Helene

What beautiful dancers in the company!

There wouldn’t be a Met option in November-December. The house is dark from the end of January-end of February, give or take a couple of days, but it’s used for tech and maybe dress for the productions that will open the second part of the season. February 2 is when NYCB opened its first Nutcracker. “Christmas in July” as part of the regular rep might be the only option, but that would also mean schlepping the sets and costumes back and forth across the country. Would they even fit at the Met if they did at BAM? I don’t know what Segerstrom is like.

That dark period in February is also used for tech rehearsals for the second half of the Met season. This season, the Met has cut the number of total productions, but they still have the premiere of the “second” opening night of La Forza and the massive Turandot for re-opening week, first performances of Romeo et Juliette and La Rondine in March, El Niño and Fire Shut Up in My Bones in April, and The Hours and Orfeo and Eurydice in May. It’s got to be a lot more rational schedule, including fewer operas for the chorus to learn/relearn by cutting the number of operas and more performances of the one they have. I’ve wondered if they save more in overtime than they’d earn in ticket sales, and it should give the costume and set people more time and breathing room mid-season to be able to repair, care for, and store the physical productions.

Welcome to Ballet Alert!, @vivi!

From the press release: Pacific Northwest Ballet continues its 2023-24 Season with the return of 10 Performances Only! February 2 – 11, 2024 February 2, 8 and 9 at 7:30 PM February 3 and 10 at 1:00 and 7:30 PM February 4 at 1:00 and 7:00 PM February 11 at 1:00 PM Marion Oliver McCaw Hall 321 Mercer Street at Seattle Center Seattle, WA 98109 SEATTLE, WA – Pacific Northwest Ballet continues its 2023-24 season with Kent Stowell’s Swan Lake. Every element of this production was crafted to keep audiences on the edge of their seats, from the masterful choreography, stunning costumes by Paul Tazewell, and off-kilter scenic design by Ming Cho Lee, to the undeniably iconic score brought to life by the world-famous PNB Orchestra. Considered by many to be the greatest classical ballet of all time, Swan Lake provides the ultimate challenge for dancers: the dual role of Odette, trapped in the body of a white swan until an oath of true love sets her free; and Odile, the “Black Swan” temptress. Swan Lake runs for 10 performances, February 2 through 11. Tickets start at just $38. (Swan Lake will also stream digitally from February 15 through 19: Digital access is available by subscription only.) For tickets and additional information, contact the Pacific Northwest Ballet Box Office at 206.441.2424, online 24/7 at PNB.org, or in person at 301 Mercer Street. TICKET INFORMATION Tickets to PNB’s performances are available through the PNB Box Office: Phone - 206.441.2424 In Person - 301 Mercer Street at Seattle Center Online (24/7) - PNB.org Subject to availability, tickets are also available 90 minutes prior to each performance at McCaw Hall. (Advance tickets through the PNB Box Office are strongly suggested for best prices and greatest availability.) Tickets for the live performances of Swan Lake are $38 - $210. Groups of ten or more may enjoy discounts up to 20% off regular prices: Contact Group Sales Manager Julie Jamieson at 206.441.2416 or JulieJ@PNB.org for ticketing assistance. (Group discounts are not valid on lowest-priced tickets and may not be combined with other offers.) PNB’s digital presentation of Swan Lake (February 15 – 19) is available by subscription only ($160 for remainder of the 23-24 season). For additional information about special ticket offers including The Pointe, Beer & Ballet night, Pay-What-You-Can, TeenTix, senior/student rush tickets and more, visit PNB.org/offers. Caveat Emptor: Like many performing arts, PNB struggles with ticket resellers. At their most mundane, third-party sites buy up less expensive tickets and sell them for a profit. At their most dastardly, they sometimes sell invalid tickets at inflated prices. To enjoy the ballet at the best prices available, always purchase tickets directly from PNB. Suspected ticket scams should be reported to the Better Business Bureau. Health & Safety: At this time, masks are encouraged but not required as part of the PNB audience experience. For details and current information regarding PNB’s health and safety policies, visit PNB.org/Health. For info on McCaw Hall accessibility, visit PNB.org/Accessibility. The show must go on: Pacific Northwest Ballet is committed to honoring its performance calendar. Performances will not be cancelled for sleet, snow, or Seattle traffic. In the unlikely event that the status of a performance does change, an announcement will be posted on PNB.org. SPECIAL EVENTS PNB CONVERSATIONS & DRESS REHEARSAL Thursday, February 1, 5:30 pm Nesholm Family Lecture Hall at McCaw Hall Join PNB Associate Artistic Director Kiyon Ross, in conversation with a panel of Prince Siegfrieds (casting TBA). PNB Conversations offer in-depth interviews with artists involved in putting our repertory on stage. Attend the Conversations event only or stay for the dress rehearsal of Swan Lake. Tickets (suggested donation of $25) are available through the PNB Box Office. BALLET TALK Nesholm Family Lecture Hall at McCaw Hall Join dance historian Doug Fullington for a 30-minute introduction to each performance, including discussions of choreography, music, history, design, and the process of bringing ballet to the stage. One hour before performances. FREE for ticketholders. (There will be no Meet the Artist post-show Q&As for the run of Swan Lake.) ABOUT THE BALLET Swan Lake Music: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Op. 20, 1875 – 1876) Choreography: Kent Stowell Staging: Francia Russell (after Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov) Scenic Design: Ming Cho Lee Costume Design: Paul Tazewell Lighting Design: Randall G. Chiarelli Original Production Premiere: February 20, 1877, Imperial Ballet, Moscow, choreography by Julius Reisinger; restaged January 15, 1895, Imperial Ballet, St. Petersburg, choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov Stowell/Russell Production Premiere: October 1, 1976, Frankfurt Ballet Pacific Northwest Ballet Premiere: April 8, 1981; new production September 25, 2003 Running Time, Live: Three hours, including two intermissions Running Time, Digital: Approximately two hours and ten minute Swan Lake is considered by many to be the greatest classical ballet of all time. With its fantastical plot filled with romance, sorcery, and betrayal, Swan Lake offers dancers the ultimate challenge of a dual role: Odette, trapped in the body of a swan while awaiting an oath of true love to set her free; and Odile, the temptress daughter of Baron von Rothbart, who plots the downfall of Odette’s true love, Siegfried. Pacific Northwest Ballet’s 1981 production was a significant milestone as the first full-length ballet re-created for the Company. The current production of Kent Stowell’s Swan Lake, in a revised staging and featuring new designs, premiered in 2003 to open PNB’s inaugural season in Marion Oliver McCaw Hall. Swan Lake has inspired countless choreographers, who, in their own productions, seek to extend the ideas and meanings suggested in the work of its creators: composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. Tchaikovsky composed his score for Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet in 1877, but it was not until Petipa and Ivanov’s St. Petersburg production of 1895 that Swan Lake took the form we know today. The original 1877 Moscow production, now generally regarded as a failure, actually achieved mild success and saw more performances over more years than most ballets premiered on the Moscow stage. Tchaikovsky longed for a successful revival of his first ballet, but died in 1893, and a memorial concert in St. Petersburg the next year included a revival of Swan Lake Act II, the first lakeside scene, with new choreography by Lev Ivanov, ballet master Marius Petipa’s assistant. The performance was a success and plans were laid for a revival of the entire ballet in 1895. Ivanov choreographed Act IV, the second lakeside scene, and Petipa supplied dances for Acts I and III. Although Petipa succeeded with his choreographic contribution, Ivanov’s lakeside acts provided the images by which Swan Lake has become iconic The 1895 revival of Swan Lake has served as the basis for nearly every production since then. The dual role of Odette/Odile remains a coveted challenge for dancers and is broad enough in concept to sustain an endless variety of interpretations. Following tradition, choreographers often have revisited Swan Lake, for the ballet lends itself generously to new stagings and new interpretations. Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Swan Lake dates from 1981, when Mr. Stowell and Ms. Russell mounted here the production they had first created for the Frankfurt Ballet in 1975. Preserving the best of the St. Petersburg original as it has come down to us through England’s Royal Ballet, Ms. Russell researched and staged what has long been regarded as the soul of Swan Lake—nearly all of Ivanov’s Act II, where music and dance are sublimely fused. Petipa’s Act I pas de trois and Act III Black Swan pas de deux were also retained. To enhance the story line, and following in the path of many choreographers, Mr. Stowell made important changes in the order of the musical numbers. He also re-choreographed most of Act I, the national dances in Act III, and all of Act IV, rescuing the usually forgotten last act with a radiant pas de deux and giving the conclusion dramatic power and unity. [Excerpted from notes by Doug Fullington. Click here for complete program notes.] FUN FACTOIDS: FEATHERS FOR THE FLOCK Swan Lake is the quintessential classical ballet, and producing this staggering production is no small feat. All of its elaborate costumes, including headpieces, bodices, tutus, and accessories, were made by the acclaimed PNB Costume Shop. One tutu can take up to 200 hours of labor and costs thousands of dollars, but once constructed, it will be used for hundreds of performances and fit many dancers with multiple sets of hook-and-eye closures. PNB’s current Swan Lake costumes were designed in 2003 by Paul Tazewell (Hamilton) and have been meticulously maintained and repaired as necessary in the years since. (The Seattle Times called the iconic tutus “as complex, and as beautiful, as a swan’s wing.”) For the 2022 run of Swan Lake, the PNB Costume Shop refurbished the production’s tacked tutus (so named because all the layers of tulle are tacked together by hand) and created 42 new bodices for the PNB Company dancers and Professional Division students (from the PNB School) dancing in the large corps of swans. (There are 24 swans on stage during a performance, but multiple costumes are created to fit multiple dancers.) The costume shop put in 1,900 hours producing the bodices, including 84 hours spent hand-sewing buttons and closures, and over 300 hours hand-painting feathery detail work. The project also entailed over 60 hours of fittings. The cost of rebuilding and refurbishing PNB’s swans and additional Swan Lake costumes in 2022 came to approximately $100,000; PNB plans to see these iconic costumes on stage for many more years to come.

Generally, younger people don't subscribe, but here they may be targeting single ticket buyers. @uptowner, are you a subscriber? I think the only way they'd tie age to a person is if they're part of the young people's group or have used the student discount. Or, if they have senior discounts, that would generally be flagged in someone's account.

ABT has more in common with most workplaces of its size than it has differences.

i just finished reading Patrick Stewart's memoir, "Making It So." What an era to be part of British theater! He's in his '80's, and a lot of his contemporaries and older idols have died, and it's easy to think of him as from a younger generation. He performed with so many greats, working his way up in the British theater. Most of the book is full of appreciation and generosity, but he doesn't pull punches the few times he describes situations where people were mean and power-hungry. One of these was when he was part of The Old Vic company. which was touring three plays headlined by Vivien Leigh and directed by Robert Helpmann in his post-dancing career. He gives Helpmann credit for his renown as a director and for having helped to great a safe space for gay people at The Old Vic. But he also described what a snob Helpmann was to the people he felt were beneath his attention, and he appeared to have had a PhD from the same school of making friends and influencing people that Jerome Robbins did: "By the end of the second week, those of us in small roles came to understand that Helpmann had no idea who we were and no interest in learning. If he wanted to make an adjustment in the staging, he would yell, 'You, over there! No, not you, you fool, you, the other other!' Or if he wanted to be a little more specific: 'You in the green shirt, horrible color, you're standing too close to Miss Leigh. Move! And you in the red time--go stand with green shirt.'" (p181). Then Stewart tells tells a short and sweet story about how Queen Salote of Tonga came backstage after a performance and wanted to be introduced to the cast. It could have ended a lot worse for Helpmann, but it was delicious nonetheless, and no one was fooled. I now have to go see the X-Men movies. I had no idea he was in them.

Almost no children in the non-professional track continue in ballet, whether by choice or because they are not accepted. The children in the Nutcracker are usually too young to be on that track. This is true across company schools, where there can be parallel tracks for high-level, but non-professional teenagers. That’s true at PNB, where the Professional Division is a 1-2 year program. SAB starts asking kids from across the country to stay for the year-round, pre-professional program when they are young teenagers, which creates that division early.

I'm always reminded of the scene in Clueless where Cher asks Lucy speak to the gardener in Mexican, and Lucy storms out, responding "I'm not Mexican," with Josh telling Cher that Lucy is from El Salvador. I also remember a documentary I saw years ago about Afro-Cuban social dance, in which a Flamenco teacher looked down her nose at Afro-Cuban dance, while talking about the superiority of European-based Flamenco. The exact origins of Flamenco are a bit murky like a lot of oral/song/dance traditions, but the mail influences were migration from India, the Roma in southern Spain, Sephardic Jews, and Moors, all of the Others (post-Moorish rule) in Spain, not the white, sanitized versions on Franco-sponsored Spanish TV. The history of European colonization of the Americas, and the importation of slaves from Africa, is as fraught in the Caribbean, and Central and South America as it is in North America, in addition to modern national borders.. While there are two common dominant official languages, Spanish and Portuguese, that doesn't mean that there is cross-racial and cross-ethnic national identification, except maybe during the football World Cup, even when confronted with prejudice from a different dominant culture. I think that's why for every two people who came from the Caribbean, Central, and/or South America, there are three opinions. Few people want to be boxed into an affiliation or definition of someone else's choosing. Almost every survey -- I don't remember the census specifically -- asks to differentiate Non-Hispanic Caucasian/White from Hispanic Caucasian/White. It's up to the respondent to check the boxes. Edited to add: and self-identification also extends to ballet. There was a PNB Zoom call in which several PNB ballerinas spoke about their heritage, or the term Amanda Morgan used in this blog post* of interviews by Amanda Morgan, Latine: https://www.pnb.org/blog/recognizing-hispanic-heritage-month-at-pnb/ (I cannot find the link to the recorded Zoom, and it might no longer be linked on the PNB site.) Edited again: the link to all of the PNB Is Listening recordings was on the bottom of the blog page: PNB titled this blog post Celebrating Our LatinX, Chicana, & Hispanic Dancers I think Amanda Morgan articulates it best: “Being an Afro-Indigenous woman I’ve found myself getting caught between how I can identify, and how people automatically identify me. My mother is from Dominican Republic and my father is Puerto Rican, so I’m full of many mixtures that originated on Caribbean islands. Growing up in Tacoma, there were not very many Puerto Ricans or Dominicans, so I always felt like I never fit in any mold. I wasn’t black enough to be black, was too black to be Latinx, and didn’t have indigenous ancestors from North America. Yet, with this revisitation of a civil rights movement, people are identifying fully how they want to, and learning their roots. I’ve taken the time to learn mine, and it has influenced so much of my work and how I interact in my life. I have ancestors that were conquerors from Europe, some brought as slaves from Africa, and the indigenous people of my homeland, the Taíno and Arawak people. They all make up who I am, and I cannot identify as just one thing. Being able to have so much history and culture to identify with used to seem so overwhelming as a kid, but now I’m so grateful and proud to have come from so much. It’s a beautiful thing, and a beautiful thing about the Latinx community.” At about 11:30, Clara Ruf Maldonado talks about tokenism, in companies and on posters.

I noticed from the credits that the staging was done by Nilas Martins and Christian Tworzyanski, and the casting on the screen matches what volcanohunter posted, although not broken down by movement. I disliked most of the costumes. The deconstructed bow at the sides of the First Movement women looked like something from an alien species in the Star Trek franchise. The Second Movement women's dresses looked like they weren't finished in time. Simple can be fine, but I think they were too much of a contrast with the First Movement, and I didn't see what differentiated the lead from the corps. The lead woman's bodice in the Third Movement had a nicer cut, in my eyes, to the corps', but the cups were distracting. I loved the design and cut of the Fourth Movement, but the gray, gah. It was like winter had arrived, when that movement usually lights up the stage. And that movement needs a go-for-broke and competitive yet playful approach. It's hard not to miss Damien Woetzel in it, but I've seen many a brighter performance. You can really see the originals through some of these performances, especially the fantastic First Movement soloist role made for Gloria Govrin, Patricia McBride's in the Second Movement, and Villella's in the Third Movement, in which Davide Dato showed the beautiful, springy jumps in the solo. You can also see why Hayden felt that Balanchine had not given his best to her, especially compared to the other three women's roles. I loved the leotards in Concertante.

To clarify, I mean Balanchine's original choreography, not the Petipa, which I assume was what, or closer to what, Danilova was dancing. The style had changed radically since Danilova's, and Hayden's is much closer to the way it's danced today than Hayden's was to Danilova's.

Not recent news, but a few weeks ago, Kurt Frohman posted the first part of the Sugar Plum Fairy variation to his Instagram account. In it Melissa Hayden performs the original choreography, with turning rondes de jambes on the quarter. It replaced the turns coming forward up the center. NYCB revived it for at least the one performance I saw it, and I went back to see if I had notated anywhere what performance that was. I keep envisioning Kyra Nichols doing it, but I'm not certain, because I didn't asterisk it or write down a note. But what I did find was that in 2001, I saw Ryan Cardea as Nephew.

Casting is up for the final post-Christmas performances; https://www.pnb.org/nutcracker/ Here's the link to the downloadable Excel sheet: 2023 12 23 Nutcracker.xlsx I can't stop watching the digital performance. Iliesiu is a magnificent Sugar Plum Fairy, and there was great dancing throughout. There were also wonderful character performances. I loved that Ginabel Peterson's Mother was more annoyed with Fritz than the Father. Larry Lancaster and a PNB student Clara Kang-Crosby were lovely as the Grandparents, charming without overacting. A highlight for me was Luther DeMyer's Mother Ginger, very elegant and demure, and so different than any other Mother Ginger I've seen over 50 years.

Regardless of whether Employee of the Month criteria are objective, there is a formal structure around the awards. They're aren't spontaneous, and they aren't announced in a personal way, here from a personal, not an institutional social media account. For the most part, ballet company management makes its public statements and/or gestures by giving promotions and celebrating major anniversaries for principal dancers, retirements. and milesones They can make formal statements at the time, or if they're prompted by journalists, which often happens with features. Whelan almost doesn't cross a line by marking the milestone and giving a Brava, which is like a combination of "Congratulations" and "It's about time." I think she does with the complement in the sandwich, but I don't think I'd get worked up about it if it happened here. The NYCB account marked the historic first in a way that we'd expect: https://www.instagram.com/p/C04ucv7soLc/ Generally speaking, management usually toes the line, and it's the choreographers and class teachers who give it away more vocally. Class teachers are either paying attention to, by giving corrections or asking dancers to come up front to demonstrate, or they aren't; our interpretations may or may not be accurate. A lot of choreographers don't hold back, though: at the panel discussion/demo before a Forsythe program at PNB, Forsythe (half-?) jokingly asked Jahna Franziskonis if she wanted to come to Frankfurt. Jacques d'Amboise lit up like a Christmas tree watching/coaching Lesley Rausch in "Diamonds." All of the attention and body language, in addition to speech, often lets the watcher know how the person in the front of the room feels.

I thought the second act was fantastic across-the-board: acting, mime, choreography, and story-telling. I didn't understand the point or trajectory of most of the third act variations, but part of it was the frustrating editing choices. The Prayer variation, choreography and costume, seemed like it was dropped in from another ballet. It might have had a chance if it were done for a dancer like Dowell in a different costume. I loved the pirate variation, and I wish that I could see PNB's Kuu Saguraki in it, but we have the Balanchine co-production with San Francisco Ballet here, and it's the season's last rep in May-June. I loved Jerome Kaplan's costumes (aside from Prayer). Watching them, I remembered the PNB/SFB costumer designer Roberta Guidi di Bagno describing that she was warned that the budget was a lot smaller than she'd have in Europe, and, as Tim Gunn would say, she made it work. They're quite beautiful and PNB could never have afforded the costumes at La Scala, but it would have been nice to see what she would have been able to do with a bigger budget. I was able to bring it up just now, which is a few hours after it ended, but there's still nothing on the medici.tv site I see that says anything about how long it will be up. It's definitely worth seeing. .

I remember Myrna Kamara, too. I didn't see Debra Austin at NYCB, but with Pennsylvania Ballet when they came to BAM.

Casting is up for the last week of performances, which begins on Tuesday, December 18 and ends with the matinee on Sunday, December 24: https://www.pnb.org/nutcracker/ Here's the link to the downloadable Excel file: 2023 12 14 Nutcracker.xlsx

Thank you, @cobweb!

Are the partial-view seats the ones in the Fifth Ring -- if they're still calling it that -- the top-most section on the sides?

If they played it during the summer, they could market "Christmas in July*" to tourists who weren't in NYC in December, and to *crafters, because July 1 (Canada) and July 4 (US) starts the deluge of "If you don't start knitting/crocheting/crafting your holiday gifts now, you are going to be one stressed out puddle with aching hands by the beginning of December." They could get snow cone vendors for the lobby, summer program kids if there are roles for them in Ratmansky's version, and they could sell any leftover ornaments and other Nutcracker souvenirs from the year before. It could become a new tradition.

It's not usual for companies to go out of Christmas season, but pre-pandemic at least, and not counting seasons that started around US Thanksgiving and trickled over into New Year's week or galas, Paris Opera Ballet performed the original double-bill -- Nutcracker and Iolanthe -- in late Spring, and, as stand-alones, Northern Ballet started the season early, by 10 November, New Zealand Ballet started their run in October, Zurich Ballet performed it in February and March and at the end of October (different years), Royal Ballet stretched it to mid-January, Australian Ballet performed it in September, ABT brought it to Hollywood in September on tour, and the Mariinsky performed it in April and May as well as mid-late November, just one or two performances amidst their rep. I was always surprised to find these.

Casting is up for the third and fourth weekend (scroll): https://www.pnb.org/nutcracker/ Link to downloadable Excel file: 2023 12 05 Nutcracker.xlsx

Rollofson grew up here -- across the Lake -- and went to the PNB school. I first noticed him when he was a tween or teen, and he danced Chinese Tiger in the Stowell/Sendak Nutcracker. He left PNB and danced on Broadway before returning to ballet. In 2017 he joined BalletMet, but I'm not sure if that was straight from Broadway.

Sean Rollofson! He used to dance with Pacific Northwest Ballet and was a terrific dancer.