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I enjoy reading Sarah Kaufman's work in the Washington Post; her recent review of the Kirov's Cinderella is an example of how she usually balances great description with history and some insight as well. I also find her feature articles very well reported and in depth - pieces that particularly stand out in my mind were the NYCB article from last year, and a piece on the Ailey company. She took the standard "advance" pieces that normally acompany a company's visit to the area - e.g. dancer profiles, or "look how great this company is that is coming!" - and instead asked all the real questions, attacking the story from every angle. Also agree about Acocella - her reviews are great to read when they are printed in the New Yorker.

If they were, they wouldn't bother recruiting a chief dance critic...

Geez - this is a pretty harsh assessment. Rockwell is writing for an audience who may not know, or care, about in depth technical and choreographic analysis. It's a fact of writing for a mainstream newspaper - you either don't have the space to go too deep in, or an editor will tell you to please keep it in check so the average reader won't be turned off by the article. Its a review that fits in with the type of publication the NY Times is - it's not necessarily for the balletomanes. kfw is right - balletomanes have Ballet Alert and the Dance View Times to turn to for more indepth analysis.

Oh I remember this part distinctly - it is the end of the sceond shade's variation (which is normally the first variation in most productions). At the end of the variation she goes into arabesque, then does this "hop" type thing where she keeps going up onto point then coming back down - please excuse my lack of technical knowledge to give this the proper name, but a book seemes to call it a releve-elance in first arabesque. Well the camera seemed to think this was repetitive and unimportant, so it cuts to a shot of the corps de ballet's legs, standing along the side of the stage in pose. Perhaps an error in the filming as was noted earlier? But this always infuriates me while watching the POB Bayadere video.

This discussion is interesting, because I didn't take Rockwell's article as a sign of ballet coverage's demise. It will be interesting to see how things turn out as Rockwell steps in, but I think he was pointing to certain trends that are popping up - such as POB's increased performance of modern dance - without saying whether or not he necessarily loved the idea of them. Towards the end of the article he says this: Dance is changing, he says, but the established forms will continue to thrive. I'm not sure what he says about finding new choreography within the classical idiom, though. I just didn't really see the whole thing as the NY Times turning its back on ballet. Rockwell's job as chief dance critic will be to cover all of the different types of dance - and not just ballet - so I think this article was a way for him to give a general overview of the whole form. Now, as for his comment about the 400-year tradition - I think he was saying that in comparison to the other art forms he was mentioning. Its true - dance doesn't have the same kind of ballyhooed tradition that classical music or opera do, and I think this is largely because music and opera can be written down and passed onward: dance can't do that so easily. So stuff that happened 300 years ago can't be looked back upon in the same way that a Beethoven score can. I didn't think it was a disparagement of dance's history. That said, it wouldn't hurt to make sure the Times knows people are still interested in serious criticism about ballet as well.

Ananiashvili might yet have a Swan Lake, perhaps?

Well, I suppose this is only somewhat ballet related - but I skipped out on Nederlands Dans Theatre to see more castings than necessary of ABT's Romeo and Juliet, and also Julio Bocca's Ballet Argentino...the latter was less than thrilling to say the least, and I could have forsaken at least one of those R&Js to see NDT. Then, everyone who went to NDT proceeded to tell me how much I missed and how great it was...

Perhaps the thinking is that the New York audiences definetly buy based on, and are highly knowledgeable about, the casting of each performance - and since the Met season is such a major part of ABT's finances each year, they'd want to pump up as much advanced sales as possible for that. Whereas on tour, the majority - and I'm not saying all - care far less about who is dancing what on what night. They'll buy based on ABT's brand name or on the story ballet being performed, and not necessarily by who specifically is dancing. Now I know this varies depending on the city, but based on the audiences I see here in Orange County, this is true: most don't care who exactly the prima ballerina is, they came because it was ABT. Only if the star is exceptional - e.g. Alessandra Ferri's Romeo and Juliet in Los Angeles last year - will the balletomanes turn out and significantly increase the crowd at a performance. And that one date will be advertised far in advance. Otherwise, casting remains notoriously mysterious from the various tour box offices... Just a thought.

Well, being out here on the Left Coast of the United States has given me fewer opportunites to see all the ballet that you East Coasters get, but I'd say this was a pretty good year for my ballet watching. The Museum of Television and Radioin Los Angeles, like in New York, kicked off the year with a series commemorating the Balanchine Centennial - giving me personally an introduction to a huge range of Balanchine ballets in rightfully historic performances that really aren't available on video. Even if the Museum in Los Angeles wasn't exactly excited to be putting it on - several Saturday screenings were pre-empted or relegated to individual monitors for one or two viewers thanks to marathon screenings of "Sex in the City" - it was great to have in a city that lacks a major ballet company. LA does, though, get visits from major companies on a regular basis, and this year was no different: I absolutely loved the Royal Ballet's 6-day visit in July, with Ashton's "Cinderella" and the Peter Wright production of "Giselle" (so much so that I drove an hour each way for the entire 6-day, 7-performance run so that I could see each cast). I was truly impressed by the Royal's all around sense of theatricality: they gave a reason why the ballets were on stage, and why the steps existed as they did. Giselle doesn't go into hysterics simply because someone choreographed it that way awhile ago (as I tend to experience when I watch a "Giselle"), but with the Royal, I saw her go into hysterics because her heart really had broken up there on stage. Performances I will particularly remember: Alina Cojocaru as both Giselle and Cinderella, Lauren Cuthbertson as the Fairy Summer in "Cinderella", Ivan Putrov as Albrecht, and Zenaida Yanowsky as Myrtha in "Giselle." This year, I also got to go crazy watching New York City Ballet, thanks to a two-week vacation to New York in late May, then with the company's two-week visit to California in September/October. Sofiane Sylve's stunning debut in "Symphony in C" while here in Orange County will be particularly rememberd, along with her performances in "Agon" and "Stars and Stripes," also in California. I remember first noticing her, though, as the green girl in "Who Cares?" while I was in New York, and also in "Western Symphony" and in the Sangunic from "The Four Temperaments." Ashley Bouder was marvelous, or at least highly interesting, in everything I saw her in: her Russian girl in "Serenade" - a debut in Los Angeles - was the most confident and secure of the three RUssian girls we had out here, and I loved her as the Girl in Yellow from "Dances at a Gathering" in New York. She also held together a rather bland performance of "Divertimento No. 15" almost singlehandedly. I look forward to seeing a lot more of this very interesting dancer. I'm glad I saw Peter Boal live on stage, in "Square Dance," before his retirement - which he was great in. Particular ballets: I very much liked "La Sonnambula" in New York, as well as "The Four Temperaments." I didn't like "Stars and Stripes" in New York, but wow it was such a difference in the three performances the company gave in Orange County - positively thrilling they were out here. "Agon" was fantastic in Los ANgeles, led by Wendy Wheland and Sofiane Sylve. Other standouts this year: The Lyon Opera Ballet in a brief visit to the LA area showed how major commitment from the dancers can bring to life highly abstract modern choreographies. And also, Elizabeth Miner in San Francisco Ballet's "Sylvia" by Mark Morris, giving an authoritative and riveting performance while, at the time, still a member of the corps de ballet.

I could vouch for Tkachenko as well; she gave a matinee performance in the "Diamonds" pas de deux when the Kirov was last here in Orange County. She did a remarkable job in the role - pristine and technically assured, showing great promise.

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the green space-age looking tutu is from "Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude," choreographed by William Forsythe.

Sounds interesting - I'll have to remember to record this. What do Murphy/Stiefel dance?

From the BBC listings: Sat 11 Dec, 19:00-21:20 140mins Stereo Widescreen BBC 4 Ashton at 100: Fred's Steps Presented by Deborah Bull, this programme featuring The Royal Ballet shows an evening of ballets by Frederick Ashton to celebrate his centenary. The selection of his work, together with archive and biographical documentary footage, shows his enormous range, from the abstract chic of Scénes de Ballet through divertissements as diverse as his Awakening pas de deux from The Sleeping Beauty, and Brahms Waltzes in the style of Isadora Duncan. The programme ends with his sumptuous Daphnis and Cloe. Anybody in the UK able to make this Royal Ballet fan stuck in the wrong country a copy of the program?

Saw this on first night in Orange County: I found Nutcracker amusing and colorful, if not as strong as Matthew Bourne's later work in "Swan Lake" and "Cinderella." Bourne's ballets are more theater-dance than dance-theatre, but I find that he often has his moments of choreographic inventiveness as well. "Nutcracker!" is clearly an earlier work than the later three pieces we have seen in Los Angeles (with "The Car Man" being the third of the aforementioned two ballets), but Bourne's knack for storytelling is present here as it is in all of his pieces, but the choreography doesn't all add up to the sum of its parts. Act 1 in particular is very clever, with some pretty funny choreography that tells the story quite clearly. The March is quite amusing and very well choreographed, and the antics of the orphans throughout are hilarious. But the story is basically dead by the beginning of Act II, and Act II is decidedly tedious. The divertissement dances are very over the top, made even more strange without a strong connecting through-line. The storytelling inventiveness we saw in Act I evaporated in Act II; the only thing holding the show together were the truly dedicated performers and the sheer colorfulness of the sets and costumes. The production would likely flow better if performed without an intermission (and according to Alastair Macaulay's book on Matthew Bourne, it was originally created without an intermission). If the production were to flow straight through, no momentum would be lost during intermission; the ending to Act I doesn't have much oomph, and the remaining story doesn't have enough weight to carry as its own act. All in all, though, the production is quite amusing, worth it to see a very different - and not horrendous - take on the Nutcracker. Do not, however, come in expecting your pretty, storybook ballet Nutcracker.

Yes, the 3-DVD set is one thing (several pre-existing DVDs lumped together as a box set), and "The Kirov Celebrates Nijinksy" is an entirely new DVD being released Jan 25, with Zakharova, Vishneva, etc.

The extended mime scene that usually opens Act I is missing from this production; instead the curtain goes straight up on the "famous" Waltz with no mime about the King threatening to punish old ladies with illegal spindles.

Amazon.com now lists a DVD entitled "The Kirov Celebrates Nijinsky", which seems to be Scheherezade/Firebird/Polovtsian Dances/SPectre DVD that Natalia thought was initially being released in the Oct 12 boxed set. This DVD is scheduled for release in the United States on January 25, 2005, with an extremely attractive list price of $19.99 (Amazon is currently selling it on pre-order for 13.99). From the Dance Books description: "Filmed at the Chatelet Theatre in Paris in 2002, the casts of these four Michel Fokine ballets include Svetlana Zakharova and Faroukh Ruzimatov (Sheherazade), Zhanna Ayupova and Igor Kolb (Le Spectre de la Rose), and Diana Vishneva and Andrei Yakovlev (The Firebird)." A nice DVD to have indeed.

Wonder if Sofiane Sylve will get a Sugar Plum this year...then we might get to see her do something like the pirouettes at the end of this video on the Dutch National Ballet's web site (click on the video link under her headshot): http://www.het-nationale-ballet.nl/index.php?&cast_id=718

Such starry casting! I wonder if this bodes well for the Los Angeles performances of Giselle the week after as well...

My copy finally came, and I've managed to watch it all the way through as well. I was particularly impressed with the Prologue; I thought the fairy pas de six was very well danced, particularly the so-called "Lilac Fairy" variation - though in this production it is not danced by the Lilac Fairy but by an ambiguous other fairy instead. From what I could ascertain from the credits, it was Britt Juleen. I was also impressed by the fairies' entrance in the intrada of the pas de six - very sharp, and got the production off to a good start. Sofiane Sylve was very good, especially in the Vision Scene, in the Awakening Pas de Deux, and in the Grand Pas de Deux in Act III. At many times in Act I, she seemed almost too womanly for the girlish Aurora. Her reactions in character read too put on; she just seems to naturally carry herself far more glamorously than her character at that moment is supposed to. That said, though, the dancing was just fine as I expected. She was definetly wobbling in the big balance moment of the Rose Adagio - as Alexandra mentioned. I'm not sure if that was a fluke (seemed like a one-off recording, based on what Herman wrote above), since I've seen her do a still balance live before. Though I liked Sylve very much, I'm afraid my favorite DVD Aurora will have to be Viviana Durante's on the Royal Ballet (even if the production itself was very oddly designed); she perfectly captured Aurora's innocence in Act I and then transformed into mysterious for Act II and then grandly bright for Act III. Larisa Lezhina on the Kirov video is pretty but almost too pretty; less texture for my taste. On DVD, Peter Wright's production is interesting to me. Very stately and very grand, which I liked. He does, however juggle some big musical moments and scenes that I'm used to seeing in certain places, particularly with the removal of the big long mime scene at the beginning of Act I, and then, at the end of Act II he goes from awakening kiss straight into a lyrical Awakening pas de deux for Aurora and Florimund - removing the traditional grandiose finale (the music used here is the Entr'acte normally cut from 'Beauty' productions, but which Ashton used for an Awakening pas de deux, and which Balanchine lifted for the moment just prior to the battle scene in his Nutcracker). Thus, Act II ends on a far more romantic note than usual, giving Aurora and Florimund a chance to meet and fall in love - makes sense dramatically but I guess I was waiting for the timpanies and cymbal crashes. I, too, was less impressed with the Act III divertissements; not as crisp as the Prologue dancing or even the Vision scene. Red Riding Hood's costume and make up actually looked a bit scary. But, Sylve and Lambiotte were sparkling in the Grand Pas de Deux. By far the BEST thing about this DVD though is the extra features: they're just fantastic. There's a great mini-documentary on Sylve, with a ton of great dancing clips (including, for NYCB fans, excerpts from her debut as Dewdrop in NYCB's Nutcracker in 2003 - marvelous to watch), and then interviews with her personally. The documentary is very well done, and its far better than the normal fluff pieces that might appear on PBS; this one actually has her talking a bit about difficulties in her life, real challenges of being a dancer. The other features are also very sweet, particularly one about fairy tales, where the history of the "Sleeping Beauty" story are interspersed with a bit following young students preparing for a visit to the Het National Ballet's Sleeping Beauty - anyone looking for reasons to put arts education in the schools? Very sweet.

Thanks for the first report of the season! Anybody going to see Ashley Bouder's turn as Sugar Plum on Friday (or her debut at the school performances on Wednesday)?

This is a reprint of an article which ran in the New York Times earlier this fall...and I also seem to remember discussion somewhere on this board about that very article as well. The article notes a byline of "New York Times News Service" so it seems like a wire story that was pulled and reprinted for whatever reason.

Bouder did show up in both Orange County and Los Angeles - though not necessarily in the roles that she was cast on the initial anouncement. She never danced the third movement in "Symphony in C" as the casting sheet said she would - Megan Fairchild danced it at all of the CA performances (I wanted to see Bouder at least once, though). Off the top of my head, I remember her appearing in "Stars and Stripes" (first campaign, all three times it was performed), "Who Cares?" (pink girl), as a standout corps girl in Martins' "Hallelujah Junction", at opening night in the "Emeralds" pas de trois, and then making a very memorable debut as the Russian girl in the penultimate "Serenade" in Los Angeles.

What exciting news! Saw a slew of ABT "Swan Lakes" when the company did it out here in Orange County a few years ago, and I must say that I enjoyed Murphy's Odette/Odile most of all - and this while she was still a soloist in the company. I found it remarkably nuanced, and of course, impeccably danced - and Murphy at this point was going up against a week of Odette/Odiles that included Kent, Herrera, Dvorvenko, Tuttle and Ananiashvili. Ananiashvili was great of course, but it was thrilling to watch a soloist make such an incredible impact at a Saturday matinee - I'm very much looking forward to this!

I'd get the Kirov version, and wait just the little bit longer until it comes out on DVD format. All around great performances, especially in the Dream Scene, and as Natalia said, its one of the more complete ones out there.