Helene

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One of the reasons I dislike the trick in the first place is how rarely fouettes are done well and properly. Most of the time, especially with singles, the place the leg whips migrate to the front and the working leg gets sloppy. At least with doubles it's more likely that the dancer does the full rotation in passe and has a chance to reset for the next "whip."

That may be true now, although in 40 years of per-going I've never seen one, and the rare ones involving opera stars are widely publicized, which wouldn't happen if they weren't an exception -- maybe because of union time -- but it doesn't seem to be the case in 1960's Moscow: From Edward Villella's "Prodigal Son" (pp.118-9):

Absolutely. I'm surprised they were revealed in the statistics video under "5 Couples." (We often can see them shadowing in the back of rehearsal videos.) Particularly since the short clip of Rausch was so enticing.

A famous incident occured when NYCB first toured Russia. The audience cheered for Edward Villella to do an encore. When he did, Balanchine was famously icy towards him.

I'm just surprised they were listed in the "couples" video if they were "covering" this time around.

I think the tall guy in the green shirt with the guitar is Charles McCall, who was a PD student and is now an apprentice. The tall guy in the yellow shirt may be Joshua Grant, who returned to PNB this year. In the couples video, Rausch and Tisserand were listed as the last of the Kitri/Basilio pairs, so, yes, they would be next in line.

Here's a new video of Kitri's and Basilio's Entrance, with Kaori Nakamura and Lucien Postlewaite:

Seattle Times intereview Tom Skerritt about playing Don Quixote: http://seattletimes....prmid=head_main Earlier in the article, he says he told Peter Boal, "I don't dance. I'm just a clumsy ox,' but I don't remember him looking out of place in "The Turning Point": not every retired dancer keeps up a pronounced walk and posture, and I though he moved gracefully. He was also interviewed on a local radio show -- there was a lead-in about his part in the ballet, but the two co-hosts didn't speak of it -- and he said he was 78. (They kept telling him how wonderful he looked.) I think it's pretty inspiring that a 78-year-old taking ballet class finds it exhiliarating. From the context of his comment, I guess he didn't take class to prepare for "The Turning Point." Also, speaking about why he chose Skerritt, "Boal, asked about the casting, said that he'd thought of Skerritt some time ago. He knew that Ratmansky preferred to have actors, rather than dancers, play the roles of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza." On the Dutch National Ballet video, this is clear: the Don Quixote mouths lines or directions throughout. It looks like he took a text-based approach, while for Skerritt: "Working without dialogue, however, has been 'kind of freeing,' Skerritt said, noting that it suits the physicality of the character. 'It's like a silent movie — a wonderful challenge.'"

Your email address was grandfathered in on BT4D after the policy was changed.. This should have no impact on this issue. What you could not do is change your email address to another free address. I don't have an iPad, but the mobile version, which came up automatically when I had an iPhone and now comes up on my Android phone, is optimized for phones. Safari is one of the supported browers, and that's what the iPad uses, from what I understand. Perhaps other iPad users would weigh in.

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You'll also hear many of us mourn over the ballets that they no longer dance, the core part of their heritage.

I love the Boys' Dance, but my favorite is the line dance, based on Morris' years of Balkan dancing.

I'm hoping the Bolshoil snatches her up.

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

There's lots of news today in Links. It could be worse than Polunin being tired of ballet -- he's not injured or sick -- but I hope he does what he needs to do now and reconsiders a career in dance. I remember seeing him a few years ago in "The Sleeping Beauty", and realizing that he was an incredible dancer just from his role as a fairy cavalier took about as much insight as hearing the young Pavarotti and realizing "He's good."

Click, look, and adjust, in real time.

She's gorgeous, and he's matinee-idol material.

The Gades Foundation published a beautiful book in tribute to Gades after his death. It was clear from the quotes and photos that he loved Cuba.

Gary Tucker kindly forwarded the casting for both weeks of Don Quixote; as always, casting is subject to change. (As I post this, the casting isn't up yet on the PNB website, but when it is, it will be available from this link: http://www.pnb.org/S...Details-Casting) This Excel spreadsheet can be downloaded: Don Quixote Casting Both Weeks 120124.xlsx I have two disappointments: there were five casts featured in the video, but Lesley Rausch and Jerome Tisserand haven't been cast as Kitri/Basilio. (They will dance Mercedes/Espada.) The other is that not all four casts will perform first weekend, and I'll miss the Foster/Orza, a wonderful partnership in "Giselle". Tom Skerritt and Allen Galli team as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza for all but the two Saturday matinees, when Otto Neubert's Don Quixote is paired with Jonathan Porretta's* Sancho Panza. My favorite performer, Karel De Rooij, in the Dutch National Ballet DVD was Sancho Panza, and I'm looing forward to seeing both interpretations.

Head West, young man, head West. (But stop at the Pacific Ocean and no farther south than San Francisco.)

I have seen performances where the dancer fell out early and didn't attempt to continue, and to me, it's not a big deal.

I don't know how many times male dancers have said that it's not the size of the ballerina, but how she holds herself and how much she helps to get into the lifts, and that some small, thin ballerinas are like lifting dead weight, because they don't help.

He didn't write that he should choose operas with lighter scores using less instruments to cut costs, or that the opera should be performed to piano accompaniments or string quartets. Somehow, though, the ballet should go on without live music? Why isn't the opera responsible for overtime costs, when the majority of operas produced by the theater last as long or longer than the average ballet performance? RDB isn't performing the reconstructed 3+-hour "Sleeping Beauty." "Swan Lake" isn't longer than "The Flying Dutchman", for example. European opera houses, which had been state-sponsored and primarily funded by governments in the 20th century, are well-known for being nightmares in which government politics, including political appointments of non-arts people, as well as lifer-bureacrats rear their ugly heads and have the actual authority in the theaters and wide decision-making powers. Where there is an overall theater administration covering opera and/or dance and/or theater, it's even worse. This shouldn't be news to anyone accepting an appointment at one of the major European theaters. And that doesn't even take into consideration unions, which are prominent in some countries. It's not part of the culture in Europe, where taxes -- income and 15-25+% VAT is included in the purchase price -- are extremely high and the arts have been a birthright. Businesses want a return for their donations. Sports sponsorships give them broader audiences, and businesses don't have the social incentives to donate like they do in North America, where boards are prominent, and getting their executives nominated for board positions is good for bidness. Even in North America, the truism is that it takes several generations before philanthopy takes hold. (For all of the complaining about how the rich Microsofties weren't donating back their fair share, one of Gates' best initiatives was to get people whose families weren't donors, or only donated to their churches, to donate millions each year to 501-c-3 organizations, which were matched up to $12K per employee per year.) It's not likely that philanthropy is likely to sprout suddenly, and scrambling businesses' first thoughts are generally not the arts. People like Vilar, Koch, and Kekhman get huge bang for their (relatively small) buck, and in Vilar's case, not even his buck, by "saving" arts institutions. Russia not only was in a crisis after the Soviet Union fell, it was chaotic. Gergiev gauged the situation immediately and jumped on the fund-raising bandwagon early and often. Most of Europe is not at that point of chaos/opportunity.

Maybe it's in the "Dance in America" program "Ballerinas: Dances by Peter Martins" where Martins said he heard a piece by Beethoven playing on the radio, and he thought of Kyra Nichols and choreographed "Beethoven Romance" for her and Adam Luders. I also remember a comment in one of Christine Brennan's books on figure skating that Michael Weiss' coach Audrey Weisinger used to get distracted by music she heard on the radio when she thought it would be good program music, which didn't help her driving record.