Amy Reusch

Hard to believe that Tomasson could be 71 already.

Great news out of SFB : http://www.sfballet.org/about/media_center/press_releases/Chris_Stowell "In this position, he will serve as Tomassons designate and liaison to Executive Director Glenn McCoy and SF Ballets administrative team on matters of planning, budgeting, and program expense management". Is this typical for an Assistant Artistic Director?

How lucky we are that he & ballet found each other!

D'Amboise did some great things with the company... After d'Amboise, the Board then seemed to want a curator rather than a choreographer leading the company... Corella does not seem to have ambitions as a choreographer, and yet one still gets the sense that he wants to "make" something of PA Ballet.. it is inspiring...

Kaiser shepherded the PA Ballet back from the brink and beyond through some fiancially treacherous years... With Corella's fame and charisma may he attract some genrous patrons to boost the budget back up to par with the company's peers. Corella must have learned something keeping his company alive during Spain"s deep financial crisis. I suspect he is in posession of a better skill set for the task ahead than someone coming directly to PA Ballet from a more generous budget model.

Thanks. That's more or less what I was thinking... Some outliers but mostly in line... I'm sorry not to see Ballet Arizona on that list. And I shoukd have put Houston down, but trust me, I couldn't come up with the fifty states if asked to say them all off the top of my head... Yeah, what is the deal with Minnesota? Is it just too cold to dance? . Have always heard they have excellent arts funding... Meanwhile, glad Corella will be in Philly.

I agree about the proximity to New York... NYers (& NY critics) tend not to come out (though they do more than in the last century). On the other hand, it is nice for the dancers to be so close... I think it might be easier to attract strong dancers to a place so close to the dance capital than say Kansas City (also a fine if smaller company). I think they did come out to see the Wheeldon spin on Swan Lake.

Yes, my "ranking" was quick and very dirty... I didn't mention PBT either, for instance... But I would still say that historically the PA Ballet have been in the top eight of lists made by people wiser than me... I was just trying to draw some rough tiers to indicate that PA Ballet was not "a small regional company"... I think they still perform only with full orchestra? For a little while there, it was the Pennsylvania/Milwaukee Ballet and was even resident at BAM.... But whether the fiscal health of the ciy called home makes a difference, I don't know. I think there was a time when the PA Ballet was better than Boston Ballet, but Boston Ballet has grown since then and I would hazard that Boston itself is a healthier city now and perhaps Philly did not rebound from the '70s recession as quickly (Remember that recession? When NYC almost declared bankruptcy and Manhattan landlords were actually abandoning buildings?). ... Seattle... Will it continue to be a powerhouse? Microsoft is laying off thousands and Boeing keeps moving more & more operations out of the city. I suppose two categories I would use for roughly ranking would be AGMA contract (as opposed to just matching AGMA rates) and live orchestra. By the way, Enrico Cecchetti performed at the PA Ballet's home theater as a child.... Just a little random trivia... Does Colorado Ballet use a live orchestra for most of its productions? I know some companies can only afford one for their Nutcracker. Ballet West seems like it might... remembering the sad new that they were no longer allowed to fire off blanks during their Nut, it seemed a big enough orchestra to be there for more than just Nut. I'd like to see a list breaking down the companies by live vs. canned music.

I think maybe one might be able to tell a lot by the size of the city the company calls home... It's not fail-safe... after all, Chicago is a pretty big city... and perhaps Joffrey is gradually recovering... whereas Ib Andersen seems to being doing a great job in tiny Phoenix... and it was ages before Los Angeles managed to support a company... but Philadelphia is still a major US market... and there is a good deal of old money there that appreciates the finer aspects of art culture. My list is by no means complete... I would equate Colorado Ballet with Milwaukee Ballet... does that work for you?

This is not a small regional company. This is one of the major regional ballet companies. I have not seen it lately but it was normally considered one of the top 8 companies. This is an AGMA contract company. I would perhsps rank American companies as follows: NYCB ABT SFB BB, PNB, PAB, MCB. These three have shifting budget rankings depending on local financial help...BB is doing well right now) Joffrey (used to be same or above SFB), BW, KCB, TBT, HB, OBT, LAB, BA, MB coming in a little lower... Still reasonable contracts... Then there are the smaller regional ballet companies (I have never seen these...) Carolina, Sarasota, Hartford Ballet used to sit about here, NJB, ARB, I'm leaving out a ton.. There are smaller companies that hire professional dancers for very very short seasons...

There is something to be said for dancers knowing Balanchine style as home turf from company class as opposed to trying to pick it up during rehearsals from a regisseur... Will Corella replace the current ballet masters/mistresses with his own people? The current ones have very strong connections having risen through the ranks to principal and then on retirement kept the company tuned to it's repertoire. Pennsylvania ballet has also been cultivating home grown choreographers. It sounds like Corella might continue that (one would certainly hope!). Taking over a company is a different animal than starting one from scratch... One thing I believe Kaiser was very good at was piloting the company a navigable course through known rapids... I do not know what hurdles the local unions and the board will throw in front of himn, but I hope Corella's grace will carry him and the company over. I hope the orchestra stays... it would be horrible to lose live music... and live music is always a budget issue. Part of the Balanchine legacy is respect for live music. Perhaps Corella will take the company on tour... I would so love to see our regional companies touring again like in the glory days of NEA funding... it is so sad to only get these one-night-stand bus tour Russians coming through the college towns... You should hear the ignorance in the media in places like Connecticut - http://foxct.com/2014/07/23/connecticut-dancers-learning-from-world-reknown-dancer/ and it's endemic to the region, (due to lack of exposure to the art form outside of SYTYCD TV)...

He has been generally well liked other places he has worked... more so than is typical... one never knows how a new situation will go but the past history has been good.

Wonderful! May the celebratory dancing begin! (And may whomever else was on the shortlist grace the helm of another company soon.)

Looking forward to the end product!!!

It would be very interesting if Hallberg spent a couple years at the Royal... His POB training is apparent in his dancing... Is there evidence of the Bolshoi influence yet? If he were to turn teacher/ballet master in his later years, he would have an amazing background to draw on...

"a fouetté girl"... Thank you, I have not seen the dancer in question and so have no idea if she qualifies, but this is a very handy expression... Now that you say it, I certainly know the type... and am glad to now have a name for it.

It leaves a gap in the Lifar years... i thought this was the short time that Balanchine was there... It is confusing... In what capacity was Balanchine at the POB? Was it no more than any other choreographer invited to mount a single piece on the POB? Had thought it was a more significant position... I see here http://balanchine.com/george-balanchine/. He was ballet master there for 6 months... But what does that mean? Was that not his official job title at NYCB even though we think of him as artistic director? It seems like we had this discussion once before on ballet alert...

I don't see how learning more of the history and background wouldn't enhance your experience... However, there is a tendency of serious ballet students to be hypersensitve to every technical flaw and miss the larger picture... and I think that might be what your friends are warning you of. In a ballet class so much is focused on error correction that it can train the eye so that these jump out at one. While you might enjoy dancing in ballet class yourself, it might change your impression of what you are seeing... On the other hand, assuming you are starting as an adult, it may even increase your appreciation of the technical prowess of the professionals. The Royal Ballet's youtube site has some wonderful dance appreciation educational videos. Learning the mime language of some of the classical ballets might help you learn more. I also find a good dance critic can teach one what to look for, and wake me up to aspects of the dance I missed the first time around... Also, there is more to a dancer than mere technique... you are quite competent to comment on the impression a dancer made on you, even if their technique were not as advanced as some other dancer...

"He repeatedly declares that he knew he was not in the same league as some of his peers, both from America-(Villella)-or abroad-(Vasiliev, Bruhn).". It is hard to evaluate one's own stage presence... His was, at the very least, in the same league...

Good for Platel... for all we know, the Millepied era might be brief... the school should not change direction whichever way the latest breeze blows... I applaud the French for trying to keep alive their style... one of the side effects of the modern global village is that regional influence and development are much diminished. (Sometimes I actually wish choreographers and companies were more isolated!)

NYCB has a tradition of running a lot of rep simultaneously rather than a week of this two weeks of that... But they train for their repertoire and it is more similar perhaps than the breadth of the POB repertoire. Living in the US, it is harder for me to see enough POB on video to have a sense of what repertoire is at risk. Could you give examples? Is it the Lifar work? Lacotte? Is there older rep? (except for the Lacotte Sylphide, isn't the older rep a come-back from Russia?) . Is it the style that is at risk? Wouldn't the school protect that? What is Legitimist?

Miliosr, don't you think his Balanchine repertoire connections were part of his appeal to whomever chose him?

That is unfortunate because back under Lou Conte they were superbly suited to it... The rep seems to be getting performed elsewhere, but it is nice when there is a "home company" for a particular set of dances, and the company certainly performed the rep frequently enough to keep it present in their bodies... The big ballet companies may do adequate performances of it, but it is not the same thing as when a company keeps it in constant performance.

I would like to see a choreographer immersed in the company they are resident in... at least for half the year... Teaching company class regularly, cultivating muse relationships with the artists who bring the ideas to life... Not hampered by administrative or fundraising... But developing a style. This constant flitting here and there from company to company seems like a recipe for superficial. Having a choreographer in longterm residence surely shaped the major companies... What effect did Petipa, Balanchine, Ashton, Tudor, Kylian, Grigorivitch... even Nureyev....have on the companies they choreographed on? This is a very partial list. Was Fokine's output after Diaghilev significant? Very likely I am ignorant, but one gets the sense that today's big names in ballet choreography are spread too thin. Morphoses didn't work out for Wheeldon, but perhaps it was because he was so involved in the effort of keeping the company alive? Same with Trey McIntyre? How much talent have we lost to the drain of courting funding? Thank heaven we have some big names again... Now lets build the company relationships...

Why on earth are they doing Sinatra Suite in Chicago? Hasn't Hubbard Street done that to death yet? (or has it been out of rep for a while now?)