Helene

Here's a 2:42 video of Lacotte rehearsing Obraztsova in a solo and then Obraztsova and Hallberg.

I don't think she can drop a bombshell like being asked to fork up $10K for a part and expect to walk away -- and continue to work in Russia -- without further comment, especially as corruption allegations are being discussed in a front-page news trial.

Interesting timing given the Dmitrichenko trial.

It would be great if she could dance in both countries. London to Bucharest isn't a huge jump, and a friend who was contracting in Bucharest during the early '00's saw a lot of ballet and opera performances while he was there, and had very good things to say about both companies. Like everything else, there are excellent performances/performers/companies outside the major arts capitols. It often takes an artist the caliber of Cojocaru to get recognition for them.

No. Pite has been quite clear what book influenced her work. The insect motif and creation/formation has a superficial resemblance to "The Cage" but it diverges greatly from that ballet, too. "Emergence" is not about the individual.

Thank you so much, Drew: it's always great to read what people who do NYC ballet visits think of companies and see with fresh eyes.

Some info from yesterday's post-performance Q&A's, both moderated by Peter Boal: Matinee: Jahna Frantziskonis and Elle Macy. Frantziskonis and Raphael Bouchard made their role debuts as the first couple in "Petite Mort." She (Pink) and Macy (Cream) made their role debuts in "Forgotten Land." Asked about Peter Boal as a teacher -- at which point he jumped in and jokingly said he could answer that question, that Boal's classes were fantastic [or a similar adjective]: Macy said that his classes were challenging, and rather than being warmups, prepared the dancers for dancing the rep. Frantziskonis said they were challenging and fast. (Her training [before PNB] had been slower.) Frantziskonis and Angelica Generosa applied and were accepted to do a joint piece of choreography for the Next Step program, in which PNB dancers create works for the Professional Division students; they are performed school graduation weekend. Asked about working on the Kylian: I don't remember who answered first, saying that she had heard so many good things about working with Roslyn Anderson [who had stated "Petite Mort" and "Sechs Tanze" previously for PNB], and everything her colleagues said was true. She described Anderson as someone who was very positive in the studio, and who could give a correction in a positive way to make it easy to accept and work on. One said she knows all of the details and never uses video in the studio. Also that she demands respect in a respectful way Asked about working on the Pite: I think it was Frantziskonis who said they were "obsessed" with Pite, her creativity and intelligence. It appears that Pite has many fan gurls and boyz in the company, which is good news, because Boal said she had a standing invitation to come back, and she will be doing a new work for Paris Opera Ballet. Boal said that the dancers didn't know what kind of reactions they could expect from the Saturday matinee audience, because the Opening Night audience on Friday had applauded throughout, and the matinee audience was silent until the end. As it turned out, there was a huge ovation [and a Saturday matinee standing ovation, i.e., really slow, as it's an older audience and takes a while to mobilize.] Someone always asks what the dancers' favorite roles are and what they look forward to doing in the future and will be doing in the next reps, which is more than awkward since Boal is sitting right there, but take-away was that aside from "Nutcracker" roles, either they haven't been assigned in detail, or this is still not-for-public-consumption. A few have leaked out, but mostly when they talked about Winter-Spring rep, they talked about roles they had done before and hoped to do again. Evening: Kylee Kitchens. Kitchens was in the Opening Night cast and repeated her role debut in the White Couple in "Forgotten Land," and also danced in "Sechs Tanze." Kitchens also lauded Roslyn Anderson and said that she was happy to learn that her role was the one created for Roslyn Anderson, who taught it to her. She said she realized this by watching a YouTube video, where, in the opening, as the dancers face upstage, one turns to face the back/audience, and the close-up showed it was Anderson. [ I'm not sure if more than one dancer turns around, but I do remember last night it was Carrie Imler, who was in the Red Couple. I wonder if a dancer is chosen for each staging, and whether the placement of the couples in the opening isn't set until staged.] When asked about whether the "Emergence" choreography changed: Boal said that there were changes: the quartet was re-choreographed, as was a lot of the duet [danced in the evening by Lindsi Dec and Batkhurel Bold and in the matinee by Carrie Imler and Jonathan Porretta. When asked about "Emergence" Kitchens said that they watched Pite demonstrate and tried to emulate the quality of movement. Boal said that one of his favorite moments in the studio was when Pite got down on the floor and was intense as an insect, and then her two-year old daughter would jump on her back. More on "Emergence": Boal said there was low-level miking to amplified the counting. When there were different groups doing different things, they all had their same counts. Kitchens said that in some parts, Imler was the group leader, and they'd follow her pace/counts. Boal said that there are a lot of companies fighting for the same choreographers -- he called it an "arms race" -- and collected one from many choreographers, but that he wanted to choose other choreographers who weren't as well known and to create a collection of works by those choreographers. He hopes that Pite will be one of these. [Given that Pite has a small child and Seattle is so close to Vancouver, I'm hoping that this helps to give PNB a leg up.] Boal also said that Pite was very impressed by PNB's men. On preparing for such different roles in one evening: Kitchens said that before each ballet, she warms up her body and goes over the steps in her head and thinks about the intention of that particular work. After the ballet is over, she re-calibrates for the next work. About the differences between first and later performances: Kitchens said that she tends toward opening night nerves, and that she's more calm in the second performance. Later performances give her a chance to do things differently if something didn't go quite right, and that each performance is a clean slate. About performing Kylian, Kitchens said it was a pleasure to dance, because he's so musical and the movement fits on the body. She also said that the positions were more intermediate and relaxed. About where her head was in performance -- in the moment, thinking ahead, etc.: Kitchens said that it depends: sometimes she's thinking about something hard that's coming up ahead, but that the best feeling in dancing is listening to the music and having the body remember and respond. sandik, please add what I missed/correct if I've misunderstood.

From the PNB website: http://www.pnb.org/Season/13-14/KylianPite/#Details Description of Johnson's book on amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Connected-Brains-Cities-Software-ebook/dp/B008TRUBLY/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1384105801&sr=1-2&keywords=emergence

Here is a video of most of the last minute or so of "Emergence":

PNB released a short video of rehearsal footage for "Forgotten Land": Featured are first cast dancers: Adomaitis (lacy black leo/white skirt)/Bartee Foster (khaki leo/black skirt)/J. Tisserand Foster/Kylee Kitchens (ink halter leo/black skirt)/Imler (black leo/white skirt) Dec (black and lavender leo/black skirt)/Cruz Kitchens/Lin-Yee Imler/Gaines At 37" there's a quick glance at the other couple in the cast, Reid (red leo)/Thomson on the left. If haven't always loved the big symphonic/choral ballets by Kylian -- Netherlands Dance Theater did them at the Met in the early '80's -- but, as a listener, I can't argue with his musical choices -- Janacek's "Sinfonietta", Martinu's Mass, Stravinsky's "Symphony of Psalms" -- and the Britten will be worth the ticket alone.

The shortlist for the 2014 National Dance Awards has been published in "The Guardian." Best male dancer Dane Hurst (Rambert) Vadim Muntagirov (English National Ballet) Sergei Polunin (Moscow Stanislavsky Ballet and guest artist, Royal Ballet) Edward Watson (Royal Ballet) Best female dancer Maria Kochetkova (San Francisco Ballet) Natalia Osipova (Mikhailovsky Ballet and guest artist, Royal Ballet and Bolshoi Ballet) Olga Smirnova (Bolshoi Ballet) Eva Yerbabuena (Ballet Flamenco Eva Yerbabuena) Outstanding company Boston Ballet Mikhailovsky Ballet Rosas San Francisco Ballet Best classical choreography Mark Morris (Beaux for San Francisco Ballet) David Nixon (The Great Gatsby for Northern Ballet) Alexei Ratmansky (24 Preludes for Royal Ballet) Christopher Wheeldon (Aeternum for Royal Ballet) Outstanding female performance classical Nancy Osbaldeston (for the ballerina in Petrushka for English National Ballet) Cira Robinson (in War Letters for Ballet Black) Akane Takada (for Olga in Onegin for Royal Ballet) Yuan Yuan Tan (in RAkU for San Francisco Ballet) Outstanding male performance classical Jeffrey Cirio (in Plan to B for Boston Ballet) Israel Galvan (for flamenco performances at Sadler's Wells) Nicolas Le Riche (in Le Jeune Homme et la Mort for English National Ballet) Brian Maloney (for Bratfisch in Mayerling for Royal Ballet) There are also a number of categories for modern dance. http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/nov/08/2014-national-dance-awards-shortlist

Dancebooks UK has released two new titles: Larraine Nicholas has come up with a fascinating new approach to dance history: a view of ballet and dance events in London in the early 1950s, seen from the perspective of a series of walks through some of the areas where these events took place. For details: [url-http://www.dancebooks.co.uk/walking-and-dancing-three-years-of-dance-in-london-195153-p-362.html]Walking and Dancing: Three Years of Dance in London, 1951-1953] And from a team at the University of Roehampton comes 'Thinking through Dance', an exploration of important philosophical questions raised in and by dance. For details: Thinking through Dance: The Philosophy of Dance Performance and Practices

From dancebooks UK: From the indefatigable Valerie Preston-Dunlop comes a new book celebrating Rudolf Laban's achivements as a choreographer. Also available to accompany the book are 4 DVDs featuring re-creations some of Laban's most celebrated works in rehearsal and performance. For more information about the book: Rudolf Laban - Man of Theatre The DVD's: Recreating Rudolf Laban's 'Nacht' - performance and documentary Recreating Rudolf Labans 'Solos and Duos' Recreating Rudolf Laban's 'Der Schwingende Tempel' (1922) - performance and documentary Recreating Rudolf Laban's 'Die Grunen Clowns', 1928 - performance and documentary

Alberich was always an honest chap, though, and Wotan's one overriding quality is his ability to lie to himself constantly.

Kultur will release Maurice Bejart's "The Nutcracker" on 17 December. It is performed by Bejart Ballet Lausanne, and it is available for pre-order on amazon.com.

Kultur is releasing a DVD of the ballet -- on 17 December 2013, and volcanohunter gave us a heads up that it's available for pre-order on (US) amazon in a ~2000 version. http://balletalert.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/37927-joffreys-green-table/

I just pre-ordered mine: I can't wait to get this.

Maybe he identifies with Siegmund.

The Mariinsky Ballet and the Mariinsky Opera are part of the Mariinsky Theatre, and the money each earns can be used whatever way the overall director sees fit. Whether he's qualified to make decisions or judgements about the ballet is beside the point: he has the confidence of the people who put him there, and he has the authority to do as he pleases, regardless of what any of us think. It *is* a standard business practice to take money from a cash cow and divert it -- yes, divert it -- into less profitable business centers, research and development, and/or pet projects of the people in charge, and boards of directors have rewarded people who've done this; removing them would be counter-productive for the decision makers. At least in one respect he's been stopped: his proposal to be the joint head of the Mariinsky and the Bolshoi was rejected; his authority and influence was proven to be limited in at least this way. He seems to have succeeded in taking over other St. Petersburg institutions.

The Kennedy Center Board appoints the President of the Kennedy Center, which is the closest thing we have in the US. The majority of board members are appointed by the President of the United States. Other ex officio members are designated by acts of Congress. Were President Obama to decide to depose Michael Kaiser and appoint James Levine in his stead, I suppose he could do so by stacking the Board with people who would vote his way. If it weren't for a specific Cultural Ministry director immediately after the Russian Revolution, the Vaganova Academy and the Mariinsky Theatre would have been liquidated. It's not a matter of how the heads of institutions are chosen that is uniformly good or evil: it's the people involved. If Iksanov, for example, had decided to interfere in artistic matters at the Bolshoi, he had every right to override Filin and the head of the opera. Instead, he chose to stick to his areas of expertise and let the professionals handle the artistic sides. Gergiev may know nothing about the ballet, but, to give another sports example, there is an International Skating Union (ISU) that is recognized by the Olympics bureaucracy as the one voice of figure skating and speed skating. The long-time head of the ISU is from the speed-skating side, and he took the post Kerrigan knee-bash TV revenue and plowed a lot of it into developing speed skating. Regardless of who is the head of the ISU, he or she is either coming from figure skating or speed skating; how he or she handles the job isn't by definition dictated by how much expertise he or she has in the other side. The same is true of the Mariinsky: Gergiev is an opera guy running the opera and the ballet. I agree that he's making a mess of the ballet; his approach is a colonial/corporate raider style, which is to drain the resources without nourishing them. However, as long as there are parents will to spend huge amounts of money to train their students at the school, and there are dancers lining up and being nourished by the work and the prestige, why would he stop?

The slowness of most careers is why the obsessiveness rings true in the context of many dancers' stories, especially the ones who weren't recognized very early, like Tallchief and Kent, or talented men like d'Amboise, who fulfilled the need for partners, too. Merrill Ashley's book sounds like a long saga of the same: always looking over her shoulder, always wondering what every glance meant, always comparing herself to Colleen Neary and Redpath when they were all soloists, always trying to read into where she stood. It was exhausting to read. Then you have Martins and Sklute talking about always being under the microsocope, no complacency, constant judgement, not to mention the judgement of outside choreographers and stagers. In very few professions are people that much under the microscope; even in the most competitive ones is there so little room for error, at least in the minds of perfectionist doers. In most competitive profssions, there's a second chance or another firm, and especially in service industries, there's enough outside contact and relationships that employers think twice about removing a well-thought-of contact, because that indicates instability, which does not seem to be an issue with ballet companies. Also, in many businesses, the head doesn't even know who most people are, let alone make day-5o-day direct decisions about their future. And work isn't allocated on the constant basis as in a ballet company: the dancers are aware every time a cast list comes up or a rehearsal schedule goes up where they stand, not to mention yearly contract renewals. Ballet is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.

Whatever one thinks of Gergiev, when the Soviet Union dissolved, Gergiev not only went west to earn a living, but he plowed some of that money back into the Mariinsky. If he hadn't driven the effort to privatize the Mariinsky quickly, and if he hadn't spent huge amounts of time fund-raising, there might not be much of a Mariinsky to discuss now. Russian figure skating was gutted for 15-20 years, and only the athletes who started in the Soviet Era were successful until recently. With few exceptions, the most successful Soviet era coaches came to the US to train their skaters, to be able to earn a living and for decent ice conditions.Whatever one might think of his conducting, almost every conductor is a staff conductor at one time or another. Leonard Bernstein was a staff conductor. James Levine was a staff conductor. It also makes little intuitive sense for Gergiev to starve the Mariinsky Ballet in any way if anyone was making money off of it, since it's the cash cow that funds everything else. It makes business sense to make cuts and "starve" non-profitable ventures.

The question would be, what would Fateev mean by increased touring? Does it mean that the ~ half of the company that tours now will tour more, or more of the company will tour?

I understand the logic of, "It's insulting to suggest I promoted ballerinas who slept with me," and "If I were promoting and casting on the basis of sex, my wife would be Prima Ballerina Assoluta for Eternity," but the end could suggest he sleeps with everyone, but makes no decisions based on it. He actually is self-deprecating about his sexual prowess: sleeping with him does not give the ballerina magical powers or talent...

Guys, you know the drill: discuss critics' reactions elsewhere. I've moved the Abrera discussion to Stella Abrera's thread in Dancers: http://balletalert.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/27895-stella-abrera/?hl=abrera