Amy Reusch

I know the Defile has been done for a long time, but how long? When did it start? When Louis XIV opened the theater? Or is it something that Lifar started? Did it disappear and return? And was it ever done in any other ballet institution?

No, it makes perfect sense... as does that the Bush family would want to help a Communist defect... But charactering Bush Sr. as a serious balletomane seems untruthful and unnecessary flattery. Why not just stick to the truth? It's honorable enough.

But I bet OSU student tickets are subsidized to be much less than that. And the equivalent in dance? I'm one of those who thinks every child in ballet class ought to be taken to see the real thing at least once a year. What got me started thinking about all this was my parent's recent visit to the Paris Opera's opening night. My mother was going on about how much the 1st ring box tickets cost her host, and I kept thinking "what a deal!!"... I still don't think she had the amount right... could it really only have been US$100? I'd really love to see matching funds for ticket sales... that would reward filling the house, wouldn't it? And nothing saps the energy out of a performance like an empty house... or adds energy like a packed house... I'm not sure exactly why there should be a difference, but there is a palpable difference.I don't mind the absolute best seats going for a high price... after all, the tickets never pay for the full cost of the production anyway... but every effort should be made to sell the rest off... and I think it's even worth it to let people filter down to the better seats if they're empty... an audience needs to feel that they're in a sizeable audience... I wish I could find some dispoable income... even just a little!

I realize this isn't dance, but somehow this didn't seem like it belonged in "other arts" because it's not really about music, it's about intellectual property rights. I wasn't sure it rated the news links since it wasn't about dance. I still think it belongs on this site because intellectual property rights often pertain to choreography and performance, and we should keep an eye one what is going on that-wise in other performing arts. It happens to be political, but that is coincidental. I believe Philip Glass has a reputation for sueing unauthorized uses of his music. Glass Sues Over "Celsius"

I've almost finished Mao's Last Dancer, and have rather mixed reactions to it. I enjoyed some of his recollections... particularly the one where on his first airplane flight, embarrassed to be served, he offered to help the stewardess wash the dishes. On the other hand, so much of it reads like he was trying carefully to be politically correct to a wealthy right-wing audience, just as he had learned to be for a different audience when writing his Communist "self-criticisms"... He claims to be interested in freedom, but almost all he writes about during his first visit to the United States was about how impressed by all the wealth he was... It seems very much that he was seeking economic asylum rather than political asylum when he defected. Can you recall anything he said about artistic freedom, other than that Red Detachment of Women was rather limiting? I think he's a flatterer and as a result comes across as insincere... Or perhaps it's just that this is the only time I've ever heard that George HW Bush referred to as a "serious balletomane". I do believe Li was a very hard worker, very committed, but there's so very very little said about physical training after leaving China... I can't imagine that there weren't big differences and interesting adjustments to be made. Perhaps all that was edited out. Once he's defected to America, it becomes rather dull. Please tell me what I'm forgetting.

Has there been a study mounted... or does anyone here know... Have ticket prices gone up (adjusted for inflation?) The recent wildly successful sell-out performances at City Center's dance festival made me wonder if one of the reasons dance popularity has plummetted is the cost of tickets. I have no idea if tickets are more "expensive" now than they were 30, 50, 70, 100 years ago. It seems the cost of labor must surely have gone up (thank heavens in some cases; those unions were truly justified).... Have there ever been "matching grants" to subsidize ticket sales?

Too bad only this season's rep is listed. I was curious to see if "Franklin Court" were still in rep, and can't tell from the website. Any regulars know when last it was performed? (I know the set is expensive to fly, so perhaps it's been dropped, but the work has it's moments, I'd hate to see it gone forever). I did, however, enjoy perusing the posters available from the gift shop. They did a special poster just for Dede Barfield's retiring? I think that was very sweet!

It was tangental.

And even with one just going through the motions and the other dancing full out! Reminds me of the double pas deux "Bifocals" from Christopher d'Amboise's tribute to Ben Franklin's inventions "Franklin Court". I wonder if that ballet is still in rep, it had some very nice parts to it. Actually, I got some print-outs of digital photos the school took, and it seems they did this. The boy looked very proud/amused, though the dancer seemed to have to bend her knees a little to reach his shoulder... very cute. I was pleased to see that the children in the audience looked entranced. Also, that the line of the dancers looked pretty good, all considered (particularly considering the space, lack of time for warming up, and a non-professional photographer... they must have held that line long enough for the idea to register in the photographer's mind). Hee! Hee! Hee!!

In the midst of running umpteen errands today, I stopped in at my daughter's elementary school to drop off a bus permission form. A van pulled in behind me, and out stepped someone wondering "where the gymnasium was?". It seemed like a strange question for a parent to ask, and so my eyes must have prompted the person to then identify themselves as Connecticut Ballet coming to put on a lecture demonstration. Kicking myself for having forgotten today was the day; I escorted them in and notified the office. Unforturnately, I couldn't stay to watch, so I wished them merde and ran off. As I raced around my other errands, I kept wondering what they did and thinking about what I wished they might do. Lec/dems in elementary schools... whatever you do has to work without benefit of lighting, usually on a terrible floor, with an even worse sound system and an unsuitable stage. What would you wish they would do to inspire an interest in dance? How would you structure an ideal lec/dem? How would you get across to children the aspects of dance that captivated your own interest when you fell in love with art form? It's tricky not having a decent stage /rehearsal set-up... I found myself wishing they would do barre/warm-ups in close amongst the students rather than up on a stage. I hoped they would talk about what dance was "about"... demonstrate how it can be about "energy", how it can be about expressing emotions... the precision and agility involved... it's roots in the royal courts and martial training and in folk dancing... I vaguely remember from my youth, Joseph Carow leading lec/demos that got kids involved in the competitive aspect ... having girls dueling for multiple pirrouettes... the kids seemed to be fascinated as they added on another and another... wondering when they were going to miss (I seem to remember he had a couple girls who could pull off 13 from time to time)... and for teenage audience he had some sort of thing about having the guys do "ballet push-ups"... lying on their back balancing a girl above them in "the bird" (I believe I've also heard this overhead lift called "angel") and then proceeding to do push-ups that instead of raising them from teh floor raised and lowered the girl. They would follow the lecture/dem part with a more traditional performance... I believe they were very successful. I suppose there needs to be a girl on pointe in a tutu demonstrating bourees at some point... and a guy who can jump.... What makes for a succesful lec/dem? I tried to quiz my 6-year-old, but couldn't get much info... except that someone had gone on pointe, a guy had lifted two girls at once, and that all the dancers had done jazz, and that one costume made them look like a turkey particularly when they bobbled their heads (I'm still having a hard time picturing what that must have been). She was very excited to tell me that they were from Mansfield... which I translated to mean that they were from "Connecticut". I asked if the kids had enjoyed it, if they had found it interesting... and she said "Oh Yes! Particularly Merce [a friend of hers] was very excited and he asked them a difficult question that they couldn't answer!!" What question? "What two people invented ballet?".

My memory is failing me (typical!), but I remember enjoying dancing in a recreation of the Rainforest set where it was an installation in the ?Warhol museum?? in ?Pittsburgh?? Tremendous fun! (Of course, no one was watching). I've been told that it's very expensive to keep sets and most end up being destroyed. It seems like such a loss. Couldn't someone start up a business in some state where real estate & warehouse rental is very cheap to store & rent out sets to regional companies? It seems like there are enough regional companies out there to support such an enterprise (particularly if we're talking sets for ballets like Giselle, Coppelia, Sleeping Beautify, Sylphide, etc.) Has Dance/USA ever looked into this? What stands in the way? Is humidity control such an issue? Couldn't they be stored in someplace like Arizona or New Mexico to get around this?

"Kirk Peterson's American Nutcracker" - even though I'm not crazy about the setting, the set designs and costumes were truly fantastic. Sandra Woodall was responsible for much of it. Ruth Page's Nutcracker - made much of an impossibly large stage (100' across); set & costumes by Jose Varona. Leigh Witchel's "Rideau" had a beautiful drop curtain by Matthew Mohr that interacted with the dancers in a wonderfully whispy way as they entered and exited through it. Vienna Waltzes makes it on my list as well, except for maybe one scene. Are we talking the actual results on stage or can we consider the sketches as well? Some of the Bakst and Benois designs are "never to be forgotten", even if the photos of the actual costumes don't quite live up. One of my favorite set designs wasn't for a ballet but a modern dancer/choreographer Diane Vivona for a piece called "Rain Forest"... consisted of a drop(wall?) painted with glow paint which would freeze shadows of the dancers for a few moments before fading. I'm sure there are more, but these leapt to mind instantly. Sadly, I can think of many more works with costumes that took away from choreography, than ones that added lustre to it.

I think there's a problem with thinking "ballet" means the same thing around the world in different languages. I've seen references to Martha Graham's ballets. I don't think the term "ballet" in "Ballet Hispanico" or "Ballet Folklorico" should be taken to mean the same thing as in "The Royal Danish Ballet". Even so, I don't think either of these companies would refer to themselves as "a ballet company"... If you look at the definitions of "ballet" at www.dictionary.com : Dictionary.com's search results for "ballet", none of them even mentions pointe shoes or tutus. Similarly, I've had trouble trying to figure out what foreigners mean when they refer to "classical dance".... does it mean classical in the sense of say classical Thai court dancers? Does it mean "classical" in it's subject matter and treatment of the art form... is Martha Graham's work "classical" in it's approach to technique... or does it mean specifically "ballet" and not neo-classical ballet or even romantic ballet but only say Petipa? None of this has anything to do with whether you enjoyed Ballet Hispanico's performance; not having seen the performance in question I'm not in a position to defend or detract from it... but... I don't think it's right to fault them for not performing ballet. Still, I often agree with Alexandra in spirit when it comes to ballet companies hiring modern choreographers instead of nurturing ballet choreographers... it just seems such a superficial repertory decision.

You're right, Watermill... I'm so out of touch that I didn't realize we were talking second season here... sounds more like the critic has run short of ideas and is trying to recycle some old work.

All this talk about "when to retire" makes me wonder if any grandchild of Jacques d'Amboise is studying dancing... I remember there was a time when he said something about wanting to dance until he was able to do Drosselmeyer onstage with his [then hypothetical] grandchild. He did retire before becoming a grandfather, though, if I remember correctly. I've heard Nureyev danced beyond when he should have retired, but I talked to someone who saw him in his final tour and was profoundly moved by his powerful stage presence even then. I think I'd rather aging stars formed "[star] and friends" touring companies, so that we still could have the pleasure of watching them dance yet without them obstructing the careers of rising dancers who are ready to step into the roles that sometimes entrenched stars are not willing to vacate. And does Netherlands III still exist?

Darn, I was going to print it out for a dancer who is appearing in Aida (Hartford) this weekend, but this time around the site says I have to be a subscriber to access the article. Glad I was able read it before the door slammed shut.

I don't know either the critic or the company well, but isn't trying to put out a spin that the current company is "better" than the past company just a benevolent sort of cheerleading/pep rally on the part of the critic? Oh Oh Oh I know it's not the responsiblity of the critic to prop up the company... but just for the sake of writing don't they need to illuminate the contrasts between a new AD and the previous AD? (...Of course I'm one of those who likes critics that help me get a little more out of a performance than if I hadn't read their column). And in some markets, dance really does need a little bolstering up by the critics... I have no idea if Oregon is one of them, though.

Or why none of the other dance writers were promoted to chief?

(Alexandra on the " good luck" thread) I was wondering about the origin of this good luck salutation, and imagined the topic had probably already been discussed on Ballet Alert. I tried a "search" for it, but nothing came up... although it looks like there had been a thread on it once. How can I find it? Or better, anybody know the provenance? Is it just because it would be about the worst thing that could happen on stage?

Thank you Estelle, I scanned the headers for "opening night" before posting, but should have looked a little further. I believe they thought the piece was all right but went on a little long and their French wasn't strong enough to understand everything that was being said. They seem to have enjoyed the rest of the program and the theater itself very much. I had a friend once talk of a warm-up room behind the stage... my parents were amazed at how deep the stage was. Would that warm-up room be just the back of the stage when it's curtained off to normal depth? He talked about portraits hanging on the walls of the famous dancers who had performed there.

My parents just returned from a visit to France, and told me that one of their hosts treated them to a performance of the ballet at the Paris Opera, opening night as it turns out. My parents enjoy the ballet, and have been to quite a few in this country, but apparently weren't aware of the tradition of the defile at the Opera. My mother described a "parade" starting with the youngest dancers, etc... and went on to say they were really beginning to wonder what sort of a piece this was going to be with all these dancers! For instance, how were they going to fit all those dancers in? They were so disappointed when the dancing part never came! This was followed by what sounded like a very long post modern exploration of a dancer's life in classical ballets such as Swan Lake. The couple next to them in their 1st balcony box was so disgusted by it that when the lights came up afterward they grabbed their coats and left. So my parents thought it was all over and that it had been rather a strange program, but the theater was a jewelbox.. and they picked up all their coats, etc. and prepared to leave as well. Luckily their host, who had seats elsewhere in the house, caught them in the lobby and explained it was only intermission, so they stayed and enjoyed the second half... with Balanchine's Sonatine, Robbins' Glass Pieces and something by Llander ... was it Etudes? Anyway, thought you all might enjoy an alternative viewpoint.

Are you discussing the Anne Belle documentary? I know one of the dancers coached was an SAB student named Cindy Drummer Ahh... here it is in Rose Ann Thom's Obituary for Anne Belle: Reflections of a Dancer (1982) It doesn't mention who the other couple is... I must have this tape somewhere, though can't put my hands on it at the moment... They were from one of the regional couples... I want to say Cleveland or Cincinatti... but it could have been Pittsburgh, I suppose. Isn't there a bit of Danilova coaching in Turning Point? Any chance that was real coaching or was it all scripted? Seems like it would easier and cheaper to just let her do her thing.

Would the following listing of Liturgical Dance Company sites be of any use? Dance Links: Other Dance Companies: Liturgical Dance

I do think it's strange that the NY Times hasn't had anything to say yet about it... after all, this is pretty big news for the ballet world.

Since they're replacing two people's salaries with one person.... wouldn't there be budget room for a choreographer in residence?