volcanohunter

3 hours ago, sf_herminator said:

• Have to search for the Christian Lacroix designs, but very happy that Midsummer is returning to the stage

Lacroix's designs are beautiful, especially the lithographic quality of the backdrops, although I don't know how well the intricate details of the costumes carry into the hall. I have seen the POB production only on video, so I can't say. 

https://en.vogue.me/fashion_week/fall-2017-review/christian-lacroix-fashion-accident/

I can believe that kind of perception persists, and Buckingham Palace may not be aware of ROH efforts to cast off an elitist image.

But their folk dances demonstrate that Georgians and Ukrainians didn't need Russians to teach them how to dance. They are among the among the most "dancing" nations in the world. And I would argue that there's a huge difference between the method Balanchine learned while training and what Vaganova unleashed on Soviet ballet.

You may remember that a number of years ago Peter Martin's invited one of the major Georgian folkloric ensembles (and honestly, I can no longer recall whether it was Sukhishvili or Rustavi) to appear on a NYCB program, where I think the point was to illustrate that Balanchine's love for speed had an older origin than observing how quickly Parisians or New Yorkers walked.

I still think it would be extraordinarily insensitive to say: "We feel awful that your countries have been invaded by Russia, but you see, it's left us deprived of tours by Russian companies, so would you mind performing The Sleeping Beauty in their stead?" First-World Problems.

49 minutes ago, YouOverThere said:

We don't need foreign companies to present the same works that our local companies present, unless they have a unique take

Balanchine's origins were Georgian. That is the company's unique take on his works.

Touring a story ballet with full sets is expensive and a logistical challenge, and there is no guarantee that American audiences would come to see, say, Gorda if the company were to bring it.

On 4/17/2023 at 12:35 PM, FauxPas said:

The Georgian and Ukrainian companies with their Russian dance heritage and tradition could fill the gap beautifully.  I wouldn't mind if these companies toured the West with opulently mounted Russian classics.

I think, perhaps, Americans don't understand how offensive this attitude of "import substitution" is to Georgians and Ukrainians, considering that Russian troops are occupying substantial areas of their countries.

If a person is unfamiliar with the plotless, "black and white" aesthetic, Jewels may be a good entry point. I would also vote for program IV: Concerto Barocco, Prodigal Son, Symphony in C. 

I may be remembering this incorrectly, but during the lockdown, when ABT and NYCB streamed some long-unseen Live from Lincoln Center performances, it turned out those broadcasts weren't owned by them or by PBS, but by Lincoln Center.

3 hours ago, Helene said:

Vienna State Opera had the Lamberghini of all monthly streaming services before the pandemic, with mutliple live streams available for 72 hours afterwards and three archival selections/mo.  They, like the Met, offered daily streams for free in the first year of the pandemic, include the ballet, but Vienna never started that service again .

There were plans to move the Vienna State Opera onto the paid My Fidelio platform. As I understand it, the archive is now there, but it's available only in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. (Again, probably a rights thing.)

The Vienna State Opera continues to stream, much less frequently than before, generally once a month, free of charge and with a 72-hour viewing window. As it happens, the next stream will be a ballet program.

https://play.wiener-staatsoper.at/

Oh golly. An all-Balanchine fall is just scrumptious. 

Pickett has choreographed a full-length version of The Crucible for the Scottish Ballet which is coming to Washington in May. I appreciate that a stage play is easier to adapt than a novel.

https://www.kennedy-center.org/whats-on/explore-by-genre/ballet/2022-2023/scottish-ballet/

In November the National Ballet of Canada will premiere Pickett's Emma Bovary, though that will be a one-act work and not strictly narrative.

https://national.ballet.ca/Productions/Emma-Bovary-Passion

I agree wholeheartedly about Rangwanasha. She has a once-in-a-generation (or two or three) voice.

It still strikes me as unworthy subject matter, but it is likely to be more substantive than the vanity piece Yuri Possokhov made for Svetlana Zakharova. That one received poor reviews when it played in London, and every video I've seen of it made me cringe.

I did notice that Lopez Ochoa's ballet was designed by Jérôme Kaplan. Zakharova's costumes were designed by the House of Chanel, and I'm not surprised it isn't involved in a less hagiographic portrayal.

The Erik Bruhn Prize is a competition for young professionals. Bruhn envisioned the competition for dancers from the companies with which he felt most closely associated: the Royal Danish Ballet, Royal Ballet, ABT and National Ballet of Canada. Occasionally one of these companies is unable to participate, so there might be representatives from other companies instead. But it's never a question of rehearsing a single variation for months and months, because the dancers are actively performing in their companies' seasons.

The competition's track record is pretty darned good: Rose Gad, Errol Pickford, Silja Schandorff, Stephen Legate, Julie Kent, Johan Kobborg, Jaimie Tapper, Johan Persson, Vanessa Zahorian, Jhe Russell, Gennadi Nedvigin, Michele Wiles, Friedemann Vogel, Tina Pereira, Ulrik Birkkjær, Elena Lobsanova, Cory Stearns, Maria Baranova, Joseph Gorak, Ida Praetorius, Andreas Kaas, Hannah Fischer, Carlo Di Lanno, Natasha Sheehan, Angelo Greco, Catherine Hurlin, Siphesihle November. 

18 hours ago, Mashinka said:

I've been told there was a week of special performances in 1953, Ashton created Homage to the Queen and Callas sang.

Perhaps part of the problem is that there is no Ashton and no Callas. Could McGregor choreograph something suitable for the occasion? The ROH could book, say, Kaufmann, but he could cancel at the last moment. 

Until yesterday I had totally missed the Next at the Kennedy Center series on PBS, but the most recent episode features Ballet Hispánico in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's Doña Perón, and it should be available on demand for viewers in the U.S.

https://www.pbs.org/video/ballet-hispanicos-dona-peron-xfrmhs/ 

I am a little surprised by the choice, given that the Royal Ballet presents Jewels fairly regularly. Wasn't "Diamonds" performed in the autumn? 

I don't know whether it had anything to do with Marco Goecke's contribution to Kunstkamer, but the tour repertoire has changed to Jewels and a gala.

https://www.roh.org.uk/tickets-and-events/jewels-by-the-australian-ballet-details 

Not only that, we know that Nazis were passionate art "collectors."

My own view is that people grossly overestimate the salutary power of art. No amount of ballet is going to change anyone or anything. For this reason "cultural diplomacy" is at best a flimsy concept. At worst, the rose-colored glasses of foreign admirers become a form of willful blindness to brutal reality.

Interview with Mikhail Shishkin, novelist in self-imposed exile.

It's hard to excerpt just one quote.

"I’ve had very solid ground under my feet all my life. This was Russian culture, as a part of world culture. And all at once this was blown away,” he says. “Because if there is Russian culture, if there is Tolstoy, if there is Rachmaninov, and so on, then how was Bucha possible?"

"This means that all the books that I wrote, and that my colleagues wrote over the past 20, 30 years . . . we are just losers. What did we write them for, if this catastrophe is possible?" He pauses. "I feel an incredible sense of shame, even though I know I am not to blame for this war." He accepts, though, that the war would not be possible without the complicity of millions of Russians, including those heading to the battlefields to kill and be killed: "Putin is the symptom, not the illness."

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/putin-russia-ukraine-war-mikhail-shishkin-c5bnmfd7n 

May he rest in peace. 

Tributes from the POB and the Rome Opera.

It was a production by Kirk Peterson.

I suspect the soloist stood on stage so that the audience would have something to watch, rather than zoning out and chatting, or something like that.

All in all, it wasn't a bad idea. It meant that a beautiful piece of music wasn't cut, it allowed for the necessary set and costume changes, and it did convey the idea of the passage of time.

May she rest in peace.

One production I saw used the Entr'acte as a purely musical interlude (curtain down, solo violinist standing in front of it) to represent the hundred years between Acts 1 and 2, instead of an intermission. So unlike the Nureyev production, the mime scene between the Prince and the Lilac Fairy was maintained, and with it some very beautiful music.

1 hour ago, Ray Boucher said:

...like Peter Wright's version for the Dutch National Ballet, as a pas de deux for Princess Aurora and Prince Désiré at the end of Act II after the former is awoken.

Wright asked Ashton to provide the choreography for the "awakening pas de deux" for his production for the Royal Ballet in 1968.

https://rohcollections.org.uk/Production.aspx?production=799

Holy moly!  Well, Lise Lander was the last one, and she inherited his ballets.

Well, in the case of Kim, this is a matter of making your bed and lying in it. He has stayed in Russia, knowing that the repertoire is going to shrink, that The Pharaoh's Daughter is legally and morally dubious, and that the tours he was used to doing are gone. The annual visits to Baden-Baden and DC, and the triennial visits to London may not return during his career. 

(P.S. I have seen Kim in the flesh and don't understand the grounds for his reputation. )

11 hours ago, Mashinka said:

I saw Etudes danced by the Maryinsky in London and the corps couldn't mange the timing at all especially the diagonal jetes.  The soloists were okay though, but nothing special.

The Bolshoi always made a mess of the criss-crossing diagonals as well, and POB corps members at their concours do a better job of the female variation than the Bolshoi's principals.

It's a bad fit for Russian companies, which don't hone finesse in the manner of the French, Danish or English schools.