Helene

PNB also linked to this article in the August/September 2011 issue of "Pointe Magazine" on corps member Abby Relic: On the Side: Abby Relic Relic is a wonderfully versatile dance for the company, and a great commedian, which she showed as one of the Eville Stepsisters in "Cinderella" this past year. I wish we had seen more of her in "Giselle".

Rosie Gaynor writes about Margaret Mullin in the August 2011 issue of "Dance Magazine"; PNB posted a link to the online version on its Facebook Page: On the Rise: Margaret Mullin She is wonderful, and I'm glad she's being recognized.

JMcN answered above. You may have missed the post.

PNB Ballet Master Otto Neubert, fielding a question in an Q&A about setting tempi for individual dancers for the recent "Giselle", answered to the effect that even when dancers had input, the dancer who asked for a certain tempo on Wednesday morning was a different dancer than the one onstage Saturday night. Energy, physical condition, adrenalin, pacing are only a few of the things that can impact a dancer from day to day.

Mme. Hermine posted a link to video tribute on YouTube to the late Berezhnoi in this thread. In the section from the Wedding Pas de Deux from "Sleeping Beauty", Berezhnoi and Terekhova do not perform the fish dives. I don't think this takes anything away from their performances.

Does anyone know who his Sylph and his Aurora are?

Giselle did the hops on pointe in the recent PNB version -- Rachel Foster took the opposite diagonal -- and the "Action/Choreography source" is listed as "Stepanov", but on the other hand, so is the Act II Pas de deux, and Boal left in the high lifts instead of the notated tour jete lifts to the original tempo. I don't like extended hops on pointe very much. Even watching Osipova in the recent 3D movie, by the time I was thinking "Wow, I can't remember the last time that a Giselle didn't, just a little, change her facial expression or knit her brow or get a concentrated look in her eyes during the second half of the hops, it looked so easy for her", I was already outside the performance. I liked Sevillanos' change because the hops themselves break up the flow of the variation, while her change made them part of a phrase that was part of a shape. Thank you so much for posting the "Swan Lake" rehearsal video, Simon. I'm not sure how much of a difference in energy and emphasis she had between the rehearsal and actual performance, but I've rarely seen a rendition of the pas de deux in which the Odile has so much Odette in the overall quality of her movement -- not just the occasional caricature -- that Albrecht doesn't look like a fool confusing the two. Even with von Rothbart in the picture, she never gives the broad wink/smirk/"in the bag" asides to him or the audience/mirror. The accompanist is a hero in the opening adagio. I love the way Armand links the phrases in his variation, never stopping to pose. In fact, there's little "ta da" in the entire rehearsal, which I find appealing. The first suggestion on the YouTube site is for a grainy clip of a live performance at the Teatro Colon by Sevillano and Armand in Ashton's "Romeo and Juliet" Balcony Pas de Deux. I can't speak to style, but she shows the same extraordinary movement quality throughout her body in this clip.

Matthew Renko joins PNB this fall.

It made me think of a wonderful photo spread in maybe "Elle" sometime in the '80's in which Lourdes Lopez, Carole Divet, and Antonia Franceschi were shot wearing and moving in Fortuny dresses.

That's wonderful -- thank you for posting the link!

She wasn't a member of Pacific Northwest Ballet, but Alice Cao did dance in main stage productions as a Professional Division student while earning a BS in Computer Science at the University of Washington. She joined American Repertory Ballet after spending last season as an apprentice with Ballet Memphis. Given Ms. Cao's academic track record and history of multi-tasking, I would not be surprised if one of the lures of the company is proximity to a great university.

Of course, she never claimed that class was eliminated. It was retained enough to support the romantic story. Since the original was 50/50 mime/dancing -- and the PNB production didn't aim to come close to that ratio -- a lot of interaction was dropped. Even in the last scene, the Justamant notebook shows over 40 people on stage when Bathilde forgives Albrecht: their society witnesses the act. In the PNB production, the Prince of Courland and Wilfrid represented their society, as PNB only has 46 dancers on the roster.

He danced in Seattle until a couple of years ago and with Suzanne Farrell Ballet last season. He's performed in Vail, did a solo for Avi Scher last year, performed at the Fire Island Dance Festival] earlier this month, and he's just joined Carolina Ballet and appears on their roster as Soloist. http://balletalert.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/34160-wednesday-june-20/page__view__findpost__p__289709 From a recent article: Most of the reviews on this board are from New York, and New Yorkers have barely seen him. The documentary came out after Sar joined and left PNB. While he is a wonderful dancer, there are many wonderful dancers in the company, and he did not get a disproportionate amount of attention, since he was known solely by what he put on stage. As I said in my post, I thought the editing did Boal no favors. Sar trained at PNB school for a year -- he did a wonderful performnace as the Dancing Master in "Konservatoriat" and also performed as Oberon in the Scherzo from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the end-of-year school PNB School show -- and Boal hired him into the company first as an apprentice and then as corps, giving him a number of opportunities in dance (ex: the solo "Mopey") and character (ex: bartender in "Fancy Free") roles. The ballet world is competitive, and when a dancer leaves, companies just don't stop and wait for them to return.

Vera Altunina, the Vaganova Academy-trained founder and Artistic Director of International Ballet Theatre in Bellevue (Washington) who danced professionally in Russia, described in a panel discussion at the Dance Critics Association conference how, in the evolution of the ballet in Russian/Soviet productions, issues of class were stripped and the ballet became more about personal romantic love. To expand upon Leigh's question, as a result of the changes in emphasis, would the original audience have recognized Petipa's version forty years later, or would they have thought that the movie made changes to the book? I would say the common thread among the Giselle interpretations at PNB was "willful", because each Giselle had her own way of showing that she had a spine. Not every interpretation was necessarily feisty, unless compared to what has become the traditional version of having one foot in the grave. She may be subject to bouts of illness, but she's still expected to pick grapes; she doesn't spend gym class in the nurse's office: instead, she's out smoking behind the building so to speak while her friends try to cover for her. She's also not pure-as-the-driven-snow innocent: even in traditional versions, she defies Hilarion, her mother, and Myrtha, all of the authority figures. She's just not as emphatic about it.

I like Lilac Fairy in heels. It sets her apart from the other fairies. When she's on pointe, her dancing is compared to the Aurora's, and that's often to her great disadvantage. As far as being successful at its home theater, Lopatkina has been a vocal opponent of the SB reconstruction. If you watch the "New Year's Eve with the Mariinsky" DVD, which does have the third act reconstructed version, at the end, when the coda morphs into the choral version and the champagne is being passed around, Lopatkina makes a majestic central entrance in party clothes. I was waiting for Gergiev to get down on his hands and knees to bow. She has influence. It is long and expensive to tour. In DC we lost part of the second act -- the dance with fans -- and almost all of the third of the Bolshoi's "Le Corsaire", so that it could end on union time.

Leigh Witchel wrote an excellent review of PNB's "Giselle" for danceviewtimes, in which he details the changes made in the production: Love's Labors Found He concludes by writing,

There were a few posts that expand upon the broader topic of reconstructions, and I've moved them to their own thread here: Reconstructions: Pros, Cons, Why, Impacts

Sokvannara Sar has joined Carolina Ballet as a Soloist: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/theatre/article-23974011-sy-sar-is-dancing-the-dream.do

Back to the R&J aside, since Royal Ballet will be doing the Macmillan version, I found the mis-filed Ulanova/Zhadanov DVD of the Lavrovsky, and I must not have seen it before, because I didn't realize it was a film, with interior and exterior sets. There are several things I love about this: the crowd scenes are rarely static, with the camera able to cut to details, there are so many more opportunities to include the crowd, the sense of space is so much bigger, and Ulanova dances with such freedom. For example, everyone from the wedding rushes to Juliet's bedroom, after she is found "dead". I'm not sure how much choreography was changed to accommodate the film. Like with the other Lavrovsky (or Lavrovsky-Grigorovich versions, I found one of the best scenes the one with Paris, after her parents force the engagement. (In the Lavrovsky, the parents exit to leave them alone, so it wasn't a change by Grigorovich. In the Ulanova version, the camera doesn't linger on their exit.) Ulanova is like a ghost in that scene, and it's a great contrast to the sunlight and blue skies seen through the window.

The theater in Vancouver is the Scotiabank Theatre, which is also the venue for the Met HD broadcasts. They are centrally located and have a chance at a ready-made audience among the opera crowd. They also do the live theater broadcasts from England. It was the Granville Cinema that showed the SFB "Nutcracker" a few years ago, to maybe a few dozen people, although it was shown on a Saturday right before Christmas and up against the NBoC version.

That's a gorgeous photo -- thank you so much for posting the link!

The great Violette Verdy is on the ballet faculty of Indiana University: http://www.indiana.edu/~alldrp/members/verdy.html Ballet and opera are usually the opposite in terms of career trajectory. Ballet training is so specialized, that it usually begins as a preteen, and by college age, some dancers are in their final year of a pre-professional dance program, while most are apprentices or members of a corps. It is rare for a college student to dance professionally in a mid-size or major company; by 22, graduation age, many ballet dancers have already finished their career in the corps. In opera, college and even graduate school students are learning the technique, languages, acting, stagecraft, music theory, sight reading, etc. skills that will support a future career as they wait for their voices to strengthen and mature. That doesn't mean there aren't wonderful dancers in college programs, but it's not the standard career path.

I have a minority opinion about Macmillan's R&J: Apart from the Balcony and Wedding pas de deux, I find it dull, as if Macmillan was only interested in the most bombastic parts of the score. Since it was the only version around where I lived for years, I saw it a few times and then gave up, apart from when the Balcony Pas de Deux was included in galas. My favorite of the ballets I've seen done to the Prokofiev score is the version BBC filmed live in the mid-70's with Natalia Bessmertnova and Mikhail Lavrovsky, which is no longer in the Kultur catalog. There's nothing on the DVD listing the choreographer. I've seen a few internet listings that list Leonid Lavrovsky, the choreographer in the Ulanova version from the 50's, but Jeffrey Gantz, in a review of recordings of the ballet, writes that the Bessmertonova/M. Lavrosky is different from the Leonid Lavrovsky choreography, and descriptions of the 1989 DVD, with Irek Mukhamedov, indicate that this was Grigorovich's gussied-up revision of the Lavrovsky. I used to have the Ulanova version choreographed by Lavrovsky -- this is still available in the Kultur and vaimusic catalogs -- but I can't find it to compare. Also, the 1974 DVD with Maximova/Vasiliev credits the choreography to Lavrovsky. I'm not sure if that's an error or if Grigorovich made his changes between the mid-70's and late 80's. I remember Ulanova being very beautiful, but I'm partial to Bessmertnova's Juliet, especially post-marriage, I could watch Lavrovsky's arms and hands forever, and the man could handle a sword. They're both in their mid-30's, but Ulanova and Margot Fonteyn were no spring chickens when they danced and recorded the ballet, and her jump is spectacular. I particularly like the choreography, because the choreographer(s) was/were listening to the entire score and told a story through it, rather than slamming it over the head with a mallet. I could have lived without Lord Capulet though, who was like a cartoon character. I'm not sure if this is the Lavrovsky or the Grigorovich, but Lord and Lady Capulet leave Juliet alone with Paris in her bedroom, I suppose figuring they are safe if they have sex, ensuring their marriage. (Sadly, the camera focuses on them as they leave, instead of giving the full shot with Juliet and Paris dancing.) It's one of Bessmertnova's best scenes, especially the way she stops/shames him from continuing to maul her. And the tomb scene, Holy Abdominal Muscles, Batman. Gantz' article is a fine primer to versions and recordings. He leaves out the Tudor, to a score by Delius, but that could be because it's a one act version. He wasn't as enthusiastic about the Bessmertnova/Lavrovsky DVD as I am. He also doesn't mention the Maximova/Vasiliev (VAI) DVD or the Bessmertnova/Mukhamedov version on the DVD list, but if he thought she was old at 35, I can't imagine him liking her much at nearly 50. A non-ballet version by Jean-Christophe Maillot is available on DVD performed by his company, Les Ballets de Monte Carlo. I heartily dislike the Friar-Lawrence-in-the-Asylum conceit, but the rest of the work is very fine theater, and Maillot really works the darkness of the score. There are many excerpts on YouTube, making it easy to compare versions to get a sense of which one(s) you like. Romeo's Balcony Scene variation, Lavrovsky, Grigorovich -- Mikhail Lavrovsky: Balcony Pas de Deux, Lavrovsky, Grigorovich -- Natalia Bessmertnova/Irek Mukhamedov Balcony Scene, Lavrovsky -- Galina Ulanova/Yuri Zhdanov http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKTJ8QiWzQk&feature=relmfu Balcony Scene, credited to Lavrovsky -- Ekaterina Maximova/Vladimir Vasiliev http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw2KdkEKNDk&feature=relmfu

Not even they could make me sit through the McMillan "Romeo and Juliet", but I look forward to seeing their "Sleeping Beauty". I'm hoping for an Alexandrova "Le Corsaire", with Andrei Merkuriev as Birbanto.

I know there were distortions from the angle, but Penteado seems to have wonderful ballon and hang time in the air.