Helene

Many thanks for the heads up, Lady Rosa Does anyone know when and where this performance was recorded? Was it shown on TV originally?

In today's Links, there's an article by Roger Downey in Seattle Weekly called Looking Up: After one season under the leadership of Peter Boal, Pacific Northwest Ballet is on the rise. The main question raised by Downey is "What had changed?" Downey wrote, "As usual, the Seattle audience paid no attention to plans or projects and waited to be told by someone else that it was safe to take the plunge." But there's another half, which is the number of people in Seattle who want to get in at the beginning, and I think from Opening Night, there was a difference in the air: the donors who had had their fill of pre-performance champagne looked younger than their opera and symphony cohorts, and they looked like they were having a blast. There is a relatively recent tradition of younger people working in new businesses, getting in on the ground floor, and hopefully, they will become a core audience of the ballet. The question for me was whether Boal and the Company could sustain their interest during the season (and hopefully their checkbooks). Based on attendance numbers, I think the answer is yes. In my opinion, the brilliance of the 8 Encores program was to reprise the works that by now were vouched for, drawing in the audience that was fearful during the first run -- who hopefully will attend next year's first run -- but also reassuring the audiences that loved the new season that there's more like it to come, and giving a pat on the back to the audiences who did appreciate the programming from the first performances. Cast lists are easily interpreted as a litmus test of who is in favor -- barring absence due to injury or pregnancy -- and how AD's "type" their dancers. Russell and Stowell had an interesting balancing act during their administration, to hire dancers, particularly Soloists and Principals from outside the school to draw in audiences while building the school to the point where there aren't enough slots for all the best dancers, who feed into other companies. Most people who've watched a company have at least one dancer that they feel is underrated and unfairly relegated to the bench and wonder why certain partnerships are not explored. I think it was inevitable that after 27 years, Russell and Stowell would have their patterns of choice. Boal has been at PNB for one year; perhaps after three or five or ten years we'll see the same thing. But what we've seen this year is a wide distribution of roles among all levels of the company, new partnerships that have either gelled or have tremendous potential, and different types of works that are particularly well-suited to dancers that had not been featured often before. In addition, dancers like Patricia Barker and Jeff Stanton are dancing with a different freedom than they have in the past, working with different partners, and, for Barker in particular, not bearing the weight of the Company on her shoulders. And Boal hasn't neglected the dancers that long-time ballet-goer have come to expect to see. I think he's shown great sensitivity to his audiences and his new community. Yes, we are extremely lucky.

I watched the first half of Children of Theatre Street for the first time today, and watching the class of 11-year-olds at the barre, it was already clear that the young girls had learned this from the beginning of their training.

I don't know Les Présages, but Apollo is one of the greatest ballets, and if you haven't seen The Green Table, it's certainly worth seeing for the first time. And we're glad you posted, BAT! Please tell us a little bit about yourself in the Welcome Forum (by clicking the "New Topic" button in the upper right of the page.

And any hope for the Mariinsky and Bolshoi to tour with anything but Swans and Don Q's...

The old board software used to notify users about new PM's by placing a bar with a red background on the homepage. The new software opens up a pop-up like box with all of the My Assistant functions on tabs. For those that use and receive PM's, I'd appreciate it if you would tell me which you prefer, and if you'd like to have the choice. (Either here or via PM ) Thanks a lot.

One of the most repeated stories about NYCB is how dancers saw working with Balanchine and Robbins: Balanchine would give them leeway, including making adjustments to help the dancers, and audiences would interpret his ballets as being formalistic and rigid. Robbins droves his dancers hard and would insist on exactness down to the last fingernail, and audiences would exclaim about how spontaneous his ballets looked.

Wikipedia is becoming more and more important as a source of information on the Internet, and I think it's in the best interest of ballet to have reasonable information appear in it. One of the issues with Wikipedia is that many articles emphasize the knowledge and focus of contemporary writers, which on the one hand gives current information on events, performers, athletes, directors, etc. that is great to have when it's firsthand, on the other hand it does in volume that is not always proportionate to their historical importance. While I'm sure it will be helpful to have information on Kowrowski and Murphy, for example -- for younger people, Murphy's performance of Swan Lake seen on PBS may be the only version they've ever seen, and to put it in context would be a good thing -- unless a miracle happens and choreographers of genius appear overnight, their historical importance is not going to be close to that of Kent and McBride, for whom two geniuses, Balanchine and Robbins, created some of their most iconic roles. Nefertari, you might have more luck with Kent, because she did write a very interesting memoir.

Thank you, Seabreeze! Would you tell us which dancers you liked and which parts were most impressive? Did you see Act III that was performed last year? The reviewer has limited space and only talks about a few of the dancers; usually there are more performances worth mentioning than can fit.

Yes, this has been noted in several articles and interviews with Stiefel.

Of the dancers I've seen on the West Coast, the two dancers with the most notable epaulement are PNB's Mara Vinson, whose arms are very English in style, and Giselle Doepker's (Ballet Arizona). Cechetti training also emphasized epaulement and the upper body. I haven't seen them perform for a number of years, but when New York Theatre Ballet was called Balletfore, the company's dancers had very lovely epaulement.

From a story in today's Links, http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/arti..._royal_company/ Congratulations to Ms. Lamb!

Thank you, klingsor -- I have to find that one.