Helene

Reading this thread saddens me, because we lost Barry Kerollis and Josh Spell at PNB in 2011. They were senior corps, and they both deserved promotions.

A new article on Misty Copeland with extensive quotes from "Washington Post" critic Sarah Kaufman: http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2015/07/02/3676508/misty-copeland-star-broke-ballet-color-barrier/

Because we can always be relied upon to give things back . (But it is nice when someone who isn't that known to US ballet fans is recognized.)

Possession is 90% of ownership, and if they don't let her back on the plane... [just kidding]

Herrera was also cast as Aurora in the most-publicized new production in many years, a role she danced in the LA preview. She opted not to dance the role, which is why Giselle was her farewell. Her last season didn't coincide with much of her standard rep, which was also centered around guest.

I'm not sure if your possibility is the likeliest, vipa, but it's a very strong one.

I am going to use kfw as a guinea pig. (The price of being a Moderator.) He has argued that Copeland lied by claiming to be the first black female soloist at ABT. I could look at this and post that by characterizing her action as such, raising it, and responding to the issue several times in several threads, it's a tactic right out of the Ken Starr playbook, one that has been used consistently by Fox News and much of the right-wing media: make a big issue out of a small or no issue and repeat it so that people hear it enough and start to doubt. However, kfw has posted on this site for a long time, and there are plenty of examples having nothing to do with race or Copeland in which he's expressed his personal standards for behavior, and his opinion on Copeland's claim is completely consistent with his standards and why it would be an important issue for him. As kfw also has said in other contexts, there's nothing mutually exclusive or incompatible about this, which makes both point-by-point rebuttals and whole-cloth assessments difficult to argue. There are a lot of intertwined and complex inputs that go into the equation. It's not simple to parse them out. I have no doubt that anyone who has followed this, any of the Copeland threads, and the ABT roster, performance, who-do-you-want-to-see-promoted, etc. threads, and has thought about it, has his or her own opinion about whether posts and posters are racist, deliberately or un-selfconsciously, or not racist based on what they've posted here, ie., the data. We know it when we see it, and we smell it when we smell it, or there's nothing to see, or there's no odor, but that doesn't translate very well in this format, unless we turn Ballet Alert! into most of the free-for-all comments sections on the internet. If Copeland has been following these threads, I hope she has had the option of a Big-Gulp-sized mimosa before hand. But I suspect if she has (read them), she's learned little that she didn't already know.

Another possibility is that people who support their favorites will exaggerate the flaws of his or her rivals, usually repeatedly, and on a discussion board, in multiple threads, to counter any argument to the contrary in support of those favorites.

kfw wrote, "As for saying something vindictive about Copeland, you give no examples because there are none." In the context of this discussion, he was talking about himself: he feels no one has given an example of him being vindictive about Copeland. I've made this warning before and this is my last: do not misrepresent what other people say or do not post.

That is not true uniformly: depending on the stager or choreographer, dancers have been asked to audition beyond company class. Plus, once chosen as part of a subset of candidates, work in the studio -- whether in style training or the actual choreography -- the dancers are often auditioning to be cast or to keep the role. A documentary aired on CBC on the making of Ratmansky's "Romeo and Juliet" for National Ballet of Canada shows this. An AD can push for dancers if there is a guest stager or choreographer, but an AD uses company class plus other factors -- whether the dancer picks up steps easily if needed, whether she or he works compatibly with or is appropriate physically for a dancer who is already chosen, his assessment of work ethic and current physical condition, etc. -- to cast. Many dancers are in a perpetual audition.

Copeland may be the only person on Ballet Alert! with more news about her than Kochetkova. I am convinced that MK owns one of those time shifting thingies that allow her to be in two places at once.

I suspect Copeland will shake it off.

The selective readings and straw man arguments have to stop. Now. If you follow the post, California did not say that Copeland's entire audience was underprivileged, although it took a few sentences to clarify context. The target audience for outreach is usually underprivileged people and/or people who have not been exposed to dance. Whether the participants will translate into box office at VIDF is a real question, because the transportation issues and costs between Vail and outreach areas are formidable, due to lack of housing, ridiculous hotel rates, and unreliable and costly public transportation, unlike in NYC, where the economically underprivileged members of Copeland's audience can take the subway from home for $6.00 round-trip (at full price). This, of course, assumes that immediate audience-building is the goal, not long-term exposure to dance, meeting the terms of educational grants or funds, and/or good will, and this is an assumption I would question. To assume that every black person is economically underprivileged is racist, and to assume that every black girl who is inspired by Copeland as a role model is poor is racist, but, not every economically underprivileged member of Copeland's audience is black or a minority, and not every mis-characterization, stereotype, and assumption about poor people is racist. Most are primarily classist, which is equally ugly and feeds into racism. For the majority of people in the US who only know of Copeland through the media and who are her potential new audience -- locals and others alike -- she is a curiosity: that's the purpose of the type of PR that's been done on her behalf.

I haven't seen a press release yet, but the following dancers have been added to the corps on PNB's website (images coming): Henry Cotton: trainee with San Francisco Ballet, then apprentice with Oregon Ballet Theatre. Cecilia Illiesiu: Carolina Ballet, from corps to Soloist. Madison Sugg: apprentice with Ballet West. People may remember her from her appearances as a PD. As noted in another thread, graduating PD Angeli Mamon is an apprentice, joining Nancy Casciano, Nicole Rizzitano, and Dylan Wald.

Very true. Goh Ballet has a lot of Asian students, too, judging from their participation in the Goh Ballet Nutcracker. In the last two decades at PNB: Batkhurel Bold is from Mongolia, as mentioned, Kaori Nakamura is from Japan, Le Yin is from China and came to PNB via the Houston Ballet talent train, Sokvannara Sar, now with Carolina Ballet, is from Cambodia -- he was discovered by Anne Bass performing classical Cambodian dance and then did a crash course at SAB -- and Americans Mara Vinson, James Moore, William Lin-Yee, Angelica Generosa, Eric Hipolito Jr. (now at Ballet Arizona), and I believe Noelani Pantastico and Christian Poppe are Asian American.

Vancouver is only one hour and a border crossing away from the US On the other hand, that could be said for much of the population of Canada.

That "affirmative action" is a negative speaks volumes, when the purpose was to level the playing field by recognizing how that field was stacked. That the definition of "political correctness" requires a judging qualifier (ex: "the avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes, of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.") when it was meant to invoke thoughtfulness and respect in expression, speaks many more.

Frances Chung was born in Vancouver, BC and trained at Goh Ballet: https://www.sfballet.org/company/dancers/principals/Frances_Chung

XV Tchaikovsky Competition winner Dmitry Masleev and other audience favorite Lucas Debargue, a jazz pianist/literature student turned classical pianist only four years ago, might have been able to play either the very original or Tchaikovsky's modified version without being booed off the stage, but I suspect anyone else would have had the same icy "we want what's familiar" reception that many gave to the Mariinsky "Sleeping Beauty" reconstruction.

I wondered about the other busts. Is Petipa there as well? ETA Hoffmann? The bells in "Coppelia" honored Balanchine, Delibes, and the production donor-sponsors in Seattle and San Francisco that made the co-production possible. I believe the mirror also had Alexandra Danilova's initials on the back, in her honor.

The controversy over "new" vs. "old" or "familiar" vs. "unfamiliar" isn't limited to ballet reconstructions. From "The Guardian", in the context of the XV Tchaikovsky Competition: http://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2015/jun/30/tchaikovsky-competition-gerstein-rubinstein

Dancers from the Spanish-speakimg Caribbean and South and Latin America are rarely included in the tallies. It's one of the quirk in how race is defined and constructed..

Unless you have links to interviews in which dancers have given their reasons for retiring roles or in which they disclose that they've turned down offers, do not post this info.

And I was visualizing Robert Helpmann as I typed Alexander Grant . Thank you for the correction!

[Admin beanie on] I've let these threads stray past our usual policies, because one of the tactics in conversations about race is immediate push back when anyone states that they think a statement or behavior is racist, which shuts down the conversation completely. I don't have to like the way the conversation is going, but I think it's an important one to have. However, too many of the last few pages of posts are either 1. readings of posts in which the context has been explained already, and, about which people have disagreed with the reading or 2. discussions about each other. Stop doing that. [Admin beanie off]