Andre Yew

So we saw the first of two programs last night here in Santa Barbara at the Granada. I listed the program above, but it's Dances at a Gathering, After The Rain, and A Fool For You.

This is the first time I'd seen Dances completely --- I'd only seen very short excerpts here and there --- and it really, really made me wish we had better classical choreographers today. It looks like a modern composition of classical steps, and yet manages to weave so much humanity into it, too. The musicality of the piece was also really interesting. I loved the ending and its simplicity that managed to still speak volumes.

The cast was:

Lauren Lovette, apricot

Sara Mearns, mauve

Tiler Peck, pink

Abi Stafford, blue

Wendy Whelan, green

Antonio Carmena, brick

Chase Finlay, green

Gonzalo Garcia, brown

Jonathan Stafford, purple

Christian Tworzyanski, blue

Tiler was beautiful, and her ending pas was just stunning. I can't get enough of her dancing! I'd been looking forward to Sara after hearing all these great things about her, and I can see why people like her --- she has a wild, edgy quality to her dancing --- but this didn't seem like her ballet. I'd love to see her in any of the leotard ballets, especially 4Ts. Her shoes were also really, really noisy. Lauren Lovette is super young, and was really nice as the yellow girl --- she'll be one to watch for sure.

Next came After the Rain with Wendy Whelan and Ask la Cour. I don't think much needs to be said beyond the fact that she is incandescent.

Finally, A Fool For You ... to borrow a phrase from Clement Crisp, it was quite simply total rubbish. What an embarrassing excuse for a dance piece. It was like a warmed-over Dolly Dinkle recital piece. Ugh.

Tonight we get Polyphonia (with Wendy!!), Sonatine, Zakouski, and Hallelujah Junction.

Speaking to cinnamonswirl's point ...

One thing I realized recently is how differently dancers regard a work or choreographer as compared to an audience member. A friend had asked me to check out a certain choreographer because she was thinking of acquiring a new piece. I did, and totally hated the choreographer's work. I told her this pretty clearly in a long email detailing exactly why I thought this choreographer wasn't any good, so she knew exactly how I'd come to my conclusion. As it turns out, they decided to engage the choreographer anyway, and a few weeks later performed that same work I didn't like.

However, talking to the dancers during the rehearsal process and afterwards, I realized that I had just valued the choreographer based on my audience member's reaction to seeing the piece, but didn't realize what working with the choreographer did for the dancers. For them, they loved working with the choreographer because of the new aspects of performance and stagecraft as well as different ways of moving they learned from the choreographer. They found it valuable because they now had new tools in their toolbox with which they could use on other pieces in the future. For them, the valuable part was not the one piece they worked on, but what they learned from the working process.

So my point is that while we, the audience, react mainly to the performance we see on stage, for the dancers and AD, there's a whole lot of other stuff going on that may not be immediately obvious to us. Clearly, one can't run a company spending money and wasting time on bad pieces all the time, but the value of a choreographer extends well beyond the one night we see a company perform. A pretty close analogy is how an orchestra will bring in different conductors because different conductors can teach an orchestra different things, and while a performance put on by the conductor on one day may not appeal to everyone, one hopes that the orchestra carries with it the lessons it learned from the conductor so it will be better in the future.

FWIW, the only bonus feature on the disk is Gergiev talking about the ballet. I haven't watched that yet. It would be nice if they made the extras more interesting. Some of the BBC broadcasts of the Royal have really interesting intermission features, which are usually not included when they release the DVD/BD of the same performance.

BTW, you can also spot Kondaurova in the Diamonds corps.

Here are my impressions I wrote for an AV forum, hence the relative lack of ballet technicalities and more audio/video technical talk:

I got the new Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet BD of Jewels yesterday from Amazon US. The picture quality is fine for what it is --- mostly a taped live performance, with the usual uneven exposure problems like blown-out highlights in some sections when the lights were too bright. But it's pretty sharp and relatively noise-free, and interestingly, also shot in 24P! So the motion looks like sped-up stop-frame animation (if you've seen the Balanchine Nutcracker in that film with Macaulay Culkin, you'll know what I mean), but there is very little, if any, motion blur.

There is a double-red line glitch around 13:13 right in the middle of Emeralds, and the menu system is kind of dumb (you can't easily return out of submenus without pressing the menu button). All of the technically very sound Opus Arte releases have spoiled me!

Sound is also quite good, and uses the surrounds in a pleasing way. It's 5.1 DTS-HD MA, 48kHz. If you have a sub, you will hear every landing on the stage!

Also unusual is the variety of camera angles beyond the usual live broadcast angles. They have a flying camera on some of the solos, which were probably shot not with a live audience, as well as some neat overhead shots so you can see Balanchine's geometric patterns in the corps work. I really liked it, but a friend who is also a rabid balletomane really hated it. YMMV, but the film direction is done well --- with whole body shots when appropriate and closeups only during the bows.

Now, the artistic quality is another story altogether. Except for the last piece, Diamonds, I think this is one of the most wrongheaded performances of Jewels I've ever seen. I've seen this company live with almost this exact cast many years ago, and liked it, so either my tastes have changed, or something else was going on.

Emeralds had no subtlety or perfume: it was just kind of put out there. Rubies tried to sell itself way, way too hard, and instead of either being innocent (the way the Americans do it) or sophisticated (the Parisians), it was just crass. Diamonds was ultra-Russian, and worked well. It was also the only pas de deux where the girl looked at her partner. Whoa, those two people are supposed to relate to each other? Who would have thunk?

Anyway, it's not worth it unless you are a rabid Mariinsky fan (and I admit to being one), or you want to see what ballet in 1080p/24 looks like (pretty good) and you like the interesting camera angles. If you can stand the motion blur artifacts in the Opus Arte version with the Paris Opera Ballet, you will have a significantly better artistic experience on that one.

I saw the Sunday show, and I think this is the best thing ABT's done in a long time, at least that they've brought out here. It was fun, zany, weird at times, and full of characterful dancing. No abstract dancing trying to evoke one of the Platonic solids here (hello, Mr. Wheeldon): the dancing was very much in character for everyone, and technically very interesting. I think Ratmansky's going to do a lot of good for the company.

The biggest surprise for me was Isabella Boylston as the ballerina, whom I've never seen dance before, and made me literally gasp when she jumped out from the wings at the end of the big Act 1 men's dance. She had the biggest jump this side of Osipova, and hit her pique arabesque balance en pointe, and held it. She was dancing pretty great in general that afternoon, and I'd go see her dance again. I loved all the images formed by the dancers, and laughed at them in spite of myself. The cow, the dog (on a bicycle!), the tractor were all really great, and done in a way that's not stupid. Actually, a lot of it reminded me of La Fille mal Garde. Anyway, Daniil Simkin as the danseur was pretty great as well, and I loved all the little details, but especially the elastics hanging out from his pointe shoes. He had great comic timing, making the audience laugh with the simplest movements (eg. jumping from the floor to the bench the first time he meets the husband).

I thought the peripheral characters were far more interesting than the main characters danced by Xiomara Reyes, and Alexandre Hammoudi, who started out OK, but seemed to lose energy as the show went on. Their Act 2 pas had no energy or feeling to it --- you wondered why these two were even married in the first place.

They visited California a few years ago, approximately when Sofiane Sylve joined the company. It was pretty great as they did a run at OCPAC, and another at Chandler in LA. The full company is very expensive to tour, whereas the smaller company, while still expensive, is a bit more financially manageable. The smaller company is said to have 22 dancers.

They will be in Santa Barbara on October 18, 19 with two different programs:

A: Robbins: Dances at a Gathering

Wheeldon: After the Rain

Martins: A Fool for You

B: Wheeldon: Polyphonia

Balanchine: Sonatine

Martins: Zakouski

Martins: Hallelujah Junction

Yes, that was me groaning over the 3:1 ratio of Martins:Balanchine or Robbins. At least we get the good Wheeldon pieces.

The Bournonville grand jete is one of my favorite steps to fuss over, and it's really unfortunate that it's not done in the way I like to see it done with most companies. For me, the heart of the step is the generosity of the arms: I like when the arms open as if to offer flowers or a gift to the audience, instead of snapping open and hitting pretty quickly its open position in second. The motion of the arms don't end when the dancer is at the apex of his or her jump, which is how most dancers do it. The gesture of continuous offering ends sometime around when the dancer lands, and is done in harmony with the plie of the landing.

If that's the middle and end of the step, the beginning is what sets up its ultimate effect. Fortunately, most ballet training does this correctly, but some (the Royal Ballet) emphasize it a bit more. As the dancer takes his preparatory steps before the big jump, the arms are in first in front, and his head looks away from the audience somewhere over his upstage elbow. As he jumps, the head turns towards the audience, but in an upwardish arc, instead of just turning from right to left, for example. The effect is to go from a line that includes the long line of the downstage side of the neck, to forming a line with the upstage side of the neck which then curves to continue the line with the back leg in attitude, and the head slightly tilted slightly towards the audience. There is a reaching quality to the end of the jump, too.

The overall effect is soft, sweet, and generous, unlike the really hard lines that many dancers make with this step.

This is a pretty poor description of it, but if you see Johan Kobborg do it, that's how I like it. There's a video on Youtube of Kobborg and Alina Cojocaru performing the Flower Festival of Genzano pas in a Mariinsky festial in 2003. Look at his opening jumps.

Well, that was a big letdown. After a whole year of anticipation of finally seeing this great company in person, I was severely underwhelmed. Hopefully, they'll perform up to their reputation in later cities.

We saw their Napoli today (Sunday matinee to a 2/3-filled house), and it's a schizophrenic ballet done with not the highest levels of taste. Act 1 takes place in a 50s La Dolce Vita-esque Italian town, which is not a bad concept unless you spice things up with Jersey Shore-style Italian stereotyping. I suppose embarrassing ethnic stereotyping is kind of normal in classical ballet. Beyond the emphatic punctuation in the mime (perhaps as a way of giving it an Italian accent), 'What?!" seemed to comprise most of their mime vocabulary --- imagine that said in the worst possible Italian accent, and you get the idea of act 1. The mime beyond that was also unclear and ugly, which is not a good thing when mime drives most of the action in the 1st act. There was little dancing in act 1, though it did look pretty good.

Act 2 is creepy weird, with some beautiful images in spots, especially when the curtain first goes up. The lighting people and background design people deserve applause here. But the act seems entirely superfluous, and the dancing style for the most part didn't fit with what we think of as the Bournonville style. The corps dance, which is like half the act, could have been pulled from any of the other classic ballets. Apparently, this act is lost, and every production of this ballet makes this act up. Act 2 does check off the "Underwater grotto" item from the standard ballet checklist.

Act 3 is the set of diverts we normally see, and while the style was there, the dancing wasn't. People were still falling off their legs, corps lines weren't straight or spaced evenly, and worst of all, the dancing seemed joyless. There was one or two bright spots (Teresina and the male solo before that), but this act, which should have been a crowning jewel for the company, was a big letdown. I've seen regional companies perform this better both technically and expressively. They used the traditional costumes for the dancers, but in the crowd were mixed people from act 1 in their modern clothing, which made for a dissonant-looking stage. I thought this was pretty much a trainwreck of a production. Good luck to the rest of you in their later cities!

I'm curious how full the Tuesday audience was. On Wednesday, it seemed like less than half the house was filled. In retrospect, perhaps that wasn't such a bad thing.

Sorry, I didn't see this until now. I saw the April 10 show. Petrouchka was great, with lots of pathos tinged by humor, great sets, and dancing. The playing by the orchestra as fantastic.

Unfortunately, the rest of the program was a letdown. Zanella's insipid ballet was affected, had no interesting choreography --- he used ballet vocabulary, but in only the most basic of ways. Contrast this to Artifact Suite or Possokhov's Classical Symphony, never mind any Balanchine or Petipa --- and had the typical dark and moody lighting with enigmatic stage sets. Neither of which really served the choreography at all. I hope they didn't pay too much for this piece. The only nice thing was the lead girl's costume: it looked like a sheer, black body suite with shiny embroidery that resembled some kind of sci-fi armor a superhero from the future might wear.

Wheeldon's Number Nine was a monotonous rush from beginning to end, except with none of his usual witty constructions (even when he doesn't have anything more to say), and no time to rest the eye. The costumes in bright colors looked great.

More thoughts on the Wednesday mixed rep. It was interesting seeing Bournonville Variations, put together from class exercises with class music, but the all-male cast weren't on their legs: lots of hopping around, even in things like standing in B+! The company just looked sloppy throughout the night, with people falling over and down, and bumping each other.

Elo's "Lost on Slow" was a bit insubstantial, and was danced without any sharpness or attack. Maybe that's what he intended, but they looked like ballet dancers doing modern, and not in a good way. The lighting and stage effects were interesting though, but they promised much more than the choreography and dancing delivered.

Johan Kobborg's pair of pieces looked like the bastard child of SYTYCD and Flower Festival of Genzano, except SYTYCD's faux emo-angst was replaced by unicorns and rainbows. It was fluffy and cute, but the dancing was witless and not musically interesting. You'd see similar stuff in a school recital.

Uotinen's Earth should be placed in a time machine, and sent back to the 80s where it would only be slightly less hackneyed. A dance with old-fashioned-looking modern vocab set to Metallica played by a cello trio and drum kit, this thing was an embarrassment. The choreography was hackneyed, repetitive, and simplistic --- how many times can you make the all-male cast dance in unison? Probably as many times as I facepalmed myself and hoped that this time, the curtain would finally come down. The dancers also were not moving with an attack and phrasing that was idiomatic to the choreography. They kept their soft quality that served them well in the Bournonville extracts, but it was dissonant with this piece.

I don't understand the programming decision behind this program: it showed the company in a bad light, and didn't bring us anything particularly unique to the company. I really hope Napoli is a giant step up from this, otherwise this will be one of the biggest disappointments in a long time.

I just saw the mixed rep program in Orange County: save your money, and skip it because it was awful. The company looked like a smalltime regional company. They had better step up their game with Napoli. More details when I am more awake.

--Andre

Quiggin, I did not enjoy Number 9, the new Wheeldon work, very much. The color design was beautiful, and the best part of the whole piece. I thought it looked thrown together, and way too busy, with no time for the eye to rest. There are other ballets, like Artifact Suite, which demand high mental and visual engagement, but Number 9 was just monotonous. Not just boring, but the same in tone and feeling throughout with very little contrast. It didn't even have very clever staging or steps like Ghosts did. It looked like something an artistic director might throw together to fill up some idle time in a big story ballet. If you've seen Wheeldon's fairly terrible Garland Waltz for the Sleeping Beauty, it's like that.

I think Possokhov's Classical Symphony is a far more successful essay at this style of work (abstract, upbeat, effervescent crowd pleaser).

Quiggin, now you've made wish even more that I'd seen the other cast! For me, one of the main characteristics of McGregor's work is sort of a reflection of modern urbanism: a jagged eclecticism glued together in one unlikely entity. I think of walking through a city --- for example, in San Francisco, walking from SoMa through the Tenderloin to Nob Hill. There are jarring, sudden changes between different groups of people that somehow define the city. The borders are visible and jagged, but somehow they still feel organic, like they're where they're supposed to be.

You don't see this as much in Chroma, though it is there. Sometimes it's expressed across time where a dancer will be doing something almost classical and then switch to something else different, and other times across space: dancers across the stage may be doing very different things. And sometimes contained within one body: one arm may be expressing a classical port de bras, while the head is doing his jutting bird neck thing, and the legs are doing something else. You see this in Infra more, and I think Entity (a recent piece set on Random Dance, his own company) expresses it most clearly.

One of my favorite moments in Entity is near the end when there is a pas de deux, and I see what I think are vignettes from various stages of a relationship all kind of juxtaposed together in time and space. You can also see various classical elements burst forth, and then withdraw and transform into contemporary movement, which then transforms again. It's like a pulsing, living amorphous blob of dance which is fracturing and shattering in all directions trying to say 10 things at a time. I hope that kind of conveys the feeling of what I see in his work.

SFB was missing most of that on Saturday night. Instead, we got a neutered, "safe" version that didn't express any of that. The jagged phrasing was all smoothed over, and much of the effect of his work was lost for me.

A few years ago, the Feijoo sisters danced as Odile/Odette for Boston Ballet's Swan Lake, so it's not wholly unprecedented. I also thought Carreno's costume was dumbed down for an audience that may not be used to men in tights. Oh well, one step at a time.

I saw programs 6 and 7 this weekend, and was disappointed. Program 6 starts with Wheeldon's Ghosts, continues with Helgi's 7 for 8, and concludes with McGregor's Chroma (which was the main reason why I saw this program).

Ghosts seems like a typical Wheeldon ballet: full of clever, well-crafted choreography and some really novel moments, but is soulless and ultimately says nothing. A lot of promise, but no satisfaction. I really liked the slightly unfurling kinetic sculture on stage, and I wish he'd done more with it.

As a non-fan of Helgi's choreography, 7 for 8 was surprisingly unawful. It's a great showpiece for the strong men of SFB, but lacking a bit for the women, with their choreography looking like the greatest hits of Balanchine.

Chroma was perhaps the greatest disappointment, because of the high expectations set when I saw SFB do Eden/Eden. I've seen this piece a couple of times before with the Royal Ballet, as well as the video just released, and the SFB dancers looked tentative and perhaps a bit tired. Someone said that this might have been the same cast as the afternoon --- I saw the evening show on 6 on Saturday. There was no intensity, and no real phrasing: just the generic legato ballet phrasing. The one exception was Lorena Feijoo who brought intensity to an unfortunately small part. They looked like a regional company struggling with the choreography. One of the few bright spots was the performance of the orchestra, who were fantastic.

I'll wait for a program 7 thread to post my impressions, but it was pretty disappointing, too.

I've said this elsewhere, but I'll say it again: Artifact Suite is a landmark dance piece. No one will (or should) make a dance piece the same way again after seeing this piece. It is unique in the ambition of its scale (very large), and how well it achieves its theatrical effects with the minimum of means. You can clearly see all the way back to Petipa through Balanchine in this piece, and how Forsythe moves that tradition forward by fusing it with post-modernist sensibilities. Is it for everyone? No, but everyone needs to see it.

Speaking of Forsythe dancers, I was really pleasantly surprised at how well Frances Chung moved in this piece in the initial yellow section, especially dancing next to Sofiane Sylve. You expect Sylve to be very strong, and she is, but Chung kept up with her.

I also liked Classical Symphony, and think it's a great showpiece for the company, and it's also good, witty choreography. Maria Kochetkova was simply amazing in it: it was like someone lit her on fire, and shot her out of a canon. At this point, I can see her dance anything (even Helgi ballets like the inoffensive, bland Trio) and enjoy it. She obviously is one of the strongest dancers in the company (and that's saying a lot!), but she also has a generosity of spirit in her dancing that makes her very appealing to watch. I'm reminded of Tina Leblanc when I see her dance.

I fell asleep during Nanna's Lied. I guess I could have gone out and gotten coffee or something and come back in time for Artifact Suite.

--Andre

I'm not sure which Saturday show you saw, but I would guess the evening show based on the casting. I saw the Saturday evening show as well, and the company looked much, much better on Sunday. Symphonic Variations was a mess on Saturday night, but when Kochetkova returned on Sunday (she'd been sick and replaced in her roles in Symphonic and 2nd movement Symphony on Saturday night by SVP and Zahorian respectively) with Gennadi Nedvigin, the trio of couples danced at a higher level and were dancing together. Saturday night had a few deer-in-the-headlights moments.

For me, Symphony in C though excitingly danced and full of spirit (especially Sunday), was lacking in uniformity of style. You could see lots of mismatched port de bras and epaulement.

I agree that RAkU needs a lot of editing. It was an overwrought mess that has potential hidden under all of the things going on.

--Andre

I just saw the Sunday show. Wow, that was awful, and to echo an earlier sentiment, it was an almost total waste of the dancing talent.

The show starts with Nacho Duato's Remansos, except with a little prologue added so that there would be women in the piece. The steps were typical Duato, and didn't really add anything to the piece. At least we got to hear more of the lovely Granados music. The main section is the same as before, and the big surprise was seeing Vyacheslav Lopatin dance the Parrish Maynard role with such poetic elegance. I wish we could have seen more of him. The other two men, Vasiliev (in Malakhov's role) and Savin (Keith Roberts's role), were OK, if a bit clunky. The ending where they lift Vasiliev upside down so he can hang on the wall by his legs was so rough, they almost knocked the wall over.

Act 2 was pretty terrible with only 1 highlight: Elo's piece for Maria Kochetkova. Unlike the others, and this would repeat itself again in the 3rd act, she looks comfortable executing modern movements, and seems to have an understanding of it: hers were the only gestures that weren't small scale. And the Elo piece, a deconstruction of ballet, with half a tutu (the right half) was actually funny and entertaining. The rest of the act was just awful, but especially bad was Karole Armitage's pas de deux. It looked like a cheap, bad copy of the famous pas from Forsythe's In the middle, somewhat elevated: the lighting went on and off, the music made Thom Willems sound like Debussy, and the upstage curtain raised up just in time to reveal the bare wall before the curtain fell. It was like the piece was furiously checking off some invisible checklist. Zanella's piece for Semionova made her look like a dancing bottle of Cristal --- is it an ironic reference to the Czars or some kind of pandering to the nouveau riche oligarchs? Who knows, and with that banal choreography, who cares? It looked like Zanella looked at Semionova's famous music video on Youtube, and then just rearranged it. It was classroom exercises done in gold silky PJs. The other pieces were inscrutably pointless, but mercifully short.

The Balanchine was welcome reprieve, if not for its genius, then at least for providing relief at watching someone competent fill the stage without fussy tricks or affectations. Just plain straightforward dancing that knew how to hold the stage and the audience's attention.

Act 3 sustained the low level of choreographic achievement with Bigonzetti's entirely wrong-headed, misapprehended Eurotrash-tastic Cinque. You had the enigmatic opening with the 5 ballerinas sitting around on Starck Ghost chairs, looking like the Desperate Housewives of Italy. You had the Vivaldi warhorses played on mandolin, strung together with little musical sensitivity. You had dim lighting with projected light rectangles. You had the dancers undressing and putting on their vestigial classical tutus and bodices on stage (with dressers coming out to help them). Even the freakin' tutus were hanging on lines which lowered them. Add to that mostly inscrutable, small-scale gestures that no one except Kochetkova made work, and you have Eurotrash choreography.

What an amazing waste of time, talent, and money.

--Andre

Holy crazy balance! Thanks for uploading that.

--Andre

Thanks for looking into it. When I saw it, I was on the main floor (albeit in a small theater), and didn't realize there were all the golden ratio designs projected on the floor until afterwards, so the video definitely shows that off well. One thing the video doesn't do as well is immerse you in all of the projections on the 3 movable things on the sides and back, but in return, the video does get you closer to the dancers and the choreography because the focus is on them. One question: towards the end, there's a pas, and there's a longish cut away to a headshot of one of the dancers waiting to go. He wasn't doing anything, and we missed many parts of the pas because of it. I'm guessing that was probably out of your control?

A great example of film really bringing choreography to life (for me at least) is the film of Forsythe's One Flat Thing Reproduced. You can find it on Youtube in 3 parts. I remembered seeing that live for the first time and being utterly confused, but after seeing the film, it made a lot more sense.

I watched the HD version on my 1st gen Apple TV. My iPhone 4 and iPad showed the rental of the HD version, but the iTunes on my computer did not. It only showed me the SD rental and purchase options, though there was a note on the bottom that said HD versions were available on iPhone and AppleTV.

As long as the HD version is available for purchase, I don't think a physical medium is necessary. Do you know if there's any interest in projecting this in movie theaters like the Met Opera or Royal Opera House series?

--Andre

edit: one more thing I forgot. The DVD of the Forsythe piece has a 5.1-channel soundtrack, and it's great how atmospheric that makes the soundtrack as you often have sounds coming from places other than the front. That's something you generally don't get in a theater, but obviously the sound designer/composer would have to be involved with the video production for this to happen.

I just rented the HD version, and it was the first thing I watched in the new year! I wish we could purchase the HD version --- is it coming out on BluRay or some other HD platform in the future?

I saw the company perform this piece at Whitebird in Portland, Oregon last year a couple of times, and before I saw this film, I didn't think this was one of Wayne's better pieces, but after seeing the film I've changed my mind. Perhaps the third time's the charm, or the camera helps focus attention on certain things or clarifies things. Whatever it is, it is worth watching if you have seen any of his pieces set on ballet companies. Entity is sort of the next step forward in his style of movement. You still see his usual vocabulary: the tilted forward pelvis, the head jutting out, the Gumby-like movement, and the ambition of design and lighting. But there's also a variety of rhythm and movement speeds that his company really brings out, and surprisingly this adds to the emotional intensity of the movements. Someone above commented that his dancers aren't allowed to smile, and most of the time they have neutral faces or even a sort of intense grimace, but what surprised me was how he could project different emotional feelings just based on varying the speed of the various movements. It will be interesting to see him move this to ballet dancers.

Another thing that's may be of interest to the resident bunheads is how classically trained his dancers are and how much of his vocabulary is ballet-based. I asked them if this was a newly-found thing after he worked with ballet companies, and they said he'd always liked that kind of dancer from the beginning.

Anyway, it's worth a rental, and it's only an hour long, so give it a try!

--Andre

Let's hope for the DVD, too! This release, in either BD or DVD form, isn't even on BelAir's English site, so who knows? But BelAir is imported into the US, though usually with a fairly high premium.

EvilNinjaX, I believe this is the same version that's on YouTube, and that's being broadcasted in movie theaters. Does that help?

So who's excited?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flammes-Osipova-Yasilev-Bolshoi-Blu-ray/dp/B0044FEZBC