volcanohunter
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Posts posted by volcanohunter
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On 6/18/2023 at 9:58 PM, Drew said:
Concerns about cultural appropriation are not unreasonable but Esquivel's blessing for the project carries weight with me--and though I don't remember the article mentioning it, she has been involved in promoting the ballet in both the UK and here in the U.S.
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
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May she rest in peace.
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But if anyone outside the UK would like to watch the entire competition without geoblocks, the links are here:
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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.
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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.
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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).
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.
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Many more sections are now open for sale. The orchestra terrace for opening night appears to be sold out.
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On 6/7/2023 at 6:57 AM, Rosie2 said:
I'd like him to have have danced his final shows with Heather Ogden
I think it's no secret that Côté and Ogden are no longer together.
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2 hours ago, attitudebalance said:
I do wonder why, if ABT wanted a Wheeldon story ballet, they chose to take a risk on the very expensive LWFC. They could have imported Alice in Wonderland (popular with kids and families) or The Winter's Tale (Shakespeare adaptation, Wheeldon's most acclaimed/best work) - both at lower cost and both are already "known quantities" with track records of success.
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.
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3 hours ago, Marta said:
Yes, absolutely sickening and horrible. I suppose we'll never know if some dancers/staff of the Bolshoi are donating voluntarily.
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.
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4 hours ago, California said:
It was very difficult to get tickets for Hamilton and Les Mis in Denver in the past year. What audience data is Jaffe looking at?
4 hours ago, abatt said:You couldn't beg, borrow or steal to get a ticket to Dudamel at the NY Philharmonic, Yuja Wang at Carnegie and Yo Yo Ma at the NY Philharmonic.
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.
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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.)
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5 hours ago, dirac said:
Fosse spends much of his onscreen time racing around doing Champion's bidding, it makes for some unintentionally amusing moments ("Bob, get me some coffee....Bob, I don't have time for this right now").
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.
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What a remarkable life. May he rest in peace.
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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.
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A post from the injured Harrison James.
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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.
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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:
QuoteMearns’ opportunity to finally dig her pointe shoes into Juliet came about in part because of her and Côté’s shared connection with Ratmansky, for whom Mearns has become something of a muse. His version is admirably suited to her.
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.
QuoteFor Mearns, dancing Juliet with Côté is “a crazy dream” come true.
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?
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Guillem discussed these issues at some length in a video interview with Daniil Simkin a couple of years ago.
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Pacific Northwest Ballet will livestream its Season Encore program on Sunday, June 11, at 6:30 pm Pacific.
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On 6/8/2023 at 1:52 PM, lacdescygnes said:
I found some parts a bit trite and repetitive - a gargouillade or a saut de chat set to pop music? how cute and innovative - repeated six times, less so.
Today NYCB is trying to market precisely that. The clip looks awfully derivative of Forsythe's Blake Works ballets.
As for programming, the pop music ballets should always go last, so I can leave early and not have to sit through them. #sorrynotsorry
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It doesn't alter the fact that her presence isn't needed. Lunkina is available and knows the part. Mearns is still in the process of learning it. And the dancers of the National Ballet have a different skill set, because three-act narrative ballets is something they do quite a lot.
I remember when Merrill Ashley, an indisputably great dancer, performed Aurora in the UK before NYCB had its own production. The critics, at least, were not persuaded. It's not always possible for a dancer to excel on alien turf. (I also remember that when NYCB finally got its own Beauty, some critics were persuaded only by Valentina Kozlova, whom they didn't find especially persuasive in the company's core repertoire.)
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38 minutes ago, Helene said:
I don't understand why it's Mearns vs. Lunkina, when there are four other ballerinas cast for the role. If Mearns wasn't dancing, is there any guarantee that it would have been Lunkina chosen as the fifth? I apologized if I missed an article discussing this.
Because Lunkina was Côté's partner earlier this year when the ballet was performed in Ottawa. The other Juliets were already rehearsing and performing with other Romeos, so short of one of the others becoming injured, she was the one left without a partner.
For myself, I take a dim view of guest artists unless the number of performances is huge. Or if replacements are absolutely necessary. When an in-house dancer ends up replaced, I'm livid about it.
6 minutes ago, Helene said:If Ratmansky's Romeo and Juliet is as bad as all that, then Lunkina or any other ballerina who might have been cast as Juliet #5 dodged a bullet.
Well, I think so... But I feel for her because otherwise she had nothing to dance. She was left only with a brief appearance at a gala that was mostly a dinner/discotheque. During their careers dancers end up dancing a lot of ballets they don't like, but sitting on the sidelines is not their goal when they drag themselves in every morning to go to class.
Plus the audience loses. A great artist can salvage a dramatically inert ballet.
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I don't think Balanchine's Sugar Plum Fairy really counts. At best her acting consists of reacting with admiration to the Prince's mime.
I guess I'll point out that Lunkina first danced Giselle when she was 18.
But there's a big difference between dancing a canonical role, where the dramaturgy is well established, and building a dramatic role out of steps you're dancing for the first time, particularly those as clotted as in Ratmansky's Romeo and Juliet. (I detest the production, and I'm on record as not being an admirer of Côté, so I'm almost relieved to have no reason to attend.) Mearns is a very emotional dancer, but that's not exactly the same as being a great dramatic dancer, and her experience in dramatic roles is limited. Has she danced another full-length production of Swan Lake with a different interpretation, different ending? I've seen Lunkina in several, where the stylistic and dramatic requirements of the producers were quite different.
Lunkina is an exceptional and remarkably detailed actress, miraculously able to convey several emotions at once. In comparison pretty much everyone else looks like they're engaging in so much forehead wrinkling and mouth gaping. And honestly, up until I'd seen her interpretations I thought other ballerinas were doing just fine. After her most of the others look almost comical.
Her roles include Nikiya, Kitri, Raymonda, Esmeralda (Petit's and Burlaka's), Anyuta, Tatiana Larina, Anna Karenina, Blanche DuBois. Can you think of two roles more different than Ashton's Lise and Grigorovich's Phrygia? She also dances Wheeldon's Queen of Hearts and Paulina, both highly dramatic roles created for Zenaida Yanowsky, which Lunkina dances in a completely different but equally compelling way. For that matter, Lunkina also has longer experience dancing Ratmansky than Mearns. Besides Juliet, there have been Zina in The Bright Stream and Coralie in Lost Illusions, as well as Jeu de cartes.
I'll add Jurgita Dronina as the company's other remarkable actress. It's like watching a real person on stage. She's entirely natural, you can sense her entire backstory, understand exactly what makes her tick. She gave birth one month ago tomorrow, and even managed to dance in place of an injured colleague at the gala, which must be some sort of record. But I suppose a complete Juliet would have been a stretch too far right now.
ABT Met Season 2023
in American Ballet Theatre
Posted
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.