Helene

It is also possible that he was so happy to be alive right after the attack that he said this after being visited by a priest and realizing that he'd survive.

If the Mariinsky Ballet takes over the Academy's studios or finds alternate studio space in St. Petersburg, there will be no need for touring to increase.

End of 2014 is the supposed start date. I haven't seen a timeline for expected completion. Hence the school's concern about the timing of the Dorofeeva outster.

What's interesting is that the sexual orientation of the male dancer talking about working with so many beautiful women in a disproportionate ratio isn't specifically relevant; while the bro cups' to whom he's speaking is. What's always been interesting to me is the number of male dancers who got no respect from their high school peers until they told them they got paid, and given the number of student roles in their rep -- Nurcracker, Harlequinade, Sleeping Beauty, Midsummer, Mozartiana, etc. -- there are chances to be paid -- and for boys especially in smaller schools with few boys, even more -- however little the amount, quite young. And the boys/guys don't even have to put that money right back into toe shoes. Money still talks.

Aside from the fact that the only stage on which the Mariinsky Ballet will perform in St. Petersburg during the reno -- unless Gergiev plans on taking over another stage that is raked -- it makes more sense for the studios in which they practice to be flat, at least in the short-term, so the dancers don't have to go back-and-forth. Long-term, though, I don't know how hard it would be to re-adjust to the rake after years of flat floors. (One of the reasons the Bolshoi reno took so long was that they found that the foundation was rotting, and who knows what they'll find when they open up the Mariinsky and how long the renos will take.)The younger students need to get their foundations for performing on a raked stage; the ones closer to graduation will perform exclusively on flat floors for the beginning of their careers if they join the Company.

Neither of us said anything about the M-II studios apart from the Mariinsky continuing to use the one studio they have and already use or suggested that Gergiev would give up opera facilites in the new house for the ballet or school, so I don't understand this comment. Gergiev's logic about the studio space is solid: it's an excellent idea to be able to practice tour rep an a flat floor when preparing for a tour, which they didn't have until M-II was built; however given the limited amount of space for the ballet in M-II, there's an argument that it's a nice-to-have and a misuse of limited space. That is a completely different issue than we're discussing, which is that when the Main theater is shut down for reno, the net amount of studio space for the ballet and the school plummets. They cannot train and rehearse the company and train the students in the total amount of space left. They can send nearly the entire Mariinsky Balet on tour for the duration, or they can shut down the school, but if they want to keep the ballet and the school running in St. Petersburg, they are going to have to find and outfit other space in St. Petersburgh or use the sudios in the school 24x7. As far as I know, that device Hermione Granger has where she can be in two paces simultaneous is still a figment of JK Rawlings' imagination, and there's no getting around the laws of physics.

Congratulations to the newly promoted dancers, and many thanks for the info, silvermash!

Here's a video about "Emergence"; I can't wait to see this again:

Isaac Hernandez has been named one of the Quien50 people who are transforming Mexico and was honored. The tweets and Google translations: https://twitter.com/Quien/status/397944907416870912 #Quien50 ¡Honor a quien honor merece! @IsaacHdezF habló de lo importantes que son los niños triqui para México. # Quien50 Honor to whom honor is due! @ IsaacHdezF spoke of how important Triqui children to Mexico. Triqui are indigenous people. https://twitter.com/rtovarydeteresa/status/397832095512281088 En reunión con @IsaacHdezF acordamos diversos proyectos de educación y divulgación de la danza. In meeting with @ IsaacHdezF agreed various education and outreach projects of dance.

Ronald Bates died way too young in 1986, however, the ballet world is very small. If Mr. Fateev knew no one to call at NYCB, he could contact Francia Russell, with whom he worked on staging Balanchine and who I'm sure would be able to make the contact. There might be a patent on this technology, but it is neither top secret nor impossible to built. When the Bolshoi came to Seattle and performed at the Paramount Theatre, someone high in admin for the theater gave a pre-curtain speech in which he lauded the Bolshoi stage crew -- they had a very short turn-around time -- and I'm sure the Mariinsky crew is just as excellent. Whether it would be enlisted to built sub-floors and rakes, attach barres to the walls of rented space, and install new lighting and mirrors, I don't know. (The Seattle Opera scene shop built a new door to replace a damaged one on the Seattle monorail, but that was during downtime, and, with two theaters, I'm not sure if the Mariinsky crew has much downtime.) If nothing is possible, then either the school and/or the Mariinsky Ballet will have no studio space, because the Main theater will be renovated, and all of that studio space in addition to all of the other functional spaces -- storage, workshops -- will be lost temporarily. While there will be expense, horrible inconvenience, and dissent and people will be miserable no matter which solution is chosen, I somehow doubt that the Russians are so incapable that they can't come up with a workable solution.

2013 Dance Magazine awards recipients were announced today: Yuan Yuan Tan, to be presented by Christopher Wheeldon Martha Clarke, to be presented by Charles Reinhardt Mats Ek, to be presented by Jorma Elo Patricia Wilde, to be presented by Robert Barnett Philip Glass, to be presented by Damian Woetzel The presentation will be held at the Ailey Citigroup Theater (405 West 55th Street, NYC) at 7:30pm on Monday, 9 December. (Doors open at 7, with a reception to follow in the Ailey Studios.) Performing will be: Ashley Bouder, in an excerpt from "Square Dance" to honor Wilde. A selection from Martha Clarke's "Cheri" will be danced by Alessandra Ferri and Herman Cornejo.

I meant one of the options is that all but a skeletal group for which the single M-II studio is adequate would be forced to tour. If Gergiev were able to make more money splitting the Marrinsky into two touring groups with a single production given by a small group at home, I wouldn't be that .surprised to see it.happen even if it had never happened before. Also, Ronald Bates, who worked at .NYCB for a long time and was a master of flooring solutions, created a traveling sprung floor for the company. It is possibly to lay such a floor in most level spaces, and just about any existing floor can be leveled. It's not cheap, but it's already been a solution for decades. Of course there would be some construction needed, but a dedicated building is not necessary, nor is any other type of permanent construction, and there will be quite a workforce available after Sochi. It will be a mess of scheduling, no doubt about it, which is one of the reasons I'm sure why the school will be booted. I'm not sure what your proposal is to adress the fact that in a little over a year the entire studio space at the Main theater will be lost. Perhaps you'd be willing to tell us.

If the Mariinsky takes over the studios in the Vaganova school, then there are several choices if no alternate space(s) is found: 1. Either the students in the school or the parts of the Mariinsky Ballet not on tour use the studios during the midnight shift, or both split the midnight shift. 2. Either the amount of lesson time or rehearsal/coaching time for one or the other is lessened. 3. Either the school is shut down or the Mariinsky splits into multiple tour groups, leaving just enough people home to be able to be coached and to rehearse in a single large studio at the M-II -- in any configuration, because they could add temporary floor-to-ceiling dividers, like we had in my high school gym. There's no such thing as no space in St. Petersburg, given the amount of government and oligarchical interest in both the school and the company. With enough interest, space could be made, or, more likely, spaces could be made. They don't have to build a building: they have to build out studios. Dance companies travel with portable floors, which could be installed in just about any building: they have until then end of 2014, and there will be all of those out-of-work contractors once the Sochi Games begins, the ones who aren't dismantling, moving, and re-assembling half of the buildings after the Olympics end. Will it be expensive? Yes: change in general is expensive, and in a well-run project, which I can't say the reno will be, the tasks and costs of change are built into the reno project. It was expensive for San Francisco Opera to find temporary spaces all over downtown SF when War Memorial Opera House was renovated for seismic improvements. I saw "Aida" at the Civic Auditorium; I'm having no luck finding out where I saw "Turandot" a month later. San Francisco Ballet performed at two smaller (under 1000-seat) venues for most of their seasons during the renos, at the Palace of Fine Arts -- way out of downtown -- and Yerba Buena gardens, in the then not gentrified SOMA, with the season-ending "Swan Lake" in Berkeley. Pacific Northwest Ballet and Seattle Opera performed at a semi-renovated hockey rink while the Opera House (later McCaw Hall) was gutted. The Opera's studios aren't very close to McCaw Hall -- there's a highway in between the two areas -- and Pacific Northwest Ballet's school and studios were built out at the Good Shepherd Center in another non-adjacent neighborhood with a required commute until they moved into the Phelps Center next door to the Opera House (as it was then called) in the 1990's. It was expensive and, without government or oligarchical sponsorship or the possibility of lucrative tour opportunities, deeply hurt each company financially. It took years to get out of the financial holes for both. It was hardly ideal. However, they had to create or adjust to new performing spaces, while the Vaganova School and Mariinsky Ballet are looking for rehearsal and lesson spaces, and those spaces don't have to be in the same place. With this degrade the experience, be costly, put yet another burden on over-worked dancers, if they don't take over the school? Will it anger the parents, especially the ones paying big bucks for something else, assuming the students are pushed out? Will it be inconvenient, affect institutional cohesion, need far more energy to schedule, manage, ensure the safety of the students? Will it it take out more time of an already packed day commute from space to space, assuming multiple venues? Absolutely. From a practical standpoint, though, it is doable, because, the facts are: the Main theater will be renovated, the studios in it will not be available during the time of the reno, and there will a net reduction of space. The alternative is to send the Mariinsky on tour for most of the time and take away their need for studio space in St. Petersburg or to relocate the studios temporarily, however sub-obtimal and expensive. No amount of anguish about it will change that.

I don't know what piece it is with the diagonal white set piece, but a lot of the footage seemed to be of that and lots of Ashley Bouder and practicing "Swan Lake," with plenty of repeats. I didn't see much indication of any Balanchine or Robbins, but maybe that's because I can't "Name That Ballet" in three steps. Ah, to think this makes the clips in "Breaking Pointe" seem extensive.

What gives the impression that they don't like long phrases? If it's what is shown, that's more an issue of editing.

We're very aware that during tours the entire Mariinsky Ballet does not go on them, and we spend lots of bandwidth arguing about who came and who was left behind. A quick glance at the roster in our programs shows that we get at most 60% of the troupe for most tours. The choices are not shut down the school or not give space to the Mariinsky Ballet during the reno: the school could be moved into another space, with classrooms and ballet studios fitted into the space, just as, if by some miracle Gergiev does not win this war, the Mariinsky Ballet will not shut down because their studios are under renovation: they will move into some space.

Prospero was definitely a colonizer, but on the scale of things, was less worse than Columbus. Of course had he beheaded Caliban to scare off the natives, that would have been self-defeating.

NYCB has been re-tweeting up a storm about it.

Unfortunately Ballet Arizona isn't doing T&V in this year's "All Balanchine" program -- it's "Walpurgisnacht Ballet," "Episodes," and "Western Symphony" -- because Astrit Zejnati as the lead man was one of the great performers in it I've seen. He was trained in Albania and, while never looking dated, is old school in the best way. Prospero is Christopher Columbus? Since Caliban was the only inhabitant when he got there in a smashed up ship, Prospero didn't/couldn't murder the inhabitants or steal their natural resources to send to another continent, and I wouldn't put him in Columbus' circle of Hell.

Ilya, thank you so much for translating that massive article Kuznetsova doesn't pull many punches, does she...

Casting is up for second weekend, as always, subject to change: http://www.pnb.org/Season/13-14/KylianPite/#Casting Sadly, no Korbes, Renko, Pasch, or Poppe in featured roles second weekend. Taking on roles second weekend are: "Petite Mort "Couple 3: Kitchens/Hipolito Jr. on Friday, 15 November 7:30pm and Sunday, 17 November 1pm Love Suddarth/Suddarth (role debuts) on Saturday, 16 November 7:30pm. "Petite Mort" Couple 4: Mullin/Porretta on Thursday, 14 November 7:30pm and Sunday 17 November 1pm "Sech Tanze" third cast, all role debuts: Adomaitis, Love Suddarth, Generosa, Anspach, Suddarth, Loch, Hipolito Jr., McCall on Thursday, 14 November 7:30pm and Sunday 17 November 1pm"Forgotten Land" Pink (role debuts): Biasucci/Griffiths on Friday, 15 November 7:30pm and Saturday 16 November 7:30pm"Forgotten Land" White (role debuts): Merchant/Grant on Friday, 15 November 7:30pm and Saturday 16 November 7:30pm Here's a spreadsheet that can be downloaded by members when logged in: Kylian + Pite.xlsx

ABT just tweeted the news that Misty Copeland had won BET's "Young, Gifted, and Black Award," and linked to the BET webpage where there's a video of her acceptance speech: http://www.bet.com/video/blackgirlsrock/2013/acceptance-speeches/young-gifted-and-black-misty-copeland.html Grab a hankie and watch.

Using Google Translate: The left button translates to "Read the petition" Edited to remove Google translation with a link to Ismene Brown's blog, where there's a real translation, and the section about the Rector's duties: http://www.ismeneb.com/Blog/Entries/2013/11/5_Vaganova_Academy_petition_to_Putin.html The whole cultural community has great respect for the outstanding artistic talent of People's Artist of Russia Nikolai Tsiskaridze, former principal dancer of the Bolshoi Ballet. He is not only an exception dancer, but also a public favorite, and valued by a wide public as a "media personality." However, the position of Rector of the Academy requires the candidate a whole range of other qualities. The Rector of the Academy of Russian Ballet is the official who answers for the administrative, educational and economic process in an institute of higher education where over 600 students are training, and where about 100 teachers are working. The Rector direct the entire training process both on specialist and general subjects; in the current regime he also decides daily management issues; he coordinates personnel policy and issues about the social protection of the employees; he constantly monitors the maintenance of the Academy's huge housekeeping operation which includes not only the teaching establishment but also the pupils' living quarters. All this not only demands knowledge of the intricacies of the dancing profession and enthusiasm for it, but a great experience of administration. We note particularly another feature of the Academy: it includes a secondary school besides the upper school, so the Rector must have a wide scope of knowledge of working with children.

Part Deux. Even perusing the photos on the website, I can't tell the difference between most of the women. I think I've ID'd the men correctly, but if anyone else knows who's who, please reply with corrections. Part two opened with a solo for Joseph Walsh, whose arms are to die for. Next was a pas de deux for Conor Walsh and one of the women I'm not sure of: Precourt? Collado? Strongin? I think it was James Gotetski with one of the three in the next section. Whoever it was looked small compared to Gotetski. I think the other two are taller. The music to the first few pieces was quite lyrical and gentle until the dramatic "B" section of the last piece. Next was a series of pas de trois with Conor Walsh and Joseph Walsh partnering three women in a series. The first was Karina Gonzalez, who barely touched the ground. The transitions in her air positions and the pass-offs between the men were seamless. The middle woman was Nojomi Iijima in a similar vein. The third was the dark-haired tall dancer of Precourt/Collado/Strongin, and her part was more independent: she spent less time being in the air or being supported. Then each woman was partnered by one of the men with a third man joining them, and finally, the piece ended with all of the dancers running onstage, making a diagonal formation towards the piano -- like the end of "Walpurgisnacht Ballet" -- and kneeling on one knee, I'm assuming a reverence of sorts. There were shades of "Emeralds" and "Serenade," in the final movement. Like in "Serenade," most of the dancers exit stepping slowing backwards as a couple begins to dance, and like in "Emeralds," the "big" ending to big music isn't the final ending. The final pas de deux, danced by Gonzalez and Ian Casady, was to the serene C minor Nocturne. Towards the end, like several other times in the ballet, the dancers stood by the piano and listened. Then Casady lifted Gonzalez overhead and slowly walked backwards, turning her in the air slowly, as the curtain fell. After one set of bows, during which Stanton Welch was brought out from the wings for his bow, Lang Lang played the "Minute Waltz" as the dancers and Welch listened, and then there were the final bows, with Lang Lang applauding the dancers, and a final, behind-the-curtain ovation to end it. This was kind of like dancing "Dances at a Gathering" twice in a row. The Robbins Foundation seems stingy about letting companies do "Dances." I think other companies should snap this one up: it's got wonderful music, and the dancers look great in it. If they were to, they could have a hit on their hands.

I didn't correct my initial "appointment" in my calendar for the 11am PST start time, but I did see the last 60% of this using Tunnel Bear. Unfortunately, the director decided to intermittently focus on Lang Lang, in his red blazer, watching the dancers, and to flip from the medium shot, in which the details of the dancing was clear and their entire bodies were shown, to long shots, which added little, and close-ups that cut off their legs and the momentum. The lighting downstage left was murky, and the dancers were sometimes moving in the shadows. The piano was downstage right. The dancers were clad in below-the-hip pants with wide elastics, the men's pink in tone, the women's more peachy, and the women wore thin-strapped "bandage" bra tops. A lot of the choreography was musically responsive, and the dancers looked great in it, when the director would let them. Most of what I saw were solos, pas, and a very nice pas de trois for Meloday Mennite and two men, although there were a few sections when other couples zipped through -- one way of dealing with the Chopin's major mood swings in the "B" sections of his A/B/A works, so not much of an ensemble. (There might have been more for ensemble in the part I missed.) Mennite is a beautiful dancer who led other sections as well. From looking at the Houston Ballet website, I think it was Charles-Louis Yoshiyama with whom I was most impressed among the men, who were all wonderfully strong, in a solo and then pas with Nozomi Iijima. His technique was so clean without being at all academic. It's now intermission, during which we've been treated to the piano being tuned and footage of some dancers on stage marking and Lang Lang setting up for part two.