volcanohunter

This certainly rings true to me: One of the reasons this is true around here is because 18 years ago the local symphony orchestra finally moved out of the oversized hangar auditorium with its abysmal acoustics into a proper new concert hall. Now the opera company would like to follow suit by building a more sensibly sized and properly designed opera house and bring the ballet company along. But I wonder whether such plans are feasible outside huge metropolises. The symphony orchestra had always given a substantial number of concerts, in addition to acting as pit orchestra for the opera and ballet. But the opera and ballet companies wouldn't be able to present enough performances, even if they were to increase in number to accommodate the existing audience in a smaller hall, to keep an opera house occupied most of the year. I fear it would result in yet another insufficiently occupied venue. I'm sure there are many equally awful multipurpose halls out there, suitable in reality only for amplified music, but what can be done with them now that they've been built? Knock them down?

This is an interesting thought. One ABT dancer who openly expressed his ambitions and for whom this seems to have backfired was Giuseppe Picone, and as it happens I found his stage persona very cheesy. Perhaps off-stage personalities and onstage personae are not such discrete and disentangled entities. I must confess that I dislike brashly assertive personalities in both men and women, and part of my antipathy for certain dancers may well stem from their projection of this quality. But I would have to monitor myself to see whether I respond merely with eye-rolling in the case of cocky male dancers and with something more violent with brassy women.

A brief video interview with Abrera's parents: http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/07/01/parents-of-newly-appointed-abt-principal-stella-abrera-recall-beginning-at-pasadena-dance-theatre/

San Francisco Ballet also sent out a message of reassurance to its audience in its latest e-news bulletin:

But statistically Vancouver is the most "Asian" city outside of Asia, with a particularly large population of Chinese origin.

I'm sorry you seem to have so little faith in her fans.

I predict that the day Francesca Hayward becomes a principal of the Royal Ballet, you will hear complaints from no one.

I've also seen this one: "Misty Copeland named first black female dancer in the history of the American Ballet Theatre"

Sigh. Although the AP headline states "first black female principal," many reposted versions read "Misty Copeland Becomes First Black Principal Dancer at American Ballet Theater," even though the complete version of the story specifically mentions Desmond Richardson.

Yes, it occurred to me that Lendorf's presence won't do anything to increase Simkin's workload, and it may also impede Gorak's progress, because it’s difficult to imagine how the company could accommodate four conspicuously short leading men.

Lendorf is not tall. He could not partner Part or Semionova; they may be taller than he is. Taking bows with Xiomara Reyes for perspective:

I suppose Shelley Washington tends to be forgotten in this discussion because as a former Graham and Tharp dancer she wasn't "really" an ABT soloist. Right. https://balletsj.wordpress.com/2014/10/22/guest-stager-shelley-washington/

Unfortunately, many Wikipedia articles on ballet dancers are in woeful condition. Take Sara Mearns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Mearns Ashley Bouder's at least includes her repertoire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Bouder There is no Wikipedia article on Tiler Peck. And this at a time when a plethora of information about them is readily accessible in online press sources.

Perhaps one of the reasons is that reviews of Anne Benna Sims and Nora Kimball tended to make no mention of race. Anna Kisselgoff may have thought it would have been patronizing to do so.

I seem to remember that when the Joyce presented the National Ballet of Canada in Wheeldon's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland last September, some posters were sorry that the programming was so populist. But it sold really well.

Unfortunately inserting footage of the real Nureyev and Fonteyn would create serious continuity problems.

Backstage shots by Daniel Neuhaus of The Sleeping Beauty http://blog.fieldguided.com/2015/06/behind-scenes-sleeping-beauty-with.html

Swan Lake: Dancing with the Stars Results Show Edition Another addition to the ignoble Worse than McKenzie's Production list.

She did, and she was splendid. Whelan stripped back everything unnecessary and showed us the ballet's essence in all its glowing purity.

Sigh. I actually find myself wishing I lived in Macaulay's world.

Nureyev's "Vienna" production continues to be performed at the Vienna State Opera. It differs substantially from the POB version.

Mearns was 19 at the time, so audiences were much more willing to cut her come slack. It doesn't surprise me that they should expect more from a 32 year old with nearly 15 years of professional experience under her belt.

Although I am a little slow in posting this... Since American Ballet Theatre and the National Ballet of Canada had programmed The Sleeping Beauty to run at roughly the same time, it seemed a great opportunity to compare Alexei Ratmansky’s originalist restoration with Rudolf Nureyev’s unbridled “interpolationism.” Many years ago Nureyev’s version was the first production of The Sleeping Beauty I saw live in the theater, and having no frame of reference, I was not then aware of its myriad peculiarities. I won’t bother enumerating them, since they’re on display in the POB films of the production and the condensed version with the National Ballet filmed back in the 1970s. Fast-forward to the present, and having admired and enjoyed Ratmansky’s new production very much, I suppose I expected Nureyev’s production to appear bloated and perhaps even a little preposterous, but what really struck me was how superior the National Ballet’s dancers were in comparison with their ABT counterparts, both the corps and the soloists, and to a large extent the ballerinas as well. Nureyev’s production is massive and requires the company to put just about every last body on stage. This proved problematic with a number of lead dancers unavailable and more falling by the wayside as the run approached. In the end the Garland Waltz had to be scaled back a little, as corps members were reassigned to soloist roles, and every performance I saw was preceded by a lengthy announcement about cast changes. The happiest of these was Svetlana Lunkina’s appearance as Aurora. Certain she would be cast in the role—one she first danced, well, 16 years ago—I was dismayed when she did not appear in the initial cast list, and then overjoyed when it was announced just before the run began that she would be stepping in. (I promptly bought myself a better ticket.) It must have been a last-minute decision, because there hadn’t even been time to include her in the printed program. I do not know how much time she had to rehearse Nureyev’s super-difficult, super-allegro version, but she made a ravishing princess, both in dancing terms and in characterization. Full of expectation, curiosity and felicity in the first act, Lunkina was confident and secure in her Rose Adage balances, the expressiveness of her upper body growing continually as the music swelled to its climax. Playful and flirtatious in her solo variation, punctuated by beautifully controlled pirouettes, she was clearly interacting with her suitors rather than performing abstracted academic steps for the audience. Her Aurora suddenly found herself surrounded by handsome young princes and discovered that she liked men very much. Naturally, it wasn't crude—Lunkina is probably incapable of such a thing—but it definitely gave her princess personality. The coda was featherlight and euphoric. In the second act she was luminously pale and lissome, with long, delicate limbs swaying and floating like a poetic vision. In the final act she was majestic and serene, with gorgeously refined port de bras and crystalline style. I suspect that speedy jumps aren't really her thing, and Nureyev added many, but she didn't cheat or fudge any of them. Jillian Vanstone is a natural Aurora, with a delicate appearance—pretty, petite, feminine—a joyful, engaging and glowing stage persona, and a light, speedy and steely technique. She was instantaneously enchanting, nimble and buoyant in her solo dancing, absolutely secure and sanguine in the Rose Adage, and dramatically compelling as the curse kicked in. Perhaps her second- and third-act Aurora was not all that different from the youthfully ebullient heroine that first appeared, but her dancing was unfailingly lovely, easy and flawlessly executed. There was nothing in the choreography that fazed her. I could be mistaken, but Vanstone seems to be “relegated” to a large number of matinee performances, so there may be a disproportionately large number of Toronto’s children in her audience. I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few generations we heard National Ballet dancers describing how they had first fallen in love with ballet after seeing Jillian Vanstone’s Princess Aurora (Giselle, Cinderella, Alice…). During the intermissions little girls in pretty dresses streamed out into the lobbies holding their arms over their heads and trying to balance on the tips of their sandaled toes. The National Ballet marked Sonia Rodriguez’s 25th anniversary with the company during this run. Tiny and slight, she still looks persuasively teenaged at the age of 42, although at times her dancing appeared a little dry and by the conclusion of Nureyev’s extra-long mazurka ending, she seemed to be running out of steam. On balance, however, it was an assured, comely and unpretentiously patrician performance, distinguished by a fine Rose Adage, incisive dramatic moments and in the sweet modesty with which she invested the character. The National Ballet’s princes, drawn this time from severely depleted ranks, dance the choreography once performed by Nureyev himself, not the even more difficult version currently performed by the Paris Opera Ballet. Among the Florimunds I saw, I found Naoya Ebe, dancing opposite Vanstone, the most persuasive. It was his inaugural run in the role, so perhaps it was not surprising that his interpretation was not particularly distinctive, but he performed all the choreography very elegantly. In fairness, all the princes were operating at a disadvantage after I had seen the POB telecast with Mathieu Ganio’s performance of the very long adagio solo Nureyev choreographed to the entr’acte. Ganio not only got through the exceedingly difficult and finicky choreography, but he made it very beautiful and even, amazingly enough, meaningful. I did not really expect to see it topped, but I couldn’t help using it as a standard of measurement. Piotr Stanczyk was the only Florimund in this run who had danced the part before, and he clearly had the strongest sense of character, although he did not appear especially comfortable with the role’s aspects of poetic longing. He seems to have a shallow plié, which doesn’t provide much push off and can’t absorb his landings; as a consequence they were noisy. In this he compared unfavorably with the Bluebird of Keiichi Hirano, who soared very high and landed almost soundlessly. However, Stanczyk appeared more at ease in the interpolated solo to the Gold Fairy’s music, which has more turns than grand allegro, and in the heftier wedding variation. The debut of Francesco Gabriele Frola was pushed up by a week following injuries first to his originally scheduled partner and then to another prince. Again, for me he was operating at a disadvantage because the charms of flashy dancers are largely lost on me, although the majority of the audience was completely enthralled, and even I had to admit that his barrel turns were extraordinarily high. He does, however, have a serious flaw as a classical dancer in the way he uses his feet. I am never one to rhapsodize about the appearance of a dancer’s feet—footwork, certainly, but I am not seduced by pretty feet. Frola’s look nice enough in theory, but whenever he performs a jump that involves lifting one leg fairly high (consider Nureyev’s love of the rond de jambe), the other is left dangling below unstretched . In this instance I was sitting a third of the way up the center of the orchestra, and my sightline was about a foot above the level of the stage, so unfortunately, I had repeated views of this peculiarity. I am surprised that this habit was never corrected in the course of his training and that he is able to jump as high as he does considering that he doesn’t always stretch his feet. For that matter, his demi-pointe never goes higher than that and is often a good deal lower. Since by nature Frola is not obvious prince material in appearance, style or technique, I hope that he can improve this aspect of his dancing to make it more polished. However, given his relative inexperience and that fact that he and Lunkina appear to have been thrown together at the last minute, it was a heroic effort. I don’t know whether she had ever performed fish dives in a production of The Sleeping Beauty before, and he used two hands to position her on his thigh, but they survived them and every other aspect of the partnering. Ironically it was the most experienced pair, Rodriguez and Stanczyk, who had the closest brush with fish-dive derailment, but he placed the fingertips of his free hand on the floor, she braced herself by holding onto his wrist, and unless someone were looking closely, he probably would not have suspected that anything was amiss. Steady nerves and know-how in action. Unfortunately, I did not see the Auroras of Greta Hodgkinson and Xiao Nan Yu or the Florimund of Harrison James. If anything dampened my enthusiasm for Ratmansky’s production for ABT, it was seeing how much better the ballet was danced in Toronto. In some cases, comparative assessments are not possible. Ratmansky has the Canary and Finger variations danced so much faster, that any comparison would be invalid. Nonetheless, the various fairies in Toronto were a consistently superior bunch. It was remarkable how quietly Tanya Howard, Kathryn Hosier and Alexandra MacDonald performed their tombés in the Candide variation, and how cleanly and confidently MacDonald, Hannah Fischer and Hosier performed the pirouettes in the Lopukhov “Lilac” variation. I especially admired the lovely Emma Hawes in the Breadcrumb variation and as Princess Florine, sprightly Meghan Pugh as the Canary and White Cat, and Jack Bertinshaw’s performance of the difficult 5/4 variation in the Jewels divertissement. It was heartwarming to see how enthusiastically and thunderously Hirano’s excellent Bluebird was received in his final run of performances. The difference between the two companies became even more pronounced at the corps level. It was distressing to see that some ABT corps members seemed to have difficulty performing a polonaise and mazurka. At the National Ballet everyone brushed the correct leg on the correct beat, although I am amazed to be in the position of praising them for it. Unlike their ABT counterparts, the National Ballet’s corps is cohesive, accurate and synchronized—always. I was almost astonished to see seven fairy cavaliers in the prologue performing pirouettes in unison. Not even the POB manages that. Evidently the company’s ballet masters run a scrupulous rehearsal process and insist there is no reason it can’t be done. Of course ABT faced a particular stylistic challenge with Ratmansky’s production, and the quest for unity remains a work in progress, but in truth ABT’s corps had also been sloppy a week earlier in La Bayadère, a production that has been in rotation for 35 years and had last been performed just a season ago. I have to conclude that the National Ballet’s corps is just plain better. Where I think the National Ballet of Canada has receded is in the mime roles. It is now many generations removed from its English origins, and this is a skill that seems to have been lost along the way. This is a real shame, since I have such vivid memories of the encounter between Victoria Bertram’s Carabosse and Jacques Gorrissen’s Catalabutte. Some things would be relatively easy to fix. I wish the Lilac Fairy would drop the gliding routine and stick to elegant, heeled walking, as the POB does, and as I remember the NBoC doing it once upon a time. At present she is a little too reminiscent of Billie Burke in The Wizard of Oz, and what works fine in Munchkinland comes across as a mite too silly here. The booby prize for sheer awfulness goes to Rex Harrington, who plays King Florestan as a gouty old fop. Boy, was I frustrated when Peter Ottmann did not appear for his performance as originally scheduled. But I did enjoy Etienne Lavigne’s Count, with his seething jealousy bubbling just below the surface; he knows the prince is fooling around with his wife, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Nicholas Georgiadis’ grandiose costumes are holding up well, even though there were a few occasions where the fairies’ giant feathered headdresses nearly became tangled up. The sets look more cramped in the smaller environs of the Four Seasons Centre and dated, although given that Ratmansky’s panorama scene is so truncated, I was pleased with the moving trees between which the Lilac Fairy’s boat passes in Nureyev’s production. The charm of the effect has not been lost. For all its eccentricities, the Nureyev/Georgiadis production of The Sleeping Beauty was the most important in the National Ballet’s history, which is why I think the company ought to keep performing it in perpetuity. At present it’s doing that pretty well.

It has, with all the party pieces included, although the telecast dates back to the early 1980s rather than 1977. http://www.kulturvideo.com/Die-Fledermaus-p/d2030.htm