volcanohunter

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.

The heel shrunk over the decades, but at the Mikhailovsky Ballet the tradition of heeled shoes for Siegfried persisted for a long time.

This can be seen in the Bolshoi film of Swan Lake from 1957, and it never especially surprised me, since Siegfried's solo dancing didn't come until Act 3.

It boils down to whether dance or music can add an emotional layer that compensates for the loss of so much text. But the tone inevitably changes.

That's a pity. In some countries when a last-minute casting change is announced, the audience applauds, regardless of whether it's happy about the change or not.

About Binet's Dark with Excessive Bright https://national.ballet.ca/Media-Room/News/Just-Announced/Choreographic-Associate-Robert-Binet-Creates-New-I

How did it feel when you first saw videos of “The Pharaoh’s Daughter,” which you and your wife, Tatiana, had worked on for two years? It was really painful. It was a longtime dream of mine to do it. It was a lot of preparatory work. But it’s nothing compared to the war. No one dies. It’s just a ballet. They take a ballet, OK, they take a ballet. They don’t write my name on the production, well, that’s bad. It’s wrong on so many levels. But it’s nothing compared to the real tragedy that is going on every single day. How can you be sure that the Mariinsky used your choreography? The work that I did was very specific. It was a reconstruction from the notations. Its steps, combinations of steps, arm movements, gestures and how the steps are connected to the music. There are parts that are now very different. But they just built it on top of the work that I had done. In the video, I saw moments that couldn’t have been found anywhere else. The dancers worked on these steps for months. It’s in their bodies. [...] Have you had any communication with the Bolshoi or the Mariinsky since you left Russia? Not long ago, the Mariinsky sent a letter from one of the clerks in a production office. They said that they spent money on us, on me and my wife living there, and that we would need to pay back that money — the hotel, the overseas flights. Of course, they perform ballets of mine without my name, and they don’t pay any royalties. So that was an interesting letter. Did you respond? I didn’t. I don’t know what to say. Everything used to be according to contract, but it was so easy for them to break a contract, to deprive an artist of intellectual property.

Do you envision a day when you’ll work again in Russia? I’ve heard that when Nabokov was invited to Germany after World War II, he said, “I won’t go because I don’t want to accidentally shake hands with a murderer.” That resonated. What is your sense of the Russian cultural scene now? It’s getting worse and worse in Russia day by day. In cultural life, they try to pretend that everything is fine, but the repertory shrinks, the best creators leave. Some have chosen to stay. But if you work for a state-supported, important Russian cultural institution, it means that you support Putin and his war, and you’re a tool of propaganda. Some Russian artists say they have no choice but to work for institutions like the Mariinsky and the Bolshoi. Even if they oppose the war, they say, they need the jobs. If you live in Russia, I understand that. But if you come from the West, that’s unacceptable — as unacceptable as for the West to receive people who support Putin. And there are many great amazing artists who still find a way to tour and perform.

Interesting that there is a revival of The Dante Project rather than a run of McGregor's MADDADDAM, which premiered in Toronto in last November as a co-production. I don't think it's McGregor's best work, but without it the ballet season is short on premieres. There is a festival of new works, including another co-production with the National Ballet of Canada, choreographed by Robert Binet, but as yet the details are sparse. Interesting also that the "short Ashton works" will be performed by Sarasota Ballet rather than the home team.

Out of curiosity, I looked at a program from about a year ago from the National Ballet of Canada. The printed version had a general list of which dancers were cast in which roles, but specific casting for each performance was accessible by a QR code. That link is now dead.

Continuing on the subject of playbills, an article on whether to print or not to print, including the disconnect between accessing a digital program and being asked to turn phones off, and how the heck to autograph them. https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/stage/2023/04/23/whats-in-a-page-to-print-theatre-programs-or-deliver-them-digitally-that-is-the-question.html

So Bernstein and Sondheim fit into this on the grounds that...West Side Story is based on a Shakespeare play? Because no British composer ever set a Shakespeare text to music? And, say, Vaughan Williams would be elitist?

Well-lived and beautifully danced indeed. May he rest in peace.

Rostyslav Yanchyshen, a dancer at the Odesa Opera and Ballet Theater, has been killed in battle. From Alexei Ratmansky. https://www.instagram.com/p/CrSZkqKOJh6/ Soprano Oksana Dyka posted that her brother was killed in action. https://www.instagram.com/p/CrOohDrsqQu/ In his youth he had been a champion rower.