volcanohunter

The National Ballet of Canada has been doing more shows since it moved into its current home. The Four Seasons Centre holds considerably fewer people than the Sony/Hummingbird/O'Keefe Centre. But Toronto really needed a proper opera house; the acoustics at the O'Keefe were so bad that microphones had to be placed in the orchestra pit. If anything, I suspect that the current arrangement is more expensive because putting on more shows requires paying unionized musicians and stage crews that much more. http://neumann.hec.c...0Canada,%20.pdf

I suspect it means that arts organizations are dependent on a relatively small group of people, who go to see all sorts of stuff, and if that core group reduces its attendance just a little bit, the bottom starts to fall out. Since building new audiences seems to be exceedingly difficult, perhaps arts organizations ought to be giving existing audiences incentives to attend more often. I have a feeling that existing subsciption systems may not be sufficiently flexible. Several years ago my local symphony orchestra included quotes from subscribers in its season brochure. These people ranged from those who'd started subscribing a year or two earlier to those who'd been attending for 40 years straight. The quote that made my blood run cold came from a couple who had "switched" from the ballet to the symphony several years earlier. Perhaps their budget hadn't allowed them to subscribe to both organizations, yet Stern seems to suggest that arts organizations are dependent on people who attend both. In my city the bare minimum to which a "highbrow" could subsribe would be, say, four symphony concerts, four ballets, three operas and a two-play pass to the Shakespeare festival. Assuming this would involve the purchase of two tickets to each show, that's 13 performances and 26 tickets. This may be more than many budgets can manage, even with the discounts often included in subscriptions. Perhaps institutions like Lincoln Center ought to introduce a discount card that would allow people to get lower ticket prices at all of its venues and, hopefully, encourage greater attendance at a variety of events, particularly among those unwilling or unable to commit to a subscription. Performing arts organizations in other cities coule devise similar schemes. I know they'd rather have full-season subscribers, but that may not be a realistic option for some people.

Mark J. Stern of the University of Pennsylvania has written a follow-up report on the NEA's audience participation survey: Age and Arts Participation: A Case Against Demographic Destiny. http://www.nea.gov/r...08-SPPA-Age.pdf It's a pretty dense thing, and I'm not a statistician, but he links the precipitous decline in arts attendance to the decline of the "omnivore" (who attends a wide range and a large number of arts events) and "highbrow" (who attends a large number of various "high" arts events). (p.52, emphasis added)

The first thing I would suggest, if it's still an option, is to get yourself a balcony seat. You'll want an overhead view because the floor patterns in this ballet are something else, like looking into a kaleidoscope.

For fans of operatic rarities, here is a performance of Ferruccio Busoni's Turandot from the Dijon Opera. There are no subtitles for the benefit of non-German-speakers, but the story is familiar enough. That's fortunate, because I suspect I couldn't have followed the plot on the basis of the stage action. http://liveweb.arte....rruccio_Busoni/

Well, I'm glad to know that the upside to prostituting ballet to pop music is that you get coverage on Entertainment Tonight Canada. http://www.globaltv....deo/top+stories

Patrice Bart's Coppelia will be beamed live to U.S. cinemas on Monday, March 28, at 19.30 Paris time, or 1:30 p.m. ET. The cast is scheduled to include Dorothée Gilbert as Swanilda, Mathias Heymann as Frantz, José Martinez as Coppelius and Fabrice Bourgeois as Spalanzani. http://www.balletinc...s-opera-ballet/ http://www.operadepa...ON=SELECT_EVENT Since the Ballet in Cinema site is so difficult to navigate, here are links to some of the relevant movie houses. Big Cinema Manhattan: http://us.bigcinemas...as.asp?cid=1009 Carmike Cinemas: http://www.carmike.com/ballet.aspx Laemelle Theatres: http://www.laemmle.c...ie.php?mid=6841

There will be a number of encore screenings of Don Q in the U.S., primarily on Wednesday, March 16 (March 12 in California). Enter your ZIP code to find them. http://www.balletinc...encore-bolshoi/

The interviewees were Gennadiy Yanin during the first intermission and Yuliana Malkhasyants during the second. Fascinating stuff, though what they said could basically summed up as: there is no Petipa left in this ballet. Malkhasyants was particularly helpful in pointing out who had choreographed what to whose music. (There used to be a hornpipe in the tavern scene?!!) I guess my venue wasn't the only one with the image disruptions. It was particularly frustrating in the first act since it left the audio and picture badly out of sync. I agree that much of the camera work was terrible, starting right off with close-ups of the dancers as soon as the curtain went up rather giving the audience a nice long shot for orientation. Kitri's entrance was also atrociously filmed. They had trouble keeping Osipova in the frame. Had the cameramen not been warned that she would move big and jump high? Far too much time was spent focusing on ancillary goings-on on the sidelines. If there is going to be a DVD release, I certainly hope the film can be re-edited. I don't know whether this problem was present elsewhere, but I'm pretty sure that the aspect ratio was off at my venue, making the dancers appear more squat than they actually are. This sort of gave them a retro look, and in the case of small, muscular dancers like Osipova and Vasiliev, it did them no favours. (Since Anastasia Stashkevich looked "normal," I have to assume she's a very skinny thing.) On the other hand, every time dancers extended arms and legs to the side, their limbs looked freakishly elongated. The one upside of this was that every manner of split leap, and lord knows there's no shortage of them in this ballet, looked preternaturally spectacular. It almost goes without saying that Osipova and Vasiliev were sensational. She threatens to make even Ashley Bouder appear earth-bound. I do wish, however, that there were a bit more variety to her dancing in the each act. I'm not looking for Aurora-like differentiation, but I thought her Dulcinea was too much like her Kitri, and in the last act I would have liked a bit more epaulment in the pas de deux. She powered her way through her fouettés with such force that she couldn't quite control the ending. And I really wish she hadn't twisted her torso so out of shape to get her foot to point at the ceiling in à la seconde. Vasiliev was doing all sorts of crazy, gasp-inducing stuff, though his character didn't register as strongly as it could have. I suspect the camera work was to blame (like not focusing on him during the "suicide" scene, for crying out loud). I thought Kristina Karasyova's Mercedes was ravishing, but Anna Antropova's Gypsy came across as unhinged rather than mysterious and sexy. As much as I enjoyed Stashkevich's Cupid, I would rather she and her adorable sidekicks hadn't reappeared in the grand pas. I wonder whether anyone could enlighten me about the provenance of the Queen of the Dryads variation. I'm accustomed to the one with the jetés and développés à la seconde rather than the Bolshoi's Aurora-esque version. The ballet played at two venues in my city. Where I attended there were about 25-30 viewers and perhaps only 2 or 3 younger than 18. What a missed opportunity for young ballet students. The people who did come out seemed to be thoroughly enchanted.

Alberta Ballet's Twitter feed states that company dancer Hayna Gutierrez, a defector herself, was interviewed about the story today by The National (the CBC's nightly newscast). Presumably, this means a report will air on The National in short order.

The last multi-part ballet documentaries in English I can think of were the BBC's Dancer, hosted by Peter Schaufuss, and Ballerina, hosted by Natalia Makarova, from the mid-1980s. Perhaps they weren't documentaries so much as introductions to classical dancing. I'm pretty sure that both were carried by A&E. There was also a BBC series from the mid-1990s called The House, which dealt with, among other things, the Royal Ballet, though I don't remember whether any American network aired it. Unfortunately, the screenings of Opus Arte offerings at Canadian cinemas petered out after two-three years. Perhaps there was no audience for it, or perhaps potential audiences weren't interested in pre-recorded performances. I thought the series was very badly marketed. It's a great pity, since it strove to screen almost as many ballets as operas. Both American and Canadian chains are now attempting to relay live, or nearly live, performances from the Bolshoi Ballet, though Canada has more per-capita screens. On the other hand, Canadians don't have access to the live relays from the Paris Opera Ballet or the Royal Ballet, which have been available in at least some parts of the U.S.

The March 6 performance of Don Quixote is scheduled to star Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev. http://www.bolshoi.r...ynid26=2519#dyn A listing of U.S. and Canadian screening sites is on the Ballet in Cinema web site. Enter your location in the top right-hand corner. http://www.emergingp...e-live-bolshoi/

OT: Generally speaking, Canada is not culturally enlightened. There happen to be two provincial educational channels, British Columbia's and the Franco-Ontario one, which have a weekly slot, dedicated to classical music, and where ballet gets an airing from time to time. (The Anglo-Ontario network pays no attention to the arts, but it does a fair job with everything else.) Today they are what PBS used to be, and certainly BC's Knowledge Network actively seeks the financial support of its viewers. But neither network can afford to produce its own arts content apart from a few shorts. However, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is a proof that a massive government subsidy guarantees nothing. What the CBC spends its money on these days is Coronation Street imports, several painful sitcoms, Hockey Night in Canada, a late-night chat show hosted by a former VJ and absolutely no arts programming. This, evidently, is what the public wants. It pains me to see PBS gradually going down the same route, because in the CBC's case it's been a road of no return.

That's my feeling, too. Is PBS worth saving? I just searched for 'Great Performances' on the schedule of my PBS station and what it yielded, in addition to a couple of (not new) classical music programs, was Rod Stewart, Michael Bublé, Paul McCartney, James Taylor, David Foster, The Police and Harry Connick Jr. (Only two Americans in that group, I notice.) I thought VH1 was invented for the likes of these. Each year PBS gives me 2 hours (perhaps 4 with repeats) of dance out of 8,760, and now they'd like me to go to bat for them? I just looked over my notes about classical concerts, operas and ballets I intended to watch on TV in January and February. There were 23 programs in total, three of which aired on PBS. (For the other 20 I'm duly grateful to British, French, German, Swiss, Italian and Polish taxpayers.) So what has Great Performances done for me lately? Not a whole lot, unfortunately. Of course, without PBS American dance companies would most probably be left without any sort television venue, but how would that be any different from the situation in which 99% of them find themselves today? I know that there have been noises from PBS about raising the profile of performing arts and even dedicating one evening a week to them, but you'll pardon me for being skeptical. I've been jilted for too long. By way of disclaimer, I am an American living north of the border, so I don't have access to secondary or tertiary PBS stations, nor any related radio stations, just the main network, which I hardly ever watch and probably wouldn't miss.

Here is a brief report from French TV about young dancers auditioning for jobs in Monaco. http://videos.tf1.fr...co-6285123.html

The ballet is also accessible on the Paris Opera site. No sign-in required. http://www.operadeparis.fr/Newsletter/videos/

Anita Doron's film The End of Silence, about an immigrant ballerina (Ekaterina Chtchelkanova), struggling to adapt to life in Canada, will air on CBC Bold on Tuesday, February 15, at 10 p.m. ET/7:00 p.m. PT, with a repeat showing at 3:00 a.m. ET/12:00 a.m. PT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450140/

CBC will air the program again on Wednesday, February 16, at 1:00 p.m. local time. I have to admit I'm ambivalent about the film. It was made toward the end of Hart's performing career, and by then her body was such a wreck, and her psyche comes across as so fragile and obsessive, that the program could persuade parents that sending their daughters to ballet class may be a very bad idea, never mind Black Swan.

The ballet can be viewed on demand on Medici TV for the next three months or so. http://www.medici.tv/#/performance/904/

Arte Live Web will stream the Prix de Lausanne final live on Sunday, February 6, starting at 9:10 a.m. ET. http://liveweb.arte.tv/fr/video/Finale_du_39eme_Prix_de_Lausanne/

Thanks for those details. Amazon.com is taking pre-orders, but the listing isn't at all detailed, so it's easiest to look for "Cinderella" or "ballet" by release date. "David Bintley" or "Birmingham Royal Ballet" won't get you anywhere.

Amazon is taking pre-orders for the U.S. release on February 22. Mind you, to find it, the title has to be spelled Siddharta.

The North American release date is February 22, and Amazon is taking orders.

Kultur will be releasing a DVD and Blu-ray of David Bintley's Cinderella on April 26. I'm very glad to hear it because it's been an awfully long time since Kultur released a new ballet video. http://www.kultur.com/Cinderella-Birmingham-DVD-p/d4712.htm http://www.kultur.com/Cinderella-Birmingham-Blu-ray-p/bd4712.htm

Giselle returns to Knowledge Network on Wednesday, March 16, at 9 pm PT, repeating at 1 am. http://www.knowledge.ca/program/giselle