Mrs. Stahlbaum

I enjoyed this movie also. The actress who played the queen, Alicia Vikander, also plays Kitty in the 2012 Anna Karenina.

I've seen the Sophie Marceau version. I can't comment on casting, acting, etc., but I loved it as a costume drama. Beautiful scenery and soundtrack. A little ballet at the theater scene, and some nice scenes of singing peasants.

It's interesting sometimes, the things that we find beautiful. I saw Firebird twice in California. The first time, I thought it was okay, but I spent most of my time trying to understand the sets, the costumes and the choreography. The second time I saw it (with Misty Copeland), I absolutely fell in love with it, and it surprised me. I am a costume designer who loves traditional story ballets. I have many books on Russian clothing, Russian royalty, Faberge eggs, fairy tales and the beautiful book of Firebird illustrated by Boris Zvorykin. So I went to Firebird hoping to see some of that old-world elegance. Once I got over the fact that it was not going to be the way I expected it to be, I was able to see how perfect it was. To me, the choreography WAS the music come to life. The sets and costumes became more of a fantasy than the traditional fairy tale look that I am attracted to. I don't know why this happens sometimes. When I go to an art museum, there's so much art to see, that I tend to go see my favorite styles, breezing through the areas with the type of art that I don't particularly care for. But then, sometimes, something catches my eye that speaks to me, even though it's beauty was not channeled through "my style" of art. I have limited funds to see all the ballets that I would like to, so I will still tend to make my choices based on what I think I will like to see, but it was nice for me to get a reminder that I might be missing out on a lot of beauty by limiting myself that way.

What beautiful photographs. How could anyone choose which one to buy? I wish a book of them were available for purchase.

I think the problem of finding ballet is a real one. I remember years ago (before the internet made everything easy), some relatives were visiting from out of town and wanted to see a baseball game when they were here. I had never been to one. I had no idea when baseball season was, or where one actually went to find tickets. Back then, one searched for things in the phone book. Should I look up baseball, the team name, the stadium name or maybe call Ticketron? Should I drive all the way to the baseball stadium and see if the box office was open? I was really clueless. I think I ended up asking a co-worker. I think it would be the same with ballet, although now one can Google anything. But still, imagine you have never seen a ballet and you think, maybe on Sunday I'll get some culture and go see a ballet. I think I'll see Swan Lake because it's a famous ballet and the only one I've ever heard of. It never occurred to you that ballet performances aren't available whenever you happen to feel like going to see one, so it's confusing that you can't find a performance and you give up. Or you Google Swan Lake and there are no performances of it and you just don't happen to know the name of any other ballets to look for. You don't know the name of ballet companies, and you have no idea where they perform. All you know is that you want to see a ballet. You look in the arts section of the newspaper, but there just don't happen to be any ballet performances advertised, so you give up. I imagine another problem is that someone decides to try a ballet performance and so they buy tickets to something they see advertised. It's a Dolly Dinkle student production, but they have no way of knowing that until they get there, and then they are disappointed at what they see and never go again. Or they are anticipating a classical ballet and once they get there are shocked to find it's a contemporary piece and they are not pleasantly surprised because they were all set to see tutus and they feel gypped. I don't know what the answer is.

Students from the JKO school received scholarships from the foundation that the show is involved with (Dizzy Feet Foundation) so it is also possible that it may be students who are dancing instead of company dancers. I'm looking forward to seeing it either way.

Thank you for the review. I thought that OCPAC had a strict rule about seating latecomers, but I think about 100 people were seated in front of me in the orchestra section during the first number. Either hold the curtain or make them wait. It was very distracting and rude to both the performers and the audience. I enjoyed the performances. Some more than others. I was surprised to find I had goose bumps while watching Flames of Paris. There was no orchestra. We've all been hearing that many companies are foregoing live music in order to save money which is understandable in this time of economic hardship, but watching (listening to) the performances with recorded music made me hope that this trend will end when the economy improves. An orchestra is sooo nice....

I just tried and got the same message.

Sounds like I would enjoy that as much as I enjoyed the tv movie, Anne of Green Gables, The Continuing Story, that takes place on the battlefields of Europe. Hmmm, indeed.

Although this is not what you are looking for, you might find it of interest: Ballets Russes Costumes

Per the OC Register in Figurante's link, above: "Herman Cornejo, as the loyal lieutenant Cassio, went too far and hurt his ankle. Cornejo was there for the opening scene in act two, and then, after exiting as he was supposed to, was not seen again. A new Cassio came on as Cornejo's replacement."

No, Sascha Radetsky danced Bluebird. Hopefully, he is playing it safe so he can dance on Sunday .

I use Safari on a Mac. I know very little about computers, so I hope my explanation was clear as I had to guess at some of the terminology. I can see BT Amazon Mini-Store now.

Look on the light blue bar at the top of your screen where it says Rules and Policies, Calendar, Blogs, etc. On my screen, I could just see the tail end of BT Amazon Mini-Store peeking out from under the Search Amazon box. By making the size of my window larger or smaller, the words moved out from under the box. If this is a problem for a lot of people, maybe Mini-Store could be moved over next to Rules and Policies.

Well, let's not go overboard with historical accuracy. "Historically", I have yet to see a real swan in tights (or a tutu, for that matter), but I like my dancing swans in tights .