Helene

I guess Indiannapolis' karma for "stealing" the Baltimore Colts has come full circle.

carbro, Another for describing this presentation so thoroughly. It is hard to transcribe when Russell and Stowell start to interact -- their delivery is very different in person, but when you look at their words afterwards, their voices blend, and if you can't then envision one of them saying it, it's hard to know who said what. Bold has always been physically expansive, with a light, pliant, flexible jump. His early training was in Ulan Bator, where his parents were dancers, and later in Russia. In most ways he looks the most comfortable in the traditional classical repertoire of the PNB principal men. As sandik notes, though, he's been working hard on expression, most obvious in a new freedom and power in his upper body, particularly as he is cast more and more in neoclassical and modern works. He and Imler pair beautifully together, and he is one of the most physically beautiful men dancing now, in my opinion. Imler was singled out for praise during the PNB's performances in City Center in the late 90's, and I'm glad you got to see her.

The one time I moved to a different section to get a better seat was when I succombed to peer pressure -- at age 45 -- and followed my friend from the top tier at Benaroya Hall to an empty box in the Founders Tier at first intermission of Messiah. An usher immediately appeared, and asked us if we had permission to be in the Symphony box. It was clear that he expected us to argue. I started to mumble apologies and was halfway back up to my assigned seat, when the usher said that we could stay if no one else showed up. But it was clear that it was a very stressful situation for him, constantly looking up the staircase to see if the people who had passes/tickets would show up. That was the last time. It's not worth putting someone else through that stress for doing their job. (I do not feel quite the same way toward meter maids, but I should.)

Pacific Northwest Ballet had once sold a subscription to a secure site where there were monthly video interviews with dancers from all levels. One of the things that was most striking about the interviews with several of the soloists and corps members was a palpable sense of sadness and disappointment when they answered the inevitable question about whether they'd like to be a Principal/promoted, although they all expressed satisfaction with the way they had been cast. There was a flash of emotional rawness to the moment, and I didn't get the impression at all that they felt they had been held down politically or because of a whim of the Artistic Directors, but more of a sense that even at their best with all of their efforts, they just couldn't quite get there. One of the corps members interviewed is one of my favorite dancers in the Company, and he clearly struggled to be a dancer, despite not having natural ballet attributes. He's made himself into a compelling dancer, one whom I have to fight not to watch when he's onstage. When dancers talk about struggling with the mirror and focusing on their own weaknesses, never being happy with themselves, it's often a successful principal dancer speaking in an interview. It's painful watching great artists, who might be somewhat limited in the way they could be cast in principal roles, internalize the brand of "not good enough," the conclusion a casual viewer would make by glancing at the program and seeing "corps" and "joined XYZ Company in 1992." Very different from the affectionate, light-hearted interviews that Pauline Golbin is doing.

From Tuesday, 17 May's online International Herald Tribune is an article about a production of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungen, produced at the Teatro Amazonas, popularly known among foreign film buffs as the hero's destination in Werner Herzog's film, Fitzcarraldo.. http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/10/features/ring.php The current season of seven operas was done on a $1.6 million dollar budget, although the sets and costumes for three of the Ring operas were paid for in the three prior years, as the operas were unveiled a year at a time until the full cycle was produced. According to the article, in 1997, when the Festival started, it imported musicians from Russia, Bulgaria, and Belarus not only as lead players, but as teachers and holders of master classes. What is extraordinary is not only that "A handful of graduates of the program were among the 75 musicians in the orchestra pit on opening night" less than a decade later, but that among them are musicians like Elismael Lourengo dos Santos, In addition, ticket prices were made deliberately affordable, even on such a small budget, to develop new audiences, even travelling to more remote towns to bring opera to people who've never been exposed to the art form. How cool is that? (Or, perhaps I should say "How tight is that?," because my 11-year-old friend tells me, "tight" is the new "cool.")

It depends on theater configuration and company policy, which can change, particularly when they have lots of empty seats and a rush on standing room. If the theater has the space, that doesn't mean that every company that performs there will offer standing room or will have the same standing room policy. The box office can tell you what the standing room policy is for each company. Sometimes, you can see this on the company website if they have online ordering, because standing room is listed as "unavailable at this time." Standing room has been a time-honored policy in Vienna at the Opera House, where ballet and opera performances appear in mixed rep. In 1977 I stood nearly every night for three weeks straight, and I saw the same people on line night after night. One was a woman in her 40's, with a reddish, shoulder length flip that was lacquered, so that when she moved her head, her hair moved with it, like a helmet. She held court among the balding, middle-aged men on line. My understanding of German was pathetically rudimentary, but I could tell that she was discussing every performance of every opera she had ever seen over at least two decades. But I digress from the topic...

Aparently, I'm not the only one. From Pauline Golbin's lead-in to her "Dancer on Dancer" interview with Sean Suozzi on the NYCB website: "The Vaganova technique is the same training that George Balanchine received at the Maryinsky School. It is the foundation of classical ballet technique." http://www.nycballet.com/about/dod2.html

The link to the Suozzi interview is located at: http://www.nycballet.com/about/dod2.html

The Slate exchange did let him express what is sounds like his main point: "There is nothing more conventional—on the left and the right—than the suggestion that the pop culture out there caters to the lowest common denominator. If the reverse is true even for part of the spectrum of intelligence, that's not something to be taken lightly, if only because it inverts a lot of our assumptions about how mass cultures tend to work. "

I use a medium-size credit union. I don't know why they require a minimum -- maximum I could understand because of money-laundering -- because they still charge $30, regardless of size.

There are some videos currently available for viewing from the New York City Ballet site. Please see this post on a thread in the New York City Ballet forum on Kaitlyn Gilliland for instructions on where to find the videos on the NYCB site.

The answers are "yes" and "it depends." Assume you'll stand and feel lucky if you get a seat. Sometimes with standing room, there is a wall to lean against, and only one row "deep" of standees. In other configurations, there are several rows, and in front of each of the back rows is what looks almost looks like a freestanding barre, with a narrow shelf that is often padded. In some venues, there are several places in the theater with standing room, at different levels of the theater. The walls can make it bearable, though it can be annoying not being in the first row, if the person in front of you does a lot of shifting. Whether you can sit at intermission depends on the theater, the ushers, the prevailing winds, and how far astray you go from where standing room is. When I did a lot of standing at the New York State Theater, once the lights started to go down, and the ushers would head down the stairs to their perches, there would be a rush from standing room into empty seats on or towards the aisles. As people got more brazen, pushing into empty middle seats, and after the curtain rose, continued to push past patrons, blocking people's view and making a ruckus, the ushers went through periods of stricter enforcement. If there are empty rows of seats, chances are you'll be able to sit, unless the ushers are being very strict. It's dangerous, though, in a crowded house, to assume that singles and doubles are going to remain empty, because there are usually some people who arrive late and take their seats during first intermission. By second intermission, it's usually clear who will arrive. Sometimes it works heading towards lower-level seats, but I've seen people ejected from, for example, the Orchestra of the New York State Theater (where there is no standing room), and I've also seen the Metropolitan Opera ushers watch the Orchestra standees carefully to see that none of them "defect" into Orchestra seats during intermission. Also, there are theaters or events where standing room is sold only if the event -- or the section with standing room -- is or is close to a sellout, which means that empty seats are hard to find.

Yesterday I went to the recital for the Pacific Northwest Ballet Seattle School's Creative Movement and Pre-Ballet II classes at the Phelps Center (among other things, where the Seattle PNB school is located.) The Creative Movement kids are 5-6 years old and the Pre-Ballet kids are 7. Among them I saw a handful of Asian girls, 3 or so black girls, and two (maybe three?) boys out of 48 kids listed on the program. (And if I were the lone boy in the Creative Movement IV, and, indeed, I did have a little ball of white feathers stuck to the back of my tights for "Ducks in a Row," -- it was hard to tell for sure from the back row -- I would refuse to go back.) After each group of children performed, they sat on the floor in front of the chairs set up in the main studio, where by the end, they had prime seats to watch 16 Professional Division students perform excerpts from Paquita. To me it looked like an all-Caucasian group of PD students. I raise this, because two of the points of the recital are 1. to show the parents how many of the PD dancers started in these programs and 2. to show the children what they should and could aspire to.

I made that mistake because I had been told wrongly that Vaganova documented Russian ballet technique from the Imperial era, and that her actual teaching evolved from that point in a different direction than Balanchine's.

Before you choose this option, please check with your bank or credit union to see if they have a minimum amount for international transfers. I was willing to pay for the transfer, but my credit union did not disclose the $100 minimum for international bank transfers until after I placed the order, which, I'm assuming, has expired. The person I spoke to for 20 minutes to set up the bank transfers didn't know, and it was only when it was rejected three days later that he found out what the policy was.

According to an article on andante.com, as originally printed in the Evening Standard [London], In addition, The article ends with a rousing, Just when we thought the cultural Apocalypse was here... (Please note that the link to the article will expire within 7-14 days.)

A great dancer making choreography look good ties to the thread about Suzanne Farrell Ballet's Bejart rep in next season's lineup.

Yes!

I found Emily's snobbery more palatable than Lorelei's and Rory's mockery. But I expected so much less of Emily

carbro, What a GREAT report!!!!! (Kvell!!!!) How sweet that he partnered his future wife at the SAB performing Bournonville. I'm so glad he is managing the school, too. What an amazing role model he'll be for the boys, and I hope he's able to tap talented dancers who have the potential to be good teachers, the way he was recruited by Mazzo and Williams.

I heard an interview on Fresh Air with Amy Sherman Palladino, the creator of The Gilmore Girls, and watched an episode for the first time tonight. So this is a disclaimer that I'm not sure if tonight's episode was a repeat, making this old news. The show opened with mother (Lorelei) and daughter (Rory) at their mother/grandmother's (Emily) dining room table, reviewing pictures of "City Ballet" dancers, to help Emily pick one to sponsor. After making fun of one potential choice's skin, and treating the entire process as a Jr. High School meat market cat-fest, Emily's choice is a blond Eastern-European-born young woman, because she is least like her errant daughter Lorelei (who was a great disappointment after having a baby at 17), and a fantasy/toy daughter is what Emily wants. When the dancer proceeds to ask Lorelei's long-abondoned magic eight ball over and over if she'll be rich -- her vapidness no longer adorable -- Emily trades her in for a pretty boy from Russia, who becomes a perpetual visitor in her sitting room until he storms out, having read a magazine interview where Lorelei compared her mother "jokingly" as Stalin, the killer of much of his family. The portrayals of both dancers were condescending, although, being trapped with Emily as a sponsor was portrayed as the nightmare the entire personal sponsorship scenario could become.

Absolutely. In 1941, things looked good for the Nazis, with occupations in Scandinavia, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Greece (after the Greek troops were off in Albania fighting Italian troops), Yugoslavia, not to mention decimating the Soviet Union's western front that summer.

According to the short bio lead-in to her interview in Robert Tracey's Balanchine's Ballerinas, "During the 1941 American Ballet Caravan tour of South America she was the company's leading ballerina, and Balanchine made two of his most famous ballets for her: Concerto Barocco and Ballet Imperial." About these ballets, she said, "In Barocco, I had to dance for eighteen minutes straight. To every beat. It was the most demanding role ever did for me. The way they do it now isn't quite the same. Ballet Imperial was not a masterpiee like Barocco, but it was a vehicle for me and delightful to dance. She continued to say that she was in four other ballets on the tour: Serenade -- which, according to the bio, Balanchine restaged for her in 1940 when she guested for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, adding a movement for her -- Apollo (as Terpsichore), and The Bat -- as well as Divertimento, which he "whipped up" as a rousing closer. In that ballet, she had an adagio and a Tyrolean Dance; the latter she said she had to do as an encore.

It's not surprising that the US ambassador found the modern works subversive: the tour was funded as part of a culture war: Latin America was considered a major battleground of political influence over which the US and Soviet Union fought. Anything "revolutionary" in any way would have been worrisome to the continent directly north.

I'm hearing a lot of "yeah, right," but I'm not hearing substantive arguments against several of his theses, at least as Gladwell describes them: 1, That there are two types of learning, and there are ways in which popular culture strengthens one type of learning in particular ways. He does not argue that one is superior to the other, just that each is inferior in some aspects that the other is superior. 1. That new, complex video games encourage complex problem-solving skills, including determining what the multi-layered rules are based upon through experience and observation. (He doesn't mention that many of the video games as well as board games we played as children are available online, to be played with other people from all around the world, on demand.) 3. That engagement stimulates part of the way that non-engagement doesn't. That one either has a scientific basis, or it doesn't. In a multi-cultural world that is linked in ways through communications, economics, and artistic endeavors to an extent that was inconceivable even a generation ago, I have no doubt that understanding a quickly changing environment is a critical skill. And in the current world economy, where employment in the US, Canada, and Europe is increasingly skewed toward services and information, lack of this skill is an economic disadvantage. Gladwell has delved into many areas where he and the authors he reviews have challenged widely held assumptions to see if they stand up to scrutiny. I don't think this is as a degredation of the The New Yorker's purpose at all. One thing that I appreciate about both Alex Ross and Malcolm Gladwell is that while they both hold high standards, they don't believe that goodness and greatness is limited. They see abundance of both.