Helene

I found this link on Ballet Talk for Dancers: http://tutus.bravehost.com/ in the Ballet Talk for Dancers > Pros > The Pro Shop sub-forum. There's a wealth of information about tutus of every kind on the site.

Critic Jack Anderson wrote in this July 1991 "Critic's Notebook" He then publishes three potential sister-in-law storylines that a reader, Joe D'Onofrio sent him, all of which seem quite plausible. Mothers-in-law are not necessarily impossible; in Sleeping Beauty, the King and Queen have become Desire/Florimund's parents-in-law, and grandparents, like in The Nutcracker are by definition someone's in laws. The basis of the Balanchine quote was that it is difficult and confusing to describe peripheral family relationships in a story ballet or extremely complicated relationships. Pride and Prejudice would need a lot of paring. I think there are several tricky plot lines to get across: exactly what Mrs. Bennett says to make Mr. Darcy send Mr. Bingley away, how Mr. Darcy explains what he knows about Mr. Collins because of his sister (could be a tableau, or may it's unnecessary in the first place), and the conversation between Lady de Bourgh and Elizabeth (how to show that it is Mr. Darcy she is forbidding Elizabeth to marry). Miss Bingley could be portrayed easily like the Countess who's after Desire in Sleeping Beauty.

The Seattle International Film Festival opened Thursday night and runs through Sunday, 18 June. I saw two movies that I would recommend highly: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. (Romania, 154 minutes, shot with a handheld camera). Stuart Klawans wrote an long review in The Nation, but even that didn't quite resonate. While some of the movie is meant to show conditions and attitudes specific to Romania, I think they are recognizable to anyone who isn't extremely rich or well-connected just about anywhere, possibly short of Scandinavia. Almost as long as Tony Palmer's Margot, it was remarkably rich. 1:1 (Denmark, 90 minutes). Set in a housing development built in the suburbs of Copenhagen with the loftiest of intentions, but what has turned into housing for immigrants from the Middle East and poor whites, this movie explores the relationships of two families, one Danish and one Palestinian, joined by the romance of a teenager from each family and the social worker mother who refused to flee her changing neighborhood. A brutal beating is the episode around which the movie is centered.

It wouldn't be the first time in history where the balance between style and virtuosity was questioned. In Ivor Guest's book The Paris Opera Ballet, he quotes former leading dancer Madeleine Guimard's husband, writing in 1816: Guest continues: "But dazzling tours de force were what the public increasingly wanted, and what Duport and later Paul, with their astonishing pirouettes and jumps, gave them. Their female counterparts were also drawn towards technical display. Guimard had danced in a terre à terre style that was always firmly founded on grace, and as her husband declared, 'disapproved of the present custom of raising the foot to the height of the hip.' Movements such as that, he went on, dislocated the body, were ungraceful, and were done only to astonish the pit." (p.39)

I guess that why football/soccer is called "The Beautiful Game."

Margot has been available from Dance Books in the UK since last year. It's 17,99 GBP plus shipping. It's all region, and although I don't see a format listed explicitly, it must be NTSC, because the DVD player that came with my TiVo doesn't play PAL. In the first 35 minutes or so, the following people spoke: Lynn Seymour, Colette Clark (former assistant to Fonteyn), Avril Bergen, Meredith Daneman, David Scrase (director of the Fitzwilliam Museum), Phoebe Fonteyn (Fonteyn's brother's wife), Peter Wright, Hilda Hookham, Keith Money, Margot Fonteyn, Patsy Lady Jellicoe, Beryl Grey, Ninette de Valois, Pamela May, Frederick Ashton, Robert Helpman, John Tooley, Andrew Motion (Constant Lambert's biographer), and Wendy Ellis Somes. There were film clips from Swan Lake (second half of White Swan pas de deux, in color), Aurora's Act III solo (in color), short clips of: First Arabesque (1937), Act I pas de deux from Giselle (from an amateur film), a film called "Stepping to Stardom," Constant Lambert conducting, some glam montage footage of Fonteyn, Aurora's Awakening (with Somes, in black and white), Fonteyn at the barre broken into smaller clips and interspersed with voiceovers, a couple of studio clips of Fonteyn in a tutu, and two remarkable clips of Facade between which Pamela May, then an elderly woman, described how they saw German soldiers "falling from the sky," followed by a description of wartime by Fonteyn, deValois, Helpmann, Ashton, and Grey. (Those few minutes alone would have been worth the brutal exchange rate between GBP and USD.) There are also amazing photos of the child Fonteyn and the breathtakingly beautiful young Fonteyn. But a warning: a film whose narrative begins with, "This is the story of how the most famous dancer that England has ever produced was deceived and betrayed by those closest to her," and in which former assistant Colette Clark asserts that Fonteyn, "had really bad taste in people...If you really want to know, that is rather what separated her and me. I couldn't quite face all the creeps," is not for the weak of stomach.

Joyaux/Jewels arrived today, courtesy of the USPS, having been shipped from Franklin, TN.

There was a link to Patricia Barker's retirement announcement in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in Friday 26 May's links. Here it is again: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/classical/271691_barker26.html I wanted to note that in the print version, the article started on the front page, with a photo of Barker in rehearsal for Diamonds that could be seen through the front window all of the newspaper vending machines.The article continued in the front section of the newspaper, with two more photos that have not been published online: one of Barker at barre in 1980 as an advanced student in the school, and another of her full flight as Odette from the 1996 production of Swan Lake.

As a very sad footnote, 81-year-old Archie Drake, who sang the Doctor in Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene, died the night of his last performance in the production after suffering a heart attack in front of his apartment: Archie Drake: 1925-2006: Singer known as 'soul of Seattle Opera' Rest in peace, Mr. Drake.

It does not paint a favorable portrait of Tito.

Just this morning, I was reading a few more Dance Anecdotes, and from another dance discipline, ballroom dancing, came the following description by Gilbert Seldes of Irene Castle's dancing: Francia Russell said outright that her preference is for "feminine" dancers among the women, which by definition is anti-gymnastics. If the PNB school produces tricksters, I haven't seen a single one of them get into the Company. I haven't seen this tendency in any of the women I've seen at Ballet Arizona or San Francisco Ballet, either. My question is, into what companies do these kids get accepted, if any, and what happens to them once they are in companies? Like most gala performances, excerpts are used regularly in school performances, and out of context, my observation is that they tend to get "sexed up." (Which is why I'm glad the PNB school eschews the gala approach for its annual school performance.) For parents who are trying to decide whether to send their children to a given school, but have no schooling in ballet, these types of performances for the public certainly catch the eye of the uninitiated. Sports, something we've discussed in another topic, is a more common background, and from your descriptions, it sounds like the ballet version of the Olympic motto, "Citius, Altius, Fortius."

I just want everyone to know that amazon.com is still listing 20 June 2006 as the ship date and offers pre-ordering, but Arkiv Music, which also lists the same release date also lists the DVD as "In Stock," and (forgive me for I have sinned) I got a notice today that they shipped it. It's listed as part of their ballet DVD sale @$24.99, but there's no free shipping and handling, which is probably another $3.00 or so for first class mail. This could be a false alarm, although that's never happened before to me from this site, and when it's in my hands, I'll believe it fully. http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album....album_id=134458 This may be good news for everyone who's ordered through amazon.com. Who knows, they may get stock and ship early.

Here's a link to what is translated as "The Hungarian Dance Academy," http://www.mtf.hu/?m=47&lang=en in which Tamas Solymosi is listed as "vice rector" and Zoltan Solymosi is listed as faculty. I suspect the site it up-to-date, since the link to the summer program is for this coming August. Here's a blast from the past: a link to Anna Kisselgoff's 1991 review of Bussell (age 22) and Solymosi (age 23) entitled, "2 Rising Young Stars of the Royal Ballet."

There used to be a "premium" part of the PNB site, where every couple of months or so subscribers could view a taped interview of a dancer, which I know included video excerpts from class. I think I remember rehearsal bits as well. I don't remember performance clips. (I'm guessing that the agreement with the unions to tape all performances is limited to archival and teaching use; Francia Russell said the video equipment was on it last legs.) There are a number of dancers who, in my opinion, should also be on the promotion track based on a combination of the roles they've danced and the quality of their dancing, Körbes among them. I hope there's a lot of good news this summer.

It's interesting that you mention this, because there was a session at the recent Pop Conference at Experience Music Project in which presenter Maria Chiarrino said: (Under the picture of Torvill and Dean.) One of the more popular shows on Public TV was an annual ballroom dancing competition, often hosted by Juliette Prowse. Competitive ballroom dancing has been rumbling for years about applying to become a Summer Olympic sport.

There was a press release from the Company reported today on this post by gracey, which appears in a thread called 06/07 Roster to discuss the many roster changes for next season. [ADMIN NOTE: It's important to note sources for official news, so that we don't have to remove uncited news from the board.]