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I went to the opening night performance. I've been hesitant to post anything about it, because: 1) I often miss a lot the first time that I watch a program and tend to have a higher opinion after a second viewing; 2) opening night performances often aren't as good as subsequent performances. That being said, I thought that it was inferior to the ABT's presentation. The Royal Ballet re-worked all the choreography, and I thought that the parts for the supporting dancers (e.g., Mercedes, Espada, the gypsies) could have been better. They certainly weren't as spectacular as in the ABT's version. They used a fairly large number of performers as villagers, etc., and for some reason I found it distracting that there were all these people on the stage who didn't spend a lot of time dancing. I kept waiting for a big ensemble number to break out, and it didn't really happen (this likely is one of my "first viewing" problems - judging a production on how it fit my expectations rather than on its own merits). I was not able to talk them into selling me a ticket for $35, so I ended up paying $59. Of course, the original price for the seat was $92, so I still got a great bargain.

Don Quixote is hardly a novelty in DC, this being the 3rd production of it since 2013. With 7 performances and high ticket prices, it shouldn't be surprising that they can't sell it out.

Interesting. I received a discount for $59 rather than $35. Do they give different discounts depending on how many tickets you've bought at the KC?

I didn't count. The stage in the Eisenhower Theater is a little small. The ballerina only did 16 fouettes because she would have ended up in the orchestra pit if she had tried to do 32.

Given the upbeats reviews here and from my co-worker, I decided to take advantage of the cut-rate $75 and take in the Saturday matinee. It was a pretty good show, but maybe I would have enjoyed a second trip to NYCB's Program A more. Tamas Krizsa is a good actor, and that helped him overcome his limitations as a dancer. He is especially expressive with his eyes. I second Natalia's opinion of Ndile Ndlovu. What I didn't like about the performance had nothing to do with who was dancing what part. Rothbart was very passive and not at all frightening. I prefer my villains to be visibly evil, rather than just standing around in a fearsome-looking costume. The swan corps added little to the production. Memories fade, and at my age fade quickly, but my remembrances of other productions have a bigger role for the swan corps.

The second time around, I liked Symphonic Dances even better. It seems like a good opening piece, with a brisk pace and Rachmaninoff's great music. But being both higher and farther back (in the rear of the 1st tier as opposed to 4/5 of the way back in the orchestra) made the ugly costumes for Pictures at an Exhibition have more of a negative impact. And I found Ratmansky's often light-hearted take on music that has always seemed somber to me a little perplexing. I didn't change my opinion of Everywhere We Go - I still think that it is a good but not great piece. The music seemed disjointed, as if different sections were taken from different compositions.

I seem to be alone in really enjoying Pictures at an Exhibition, despite the horrid costumes and despite the fact that Ratmansky treated the music as abstract music and didn't attempt choreography that expressed the themes of the various movements (4 very petite women dancing during "Bydlo"???). Maybe it's because I LOVE the music. I thought the choreography was the most original of any of the works in the program. I also seem to be alone in preferring Symphonic Dances to Everywhere We Go. Perhaps because it was so late by the time that Everywhere We Go began. I thought that Everywhere We Go was a little long, especially since it at one point seemed to come to a natural conclusion (the point that Natalia mentioned where many people started applauding) but then re-started. I share Natalia's opinion of Sufjan Steven's music. I'll see if tonight's second viewing changes my opinion at all, since tomorrow isn't a work day and I won't be thinking about how late I'm getting home.

A co-worker who went to the Wednesday "preview" (since she had bought season tickets, she only paid $24 for her seat) said that Maki Onuki turned in a very good performance as Odilia/Odette. There are a few tickets available (as of 5:30 Friday evening) for all shows, including Misty's Sunday evening performance (still $225) and even some $75 seats available for the Saturday matinee (bet those get snarfed up pretty quickly).

Speaking of bad costumes, the women's outfits for Pictures at an Exhibition were downright awful.

There are now seats available for all but the Sunday evening performance, $225 for a Misty performance and $155 for a performance sans Misty. I might consider forking out that kind of money for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a legend. Unless the WB has managed to borrow more than just Misty Copeland from other dance companies, the swan corps is going to consist mostly of students. I'm not a big fan of Misty's partner, Brooklyn Mack.

How time flies. It's been almost 3 weeks since I attended both performances by the modern flamenco company Compania Maria Pages at the Kennedy Center. It was a whole new experience for me. Maria Pages incorporates modern dance sensibility into flamenco dancing, increasing the emotional range over traditional flamenco dancing. The current tour users 14 performers: Maria Pages does the solo dancing, with the solos sandwiched between ensemble pieces for 3 male and 3 female dancers. There are male and female vocalists and 5 musicians (including 2 Spanish guitarists). Listening to the haunting Andalusian folk music would have been worth the price of admission.

Wow! Losing 3 of the top 5 men (with Adam Still leaving last year, it's 4 of the top 6 in 2 years) will present a challenge for next year.

I made my first trip to Cinderella for the Saturday matinee. The orchestra started playing and I immediately thought that the tempo was too slow. It stayed that way through most of the performance. Martin Fredmann's choreography is ingrained in me, and I found the Ashton choreography disappointing. It made little attempt to tell the story, in fact other than when the stepsisters were involved there was little in the choreography in the 2nd and 3rd acts that reminded me that I was watching Cinderella rather than some other ballet. I missed the beautiful waltz that Fredmann stuck in the 2nd act. It's my understanding that Prokofiev envisioned Cinderella as some sort of morality story, but there was nothing in this production that gave that feeling.

It looks like the Misty Effect has spread to all performances. All the other performances are virtual sell-outs, with the few remaining seats priced at an unbelievable (even for DC) $155. And this despite the fact the the Washington Ballet will be going head-to-head with the New York City Ballet (except for the Sunday evening show). I'd like to see this production just out of curiosity to see how they manage to fill the need for a large number of female dancers when they only have 10 in the professional company. But not for $155.

I'm back in DC now, so you will all have to put up with my often ignorant opinions again. I was a little disappointed with ABT's choices this time around. I'm a little over-saturated with Theme and Variations, this being the 3rd production of it at the Kennedy Center in the past 24 months (plus the Colorado Ballet performed it while I was visiting Denver in 2013) and Rodeo just seems to not be the sort of thing that separates an elite company like ABT from the rest of the pack. While I often like to see 2 performances of a program, I haven't been able to get motivated to fork out the $$ for a ticket just to see Pillar of Fire a second time.

I ended up going to both the Nov. 28 and Nov. 29 performances. There were 4 works in this very long show, Balanchine's Swan Lake, Monumento Pro Gesualdo/Movements for Piano and Orchestra, Allegro Brillante, and Jerome Robbins' The Concert. I was a little disappointed. They seemed to be a few rehearsals shy of performance-ready. The opener, Balanchine's Swan Lake, was probably the weakest. In Friday's show, the swan corps just wasn't together and the dancer playing Siefgried seemed a little low on energy. During Saturday's show, I thought that they were doing better, until one unfortunate ballerina tripped over another ballerina's foot and ended up on the floor. There were still some spacing issues, so that on several occasions ballerinas' feet came nervously close to bumping into the next ballerina. I thought that The Concert was a poor choice. It's cute and funny for about 15 minutes, and then after that it just goes over the top with predictable and rather unintelligent comedy. .

I really enjoyed it (Nov. 29 matinee). But I have to admit that I was far more impressed with the cast than with the play itself. The range of skills required of the actors was amazing, and they all nailed it. As far as the play goes, I thought that the music was in general bland and generic and that the first act dragged on too long. Many of the plot elements weren't particularly original. I would say that it was the performers rather than the creators that made the play enjoyable.

I ended up going (didn't want to offend the intern by not accepting the invite). I thought that it actually was entertaining, and that it had more "bite" than many of the other Broadway musicals that I've seen. The social commentary was deeper. Perhaps it was because I had such low expectations.

I prefer Wheeldon's version to Balanchine's, mainly because I think it has a clearer narrative. It was the first professional ballet performance that I attended (back in, IIRC, 1998) and it immediately turned me into a ballet fan.

Has anyone seen the Broadway musical Pippin? In particular, I've heard that there is a significant difference between the professional edition and the edition that is licensed to amateur groups, with the amateur version having all the "edgey" stuff removed. The graduate intern has invited me to accompany her and her husband to a local amateur theater production of Pippin. Given my historical dislike of award-winning Broadway musicals (I found Hairspray and The Light in the Piazza absolutely agonizing to sit through), I'm worried that I will be totally bored, especially if this is a watered-down version (and I will regret missing a chamber orchestra concert that will include Bartok's Divertimento for Strings).

Unfortunately, she has a Ph.D. so she is very spacey and sometimes loses track of time. I emailed someone at the Washington Ballet and received a very gracious response, though because the theater rather than the Washington Ballet ran the ticket office he was not sure exactly what the policy is. I guess that it's a little different in Denver, where both the Colorado Ballet and Colorado Symphony perform in the main downtown area so that people who want to attend a future performance might be in the area for some other reason and will stop by to purchase tickets. The Kennedy Center has a rigid policy of not selling tickets after the starting time for a show even though the box office is normally open until (IIRC) 9:00.

A friend went, well actually tried to attend, tonight's performance at the Sidney Harman Theater. She somehow managed to get there shortly after the 6:30 showtime, only to find that the box office was closed. To add insult to injury, she had to pay the normal $22 parking garage fee rather than the $7 fee for theater goers. I thought that this was a little strange. In Denver, I once bought a ticket for The Nutcracker shortly before the intermission.

Mozart was the first hip-hop composer? And the Soviet Army invented hip-hop dancing?

I wonder what it would look like if each section wore a different color. Maybe sections could be color-coded by their relative pitch mapped to the colors of the spectrum, though the order would probably have to be reversed because people would tend to think of red as representing higher pitches than blue. You'd have the 1st violins and flutes in red, the 2nd violins and other soprano instruments in orange, and so on down to the tuba in violet. Nah, that would probably look pretty ugly. I don't know that it's ugly so much as it's busy, but I'd be curious to see this a couple of times. They could use more-neutral colors. White and off-white for the 1st and 2nd violins down to black for the double basses. The violas could be dressed in dull grey.

I wonder what it would look like if each section wore a different color. Maybe sections could be color-coded by their relative pitch mapped to the colors of the spectrum, though the order would probably have to be reversed because people would tend to think of red as representing higher pitches than blue. You'd have the 1st violins and flutes in red, the 2nd violins and other soprano instruments in orange, and so on down to the tuba in violet. Nah, that would probably look pretty ugly.