Amy Reusch

It's a shame for such a company to ever dance for empty seats... I suppose I would bankrupt a company in no time, but if it were me, I'd focus on filling seats before upping prices. I'd rather see innovations like the sort megabus.com uses to fill deats on its busses... Tickets are inexpensive until a certain number of seats have filled... And then they get progressively more expensive as the bus fills... Don't we have the technology to do this in theaters yet? It's sort of how the scalpers make a profit, isn't it? Less audience in seats leads to less audience...leads to less audience... Leads to less audience and less funding. Maybe NYCB is looking forward to the return to feudalism and single patron sponsorship. How much does Mr.. Koch like ballet after all? He got Kevin & Peter mixed up n December.

Yes, the corps was uninspired and ragged particularly after Bright Stream... Simkin seemed not quite tall enough for the lifts, Hee Soe didn't manage to sustain one arabesque among many others that were beautiful but frankly her dancing was so gorgeous I could care less that it dropped to tendu and raised again... Her variation alone was worth the entire production for me. I suspect I could watch her dance doing only tendus and still be mesmerized. Simone Messmer's feet perhaps could use some strengthening so she had more support without having to wear such hard shoes.. She did not look comfortable enough to express herself.. And the orchestra was less than crisp in places... But, it had been an absolutely soggy day, alternating fog, downpours and thunderstorm, so perhaps the less-than-perfects could be blamed on the weather.

I saw it on Friday with Simkin & Osipova. After hearing for years and years how wonderful Franklin's Coppelia was in relation to others, I was really lookng forward to his insightful staging of the Sergeyev notes. I was taking three girls to see it and have always felt Coppelia was a good ballet for children. It was their first time seeing a ballet at the Met,,and for some of them the first time ever seeing a real ballet company. They adored it. For myself, though I do not feel I have seen Franklin's ballet and suspect I have now lost the chance to do so. There were some strange musicalities going on here to some of the most danceable music in Ballet's repertory... In particular I remember the corps sustaining a fifth position instead of the following arabesque when the music so cried out for it, and the actorly theatrics were missing throughout in a way that seems opposite to how I've heard dancers fondly describe in Franklin's staging... It bothered me to see the Mayor pay off Coppelius rather than the young couple giving him their wedding gold. I guess my hope now is to see Ratmansky restate it and bring out the music again... Though I fear in gaining some gifts from Ratmansky we might also lose some threads back to the original. I swear for one moment i saw a Danilova mannerism preserved in something Osipova did... I keep thinking of how jacques d'Amboise said something like he can't go to the ballet without seeing the ghosts of the dancers who created the part. Something has been bugging me about Dr. Coppelius... Was there never a production that tied his manufacture of mechanical dolls to the mechanical clock? I keep "hearing" a mechanical doll clock parade....just wondering.... From up in the nosebleeds (and by the way, the house seemed sold up to the to the last row of the FamilyCircle) Osipova!'s floating elevation is still jaw dropping, but there is not enough opportunity for herto fly in this choreography and one had to be content with her ravishing turns. Simkin also delivered, with an amazing set of grand jetes that switched from en avant to arriere and back again without changing the arc of trajectory.... But the real surprise pleasure of the evening was Hee Seo's exquisite "prayer" variation... I cannot wait to see her dance again.. I missed Meredith Benson in Basil Thompson's clever staging of Swanilda's interaction with Franz.

It was wonderful and it makes me very happy that Ratmansky is in residence... I hope the dancers are having as much fun as they seem to be having on stage... It's nice to see a story ballet that makes use of the skills today's corps dancers have... many doing steps the 19th century ballets seem to have reserved for principals. BUT where were the giant vegetables mentioned in earlier production reviews? I see this set was from Riga not Moscow... Was the ending of the ballet changed because of the horrible starvation? Quirky as I might be I was curious to see a ballet with giant cabbages... I don't really object, I loved what I saw... But now I'm wondering what happened with the original production.

Well at least he's a dancer! I was afraid we were talking some sort of corporate executive... And it frees the choreographers from administrative duties...which is no small accomplishment.

I believe the two companies competing against each other actually helps to build excitement about going to the ballet... the double blast of PR about the competing seasons probably gets more people to consider going to the ballet than if they weren't in competition. It works for retail, why not for performing arts? There are more people in the potential audience than are actually reached. If it were a small town and the population was already maxed out, maybe... but I am sure there is still a large "sleeping" audience that hasn't been tapped yet. I don't think the competition spreads the audience too thin, I think it's the high cost of tickets that slows the flow of the ticket sales. Sure Broadway gets high prices, but hey, those prices slow down many of us as well... and there is more awareness of the Broadway half-price ticket booth perhaps than of discounts on ballet tickets...

& d'Amboise has way of making us look at him considering her... without ever taking away from her... is it the tilt of the head? Is it the dark colouring?

By chance, yesterday, I heard that Jeanne Armin had passed away. Unfortunately the obituary seems to have expired. I was hoping I could find out more about her life. I remember hearing, decades ago, that Jeanne used to drive her fellow dancers at ABT crazy because she would come back from several weeks off and her pirouettes & balance would look like she hadn't missed a day. I thought she had danced with one of the Ballets Russes incarnations, but the extremely short blurb I could find makes no mention except of 3 years she was at ABT. For some reason, this lovely program popped up as part of the google search: http://ums.aadl.org/ums/programs_19661117e ( Love to see these names again.) There seems to be a recent video clip of her online from the Fall of 2010 and in it she looks barely aged. So, I'm sorry to have so little on her, but despite this, thought her passing should be noted here.

Quoting that Balanchine photo! very cute!

This will do much to inspire the company, no?

Wasn't it Bolle who backed out of ABT performances last year "due to injury" only to dance a few days later in Europe?

Drat. I'm in ATM's boat ... except I talked 3 guests into coming as well. I hope Steifel's replacement makes much of the opportunity.... and I see from the notice that it will be Simkin. Has he danced with Osipova much yet?

It's gone viral and I'm glad... but I can never quite make out what Yo Yo Ma is saying...

Bamburgers, Epsteins.... and then there was the stamp collecting counter at Gimbels... & Korvette's; the pre-Walmart.

In Connecticut, the prices distinguish Nordstrom from Macy's... My daughter had found a pair of jeans there last summer in Seattle, we went to the Nordstroms here hoping to find the same brand (I consider shopping for a middle school girl an ordeal), but there was nothing for less than $160 pair...[i'm old enough to find that mind boggling], I think what is offered at Nordstrom's outside of Washington State is very different. There was a piano in the store when it opened... I think I might once have seen someone play it, but can't quite picture it... I think it's very sad how all the department stores have become identical.. in many cases, they've actually become Macy's. I agree, foolish.

And musical too!

For me, "technique" is what allows one to achieve a certain "style".... certain techniques build abilities to perform certain ballets in a particular way... one can attempt a style without the underlying technique, but usually one falls flat.

Thank you! For some reason those sneakers brought back memories! Loved the Apples!

Did Sarah Lane start the fuss? Or did Wendy Perron start the fuss? Wasn't it when Sarah Lane was asked to stop giving interviews that the bruhaha started to bubble up? Was Wendy Perron asked to hold off on the Sarah Lane interview?

Do you have more of a quote on that? Doesn't her part as Manon involve "manhandling" as part of the plot? Or did she mean outside of rehearsal?

Someone tells me I'm mistaken about Tudor's choice of composers... Thank you little bird! I always thought he'd used Tchaikovsky's score... here it was Delius all along: "Walk to the Paradise Garden". Would love to see that some day...

That's huge...

How could I possibly have forgotten when I so thoroughly enjoyed your review the first time, Emilienne? I laughed just as much again. Thank you!

Unfortunately, I couldn't go to this evening's performance at UConn's Jorgensen Auditorium by Russian National Ballet of Petipa's Romeo & Juliet set to Tchaikovsky's music of the same name, but I'm wondering what it might be. The photo in this interview : http://www.pressconnects.com/article/20110331/ENT/103310319/1017/Russian-ballet-company-stages-new-take-Romeo-Juliet- isn't very enlightening... Wikipedia's Marius Petipa entry doesn't mention it, although it's an extensive entry. Ballet Master Alexander Daev doesn't inspire confidence when he says "The full-length "Romeo and Juliet" ballet is set to the music of Sergei Prokofiev. Our company's version is the only one I know that is set to Tchaikovsky's music.", but I suppose Antony Tudor's work might be less known in Russia... Is it a real Petipa derivitive ballet or it all a ruse? Is it mostly Radchencko?

There are some awesome treasures here!!! Tanaquil LeClercq & Nicholas Magallanes dong La Valse! Franklin & Danilova! Maria Talchief & Michael Maule doing Firebird! Stanley Williams performing! the list goes on & on!