Helene

When Olivier Wevers founded W'him Whim, he mentioned two goals among many: to have a full-time roster of dancers and to present programs of other choreographers. He was still dancing with PNB and his own career as a choreographer was still young. the economic crisis was still strongly felt in Seattle. Didn't he know how unlikely this was under the best of circumstances? I think most of us thought he was crazy. We were wrong. Last season, he had his full-time roster of dancers. This season, with Shindig, from September 11-13 and 16-19 at the intimate Erickson Theatre on Capitol Hill, Whim W'him will present its first program with outside choreographers, requested by the dancers in an annual collective discussion: Joshua Peugh, Maurya Kerr, and Ihsan Rustem. I was privileged to be able to see an early rehearsal of Rustem's new work. Dancers and choreographers are incredibly generous to let people see them as they are working things out. The movement vocabulary challenges this fine group of dancers, and even at this early stage, it was clear this was a work well worth the price of the ticket even if it was the only work on the program. Watching Rustem demonstrate was bittersweet, as I never got to see his Europe-based dancing career. Wevers will present a new work in November as part of Seattle Symphony's Music of Remembrance Series on November 8 at the Nordstrom Recital Hall, and Grand Rapids Ballet will perform his "A Midsummer Night's Dream" October 8-10 at the Cornish Playhouse.

That will be a lovely transition and give her a year to get up to speed including the full audition and admissions cycle.

The upgrade is complete! Please post any new issues you see, if there are any.

Couched in a "Buy tickets" and "Donate" email today were these tidbits about "Nutcracker": Fugate and Boal were among the few SAB -> NYCB -> Principal Dancers who started in the "regular" track at SAB and trained there from the time they were children, and they would have performed (or at least observed) more children's roles than those who came as Professional Division students. There was an iconic photo of her as a child being taught by Balanchine, but I can't find it online. I remember from Christopher d'Amboise's memoir: "One year the Nephew/Prince, the next year the bed boy."

I'm about to ask for the upgrade to begin. We will be in the queue, but there's no guarantee about how long it will take to process. In the meantime, if you are posting a long one and/or important one, I'd suggest copying it into Word or a text program, in case it is lost in the upgrade.

The are student recitals and there are student recitals. People travel to see the SAB workshops. The lec-demo is Tuesday, March 8: http://purchase.tickets.com/buy/TicketPurchase?orgid=30247&group_id=606561&schedule=list Both weekends are concurrent with the "Director's Choice" program: Justin Peck's "Year of the Rabbit," Alejandro Cerrudo's "Little Mortal Jump," and Paul Gibson's "Rush." You could do PNB "Director's Choice" Saturday matinee Mar 19, Kidd Pivot in "Betroffenheit" (Crystal Pite's company) Saturday night, and either or both "Corsaire's" Sunday afternoon. http://www.ontheboards.org/performances/betroffenheit http://purchase.tickets.com/buy/TicketPurchase?orgid=30247&group_id=606561&schedule=list http://www.pnb.org/Season/15-16/DirectorsChoice/ Tickets to the Pite are $40, including fees. The Moore Theatre is downtown. PNB will likely have some discounts for "Director's Choice,"

In this Balancing Pointe interview, Megan Fairchild asked Sara Mearns about her career high points, and starting at the ~12:00 mark she talks about dancing with Fairchild's husband, Andy Veyette, in the first performance after Albert Evans died. At about 15:25 she answers about low points by describing what working with Evans and his loss means to her, and Fairchild speaks about this as well. http://balancing-pointe.com/93-ask-megan-megan-interviews-sara-mearns/

We need to do a last-minute upgrade request which should resolve some issues we've been seeing on the site. We can't schedule the exact time: it can be done anytime after the request is in, and you may experience errors or lose your posts done just before the upgrade. I'll post when the request is made and when we receive confirmation that it's complete, änd there may be functionality I need to tweak/turn off right afterwards. I'm going to request it ~9am PDT/12pm EDT on Wednesday, September 2.

Amy Watson will be guesting with Oregon Ballet Theatre (Portland) in October in Act III of Napoli. We rarely get to see RDB dancers in the Pacific Northwest. I think the last time was two or three years ago as Sugar Plum Fairy and Cavalier in the Goh Ballet's "Nutcracker" in Vancouver.

Yes, Susan Jones staged it. Act III was when the video came through. Until then ,it was a black screen with beautiful audio.

I don't have full access to "The Sunday Times," but the amount they are showing for free quotes Filin, including at least one from the documentary: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/world_news/Europe/article1600305.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2015_08_29 Ratmansky could have told him that, but some things, you just have to learn for yourself. (Thanks to a heads up tweet by Marina Harss)

I'm trying to decide if the new AD did it on purpose to keep his dancers from being poached, or if he's kicking himself because the ones who are less likely to fit into his new/old contemporary rep weren't seen and poached. Go, Diana, go! Yes, she saved the day and is dancing up a storm! No, wait, she didn't, and now she's storming up a storm! Hmm, second thoughts, and all's well. And many virtual bravos for the violin soloist in the pas de deux.

Thank you so much, volcanohunter!

Yes. We're having the same conversation on the video thread: http://balletalert.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/40570-sat-29-august-ashtons-sylvia-live-from-argentina/#entry361101 It's been reported at least in Canada, the US, and the UK.

Thank you for the update!

I'm getting audio when it's not buffering, but as for video, all I'm getting is a black screen. I've tried this on Windows and Mac, Firefox, Chrome, etc.

Old school Flamenco singers have that quality. A lot of Nueva Flamenco singing is toned down, with the edges smoothed out, especially when amplified and/or orchestrated, and a lot of what sounds flat and unmelodic about many of the older and/or puro singers is sung more melodically by contemporary singers. My Flamenco teacher grimaced when I told him that I loved Agujetas' singing. He said it was too raw, which is the quality I like best about it.

I wish I could have seen it -- thank you so much for describing it in so much detail!

There are a lot of different ways to approach social media. Here is one in a tweet from two hours ago from soprano Elizabeth Caballero, who, among other things, uses social media to keep in contact with colleagues who lead the same traveling life that she does:

Diaghilev couldn't dance, and he couldn't paint. Jenkins was an impresario, much like Diaghilev. As General Director of Seattle Opera, he made careers. He didn't have to be able to sing to be able to recognize whether the vocal output was good, whether the singer had been properly trained/had solid technique, and whether the singer had a shot at a career, because, unlike a ballet Artistic Director, he didn't have to teach anyone to sing or perform, and he traveled enough to see performances around the world in all kinds/sizes/ranks of opera houses that he knew who was available and how to rank and evaluate what he heard. Not being a singer was an advantage to him in many ways: he didn't have confirmation bias based on his own training, he didn't favor singers in his own image, like many ballet artistic directors do their dancers, and he wasn't disproportionately or inappropriately dazzled by technique. He was broad in his tastes -- he has no patience for the Tebaldi vs. Callas vs. Milanov wars, because he prized each for what she brought to the table -- and the only things he seemed to be against were singers who were 1. boring and 2. bad colleagues (which he learned over time).

This is the quote, She specifically ties "all this media" to social media with her last sentence. If she hadn't qualified her thought with "I don't have Facebook or Twitter or any of that" -- all of which is social media -- or if she had mentioned any of "TV interviews and appearances, magazine articles, book and other media formats" I would agree. Then she would be a hypocrite, because her career, especially her early career, had lots of media coverage and interviews that supported her career. I don't know if she made TV appearances, outside the PBS presentations, because I didn't have a TV during that time.

Yuan Yuan Tan has one major audience, the local audience. Mathilde Froustey has two local audiences. Maria Kochetkova has many audiences from training/dancing in Russia, dancing in companies in England and the US, and doing numerous galas around the world. She is someone who feeds media regularly, which the other two do not and which begets more followers, especially with re-tweets that reach networks of readers.

Exactly. And while Fairchild is known in NYC, she is not a ballet "superstar": while few of the tourists who make up the bulk of the audience would have heard her name, many would recognize Copeland from "60 Minutes" and "Time Magazine" and the description would be believable, unlike for Fairchild. There was a big difference promoting Makarova and Kozlova in "On Your Toes."

Herrera talks about media exposure and ties it immediately into social media/self-promotion: "I don't have Facebook or Twitter or any of that." One of the underlying issues to Bujones statement is something that American dancers, musicians, and conductors raised for a very long time: they were not Russian or European and were not taken as seriously or given their due. (Unless they magically became Russian, like a good portion of the Ballets Russes.) Due to the Cold War, dancers with defection stories made big, mainstream media news. It would, indeed, have been interesting had there been social media around for the 20th century, because it can be a counter-argument *or* a complement to the mainstream media narrative. I bet Bujones would have had tens of thousands of followers.

So what is this topic -- "Speight Jenkins on 'What Makes a Great Opera Singer?' -- doing in the ballet forums? http://www.artsjournal.com/operasleuth/2015/08/what-makes-a-great-opera-singer.html I posted it her because of this comment, While my preferred aesthetic is closer to Balanchine's, if I substitute "movement quality" for "expression," I think the comment is as pertinent to ballet, especially as coaches get farther and farther away from Balanchine, Ashton, and Tudor and training seems to be more about technique than movement quality. To substitute a name, would anyone hire Lynn Seymour today?