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miliosr

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About miliosr

  • Birthday 06/16/1967

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  • Connection to/interest in ballet** (Please describe. Examples: fan, teacher, dancer, writer, avid balletgoer)
    fan/balletgoer
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    Madison
  • State (US only)**, Country (Outside US only)**
    Wisconsin

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  1. That was my first response to the original "Why?" question: O'Connell's guesting may be an audition/test. With Luke Ingham's departure, San Francisco Ballet is down to six principal men. So, there is room for new hires and/or promotions.
  2. New York City Ballet and Musicians Union Reach Contract Deal (broadwayworld.com) (Broadway World cites the Times, which is behind a paywall.) Here are two key provisions: [T]he two parties have reached a three-year deal that includes a pay increase of approximately 22 percent over the course of three years. The deal will also include an updated healthcare plan that would “continue to be funded by N.Y.C.B. while also providing the musicians with greater independence to choose their own plan." Preliminarily, I would say the union won big on its salary and health care demands.
  3. I finally caught up with Joan Crawford in Our Blushing Brides (OBB) (premiere: July 19, 1930). OBB was the final film in the Crawford 'Our' series at M-G-M, which also included Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and Our Modern Maidens (1929). The characters were different in the series but the actresses were largely the same. Crawford and Anita Page appeared in all three while Dorothy Sebastian appeared in the first and third movies. In any event, OBB was an early species of the 'three girls in the big city' genre in Hollywood and, in its structure, bears a strong resemblance to the later The Best of Everything (1959). In this, Crawford's part parallels that of Hope Lange in The Best of Everything while Page and Sebastian's parts are reminiscent of those of Diane Baker and Suzy Parker in the latter film. The basic premise of OBB has Crawford, Page and Sebastian toiling away in dead-end jobs at a department store. Page and Sebastian are out to find rich husbands while Crawford is looking for love and romance. Matters end badly for Page, OK for Sebastian and happily for Crawford. (Not only does Crawford's character, Jerry, find happiness with looker Robert Montgomery - he's also the department store owner's son! The Joan Crawford 'shopgirl makes good archetype' was born here.) As for Crawford herself, she's a work in progress in OBB. Her speaking voice alternates between an early talkie affected one and a working-class accent (which is more believable for someone who is earning her living modelling clothes at a department store.) Her acting is also an uneven mixture of naturalistic talking pictures acting and silent film conventions. But the face is already starting to achieve its full potential. There's a funny bit of business toward the end of the movie. Crawford finds herself in a movie theater showing Let Us Be Gay - the M-G-M movie which premiered three weeks after OBB in 1930. It's funny because actor Raymond Hackett, who played Montgomery's younger brother in OBB and whose character was in the theatre with Crawford, also played a supporting role in Let Us Be Gay. So, Hackett the character was watching Hackett the actor on screen. Viewers can decide for themselves which ending - to OBB or Let Us Be Gay - is more implausible.
  4. I rewatched The Legend of Hell House this weekend. (2023 is the 50th anniversary of the film's original release and actress Gayle Hunnicutt, who plays the character of Ann Barrett in the film, died this year. So, it seemed like a good time to rewatch it.) Horror/sci-fi legend Richard Matheson adapted the screenplay for The Legend of Hell House from his own 1971 haunted house novel, Hell House. The movie adheres closely to Matheson's novel, and both bear certain similarities to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and its movie adaptation, The Haunting; the biggest similarity being a team of mediums and scientists investigating haunted houses. But whereas the haunting in the Jackson work is left ambiguous, the same is not true for the Matheson novel and the derived film. In The Legend of Hell House, the haunting is objectively real. In any event, The Legend of Hell House has that great early-70s "Hammer horror" feel to it (even though it was not a Hammer Studios film.) The use of bizarre colors and furniture design give the haunted house a disorienting quality as do strange camera angles and a pulsating electronic score. The primary cast consists of only four actors but they are all quite good in their parts. The ending is something of a letdown but, then, Matheson left the ending unchanged from his own source novel. I wouldn't classify The Legend of Hell House as scary, per se, but it does invoke a strong feeling of dread.
  5. I couldn't agree more. For all the money ABT threw at him, Ratmansky never provided them with the kind of lasting multi-act story ballets that are the company's bread and butter. (His Nutcracker and Whipped Cream probably came the closest.) But how many times would the company be able to go to that particular well? It would work for a season or two but I doubt it would relieve ABT of their (over)dependence on Giselle, Swan Lake, Romeo & Juliet and Don Quixote.
  6. I took a look back at ABT's Form 990 for calendar year 2013 (freely available on the Internet). Of the eight listed positions with the highest base compensation (nine actual people), two were dancers - Julie Kent (28 years w/ ABT as of 2013) and Paloma Herrera (22 years w/ ABT as of 2013). Gillian Murphy (25 years w/ ABT as of 2021) and Herman Cornejo (21 years w/ ABT in 2021) would be roughly comparable to Kent and Herrera in terms of tenure. Perhaps fewer working weeks are acting as a drag on Murphy and Cornejo's base compensation although I'm much more inclined to believe that COVID-era cuts to the dancers' compensation are to blame. Regardless, comparing the administrative salaries from 2013 to those in 2021 is telling. Base compensation for the administrative side has drifted ever upward while the compensation on the top dancers' side has remained stagnant or even declined (based on what I would expect to see from the Kent/Herrera example in 2013).
  7. Friday the 13th fell in October this year. It's my tradition to watch the original Friday the 13th (from 1980) on Friday the 13th. "You're doomed . . . you're all doomed!"
  8. Courtesy of publicly available information on Guide Star . . . ABT's most recently filed Form 990 was for calendar year 2021. For that year, the nine highest paid employees were all on the management side of the ledger. (Highest was Kevin McKenzie at $463,576 and lowest was Cynthia Harvey [then-JKO School head] at $169,698.) Even dancers like Gillian Murphy and Herman Cornejo - both of whom have had very long tenures in the organization - don't appear on ABT's list of highest paid employees. For comparison, the situation at the New York City Ballet is no better. Of the 11 highest paid individuals listed on its most recent form 990, none are dancers. (However, Justin Peck does appear on the list.)
  9. I read the news about Lara Parker last night and, at first, I almost couldn't believe that 'Angelique' could possibly die.
  10. Do we all remember this discussion from over nine years ago? 2014 Met Season - American Ballet Theatre - Ballet Alert! (invisionzone.com) On p. 11 of the '2014 Met Season' thread, forum members - many of whom are still with us! - discussed the embarrassing spectacle of ABT having to draft Andrew Veyette from City Ballet to replace an injured Cory Stearns in Theme & Variations. This, despite the fact that there was time to teach an ABT soloist or corps member the part - Jared Matthews being the prime candidate.
  11. The money to make Peter Martins go away on rather lavish terms (contractually stipulated or not) is coming from somewhere within the organization. It's not unreasonable for the musicians' union to see that and think that there must be money in the organization to meet their demands. (To the extent the board entered into a financially onerous contract with Martins, the musicians' union is under no obligation to accept a bad deal in order to help bail out the board and the organization. The union already did its part during COVID.)
  12. I can't speak to the Post's sudden interest in running stories about the New York City Ballet (beyond delighting in tweaking the "progressive" City Ballet for its various lapses.) I do believe one or more parties are feeding these stories to the Post. Certainly, a story like the Peter Martins one undercuts the company's claims of poverty in its negotiations with the musicians' union and only helps the union. Also, kudos to the reporter for actually reporting correctly the Board's findings regarding Martins: "An investigation commissioned by the organization did not corroborate [note: my emphasis] the various allegations made against Martins by current and former dancers to the New York Times and the Washington Post in 2017." The Board was very, very careful when it released its findings to say that it couldn't corroborate the charges made against Martins. Oh, and John Clifford is always ready, willing and able to criticize Peter Martins!
  13. Interesting that you used the word "ghost" because that was exactly the word I was thinking of when I wrote my response upthread. Cozette became like a ghost haunting the hallways of the Garnier.
  14. Cozette hasn't performed much in recent years. Under Benjamin Millepied and then Aurelie Dupont, she only appeared intermittently. So, the company absorbed the loss long before the actual departure. The bigger losses are still to come with the looming departures of Myriam Ould-Braham and Dorothee Gilbert.
  15. The union's real leverage comes with Nutcracker season. That's when they can ratchet up the pressure on management to the maximum extent, as Nutcracker season is the company's cash cow. If they do strike, it's almost irrelevant if the dancers honor the strike or not because the stage crew would most certainly honor it.
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