dirac
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An interview with Jean-Christophe Maillot by Victoria Looseleaf in San Francisco Classical Voice.
Quote“For me,” said Maillot in a recent phone conversation, “the question that arises with traditional big ballets [is that] everybody knows the story; everybody’s relating to it. If we do a new one, what’s the point of view we can have that makes it interesting? Every [production of] Coppélia that I’ve seen, this lady [Coppélia] sitting on the balcony, was the most uninteresting character of the ballet.
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A review of the Joffrey Ballet by Leigh Witchel for dancelog.nyc.
QuoteGoncalves and Mendoza did very good work. But at the Sunday matinee Dylan Gutierrez and Victoria Jaiani were as close to heaven-sent casting as it was going to get. It helped that they each are about five years older than their counterparts. In her late thirties, Jaiani is the perfect age for the duet. Like Lorena Feijoo, who originated the part as well as Yuan Yuan Tan in San Francisco, experience helps when you’re asked to express emotional pain.
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The Bolshoi Ballet celebrates the memory of Ekaterina Maximova.
QuoteVasiliev, a renowned former principal dancer of the Bolshoi and the company’s director from 1995 to 2000, has also been productive as a choreographer. Several samples of his ballets were shown at the gala. Much to the audience’s appreciation, for the first time, Vasiliev included film footage and archive photos of Maximova’s performances and private life, which testified to her dazzling talent and vibrant personality. The clips he chose depicted her in the very same roles that were subsequently performed live at the gala, allowing comparisons between her and today’s ballerinas. They left no doubt that Maximova’s performances should be considered a standard. Although forty years or so have passed, her style and technique still looked fresh and modern. Most striking, though, was her captivating charisma. How impressive must she have been alive and in person!
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A review of New York City Ballet by Jennifer Homans in The New Yorker.
QuoteNo more. Her ballet, “Concerto for Two Pianos,” shows Peck to be a choreographer of considerable skill and range. Set to the double-piano concerto by Francis Poulenc, the dance she has devised is a perfect match: a mercurial and moody rush through styles and ideas for nineteen dancers which leaves us somehow lighter—and full of the great good energy of Poulenc and the dancers. In an era inclined to narrative and political art, Tiler Peck is not afraid to give us the pure pleasure of music and dance.
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A list of "Best Ballet Movies" from Cosmopolitan.
QuoteThere are also some great ballet television shows out there: Bunheads, Flesh and Bone, and Tiny Pretty Things to name a few. (Speaking of Bunheads, Amy Sherman-Palladino is working on a new ballet series called Étoile starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Luke Kirby and I will be sat.) But for now, let's focus on the movies. There are a lot of great ones!
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San Francisco Ballet's encore run of "Swan Lake" will feature guest stars.
QuoteNatalia Osipova, Daniel Camargo and Jacopo Tissi are scheduled to appear with the San Francisco Ballet during its encore performances of “Swan Lake,” the company announced Monday, March 4. The high-profile guest appearances, set for April 30 through May 5, are part of a new programming strategy under Artistic Director Tamara Rojo, who assumed the top leadership post at the Ballet in 2022.
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I feel much as the two of you do but I'm sorry not to see this. Please tell us what you think after you see it, abatt.
I really liked the little pas de deux he made for Delgado and himself to The National's "Dark Side of the Gym."
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San Diego Ballet presents "The Many Loves of Don Juan."
QuoteTwo hours of running time with San Diego Ballet filled up the weekend with spectacular beauty, making the audience feel like they were in the middle of medieval Spain. Don Juan, second to none in Casanova’s league, wanders around the world to seduce every woman who catches his eye, starting his voyage from a Spanish lord’s house.
The performance is more in tune with Lord Byron’s epic poem rather than the traditional Mozart opera, “Don Giovanni.” Compared to Mozart’s conjoining of characters from opera seria (noble and serious style) and opera buffa (comic style), “Many Loves of Don Juan” is more focused on comedic incidents and accidents.
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Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre's old house for students is for sale.
QuoteThere is no need for the space since students are now leasing their own apartments. The ballet is recommending identified student housing in September 2024 in the Cultural District, close to the Benedum Center and Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus lines.
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An autobiographical article by Peter Martins, "A Life in Ballet," in the March issue of The New Criterion.
QuoteBy my early teens I had become rowdy, quarrelsome, sometimes snotty, and completely undisciplined. Stanley Williams, who was a principal dancer with the company, became my teacher when I was twelve. He had been born in England, but his mother was Danish, and his family moved to Denmark when he was a child. When a dancer says, “So and so is my teacher,” he means this is the one who determined my style, who gave me the clue to the art and my way of performing. This is the teacher who set my goals, who set my standards of movement. It was Stanley who first made me feel the challenge, the potential achievement, and the importance of being a dancer.
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A review of the Birmingham Royal Ballet by Sarah Crompton in The Observer.
QuoteHow times change. The company’s current artistic director, Carlos Acosta, has mounted a 40th-anniversary revival just as the bankrupt local authority has withdrawn support from all the arts organisations it once part-funded. Birmingham Royal Ballet will survive, but the cut is a sign of how far artistic ambition in national and local government has receded from the high-water mark that this handsome, expansive production represents.
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An interview with Lacey Hammond Harrington, the National Ballet of Canada's footwear co-ordinator and dye workroom manager.
QuoteHarrington not only co-ordinates and organizes every pair of shoes in each NBC production, but fits each dancer, and then paints, dyes and embellishes each shoe that hits the stage. After all, flamboyant characters such as the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter demand such attention to detail. While most might be familiar with the rabbit ears, the top hat and the endless tea cups, a tremendous amount of work goes into the shoes they twirl in on.
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A review of the Ballet of the Buryat Academic Ballet and Opera Theatre by Ilona Landgraf for "Landgraf on Dance."
QuoteLast year, the Republic celebrated the centenary of the foundation of the Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic—currently known as Buryatia (which is still an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation). On this occasion, the Buryat National Ballet and Opera Theatre commissioned the Moscow-based contemporary choreographer, Nikita Dmitrievsky, to create a new ballet. His Land of Faith – Bargujin Tukum premiered last May and will return to the schedule later this year. During a tour to Moscow last December, it was shown at the Stanislavsky Theatre. I was able to watch a video of the premiere.
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Thanks. I need to see this again....
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Several dancers of the Lviv Opera Ballet fail to return to Ukraine.
QuoteThey were next scheduled to appear on stage in their home city of Lviv on March 1, but did not return.
The runaway artists have been suspended from further performances at the Lviv Opera and their names have been removed from its website. The theatre says the incident is being investigated.
QuoteSince the declaration of general mobilization by Kiev in February 2022, following the escalation of conflict with Russia, there has been a notable increase in individuals, particularly men of conscription age, attempting to flee the country. This incident with the Lviv Opera Ballet members is not isolated but part of a larger trend that has seen even public figures like TV host Aleksey Pechiy seeking refuge in the European Union. These actions highlight the desperate measures some are willing to take to avoid conscription, amidst reports of the Ukrainian government considering a new mobilization law to bolster military ranks.
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Ballet Edmonton appoints a new artistic director.
QuoteShe [Kirsten Wicklund] replaces Wen Wei Wang, another Vancouver dance talent who has transformed the company as its artistic director for the past six years.
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A review of New York City Ballet by Leigh Witchel for dancelog.nyc.
QuoteThe company gave its all to Times in a way they hadn’t in anything up to that point in the season, and its performances were emotional, moving events. But even if the ballet is now seven years old, it doesn’t yet feel like someone else’s clothing.
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Louisville Ballet closes its season with "Romeo and Juliet." TV news clip.
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A study of "Odesa" and "Solitude" by Gay Morris for danceviewtimes.
QuoteDespite Odesa’s familiar structure, the ballet is anything but uninspired. It is striking how, in this instance, Ratmansky employs dance forms that could be called cliches, and yet renders them vivid and fresh. What makes him different from so many choreographers, and which Odesa demonstrates, is that he comes to a non-narrative work with an overarching vision, he doesn’t simply arrange steps. One senses he has a plan that is greater than a ballet’s disparate parts and that holds everything together. The result is that his works have an unusually high level of logic and clarity. At the same time, the dancers emerge as living human beings, not merely objects to be moved about the stage.
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Q&A with Robert Carter of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo.
QuoteYou mentioned Tokyo as a city that was one of your favorites. You have a big fan base there. What is it about Japanese culture, you think, that they love the Trockaderos?
Oh, my goodness, so many things. We are different, for sure. But the Japanese people have such a profound appreciation for artists and when they find something unique that they like, they truly support it 100%. I mean, we have a fan club. Especially after being in the company for so many years, I have a lot of fans. It's just so funny. They buy a block of tickets, so when the curtain opens at a different theater, and it's almost as if they have assigned seating. You know where they're all sitting.
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A review of San Francisco Ballet by Charles Lewis III for 48hills.
QuoteYet, this story flies or falls on the strength of its two romantic leads. Robison is a fine Siegfried, but the opening night show belonged to Nikisha Fogo as Odette and (another swan) Odile. She stepped into a roles memorably performed by such grand talents as the recently-departed Yuan Yuan Tan. By seeming to perform every toe-step with the greatest of ease, she almost single-handedly proves why this show has been performed so frequently in recent years: so that a new generation of dancers could inherit the masterpiece they themselves have grown up watching.
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A TV interview with Natalia Ashikhmina about her retirement from the Louisville Ballet.
QuoteNatalia Ashikhmina will perform for the final time in the Louisville Ballet's "Romeo and Juliet."
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A review of Houston Ballet by Carla Escoda for Bachtrack.
QuoteProkofiev’s darkly lush and glittering Cinderella was reportedly a hit when the ballet premiered at the Bolshoi in 1945. Conceived in war, this escapist fantasy provided a diversion from the bleak realities of postwar Russia. Since then, Prokofiev’s score has underpinned many reinventions among which Stanton Welch’s – originally set on Australian Ballet in 1997, now a staple of Houston Ballet’s rep – stands out for its touching rewrite of the central love story and its devastating send-up of the aristocracy.
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The Joffrey Ballet performs in Berkeley this month.
QuoteThe Berkeley Symphony joins this engagement for live music.
Tuesday, March 5
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A review of the Finnish National Ballet in "Dracula" by Maggie Foyer for Bachtrack.