Helene

Oh, congratulations! to your new family!

Thank you, doug! My mind is playing tricks with me. I was probably casting him in my head when PNB performed it in 2015.

I checked, even the spreadsheets, where I noted changes as of 3/20, which was second weekend Friday, but he's not listed. (Which of course could be user error.) Did PNB tour with this elsewhere?

It wasn't Season Encore, either, programmed to celebrate Bouchard's last performance.

I think I may be missing a program, because I could swear I saw Ezra Thomson in one cast in 2015. From L-R: Elizabeth Murphy, Dylan Wald, William Forsythe, Angelica Generosa, Rachel Foster, Ezra Thomson.

Hello, chezron, and welcome to Ballet Alert! Ballet Alert! is the site for watchers, and we'd love to hear about professional dance you see. If you want to discuss dancing that you do, you're looking for our sister site, Ballet Talk for Dancers (BT4D): www.dancers.invisionzone.com You have to register separately for BT4D, and we have separate rules and registration policies. For example, you can't use most free email addresses to register for BT4D, but you can use AOL.

Thank you so much, sf_herminator! Ezra Thomson was terrific in "Waiting for the Station," and I love the contrast between Thomson's and Porretta's Mercutio. Thomson does just enough to bait, fight, make his point and leave, retracting like a knife, until his final, fateful encounter. Porretta's is so in-your-face, that he's the type of guy his friends would hate if he weren't their friend and on their side.

Josette: do you know who the other five PNB dancers are? I looked at the cast lists from March 2015 when PNB performed Vertiginous as part of its "Vertiginous Thrill of Forsythe" program, and half of them have either left the company (Bouchard, Adomaitis, Frantziskonis) or are still not back from injury/surgery (Samuelson and Davis). The remaining five are Dylan Wald -- sf_herminator, was one of the PNB dancers in front of you a tall blond? -- Angelica Generosa -- just promoted to Soloist -- Elizabeth Murphy, Rachel Foster, and Price Suddarth. They were in two different casts, while the cast you saw on Friday was an intact cast. Leta Biasucci had an injury during season's opening program after making a brilliant debut in Third Movement of "Symphony in C": I'm glad to hear she's better. She's a remarkable dancer, who's been dancing above rank since she joined PNB.

I haven't checked for "Madame Butterfly" or "Otello" at the Sundance Cinemas in Seattle, but I did see Les Contes d'Hoffmann and Il Trovatore listed on the schedule. With an 11am start, a field trip to Bellingham to see The Dream/Symphonic Variations/Marguerite and Armand may be in order.

I thought there was already a thread for Allison DeBona, but information about her is on different "Breaking Pointe," and podcast threads, and I've decided to create a dedicated thread. DeBona was just interviewed for Michael Sean Breeden and Rebecca King's podcast, "Conversations on Dance," and the interview gives a nice update on what she's been doing since and some background on "Breaking Pointe." http://tendusunderapalmtree.com/allison-debona-ballet-west-breaking-pointe/ She's been tweeting clips of different dancing she'd like to highlight from the following Twitter account; she refers to Art with Alli in this interview: https://twitter.com/artwithalli

Paris Opera just tweeted: As did Laura Cappelle, with a link to the beautiful video in volcanohunter's post. Rest in peace, Mme Chauviré.

But the headbands are frighteningly evocative.

The Seattle showings at Sundance Cinemas are listed as: Anastasia: Saturday, November 19, 10am and Monday, November 21, 7:15pm Nutcracker: Friday, December 23, 11am Sleeping Beauty: Saturday, March 18, 10am and Monday, March 18, 7:15pm Jewels: Saturday, April 29, 10am and Monday, May 1, 7:15pm Their food menu looks pretty tasty, too. Thank you for the heads up, seattle_dancer

What a wonderful line-up!

A large company is unlikely to want a green solo dancer, especially one that hasn't been trained by their school. It's possible if they are a small-medium-sized company that wants to do a shake-up, like Tom Seaver did for the late 60's Mets, when he refused to accept the laissez faire attitude of his teammates. It's tricky for company morale to bring in someone from the outside to take on featured roles, and companies have to be convinced the dancer is worth that. Most companies need role players, dancers who are willing to do a brilliant job in the corps when there are a series of injuries, even when they've been promoted to a higher rank or have been featured, and having corps experience is critical to being useful for the vast majority of dancers. There are rare exceptions, like Darci Kistler, who in the "Six Ballerinas" documentary, described herself as being a pretty bad corps dancer and going home in tears. She was soon pulled out of the corps and anointed for solo roles exclusively, by Balanchine and Martins, but she was a needle in a haystack and was "finished" at SAB.

I love all of the women. I envy anyone who gets to watch them. I've only seen Joseph Walsh as a Meliton in Ben Stevenson's "Nutcracker" when Walsh was at Houston Ballet, which isn't much of a help.

David Resnick interviewed Mikhail Baryshnikov for "The New Yorker Radio Hour" podcast: http://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/episode-52-mikhail-baryshnikov-t-c-boyle-and-germanys-kriegskinder On iTunes, it starts around 27'48".

For ABT I would say "Swan Lake" and "Giselle." Just like the Royal Ballet has replaced some productions of "Sleeping Beauty" and has thrown a bunch of cooks at others, I agree it's the Royal Ballet's signature ballet, stemming from the original Sleeping Princess set on the company. Similarly ABt has played around with "Swan Lake" and "Giselle," but I think that's what most people associate ABT with. It's too bad, because ABT had original signature works, like the Tudor works, most of which they have to dust off, when they think of it.

Historian Melissa Klapper has released her latest "Pirouettes from the Past" episode on the Balancing Pointe podcast; its topic is "European Ballet Teachers in America," particularly their influence at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. http://balancing-pointe.com/214-pirouettes-past-chapter-seven-european-ballet-teachers-america/

Lauren Fadeley describes her experience in Miami City Ballet's live segment, in which Lourdes Lopez coached Jordan Elizabeth Long and her in variations from "Divertimento No. 15," for her "Rediscovering the Dream" podcast: http://www.premierdancenetwork.com/world-ballet-day/