YouOverThere

For those of us who have trouble balancing our checkbooks, multiplication IS advanced math.

The Boulder Ballet has scheduled performances for Feb. 10, 11, 17 and 18 at 8:00 and Feb. 12 and 19 at 2:00 of Premiers. They describe Premiers as (3) "new, contemporary ballet works", but judging from the descriptions on their website, http://boulderballet.org/page4.html#premieres , I'm guessing that purists would not classify at least some of the dances as ballet.

The Denver Post's article is at http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_3485314. I doubt that it will add much clarity for you.

Does that motion of raising their leg behind them that golfers often make when reaching down to get their golfball out of the hole qualify as an arabesque? Maybe a fore-th arabesque?

I apologize for not mentioning for the benefit of the vast majority of the users who aren't all that familiar with the Colorado Ballet who the Armstrongs are. They were the Colorado Ballet's largest donors and were on the Board of Trustees until last Spring when they resigned at about the time that the former Executive Director of the Colorado Ballet quit.

Is hiking a good way to get in shape to play golf, Golden Gate? It's interesting that the Armstrongs have (according to the Rocky Mountain News) jumped back on the ship in a big way. [snip]

I used to avoid Modern performances. My ballet friends kept trying to get me to Paul Taylor, but I insisted "I don't like Modern Dance." They said, "No, you don't like Martha Graham. Give this a try." I finally caved in, and in a little over two hours, I'd fallen in love. There's Ballet and there's Modern. There are good works and bad ones. But I don't think there's any correlation between one to the other. Of course, it may be that there is something about Modern -- the use of weight, the absence of pointe shoes or something else -- that doesn't allow you to be pulled in. I'd recommend trying to track down the Paul Taylor Dance Company video (I doubt it is available on DVD) that includes "Esplanade." <{POST_SNAPBACK}> My wording may have been a little misleading. I wasn't intending to knock modern dance. Because most of the "modern dance" performances that I've seen have been by local groups performing their own choreography, it's easier to think of examples of poor dancing and lame choreography from them than from the ballet performances that I've seen. Indeed, the Colorado Ballet has done several works that arguably aren't true ballet, such as "Appalachian Spring" and "Earth Tribe" (a hip hop dance piece). To me, art is art and as long as it's meaningful and challenging for the artists I can appreciate it.

I got the word "foites" from an email sent to me by another poster on this board. If it is mis-spelled, it is all THEIR FAULT. I brought up "modern dance" because I don't have a lot of bad ballet experiences to reference. Most of the non-ballet dance performances that I've been to have been by local groups where the quality is very uneven.

Dracula!

I love ballet and I haven't got a clue how to analyze it. I don't even know the names of most of the techniques (e.g., foites) much less the proper way to perform them. I go just because 1) it's fascinating to see how people can tell a story without words; 2) it's amazing to watch the incredible physical feats that the dancers perform; 3) ballet has a high goose-bump factor. No matter how good the dancers are, if the choreography or story is lame then I will be bored (for me, there's only been 1 ballet that the I've seen at the Colorado Ballet that qualifies, though I have been to several performances by "modern dance" companies that were agony to sit through). Great dancers can make an OK ballet really enjoyable, however. On the other hand, for me poor dancing can ruin the best of ballets.

There is an opera singer who frequently performs (mainly secondary roles) with Opera Colorado and the Central City Opera who reportedly did not start singing seriously until after she graduated from college (with a degree is "psycholinguistics")! I guess that doesn't necessarily mean that she didn't have any voice training at all earlier in her life, but it does show that if you have talent then it is possible to start out at a relatively 'old' age.

Even if I still don't know what "foites" is?

I'll keep that in mind for the future. This one's "OBE".

2006: The 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart and the 100th anniversary of the birth of Shostakovich!

In reality, the change in perks was insignificant in creating my current negative attitude towards the CB's management compared to the 'spin' that the board has been putting out about the firing (and actually the change took place well before Fredmann was fired, though I didn't realize that when I wrote my earlier posts). I tend to react VERY negatively to PR spin.

It didn't occur to me to mention this earlier, but the CB is offering discounted tickets for the opening weekend of Cinderella (most likely all the Denver-area users get their e-newsletter and already know about this). The bad news is that the offer expires at 4PM MST today (Feb. 1). I guess anyone interested would need to send me an email or personal message, though I don't think that anyone should object if I post the code since the e-newsletter explicitly invites recipients to forward it to anyone they think might be interested.

"Left Unsaid" - Nicolo Fonte, choreographer "Noir Blanc" - Moses Pendelton, choreographer "Like A Samba" - Trey McIntyre, choreographer

Is anyone familiar with the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet? They're going to be in Boulder, CO in a few weeks, but my piggy bank isn't real full right now. If anyone has seen them, I'd appreciate their opinion before I spring for tickets.

On the other hand, contemporary art is often considered to be "elitist" (and it often is "unaccessible" to people without a strong interest in the art form), so to be "cutting edge" may get an arts organization a reputation as being "elitist" even if they are "contemporary".

This site is apparently optimised for Internet Explorer and doesn't display properly with other browsers. In particular, I am having problems with Firefox (I have version 1.0.7). Among other things, the link for logging out is non-existent. And the link for contacting the moderators/administrators that is described in the help section (which is the 'lp' section for me) is also non-existent, which is why I needed to open a thread and bore everyone else with my problem.

I assume that this was a response to some part of my post but it isn't clear what you were referring to (apologies to the other users but I haven't made the requisite number of posts to allow me to contact Golden Gate privately).

IMHO it's just another case of people bashing something that they don't want to take the time to understand. Anything that pushes the limit of creativity is obviously going to be challenging for the audience as well as to the artists (rock musician Robert Fripp says that his definition of good music is music that takes almost as much skill to listen to as to perform). If having to use your own intelligence to appreciate someone else's performance is "elitist", so be it.

Neither the "Stars of Tomorrow" nor "The Turning Pointe" are mentioned on the CB's website. Nor did the Development Director mention them when I asked about what perks I'm entitled to. You are sure about these? Which is unfortunate since my car is really dirty after being parked at the airport for 5 days. OK, I'm selfish. But I did double my donation specifically to get more dress rehersal tickets, which I ended up not getting. (Even being selfish I'm one of the top 100 donors.)

Five weekends?! Golly -- who else uses that theater? Up here in Seattle, the ballet used to share with the opera and the symphony, and everyone clawed for more time (in a well-bred manner, of course). Now that the symphony has its own hall, the ballet and the opera still have to contend with other users. I can't imagine a situation where they would have five (I'm assuming consecutive) weekends for anything other than Nutcracker. I imagine that the Choreographer Showcase (above) shares time with some other event, considering the math, but still... Golly. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The Colorado Ballet shares a venue with Opera Colorado. It looks like Opera Colorado got the better dates this year. The Choreographer Showcase does share time with some other event: Cinderella. It will be interesting to see how they split up the principal dancers between the 2 programs. It also means that there is no April-May ballet, which is really unfortunate. On warm Spring evenings, the audience-watching can be almost as much fun as the performance.

It seems that in many arts organizations jobs go to the spouses of high-ranking administrators or board memebers.