vagansmom

I can't imagine what it must be like for Filin who knows the guy who ordered the acid attack is once again living in his apartment building! I imagine it's a very large building, but still...It was chilling to read Dmitrichenko's words linking the prospect of increased ticket sales (therefore, the Bolshoi should rehire him!) to his imprisonment for ordering the attack. It was equally chilling to read his remark about how he can easily forget the past. I'm hoping that's bravado. Hopefully, he won't be able to get back into enough shape to pass an audition. I don't trust that the powers-that-be wouldn't hire him if he gets back into dance shape. If they did, can you imagine it? Both he and Filin would then work and live in the same places. The only good thing I could hope for if they had contact is that Dmitrichenko, on seeing Filin, might feel guilt. That is, if he has a conscience.

Thanks so much for that clip: Amazing!

I really loved Macaluley's comment about the fouettes being done in time to the music. Personally, I couldn't care less how many fouettes a dancer does. What I care most about is: Are they performed on time to the music? If a dancer is just trying to fit in 32 or close to that and is off time (and in poor form as they continue), I'm terribly disappointed. Macauley's point that Copeland performed her fewer number of fouettes completely in sync with the music as opposed to Murphy's many fouettes out of time is very well taken, in my opinion. If there's music, the dancing needs to be musical.

Just saw this: I am very sorry to hear such sad news about Giannina. She was truly a welcoming lady, both officially for these boards and also in all her other posts. RIP. I wish I knew her in real life. My condolences to her family.

I'd say it should be "en pointe" if we're going to be French about it.

I always try to give a dancer the benefit of the doubt when s/he under-performs roles they've done very well in the past. Maybe they're dealing with an illness. Also, I figure they may be dealing with an injury, needing to baby it for a performance or even a small series of performances until it heals. Holding back a little for some performances allows them to actually heal and could very well permit them to return to their former excellence and extend their careers. It's such a balancing act for dancers; they deal with injuries all the time. Note: I have no idea whatsoever if Veyette is dancing injured or is sick. I'm just commenting in general about my thought processes when dancers don't perform up to my usual expectations. I try to be forgiving until under-performance over a period of time becomes the norm.

The placement of those fingers makes me want to scream.

Hehe, maybe that's why they practice it so much!

Really love this quote from the Kourlas article: "They all said that she's [Messmer] really talented, she's a workaholic, she's very focused and present, she delivers onstage, but she has a very strong personality and asks a lot of questions and wants to know the answers," Lopez says. "There was a part of me that made me wonder: If we were talking about a male dancer, would you have the same reaction?"

So, do ballets with Hee Seo sell that many more tickets than ballets with other principals at ABT? Is that why she's used so frequently?

Count me in as another youtube watcher who gets so excited about what she sees there that she buys tickets to NYCB despite living 2.5 hours away and it's a major sacrifice to drive down the city. I think the youtube videos are a great introduction: how do you know if you'll like something if you've never seen it before? Most people won't part with their money for something they don't have a clue about. I'm committed to ballet, but my friends and students certainly aren't. Recently, I showed some young teen students the McBride/Baryshnikov video of Tchai pdd. They are Irish dance students. They got so interested that they got a group together to go into the city to see NYCB perform. These were kids who would roll their eyes as soon as someone said the word "ballet." But they had no experience to draw on to judge it accurately. Now they're psyched to see more and more live ballet. This is how to build a youth audience.

I triple giving mega credit to Villella and applaud Lopez's wisdom in continuing his legacy while adding her own stamp on the company. Not all former Balanchine dancers have the talent for understanding and imparting his spirit on their dancers, but Villella and Lopez both certainly possess it.

I've seen hundreds of dance performances that use scrims as I have a relative who worked many years for a company famous for its use of scrims. I think that how much the scrim enhances or obscures the dancing really depends on the lighting. There are times when I've hated the scrim, and other times when I've found it sets a mood. There are times when I've been able to see faces quite well behind the scrim and times when I haven't. Different shows, different lighting.

Hehe, I always think of Odile as having ATTITUDE, and since my understanding of Womack is that she is not lacking in that department, I was expecting something vibrant. I was surprised to find that it was, instead, an artistically vacant performance.

I had the opposite impression. I found her performance as lacking in command. She was technically beautiful in parts, but there were many bobbles. I can happily overlook them if I feel a dancer is inhabiting her role. Mostly, while watching this, I saw a dancer THINKING about how Odile should look, rather than simply BEING Odile. It was a good, not great, technical performance. I did feel sorry for her in that neither the music nor her partner were very helpful.

I always felt that Paloma was taken into the company too young and that if she'd had two more years of school training, she would have developed her artistry more. She was magnificent in her lower body, but I had a great deal of trouble watching her dance sometimes because her upper body was so stiff. I wish she'd been given the gift of time to develop her arms and shoulders.

Thanks. Dancer's route to college after dancing professionally till she was 26 was through a program affectionately nicknamed " Tutus and Uzis" because most of the students entering via that route were either ballet veterans or war veterans. Quite a few of the professional ballet dancers I've seen perform or whom I've read about on these boards have eventually landed there.

The ballet dancer in my life left the ballet world to move over to contemporary dance largely because she was able to have a much bigger part in the choreographic process along with much greater touring opportunities. It helped that full benefits were included along with salary. She had always told herself that she'd enter college full-time before she was 30, did so, graduated and is studying to be a doctor. She grew up with the double passions of dance and science. Many of her ballet company friends have headed in a similar direction. Interestingly, it often seems to be medicine or journalism that comes afterward.

Very happy for Cirio. I saw him in Boston a couple times and will definitely get tickets for his Ratmansky performance.

Mimsyb, re your "perhaps the current political situation ( vis a vis terrorism, etc.) wasn't to Miss Portman's liking when it came to living in Paris..." I can imagine that Mr. Millepied might not find it to his liking either since Paris Opera Ballet, like any well-known Parisian institution, must be considered a potential terrorist target. One doesn't have to be a foreigner in Paris to feel that way. Having had a home and livelihood in another country, and the chance to return to it, Mr. Millepied might be easily swayed. Perhaps that, along with the ballet political issues he feels he is up against, is enough for him personally to decide to leave.

Balletforme, I wonder if it has to do with the change as described by Natalia on another BA thread from 2013 about Kirov Academy. My iPad won't let me copy the link or quote, but go to the thread entitled " Help the Kirov Academy of Ballet of Washington DC!" Go to post #9. There was a big change in 2009 of directorship and, due to money constraints because The Unification Church cut funding, Kirov began to accept all kinds of body types. Teaching staff also changed as well as directorship, which was no longer Russian. In effect, they no longer had the financial stability ability to follow the Russian model anymore and were suddenly like all the other very respectable ballet schools who need to work hard to get and keep students.

It will be interesting to see how many fully homegrown JKO students get contracts with ABT. I suspect they'll end up in a model similar to that of NYCB, whose ranks include very few dancers who train all the way up the levels, despite having a children's division. At age 11 or 12, SAB starts weaning their students to make way for the dancers they invite from their summer intensive to stay year-round. Even though NYCB has the children's division, it is still essentially a finishing school for dancers, as is HARID, for example, in Boca Raton, which is a stand- alone school for high school aged dancers. While their reputations for training dancers are excellent, it's always important to remember that they are skimming the best of the best from other ballet schools, so their reputations are quite a bit overinflated. Without a system where students with the physique and intellect are invited from their regular academic schools to enter a dance conservatory ala the Russian system, there are simply too many mitigating factors that keep dancers from being able to progress all the way up to professional level. So the children's division (through age 12-ish) of a school is a great cash cow, but it doesn't have much luck producing professional ballet dancers.

I believe it was Ib Anderson.

Stage Right, that's what bothers me as well. Are we all THAT removed from the natural world? Surely there are other nouns that we can part with? I would love to know how many of those decision-makers were male vs. female.

Hehe, someone ought to alert the SSAT test makers. Cygnet is one of their favorite analogy words.