SandyMcKean

Does anyone plan on going to see both casts perform?

I'm sure many of us will. I saw 5 performances last year (yes, there is no hope for me ).....and that's with only 1 Juliette. I can't imagine what I'm going to do with 2 (maybe 3???) to choose from. Does anyone think there will be a 3rd Juliette? It was mentioned in this thread that Mara Vinson was rehearsing the part.

It's going to be fun to post all our reactions here as these performances unfold. I feel like a little kid the night before Christmas when ballet season starts again!

Imler is rehearsing the Nurse

Now, that's interesting. With her acting skills (along with everything else wonderful about Carrie) she'll take that role to unimagined places (if she doesn't upstage Juliette ).

Mara Vinson is also learning Juliette.

Looks like sandik called that one right!

Frankly, Mara didn't use to excite me, but something's changed....I am really getting into her dancing since she returned from maturity maternity leave. I loved her in Dances at a Gathering. If she does Juliette that will no doubt clinch it for me: one way or the other.

[later edit....OOPS )

Chalnessa Eames and Rachel Foster are seen rehearsing the Nurse...

Glad to hear that (great detective work, BTW!). Rachel was my pick to replace Jodi Thomas as the nurse if Rachel didn't get the nod to do Juliette (low odds I know). I agree with you Helene, Chalnessa was a terrific nurse last year (such a great part!) so it is not surprising she will do it again. Hmmmmm....Carrie as Lady Capulet perhaps. I wish the men photo had Barry Kerollis in it since I was pulling for him to inherit the Tybalt role from Herd.

I will be excited to see Kaori in this role. Her technique is flawless, but in a crystaline sort of way. A strong exception to that overall impression was when I saw her performance in Tharp's "Afternoon Ball". There Kaori created a character of wild emotion with non-traditional dance vocabulary that made it hard for me to believe that who I was watching was really Kaori. I'd still like to see someone like Rachel Foster doing Juilette because of her natural affinity for more modern styles, but certainly not to the exclusion of Kaori -- assuming Kaori can marry her incredible technique to the emotionalism required to deliver Malliot's choreography. Watching Kaori in the last couple of years inject character and emotion into her dance gives me reason to be very excited indeed about the possibility of her Juilette in this version of R&J. I can't wait!

Is the third son's name Woltan? ( inside joke)

Yes, Ethan is one of their sons (the other, Christopher, is the Artist Director of the Oregon Ballet Theater). Kent and Francia Stowell are, of course, now retired.

Or in "Kiss"

Indeed!

Hmmmmm...Kiss another possibility for a restaurant name .

For those of us who have followed Kari's food blogs, it is clear the passion Kari has for high quality, artistically presented cuisine made with only the freshest of ingredients. She has been working at Ethan Stowell's newest restaurant "Anchovies & Olives" this summer and loved it. We're going to miss her direct and sometimes sexy dance, but her blogs make it very clear that she will now be in another field she loves.

Take a look at the photos (which she takes herself) of some of the dishes she creates here: http://www.anticiplate.com

I have little doubt we in Seattle will someday take out of town guests to Kari Brunson's own restaurant. Maybe she will call it something like Pirouette or some other ballet based name, and we can all eat there and say "Who could forget Kari in Take Five."

Thanks bart for this insight. Jewels is a ballet I hope to see dozens of more times (I've seen it maybe 6 or 7 times so far). It's one of the pinnacle ballets for me. Your insight will be very much in mind the next time I'm lucky enough to see it.

and suddenly realizes that it is not really possible to get 2 feet from Juliet's face.

It wouldn't be the first time advertising painted a rosier picture than the reality (think Viagra ). Your software engineer likely has run into that marketing technique before and would accept it as SOP .

OK Helene....... :

I get it (I think). You see BT'ers, Helene and I just love to talk PNB and all else ballet....and we do so often. We don't always agree of course. One of the main reasons we sometimes disagree is that my tastes are less, shall we say, informed , than hers. I absolutely love, love, love Maillot's R&J, and damned be that it may not meet certain standards of choreography. Helene, OTOH, has the most refined ballet (and opera) tastes of anyone I know.

Helene is just far too polite to tell me that I don't know what the hell I'm looking at . I, OTOH, am working on getting her to let her heart rule her mind from time to time. (Give me time BT'ers......her mind is a formitable challenge given its incredibly high quality.)

I won't resist .

I'm going to look past the "camera angles" question. One can certainly debate how a video director "ought" to capture a ballet performance, and I can see differenct folks taking different POVs. But here is the my take on why the R&J video is all closeups......MARKETING.

From nearly the day Peter Boal got to PNB, he has been interested in increasing the numbers of the younger generation who go to the ballet on a regular basis. I can't state this as fact because I've never talked to him about it, but there are lots of signs that this is one of his objectives (however, I did once talk to a PNB board member who said as much). I think he has systematically sacrificed things the "older" patrons prefer in an attempt to interest "younger" patrons. His program choices speak volumes that this is so (and I've heard Boal defend his program choices to the complaints that PNB no longer does enough "traditional" ballet, especially traditional choreographed story ballets).

So the R&J video characteristics, I believe, are a direct attempt to appeal to the younger set. To intice them into thinking that ballet is perhaps not just what they had always thought it to be. Such at least is my speculation.

This was certainly hush-hush.....or was I the only one who didn't know this was underway??

The new seating chart is a vast improvement (and looks as if PNB might be heading toward the sort of seat-by-seat interactive internet-based ticket purchase system that the Seattle Symphony and the Seattle Opera have).

"what was the last really promising ballet that you saw"

Yes, I like this addition too.

Again from my limited vantage point:

Paul Gibson: Sense of Doubt, or The Piano Dance

Kiyon Gaines: Schwa

Wheeldon: Polyphonia

....this thread is to discuss works using the academic language of ballet

Allow me to push back a little on this.

I once heard (and partcipated in) some fascinating discussions of "One Flat Thing, Reproduced" that included Peter Boal, Doug Fullington, and a couple of PNB dancers as well as audience members. As I've posted elsewhere on this board, I've seen OFT,R 5 or 6 times in the last 2 years. At first I didn't like it -- mainly because it didn't look like ballet to me. Then Fullington pointed out that dancers in OFT,R were queueing off each other instead off the music; Boal gave his opinion that Forsythe was using what he might as well have called "academic language of ballet" in his movement, not precisely perhaps, but that Boal considered it put together using the language of classsical ballet on its most elemental (atomic) level. Once I understood those insights, I started to love OFT,R. In fact the last time I saw it, it reminded me, perhaps strangely to some, more than anything else, of Balanchine.

Having said that, I grant you OFT,R perhaps takes this thread down the "wrong "path.

Possibly dancers, choreographers, ballet masters and even serious ballet-goers don't have the time?

I'm sure that's true, but I was thinking more of the committed ballet audience than the dancers and choreographers (tho their relationships with cats is interesting too). It just struck me earlier today as pausible that whatever it is that we all love to watch in ballet has something in common with whatever it is that we love to watch in cats.

I'll pick a trait to start with: landings. I am endlessly admiring a superb dancer (especially a male dancer) for having made a "just so" landing where it seems the pressure to the floor is no more than an ordinary walking footfall......dare I say it, a cat like landing.

I was wondering: Who among the leaders of the ballet world today -- companies, ballet masters in chief, artistic directors, foundations, etc -- are doing a decent job in this? What can we learn from them?

I hate to suggest PNB right out the box because it's "my" company, and it's really all I know (well, I do sort of know a few other companies); however, I do think PNB does a good job of this.

PNB brings lesser known (but relatively safe) choreographers to the main stage in the main season. It also has a "Choreographer's Showcase" each year where company dancers apply to create a brand new piece. In the season just past, 8 pieces were done by 8 PNB dancers including the likes of Gains, Wevers, and Lowenberg (and 5 other dancers, some doing their very first piece). PNB also did a Festival mid-season for a couple of years which featured smaller companies from the west coast, but that is now defunct since it lost too much money.

Next, I know from personal experience how supportive PNB is to small local companies. I help out a small new-ish company here in Seattle known as the Seattle Dance Project that focuses on creating more modern style works for classically trained dancers (ADs = Julie Tobiason and Tim Lynch). Seattle Dance Project is made up of some 10 dancers many of whom are retired PNB dancers (including principals) and other dance professionals from the modern dance scene here. PNB gives them rehersal space; loans them marley flooring when required; contributes money (at least as individuals); gives them technical advise, and just about anything else that makes sense. Seattle Dance Project, in turn, commissions several new works per year (for example, I had the privilege to partially sponsor Heidi Verthaler (ex-PNB and Forsythe company dancer) who did a new and astonishing work called "Surfacing").

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It just struck me........you don't suppose a charactertistic of a balletomane is that s/he loves cats, do you?? (Think Balanchine)

Sandy, there are the 'next size cats' even if they aren't 'breedable' as such from the smaller domesticated kinds of cats

My comment about breeders not being able to breed significantly larger or smaller cats was just that....BREEDING. Naturally there are animals from the cat family as large as lions and as small as ????. Which makes it even more curious that breeders of domestic cats haven't been able to significantly change overall body size.

Forsythe's "One Flat Thing, Reproduced"

Dove's "Vespers"

Of course, one could logically argue that neither of these are ballet, but I consider them to be ballet.

I'm a little surprised that anyone would try.

Then I suspect you don't know many breeders . To say they can be obessive about "creating" a new, hot look would be an under statement.

P.S. Seriously, you do raise a good point that never occurred to me.....if one could breed much larger cats, their superior pedator skills and rather unpredictable inclinations (unlike dogs whose inclinations are moderated by including you in their "pack") could surely be dangerous to have around. "Your honor, I just left my cat and son together for a moment."......I won't go any further.

I suspect cats think they're perfect as is and see no reason to change.

BINGO!...... you made my day!

This is what reading too much Ayn Rand does for one.

She's always scared the ba-jesus out of me (BTW, I did read Atlas).

Being a "cat nut", I've read some books about them. Also being scientifically mined, I get struck by the biologic items. Three such items might be worth sharing:

1. Dogs have been domesticated for about 20,000 years, cats for only 5000 years. Some think this is a partial explanation for the "wildness" that is still noticeable in cats. (Of course dogs are a pack animal and cats are not....so that's there too.)

2. Cats and mankind got into "relationship" because after the start of agriculturally based society, humans encouraged cats to hang around since the cats cropped down the rat/mouse populations that invaded grain storage. Cats agreed since the human granaries concentrated the rodents.

3. Humans breed both cats and dogs for show and as "working" animals. This has created an amazing number of varieties of both. However, no one has been able to breed cats that are significantly larger or smaller than your average cat, whereas dogs, of course, have been bred to be as small as toy dog sized and as large as St Bernard sized. No one, apparently, knows why this is so.