Helene

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.

Sounds great! In at least the major Australian cities there is a very large pdestrian shopping zone, and when I was there at the beginning of December one year, it was 32C/90F degrees in Adelaide, and over the loudspeaker, between Christmas carols, were announcements for sales. There was also one of the tallest Christmas trees I've ever seen, and when I got back to Sydney for my outbound flight, there were signs all around for beach Christmas and New Year's celebrations. But at least it was December!

I could say the same about a lot of dance I've seen

Figure skating has long been another exception by practice, but skating-related threads are not to rehash what's been said on figure skating boards, but to discuss movement to music and its relationship to the sport. Dressage, horses moving to music, can't come soon enough. We still have the Ladies' floor ex, rhythmic gymnastics, and synchronized swimming, too.

Sorry, Barbara: the point of the thread is to discuss the Olympics, and that goes for things that finished 2 seconds ago. If you want to remain unspoiled, please stay out of this thread. This has always been true for our Olympics and figure skating threads.

I know that there have been droughts and horrid weather in much of North America, but in the Pacific NW, my heat was on in the beginning of July, and I'm not ready for the barrage of "Nutcracker" marketing emails I've been receiving.

Not according to Sebastian Coe, who, called Phelps the most "successful" Olympics athlete (after Phelps' 19th medal), and when pressed, came up with other possibility and settled on Jesse Owens: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/olympics/sebastian-coe-says-michael-phelps-up-there-but-not-the-greatest-olympian-of-all-time-164592226.html?viewAllComments=y

Word. I'm sure that Speedos would be just as comfortable to play in as the women's bikini bottoms.

When Peter Boal took over PNB, 1/3 of the dancers had been his students at SAB, and since then he's hired more, a handful of whom danced in other companies first. I wouldn't doubt a teacher's ability to have an extensive network. His credibility in the Russian dance community and the depth of his relationships with his students and other dancers isn't anything we can judge without being in that world, and unless someone from that world speaks on the record about it, we really haven't that much to go on. He certainly makes himself vulnerable if his claims are not true or highly exaggerated. If he's going back to Russia to make his film, it's hard to imagine him getting a warm reception if they think he's a liar, unless it is somehow advantageous to them. As far as his intent to sell DVD's, I think it's pretty clear from the distracting footage in the background of his video blogs, which, like infomercials, rely upon great length and constant repetition.

Vail has posted an extended excerpt of the third couple in Jerome Robbins' "In the Night" performed by Tiler Peck and Amar Ramassar -- from NYCB Moves -- and the film quality is wonderful: Robbins Foundation, Vail, and NYCB!

There used to be a live pianist off to the side. I can't find any references to when there was a switch to instrumental recordings, but I would not be at all surprised if current "dance" styles -- just as second-rate (I'm being kind here) in hip-hop, jazz, contemporary, and even cheer leading -- became the norm soon after they were no longer limited to piano transcriptions. I never understood how Caslavska's hair didn't knock off her balance, but she was the most dominant gymnast ever, with two all-around Olympic titles in 1964 and 1968 and every major championship in between. Olympic titles in the same years were not the only thing they had in common with the Soviet Pairs team the Protopopovs: the coming of the more athletic -- and young -- Tourischeva was considered doom to the lyrical and balletic style favored until then, just as Irina Rodnina and partner's dominance was considered the end of lyricism in skating. Apart from doing point work, I also don't think that every corps member of a regional company in 1968 was a better dancer than Caslavska, from what I saw of regional companies from the '60's. I think the change of music was a nightmare, but death came when the judges started to accept the broken wrists and splayed hands in floor ex and balance beam. Shannon Milller is one of my top 3 all-time favorites, with Tourischeva and Caslavska, but her hands are cringe-worthy. Balance beam is the event in which the internal rhythm becomes clear, even with the floor ex competitor's music blaring in the background and crowd cheering for the other three events running simultaneously, but they still are required to do at least a full turn and leaps, just like in floor ex, and while they don't shimmy, they do all kinds of cutesy poses in between the tumbling and other elements. There's rhythm in vault and uneven bars, but not the same physical momentum and continuous movement in floor ex and beam, due to those pesky laws of physics. Rhythmic Gymnastics debuted at the LA Olympics, sadly boycotted by the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, except Romania, and the field was very diluted. There was a question in a recent ballet thread about what makes you think of pain while watching, and in addition to when gymnasts on the beam tumble and land with the beam between thighs -- thankfully rare these days -- watching rhyming gymnasts extend to a minimum of 190 degrees makes me queasy. Artistic Gymnastics has a much longer history, competed first in the Olympics in 1928.

If they have to dance, I wish it were more like this:

If you follow the link above to the thread about him on BT4D, there is a discussion about his teaching credentials, which are solid. It was not like he got diplomas from the Dasha Dinkleovna Academy.

His expresses his disdain for the Mikhailovsky Ballet as not even third rate. The Mikhailovsky doesn't have a training academy and traditionally got dancers, however good, who weren't hired by their affiliate companies. It can't be defiled by foreigners. The billionaire businessman who runs it doesn't come from the great traditions of the theater, etc. As a result he's made some pretty great business moves in his hiring.