volcanohunter

I had an opportunity to see Kajiya and Matthews in La Bayadère. Although the "Kingdom of the Shades" survives more or less intact, Stanton Welch's production makes a hash of the rest of the ballet. Nikiya loses her entrance down the temple steps, her first variation is cluttered with a lot of other temple dancers surrounding her, the second with the water jug is eliminated completely to make for a longer duet with Solor, and the pre-death variation is hacked in half, almost completely re-choreographed and similarly cluttered with excess bayaderes. (There is no offer and rejection of an antidote.) But her choreography in the "Shades" scene is pretty much all there, and in particular Kajiya got through all the pirouettes in the scarf variation without a hitch. I suspect she might have preferred slower tempos than the ones Welch ordered and Ermanno Florio provided. At the end of the scene Nikiya makes her exit by bourréeing up the shades' ramp. Now that must be painful. Matthews lacks the big, elastic plié that has practically become standard issue among male dancers over the last 25-30 years. I think this deprives his dancing of some dynamic variety. He doesn't exploit "low" space the way many dancers can, and his phrasing tends to be homogeneous, without any particular points of emphasis. The shallow plié proves most problematic in his stiff-legged walk, but I wonder whether this couldn't be ameliorated. Solor gets to keep most of his choreography, except for the entrée of the engagement party divertissement. Visually Matthews wasn't quite tall enough for Katharine Precourt's Gamzatti, but some of the little partnering they have is reassigned to the Rajah, and Matthews had no trouble with what remained. Overall I suspect the heroic warrior/pirate roles are not quite his turf. Welch has even less faith in mime than the Soviets had. The High Brahmin, Rajah and Aya are all turned into dancing roles. (Is there any good reason to put Aya on pointe and in a costume practically indistinguishable from Gamzatti's?) The net effect is to flatten out all the relationships. If Nikiya and the High Brahmin perform standard pas de deux choreography instead of mime, it looks practically the same as her interactions with Solor. The confrontation between Nikiya and Gamzatti is turned into a trio in which Aya is the one who attempts to stab Nikiya, while the latter contents herself to slash Gamzatti's portrait. It's also extremely anti-climactic to place snakes into Nikiya's basket of flowers at this point. At the end of the ballet the temple comes crashing down not because of Solor's infidelity--he hadn't sworn anything over a sacred fire anyway--but because Gamzatti kills him for refusing to marry her. At least so the program notes tell me. There are a number of dancing gods in this production. In the first scene a fire god dances, unseen by everyone else, to music normally assigned to fakirs, and a dream god ushers in the "Kingdom of the Shades" (because evidently, when a man passes out on his bed after smoking opium, it is insufficiently obvious that what appears behind him is a hallucinatory dream). There is a dancer painted gold in the final scene, but he doesn't dance. But no doubt the strangest thing Welch does is to reassign the D'Jampe music to a quartet of male dancers, which just looks silly. Still, the "Shades" choreography is relatively untouched, even though I don't care for the dotted-note rhythm of the shades' descent, and the very abrupt accents they employ, especially the woodpecker bourrées. But at least Peter Farmer's designs look mostly good, and the company dances it well.

Yes, there may be some hairsplitting here. I'm not familiar with the hierarchy at the Kremlin Ballet, but at the Bolshoi there are three basic groups. The first includes "artists," "artists first category" and "artists first category-coryphees." Collectively they are known as the corps de ballet. Then there are soloists ("artists of the higher category"), further subdivided into "soloists" and "first soloists." Finally there are "leading masters of the stage," who are divided into "leading soloists" and "ballerinas/premiers," aka principals. It's possible that at the Kremlin Ballet "leading soloists" and "ballerinas/premiers" are subdivisions of a single grouping, but as at the Bolshoi, the translation "principal dancer" should be applicable to the latter, since English-speakers generally understand it to be the highest rank within a company.

All the same I can understand the frustration of those who believe that Roberta Marquez's performance from three years ago was superior, and that it may have been more deserving of a DVD release.

Strictly speaking, she is a "leading soloist" rather than a "ballerina" or principal of the Kremlin Ballet.

Judging by the looks of them, I'd have to guess they don't.

Next season's ballet pickings are pretty slim. As far as I can tell, there will only be two streams. Sunday, December 27, 2015 - Ashton's La Fille mal gardée Wednesday, March 23, 2016 - Manuel Legris' staging of Le Corsaire https://www.staatsoperlive.com/en/live/

In a sense, yes, because all screenings outside Europe are time delayed, in some cases by several months. U.S. screenings were delayed by only a few hours.

Intermission films

Perhaps because the Cuthbertson/Bonelli performance is already available, a new Romeo and Juliet DVD was never in the cards. Will we ever see a Drosselmeyer other than Gary Avis? I found Alexander Campbell a (surprisingly) disappointing Nutcracker last time around, but I can always hope for improvement. I'm beginning to wonder whether Iana Salenko isn't moving to the company full time.

No doubt that's why the POB thought it would be a logical work to present.

The POB has not performed Lost Illusions. In early 2014 the Bolshoi came to Paris for a week to perform it.

What a despressing prospect. Perhaps ABT should just print "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate" at the top of their contracts.

http://www.dancemagazine.com/issues/May-2015/Director-of-Danse

I don't doubt that many of the Royal Ballet's dancers grew up idolizing Ferri, so I imagine it would be a thrill for them to work with her. McGregor's ballet also has many roles. The first cast includes Sarah Lamb, Natalia Osipova, Melissa Hamilton, Akane Takada, Beatriz Stix-Brunell and Francesca Hayward, plus eight male leads, so it appears there is a lot of work to go around. If the ballet is going to have any sort of shelf life, eventually other dancers will have to learn Ferri's role.

Footage of Wayne McGregor rehearsing Ferri and Federico Bonelli in Woolf Works:

Do you think that the Mariinsky and POB are really more restrictive? On the contrary, I have always had the impression that since the companies are so large, they can accommodate physical oddballs more readily. Just take a look at Marie-Agnès Gillot's "tall girl" dancing with a quartet of much shorter men and you'll see what I mean. But by virtue of being so big, they've got enough dancers to choose from to field 24 similar-looking wilis or 32 resemblant shades. On the other hand, I find my smallish regional company much more uniform where bodies are concerned. For one thing, no tall men = no tall women.

This is a reminder that the Royal Ballet's production of La Fille mal gardée, with Natalia Osipova and Steven McRae, will be beamed live to cinemas on Tuesday, May 5. http://www.roh.org.uk/showings/la-fille-mal-gardee-live-2015 Lise: Natalia Osipova Colas: Steven McRae Widow Simone: Philip Mosley Alain: Paul Kay Farmer Thomas: Christopher Saunders Cockerel: Michael Stojko Hens: Francesca Hayward, Meaghan Grace Hinkis, Gemma Pitchley-Gale, Leticia Stock Lise's Friends: Christina Arestis, Claire Calvert, Olivia Cowley, Fumi Kaneko, Emma Maguire, Kristin McNally, Sian Murphy, Beatriz Stix-Brunell Notary: Gary Avis Notary's Clerk: Michael Stojko Europe: Tuesday, May 5 at 7:15 pm BST. U.S.: Tuesday, May 5 at 7:00 p.m. local time http://www.fathomevents.com/event/roh1415-la-fille-mal-gardee/more-info/theater-locations http://www.carmike.com/Events/Event/394 Japan: Wednesday, May 6 at 7:00 p.m. local time. Brazil: May 28, 30, 31, June 2 Canada: Saturday, June 6 & Monday, June 15 http://www.landmarkcinemas.com/en.aspx South Africa: June 27, 28, July 1, 2 http://www.cinemanouveau.co.za Australia: July 3, 4, 5, 8 http://www.palaceoperaandballet.com.au/production/la-fille-mal-gardee It will also be screened in a number of countries of Central and South America on August 22, 23 and 25. Use the screening search box on the upper right-hand side of the ROH cinema page to find the showing closest to you. http://www.roh.org.uk/showings/la-fille-mal-gardee-live-2015

This blog post by Tai Jimenez seems relevant. http://taijimenez.com/2015/04/28/letter-from-peter-martins-and-my-response/

Ferri's return to the stage continues apace. She has the lead in Wayne McGregor's new ballet about Virginia Woolf for the Royal Ballet. http://www.roh.org.uk/news/i-dive-in-alessandra-ferri-and-her-return-to-the-royal-opera-house-stage-in-wayne-mcgregors-woolf-works And today it was announced that in December John Neumeier will unveil a new ballet about Eleonora Duse starring Ferri. http://www.hamburgballett.de/e/_duse.htm

Only a few years. He moved around a lot during his career, retiring, I believe, as a principal dancer of the Birmingham Royal Ballet. ABT also has a track record of pairing together the not-interesting-to-me dancers, which makes avoidance that much easier. However, I worry that soon there will be practically no one left worth making the trip to see.

Michael Shannon graduated from the school into the company in 1989. http://articles.latimes.com/1989-11-18/entertainment/ca-1313_1_bolshoi-ballet

There have been discussions of Womack on this board, and some did take her to task for the "first" claims typically assigned to her, but no, the discussions were nowhere near this lengthy. He also has a publicist, who, presumably, works to generate publicity.

Which he wasn't either.

Parish is one of the few nominees without an obvious patron on the jury. But you raise a good point. Where are the other Mariinsky (POB, Royal Danish Ballet, New York City Ballet…) dancers? The Benois should make public exactly who nominated whom. Or would artistic directors suddenly become embarrassed about nominating ballets they commissioned themselves? The idea of an international performance award is untenable. Nobody can have been everywhere and seen everything. It’s one thing to establish a theater prize for a single city, where it would be possible for a selection committee to see virtually every eligible candidate, and votes could be cast on the basis of live performances. But here you have a highly subjective and self-interested nomination process, and decisions are made on the basis of watching videos of variable quality. I think most of us recognize the perils of “You Tube assessments,” but that’s how ballet’s supposed “Oscars” are decided.

Yes, the nomination process is such a joke that the Benois is meaningless to me. I became convinced of this after an execrable ballet I saw, but which most of the jury could not have, was nominated for the choreography award courtesy of a friendly juror. The prize reached its nadir two years ago when all but two of the 17 nominees could be traced back directly to an AD/coach on the jury. Dwight Rhoden, Copeland and Clifford Williams owe their nominations to Desmond Richardson's presence in the jury, for performances given with his company, just as Kevin O'Hare put forth Christopher Wheeldon, Nuñez, Edward Watson and Joby Talbot, Ingrid Lorentzen nominated Alexander Ekman and Yolanda Correa, Vladimir Malakhov put forward Marian Walter, and Alexander Vetrov presumably nominated Maillot, Zakharova and Rodkin. It's not that there aren't worthy artists among them, but the award itself is tainted.