chrisk217

Ballerina was shown on the satelite french channel TV5 about a year and a half ago. What you say of it makes me wonder if a different cut of the video played in Japan. The video I saw was about all five dancers going progressively from the (then) lower rank Somova, to Obraztsova, Zakharova, Vishneva and finally Lopatkina, according to hierarchy. On the whole, the film captures the beauty and joy but also the tremendous difficulties and pain that come with dancing at that high level. Somova doesn't really register that much in the film - she is too young and the little she says is rather predictable ("my first year was very hard" etc). The ones that make the most vivid impression are Vishneva and Obraztsova. They are both very open and give good interviews. Vishneva, comes across as intense and very intelligent while Obraztsova looks warm and bubbly but capable of great emotional depth on stage. Most of the doc was filmed in 2002-2003 just before Zakharova left for the Bolshoi and around the time when Lopatkina returned from her two year injury hiatus. Lopatkina is the more aloof of all, she does not say a lot to the camera but rather lets others and her dancing speak for her.

Wow - I didn't know PNB was in such bad shape under Stowell and Russell. Thank heavens Boal wrested control from them, prying the company from their bony fingers before they did even more damage. Sheesh. Maybe they should have reworded that. Do you know what you are talking about? Kent Stowell and Francia Russell made Pacific Northwest Ballet what it is today, along with many supporters and benefactors of the art. Peter Boal happened to be at a time and a place of esteem, in his own right, concerning his career in the ballet world, outside of a NYCB concept. If anything I would think he should privileged and honestly blessed with some divine luck to work with such a company! Leigh Witchel is being sarcastic.

One vote more for Lord of the Rings. If there is one ballet that will get my boyfriend to ever go to the theater for ballet that must be Lord of the Rings. It will be great fun for kids too to dance hobbits! Also loved the Blade Runner and Wuthering Heights ideas. Wuthering heights has been choreographed at the Paris Opera in contemporary style (as was Medea) but I'd love to see it as a classical ballet with maybe only Cathy and Heathcliff occasionally dancing in a freer, wilder style to show the contrast of their characters with those in their environment. Other ideas: The nightmare before christmas (comes with ready made, tuneful, if thin, score) My fair lady (substitute dancing style for pronunciation - everyone loves a good makeover :-)) One flew over cucko's nest (Mats Ek has already used an asylum for his Giselle but why not a ballet loosely based on this story?) Antigoni has too many fine points for a ballet. Maybe something simpler and more movement oriented like Icarus? btw bart, I think Diana and Acteon was just a divertissment from Esmeralda not a full length ballet. The pdd has precious little to do with the myth - Acteon was turned into a male dear and consequently devoured by hounds for having seen Artemis/Diana naked - not much happy frolicking around there. I sincerely hope to see less new fairy tale ballets choreographed. They may fill the coffers in the short term but in the long term they are possibly turning people off ballet by confirming the widely held impression of ballet as something irredeemably childish, fluffy and pink. There was a time where ballet was considered adult entertainment and ballets could present such stark and unflinching visions as Nijinska's Noces or such complex relationships as those in the ballets of Tudor. We rarely see ballets like that anymore. Have all original artists escaped to the lands of plotless or contemporary dance? I'm tired of seeing ballet being condescended to, sometimes even by its own people. [Edited to add: Not that fairy tales cannot be dark or psychologically complex - but this aspect is rarely apparent in new choreographies of fairy tales - most are rather Disneyfied]

I don't think anyone complains about the hyperextension per se. Polina Semionova also has crazy hyperextension but she has everything under control. I've never heard anyone complain in such a way about her. Somova must have had some good qualities to begin with - I seem to remember she won a medal in a well known competition some years ago (not sure when/where) and I can't imagine she was flapping and flopping around in this manner back then. Perhaps now she is overindulged Ultimately, she has a right to dance however she pleases and the audiences will judge her accordingly. We can only hope she wont "inspire" others with her example. Mashinka thanks for the background info. I had no idea about all that. I'm very naive. Still, more than 6000 users viewed the clip and judging from the rating only a handful were sufficiently disturbed to click and rate it as low as possible. Regarding the youtube comments you're right, I tried to stop looking at them when I came across someone who wrote "Ewww disgusting!" about Kolpakova whom I revere. But it's a perverse compulsion, I always wonder what people are saying and end up looking.

The Rose Adagio clip that left us all is rated at 4 out of 5 stars. So apparently there are people out there who like that sort of thing. If you read the comments you'll find that there are a few fans so loyal that they will bully and abuse anyone who dares write a dissenting opinion. Many of her fans must be ballet students. Extreme extension is like a fetish for them and they tend to overlook more subtle qualities. As for the general audience most people have a very vague idea of how classical ballet should look like. Kirov is a brand name and if it's the Kirov then it must be good, no? The ones who know and care, the traditional audience that you mention, are too civilized to publicly show displeasure in a dancer. Ballet audiences are too polite. She would probably be interesting to watch in ballet moderne, Forsythe, things made on her body - individuality and weirdness can be refreshing things - but putting her in Sleeping Beauty is too much. One has to wonder what is the point of researching and presenting a production that tries to recreate the first presentation of this canon of balletic classicism when you are going to cast so unclassical a dancer as Aurora. A sad thing is that I remember how when I was a student we watched on tv a clip of Guillem in the Grand pas classique and our perception of what was possible, desirable and aesthetically pleasing in ballet, and also what we should strive for, was changed in the space of 10 minutes. We were that impressionable. I hate to think how watching Somova might impress a young student. (a clarification: i'm not comparing Guillem with Somova as dancers, just the effect of watching something extreme and unknown)

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/danc...ancing_acocella

Most people on ballettalk are hardly typical members of the audience - we are all passionate about ballet. I will buy all the dvds I can afford and watch all the live performances I can afford. But there is a sizable part of the audience who after watching the almost complete ballet will skip the live performance especially since Flora is something of a curiosity item. Youtube is a wonderful thing but a distinction should be made between complete videos and clips. In some form or other, uploaded videos tend to live forever, moving from site to site even when taken down by admins. If in a couple of years the Mariinsky does bring Flora to your city that video will probably still be online somewhere. Also having a filming of the ballet in worldwide circulation makes a dvd even more improbable - in this case it removes the novelty aspect from an as yet unseen production. Factors such as this do affect the probability of filming - I'm sure the rampant piracy in russia/eastern europe had a lot to do with how little was filmed by the Mariinsky in the last decade and that was before youtube took video sharing to a worldwide scale. Apologies if I sound harsh and absolute, I'm not, and I don't want to be a killjoy but I was bothered to see a complete film of a new production shared in such a manner however beautiful it might be.

Thank you Azylun for alerting us to this but I have to say how sad I find it that an almost complete video of a valuable new Mariinsky production is available on you tube. I'm all for diffusion of knowledge but what this self-styled "guru" does by posting this for the whole wide world is devalue the Mariinsky project. There is a difference between posting judiciously selected clips and posting an almost complete video. I sincerely hope that someone will complain and the video will be taken down.

Well bart, being as it is a depiction of a revolutionary group there are no princes or enchanted creatures anywhere in the vicinity. There's a group - they move around - Firebird strips to the red pants - he falls for the common good and is then resurrected. Bejart uses one of the Firebird Suites, which is an abbreviated version of the ballet's music. I would hate that anyone's first experience with Bejart would be the Nutcracker. He is acclaimed in middle/southern Europe and consequently allowed a certain degree of self-indulgence in later life. But for someone who knows nothing about him the focus on his person in the Nut will seem annoying and plain weird (esp if one expects the standard children at Christmas, classical dancing affair). The main barrier between the somewhat detached english/american audiences and Bejart is, I think, the lack of irony in Bejart's works. He takes on grand (or grandiose) themes and he is literal and earnest which can often translate as being naive, kitchy, lacking self awareness and/or intellectual rigor. In this respect he is a very non-postmodern artist (despite abundant references left and right to other works). But whatever the english speaking world may think of his peculiar blend of ballet, theater and various dance styles, he is a capable choreographer. There are many memorable moments of dance in his work (of which as a kid in the 80s I saw tons on tv) It is also unfortunate that much of his work reflects the climate of the 60s-70s so well (idealism, leftist tendencies, narcissism, experimentation etc) - naturally it now seems dated. But it was exactly that resonance that put people (esp young men) in the theater in the first place. I know a number of older men, now in their 40s-50s, whose first experience of dance as a vital art was Bejart. edited to add that I was posting at the same time as Gina Ness - she describes it much more vividly. Gina you remember correctly there are about 10 dancers dressed in red in the end.

She is a wonderful teacher and must have been an amazingly expressive dancer (esp in Giselle). More teaching by Chauvire can be found the Monique Loudieres video "Comme les oiseaux" from the same series (where she, Jerome Robbins, Violette Verdy and Vladimir Vasiliev work with Loudieres) The whole series of Etoile pour l'exemple videos is a small gem and I hope they'll put out more of them. Another wonderful video from this series is "Violette Verdy et Mr B" - not only is Verdy a wonderful, full of life personality but she has a unique way of conjuring images and metaphors to help the dancers better feel and express what they dance.

i haven't laughed so hard in months carbro

ngitanjali, great theory Not sure they market at teenagers though. Few teenagers would buy a ticket for an event that takes place a year ahead. They do seem to promote Somova very much both at home and on tour, giving her new roles, premieres etc. This program seems to be designed with a "let's make Alina Somova a star in the US" objective - she seems inescapable. It's the right of the management of course, perhaps they see something in her that we lowly mortals can't as yet But it's a long time ahead and the program may change, even for a management favorite.

I hope no one is selling on the strength of a preliminary list. This is casting announced 6 months prior to the event! By the Mariinsky! It is guaranteed to have little relation with whom you will actually see. One shouldn't get neither too happy nor too disappointed. Having seen on youtube Somova's entrance as Aurora which left me (in the reconstruction - of all productions!) I understand the strength of the feeling she arouses but six months is a very long time - she may get injured, sick, fall out of favor, have a divine revelation and see the glory of classicism, whatever Wait a few months before you sell or you might go btw I was also expecting Somova at two recent performances and was thinking of selling my second night ticket (the rest of the program had slowly disintegrated with each consecutive casting announcement) but was happily surprised to find Osmolkina dancing in her place in both nights and the rest of the program far exceeding my expectations.

papeetepatrick if you haven't stumbled upon it yet, there is a news page with videos on the POB site. There are clips of Songe de Medee by Preljocaj (perhaps the most striking set of all, suspended silver buckets and a tree trunk), Wuthering Heights and Waltz's Romeo and Julliete. Go here: http://www.operadeparis.fr/Accueil/Actualite.asp?id=321 You can also find on youtube short clips of Sasha Waltz's other works, from Zweiland (which is more typical Sasha Waltz i.e. more tanztheater) to dido and aeneas.

Grrrrrrr. I was looking forward to seeing him during the City Center season.He's still on the company's website, for what that's worth. For that matter, so is Ayupova. For what it's worth he was dancing with the Mariinsky on a tour less than a month ago. He closed all nights with Corsaire pdd, partnering Terioshkina. He's in very good form, much better than 2003 when I last saw him dance. I don't know what he'll be doing in 3 months though...

While I deplore the indiscriminate use of extension in classical repertory and would take the Fracci/Bruhn Giselle over Zakharova's any day, I do understand a little bit where dancerboy87 is coming from. I've heard the same complaint, quite unprompted, from two Italian friends. No one would or should object to Fracci doing mime roles but from what I hear she was dancing pointe roles in Excelsior, spectre of the rose etc till a few years ago (2000?) She also appears frequently on the media, festivals etc. If I remember well she was planning to appear in Nijinsky's Jeux as recently as last summer. I know this is not a classical role but however little dancing there may be in it I have some trouble picturing Fracci at 70+, as a young tennis player. At around 2000 she was appointed to direct the La Scala ballet but didn't accept because it would not afford her the opportunity to dance. I'm not exactly sure what her proposed repertory would be. Even if she did not propose to dance en pointe, at that time it was hard to imagine that as AD she would not favor productions with roles fitting her abilities and that she would not divert to them resources that should perhaps be best spend elsewhere. I think the dancers organized some sort of protest over it. There may be a parallel to Nureyev whose presence in the spotlight, from some point on, had more to do with the cult of personality than with the power of his dancing. This has created a slightly intolerant climate against her and what's more may have cast her in the role of the old-timer who stops progress. I know Bolle gave an interview where he railed against all the ills of italian dance and among other things he claimed she was an egoist for still being on stage. So there's a backstory here that may explain why some people in Italy feel somewhat tired of seeing Fracci on stage. And I imagine a young dancer like dancerboy87, just out of school and struggling, would particularly resent seeing precious and limited resources being spent by/on a ballerina who has had many many many years in the limelight. I say this with the greatest respect for Fracci whom I love in the old videos. dancerboy87, you are very young and must be excused for having the cruelty of youth but I have to say I was shocked by your blunt way of putting things

Which Semyonova? Marina or Polina?

While dancing with the Mariinsky she also worked with Ceccheti in order to "italicize" her technique.

Nothing against the spectacular competition type variations - I love them. But I've seen them so many times that sometimes when they come up I think "oh dear - not again!", especially if the cast is not that good. I prefer variations where the technical demands are balanced with the demands in musicality, flow and style. Sleeping Beauty: Miettes qui tombent, Violante, Aurora's entrance (sergeyev version), Aurora's variation after the rose adagio, Aurora's 2nd act variation but with the original music (as done in the vikharev version), Diamond fairy, the prince's variation and most of all the 3rd act Aurora variation Paquita: the Pavillion D'armide variation. I've seen two versions of this - one from the Mariinsky slow, simplified but incredibly elegant and poignant. Another in a documentary as taught by Danilova. That one had more batterie and was way faster (and Danilova stopped the orchestra to make them hurry up more ) I also like Paquita's own variation (the Mariinsky version). Swan Lake: Odile, the Bolshoi version Raymonda: La claque, Henriette 1rst act variation (? or Clemence's, never sure which is which, in any case the one that comes first in the Kirov production), a 3rd act variation by either Henriette (or Clemence ?), Raymonda with the veil and the 3rd act male variation in the Grigorovich production Don Q: Queen of the Dryads, Amour Corsaire: Gulnare variation in Jardin animee, 2nd odalisque, 1rst odalisque Giselle: village pdd female (Bolshoi version), Albrecht's variation Ballo de la Regina: the 2nd solo (the one with pirouttes ending in arabesque) Theme and variations: the female solo danced just before the pdd La fileuse and la siciliene from Emeralds Agon: the female solo in the second pd3 while the two men stand by Stars & stripes: female var from the pdd The female variation from Ashton's Les Rendezvous Autumn variation from Ashton's Cinderella Sylvia: male and female variations, both Balanchine and Ashton, prefer the Ashton one best though Suite en blanc: la cigarette Napoli's pas de six: the 3rd man's and the 2nd and 3rd women's La vivandiere pd6: female variation the 2nd act sylphide variation from Lacotte's sylphide and the 2nd river variation from his Fille du Pharaon the solo Violette Verdy used to do in dance in dances at a gathering ok, i should seriously stop now............

Doesn't "sofia" mean wisdom? I don't want to split hair here or drive things off-topic but the different meaning significantly changes what Volynsky though.

Cojocaru has been filmed with Kobborg and the film was broadcasted last November in the UK by the BBC. Since the Royal Opera House has acquired Opus Arte there is definite hope that it will be on DVD and for sale soon. She has also recently been filmed for the Japanese TV with Legris and the Tokyo Ballet. I'm not sure if this has a chance to be released on DVD since there is already the Tokyo Ballet Giselle DVD with Vishneva and Malakhov. I went over at youtube and looked at the Cojocaru/Legris videos you mention. Most are not from the japanese tv film. The production around them seems to be the Parisian one and Legris seems a bit younger in them.

Maybe it's the only BBC film but I think there is a pre-war amateur film of Fonteyn in act I. As for the Cojocaru/Kobborg it should certainly be on dvd. I hate closeups but for once I was glad there were many. The dancing is beautiful but never at the expense of the story. The emoting is subtle and sincere, they both possess great theatrical intelligence and have obviously thought long and hard about their Giselle. I was left with an impression of radiant humanity (for lack of a better expression) coming from both of them.

He'll dance in Athens next month with a group of Russian stars (Lopatkina, Matvienko, Zakharova, Uvarov etc) In last year's gala he was in great shape considering his age and his stage presence as intense as ever. This year is supposed to dance Bejart's Bakhti with Sofia Gumerova and Assura which according to the producers is an exotic themed solo choreographed by Bolshoi's Morihiro Ivato. has anyone seen Ivato's work ? There's quite a lot of it in the program.

In the context of this discussion it should be clarified that Lynn Seymour's difficulties and resignation had nothing to do with her being a woman (according to all reports at least). Mr Stefanos Lazarides, the National Opera director who had invited Seymour to head the ballet, was let go by the Board just a few days after she resigned (this despite having just completed a commercially successful and critically acclaimed first year on the job). Both had to go against a deeply rooted bureaucracy, interested in maintaining the status quo and vested rights. This unwillingness to adapt affected the ballet as well as the opera. To give just one small example: the dancers of the company were contracted to work for about 20 hours per week. One has only to watch them on stage to see how sorely they need more time in the studio. Seymour was pushing to increase rehearsal time and to add one more day of work per week. She was reportedly very frustrated by dancers working "with their eyes on the clock". Unfortunately she was not given the financial resources to implement this. I'm grateful for Lynn Seymour's short time in Athens - a lot has changed for the better: For the first time there was live music at the National Opera Ballet (Alan Barker conducted the Solitaire performances I watched) Evelyn Hart, Truman Finney and Irek Mukhamedov were invited as teachers. At least some of the dancers appeared revitalized by the changes. But at the same time the repertory became almost exclusively contemporary. This was a very unexpected disappointment. The only non-contemporary work was McMillan's Solitaire. Ashton's Les Rendezvous was also initially announced but the plans were scrapped after a while and instead we got a very flat Afternoon of a Faune by Yannis Mantafounis (he's a young Forsythe dancer who choreographed, very predictably, in late Forsythe style). [The turn to contemporary was not only unwelcome but also entirely unnecessary as Greece has a very lively contemporary scene with two major festivals (Athens & Kalamata) and more than 50 dance groups. Meanwhile, performances of neoclassical ballet (say Balanchine) come 2 or 3 years apart of each other. One would hope that the National Ballet would step in, fill the void and show diverse works from all eras instead of turning into yet another contemporary company]

It just sounds ever so much more elegant and pretentious. So what if my American Heritage Dictionary says the accent is on the second syllable? lol yes it sounds more elegant and pretentious But both are correct. MOrphoses is in the singular and MorPHOses is in the plural (this is where the accent goes even if the word has a prefix (meta-, epi- etc)) I would have guessed the plural number to be more appropriate.