Dale

Ignore my message about splitting off Hallberg injury news. I merged them back

Official release: DAVID HALLBERG TO WITHDRAW FROM PERFORMANCES WITH AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE AT METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE Vladimir Shklyarov and Leonid Sarafanov to Appear as Guest Artists for 2015 Spring Season Principal Dancer David Hallberg will withdraw from performances with American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House in order to focus on his recovery from recent injuries. It was announced today by Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie. Hallberg was scheduled for 13 performances during the Company’s 2015 season at the Metropolitan Opera House. Hallberg required surgery last fall for a recurring foot injury. “It is with great regret that I must cancel the ABT Spring season, but my complete recovery is of utmost importance,” said Hallberg. “I greatly look forward to when I am back on stage and ready to dance with ABT once again.” Guest Artist Vladimir Shklyarov, a principal dancer with the Mariinsky Ballet, will replace Hallberg on Saturday evening, May 23, making his ABT debut as Albrecht in Giselle. Shklyarov previously danced Solor in La Bayadère with ABT in 2014. Guest Artist Leonid Sarafanov, a principal dancer with the Mikhailovsky Ballet, will replace Hallberg as Solor in performances of La Bayadère on Wednesday evening, June 3 and Saturday evening, June 6, and as Prince Désiré in The Sleeping Beauty on Wednesday evening, June 10. These performances will be Sarafanov’s first with American Ballet Theatre. For additional changes and more information on American Ballet Theatre, please visit www.abt.org

Carley is definitely missed by this board. I was recently thinking of a performance I saw and it briefly flashed in my mind, "Carley, remember when we saw...." Oh, right. I miss her enthusiasm and commitment to ballet and the board, as well as her cheerful company.

A release: AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE’S STUDIO COMPANY AND THE ABT JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS SCHOOL TO PERFORM AT PACE UNIVERSITY IN NEW YORK CITY, MARCH 13 – 14, 2015 American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company and the ABT Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School will appear at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at PACE University in New York City, March 13 – 14, 2015. The Studio Company will give one performance on Friday, March 13 at 7:30 PM and the ABT JKO School will give two performances on Saturday, March 14 at 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM. American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company program will include Stephen Mills’ Hush, Antony Tudor’s Little Improvisations and excerpts from Marius Petipa’s Le Corsaire and Merce Cunningham’s Duets. George Balanchine’s Valse Fantaisie, Tudor’s Soiree Musicale and excerpts from Les Sylphides will highlight the ABT JKO School programs on Saturday, March 14. The performances will also feature original choreography by ABT JKO School Artistic Director Franco De Vita, ABT National Training Curriculum Artistic Director Raymond Lukens and JKO School faculty member Marianna dello Joio. The matinee performance on March 14 will feature a special performance by students of the ABT JKO School Children’s Division choreographed by faculty members Harriet Clark, Pamela Levy, Flavio Salazar, Richard Bowman and Olga Dvorovenko. American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company, directed by Kate Lydon, is comprised of 14 dancers of outstanding potential aged 16-20. In addition to a schedule of classes including ballet technique, pointe, variations, partnering, modern, Pilates, men's strengthening, acting and dance history, the Studio Company gains performance experience through residencies, cultural exchanges and local performances. The ABT Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School serves approximately 300 students and encompasses a Pre-Professional Division for dancers ages 12-18 and a Children’s Division for dancers ages 3-14. Classes include classical ballet technique, pointe, partnering, men's class, character, modern technique, variations and Pilates. Instruction at the ABT JKO School is based on ABT's National Training Curriculum, which combines scientific principles with elements from the classic French, Italian and Russian schools of training. Tickets for American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company performance, beginning at $29, are available online (https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/938665), by phone (866-811-4111) or at the PACE University Box Office located at 3 Spruce Street, New York, NY. Tickets for the ABT JKO School performances, beginning at $29, are available online (https://web.ovationtix.com/tra/pr/943525), by phone (866-811-4111) or at the PACE University Box Office located at 3 Spruce Street, New York, NY.

This has been bouncing around on the web but I hadn't seen it discussed here. Video of a Q&A with Part:

The men's solo was added later, so the original would be shorter.

I'm less picky about my opera than I am about ballet, so I'm pretty pleased with the HD offerings for next season. Especially with Lulu, Elektra and Tannhauser.

And those are in color! I had only seen the clips of Square Dance in black and white.

Yeah, it's disappointing that the other CBC broadcasts haven't come out yet. I'm also eager for Divert 15. But they were releasing the Bell Telephone Hour before the CBC ones so maybe they just wanted to clear the boards. I had been waiting for the Sylvia and Square Dance.

I'm doing this on an iPhone I'm so excited. Hope this pastes right. From the page; LEGENDS OF BALLET: Stars of American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet A thrilling collection of performances by stars of American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet, including Jacques dAmboise, Allegra Kent, Lupe Serrano, Royes Fernandez, Violette Verdy, André Eglevsky, Melissa Hayden, as well as international dancers Alicia Alonso and Mia Slavenska. Highlights include New York City Ballets production of George Balanchines innovative ballet Square Dance, featuring the cast of the 1957 premiere, which included a square dance caller; the rarely performed Pas de Quatre with an all-star cast; the Rose Adagio Scene from Sleeping Beauty (choreographed by Eglevsky); scenes from Giselle and Sylvia, and more. Color performances from the Bell Telephone Hour, 1960-1965. Color, 68 minutes, 4:3, NTSC (Playable all regions) Square Dance (Balanchine) 13:25 Patricia Wilde, Nicholas Magallanes, New York City Ballet Corps de Ballet, with Elisha Keeler, caller and librettist Concerto for Art Lovers (Nelson) 7:43 Jacques dAmboise, Gene Nelson, Allegra Kent, Taina Elg Scenes from Romeo & Juliet and A Midsummer Nights Dream (Saddler) 9:46 Violette Verdy and Jacques dAmboise Pas de Quatre (Dolin) 10:41 Alicia Alonso, Melissa Hayden, Nora Kaye, Mia Slavenska The Sleeping Beauty: Aurora's Act I Variation, Jewels Variation, and Rose Adagio (Eglevsky) 9:25 Melissa Hayden, André Eglevsky, Francisco Moncion, Conrad Ludlow, Michael Lland Giselle: Act II Pas de Deux & Finale (Eglevsky) 7:38 Lupe Serrano, Royes Fernandez Sylvia: Pas de Deux (Balanchine) 8:26 Allegra Kent, Jacques dAmboise

VAI has another great new release: http://www.vaimusic.com/product/4581.html

Thank you, Natalia. I hope some of the lectures can be put online. Your reports are great.

The release: RUSSIAN MOVEMENT CULTURE OF THE 1920S AND 1930S An International Symposium Organized by Lynn Garafola and Catharine Nepomnyashchy Thursday, February 12 - Saturday, February 14 In the years that followed the Russian Revolution theorists and practitioners of movement feverishly explored ways to remake the human body. In studios and theater laboratories, choreographers explored new movement languages, seeking materials for a new Soviet body in acrobatics, “free movement,” physical culture, popular dance, music-hall styles, and even ballet. By the 1930s this experimental impulse was largely spent. However, ballet had absorbed many of its core ideas: the new Soviet man as expressed in ballet of the 1930s was “muscular” and athletic. He tossed partners in the air and held them overhead in spectacular lifts. His body told a plain story, free of dreaminess and unembellished by stylistic niceties, and he often embodied the “others” of the Soviet periphery in vigorous national dances. A distinctive Soviet approach to choreography and performance, reflected above all in Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet, had been born. Meanwhile in the communities of “Russia Abroad” the experimental impulse of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes gave way in the 1930s to works that revealed only a tenuous sense of Russian identity. Yet ballet itself was now widely viewed as a Russian (as opposed to Italian or French) phenomenon, an art dominated by émigré teachers, dancers, and choreographers. They brought with them a belief in ballet as a high art exemplifying refinement and good manners, and a passion for the ballerina eclipsed by Diaghilev’s promotion of the male dancer. Echoes of surrealism appeared in many ballets, and there was a growing number of semi-plotless works. As period footage makes clear, by World War II the ballet communities of Soviet Russia and Russia Abroad had little in common. World War II divided the European émigré ballet community. The major Ballets Russes companies fled to the United States, where their dancers and choreographers quickly put down roots. Meanwhile, in Europe, others, including Serge Lifar, ballet director of the Paris Opéra and a member of the émigré elite, collaborated with the Germans. With an international roster of scholars, Russian Movement Culture of the 1920s and 1930s will explore these pivotal decades in the evolution of Russian ballet and the making of a modern Russian body both in Russia itself and abroad. Where: School of International and Public Affairs 420 West 118th Street, New York, NY 10027 Free and open to the public. About the Speakers Aleksandar Boškovic' is a specialist in Russian and Balkan modernism. He completed his Ph.D. in Slavic literatures at University of Michigan and joined the Columbia Slavic department in 2013, where he now teaches. His first book, The Poetic Humor in Vasko Popa’s Oeuvre, was published in 2008 by the Institute for Literature and Art in Belgrade, where he was previously employed. His recent articles on digital mnemonics and Yugonostalgia are published in Digital Icons (2014) and Slavic Review (2013), respectively, while his study on Yuri Rozhkov’s photomontages for Mayakovsky’s propagandistic poem “To the Workers of Kursk” is included in the Russian reconstruction of the unpublished 1924 book (2014). His current research focuses on the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary exploration of photopoetry and bioscopic books within Slavic avant-gardes. Christina Ezrahi is an independent scholar based in Tel Aviv and London specializing in the history of Russian ballet. She was educated at the universities of Princeton, Oxford, and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. Her recent book Swans of the Kremlin. Ballet and Power in Soviet Russia investigates the collision of art and politics at the Maryinsky/Kirov and Bolshoi Ballet companies during the volatile first fifty years of Soviet power. A frequent commentator on Russian ballet in the international media, she is currently working on a biography of the Kirov Ballet character dancer Nina Anisimova (1909-1979). Mark Franko is Professor of Dance and Coordinator of Graduate Studies, Boyer College of Music and Dance, Temple University, and Professor in Performance and Visual Studies, School of Performing Arts and Media, Middlesex University (London). He has published six books: Martha Graham in Love and War: The Life in the Work; Excursion for Miracles: Paul Sanasardo, Donya Feuer, and Studio for Dance; The Work of Dance: Labor, Movement, and Identity in the 1930s; Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics; Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body; The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography. He is editor of Dance Research Journal and founding editor of the Oxford Studies in Dance Theory book series. He is recipient of the 2011 Outstanding Scholarly Research in Dance Award from the Congress in Research in Dance. Lynn Garafola is a Professor of Dance at Barnard College, Columbia University. A dance historian and critic, she is the author of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance, and the editor of several books, including The Diaries of Marius Petipa (which she also translated), André Levinson on Dance: Writings from Paris in the Twenties (with Joan Acocella); Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet; and The Ballets Russes and Its World. She has curated the exhibitions Dance for a City: Fifty Years of the New York City Ballet (at the New-York Historical Society); 500 Years of Italian Dance: Treasures from the Cia Fornaroli Collection (with Patrizia Veroli), New York Story: Jerome Robbins and His World, and Diaghilev’s Theater of Marvels: The Ballets Russes and Its Aftermath (all at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts). A former Guggenheim fellow, she is writing a book about the choreographer Bronislava Nijinska. Susan Grant, Ph.D., is an Irish Research Council/Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow, based for two years at the University of Toronto and now at University College Dublin. Her research interests include Russian and Soviet history, the history of sport and physical culture, and the history of health care. Her monograph, Physical Culture and Sport in Soviet Society: Propaganda, Acculturation, and Transformation in the 1920s and 1930s (2012), focuses on physical culture during the first two decades of Soviet power, examining the origins of Soviet physical culture and showing how the ideology of physical culture was applied in an attempt to modernize and civilize Soviet citizens. She is currently working on a history of Soviet nursing during the interwar period, exploring issues of professionalism, gender, and care. Marion Kant earned her Ph.D. in Musicology at Humboldt University, Berlin. She teaches at the University of Cambridge in the German Department and at the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of research focus on modernism and its manifestations in nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe, particularly on German movement cultures, Romantic ballet, the history and aesthetics of early twentieth-century avantgarde movements and the arts during the Weimar Republic, the evolution of Nazi ideology and Nazi aesthetics, and the anti-fascist exile of artists and critics. With the musicians Sam Hsu and Marshall Taylor she organized a concert series on “Degenerate Music” – the music banned by the Nazis. More than ten concerts have taken place. Edward Kasinec holds graduate degrees from Columbia University (M.A., 1968, M.Phil., 1979), and Simmons College (M.L.S., 1976). In addition he has been awarded a Certificate in Appraisal Studies (Fine and Decorative Arts, 2010) from New York University. His professional career includes service as Reference Librarian/Archivist for the Harvard University Library and the Ukrainian Research Institute Library (1973-80); Librarian for Slavic Collections, University of California, Berkeley, Library (1980-84); and Curator, Slavic and Baltic Division, The New York Public Library (1984-2009; 2009-2011, as Staff Advisor to the Exhibitions Program). He presently holds appointment as a Staff Associate, Harriman Institute, Columbia University. He is the author of more than two hundred refereed articles and books and has been acknowledged in equally as many academic publications. Elizabeth Kendall is a dance and culture critic and a professor of Writing/Literary Studies at New School (Eugene Lang College and Liberal Studies graduate faculties). Her book Balanchine and the Lost Muse: Revolution and the Making of a Choreographer, was published in July 2013 by Oxford University Press. She has also written Where She Danced: The Birth of American Art Dance; The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the l930’s; two memoirs, American Daughter and Autobiography of a Wardrobe, and many magazine, newspaper, and journal articles. She has received fellowships from the Rockefeller, Guggenheim, and Fulbright Foundations, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, Russia’s Likhachev Foundation, and CUNY’s Levy Center for Biography. She is working at present on Rudolf Nureyev (a small book) and on Balanchine before the founding of the NYCB. Anna Kisselgoff was Chief Dance Critic of the New York Times from 1977 to 2005. Earlier, she had worked as a dance critic and cultural news reporter for the paper, and she continued as a staff writer until leaving the Times in 2006. She remains a contributor to the Times and other publications . Over the years, she has reviewed ballet, modern dance, ethnic dance, tap dance, Michael Jackson – and at the 1988 Olympics – ice dancing and the rodeo. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, she holds an M.A. in European history and an M.S. in Journalism, both from Columbia University, where she has received alumni awards in both fields. Other awards for her writing include the Order of the Dannebrog from Denmark and the Order of Arts and Letters from the French Government. The President of Iceland personally awarded her the Order of the Falcon. She studied ballet in New York with Jean Yazvinsky, a dancer in Diaghilev 's Ballets Russes. She has taught at Yale University, Barnard College, and Hollins University. Sanja Andus L’Hotellier is a dance historian, who received her Ph.D. from the Université de Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis where she is an Associate Researcher. Her book Les Archives Internationales de la Danse-Un projet inachevé 1931-1952 was published by Ressouvenances in 2012. She has served on research projects with the Dance Museum, Centre National de la Danse, Institut Mémoires de l'édition contemporaine (IMEC), and Mas de la Danse and has received research awards from the French Ministry of Culture, Rolf de Maré Foundation, and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A Visiting Scholar in History at Columbia University from 2011-2013, she is a fellow of the Columbia Oral History Institute. Her current work focuses on the Bennington Summer School of the Dance Oral History Project. She is on the editorial board of SDHS. Nicoletta Misler was until she retired, Professor of Russian and East European Art at the Università di Napoli "L' Orientale" in Italy. Her academic interests range from the artists and philosophers of Russian Modernism such as Kazimir Malevich, Pavel Filonov, and Pavel Florensky to the free dance in Soviet Russia in the 1920s and 1930s, and she has published widely on these subjects. She has organized major exhibitions in Rome and Moscow and is now preparing an English-language version of her Russian monograph on the art of movement in Moscow in the 1910s-1930s, V nachale bylo telo [in the beginning was the body]. She has also written extensively on Soviet architecture publishing articles on Ivan Leonidov, Yakov Chernikhov, and others. The recipient of many international fellowships, she has conducted research in Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, and the United States. She has been a visiting scholar at universities in Australia, Israel, and the United States. Simon Morrison, Professor of Music at Princeton University, specializes in Russian and French music of the twentieth century. He has conducted research in St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Paris, London, New York, and extensively in Moscow. Morrison is the author of Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement (California, 2002) and The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years (Oxford, 2009) as well as editor of Prokofiev and His World (Princeton, 2008). His articles have appeared in Journal of the American Musicological Society, 19th-Century Music, Cambridge Opera Journal, Journal of Musicology, Music & Letters, and Slavic Review. Currently he is writing a history of the Bolshoi Ballet, under contract with Norton, and restoring the score of Cole Porter’s ballet Within the Quota. In 2008, Morrison restored the scenario and score of the original (1935) version of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet for the Mark Morris Dance Group. Catharine Nepomnyashchy is Professor of Russian Literature and Culture and Chair of the Slavic Department at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her books include Abram Tertz and the Poetics of Crime (Yale, 1995); Strolls with Pushkin, which she translated with Slava Yastremski and for which she wrote the introduction (Yale, 1993); Under the Sky of My Africa: Alexander Pushkin and Blackness, edited with Nicole Svobodny and Ludmilla Trigos (Northwestern 2006); and Mapping the Feminine: Russian Women and Cultural Difference, edited with Irina Reyfman and Hilde Hoogenboom (Slavica, 2008). She has published extensively on Soviet and post-Soviet literature and popular culture, Pushkin, Russian ballet, Russian émigré literature and culture, and the future of regional studies. She is currently working on a book entitled Nabokov and His Enemies: Terms of Engagement. She is a former Director of the Harriman Institute. Serguei Oushakine is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton, where he directs the Program in Russian and Eurasian Studies. His research is concerned with transitional processes and situations: from the formation of newly independent national cultures after the collapse of the Soviet Union to post-traumatic identities and hybrid cultural forms. His current project explores Eurasian postcoloniality as a means of affective reformatting of the past and as a form of retroactive victimhood. Oushakine edited special collections of essays(in English and Russian) on affect and cinema, new materialism, early Soviet laughter, contemporary nomadism, and architectural memories. His research was supported by the Social Science Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Council for East European and Eurasian Research, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. During 2014-2015, Oushakine is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Robert O. Paxton is professor emeritus of Modern European History at Columbia University. He specializes in the history of Europe in the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on fascism and on the collaborationist government of Marshal Pétain that ran the unoccupied part of France during the German occupation of 1940-1944. Among his works are Parades and Politics at Vichy (1966), Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order (1972, new ed. 2001), Vichy France and the Jews (with Michael Marrus) (1981), French Peasant Fascism (1997), and The Anatomy of Fascism (2004). His textbook Twentieth Century Europe, now with Julie Hessler, is in its fifth edition (2011). Janice Ross, Professor, Theatre and Performance Studies Department, at Stanford University, is the author of Like A Bomb Going Off: Leonid Yakobson and Ballet as Resistance in Soviet Russia (Yale University Press January 2015). Her books include: Anna Halprin: Experience as Dance (2007), San Francisco Ballet at 75 (2007) and Moving Lessons: Margaret H’Doubler and The Beginning of Dance in American Education (2001). Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright Scholar Fellowship, Stanford Humanities Center Fellowships, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture Fellowship, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. For ten years she was staff dance critic for The Oakland Tribune and for twenty years the San Francisco contributing editor to Dance Magazine. She is past president of both the Society of Dance History Scholars and the Dance Critics Association. Tim Scholl is a scholar of Russian and a dance historian who has written two books on the history of Russian dance: From Petipa to Balanchine, Classical Revival and the Modernization of Ballet (Routledge 1994) and Sleeping Beauty, A Legend in Progress (Yale 2004). Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at Oberlin College, Scholl is also a docent in the Theatre Research Department of Helsinki University, where he held a Fulbright teaching/research fellowship in 2000-01. His current research examines Russian and Soviet ballet as an artifact of empire and explores the ballet’s engagement with borders and borderlands, from the purported foreign “domination” of the Russian ballet in the nineteenth century through the cultural exchange process of the Cold-War period. Irina Sirotkina received her Candidate of Science degree from the Moscow State University and her Ph.D. from the University of Manchester. She is full-time Researcher at the Institute for History of Science and Technology in Moscow. Her first book, Diagnosing Literary Genius: A Cultural History of Psychiatry in Russia, 1880-1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002) was awarded the MLA Award in Slavic Literature and Languages. In the last decade she has worked extensively on the dance and movement culture in Russia. Her book, Free Movement and Modern Dance in Russia, came out in Moscow in 2012, and her latest book, The Sixth Sense of the Avant-Garde: Dance, Movement, Kinaesthesia in the Lives of Poets and Artists, was published by the European University Press in St. Petersburg in 2014. She is also a recreational dancer in a “musical movement” group and writes dance criticism. Edward Tyerman is a Term Assistant Professor in the Slavic Department at Barnard College, Columbia University. His research focuses on Russian literature and culture of the twentieth century, with a comparative interest in modern Chinese culture and experiences of socialism and post-socialism across greater Eurasia. He is currently at work on turning his Ph.D. dissertation, “The Search for an Internationalist Aesthetics: Soviet Images of China, 1920–1935” (Columbia, 2014) into a book manuscript. This project argues that the aesthetic representation of internationalist ideology in early Soviet culture found its fullest expression through the variety of aesthetic strategies used to re-imagine China, via multiple media including film, theater, ballet, and documentary writing, as the next scene of socialist revolution. Elizabeth Kridl Valkenier, Harriman Scholar, Columbia University, has specialized, taught, and published in two fields – Soviet foreign policy and history of Russian art. Her publications include: Soviet Union and the Third World: An Economic Bind; Russian Realist Art, the State and Society; biographies of Ily Repin and Valentin Serov, and two edited volumes – an anthology on Russian realist art and on the Wanderers (Peredvizhniki), as well as numerous chapters and articles for academic publications. Patrizia Veroli is an independent dance scholar from Rome, Italy. The author and co-author of several books, she taught at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” from 2004-2010. In addition she has co-edited the journal La danza Italiana and curated with Lynn Garafola the exhibition Five Hundred Years of Italian Dance (The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 2006). Among the volumes she has coedited are Les Archives Internationales de la Danse 1931-1952 (2006), Omaggio a Djagilev (2011), and I Ballets Russes di Diaghilev tra storia e mito (2013). A member of the Advisory Board of Dance Chronicle and Recherches en danse, she is currently the President of the Italian Association for Dance Research. James von Geldern is Professor of International Studies and Russian at Macalester College, where he teaches courses on Soviet culture and international law. He is author of Bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1920, co-author of Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays and Folklore, 1917-1953 (1995), and Entertaining Tsarist Russia: Urban Entertainments, 1798-1917 (1998, and co-developer of the website Seventeen Moments in Soviet History (soviethistory.macalester.edu). He is also a practicing attorney, representing asylum seekers pro bono in collaboration with the Advocates for Human Rights of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Richard Wortman, James Bryce Professor Emeritus of European Legal History, specializes in the history of imperial Russia. His publications include Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy. Volume One: From Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton University Press, 1995), and the second volume of the work From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II (Princeton University Press, 2000), (Russian translation, OGI Press, 2004), which was awarded the George L. Mosse prize of the American Historical Association. The two volumes were awarded the 2006 Efim Etkind prize of the St. Petersburg European University for the best western work on Russian culture and literature. RUSSIAN MOVEMENT CULTURE OF THE 1920S AND 1930S An International Symposium The Harriman Institute Thursday, February 12, to Saturday, February 14, 2015 Organized by Lynn Garafola and Catharine Nepomnyashchy Program All sessions take place at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, 420 West 118th Street, New York, NY 10027. Thursday, 12 February 2015 (1501 SIA) 4:30-6:00 Opening and keynote address 4:40-4:45 Welcome: Timothy Frye, Director, Harriman Institute 4:45-5:00 Symposium welcome: Catherine Nempomnyashchy/Lynn Garafola 5:00-6:00 Keynote: Simon Morrison, “How the Bolshoi Ballet Survived the Revolution” 6:00-7:00 Reception (lobby) Friday, 13 February 2015 (1512 SIA) 10:00-12:15 Making the New Soviet Body Introduced by Aleksandar Boškovic' Nicoletta Misler, “Feeling, Sentiment, and the Soviet Body: From Isadora Duncan to the Russian Avant-Garde” Irina Sirotkina, “Choreographing Physical Culture: Between War, Theater, and Circus” Susan Grant, “Bodies in Motion: Physical Culture and the Construction of the New Soviet Person” James Von Geldern, “‘How Wide is My Motherland’: Moving through Space and Time in Aleksandrov’s Musicals” Discussant: Serguei Oushakine Q&A (15 minutes): 12:15-12:45 Dancing in Soviet Russia: footage 12:45-2:00 Lunch 2:00-4:30 A New Soviet Ballet Introduced by Anna Kisselgoff Edward Tyerman, “The Red Poppy and 1927: Translating Contemporary China into Early Soviet Ballet” Janice Ross, “Leonid Yakobson’s Muscular Choreography and The Golden Age” Tim Scholl, “From Moscow and Back: Creating and Assessing the ‘National’ Ballets of Caucasia in the 1930s” Christina Ezrahi, "Experiments in Character Dance: From Leningrad's Estrada to the Kirov Ballet” Discussant: Irina Klyagin Q&A (15 minutes) 4:30-4:45 Break (15 minutes) 4:45-5:30 Alexei Ratmansky’s recreations of Bolt and Flames of Paris, excerpts introduced by Irina Klyagin. Saturday, 14 February 2015 10:00-12:45 The Problematical Career of Serge Lifar Introduced by Richard Wortman Patrizia Veroli, “Modest L. Gofman as the Ghostwriter of Serge Lifar’s Early Books” Mark Franko, “The Politics of Serge Lifar” Sanja Andus L’Hotellier, “Lifar in Oral Histories of the Archives Internationales de la Danse” Edward Kasinec, “The 1830 Pushkin Letters to Goncharova: Their Twentieth-Century Fate” Discussant: Robert Paxton Q&A (15 minutes) 12:45-2:00 Lunch 2:00-5:30 Emigré Bodies Introduced by Elizabeth Valkenier Marion Kant, “Russian Ballet in Berlin After 1917" Daria Khitova, “Nijinsky’s Afterimages in Eisenstein’s and Chaplin’s Eyes” Elizabeth Kendall, “Balanchine, Cotillon, and the ‘Baby Ballerinas’” Lynn Garafola, “Soviet Bodies, Emigré Bodies: Bronislava Nijinska’s Career in the Late 1920s and 1930s” Dancers of Russia Abroad (footage) Discussant: Tatiana Smolyarova Q&A (15 minutes) Conclusions: Lynn Garafola & Simon Morrison

I'm not sure I agree with this analogy, but you might notice more reviews for NYCB in the NY Times because NYCB has more performances here than any other company. It has the Fall season, Nutcracker season, Winter season and Spring season, plus the SAB workshop performance. All multi-week seasons. ABT plays 2 weeks in the fall, 2 weeks at BAM for Nutcracker (which is leaving next year) and the Spring Season. And I'm a sports journalist and this idea that the sports media is run by some Yankees-loving cabal is a huge mistake. Our current EIC and executive editor are Cubs fans

Here's the official press release: Ric Burns' New Documentary American Ballet Theatre at 75 Premieres Nationwide on THIRTEEN's American Masters Series Friday, May 15 on PBS in Honor of the Company's 75th Anniversary Connect with more than 200 cultural icons at pbs.org/americanmasters THIRTEEN's American Masters series teams up with Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Ric Burns to co-produce a new documentary about American Ballet Theatre (ABT) in honor of its 75th anniversary. American Masters: American Ballet Theatre at 75 premieres nationwide Friday, May 15, 2015 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Delving into the rich history of one of the world's preeminent ballet companies, Burns combines intimate rehearsal footage, virtuoso performances and interviews with American Ballet Theatre's key figures: artists pivotal to the company's formation, including Alicia Alonso and the late Donald Saddler and Frederic Franklin; contemporary luminaries, including dancers Susan Jaffe and Julie Kent, choreographer Alexei Ratmansky and artistic director Kevin McKenzie; past and present stars Misty Copeland, Gillian Murphy, Marcelo Gomes and Hee Seo; dance historian and author Jennifer Homans; and prominent dance critics Anna Kisselgoff and the late Clive Barnes. "The story of American Ballet Theatre, and the breathtaking rise of dance in the U.S. over the last three-quarters of a century, is one of the most inspiring stories in the cultural world," says Burns. "Ballet is the most poignantly ephemeral and expressive of all the arts, both earthbound and transcendent. And ABT, indisputably one of the greatest dance companies in the world, has torn down an incredible number of barriers, welcoming choreographers of every kind and dancers from around the world." "As we approach our 75th year, it is a tremendous honor to have Ric Burns and American Masters illuminate ABT's history in such a rich and meaningful way," said Rachel Moore, CEO of American Ballet Theatre. "I am certain the expertise and care Ric and his team have devoted to this film will offer a fresh perspective on our art form and serve as a fitting testament to this cultural institution." American Masters: American Ballet Theatre at 75 chronicles the rise of the company from its earliest days as a small, financially struggling collective, to its pinnacle as one of the most respected and revered dance companies in the world. Beginning film production in 2006, Burns was given unprecedented access to the company and shot hundreds of hours of original footage, including dramatic live performances in Paris and Havana, grueling rehearsals at ABT's flagship studio in New York City and slow-motion captures at Kaatsbaan International Dance Center in Tivoli, N.Y. The footage from Kaatsbaan features iconic dances by nine ABT dancers, including Copeland, Murphy, Seo, Gomes, Isabella Boylston, Herman Cornejo, Daniil Simkin, Joseph Gorak and Cory Stearns, chosen by McKenzie for their diversity and breadth of talent to illustrate the ABT dancers' formidable technicality, intricate artistry and nuanced emotion. Shot by Emmy-winning cinematographer Buddy Squires and a 30-person crew using Phantom Flex cameras - which capture up to 2,500 frames per second and brings to life even the smallest of movements - the footage brings a new dimension to the understanding of the extraordinary efforts made in the perfection of form: from the delicate placement of a fingertip to the perfectly executed jeté. Combined with hundreds of carefully curated stills from archives across the country and rare footage of ballet icons Jerome Robbins, George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Twyla Tharp and Mikhail Baryshnikov, American Masters: American Ballet Theatre at 75provides a comprehensive inside look at American Ballet Theatre and the world of professional ballet. "Ric has created an entertaining film that will touch and transform both seasoned aficionados and those who never have seen a ballet," says Michael Kantor, executive producer of American Masters. Launched in 1986, American Masters has earned 28 Emmy Awards - including 10 for Outstanding Non-Fiction Series since 1999 and five for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special - 12 Peabodys, an Oscar, three Grammys, two Producers Guild Awards and many other honors. Now in its 29th season on PBS, the series is a production of THIRTEEN PRODUCTIONS LLC for WNET and also seen on the WORLD channel. To take American Masters beyond the television broadcast and further explore the themes, stories and personalities of masters past and present, the series' companion website (http://pbs.org/americanmasters) offers streaming video of select films, interviews, photos, outtakes, essays and more. American Masters: American Ballet Theatre at 75is a production of Steeplechase Films, Inc. and THIRTEEN Production LLC's American Masters for WNET. Ric Burns is producer and director. Bonnie Lafave is producer. Emily Williams and Mikaela Shwer are editors. Katie O'Rourke is co-producer for Steeplechase Films. Susan Lacy and Michael Kantor are executive producers. Funding for American Masters: American Ballet Theatre at 75 is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Rosalind P. Walter, Lewis Ranieri, Madeline Eckett Oden, and Ruth and Harold Newman and Jody and John Arnhold. American Masters is made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Rosalind P. Walter, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Rhoda Herrick, Vital Projects Fund, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, Jack Rudin, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation and public television viewers. About WNET As New York's flagship public media provider and the parent company of THIRTEEN and WLIW21 and operator of NJTV, WNET brings quality arts, education and public affairs programming to more than 5 million viewers each week. WNET produces and presents such acclaimed PBS series as Nature, Great Performances, American Masters, PBS NewsHour Weekend, Charlie Rose and a range of documentaries, children's programs, and local news and cultural offerings available on air and online. Pioneers in educational programming, WNET has created such groundbreaking series as Get the Math, Oh Noah! and Cyberchase and provides tools for educators that bring compelling content to life in the classroom and at home. WNET highlights the tri-state's unique culture and diverse communities through NYC-ARTS, Reel 13, NJTV News with Mary Alice Williams and MetroFocus, the multi-platform news magazine focusing on the New York region. WNET is also a leader in connecting with viewers on emerging platforms, including the THIRTEEN Explore App where users can stream PBS content for free. About Ric Burns & Steeplechase Films Steeplechase Films is the award-winning production company founded by Ric Burns in 1989. Over the past two decades, it has become one of PBS' most trusted and honored collaborators, making a mainstay of bringing quality programming to public television and redefining the way audiences engage with American history. Director, writer and producer Ric Burnsbegan his career co-writing and producing the celebrated PBS series The Civil War and has since directed over 30 hours of award-winning films, including Coney Island, The Donner Party, New York: A Documentary Film, Ansel Adams, Eugene O'Neill, Andy Warhol, Into the Deep: America, Whaling and the World and Death and the Civil War. American Masters websites: http://pbs.org/americanmasters http://facebook.com/americanmasters @PBSAmerMasters http://pbsamericanmasters.tumblr.com http://instagram.com/pbsamericanmasters http://youtube.com/AmericanMastersPBS #AmericanMasters

Press release: NEW YORK CITY BALLET PRESENTS THIRD ANNUAL ART SERIES DURING 2015 WINTER SEASON Dustin Yellin, the Brooklyn-Based Artist and Founder of Pioneer Works, To Create Large-Scale Installation Featuring Fifteen 3,000-Pound Glass Sculptures The Installation Will Be on Display at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center Throughout NYCB’s 2015 Winter Season January 20 through March 1 Single Tickets for Three Special Art Series Performances on February 12, 19 and 27 To Go on Sale at Noon on Monday, January 12 All Tickets $29 and All Audience Members at These Three Performances Will Receive a Limited-Edition Commemorative Takeaway Created by Dustin Yellin New York City Ballet will present the third installation of its acclaimed Art Series initiative during the Company’s 2015 Winter Season. Launched in 2013, the New York City Ballet Art Series features annual collaborations between NYCB and contemporary visual artists who create original works inspired by NYCB for exhibition at the Company’s home, the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. For the 2015 Art Series, NYCB has commissioned an installation from Dustin Yellin, the Brooklyn- based artist and founder of Red Hook’s Pioneer Works. Yellin’s body of work, which includes paintings, drawings, installation, performance and sculpture, has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries in New York, as well as internationally. For the 2015 Art Series installation, Yellin will exhibit 15 works created as part of an ongoing project that when finished will consist of 100 large-scale glass and mixed-media sculptures each weighing more than 3,000 pounds. Yellin calls the sculptures, which resemble multi-dimensional human forms encapsulated in suspended animation, Psychogeographies, as they feel like maps of the psyche. The installation will be on display from January 20 through March 1 during all of NYCB’s 2015 Winter Season performances. NYCB will also host free, open hours for the general public to view the exhibition on the following dates: Thursday, February 12 through Sunday, February 22 – Mondays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays from 10 a.m. to noon; and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. In addition, NYCB will hold three special Art Series performances, which will take place on Thursday, February 12 (All Balanchine -- Serenade, Agon, and Symphony in C); Thursday, February 19 (Peter Martins’ Hallelujah Junction, Christopher Wheeldon’s A Place for Us, and Jerome Robbins’ Interplay and Glass Pieces); and Friday, February 27 (Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, a new work by NYCB resident choreographer Justin Peck, and Christopher Wheeldon’s Mercurial Manoeuvres). Single tickets for the NYCB Art Series performances are priced at just $29 and will go on sale at noon on Monday, January 12, at nycballet.com, or by calling 212-496-0600. All audience members attending these three performances will also receive a special limited-edition takeaway created by Yellin to commemorate the NYCB Art Series collaboration. ABOUT DUSTIN YELLIN Born in California and raised in Colorado, Dustin Yellin currently lives and works in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he founded Pioneer Works, a non-profit center for art and innovation, in 2010. Yellin is best known for his large-scale sculptural paintings that use multiple layers of glass, each individually embellished through a precise and painstaking process, to create an intricate, three- dimensional collage. His largest and most complex work, The Triptych, is a massive 12-ton, three-paneled epic that recalls the fantastic imagery of Hieronymous Bosch. Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation, a vast three-story brick warehouse built in 1866 and first occupied by Pioneer Iron Works, is a 24,000 square-foot, multi-disciplinary center dedicated to the creation, synthesis and discussion of art, science and education. It has been called Yellin’s “Gesamtunsktwerk,” or total work, and Yellin himself has called it “a place where the community can grow out of and exchange ideas – where disciplines can cross, where you can have painters and sculptors, but also filmmakers and musicians and scientists, all under one roof.” In its dramatic main exhibition space, Pioneer Works presents an extensive series of exhibitions, performances, lectures and educational programming. In addition, the Pioneer Works residency program grants free studio space to artists and scientists from a variety of fields. For more information on Dustin Yellin visit dustinyellin.com, and for more information on Pioneer Works visit pioneerworks.org. ABOUT THE NYCB ART SERIES Launched in 2013, the NYCB Art Series was designed to produce annual collaborations between contemporary visual artists and New York City Ballet in an effort to showcase and celebrate the visual arts during NYCB performances at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. The first two installments of Art Series have featured acclaimed collaborations by FAILE (2013) and JR (2014). Through the use of non-traditional marketing, social media engagement, and specially priced tickets, the NYCB Art Series was also conceived to engage audiences new to NYCB, as well as to cross pollinate NYCB’s existing fans with those of the commissioned artists. During the first two years of Art Series, nearly 90% of single ticket buyers attending Art Series performances were new to NYCB. In addition to NYCB’s unparalleled history of commissioning new work from numerous composers and choreographers, the Company also has a long tradition of working with visual artists such as Isamu Noguchi, Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente, Helen Frankenthaler, Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring, Santiago Calatrava, Per Kirkeby, and others, all of whom have created artworks and other visual elements for NYCB performances. The lobby of the David H. Koch Theater, which was built for NYCB and opened at Lincoln Center in 1964, also features a permanent collection that includes several landmark works of art, including Jasper Johns’ Numbers, Lee Bontecou’s Untitled Relief, and Elie Nadelman’s Two Female Nudes and Two Circus Women. To learn more about New York City Ballet, or to purchase tickets for any performances, visit nycballet.com, or call 212-460-0600. The David H. Koch Theater is located at Lincoln Center, Columbus Avenue and West 63rd Street. The Travelers Companies, Inc. is the Global Sponsor of New York City Ballet.

A guest artist: KIMIN KIM OF THE MARIINSKY BALLET TO APPEAR AS GUEST ARTIST WITH AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE DURING 2015 SPRING SEASON AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE Kimin Kim, a first soloist with the Mariinsky Ballet, will debut as a Guest Artist with American Ballet Theatre during the Company’s 2015 Spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House, it was announced today by Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie. Kim will perform the role of Solor in La Bayadère on Monday evening, June 1 and at the matinee on Saturday, June 6, opposite Polina Semionova as Nikiya and Gillian Murphy as Gamzatti. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Kimin Kim trained at the Korea National University of the Arts under Vladimir Kim and Margarita Kulik. He was a prizewinner at the international ballet competitions in Rome (1st prize, 2008), Moscow (2nd prize, 2009), Jackson (2nd prize, 2010) and Varna (1st prize, 2010). In 2012, he won the Grand Prix at the Arabesque international ballet competition in Perm and the Youth America Grand Prix in New York. Kim joined the Mariinsky Ballet as a trainee before being promoted to first soloist in July of 2012. His repertoire with the Mariinsky includes Solor in La Bayadère, Ali in Le Corsaire, the Diana and Acteon Pas de Deux, Basilio in Don Quixote, Count Albrecht in Giselle, Rubies from Jewels, the Nutcracker Prince in The Nutcracker, Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake, the third movement of Symphony in C, Aminta in Sylvia and roles in Études, The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, Concerto DSCH and Infra. Subscriptions for American Ballet Theatre’s 2015 Spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House are on sale now by phone at 212-362-6000, or online at ABT's website www.abt.org.

Symphony in C has 2 Demi couples in each movement, too.

It's actually Symphony No. 1 in C major.Wow. I never had somebody "correct" me from 10 years ago! Maybe I meant that Bizet didn't number his symphonies the way other composers did.he had a second symphony too and nobody calls it by the number either. It's just called Roma. Or that if you wanted to buy it in a store, you'd just look for "Symphony in C" not by a number (i dont remeber, this was so long ago!) When I played the symphony in an orchestra, the front page from the publisher just said Symphony in C. But, yeah, it's his first symphony. Thanks for reading

Remember, posting links to full videos here will most certainly lead to the Trust pulling videos and YouTube accounts shutdown.

Another press release (although it's got more about the Segerstrom Center than it does on the Sleeping Beauty production!): Segerstrom Center Presents World Premiere of American Ballet Theatre’s New Production of The Sleeping Beauty Choreography by Alexei Ratmansky with sets and costumes by Richard Hudson March 3 – 8, 2015 in Segerstrom Hall; tickets go on sale January 11 COSTA MESA, CA – American Ballet Theatre returns to Segerstrom Center premiering an all-new production of the classic ballet The Sleeping Beauty as choreographed by Artist in Residence Alexei Ratmansky. ABT’s return to Orange County from March 3 – 8 marks the company’s 23rd visit to the Center. Pacific Symphony will perform the beloved score by Tchaikovsky. Sets and costumes are by Tony Award®-winning designer Richard Hudson. The production will receive its New York premiere during ABT’s 2015 spring season, certain to be a cornerstone during the Company’s celebratory 75th anniversary year at the Metropolitan Opera House. This version of The Sleeping Beauty is the Company’s fourth production of the ballet and marks Ratmansky’s eleventh work for ABT. “I have long wanted to choreograph a version of The Sleeping Beauty,” said Ratmansky. “Tchaikovsky’s complex score and Petipa’s choreography represent the highest achievement of Russian classical art. It symbolizes the harmony and magic of classical dance for me.” Hudson’s designs will be based on the historic work of Léon Bakst, who created a seminal version of The Sleeping Beauty for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1921. This will be Hudson’s third collaboration with Ratmansky for American Ballet Theatre, having previously designed scenery and costumes for The Nutcracker (2010) and costumes for Dumbarton (2011). Tickets for American Ballet Theatre’s The Sleeping Beauty start at $29 and will go on sale Sunday, January 11, 2015 at 10 a.m. PST. Ticket will be available at SCFTA.org, by calling (714) 556-2787 and at the Box Office at 600 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa. For inquiries about group ticket discounts, call the Group Services office at (714) 755-0236. The TTY number is (714) 556-2746. Free Preview Talks will be conducted one hour prior to each performance. Artists and program are subject to change. The Center's International Dance Series is made possible by: Audrey Steele Burnand Endowed Fund for International Dance and The Segerstrom Foundation Endowment for Great Performances with special underwriting support from Diane and Harry Johnson. Classical KUSC and COAST Magazine are Media Partners of the International Dance Series. Segerstrom Center for the Arts applauds Kia, the Official Automotive Partner of the Center. United Airlines is the Official Airline of the Center. David H. Koch is the Lead Underwriter of American Ballet Theatre’s The Sleeping Beauty. This production is generously supported through an endowed gift from The Toni and Martin Sosnoff New Works Fund and through a grant from the Lloyd E. Rigler-Lawrence E. Deutsch Foundation. ABT gratefully acknowledges Linda Allard for her generous support of costumes for The Sleeping Beauty. This production of The Sleeping Beauty is a co-production with Teatro alla Scala. American Ballet Theatre is one of the great dance companies in the world. Few ballet companies equal ABT for its combination of size, scope and outreach. Recognized as a living national treasure since its founding in 1940, ABT annually tours the United States, performing for more than 400,000 people, and is the only major cultural institution to do so. It has also made more than 30 international tours to 44 countries as perhaps the most representative American ballet company and has been sponsored by the State Department of the United States on many of these engagements. Over its 75-year history, the Company has appeared in a total of 132 cities in 44 countries. ABT has also appeared in all fifty states of the United States. ABT has recently enjoyed triumphant successes with engagements in Brisbane, Abu Dhabi, Beijing, Hong Kong, Moscow and Tokyo. On April 27, 2006, by an act of Congress, American Ballet Theatre became America’s National Ballet Company®. Pacific Symphony, which marks its 36th season in 2014-15, is led by Music Director Carl St.Clair, who celebrates his milestone 25th anniversary season with the orchestra. The largest orchestra formed in the U.S. in the last 50 years, the Symphony is recognized as an outstanding ensemble making strides on both the national and international scene, as well as in its own community of Orange County. Presenting more than 100 concerts a year and a rich array of education and community programs, the Symphony reaches more than 275,000 residents—from school children to senior citizens. The Symphony offers repertoire ranging from the great orchestral masterworks to music from today’s most prominent composers, highlighted by the annual American Composers Festival and a series of multimedia concerts called “Music Unwound.” Segerstrom Center for the Arts is unique as both an acclaimed arts institution and as a multi- disciplinary cultural campus. It is committed to supporting artistic excellence on all of its stages, offering unsurpassed experiences, and engaging the entire community in new and exciting ways through the unique power of live performance and a diverse array of inspiring programs. Previously called the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Segerstrom Center is Orange County’s largest non-profit arts organization and owns and operates the 3,000-seat Segerstrom Hall and intimate 250-seat Judy Morr Theater, which opened in 1986, and the 2,000-seat Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, which opened in 2006 and also houses the 500-seat Samueli Theater, the studio performance space and Boeing Education Lab. A spacious arts plaza anchors Segerstrom Center for Arts and is home to numerous free performances throughout the year as part of Segerstrom Center for the Arts’ ongoing Free for All series. The American Ballet Theatre William J. Gillespie School at Segerstrom Center opens in 2015. The Center presents a broad range of programming for audiences of all ages, including international ballet and dance, national tours of top Broadway shows, intimate performances of jazz and cabaret, contemporary artists, classical music performed by renowned chamber orchestras and ensembles, family- friendly programming, free performances open to the public from outdoor movie screenings to dancing on the plaza and many other special events. The Center’s arts-in-education programs are designed to inspire young people through the arts and reach hundreds of thousands of students each year. In addition to the presenting and producing institution Segerstrom Center for the Arts, the 14-acre campus also embraces the facilities of two independent acclaimed organizations: Tony Award®-winning South Coast Repertory and a site designated as the future home of the Orange County Museum of Art. Segerstrom Center for the Arts is also proud to serve as the artistic home to three of the region’s major performing arts organizations: Pacific Symphony, the Philharmonic Society of Orange County and the Pacific Chorale, who contribute greatly to the artistic life of the region with annual seasons at Segerstrom Center for the Arts.

<Moderator stepping in> OK. Let's pull back on this topic and return to what we saw in performance on this thread. I think trying to make sense of ABT casting/politics would make anybody testy Thanks.

A big feature in the January issue of Vanity Fair on Balanchine's Nutcracker: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/01/the-nutcracker-george-balanchine The print version has more photos.

Kaysta, thank you for your report. Too see the Nutcracker with fresh eyes is a wonderful experience. I've always gone a few times each year. And every time I think that I'll zone out during Act I and perk back up for all the dancing in Act II. But I still get involved in all the storyline and action in Act I, that I don't zone out at all! And I can watch his second act again and again. I never tire of it (although I think I'm over Mother Ginger. I like the kids' dance but her exit takes forever!).

Thank you, Amour. The discussion of the broadcast is here: http://balletalert.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/39415-school-of-american-ballet-workshop-2014/