Helene

Ismene Brown just published a summary and translation of the following news to her blog: The Boshoi's Vladimir Urin announced that Natalia Osipova would be dancing with Ivan Vasiliev in "Don Q" in October, and he would begin talks with her for future performances (source: Izvetsia), as Brown noted, "just when the Royal Ballet is staging the same ballet in London amid a serious shortage of ballerinas." It may be a rare opportunity to see Osipova with the Mariinsky in "Giselle," if the Bolshoi manages to fill up her calendar going forward.

I received the casting for the first weekend of AIR TWYLA!; it's not up on the website yet, but I assume it will be there shortly. If you're and active member (Group=New Member, Members, or Senior Member) or Moderator and logged in, you can download this Excel spreadsheet (.xls) with full details, including the ensembles: 2013-14 Rep 1 performance casting week 1.xls Just to note: three women in the Company got married and have changed their names since the end of last season: Laura Gilbreath is now Laura Tisserand Emma Love is now Emma Love Suddarth Leah O'Connor is now Leah Merchant On the casting spreadsheet, the women, including Sarah Ricard Orza, who are married to men in the company are referred to by their maiden names (Gilbreath, Love, and Ricard) to avoid confusing them with their husbands. Eric Hipolito, Jr. is listed as "Hipolito." Principal and featured casting, as always, subject to change and the same for all three performances unless otherwise noted, is: Brief Fling Blue: Kaori Nakamura and Sasha Radetsky (Guest Artist, Fri 27 Sep & Sat eve 28 Sep) or Jerome Tisserand (Sat mat 28 Sep) Red: Kylee Kitchens/Eric Hipolito, Jr. and Maria Chapman/Benjamin Griffiths Green: Leta Biasucci, Jonathan Poretta, Kiyon Gaines, and Ezra Thomson Waiting at the Station Principal Couples: Carrie Imler/Kiyon Gaines and Rachel Foster/Jonathan Porretta Character Men: James Moore and Price Suddarth Golden Girls: Chelsea Adomaitis, Elle Macy, Sarah Pasch Cross-over Couples: Angelica Generosa/Steven Loch and Jahna Frantziskonis/Andrew Bartee Nine Sinatra Songs "Softly As I Leave You": Lesley Rausch (Fri 27 Sep & Sat mat 28 Sep) or Kylee Kitchens (Sat eve 28 Sep) and Joshua Grant "Strangers in the Night": Lindsey Dec/Batkhurel Bold (Fri 27 Sep & Sat mat 28 Sep) or Laura (Gilbreath) Tisserand/William Lin-Yee (Sat eve 28 Sep) "One for My Baby": Maria Chapman/James Moore (Fri 27 Sep & Sat eve 28 Sep) or Leah Merchant/Ezra Thomson (Sat mat 28 Sep) "Somethin' Stupid": Carrie Imler/Jonathan Porretta (Fri 27 Sep) or Brittany Reid/Ryan Cardea Sat mat & Sat eve 28 Sep) "All the Way": Sarah Ricard Orza/Karel Cruz (Fri 27 Sep & Sat eve 28 Sep) or Elizabeth Murphy/Charles McCall (Sat mat 28 Sep) "Forget Domani": Margaret Mullin/Benjamin Griffiths (Fri 27 Sep & Sat mat 28 Sep) or Carli Samuelson/Kiyon Gaines (Sat eve 28 Sep) "That's Life": Kaori Nakamura/Seth Orza (Fri 27 Sep & Sat mat 28 Sep) or Rachel Foster/Jerome Tisserand (Sat eve 28 Sep) There's also a contest going on for people on Facebook or willing to sign up for Facebook. Deadline is 20 September (no time listed). The prizes are: Two tickets to AIR TWYLA! for 28 September. The fine print doesn't say whether for the matinee or evening or a choice of both, but may imply evening. Overnight in the Prima Donna Suite on 28 September. $100 to spend at Petite Toulouse, which is across the street from the hotel. The food is great, but in my experience, it's too late for Sunday brunch reservations for Sunday 29 September. To enter, "Like" PNB on Facebook, fill in your name and email on this form, and submit.

She spoke about vampire literature becoming prominent in the early- to mid-19th century, so vampires would have been in the air.

The original orchestration for "Giselle" is beautiful: much lighter, more atmospheric, and a lot more subtle. Besides chopping, modern conductors and orchestras play it like it's supposed to be Tchaikovsky, who was 16 when Adam died. Then people complain that it's not Tchaikovsky. Adam was no Minkus, but it's hard to tell the way "Giselle" is approached.

I wasn't clear: I meant the full-length video Mariinsky version, which I found stripped down, in terms of narrative. On the other hand, watching a more dramatically rich version on YouTube might fill in some of the blanks.

"Gisele" is a classic, the way "Hamlet" and "Don Giovanni" are, and is worth seeing for that alone. You don't have to love it. A lot of people who are much more interested in neoclassical ballet don't like it, and for others it's an acquired taste. It is not, however, a fast-paced-lots-of-action ballet. Its core is from the Romantic peiod, with added classicism from Petipa when it was revived in St. Petersburg. The first act shows the final day of courtship between Giselle and Loys, who is Prince Albrecht in disguise, and how his betrayal of her unfolds, until she goes mad and dies. It's performed in the street clothing of the period in which it's performed. The second act is in the forest realm of the Wilis, the souls of women who were betrayed before marriage and died. During the night, their queen, Myrtha, leads them to take revenge on men who wander into the forest they inhabit. Giselle is fated to join them, and Albrecht is their target, but Giselle saves him. It's performed in long, Romantic tutus. Depending on the production, there can be a lot of mime or very little. The Mariinsky production, the one filmed in 3D with Osipova (guesting) and Kondaurova doesn't do the ballet justice, in my opinion. If there are only excepts available on YouTube, they won't give a sense of the way the story ties together.

Marina Harss just published this excellent long interview with Virginia Johnson, which covers her early training through her artistic directorship of DTH. http://dancetabs.com/2013/09/virginia-johnson-artistic-director-dance-theatre-of-harlem/

At the end of Marina Harss' interview with her, Virginia Johnson said that Michaela DePronce has left Dance Theatre of Harlem to join Dutch National Ballet. http://dancetabs.com/2013/09/virginia-johnson-artistic-director-dance-theatre-of-harlem/

February is a long time away, but in the meantime, that is great news.

I committed a grave sin this afternoon: listening to the sleepwalking scene from "La Sonnambula" on the Met Opera Channel on Sirius, I thought, "Oh, that must be Callas" and walked back to check the radio display, and it said it was Renata Tebaldi. It was playing in the background, and she was off pitch, so it wasn't entirely crazy, but it was still . Then a few excerpts later, Leonie Rysanek nailed "Pace, pace" from "La Forza," so all was well again, and George London is now singing Wotan's passage from the end of "Das Rheingold."

I've moved the responses to the Project Plie to Dale's thread, which is now California's thread, since California wrote the earliest post. Please continue to discuss here: http://balletalert.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/37780-abt-launches-project-plie/

Like all Facebook users, some dancers only allow their content to be seen by Friends (private) that they've approved, some allow all of their content to be public-facing, and others choose post-by-post whether to make it public or private. ABT just tweeted, Tomorrow is the day! We are launching a major initiative and can’t wait to tell you about it. which doesn't sound like promotion announcements to me.

People flock to opening night regardless of who is cast.

Management makes up its own rules about management. It would be unusual to have two Associate AD's, but ABT could do it if it wanted. I don't think ABT would throw this out as a teaser though.

There never was a ballet market. The classical music market is still greater than the ballet market, but it's still like comparing strawberries to blueberries. As volcanohunter pointed out, even it it's heyday, a very small number of records/tapes/CDs comprised most of the sales, and those days are over. For Pavarotti, Carerras, and Domingo, there was a windfall, but the majority of classical musicians made their money performing, not from record sales, even when sales aside from the outliers were at their most robust.

Frances Chung and Alex Wong, formerly of Miami City Ballet, both trained at the Goh Ballet Academy in Vancouver, which was started by Chan Hon Goh's parents. I'm not sure what "a major international" company is supposed to mean, if the dancer spoken about is from San Francisco Ballet. A roster of international dancers? A company that's been on tour? More Asian female Principal Dancers: Aki Saito, who is Japanese, Royal Ballet of Flanders. Tzu-Chia Huang, from Taiwan, Ballet Arizona

Whenever a ballet DVD is released, our amazon.com commissions rise. Not as much as the dancers' moms pay for back-to-school stuff every year, but enough of a bump that we celebrate for multiple reasons when ballet DVDs are released and, especially, when they get good reviews. The market may be small. Perhaps Market Are Us. I'm not sure that opera singers' recording income is that high these days. There aren't very many of them, although with new media digital recording, and small studios, a singer can self-publish and post links/excerpts to their blogs and websites, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, etc., and with iTunes, there's no reason to be dependent on physical distribution.

There have been numerous discussions about Skorik and the casting/promotion policies of Mariinsky management. Here is. Link to the thread on Skorik in the "Dancers" forum. http://balletalert.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/36167-skorik/ There are many relevant comments in the 2012-13 Mariinsky Season General News hread: http://balletalert.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/36116-20122013-mariinsky-ballet-season-general-news-etc/

Thank you for the recap, Paul. In this case, the "ca" is for Canada

I wonder if it's geo-blocked, because when I click the link, the URL resolves to on.aol.ca and a message that the page cannot be found, and when I try to correct the URL (change ".ca" to ."com") it won't let me.

Ballet Arizona isn't particularly consistent about announcing when dancers come and go, and I wasn't able to attend the final performance of the season at Symphony Hall, where many dancers who leave get flowers during the last curtain calls and where the program has a snapshot of the roster, but today's Facebook post was captioned, "Former Ballet Arizona dancers, Shea Johnson and Ginger Smith rehearsing Don Quixote, photo by Rosalie O'Connor Photography." I didn't realize Shea Johnson was no longer with the company, and a quick glance at the roster shows that Michael and Slawomir Wozniak are no longer there either. Our friend, Mr. Google, is not bringing up any official news about where they are now. Joseph Cavanaugh has become Ballet Master. He was one of my favorite dancers in the Company, and from this article, it looks like he retired as a dancer after "Topia." The bios aren't up yet, but new members of the company for 2013 are: Annier Navarro Arianni Martin Brian Leonard Eden Garcia-Thaler Eric White Killian Stephens Randy Crespo Apprentices and Trainees aren't broken out separately or identified in the group. I'm not sure if the current roster on the website includes them.

I just got an email with this info from the UW Workd Series:

In 2006, I saw Foster/Yin and Lallone/Maraval. In 2008, I saw Foster/Lin-Yee and Dec/Tisserand. Lallone/Maraval were reviewed on Opening Night 2006: Seattle Weekly Seattle PI Most of the 2008 reviews were heavy on the two new works, "Afternoon Ball" and "Opus 111," and, in general, "Strangers in the Night" is not one of the few, like "That's Life," that gets singled out for individual mention when there are two-three lines about the work.

PNB has published a new video: Rachel Foster and William Lin-Yee dance "Strangers in the Night" from "Nine Sinatra Songs."