Helene

According to the caption, "Скорик, Корсунцев Адажио Одетты", which is "Skorik/Korsuntsev Adagio Odette" Watching her, I thought will all of her cool detachment, she looked more like a POB dancer than a Mariinsky dancer.

Thank you both so much! (The issue with the URLs is that they were missing a "Y" at the end of the video code.) I searched and searched through pages of "ОБРАЗЦОВА", but I couldn't figure out how to spell "Голдинг"!. The Obraztsova/Golding section is cut off prematurely to be followed by the Skorik/Patrick Dempsey Korsuntsev White Swan adagio.

This is how to ask a direct question: By the answer, I think Lopez is pretty direct about addressing her intentions for the company going forward, and that it will be a continuation of the Villella legacy.

The Balanchine is a one-act ballet, all based on Act II, but he used the music from Act IV to end it, according to the Catalog. Does anyone know if NYCB has danced the one-act version since Martins produced his full length.

Gavin Larsen, who danced with Oregon Ballet Theatre until 2010 and is on the school faculty, will teach in the Shreeveport (Louisiana) Metropolitan Ballet summer program: http://dance.broadwa...ogram-20120406# I just found this: http://www.eflorida....al.aspx?id=1472 I thought Louisiana had the largest francophone community in the US, but I was wrong.

This looks like a TV ad for Carmina, except it's probably too long to be one: The male soloist is Christophe Maraval, whom I still miss terribly.

NYCB mostly doesn't do Petipa. NYCB does Balanchine's Act II of "Swan Lake", and the pas de deux and Odette's variation look like most of the other "After Petipa" versions, which is why the Balanchine Catalog says "Choreography: By George Balanchine after Lev Ivanov" and about the original: The first two acts of Danilova's and Balanchine's "Coppelia" were "after Marius Petipa (1884; revised 1894 by Lev Ivanov and Enrico Cecchetti), with additional choreography by George Balanchine" -- most notably Frantz' variation for Helgi Tomasson -- according to "Choreography by Balanchine."

That's so hard to tell, though: "The Sleeping Beauty" rushes by at lightning speed, and the only time I can focus is during the projections, when there's no dancing.

There's almost no company in the world that is a ballet company by that definition, because apart from the original choreography from the notated reconstructions, everything else is "After Petipa". From Doug Fullington's excellent "After Petipa" presentation, which will be online from the Guggenheim next month, we saw a reconstruction of a beautiful, intricate variation choreographed for Gorsky, the same Gorsky who "streamlined" Petipa ballets to modernize them, starting in Petipa's lifetime, and according to Catherine Pawlick's book "Vaganova Today", Vaganova herself was responsible for stripping much of the mime from Petipa's ballets. It's possible to argue that we see more of Petipa in Balanchine's original, neo-classical ballets, than we see in productions that tout themselves to be "After Petipa", and Balanchine is what Miami City Ballet does best.

"Liebeslieder Walzer", my favorite ballet of all, is tricky, too because it's a two-parter, although with pause, not intermission, and it dominates a program. I think that is rightly so, but if the audience doesn't like it, the program is in huge trouble. Russell also mentioned the cost of the sets and costumes required by the Trust: her sons had to get special permission from the Trust for the company to perform excerpts for Russell and Stowell's retirement tribute performance. At one one, Russell said that PNB and SFB talked about co-sponsoring and performing "Vienna Waltzes", but that never came to pass. There are waltz ballets that are neo-classical and would provide a big contrast to a "Liebeslieder" or "Vienna Waltzes", which in these economic times could only happen if someone made a monster, restricted donation for it, since I'm not sure PNB could afford the "Rosenkavalier" costumes alone, such as Peter Martins' "The Waltz Project", which I've seen at least once outside NYCB. (Maybe in SF?) "La Valse" would fit the theme, but is a bit macabre for Valentine's Day.

MCB does story ballets, and quite well, but these are the neo-classical story ballets, even if "Coppelia" Acts 1&2 were based on the classical version. What they haven't done well from many reports is the classical story ballet rep.

I love Cote and his wife, Heather Ogden, but the NBoC season runs November-June, and this year they have two programs and their big gala running in June.

First weekend casting is now up on the PNB website: http://www.pnb.org/Season/11-12/ApolloCarmina/#Details-Casting

I haven't seen Golding live or Polunin on video -- Emerging Pictures isn't showing the Royal Ballet in Vancouver, only the Bolshoi -- so it's hard for me to compare stage presence. From the video, I wasn't wowed by Golding's stage presence as much as pure technique in the Hallberg mold, and Basilio is not a princely role, but he did lots of virtuoso things without breaking any form or line or the big "Ta-da, look at the pirouettes I just did!!!!!", which is usually a good indication of being a good prince. I know there was recent news about budget cuts in the Netherlands, but I don't see what ABT would have to offer Golding that he's not getting in Europe, unless he wants to be in NYC. I can't believe they let him get away in the first place.

Nikulina has two partners from which to choose.

Milov did at least one work for PNB's Choreography Workshop when it still used company dancers -- now it uses Professional Division students -- a series of pas de deux to his own music, and another for "Out on a Limb" a program by the Seattle group Simple Measures, which presents music and dance in community centers and encourages audience participation. (Their motto is "Any closer, and you'd be licking varnish.) Milov's piece, for him and Julie Tobiason, was set to songs and movements by a range of composers, and had some of my all-time favorite pieces. It would have been interesting to see what direction his work has taken since 2008.

It also speaks to coaching. Ballet Arizona, a smaller company than MCB, has no fewer neoclassical ballets in it's rep, with the occasional Tharp, but when Olga Evreinoff stages a work for them, like the "Raymonda" Act III suite, or "Les Sylphides", or "Don Quixote", although they'd never be confused with the Mariinsky Ballet or POB, they make those stylistic differences. When the company danced "Giselle", the Wilis, many of them students in the school or apprentices, made the distinction between Romantic and neo-classical or classical.

I was very impressed with Jose Sebastian when I saw him in ensemble roles in "Sleeping Beauty" last year. I think he should be developed from within.

Many thanks, Cygnet! The O/O-Siegfried pairs are: 7 June: Anna Nikulina/Semen Chuden 8 June: Ekaterina Krysanova/Ruslan Skvortsov 9 June matinee: Anna Nikulina/Artem Ovcharenko 9 June evening: Ekaterina Krysanova/Ruslan Skvortsov 10 June: Anna Nikulina/Semen Chuden There's an off chance I might be able to get to this. Should I am for a specific cast?

Many thanks, rg!

The "Apollo/Carmina Burana" (Rep 5) program opens next Friday, 13 April, and continues with two performances on Saturday, 14 April (matinee and evening) and runs second weekend from Thursday, 19 April-Sunday, 22 April. PNB has just emailed me the cast info for Week 1, and I put it in a spreadsheet, which can be downloaded: Apollo and Carmina Burana Week 1.xlsx Peter Boal said in the "Balanchine: Then and Now" lecture demonstration that there were four casts for "Apollo". The disappointing news, for me at least, is that only two casts will perform first weekend, while the casting for "Carmina Burana" is more distributed. Here is the trailer: The "Apollo" excerpts shows some of the opening (Russell staging) that we won't see in Boal's staging, and features Patricia Barker's Terpsichore and Stanko Milov's Apollo.

Guest dancers have a good deal with ABT: a spring/summer season of a few months with the option of working in the Fall. ABT gets to generate excitement about various visiting artists. If the supply of interesting guest dancers is continuous, then I'm not sure why ABT would try to change that practice and invest in homegrown talent that doesn't have the star quality of Hallberg or Gomes. They're selling Big Ballets, but not productions, unified style, or choreographers, and they've pretty much squandered the great choreographic legacy they had. When ABT started, they had a stable of exceptional, experienced dancers; it's hard to say they were homegrown. Baryshnikov tried to sell Harvey, Rizzo, Radojevic (whom I adored), Tcherkassky, LaFosse, etc. and while they all had fans, many people hoped they'd see the next Makarova, Fracci, Bruhn, Baryshnikov, Gregory, etc. and stayed home or begrudgingly buy a ticket to see Cojocaru.

I thought the concern was that the Balanchine rep would be replaced by works of the Morphoses ilk. If it's a matter of performing the Balanchine works badly, I think it's a matter of technique. As we've seen with the Royal Ballet, once Macmillan started to replace Ashton and classes changed, the dancers lost the fine points of style and then, eventually, the technique. I don't think two-four works a year out of the style is necessarily detrimental to the technique when the balance of the rep is solidly classical and neoclassical, and I don't think there's any danger of Balanchine being replaced by Cecchetti or full-time Duato on Lopez's watch. I think it's when there's an Artistic Director who changes the vision completely, or there is a Resident Choreographer whose works in a non-neoclassical style dominate, that there would be an erosion of the technique and energy needed to dance Balanchine. Morphoses was someone else's vision -- or at least began as someone else's vision -- and Lopez did more work that wasn't Morphoses than with the company, while anyone watching Peter Boal and Company could see what his taste and preferences were and his choices for PNB aren't all that surprising.

This is a wonderful piece -- many thanks, innopac!

Many thanks for the heads up, bingham! It's a little tricky to search for now. So far, there's no unique ID assigned, and it's listed as "Glazunov: Raymonda (2012)" with no reference to La Scala at all, except on the (unsearchable) cover art graphic, but searching for that brings up no results. If you search for "Glazunov: Raymonda", you'll need to scroll down the results page. Please note that it's offered in Blu Ray and regular DVD versions, and they are listed as separate entries, not necessarily consecutively.