Helene

No official news yet. Promote from within on a reasonable course means rep or versions of the rep that include opportunities to work up the ladder towards the secondary leads and then the leads, as well as good coaching, so that when a dancer is given an opportunity, that dancer is ready enough for the audience to be happy that they were there to see that dancer's first performance.

The download is not available in Canada on amazon.com, and it's being geo-blocked, even when signed into an account with a US billing address, I'm guessing by IP location. It's not available on amazon in Canada, even at amazon's much higher prices in Canada, despite the exchange rate. Amazon is charging $14.99 for the download. iTunes is charging $19.99 for it. There's also the option of short rentals from each.

That makes sense. In a way, most dancers that aren't civil servants and pretty much have guaranteed jobs until the mandatory retirement age, are perpetual free agents, because they are working on short, usually one-year contracts, so they have a right to make contact with other companies for their next year's employment and/or guest contracts.

I was very impressed with Joseph Walsh, too, in the same performance -- he had beautiful line and articulation -- but he didn't have to do the intricate partnering that Connor Walsh did, so it was harder to judge overall whether he'd be Principal material. This is Boal's conundrum in Seattle: the men are relatively short, and he's got a stable of tall women who flocked to PNB because Ariana Lallone, at nearly 6' tall, set the precedent. (For example: if Kiyon Gaines were six inches taller, companies around the world would be having bidding wars over him.) Of the eight dancers leaving, three were tall and key partners for the women: Jeffrey Stanton, Olivier Wevers, and Stanko Milov.

Why would it necessarily be negative if she did switch, especially since she'd more likely get greater opportunity there? Besides, New Zealand's a gorgeous place, much like the Pacific Northwest, and very convenient to Australia and southeast Asia. (Not that I think she is doing anything more than guesting, as you noted, like many ABT dancers do.) I would have been equally snarky to describe Boal as having "poached" Carla Korbes -- easy for me to do, because I'm on the right side of that transaction, and I just rewatched "The Rules of the Game" -- and he sure wasn't able to do it with a pile of cash or more prestige; instead he gave Korbes better opportunities under a much more humane schedule, which for a dancer who had been prone to injury, is a great advantage. Miranda Weese lived across country from her long-time partner for the last few years of her career, as she said, in order to dance in a sane schedule. Actually, Daniil is still quite young. He's 23, turning 24 in October. (Sarah Lane is 26 as you surmised.) It feels like he's been a prominent dancer for at least a decade. No wonder we think he's older than he is.

That hasn't been true for all of ABT's history, though. Even when I first went to ABT in the 1970's, the seasons at the New York State Theatre were a mix of full-length story ballets and the triple bills of works that were rich with performance history in the company -- many are masterworks -- which from the start featured a series of Tudor ballets, like "Jardin aux Lilacs", "Pillar of Fire", which was broadcast at least twice on TV, "Dark Elegies", "Dim Lustre", "Undertow", "Shadowplay", and "The Leaves Are Fading", "The Green Table", "Voluntaries", "Airs", Robbins' works for ABT like "Fancy Free" and "Other Dances", works by deMille like "Rodeo" and "Fall River Legend", "Le jeune homme et la Mort", the occasional Ashton, like "Les Patineurs", as well as "Theme and Variations", which Balanchine created for Ballet Theatre, and "Bouree Fantasque" and "Symphony Concertante", which NYCB stopped performing. Add in classical short works like "Les Sylphides" and "Le Spectre de la Rose" and there is an entire rep that is fading into the past. When Boal said that the downside of presenting full-lengths was limited opportunities, he also spoke about the range of opportunities that triple bills provided, the ability to cast 12 or more leads vs. two-three in a single evening.

Where I used to work we spent hours in meetings to bash out solutions and agreements, but we all knew that minutes after the smokers finished convening that we'd get the email with the final decision or approval.

I'm sure a lot of dancers wanted to move to Seattle to work for Peter Boal, too, but it's a tricky business for company balance and morale to bring in a bunch of dancers to replace the ones that are there. There are 32 dancers on the roster now. Of them, I counted: 12 are from New Zealand 8 are from Australia 1 is Japanese-born and got a scholarship to train at Australian Ballet's school 3 came from England and trained at the Royal Ballet School 1 is from Singapore and moved to NZ to study dance 1 is from China and taught with a Chinese-born former dancer in the company 1 is from France and used to dance with ENB There's another Chinese-trained dancer, and a handful from the US -- trained in North Carolina and might have been trained by Stiefel -- Brazil, and Europe. (The Belgian-born dancer is from Chimay!) Which makes all but a few either from the region and/or had a tie to the company, and/or trained/dance in commonwealth countries. It's a tricky balance, especially with almost all of the dancers being home-grown or regional, and having similar training, to start importing. I disagree. I think that it was important for Martins to show that he, too, could produce prodigious dancers from the school, not to mention that young phenoms create good publicity stories, but many of the Principals from the period right before and after Martins took over the company -- Maria Calegari, Stephanie Saland, Nichol Hlinka, Joseph Duell, Judith Fugate, Melinda Roy, Helene Alexopoulos for example -- were promoted in their mid-twenties or later. Before that, it took Merrill Ashley, Heather Watts, and Bart Cook about ten years and Daniel Duell seven years to reach Principal. Most dancers take longer to reach their potential, even if the talent is recognized. As a wise man said about go players -- who have until 30 to pass the pro test -- in the manga "Hikaru no go": I think that you lose the bulk of a dancers' career if the dancer isn't nurtured, supported, and given the opportunities to progress at his/her pace, and that if the dancer is pushed aside constantly by the new young dancers. Since I've been attending ABT in the 70's, it seems to me that many of the "home grown" dancers in the company are used to fill in the blanks. Which is fine, if both parties understand the deal. The trade-off of dancing a lot of performance for a world-famous company that tours and pays enough to live in NYC vs. getting the roles and rank in smaller American cities could be worth it.

I had to look this up to see who was getting married. The big news in Canada was the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's appearance in Ottawa on Canada Day for a citizenship swearing-in ceremony. Love the dress and the construction of Isabell Kristensen's. What was Bernadette Chirac thinking? I don't think Princess Charlene is required to put an asterisk next to "Princess", though I suppose they get bumped to the back of the parade after all the royal children, like the wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

I saw him a few seasons ago in "The Nutcracker", and he was ready to be a Principal then, in my opinion.

We just lost eight dancers from PNB. There's been no word yet on where Josh Spell is going, but there isn't a ballet company in North America that wouldn't be richer for hiring him.

Please keep thinking that there's no one west of NYC (We love our men out here!)

That's exactly what dancers said about Balanchine! And what dancers Cunningham formed out of those classes and those steps

It occurred to me that if they were dancing Bournonville, there would be so many more opportunities for the men to learn the basics of partnering -- examples where to stand in relation to the woman, supported pirouettes, matching lines, supported arabesques, promenade -- before they have the adult muscles to do all of the heavy lifting. In one of the baseball books I gave away, the author described how a man in general doesn't have full shoulder strength until his mid-20's. I think it would be enormously frustrating as a young male dancer to learn partnering while growing, with the center of gravity and proportions are shifting, and before the upper body strength is there to do all of the maneuvering.

Oh, my, Ulbricht just hangs in the air.

The issue isn't so much casting corps members in the leads in the full-lengths, but that the full-lengths don't have the enough parts, in general, to develop the corps members into the leads, especially Romantic and Classical leads. The male virtuoso dancers have it easier with jesters, Golden Idol, peasant pas, "Swan Lake" pas de trois. That's why I mentioned that the full-lengths are ABT's bread-and-butter. I don't think people would necessarily boycott if one of the names was home-grown and less than a star, but I do think McKenzie has to hire from the outside to sell tickets.

It still shows how effortlessly she could toss it off.

Wiles received a public bouquet from Kevin McKenzie after a performance of "Swan Lake" last week, which is normally ballet-speak for leaving the company, especially without a sing-along to "Happy Birthday". However, as I learned the hard way, twice noting that PNB dancers were retiring when they were leaving, we really don't know what she's planning to do next, until there's (official) news.

Farrell's hip surgery was public knowledge, with descriptions of the ways it limited her physically and in the roles she could do. There was at least one article that described how, because she had a medal shaft down her femur, to which the replacement hip was attached, if she landed on that leg badly, her femur could shatter. Peter Martins commented at the time that he did not want to be responsible for that happening. In fact, Farrell, like every other dancer, is/was graded on a curve. She wasn't capable of or cast in 10% of what she could do physically in the 60's or 70's, and to an extent before the surgery, where she could be hit or miss. Her movement was more physically conservative. Any dancer who is aging, injured, or returning from injury is compared not only to current dancers, but also the dancer's own past performances. A lot of people found wonder and value in Farrell's late, limited performances, especially those who had followed her career for a long time. A visitor from Europe or a newcomer to ballet might not have seen what the big deal was. The same is true of most great dancers and singers at the end of their careers; few retire at their absolute peak. I think it depends on the dancer and the viewer. For example, I never think about Kirkland's life unless she looks particularly skeletal; she either dances strongly or she doesn't, but I know others who think of this whenever they see her dance. As a ballet-goer, I tend to view performances differently if I know a dancer is performing with an injury, or if the company is plagued by injuries. I remember one spring season in the 1980's where there were so many injuries at NYCB that Heather Watts was dancing two-three times a night. If she looked tired at the end of six weeks of doing this, I happily cut her some slack. (Others did not and stayed away.) I also understand that after a long season, there isn't always the option of a replacement, or that a replacement would cause a cavalcade of changes, and dancers do the best they can. (Of course, a critical storm of factors can cause this anytime in the season.) I'm more unforgiving when AD's miscast dancers in advance who I think have never shown near the technical facility needed for a role without working them up to that level in interim steps or who are giving continually declining performances without the artistry necessary to make it an acceptable trade-off. For me this was the difference between Kyra Nichols and Darci Kistler towards the end of their respective careers; I do understand that this is subjective. A critic, though, has a different role, and context is part of that role, which includes when a dancer has an injury or surgery that greatly changes his or her performance ability. When writing a review, it helps to know if a dancer is injured or couldn't rehearse a few days before a major role because of one, because while it doesn't make the performance any better or worse than it was, it's possible to say that under better circumstances, the dancer is capable of much more, especially when there is one review of one cast, and it's a major role debut. Opera is so much better about this: I may groan any time there's a pre-curtain announcement asking indulgence for an ailing singer, and my feeling is that if it's bad enough to make an announcement, the cover should sing, but, on the other hand, as a friend of mine wrote to me after the recent San Francisco Opera Ring, which was all kinds of brilliant, "Wow, I've never heard an 'indisposed' Siegfried, or actually any other, sing a long high C in that exposed moment in Act III [of 'Die Gotterdammerung']." So the review might say, "Despite problems here and here, he also sang a long, clear high C, and was strong through most of Act III, and his next two cycles might show him in normal form." (According to reports of cycles 2 and 3, he was terrific in them.) Also, most opera in North America is cast by opera, even if there is a small pool of comprimarios used regularly. Speight Jenkins at Seattle Opera once said, if the audience really doesn't like a singer, he'll give that singer another chance, but if the audience doesn't like that singer again, he won't re-engage the singer, regardless of how he feels personally. This is less of an option in ballet companies.

I agree, there are a lot of environmentally bad practices on this planet. I even agree that there are worse environment impacts than second-hand smoke. (Shocking, I know.) I don't think, though, that reducing or removing environmental impacts is an all-or-nothing proposition.

Assuming that it's really a deficiency, and not a matter of having been thrown into roles and/or partnerships at the last minute -- a small dancer doesn't guarantee a light-to-lift dancer with a strong core or proper balance between the two -- it should be company's job to be sure that he gets any additional training, physical and/or technical and training/rehearsal time, so that he can partner skillfully. Did he do some lifts well? I saw a wonderful young dancer in the Goh Ballet "Nutcracker" last December. He did an amazing amount of tricky partnering with three different girls and women, most of it exemplary, but I'll bet most people remember a pretty awful splat in the Snow Queen/Snow King scene. (The poor woman was stunned for a few moments.)

This is an important point: dancers need to be nurtured and given appropriate opportunities. Look at the growth opportunities that Balanchine crafted at all levels, from little breakout solos to extended soloist roles, providing so many roles to grow his dancers. He was sure to build these in especially in his story ballets. They're ready made; AD's need to know how to use them. Peter Boal once said that the problem he has with most full-lengths is that they give major roles to just a few dancers, and the full-length rep ABT's bread and butter. Even the new PNB "Giselle", which greatly extends roles like Bathilde and Wilfrid, and beefs up many others, has four Principal roles -- Giselle, Albrecht, Hilarion (major in this production), and Myrtha -- with the two demi-soloist Wilis and four character roles. That leaves "Peasant Pas de Deux", which in many companies is used to cast another set of senior soloists or principals, because there are no national dances or other solos in the ballet, and you can't leave dancers on the bench. To his great credit, Boal cast it with five couples (performed with 4.5) and all but one cast was made up of young corps dancers.

Once raised, it becomes a legitimate part of the discussion. I asked for sources, because there's a lot of literature out there from both sides of the debate, and I was curious what the basis of your statement was, since there are arguments against global warming and evolution as well.

The choices describe the shifts between when the company created great vehicles for stars -- particularly in the American rep that is, for the most part, sadly neglected -- and the Baryshnikov years, where he emphasized discipline and development from within, and back to a shaky middle-ground under McKenzie, where the boys in the ranks are fine until the ink is signed on a new guest contract. Those contracts sell tickets: I bought one to see Alina Cojocaru and otherwise wouldn't have bothered to try to see the ABT "Sleeping Beauty", and I didn't really care who her partner was. Now that Kobborg is listed, I care, not because he's just a bigger name than a Stearns, like Bolle, but because they have such a great reputation as a partnership. Stars also create factions and loyalty among fans, for better or worse; when I was growing up, it was Makarova vs. Fracci, for example. It will be interesting to see if ABT can grow their school successfully, at least as a finishing school -- training dancers in their last year or two, rather than training them for 4-6 years like at SAB. The "finishing" schools need to provide opportunities for their graduates, or the program loses prestige and students. If they're serious about this route, then the current non-star company members are stuck between needing to make room for the former students and the stars that sell tickets, and it will be a decade before the stars could be replaced by home-grown stars. ABT is not the best place to grow; it's a great place to come in as a headliner. NYCB is the engine that promotes from within by design, or at least since Balanchine was able to grow his own dancers from scratch. Until then, he assembled his crew from the Ballet Russe and ABT, and until the end, the men trained in Denmark. Francia Russell and Kent Stowell did the same at Pacific Northwest Ballet, for the most part: they brought in a number of dancers for the company from the outside, often from San Francisco Ballet, with many making it to the soloist and principal ranks, including Louise Nadeau, Olivier Wevers, Kaori Nakamura, Chalnessa Eames, Paul Gibson, Jeffrey Stanton, Kimberly Davey, Le Yin, Anne Derieux, Amy Rose, Batkhurel Bold, Stanko Milov, and Phil Otto, as well as some wonderfully trained dancers from Russia, who came to the US after the breakdown of the Soviet Union. Looking at the roster at Pacific Northwest Ballet, now, for example, five of the Principals -- Chapman, Imler, Lallone, Porretta, and Postlewaite -- were finished at PNB school and rose through the ranks from apprentice -- and half the soloists did the same or were in PNB summer programs. Boal brought in a handful of his own dancers from NYCB (retired Miranda Weese, Seth Orza, Sarah Ricard Orza, Carla Korbes), but for the most part, he has been promoting up the ranks. Russell and Stowell would likely have done so sooner, but the two years in the hockey arena while the Opera House was closed for seismic repairs devastated the budget, and they didn't have it for salary and benefits. However, eight dancers left the roster a few weeks ago, including four Principals and one Soloist, and Boal said he'd replace all eight with apprentices (two Professional Division graduates who performed in big productions with the company this year) and corps members. We all expect a lot of promotions from within.

Since the context of dirac's comment was people in the workplace, not those casually exposed to second-hand smoke: From the last link, since the others debunk claims of increased mortality due to second-hand smoke, rather than chronic or secondary effects like asthma (cited by the EPA) and as far as I can see, don't distinguish between the amount of smoke a worker is subject to, i.e. a bar vs. an office: Starting with the title: Then Note the use of "brief". The conclusion: