Helene

CoP is closer to basic multiplication than advanced math. There are two factors for each technical element: how difficult it is, which is reflected in the base score, and how well it was done, which is reflected by the GOE (grade of execution). Conceptually, it's like scoring an entire round of dives from one diver, only all of the elements in skating are done in a row. In general, a simple element done excellently will score as highly as a more difficult element done adequately will score as high as a very difficult element done poorly: 1*6=6 2*3=6 3*2=6 6*1=6 The components add in a third factor, which is what percentage of the program is done well at the highest degree of difficulty. Then it's a matter of finding the difficulty/quality "average" for choreography, skating skills, etc, and determining what percentage of the program this covered. The third dimension is a lot messier, especially when the same panel of judges is supposed to look at each technical element and to "forget" it before the next, thus not allowing the quality of the last element to effect the judging of the current one. Two types of thinking that don't mix well.

As was Imler.

At PNB now, I would say Carrie Imler. The strange thing is that she often doesn't look like she's moving quickly, because the preparations are invisible. Then another dancer in the same role will work very hard to do all of the steps, and you realize how fast Imler is. (She also has that Fred Astaire quality of having a still upper body, while her legs are doing something amazing.) I agree about LeBlanc. She has the same quality.

History is written by the victors. The number of participants in pre-professional training far exceeds the number of positions in ballet companies; can we dismiss experience of those who do not make it out of hand? Merrill Ashley wrote in Dancing for Balanchine that when she was in a cast, she was interviewed about her injury, and she said that Balanchine disapproved because he thought that injuries shouldn't be publicized. There is a vested interest in any industry that relies on illusion, glamour, and beauty, not to mention fundraising, to keep the uglier aspects of it out of the public eye. Can we deny that in the process of training dancers and athletes, there are casualties galore, from eating disorders -- a topic on which Linda (Homek) Hamilton wrote her PhD thesis -- to chronic and crippling injuries, even with nutritional programs, more oversight, and better training? That many of the dancers who've been in pre-professional programs since the age of 13 and who do not make it into companies are undereducated and unprepared for the work force in relation to their peers? (The non-professional-track, high-school-aged students at the PNB school regularly attend college, and they have a great ballet experience as well.) Or that the art form we love so much comes at the expense of the long-term physical health of the participants, regardless of the rewards to them? Do we think that issues of race in ballet have been eliminated? I find it interesting that nationally sponsored companies often have/had very simple ways of deciding how to reject applicants to their elite dance academies: in Russia, the administrators and teachers would look at the parents, to identify potential weight and height issues at the beginning. There was a short article in the now-defunct Ballet News which noted that one of the Scandinavian companies -- I think it was Royal Ballet of Sweden -- compared turn-in to turn-out of potential students. If turn-in exceeded turn-out, the child was not accepted, to avoid long-term problems later on.

Thank you for the link, trantran. [ADMIN BEANIE ON] As a note to Ballet Talkers, this is not an official site. Any information on it that is not from an official news site (link to interview, newspaper, etc.) should not be discussed on the board. [ADMIN BEANIE OFF]

I have CBC, and they showed only Totmianina/Marinin, Petrova/Tikhonov, Zhang/Zhang, Pang/Tong, Shen/Zhao, and the two Canadian Pairs, Marcoux/Buntin and Dube/Davison. No Inoue/Baldwin, not even the landed throw 3A. I can't comment on the actual performances, except to note what I've read so far from people who saw the NBC and CCTV broadcasts (over the Internet). Following is a link to the detailed, element-by-element scores for the SP: http://www.nbcolympics.com/results/1501431/detail.html It lists the Base Value of elements, one by one, with total, the factored* GOE (Grade of Execution, or how well the element was performed), the individual judges scores (-3 to +3), and then the total score for each element (Scores of Panels), which is the base score plus the GOE, unless the element is illegal, in which case it will be "0," regardless of the judges' scores. The number at the end of spin, step, throw, lift, and twist elements represents the level of difficulty (usually 1-4). Lifts also have a "group" number, which represents the type of lift. For the SP, the type of lift is specified, and the elements are also defined up front. (For example, in singles, one triple or quad jump must be preceeded by steps, there must be one combination, and there must be one axel-type jump. Steps into a double does not count.) *Factored GOE: There's an entire chart on the ISU website that lists the base score for each element, and what the Grade of Execution is for each value of -3, -2, -1, 1, 2, 3. For example, for quads and triple jumps, the base score is X, and the score is adjusted by a full point for each + or 1 GOE. (Triple axel = 7.5. A -2 triple axel = 7.5 + (-2). A +1 triple axel = 7.5 + (+1), etc.) For the other elements, each + or - GOE could be worth less than a point. For example, a spin with a base of 2 might yield an additional 1.2 for a +2 GOE, or a decrease of -1 for a -2 GOE. Nine judges of the panel of twelve are selected randomly by the computer before the phase begins. (There will be a new random selection before the Free Skate today.) The scores for those same nine judges are evaluated for each skater. High and low are dropped, and the remaining seven scores are averaged to determine the value in the GOE column. A number of us CoP nerds have observed but not proven statistically (at least yet), that the higher the reputation, the more likely a skater or team is to get more than +1 on an element, even if other teams perform that element considerably better. (The judges' scores are presented in PDF format and would have to be typed in manually, but I'm sure the analysis will come.) For example, Inoue/Baldwin's side-by-side spins are considered among the best in the world, but while they were given decent scores (+.29 added to the base), the Shen/Zhao and Zhang/Zhang, whose positions are unmatched and a bit wonky, who had minor synch issues, and who performed them pretty far apart, received .21 and .14, respectively. Petrova/Tikhonov, former World Champions who are also considered among the best side-by-side spinners in the world, received a full .43 GOE for their attempt. Pang/Tong's would likely have received a bit less than -.17 (lots of -1 GOEs, no -2 GOES), if they had not been former world bronze medallists and were 17th ranked skaters. The judges also seem to not have de-coupled difficulty (determined by the Technical Specialists) with Grade of Execution. A perfect layback spin should get +2 to +3 GOE, even if it is considered a Level 1 spin (in terms of difficulty), but it is more likely to get +1 or 0. The ISU started by listing the Levels, and they found that judges were being swayed by the level, and the ISU removed them. But the judges adjusted anyway, and there are positions like the Biellmann and full splits in dance lifts, that telegraph "Level 4" and seem to have their effect on the GOE accordingly. And all judges have their own ideas about the relative difficulty of a quad to a triple, and despite the official point difference, may be using GOE incorrectly to adjust to give extra credit to the quad and less credit for the triple. Johnny Weir, for example, when healthy has just about perfect jumping technique in all phases of the jump (take-off, rotation, flow-out), but he does not get the string of +2's on the majority of his triples that this would warrant, at least according to the written guidelines. Not having seen all of the programs, I can only speak in generalities, but if you look at the technical scores -- and Inoue/Baldwin had the second highest technical total in the competition -- you'll see that Inoue/Baldwin had the highest technical base score, but overall execution of all elements gave them a 2.43 lift over base (and nearly half was on the 3Axel throw), while Totmianina/Marinin started with a base that was 3 points lower, but they gained 5.33 points on the quality of their elements. Pang/Tong gained nearly 3 points over base, and made up the rest in Components (PCS) scores. The components have been the most controversial part of the New Judging System (NJS, also known by its test name of CoP). The goals in PCS were to mark five distinct aspects of the overall program independently of the elements and each other on a scale of 0-10, and the criteria for each score is quite specific (ex: to get a score of 7-7.75, the skater must have transitions in X% of the program). For example, the ISU envisioned that a simple, but well-choreographed program might get 4.75 in Transitions, but a 7.75 in Choreography, or that a young technician might get an 8 in Skating Skills, but a 5-6 in Interpretation. The equivalent on the technical side is when a Yan Liu (ranked in the 20's) or even an Elena Liashenko, who was European bronze medallist last year, does one or two superb jumps in the program with textbook technique, the +2's are not forthcoming. It was also envisioned that different skaters and teams at the top would be better or significantly better at specific skills. For example, at Trophee Eric Bompard, where Arakawa's skating skills were superb and Asada's were fine, but nothing special, an Arakawa could receive an 8, while Asada could receive a 6.25. Instead, the actual scores were less than .5 apart. Savchenko/Szolkowy have the a higher concentration of transitions of the most difficulty than Totmianina/Marinin, but they've never received a transitions score as high as T/M. What we see is just handful of judges who have given ranges of a minimal 1.5 between the five elements for the same skater; the majority are within a point of each other. Typical is a list of: 7.25, 7.25, 7, 7.5, 7.25, with the transitions mark being the lowest. They seem to think that giving a skater a 6.75 on one element, but a 7 on another is a greater differential than giving that same skater a 6.75 on the first and a 6.25 on the second, because one score is in the 7's and the other has "dropped" to the 6's. Rarely will a judge give Skater A higher scores for one Component and Skater B higher scores for another Component; the scores are used as placements, like the old ordinals system. And where a skater is clearly superior, the judges might cede a higher score, but not proportionally to amount of excellence, leaving the favorites in a position to make up the gap. Inoue/Baldwin got middling PCS. Except for Totmianina/Marinin, who had the highest technical score, Inoue/Baldwin are in 6th place, because Zhang/Zhang, Pang/Tong, Petrova/Tikhonov, and Shen/Zhao were deemed to have better Skating Skills, Transitions, Interpretation, Choreography, and Performance/Execution. The differential between 2nd and 3rd is .5, although Petrova/Tikhonov have not skated their Fellini free skate cleanly all year, and Zhang/Zhang have higher base difficulty and are being given very high PCS. The differential between 3rd and 8th is less than 3 points, which is a one element/one fall difference. The issue with Inoue/Baldwin being in 6th instead of 4th is that the pairs skate in five groups of four, and they will be in the pentultimate group, before the zamboni break. (At least the last group gets freshly zambonied ice, which the last group of singles and dance has not in the past.) While the NJS should make skating order moot, there's still the traditional attitude that the last group is the best. While they get a lift, this may be counteracted by having already written a fixed score down for the previous skaters.

The version that PNB showed during the Balanchine Celebration year had accompaniment by Diane Chilgren. There was also a film in which Chilgren and Verdy discuss the music for the excerpts.

Sadly, the Sneak film series, in which subscribers would show up to a movie theater once a month and see whatever movie the program directors chose, is now defunct. The silver lining was that I was able to go to the last performance of the "Valentine" program this afternoon. When I went to pick up last night's ticket from Will Call at 7:25pm, there was a line of at least 30 people waiting to buy tickets, and there were very few empty seats in the Second Tier and what I could see of Upper Gallery Left and the Main Floor. When I went to buy a ticket for this afternoon's performance, all but about 10 seats in the Second Tier had been ticketed. This is great news for the Company, because word-of-mouth has spread. Boal mentioned in both post-performance Q&A's that the audience has warmed to Kiss over the run, and that there were people who came back to see it again. He also said last night that we would see works from this program in future years (after next season, which is already planned and published.) Last night Boal said that because Dominique Dumais, who is choreographing a work for the March program, needed to rearrange her schedule, both she and Shelley Washington were in Seattle at the same time, and, as a result, Ancient Airs and Dances, was rehearsed for a shorter-than-usual period of time. (Brittany Reid described in last night's Q&A how the had been begun in November and continued briefly during Nutcracker.) I was surprised by this, because the work had looked so tight the first three times I saw it; the only thing unusual was that Wevers looked like he was concentrating hard when partnering Weese, who had flown in last Monday for rehearsals on Tuesday-Thursday. Today, there was something off when the three men, Herd, Maraval, and Porretta, danced together. I'm pretty certain that the men were supposed to be in unison, but it seemed like one of the men was a bit behind or ahead. (This is the first time I saw these three men together.) Last night, Barker and Cruz reprised their roles, but it was the first time I saw Weese and Wevers paired, and Nakamura danced with Lucien Postlewaite (they debuted as a pair on Friday night). Barker and Cruz again were very free and playful. Weese danced with a lovely upper body and arms. (When in the Q&A she said that the role had been originally done for Heather Watts, I was surprised that it was Watts' role she was cast in, and not the role danced by Barker and Lallone. As a civilian, she was simply stunning, with alabaster skin, and more beautiful than in photographs. The next time a film director decides to go period, instead of trying to convince us that Winona Ryder or Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock is an early-20th-century character, s/he should head straight to Weese.) In the third couple, I thought that Nakamura was best matched with Postlewaite, because of contrasting styles and his height; she could really stretch out with him. In a way, they looked like the stylistic inverse of Imler and Porretta. For a shortened rehearsal time, it was amazing that while I had seen all of the couples in this afternoon's performance, I had never seen them together. Lallone and Herd, Korbes and Maraval, and Imler and Porretta were the three. While I liked many other individual performances, I thought that apart from the aforementioned synch issues, this combination made the nicest stage pictures, particularly in the short pas de trois with Lallone, Herd, and Maraval, a very tall, lean, long-legged line of dancers, and in the mirror dancing by Imler and Korbes, who looked beatifully matched together and when joined by Porretta. Of the four performances I saw, it got the most enthusiastic response from the audience today. There were four pre-teen to teenaged girls behind me with one mother, and the false ending at the end of the Korbes/Maraval pas de deux got a spontaneous, collective "Wow!!!!" from the group, and there was lots of screaming at the curtain calls. The NYCB website lists "Original cast: Valentina Kozlova, Heather Watts, Wendy Whelan, Philip Neal, Jock Soto, Damian Woetzel." Does anyone know who the pairings were and who danced the first and third couples? (It looks like alphabetical order, but that may be coincidental.) In both programs, Kiss was performed by Mara Vinson and James Moore. What a contrast to the more languid Brunson and Herd. There was almost a desperation in Moore's performance, and an innocence that contrasted to his darker persona in Sinatra. Last night, I felt like Vinson was being swept away from Moore, beyond his reach and her control, as if by an ocean wave, but in today's performance, it seemed more deliberate, like she was controlling the situation. It was just as visually gripping, but, emotionally, I felt like a voyeur watching an impending tragedy, which was odd, because I didn't feel like a voyeur watching a more sensual performance by Brunson and Herd. Last night, the pairs for Red Angels were Korbes and Maraval, Foster and Postlewaite. This was the most homogeneous cast in terms of the round, sinuous, cat-like movement quality, and it made the differentiations in the choreography stand out more. There was much more contrast in today's couples, Lallone and Wevers, Kaori Nakamura and guest Rasta Thomas. Lallone and Nakamura both gave dynamic performances, but because their heights and body types are so different, the affects were strikingly different too. Lallone's long lines and arcs were blazing; Nakamura was more explosive. Thomas' performance was very open and bright, much like I remember his Apollo. Olivier Wevers and Christophe Maraval are often cast in the same roles, and it was fascinating to contrast them. It's as if Wevers has a coil inside him; when he stands still, you know something striking is going to come. Maraval dances a phrase and comes to a dead stop, with the resonance of motion still in the air encircling him. (Porretta, by contrast, looks as though he has the entire contents of the Harbour Bridge New Year's fireworks inside him, ready to go off at any time.) I had forgotten who was dancing the role today, but even in the semi-darkness of the opening, when the dancer walked across upstage from the wing, there was no mistaking that it was Wevers, just from his walk. The differences in Nine Sinatra Songs were as striking as the differences between the two casts of Kiss, but magnified by five. (Thomas and Spell danced Couple 6 in all eight performances, and Korbes and Stanton reprised their role.) In "Softly As I Leave You," Lesley Rausch, with her blond hair swept up, and her graceful style, reminded me of Darci Kistler. Stanko Milov as her partner had a lot of panache and was fun to watch, but he was playing the romantic lead, while Karel Cruz partnered Kari Brunson as if he was in a romance. In "Strangers in the Night" Ariana Lallone danced a glamorous, perfumed tango (straight), while Christopher Maraval, with his slicked back hair, played a tango lizard; all he was missing was the pencil-thin mustache. (Maybe he had one that wasn't visible through my opera glasses.) That was a complete contrast to Rachel Foster and Le Yin's spirited tango, in which I detected no irony. While in the first two performances, Maria Chapman portrayed a too-tipsy woman trying to steer a rather broody James Moore away from a bar fight or smashing the car into a pole -- today he seemed lighter and she seemed drunker -- Chalnessa Eames was the life of the party girl that Anton Pankevitch was trying to get home while she still had life in her, and the effect was more comic. Carrie Imler and Jonathan Porretta were explosive and hysterical in "Somethin' Stupid." They have mentioned in Q&A's that they are friends offstage, and Boal said last night that they are just like their performance in real life. In response to a question about how he cast for comedy, he said he picked Imler and Pantastico for the role because of their general timing and technique, which would work in any dance. Pantastico was more outgoing and funny in this afternoon's performance. There was still more depth with Korbes and Stanton in "All the Way," but this afternoon, Vinson and Stanton danced more smoothly together, and they were more sparkly. Kudos to Thomas and Spell, who brought the same life and high standards to each performance of "Forget Domani," one of the highlights for me. About "That's Life" Joshua wrote, "I would say that Kaori Nakamura in that part exhibited a different character - one that dished out as much as she received. This certainly made the part a little more palatable." He was not kidding: Nakamura might even have been running that show. She has been cast so strongly in this program, bringing out previously unexploited aspects of her dancing. I don't think I would have guessed that she would turn out to be an Authentic Twyla Girl: she looked like she could have jumped off the stage of McCaw Hall and right into Tharp's company. At the end of the "That's Life," someone tosses the man's jacket to him from the wings, and he puts it on before the woman runs across the stage and jumps in his arms. Casey Herd was already smoothing out his collar when Nadeau took her leap, but Wevers upped the ante: he barely got his second arm in the sleeve when Nakamura came flying through the air. For those who think the ending leaps of Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux have gotten tame, these two could give them a lesson in danger. It may have been the energy level of the last performance of the program -- Lallone said in today's post-performance Q&A that she felt sad before her entrance in Red Angels, knowing it was the end of the run -- but Nadeau gave it back to Herd today, too. Maybe not as aggressively as Nakamura, but Herd wasn't getting away with much this time. Looking at the work as a whole, last night's cast was something that would have been more recognizably Tharpian, with more of the edgy irony. But there were so many good performances across all of them, that I was glad I didn't have to choose. For Dolly Dinkle watchers, in the Q&A, Lallone started by describing her early dance training, which was in a ballet studio in a strip mall in Southern California, next to a bar and I think she said dry cleaners. Lallone was delightful. Boal said that the Dumais work is being built around Lallone. It is the piece in the next program to which I'm most looking forward. In talking about the upcoming Choreographers' Showcase on 22 March, in which company members present their works, Lallone described working with dancers who are friends and peers, but are in the role of Ballet Master when choreographing. She gave the example of saying that she didn't like a step, and he said, "just do it" but she said it was a fun experience. Boal answered questions about the guest appearances in both sessions. He said that while he was at NYCB, there were lots of guests, for anywhere from a couple of performances to two years. He noted the dancers who have guested from PNB, like Patricia Barker going to Boston Ballet, and Pantastico and Wevers dancing with NYCB, and wanted to reciprocate. He said that he wanted to invite both Weese and Thomas this year, but didn't plan specifically to have them dance on the same program. He also said that when the men cast in Red Angels heard there was going to be a guest, they "took it up a notch." (He said they had been good before, but got even better.) And people say women are competitive It's really a shame that this program has to end.

That one may have been apocryphal, but Suzanne Gordon wrote in her book Off Balance that Kistler's "peers" at SAB laughed at her because she threw herself so intensely into a move in class that she was unaware of her space and fell.

Kelso's article, published in a scholarly journal, has substantial citations, many of them from Suzanne Gordon's 1983 book, Off balance: The real world of ballet and Benn and Walters' 2001 study, "Between Scylla and Charybdis. Nutritional education versus body culture and the ballet aesthetic: the effects on the lives of female dancers. Research in Dance Education."

beck_hen, Please don't apologize. You are approaching these ballets from a different perspective than many long-time company watchers, for the very reason you noted: each Balanchine and Robbins ballet is new for you. Unlike many of us who saw different generations of dancers, you are comparing the Balanchine, Robbins, and Martins ballets danced by the same dancers. In that sense, everything you see is a premiere, and you are "stack-ranking" them with fresh eyes, without the long-term memory of other performers.

I'm not sure she was talking about the score, but of Balanchine's response to it and POB, for which he did the original choreography. The score was a graduation exercise for Bizet, which was one of the reasons it was "lost" for such a long time. It had just resurfaced when Balanchine set it.

Last week Seattle Symphony's Mozart Celebration featured a program with three very different pieces: two tributes and one by the master himself. *Richard Strauss' Quartet and Finale from Mozart's Idomeneo, which features a Straussian orchestration of the vocal quartet, intended to re-popularize Mozart, who had been out of vogue for much of the 19th century. *Tchaikovsky's Suite No. 4 in G major, Op. 61 "Mozartiana" in its original order: Gigue, Minuet, Prayer, and Theme and Variations. I had images of Farrell, Andersen, and Castelli throughout the piece. *Mozart's Mass in C minor. Tonight's concert didn't have Mozart, but it did have Carl Maria von Weber's "Overture to Oberon," which made me think of our oberon, and violinist Nikolaj Znaider. He's well over 6 feet tall -- he towered over acting concertmaster Maria Larianoff, and while she's not tall, she was wearing at least three-inch heels -- and is a beautiful guy in the Polish-Israeli-raised-in-Denmark-trained-at-Julliard-boy-next-door kind of way (one of the better aspects of globalization). When I turned to see who was doing all of the "woofing" in my section, they all had grey hair! I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance to revive the swooning twenty-somethings to my left. Oh, did I mention he played the Beethoven Violin Concerto like a celestial choir?

Bluenightdipper, There aren't any national ballet companies in the US that are mainly state-subsidized. Most are tied to specific home cities, and occasionally are co-sponsored by two cities. Others like NYCB have summer residencies outside the city. Many have charters to perform and do outreach programs in schools and try to tour to other parts of the state. We assume that when there is touring, the companies have done substantial fundraising to subsidize the tour, and that they only travel if they think it is feasible financially. I think that your complaint is echoed by people in countries with national ballet companies. For example, when National Ballet of Canada focuses on touring in the East -- it is based on Toronto -- and skips the western cities (Vancouver, Regina, Calgary, Saskatoon, and Edmonton to name the biggest and most prominent), there's an awful lot of grumbling. The Dutch National Ballet does tour outside Amsterdam for a small part of the season; perhaps one of our Dutch posters could comment on whether the touring schedule is adequate for a national company. You live in a beautiful place; I visited Tasmania for the first time in 2004, and fell in love with it. When I looked to see if there were any cultural events when I was there, I found that the symphony has a very limited number of performances, and there were no other events scheduled. It's sad to know that while you are so close by air to the standard touring cities (Melbourne and Adelaide), the Australia Ballet skips you altogether.