chrisk217

She was supposed to dance Chopiniana with Pavlenko on a September tour in Greece but about a month ago was substituted by Ostreikovskaya. A lot of other dancers were changed in the latest cast list so I wouldn't read anything in the cast change.

Amour, I don't like air-conditioning either but I wouldn't stay in Athens in August unless I had to. Italy, like Greece, works at half speed from around the 25th of July till the 15th of August. Around this time anyone who can afford it leaves big cities for the coasts and islands.

This is not directly related to the heat - it could be raining torrential rains and the city would still be half empty. It has to do with the fact that mostly everyone else is also on holiday (that means clients, bosses, collaborators, civil servants, everyone) so it's the most convenient time to go away. Few people are left behind to miss you.

Momix is very popular in Italy but ballet is (still) popular. In my experience what makes or breaks such a mini tour is the advertising. My guess would be that Momix was widely advertised, probably on tv too and there was word of mouth from their previous visits, while the NYCB group had minimal advertising with posters and print ads. The time of year certainly didn't help...

Guillem herself pronounces her name as Gee-LEM

Thanks for your suggestions. I'm going to see her Swan Lake. I'm really looking forward to it.

Arne Villumsen in the early 80s looked like a younger, more handsome Jeremy Irons. It is very evident in the Napoli video.

Also Nikolaj Hubbe looks a bit like Owen Wilson esp when laughing. A couple of photos (both rather serious): NH photo 1 / NH photo 2 & OW photo

To add to Natalia's very useful description: it should be noted that the image quality leaves a lot to be desired. It is blurry and occasionally a bit grainy. The video is not in any way restored/enhanced etc

That said the chance to see Ivanova and the lovely Ayupova is rare (and for me totally worth it) and the Jacobson disk unusual & interesting.

I am currently obsessed with the 1973 film of Valse Fantaisie with Leland and Clifford and this made me wonder a bit about the 1973 recordings of NYCB. I've read somewhere that there were 15 ballets filmed. I know of Symphony in C, Liebeslieder, Agon, Serenade, Concerto Barocco, Pulcinella, Violin Concerto and Valse Fantaisie. Does anyone know which were the other 7?

Also I was wondering if anyone (from the NYCB or the Balanchine trust) has ever tried to buy the uncut video from the German production company and stitch them back in a more rational, less annoying manner

Natalia, you were not nearly harsh enough!

Apart from the usual cough percussionists I've also come across the Explainer. Explainers are people who feel so confident about their knowledge of ballet that they absolutely have to share their insights with their less enlightened friends while the performance goes on.

I was recently at a Russian Stars gala where due to poor organisation a lot of people didn't get a program. But, never fear, there was this woman who gave us all a running commentary of the proceedings.

Our seats were several rows in front of hers so I couldn't quite catch everything (mostly the steady stream of whispering) but at some points she got really animated and upped the volume. It was after Ali's variation and Medora was coming on stage to do hers when in great excitement she cried: "Now watch this! Here comes Giselle again!"

As I have now gone through all my ballet videos and transferred them to DVD, I was surprised to note one thing. I owned very few commercially made videos, just some Highlights of this and Glories of that. So the rest of my ballet library was taped from the national Swedish networks. Looking at the dates, very few were later than about 1995. Before that, masses of stuff, Shaufuss, Makarova, Ustinov and Fonteyn series, in addition some rather intellectual and genuine stuff about flamenco. That glorious program "Backstage at the Kirov" was broadcast at prime time, 20 hours a Saturday night! The mind boggles... I also have several other Soviet tapes about the Vaganova, Perm Ballet School and the Bolshoi and what have you. Note that I used the word "Soviet" which means all videos were pre 1991.

Now I am sad to say that Swedish TV has become all fun and games and silly contests - the times they are achanging. It is very rarely one sees any ballet these days. It seems it is the trend all over.

This makes me very sad. Except for classes, everything I knew about ballet till age 18 I got from tv. I did not own a vcr at the time but a friend did and when we sat down last year to transfer the tapes to dvd we were amazed at the things we've been exposed to as children.

So much for pluralism and choice... There were only two channels in the 80s here, yet there was at least an hour of ballet every 2-3 weeks. Now with more channels than I can count there only seems to be time for celebrity gossip, reality or game shows. This year the only ballet on tv was a rerun of a second rate Swan Lake at Christmas (and even that, in a small channel, at 2.00am, lest someone should actually see it)

For a while recently there seemed to be some hope for arts programming - a new Parliament channel was created, broadcasting Parliament proceedings during the day and documentaries, art-house films, opera and ballet from 6pm on. But they figured the audience is small soon enough. Now it's just parliament, documentaries and films.

At least in some places ballet appreciation is still strong. Russian and Korean sat channels frequently broadcast ballet news or performances.

Sorry for the off-topic ramblings but this topic makes me very very sad....

The 74 second continuous interval given on the site shows some impressive geometry from Nureyev, but is fast cut into 17 segments by the editor. Perhaps this will be shown on MTV here. Or was this atypical of the dvd?

When will they ever learn...

As the case of Ross McGibbon at the BBC amply demonstrates no amound of education and involvement in dance is guaranteed to produce a watchable video. The more cameras they have the more they feel the need to use them.

Perhaps the only possible solution is to have multiple angles in ballet dvds. That way the people who care about the dance will get the dance and everyone else will get their MTV.

Regarding this specific video while it's not one of the worst I'm afraid it's quite annoying. In just the first minute of the act II adagio there are 10 camera changes. There are even some very close shots (hands or pointe) which is really inexcusable. Some times though it not too bad - for example you can see the entrance of the swans from many cameras and the corps is excellent from each and every one of them.

Symphonic Variations

They must be dvds of a program also known as Czar's Box, that is boradcasted by the russian Kultura channel and usually focuses on a specific Mariinsky dancer.

These programs are usually 40 minutes long. The dance clips are well selected, typically around 15 minutes, the rest is interview and discussion.

I don't know if they're availlable on dvd, but look for the ones presenting Yuri Solovyov and Irina Kolpakova as they're wonderful and, I think, worth the steep price.

Is there a video of any kind available for either of these ballets? Thanks.

There is the video with Allegra in the 2nd movement (and Sarah Leland in the 3rd) that was part of the 1973 German recorgings of Balanchine. It was broadcasted in Europe on satelite tv some time ago. Considering how incredibly awful the video direction is in the other german recordings, this one escaped relatively unscathed. An amazing video.

There was a broadcast some years ago by the BBC, with Darcey Bussell in the 2nd movement.

And when the Mariinsky acquired Palais de Cristal they filmed it for tv (1rst Nioradze, 2nd Lopatkina, 3rd Vishneva, 4rth Ayupova)

I'm also aware of a video by the Korean Ballet that was on a Korean satelite channel recently.

Finally, I'm not sure about this but I think in the Balanchine documentary there are fragments of an older NYCB film, perhaps this exists in some library in NY and you can watch it.

How does one say "Morphoses" anyway? Mor´phoses or Mor-pho´ses?

Assuming it's singular, it's μόρφωσις (MOR-fos-ses, meaning form, the act of shaping etc in newer usage it may even mean education) Assuming it's plural (more likely), it's μορφώσεις (mor-FOS-ses, meaning forms, shapes etc)

goro,

there is a 4% speedup when one goes from film (24 frames per second) to PAL video (25fps), but where would one find ballet related film?

Most ballet videos were originally shot in Europe and are made for tv hence they were originally photographed at 25fps (either PAL or SECAM). Only with old archival film or theatrical releases could a pitch problem come up.

That said, Nero gives a so-so solution to the issue of NTSC's and PAL's different frame sampling rates:

It does not do a regular 3:2 pulldown - instead to go from PAL (25fps) to NTSC (29.97fps) it just duplicates every 5th frame.

The results are not optimal especially for dance that is very slow (which may appear ever so slightly jerkier) or very fast (which may appear somewhat smoother) But overall, it does an ok job.

Despite that, in general, the less one tampers with dance dvds the better. If someone plans to watch more than a few PAL dvds it makes sense to get the player that can do the job.

chris

ps. apologies for being so completely off-topic. To return the conversation my vote goes to the Mezentseva Giselle. A very good Giselle, the Kirov corps and Tatiana Terekhova, arguably the best Myrtha on video.

This has been recently broadcasted on a sat channel. I have not yet watched all of it but my first impression is that although the dancers are very good (Osta slightly miscast, maybe) the film is rather choppily directed - it's not trully bad but the director never let's you forget s/he's there.

I'll post more when I've watched all of it.

photos from the kors collection:

the fonteyn dress:

http://www.style.com/fashionshows/collecti...ay=false&cnt=36

the farrell dress:

http://www.style.com/fashionshows/collecti...play=false&cnt=

i think the graham dress is this but I'm not sure (lots of jersey dresses):

http://www.style.com/fashionshows/collecti...rend=&iphoto=55

May also be this:

http://www.style.com/fashionshows/collecti...lay=false&cnt=3

all the collection can be found here:

http://www.style.com/fashionshows/collecti...ete/thumb/MKORS

what do you think?

It's quite possible then that it's just not availlable in the region2/PAL edition. There seem to be some other trivial differences in the extras with the NTSC edition as described in the film's website (namely no trailler, no english subtitles except where russian is spoken, no "Easter Egg" - no idea what that is - and no booklet)

But overall it's a wonderfull production.

As everyone has said this is an excellent tribute to the dancers of another era with fascinating personalities telling a great story.

It has though one great fault. Most of the music is unsynchronised/wrong for the dance. How difficult could it have been to get a pianist and with the cooperation of the dancers record the correct music? For the more rare (and maybe lost?) ballets it may even have had some historical value (OTOH this is a dvd so if you're too annoyed you can press mute and whistle )

The dvd is totally worth it, as it has more extras than I've ever seen on a ballet dvd. All the extras are very interesting with many more stories, anecdotes, and clips:

* Archival motion pictures (6'): extra archival material, again with little attempt to synchronise music and dance. Tallchief and Franklin in act2 of Swan Lake (1954), Franklin in a Russian Sailor solo from Red Poppy (1945), Tallchief/Danielian in Don Quixote pdd (1954), Slavenska in Don Quixote solo (1952), Alonso Youskevitch Giselle (1955), Krassovska in Raymonda (1946)

* Dancer Beginnings (10') Frederick Franklin, Markova, Zoritch, Tallchief and Alan Howard talk about how they started to dance

* Behind the velvet curtain (12') stories about Zoritch, Slavenska, dancer superstitions, the last meeting of Riabushinska and Baronova, the elopement of Baronova etc

* Ballets Russes collaborators (20'): the best of the extra features, with a remarkable story about how Stravinsky made Markova understand the Rossignol music, stories about Fokine, Balanchine, Massine, Nijinska etc This particular feature is almost as interesting as the film.

* The Rehearsal studio (16'): Zoritch and Krassovska coach 2 Bolshoi dancers in Spectre de la rose, Frederic Franklin in Cincinnati Ballet's Romeo and Julliet and coaching Devil's holiday, Alicia Markova coaching students in London, Alan Howard coaches a Trocadero dancer, Krassovska in Dallas.

* Wakefield Poole as a film-maker (3') and some Yvonne Craig

* 2 photo slide shows, beautifull photos of dancers featured in the film and not (somewhere around 180 photos).

* photo gallery of programme covers.

The region 2/PAL DVD I got came without the 12 page booklet it was supposed to have. If anyone gets the booklet I'm curious to know what's in it.

For anyone with even a slight knowledge of modern greek Malakhov's last name sounds uniquely unfortunate

Has anyone else had any qualms about the tempos or the smiles in Emeralds (signaling awareness of the audience in an in-the-box ballet) and eye contact?

At the moment my favorite part is the Diamonds mainly for the four diamond girls!

A lot of info on class of blank media, dvd brands/makers and how to detect problems before you write a disk can be found in this page:

http://digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm

How to handle dvds (from the Digital Data Preservation Program)

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div895/carefordisc/disccare.html

Everything you want (or dont want) to know on the subject of DVDs can be found in the DVD-FAQ:

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html

Yes, the dancer is important and zooming in to see details is important - but isn't the point of broadcasting something to give a TV audience a chance to see that work? If you cut out the choreography, or mangle it with too many camera cuts, you loose a) the reason why the dancer is dancing in the first place, and b) what makes that particular piece of dancing special or unique. Otherwise its just a bunch of steps.

There has to be some way to strike a balance between catching detail and giving an overview of the choreography, not just dancer over choreography. It seems like he is applying the standards of opera broadcast, when its ok to just zoom straight in, to dance broadcast, which is an artform with different demands. Especially in the era of larger TVs and high definition, the argument for needing to zoom in all the time becomes less relevant.

And regarding that cult audience - sure we're the ones who are going to care about not getting to see the choreography. But those ones who "dont care" won't get the chance to ever care if they never see why the "cult" wants to see it.

EXACTLY art076!!!

This is not only the era of larger tvs and high definition... it's also the era of ANGLES in dvds. Yet, I've never ever come upon a dvd that has that feature... It has been explained to me by my male friends that many adult dvds have angles for obvious reasons... Might we ever hope that the same meticulous multi-angle presentation may be used in less marketable physical endeavours like ballet?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could, at the touch of a button, go from the dancer to a wide shot of the whole stage? As a feature it's underutilised in movie dvds (no director wants to direct the same picture 3 times, apparently) but having an angle of the whole of the stage would greatly enhance the ballet dvd experience... And everyone would be happy... directors, mainstream audience & that pesky cult audience...

Yes, the cost would be slightly greater, but as with multiple sound channels in opera dvds, multiple angles can be a marketing tool. See here how Opus Arte explains the higher quality (and cost) of their opera dvds. Ultimately, I think it comes down to a respect for the audience. Opera devotees get far more respect from tv & dvd producers than balletomanes. The evidence is in the disks...

I think Natalia said the Kirov Swan Lake will be with Lopatkina.

Isn't it a little soon for Lopatkina? I think Natalia was talking about an end of 2006 release. This must be either Mezentseva or Makhalina...(both welcome )

Region 2/PAL DVD releases for June according to this website:

Napoli - Royal Danish Ballet

Kirov Swan Lake (by Warner, no more info)