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catbrown

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Everything posted by catbrown

  1. I'm attending Program 8 tonight, Wednesday May 7, and just got an email notice that Agon will be replaced tonight by The Fifth Season. Not that I mind seeing Fifth Season again (loved it last week), but I will miss Agon and am wondering if anyone knows what happened to cause the replacement? It's been a great season! Thanks, Cathy
  2. The 1976 Zellerbach Giselle is the one by which I judge all other Giselles. I saw several of the performances and was there the night that the performance went beyond just great and touched the sublime. I had chills up my back and tears in my eyes. I will never, ever forget it. I also saw Kirkland and Baryshnikov and although the performance didn't come together as a perfect whole the way the Makarova/ Baryshnikov perfomance did, Kirkland was a perfect Giselle ... all innocence and light, and there was this puppyish quality to her dancing, like her feet had little air pads under them so that gravity didn't affect her. Amazing. As for this season's Giselle, I saw Kristin Long on Wednesday night and have to join with the detractors. I thought her first act was dismal. She didn't inhabit Giselle, she just danced the steps (and not even all that well). She was somewhat better in the second act. I was surprised by how good Zahorian was. And Gennadi Nevidigine was wonderful as always. He's such a strong dancer and I thought his acting was fine. He played a very tender Albrecht. I haven't seen Tina LeBlanc's Giselle, but I have a real problem imagining it. I often have difficulty fulling enjoying Tina's fine technique because of the tension I see in her neck and face. Sometimes when she's "smiling" it comes across as a grimace. That may be acceptable in other roles, but in Giselle? Sorry, I just can't see it.
  3. Clara, sorry, but can't comment. The production I saw was conducted by Andrew Mogrelia, who is now the official conductor of the SFB orchestra.
  4. Interesting comment, Alexandra, and worth thinking about in relation to the differing opinions. Just to let you know, although I love "all dance" ballets (Balanchine, for example), I'm also more than partial to the white ballets and enjoy character dancing .. mazurkas, polonaise, whatever. But there isn't any of what I'd call character dancing in Sylvia. There is a fair bit of pantomime, some of it not the standard classical bits (and refreshing because of it), but the rest is lightweight classical, "in character" for the part, ruffian, satyr or whatever, but certainly not in the tradition of character dancing. Think of the nurse in Romeo and Juliet (virtually any production), except that she has a truly develped character ... the dancing expresses in movement, what Shakespeare expressed in dialogue. Whereas the characters in Sylvia are so unsubstantial and the story is so silly that any cheoreography to express the "nature" of these characters, although it can be charming at times, is mostly just fluff. Just my opinion, of course, and I seem to be in the minority on this one. Thanks for the welcome. I just wish I had discovered this site at the beginning of the season instead of the end!
  5. This is really bad news. San Francisco Ballet has a sterling bench of male dancers but is short on top notch ballerinas. Julie Diana will be sorely missed. I wonder what lured her away?
  6. My first post on this forum, which I have just discovered. I'm very happy to be here! I saw Sylvia last night with Liz Miner in the title role, Pascal Molat as Aminta, Lorena Feijoo as Diana and Garret Anderson as Eros. The dancing was great ... what there was of it. My problem with the ballet is that there is so little real dancing. In the first act the cheoreography is incoherent, the second act has no dancing at all really. The third act, however, finally gets going with a lovely pas de deux. Elizabeth Miner, a corps member, was terrific in the title role. She absolutely sparkled and her technique was flawless. Pascal Molat danced well, but was perhaps to trifle too serious in his approach to a very playful ballet. Overall, my take is that this production is a lightweight, easily forgettable piece of fluff, that, well, fails to grip.
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