Helene

Peter Riegert was a little too perfect, too, but I loved him anyway. Forget about affording those cut little ensembles on a Pickle Man's income -- how about affording those outfits by working in a bookstore and paying rent in NYC?

Paper Wedding Smiles of a Summer Night Persuasion Truly Madly Deeply Clueless

Welcome to Ballet Talk, whtokbyu! Many thanks for your informative and timely post, and we hope that you'll post again and tell us about the ballet performances you do see through those old binoculars

I think that drb's original point was that there are dancers who have such a big stage presence, that it's out-of-proportion to their actual size. (drb, please tell me if I'm wrong.) There's a corps dancer at PNB. Brittany Reid, who is a little taller than I am -- I'm guessing she's ~5'7" -- and while I wouldn't say that she always has the stage presence of a legendary dancer like Cynthia Gregory, she danced two roles in which she had such sweep and authority that she owned the stage: Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Flora in The Nutcracker. (Flora leads the "Dance of the Flowers" in Kent Stowell's version.) Those were larger-than-life performances. As far as stage presence alone, Bart Cook was always a dancer I could never take my eyes off of, but, paradoxically, one of the attractions of his dancing was its human scale.

I just found the article online, but, alas, not with the photographs: http://www2.eckerd.com/OnCallMag/diabetes/...e=df_q305_grace

According to an AP report, the Opera Bastille will offer 62 standing room places in the back of the orchestra with "excellent visibility," and the cost will be 5 Euros. Limit is two per person, beginning 45 minutes before the performance, and the tickets will be sold from machines. http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=25890

There is a small, free quarterly magazine called Diabetes Focus that I found this morning at my local eco-pharmacy. On the cover was a beautiful photograph of Zippora Karz in sousous. There isn't any information about the cover photograph (or the black and white one of Karz in grand jete on the table of contents page), but it looks like it was taken in a grand setting, like a court house. She's wearing a soft tutu -- the top layer is a shimmery, cream-colored, pearlized silk, with a bodice trimmed in gold and lacy, half-cap sleeves. The costume in the jete photo looks like the pink Sugar Plum Fairy dress from the NYCB production. The article itself, named "grace and will" opens on a wonderful current photo of her wearing a black tank, dark rolled up jeans, and pointe shoes, in croise attitude (on a flat standing foot) atop a huge rock, with hills and rocks in the background. (The photographer is Mark Hamel.) In it Karz recounts her struggle to dance with diabetes at a time when there were no other dancers who had gone public and little expertise on diabetes management for dancers. She describes receiving the diagnosis (at age 21) at a "truly magical time in the ballet scene: George Balanchine, who founded the NYCB was still alive and creating. Nureyev and Baryshnikov would come in and take classes. And I'd worked so hard to get there." The challenge was to regulate her blood sugar when, "[W]e'd perform a different piece every night. The Nutcracker was the only piece we ever did consistently, and that was a five-week run. So I could never predict how much energy I'd be using one day to the next." After getting conflicting medical advice -- "she eventually realized that her doctors did not understand just how aerobic the activity of a ballerina was" -- Karz created her own approach under the constant pressure "to show that there was nothing really wrong with me." It's remarkable that she was able to give such luminous performances with such little medical support or understanding. Karz is currently staging ballets for the George Balanchine Foundation and teaching in Southern California.

Thank you for identifying him. I couldn't figure out why he looked so familiar.

To find "mon dieu!", click the Show All link under the "Clickable Smilies" to the left of the input box. You should see a pop-up window with smilies, and it's the 12th from the bottom. 5 September was the day that a number of ballet and opera performances went on sale. I noticed the "reserve" link appeared on Tristan und Isolde at about 12:10am Pacific Time (10 hours behind CET), and it took me until almost 2am to purchase a ticket. (The system was very slow, and it timed out numerous times before I could place the order.) I assume that many people pounced on the site the moment tickets became available.

That's terrific news -- definitely something to add to the list on my next visit to NYC.

Many companies tape live performances for archival and teaching purposes, but few are of broadcast quality. Francia Russell had said in many post-performance Q&A's that PNB's current equipment is on its last legs. Unfortunately, contractual issues and royalties would prohibit distribution, even if there was multiple-camera quality output that could be edited professionally.

The updates to the board are complete! Following is a guide to what has changed: Editorial Advisors We are extremely lucky to have a group of scholars and writers on Ballet Talk who are so generous with their time and expertise, and we are grateful that they do so for us. We have created a new board group called "Editorial Advisor," which will now appear under their names in posts, which will recognize their contribution to the board. To read more, please click here. Thank you to Alexander, Alexandra, doug, Marc Haegeman, and rg. Look of the Board We moved and renamed some forums. Here's a guide to finding them: * The "Homeroom" -- Ballet Talk Annoucements" category has been consolidated with the "About This Site" category to form a single one, "Homeroom" -- Ballet Talk Announcements and Policy." The forums in this category are "All Members," "About This Site" (with subforums for policy and how-to's), and "Welcome." * We've moved the "How-To's" into a subforum of the "About This Site" forum called "How the Site Works," and we've deleted a forum ("Dancers and Parents") that was needed during the transition when Ballet Talk and Ballet Talk for Dancers split into two separate boards. * In the "General" Category, we've re-sorted the forums, changed the name of "Ballet News" to "Ballet News Discussion," and moved "Modern and Other Dance" into a new category devoted to modern dance and arts and literature. * In the "Subtexts and Contexts" Category, we've made the following changes:> The most important is that the Ballet History and Ballet Music forums have been combined into a single forum. While not every topic on ballet history is music-related, we've found that more and more music topics are inextricably tied to ballet history, particularly in reconstructing the versions of choreography in which ballet music was added and removed. > "Books, Magazines, and Critics" is now called "Writings on Ballet," to include Internet-related sources, such as professional blogs. > "Other Performing & Fine Arts" and "General Reading and Literature" join "Modern and Other Dance" in their own dedicated category. * The "Ballet Companies" category has been renamed as "Ballet Companies, Performances, and Reviews" to reflect the way in which it has evolved. Changes to the category are: > "Recent Peformances," the original forum where all reviews lived until company forums were created, has been renamed "Galas, Competitions, Festivals, and Commemorations," as a place to review and discuss performances that span various companies or are not company-related. + If you are looking for the "Ashton Centennial" or "Children of Balanchine on Balanchine" sub-forums, they are now located here. + School workshops and tours by the related companies will remain in the appropriate company forums. > The "Ballet Videos, Films, and Broadcast Performances" forum has been moved to this category. * A new category, "Modern and Other Dance, Arts, and Literature" has been created to consolidate the three non-ballet, but important, long-time discussion forums. It is located directly below the "Ballet Companies, Performances, and Reviews" category. About This Site Update We've consolidated and rearranged the Rules and Policies and How-to's for the site. * Rules and Policies are now broken into three sections:> "Before You Register" is targeted to non-registered posters, and explains what the board is and isn't, the registration process, and the guideliness for choosing a username. > "Before You Post" is targeted to newly registered posters, and gives a strategy for joining discussions and links to helpful references. > "Rules and Policies" is a consolidation of policy. If you are a current member, please give it a read, because it provides the basis for how the board is moderated. * "How the Site Works" contains an explanation of board moderation and has a list of posts to explain board functionality, such as how to reply, to format, to create special characters, what the various buttons and links do, the search and help functions, etc. > This is still a work in progress, and more posts will be added. The current documents are "closed," but please feel free to open new threads to ask questions and to report things that don't work as described. *The documentation for "Blogs" has been moved into it's own sub-forum in"About this Site."

Some of our newer members have a lot of experience on other discussion boards and/or social media. Some have been reading the board for a long time, and have just chosen to post. Others have been posting to Ballet Talk for Dancers. For some this is their first experience on a message board. Note: we're not like social media, and our mission is not to replicate or "curate" it here. Our tone and purposes are different. The danger of writing this is that it will scare the perfectly reasonable people into not posting. The purpose of this thread is to provide guidelines, so that New Members are comfortable posting and get the best response from the Ballet Alert! community. If you're new to discussion boards, the post after this has some basics to get you started and put you at ease. Please remember that when you first register, you will be in the "Registration Complete" group, and your first post(s) may not be visible to the board until a Moderator changes it to "visible." Once an Admin changes your group to "New Member," your posts will be visible automatically after the change is made. (Posts before that need to be approved manually by Admins.) We've been told that this board is like a garden party. We consider this a compliment. New Poster Guidelines * If you haven't already, please read existing posts on the site to get a feel for the tone of the site. You'll see quickly that the response to the Internet equivalent of slapping a stranger on the back and greeting him with a friendly insult will go down as well as if you had walked up to Sir Anthony Dowell on Opening Night at the Royal Opera House and done the same. * Once you're familiar with the site in general, you'll notice patterns: *Company forums differ from forum to forum and from country to country and city to city, in tone and in the number of regular posters. Please be respectful of the differences. * If you're new to ballet, the Discovering the Art forum is the perfect place to ask questions or to raise topics. No question is too basic here. We all started from the beginning, and there are enough people on Ballet Alert! who will be happy to help. * Forums in "Subtexts and Contexts" tend to have a more intellectual tone. If the thread has been discussing the historical greats from Karsavina through Fonteyn in Giselle, and you post, "Isn't [fill in newest young principal] the greatest Giselle EVER!!! , you aren't likely to get an overwhelmingly positive response. However, if you can make an historically contextual argument for this, you'll be sure to engage the board in discussion. * If you have a question about how to understand the information in a thread -- anything from jargon to shorthand for a dancer's, company's, or choreographer's name to the underlying assumptions of the argument -- and you don't want to ask in the thread, Discovering the Art is a perfect place for your question, regardless of how much experience you have. Chances are, if you have a question, there are many others have the same one, but never asked. * Please don't ask us to do your term paper for you. Google, Yahoo, and MSN searches are good for basic factual questions, if you have a foundation in dance already. But when the information on the Internet is conflicting -- please let us know what you've found already -- or your question is on a less-well-known topic, please ask, and chances are, someone will be able to help or point you in the right direction. If you are a ballet beginner, Discovering the Art is the place to ask about the basics. * Quoting: If you are responding to one specific post, please use the " "Reply" button at the bottom of that post to "quote" the post, especially if you disagree. Otherwise, the poster directly above your post will think you are speaking to him/her. If you are responding to more than one post, click the "+" for each post. If you want to quote only a piece of a post, highlight it, and, your browser willing, you should see a little control that allows you to select "Quote." * If a post takes the discussion off-course, feel free to post about the original topic. You don't need to create a segue from an off-topic post to your own. * When you see a performance, please tell us about it! Especially local performances outside the NY/DC metro corridor, although posts from dance capitals are always welcome. Please introduce us to dancers and companies that we haven't seen. The blank posting box can be intimidating at first, and starting simple is fine.

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This is a great question, and I've opened a new thread for it here: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=20512

In the Cynthia Gregory thread, drb wrote: This is a wonderful question, and it warrants its own thread. Thank you, drb!

L'Allegro is one of my favorite pieces of any kind. There are several things I love about this piece which are characteristic of Morris' choreography, in addition to his fidelity to the spirit of the score, but the most important is his ability to convey what I can only describe as a life force: in his darker pieces, resilience and a will to rebuild with what is left, and in his lighter ones, energy and joy of movement, without a hint of naivite or coyness. When given a chance and a budget, he also uses costumes and sets as an integral part of the dance. Like the theatrical conceit that Robbins uses so effectively in the Theme Couple in Goldberg Variations -- the dancers in stark practice clothes walking through the lines of dancers in stylized period costumes to join at center stage as the body of dancers retreats into the wings -- he uses costumes, in this case color, to lift the Novembery spirit of the first part into the spring of the second. Despite the autumnal colors though, the costumes in the first half are the same, flowing design, and even if Persephone is in the underworld for six months, the picture is not entirely bleak. There are three dances in particular to which I look forward in each performance. "The Stupid Men's Dance" has to be one of the goofiest portrayals of young men feeling their oats after a long winter of captivity. "Basilica," is a piece in which the dancers walk onto the stage and examine the back wall made of large, column-like panels, and they are seeing a huge, holy, unknown place for the first time. The last is "The Walking Duet," a double line dance in which the simplicity of individual movement is used to create patterns of such great invention, that it was in the first 10 seconds of this dance that, having loved Morris' work for years, I fell in love with his work. If he had choreographed nothing else, it would have been enough.

New York City Opera did in a production of La Traviata, where Violetta dies of AIDS, and Act III, where the dancing occurs, took place in a leather bar.