Helene

Cappelle's immediate follow-up tweet was:

Where in the West are we talking about? In North America, there is only one major or medium-sized company that is a classical company, and ABT didn't start out that way. Nor did Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Maybe National Ballet of Canada started that way -- I could never follow their narrative -- but nearly every professional North American company is a neoclassical company and most of those started as a neoclassical company. Their students have a wide range of training, and very few of them started in the schools at aged 8, and even for those who did, until they are at least 13, they are not on a pre-professional track. (There is no comparison between the kids who perform on the stage of the Mariinsky or Bolshoi in children's roles and their same-age counterparts in the US. Most of the 8-year olds trying out in the "Ballerina" movie looked more professional than almost all 12-year-olds who perform with their companies.) If the companies are big enough, they do some version of some classics, but that doesn't make them classical companies. Some are lucky to have an AD like Ib Andersen who can make coherent versions of classical ballet for them and who, like Martins, Balanchine, and Tomasson were classically trained. Just about all of their reps have some proportion of contemporary, or what is called contemporary, ie. 25-year-old Kylian, like the ubiquitous "Petite Mort" and almost 30-year-old Tharp ("In the Upper Room") and you can't move sideways on the schedule without bumping into one of them. Much of what I see in the contemporary realm is After Kylian, since After Forsythe proved to be too difficult. In Paris, they seem to have two camps: the contemporary/once-contemporary and the classical/neoclassical, but they are trained in a very specific technique and are honed to look a certain way. It's hard to keep track of many of the other companies: one moment Plisetskaya is running a company and the next moment it's Nacho Duato. (At least he changed it in name, in dancers, and in technique, so that it was never false advertising.) As far as Gergiev being fired, it seems from watching Europe, the only way anyone gets fired is if they get on the wrong side of an entrenched bureaucracy or if the government changes and will only fund something fundamentally different, like in Spain. In North America, take a few minutes to read what our NY crowd says about Martins and McKenzie: the only reason they aren't considered anti-christs is that people think they're too incompetent to be one. Gergiev brings in the money and the donors and is a friend and supporter of Mr. Putin, the ultimate Chairman of the Board. One of the few things that gets an AD fired in North America is spending money in a way the Board has an issue with, and I don't see that being Gergiev's Achilles heel.

I think that most of the people who are going to see the Mikhailovsky, aside from when Osipova/Vasiliev are cast, are there to see the company. If they bought tickets to Shapran or Bondareva, they'll have to wait for a different tour: YID posted a link in the Mariinsky White Nights thread to an article in the Russian press that confirms that both Shapran and Bondareva have moved to the Mariinsky.

Crowd funding sites enable small projects to get funding, but they have never been exclusively for them, or there would be a formal limit.

Today's Concert de Paris was dedicated to his memory. I'm sure there will be many more.

95% to target for MMDG, with a little less than a day and half to go. Since the campaign is set for flexible funding, if they raise the last $3,747 by tomorrow night to make their goal, they'll save almost 4% on fees (~ $3K), since the indiegogo fee for campaigns that meet their goal is 4%, vs. 9% if they don't (less 25% discount for being a registered 501 © (3)).

Considering that Mathilde K's response was to posts up thread on Ballet Alert!, and there's no way to filter out social media posts automatically, it would pretty much mean staying off discussion boards and the internet. Avoiding social media is like avoiding cigarette smoke in cities: you can stay in your own house/apartment, but don't go out on the streets because people are having smoking breaks, even if that's 10 feet from your bus stop.

Different production, different colleagues, and I'm sure Semionova fans would be happy to see her again. Shapran and Bondareva not being on the roster is a big deal. I look forward to the announcements of where they're landing.

The timing doesn't make a decision any more or less abrupt, and what is known to people in theater isn't relevant to the general audience, especially those who have bought tickets based on casting. (Although, by now, expecting to see him is more of a gamble the more he withdraws for whatever reason.) Timing is relevant to the people who are involved in the production, since it tells them how long they have to adjust to different casting.

I'm not so sure how great this is. My understanding is that either a theater is equipped for transmission or an independent producer has to bring equipment along. Unless the Arts Council is planning to fund the filming and transmission infrastructure -- in which case they are investing in the arts for everywhere in the country there are compatible cinemas, not just ballet and opera but anything that is performed in these theaters -- it seems to me to be a huge burden to place on companies without the equipment or the lure to independent producers, most of whom seem to be in France. It's like blaming the poor for being poor.

Many of the variations were given to auxiliary characters, who were expected to be virtuosos, just as the two men's solos in the first act of "La Sylphide" were danced by members of the village, not James and Gurn.

[Admin beanie on] A sentence that starts with "Rumor is," unless it is a quote with a citation from as established ballet professional in a public statement, is the pretty much a definition of unofficial news on Ballet Alert! The opinions of self-styled experts (or "experts") are in the same category as opinions from other discussion boards. Don't post them. [Admin beanie off]

There's no reason for DC not to become a ballet town in the tradition of Houston and Melbourne to throw money at it and/or buy things that already exist. However, I think the Kennedy Center is smarter, financially and artistically, to import lots of different world-class companies while funding the Suzanne Farrell Ballet.

As Doug Fullington has pointed out many times, the notations for the ballets can differ widely in the amount of detail provided, the years notated, and the number of notators working on a given score. Also, dancers' bodies have changed since Petipa's time, the fast footwork and tempi of his time are not comfortable on most of today's long-limbed dancers, nor do they support the extensions that have become ubiquitous, and dancers aren't willing to be as imperfect. He's also noted that reconstructions are collaborations with dancers. Perhaps in Russia they are dictated and the highly trained professionals just do as they are told without giving any feedback, but in a video of Tsiskaridze rehearsing a role (not reconstruction) just before his contract wasn't renewed, his sulking and body language told a different story, and reminded me of the scene in the (fictional) "Turning Point" where Emma is rehearsing the "new" ballet (which is actually from an Ailey work). The reconstructed versions often look simpler with more repetition, but what's particularly striking are the male variations that look like they came from the Bournonville rep, not surprising since Bournonville and Petipa came from the 19th century French School and share the same DNA. Watching them you can see where Balanchine was coming from in terms of tempi and emphasis, and why Patricia Wilde was necessary for Balanchine to create "Divertimento No.15," "Square Dance," and the often-dropped Third Movement from "Western Symphony" (dropped because of difficulty): she had the body type and strength of technique that the Italians brought to St. Petersburg.

According to Ismene Brown's recent blog post, which is linked in the Sergei Polunin thread, Moskovsky Komsomolets has reported his guest artist status, and while reports in the mainstream media can be incorrect, it is official news of his status. She summarizes, translates and comments on sources for the latest information about Polunin.

Lopatkina is on the record as being opposed to the reconstructed version of "Sleeping Beauty," just as Tsiskaridze is a "highly trained professional" and was outspoken against the reconstructions presented by the Bolshoi. Doug Fullington is a very busy man, not only with ballet -- as Peter Boal's assistant, preparing "Giselle" for June, working with Ratmansky and Marian Smith in Munich on the new "Paquita," planning future stagings, reconstructions, lec demos, etc. -- and with his Tudor Choir, with upcoming performances on July 24-25 in St. Benedict, Oregon at the Abbey Bach Festival, then in Portland on July 26, and finally in Seattle on July 27. I'm not sure when he sleeps.

There aren't that many people who can read the notation. From what sources was this criticism based?

Tiler Peck appeared on Broadway in the "Music Man" when she was 11, so she's going home to Broadway.

NZ Ballet just tweeted:

It's not any more surprising that Tharp chose ABT people any more than it is that Wheeldon chose NYCB people: they were both affiliated with the respective companies. Tharp became Associate AD when she merged the core of her troop into ABT, and Roberts joined her next group in the early 00's. She did choose former NYCB dancer Benjamin Bowman for "Movin' Out."

I want a dancer whose movement radiates from her core. I don't care how long her legs are or how close to her ear she can place her toe shoe. Many thanks for all of your reports, Birdsall!

I agree, but I don't think that Dawson is extending ballet beyond Forsythe any more than Martins, Tomasson, or Stowell have extended ballet directly from Balanchine. Pite, though, did something different with "Emergence": the women on pointe come out of the Forsythe ballet gene pool, while the men come out of the more dominant European strains -- from her experience with Nederlands Dans Theatre. Instead of trying to create a hybrid of the two, she gives them equally masterful choreography and respect, and rather than appearing as a cross-over character, who escapes from the non-so-fun/non-pizza-eating people on the other side, the woman in pants and point shoes in the quartet with three men co-exists peacefully within the hive, with both the men and the women. It's only when the men try to infiltrate the female corps that they''re slapped around. I think that's a pretty radical approach.

Conductor and composer Lorin Maazel has died at age 84. In opera he ran the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Vienna State Opera and composed "1984," presented in London and La Scala. He started as a violinist, and he conducted many of the world's great orchestras. At 79 he launched the Castleton Festival with his wife in Virginia, where he died today. Rest in peace, Maestro. http://www.castletonfestival.org/news/item/maestro-lorin-maazel-19302014

By definition the direct connections are getting older and the stagers are getting to be people who weren't coached by Balanchine. Peter Boal, fo example, who joined the company when Balanchine died. I also think that Forsythe was considered the last choreographer to extend Balanchine's trajectory, but he jumped off that path a number of years ago.

I enjoyed reading this book a lot. It read like listening to someone tell his story sitting by a fireplace, where repetition feels very natural. I felt that he talked/wrote about what was important to him and what he wanted to articulate. That wasn't, though, detailed descriptions of learning and creating roles. It was a very personal book.