Helene

Hi again, folks. We're about 25% there, and we appreciate everything we've received so far. We still have a way to go, and I'm hoping we can meet our goals quickly, so that we don't start to resemble the nearly constant PBS/NPR fundraisers. Thank you!

I couldn't get past Halle Berry's hair. I think Daniel Day Lewis looked fantastic. Everyone should age like he has.

It's remarkable how often, when they can just look great in the default black tie, the men muck it up by trying to be creative.

That's great news, Jane: I can't wait to see it.

As I mentioned, I love Act II, and Fabiano and Mimi, Jennifer Black, made me love it even more, with help from Keith Phares' Marcello and Jennifer Zetlan's Musetta. You could hear the emotional exhaustion of a Mimi who had been up all night and was out at the crack of dawn to find Rodolfo's best friend and have the painful discussions that women have with their maybe ex-boyfriend's best friend. Her "Addio senza rancor" was heartbreaking. Fabiano wore his voice on his sleeve, and he has a very wide emotional palate. When he sang to Marcello, "I'm scared," it was like a knife. Smart is irresistible, and, as an artist, he is very, very smart.

Some quick thoughts between Act I/II and Act III. I hadn't seen a staging before where I can remember Collline buying the overcoat on Christmas Eve and finding the rare grammar in a pocket. It's even more poignant that the coat's life with Colline began and ended with Mimi and Rodolfo's relationship. This production makes wonderful use of projections, most notably the wonderful sepia photographs of period Paris during the set change between Acts I and II, and the lighting is used beautifully in the Cafe Momus scene. Michael Fabiano: there aren't enough Guy Fieri superlatives to describe him, but I'll stick with: he's the real deal. Sonorous voice from top to bottom. His Rodolfo reminds me of why the Italian boys I grew up with were equal parts babe magnet and impossible.

I'm not sure how the "Episodes"/"Tchai PDD"/"West Side Story Suite" is going to work program-wise: will there be one intermission, with a pause between "Episodes" and "Tchai PDD"? Or will they add another short piece to "Tchai PDD"? "West Side Story Suite," which I'd hate if I didn't find it so dull, will bring in the crowds, so that should cover people who are jittery about "Episodes." (Even though I find it dull, like almost everyone else, I'm curious about how the dancers will sing, and, especially, sing after dancing up a storm.) If there's a pause between the first two, then people won't be tempted to come at first intermission, because they'll be drawn to "Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux," and they won't want to miss half of the program. If there will be another ballet paired with "Tchai PDD," the middle part of the program is where two small pieces go traditionally. If I'm remembering correctly, "Episodes" usually started the program at NYCB. Maybe they'll play up how the last movement is really Bach.

I saw this last month and I agree. Nina Hoss was superb as an East Berlin doctor exiled to the East German equivalent of Podunk after having asked for permission to emigrate to West Germany around 1980, close enough to the fall of the Berlin Wall and formal unification of Germany, but far enough away tat no one could have conceived of it happening in thier lifetime. Hoss conveyed the brittle interior of her character, Barbara.

I'm not a huge fan of "Jardi Tancat," but the music is a combination of three fragments from traditional Catalan song and two new original songs sung by the incomparable Maria del Mar Bonet. While I appreciate the genious of "Agon," "Episodes" is my favorite of Balanchine's leotard ballets. I'm glad to see it getting some traction outside NYCB: Ballet Arizona did a fantastic job with it last June.

Some short impressions of Opening Night of Seattle Opera's "La Boheme": The direction by Tomer Zvulun was detailed and crisp. The singers had time to and space to react to one another, and the goofing among the male Bohemians, which can be stilted, was really funny and very sharp, especially Andrew Garland's Schaunard in the opening and closing acts. The Cafe Momus scene, with the superb Seattle Opera Chorus and Children's Chorus, popped with energy and cheer. Norah Ansellem played Musetta as a Cole Porter heroine, Miss "I'll Always Be True to You in My Fashion," but, in typical fashion, Marcello wasted his time and energy being jealous. Elizabeth Caballero sang Mimi. Her voice has a golden quality, and it soared over the orchestra. What was so impressive is that while Puccini shifts pretty quickly between light and in your face orchestration -- the most obvious example is in "Mi chiamano Mimi," in the transition to the third part -- there wasn't an noticeable boom in volume: she just eased into a bigger sound. My favorite part of "La Boheme" is Act III, and here it was beautifully sung by Michael Todd Simpson (Marcello), Caballero, and Francesco Demuro (Rodolfo). I usually find Act IV a let-down, but Caballero's slow decline throughout the act was dramatically true and very moving. The act opened with the finest Rodolfo/Marcello duet I've heard in many decades of hearing the work. There's a part towards the end when Marcello has a few lines of his own, and Simpson's delivery was heartfelt in its directness and simplicity. (It's one of the few times in the opera where he's not melodramatic about his up-and-down relationship with Musetta or being a shoulder to cry on.) His and Demuro's voice blended beautifully, and the friendship was palpable. Arthur Woodley, possibly the only member of the cast who was alive when I saw my first "La Boheme" in 8th grade at New York City Opera, was meant to be the older, wiser advisor to the young Bohemians, and he sang "Vecchia zimarra" like the philosopher his character was, contemplating each phrase, rather than singing a lovely, sad song, and his sonorous bass filled the theater. The orchestra, conducted by Carlo Montenaro, soared in the big orchestral moments, but also played with sensitivity and subtlety in the quieter parts of the score. I can't wait for tomorrow afternoon's performance with the alternate cast.

If you click on his linked name in the quote of Bouder's post, you'll find a Adrian Clay's Facebook photo.

Balanchine got there in reverse: he started with "Theme and Variations" and then went to looseness of the first movement, with the woman in ballet slippers.

That's very exciting news: to them all. Thank you for posting, SCchck!

You'd be very surprised, AlbanyGirl. I've sat next to the same couple of women for years at the ballet, and I've always been surprised at the questions one of them asks the other. It's something she has done for years, and she enjoys it for the most part, but as far as getting deeper in or being interested in the details and distinctions, no: she seems to only want to know if she's going to like it or not.

Dear Members, It is now time for our yearly fundraiser for the monthly hosting fee for both Ballet Alert and Ballet Talk for Dancers, and we need to raise enough money to cover them for the next year. As in the past, we will close the fundraiser when we've made our target, and we will not launch another until our coffers are near empty. We will keep asking until we reach the target. We have set the standard donation at $20, like last year. We will graciously and gratefully accept whatever you can send. It's a drop-down box again. Until our site support HTML5, which allows the data sent from an input box to be recognized as a number by our processor, I won't be able to add a box for custom amounts, which, for now, can only be donated by check. You may donate by credit card (American Express, Mastercard, Visa, Discover) through the box in the upper right corner of the home page. You will be redirected to the First Data processing site ("YourPay Connect") to collect your payment details. First Data is one of the world's largest credit card processing sites, and they've secured these pages. If you prefer to pay by check, please make them out to to BALLET TALK, as we have a dedicated bank account in that name. We had to combine the two boards for the account, and could not use two separate names, so we decided to just call it Ballet Talk for the banking purposes. Ballet Talk 11165 Abbotts Station Dr. Duluth, GA 30097 THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!! Victoria Leigh and Helene Kaplan

I wish I understood French, but I've never had a problem ever understanding her English, and so appreciate her facility with languages, how she thinks on her feet and the graciousness and intelligence that she shares with a worldwide audience. She's one of my cultural heroes.

I'm with you. It's hard enough to keep track of a company with which you're somewhat familiar, but with visiting companies, it's impossible to tell who the players are.

I agree: I think Novikova is amazing.

To answer whether general audiences make the distinction between Romantic and Classical ballet, I think in North America, the main distinctions would be between the long tutu and the short pancake tutu with crowns on the head, and between the music used for "Giselle" and "La Sylphide" versus the symphonic Tchaikovsky scores, because "Swan Lake," "Sleeping Beauty," and "Nutcracker" are done so much more often here than Petipa ballets with lighter scores like "La Bayadere." If "Raymonda" were performed in North America, I think it would be classified musically with Tchaikovsky, although only the Intruder dies. "Romeo and Juliet" gets performed a lot, and I would suspect, despite its dissonance, would be bundled with "Swan Lake"'s score in people's minds. I think audiences that see "Serenade" don't see Petipa as much as "Giselle"or "La Sylphide" and I think Fokine's "Les Sylphides" would be grouped in with these and not seen a Classical. (I don't know if people would recognize "Giselle" as a work by Petipa.) They would, at least with Pakeldinaz's designs for "Ballet Imperial," group that and "Theme and Variations" with classical ballets like "Sleeping Beauty." Most non-tragic opera isn't taken very seriously here, with the exception of the bittersweet Mozart/da Ponte operas, and I think "Don Quixote" is looked at similarly, and I suspect more people have seen the Pas de Deux than the full ballet.

Thank you so much for the heads up, sandik! I found this "Dancer Spotlight" Q&A from last November: http://kcballet.word...ght-josh-spell/ Here's the link to the list of dancers page on the Kansas City Ballet website: http://www.kcballet....ny/dancers.html I'm so glad he decided to return to the stage. Kansas City Ballet is lucky to have him. He's teaching at this the Pilates studio, and this is his bio on the studio's site: http://www.pilates1901.com/josh-spell/

Based on doing the Ballet Alert! calendar and seeing KCB's rep over time, yeah.

The online Balanchine Catalogue states the following about "À la Françaix": It sounds like it must have been fun to perform. Welcome to Ballet Alert!, Roman. We're glad you found us and joined.

Perhaps she was not brought in solely on talent -- the number of performers who describe getting breaks speak a lot about luck/being in the right place at the right time -- and when speaking of dancers who've made it, teachers and coaches will talk about work ethic, perserverance, a quality thet see that's unusual, etc., but the idea that the Mariinsky would hire and cast a dancer solely because a documentary is being made about her is questionable, even were Spielberg making the documentary. (Maybe if she was playing the main character in the "Black Swan" follow-up.) She clearly has something Mariinsky Management wants. She's hardly the only Mariinsky dancer whose casting has created controversy when looking at others considered vastly superior dancers in the company, and Vaganova training alone doesn't guarantee that a dancer will not be controversial or that even the dancers considered the epitomes of Vaganova style will choose a classical approach to their extensions in the Petipa ballets, for example.

Regardless of whether I agree or not, I think such a statement should be accompanied by some sort of authoritative reference. She was either cast in the role or type of role in Boston, or she wasn't. If she wasn't, then her talent wasn't considered great enough to supercede whatever casting considerations the AD had in making his own choices. If she's cast at the Mariinsky, then one can assume that she compared favorably in Management's mind over the other, healthy dancers who could have been cast, and in a way that was important to them. AD's have lots of reasons for casting the way the do, and they do it on their own timetables. Dancers respond in their own ways with their own reasons, and, in this case, a more renowned company was willing to give her what she wanted on her own timeline.

Yes, I did mean Ton Simons. Thank uou for the correction. PNB performed a work by Simons during their 1996 tour to City Center.