted into the pre-professional SAB track. (I don't know if the school training was split as formally when Leclerq, Villella, and d'Amboise attended SAB.) When SAB accepts an eight-year old, there is no great expectation that that child will make it into the pre-professional division, let alone the company. The company ranks are expected to be filled by those who are accepted into the pre-professional division, and these kids come from all over the country. (PNB has a parallel track for teenagers who aren't in the professional division, who are usually on a college track.) When the Kirov or Bolshoi accepted a child, aside from the children of the highly placed government officials, they were investing in a potential dancer, if not for their companies, for companies throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Welcome to Ballet Talk, sf_herminator!I did mean Joanna Berman. Thank you for pointing this out -- I always seem to combine these two, who were very different dancers.