Helene

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

. (There was the time I was at the Met for "Queen of Spades" and after the baritone sang the most heart-rending Yeletsy's aria, I thought I had heard the next great baritone only to realize I had "discovered" Dmitry Hvorostovsky, whom I hadn't recognized in a brown wig.)

Welcome to Ballet Alert!

In February 1981 the Metropolitan Opera produced a triple bill consisting of the ballet "Parade," with choreography credited to Gray Veredon, and two operas, Poulenc's "Les Mamelles de Tiresias," and Ravel's "L'enfant et les sortileges." Gary Chryst was Harlequin, and Dave Roeger was the Chinese Conjurer. It was the first of two promising mixed bill programs. The second was in December 1981, the following season, with an all-Stravinsky program consisting of the ballets "The Rite of Spring," with choreography by Jean-PIerre Bonnefoux, Ashton's "Le Rossignol," with singers in the pit and Makarova dancing with Dowell, and the opera "Oedipus Rex." Unfortunately, search is done within frames on the Metropolitan Opera Dabatase site, and there are no direct links to the results. You have to search for it yourself: http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/frame.htm

[Admin Beanie On] We never had a policy against "board-dragging," because other discussion boards were off limits for discussion here. But it appears that we need to be explicit and extend this to social media and other sites where there are comments. Off limits is discussion of other discussions unless they are by ballet professionals/companies on mainstream media, official social media, and video by ballet companies or professionals. I will add this to our policies. If a ballet company/professional posts/comments on his/her public-facing social media or video (YouTube/vimeo) account, etc. or another ballet professional's/company's public-facing social media then it's up for discussion. Any else's comments are off limits. If you have a problem with what is posted to official media, let them know what you think directly. [Admin Beanie Off]

They appear to have set a precedent for Fairchild and Veyette, so if Fairchild and/or Peck request it, NYCB would be on shaky ground to deny them the same.

Megan Fairchild said in her own podcast that she agreed to the performance in an emergency situation, That suggests to me that she had some control over whether they danced together before that.

I hope this means that NYCB will respect any wish to cast them apart, until they both are ready to dance together.

That's the way I remember it, too! So I looked it up on my phone, and per Wikipedia: Batman: January 12, 1966, to March 14, 1968 Laugh-In: January 22, 1968, to March 12, 1973, Seven weeks of overlap in 1968.

For some reason I thought Batman was third grade and Laugh-In fifth grade, but I don't trust my memory on this

Sorry, @nanushka, I was typing too fast at work, and in the middle of editing, mashed up my post, which I've re-edited above. We allow members to post links to their own ballet-related blog posts on Ballet Alert!. For example, canbelto can link to canbelto's blog; no one else can or to any non-member fan blogs.

I thought I had posted about PNB's Next Step, a program in which PNB dancers choreograph for the Professional Division students, all under the guidance and leadership of Kiyon Gaines. But I didn't, which is why this is starting in Heads Up! The performance is tonight, Friday, June 16, 7:30pm:

A clarification: For blogs by ballet professionals, we allow them to be discussed in "Writings on Ballet." For fan blogs with serious writings on ballet, while we allow members to post links to their own ballet-related blog posts on Ballet Alert!, but we don't allow discussion of them, just like we don't allow discussion of what's written on other discussion boards. If there is a way to respond to the posts on the blogs themselves, we encourage you to engage there.

[Admin Beanie On] If you can no longer post, or if your posts aren't visible publicly (pink background), it is because you're in blatant violation of our rules. Read them. There will be a quiz. Do not post about private conversations with ballet professionals. If you have a problem with a post, report it: do not discuss it on the board or moderate each other. Even if you have to wait because we have day jobs. [Admin Beanie Off]

Thank you, @nanushka!

Plus the music Balanchine used in "Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux" is the original music for the Odile/Siegfried Act III Pas de Deux, and it was rediscovered in an archive in the 1950's. (There were no black swans in the original.) Balanchine's choreography cleary shows the difference in character. According to Wikipedia, Sobeshchanskaya hated it and requested a new pas de deux, and Minkus wrote the music. Tchaikovsky was angered, but he wasn't allowed to write any new original music: it had to fit Petipa's choreography to Minkus. She then requested more music for the variation, which wasn't in Tchaikovsky New PDD music v1. I don't see a citation, though.

There are family dynasties in the Russian, Danish, and French companies. There have been generations of the same family at NYCB, notably Peter Martins, who was his son's boss, and is his son's step-brother's boss. Sometimes that influence is direct, and sometimes, like in the Hilaire example, the older generation distances him- or herself. If I had buckets of money and a kid who wanted to choreograph, I would start a small, private foundation for budding choreographers, and among the small grants the foundation would give out would be to my kid, so kid could go to small companies with money in hand and get practice, hone skills, and attempt to create a reputation that would make it credible to be selected for a mainstage production at the Mothership.

I never saw any of the Soviet companies live, but Chenchikova did that great performance at Wolf Trap that was televised on PBS. I wore out that tape!

They're a couple of decades behind PNB, which launched DanceChance in 1994 for elementary school kids. While the numbers of local dancers who went through the school from the beginning and were asked to join the Professional Division and then the company is still very small, that two DanceChance graduates joined PNB is pretty strong, since only a handful of other local, "from scratch" kids -- I can think of Jessika Anspach and Sean Rollofson, both from the Eastside school -- have made it into the Company. Amanda Morgan might be from the Francia Russell Center, too. A few other DanceChance graduates have been accepted into the Professional Division and have danced professionally elsewhere. Like most professional companies, the local kids are eclipsed when the schools select Professional Division students from around the country. Unlike SAB, though, the PD program is generally two years, with an occasional third, while SAB snags year-round kids early in their teens, if their parents will let them. Of course, the double-edged sword is that a local dancer of color might be the child of a doctor and a Microsoft General Manager, but people will assume that he or she came through DanceChance for tired reasons.

It's not a semantic point to point out that there's a general misunderstanding and misapplication of a term that underlies a national myth that is myopic in the best of cases. But like in many American myths, the idea that the founding American concepts actually apply to everyone are wrong. For a simple example, we can start with who could vote or own an animal. In theory, the only dancers who are promoted based on talent and ability through examination are Paris Opera Ballet dancers until the rank of etoile, and that is a jury system, which is representative of various factions. Dancers who are promoted through the ranks at other companies represent a combination of taste, judgement and need of the Artistic Directors, who are presumed to be in charge due to talent and merit, constrained by taste, judgement, need, and money, as well as pressure exerted from a variety of sources, most of which they ignore. Some of that need is transparent to the public as it views the product and the conditions under which the company operates, ie, the need for people to work together, the need to take dancers into the company from the school, or they won't get the best candidates at the school, for a mix of type and fach, for reliability -- physical and emotional -- for the ability to learn quickly, to work on different stages, to mentor, to travel, to project in large theaters, to look polished close up in small theaters, for height, for partnering abilities, for versatility, etc.

Being an older grumpy, no-longer-physically-Metro-NYer, but always a Jersey girl temperamentally, I, too, am offended that someone might think me "upbeat and happy to be there." There reason many of us, including us older folks, point out when older people are rude, is that many older people live in glass houses, but throw stones anyway when it comes to appropriate behavior in the theater. I assume anyone my age or older, especially people who've been going to the theater since they were young, should know better -- I admit that's my bad -- but it incenses me to hear the same people complaining about "young people these days."

It's not just power over casting: it's the power to make decisions about what goes on stage. Most people mistakenly believe that meritocracy has to do with the talent and ability of the dancers, who aren't the ones deciding what's best for the rest of us, based on their talent and ability. Edited to add: Meritocracy is still a paternalistic idea, that people rule based on talent and ability, as opposed to heredity, for example.

How is that power? The dancer doesn't cast him or herself. Unless he or she is associated with a powerful enough general or politician who can pressure the AD to cast him or her, whether implicitly or explicitly. Dancers can create pressure, but they're not the Deciders.

Russell and Stowell came to Seattle in 1977, and they spent their time building a school. 17 years later, there were some home-grown top dancers, like Barker and Lallone, who came up the ranks, dancers in the corps who were mainly from the school, but prominent in the Principal and Soloist ranks were dancers who were hired from the outside. While they hired the occasional male dancer direct to Principal (Milov, Le), they hired many dancers as Soloists, often promoting them the next season to Principal, once they had proven themselves, but every one was a full-time member of the company, whose season ran September-June minimally, although they made guest appearances. Miranda Weese is the only dancer that Peter Boal brought in directly to Principal; even among the NYCB dancers he's brought in who were/are long-term members, only Korbes was brought in at Soloist level, and each one has worked up through the corps. Similarly for all of the other dancers he's hired into the company from the outside, although a few, like Joshua Grant, Taylor, Pertl, and Ryan, were in the company before and/or were PDs before dancing elsewhere. Among the Principals and Soloists today, every one came through the ranks, and half of them through the School. But, per the Balanchine principle, "But first, a school", it took a long time and a lot of patience, commitment, and resources to get there, and it took two decades of transition before "home-grown" -- or, at least "home-finished," since many, although not all, PD's are in the school for two years -- was the norm, not the exception. How long as ABT had the most recent incarnation of the school? The Studio program has born fruit among the current roster. And, like many things, "America"'s understanding is based on a misconception: the definition of "meritocracy" per Wikipedia: So it has zero to do with the dancers, and all to do with the Powers That Be, in this case, at ABT.

I following this conversation with ???. Dynamic pricing works based on whether you buy or don't buy. If I don't like the published casting, I vote with my feet. If I know that a dancer won't do the 32-fouettes, and the 32-fouettes are so important that no other qualities the dancer has for the other [running time-60 seconds], I won't buy tickets to the performance with that dancer. If I've chosen performances based on casting -- positive or avoidance-based -- and then there are often changes that I don't like, I vote with my feet. If I'm so convinced I won't like something ahead of time, and it's scheduled, I tend to not spend money on it.