Helene

That can be literal and figurative in Ratmansky's case: he often has so much going on simultaneously, that it's hard to see everything at once "Don Quixote" was so beautifully layered -- the camera barely caught 25% of it -- that in the handful of times I saw it, I saw a new set of interactions in each performance. It's not a deep tale, and it helps that the story is familiar -- even so, when there was an important plot point, like Basilio pretending to be dead, it was front and center -- so that the audience fills in the blanks, perhaps some that weren't there. I sometimes wonder if he's trying to show us the limits of being able to know/see everything. (Shostakovich is the perfect composer for this: out of necessity he made being inscrutable into an art form.) That he see's everything, though, is one of the wonders the dancers describe: in a stage rehearsal full of controlled chaos, they say he can see that the seventh person on the left behind three other dancers is standing at the wrong angle. In a ballet with deeper content, or, especially historical/political content that's not familiar, and where we can't fill in from experience or knowledge, on the one hand, it can be harder to follow with so many layers, but, on the other hand, a choreographer like Ratmansky allows us to follow different angles and aspects. I wish I could have seen what I did see many more times.

I don't think there's any question that some dancers sell more tickets that others, all else being equal or similar. It would be easier to show from a company that has advance sales without disclosing casting until closer to the performances, but I doubt ABT would have posted so early for so long if they weren't selling tickets on names. (Now, it's harder, because dancers tweet and post their schedules to websites, blog, and Facebook.) I remember as a pre-teen and teenager poring over the ABT ads in the Sunday NYT and fantasizing about performers I would never get to see, as they were no long performing in NYC when I moved back to NY metro as an adult. It's not just casts: for three years in a trips in a row, the only time I could be in NYC, NYCB was playing "A Midsummer Night's Dream." I love the ballet, and it could have been a lot worse, but I was dying to see some other Balanchine.

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People will go to matinees because the slot is appealing and possible, and, for the most part, people who have to take time off from work won't. Wednesday night is neither Opening Night, a traditional night out night, like Thursday (huge in the UK and Ireland and among macho young financial types in the US who can make it to work on Fridays after getting home at 3am or later) and Friday, nor a weekend. It's also not considered a "prestige" night, like Opening Night or Saturday night. The only day-specific casting patterns I remember from NYCB were more soloists and corps members getting their chances on Saturday matinees -- I don't remember if this was true for Sunday matinees when they did two Sunday performances -- a majority of Principal Dancers' final performances were scheduled on Sunday nights, and there was lots of star power at the Spring Galas, usually on Thursdays, if I remember right and at the season finale Sunday night special performances. (Dancers' Emergency Fund benefit at the end of Winter Season; I don't remember what the Spring season closer was.). Does ABT have a pattern of giving specific nights to the casts with the biggest names? Do Wednesday nights sell very well if the big guns appear? "Cast-agnostic" means pretty much the same number of tickets will be sold no matter who dances, because people want to go on a particular day or time (or they want to see a ballet no matter what) or they can't make/dislike a slot. Subscriptions, for example, generally are cast-agnostic, unless they're to "All Opening Nights" or predictable based on experience about how a company casts. Another example is weekend matinees of "The Nutcracker," to which families will buy tickets way in advance of knowing the casts, and, if they're trying to make their five-year-old happy generally, won't care who's dancing, unless the Prince is their next-door neighbor. For people who travel to see ballet and can only come on weekends -- that's my situation with PNB now -- you can only hope that casting works out, which for me means almost always, as many permutations of casts as possible. I passed up almost every matinee In NYC, except the year I was a full-time graduate student with night classes. The exception was a Paris Opera Ballet matinee for which I took a precious vacation day. It was my only chance to see Patrick Dupond, and it might have been the performance with Sylvie Guillem in second movement of "Palais de Cristal." [Edited to add: no, I checked: Guillem danced Tuesday night, 15 July 1986 and Platel, whom I loved, danced the Wednesday matinee, 16 July 1986. The trouble comes when a person picks a day/time that yields them casting they don't like consistently. I've long had a first weekend (of two) Saturday matinee subscription to PNB. Until five or so years ago, Opening Night was a Thursday, and if there was ever a time that Patricia Barker, the PNB star at the time, was not going to dance, it was Saturday matinee. (She would have danced the Opening and would be prepping for the evening performance.). I would hear people around me open their programs and say, with disappointment, "No Patty," as if this wasn't predictable. Same with NYCB Saturday matinees: I got to see lots of the soloists -- Saland, Calegari, Fugate, Joseph Duell, for example -- make their debuts in roles and grow into Principals. For people who wanted to see Suzanne Farrell, who did a few ballets like "Davidsbundlertanze" in that slot -- it was a time when many elderly women were worried about taking the buses or subway at night -- it was an exercise in frustration.

Mid-week matinees are tricky to sell in general, since so many people work and NYC isn't the scary place of the '70's and '80's when especially eldetly women were afraid to travel at night. I would think it's the slot that generally appeals or isn't possible, and that while casting may entice a few to take a precious vacation day, I think on the whole, the slot would be cast-agnostic.

Many thanks for reporting back, Drew!

Just from Links, Judith Mackrell described the pair in "The Guardian" as "Vasipova" on April 1: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2013/apr/01/mikhailovsky-ballet-don-quixote-review That's in the mainstream press, and it was the first quoted reference on this site, followed by "Osiliev" in another article from Links two days later. (The terms may have appeared in far more and earlier Links articles and earlier where they weren't part of the short except quoted.) "Bennifer" and "Brangelina" are latecomers to the party: The "Supercouple" was the calling card for the soap opera "Days of Our Lives" in the '80's, and portmanteau couple names like "Shelle" and "Bope" were used regularly. Silly as the term "Vasiova" might seem -- that and "Osiliev" -- at least they're descriptive of a phenomenon and the fact that native English speakers now are willing to recognize and spell anything beyond first names. There are languages that use symbols and regularly use and create compound words in which this type of wordplay is far more common. It's one thing when "Margot," "Rudi," and "Misha" became worldwide phenomena and were well known outside of the ballet world by a single name, but outside the ABT ballet world, "Marcelo," for example, has no meaning, and smacks of cliquishness and intimacy. We've often asked Ballet Alerters to stop using first names only, or, at minimum to use full names at least one in the post, so that people outside the sanctum can follow the script without a scorecard or Google, but to no avail.

When I saw Ratmansky's "The Golden Cockerel" in Copenhagen last fall, the notes were in Danish (), and while I got something very specific from the performance, I'm still not sure I didn't misunderstand what I was seeing. But it was worth every minute of seeing.

I apologize. I didn't realize that the Russian Orthodox Church members were allowed to practice their religion freely during Soviet rule in general, not just specifically, and that I accepted the Western version that the Church, its members, and its clergy were persecuted, prosecuted, and harassed in general.

The "quoters" were addressing a different point. One risk with editing posts is that the original post can be quoted before it is changed, and other posters aren't obligated to return to the original to look for additional info or context. You might want to read Michael Popkin's detailed descriptions of the other ballets in Back in the USSR for danceviewtimes before you make any assumptions about the other two ballets. I think it's silly to ask an artist to do any such thing. That people survive unspeakable horrors physically and psychologically doesn't make the horrors any less heinous.

Marga clearly described how people can rise above many tragic circumstances, and her family experienced this directly. Billions of people survive in camps, under military dictatorships and other oppressive regimes, in ecological disaster zones, in war zones, and through plagues, and they all don't commit mass suicide in despair. That doesn't dismiss the trauma they experienced or those who never recovered: different people have different experiences. One of the most consistent things I've read about Soviet life or life under Soviet rule is how getting around the table for long nights of eating, drinking, and conversation with friends was especially nuturing. The Russian Orthodox Church is extemely powerful in Russia today, taking very conservative political stances, despite having been targeted during Soviet times. It certainly rose above its circumstances. "Secrets" in this case are specific to an action or ideology that would get people arrested, killed, sent to camps, etc. As history has shown, the same things happened to people who were ideologically pure, but the official propaganda said otherwise. A secret in this context would be one described in the book "Holy Days," how in Soviet Russia a few secretly practicing Jewish families hoarded small amounts of building supplies for years to eventually built a collective mikvah in one apartment building, complete with a halachically required constantly renewing water source, diverted from the buildings pipes. They acknowledged their lives were at risk, but that's how they rose against their circumstances.

Only casting info from an official and public source is valid here. Casting posted for company use in their studio building is off-limits. Casting is listed on the website at this link: http://www.pnb.org/S...Encore/#Casting Both a Cinderella excerpt (Foster/Porretta) -- it doesn't say which Pas de Deux -- and excerpts from "Swan Lake" Act II (Chapman/Tisserand/Neubert) and Act II (Imler/Bold) are listed. Korbes is listed for "Diamonds" with Seth Orza. (He's been partnering Kaori Nakamura this rep.) This is a list to running times on the PNB website: http://www.pnb.org/Season/12-13/Encore/#Details We get 4 minutes of "Cinderella," 9 minutes of Act II of "Swan Lake," 8 minutes of Act III, and 16 minutes of "Diamonds."

The Principals for "Diamonds" second weekend have been updated on the PNB site as follows: Thursday, 6 June: Imler/Bold Friday, 7 June: Nakamura/Orza Saturday, 8 June (eve): Imler/Bold Sunday, 9 June (mat-1pm): Nakamura/Orza. Laura Gilbreath also loses her performance of Diamonds, as Karel Cruz was scheduled to partner her second weekend Friday as well as Korbes twice first weekend. Korbes is listed with Seth Orza on the cast list for the "Diamonds" part of the "Encores" program. In "Agon" first weekend, Batkhurel Bold partnered Leslie Rausch and Joshua Grant partnered Laura Gilbreath. Second weekend, Bold partners Carla Korbes (Friday/Sunday matinee) and Grant partners Maria Chapman (Thursday/Saturday eve). Both Bold and Grant dance all performances of "Tide Harmonic" as well. to them both for supporting the PNB women and the choreography in this rep.

From Franklin Stevens' "Dance As Life: A Season with American Ballet Theatre":

You may not have read the original post which was quoted: This is an astonishingly offensive remark. Many people DID live and die in a Gulag. Many millions. And most of those people WERE innocent, with no secrets to hide. The original quote could be read to imply that if there were no secrets, there was no need to worry, and only the guilty need worry, which is, of course, belied by the fate of millions, but I read it as saying it didn't occur to Natalia's relatives to worry because they didn't have anything to hide and nothing in their experience made them feel threatened. That was serendipitous for them. There were many people who emigrated elsewhere from the Soviet Union, and while they didn't necessarily want to return, they had a better appreciation of the trade-offs they made when they found some social safety net functions -- for example, the amount of arts television -- were no longer a given. It would be offensive to assume that everyone had the same experience in the Soviet Union, and that the only people who were happy were connected and/or in charge. Again, Ratmansky isn't making that claim.

The trilogy is being performed in San Francisco next year, and Ratmansky ballets are heavily in demand. I'm guessing everyone wants a new one, but Peter Boal got a new Wheeldon for PNB by presenting re-stagings of several works, at first in mixed-bills and then in an All-Wheeldon program. It takes patience: Ratmansky is a busy man. ABT isn't the only company in the world

Why should anyone assume that a ballet presented by ABT should be ice cream? Did the company promote it that way and mislead the public? "Pillar of Fire," "Dark Elegies," "Jardin aux Lilacs" are no picnics in the park, but I doubt anyone said to Tudor, "Lighten up, already" (or at least lived to tell about it). From what I've read of the Ratmansky ballets, his work resembles the dramatic roots of Ballet Theatre, certainly more so than the classics (which can be tragic for other reasons).

Should Solzhenitsyn have put on a happy face to entertain? Unless ABT hired Ratmansky to stage a specific ballet or libretto, or the company puts restrictions on him, the choice is up to him. The audience can vote with its pocketbook. There's plenty of "Le Corsaire" as an alternative.

[Admin beanie on] Only official news with official sources is valid to post here. Anything else will be removed. [Admin beanie off]

I tend to take confessions seriously, especially when one of the confessed states in front of a judge that he contracted a beating, not an acid attack, and, therefore, he has nothing to be sorry about.

It's the defense's job to do what they can to defend their client, and that includes exploiting the current climate in Russia, where beating someone, including to death, is not considered sonething out of the ordinary and where the general public does not believe that anything that happens in the court system or through the police is not a corrupt set-up. These incidents aren't pertinent to Filin's case. Generalizing a situation, particularly a medical one, from a very limited number of superficially related situations isn't meaningful, however ubiquitous.

He's currently listed for the 5 July "Sleeping Beauty" with Murphy. If he's removed from the schedule and/or there's an official source for an update, it can be posted here.

It should also be considered that people with serious burn injuries are much more susceptible to infections than healthy people. Yes, and infection is the biggest cause of death among severe burn victims. Filin was fully clothed during the attack and wasn't burned over a large surface area, but faces are very susceptible and hospitals are breeding grounds for infection. (Not that he had a choice.)

There's little basis from this article to conclude that it is "increasingly likely" that photos of Filin are photoshopped: in fact, there's no reference in the article to the defense claiming that photos released of Filin were altered. The defense has sent the official written given them evidence to their experts, who have by no means proven to be objective, because their identities are being hidden, and they're basing a defense on these experts' conclusion. Of course, this is on the basis of paperwork, not a physical examination of any kind. The points in the linked articles are: 1. The defense has conflicting claims: Filin was never as injured as claimed or he was injured, but the seriousness of his injuries was caused by an infection he caught in the German hospital, so its really not their fault. I notice here are no claims from he defense that the defendents, including Dmitrichenko, had been set up by the police with false confessions beaten out of them, just that they didn't cause much damage. 2. The defense insists on an examination; they've been told to come to Germany if they want more experts to examine Filin.

I don't think there's a contradiction between the diaspora and the originators of roles being able to coach three decades of great NYCB dancers for NYCB. Martins seems to have blocked them from this. The coaching they get from many of the greats of the past is under the auspices of the Balanchine Foundation, and that's very limited.