volcanohunter

As the fabulous "After Petipa" presentation at the Guggenheim reminded us, the ballet was not notated in 1890. It was noted around 1903, by which time the part was being danced by Nikolai Legat, and the variation he danced was insanely difficult. Skip ahead to about 1:12:30. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6xpOVN3cfGc#t=4350

How I wish that programs for all classic ballets included such charts! All ballets with composite scores could use them, too.

Here's something sort of on topic. It's a Sleeping Beauty cast list from the National Ballet of Ukraine, ca. 1992. Unfortunately the ticket stub slipped out so I can't give you an exact date. This was a leftover Soviet-era program in which theater ushers would mark the dancer performing that evening from a list of all interpreters of a role. Obviously, it was a system poorly suited to accommodating debuts. Penciled in as Aurora is guest artist Kumiko Ochi. Penciled in as Désiré is Alexei "Rotmansky." And at the top of the second page you can see Irina Dvorovenko penciled in as the second prologue fairy.

Oh, that's true! Apparently the ROH is a little more familiar with nobility, politicians and clergy than the military. What would the Royal Navy have to say about that?!

Ironically, as dirac noted, the loss of second person singular pronouns and verb forms has forced English to make the formal/informal distinction in other ways, including the use of titles. For a really mindboggling selection, try registering on just about any website in the UK. For example, give the Royal Opera House a whirl; select "other" under title and watch what pops up. https://www.roh.org.uk/register I don't know any Japanese, but in Russian and many other languages it's possible to address someone by their first name and still use formal pronouns and verb forms to indicate respect and avoid excessive familiarity.

In some languages with which I'm familiar, the practice is always to use pseudonyms in their entirety, even for "normal"-sounding ones like George Eliot. "Mr. Eliot" and "Miss Eliot" would be equally nonsensical, and readers would probably have no idea who Miss Evans or Mrs. Cross was, any more than they could be expected to know that Mr. Aday and Meat Loaf are the same person.

Incidentally, today I received a fundraising call from the National Ballet of Canada. (I probably wouldn't have answered if my curiosity hadn't been piqued by this thread.) The caller quickly acknowledged that since I live far from Toronto, I wouldn't be able to take advantage of the donor perks. She plowed through all the membership categories nevertheless and pointed out that the company's individual donors include Americans. I guess the NBoC hasn't got a good script for out-of-towners either! But the caller was very pleasant and not at all rude.

"Pick Yourself Up" is sheer genius on every level. It's like pure joy. I don't think Barkleys is all bad. The "Bouncin' the Blues" number highlights Rogers' excellent sense of rhythm. But there's no getting around the fact that the "Young Sarah" scenes are dreadful.

Many years ago Michael Crabb wrote a piece about solo dancer Margie Gillis and the late Christopher Gillis, then a member of the Paul Taylor company, for Maclean's magazine. Normally the practice at Maclean's is to use the surname only after the initial introduction, but in the case of siblings with the same surname, this was not feasible. Crabb elected to refer to them as Margie and Christopher rather than Ms. Gillis and Mr. Gillis, and I found this jarring in the magazine's context and inappropriately familiar.

The artist Helen Hancocks made a charming drawing of famous dance sequences from films. Charisse appears twice in the illustration, once in green and once in red. An American in Paris is also there, of course. http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/how-many-classic-film-dance-scenes-can-you-spot

Some physical productions can be very enduring. I believe that David Walker's Sleeping Beauty designs from the 1970s are still in circulation, even though the Royal Ballet has moved on to its third or fourth production since then. Of course a North American Nutcracker would be subjected to more frequent use and would suffer greater wear and tear as a result.

Ooh, that's interesting. But saints preserve us from such a thing. The Siminov/Chemiakin chorus of singing dead children was quite enough for me, thank you.

For many years the Joffrey was Ashton's primary home in the United States, so in a way the inclusion of Cinderella is a nod to that heritage.

I'm guessing this refers to the lyrics of "Stereophonic Sound." "He's gotta have glorious Russian ballet or modern ballet or English ballet or Chinese ballet or Hindu ballet or Bali ballet or any ballet...and Stereophonic Sound." Each of the styles is accompanied by appropriate arm positions, a prim en bas position representing English ballet.

Yes, it injects a necessary tone of droll humor. ("Because I shoot hard, and I hate hard.") And yet what people remember primarily is Cyd Charisse's spangled red dress.

I value Michael Kidd's "Girl Hunt" ballet if only because the choreography for the chorus of hoods anticipated the hyper-physical style of Édouard Lock, Ginette Laurin, Jean-Pierre Perrault and other choreographers from the 1980s Quebec school by about 30 years.

The business of long pieces of fabric being dragged across Kelly's face and/or torso was one of his favorite and more tiresome tropes. I groan every time I see it. Yes. I have never cared for any of Kelly's big production numbers. The only thing I can say in defense of the American in Paris ballet is that the art department in the "Chocolat" sequence did a good job of capturing Toulouse-Lautrec's palette. (And fortunately Kelly elected not to go blackface.) Beyond that I don't like it, and in any case I find the film's romantic plots revolting. Apart from the "I Got Rhythm" number I don't think it's worth watching.

Following in the footsteps of Judith Jamison is never easy, but Rebecca Horner was sensational in The Legend of Joseph: ferocious, elementally powerful and with awe-inspiring stamina. Violent passion personified. The audience greeted her performance accordingly.

In this version is the Lilac Fairy a dancing or a mime role?

Oh yes. My least favorite ballet of all time is set to a piece of classical music, albeit a short piece. Not short enough.

I ought to have specified that I was thinking of one choreographer in particular, whose pop-song extravaganzas are pretty darn terrible. However, the first piece of his that I saw was set to Thomas Tallis' famously complex "Spem in alium," and that music had inspired a rather beautiful ballet. (Alas, it's been downhill ever since.) My other major objection is that his pop-song ballets are evening-length affairs; they give the fans of a particular pop star no exposure to a different kind of choreography and little incentive to come back to see something else. The newbies are being fed choreographic junk food, and there's no mechanism to move them onto something more substantial. The company may give additional performances of the pop-song ballets owing to "popular demand," but it doesn't seem to build the audience overall. The last time they presented a choreographically substantial program (Divertimento no. 15, The Four Temperaments, In the Upper Room), the performances I saw were far from sold out. Another way to avoid some of the typical pitfalls that come with pop-song ballets is to follow William Forsythe's example in Love Songs and to work deliberately against the music. I am inclined to think that the unrelenting sameness of the drum track is often a big obstacle. This is a problem in James Kudelka's The Man in Black, which has some interesting ideas that aren't developed as fully as they could be, and which strikes me as a little thin overall. But at least it shares the program with other works, and 20 minutes are not 90+ minutes.

Because, unfortunately, ballets set to pop songs are usually very inferior choreographically. The rhythmic simplicity of the music, its repetitiveness, almost invariably rubs off on the choreographer. You end up with an excess of unison dancing and very little movement invention. I know because my local company specializes in the genre, and it's all dreck, dreck, dreck. On the other hand, the structural complexity of classical music tends to stimulate choreographic invention and produce works of far more interesting rhythmic and spatial architecture, so to speak.

This performance will finally reach American movie screens on Tuesday, February 17 at 7:00 pm local time. The Carmike Cinemas site includes a few locations that are not included on the Fathom Events master list, so as always, check local listings. http://www.fathomevents.com/event/roh1415-the-winters-tale http://www.carmike.com/Events/Event/392

Yes, I believe the company first performed it in 2000. The company has 65 members and ten apprentices, so it's got enough dancers to go around. (Though I wouldn't expect the five principal character artists to participate.) In the past the National Ballet of Canada did some joint performances of Symphony in C with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, for example at the arts festival of the 1988 Winter Olympics, and also with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

Yes, even by today's standards that's very little. I was also a bit surprised to see the commission of a full-length The Little Prince in light of the fact that Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal is about to unveil its own version. But then intra-Canadian touring has practically disappeared, so every company could justify having its own production. http://www.grandsballets.com/en/performance/the-little-prince/ I am a little sorry that the company has opted to present "Rubies" and The Four Temperaments on a triple bill rather than a complete Jewels. LGBC, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Alberta Ballet have all performed "Rubies" and the 4Ts. Again, none of those companies is likely to tour those ballets, so it isn't as though Torontonians have an alternate place to see them, but at present the National Ballet is the only company in Canada with enough bodies to do "Diamonds" feasibly, so it seems a shame not to show off this capacity.