cinnamonswirl

Back from the Herrera/Stearns/Messmer Bayadere. Overall it was a good performance. It was beautiful to watch, but for me it didn't have the same emotional impact as Part/Gomes last night. Herrera seems better suited to Gamzatti to me, and her Nikiya was never quite enough -- not desperate enough in the confrontation with Gamzatti, not tragic enough in the solo before she dies, not quite ethereal enough in the Shades. And not helping matters, Stearns always screams all-American to me, in his looks and the physicality of his dancing. (Can someone please design a turban for him to wear during the Shades scene? With that curly hair he looks like a GQ or Ralph Lauren model who wandered out of an Indian-inspired photo shoot by accident.) On the other hand, Messmer is much closer to my idea of Gamzatti. Elegant, imperial and very glamorous. (Perhaps Abrera needs to try Messmer's trick of wearing tons of glitter on her false eyelashes!) And commanding - that moment at the end of the second act when Gamzatti walks (or stalks, in this case) towards Solor and he steps backwards, backing away from her ... wow. It was also nice to see someone do really clean fouettés, opening devant each time, then whipping to à la seconde before going to retiré. Joseph Phillips replaced Salstein as the Golden Idol (Salstein replaced Arron Scott as the Head Fakir) and was very impressive. Devon Teuscher gave a very elegant 2nd Shade variation.

Just back from the Part/Gomes/Abrera Bayadere. Part and Gomes were fantastic -- I always think they make a great pair, and that soft, gentle quality Part has really works as Nikiya. I was a bit worried how she'd do in the White Act, since her technique can be inconsistent, but it was all very smooth. Gomes was a top form, as per usual. He really is a terrific partner. I was disappointed with Abrera. Very dry and brittle. Gamzatti can be an ice queen, but she still needs to sparkle (cf Platel or Alexandrova). Abrera didn't sparkle at all, and her face had one expression through the entire evening. I guess the difference is that Platel and Alexandrova (and Part too) have an innate nobility, where as Abrera was acting it. Sarah Lane was a standout in the first Shade variation. I thought the corps looked pretty good in the Shades scenes in terms of synchronization. A bit more wobbly in the arabesques that I was expecting, but the patterns looked pretty sharp.

I absolutely agree, the lighting for Black Tuesday is terrible! When the stage is all spotty like that, and the dancers are wearing dark costumes and black shoes, all you can really see is their faces, arms and the middle of the legs. It's a waste of good dancing because you can barely see what they're doing. Thirteen Diversion is not diverting. Natalia, I would say bland! It's unoffensive and was very neatly executed, but it's also entirely unmemorable. The only striking thing about it is the lightning, I'm sorry to say. I went on Tuesday, so I saw the Manon and Don Q pd2s. In DonQ, Cornejo was on fire, as usual. I've never seen Reyes dance before - she struck me as very bland and perfunctory but technically competent (for the fouettes she did doubles with her arm in fifth -- and opened the fan.) Also, her tutu was so cheap looking! No wonder it started to unravel. The girls who dance Kitri's solo at YAGP usually have more elegant, refined tutus. Manon, on the other hand ... what a dream! Kent was absolutely luminous and very capably supported by Gomes. I've never liked Manon, but now I think maybe I've just never seen the right cast. If Kent/Gomes are cast the next time the full ballet is performed, I am absolutely getting tickets. In short - ABT's mixed bill = mixed bag. I see Gomes subbed for Simkin on Wednesday. He (Gomes) is dancing a LOT. I hope he stays healthy.

I know we have several Gilbert fans here so I thought I would post these vids. They're excerpts from her new DVDs for the Japanese market and show her and Alessio Carbone taking a typical class "of the French school" given by Gil Isoart. Her intro at the beginning of the videos is the same - once you get past that the excerpts are different. - barre - centerI assume they would have done retakes, but even so her technique just is unbelievable. Hopefully these will show up on Japanese Amazon (or any other website that will ship outside Japan) because I would love to see the entire class! (For any Japanese BalletAlerters, the DVDs are available from Fairy http://www.fairynet.co.jp, but as best I can tell Fairy does not ship internationally.)

I think typically the orchestra just does its thing and Odile does her thing. As long as the tempo stays the same, the dancer should know from rehearsal what she can fit in. (I did once see a performance where the orchestra's tempo increased during the can-can bars -- the result was not good.) Also, I'm not sure how the 32 fouettes fit in with the history of Swan Lake. (I'm going to go look at the Swan Lake history thread to see if this has already been discussed.) The Black Swan pas music typically used today is not what Tschaikovsky originally composed for the ballet. 32 fouettes was a trick done by Pierina Legani. I assume the other ladies who danced Odile weren't doing 32 fouettes (or maybe they were?) It wasn't until the '90s, I think, that doing the fouettes became standard. In the recordings of Pliesetskaya she does pique turns and chaines, for example, and some dancers did 16 and then piques or chaines. Also, to me the fouette music in SL is not really suited to fouettes (in the way the fouette music of Don Quixote is, for example). The music changes half way through -- a lot of dancers use that point to switch from doubles/triples to singles -- but I find it odd to have the music change on the same step like that.

Some nice photos of Kondaurova, Shirinkina, ?? and Fateev visiting the Kirov Academy in DC yesterday: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.341131219244746.84737.123720817652455&type=3&l=8124aa3067

I don't think we've reached a place where citing adultery in a divorce case is retrograde, and I can't imagine what reason could be more justified and germane. It's also a legal tactic, as well as an emotional or societal one. In this case, the plaintiff presumably has greater assets than the defendant, and she wants to protect those assets. It is therefore in the plaintiff's financial interest to ask for an at-fault divorce. If they had a prenup, it may have contained an infidelity clause as well.

Mearn's isn't really a turner, is she? I think she'd be wonderful in Embraceable You, but would struggle with My One and Only. It's hard, even for natural turners.

She does have sleepy claps! She also lacks the sharpness of attack that Pontois and Guillem had (and Gillot to a lesser extent), which is what makes the variation so interesting -- the contrast between the soft, floating bourrées and the crisp, snapping hand movements. This was a one-off gala performance and since I wasn't lucky enough to see her as Raymonda, I don't know if it is representative of what her performances were like during the full POB run when she would have be getting coaching and notes. As for the "headache" hand movements, Nureyev must have choreographed them because Pontois, Guillem and Gillot do them too. They don't leave their left hands up to the forehead for quite as long as Gilbert, so the movement is more transitory and less "J'ai mal à la tête." There are so many great Raymondas who deserve DVD releases - Pontois, Guillem, Lopatkina.

Gilbert is wonderful as Henriette. (Emilie Cozette danced Clémence in the recording.) I especially like Gilberts third act variation - the one with the Italian changements. Gilbert did dance Raymonda during the same run, and got the best reviews, but she was the newest étoile at the time and evidently they wanted the recording to go to someone more senior. Here is Gilbert's Claque variation, danced at a gala in Vietnam this fall: As for the DVD release, it was originally announced the the Robbins bill, taped the season before Raymonda, wouldn't be released on DVD (despite being broadcast on TV). But after several years in limbo, Bel Air Classiques brought it out this past summer. So perhaps there's hope for the Gillot Raymonda yet.

Sounds like Obraztsova may be leaving the Mariinsky. She was scheduled to dance Les Millions d'Arlequin in Japan in February, and the ABA just announced she has withdrawn from the performances because she is moving to a new company. http://www.nbaballet.org/news/index.html Osmolkina is replacing Obraztsova in Harlquin, BTW.

About the slow tempo last night - Kobborg implied in a tweet that recorded music would have been preferable!

I think you'll find Ludmila Pagliero is quite a divisive figure among French ballet fans. Most of the criticism seems to center around her not having "the house style," and veers into "she's not French/French-trained" territory. She's been quite heavily cast lately, and there was talk of her being named etoile after she got the opening night of La Source (after Pujol had to withdraw due to injury), but obviously that didn't happen. She was filmed for the DVD in La Source though. Personally, I like her a lot. She has a very clean style and a very calm stage presence. I'd love to see her in Balanchine. Here's her variation from the Concours where she was promoted to Premiere Danseuse - Robbins's "Other Dances" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJUZ7fGgWtk She also has an official website http://ludmilapagliero.com/ and is on Twitter @ludmilapagliero (although neither is particularly active).

Chelsea Clinton is on the board of directors of SAB. She also, conveniently, made her debut as TV reporter on Monday night. The violinist was Kurt Nikkanen, the NYCB orchestra concertmaster. Overall I enjoyed both performances. Fairchild wouldn't have been my choice for SPF, but I thought she was fine. I understand why Martins chose her; she always delivers clean, technically strong performances. Bouder was great - her phrasing is perfect for Dewdrop. My only quibble is that she has such strong facial expressions that when the camera zoomed in on her face (particularly during the HD broadcast), it really looked like she was mugging for the camera - something that doesn't come across during live performances because of the distance from the stage.

Ekaterina Krysanova was promoted to principal after a performance of Bright Stream this evening. http://www.bolshoi.ru/about/press/articles/2011/2012/ Congratulations to Miss Krysanova!

Kristin Sloan weighs in on NYCB's new media plan (or lack thereof): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristin-sloan/nycballetmedia-suite_b_1115741.html?ref=twitter&comm_ref=false

Detailed account from Kathryn Morgan about her struggle with hyperthyroidism in Ballet News: http://balletnews.co.uk/new-york-city-ballet-soloist-kathryn-morgan-from-the-wings-in-her-own-words/

Yes. I should have said "a driven young dancer," not "very driven." To be a professional you have to NEED to dance, not just like to perform. As for the absences, I do wonder why she was so frequently absent. When I didn't want to go to ballet when I was a kid, my parents made me go anyway. It does seem like she had absent parents and that there's more her family background than the Times story went into.

I definitely feel duped. To me, "Live from Lincoln Center" means a LIVE performance, not "live-on-tape," whatever that means. PBS should add a disclaimer. I bought HD tickets. I will have to leave work early, given the rush hour traffic, to make the 6pm curtain. To now know that I could save myself the trouble (and money!) by just watching the broadcast at home the following evening ... I understand why NYCB didn't want to advertise that it was going to be the same performance, but it stills feels like bait and switch. It definitely does not improve my already poor impression of NYCB's administrative workings.

ITA with Aurora. If she'd been at another school, I would say yes. But SAB was IT in those days, especially if you were in New York. I can certainly imagine being dismissed from SAB as demoralizing enough to crush even a very driven young dancer. She evidently wasn't getting a lot of support at home, which could have made a big difference. Add in the fact that she was famous for being an SAB student, and I don't think it's surprising she just quit ballet. I think most people have made decisions as a young adult that they regret later on. She just happened to be well-known for the path she was leaving.

Here's a vid of her in Aurora's first variation. Utterly charming. The same channel has more videos of Kaptsova (including other parts of Sleeping Beauty).

Nina Kaptsova was promoted to Principal Dancer after dancing Aurora last night. Announcement on the Bolshoi site (in Russian): http://www.bolshoi.r...cles/2011/1982/ Congratulations to Miss Kaptsova!!

I think in Spain he's been referred to as Jose Carlos Martinez for sometime. It was in France he was called Jose Martinez.

Cojocaru and Yoshida are in the same performance; Cojocaru dances Clara and Yoshida the Sugar Plum Fairy. Anthony Dowell is Drosselmeyer. The other film is from the '80s with Lesley Collier as the Sugar Plum Fairy and Dowell is her Prince. Clara is danced by Julie Rose. The production is basically the same between the 2, although they did make some changes. (I think Drosselmeyer's role is different, although I may be misremembering.) Personally I prefer the Collier version, although they are both highly enjoyable as Peter Wright's Nutcracker production is charming.

Principal dancers with major companies are relatively well remunerated. (Relatively being the operative word.) And don't forget endorsement deals. Irina & Max have their own line with Bloch, for example.