Amy Reusch

Could we evoke National Treasure and bring in the Library of Congress? Or at least Nicholas Cage?

How long had Sarah Lawrence been coed when he went there?

And now I know there's a Joffrey College program! Wonderful news about the chief of staff... dance major at Sarah Lawrence... there must be someone on this board who knows him!

There are usually so many inaugural events, parties, etc... perhaps more than one Chicago troupe could perform... how about Joel Hall's group too?

I can't tell you the best... but if you're collecting recommendations, some people have been very fond of Ernestine Stodelle's Deep Song, out of print but I found several availble used when I googled.

Even if it is murky, it's a beautiful shot.... so full of moment & movement... I almost hear the music.

Which Nutcracker waltz, Snowflakes or Flowers?

Snowflakes. (If they don't dance all that well, just toss more confetti!)

The Mice in Nutcracker or Kastchei's monsters in Firebird?

The Mice! (More charm, more strategy!)

Flying birds - Bluebird or Firebird?

Something under water? Or would that be The Stone Flower? Looks like Mars. Or Rousseau?

Interesting set!

Rats. I liked the hyphenate... it keeps the history of the company tied together... eventually there will be a generation who have no idea that the Maryinski had anything to do with The Kirov...

I've been wanting to say film & I want to say opera, but of course I have no evidence except intuition... things seem odd about it, like it's not a real stand alone ballet company but an opera's company (and I don't mean the Paris Opera)... maybe it's the prompter box thing... maybe it's the sets... maybe it's that the ballet looks to be of a certain era but doesn't resemble anything I've seen photographed before... they might be Italian... they definitely look overcrowded, as if what they're doing wasn't designed for that stage (even though it looks like a well appointed house)... something is definitely odd about it. It seems like such a large cast and orchestra not to be more normal looking, like a Hollywood budget or Opera might provide... if a ballet company could afford that, would things be spaced better? It's an odd place to rehearse a company from. I don't buy that the photo is actually from the 1840s or 1850s so it must be staged to look like something older... which would be why it would be from a movie...

It's just plain odd. (and fascinating

A considerable bit of further prying of the internet, and I think what I'm looking for is a manual of Delsarte gestures... (which I now have some leads on)..

Thought I'd respond to my own post, in case anyone was following this thread.

Wikipedia on Delsarte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Delsarte

I think I remember poses from Ivan Nagy's staging of Giselle that almost quote some of the illustrations at the bottom of the page... particularly the "mourning" one... but I'm not sure.

http://www.musikinesis.com/Delsarte.htm

Okay... this is not technically a ballet question, and maybe it really belongs on the sister site, but I thought perhaps one of the dance history buffs who haunt/enrich this forum might have some clues for me...

I believe in dance history class, I was once lectured that Histrionics were a codified set of gestures for 19th century actors... and think I was shown some slides depicting the histrionic gesture for say "wrath", "despair"... or some such thing...

Now I'd like to find a book on the topic, but googling seems to only bring up the now dominant "over-acting" meaning of the word "histrionics" or alternatively discussions of some sort of pychological histrionic disorder.

Any suggestions of keyword combinations that might help pull something up? Or better yet a book title?

Todd Clark is a highly competent lighting designer himself... was LD for Hubbard Street for years....

If you still have your program handy, I wonder who designed the lighting for Pavane? (or who apparently interpreted it, if it seems like a name that wasn't likely present at the tech rehearsal?) I don't know if the LDs I knew in Chicago in the mid '90s are still active, but I'm curious to see if I recognize the name.

I'm wondering if this is that new venue where I hear everyone looks down on the dancers... at a sharper angle than perhaps one normally would? Would this have effected the perception?

It just seems a little sad to me, that training a dancer exquisite in one of those techniques to have no new work created on him/her... I'm not sure that the contemporary evolved mix of techniques is the same as someone specially trained in one of them... (yes, a great dancer is a great dancer, but... ) With all the techniques mixed, and blurred, some of the imagery becomes blurred too.

After posting I found myself thinking that in a way Limon was a choreographer working in Humphrey technique (and expanding on it) more than say Cunningham could be said to be expanding on Graham technique.

After a while, I'm afraid it won't be possible to see a valid performance of a Graham ballet... and the world will have lost a treasure.

I'm going to ask a dumb question.

If Graham & Humphrey are accepted techniques that we have generations of trained dancers in... why aren't other choreographers working in the techniques? Or are they, in the same sense that Balanchine worked in Taglioni's technique, Cunningham works in Grahams's?

Do you have a technique if the shadow of the originator is so great that no one else can create in it?

Or am I ignoring a huge number of perfectly valid Graham & Humphrey choreographers?

I wouldn't ask this if I didn't think Graham & Humphrey techniques to be the beautiful articulations that they are.

Any interest in the opening ceremonies' physical costs?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080819/ap_on_...s__sacrifices_1

Some students of the Shaolin Tagou Traditional Chinese Martial Arts School in Henan province who began training for the event last May were injured in falls on the LED screen that forms the floor on which they performed and was made slippery by rain, said Liu Haike, one of the school's lead instructors.

"At one point, the children had to run in four different directions. ... When one fell, others quickly followed," Liu said, adding the injuries were minor.

While in Beijing, the constant exposure to the dizzyingly hot summer resulted in heatstroke for some students, particularly during one rain-drenched rehearsal that stretched on for two days and two nights.

The students were kept on their feet for most of the 51-hour rehearsal with little food and rest and no shelter from the night's downpour, as the show's directors attempted to coordinate the 2,008-member performance with multimedia effects, students and their head coach told the AP

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/sports/o....html?ref=dance

Liu Yan, considered one of the country’s top classical Chinese dancers, was preparing the performance of a lifetime: the only solo dance in a four-hour spectacular that was expected to be seen by a global audience of more than one billion people.

But on July 27, during an evening rehearsal at Beijing’s National Stadium, the so-called Bird’s Nest, she leaped toward a platform that malfunctioned and plunged about 10 feet into a shaft, landing on her back, according to family members.

She was rushed to a local military hospital and underwent six hours of surgery but suffers from nerve and spinal damage.

Her head was not badly injured, and she can move her arms. But she has no feeling below her chest, she said in a hospital bed interview. She cannot move her lower body, including her legs.

I think the director sounds a little out of control. 51 hours? I understand why it couldn't be done with several shorter rehearsals instead of such a long one...and I understand the pressure that was put on these particular Olympic Games (hey, lighten up, China!)... but, it makes me understand just why we need unions.

I was wondering about Alma Mater, and if it would humanly be possible to do a ballet about football today. I decided only if all the pads, etc. were transparent. But Stars & Stripes is as close as I ever want to get to a ballet with cheerleaders.

Are "showcase for stars" and "choreographer's vision" mutually exclusive? Did showcasing blockbuster superstars like Baryshnikov do wonders for the box office but sink the company once Tudor & choreographic company departed? ABT always showcased stars, didn't it? Why has no choreographer been resident since Tharp left? Was Tharp's rehearsal process so expensive that they were loathe to go there again? Why is there no resident choreographer?

I'm interested in seeing the best athletes in the world compete... their nationality is of less interest, .(.along the lines of did they come from a small town, big city, their age, their family, etc... fun background color but really not the prime reason for watching...) perhaps I'm odd, but I'd think interest in sports would mainly be interest in seeing them well played... getting hung up on medal counts seems like compulsive gambler's take on it... or perhaps evidence of national insecurity. Any competition where the winner is far ahead of the competitor(s) seems boring to me.

There was a lot of talk about the declining audience during the last winter Olympics... I'd like to suggest that interest in the Olympics has been declining pretty much matching the development "Chacking" programming policy mistakes... when the broadcasters began showing only sports Americans were likely to medal in rather than sports where the most interesting competitions were taking place.. Several "tweens" I've spoken with lately have no idea how many different sports are included in the Ollympics... they know Swimming, Track & Field, Gymnastics... and maybe weight lifting... but are astounded to hear of equestrian events, Judo, bicycling, sailing, etc.. (I've actually heard more than one say "why didn't anyone tell me?"). what's wrong with this picture?

Thanks for the new word! (For the clueless, like me, here's a wikidictionary link: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chack )

I thought the screen painting dancers were very succesful, but the traditional chinese dancers where hard to get much of a feeling for because of the attention deficit disorder like camerawork. I think the pre-ceremony secrecy may have gotten in the way of directing the broadcast. I was rather impressed by the dancing of the color guard as well.

Unfortunately, it appears one can only watch the live stream if one is a cable subscriber.

I was fooling around with something called Google SMS... it seems to be a search service available via texting on your cell phone... looks very handy, by the way... one of the things it apprarently offers is a glossary/dictionary service... I tried a few words, "glossary iconoclast" came out okay, sort of... something else didn't (wiped from my memory already)... then I tried "define ballerina" just to see what would happen:

Glossary:

BALLERINA: Baltic Sea Region Online Environmental Information Resources for Internet Access

Source: maritimecompliance.com/glossary.php

(I suppose when they get the bugs out of the system it won't be free anymore. )

Here's the link: http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/mobile/de.../sms/index.html

I couldn't be more delighted with the exposure youtube is giving to dance... think of how few people fit into a grand opera house compared to the huge number that check out the clips on youtube.

I don't know if one is allowed to selectively police copyright? If you don't police all instances of infringement you are proven aware of, do you weaken your right to police bad ones? (I can't imagine what youtube clips are doing to the union archival waivers... I've been off the circuit since youtube's rise)

If you respect the artist, then you must respect their copyright.