volcanohunter

Of course I wasn't suggesting that dancers should literally eat more cheesecake. But if a dancer appears to be emaciated, it is a distraction for me and reduces my enjoyment of what I'm seeing, often severely, because I suffer inwardly for them. I would be happier if the dancers were costumed differently so that their thinness would be less obvious. And if dancers aren't that thin by nature, I wish they didn't feel compelled to achieve that look. A lot does have to do with body type and metabolism. I know dancers who are rail thin, but covered in rock-hard muscle, eat more than I could an

I meant recently, because I agree that ballet today is in the thrall of a cult of the "ballet body." I just can't imagine what leads Howard to believe that white dancers are exempt. Ballet suffers from a really bad case of not seeing the forest for the trees. Nearly every ballet company I've seen has principal dancers who can't really dance. They may have brilliant technique, beautiful legs, remarkable flexibility and so forth, but they can't dance according to a dictionary definition of the term: to move one's body rhythmically usually to music, preferably harmoniously, in an appropriate

I'm genuinely curious, where has Theresa Ruth Howard seen white female ballet dancers who fit the description of "bad feet, a little bit tight, a little bit turned in"?!!

Possibly something went awry, either in the performance or in the filming, and different finale was more presentable.

This week from the Vienna State Opera 1 March - Carmen 2 March - Otello 3 March - Ariadne auf Naxos 4 March - Manon 5 March - Kátja Kabanová 6 March - Aida 7 March - La traviata (live, starting at 18:00 CET / 12:00 pm Eastern) 8 March - Don Quixote (Nureyev production) https://play.wiener-staatsoper.at https://www.wiener-staatsoper.at/en/staatsoper/media/detail/news/current-streaming-schedule/

Elena Tschernischova's production of Giselle for the Vienna State Ballet https://play.wiener-staatsoper.at/event/06eddb5e-20b3-4f04-9171-37e8e0ce14e6

New York City Ballet in Balanchine's Prodigal Son, with Daniel Ulbricht and Teresa Reichlen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFKa6vhTbcQ

The National Ballet of Canada in excerpts from John Neumeier's A Streetcar Named Desire (with Sonia Rodriguez, Evan McKie, Skylar Campbell and Francesco Gabriele Frola), The Seagull (with Rodriguez and Guillaume Côté) and Nijinsky (with Côté, Heather Ogden and Keiichi Hirano)

Here's the link for those interested in watching. https://youtu.be/Wz1yfSLH3o4

Streams from the Vienna State Opera 23 February - Kátja Kabanová 24 February - Věc Makropulos 25 February - Příhody lišky Bystroušky 26 February - Carmen 27 February - Giselle (production by Elena Chernishova) 28 February - Le nozze di Figaro https://play.wiener-staatsoper.at https://www.wiener-staatsoper.at/en/staatsoper/media/detail/news/current-streaming-schedule/

It's not exactly my opinion. It's true that I know very little about minority Slavic languages, such as Kashubian, Upper Sorbian or Lower Sorbian. But I can assure you that there are no -s plurals in Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovakian, Slovenian or Ukrainian. -S plurals are the norm in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, but not in Italian or Romanian, and not in most Germanic languages either.

As far as I know, no Slavic language forms a plural by tacking on an -s at the end of a noun, but that's true of many languages. I'm also not sure all that much about Giselle can be gleaned by studying folkloric sources. Ballet's wilis probably owe more to the imagination of Gautier, and I've learned not to expect anthropological accuracy in ballets.

Pelléas et Mélisande from the Grand Théâtre in Geneva, staged and choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet.

Ballet West in "Rubies"

The key thing here, I think, is the "rest" which was discarded. The new ballet into which the popular pas de deux is inserted may prove to be no more enduring than its predecessor. A gala setting requires only a costume or two, no backdrops, and often even the music is canned. But a new ballet involves enormous production expenses, and if it's a flop, a company is left holding a white elephant. A choreographer with carte blanche and a hefty state subsidy, like Petit had in Marseille or Neumeier has in Hamburg, can pursue a big personal project about a favorite dancer. (Although from the clips

It depends on the language, there being no "Slavic language" per se. You cited Dvořák's Rusalka, for example, and in Czech the plural is rusalky. Likewise, there is no one plural ending for vila (víla/wiła).

I never saw Petit's Ma Pavlova so I don't know whether he quoted her numbers directly or, like Neumeier in Nijinsky and Pavillon d'Armide, alluded to them. Possibly choreographers would rather have their own say.

This week from the Vienna State Opera 15 February - Don Quixote (Nureyev) 16 February - La clemenza di Tito 17 February - Die Zauberflöte 18 February - L'elisir d'amore 19 February - La Cenerentola 20 February - La Sonnambula 21 February - Carmen 22 February - L'elisir d'amore https://play.wiener-staatsoper.at https://www.wiener-staatsoper.at/en/staatsoper/media/detail/news/current-streaming-schedule/

The Vienna State Ballet in Nureyev's production of Don Quixote. Available for about 24 hours. https://play.wiener-staatsoper.at/event/699d5606-ab8c-43de-b959-4ae189f77892

If you want to get some idea of what Grand Pas Classique in a full-length setting would be like, try Marco Spada. I won't speak for anyone else, but I found 2+ hours of Auber's music to be unbearable.

I couldn't say the music is unknown. Several productions of Swan Lake I've seen use the adage, but not Balanchine's choreography, obviously. Other productions use the male variation for Siegfried. In a few cases the female variation is used, although not for Odile. And practically every audio recording of the score includes it, because musicians are interested in what Tchaikovsky composed, not how Petipa reordered the score afterward. Intricate hand grips are extremely characteristic of Balanchine, used in ballets that don't imply any seduction whatsoever. And we can't claim to be respec

Does the Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux strike you as even remotely seductive? It doesn't seem that way to me, so I can't imagine how it could be made to work dramatically in that context.

It comes from a complete Papillon staged by Pierre Lacotte for the POB in 1976. These days it's the only section that's performed. Ronald Hynd also staged a full-length Papillon in 1979 for the Houston Ballet.

The Staatsballett Berlin also continues to perform the Pas de Quatre. These days the Bolshoi's "highlights" programs appear mostly on tours to smaller venues. But in Moscow as recently as 2015 a selection of "divertissement" pieces was sandwiched between ballets that otherwise didn't sell well, in this case Ek's Apartment and Possokhov's Classical Symphony. The theater doesn't seem to regard the concept very seriously: the divertissements aren't entered into its online performance archive.

Vaganova's "Diana and Acteon" pas de deux was an insertion into Esmeralda, which Yuri Burlaka and Vasily Medvedev retained in their production. I think it sticks out like a sore thumb, which is why I generally wouldn't be in favor of the practice. But then I dislike gala pieces in general, so their inclusion in a full-length narrative ballet wouldn't be a draw for me.