volcanohunter

Some still insist that art exists apart from politics, but here is Vladimir Urin, on behalf of the employees of the Bolshoi Theater, pledging fealty to "the president." For the majority of its videos the Bolshoi no longer provides English subtitles, and this was no exception.

Oh lordy. I have seen Welch's La Bayadère, and it's plenty weird, but this sounds even stranger.

The work of Larissa Saveliev and Howard Buffett to help relocate displaced Ukrainian ballet students has been mentioned upthread. ABC News talked to them and two of those students now training in the U.S https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukrainian-ballet-dancers-find-refuge-us-ballet-schools/story?id=100271284

There are storm clouds over Australian Ballet as it prepares for a run of Jewels, including a livestream on July 6th, and its visit to London in August. For now the dancers are planning to delay a scheduled performance by 15 minutes, but it's the first industrial action the company's dancers have taken in 42 years. "The key issue at stake in this dispute is a clause in the existing enterprise bargaining agreement under which the company agrees to top up dancers’ salaries if the pay rise falls short of CPI. The Australian Ballet is seeking to have that clause struck out, a move the dancers are vigorously resisting." https://www.theage.com.au/culture/dance/australian-ballet-dancers-to-take-first-industrial-action-in-42-years-20230621-p5dicm.html I was astonished to read that in 1981 "eight of the company’s lead dancers were offer[ed] reduced conditions of employment (as soloists rather than principals) for the 1982 season. On that occasion, the dancers cancelled a performance of The Three Musketeers, and ultimately went on strike for 26 days."

The ROH Stream site actually emphasizes streams of productions that will be performed next season: "A taste of what's coming to our Covent Garden stage from September 2023" (Don Quixote, Rigoletto, The Dante Project, La Boheme, The Nutcracker, Andrea Chenier, Swan Lake, Tosca). Obviously, this is inherently impossible before a premiere. From the ROH point of view, better that people pay to watch regardless of how they watch. If a person lives in the vicinity of London and loves one of the streams, perhaps it encourages attendance of the live show. New Yorkers wary of an unknown property could watch the stream of Like Water for Chocolate and decide for themselves that yes, it's a good ballet and worth experiencing in person, especially to see what favorite ABT dancers make of the roles. I have no idea how the streaming service affects attendance at the ROH. It is a relatively new enterprise.

Laura Esquivel participated in one of the Royal Ballet's Insights programs in the lead up to the ballet's premiere, so we can listen to exactly what she said then. Anyone really interested can sign up for a free 14-day trial of ROH Stream and watch the complete ballet there. https://www.roh.org.uk/tickets-and-events/like-water-for-chocolate-2022-digital

May she rest in peace.

But if anyone outside the UK would like to watch the entire competition without geoblocks, the links are here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ftw1rr

Watching the final on YouTube may be easier than navigating the BBC iPlayer, so here it is. It will be available on demand for 6 months.

I would think that Lane was loath to withdraw, because her performances are few and far between now, and she made it less likely that she would receive a repeat invitation from Houston Ballet in the future. But a high fever is a high fever, nausea is nausea, a migraine is a migraine. Whatever ails her, I'm guessing it couldn't be helped. As someone who has logged tens of thousands of ballet-going miles, I do feel for those who flew to Houston especially.

The National Ballet of Canada announced a number of promotions today, and in a nutshell, they're all men, none of them is from Canada, and none trained at the National Ballet School. Christopher Gerty has been promoted to principal dancer. Born in England, raised in Australia and trained in Australia, New Zealand and the United States (San Francisco), he joined the company in 2014. Josh Hall has been promoted to second soloist. He was born and trained in the United States and prior to joining the company this season, he spent ten years at Hope Muir's previous company, Charlotte Ballet. Peng-Fei Jiang has also been promoted to second soloist. He is Chinese, trained in China and New Zealand, and prior to joining the National Ballet of Canada in 2017, he danced with the Royal New Zealand Ballet and Hong Kong Ballet. The third new second soloist is Larkin Miller, who is American and trained in New York. He joined the company as an apprentice in 2016. Principal dancers Svetlana Lunkina and Harrison James received the David Tory Award for "their consummate professionalism, dedication to the company and exhibiting the many qualities that inspired the creation of the award." Emma Ouellet and Albjon Gjorllaku received the Patron Award of Merit, awarded annually to two members of the corps de ballet. With the retirements of Stephanie Hutchison, Alejandra Perez-Gomez and Rebekah Rimsay (none of whom is particularly advanced in age), I suppose that the rank of principal character artist, created in 1985 by Erik Bruhn, ceases to exist. I guess that from now on the company will follow the practice of smaller troupes and have character roles performed by ballet masters and mistresses (of which Hutchison will be one). https://national.ballet.ca/Media-Room/News/Just-Announced/2023-24-Promotions-Christopher-Gerty-Promoted-to-P I see in the long list of credits that Sara Mearns' appearances were "made possible by The Estate of Katherine Barber," which is ironic because Katherine loathed Ratmansky’s Romeo and Juliet. She used to say that each time she saw it, she liked it less and less. She did, however, admire Sara Mearns.

Many more sections are now open for sale. The orchestra terrace for opening night appears to be sold out.

I think it's no secret that Côté and Ogden are no longer together. https://www.instagram.com/p/CrGW4M1Lfag/

These were co-produced by the National Ballet of Canada, which possibly holds exclusive North American rights for a certain number of years, in exchange for footing half the bill. No doubt ABT saw that the NBoC managed to co-finance a couple of Wheeldon hits and decided to follow suit. Admittedly, Alice and Winter's Tale have more familiar source material, but ABT may have hoped that Like Water for Chocolate would attract new Hispanic, or specifically Mexican-American, audiences.

The membership of this group constitutes less than 10% of the theater's employees, so it's clearly not mandatory, but no doubt the social pressures to donate are high. Of course it's sobering to realize that the donations are coming not only from, say, bookkeepers, carpenters and wig makers, but also performing artists, the ones the audience showers with admiration and applause at the end of a show.

NEA audience participation surveys consistently showed that musicals are about 5 times more popular than ballets in the U.S., and concerts of classical music are three times more popular than ballet (and more widely available). So I don't think comparing the forms is especially useful. Hamilton was always going to do better. (For that matter "other dance" is twice as popular as ballet.) Opera has an even smaller audience than ballet, but it is likely to attend more often. As for Wheeldon, if ABT is trying appeal to crossover audiences, I would remind them that An American in Paris was set to music by George Gershwin, MJ was set to songs by Michael Jackson, and Like Water for Chocolate is set to a commissioned score by Joby Talbot. And obviously it's easier to fill 2,500 seats (or 2,100 in the case of BAM) than 3,800. But that's a problem of ABT's own making.

Alexei Ratmansky has drawn attention to a Telegram channel called The Bolshoi for the Front. Through it, employees of the Bolshoi Theater collect money to buy supplies for the Russian army invading Ukraine. This ranges from footwear and medications to binoculars, drones and even munitions. It's not a large channel; at the moment it has 187 subscribers. It is administered by Kirill Nosenko, a member of the Bolshoi orchestra, who rather cynically ends his posts with the words "For Peace!" Otherwise the channel's membership is fairly anonymous and people are identified by first name only: Vladimir, Anna, Svetlana, Anton... But one member who is loud and proud about her contributions is former principal dancer and current coach Nadezhda Gracheva. Ratmansky includes screenshots of the letters that accompany her parcels, some of which she signed People's Artist of Russia, Commander of the Order of Honor, Prima Ballerina of the Bolshoi Theater Nadezhda Gracheva. (I suppose it bears pointing out that she retired from the stage 12 years ago.) https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02fDb2yKzAfcbpR1iJJkxpKtKy1kDS1Fn8thGywkX1J9qE7yAB38gGkYwsKvvzfPC4l&id=1377723438&mibextid=Nif5oz https://www.instagram.com/p/CtS7vksNkF5/

Well, Gower Champion's eight Tonys are nothing to sneeze at, and by that point he already had one, while Fosse's first was still a little more than a year away.

What a remarkable life. May he rest in peace.

I was sorry that Odette's exit was so quick, and that the end of the scene was more about Siegfried and Rothbart. On this particular occasion it would have been nice to see Odette's transformation back into a swan as she slowly bourréed into the wings. Surely, it could have been done that way as a one-off.

A post from the injured Harrison James. https://www.instagram.com/p/CtcdVQkP81i/

I hope that casting for Tybalt is also revised, because seven shows is a lot for Rudisin, especially since he'll have to do heavy-duty lifting with two different partners.

Previews are a very specific genre, and they never include anything that would suggest the world isn't hunky-dory. But since the issue has been mentioned, Michael Crabb's preview makes no reference to Svetlana Lunkina's injury earlier this year as being the reason for inviting Sara Mearns to replace her as Guillaume Côté's partner. It does mention some of his and Mearns' joint projects over the past 3 years or so. It also mentions Ratmansky: I'm not sure how Crabb can make the last assertion before Mearns has danced the role, but to me it sounds as though this has been Ratmansky's and Côté's and Mearns' plan all along. Alright, only I don't think a slot should be given to an outsider until a company's own dancers have been looked after. Well, okay, but I don't see why the National Ballet of Canada should have to foot the bill to make Mearns' dreams come true. What has she ever done for the company? https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/stage/2023/06/11/goodnight-romeo-the-national-ballets-guillaume-ct-parts-with-a-signature-role.html

Guillem discussed these issues at some length in a video interview with Daniil Simkin a couple of years ago. https://www.dance-masterclass.com/sylvie-documentary

Pacific Northwest Ballet will livestream its Season Encore program on Sunday, June 11, at 6:30 pm Pacific. https://www.pnb.org/season/season-encore/