Helene

I use a medium-size credit union. I don't know why they require a minimum -- maximum I could understand because of money-laundering -- because they still charge $30, regardless of size.

There are some videos currently available for viewing from the New York City Ballet site. Please see this post on a thread in the New York City Ballet forum on Kaitlyn Gilliland for instructions on where to find the videos on the NYCB site.

There have been references here to "standing room" tickets.  Are these literally standing room only for the entire performance? If so, wouldn't unoccupied seats be claimed at intermission?

The answers are "yes" and "it depends." Assume you'll stand and feel lucky if you get a seat.

Sometimes with standing room, there is a wall to lean against, and only one row "deep" of standees. In other configurations, there are several rows, and in front of each of the back rows is what looks almost looks like a freestanding barre, with a narrow shelf that is often padded. In some venues, there are several places in the theater with standing room, at different levels of the theater. The walls can make it bearable, though it can be annoying not being in the first row, if the person in front of you does a lot of shifting.

Whether you can sit at intermission depends on the theater, the ushers, the prevailing winds, and how far astray you go from where standing room is. When I did a lot of standing at the New York State Theater, once the lights started to go down, and the ushers would head down the stairs to their perches, there would be a rush from standing room into empty seats on or towards the aisles. As people got more brazen, pushing into empty middle seats, and after the curtain rose, continued to push past patrons, blocking people's view and making a ruckus, the ushers went through periods of stricter enforcement.

If there are empty rows of seats, chances are you'll be able to sit, unless the ushers are being very strict. It's dangerous, though, in a crowded house, to assume that singles and doubles are going to remain empty, because there are usually some people who arrive late and take their seats during first intermission. By second intermission, it's usually clear who will arrive.

Sometimes it works heading towards lower-level seats, but I've seen people ejected from, for example, the Orchestra of the New York State Theater (where there is no standing room), and I've also seen the Metropolitan Opera ushers watch the Orchestra standees carefully to see that none of them "defect" into Orchestra seats during intermission. Also, there are theaters or events where standing room is sold only if the event -- or the section with standing room -- is or is close to a sellout, which means that empty seats are hard to find.

Yesterday I went to the recital for the Pacific Northwest Ballet Seattle School's Creative Movement and Pre-Ballet II classes at the Phelps Center (among other things, where the Seattle PNB school is located.) The Creative Movement kids are 5-6 years old and the Pre-Ballet kids are 7. Among them I saw a handful of Asian girls, 3 or so black girls, and two (maybe three?) boys out of 48 kids listed on the program. (And if I were the lone boy in the Creative Movement IV, and, indeed, I did have a little ball of white feathers stuck to the back of my tights for "Ducks in a Row," -- it was hard to tell for sure from the back row -- I would refuse to go back.)

After each group of children performed, they sat on the floor in front of the chairs set up in the main studio, where by the end, they had prime seats to watch 16 Professional Division students perform excerpts from Paquita. To me it looked like an all-Caucasian group of PD students. I raise this, because two of the points of the recital are 1. to show the parents how many of the PD dancers started in these programs and 2. to show the children what they should and could aspire to.

Oh dear.  I think a couple generations in the ballet world still do not make the distinction between the Imperial era in Russian ballet and the post-Revolution Vaganova era.  I am certain there are varying reasons for this.  And that would be a whole new thread (and maybe a Pandora's box)!

I made that mistake because I had been told wrongly that Vaganova documented Russian ballet technique from the Imperial era, and that her actual teaching evolved from that point in a different direction than Balanchine's.

I used Moneybookers.com to transfer funds (these CDs are only 15.00 a piece, and that includes shipping!), and I reccomend that if you wanna get the CDs, you should do the bank transfer thing to moneybookers.com. It was 32 bucks through my bank.

Before you choose this option, please check with your bank or credit union to see if they have a minimum amount for international transfers. I was willing to pay for the transfer, but my credit union did not disclose the $100 minimum for international bank transfers until after I placed the order, which, I'm assuming, has expired. The person I spoke to for 20 minutes to set up the bank transfers didn't know, and it was only when it was rejected three days later that he found out what the policy was.

According to an article on andante.com, as originally printed in the Evening Standard [London],

In the first week of June, the BBC will broadcast the complete works of Beethoven, from the juvenile piano trios to the climactic string quartet in F major, Opus 135, with many fragments and oddities besides. The exercise is being initiated, as you might expect, by high-minded Radio 3, which is clearing its decks of all other music for six days and nights.

In addition,

The BBC Philharmonic will play the cycle with chief conductor Gianandrea Noseda over two weekends at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester...

These concerts will be aired on Radio 3 and "streamed" for a week on the website [www.bbc.co.uk/radio3]. Anyone from here to Hong Kong can slip a disk into the drive and download a set for keeps. Allow five minutes on broadband for Symphonies One to Eight, 10 minutes for the momentous Ninth.

The article ends with a rousing,

And when, two or three decades hence, China is the world's largest industrial power, it will be Noseda's Beethoven that couples recall over pre-concert double-lattes as their formative revelation, as our grandparents once savoured Toscanini's over Nescafé.

Such, no less, is the potential magnitude of the BBC's magnanimity. And, to those on-message politicians who want to clip the wings of public broadcasting and yoke it to their social agendas, the Beethoven week is a robust reminder that there is life yet in the Reithian principle: that broadcasting must educate and inform, and that there is no better way in the 21st century for nation to speak peace unto nation.

Just when we thought the cultural Apocalypse was here...

(Please note that the link to the article will expire within 7-14 days.)

A great dancer making choreography look good ties to the thread about Suzanne Farrell Ballet's Bejart rep in next season's lineup.

I realize it'a a bit early, but can I nominate Carbro's reporting of this interview  for Ballet Talk's "Best of" 2005? 

Yes!

I found Emily's snobbery more palatable than Lorelei's and Rory's mockery. But I expected so much less of Emily

carbro,

What a GREAT report!!!!! (Kvell!!!!)

How sweet that he partnered his future wife at the SAB performing Bournonville.

I'm so glad he is managing the school, too. What an amazing role model he'll be for the boys, and I hope he's able to tap talented dancers who have the potential to be good teachers, the way he was recruited by Mazzo and Williams.

I heard an interview on Fresh Air with Amy Sherman Palladino, the creator of The Gilmore Girls, and watched an episode for the first time tonight. So this is a disclaimer that I'm not sure if tonight's episode was a repeat, making this old news.

The show opened with mother (Lorelei) and daughter (Rory) at their mother/grandmother's (Emily) dining room table, reviewing pictures of "City Ballet" dancers, to help Emily pick one to sponsor. After making fun of one potential choice's skin, and treating the entire process as a Jr. High School meat market cat-fest, Emily's choice is a blond Eastern-European-born young woman, because she is least like her errant daughter Lorelei (who was a great disappointment after having a baby at 17), and a fantasy/toy daughter is what Emily wants. When the dancer proceeds to ask Lorelei's long-abondoned magic eight ball over and over if she'll be rich -- her vapidness no longer adorable -- Emily trades her in for a pretty boy from Russia, who becomes a perpetual visitor in her sitting room until he storms out, having read a magazine interview where Lorelei compared her mother "jokingly" as Stalin, the killer of much of his family.

The portrayals of both dancers were condescending, although, being trapped with Emily as a sponsor was portrayed as the nightmare the entire personal sponsorship scenario could become.

And the Nazis, too.  Let's not forget Onkel Adolf!

Absolutely. In 1941, things looked good for the Nazis, with occupations in Scandinavia, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Greece (after the Greek troops were off in Albania fighting Italian troops), Yugoslavia, not to mention decimating the Soviet Union's western front that summer.

Wasn't Marie Jeanne the lead ballerina on this tour?

According to the short bio lead-in to her interview in Robert Tracey's Balanchine's Ballerinas, "During the 1941 American Ballet Caravan tour of South America she was the company's leading ballerina, and Balanchine made two of his most famous ballets for her: Concerto Barocco and Ballet Imperial." About these ballets, she said, "In Barocco, I had to dance for eighteen minutes straight. To every beat. It was the most demanding role ever did for me. The way they do it now isn't quite the same. Ballet Imperial was not a masterpiee like Barocco, but it was a vehicle for me and delightful to dance.

She continued to say that she was in four other ballets on the tour: Serenade -- which, according to the bio, Balanchine restaged for her in 1940 when she guested for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, adding a movement for her -- Apollo (as Terpsichore), and The Bat -- as well as Divertimento, which he "whipped up" as a rousing closer. In that ballet, she had an adagio and a Tyrolean Dance; the latter she said she had to do as an encore.

It's not surprising that the US ambassador found the modern works subversive: the tour was funded as part of a culture war: Latin America was considered a major battleground of political influence over which the US and Soviet Union fought. Anything "revolutionary" in any way would have been worrisome to the continent directly north.

I'm hearing a lot of "yeah, right," but I'm not hearing substantive arguments against several of his theses, at least as Gladwell describes them:

1, That there are two types of learning, and there are ways in which popular culture strengthens one type of learning in particular ways. He does not argue that one is superior to the other, just that each is inferior in some aspects that the other is superior.

1. That new, complex video games encourage complex problem-solving skills, including determining what the multi-layered rules are based upon through experience and observation. (He doesn't mention that many of the video games as well as board games we played as children are available online, to be played with other people from all around the world, on demand.)

3. That engagement stimulates part of the way that non-engagement doesn't. That one either has a scientific basis, or it doesn't.

In a multi-cultural world that is linked in ways through communications, economics, and artistic endeavors to an extent that was inconceivable even a generation ago, I have no doubt that understanding a quickly changing environment is a critical skill. And in the current world economy, where employment in the US, Canada, and Europe is increasingly skewed toward services and information, lack of this skill is an economic disadvantage.

Gladwell has delved into many areas where he and the authors he reviews have challenged widely held assumptions to see if they stand up to scrutiny. I don't think this is as a degredation of the The New Yorker's purpose at all.

One thing that I appreciate about both Alex Ross and Malcolm Gladwell is that while they both hold high standards, they don't believe that goodness and greatness is limited. They see abundance of both.

Well mark your calendar hockeyfan228.  SF Ballet will reprise Dybbuk next season as part of their program 4, March 7 through March 12, 2006.  It shares the all Robbins program with Glass Pieces and the SFB premiere of Afternoon of a Faun.

Many thanks, balletdad! I'm looking forward to seeing all three pieces.

From all accounts from his partners, Jock Soto is a Partner-King. I'm not sure if Conrad Ludlow is a Partner-King or Partner-Prince, but he, too, was the NYCB man of his generation whom the ballerinas coveted as a partner.

I tried to answer this, but I looked at my list, and there were no KINGS on it. Only dancers!

There are two sites that manage payment for the site that is selling the CD:

1. Moneybookers, for which if you select credit card, you must supply fax the info that ariodante described

2. ikobo.com, which is down right now, and may not ask for the same.

When I ordered tickets from the Bolshoi, they used a third-party payment processor. It's fairly standard for foreign transactions off sites from Europe and Russia.

If the processor is legit, then the request for a fax of the credit card is to protect the site from massive credit card fraud, because it shows that the person ordering is in physical possession of the card, and has not purchased a stolen credit card number for $5. I suspect it qualifies the processor for better chargeback protection as a result.

If the processor is not legit, then the processor has possession of the "CVN" code, the 3- digit code on the back of the credit card (Visa/MC/JCB/Discover) which is not printed on the front of the card or on credit card statements. The processor also has a copy of the signature.

If you choose Moneybookers and "bank transfer," you do not give banking details to the site. You are given bank transfer instructions to deposit the money in a Commerzbank account in Frankfurt, using a transaction ID that links the payment to the original order. However, expect the cost of a foreign bank transfer to be at least $30 from the US, making the cost of the CD at least $45.

While I can't say whether or not this is a legitimate company, it certainly has made a big effort to appear as one, capturing IP addresses as backup and banking with one of the world's major banks.

On Sunday night, 12 June, Pacific Northwest Ballet is producing a farewell tribute program for Francia Russell and Kent Stowell. On the website is the following description:

The Tribute program will be a surprise for Stowell and Russell and will not be announced in advance, with one exception. As a gift to their parents, the Stowell's three sons have acquired excerpts from George Balanchine’s 1960 Liebeslieder Walzer for a one-time performance at the Tribute. Often mentioned as their favorite Balanchine ballet, Stowell and Russell are intimately familiar with this work for four couples, accompanied on stage by four singers and two pianists performing waltzes by Johannes Brahms. Russell was in the second cast when Balanchine choreographed the ballet and Stowell performed it many times during his career at New York City Ballet. The Tribute excerpts from Liebeslieder Walzer will be staged for PNB by Karin von Aroldingen, Trustee and Repetiteur of The George Balanchine Trust.

http://www.pnb.org/whatsnew/tribute.html

What a wonderful gift from their sons

The Seattle Symphony kicked off its MADE IN AMERICA Festival tonight, and one of the pieces was "Suite No. 2" from Dybbuk. The music was so beautiful, that I regretted not having gone to San Francisco for Program 6, especially since it was the last chance to hear Mogrelia conduct it for the Company. (The Seattle Symphony played magnificently for conductor Christian Knapp.)

Local PBS station KCTS is airing a tribute to Francia Russell and Kent Stowell on 26 May (time TBD). According to the blurb in the PNB newsletter sent today,

"KCTS Special Honors Kent Stowell and Francia Russell. Tune in to KCTS TV on Thursday, May 26 for a special tribute to retiring PNB Artistic Directors Kent Stowell and Francia Russell, including in-studio interviews, rehearsal footage and photography spanning their 28-year tenure at PNB."

Set those TiVo's!!!

In today's PNB newsletter, there's a mention that

"Four boys from PNB's DanceChance program performed a piece choreographed by former PNB dancer Timothy Lynch at PONCHO's annual gala on April 30. Following the performance, PONCHO raised $165,000 specifically for Arts Education."

(PONCHO stands for "Patrons of Northwest Civic, Cultural and Charitable Organizations," which, according to its website started as a group that put on an auction to retire a chunk of the Seattle Symphony's debt after the 1962 World's Fair, and raised enough money to donate more to the Symphony and several other arts groups. They've never stopped raising money for the arts in Seattle, and they give away a lot of it.)

I just received Pacific Northwest Ballet's newsletter, announcing that Principal Dancer Patricia Barker will make guest appearances in The Sleeping Beauty on 5-6 May (tonight and tomorrow), dancing the role of the Lilac Fairy.

Other major role casting (as of now) is:

5 May

Aurora: Lorna Feijoo

Desire: Nelson Madrigal

Carabosse: Jennifer Glaze

6 May

Aurora: Larissa Ponomorenko

Desire: Roman Rykine

Carabosse: Viktor Plotnikov

Full cast list for the two performances is posted to the Boston Ballet site at:

http://www.bostonballet.org/season/attendi...tingmay5_6.aspx