Helene

Phillipe Candeloro is the name of the skater. He won bronze medals in two Olympic games and has been skating professionally ever since.

[ADMIN BEANIE ON] I think it's important to step back a moment to the purpose of the site, which is to provide a place for people to discuss ballet. As long as criticism follows our Courtesy Policy, it may be expressed on the board. No one need apologize for or justify courteous, well-reasoned criticism. [ADMIN BEANIE OFF]

It's a good thing we don't hear the backstage singing, or out the window would go the perfume and magic of Liebeslieder, Symphony in C, et. al. We would just think, "drunken sailors in tutus."

I've been browsing through Barbara Newman's Striking a Balance, in which a number of dancers interviewed spoke about the mime in Swan Lake, and in the back of my mind I'd remembered that Antoinette Sibley said something true to my heart: Donald MacLeary may have summarized the issue with mime most efficiently:

That would be such a gem.

It's time for our annual joint fundraiser, where we ask for your help to support the cost of running Ballet Talk and Ballet Talk for Dancers for the upcoming year. Our goal is to raise $1,000 for both boards, and we will remove these announcements when we've crossed the goal threshold. There are two options to donate: through PayPal and via check. If you'd like to donate through PayPal and don't have an account, there is a sign-up option on the payments page. Personal accounts are free and allow you to pay by credit card or checking account. (Checking account takes several days to verify.) Edited to delete link and add: FUNDRAISER FOR 2005-6 CLOSED -- we have reached our goal! We are very serious when we say that any amount helps, and we are grateful for all support. For a link to the Mini-FAQ in our "About This Site" forum, which includes more information about the PayPal process, please click here.

It's time for our annual joint fundraiser, where we ask for your help to support the cost of running Ballet Talk and Ballet Talk for Dancers for the upcoming year. Our goal is to raise $1,000 for both boards, and we will remove these announcements when we've crossed the goal threshold. There are two options to donate: through PayPal and via check. If you'd like to donate through PayPal and don't have an account, there is a sign-up option on the payments page. Personal accounts are free and allow you to pay by credit card or checking account. (Checking account takes several days to verify.) Edited to delete link and add: FUNDRAISER FOR 2005-6 CLOSED -- we have reached our goal! We are very serious when we say that any amount helps, and we are grateful for all support. For a link to the Mini-FAQ in our "About This Site" forum, which includes more information about the PayPal process, please click here.

It's time for our annual joint fundraiser, where we ask for your help to support the cost of running Ballet Talk and Ballet Talk for Dancers for the upcoming year. Our goal is to raise $1,000 for both boards, and we will remove these announcements when we've crossed the goal threshold. There are two options to donate: through PayPal and via check. If you'd like to donate through PayPal and don't have an account, there is a sign-up option on the payments page. Personal accounts are free and allow you to pay by credit card or checking account. (Checking account takes several days to verify.) Edited to delete link and add: FUNDRAISER FOR 2005-6 CLOSED -- we have reached our goal! We are very serious when we say that any amount helps, and we are grateful for all support. For a link to the Mini-FAQ in our "About This Site" forum, which includes more information about the PayPal process, please click here.

It's time for our annual joint fundraiser, where we ask for your help to support the cost of running Ballet Talk and Ballet Talk for Dancers for the upcoming year. Our goal is to raise $1,000 for both boards, and we will remove these announcements when we've crossed the goal threshold. There are two options to donate: through PayPal and via check. If you'd like to donate through PayPal and don't have an account, there is a sign-up option on the payments page. Personal accounts are free and allow you to pay by credit card or checking account. (Checking account takes several days to verify.) Edited to delete link and add: FUNDRAISER FOR 2005-6 CLOSED -- we have reached our goal! We are very serious when we say that any amount helps, and we are grateful for all support. For a link to the Mini-FAQ in our "About This Site" forum, which includes more information about the PayPal process, please click here.

It's time for our annual joint fundraiser, where we ask for your help to support the cost of running Ballet Talk and Ballet Talk for Dancers for the upcoming year. Our goal is to raise $1,000 for both boards, and we will remove these announcements when we've crossed the goal threshold. There are two options to donate: through PayPal and via check. If you'd like to donate through PayPal and don't have an account, there is a sign-up option on the payments page. Personal accounts are free and allow you to pay by credit card or checking account. (Checking account takes several days to verify.) Edited to delete link and add: FUNDRAISER FOR 2005-6 CLOSED -- we have reached our goal! We are very serious when we say that any amount helps, and we are grateful for all support. For a link to the Mini-FAQ in our "About This Site" forum, which includes more information about the PayPal process, please click here.

It's time for our annual joint fundraiser, where we ask for your help to support the cost of running Ballet Talk and Ballet Talk for Dancers for the upcoming year. Our goal is to raise $1,000 for both boards, and we will remove these announcements when we've crossed the goal threshold. There are two options to donate: through PayPal and via check. If you'd like to donate through PayPal and don't have an account, there is a sign-up option on the payments page. Personal accounts are free and allow you to pay by credit card or checking account. (Checking account takes several days to verify.) Edited to delete link and add: FUNDRAISER FOR 2005-6 CLOSED -- we have reached our goal! We are very serious when we say that any amount helps, and we are grateful for all support. For a link to the Mini-FAQ in our "About This Site" forum, which includes more information about the PayPal process, please click here.

It's time for our annual joint fundraiser, where we ask for your help to support the cost of running Ballet Talk and Ballet Talk for Dancers for the upcoming year. Our goal is to raise $1,000 for both boards, and we will remove these announcements when we've crossed the goal threshold. There are two options to donate: through PayPal and via check. If you'd like to donate through PayPal and don't have an account, there is a sign-up option on the payments page. Personal accounts are free and allow you to pay by credit card or checking account. (Checking account takes several days to verify.) Edited to delete link and add: FUNDRAISER FOR 2005-6 CLOSED -- we have reached our goal! We are very serious when we say that any amount helps, and we are grateful for all support. For a link to the Mini-FAQ in our "About This Site" forum, which includes more information about the PayPal process, please click here.

It's time for our annual joint fundraiser, where we ask for your help to support the cost of running Ballet Talk and Ballet Talk for Dancers for the upcoming year. Our goal is to raise $1,000 for both boards, and we will remove these announcements when we've crossed the goal threshold. There are two options to donate: through PayPal and via check. If you'd like to donate through PayPal and don't have an account, there is a sign-up option on the payments page. Personal accounts are free and allow you to pay by credit card or checking account. (Checking account takes several days to verify.) Edited to delete link and add: FUNDRAISER FOR 2005-6 CLOSED -- we have reached our goal! We are very serious when we say that any amount helps, and we are grateful for all support. Mini-FAQ How does the joint fundraiser work? Announcements for the fundraiser are posted her and on Ballet Talk for Dancers. As soon as we cross our targeted goal, we will remove the announcements. In the past we've found that donations from members of each board match the costs for that board proportionally. What if I post to both boards? You may donate by clicking the link to ballettalk.com from an announcement on either board. What sites will this take me to? The link in this annoucement is to the ballettalk.com site, which redirects posters to our hosted boards. If you click the "PayPal Donate" button, you will be directed to a customized "Checkout" page on the PayPal site (https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr) How do I fill in the form on the PayPal site If you already have an account, it's a very easy process: fill in the amount, login, change the shipping option, and click "Pay." The first step is to fill in the amount in the Amount input box in the top of the form. If you already have an account, fill in the log-in information at the bottom of the page and click "Continue." If you need to sign up for a PayPal account, click the "Click Here" button in the middle of the page, and follow the sign-up process instructions. You should be sent to the "Make Your Payment" page at the end of the process, but if it doesn't appear, you can start from the "PayPal Donate" button on the ballettalk.com site, fill in the Amount, and log-in. If you've logged in, you'll go directly to the "Make Your Payment" page. From the "Make Your Payment" page, under "Shipping Options," you can select "No Shipping Address Required" and click the Pay button. What does "Finance_BT_BT4D" mean? This is an email address to which all of the invoices for the board are sent and all finances are managed. Is my donation tax-deductable Ballet Talk and Ballet Talk for Dancers are not non-profit, charitable organizations, and donations to the sites are not itemizable. However, dance professionals may be able to deduct donations as a business expense. Where does the money go? The fundraiser proceeds pay for the monthly board fees, including bandwidth and hosting support; email service; technical modifications; and version updates.

At the Saturday night performance of Arizona Ballet's closing triple-bill, which included a new Ib Andersen ballet, Agon, and Theme and Variations, Andersen announced during the post-performance Q&A that ticket buyers could turn in their ticket for a free ticket to the final, Sunday afternoon performance. While I don't remember him saying so explicitly then, he has, in Q&A's, encouraged the audiences to see different casts in the ballets, which is a great way to educate an audience. (Seeing those three ballets in successive performances is a great way to educate anyone.) If the house is not going to be full, it's a chance to make a last-minute decision, particularly at a time when the audience is excited by what they just saw. Hopefully, they'd even bring a friend to the performance. (To anyone who paid full price for Sunday, the person holding the free ticket already paid full price to see the performance once.) Principal dancer Paola Hartley, who danced the lead in all five performances of Theme and Variations, said in response to an audience question, that while she gets nervous before a performance, in Theme, because she can hear the spontaneous ooh/aah/gasp from the audience as the curtain goes up on a full stage of women in tutus and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, it put her at ease, and was so gratifying, that it made her want to give back to the audience the gift they've just given her. Many PNB dancers have said that they can feel if there is electricity in the air from the audience. In the Saturday afternoon performance, some audience members were standing and clapping as soon as the ballerina jumps up onto the cavalier's shoulder, when she still has several bars of port de bras left! The evening audience was equally enthusiastic, even if they waited for the end of the ballet to stand. It's got to be demoralizing to end a season with a half-empty theater and not much noise. While the size of the audience is not necessarily correlated to enthusiasm, odds are better with a fuller house, as long as the audience isn't a gala audience.

The central pas de deux, created for Kirkland, is performed as a gala excerpt. In a performance captured on tape and released commercially (ABT Now), Amanda McKerrow and John Gardner performed it, and retiring Ballet Arizona ballerina Yen-Li Chen-Zhang performed it at a special, final performance.

And, hopefully, now that it's been done in a three-truck, commute-ready production, NBoC will bring it to Vancouver. We hope to hear from those who are attending

The last time I was at BAM was in 2001, when I saw performances of Mark Morris' beautiful L'Allegro and Compagnie DCA/Philippe Decouflé, a circus-based modern dance performer from France. The audiences at both were modern dance audiences. BAM's focus was more on contemporary dance of all kinds and mixed media than ballet; the man responsible for programming at the time, Lane Czaplinski, is now Artistic Director of On the Boards, an organization in Seattle that is dedicated to contemporary performance, sponsoring Bill T. Jones, Susan Marshall, Pat Graney, and Laurie Anderson, among the most notable. (We are very lucky to have him here.) BAM has taken the contemporary niche and run with it. Among the ballet companies I'd seen at BAM in the period before that (80's) were Neumeier's company and one from Shanghai. From reading Arlene Croce's reviews in The New Yorker, it seems like it was the venue of choice at the time for first-time visiting regional companies. That is where PNB made its NYC debut, for example. But I don't think that's the case anymore. And companies like POB play at the Met, and Eifman Ballet at City Center. The European-based ballet companies and the choreography they bring are not the daily fare of the NYCB crowd in general, wherever the venue. BAM is not the easiest place to get to for commuters from New Jersey and Westchester, and it takes some incentive for the "dinner and a show" or the "ballet every other Thursday" crowds to hie it to Brooklyn, particularly the non-subway crowd. Not everyone even makes it to the Joyce, which is only about 40 blocks away from Lincoln Center. Edited to add: On the Boards is priced to attract a younger, less flush audience. I don't remember an individual ticket being over $30, and I've seen them for as little as $18. The Main Stage is not a big theater, and the Studio is tiny. A 100% subscription costs $500, which would be the actual cost of one seat for the season. while a regular subscription costs $130 for 7 performances.

Of course it's a big deal for the regional company, but is it a big deal in NYC? Or do a lot of people in NYC just say 'that's nice' and carry on watching the NYC-based companies? I should start by saying that I'm not sure much of anything has been a big deal for New Yorkers since Fonteyn and Nureyev tours with the Royal Ballet, some widely-anticipated performances by the Kirov and Bolshoi, and the occasional NY debut of a featured dancer, like Sylvie Guillem. (Perhaps the one-time performance of Theme and Variations with Kirkland and Baryshnikov?) I lived in New York City for many years before moving to the West Coast, and still my answer may not be typical, but there are several factors that have to do with what will grab a New Yorker's attention, which is quite different than being a big deal. When a Company comes to town makes a difference, and also whether it's part of a special occasion, and even more, if the Company can be used as an example to bludgeon reigning companies. Is it part of the year when balletomanes are suffering from withdrawal, especially the six months between NYCB spring and winter seasons, for those who don't attend ABT in the fall? That fix might attract some people. Is it part of a festival, like last year's Ashton Festival, or a special group from a Company that performed in the Gugenheim series as part of the Balanchine Centennial? What rep is the Company bringing? Is is the only chance to see Balanchine's Bouree Fantasque, which isn't performed by NYCB, or The Three Pigeons? Is there stylistic or textual integrity that the Company brings, and can NYCB or the Royal Ballet, for example, be criticized implicitly by praise of that Company? Is the Company performing at the Met or State Theater, or does it require a trip to Brooklyn or Newark, where Suzanne Farrell ballet performed during the last tour, or Long Island? New York seasons are crucial to regional companies, because most companies with ambition don't want to be known as regional companies; they aspire to being national and international companies, however tied their mission statement is to the city and region in which they are located. When New York critics laud a regional Company and find the performances on par with New York companies, that works toward that goal; it can put the Company on the map in the first place. When the London critics go mad over San Francisco Ballet, for example, that raises SFB's profile. To answer your question about leaving the home town high and dry, touring outside the region is an expensive rarity to begin with for most regional companies, and for all Companies, including NYCB and ABT, there is a limited time frame whether there is available theater space. ABT has two seasons, a fall season at City Center, which is booked for much of the year, and a spring/summer season at the Metropolitan Opera House, which is booked by the Met itself from September-April. NYCB shares the New York State Theater with New York City Opera. (They also perform for several weeks in Saratoga Springs in upstate NY during the summer.) Pacific Northwest Ballet shares McCaw Hall with the Seattle Opera; they alternate months. Same with San Francisco Ballet and San Francisco Opera. Ballet Arizona shares Symphony Hall with the Symphony and the Opera, and when asked by an audience member why there aren't more performances each year, Artistic Director Ib Andersen said that SH was booked seven years in advance, and there were no more free dates. There is also a limit to the number of subscriptions that can be sold and houses that can be filled. All ballet companies perform each performance at a loss. From a financial perspective, I'm sure Companies would love it if they didn't have to take their own orchestra, but union contracts make that very difficult.

Welcome to Ballet Talk, nmdancer. Glad you de-lurked! We hope you'll post more impressions when you can, and that you'll go to our "Welcome" forum at: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/admin.p...710b3cc162789f& and click the "New Topic" button at the top of the page, where you can introduce yourself.

One of the problems the regional ballet companies have with touring is that if they have an orchestra, it is very expensive, and often cost-prohibitive to travel with them. Michael Kaiser of the Kennedy Center helped to broker a deal with the orchestra so that NYCB could do an annual visit there; one year the Kennedy Center orchestra would play, and the next year the NYCB orchestra would play. Before I moved to Seattle, NYCB visited Seattle for a two-week season before Pacific Northwest Ballet opened, and their performances were treated as an extra subscription performance, and added to the annual subscription fee. (This was repeated for the Australian Ballet at the beginning of the 1994 season.) Some regional companies tour within their state, like Ballet Arizona, and others give performances in parks, like San Francisco Ballet has, or in other outdoor venues, like PNB did at an outdoor stage at Chateau St. Michele, a winery in Redmond, Washington. It is a very big deal when regional companies tour to NYC or to Europe or Asia. When asked about touring in a post-performance Q&A, Ballet Arizona principal Paola Hartley spoke excitedly about the opportunity a group of dancers had in performing at the Gugenheim during the Balanchine series. In Seattle, there are two organizations that sponsor visiting dance companies: the University of Washington and Seattle Theater Group, both of which sponsor world dance programs. The theater at UW is a small theater with a smallish stage; STG has two theaters, the Paramount Theater with a full-sized stage, and the Moore Theater with a smaller one, and the performers are matched with the theater. Both organizations are dedicated to world dance in all senses of the word: all kinds of dance from all over the world. STG tends to book the international ballet companies: ABT, Bolshoi, and National Ballet of Cuba among the large classical companies, and other companies of the contemporary bent, like Lyons Ballet Theatre. UW has booked the Eifman Ballet, Julio Bocca's visiting troupe, and Lines Ballet in recent years, as well as a number of companies with "Ballet" in the titles, but used to mean stylized folk or folk-based dance. Next season, STG is bringing Alvin Ailey, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, and Spectrum Dance Theater. UW is bringing no ballet companies. It's a fallow year for touring ballet companies here.

Oh, yes.

Discussing the Birmingham Royal Ballet, http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...ndpost&p=159461 Becca_King wrote, which warrants a thread of its own!

On the Birmingham Royal Ballet sub-forum an interesting discussion started as Becca_King described the touring policy of BRB, and asked about US touring policy. http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...65entry159465 bart responded, in part, Becca_King responded with questions of her own: These are great questions that warrant their own topic!

I was scratching my head looking for a logical break, because the new topic evolved seamlessly from the old. But please, feel free to start new topics. Edited to add: Now you are being naughty -- you raised another great topic in your edit, which I'm going to use to create a new topic on attitudes on regional companies Edited again to add the link to the new topic on Attitudes Towards Regional and "Second" Companies: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...t=0#entry159469

A wish list for board software -- the ability to split part of a post out! I'm not going to move the last two posts from the BRB thread, but I am going to create a new thread on which to discuss US ballet companies and touring. Edited to add: Here's the new thread on US company touring: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=19783 (To return to this thread from the new one, please click the link in the first post on the thread.)