YouOverThere

Yes, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra has decided to have its men dressed in suits rather than tuxedos! http://www.cpr.org/news/story/colorado-symphony-opens-bar-loses-tuxes-and-starts-new-concert-series My prediction is that this is the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it.

From Ticketmaster's website (http://www.ticketmaster.com/h/returns.html?tm_link=tm_i_rp): which implies that you are not necessarily legally entitled to a refund if a show is rescheduled.

Er, make that 4 women and 2 men.

The CB's website shows 6 additional dancers added to the corps (5 women, 1 man), 1 of whom was in the studio company last year.

Christopher Ellis, Adam Still, and Caitlin Valentine appear to have joined Balletmet. http://bmts2014biz.ipage.com/redesign/?page_id=1240

They're now down to 23, as Cara Cooper is no longer listed on their website. I leave Colorado and look what happens: dancers start leaving the Colorado Ballet, Denver decides to tear down the symphony's concert hall, the baseball team finishes in last place every year, ... One would expect that they will add more dancers, as they have too few women (10) on the roster.

This is SOP at all theaters that I've been to. I believe the motive is that they are afraid that something might get knocked off and fall on someone in the orchestra section. Saturday evening's performance was probably top to bottom the best all-around ballet performance that I've seen.

I scrounged up enough money to take in the Washington Ballet's production of Peter Pan at the Kennedy Center back in April (for some reason, I was not able to post here at the time). As I expected, it was basically a kids' show. There wasn't a lot for adults to get interested in. No hint of any romantic feelings between Peter and Wendy or between Peter and Tiger Lily. No jealousy towards Wendy on the part of Tinkerbell (Tinkerbell was a very minor role in this production). No big battle scene between the pirates and the Indians/Native Americans nor scary kidnapping scene. The choreography was created by the WB's artistic director, Septime Webre. It reinforced my earlier impression that he feels much more comfortable creating pieces for men than for women. The few interesting bits of choreography were all for Peter or the pirates (and much of it was gratuitous). The women's parts were pretty basic.

IMHO, losing Adam Still would be a significant loss. He appeared to this non-expert to have a lot of upside. Certainly he is a dancer who commands the stage when he has a solo. YAY!!! for Dana Benton, who paid her dues and was finally rewarded with this promotion.

Simkin was also stellar as Puck in Wednesday's The Dream.

I finished off (and perhaps finished my ballet viewing at the Kennedy Center ) with the Sunday matinee. Some spectacular stuff from Herrara and Vasiliev, though in the first act they seemed a little uncomfortable with the lifts

I won't disagree (even though I thought that this was overall the best ballet performance that I've seen this season). On several occasions, Boylston was slightly slower than everyone else, which I found distracting. Couldn't ask for anything better than $35 orchestra seats (it is surprisingly cheaper to attend the ABT performances than the Washington Ballet performances)..

I wonder what list they sent out this offer to. I usually get notifications of offers like this.

Wow, thanks for the link! I'm headed to DC (unexpectedly!!!!) tomorrow for the matinee. As I live right outside of Philly, it's only a 2 and 1/2 hour drive for me. Can't beat 35 dollar tickets. Too bad I was going to go into work tomorrow to catch up on stuff and now I'm heading to the Kennedy center. It's my first time seeing Don Quixote. I also have tickets to the Wednesday matinee on 5/14. That's so cheap I'm almost tempted to go, and I don't really even like Don Quixote. However, if you're not familiar with the Kennedy Center, beware the $22 parking fee. Use one of the garages across the street, next to the Watergate, and you can save $10-12. On-street parking is free on Sundays. Just give yourself time to drive around a little to search for an available space. Downtown will probably be crowded during the day (though this week's heavy rain may have spoiled the cherry blossoms). If they ran any discount for Saturday evening I'd go for a 2nd time (I already have a ticket for Sunday). There are more than 500 tickets left for Saturday evening, over 600 left for the 2 matinees.

Wow, thanks for the link! I'm headed to DC (unexpectedly!!!!) tomorrow for the matinee. As I live right outside of Philly, it's only a 2 and 1/2 hour drive for me. Can't beat 35 dollar tickets. Too bad I was going to go into work tomorrow to catch up on stuff and now I'm heading to the Kennedy center. It's my first time seeing Don Quixote. I also have tickets to the Wednesday matinee on 5/14. That's so cheap I'm almost tempted to go, and I don't really even like Don Quixote. However, if you're not familiar with the Kennedy Center, beware the $22 parking fee. Use one of the garages across the street, next to the Watergate, and you can save $10-12. On-street parking is free on Sundays. Just give yourself time to drive around a little to search for an available space. Downtown will probably be crowded during the day (though this week's heavy rain may have spoiled the cherry blossoms). There are also parking garages on I Street between 21st and 22nd and 22 Street between I Street and Penn. Ave. that charge $11 on evenings and weekends and are less than 2 blocks from the shuttle stop.

And schedule another dance performance (Washington Ballet) in the same building at the same time.

I did! I did! Unfortunately, I don't know where my program disappeared to. I'm getting ready to move, and my place is in shambles. The program started off a bit slow, with the dancing in Les Sylphides a bit less than the crisp standard of last year's ABT visit to the Kennedy Center. It's a ballet that's little more than a dance exhibition, so every imperfection is noticeable. They used a man from the corps as the male dancer, and it took a while for him to get comfortable. Lots of little extra steps to get his balance after the first few jumps off the solo. There was a little wavering amongst the corps and some spacing issues. Aftereffect, like the program in general, started off slow, and at first I thought that I wasn't going to like it. But it eventually got cranking, with some nice athletic dancing for the men. I was unable to discern a theme, however. The Dream was by far the best of the 3. Again, the start was a bit disconcerting since the ballet begins in the middle of the story. But that was quickly forgotten,as the dancing was up to the previous ABT standards. Julie Kent was very impressive as Titania and Herman Cornejo was outstanding as Puck. Unfortunately, the orchestra wasn't good at all. The tuba player totally muffed an important passage (and was almost as bad the 2nd night) and the horn players also clanked some notes. There were overall balance issues, with the strings being way too weak. ETA: I just read the Washington Post review, and I agree with basically the entire review.

There are also some $39 orchestra seats for 4/15, 4/16, and 4/18. Tickets have to be purchased by 4/12. Discount code is 176509. You can't use both offers on the same ticket purchase.

Christina Schifano is listed on the roster of the Peninsula Ballet Theater. http://www.peninsulaballet.org/company-dancers/ Gregory Desantis is listed on the roster of the Menlowe Ballet http://menloweballet.org/about/dancers/ He also danced in The Nutcracker with the Oakland Ballet in December.

I attended the April 3 Mixed Repertory. I wouldn't have minded having missed this. I just wasn't impressed by the choreography in any of the works. Especially the last 2 works were, to my perception, disjointed. Peck's work was more like 7 4-minutes ballets than a coherent piece. My Chinese-born accomplice said that she got "The Year of the Ox" (the first movement) but not the others. But at least the music was interesting. Ratmansky's piece was, to me, just plain bizarre. There was some sort of story involving characters whose identities and relationships I could never figure out. "Awful" is not strong enough to describe the costumes. They looked like rejects from a 1950's sci-fi movie. The solos and pas de deux's (what's the plural?) were challenging but the rest of the choreography was pretty bland (or maybe it had meaning to someone who could figure out what this piece was about). A number of people left before it was over. I would have if I had come by myself. The performance reinforced the impression of the NYCB that I got last year: a company with extremely talented dancers that is content just to dance well and has little to say. The good news is that I found out that I will still be in the area when the ABT comes to the Kennedy Center.

Just by coincidence, I had to return to Colorado this weekend, and managed to get to a performance, OK, 3 performances of the Colorado Ballet's season-ending Director's Choice program. This brings up the total number of times that I've seen Edwaard Liang's Feast of the Gods into double digits. And it never gets tiresome. I always see something that I missed. And I always run out of Kleenex . I definitely saw things in Amy Seiwert's Traveling Alone that I missed when it was premiered in 2012. Much of the time the music has a melody line and an accompanying line that seems to move at a different pace than the melody. Seiwert took full advantage of that by having some dancers moving at the pace of the melody and some at the pace of the background, but without making it obvious. I had mixed feelings about Sandra Brown's The Last Beat (as did my accomplice for the Sunday matinee). It contained a lot of opportunities for very athletic dancing and a beautiful romantic pas de deux (mainly written for Maria Mosina). But it seemed to lack an overarching theme. Or I just missed it. Living near the Kennedy Center for a year, I watched a number of companies that were more precise technically than the Colorado Ballet. But the Colorado Ballet doesn't take much of a back seat when it comes to bringing out emotion in dancing.

I've seen Dracula 14 times. It's a cash cow for them, as long as they don't overuse it. Martin Fredmann recognized the potential popular appeal of it and purchased costumes and props because he expected to program it on a regular basis. Not the greatest ballet ever, but lots of fun. Wheeldon's A Midsummer Night's Dream was the first program that I saw the CB do, and that was the first professional ballet performance that I ever attended.

It looks like they managed to scrape together enough financing for 5 programs this year! Albeit, 2 of them are only a single weekend.

Day 2 (Wednesday): I was much happier with the pair of Anastasia Kolegova and Maxim Zyuzin. None of the off-balance stumbling that plagued the Tuesday pair. Zyuzin made all the movements seem natural, as opposed to Vladimir Shkyarov, who danced like someone who was just learning the part.

Although I have never heard of anyone counting fouettes during a performance of Swan Lake, as if it is an Olympic event, I was just using that as an example (when you're standing in the back of the theater, you tend to do strange things ). Both of them were visibly wobbling on several occasions. I was surprised to see them listed as principal dancers. Vladimir Schklyarov, who played Prince Siegfried, was lacking in dramatic skills, so that many movements, especially arm movements, looked very stiff and unnatural. For me, this ruined the show. On the other hand, the large ensemble sequences in the first act were impressive (though perhaps I was biased due to the number of extremely pretty women in the corps ). The guy who played Rothbart danced with great passion, what I expect from a Russian dancer. Unfortunately, in the MB's version Rothbart is a small role (at least compared to the Colorado Ballet's version).