Helene

Marc Haegemann has posted a bunch of new photos of the recent Bolshoi performances of "Jewels": Emeralds and Rubies Diamonds Emeralds features Evgenia Obrastzova/Vladislav Lantratov and Anastasia Stashkevich/Dmitry Gudanov in the Verdy/Ludlow roles, Maria Prorvich, Denis Medvedev, and Svetlana Pavlova in the "Pas de trois", and Anna Tikhomirova and Yuri Baranov in the Paul/Moncion roles. Rubies features Ekaterina Krysanova, Yulia Grebenschchikova, Nina Kaptsova/Andrei Bolotin, and Daria Khokhlova/Vyacheslav Lopatin. Diamonds features Olga Smirnova/Semyon Chudin and Ekaterina Krysanova/Alexander Volchkov. If you are a Facebook member, you can get quick notification whenever new photos are posted by "Like"ing Friends of For Ballet Lovers Only.

From Oregon Ballet Theatre's Facebook Page: Very sad news for Pacific Northwest ballet fans. Best of luck and wishes to Mr. Sultanov in whatever the future holds

Yes, discussions of professional reviews have no place in company forum review threads: they're for what our members think about performances. Feel free to discuss professional reviewers in the "Writings about Ballet" forum.

I wonder how this version of Danses Concertantes will differ from 1989 revival at NYCB that I also saw in 1993, and I'm sure I've seen on their roster since then.

Congratulations to Ms. Kondaurova

According to this article in the Seattle Times, the following film will be shown as part of this year's Seattle International Film Festival (emphasis added):

I thought it was my Wifi. I missed the beginning through the Florine variation rebooting my computer, and finally went to the wired laptop, where there were only a few interruptions until the end. (The commercial only came up again after I clicked the "Popout" button. The stage is very small, making the two stages that SFB used during the War Memorial seismic renovation look huge. Most dancers look like they're marking a bit there in every presentation I've attended live or seen streamed.

For those who are interested in Vogel, there's a new set of uploads of his guest appearance as Albrecht with Tokyo Ballet from 2009; Mizuka Ueno is his Giselle. I think there are more parts coming; five are up so far. Here is the link to Part 1: the rest should show to the right of the video.

I would rather have fallen out of Wagner's contraption than off the top of the Machine, although I thought the effect (from an audience point of view) was fantastic. A couple of the Valkyries got caught sliding down the paddling Machine planks, and they were very lucky not to have been injured.

It might not have been a new request, but at least Wagner's Rhine daughters were strapped into Wagner's contraptions and they were less than 10 feet off the ground in the ones shown, not more than three feet above the heads of the standing handlers.

I just finished slogging through the almost 8-hour Tony Palmer film "Wagner." One of the rare treats in this film when Sir John Gielgud wasn't on screen was the set of clips of the Rhine daughters in the contraptions Wagner either designed or approved to show them flying, which looked like cages that might launch Evel Knievel, and while they had handlers to move them, and they weren't nearly as high as the top of the Machine, they looked quite rickety. The first clips were shown while Karl Ritter (Gabriel Byrne) conducted the first orchestral rehearsals of the prelude to "Das Rheingold", with the singers squealing in fright over Ritter's shouts at the orchestra. The second clips were when "Das Rheingold" was finally premiered in Bayreuth, where the scene was shown as lit through a scrim, and the effect was magical. There's also some footage of the late Jess Thomas as Albert Niemann. Christopher Gable is listed in the credits as Peter Cornelius, but there were so many characters and so much facial hair that I didn't recognize him.

The one thing I did like about the "Das Rheingold" use of the Machine was that it pushed all the characters to the front of the stage, and made them interact with each other, rather than shouting across the stage, which made it more intimate, or at least that's what it looked like on camera.

When they designed the Seattle Ring, and they hung the Rhine daughters from harnesses and made them flip around what I assume is a horizontal bar, they created a harness where the singers could stand against the bottom of the harness and get support through their feet when they had to sing. (I think they did some free-form squeals while flipping.) Each Rhine daughter has two "handlers", one creating horizontal and the other creating vertical motion, with whom they worked for a long time and came to trust. They were also warned one year ahead of time to start working out, and I seem to remember it came up at one of the seminars that at least after the premiere (in 2001), they sent work-out bags (I think with some equipment) and exercise outlines to each of the Rhine daughters to get them started.

Jessica Philiips, a dancer with Ballet Arizona, was interviewed for a piece on raisingarizonakids.com about her experience competing at YAGP: Thanks to Ballet Arizona for posting the link on its Facebook page.

Dance United will be performed on 9 June, 7:30pm, at the Keller Auditorium in Portland. Here is the program and guest artist info from the OBT website, on which ticket info is posted: For those who saw the Dutch National Ballet "Don Quixote", Maia Makhateli danced Amor in the Act II Dream Scene.

Pointe Magazine online has an interview with Doug Fullington with four excellent questions: http://www.pointemagazine.com/blogs/works-and-process/evolution-ballet

I haven't hear this Ring live, but besides the first two HD videos, I've heard a number of live broadcasts on Sirius radio. I have no idea what the production looks like at the Met -- Lepage's "Damnation of Faust" had a different feel in the house and on HD, and each had their merits, and Ross writes "I wonder whether it is almost unfair to review new Met stagings from the point of view of one sitting in the house, since they now seem designed more for the camera operators" -- but the singing and conducting has been mixed, and, like with HD's, the balance on Sirius is not what one hears in the house, apart from the noise from the Machine. I agree with Ross when he singles out Konig and Owens, and I've been impressed with Dalayman each time I've heard her on Sirius. (An aside about Gelb's quip that "“London was really the equivalent of doing something out of town,”Two Boys" is at least the second Met co-production that opened at English National Opera: I saw the beautiful Minghella "Madame Butterfly" at ENO in 2005.) I also agree with Ross when he writes, Gelb is a marketing guy who comes from what is now old media, but was a half century century ahead technologically from what the Met had before Gelb, and when the marketing approach fails, there is a problem. I give him credit for digging the Met out of stultifying layers of Zeffirelli decor, and for increasing the number of co-productions, pretty much the only way he can afford to stretch his traditional audience without breaking the bank on every production. For "The Ring" there was not the option of ironing out the technological wrinkles and recalibrating the direction beforehand as there were for other co-productions, such as the "Madame Butterfly", "Iphegenie en Tauride" (with Seattle Opera), and will be for "Two Boys": even with the operas released slowly over a few seasons, the fundamental issues with the technology haven't been addressed, and they're playing catch-up. From what I've seen, overwhelming technology isn't even the theme: it's just a byproduct. While I think Lepage is suited for "The Tempest", just as he was for "The Damnation of Faust", the Ring is both too big and too specific for his approach to opera, this, unlike the others he's done, has far more expectations in people's minds -- including the comparison to the Schenk production -- as one of the greatest masterworks in the history of music, and the technology is a bust in light of expectations and his previous use of it. It overwhelmed the singers and the action on camera, and I can't imagine how this isn't magnified in the house. If I'm ever in New York when the Met is playing one of the operas, I'll try to see it for the experience, but there are so many other productions worldwide that I'd rather see, and I wouldn't travel to see this one.

Alex Ross isn't impressed: in a link Ray posted to the Met Ring discussion thread, Ross wrote: http://www.newyorker...s#ixzz1uUUYIQIP Later in the review he writes in greater detail, concluding:

I should have been clearer: I didn't think that he had danced, but if it were his production, I have my reservations, given his approach to this role and other iconic roles.

Ballet Arizona posted a link to this news from their Facebook Page: burlesque artist Dita Von Teese has commissioned a pair of custom ballet slippers from designer Christian Louboutin: http://cocoperez.com...allet-slippers. They are quite stunning, and are just one of a series designed for her. (If you click the photo at the bottom of the post, you can see a larger version of the others.)

That would be great news if Washington Opera were to present it. I agree about the little girl at the end. Bad, bad, bad.

It isn't clear whether Seattle will have a new Ring anytime soon. Speight Jenkins said that the board approved the cost of the current production, to be presented for the fourth time next summer, because he told them he wouldn't ask for another production during his tenure. The last time there was a new Ring, there were six years between productions. No one knows yet who will replace Jenkins after the 2014 "Die Meistersinger", what direction a new General Director will take, or what kind of budget that director will have to work with and when the company will be able to raise the funds for a new Ring. I've heard good things about both Vinke and Mellor, and I'm looking forward to hearing them next summer, along with returning singers Blythe, Wray, Skelton, Peterson, Collins, and Fink. The San Francisco Ring was splendid. I don't know what SFO is planning to do with it over time -- it was originally to be a co-production with Washington Opera until WO pulled out -- but it's too bad it couldn't be borrowed and shown in Seattle, especially since director Francesca Zambello is no stranger to Seattle.

Peter Boal's statement was released by "Seattle Times" today:

You can also peruse a bit on the Simon and Shuster website by clicking "Browse inside" from this page: http://search.simonandschuster.com/_/N-/Ntt-master%27s%20muse