Helene

I think there are several fine underlying issues that have been discussed here: 1. Does the fact that ballet dancers are as well-trained and physically fit as athletes make them athletes? 2. What are the other criteria that would distinguish ballet from sport or establish the similarities? 3. What are the similarities between the greatest dancers and the greatest athletes? 4. On what basis should the question of this thread be answered?

A mother and her mid-twenty-something year old son file the court papers to have their husband/father, who was kidnapped during the 1988 war in Lebanon, declared dead. The next day, the declaration will be made. In theory, A Perfect Day is an allegory of a society that cannot overcome its past. (At least that's what the festival booklet says.) This movie covers dawn to dawn of that period. What I saw was a mother who had boundary issues, and a son consumed in a young life, pursuing a miserable tease of an ex-girlfriend in a city that is portrayed as one big come-on, when he is not passing out cigarettes to the middle-aged and elderly men who are hanging out in his neighborhood. Visually, the directors stopped short of a wet T-shirt contest, but not by far, and without the "heh-heh" attitude of an American beer commercial. From Copenhagen to Beirut, the horny sleep clinic doctor/technician seems to be a recurring character. What is a boy to do? (Answer: be as passive-aggressive as possible.) In this movie, the only time people are kind to one another is when one is asleep.

doug, I'm so glad Saland was in to coach the Verdy role in Emeralds. I never saw Verdy , but Saland was by far my favorite interpreter of it by the dancers I did see. I really liked Borne as a dancer, too. allegrafan, traffic willing, I'm going to the first three performances, starting tomorrow night. (I have a family wedding next weekend.)

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. Had Fonteyn not written her own autobiography/memoir, then I would agree that press should focus on what is onstage. Had she simply written that she was married to a person and that their relationship was between them, that should have been the end of it. However, once she wrote an extensive version of her own life including the marriage, and wrote a version that could be disputed, she opened up the subject.

I'm glad you're coming down, allegrafan. On 8th June you'll see Jodie Thomas and Le Yin's debuts in Rubies, Carla Körbes in Emeralds -- she was coached in the role by Violette Verdy during the Balanchine Centennial year -- and I expect Imler to be wonderful in Diamonds.

Fonteyn wrote her memoirs and spoke publicly. I think that makes her intention public and subject to scrutiny and contradiction.

I've rarely seen a movie, this one directed by Copenhagen-trained Icelandic director Dagur Kári, where a rather unfocused lead character, Daniel (played by Jakob Cedergren), shares the first third of the film mainly with one character (Nicolas Bro's Morfar ["Grandpa"]), goes dark a bit during the middle of the movie, which is dominated by Morfar and Daniel's girlfriend Franc, and spends the last third of the film in parallel with another, the judge who sentences him to community service as a result of his arrest during an anti-graffiti sting operation. The very good looking and talented main character, who had been landing on his feet like a cat, fades in the presence of his friend and girlfriend, instead of being bathed in Hollywood light and having his cheekbones caressed by the camera to create a distraction from the lack of substance. A darling of European film festivals, I think it's telling that in most English synopses of Dark Horse (Voksne Mennesker) on the web, the judge is rarely mentioned, although he becomes a major character with no foreshadowing towards the end of the movie. I think the slacker angle loses the importance of the opposite trajectory of the judge. I am not sure how much of this movie I understood, but it was a very fine film by which to have been washed over. The black and white photography was stellar. Nicolas Bro is having quite a year: he played one of the major characters in Adams Æbler, and he has a lead in Dark Horse as well. (www.imdb.com shows him in five movies release in 2005, and two 2006 movies currently in post-production.) Perhaps he is the Robbie Coltrane of Danish cinema. The Betrayal (La Trahison) is a rather matter-of-fact story depicting a few weeks in which a handful of ethnic North African soldiers (called "harkis") who are part of the French occupying force in Algeria in the 1960, and are suspected of having turned to the side of the FLN, the Algerian National Liberation Force, to the chagrin of their battalion commander. One of the movie's strengths is that although it does show parallels between the internal conflicts of the commander and of the harkis, both torn between two societal norms, it doesn't attempt to equate their struggles.

It's never too late to weigh in.

A pairing of this stature is likely to be tabloid fodder for months to come. Sadly for the newspaper business, Olympic gold medallist Evgeni Plushenko fell in love young, married his non-newsworthy love, and is about to become a father any day now. The things he doesn't do to stimulate the economy

I think Dupont would have been much better cast in Emeralds.

Two more: Queens, directed by Manuel Gómez Pereira. It was as if Crustacés et coquillages (released in the US as Côte d'Azur) were directed by Pedro Almodóvar. In fact, it stars three of Almodóvar's leading women -- Carmen Maura (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Marisa Paredes (All About My Mother), and Verónica Forqué (Kika) -- has several Almodóvar in jokes, and ties all neuroses back to Mama. The plot centers around a mass wedding of the first 20 gay couples to marry in Spain. The wedding takes place in a new, gay-centric hotel owned by one of the men's parents, and the rest of the parents ascend upon the scene (or don't), increasing the stress levels of the couples. Chaos ensues. Adam's Apples (Adams Æbler), directed by Anders Thomas Jensen. Plotwise, a recently released neo-Nazi convict is sent to a rural church as part of his parole/community service, where he becomes the assistant to a minister whose take on reality is, well, interesting. A unique and very twisted film. Anyone who seriously dislikes Yanni but has found his/herself absent-mindedly singing "Baby Beluga" when there are no children around will recognize him/herself in the final scene.

Here is the link to Jack Cole's credits from www.imdb.com: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0170574/ His dance credits are listed as: Moon over Miami Designing Woman (also choreographer) Eadie Was a Lady (also choreographer) Tonight and Every Night (also musical numbers and dance director) His credits for choreography are far more extensive.

After several interviews in which Yagudin identified his serious girlfriend as Somova, the Russian press has gone wild with the story, and I suspect this won't be the first article that tries to generate a bit of an uproar with a forceful title wrapped around a recap of events to date.

I have very strong feelings upon my first viewing of this DVD, but I'd like to start by saying I think it's worth every penny, despite the reservations I have. Highlights: The decor by Christian Lacroix. I loved the projections in Emeralds and Rubies, and wanted another in Diamonds, but the horizontal diamond spines hanging high were quite beautiful. For me, the costumes in Emeralds and Diamonds were to die for, particularly the women's bodices. The little flouncy ruffled skirts in Rubies would have been fine, if the dancing didn't match them stylistically. Pujol and Osta in Emeralds. Both very French and beautiful in these roles, particularly their arms and Osta's very beautiful feet. Balarbi, Osta's partner, a very mature presence. There was nothing wrong with an older woman/younger man pairing, but I thought Ganio was too much Cherubino and too little Octavian. I would have switched Bart and Ganio, although that would have deprived Bart of his solos in Diamonds. Thibault in the last two movements of Emeralds. In the pas de trois, he was a bit light, and I kept seeing Daniel Duell in my head, but he held his own beautifully at the end of the ballet, side-by-side with the principal men. The corps women in Diamonds, including demis Ciaravola and Cozette, and the two others in the third movement quartet. Like the little "which hat is the ball under" that they show between innings at live baseball games, because of the camera cuts, I wasn't sure if I was loving one of the four or two, and wishing she had been cast as the tall girl in Rubies. These dancers got it -- the energy and scope of what was being asked for, while at the same time staying in harmony with each other. Lowlights: Rubies, although Carbone did manage to break out a bit during his solos. I loved Dupont in La Sylphide, but I think she was completely wrong for Rubies. Towards the beginning of the first pas de deux, where she turns on a bent knee, she places her weight so carefully, and is so square to the audience, that the sense of progressive movement is lost. When she does the backwards jockey steps, her back is straight up, as if she were in a tutu. When she is left balancing in passe, there's no surprise, because she's taken no risk in getting there. In the hip thrusts, her hips need oiling. Gillot danced similarly. My response, to quote Samantha Jones, was "No. No, no. No, no, no, no." Letestu in Diamonds. The lead in Diamonds is not Odette. (pas de deux). The lead in Diamonds is not Aurora (first half of solo) or a principal in Etudes (end of solo). Letestu perked up a bit in the final movement, but the lead in Diamonds should not be put to shame by the contrasting energy of the corps, no matter how beautiful her placement is. The credits. The credits for each ballet are given by rank, in alphabetical order, without regard to the roles or pairings. (The booklet breaks down the principals scene by scene, thank goodness.) Two of the four demi-soloists in Diamonds and the rest of the corps are not listed at all. The English translation of the credits could have included the full list of dancers; they didn't have to be limited to what was broadcast on French TV. Don't these dancers have a union? They were one of the production's crowning glories.

I actually meant Farrell Fan's description "in which he looks a little like Peter Boal and a little like every male dancer you've ever liked." (Writing as a huge fan of Lund's who still feels infinitely "wuzrobbed" that Nikolai Hubbe replaced the scheduled Lund as James when I saw La Sylphide in Copenhagen.) I'm sorry I wasn't clear.

That is a fantastic image, Farrell Fan.

Yes!

When I first saw this in Sacred Stage, my only thought was "make this go away." Please tell me it works better in person.

Thank you, Hans, for the exact quote. papeetepatrick, as carbro mentioned, National Ballet of Canada performed Glen Tetley's ballet Alice to a score by David del Tredici. It wasn't exactly Carroll book, but a ballet about the historical young and old Alice, Alice's husband, and Lewis Carroll. I loved it when NBoC brought it to NYC in 1986. Kimberly Glasco did indeed dance the young Alice, with Karen Kain as Alice Hargraeves, and Rex Harrington as Lewis Carroll. The figures from Alice in Wonderland do appear in the ballet as well. The Prague Chamber Ballet performed Alice in Wonderland: A Dance Fantasy based on Carroll's book with music by Victor Kalabis; the video won a Parent's Choice Award. (Although one reviewer on amazon.com called it "surreal.") I haven't been able to find a choreographer, though, through Google.

I left out one of yesterday's films called Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul. It is a survey of contemporary Turkish music documentary of sorts in the "narrator attempts to discover the secret of X and realizes he's only scratched the surface" kind of way. In this case the narrator is experimental rock bass guitarist Alexander Hacke. The structure itself is a bit self-conscious and awkward, but the music is almost uniformly terrific. Hacke talks to lots of different bands and street musicians and young people, including a street dance group that performed a cross between break-dancing and Cirque du Soleil. There are also movie clips of three of Turkey's most famous popular singers, who also performed in movies, pop legend Sezen Aksu, Orhan Gencebay -- there's some hysterical Magnum PI-like movie footage of him -- and Müzeyyen Senar, an older star. In a wonderful twist, there is not only film of rock bands and street musicians performing and rehearsing, but there are staged performances as well: with a now middle-aged and still stunning Sezan Aksu singing in the studio and a Kurdish singer named Anyar singing a lament in echoing old building. My favorite moments were during an interview with two female rappers, when one waxed lyrical about Sezen Aksu, whose music was the only anemic music in the movie, which is kind of like a young Canadian rapper girl saying that she grew up on the songs of Celine Dion and still loves her. Another fun moment was when her father, who looked like a traditional guy in his 60's, said, "back in my day, we listened to Pink Floyd," and then in a quite moving moment acknowledged how he has come around to recognize the validity of the rap music both his son and daughter perform. Today: We saw a restoration by the Cinématèque Française of the 1930 Julien Duvivier silent Au Bonheur des Dames, based on a story by Emile Zola, with a wonderful original score and live accompaniment, and, unfortunately, spoken translation of the intertitles. Set in Paris, the mega department store, Au Bonheur des Dames, has been undercutting small businesses and sending them into bankruptcy. The niece of the last holdout gets a job at the store. Chaos ensues. I was awestruck by the cinematography: in the department store itself, the destruction of the buildings where the store will expand, and in the montages. If the ending is true to the Zola novel, which I haven't read, this is one of the most cynical movies I've ever seen. Otherwise, "Hollywood endings" is a misnomer. Pippa Scott has produced a documentary called King Leopold's Ghost, based on Adam Hochschild's book by the same name about the colonization of Belgian Congo (aka Congo/Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo) by King Leopold II and the resulting holocaust in central Africa. The film purports to bring history up to the present day, and in my opinion, undermines its story in the last 15 minutes of the movie in a very 1984-like way. As I left Russian Dolls by Cedric Klapisch, a sequel to L'Auberge Espagnole, I heard two women behind me debate whether or not we had just seen a chick flick or a romance. The movie is what a friend of mine would call a "nice" movie. It was two hours of multi-lingual eye candy with some truly funny parts, not to mention incredible location shots of London, Paris, and St. Petersburg and several of the most magnificent movie apartments I've ever seen, including what may be the hugest communal apartment in the history of Russia. The L'Auberge Espanole characters travel to St. Petersburg where the goofy, romantic stage-hand William is about to marry Natasha, a young dancer with the Mariinsky, whom he met when she performed in England, and whom he re-met after spending a year learning Russian. (There are some relatively short scenes from Swan Lake in the movie.)

Thank you for that lead, drb. When I heard that Hallberg had been cast as Apollo, my first thought was to wonder if he'd be coached by Andersen. I know he trained originally in Arizona and that he returned a couple of years ago to partner Yen Li Cheng-Zhang in Theme and Variations during her retirement performance at Ballet Arizona.