Helene

Ooops, jumped the gun . I hope in a decade or so to do a year-long apartment swap and commute between the NYPL and the Museum of TV (or whatever it's called these days).

The Big Three for me are Adams in "Agon," LeClercq in 2nd Movement of "Symphony in C," and Soloviev in anything. Then Kent in 2nd Movement of "Symphony in C," Nijinsky in "Faun," Pavlova in anything but "The Dying Swan," Spessivtseva's Giselle, Kolpakova's Aurora and Raymonda live in her 30's, Tallchief's opening night in "Firebird," the Seymour/Gable "Romeo and Juliet," Alonso in "Theme and Variations," Karsavina's "Spectre de la rose," Nora Kaye in "Pillar of Fire," one Soviet ballerina whose name I don't remember but didn't get to tour (or tour much) and always got the second night and never the TV broadcasts, but whose name invokes sighs and "You missed an incredible dancer" (maybe Shelest?), and, going into a third dimension/alternate universe, Thomas Lund, Leta Biasucci, Carrie Imler, and Jerome Tisserand in PNB's "Giselle." Later: Adding Danilova and Franklin in "Gaite Parisienne," Baronova, Balanchine in the hoop dance from "The Nutcracker," Henning Kronstam, Hans Brenaa, Hans Beck staging Bournonville and putting together the schools, Beriosova.

One thing that Christopher Stowell's early resignation did was to allow any dancers who wanted to leave the company to contact/audition for other companies in the winter-spring contract time. Given Stowell's long-time tenure and prominence with San Francisco Ballet, I'm not surprised that some of the OBT dancers would find it a hospitable company. Rowe surely knows it well: her OBT bio says that she spent a year at SFB's school (after ten at CPYB), before she joined OBT in 2008. (Often the bio pages are kept on the site, even if the links to them from the dancer roster pages are removed.)

Thank you, Barbara. I apologize for the brain freeze .

I've been looking at the SFB schedule to see how to maximize the number of times I can see the Ratmansky program next April, since except for full-lengths, SFB runs two programs concurrently. I know it's too late for this and impractical anyway -- even SFB, which has at least an extra score of dancers doesn't try to do this -- but I think it would have been fascinating to have a concurrent program with "Giselle," a "Giselle Project" of sorts, in which later essays on the material could be seen up close to the original. I'm thinking of Robbins' "The Cage" and Quijada's "Mating Theory," which to me looked like the logical extension of "The Cage." Has Ratmansky done a short riff on "Giselle" in any of his one-acts, the way Caniparoli took on the contemporary story of the former-Yugoslavia Romeo and Juliet? If not, he'd be the first whose take on it I'd love to see.

The Lubovitch "Othello," which was released on DVD with San Francisco Ballet, is too long, but Limon's "The Moor's Pavane" would work. It used to be in ABT's rep: I remember seeing photos of it in the ABT program book sold in the early '70's.

From the email I received today from Dance Books: During a recent warehouse tidying we've discovered several hundred copies of the first number of the Society for Dance Research's journal 'Dance Research', and we're happy to be able to offer these free of charge to anyone who would like a copy (though there will be small charge for postage). It's a 128 page paperback containing papers presented at the Society's inaugural meeting in 1982 and includes a wide subject coverage by some distinguished names: Ivor Guest, Clement Crisp, Selma Jeanne Cohen, Richard Ralph, June Layson, Belinda Quirey, Richard Glasstone, Ann Hutchinson Guest, Valerie Preston-Dunlop, John Blacking, Peter Brinson, Roderyk Lange, and Alexander Schouvaloff. www.dancebooks.co.uk Postage to the US is 4.76 GBP (~7.45 USD) for one and 8.09 GBP for two.

It takes at least three weeks to adjust to altitude: he won't be worse off than the other dancers in that regard alone, but it will be compounded by by travel and time zone changes. New Zealand is gorgeous, though, and I'm sure it will be a wonderful experience for him.

Yikes, Cruz and Gillian Murphy are scheduled to dance four performances of "Swan Lake" in New Zealand from 18-27 July. Opening Night in Vail is 28 July. If Cruz leaves on the 28th, he'll get to Vail on the 28th, but 6 hours later, because NZ is 18 hours ahead of Vail at this time of year. (Like JFK to Rome.) That's a lot of travel. http://www.nzballet.org.nz/shows-and-events/the-vodafone-season-of-swan-lake/casting/

Many thanks, volcanohunter! Now, if Helgi Tomasson could get McRae to sign a contract... (Feet like knives.) I wish SFB wouldn't erase the Stanislavsky to push the Bolshoi.

Sources, please for casting info.

Maria Kochetkova posted this photo of a curtain call with Cornejo to her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151558508483547&set=p.10151558508483547&type=1&relevant_count=1

Dmitriy Zagrebin will come from the Bolshoi Ballet, where he's not listed on the website. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151681332761293&set=a.209483166292.171774.27923251292&type=1 The Facebook posts welcomes Froustey, Messmer, and Zagrebin "amongst others," so we'll have to stay tuned for more.

SFB just confirmed that Dmitriy Zagrebin from the Bolshoi Ballet will join the company. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151681332761293&set=a.209483166292.171774.27923251292&type=1

San Francisco Ballet posted the news that Dmitri Zagrebin would be joining the company to its Facebook page. (We can't *wait* for you to meet the new faces joining our Company— including Mathilde Froustey from Paris Opera Ballet, Simone Messmer from American Ballet Theatre and Dmitry Zagrebin from the Bolshoi Ballet, amongst others. Stay tuned for all the news!)

POB could do what it wants with "Raymonda," although it needs the width to perform the choreography the way it's now blocked, but when an audience member asked in a Q&A whether PNB had experimented with different colors on the cyclotron, Peter Boal said that Trust dictates "Balanchine blue" and I'm not sure how kosher it would be to shrink the stage lighting-wise. At the Bastille, it would become a tunnel if the stage was narrowed.