volcanohunter

A Russian news program visited Filin in Aachen, and the subsequent report presented a mixed picture. Filin descibes himself as a "half invalid"; he has no sight in his right eye and what sight he has comes and goes. However he also says that sometimes he can read newspapers without difficulty, and as the report notes, he's able to walk through the town pretty much unaided. Filin is hoping that doctors will give him permission to return to Moscow on September 14.

Yes, her name is still on the roster, so some hope remains.

Not on any account could I do that. I have seen 19 performances out of 21 (work prevented me from seeing 2 more) and enjoyed them all. Every single preview and review in the press mentioned the Bolshoi's problems but the dancers didn't disappoint. I enjoyed their powerful exciting performances, some were truly outstanding and unforgettable, 'The Flames of Paris' among them. It never crossed my mind either.

You're correct, Helene. The season after the Met's first cinema broadcasts Empire Theatres started an alternate series that presented primarily Opus Arte productions (ROH, POB, Teatro Real, Liceu, Netherlands Opera). Perhaps there was a loophole involved: the multiplexes in Vancouver, Winnipeg or Toronto showing these performances were not the ones showing the Met in HD, and the Opus Arte performances were all pre-recorded. I was sorry that the series stopped because it endeavored to show as many ballets as operas, and I was unbothered by the fact that the performances weren't live. A year ago Cineplex did air a couple of operas from the Royal Opera House, but they were pre-recorded 3D films. They may have been sufficiently different from "live in HD" to qualify. It's very odd that this was not mentioned in the article since it's entirely germane to the subject matter. I would be interested in learning how this turned out for NYCB. My guess is that the American side of things was bungled. The cinema broadcast was followed the next day by a live broadcast on free television, which wouldn't have incentivized going to the movies. Most of the article is now behind a paywall, but in May Le Monde published a piece on the Bolshoi's cinema screenings which suggested that the enterprise was very successful. The Bolshoi may stream performances for its domestic audience free of charge on You Tube, but the screenings abroad are decidedly made for profit. http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2013/05/21/sur-550-ecrans-le-bolchoi-fait-son-cinema_3414632_3246.html

The Russian service of Radio Liberty has published a blog post by Pavel Dmitrichenko, in which he continues to protest his innocence. Perhaps there will be more "letters from prison" forthcoming. http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/25095090.html

I think it has been discussed elsewhere on the board that the Met stipulates that cinemas that show its HD performances cannot show the broadcasts of other opera companies. Since the Met got out of the gate early and established successful ties with many U.S. chains, it is exceedingly difficult for any other opera company to elbow its way in. Canada has only two movie chains with nationwide reach, and both of them have been showing the Met since the outset, though at present Empire Cinemas shows the Met only in Atlantic Canada, while Cineplex shows it everywhere else. The Cineplex dance series, when it finally got going, was built around the Bolshoi, and was later augmented by the Royal Ballet. But apparently the Royal Opera is off limits because of existing contracts with the Met, and presumably the Canadian market would be equally inaccessible to the Bolshoi Opera. No doubt contracts with the Met would make the bundling of the Bolshoi Ballet and Opera difficult in other countries as well. For example, Pathé Live, the Bolshoi Ballet's primary distributor, is also the French distributor for the Met. Distribution continues to be a problem for the Royal Opera House in the U.S. When Emerging Pictures announced its fall season, the lineup included the Bolshoi Ballet and La Scala, but the Royal Ballet and Opera, which had been included in more than one preceding season, were conspicuously absent. http://www.emergingpictures.com/2013/08/05/opera-and-ballet-in-cinema-from-emerging-pictures-fall-winter-2013-season-announced/ For now, at least, it appears that U.S. audiences will not get to see the Royal Ballet's forthcoming cinecasts.

I would also like to hear what ABT has to say about this. I have always been baffled its failure to take advantage of the Met's HD facilities, not to mention an audience with a built-in habit of going to the cinema on Saturday afternoons. I think of my aunt, a fanatical standee in her college years, who so loved going to the Met that when the opera season ended, she would keep right on going to see the visiting ballet companies.

According to the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, Valery Gergiev has devised a plan for combining the Mariinsky Theater, the Academy of Russian Ballet, the St. Petersburg Conservatory and the Russian Institute of the History of the Arts into a single entity called the National Center of Academic Theatrical and Choreographic Art, with him in charge of everything. Supposedly he is pitching the idea directly to Vladimir Putin rather than to the Ministry of Culture, which recently balked at the idea of making Gergiev director of the Mariinsky and the Bolshoi simultaneously. Both the Mariinsky Theater and the Ministry of Culture are denying the existence of Gergiev's letter, a copy of which Forbes claims to have, though apparently people within the Institute of the History of the Arts are aware of the idea and are adamantly opposed to it. http://www.forbes.ru/sobytiya/vlast/243576-teatr-odnogo-imperatora-kem-valerii-gergiev-khochet-stat-v-budushchem

He lived and worked in New York for several years, but Kevin McKenzie didn't do anything with Golding while he had him. Not an unfamiliar tune. The Dutch National Ballet, on the other hand, recognized his potential immediately.

Yes, certainly. On stage he gives his ballerina heart and soul, and he is very musical. He typically partners the biggest and tallest, but looking over the Bolshoi's archive of cast lists, I see that he has danced full-length ballets with all of the company's primas, from Kaptsova and Obraztsova to Alexandrova, Zakharova and Shipulina.

Last summer when they appeared together on the "Big Ballet" television program I thought she and Vladislav Lantratov did well together, so that could be one possibility.

(This was written at an altitude of 36,000 feet in a state of extreme sleep deprivation, so I beg your indulgence if I’ve forgotten half of what I wanted to write. It’s too long as it is.) Flames of Paris Jeanne - Natalia Osipova (16), Ekaterina Shipulina (17m), Ekaterina Krysanova (17e) Philippe - Ivan Vasiliev (16, 17e), Vladislav Lantratov (17m) Jérôme - Andrei Merkuriev (16), Denis Savin (17m, 17e) Adeline - Anastasia Stashkevich (16), Anna Rebetskaya (17m, 17e) Marquis de Beauregard - Ruslan Skvortsov Mireille de Poitiers - Kristina Kretova (16, 17e), Anna Tikhomirova (17m) Antoine Mistral - Artem Ovcharenko (16, 17e), Denis Rodkin (17m) Jarcasse - Irina Zibrova Gilbert - Vitaly Biktimirov (16, 17e), Alexander Vodopetov (17m) Sutler - Anastasia Vinokur Gaspard - Alexander Petukhov Lucille - Lyudmila Ermakova Hunstmen - Batyr Annadurdyev, Yuri Baranov, Karim Abdullin, Evgeny Golovin (16, 17e), Maxim Surov (17m) King Louis XVI - Denis Medvedev Marie Antoinette - Elena Bukanova (16, 17e), Olga Tubalova (17m) Amour - Chinara Alizade (16, 17e), Daria Khokhlova (17m) Apparition of Rinaldo’s Bride - Yulia Lunkina Armida’s Friends - Maria Zharkova, Yulia Grebenshchikova, Olga Marchenkova, Angelina Vlashinets (16, 17e), Ana Turazashvili (17m) Furies - Maria Vinogradova, Anna Okuneva, Yanina Parienko, Viktoria Litvinova, Anna Leonova, Anna Tikhomirova (16, 17e), Xenia Sorokina (17m) Master of Ceremonies - Alexei Loparevich Auvergnese - Anna Antropova, Anna Rebetskaya (16), Kristina Karasyova (17m, 17e), Alexander Vodopetov (16, 17e), Vitaly Biktimirov (17m), Anton Savichev (16, 17e), Ivan Alexeyev (17m) Marseillaise - Igor Tsvirko, Alexei Matrakhov, Maxim Surov President of the Convention - Alexander Fadeyechev Jacques-Louis David - Yuri Ostrovsky conductor - Pavel Sorokin The best way to summarize the opening night of Flames of Paris would be to say “veniit, vidit, vicit,” because it felt a lot like Natalia Osipova’s coronation. With her spark and one-of-a-kind jump, she effectively overshadowed everyone else on stage. I barely even noticed Ivan Vasiliev until the pas de deux. Nevertheless, it was obvious that Osipova and Vasiliev had been away from the Bolshoi for a while, not because they no longer fit in stylistically (they did), but because what was presumably a fairly short rehearsal period was not enough to overcome Osipova’s synchronization problems with Andrei Merkuriev’s Jerome and even Vasiliev’s Philippe. I also have to note that in the Dance of the Basques, it was not Vasiliev and Merkuriev, but rather Vitaly Biktimirov’s dashing captain who put the dance over the top, which certainly helped me understand why Vassily Vainonen had originally given the lead in the piece to a character dancer. The audience was beside itself during the pas de deux, and when Vasiliev got whoops and hollers during his variation and coda, which included things like triple revolutions in the air and his proclivity for ending sequences of pirouettes very, very slowly, I didn’t mind in the slightest. That’s the nature of the beast. Nevertheless, Flames of Paris suddenly seemed like a much better ballet the following afternoon when Ekaterina Shipulina and Vladislav Lantratov took over the leads. Instead of being the Vanya and Natasha Show with a few extra bits thrown in, the ballet now came across as an integrated whole. Given her height, Shipulina is not an obvious ingenue, but she and Denis Savin as Jerome were entirely synchronized, and so was everyone else on stage. I did not find Shipulina to an inferior Jeanne in any way, She is not exactly earthbound, has just as much Bolshoi style and there were many moments when took full advantage of the length of her legs to drive the choreographic point home. Lantratov can’t do a macho strut anywhere near as plausibly as Vasiliev, but his dancing has greater beauty. He does not have Vasiliev’s bag of tricks in the pas de deux, but frankly Shipulina has the better fouettés. Perhaps because he’d been dealing with an injury during the tour, Lantratov looked visibly pumped up by his own performance of the pas de deux, not quite like the footballer who had just scored a goal, but perhaps like a fan who had just watched his team score. Since Vasiliev is not exactly a model of balletic decorum, I couldn’t blame Lantratov for taking his own liberties. Lantratov’s Philippe is also a nicer guy. Unlike Vasiliev, he does not crow over those being led to the guillotine, though Vasiliev’s reading gives him a dramatic opportunity when he realizes how much distress his behavior has caused Adeline. I can certainly understand what Vasiliev is trying to do, because otherwise Philippe’s character has no dramatic development to speak of. Ekaterina Krysanova and Savin did not have the eerie synchronization he had with Shipulina, but they were by far the most convincing pair of siblings. In many ways, Krysanova was the most persuasive heroine. She looked the youngest, her character underwent the most clearly delineated development, and every jump and turn was there. Her variation was also the best of the three, the hops on pointe and rapid turns being most compatible with her technique. On Friday Andrei Merkuriev as Jerome was largely overshadowed by Osipova, but the following day Denis Savin effectively made him the ballet’s dominant character. Nearly all of Jerome’s choreography is by Ratmansky, and since Savin is a self-described contemporary ballet specialist within the Bolshoi, he was at ease with Ratmansky’s shifts of balance and quirks for hands and feet, all danced with gorgeous flow and, to borrow a modern dance image, a fall-catch-and-suspend dynamic. (Ditto for Shipulina.) He was completely persuasive as a good and innocent teenager, all heart and hope, who endures unbearable tragedy. And Savin’s finale is devastating. At the end of the ballet the stage is crammed with movement and action, but I could see only Savin’s desolation. Having watched the afternoon performance from the seventh row of the orchestra, where every dramatic detail was visible in high resolution, so to speak, I was crushed by his performance and could barely bring myself to applaud when the curtain came down. And then he did it to me a second time in the evening! Ratmansky has both his heroines change footwear during the course of the ballet. If Jeanne spends most of the ballet in pointe shoes, excepting the scene of character dances in Act 2, during which Osipova and Krysanova wore low-heeled shoes and Shipulina wore boots, Adeline wears heeled shoes for most of the ballet until her duet on pointe with Jerome, which is effectively her only passage of what we’d call “real” ballet dancing. At the first performance Anastasia Stashkevich was luminous as Adeline, her expansive dancing punctuated by high extensions and deep swooning backbends. All of changing realities of Adeline’s world registered on Stashkevich’s face, and in the end she was stoic in the face of death. Anna Rebetskaya’s dancing was perhaps not as vivid or individual, but her character was delicately drawn, and she was very touching in her interactions with Savin. She and Ruslan Skvortsov looked sufficiently alike to be plausible as a daughter and father, even if she is actually older. In the absence of Dmitry Gudanov, Skvortsov danced all the performances as the Marquis, though the printed programs would have us believe that he wasn’t scheduled to do any. He was delightfully dastardly, a rapacious predator whose alpha-maleness is expressed through deep, wide strides and dazzling batterie. With merciless, surgical precision he skewered the man of power who abuses it to prey on women. (I’m sure he’s never run across those in the theater. ) Ratmansky has the Marquis observe his rivals, studying their methods and weaknesses, and then outdazzle them choreographically. Even when seemingly paying tribute to the King, the Marquis is really showing him up. Skvortsov’s dancing was especially satisfying because it’s rare to see a six-footer excel at such rapid and intricate footwork, and each performance was stronger and more forceful than the one before. It’s a shame Skvortsov was not able to do at least one performance as Antoine Mistral/Rinaldo because neither Artem Ovcharenko nor Denis Rodkin quite had his droll wit, musicality or grasp of the style. Too often Ovcharenko and his partner Kristina Kretova played fast and loose with the music, while Rodkin needed reminding that he was dancing an enervated Rinaldo and not Conrad. His determination to dance everything as big and as strong as possible negated any chances of conveying the pseudo-Baroque style. As for Rodkin’s potential danseur credentials, he is tall and strong, but in the coda he performed royales rather than entrechats six, and in a spetacular display of ungentlemanliness, he elected to out-jump and out-split Daria Khokhlova’s Amour as they performed what was supposed to be a series of small, rapid flick jetés. In an instant Rodkin managed to negate about three-quarters of the positive impressions he may have made on me during the tour. Evidently his coaching sessions with Nikolai Tsiskaridze did not include lessons on good stage manners. For his part, Ovcharenko did perform entrechats six, but spread out three of them over music that called for four. As Mireille de Poitiers/Armida, Kristina Kretova showed admirable Baroque port de bras, even while dealing with completely anachronistic elements of choreography, such as pointe shoes. Even though she has extremely flexible feet, Kretova hopped and hopped and hopped on pointe perfectly. She and Yulia Lunkina as the Apparition of the Bride engaged in a Dynasty-worthy struggle over the hapless Rinaldo, and she clearly relished every minute of her melodramatic revenge. At her second performance she perhaps elected to ham it up excessively, but she was charming. In her republican incarnation she was more of a hard sell and less attractive as a result. Anna Tikhomirova was somewhat less convincing as a period stylist. Her performance was a 21st-century allusion to the style rather than an attempt to recreate it, and this is, after all, Vainonen’s choreography, not Ratmansky’s. (That said, on the basis of her performance I would very much like to see her take a crack at Balanchine’s Chaconne.) Unlike Kretova, her Armida actually seemed to derive sadistic pleasure from destroying Rinaldo. Tikhomirova was the better and more appealing dancer in her second-act duet, her rhythmic accuracy resulting in each of her movements coinciding with the appropriate musical accent. Tikhomirova recognizes that cymbal crashes are there for a reason and uses them. Both Chinara Alizade and Khokhlova were in fine Amours, Alizade a bit flashier, Khokhlova subtler and charming. Alexei Loparevich as the Master of Ceremonies and Denis Medvedev as Louis XVI were very funny. Medvedev was especially vivid as an alternately cynical, bored, petulant and jealous king. In Vainonen’s character dances, all those who performed the Auvergnese dance gave it verve and personality, and the Marseillaise trio was bursting with both virtuosity and fun, particularly Igor Tsvirko, who overflows with vitality. At the final performance there were some end-of-tour “shenanigans,” for example, one of the Marseillaise dancers wore a thick red beard, and the first of the corps of “Mariannes” carried a small French flag. On the whole I found Ratmansky’s first act more persuasive. The drama flows easily, and the choreography is interesting in its unconventional use of the pas de deux: brother-sister, father-daughter, assailant-victim. In the second act I got the impression that the imperative to preserve as much Vainonen as possible, especially the flashy pas de deux, interfered with the story Ratmansky wanted to tell, and which he had been telling persuasively up to that point. My honest advice to anyone who’s interested in it is to grab any opportunity to see Osipova and Vasiliev perform the pas de deux in a concert or gala setting. But if you’re going to see the whole ballet, choose a different cast. Overall the theatrical experience will be more satisfying and feel less like a circus. The ballet is also probably best seen from a slightly elevated position. There is a lot of stuff going on around the stage, so the ballet benefits from a panoramic view. Audience response was very enthusiastic and there were lots of curtain calls, since all three couples would take them in turn, and then come out together before going separately a second time around. Even though I didn’t record an exact tally, my impression is that the greatest number may have taken place at the last performance, during which Vasiliev had worked very hard to sell himself to the London audience, and they ate it up.

According to a notice posted inside the theater, "due to injury" the Marquis will be danced by Ruslan Skvortsov rather than Dmitry Gudanov. But is Gudanov really injured, or is he performing at the festival in Peralada, as the festival's web site claims? http://www.festivalperalada.com/programacion-2013/danza/gala-grans-estrelles-del-bolshoi-marinsky-eifmann-i-mikhailovsky/?lang=en

Swan Lake, August 15 Odette/Odile: Olga Smirnova Prince Siegfried: Semyon Chudin Evil Genius: Artem Belyakov Jester: Alexei Matrakhov pas de trois: Kristina Kretova, Anastasia Stashkevich Dowager: Kristina Karasyova Tutor: Alexei Loparevich Master of Ceremonies: Alexander Fadeyechev Waltz demi-soloists: Anna Okuneva, Anna Rebetskaya, Anna Leonova, Ana Turazashvili, Karim Abdullin, Denis Rodkin, Mikhail Kryuchkov, Yuri Baranov Cygnets: Svetlana Pavlova, Margarita Shrainer, Anna Voronkova, Yulia Lunkina Big Swans: Olga Marchenkova, Yulia Grebenshchikova, Ana Turazashvili Hungarian Bride: Angelina Vlashinets Russian Bride: Maria Vinogradova Spanish Bride: Anna Tikhomirova Neapolitan Bride: Daria Khokhlova Polish Bride: Yanina Parienko conductor: Pavel Sorokin How you feel about Olga Smirnova’s Odette-Odile will probably depend very much on the way you respond to her port de bras. Do you think Odette’s arms ought to be very wing-like, or only occasionally so? Do you find Smirnova’s upper body to be flexible and fluid, or angular and hyperextended? Are you bowled over by her physical expressiveness, or do you find her mannered and exaggerated? For now, Smirnova’s interpretation lies mostly in her upper body, and in doing so, she is working to her strengths because, for one thing, she cannot compete with Alexandrova, Shipulina or Krysanova where jumps and turns are concerned. The hovering balances and slow, smooth descents from pointe are not there yet, and the battu at the end of the ‘white swan’ adage are glossed over. That said, her balance in her variation and the coda was very good; there were no technical slips in these solo passages. For now some of the others things, like the couple of sticky partnering moments that happened in the adage, have yet to be worked out. Matters were not helped by the poor playing of the violin soloist (Dmitri Khakhamov?). Her transformation back into a swan at the end of the act is anticlimactic, perhaps because she already undulates her arms so much that this doesn’t look any different. The applause immediately after the adage and her variation was not especially prolonged, but the audience responded more vociferously during the bows at the end of the act. Smirnova did not look entirely comfortable as Odile, but she endeavored to dance as big as she could, though this occasionally looked a little awkward and forced in the adage. She got through her variation without difficulty, and despite slipping off pointe on about her third fouetté, she was able to complete the sequence of singles. Again, I’d have to note that the applause following the adage and variations was not as prolonged as it had been the evening before. She has been paired with him quite a bit, but I do not think Semyon Chudin is the best partner for her. For one thing, she is more musical than he is. Unfortunately, he has a strong tendency toward posing, she exaggerates her port de bras, and together I think they are at risk of getting stuck in their particular exaggerations; mannerisms tend to get worse, not better, over time. A partner with a warmer and more direct style might be better equipped to help her open up emotionally and perhaps dance more freely. It’s a much simpler part, but I came away most satisfied by the Evil Genius of Artem Belyakov, who danced it big and danced it strong, and that’s what his role really needs. No fuss. Alexei Matrakhov’s Jester, filling in for Denis Medvedev, was cloying in the extreme, and I wanted to strangle him. (My kingdom for a BB gun!) But the audience reacted very positively. For the first time the first-act waltz looked ragged in spots, but Kristina Kretova and especially Anastasia Stashkevich were both excellent in the pas de trois. The cygnet quartet of Svetlana Pavlova, Margarita Shrainer, Yulia Lunkina and Anna Voronkova was unchanged at all five performances that I saw, and it’s entirely possible that they danced all eight Swan Lakes, so for that I give them a deep bow of respect. The corps of swans was as fine as ever, which was obvious from my overhead view from the amphitheater. Maria Vinogradova tried to inject some spice into the Russian dance, though she was also severely undermined by the solo violinist. Anna Tikhomirova flew higher than ever in the Spanish dance (the trumpets didn’t begin that one well either), and Daria Khokhlova delivered a lovely and musical Neapolitan dance. Chudin was at his best in the final scene. If earlier in the ballet his soliloquizing had been posey and frustratingly devoid of longing, here he came bursting out as though someone had finally lit a fire under him. I would hope that he could transfer some of that reaching dynamism to earlier scenes. I can’t blame him for not having figured out the ending yet. There were two curtain calls, first for Smirnova, Chudin and Belyakov, and then a somewhat shorter bow for Smirnova and Chudin. The loudest applause of all was reserved for the orchestra.

Of course. Thank you.

The acid reference is unfortunate, but this paints a less malignant picture than I would have feared, especially after Ratmansky referred to said claque as "disgusting." As Drew says, they're "wild (if corrupt) fans." And I can understand where they're coming from, because I often take it upon myself to lead applause during performances. If I'm positioned properly, I'll usually be the one to start applause for the conductor when he or she enters the pit, and during the performance mine is usually the last clapping you hear when the applause dies away, unless the music has already resumed. I'm very sympathetic to the situation of the male dancer during a pas de deux, so I'll try to applaud for as long as possible after the adage in the hopes of helping him to catch his breath before his variation. And if I happen to be more familiar with an opera than others in the audience, I try to applaud in the "correct" places. I can't really do much effective hollering because I'm not very loud. No one rewards me with free tickets or anything else, and I do the same things irrespective of who's performing, but on some level I understand the instinct of these claquers to support their favorites in this way.

The Nerina exhibit mentions that she also appeared in films of Firebird and Petrushka, so hopefully these will make their way to DVD as well.

I don't agree with that characterization either. On the one hand I can see what they're trying to say, because of all the Bolshoi's ballerinas she is the one who most reminds me of the big, unbridled Old School, which I mean as a compliment. But her sensibility is more modern. In certain repertoire I can't help but think of her as a Bolshoi-American hybrid.

Swan Lake, August 14 Odette/Odile: Ekaterina Shipulina Prince Siegfried: Ruslan Skvortsov Evil Genius: Artem Belyakov Jester: Igor Tsvirko pas de trois: Kristina Kretova, Anastasia Stashkevich Dowager: Kristina Karasyova Tutor: Alexei Loparevich Master of Ceremonies: Vitaly Biktimirov Waltz demi-soloists: Yanina Parienko, Anna Leonova, Maria Vinogradova, Ana Turazashvili, Karim Abdullin, Denis Rodkin, Mikhail Kryuchkov, Yuri Baranov Cygnets: Svetlana Pavlova, Margarita Shrainer, Anna Voronkova, Yulia Lunkina Big Swans: Olga Marchenkova, Angelina Vlashinets, Yulia Grebenshchikova Hungarian Bride: Angelina Vlashinets Russian Bride: Anna Rebetskaya Spanish Bride: Chinara Alizade Neapolitan Bride: Anna Tikhomirova Polish Bride: Anna Okuneva conductor: Pavel Sorokin Ekaterina Shipulina and Ruslan Skvortsov make an extremely glamorous pairing. Immediately I could feel my American prejudice for the tall and the fabulous asserting itself. Chronologically speaking, this is probably the Bolshoi partnership of the longest standing, begun in the classrooms of the Moscow Ballet School, which they completed in the same year. Yuri Grigorovich has been persuaded to allow his Sleeping Beauty to be redesigned, so the Bolshoi really ought to work to get his permission to change the costumes and decors for Swan Lake as well. When the corps de ballet dances the opening waltz as well as they do, it seems almost criminal to dress them in costumes that appear to have been sewn out of camouflage fabric bought at an army surplus store. There was a flawless pas de trois for all concerned, and Igor Tsvirko was also near perfect as the Jester. Because he was acting vigorously, he was perhaps more conspicuous that I would have liked, but I can’t blame the man for trying. So far I think he was the only Jester who managed to catch the flower the first pas de trois soloist threw in his direction. This was my first look at the Evil Genius of Artem Belyakov, who made his debut in the role this spring. I thought he acquitted himself very well, dancing with a great deal of force and elevation. Shipulina is an august, expansive Odette. Those who seek Russian grandeur and pliancy need look no further. She took the adage at a slow pace, but was able to sustain it. The first lift of the middle section was a little noisy, but all of the subsequent lifts were remarkably quiet, and while I suspect that a tall dancer like Shipulina may not always be easy to partner, Skvortsov did not let on. In the end the pas de deux was very satisfying. Old Hollywood couldn’t have produced a more splendid pair of lovers. The swans, small and big, who followed were excellent. Toward the end of her variation Shipulina seemed insecure as she performed the final sequence of turns, and indeed at the end she lost her balance. It occurred to me that she might be fatigued, as she was performing for the third day in a row. But she came back strongly in the coda. It was notable how fiercely her Odette resisted being turned back into a swan at the end of the act. Shipulina and Skvortsov brought real dramatic tension to the scene. In the Hungarian dance I was pleased with the épaulement of Angelina Vlashinets. Anna Rebetskaya must be the personification of the Sweet Young Russian Thing. Chinara Alizade had style but couldn’t match Anna Tikhomirova for elevation as the Spanish bride, while Tikhomirova took the Neapolitan dance and knocked it out of the park. Anna Okuneva’s jumps looked a little labored in the mazurka. Shipulina is a natural Odile, so she burst onto the scene and took command of it, not really trying to impersonate Odette. The adage had an up-to-the-minute urgency on both sides. Again, often times Skvortsov seems ready to surrender, but no sooner does Odile begin to impersonate Odette than he feels in his gut what a vulgar fraud she is, and he hesitates once more. Like Ekaterina Krysanova, Skvortsov does a lot of things the “hard” way. He does not dance through the music, evening out a phrase to make it physically easier to perform. Instead he will descend from a jump and hold the landing until the next musical phrase begins. Shipulina’s solo dancing was stronger than had been at her previous performance, and by the time she got through her perfect single fouettés, it was obvious that she wasn’t suffering from any sort of fatigue. Superb dancing from both from start to finish. Perhaps once you’ve seen this version enough times you can start to make peace with Grigorovich’s idea of Siegfried’s victimization at the hands of a Cartesian Evil Genius, in which Odette was never real and Siegfried is doomed to end up alone, but nothing worse. Even the swans are no longer swans but rather turbulent waves conjured up by the Evil Genius to separate Odette and Siegfried. Certainly Shipulina, Skvortsov and Belyakov gave it their all to put this across, so the ending was not without drama, and it was not uninvolving, even if it was not catastrophic. Since it turns out he is flexible in these matters, I’ll add that this time Skvortsov’s Siegfried ended by kneeling down slowly on one knee before raising his arms toward the amphitheater as the curtain fell. So he finished each of his three outings in Swan Lake differently. At the end of the performance there were three curtain calls, the most there have been at the nine Bolshoi performances I’ve attended so far. In truth the audience may not have been clamoring for a third call, but as soon as Shipulina and Skvortsov appeared before the curtain, they were greeted enthusiastically. We’ll see how Smirnova does tonight. I sat among the well-heeled of the grand tier, who are a stingy bunch, not willing to applaud much of anyone or anything, leaving it to the rest of the hall to do such a vulgar thing. If you’re looking for a fun crowd, I’d sit higher up. Excellent views, though.

Nerina's Giselle is available on DVD, paired with Markova's Les Sylphides. http://icartists.co.uk/classics/catalog/dvds/les-sylphides-giselle At the moment there is an exhibit on Nerina at the Royal Opera House. Costumes and photographs are scattered throughout the theater. Among the things mentioned in the displays is that she was one of the first ballerinas to take television seriously. Apparently many of her colleagues wanted nothing to do with it. This is why we're fortunate to have so many of her roles preserved on film. http://www.roh.org.uk/visit/exhibitions

The Cineplex chain has announced dates for Canada. As in the past, Bolshoi and Royal Ballet performances will probably be broadcast same-day rather than live. September 18 - Swan Lake in 3D (Mariinsky Ballet) + September 22 October 16 - Don Quixote (Royal Ballet) October 20 - Spartacus (Bolshoi Ballet) November 17 - An Evening with Crystal Pite (Nederlands Dans Theater) December 12 - The Nutcracker (Royal Ballet) + December 22 January 19 - Jewels (Bolshoi Ballet) January 27 - Giselle (Royal Ballet) February 2 - Lost Illusions (Bolshoi Ballet) February 23 - Moulin Rouge (Royal Winnipeg Ballet) + February 26, March 8 March 19 - Sleeping Beauty (Royal Ballet) + April 13 March 30 - Golden Age (Bolshoi Ballet) April 28 - Winter's Tale (Royal Ballet) They're finally getting around to the Crystal Pite program. Canadian content and all. Too bad it's the sole offering from NDT. http://www.cineplex.com/Events/DanceSeries/Home.aspx

Jewels, August 13 Emeralds Anastasia Stashkevich, Dmitry Gudanov Ekaterina Shipulina, Ivan Alexeyev Daria Khokhlova, Yulia Lunkina, Denis Medvedev Rubies Kristina Kretova, Andrei Merkuriev, Yulia Grebenshchikova Diamonds Olga Smirnova, Semyon Chudin Anna Leonova, Ana Turazashvili, Angelina Vlashinets, Anna Okuneva Denis Rodkin, Artem Belyakov, Mikhail Kryuchkov, Dmitri Efremov conductor: Pavel Sorokin I’m having connectivity issues, so I’ll have to try and hustle. Problematic issues first, like the designs by Alyona Pikalova. Each section of the ballet is preceded by a garish gold front curtain that has little visual relationship with what follows. If it’s supposed to represent the cover of a jewel box, the image is clumsy, and it would be best to skip it altogether. Emeralds and Rubies appear to take place in front of columns of colored glass blocks, while Diamonds takes place against a slightly cheesy nighttime sky. In Emeralds Elena Zaytseva’s costumes are closer to Christian Lacroix than Karinska, except that Zaytseva is not Lacroix. The bodices are excessively glittery, and the light they reflect is white, not green. The vertical stripes of the two-tone tutus are also not especially pretty and particularly distracting in the Sicilienne. In Rubies the dresses are awful and the headdresses are worse, and the Diamonds tutus are a little too big; they flop too far behind the music in allegro sections. But the tiaras are suitably Russian. On the matter of performance style, I don’t lament that company A, B or C does not look like New York City Ballet. In the case of the great companies I am interested in seeing their unique approach to Jewels. As long as the music and choreographic accents are respected, and the dancing is large and committed, I am satisfied. The Bolshoi performs the longer version of Emeralds with the double ending. I had a few doubts going in about Anastasia Stashkevich in the principal role, because while she is an extremely dynamic dancer, her movement, and especially her port de bras, can have a brittle quality sometimes. But she recently made her debut in La Sylphide, and it shows. On balance she was alright, although she was a little hit-and-miss rhythmically, which, as you can imagine, was a problem in her solo. However, when Ekaterina Shipulina appeared on stage, all luxuriant and dreamy rapture, my mind was put at ease, knowing that I would come away completely satisfied with at least one performance that evening. In the “walking” pas de deux, she did for the most part walk on the music’s pulse, which happens far less often than I’d like. In the trio Yulia Lunkina was especially lovely, since the air of gracious serenity she always projects seemed especially suitable in her solo section to the violin solo. The men had a few problems staying together in the allegro finale, but in the second finale is was obvious how Jewels benefits from a great company like the Bolshoi: a chain of seven dancers, the women all on pointe in arabesque, perfectly positioned, perfectly synchronized and entirely secure. As Rubies began the orchestra seemed to lack rhythmic bite, and initially Yulia Grebenshchikova appeared not entirely secure in her échappés, so I was worried that her turnout may betray her. However, when the musical theme repeated itself, and she came out a second time more confidently and emphatically, I was reassured that everything would be alright. Kristina Kretova has a lot of fun and she’s very game, though for my taste there isn’t yet enough dynamic shading in her performance. Perhaps because she tends to hold her arms very straight, she doesn’t always appear quite as slinky as she could. Andrei Merkuriev was better and Grebenshchikova was better still. Tall, long-legged and charming, she did vary the dynamics of the way she bent and re-straightened her elbows and wrists again and again; she managed being “manhandled” with aplomb, and the big, wide échappés, pliés and penchées were all there. The audience reacted enthusiastically, but then I’ve yet to encounter an audience that wasn’t won over by Rubies. Nina Kaptsova’s husband Alexei Melentiev was the piano soloist. The Diamonds corps was excellent, that was apparent immediately from my vantage point on the balcony. However the main demi-soloists Anna Leonova and Ana Turazashvili looked a little mismatched, Leonova’s more straightforward style contrasting with Turazashvili’s very grand manner. Olga Smirnova gave a very confident performance of her long and fiendishly difficult pas de deux, only it didn’t seem difficult. She appeared to have no fear as she dove right into all the plunges and off-balance turns and twists. There have always been hints of Swan Lake in Diamonds, but in Smirnova’s interpretation it is an all-out abstraction of Swan Lake, with her undulating arms and broken wrists. If there was an aspect of her performance that bothered me, it was the very exaggerated way she walked on pointe. Semyon Chudin’s manner was more straightforward, and the audience was made ecstatic by his solo dancing. However, I was bothered by the jerkiness of his coupé jetés en tournant: by the excessively aggressive way he seemed determined to split his legs (you know the feeling you get when you think a dancer’s legs are about to undergo the wishbone treatment?) and by the fact that he allowed the rear arm to rise above the shoulder and higher than the front arm. His next sequence of pirouettes à la seconde was really beautiful, but by then the audience reaction was way over the top. Not that I have any right to tell an enthusiastic audience how they ought to respond, but once they start reacting to a performance of Diamonds as they might whoop and holler at an Ailey show, I feel some sort of line has been crossed. Sadly, for me the ending of Diamonds fizzled. The great unison promenade, which follows all that swirling counterpoint, is probably my favorite moment in all ballet. And yet here it didn’t have the usual effect. I don’t know whether this was because the preceding counterpoint hadn’t swirled enough, or because the conductor didn’t slow down sufficiently for the grandeur of the moment to register, or whether the dancers, accustomed to dancing on a larger stage, felt a little cramped. For me, at least, the usual euphoria of Balanchine’s evening-ender ballets was missing, though the audience was very appreciative and rewarded Smirnova and Chudin with two curtain calls. Smirnova was the only ballerina to receive flowers on this occasion.

You can drop off flowers for the ballerina of your choice at the stage door on Floral Street. You can leave them for male dancers as well, but in London it's not the custom to give danseurs flowers on stage.

The Telegraph live streamed a morning class by the Bolshoi this morning. A predominantly men's class taught by Alexander Vetrov was promised, but in fact what was filmed was a predominantly women's class taught by Svetlana Adyrkhaeva, and it could really more accurately have been described as a warm up rather than a full-blown class, especially since it lasted less than an hour. The large studio was not particularly filled up. There were maybe two dozen or so dancers present. Most visible, because they were standing at the barre opposite the camera, were Ekaterina Shipulina, Ekaterina Krysanova, Ruslan Skvortsov, Anastasia Stashkevich, Chinara Alizade, Daria Khokhlova and Vladislav Lantratov. Later others came into view as well, including Kristina Kretova, Anna Leonova, Yulia Lunkina and Ivan Alexeyev. Adyrkhaeva began with lots and lots of tendus and every manner of rond de jambe, integrating pirouettes into the exercises almost immediately. Once she moved to center pratice she threw the dancers into the deep end right away: a grand plié, into pirouette, into développé, into promenade à la seconde combination. Being a female-oriented class, there was lots of petit allegro. Only at one point did she stop to give a dancer, Dmitri Dorokhov, I think, a correction. (He was unfamiliar to her and when asked, identified himself as Dima.) Once center practice began the dancers began to drop off very quickly. Many did only one or two exercises, and ultimately only three women made it to the end, none of whom, I'm sorry to say, I can name for you. No doubt the dancers are simply very tired and conserving their strength. A three-week season may not be as tough as an eight-week ABT marathon, but the Bolshoi has been performing continually since mid-September and these dancers have basically been deprived of a summer vacation. Here is a Reader's Digest version of the class. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/dance/10238195/Behind-the-scenes-at-Bolshoi-Ballet-class.html

I would reiterate what naomikage said; the tiers are not set nearly as far back as they are at the Met. They're stacked directly on top of each other, which makes for less than ideal sound on the balcony and, presumably, the stalls circle and grand tier also; I wouldn't recommend them for opera, but the sightlines from the center are fine. I also agree that the front section of the amphitheater, which is steeply sloped, is a nice place to sit. From there I had no problem seeing the multiple ramps of La Bayadere, for example, and I didn't feel the need to use any kind of magnification to look at dancers' faces. I definitely wouldn't sit at the sides.