miliosr

Probably doesn't climb the camp Mount Everest like Valley of the Dolls and Showgirls did. But, if you're in the right frame-of-mind, it can crossover from tedious to ridiculous.

"Another" is doing the heavy lifting in the original sentence. Much testimony exists to the problematic nature of all of Clifford's ventures and his role in them. What are we to make of John Clifford? In one of his recent posts, Clifford mused whether he had, "peaked too soon." Perhaps the more penetrating question would be: "Did you overestimate your abilities as an artistic director and a choreographer?" (A corollary to that question -- and a criticism of George Balanchine would be: "Did Balanchine overestimate or overpraise Clifford's abilities and lead him into areas that were ill-suited to his actual talents [dancer, stager, teacher].)

Results from the women's competition: https://www.dansesaveclaplume.com/a-la-barre/1035399-concours-interne-de-promotion-2018-novembre-resultats-des-danseuses/ Marion Barbeau to premiere danseuse Heloise Bourdon to premiere danseuse Bianca Scudamore to sujet Victoire Anquetil to coryphee Nais Duboscq to coryphee

I did as well. Thanks anyway silvermash!

Results from the men's competition: https://www.dansesaveclaplume.com/a-la-barre/1033555-concours-interne-de-promotion-2018-novembre-resultats-des-danseurs/ Marc Moreau to premiere danseur Axel Magliano to sujet Antoine Kirscher to sujet Leo De Busserolles to coryphee Andrea Sarri to coryphee No surprise regarding Marc Moreau's promotion especially given that Jeremy Loup-Quer didn't compete this year.

The annual competition for promotion starts today!

Bel Air Classiques has released the double bill from March 2016 consisting of the opera Iolanta and the ballet The Nutcracker on a two disc set. I've only had time to watch the first disc and will report back in full when I've had time to watch the second disc. But here's a funny taster until then. Iolanta segues immediately into the party scene of The Nutcracker, in which the sujet Daniel Stokes, dressed in a brown argyle sweater and tan slacks, plays one of the party guests. At the end of the party scene, the guests leave only to return a short time later in more menacing form. When we see the Boy in the Brown Argyle Sweater again, the corps dancer Simon Le Borgne is playing him instead of Stokes. (We see Le Borgne in close-up at 2hrs 3mins and full body at 2hrs 5 mins.) At 2:06:02, we see Le Borgne again only now he's wearing a mustard-colored vest and brick-colored slacks. At 2:06:18 -- 16 seconds later -- when we see Le Borgne once again, he's back to wearing the brown argyle sweater and tan slacks. Holy Continuity Errors, Batman!

I saw Suspiria last night. My verdict? Don't bother. As a horror movie, Suspiria didn't have a single scare. It makes the recent Halloween remake seem like a masterpiece of horror even though that movie isn't particularly scary either. Suspiria doesn't compensate for its failures as a horror movie by being great (or even good) camp. If Suspiria wasn't going to be good horror, I was hoping it would at least be a camp classic along the lines of Valley of the Dolls, Showgirls and Glitter. Alas, it was not to be. Even Tilda Swinton (in the old Joan Bennett part of Madame Blanc) intoning portentously on the dance didn't deliver enough pure camp. (And, truthfully, Susan Hayward [as Helen Lawson] lip-synching "I'll Plant My Own Tree" in Valley of the Dolls is scarier than anything in Suspiria.) There were three things I liked in Suspiria: Dakota Johnson (as Susie) performing a violent solo for Madame Blanc, which has an equally violent effect on Olga, another member of the company who has run afoul of the witches' coven. It's not scary but it is powerful. The Markos Tanz Theater performing its signature work, Volk, in one of the company's studios. The general look and period flavor (i.e. the constant background references to the Baader-Meinhof gang) of 1977-era Berlin. It's the complete antithesis of Dario Argento's conception of Berlin in the original.

The December 1970 issue of After Dark has a lot of content related to ABT, including an ad for its December 22 - January 10 season. Here's what the company and repertory looked like way back when: Principal Dancers Men: Erik Bruhn/Royes Fernandez/Ted Kivitt/Bruce Marks/Ivan Nagy/Michael Smuin/Gayle Young Wome: Eleanor D'Antuono/Carla Fracci/Cynthia Gregory/Toni Lander/Natalia Makarova/Mimi Paul/Lupe Serrano/Sallie Wilson The Season December 22: Special performance of Giselle "introducing Natalia Makarova with Erik Bruhn December 23-27: Coppelia December 29-January 10: A Rose for Miss Emily (premiere - Agnes de Mille) Ontogeny (premiere - Dennis Nahat) Schubertiade (premiere - Michael Smuin) Les Patineurs (revival - Frederick Ashton) Miss Julie (revival - Birgit Cullberg) "Plus 10 Repertoire Favoriites" That was the ABT world that was 48 years ago!

The New York Times picks up on the modern dance element (specifically Pina Bausch, Martha Graham and Mary Wigman) in Suspiria: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/arts/dance/luca-guadagnino-dance-suspiria-damien-jalet.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fdance&action=click&contentCollection=dance&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront I would take issue with this comment by director Luca Guadagnino, though: “Dario making it classical ballet was a big mistake, a misstep,” Mr. Guadagnino said. You don't watch Dario Argento's original version of Suspiria for acting, plot or theme. You watch it for color, mood and music (Goblin's score).

Allister Madin is leaving as well? I like the first photo of Josua Hoffalt in the following link: https://www.dansesaveclaplume.com/en-coulisse/1019424-adieux-a-la-scene-de-josua-hoffalt/ With the hair and the beard, he looks the part of Conrad in Le Corsaire.

Thanks for confirming Colette! Hoffalt retiring this week and Karl Paquette retiring in December leaves the ranks of the male etoiles in a depleted state: Mathieu Ganio Mathias Heymann Stephane Bullion Germain Louvet Hugo Marchand I would imagine that Francois Alu and Paul Marque are the two likeliest candidates for being made etoiles but who really knows with Alu? He has such an up-and-down relationship with management. Justice for Alu!

Has Josua Hoffalt also taken his last bow at the Opera?

I had the same reaction when I read that quote, especially the part about, "what the audience wants." The audience wants even more Peck/Ratmansky/Wheeldon -- really?

Regarding the Valse Fantasie coaching session, Clifford himself apologized online to Jared Angle for a certain misdirection during the session:

I don't think they can cancel dates for precisely the reason ABT Fan cites. Cancelling would make the company look like it is in even greater disarray than it is. As for substituting, who could they remove without burning bridges?

Happy 100th to Margarita Carmen Cansino a.k.a. Rita Hayworth -- born this day in 1918! Here's clip of Hayworth dancing "The Dance of the Seven Veils" from 1953's Salome (choreography by Valerie Bettis and costume by Jean Louis):

Those stats for Afterite are woeful given the size of the house. (Other Dances, Songs of Bukovina and Symphonie Concertante don't appear to be helping either.)

Neumeier's La Dame aux camellias, which premiered at the Stuttgart in 1978, turns 40 this year. It will be very well programmed this year and next: Stuttgart (Jan 18), Dutch National (Oct 18), Paris Opera (Nov 18), and Bayerisches Staatsballett and Polish National (both Jan 19).

Bel Air Classiques has released Alexander Ekman's Play on DVD and BluRay. Debuting at the Garnier in 2017 and recorded in December of that year, Play is Ekman's full-evening discursion into the notions of "play" and "work". Set to Mikael Karlsson's original (and at times very tuneful) original score, Ekman has divided Play into two acts -- the first being 45 minutes in length and the second being slightly longer. Ekman's "theme" (to the extent I can discern one) is that "play" is fun and "work" is drudgery. As these aren't exactly original or riveting insights, Play rises and falls both on its episodic set pieces and the dynamism of the Paris Opera Ballet (POB) dancers. Of the two sections, the first is the more entertaining because, well, it's more playful. The viewer gets to see the POB dancers romping about in various activities, including a "duet" between the coryphee Simon Le Borgne (in a star making performance), and (I think) the sujet Marion Barbeau which Ekman sets on large, white boxes. Also on hand for this is the coryphee Adrien Couvez (the hardest working man in French show business on the night), who acts as a kind of ball boy frantically moving the boxes around the stage for Barbeau. The first acts ends with the dramatic dropping of thousands of green balls onto the stage from the rafters, which the dancers then have the time of their lives playing in before the curtain falls. The second act suffers somewhat in comparison to the first as the "work" sections consist largely of monotonous tasks like repetitive walking. (Think of it as mild Lucinda Childs or Andy de Groat, which was already pretty mild.) The work section ends with Le Borgne rejecting the soul-crushing conformity of work by stripping off his somber clothes and walking off stage. (It's like a moment in a Martha Graham dance when the heroine experiences a moment of revelation.) But Ekman doesn't leave things there (although he probably should have.) The entire company returns to the stage one last time to throw plastic balls to the audience members before taking their bows to (it must be said) loud cheers. Let's get the good of Play out of the way first: It's undeniably entertaining. Some sections are more entertaining than others but my interest never flagged no matter how juvenile or just plain bizarre the stage action was. (And some of it is bizarre.) In the POB '2017-18 Season' thread, I suggested that Play might look like a big budget M-G-M production of 60s New York postmodern dance. Having now seen Play, I stand by that description. If Busby Berkeley had had a M-G-M-sized budget at his disposal and had decided to produce the hell out of Yvonne Rainer and Lucinda Childs and Trisha Brown, the result might look like Play. In addition, the dancers are clearly enjoying themselves and giving the material their all. In particular, Simon Le Borgne is a standout as 'The Boy in Orange' and he displays comic timing worthy of Buster Keaton. Finally, Karlsson's score is lively and diverting in its own right; the central theme being a particular standout. Now for the negative: I also stand by my prior speculation in the '2017-18 Season' thread as to what business a great classical company has performing something like Play. Ekman does use classical technique at times but to the extent he uses it it's as an adornment or affectation. Play's classicism has no life organic to itself and certainly any reasonably competent contemporary company could perform Play as well as the POB dancers. To that end, Ekman's use of the POB dancers' technique is truly vampiristic in that he exploits their obvious athleticism to make his movement ideas appear more significant than they really are. In and of itself, Play would be a harmless one-off. But given how the POB now performs contemporary or semi-contemporary spectacles like Pina Bausch's Le Sacre du Printemps, Maurice Bejart's Bolero and Crystal Pite's Seasons' Canon better that they do some standard works of classical and neo-classical repertory, the company's dynamism (and they are dynamic) in Play should be concerning.

Exactly. Given sufficient time and willingness, a City Ballet dancer could adapt to the Ashton (and Tudor) styles. But it wouldn't happen overnight. I wonder what the stats are for School of American Ballet (SAB) placements in foreign companies. When I look at the top ranks of the most prestigious Western European companies (the Dutch National, La Scala, the Paris Opera, the Royal, the Stuttgart), the SAB is barely represented. Only Nikolaj Hubbe's Royal Danish could be said to have a vibrant SAB presence at the top. (And, yes, I realize many of these companies have their own schools. But this just underscores that graduating from SAB is not necessarily a calling card overseas.)

I would agree with the first part of your statement but not the second. Regardless, his numerous posts on Instagram this week have undercut whatever end he's pursuing because they reveal him as being completely tactless and tone deaf. Haha -- which Los Angeles Ballet fiasco? And Victor Barbee and Kipling Houston too! When Suzanne Farrell had her hip replacement surgery, Arlene Croce wrote about how the teachers at the school were adapting the training so that dancers would be "trained up" to the demands of late-period Balanchine. The thought being that, by preparing the pupils for these demands, the risk of physical injury (of the kind that happened to Farrell) would be lessened. (Croce's point wasn't that the Balanchine method was destructive. Instead, she posited that Farrell's original training base was insufficient for the journey Balanchine and Farrell took together.) I take no issue with Clifford's Instagram posts about missing details as these posts are very informative. Where I part ways with him is his insistence that Balanchine's every utterance, no matter how lightly uttered, can be transformed into a basis for all future action for the dancers of today. I think of a lot of what Balanchine said was in the moment and him just being funny or trying to pull the leg of a gullible journalist. But people like Clifford act as if Balanchine's sayings should have the same force and application as the Hadith of Muhammed! (And while I'm carping, I don't think the Russians care what Clifford -- or Balanchine -- think/thought about Vaganova.)

I bought the May 1974 issue of Dance Magazine on eBay. It covers the 1974 Dance Magazine awards, which were given to Maurice Bejart, Gerald Arpino and Antony Tudor. Interestingly, Violette Verdy introduced Bejart at the ceremony. I never realized their paths had crossed but, apparently, they had known one another from a young age. (And Tudor's speech is great. He wisecracks that Dance Magazine is giving him the award for not doing anything for 25 years!) Elsewhere in the issue, there's a short interview with Bejart where he discusses a new work he's creating titled The Triumphs of Petrarch (or For the Sweet Memory of That Day.) It premiered in July 1974 and starred Jorge Donn, Suzanne Farrell and Rita Poelveorde.

What's especially unfortunate is that it's not by choice.

I agree. Taken together, Clifford's Instagram posts indicate that he's campaigning for the job and, furthermore, that he believes he is Balanchine's rightful successor. This from a dancer who was only with the company for 7 years! What I find bizarre about all of this is the Gatsby-esque implication to these posts. It's as if Clifford thinks he can recreate that moment in time (which clearly meant so much to him) exactly as it was. But just as Nick Carraway told Jay Gatsby that, "You can't repeat the past," Clifford (who, if by some miracle found himself as artistic director) wouldn't be able to repeat the past either. And Balanchine recognized as much at the end of his life.