Helene

In the 70's, ABT performed at the New York State Theater, and their season extended well into the summer. I remember this, because in 1974 I was at a summer program whose directors chose several cultural events for field trips. Sadly, they decided that the boys wouldn't like ballet, and they chose to take us to Mostly Mozart instead on the last Saturday in July. That was the night that Baryshnikov made his debut with ABT in Giselle.

I'm requoting your entire post, sandik, because I think it is one of the most cogent analyses I've seen on the subject of organizational size and evolution. I think one of the things that distinguishes ballet from other dance forms, though, is that to dance professionally, a ballet dancer has to have a chance to be in class every day. The stability of mid-sized ballet companies gives dancers that option. Most modern dancers I've know in smaller companies have day jobs (often many strung together) and their training fits around their jobs. Unless a company is formed around a specific type of training, and that training is offered around the schedules of the people dancing, class can be hit or miss, and up to each dancer to arrange. Both Ballet Arizona and Pacific Northwest Ballet could be considered midsized by looking at the number of dancers on the roster. PNB has a large staff, both administrative and artistic -- it's got its own costume shop, for example -- which would make me classify it as large. Both have schools whose dancers can augment the core company for story ballets. But I found comments by both companies' Artistic Directors in Q&A's interesting. Ib Andersen said that he wouldn't want more than 50 dancers: above that size, you just can't know everyone. Peter Boal said that his ideal company would be made entirely of principals and soloists, which creates its own natural limit.

I once had an art teacher in college who explained to us why he had let in non-art students (me among them) into his high-level Typography class. He said that he didn't expect us to become designers, but he wanted us to appreciate good design so when we became lawyers or business people, we would automatically look to hire good designers, because the more good designers who could make a living at it and the more good design in the world, the better. The PNB school has a split between the Professional Division and school training for teenagers. I've seen the students in levels VI-VII (the highest non-Professional grades) perform. While there may be some dancers who are disappointed that they did not qualify for PD, they still continued to train on a parallel track. It's hard to imagine that these students will not continue to support ballet in their later life, having become so accomplished in a difficult discipline.

Ballet Talk for Dancers has a specific mission which is mainly limited to pre-professional training, just as Ballet Talk has a specific mission which is limited to the discussion of classical ballet. A great deal of energy was invested when Ballet Talk (then Ballet Alert!) was founded to try to convince people that limiting scope/mission to a common interest was not intended to comment on any other form of dance, any more than a discussion board dedicated to figure skating is a put down of gymnastics. The founders and Moderators of BT4D have dedicated their energy to helping students and parents in the pre-professional training sphere (although not exclusively: there is an active adult student ballet forum.) Just as there are other dance boards whose mission is to discuss a wider range of dance, it would be great if people with an interest in non-pre-professional training founded their own online community based around that common interest.

What's interesting to me is the breakdown of the athletes: While there are officials in all of the other sports with various degrees of influence (low in swimming, high in fencing and martial arts), the only judged sport is martial arts, and, for example, in judo the judges only vote if there's a tie based on technical elements. There's a lot of politics and personality involved in sports as well as dance, but once athletes are eligible to compete and qualify, they are not subject to as much personal preference, particularly based on appearance. Athletes are expected to be aggressive on the playing field, with the exceptions of figure skating and gymnastics and they can admit that they are there to win. It isn't surprising that they'd score higher in self-esteem: they don't look at a mirror for hours a day and pick apart every last detail of weakness, coaches are more likely to be positive, and a national-class athlete has trophies, medals, and titles as evidence of progression.

I'll go one step further and say that having no local dance at all except dance school recitals and attending a mixed dance series associated with a performing arts center, theater, or school is preferable because of the variety and because there isn't the financial pressure to support a local company. Modern dance companies live on tour for most of the year, and they perform in any number of these series. When there is a ballet company, that company must compete with an array of dance offerings from Flamenco to hip hop to modern to Riverdance to Stomp to jazz to fusion to ethnic, etc.In Seattle where there is a thriving ballet company, albeit one that suffered financially post 9/11 and after performing for 18 months in the hockey arena, there are also two other dance series -- University of Washington World Dance and the Seattle Theatre Group Dance Series -- as well as several modern companies, like Spectrum. Touring ballet companies mainly skip Seattle, although STG offers a short visit every few years -- Bolshoi, Mariinsky, National Ballet of Cuba, Lyon Opera Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem and ABT since 1994 -- and Eifmann has performed several times at the University of Washington. Berkeley (Cal Performances) got the Mariinsky and Perm Ballet this year alone. (Next year they get Lyon Opera Ballet and Eifmann Ballet.) Still no word from Seattle Theatre Group about next year, but this past year's pickings for dance were slim. I am green with envy looking at the classical music offerings for the 2006-7 season between Cal Performances and the Vancouver Recital Society, knowing most of them are skipping Seattle on their way from one to another

I just received the following email from the Royal Opera House:

I haven't seen The Turning Point for a while, but didn't the film morph from a studio rehearsal of MacMillan's Romeo and Juliette into the bedroom scene between Baryshnikov's and Browne's characters? Later on, after he's cheated on her, I seem to remember them being in the studio again, but I don't remember what they were rehearsing or if that commented on the plot. Also in Six Weeks, Katherine Healy's character, who is 12 and dying of leukemia, gets to dance Clara in The Nutcracker as a dying wish. I assume there is supposed to be a parallel between Healy getting six weeks of fulfilling her dreams and Clara dreamscape of the Drosselmeyer's magic kingdom, both of which come to an end. If the character comes around by the end, FaveDave, you might want to look at footage of Vladimir Vasiliev in street clothes coaching Monique Lourdieres, the last chapter of Dominique Delouche's film Comme les Oiseauz. Just those few clips made me believe for the first time that Albrecht isn't completely irredeemable.

Many thanks, coda for the info (But, waaaaaah -- I was hoping for Bright Stream to be presented on the first weekend, so that I could stitch together SFB in NYC and then off to London, and now the whole plan is in flames....)

I can understand what is appealing about Vishneva, but the one time I saw her perform live, as Aurora, I felt like I was watching a Personality, not a character. She almost appeared to be a Guest Star, while the rest of the Mariinsky performers, who ranged from great to just fine, seemed to have a unified dramatic focus that Vishneva did not share. Because the difference was not from exaggerated positions -- Lopatkina did that in several places in the Lilac Fairy solo, which shocked me -- I think the contrast came over more live than it would be in a video, where the stage picture tends either to recede or to appear in miniature.

Many thanks for the link, canbelto! The Jewels release note also says,

There were a couple of things I noticed yesterday at PNB's Sleeping Beauty, which reminded me of a thread from 2002 re: marketing to a younger audience: When I walked into the building, I heard amplified dance music -- I wondered if someone's boom box was paying a kamikaze visit -- and when I went up the main staircase, there was a big sign for an Italian line of children's shoes, Lelli Kelly, and a group of little girls wearing Lelli Kelly shoes dancing to aforementioned music on a low platform. I only got a glance, because there was a pretty big crowd watching, among them lots of interested little girls who had come for the matinee. In addition, there were what I guess were ads for Lelli Kelly on the silent TV monitors in the inner lobbies and section balconies. (Normally these show donor lists, note who will speak at post-performance Q&A's, advertise upcoming program, etc.) As long as they remain silent, this is a clever and non-obtrusive use of space to generate revenue, in my opinion, because the audience isn't held hostage waiting for instructions on how to evacuate the building in an emergency, for example. There were two secondary effects. The first, blatantly obvious one that I never noticed before is that the average age of the adults drops, as more parents bring their young children to matinees of ballets like Sleeping Beauty. There were two extra matinees in the run, with both Saturday and Sunday each weekend. And when I went to get a ticket yesterday, the final performance, I was told the entire Second Tier was sold out, and there were practically no pairs of Orchestra seats left, even in the two side sections. (I forgot to look to see how full the First Tier was.) And on a gorgeous, 65+ degree sunny Sunday, a rarity at this time of year, several thousand people opted to be indoors for over three hours, catching sun breaks at intermissions. The second was the number of children in the donor lounge, all of them well-behaved, and some well-behaved preteens without accompanying adults. (In an effort to encourage people to up their donations, PNB gave out some one-day passes to the lounge, so there were more of us.) I think this is a great trend, particularly at a matinee. It's never too early to train donors. (Although I was amused when the five-year-old in the pretty pink brimmed garden hat at the table next to me told her father, who had asked, that the donated Dilletante chocolate truffle she had chosen tasted like candle wax ) What I hope will be a great success is the new "8 Encores" program scheduled for June 11 at 6:30 pm. The program consists of one-act ballets, short pieces, and excerpts from longer ballets from throughout the season, and features work that got great buzz. For those who weren't able to see the works during the regular season or for those who loved the works and don't want to wait a few years for the revivals, this is a great opportunity: Rubies (Stravinsky/Balanchine, "Jewels," Jun 2006) Kiss (Part/Marshall, "Valentine," Feb 2006) In the Night (Pas de Deux) (Chopin/Robbins, "Director's Choice," Sep-Oct 2005) Jardi Tancat (del Mar Bonet+traditional/Duato, "Past, Present, and Future," Nov 2005) Nine Sinatra Songs (Pas de Deux) (Sinatra/Tharp, "Valentine," Feb 2006) Time and Other Matter (Pas de Deux) (Lang/Dumais, "Points of View, Apr 2006) Mopey (CPE Bach+The Cramps/Goecke, "Past, Present, and Future," Nov 2005) Red Angels (Einhorn/Dove, "Valentine," Feb 2006)