Helene

That's very sad news. This New Yorker profile on Hunt Lieberson was published just a few years ago: The Soul Singer: A mezzo with the most potent voice since Callas

I went to the bargain matinee of The Devil Wears Prada today, and it was indeed a bargain: apart from a few runway scenes, there were beautiful clothes worn by women who are worst are deliberately nonchalant about wearing a year's mortgage on their backs and feet to beautiful clothes worn by Anne Hathaway, who looks like she's thrilled to be wearing them and actually eats onion bagels. For $6.50, I could have bought a print edition of Vogue, to see the same clothes worn by models who look like belligerent junkies ready to stab you in the chest with their Montblanc fountain pens. I prefer the former, and for the same price, I got to see Meryl Streep!!!! Not to mention enough male eye candy to distract from the clothes: Adrian Grenier as the solid sous-chef boyfriend, Simon Baker as the non-so-solid writer/anti-boyfriend, Daniel Sunjata, who played the visiting Navy guy who tells Carrie Bradshaw he could never live in the city in an episode of Sex in the City, as a designer with a killer loft, and even a few glimpses of James Naughton as Meryl's Streep's character's husband. Yes, it was formulaic as all get-go. Yes it was ridiculous and just as predictable that the close friend who accepts the $1900 pocketbook from her friend gets all huffy about not knowing who Anne Hathaway's Andy has become. (She'd be the friend who goes to work and brings home $1900 castaways for her friends who giddily accept them.) Yes there is the ridiculous speech about how designers are Artists and how everything on everyone's back, no matter how cheap, is determined by them, blah, blah, blah. The book itself was formulaic; what was missing from the movie was the way it competed with The Nanny Diaries in cataloging the absurd self-regard of the employers, the ridiculous demands made by them on an hourly basis, and the nervous breakdown that Andy was perpetually on the brink of for months on end. The movie gave a glimpse, and then backed off to beautiful clothes, those testy moral decisions to be made, the long-suffering boyfriend, who became cuter and cuter the sadder and sadder he got, and not enough location shots of Paris. Stanley Tucci was perfect as Nigel, the true believer in fashion, and Emily Blunt as First Assistant Emily "I'm one stomachful away from my ideal weight" was superb. It was worth the price of admission to see the involuntary look of soul she gave to a tray of hospital food.

The EU has some pretty tough enforcers and some very sharp teeth. The Monti's of the EU haven't been willing to accept empty gestures, and some institutions are more public than others and subject to more scrutiny.

Where the dancers have say in their partners -- for example, where they are on contract -- this might be the case, but in any company where there are long-term members, there are inevitable break-ups, and those dancers aren't segregated forever. It makes little sense to partner people where emotions are still raw or animosity is great, but part of being a professional in a tight-knit community is working with one's exes. I once heard it said about Iceland is that since everyone knows everyone else and there's a limited dating population, it would be a tough place if divorced and broken-up people couldn't get along over time.

Platel is facing the political realities of European Union law that were not applicable during much of Bessy's tenure. EU law dictates that rules of employment be relaxed, and the external contracts could very well meet these requirements.

Gennady Smakov's The Great Russian Dancers came in the mail this past weekend, and it opens with a chapter on "The Lyrical Ballerinas": Pavlova, Egorova, Ulanova, and Makarova. In Smakov's telling, bravura technicians trumped the lyricists, even those with superb technique, at least early in their careers. Quoting Egovora, he describes how Kchessinskaya inadvertently gave Pavlova her big break by agreeing to let Pavlova replace her in La Bayadere when she had a baby, so sure was she that Pavlova would have a failure. Even dancers with superb technique but more subdued -- some might say tasteful and/or classical -- personalities were set aside in favor of the bravura technicians, including by the critics Smakov cites. Also according to Smakov's narrative, Petipa coached Pavlova personally in roles in his ballets despite her technical deficiencies, although it was toward the end of his life when he had less power. Amanda McKerrow had the support of Tudor toward the end of his. A number of NYCB dancers were "Robbins' dancers," cast by him in his ballets and promoted during Robbins' tenure as Co-Ballet-Master-in-Chief. MacMillan had his at the beginning of his career, when Ashton and deValois were the powers at Royal Ballet. Kent has had no such equivalent: what current choreographers are associated with the company? I'm not sure how much influence the coaches have with regard to the traditional classics at ABT.

Welcome to Ballet Talk, BigToe! We invite you to tell us a little about your interest in dance in our Welcome Forum by clicking on "New Topic" from the upper right of the forum.

Wow, Houlton has passed on some serious dance DNA. What beautiful and talented girls.

The women that Barnes cites almost all pioneers outside of the four ballet countries that started institutionalizing ballet from the 16th to 19th centuries and/or provided ballet masters and dancers to them -- France, Russia, Denmark, and Italy. Most are from English-speaking countries, where ballet was new and/or unestablished in the late 19th and early-mid 20th centuries. Where there was little money and little prestige. Now that ballet has been institutionalized in England, the United States, Australia, Canada, and South Africa, the institutions are run primarily by men, on the board, and at the highest levels of management.

I, for one, am glad.

Since Ballet Talk is a board whose purpose is to discuss issues in ballet, (mainly professional) performances, ballet music and history, dancers, and other topics from the point of view of the audience, there should be no issue with maintaining anonymity here. It is on Ballet Talk for Dancers that dance training and dancing itself is discussed.

I know it's been a month, but did anyone see any of the performances with Jodie Thomas and Le Yin in Rubies? They were teamed with all three "tall" girls -- Dec, Imler, and Lallone -- in the ballet, and with all three casts of Emeralds and Diamonds. If so, please do tell

If these are Jean Richard's photo's on the Tulsa Ballet website, I'm having a hard time finding an attribution (although the design company is.) Thank you for the heads up, mississippiqueen. We don't have many posters who tell us about Tulsa Ballet. Please feel free to introduce yourself on our Welcome Forum by clicking the "New Topic" button in the upper right corner of the forum.

For a more granular breakdown, of those 425 works listed: 35-created before he left Russia, for Petrograd Theater Ballet School graduations, concert performances, resorts, the Maly Opera, Evenings of Young Ballet, and a benefit in 1924 for his beloved Elizaveta Gerdt. 106-choregraphed for opera companies 43-cabarets, musicals, made for TV, plays -- including one The Tempest with Raymond Massey, Fritz Weaver, Christopher Plummer, Jack Palance as Caliban!, Joan Chandler, and Roddy McDowall as Ariel! -- films, pantomimes, and revues 8-pièces d'occasion for the elephants at Ringling Bros., a ballet at the Ford Pavillion, a USO appearance, and Symphony of Psalms, in which the dancers sat onstage and listened to the choir sing the work 6-alterations to other people's choreography 13-small commissions for dancers (Ruth Page, Anna Pavlova), parties, charities If I've done the math correctly, that's 211 pieces that would not be expected to be part of the active repetoire, although opera would be a great deal richer if those 106 dances had been retained. That leaves 214 ballets made for repertory, and if 80 are performed, that's a .374 batting average, without counting the number of works that were listed for each revival -- Apollo (at least three), Les Bourgeois Gentilhommes, and Les Enfants et Les Sortilege, are just three -- or the number of works that no one could remember in time to preserve. Hardly shabby by any means.

As was once said in the Old West-----"Thems fighting words" I agree, atm711. Of the 425 works in the Balanchine catalogue, over 80 have been performed in the last couple of decades. Some ballets were redone, with earlier versions mostly retired -- Palais de Cristal to Symphony in C, Caracole to Divertimento No. 15 -- several were multiple versions to the same music done years apart -- Mozartiana, Baiser de la Fee, Variations for Orchestra -- others were expansions and re-workings of pieces done elsewhere -- ex: Chaconne from a commission for the Hamburg State Opera. A few were pièces d'occasion for the Festivals. Many short works were choreographed for operas and serious theater, and others for Broadway and Hollywood. Of the ballets in (relatively) final version that were performed by ballet companies, how many actual duds were there? PAMTAGG is usually cited. Having seen The Steadfast Tin Soldier for what seemed like two weeks straight in the mid-80's, never having warmed up to Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir, and always wishing I was seeing Symphony in C when Gounod Symphony was being performed, there are exactly three ballets my vote for the exception to Arlene Croce's rule that "[t]he greatest Balanchine ballet is the one you happen to be watching."

Amen, sister!

Thank you for the link, Marga.They could have spelled "Simkin" correctly Hopefully, he will update his site with videos from the competition.

Balanchine used to say that anyone who didn't like his choreography should close their eyes and listen. It sounds like some of the crowd at Golden Age didn't take his advice and listen to the superb Shostakovich score, while they had a chance. There were similar reactions to some of Balanchine's special pieces performed at the Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky festivals, like Persephone and Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony. These pieces contained more pagentry and mime than dance, and there was a lot of head-scratching at them, too.