volcanohunter

Le tour du monde en 80 minutes returns to TFO for its traditional Christmas showing on Sunday, December 26, at 8:30 p.m. ET. http://www.tfo.org/emissions/?bpn=GP004907

Caravaggio will air again on TFO on Sunday, December 26, at 7:00 p.m. ET.

Swan Lake returns to Knowledge Network on Wednesday, January 12, at 9:00 p.m. PT. http://www.knowledge...ogram/swan-lake

A brief video report on this year's run of Swan Lake at the Bastille with comments from Agnès Letestu and Karl Paquette. http://videos.tf1.fr...le-6176179.html Odd that they should do the dress rehearsal given that they're not scheduled to dance together.

The POB's Nutcracker will return to TFO on Sunday, December 12, at 8:00 p.m. ET. It will also air on Christmas day at noon and 7:00 p.m. ET, and on Sunday, December 26, at 10:00 p.m. ET. http://www.tfo.org/e...s/?bpn=GP024039

Yikes. Last minute announcement. It's playing right now on Artv in Canada. (Monday, 10:00 p.m. ET). There will be more airings at 3:00 p.m. tomorrow, 1:30 a.m. Wednesday and Sunday at 3:00 a.m. http://artv.ca/emiss...spectacles.html

The DVD is being released on November 22. Amazon is taking orders.

Another brief video report http://videos.tf1.fr/jt-we/les-ballets-de-roland-petit-illuminent-l-opera-de-paris-6094175.html

It was released in France at the beginning of the year, though French Amazon isn't carrying it at the moment. http://www.amazon.fr.../dp/B002UQ9UI0/

This is from a program called The Ballerinas starring Fracci and Peter Ustinov. In the series Fracci played ten great ballerinas, from Taglioni to Spessivtseva. The second half of the program was centered around Diaghilev (Ustinov) and preparations for the Ballets Russes revival of Sleeping Beauty. He lures Brianza out of retirement to play Carabosse and coach Spessivtseva. The pas de deux is a flashback to the original production (hence no fishdives). Fracci as Spessivtseva performs the Rose Adagio at the end. Fracci's partners were also very impressive: Peter Schaufuss, Michael Denard, Vladimir Vasiliev, Richard Cragun, Stephen Jeffries, Charles Jude and Jose Antonio. I'm very sorry it hasn't been reissued on DVD. http://www.amazon.co.../dp/B0000016WD/

A video report about the POB's all-Petit program http://culturebox.france3.fr/#/danse_classique/28036/roland-petit-ouvre-la-saison-de-danse-de-l_opera

Alexei Ratmansky's Les Flammes de Paris, filmed at the Bolshoi and starring Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev, will be screened at cinemas affiliated with Emerging Pictures this autumn. Unfortunately, the web site doesn't feature a master list indicating all participating locations and show times, but in New York it will be screened at Big Cinemas Manhattan on November 2 & 7, and at Kew Gardens Theatre in Queens on December 18. Entering your ZIP code into the space near the top of the page should tell you whether it will be shown near to where you are. http://emergingpictu...y_limited=false According to French Amazon, Bel Air Classiques will be releasing a DVD of the ballet in France on November 18, though it's not yet listed on the Bel Air web site, and there's no indication of when it could become available elsewhere.

It's up for only two more days. Sometime on Sunday afternoon (by North American measures) the video will be taken off the web site. Catch it while you can.

What I didn't know until yesterday is that the free streams can also be accessed on an iPhone, Blackberry or Android. http://www.metoperaf...org/stream.aspx I don't own any of those devices, so I have no idea how the stream works, but undoubtedly the non-Luddites out there will understand.

A DVD and Blu-Ray will be relased on Opus Arte in the new year. http://www.opusarte.com/en/pre-orders/la-bayadere.html http://www.opusarte.com/en/pre-orders/la-bayadere-blu-ray.html

Perhaps Arthaus Musik, It bought out TDK, which used to release quite a few POB videos. Alternately, it could be Bel Air Classiques, which has also released POB stuff, in which case the DVD would cost a small fortune.

I'm partial to the Australian Ballet's Coppelia. The Kultur transfer isn't ideal; the Faveo edition sold in Europe and Asia is far superior. But the production is lovely, and the dancing is very fine. I don't especially like the Royal Ballet version, in large part because the dancing of the corps is ragged. I also like the Terekhova Don Quixote, but she doesn't perform the usual variation in Act III, if that matters to you. Both Raymondas are beautiful, but I'm always floored by Semenyaka's performance.

Melissa Hayden was one of the most illustrious exports. I can give you my opinion as an American living in Canada. I thought Karen Kain was vastly overrated: rigid and uninteresting, except in the works of Glen Tetley. I thought Frank Augustyn was the more talented of the pair, but his dancing went south quickly once he entered his thirties, and I often had the impression that he was phoning in his performances in the latter stages of his career. I adored Veronica Tennant as a dramatic dancer, and she retired at the peak of her powers. She had two other English-born, Canadian-raised colleagues at the National Ballet: Nadia Potts and Vanessa Harwood, and I was especially fond of Potts' lyricism. Evelyn Hart in her prime was sublime, unearthly and intense at the some time, though later on I think she was trapped in some of her own mannerisms. Rex Harrington I never liked at all. I don't know whether he was actually hopelessly vain, but he sure came across that way. I found many of his male colleagues much more interesting, such as Raymond Smith (born in Scotland), Jeremy Ransom and the devastatingly handsome Peter Ottmann, who never rose to principal rank. I admired Gizella Witkowsky's bold physicality and obvious intelligence, and I was mightily sorry to lose (Swiss-born) Sabina Allemann to San Francisco. Among Hart's colleagues, I derived great satisfaction from the forceful dancing of Albertan John Kaminski, who still works for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet as a stage hand.

The answer I really want to give is, nothing should to be changed because any change is a violation. Perhaps this is a particularly sore spot of mine. For me the great tragedy of dance is the apparent impossibility of preserving its choreography faithfully, if at all, so different from the musical examples papeetepatrick listed. This ties in to another current discussion on the board about the preservation of new ballets. Obviously, notating movement--any sort of movement, even recording what a kid does when he climbs a chain-link fence--is exceedingly difficult, so I'm not at all surprised that notation literacy is so low among dancers. But on the other hand, this situation is madness. All classical instrumentalists are required to read music and be well-versed in theory. (Composers still more so.) Presumably all actors can read the texts they perform. But dancers are forced to rely on a variant of "oral tradition," terminological shorthand, and imperfect, idiosyncratic performances preserved on grainy videotape. The consequence is that 99% of ballets created have been lost. I wouldn't mind Odile substituting other steps for the fouettés if I were confident that a standard "text" were preserved somewhere and could be retrieved easily at any time. I don't particularly mind vast sections of Shakespeare being jettisoned in live performance because I know that the actual text is safely preserved and that anything cut can be reinserted without difficulty. But, as you say, lots of changes have crept into Giselle over time to the point of it being practically impossible to know what the original choreography really looked like. The other thing I think that the loss of most of ballet's choreographic history has done is to have stunted the acceptance of dance as a serious art form. I don't know about anyone else, but when I went to university and had to deal with the Library of Congress classification system on a daily basis, it used to drive me bananas that music was assigned its own letter (M), as were the fine arts (N), and that drama was treated as a subdivision of literature (PN)--all serious, respectable disciplines--but that dance was lumped under GV: sports, recreation and leisure.

The choreography in Barocco doesn't much resemble the steps I learned in my Baroque dance classes, so I don't see why its costuming would have to reflect the period. Theme and Variations is different. It is an evocation of Petipa, so using classical tutus is entirely logical.

Do you really think that modern productions are better motivated dramatically? I recently watched two videos of Don Carlo with the same Filippo in both cases: the Visconti/Renshaw production from the Royal Opera House, filmed in 1985, and Willy Decker's newer production from Amsterdam, filmed in 2004. I can tell you that Robert Lloyd's performance was much more detailed, complex and differentiated in Visconti's hyper-naturalistic production than it was in Decker's stylized Twitch and Lurch staging, which, frankly, didn't seem to have much in the way of dramatic logic. But I know that SanderO was asking about ballet, and here I'm in complete agreement with Mel Johnson. In drama or opera the staging can change in any number of ways without altering the basic "text," but in ballet, the staging, meaning the choreography, is the text, and once you've altered it, it's not really Giselle or Swan Lake or Apollo any more. So, yes, Odile must do the fouettés.

I have to disagree with you there. Baryshnikov and Balanchine were naturalized American citizens whose careers were firmly rooted in the U.S. But if you're going to give the prize to Luciano Pavarotti, there's no reason to exclude Nureyev.

As I recall, she is a decent guitarist, which makes her at least as qualified as Oprah Winfrey. No argument there.

My thoughts exactly.

I believe that GNicholls is a Torontonian and as such is undoubtedly familiar with Opera Atelier. They're not strict traditionalists, but they are very much committed to presenting opera-ballets as a cohesive theatrical experience. In recent years France's Le Poème Harmonique has attempted to present baroque works as traditionally as possible, right down to using candles instead of electrical lighting.