Helene

From the MCB Facebook page, a link to the company blog with the news that Jennifer Kronenberg and Carlos Guerra are expecting their first child in November and a very nice photo: http://www.miamicityballet.org/blog/2012/08/09/congratulations-jennifer-and-carlos/ Congratulations to them both!

Maria Kochetkova also started as a gymnast, as did figure skater Sasha Cohen.

The discussion of blackface in "The Pharaoh's Daughter" has been moved here:

PNB posted on Facebook that PNB dancer Liora Reshef married Eric Neuville. The beautiful photo of the beaming couple is by Lindsay Thomas, the women who does the great PNB videos: Congratulations to them both

From the NYT on synchronized swimming (emphasis mine): and

I think Osmolkina would be lovely in it, too.

It's 10 posts on BA, 30 on BT4D.

Congratulations to all of the winners! I'm really happy to see that Sisk won an award: she was lovely in all of the short clips of her in "Breaking Pointe," but she mostly impressed me by understanding the style of "Paquita."

From the Seattle Symphony Facebook page is a post in tribute to Marvin Hamlisch, who among his other accomplishments was Principal Pops Conductor of SSO, and who just died: http://seattletimes....inhamlisch.html Here's a link to a marvelous photo of him in front of Pike Place Market, just a few blocks from Benaroya Hall: https://www.facebook...54924433&type=1 Rest in peace, Mr. Hamlisch.

The Balanchine Caalogue server seems to be sticking, but I believe the characters are called "Handmaidens.". They and Leta appear in front of the stairs/platform at the end of the ballet.

For me, the distinction is not between amateur and pro, but between multi-million dollar earners through full-time sports in premier leagues and those who make a decent living, like women's prossional basketball players.

I heartily dislike pros in the Olympics, but if they're going to be there, I couldn't be happier for Murray for winning decisively over Federer at his home Olympics and at Wimbledon. Now he's on again for doubles.

Dance Tabs retweeted this: A ginger, a Muslim immigrant and a mixed race woman walked into a bar. Everyone bought them a drink

The British women won Team Pursuit today in World and Olympic record time. Congratulations to Dani King, Laura Trott, and Joanna Rowsell

I'm very far behind in watching what I've recorded on the PVR, but this evening I finally saw part of the Canada/Russia Women's Beach Volleyball game, and the Canadian women were wearing ankle-length tights. That's got to be a lot more comfortable than having a bikini bottom wedgie, and easier on the legs when sliding across the sand. Their bare mid-driffs must get cut up, though.

This is making me all verklempt: https://www.facebook...43311883&type=1 (I love the expression on the baby's face.)

Kazakhstani women weightlifters continue their roll!

There's a difference between fundraising and project funding. Kickstart is a project funder: it is not fundraising for an organization or person. Backers are project sponsors, not donors. For project funding, there is a defined output for a limited duration effort in the project charter, which is a contract between the project team and the project sponsors. The budget is supposed to take into consideration all costs, not only for pledges that don't come through, but also for the fees that Kickstarter charges for processing and administration. The budget should include risk contingency, and often management has its own contingency fund, I would guess, in most Kickstarter cases, the project manager's credit cards. Just about every project can spend more money to do something cool, but adding features and spending money to increase quality above the stated quality metrics without proper change controls is called "gold-plating," which is one of the ethical no-nos in project management, at least defined by the leading PM organization in NA and Asia. Yes, it happens all the time, and there are so many incentives in business to spend the budget to get more budget, but it's pretty much stealing from the shareholders, tax-payers, and private owners. Europe uses a different certification process, which is based in management public projects, and I don't know enough about this to speak to their stance on gold-plating. The directors of the Gomes documentary were smart in that they told people what they would do with the incremental funds: new donors would know why they should give instead of passing, and they announced in time for one of the original backers to pull out, because it wasn't signed up for, because they thought this would change the focus of the project or endanger the original promised output, etc., and not feel ripped off. There's no "change control" mechanism in Kickstarter, though: no one is obligated to explain what they'd do with additional funds. If a filmmaker is creating a film, for example, and s/he decided to hire Eric Fischl to design the DVD cover for the film, or to travel first-class to Cannes, there's no accountability to the sponsors beyond the original target. (They're still obligated to deliver the original output.) IndieGoGo is a bit different: the type of project is not defined as a creative project, and anyone could use the site to raise funds for sitting on their couch catching up on their reading, if they could get people to contribute.

If I've been following their tweets correctly, there's an Olympic museum or exhibit at Covent Garden.

If you scroll to the very top, you should see a thin gray horizontal bar, and on the right hand side, a link to "Opera in Cinema."

The documentary made if officially this morning, with over $41K in pledges. Billing went through: I'd be interested in knowing the success rates of the initial and subsequent billing attempts. I know there is more than one attempt: for my first attempt at backing, I had forgotten that amazon was doing the payment processing, and I hadn't yet updated a replacement credit card number in my amazon.com account when the first attempt went through. It's never over until it's over: some people will remove their pledge after the project exceeds the target goal to spread the wealth. The directors were very clever in several ways: first to appeal to Gomes' fan base in Japan, Russia, and Brazil in their own languages, and second to contact backers after they exceeded their target relatively early to explain how they'd use the additional money to make a better film, citing a trip to Japan to film Gomes, which otherwise was not in budget. What I find interesting is that because kickstarte's philosophy is that they only allow funding that at least makes a target, because the project is unlikely to succeed with its stated goals if it's underfunded -- this is squarely within the Project Management Institute's (PMI's) guidelines -- by allowing the project mission to change/expand with additional funding, I suspect PMI might not approve.

This article is primarily about how opera singers' tattoos are concealed although it does mention dancers as well: http://www.wqxr.org/#!/blogs/operavore/2012/aug/02/how-opera-companies-singers-tattoos/?utm_source=local&utm_media=treatment&utm_campaign=carousel&utm_content=item1 I didn't realize how much more work it would be to conceal them for HD broadcasts, of which there have been more recently for dance, primarily thanks to Emerging Pictures.

I think the same thing is true in ballet: it's the big jumps, multiple turns, especially fouettes and those that change position and speed, hops on pointe, and big balances that get people clapping in the middle of the music. In ballet competitions, it's the big extensions as well that gets the teen crowd shrieking. The shift from piano to recorded instrumental happened sometime between the 1976 and 1980 Olympics. Here are two examples of the same gymnast, the great Nellie Kim, in those two Olympics, the first with piano and the second with instrumental: Aside from the stylistic change in the type of movement -- a lot of the 1980 vocabulary would not have fit piano arrangements -- I think there's a lot more continuous movement that reflected the rhythm of the music in the 1976 clip with the piano. (She was also at her peak in this event in 1976, I think scoring a perfect 10 to win individual gold.) I'm reminded of how Balanchine would ask the pianist, especially in his special Monday class, to play chords, not music, because if the pianist was working, then the dancers would think they were, too.

Congratulations to PNB. It might not create a subscribing, full-priced ticket-buying, donating public immediately, although I'm sure many teens who go to university will seek out dance where they're studying, but some of them will be enticed back when they have the cash and babysitters.