Andre Yew

I see this problem too. I'm curious if you use a progressive scan TV (eg. LCD, plasma, or something that upconverts to 480p). Other Opus Arte DVDs I have don't have this problem. I haven't watched all of it yet, but I thought Emeralds was superb: it has a solidity that I haven't seen elsewhere, where its ephemeral perfume qualities seem to be more emphasized. I loved the ring solo, where she starts turning her hand over as if she were examining a ring. --Andre

I saw both within a week when ABT visited SoCal this past spring. The Morris does not hold a candle to the Ashton, and the libretto is virtually identical. The choreography is repetitive, small-scaled, and ploddingly enslaved to the music's grossest features, and elements seem to be inserted at random. The whole thing looks unfinished, and should be shelved. I think it's artistic suicide for SFB to present this in New York. --Andre

Here's a link to the article: http://www.newyorker.com/critics/dancing/ Judging from the generic name of the link, it will probably expire when the next dance article comes along. I'm not sure how to get their archives. --Andre edit: Thanks to drb, here's direct link to their archives that shouldn't expire for a while: http://www.newyorker.com/critics/dancing/a...710crda_dancing

For those of us who can't get enough of the music, it's been recorded in its entirety, and is still currently available in print: http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Namedr...200&name_role=1 --Andre

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Howard Schatz yet: http://www.howardschatz.com/portfolio/inde...=24&grouping=20 --Andre

Helgi Tomasson's choreography does use quite a bit of batterie, but it's not clear yet that he's a successful choreographer for the ages. I wonder if the decline in what is one of the most distinguishing characteristics of classical ballet is just a reflection of the fact that there are very few choreographers working in a purely classical style today. But if it's still being taught, and works that use it successfully are being preserved, is there any reason to worry? --Andre

There's a broadcast of Tetsuya Kumakawa performing Bluebird, which would seem to a role made just for him. This was when the Royal Ballet were visiting Washington DC in the late 90s. Darcey Bussell was dancing Aurora, and one amusing moment is a shot of Anthony Dowell muttering under his breath, "That's not musical!" when Bussell was trying to get some section down during a dress rehearsal. Unfortunately, I don't have the tape of it. --Andre

Nunez and Soares kissed each other during one of their curtain calls, which was really sweet, too. --Andre

OK. I thought I was weird, but Cojocaru also leaves me a bit cold --- her Aurora is rather flat in her development, and I don't think she ever completely overcomes her small physical stature in her dancing. She doesn't dance small, but you never forget that she's small either. But she does know how to use her back so beautifully. I was surprised at how weak her turns were on Sunday. I thought Lamb was magnificently elegant: she is like classicism brought to life. The purity of her line no matter what she's doing is pretty breathtaking. I wish I had seen her Florine. Nunez for me was probably my overall favorite Aurora. She has technical brilliance combined with her bright, sunny disposition, as well as the best command of the English style I've seen --- the way her upper body bends combined with the use of her head and shoulders. I loved her renverses that just lingered, and she had a triple in her act 1 solo that just lingered on improbably. I also thought she and Soares had the best chemistry of the 3 weekend shows I saw: act 2 was hot! I liked that the 3 men I saw all had their own conception of the prince. Samodurov was dark and brooding, obviously unhappy, and while Soares was similar, he was also the most ardent in his pursuit of Aurora. Kobborg however tried to put everyone at ease and hide his underlying unhappiness with a smiling facade. I thought all 3 men were very fine technically. In the grand pas, Kobborg and Cojocaru looked very comfortable with each other, like they'd done this hundreds of times before, and they were really going for it all on Sunday, much to the audience's delight. Speaking of style, I thought Ansanelli stuck out like a sore thumb because of her NYCBisms. To be fair, she's only been there for a few months, so hopefully in a couple of years, she'll be really great. She also looked very uncomfortable with her Lilac Fairy. I also wish I had seen Nunez's Lilac Fairy, but I thought, except for Ansanelli, they were all very good, and of a consistently high level. I found Cuthbertson to be the most musical, as she played with the music and tempi, making full use of all the music, in her solo. In general, I liked all of the fairies, too --- the Royal Ballet has a very deep lineup of women soloists that are very good. I found the Bluebird men a mix: there were great moments from each, but not one pulled it all together in one performance. Brian Maloney's beautiful arch in his pas de poisson for his solo was nice. Kenta Kura had by far the cleanest brise voles at the beginning of the coda. Yohei Sasaki was probably overall the cleanest, and had nice ballon and turns. Florines, like the fairies, were very good. Yuhui Choe had an especially bright Florine. The low points for me were the corps and ensemble work. The worst were probably the Lilac Fairy's attendents, but the fairies' cavaliers were pretty bad too. Moves were not synchronized, lines were crooked, arms and legs didn't match, etc. I was frankly very surprised to see such bad corps work. BTW, did anyone else notice that Kobborg kind of stared at the Batmobile in wonder as it moved off-stage by itself? Even today, a remote-controlled car would be really cool! As for the production itself, I found myself preferring the Sergeyev Kirov one more, surprisingly. I think I preferred its slightly more abstract nature which allowed the symbolism of the story to come through more clearly. The final struggle between the Lilac Fairy and Carabosse also seemed more important and consequential because of it. The Royal Ballet tells a great story, and the mime was wonderful --- the style and effectiveness of it is something no American company can come close to --- but it didn't have the epic feeling of the Kirov's that I saw last fall. --Andre

There are also many different styles of Balanchine port de bras! PNB's Balanchine is very different than NYCB's which is very different than the Royal's. My favorite dancers for port de bras include Uliana Lopatkina, Zenaida Yanowsky (check out her Rose Fairy in the DVD of the Royal Ballet's Nutcracker which also has a great example of port de bras creating 3D space with Cojocaru during her pas with the Nutcracker after the rat battle), and Patricia Barker. I guess I'm partial towards long-limbed women! edit: for men, I think Roberto Bolle has very masculine and strong port de bras. Andrian Fadeyev is another great example. Another interesting way to see port de bras is to watch one of Forsythe's neoclassical ballets (In the Middle ... or Vertiginous) where he deconstructs, warps, and manipulates port de bras like a Rubik's cube. --Andre

I'll be up for meeting at any of the 3 shows this weekend. Is there a landmark we congregate at? --Andre

In classical sculpture, this oppositional posture thing is called controposto, and I think many ballet choreographers were aware of it and used it. Another way to think about this is that ballet is performed in spaces where the furthest seat still has to be able to grasp the shape of the choreography: you have to be able to project clearly to back of the hall. I think this was codified in one way by ballet: looking towards front leg, the spatial relationships between the various limbs, etc. are all designed to project line and shape to people far away. And I think it doesn't take any special training or skill to appreciate good lines or epaulement or any of that stuff. In a way, many of these positions and choreography were done because they appealed to human psychology, and were effective in how they could communicate what the choreographer wanted to a large number of people, not just a select, trained few. For example, people will tend to look where you're looking, so in an arabesque, to extend the line of the pose, you wouldn't look down on the floor, you'd look up to where you want your line to be, among other things. My (current) favorite school of thought for epaulement, heads, and arms is the Royal Ballet, and especially the Ashton rep. It's a luxurious, plush style that has a unique life that I don't see anywhere else: lines and shapes grow, and shift and change in shape. --Andre

I'll be landing in DC on Friday evening, and seeing the 3 weekend SBs. --Andre

I think ABT's Zhong-Jin Fang has beautiful epaulement, to the point where she stood out like sore thumb in Sylvia when ABT was at Orange County a couple of months ago. I was very impressed with Misa Kuranaga when I saw her Lise in Boston Ballet's production of La Fille Mal Garde a few months back, and how she captured the English style so well. It was especially impressive in her solo in the Ellsler pas, where her epaulement and arms seemed to serve the same function as the reverberation of the hall during the silent pauses of the music: you could see and hear the music resonating in the silences through her arms and shoulders. One reason I've heard that a lot of young students don't develop their upper body expressiveness is because it's considered almost an affectation that is added only after they join a company so that they fit in with that company's style. I really don't buy it. I think the real reason is that many students don't see enough productions so they don't see the expressive possibilities of their technique, and there seems to be an overemphasis on pure technique, especially for the lower body. --Andre

I've heard it called a double barrel turn as well. I've seen Gennadi Saveliev do it as Lankendem when ABT was out in SoCal with Le Corsaire in the summer of 2002, and the audience gasped as well all three times. Acosta was also doing that move with ABT then in Le Corsaire as Ali in the slave variation. You can also see Tetsuo Kumakawa do a whole series of them in the last variation of Ashton's Rhapsody in a DVD available from Japan. --Andre

I have a recording of the 2004 Balanchine centenary celebration with Vienna Waltzes. The dancers are: Kyra Nichols, Charles Askegard Rachel Rutherford, Albert Evans Abi Stafford, Benjamin Millepied Amanda Edge, Tom Gold Jennifer Tinsley, Arch Higgins The conductor is Roberto Minczuk. --Andre

I saw the Sunday show, too, and agree with most of the comments. I also thought the corps was phoning it in, kind of just going through the steps, and neither they nor Wiles really had any of the Ashton style with its lush, feminine port de bras. In fact, their upper bodies just looked dead. The sole exception was Zhong-Jin Fang who was in the hunt party, and then danced Ceres (wearing the polka dot dress) in Act III. Nice expressive epaulement, head and arms. Arron Scott danced Eros very well, too, and Gennadi Saveliev did a good job with Orion. Kristi Boone danced Diana like how I expected the hunting party to: with some energy and attack. --Andre

Neumeier seems to like that style of choreography, as his Nijinsky also has multiple Nijinskys on stage at once, each dressed in one of his famous roles (Spectre of the Rose, the Faun, Petrushka, etc.). Having just seen Sylvia (MM's, then FA's this weekend), Diana watches herself iin the past seducing Endymion. --Andre

I wanted to enjoy this show, but didn't. It didn't show why men should be dancing ballet by showing unique things that only the guys can do: their unique stage presence, gesture, etc. If this was a regular show, then it may have been OK, but to put together 4 guys who are billed as among the best male ballet dancers in the world dancing fairly mediocre choreography that had nothing to say (Wheeldon's "For 4" and Christe's "Wavemaker" for Steifel) about anything, much less male ballet dancing, showing a misogynistic relationship as the only partnering demonstration with women in the show ("The Lesson"), and having an amazingly convincing cross-gender dance ("Carmen") really does a disservice to the public image of the male ballet dancer. Show us why men should be in ballet in the first place. Only Kobborg's Faun, and to a lesser extent Corrella's solo, demonstrated this. I found the old videos of Baryshnikov, Nureyev, Dowell, Vasiliev, etc. being shown in the lobby far more compelling arguments. I attended the Sunday OC performance with Tsiskaridze dancing the teacher. --Andre

When ABT visited SoCal last year, I saw Herrara's Giselle. It was by far the worst Giselle I had ever seen, and it wasn't just her, though her sullen, joyless, careless performance was pretty bad --- the whole company, except for Gomes and Abrera, seemed to have fallen apart on their last day. I'm also planning my June around the Kirov's performances (mostly the Forsythe instead of the Giselles) in DC, and am considering going to NYC afterwards to see Vishneva's Giselle, if there are any tickets left. --Andre

Thanks Buddy and Susan. The Kirov is full of treasures so I'm not too worried about their Forsythe program (especially if we get to see Daria Pavlenko). I wonder who will take her place at Kings of Dance. I don't like ABT, but if she's dancing Giselle there, it may be worth the trouble. --Andre

Excellent: a Diana appreciation thread! She is one of my favorite ballerinas currently dancing. I've seen her dance Nikiya, Rubies, and Aurora live, and she's always astounding both in her dancing verisimilitude and expressive range . In La Bayadere, she had this emotional complexity that's very hard to describe, but gives so much depth to Nikiya and her plight. In Rubies, dare I saw that she does Balanchine better than the Balanchine specialists? OK, there I've said it. And as Aurora, she danced like her character's name: everytime she came on stage, it was like someone turned on an extra spotlight: she beamed to the rafters. Her 2nd night Rose Adagio was literally flawless. I need to see her in Giselle, and I hope to to see her in Forsythe when the Kirov brings their Forsythe program to DC this summer. I wonder what her Juliet and Odile/Odette will be like when the Kirov takes residency at OCPAC this fall. --Andre

When PNB were working on their goodbye tribute to Kent Stowell and Francia Russell, they were both barred from the studios. --Andre

Joseph, I got it here: http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=PCBX-50761 Mine is region 0 (will play in all players) even though the website says it's region 2, but perhaps that's changed recently. It's in NTSC, and, as you can see, is horrifically expensive. --Andre

The K-Ballet production of Ashton's Rhapsody with Yoshida and Kumakawa is the fastest 27+ minutes of ballet watching I've seen recently. Seeing Zakharova in the Kirov's production of Scheherazade from Paris was revelatory among other things .... What amazing feet and expressive arms she has. Not a new one, but I just watched the Royal Ballet's Nutcracker, and Zenaida Yanowsky blew me away as the Rose Fairy with her beautiful, long lines, expressive movement, and a just-in-the-moment kind of freshness in her dancing, almost like she's discovering the steps for the first time. I loved Putrov's and Dowell's mime sequences as well as the beautiful pas for Clara and the Nutcracker --- the rippling, falling curtain at the beginning is such an exquisite bit of theatricality. --Andre