richard53dog

I find too that there is a rather a diverse look to them. They don't seem to be chosen to fit a predeteremind set of body characteristics. Other companies/schools do this and it leads to a more uniform look overall but often this goes a bit too far into facelessness and as Mashinka notes, the Cubans aren't bland or faceless. As a defining trait there seems to me to be a tremendous focus on virtuosity which is sometimes amazing. But often I have a problem with the boundries between this terrific virtuosity and form, musicality, and taste. At their best the cubans can be wonderful and at their worst they can be crude and tasteless.

To sort of leapfrog off this statement, one of the issues I have with the current MT is that the effort for making these "beautiful lines" (some not so beautiful anyway in my eyes) sacrifices the actual movement itself for the quest for the beautiful position. I see a lot of actual movement in which individual steps are bluntly obvious. There is often little sense in blending them to create a stunning sense of movement or phrasing. It almost looks like a paint by numbers thing. Do this step. OK, do that step, do this....instead of a blended sequence of ....dancing....what a concept!

Oh, if anything, he is certainly very STRAIGHT. And you're right...it is definitely a particularity of the Cuban male dancers... That's SO comforting to know!

Well, I see your point but don't you think that a big issue is also the inconsistency in the reviewers themselves? Think about the differences in their expectations, just for starters and also, and I think this is a biggie, in their frame of references. I'm not that familiar with Flanders as a writer but she seems to have a complex set of standards she's using from detailed points of reference. Another reviewer, maybe with much less experience, may not even be aware of all the detail that Flanders is discussing and might have much more of a surface view of things. Often this goes along the line of accepting "common knowledge"; i.e. the Mariinky Theater is the best ballet company in the world and sets the standards , ergo a certain level of "quality" is taken on assumption. But going back to your original point, it certainly seems to me that there is a lot of inconsistency these days in the MT, both on the ballet, and to go a bit OT, on the opera side

Well, without going into this thread too deeply, I feel that the relentless promotion of Alina Somova is a very strong sign of something very worrying going on in the management of the MT.

Valdes is named after a site in Laos, where she spent her first years. I've read her father was Cuban ambassador to the Asian nation. I've also seen the Laotian name transliterated as Viengxay but like Viengsay, that would be a Western approximation of the original.

Yes, wouldn't you think so? It cuts the human intervention just about completely out of the process. There was a note connected with the "print-your-own"link that for this festival, the print charge was waived but my transactions were slow and I was afraid I might exceed the 15 minute limit for the cart and have to start over so I didn't click on the "print" link. I'll have to get my tix at the box office. I was very focused on getting through and kept trying each time a got the "try a few minutes later" message. So I was finished before 11:30 and got good, center Grand Tier tickets. But I was very, very persistent.

Hmmm... good point. Yes the ticket price is $10 with a $6 internet fee. And they were pushing the "print your own" ticket option too which also limits the City Center's expenses in processing these orders. With "print your own" there is basically no human involvement with each transaction.

Just a reminder for all those Fall for Dance Festival fans that tickets have gone on sale today. I used the website to make my purchase, it was a bit slow but I eventually got through. Don't give up!

Best of luck to Sascha with his new/old company!

I've looked for a Don Q dvd with N. Pavlova and can't find anything on Amazon. Is this the full-length ballet or just excerpts? [ Hmmmm, it doesn't seem to come up in an Amazon search, does it? It's a VAI release, here's a link to the VAI page with a full description (including the extra footage with Maya P from a 1964 Bolshoi Don Q) http://www.vaimusic.com/VIDEO/DVD_4407_DonQuixote.htm

The DVD version of this also has extended excerpts of Maya Plisetskaya in Don Quixote. A bit rough around the edges but bags and bags of charisma. She even does the 32 fouettes in the big pdd. She ****defines***** over-the-top!

And here I always thought the entrance to "old-fart-dom" was attending performances regularly, but insisting far and wide that they don't make them the way they used to. I think these are just two variations of the same idea. At the root is the idea that the best performance was in the past, has already happened, and will not be bested by anything in the future. Whether you whine about the inadequacies of the current performances compared to the one from the good ole days or take the affected stance that you you will not need to see anything since it couldn't possibly be better really boil down to the same thing. Greer's choice of words is rather odd and gives a hint of another twist to the mix. She is AFRAID to see another Brunnhilde because it MIGHT undermine her rosy memories of Hildy. Ms Greer, you need to get a life.

While I appreciate the sentiment, and have applied it temporarily, for example leaving at the end of the act after Vinson Cole sang Werther's monologue, not wanting anything to mar my memory of it. But it's hard for me to imagine, unless I was pretty sure I was at the end of my life, that I would boycott one of the greatest works of music and theater and miss the chance that I could hear a young great or soon-to-be-great or a singer I never appreciated but had an inspired performance. If I had decided that no one could ever dance Aurora like Fonteyn and boycotted "Sleeping Beauty", I would have missed any number of wonderful dancers in the role. (And, of course, some not very wonderful dancers in the role and some wonderful dancers I haven't liked in the role .) Thoughts? I had read this article a few days ago after being directed to it from an opera board. I thought the idea of avoiding future performances was silly, to say the least, time does NOT stand still and there are always new performances to explore. And who can tell when the next great experience will arise????? And my point of view goes back quite a ways at this point, I've been attending opera, ballet and theater performances for more than forty years. I hope NEVER to say, "ok, that's the best that that piece can be done, I don't have to see that particular work ever again" That would be entrance to official "old-fart-dom"

I really enjoyed the interview. Julie sounds like a charmer.

For that reason I would always fast forward Makarova's contribution on that tape. For me it's excruciating. Yeah, since you mentioned it first, I was sort of surprised at how chaotic her performance was. The comments about the tempo misunderstanding helped explain it, but it sure isn't one of her finer moments. And I admire her greatly.

This is one of the program's highlights for me too, along with the entrance of the Shades from Bayadere.

I was thinking the same thing. Today not so much is actually shown on tv live, much more is done after a delay. And the warts are edited out. But I guess that's a real consideration as the filming is now often destined to be a DVD "product" . I do get a kick out of how resourceful most performers are, I guess it is part of their professionalism to be ready for the unexpected and to deal with it.

Minkus in this case. I'm guessing the info on the VHS cover and/or the Ebay lister don't have a clue. This info is from the NYPL catalog, not from the info on Ebay. So blame the cataloger at NYPL! Going back to the performance itself, I recently was able to watch a friend's copy of this performance. It's a real mixed bag , some stuff I really liked and others that I didn't. But a unique moment is the camera catching Makar Vaziev realizing that his slipper was coming off in the middle of the Don Quixote pdd. He rips it the rest of the way off and tosses it to the side of the stage.

From some written sources, it seems like the wobble was there VERY early, back in her student days in Athens. According to some of her contemporaries quoted in The Unknown Callas:the Greek Years, Callas was troubled by a wobble in the early 40s. She worked with her teacher, Elvira di Hidalgo who gave her exercises to steady her voice and they seemed to have done the trick, at least temporarily. The Greek colleague offered that di Hidalgo felt the wobble was due to damage done to Callas diaphragm by her heavy singing as a small child. (Callas had a super example of a driven stage mother). A few years later, in the late 40s, Louise Casselotti (a friend and coach) is quoted in George Jellinek's bio of Callas as commenting that Casselotti heard some early performances of Callas in Italy as Turandot ca 1948 and that her top wavered badly in those performances. So it's fair to conclude that the unsteadiness was there from the beginning but was sometimes more noticeable than other times .

Isn't this just so true?? Just reading posts the last 5 years or so I've been on BT has exposed me to SO much history and knowledge that I would probably never have explored on my own. For instance, I knew who St Denis was and vaguely what her perfomance style was like. But it was a very sketchy outline and many, many details have been filled in by the posters who have written about her, her husband, her performance style, and her possible influences on the next generation of modern dance. Let me add my thanks to, and not just to the posters on this thread.

So this is how it feels to live in China. So much for the "worldwide web". I've run into this before with links to BBC. As it was explained to me the links only "work" from areas (UK, etc) that contribute to the liscensing fees the BBC receives. So like so many other things in the world today, it boils down to dollars and cents...er.. in this case pounds and pence. Actually, I have to admit that it makes "cents" to me.

The official reason given by the Met for Brewer's cancellation was slightly more complicated than her not being able to manuever around the stage because of her weight. No doubt this would have been an issue but the precise reason for the cancellation (officially, anyway) was a knee injury. Brewer had to resort to using a cane to walk for this same period last Spring. Of course it is very likely that the knee problem was aggravated by the amount of weight she is carrying around but the production requirements of the Schenk Ring production at the Met aren't all that rigorous. Back several seasons, the very heavy, none too mobile, Jane Eaglen managed to perform in the same production. I realize I am splitting hairs a bit here but I believe there may have been other issues involved. Also, I agree with abatt's disappointment; I would have loved to hear Brewer sing Brunnhilde with her stupendous voice. A terrific opportunity lost.....

I was looking at the DNB site recently and noticed that Radetsky photo no longer appeared in the principal dancer section. I wondered what happened. So this notice makes sense. Certainly I hope he winds up in a good position, hopefully back here in the US. Even back at ABT, I think he has both the talent and the drive to rise through the men's talent pool. I do think their are opportunities there as Bocca has retired and Malakhov appears to have left , Carreno (while dancing very well) is in his 40s and Corella is focusing so much on his new company. So my own hope would be that he would return to ABT, not that I have any information at all about his future plans.

I think White misses an important point. He suggests that "the weight loss was counterproductive"; which is probably true. But then he goes off track by proposing that you might have to be fat to sing. And to counter this, cites examples of noted singers who didn't carry around extra weight. But I think Voigt's problem was related to the rapid weight loss itself. Singers uses many areas of their entire torso to produce and support the sounds they make and if the whole muscle system changes, the entire mechanism is thrown off. The singer's technique needs to be retooled to adapt to the changes in the body's structure. And their are no guarantees that this adaptation will be successful. To be fair, their may have also been some other bits of decline setting in in Voigt's case at the same time. White seems to hover around the key point in mentioning Callas, who also lost weight very rapidly, but then gets himself sidetracked by the "do you HAVE to be fat to sing" question again. No, you don't need to be fat to sing, Mr White, but the whole process of singing is based on the entire body you have when you develop your technique and any significant changes can throw the whole mechanism off. Lots of singers have lost weight in the 30-40 lb area and have seemed ok afterward but the whole 100 lb plus type of loss seems to be much more complicated. To get away from the "fat" or " slim" issue, certain kinds of surgery can mess up a singer. Imgard Seefried gave birth to a child via caesarian section and found that her voice had changed drastically (and not for the good). Ljuba Welitsch had a gall bladder operation around the time her voice went into an unexpected decline. In these cases the sugeons had cut through abdominal muscles which made a significant change in an important part of the body the singers use to support their voice. Voigt had to suddenly cancel appearances at Covent Garden this summer, which may have prompted this article in the British Press. And the reason was a digestive ailment. At least Voigt can take consolation that overall she has put her body in a much more positive shape healthwise. And she needs to work with a vocal coach to try to retool her voice.