Helene

The most brilliant fouette sequence I've seen in "Swan Lake" was danced by Carrie Imler, but it was the chaine turns that signaled entrapment for me. That was taking a basic turn and by executing it as perfectly as it could be done, enlarged her character and told a story. This is a rehearsal video:

I don't see how "modern dance" encompasses "everything else." Aside from classical vs. neoclassical -- I don't see from Leonid17's post specifically where he'd categorize neoclassical ballet, but I'd guess differently -- most dance traditions -- classical/court and folk -- stem from centuries before ballet and certainly before modern dance, and I don't know who would lump these into a "modern" category. Modern dance, which was emphatically "not ballet" has its own philosophy, movement vocabulary, and often distinct techniques from the mush that describes "contemporary" dance, which is a much more of a lump-it-all-together category than "modern dance." I don't think anyone would experience watching dance would confuse "Appalachian Spring" with most of what is presented as "Contemporary" on "So You Think You Can Dance." Even SYTYCD distinguishes between their choreographers' brands of "Contemporary," "Hip Hop," "Jazz," "Bollywood," "Disco," etc. Hip-hop and its subcategories, for example, may be "contemporary" int he sense of "currently created and performed," but they are a specific genre and have very distinct and specific movement vocabulary and techniques. Neoclassical ballet is a continuum from classical ballet, but it is rooted in danse d'ecole. While classical ballet traditionally makes the distinction between classical and character dances and emploi -- something that Balanchine and Ashton did by integrating vernacular dance traditions into some of their works instead of separating them -- Vaganova, when she was AD in Russia, allowed classical ballet to be changed to adding much more gymnastic and circus-like elements into the ballets, updating her pedagogy to support this and allowing changes to the original choreography and stripping it of mime to make it more palatable to her contemporary audiences, until the trend crossed a line that even she couldn't support, where she reverted back to the other side of that line. Influential Mariinsky dancers vetoed the reconstruction of "Sleeping Beauty" because they liked the more recent version they had grown up with. We've had many discussions about how modern bodies and technique have imposed neoclassical aesthetics on classical ballets, example extensions, tempi, changes in the kind of steps, jumps, number of turns, etc. done in variations. I think the question has shifted from "Should ballet companies perform dance that isn't ballet" -- sadly, in my opinion, that ship has sailed aside from Paris, where there are almost two companies making the distinction, and Russia, and maybe Denmark -- to "How can people distinguish where on the neoclassical-to-contemporary continuum the dance stops being ballet?" Maybe that's a distinction that much of the audience feels is artificial, unnecessary, and even harmful, but I haven't seen much contemporary dance -- to be distinguished from modern dance, which doesn't aim to come out of ballet -- that is all that interesting as a direction in which classically trained dancers and ballet companies should go. Individual pieces can be interesting, but as a movement or direction, not so much.

The lifting of the veils is meant to elicit surprise and delight. I don't think there is a uniform audience reaction, though, because most people's other experience with "Giselle" is with Russian or Russian-based productions, where the Wilis are serious and ghost-like, and, in that context, it can feel like a silly joke at a funeral. Theater audiences expect a dichotomy: these are the serious characters and these are the funny characters, especially in a tragedy. Even for people unfamiliar with "Giselle" -- the last professional company to do it in Seattle was a short run by ABT in the '90's; the 2011 premiere of this production was the first PNB production -- if they read the program notes, they would expect a tragedy like "Swan Lake" and the device could be seen as out-of-place. The Wilis in this production are not the soulless ghosts of the Russian productions. In the preceding scene, Myrtha wakes up, surveys her forest kingdom, and relishes in it, the power and sweep of her dancing not only representing her power and majesty, but also her innate love of dance. She does this alone; she's not doing it to impress anyone else. It's like she gets to the office early to be able to set up her day without interruptions, enjoying the peace and quiet, until it's time to summon the troops. She tells us who she is and what her relationship to this place is, but her long opening is full of life and lacking menace. Once she does call the Wilis, and they are unveiled, it's their wake-up call. Although it's clear Berthe and Hilarion believe the story of the Wilis, when we first see them, they're benign, and they don't show their true colors immediately. Eventually, from the audience's point of view, rounding up and killing men all night out of anger and vengeance for eternity looks exhausting and like a tragic fate, but to them, it's not: they get to move. There's nothing tragic in their music, either, and it only gets dramatic when they start to capture two of the four lead characters. After they off Hilarion, there's a hoppy piece of music where they wipe off their hands and head off to find fresh meat, and there's a gleeful undertone to it. In almost every other production, Hilarion is dragged in half exhausted, with all of the dirty work done behind the scenes, but here, in the tradition of "La Sylphide," in a scene reinstated from the original sources, they are playful, seductive, and amoral as they try to lure a group of men into their trap, and we see how they, like most death figures, set the bait based on what will fly to the specific victim. The Wilis aren't Amazon-like avengers: their affect has a bigger range, and is often quite light, and it's all in the music. We're just not used to hearing it that way.

A short version "The Red Detachment of Women" is performed in John Adams' opera "Nixon in China" to portray how the Nixons intended a performance while in China. Mark Morris did the choreography for the Met Opera production performed and shown in HD in 2011.

Placing plots and stories elsewhere wasn't new to Russian ballet or to ballet for that matter. Not only are other locales exotic, with plenty of excuses for national dances and color, but politically, it's a way of commenting on local matters while keeping out of prison, or the comparison can be an explicit, mostly flattering one. How many Shakespeare plays are set in England or Verdi operas set in Italy (pre- and post-unification)? New ballet companies in the US and Canada strove to set ballets in their countries and on North American themes; this was Royal Winnipeg Ballet's early calling card and dear to Kirstein's heart, but that was different from the Russian, French,and Danish classic balket. I think the bigger question was why Russian opera seemed to buck the trend, with many classic Russian operas set there or regionally, like "Mazeppa" in Ukraine.

I understand the context, although very often Siegfried is catching his breath and thinking about his next part of the coda, but I don't think it's the only option, and there are other ways to be mesmerizing/dazzling and there are other classical ways to be a seductress and sexual and to close the deal with both Siegfried and his mothet, especially since he's desperate at that point -- his mother is impatiently, emphatically, and publicly insisting that he pick a bride, any bride right then and there -- and is ripe to be convinced and half convinces himself. Regardless of context, I don't think it's the most important part of the ballet -- it wasn't even the original music, which is quite different in character -- but even if it was, that doesn't explain why few care about the rest of the text and how it's been changed. British audiences used to get Mozart operas with chunks of Mozart cut out and Bishop interpolated in between. Why no outcry about the changes to Petipa/Ivanov?

Ludmilla Pagliero is exquisite.

I didn't see this posted anywhere, but Lorena Feijoo posted a photo of her, her sister Lorna, their mom, and I think Lorna Feijoo's older child to her Facebook page, and Lorna Feijoo is having a baby. Due date isn't posted, but she looks visibly pregnant. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152252948406884&set=a.309370106883.160362.177243311883&type=1

Lesley Rausch and Seth Orza in a short excerpt from Act II:

Company rosters and websites are evolving organisms. It's not that unusual for pre-season additions to occur.

Great photos, but the public-facing ones on her Facebook account are very lovely. Congratulations to the newlyweds

I would recommend John Percival's "Nureyev: A Biography." Amazon shows a number of used copies for $5-15 (with shipping). It's too bad people are looking for big names, autobiographies and memoirs being so different than biographies. Two of the best of those I've read are Barbara (Milberg) Fisher's "In Balanchine's Company" and Tamara Tchinarova Finch's "Dancing into the Unknown." Finch was in the Ballets Russes documentary: she was a friend of Irina Baranova, and sat next to Baranova in one interview, emphatically lauding Baranova's dancing. She was also married to Peter Finch, and writes about more than ballet.

I didn't realize that Ismene Brown also tweeted the link to her summary and translation of the report on Medinsky's proposals, which are based on Putin's directives: http://www.ismeneb.com/Blog/Entries/2014/6/4_State_should_fund_good_art_not_wages%2C_decrees_Medinsky.html The proposal is that institutions compete for project-based funds, rather than what has amounted in practice to regularly renewed fixed allocations, and, as a manager, Urin does not believe this will work. The proposal tries to revert back to the nominal purpose of the grants, renewed every three years, to support projects, instead of being used primarily to bolster salaries to keep top artists from leaving Russia. One proposal is that part of the funds be used as a block grant and part should be used for project-based allocations. They are talking about less than $100million a year. With all that gas money, this can't be purely about the bottom line, especially since arts are a precious cultural commodity and part of the national identity in a way that they are not in North America. The way I see it, this is a big win for Gergiev and Tsiskaridze, since I expect full funding for the projects they propose. If the Bolshoi wants to revive Grigorovitch, great, but a program of Western choreography? Not so much. This sounds like the worst of communism plus the worst of short-term, revenue-measurement-based capitalism applied to the arts. ETA: Just to be clear, this is a budget originally earmarked for projects that has been used consistently for salaries. The operating budgets, which the companies have felt is inadequate, noted in the article especially to keep Russian dancers from leaving, are allocated separately.

I don't know of any American contracts that are that specific.

I don't think of Wheeldon as choreographing contemporary ballet. He is a neoclassical choreographer in my book, just as Ratmansky is. I'm not sure how Forsythe's post-ballet work is classified. The harder ones are the modern choreographers who choreograph specifically for ballet companies. The Mark Morris works I've seen at SFB and PNB wouldn't be confused with anyone else's, but he uses classical vocabulary expensively, as do Tharp and Crystal Pite in "Emergence" (made for NBoC). Cerrudo, Goecke, and Lopez Ochoa haven't choreographed ballets, as far as I can see, even though they rely on classically trained dancers with stellar technique and occasionally someone is wearing point shoes, but there's little difference in the vocabulary or approach I see from the work of Lopez Ochoa whether it's danced by PNB or Olivier Wevers' Whim W'him or betwwen Goecke's "Mopey" (Peter Boal and Co.) or "Break a Chill" (PNB), while there are big differences between Morris' "Sylvia" (SFB) or "Kammermusic #3" (PNB) and "Love Song Waltzes" (MMDG), or Tharp's "Golden Section" and "Nine Sinatra Songs" made for her own company vs. "Brief Fling" and "Push Comes to Shove" (ABT), "Waterbaby Bagatelles" (Boston Ballet), and "Opus 111" and "Waiting at the Station" (PNB). Her "In the Upper Room" is a compare and contrast work, where half the work was the secondary if not alien tradition to whatever company dances it. So far I can't remember seen any other modern or contemporary choreographer who has been a freelancer, done work for ballet companies outside his or her own company, or has had his own non-ballet company's works adopted by ballet companies, where even a few of whose works have had legs in the ballet world since Kylian and Duato, like Jardi Tancat (most widely performed), which is over 30 years old. PNB is reviving "Rassemblement," which Russell and Stowell acquired for PNB in the late 90's, and I'm not sure when the last time ABT performed "Remansos," which is mainly remembered from one of the few commercially available ABT videos. Most of the Kylian performed today outside Amsterdam is decades old; "Petite Mort" is ubiquitous, but over 20 years old, and one of its partner works, "Sechs Tanze" is five yeas older than that. Among today's ballet choreographers, Wheeldon and Ratmansky are the most performed aside from house choreographers'. Caniparoli is active. Millepied was getting commissions before he took the POB job. Corder's choreography has been danced in Great Britain and Europe. Peck and Scarlett are considered great new hopes. Liang was getting various commissions for a while. (I'm not sure if he's mainly concentrating on BalletMet now.) Kudelka was let back in this year. Most work being choreographed now/recently and performed by ballets companies, is still done by AD/choreographers or resident choreographers and only rarely makes it out of the home company. (Examples are Ib Anderesen, Peter Martins, Mark Godden, Stanton Welch, Robert Weiss, Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, Jorma Elo, Ben Stevenson, Jean Grand-Maitre, Helgi Tomasson, Victoria Morgan, and before them Gerald Arpino, Christopher Stowell, Kent Stowell.) Occasionally works escape -- Kansas City Ballet performed Ib Andersen's "Romeo and Juliet;" some of Peter Martins work has been performed elsewhere -- and Hubbe has staged "La Sylphide" around the world, but only Elo's is relatively widely performed, aside from Ratmansky's.

From Ismene Brown's blog, commentary on the completed and waiting-for-signature three-year labor contract, which includes dancer participation in the bonus pool distribution and a translation of the Izvestia report/announcement: http://www.ismeneb.com/Blog/Entries/2014/6/4_Bolshoi_labour_contract_ready_at_last.html Brown writes, Brown also links to her article in this month's "Dance Magazine," in which she writes,"Urin’s had to make the Soviet-devised payment system work in modern times for modern theaters." If Medinsky's plan is a departure from the system and not a cosmetic re-shuffling, it could be to Urin's advantage, especially since it's hard to imagine a system that doesn't have Gergiev's blessing, ie, with no diminished power for him. I think that if the new contract is rendered moot by Medinsky's plan, it still is a win for Bolshoi management, since management's concession on the bonus pool distribution can be seen by the dancers as a victory for them, even if it's later revoked by the government, and, at best, a sign of good faith and reconciliation by management. In the article there are extensive comments by Ratmansky, who thinks the contract is feel-good for the dancers, about working conditions at the Bolshoi. Aside from maternity leave and menstruation leave that applies to all the women in the company, the main corps-specific thing he addresses is short rehearsal time on the days of performance and company-specific lifetime employment, but a lifetime contract isn't terribly helpful to corps members who are being starved out by being paid per performance and minimally cast. ABT dancers don't have the same guarantees or coaching, if he's comparing the companies mentally, but at least for the year, anyone on contract knows what his or her paycheck will be, and there's a union to protect it. Presumably the extra paid month off at the Bolshoi is an amount known in advance.

Marina Harss just tweeted: Angel Corella has given up on his company and is leaving Spain, he told a Spanish paper earlier this year http://www.vanitatis.elconfidencial.com/noticias/2014-06-01/el-bailarin-angel-corella-se-va-de-espana-y-deja-de-bailar_139662/ From Google translate, it sounds like he was saying he was pushed out, that the government isn't interested in funding the company as needed, and that he will be cautious going forward. The Company at one time had 70 dancers, but is now down to 16, which makes traveling easier. He sold several properties to finance his company. He said the head of the cultural council of Catalunya wouldn't make time to see him. He turned down the AD job at New Zealand Ballet because it was too far from his family, but he expects to go abroad, and he will dance in Spain for the last time soon. (He talks about how the royal family have been great supporters, even attending incognito, and I suspect if he were asked to perform for the new King, he would.) His current show, "A+A" in Barcelona, opens tonight. I don't understand Spanish, and I'm not sure if the translation is saying there are two shows, one with a violinist and another with five dancers and five musicians, or if these are two acts of one show that will performed in two blocks of dates.

Keeping Froustey is fantastic news for San Francisco Ballet!

I can't remember in what documentary or article it was -- maybe the one on Jacob's Pillow -- spoke to the issue of black dancers not getting corrections in class. Getting corrections is getting attention; not getting them means you're on your own. If the teachers don't think the dancer is worth the investment, it's extremely difficult to progress, especially since those teachers are the ones making recommendations to companies outside the school, and having an inside track -- maybe being able to audition in company class and not be part of a cattle call or having ADs drop in on class to scout a student -- is a distinct advantage.

Hopefully she'll let us know sooner than later.

Pacific Northwest Ballet just tweeted: We were lucky to have @ABTBallet soloist, Sascha Radetsky dance w/ us before his retirement: http://bit.ly/Sr1xzj The video is a short excerpt of Radetsky and retiring PNB ballerina Kaori Nakamura in Tharp's "Brief Fling." Many of us out here more-than-half expected Radetsky to join PNB after his guest stint, the way Miranda Weese did for a couple of years at the end of her career, while she maintained a long-distance relationship with her partner. It appears not to be the case, if PNB is using the r-word.

There were short references in Duberman's bio of Lincoln Kirstein, and I also have a vague memory of a Ballet Review article on Raven Wilkinson and the racism she encountered on a Ballets Russes tour through the South that I think made reference to Balanchine and his action or reaction. I don't ever remember Balanchine trying to be liberal in any way, at least deliberately. When he tried to argue Barbara Milberg out of her politics, long before he told Suzanne Farrell how to vote, it was before the Republican party shifted. Balanchine was happy to back a Czar-like anti-Communist politician, but he seemed to take politics on that meta-level and didn't expend much energy on domestic policy issues. While I don't know the personal politics of any other artistic directors off hand, I know that their bosses, the Boards, come from the money and class that in general doesn't produce many bleeding hearts. The driving forces in the arts aren't uniformly liberal: there are still conductors who think women, for example, don't cut it and orchestras where women are still tokens. There are very few women AD's in ballet companies, hired with identical experience as men, even or especially when they have zero admin experience going into their first jobs and are hired because they were dancers, and, even now that fewer AD's are choreographers in their own right, an almost exclusively male group in ballet, which at once seemed to be a pre-requisite. Bruce Wells told Jeffrey Edwards, a finalist in the PNB AD race, he would never have been hired at PNB, because the straight men on the Board aren't comfortable having their photo taken with an out gay man. The men who direct and have directed the largest US companies are mostly straight/married. There are plenty of ceilings that are still in place in this so-called "liberal" profession.

Balanchine political reasons for voting Republican are well-documented and clear -- he despised Communism and the Soviet Union -- the Republican Party was the Party of Lincoln and far more moderate than it has become, and it was the southern Democrats who were so staunchly anti civil rights. His views on race are mixed in the few instances where they are documented, but even that doesn't always coincide exactly with a view on civil rights. Wasn't Sono Asato the last ethnic Asian woman to be hired during Balanchine's tenure?

I was speaking generally about racism and nepotism. Certainly the latter is well-documented, but it is not illegal, unlike racial discrimination. It is possible to assume that because no one can prove bias there is none. I just don't buy it, because it assumes that AD's and schools are free from bias and live on a higher moral ground because of their art. There is enough documented evidence that this isn't so, and that they're mortal.

I didn't realize that tutus came in vanity sizing.