Helene

Thank you for posting! Two other highlights for me: "Bright Stream" and "Le Corsaire", and, if from the home theater, not the truncated version we saw in DC, which still had the magnificent "Jardin Anime". I wonder if they'll start to release these on DVD. I know the Royal Ballet has Opus Arte, but I'm much more interested in what the Bolshoi is offering.

What's frightening is that in the "Ballerina" documentary, there is a scene on stage in which this is very clear, where Somova is not able to give them what they want, and, to me, her confidence looks shaken. Farrell and Fonteyn had the kind of egos that allowed them to stand up to Balanchine, Ashton, and de Valois. I don't think Somova has that iron will and confidence. Farrell, Fonteyn, and Maximova were muses to choreographers, which takes strong artistry, while Somova is not.

Fixed! -- Pacific Northwest Ballet School typically trains dancers for their last two years before joining the company. (There have been a few local dancers recently who joined the school at a young age: Rollofson, Anspach, and Hippolito, Jr., for example.) That's the expectation here, while at Royal Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Mariinsky Ballet, and Bolshoi Ballet, major companies that have schools whose reason is to train young kids for the company, a dancer who has only a year or two at their schools is not the norm. Is the definition of "home-grown" the same for a dancer in the Mariinsky Ballet as it is for ABT or NYCB? I think one of the major criticisms of the Royal Ballet is that the school is not producing the top dancers, who are, for the most part, imported.

This has been raised and discussed many times on various threads. Regardless of why a dancer is featured, the performance he or she puts on stage is the valid subject for criticism, just as it is when any professional athlete performs before the paying public. --- I hope that the way Somova has been cast this year under a newish administration is based on sanity having been restored, for her sake and ours; however, I'm sure we can all recall numerous times and circumstances when a great dancer has been shelved for reasons that seem inexplicable.

Thank you for the correction; I didn't read far enough to see that she did the Graduate Course at the school.

ABT is the only company for whom "home grown" does not, at least yet, include coming from the school, which is still too new to have an impact. Part of the answer depends on whether the dancer needs to be part of ABT II or whether starting in the corps counts. For the Royal Ballet, whether they studied in the school: Principals: Acosta-no Benjamin-yes Bonelli-no Cojocaru--studied six months at the school from a Prix de Lausanne scholarship prize Cuthbertson-spent nearly seven years at the school Galeazzi-no Kish-no Kobborg-no Lamb-no Makhateli-no Marquez-no McRae-yes, one year at the school Morera-yes Nunez-no ETA: "yes" (see below) Pennefather-yes Polunin-yes Rojo-no Soares-yes ETA "no" (see below) Watson-yes Yanowsky-no First Soloists: Cervera-yes Chapman-no Choe-no Crawford-yes Gartside-yes Hristov-no Kobayashi-no Martin-no Mendizabal-no Stepanek-no The Bolshoi has foreign students in the school -- Julian and Nicholas MacKay are two of them -- but I don't know if there's a rule or policy about whether they can be accepted into the company, and they still are too young to be chosen, if this is possible. I haven't read anything to show that the same is true at the Mariinsky. I know Paris Opera Ballet has competitions for dancers not trained at their school, and I don't know the policies of either the Vaganova Institute or Paris Opera Ballet School about accepting students in addition to the kids they choose at eight for the sole purpose of making them into professional dancers, which is not the case for any of the company-affiliated schools in the US, which accept local students early and then select most of their professional division students much later. According to the Paris Opera Ballet website, "Practically all the dancers are trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School." All of the Etoiles attended the school. Only two of the Premiers Danseurs, Alessio Carbone, who came from Milan, and Ludmila Pagliero, who came from Ballet de Santiago did not attend the school. There are no bios for Sujets and below on the site. http://www.operadeparis.fr/cns11/live/onp/L_Opera/le_Ballet/le_Ballet_de_lOpera/index.php?lang=en The majority of Etoiles and Premiers Danseurs studied at the school for 5-7 years, joining the school between 9-11 and either being asked to join the corps or auditioned successfully for the corps between the ages of 15-18. Several of them studied at the school for one year before being accepted -- Clairmarie Osta, Jose Martinez, and Laetitia Pujol -- and a few for two years -- Mathieu Ganio, Isabella Ciaravola, and Nowwenn Daniel. For the Mariinsky, three of the Principal Dancers did not study at the Vaganova Academy: Igor Kolb (Byelorusian State Ballet School), Daniil Korsuntsev (Uzbek School of Ballet), and Denis Matvienko (Kiev State School of Dance). Both Irma Niradze and Igor Zelensky studied at the Tbisili School of Ballet before studying at the Vaganova Academ. No other Principal Dancers or any of the First Soloists have any other school listed in their bios. Of the Second Soloists, Nadezhda Gonchar (Kiev State School of Dance), Maria Shirinkina (Perm State School of Dance), Andrei Ivanov (Byelorussian State School of Dance), and Timur Askerov (Baku School of Dance) were trained outside the Vaganova Academy. http://www.mariinsky.ru/en/company/ballet/troupe/ At the Bolshoi, six of the 19 Principals studied outside the Moscow State Choreographic Academy: Nikolai Tsiskaridze (Tbisili Ballet School), Anna Antonicheva (Baku Ballet School), Ivan Vasiliev (Belorussian State Choreographic College), Mikhail Lobukhin (Vaganova Academy), Nadezhda Gracheva (Alma-Ata Ballet School), and Svetlana Zakharova, who studied at the Kiev Choreographic School before being "finished" at the Vaganova Academy. Three of the nine Leading Soloists studied outside Moscow: Yelena Andrienko (Kiev Ballet School), Andrei Merkuriev (Ulfa Ballet School), and Yekateriana Shipulina (Perm Choreographic College). There are only a couple of bios of First Soloists and Soloists. http://www.bolshoi.ru/en/theatre/ballet_troupe/soloists/ The Mariinsky and Bolshoi have promoted dancers that were not trained in Moscow, but all of them were trained in schools that had been part of the former Soviet Union training system.

Thank you for the info on Castelli, one of my all-time favorite dancers at NYCB. He was from the transitional generation of the Ford Foundation era, forty or so years ago. How time flies... Very few Principals and Soloists started in the school before pre-professional division kicked in -- Boal, Fugate, and Somogyi are the ones I can think of off the top of my head -- and not all of the NYCB dancers trained at SAB started in their early teens on the professional track. I should have been clearer with "exclusively SAB-trained", by which I meant their last years of training were at SAB, and they were taken into the company from SAB. Many, like Ulbricht, started in their mid-teens, but were still school-trained. I make the distinction between full-time study, and those, like Askegard, who went to a summer session, but never attended the school full time, and Sean Lavery, who didn't attend the school until after he danced professionally and came from Principal Dancer status at Frankfurt Opera Ballet.

ENB has been a stepping stone for many dancers we've grown to love: it's like a New York Yankees AAA club, where so many dancers are as good as anyone dancing in the larger companies throughout the world, but there's no room. One of the things that strikes me most about the discussion of "home-grown" vs. "store-bought" is that thinking about whom ABT might "acquire": it's like a fantasy sports league, where by choosing all of the dancers we'd like to see, we can create an All Star Team and not have to travel to see them Looking at a NYCB souvenir book from the early '80's, Principal Men: Ib Andersen Bart Cook Lindsay Fischer Peter Frame -- now doing weight training for SAB's 2011 summer session Leonid Koslov Robert La Fosse Sean Lavery -- studied at SAB for a year after dancing with SFB and Frankfurt Opera Ballet Adam Luders Jock Soto I don't know about Lindsay Fischer's training, but, at most, 1/3 of the male principals were SAB-trained (Soto and Frame, possibly Fischer), and Lavery's foundational training was at School of Pennsylvania Ballet and with Richard Thomas and Barbara Fallis. compared to the Principal Women: Merrill Ashley Suzanne Farrell Judith Fugate Darci Kistler Maria Calegari Valentina Kozlova -- hired as a Principal from Bolshoi Ballet Lourdes Lopez Patricia McBride Kyra Nichols Stephanie Saland Heather Watts Only Kozlova wasn't home-grown. The soloists were more evenly distributed among the men -- Boal, Aromaa, Frohlich, Castelli, Merlo, Horiuchi, Houston, Neubert, O'Brien, David Otto -- and unless I'm mistaken, exclusively SAB-trained among the women -- Caddell, Alexopoulos, Hauser, Hlinka, Melinda Roy, White. Compared to today's roster, at least eight of the male principals were trained at SAB -- the Angles, Fairchild, Millipied, Ramasar, Stafford, Ulbricht, Veyette. Only four of the male principals -- Askegard (SAB summer session, so known to NYCB), de Luz, Garcia, and Marcovici -- were trained all or mostly outside of SAB and/or danced elsewhere before joining the company, which is quite a change, although RDB-trained Nikolai Hubbe and Nilas Martins were on the roster until relatively recently. All but one (La Cour) of the NYCB soloist men were trained at SAB. ETA: As long as we're suggesting possibilities for recruitment, please, some company in North America hire Thomas Lund as a guest...

I'm losing my patience. Our rules are very clear: 1. Do not discuss the discussion 2. If you have a problem with a post, hit the "report" button and do not discuss it on the board (see #1) and the Moderators will consider it Don't even think about posting that my Admin posts are "discussing the discussion", because that's one of the superpowers we Admins and Moderators have, and you can see how much fun it is. Members will come to their own conclusions about what other members' "problems" are. We don't need to be told what the board is for, although we sometimes have to remind people. We also monitor single-issue posters carefully; posting regularly on a single topic can itself be an agenda. (Determining such is one of our other superpowers, as this is a private board.) I'm not going to bother to edit posts anymore. I'm going straight to "Moderated" status going forward, because we've finally got ourselves some summer here in Vancouver.

The discussion on "Raymonda" has triggered more discussion on Bessmertnova. Even if Somova raised her technical level and musicality, I can't imagine a resemblance between the style and movement quality of an "ideal" Somova and Bessmertnova.

Both Bessmertnova and Kolpakova are past their prime, but they're both competing against their younger selves, and you can't buy that kind of expression. I also love, love, love the Mariinsky version. I think it's always good to own as many version of a favorite ballet as possible. I managed, through a post of naomikoge's, to purchase the New National Ballet of Tokyo in the ballet on the Japanese amazon site. The guests are Svetlana Zakharova as Raymonda and Denis Matvienko as Jean de Brienne. Asami Maki is the choreographer. I love this DVD for the costumes alone, and the woman who portrays the Queen is stunning.

Had I still been in NYC I would have gone to that performance: for one, it's not like she was dancing a solo like Bejart's Bolero or Balanchine's "Sonatine" or even being the raison d'etre of the ballet, like Aurora, but there are many important roles in "Little Humpbacked Horse", secondly, I particularly loved Petushkova as the other female lead along with many other of the male dancers and would have been interested in seeing alternate casts for the men's roles, and finally, the ballet itself is so fantastic, it would be worth seeing with anyone in the company. I saw the Balanchine programs that the Mariinsky brought to City Center a few years ago, and, frankly, I think very few dancers in the company danced Balanchine well. Somova had some very lovely moments in "Ballet Imperial", most of them in the second movement adagio. We are a discussion board, not a fan board, and threads on dancers are to discuss the dancers, pro and con. The only place taste comes into the picture is when there is a congratulations thread that turns highly critical, and even then, if the promotion is controversial, it is fine to discuss. While that covers the majority opinion, it is not the only one on this board; in fact, rather recently, a number of posters came out to say that they liked Somova's dancing and/or have reviewed her favorably in the mainstream press. An Admin note: please keep the discussion on Somova, not each other. Discussing motivation is discussing the discussion, and is off limits.

It takes a while to adjust. The pacing and architecture are different. Often the ratio of mime and theater, like processionals, is much greater in relationship to dance sections, and the characterizations can change. Some of the "wow" choreography goes and is replaced with choreography that has a different feel. When watching the same recorded performance over and over, we get inured and expect almost the exact thing in the theater, even if the performers are the same. If the only "Raymonda" I had seen was the Nureyev version, and I saw even the gussied-up Bolshoi version, let alone the Mariinsky version or the reconstruction, I would wonder where half of the choreography went, much like if I had only heard the Stowkowski versions of Bach, I would be completely thrown hearing a version based on the original orchestration. My balance would be off. Some of the changes are like a punch in the solar plexus, some are like a pebble in one's shoe, and others are less obvious and cause an "I can't quite put my finger on it" reaction. Seattle is extremely lucky to have Doug Fullington, who is an expert interpreter of Stepanov notation and has worked extensively with the manuscripts in the Sergeyev Collection at Harvard. Most recently, he and Marian Smith, a musicologist from the University of Oregon and expert in the original musical score and a notebook found in 2002 by two early stagers of "Giselle", collaborated with Peter Boal and the PNB dancers on a new production based on Smith's sources and the Stepanov notation for the ballet. Smith describes in her book, "Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle" how the original ratio mime to dance was about 50/50. The PNB version did not restore all of the mime, but it restored three scenes in Act II from the original, one of which, the scene with the hunters, is seen in the Ballet Nacional de Cuba production, and one which reverts to the original ending, much like the reconstruction of Sleeping Beauty shows the inclusion of Carabosse in the last act rather than the various Wicked Witch of the West deaths in modern productions. It also fortified scenes in Act I with longer mime excepts, and added vignettes in the group scenes to enrich the texture and support the plot. As Fullington has often said in lectures, in the fantastic studio programs he's presented called "Balanchine's Petipa", and in other presentations, each manuscript has a different level of detail in the notation and coming up with a presentation version is a collaborative process. It's not like finding the original manuscript of a symphony with all of the notes, markings, and instruments listed, and even there, someone(s) has to decide what "piano" meant in that time with those instruments and adjust for modern performance spaces. For example, Fullington describes the level of detail in the "Giselle" manuscript as "medium", and the manuscript isn't even the notation of the original, but of the Petipa version, notated 15-19 years after the 1884 premiere in St. Petersburg by different notators. (The PNB program notes by Fullington and Smith note that Anna Pavlova's name is included in the notations, and she danced Zulme in 1899 and Giselle starting in 1903.) It had steps and no port de bras. The team was lucky that there were two rich sources for the mime, but only one placed the mime with the music, and the other was descriptive, but that isn't the norm for most Petipa ballets, and the Justament notebook with descriptive mime and stage placements wasn't found until 2002. In creating the version, the team had to analyze the sources -- they published a grid to show the origin for each musical scene -- piece together a version, add the arms, interpret what physical gestures belong with descriptions like "voluptuous pose" and "angry gesture", determine what to keep of the Petipa choreography, and adjust to modern bodies and a company that has 46 dancers plus professional division students, where the original ending calls for 45 dancers to be onstage to witness Bathilde forgiving Albrecht at Giselle's grave. Plus, all of those choices had to support a balanced and integrated whole. One of the things that made me most crazy about the ABT "Sleeping Beauty" is the addition of a scene with the four gossips right before the Garland Dance. It is a long, intricate, mime-filled scene, in which the King ponders the fate of Catalabutte, who has allowed the gossips to bring a forbidden spindle. I loved the scene, although I wish the mime had been clearer, but it was so out of balance to the rest of the mime shorthand in the production. In the PNB Giselle Peter Boal made the decision to keep what has become the standard long Giselle/Albrecht lift in Act II, even though the notation and score read otherwise, and stated in a Q&A that he understood that this was a distortion of the music, but that he liked the lifts. Some of the original choreography was not accepted into the production because it didn't suit the technique of 21st century dancers. In a reconstruction they're dealing with incomplete data as well as modern sensibilities in analyzing and editing the available sources. The mime shorthand in modern productions makes for faster theater and gets straight to the meat of the dancing, but it also turns the characters into archtypes and simplifies them. In the original Giselle, she was a feisty creature who stands up to everyone. It was interesting to see Osipova's gorgeously danced Giselle in 3D just a month later; she, like many Giselles, had one foot in the grave in Act I, which was a stark contrast to the original character and the version I had seen in Seattle, where "feisty" and "determined" were interpreted four ways by four different dancers. In the PNB version, Wilfrid is a real character. He watches and comments on the action and doesn't just ferry Albrecht's cape and sword on and off stage. Albrecht's entrance in Act II is to a real bel canto oboe solo. You can hear the pace and footsteps in the music: it could be sleepwalker music. In a typical staging, Albrecht rushes in with the flowers and runs back and forth to find her grave and/or be agitated, which is not what the music is saying. In the PNB production, Wilfrid helps Albrecht find Giselle's grave (downstage diagonal), and it's a slow walk to the pulse of the music, while upstage, Wilfrid mimes, to the pace of the music, Albrecht's sorrow. Instead of indicating "I am upset!!!!", the Albrechts had to work very hard to create a characterization and to show us how they had changed, which was more demanding than it sounds. The "Giselle" team had over a year to work on this production; in the lecture demos and presentations, Fullington has much less time to work with the dancers, who are collaborating in addition to their day jobs, so that they aren't necessarily production-ready, but they illustrate so much. As part of an excellent program for the premiere of Balanchine's "Coppelia" at PNB, Fullington worked for a very short time with Brittany Reid to contrast the Spinner variation from "Coppelia" in the manuscript to Balanchine's version, which was about to be performed. The conventional wisdom is that Balanchine's version was better, but I disagree: Petipa's architecture, especially the use of the diagonal, was much richer to my eye. I wouldn't have realized how confined the Balanchine version is on the horizontal without seeing it in the studio as a solo, because there are 24 young girls taking up a lot of space on stage as Spinner dances front and forward. In one of the "Balanchine's Petipa" series, the female corps did a version of a finale based on the manuscripts that was much more eye-catching to me than a more typical current version. It takes a lot for the audience and the dancers to put aside the familiar versions and clear the palate for the new. It takes time and effort. For me the reconstructions set a new bar and are a lens through which I see other performances, but that's not everyone's experience, and dancers like Lopatkina and Tsiskaridze are on record as being against them, although apparently Tsiskaridze later tempered his criticism of them.

I didn't see Somova's live, but from the clips, it looks like her feet are a little stronger since the last time I saw her, but her hands were very distracting. What both Tereshkina and Obratztsova had (live) that Somova shows little of in the clips is a sense of the musical and dance line: there's not much connecting between the steps and mini-phrases, which are more like text-speak than sung lines. Plitsetskaya is such a beautiful woman...

Then there's NYCB, which is not allowing new subscriptions in the Fourth Ring (top level center), and is trying to push everyone down into less appealing seats in lower rings and the Orchestra, much like PNB tried to do a few years ago with the Second Tier and has since reversed, has jacked the prices in the Fourth Tier for current subscribers (and single ticket holders when they need to open up the section), like Seattle Symphony did a few years ago, plus they are effectively killing the Fourth Tier Society, in which for a nominal fee, members could get one or two seats for $15 in the Fourth Tier, if there was availability.

Australian Ballet is a fine company, and hopefully, they'll bring worthy rep. My first subscription performance at Pacific Northwest Ballet in 1994 was Australian Ballet in the Ashton "La Fille mal gardee", back when PNB occasionally added a guest company performance to their season, and I got to see a very young, very lovely Lucinda Dunn as Lise. She's still with the company, as well as Madeleine Eastoe who gave knockout performances when I saw the company in 2002 in Melbourne. Eastoe had a part in the film of "Mao's Last Dancer" as Lori. It's great to see them both on the roster, and, hopefully, they'll make it to NYC.

I always liked Vasyuchenko with Bessmertnova in this and other ballets. Taranda is the bomb.

In the Summer 2011 issued of "OperaCanada", Patrick Dillon reviewed the joint production between the Juilliard School's Institute for Vocal Arts and the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program of "The Bartered Bride" performed in February 2011 at the Juilliard School. He wrote (p.51):

Oregon Ballet Theatre just posted the following to PNB's Facebook Wall: It's wonderful to see fellowship between companies.

Also, single tickets are on sale, and through 31 July, there are no service charges on single tickets.

[Admin Beanie On] This topic has strayed far off course, and many posts have been removed. Please post on topic. Thank you. [Admin Beanie Off]

PNB has published it's season trailer video: It goes by so fast, and I couldn't made all of the identifications, but the clips from "Don Quixote" are from the Dutch National Ballet, and I recognized Carrie Imler as Polyhymnia in "Apollo" Seth Orza, solo, and with Carla Korbes in "Carousel" Karel Cruz and Carla Korbes in "Sleeping Beauty" and Black Swan Pas de Deux Stanko Milov as Apollo Mara Vinson and James Moore in "Coppelia" Lucien Postlewaite, solo and with Carla Korbes in "Romeo et Juliette" James Moore and Rachel Foster in "In the Rain" Pas de Deux Jonathan Porretta as Bluebird in"Sleeping Beauty" Kaori Nakamura in a peach-colored dress that I don't remember from "Coppelia"; not sure what ballet this is Chalnessa Eames as Spinner from "Coppelia" There are a few clips I think are from Wheeldon's "Variations Sérieuses", which I missed when it was first danced, some from "Carmina Burana", and two from Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's "Cylindrical Shadows" originally performed in January by Olivier Wevers' company, Whim W'him, part of the New Works program in March 2012. The company performs excerpts from "Sleeping Beauty" ("Aurora's Wedding"), "Swan Lake" (Black Swan Pas de Deux), and "Romeo et Juliette" (Balcony Pas de Deux) as part of the "Love Stories" program in November, which also features company premiers of Jerome Robbins' "Afternoon of a Faun" and George Balanchine's "Baiser de la fee". I usually don't like gala excerpts, but I think this is very clever programming on PNB's part, and "Aurora's Wedding" is a treat.

I'd choose Russia over Paris, if it's feasible: Nureyev's version for POB has his choreographic "improvements". If you can get it, there's DVD documentary on "Raymonda" in the "Dancer's Dream" series that will give you a better idea. For me, just to see Claude de Vulpain's dancing made the DVD worthwhile: I loved her in it. The version that Gilbert dances on the YouTube clip is different than the versions in the Kirov and Bolshoi DVD's; both are productions danced in 1989 (Bolshoi with Bessmertnova) and 1980 (Kirov with Kolpakova). According to Wikipedia, Kolpakova was born in either 1933 or 1935, which would make her either 44-45 or 46-7 when she danced that performance with all of those variations and pas de deux. Bessmertnova was born in 1941, and she would have been 47-8 when she danced the live Bolshoi performance, which has even more choreography.

If you can find it, try to find the VAI DVD with Kolpakova in a 1980 live performance. It's the Kirov/Mariinsky version. This is my favorite performance video of anything. YouTube doesn't have the complete, but it does have some excerpts from 1976: Her partner here is Semenov. In the video it's Berezhnoi. There's also the video excerpt from the DVD, which I missed the first time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prkkyJymx8s

Green with envy at what RTR broadcasts. for them to have streaming broadcast subscriptions one day...