Helene

"In Balanchine's Classroom project" has just posted a photo of Villella coaching Jeanette Delgado and Kleber Rebello in (I assume from the tamborine) "Tarantella" to its Facebook Page: The post reads, To Edward Villella, In celebration of all you have given the world through your dancing, your teaching, and your leadership at Miami City Ballet and the Miami City Ballet School... Thank you!

Congratulations to Ms. Somova and Ms. Tereshkina

When watching Wasikowska in "Jane Eyre," I thought of Anna Karenina.

This!!! Stemme was phenomenal. I have to got back to my Frida Leider excerpt recordings to love a Brunnhilde this much. It will if/when the time is ready. (Been there.)

I'll probably go see it, but if I were looking for a young female lead, I would have cast Mia Wasikowska of "Jane Eyre." I'd have loved to see Tom McCamus as Karenin. I can't think of any age-appropriate Vronsky's offhand. Benedict Cumberbatch has too much energy. Or Levin's for that matter.

No, they're broadcasting the Met (on HD) Ring on the local Seattle station, which is also part of basic cable in Vancouver. People ask Jenkins constantly about filming the Seattle Ring, and the answer is always, "No money for it." If the Company were able to get a magic technology grant, like PNB did to fund their video projects (not commercial) -- a decade ago Francia Russell was begging for $10K to replace the camera they used to video each performance for their library -- combined with a big check, then it might be possible. Jenkins has been careful about not starting projects that shift money away from basic productions and operating expenses. The default is always "Microsoft" or "Paul Allen," but Microsoft is already a season sponsor and the Allen Family Foundation is a big donor in general. I wonder if it would have been more possible, if the artists and unions would have agreed, to have raised money for a Ring HD vs. the cancelled "Die Meistersinger" production as a farewell gift in honor of Jenkins, who leaves at the end of the Wagner Competition in summer 2014.

I've been reading a slow trickle of articles that are re-considering the LA Ring in a positive way. For those with PVRs -- like TiVo -- you can PVR it whole, and then record it whole from the PVR to a DVR's hard drive, edit the file, and break it down into segments before burning it to disk. The copy for me is an automatic overnight process. I usually put in chapter marks between scenes, and I break it into a max of 60-minute segments, because that's the max on my machine for the highest quality. Which reminds me that I'd better head to Costco for another spool of blank DVD's. (Seattle's KCTS is broadcasting the Ring operas one each Sunday afternoon.

I think "Firebird" was her best role.

If anyone plans to buy this $$$ set from amazon in the US, it would really help out Ballet Alert and Ballet Talk for Dancers if you'd use the amazon.com search box at the bottom of each page or top right of the home page. [/end commercial]

We have Bill Gates and Paul Allen to thank for that

I'm now up to 8 August (Day 12, I think) on the taped coverage, and I've had a great time watching track cycling. The British team had an awe-inspiring Olympics on the track. Just the basics: Track bikes are single gear -- the rider chooses a gear from among the acceptable sizes -- the rider can only pedal in one direction, and the bikes have no brakes. That's why someone has to hold the back of the bike so that they don't fall over, and why races start with at least one lap of getting up to speed. Pursuit. In Pursuit, two riders or teams start the race at opposite sides of the middle of the straightaway of the track. It's mostly a time trial -- the fastest time wins -- with the added twist that over the course of the multi-lap race, a rider/team beats the opponent if the ride team catches the opponent. After all of the eliminations, the top two ride for silver and the next two rider for bronze. Individual pursuit was removed as individual event this Olympics and was added to the Omnium. In team pursuit, time is counted from when the third member of the three- or four-member team crosses the finish line, and the team members work together (hopefully) to fulfill a strategy. They "draft" each other, and, usually, because the person in front has to work harder to fight wind resistance, they trade-off that top position, and they ride at the bottom of the track until they need to cross the finish line, because the inner circle has the shortest distance. (At the end two riders go wide, and try to cross at the fastest pace, since it's the third rider's time that counts) . However, because only three scores count, they can "sacrifice" one team member who is expected to tire by having that rider spend more time at the front and sometimes to set a very fast pace for the team. (The risk is that if another member crashes or burns out, that the third rider's time will be very slow or the rider won't finish.) Great Britain won the Men's (Clancy, Thomas, Burke, Kennaugh) and Women's (King, Trott, Rowsell) Team Pursuit. Keirin. This is a group race in which a motorized bike leads the (individual) competitors around the track single file for a set number of laps, gradually increasing the speed, and then drops off, and the racers jockey for position, based on their strategy for the last few laps, which is the race. The riders start in a random position. (It was invented as a gambling sport.) First one over the line who doesn't get eliminated for infractions wins; there are rules about not running the other cyclist off the track, how close they can come to each other, what it means to cut someone off illegally. It's a lot like long distance track races in terms of jockeying for position, leading vs. having a kick, trying to avoid getting boxed in vs. trying to box in an opponent, having to go wide to get around the group, but 1. It's a lot faster and 2. The track is steeply banked. Victoria Pendleton won the Women's Keirin, and Chris Hoy won the Men's Keirin. Sprint. Sprint is head-to-head competition. Two riders or teams (of two for women and three for men) compete at a time, best two-of-three races. In the qualifications, the winners go on, and the losers get a second chance to qualify against each other in repechages, like in rowing. There's a draw to determine who has to lead the first race (and the third, if necessary). The leader gets dibs on the inside "lane" of the track (which is quite narrow), and the other rider is not allowed in that space. The first lap or two the riders stalk each other, usually at a snail's pace, although sometimes the strategy is to take off quickly and hope that the other rider can't react in time. The race within the race starts at the bell lap, and the winner is the first one over the finish line. In general, the idea is to beat the other person while expending the least amount of energy -- they race a lot without that much recovery time -- which is why you'll often see one rider ease up in the last stretch when s/he realizes that s/he can't win. Victoria Pendleton won silver in the Women's Sprint. Great Britain won the Men's (Hindes, Hoy, Kenny) Team Sprint, and Jason Kenny won the Men's Sprint. There was a controversy because the governing body of cycling said that only one rider from each team could enter, and there was a lot of criticism that the British team chose Kenny over Chris Hoy, the defending Olympic champion, based on Kenny's and Hoy's results this year. Luckily, Kenny proved them right. Women's Team Sprint was the only cycling event in which GB didn't medal. Omnium. I'd never see it before these Olympics, and found it fascinating. It's made of six events, half of them timed events, and half group strategy events. It's a bit like the heptathlon or decathlon, demanding different skills or the same skills in different distances. Relatively, the timed events are like the 100m, 200m, and maybe the 1500m in track. Unlike the decathlon and heptathlon, where the athletes are given points based on time or distance, and where the 1st and 2nd place athlete in one event can be few or hundreds of points apart, based on how well or badly they did, in Omnium, points are awarded like ordinals: the first place rider gets 1 point and the second place rider gets 2 points, whether No. 1 was .01 of a second or 2 minutes ahead of No. 2. The rider with the lowest number of points wins. The three strategy races are intense. In the long points race, there are a lot of laps, and every ten or so laps, a rider can earn event points either by crossing the designated finish line in the top four (5, 3, 2,1 points earned) or by sprinting ahead and catching the main pack, which gets them 20 points. The riders are ranked by how many points they've earned, with the winner (most points), getting the least points towards the Omnium total. In the elimination race, the last rider in the pack after every set number of laps is eliminated and leaves the race; they have lights on their handlebars that the officials activate once they've been eliminated. The first one to cross the finish line against the only remaining competitor at the end wins the race. The scratch race is like a road race -- everyone sets off for a fixed number of laps, and the first one over the line wins. At the end, they add up the points, and the rider with the fewest points wins. Like with the heptathlon and decathlon, different riders have different strengths, and it takes a few events before the true contenders shake out. Edward Clancy won bronze in the Men's Omnium, and Laura Trott won the Women's Omnium. She was first in three segments, second in two, and third in one, just edging out Sarah Hammer by one point. It was great to hear Nancy Wetmore's commentating on the CTV et. al. coverage: she spoke more about the horses than the riders. I taped hours and hours, but I don't remember seeing any coverage of dressage.

I think that's Mark Morris' "The Hard Nut"

Is anyone else getting random commercials during the presentation? I don't mean banners that you can choose to click, but 30-second films that override the presentation? ETA: Now I see a banner ad from UStream, advertising a $3.99/mo membership to get "ad-free" transmissions and to "get noticed by broadcasters." Why would I want to be noticed by broadcasters?

It has started!

I just added a subtitle of warning. Sorry!

An excerpt from new reconstruction of "La Sylphide" by Alexei Ratmansky, posted by Johan Kobborg to YouTube (from his Twitter announcement), with Alina Cojocaru, Johann Kobborg, and Ivan Vasiliev:

Interesting, because I thought last year they were showing them live on the East Coast in the US (at 11am), but delayed for the West Coast. (They've started here in Vancouver at 1pm.) I'm fairly certain that in Europe, they're being shown live. There's only a few hour time difference, depending on the country.