Helene

Villella did slip in that Verdy loved to discuss a lot. Maybe he meant "Talk to the hand," but maybe he meant, "Try it, and don't trip yourself up mentally."

My mouth is watering now...

Bella Ureta, who performed with PNB as a Professional Division student and went to Boston Ballet II after graduation, has joined Cincinnati Ballet as a corps member: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/entertainment/arts/2017/08/05/new-ballet/104243646/

I'd love to see that happen!

One could say the "essence" was most of the only original (Ivanov) choreography that existed continuously, even if there were changes, and most of the rest is whatever whoever is staging.

Measured by what criteria? I know it didn't make many fans of his black-and-white ballets, who thought he was selling out, but it's live side-by-side with those ballets for decades and was programmed often enough, until Martins did his own full length at least.

Worked for Balanchine.

Welcome to Ballet Alert!, CharlieH! Washington Ballet's leadership changed: In 2016, Julie Kent, a long-time American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancer, became Artistic Director, and she and her husband, Executive Director Victor Barbee, also from ABT, and, in my opinion, the repertory has gotten a lot stronger, and there are some terrific dancers in the company. We hope you'll post about what you see.

Welcome to Ballet Alert!, Sarabande! I don't know if you've listened to Rebecca King's and Michael Breeden's three-part interview of Edward Villella for their podcast "Conversations on Dance," but Breeden asked Villella what he thought Balanchine meant by "Don't think, dear, just do," and Villella laughed and said, "Shut up!" So even that canonical Balanchine statement might not have been meant quite that literally Plus in "Restless Creature," Christopher Wheeldon talked about what Wendy Whelan taught him when they started their collaboration. So there's hope out there!

I don't understand why you're discussing the discussion.

I think if one doesn't like Balanchine in the first place, but finds another style superior, it's not unusual to prefer Balanchine performed in that style.

I've also read that red and gold was traditional for Odile, like she was wearing a party dress. The original music for that pas de deux, which Balanchine used in "Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux," was a lot softer and less in-your-face bad girl, which made it a lot more reasonable. I think the dramatic subtext starts with people having their private mode and their public mode, especially royals. If he weren't in such a panic being pressed to make a decision in public, he might have sussed Odile out, but she showed up as a savior just in the nick of time, in the current "tradition" in a little black dress. It's easy to see him as an idiot, but there's a solid dramatic context for the way he acts, and the more dramatically adept Siegfrieds manage to convey this. We'd all like to think we'd be clear thinking in that kind of pressure-filled situation, but easier said than done.

Unfortunately, not. Our support team could neither reproduce nor find that this was a systemic problem with other customers. I still can't use Chrome on Windows no matter how many times I clear my cache, but I can use Chrome on my Mac at home and on my Android phone, but I'm stuck using IE on Windows. Which I do not like. I'm going to invoke the next version upgrade this weekend, and I'm hoping somewhere in the re-boots and restarts and clears and rebuilds, this will go away.

I, too, worked in publishing, and one of the things I loved about the book was reading about how much he loved his work. But I think like other people who are totally engrossed in what they do -- very much like dancers -- it's not instinctive to describe the nuts and bolts. For him, it sounded like the collaboration was important, and that's not easily dissected, especially when people just fit together.

I have mixed feelings about Homans and a Balanchine bio, based on her tome. Two short bios of Balanchine appeared a dozen years ago, one by Robert Gottlieb and one by Terry Teachout. Teachout: All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine (2004) Gottlieb: GEORGE BALANCHINE The Ballet Maker (2004) A Kirkus review of the Gottlieb, with references to the Teachout: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/robert-gottlieb/george-balanchine-2/

Flying into San Francisco is always iffy because of fog, and I got to War Memorial late for "Don Carlo.". I was let into standing room with the rest of the latecomers, and it was like being in a singles bar. People were a lot better behaved in the Ampitheater for Royal Opera and Royal ballet the last time I was there, but I don't remember wine being allowed yet. (I was scandalized when they not only sold ice cream -- branded, no less -- inside the auditorium, and people shoved their empty containers under the seat like it was a baseball game.) But I met a lovely fellow armrest-less sardine from one of the islands, who was in town for a culture binge.