volcanohunter

Only until June 5th, Glyndebourne has posted a complete performance of Rusalka, starring Sally Matthews and Evan LeRoy Johnson, and conducted by Robin Ticciati.

I don't see why. It was only the Mariinsky that was touring the US regularly, and ballet series need a lot more than one company. The Bolshoi last visited Los Angeles in 2012 and Washington in 2014. Besides, these days the Royal Ballet does a much better job of La Bayadère than the Bolshoi. If proximity is an issue, the National Ballet of Japan or Korean National Ballet would be very fine choices.

Ironically, if Hartmann had actually succeeded in building his Russian Revival-style gate, it would have looked alien in its setting and made his argument appear tenuous. I will hazard a guess that when Ratmansky listens to that music he doesn't see Hartmann's nonexistent gate. He may see something more like Kyiv's Golden Gate, which he has probably passed hundreds, if not thousands, of times, and he may hear the city's Baroque bell towers. I am not remotely surprised that in late March 2022 he felt that he needed to adjust the ballet’s imagery to show what Kyiv is to him, because the stakes had changed. The city withstands frequent bombardment but hasn't fallen. The opera house where he began his career can no longer present seven shows a week, but it continues to present three weekend shows with early start times. These are sometimes interrupted by air-raid sirens, but once they stop, the show goes on. Somehow, this new reality had to be acknowledged. Not Kyiv as "Mother of all Rus cities," but Kyiv as capital of Ukraine. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cbj2icIgt93/ In his interview for the London Ballet Circle Ratmansky seemed to suggest that it's time for The Bright Stream to die. He also said he was done with Shostakovich, not in a cancelation sense, but because he had exhausted his exploration and had choreographed all the ballets he had wanted to make to Shostakovich's music.

Gomes left under a cloud, but he hasn't retired. I know that ABT has held farewell performances for dancers who continued performing elsewhere, but it is a somewhat peculiar practice. Hallberg's dancing days were undone by very long stretches of injury and lockdowns. The last 10 years of his performing career were a rocky series of fits and starts, and I understand why at some point he just had to move on.

That seems unlikely given that Mearns has never danced the ballet and cannot be present in Toronto right now to learn it. In the event of an injury, it would make sense to teach the role to another member of the company, as rehearsals are taking place. Emma Hawes did return from London to dance Cinderella when the roster of available dancers grew thin, but she had danced the role in the past, and that was the point of inviting her. Or when a couple of ABT dancers came to the rescue of a run of Manon when the male ranks were awash in injuries: they stepped in because they danced those roles at ABT.

Actually, it isn't. Mussorgsky was referring to a proposed design by Viktor Hartmann (Gartman), which was never built. Thankfully, because it was an ugly design, complete with double-headed eagle, which might have fit in stylistically on Red Square, but which would have stuck out like a sore thumb among Kyiv's buildings. Also, the design never struck me as appearing especially "Great" or grand. (The ruins of Kyiv's Golden Gate that led into the upper city survived into modern times, and in 1982 a reconstruction of the original gate was built in order to protect its surviving walls from further erosion. Today it stands about halfway between the opera house and the St. Sophia Cathedral complex along the same street.) As far as I can gather, the change in the projection was made when the ballet premiered in Munich in the spring of 2022, which was interesting, because subsequently it turned out that AD Igor Zelensky was secretly Putin’s son-in-law and soon after he resigned his position for "family reasons" and returned to Russia. His former wife is still on staff at the Bavarian State Ballet.

Jaffe also went through the fraught process of deciding when to retire after a very long tenure as principal, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if she were very sensitive to the dancers facing the same issue.

This is true for many performing arts organizations and venues. How often does New York City Ballet close off not just the fourth ring, but also the third? There have been press stories about how poor Metropolitan Opera ticket sales have been this season. It was offering rush seats for the premiere of a new production on New Year's Eve. I have seen this in others cities as well. Audiences have been shrinking for years, and many people who had been attending haven't come back post-lockdowns. For some the cancellation of 2020-21 seasons was a "nightmare." Others discovered they could get by in life without theater outings. Personally, the last time I encountered sold-out houses was with the National Ballet of Canada's new production of Swan Lake, whose premiere had been delayed by two years. And it had nothing to do with casting, which was, as always, announced very late, after most tickets had already been sold.

Val Caniparoli's Jekyll & Hyde, set to music by five Polish composers, performed by the Finnish National Ballet and available on demand until 24 October 2023. https://oopperabaletti.fi/en/stage24/video/jekyll-hyde-recording/ Since it's the most obvious question about the adaptation, Jekyll and Hyde are performed by different dancers.

So this is an expanded version of Broken Wings? Annabelle Lopez Ochoa just expanded her one-act GaBotero into a two-act Botero.

The Ambiguous Dance Company performing Boram Kim's Body Concert

Thank you starting a thread. California had posted the release elsewhere. Is this similar to what happened with ABT tickets? Is there now a policy to open up areas only once the one below is well sold? https://www.scfta.org/events/2023/united-ukrainian-ballet

Daniil Simkin is leaving the Staatsballett Berlin. The company had been under interim leadership since 2020, but as of autumn 2023 its artistic director will be Christian Spuck. https://www.staatsballett-berlin.de/en/blog/onegin-abschiedsvorstellungen/181 The English translation is a little less clear, but of Evelina Godunova, Simkin and Yevgeniy Khissamutdinov the German version reads "die alle drei ihre letzte Vorstellung geben und das Ensemble zum Saisonende verlassen werden."

There are major changes coming to the roster as well. Veteran principals Marian Walter and Dinu Tamazlacaru are leaving the company (perhaps more like retiring), and Daniil Simkin, Iana Balova, Evelina Godunova, Aya Okumura and Yevgeniy Khissamutdinov are also leaving. There may be other leavers who aren't dancing principal roles in Onegin. https://www.staatsballett-berlin.de/en/blog/onegin-abschiedsvorstellungen/181

Alessandra Ferri celebrates her 60th birthday today. This video of Christopher Wheeldon's This Bitter Earth was shot four years ago, but two months ago Ferri was dancing at Covent Garden in Wayne McGregor's Woolf Works.

Froustey will be 38 years of age in June, which is a rather late stage in a dancer's career to move to a new company. To that extent she's fortunate to have found a new artistic home. But the company in Bordeaux is about half the size of SFB and doesn't present nearly as many programs or performances.

Most native-born Canadians never swear an oath of loyalty to the monarch. Those acquiring Canadian citizenship have a choice between swearing or affirming loyalty to the monarch and his/her descendants. Occasionally young attorneys will object to having swear such an oath, arguing that they signed up to uphold Canadian laws, not the monarchy. A poll released last week suggests that 60% of Canadians are opposed to recognizing Charles as King of Canada (they like Camilla even less), most don't want to see him on their coins and $20 bills, and 52% think that Canada shouldn't continue as a constitutional monarchy, which is interesting given that republican sentiment has never been especially strong in Canada.

At this point they're pretty far down in the line of succession and will only drop further once William becomes a grandfather.

Is a list of the complete catalog available? A list of the most popular streams doesn't necessarily reveal a lot, especially for a contrarian like me.

It occurred to me that I ought to have posted those links. ROH Stream: https://www.roh.org.uk/stream/ Paris Opera Play: https://play.operadeparis.fr/en La Scala TV: https://lascala.tv/en/ Although I am not a frequent Met Live in HD viewer, the screenings I attended within the last year had tiny audiences compared to what they were a decade ago. Now they're like the ballet-in-cinema audiences of yore.

I hope Pacific Northwest Ballet sticks with streamed seasons, because as far as I can tell, it and Australian Ballet are among the few companies still offering PPV streams. La Scala periodically offers PPV streams, but ballets are few and far between. The Paris Opera offers live PPVs, but its archive is available only by subscription. The Paris Opera and the Royal Opera House have created their own streaming sites, but the libraries aren't deep enough to warrant a monthly subscription. ROH Stream includes "over 45" opera and ballet streams, Paris Opera Play has a catalogue of 24 ballets, 28 operas and 27 concerts (but the concert repertoire in particular is readily available in HD on YouTube by other orchestras). The POP subscription includes the livestreams. If they were to post their entire archive, I'd be there in a second. I fault myself for not always being aware of the digital seasons that were being offered a couple of years ago, because it was a question of using it or losing it.

I forgot to post this a couple of days ago, but a stream of Heinz Spoerli's Goldberg Variations performed by the Vienna State Ballet should be available for one more day. The ballet begins 19 minutes into the stream. https://play.wiener-staatsoper.at/event/abe77bb5-9f5e-4186-95ee-e18b6dd57546

Since April 29th is International Dance Day, it seems a good time to watch Pacific Northwest Ballet's stream of Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which will be available until May 1st. The cost is $35. https://www.pnb.org/season/midsummer-nights-dream/

The corps dances every show, so if most of them are done long before it ends, it's only practical to let them go home early and rest.

Then there was Nureyev, who in real life was fond of high boots with pretty big heels. He gave his prince in The Sleeping Beauty an extravagant version of them. In Paris the Prince switches from ballet boots to ballet slippers after his entrance, but to this day at the National Ballet of Canada, the Prince does his first dancing on those substantial heels.