Helene

It's really too bad about Swedish pairs. Niklas Hogner was a beautiful skater, with lovely posture and soft edges. After he and Angelika Pylkina split, he tried to team up with Julia Vlassov, whose partnership with Drew Meekins ended as she outgrew Meekins. However, since Vlassov/Meekins were the 2006 Junior World Champions, the United States Figure Skating Association would not agree to release her to skate with him for Sweden, and that was the end of his competitive career. I know he was a figure skating commentator in Sweden: is he doing commentary this year?

David Hallberg just tweeted a link to a "Dance Magazine" blog entry announcing a new scholarship to Hallberg's alma mater, The School of Ballet Arizona, started by its parent company, Ballet Arizona. The scholarship is for tuition and supplies for boys 13 and older, and the first ones will be granted for the 2013-14 school year. Great news!

I hope someone posts the TV interview on YouTube .

Admin beanie on: There was a partial response above that has been removed: it was posted before I could remove the post which it addressed. The removed post referred to a blog post about particular NYCB performances. (The link in the post didn't resolve to anything about ballet.) The company forums are here for member reviews and discussion. Reviews in official blogs by dance professionals and recognized critics and blog collections should be discussed in the "Writings on Ballet" forum, and reviews in any other blogs are off limits here. Admin beanie off.

Wow, Feijoo is back and in the big final Raymonda solo, right into the deep end.

Choosing Milepied might upset Hilaire and Legris equally and avoid chosing between them.

Yes.

It's a good one for the Seattle audiences (and the Victoria audiences), too.

"Agon" will be performed in the season closer, "Director's Choice", 31 May-1 June, 6-9 June. Principal casting for the Seattle performances of "Romeo et Juliette" has been posted to the PNB website; as always, casting is subject to change: http://www.pnb.org/S...liette/#Casting Kaori Nakamura and James Moore reprise their partnership in the leads. Carla Korbes' new Romeo is Seth Orza, who also performs Tybalt twice second weekend. A new couple, who performed the "Balcony Pas de Deux" in the "Love Stories" rep last season, Lesley Rausch and Jerome Tisserand, are scheduled to dance the second Saturday matinee performance (9 Feb 2pm). William Lin-Yee debuts as Friar Lawrence in that matinee; Karel Cruz is cast for all other performances. Noelani Pantastico and Lucien Postlewaite perform the lead in the second Saturday evening performance (9 Feb 7:30pm). Sharing the role of Nurse are Rachel Foster, Margaret Mullin, and Carrie Imler. Here are the cast lists for both weeks in Excel spreadsheet form, for those who wish to download them: R et J performance casting week 1.xls R et J performance casting week 2.xls There's so much to look forward to!

The most well-known ballet-related food is the wonderful dessert named after (Anna) Pavlova: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=pavlova+dessert+photo&qpvt=pavlova+dessert+photo&FORM=IGRE When I did two cycling trips in New Zealand, I think the only reason I made it to the end point was for the Pavlova we had each night. It was everywhere in Australia, too, much like apple pie was on the menu of every old fashioned diner. Who invented it? A recipe Today I went to a wonderful French bakery in Vancouver, Patisserie Bordeaux, and bought a dessert called a "damboise." It is a figure eight-shaped danish pastry filled with raspberry jam in one of the circles and custard with whole blueberries in the other. I hoovered it down finished it before I realized I should take a photo . Next time I'll try to remember. Yummmmmm.

They're taking it one step at a time: first, his eyes.

That is very good news!

Hallberg tweeted: 17 Jan My thoughts are with Sergey Filin after this incomprehensible incident. 18 Jan The attack on Sergey Filin is a tragedy & I hope for a swift recovery for this cultural visionary @ BalletBolshoi http://on.fb.me/UVEs2R The link in the tweet is to his Facebook page where he wrote: The attack against Sergey Filin is a reprehensible strike at an artist who is leading a generation of dancers in a visionary way. This violence has no place in the artistic community or anywhere else, and I wish him the healthiest recovery so he can continue his exemplary leadership at Bolshoi Ballet. The latter wouldn't fit in the 140-char limit on Twitter, and he expanded on FB.

Still to come this season, the following major companies are performing "Serenade": NYCB, late May/early June in NYC, and early April in Copenhagen Boston Ballet, early May Ballet Arizona, early May Dutch National Ballet, February-March throughout the Netherlands For details, you can search for the company websites or go to our calendar (link under the Ballet Alert! Logo) and navigate to the month of performance. If you click the link for the performance, you'll see more details and a link to te company website.

She quotes Terekhova and Kolpakova, who did exemplify the Kirov style and has no skin in the game, to support this.

It's certainly an MO in a number of countries, like Pakistan and Afganistan, against women and, when reported, almost always by male family members. The NYTimes reports that the police say it was sulfuric acid.

Tonight is the last performance of Whim W'him's "Crave More" program at the Playhouse at Seattle Center (formerly the Intiman). If you're in Seattle, go see it. Either of the two works in the middle half of the program, "More", Olivier Wevers' solo for Andrew Bartee and "Before After", Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's duet, which she danced with Lucien Postlewaite, make it worth seeing this program. "More" is a witty, passionate take on another ballet icon, "The Red Shoes," and Andrew Bartee is brilliant in it. The partnering in "Before After" is dynamically varied, full of striking shifts. Choreography's gain is the loss of a gorgeous dancer in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, and she and Lucien Postlewaite looked like they had been lifelong partners in it. The program began and ended with longer works. Lopez Ochoa's "Crave" was the opening. Unlike Oliver Wevers' "The Sofa", the closer, in which the Mozart score provided a clear structure, "Crave" was set to an compiled electronic score that was more of a canvas than driver, and on first viewing, while some of the movement was striking, the piece looked like it could use some editing. "The Sofa" was choreographed for Grand Rapids Ballet, and two dancers from GRB, Yuka Oba and Nick Schultz" joined the Whim W'him company to perform it. The sofa is a main character in the work; the last time I saw Wevers choreograph with a sofa, it was for a burlesque show, and it was great to see how he shifted in tone for this newer work, keeping it witty without the cheek. The tableaus on the sofa were the strongest part of the piece when seen in such a small theater: the timing was perfect and the movement was precise. The dancing in the rest read more broad than nuanced in the small space and could have used more contrast among the couples; in a larger theater, the same dancing would have read, even if more contrast would have made more impact. It was enormous fun, though, which is extraordinarily difficult to sustain without distortion; this may have been the greatest strength of this work. The costumes for "The Sofa" with a modern take on period, were superb, especially a purple overlay to the two-toned short body suits worn by the central woman, in which the billowing skirt was a character of its own, a nice offset to the purple sofa. The recording, especially for the first movement, was painfully loud, at least from where we were sitting.* The last performance, tonight, is a 7pm. The ticket prices are ridiculously low for an arts performance of this quality. *Edited to add: I just learned this was a technical glitch in last night's performance, not imbedded in the recording.

Maybe he would be better served by not being in the press. He is attacked for saying too little (by whose standards, I do not know.) He accused of supporting a vicious attack because he does not say, "X", even though he does not say "I think he deserved the attack." He would be attacked for protesting too much if he more strongly denounced it. He would draw attention. He is damned if he does or does not say anything, or for how much he does or does not say. That is the nature of the media, and how papers sell. Hypothetically, even if he did not know of the attack, he would be accused of not saying enough, I believe. I understood solo's comment, which is here not quoted fully, and is incomprehensible out of context, to mean that for someone who has been so publicly critical of every administration since Grigorovich plus the Bolshoi reconstruction -- plus the outed petition against the administration in which, according to the signees, he lied about the status of those in the administration -- to be behind a physical attack would be stupid, because he's the first person at whom fingers would be pointed. The full quote, and I emphasize what was missing, is "Can he, after all this public exposure, back a low criminal night attack on his colleague to allow all fingers to be pointed back at him?" As far as Tsiskaridze saying too little, I think it speaks to his character that in response to a criminal attack against the artistic director of the Bolshoi, he says nothing directly. Not, "We've had our differences, but this attack [criminal, crazy, uncalled for, something negative, immoral, etc.], and I wish him a full recovery." Perhaps someone who is familiar with Russian culture can say whether such a statement would be considered PC claptrap and that it's standard to stay silent when one's self-proclaimed enemies are attacked.

I think Mr. Ratmansky has worked for or with enough major institutions to understand the difference between the situation in Russia and other attempts at influencing casting and hierarchy.

They must have been striking: Marina Harss mentioned them as well. I'm so envious of everyone who got to see this program with these casts

[Admin beanie on] This is a sensitive issue and there is a criminal act and legal issue involved. I want to reiterate Ballet Alert! policy: Only official news may be posted, and all must be sourced, unless it is posted by one of five Editorial Advisors (identified under their board names). Other message boards are not official sources There are a number of people on the board who have insider knowledge and personal connections to members of the dance world. We're not questioning credibility but managing through standard board policy. [Admin beanie off] A small homage to Mr. Filin on Marc Haegeman's Facebook Page "For Ballet Lovers Only": https://www.facebook...162981420429554

I don't see anything specific so far in the English language press. Dancers are starting to weigh in. David Hallberg just tweeted: "My thoughts are with Sergey Filin after this incomprehensible incident."

Diana Vishneva posted this sad news to her Facebook page: Terrible, shocking news from Moscow: someone poured acid in face of Bolshoi ballet director Sergey Filin. Sergey is in the hospital now. I pray for his soon recovery...

Many thanks for posting the video, Elena! I loved the short clips of Gracheva in the role. I would have loved to see her on the HD from the Bolshoi on the 27th...

The 10pm time was a re-run on local PBS. The documentary can be viewed online on demand at: http://www.ket.org/cgi-bin/cheetah/watch_video.pl?nola=KMUSE%20000502&altdir=&template= (Link tweeted by Pacific Northwest Ballet)