Helene

That's exactly what happened in a very cheesy movie called The Competition. The young pianist played by Amy Irving was surprised to find that she had auditioned for a piano competition, when her teacher, played by Lee Remick, told Irving's character that she had made and submitted the audition tape for her, and described in several pointed phrases exactly how she had mimicked the personal qualities of Irving's character's playing.

I agree. When I hear the ballet described as "fluff" or a light little trifle, I remember the Verdy/Villella tape and wonder if I'd been watching the same ballet.

If it weren't enough to have competing Opening Nights, on September 16 Savion Glover is performing Classical Savion at the Moore. He will do a second performance on Sunday afternoon at 3, but still. Why don't they just schedule a Bolshoi Raymonda with Allash at the Paramount and a Podles recital in Tacoma for the same day?

I haven't read Dallek, but I think all three of Caro's books are well worth reading. They are beautifully written, and in the first two, Caro does not pull punches. In the third, I felt that he was giving Johnson more moral credit for civil rights, despite the picture he paints of Johnson in all three books that, in my opinion, contradicts this. He may want to believe, in order to set up the tragic fall with Vietnam in the last volume. It makes a more classic story. Caro does have his heroes, and paints a mythical Coke Stevenson. Even though you know the ending, the chapters on Johnson's stolen Senate race with Stevenson is a nailbiter to the end. The beginnings of modern media politics are described vividly, and the books give a greater understanding of the power that Brown and Root wields today. Caro's other protagonists and heroes are more unsung and unusual: the unforgiving landscape, the Texas wives who had to do laundry without electricity. He contrasts the very few times that the Senate's braking effect -- fully intended by the Founding Fathers -- was critical, to the vast majority of the time that it provided a very thick wall, particularly against racial justice. One of the crowning pieces of the trilogy is the description, by a Johnson aide, of Johnson's father's funeral. It says volumes about the father and son and their place in Texas history.

I apologize for not completing my thought in this post. I think the way the discussion has evolved is much more important than a narrow interpretation of the question. I meant to bring up Seymour in the context of the discussion: a dancer who is widely called a great dramatic ballerina and artist, who strengthened her technique during her career, but was never a stellar technician or bravura dancer, and whose training in unified schooling started relatively late, with her move to England. In a narrow definition of ballerina as classical technician, she would not qualify, and would have been sent home to Canada. Luckily for ballet, this did not happen.

A European perspective on Hunt Lieberson: an obituary in The Scotsman. http://news.scotsman.com/obituaries.cfm?id=988582006

I was just re-watching the documentary From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China the other day. There's a scene where he's teaching a master class to students in front of a packed auditorium. He was teaching a young (10-12?) girl, who had played a passage dutifully. Her playing was technically "correct" in that the notes were the ones on the page with correct spacing, and even somewhat dynamically correct in terms of relative volume. But what was missing was the connection between the notes: they sounded mechanically produced, with no breath between them. In front of this entire crowd, he made her sing the phrase out loud. While he could make his musical corrections clear by imitation and example, this request needed translation, and her very first reaction, before she looked mortified, was as if he had asked her to stand on her head. Very much like the story Farrell tells where Balanchine asked her to keep extending her fourth position preparation for pirouette into a virtual lunge. After taking a few seconds to gather her courage, she sang the passage, and almost miraculously, played it with the same beautiful phrasing with which she had sung it. It had life and breath. She had been given permission to use her musical imagination and apply it to the score. His explanation was that the violin was an extension of the voice. At best, in my opinion, dancers use their bodies to sing. (As a fan of 20th century and contemporary music, I know that the singing might not always be sweet, a la Pierrot Lunaire.) That doesn't in itself mean that a dancer is musical -- many people who sing are tone deaf, and others have bad taste -- but it's a great start.

[Admin Beanie On] You may notice that this thread has gotten shorter. The reason is that it concerns the current whereabouts of students which haven't been made public through an official news source. I couldn't find any articles with profiles or listings of workshop performances, and the Alumni Directory at SAB is limited to SAB alumni. We know that there are a number of Ballet Talkers who do know who is studying where, based on personal knowledge. Unfortunately, insider information isn't permitted on the board. Many company websites publish information that is accurate at the time it is posted, but may not be updated as things change. A recent example of this was the SAB newsletter, contents reported here by drb, which listed Jeffrey Stanton's recent promotion to Principal Dancer at PNB, which happened in 1996. If there is something that is posted to an official company site that is being discussed actively and that you know to be outdated and there is no official announcement, please contact someone on the Admin team through the My Assistant link at the top right of the page, or if you don't yet have PM or board email access, through the Contact Us link. [Admin Beanie Off]

To speak literally to the topic, Lynn Seymour, certainly at the beginning of her career, was not a solid technician, but at a very early time in her performing career was singled out by Kenneth MacMillan, whose eye she had obviously caught.

I am glad that another married couple is reunited to dance in the same city!

I think they're a little behind: Jonathan Poretta and Maria Chapman were promoted last year, and Jeffrey Stanton has been a principal dancer for over a decade.

There are few companies in North America that schedule more than one program in a fixed week. ABT does it with their fall season and NYCB for its rep seasons, aside from a block of Swan Lakes, Sleeping Beautys, or Midsummer Night's Dreams. San Francisco Ballet alternates two programs over two weekends, and Ballet Arizona did the same for its last two Balanchine Celebration weekends. Almost every company has a fixed program repeated over a week/weekend or two, with programs often a month or more apart, as the companies either share space with an opera company and/or symphony and have to alternate, or they tour to other cities, like Miami City Ballet.

I read the original thread on SFB brings Don Q to Edinburgh Festival as "San Francisco Ballet" so many times that I finally added a subtitle of "Suzanne Farrell Ballet."

And she doesn't even orchestrate getting the assignment: Meryl Streep's character says, I made the decision, you're coming with me, or you can walk.

((((((((((((beck_hen)))))))))))) I'm glad you're safe, though.

Among the women, I'd say Tina LeBlanc, Lorena Feijoo, and Muriel Maffre are the three Principal women not to miss. They are very different dancers, but each as authoritative as the other. A lot of people love Yuan Yuan Tan and Vanessa Zahorian, but they're not my favorites, the latter more for being miscast in my opinion, and while I liked Katita Waldo a lot in the mid-late 90's, I've been disappointed when I've seen her recently; she seems to have lost her punch. Among the junior women, I haven't seen Nutnaree Pipi-Suksun, who joined this year, but she caused a lot of buzz. Frances Chung, Rachel Viselli, and Sarah van Patten are very talented soloists. The men are so terrific, it's hard to know where to begin. It depends on your strategy: if you go to the opening gala-format program, you'll see everyone. If you attend the mixed bill on Saturday night, July 29, you'll see Yuri Possokhov's last performance with the Company. If you're planning to see Sylvia, that's a tougher one: when it first premiered, I saw Megan Low, who retired in the role this past spring, and Elizabeth Miner. Miner was fabulous, but the reviews from this year indicate that this year's performances weren't to the same standard. I didn't see Tan or Zahorian, both of whom are cast for NYC. If I had to choose one Sylvia, it would be Friday, July 28, because I loved Guennadi Nedviguine's sweet, sweet Aminta, and Maffre will appear in the short, but potent, role of Diana.

Morris' Sylvia and Aminta don't have a first act pas de deux, but it will be interesting to hear what BTers who've seen both ABT's Ashton version and will see San Francisco Ballet perform Morris' at the Lincoln Center Festival have to say when comparing the two, especially with both performed the same month.

From the PNB newsletter I just received, PNB has a MySpace: http://profile.myspace.com/pnballet

The obituary in The New York Times has been posted to the website: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/arts/mus...r=1&oref=slogin And an anecdote, in a remembrance by Alex Ross in All the Rest Is Noise of the late Village Voice critic Leighton Kerner: The AP obituary, as posted in The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6070500038.html