PeggyR

She's scheduled to dance the Snow Queen at the performance I'll be attending next Friday. I look forward to seeing her!

A huge 'amen' to that. And if Father Christmas can handle another request, how about providing this new, digital age of filmed performances with some good dance directors. There must be some former dancers out there with an interest in directing. BTW I'll be seeing SFB's Nutcracker next week; no casting posted yet.

Recently finished Simon Sebag Montefiore's biography of Stalin. Just finishing 'Stalin's Folly' by Constantine Pleshakov (about Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the USSR in June, 1941). Starting 'The Bookseller of Kabul' (which doesn't promise to be much more cheerful than either of the above). In the tbr pile: Julie Kavanaugh's two bios (Ashton and Nureyev); more books about the Stalin period; several about the current war in Iraq. I have a four-hour round trip daily commute, and it's too dark in the winter for reading on the way home, so I switch to audio books. Last winter was all of Jane Austen. This year it's going to be Anna Karenina.

Hi Adam. How right you and Shankley are about ballet looking better in person than on TV. On the other hand, DVDs are giving us the chance to experience ballets and dancers we would otherwise never have a chance to see at all. Better than nothing, but nothing like live.

A couple of seasons ago, SFB performed Wheeldon's Quaternary. The third section, Summer, was a breathtaking pdd for Muriel Maffre (now retired, unfortunately) and Yuri Possokhov. I've only seen it the one time, but it left such an impression that it has just about supplanted all the old favorites.

Wow, talk about a blanket statement! Let's see: Fonteyn and Plisetskaya: big eyes, great dancers; Ulanova: little eyes, great dancer. I can't image the lack of 'big eyes' would hold anyone back from being a great anything (well, maybe lemurs would have a problem ). Personally, I love the expressiveness of large eyes, but I'd have to say 'big eyes' wouldn't be anywhere near the top of the list of qualities that make a dancer/actor/whatever 'great'.

Well, it seems I registered here over two years ago, and then never posted (actually, until a few months ago, forgot this site existed ). Anyway, I've been lurking for a while now and very much enjoying the civilized, intelligent discussions. I studied ballet off and on as a young child, then started seriously at around the age of 12 until the end of high school. There was never any chance I would become a pro, but my mother was kind enough to foot the bill for my daily lessons all those years just because she knew how much I loved ballet. As an (almost) senior citizen, I was lucky enough to see some of the legends when their companies toured to my hometown of Philadelphia back in the '60s - I remember the audience singing Happy Birthday to Fonteyn after Swan Lake (she must have been accustomed to this happening, but she was kind enough to act like it was the first time). And then there was the Bolshoi and Raissa Struchkova in (I think) Spring Waters, where she flings herself halfway across the stage at her partner. Naturally, the next day, before class, all the girls insisted on flinging themselves halfway across the studio at the boys. We were lucky nobody got hurt, since at that age, most of the girls were quite a bit bigger than the boys! Right now I'm living in the San Francisco Bay Area and finally have season tickets to SFB. I look forward to sharing thoughts on the upcoming season.