Helene

In case anyone missed the news from June 20 Links, Rex Harrington and his fiance Bob Hope are in Amazing Race Canada, which starts tonight. Heather Ogden tweeted her cheers:

Although you wouldn't always know it from reading Ballet Alert!, Macaulay is watching the same season that we are.

The video on the project page shows just how fragile the current ones are. $80K is an incredibly reasonable goal, considering the number costumes that covers.

Update: the MMDG costume project for "L'Allegro" crossed the $55K mark -- goal is $80K -- with a week to go.

A short three questions for Froustey in "Le Monde": Translated with Google Translate Original article

Ismene Brown translated a new, short interview with Filin in Izvestia about past, present, and future for her blog: http://www.ismeneb.com/Blog/Entries/2014/7/7_Filin_speaks_on_allergy_alarm%2C_healing%2C_and_forgiveness.html

Do not post any news about dancers (or rep or any other ballet-related issue) until the news comes from an official source. This is not new.

I wasn't able to see the year-end graduation program where PD news is printed in the program. In a Q&A Peter Boal said there was one (male) apprentice this year, and if he said the name, I missed it. This isn't "new" news, but PNB posted this to Facebook (with photo): After seeing him in rehearsal in Kyle Davis's "Sylvia" and in Next Step works, . Last year's sole apprentice, Christian Poppe, is now listed in the Corps. Congratulations to him!

In Marina Harss's description, "It appeared that every dancer in New York – including Stiefel, Wendy Whelan, Joaquín de Luz, Maria Kowrosky, and even the former Joffrey star Gary Chryst, had come to cheer him on. The applause went on for a good long time and, from what I hear, continued at a restaurant across the plaza." She notes that Radetsky and Stiefel are great friends, and that Radetsky also will be dancing in "Flesh and Blood," which I had forgotten about.

Many thanks, silvermash! It's wonderful to hear that Le Riche is being honored along the way to Wednesday.

According to the World Time Clock, the difference between Paris and NYC is -6 hours, which makes the start time of 19:30 in Paris 13:30 EDT, or 1:30pm.

In case anyone has not seen this thread, Le Riche's farewell performance will be streamed live from two different websites on Wednesday, 9 July at 7:30pm local time (CET), 1:30pm EDT, 11:30am MDT, and 10:30am PDT. David Hallberg tweeted: as well as this photo: https://twitter.com/DavidHallberg/status/485644134305521666

Of course Zakharova felt that it was Bolshoi management's decision, a feeling that was attributed to her in this Izvestia interview with Reid Anderson, the Stuttgart's AD, who said that he made the decision, and then told Filin about his decision. Filin did not try to overrule his decision, but I would think Anderson would be aware that there would be issues that Filin would have to deal with. http://www.ismeneb.com/Blog/Entries/2013/7/5_Anderson_says_not_even_Zakharova_can_dictate_Onegin_casts.html Ismene Brown translated the article into English. Zakharova opened up the can of worms. As Melanie Griffiths' character said to Alec Baldwin's in Working Girl, "If you want a different answer, ask a different girl."

There will never be a scenario where the AD's fascination with a given dancer will go away, nor his pushing here ahead. Even at Paris Opera Ballet, where dancers have to pass a committee's promotion test, that speaks to nominal rank and compensation, not casting, prominence, or PR. Add to that the fascination with new productions, and as long as AD stands back when a guest choreographer or stager casts the ballets, like Filin did when the Cranko people refused to give the premiere to Zakharova, and dancers that are not popular with management suddenly have prominence.

Agreed about Zhiganshina's style matching the Boshoi's. Maybe someone should whisper the idea of having a plan for young artists in Mr. McKenzie's ear.

In Fall 2008, ABT issued a press release announcing Osipova as a Guest Artist for the Spring 2009 season. In November 2008, ABT posted her performance dates to its website for one Giselle -- it was one of the famous back-to-back Giselles with Cojocaru -- and two for "La Sylphide," with one performance between Anianashvili's on Thursday and Part's on Saturday night. That I remember clearly, because I originally had a ticket for all three. Eventually, Hee Seo was announced for the Friday performance, then she was switched to the Saturday matinee, and Part did Friday and Saturday night. Yuri Burlaka took over as AD in 2009, and in Spring 2009, he pulled Osipova from her Friday night performance to dance with the Bolshoi at the Kennedy Center tour of "Le Corsaire." He gave an interview which was on video, where he wagged his finger at ABT for their audacity in casting Osipova without his permission. She pulled from at least the closing performance of the tour, a Sunday matinee, because she was hospitalized earlier that weekend, which I also remember, because I was among a bunch of people who had made the trip down from NYC to see her, and there was major grousing in the lobby. (I was flying out of DC the next day, but I would have stayed in NYC another day had I known, especially since the Bolshoi had to cut off much of Act III to keep it under three hours.) Having attempted to chase her down in an epic fail, and following her history since, I will never again make plans around seeing her.

He is singing Wolfram in "Tannhauser" in Chicago next February/March (with Johan Botha, Amber Wagner, Michaela Schuster, and John Relyea), and he's got the best music, "O du mein holzer Abendstern,"which he recorded for Chandos in 2010.

Welcome RStorms -- we're glad you decided to join in the discussion. You can't post a photo as an attachment, but if it's published to a public-facing website, you can link to it. For example, David Hallberg tweeted and this is the link to the tweet with the photo: https://twitter.com/DavidHallberg/status/485207670761484288

It wouldn't be the first time she was double booked and NY lost.

Joffrey Ballet:

Bartee is the subject of Ballet BC blog's latest "Meet the Dancer": http://blog.balletbc.com/post/90765102974/andrew-bartee

For our US members,Happy July 4th! Some greetings tweeted and posted by ballet companies -- you have to click to see the photos: Pacific Northwest Ballet: Ballet West: Boston Ballet: American Ballet Theatre: very clever! Ballet Met:

From Daniil Simkin:

Reports from the Russian press spanning artistic directors said that the directives for how much the company toured and performed came from a higher ministry, a person higher than Urin's level, let alone Filin's. If the government(s) funded the labor budget for the company at the level needed to allow its dancers to be paid well enough to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet, and the discretionary arts "project" budget hadn't been needed for wages, any bonus fund managed by the AD would not determine who could earn a living wage.

In the recent long, wonderful interview with Mathilde Froustey (in French and English via Google Translate) -- posted by pherank in the dancer's thread -- speaking about working with Makarova on her "La Bayadere," Froustey said, (original: Natalia Makarova ne lâche pas tant qu'elle n'a pas ce qu'elle veut, c'est un personnage ! Au début, c'était difficile de travailler avec elle, mais sur scène, lorsque je voyais le résultat, je comprenais où elle voulait arriver. Elle a sa vision de la danse et j'aime ça. C'est très différent de l'Opéra, c'est presque l'opposé. Elle disait : "Ohhh, Noureev version, Noureev Bullshit".) So, yeah, not exactly warm and fuzzy. Messages of congratulations from Radetsky's colleagues: Tweet from David Hallberg: Tweet from Marcelo Gomes with link to photo on Instagram: Tweet from Dance Spirit: