volcanohunter

I also agree. Generally, when I tell friends how much it costs to see the ballet, opera or symphony, they're astonished at how little the cheap seats cost. These people often make less than average, but are nevertheless willing to pay through the nose to get great seats to rock concerts because they love the bands, simple as that. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to let people know that tickets to the ballet can be bought cheap, but I'm afraid that the bigger obstacle would be persuading those same people that it's worth going to see in the first place. (I once nearly persuaded a friend to come to the ballet with me, except that she'd already spent a small fortune to go see Leonard Cohen that night.)

It just goes to show you that the pickings on Canadian television are very slim.

I haven't seen the film, but I suspect that Fracci is on to something. I was struck by this sentence from the Variety review: "Brief glimpses of Beth on her way out remind how quickly young replacements are cast aside in the cruel world of ballet..." That's rich, coming from Hollywood, where the shelf life of many "It Girls" seems to be a year, perhaps two. What exactly leads the reviewer and, presumably, the screenwriter to think that the ballet world, particularly its New York incarnation, regards dancers as disposable? The careers of Irina Dvorovenko (professional dancer for 20 years), Paloma Herrera (19 years), Julie Kent (25 years), Diana Vishneva (15 years), Maria Kowroski (16 years), Jennie Somogyi (17 years), Wendy Whelan (26 years), perhaps Darci Kistler, who just retired after 30 years with NYCB?

According to Ukrainian newspapers, Putrov will be dancing at the opera house is Kiev on September 7 in Vakhtang Vronsky's The Forest Song. In an interview, Putrov states that it has been his dream to dance the lead in the ballet, in part because he made his stage debut in the work 20 years ago.

On Sunday, September 12, at 7:00 p.m. ET, Artv will air a documentary titled Un été de danse. Weber Biron's film tracks Les Grands Ballets Canadiens backstage and in performance at the 2008 Festival Les Étés de la danse de Paris. http://artv.ca/emiss.../portraits.html

Could those familiar with it tell me more about this TV special, which is available on Amazon? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0221445/

The American release date is September 28, and Amazon is taking pre-orders. http://www.arthaus-musik.com/templates/tyCatalogueDetail.php?id=787&topic=catalogue_Ballet

This is wonderful news! It's about time.

The big companies also have choreologists on staff who notate choreography as it's created, usually in Benesh notation. It's not limited to ballet companies either. Large opera companies also have choreologists to record and recreate stagings. The Metropolitan Opera once had a web feature on its choreologist, but unfortunately, I can't find it. I remember seeing a couple of documentaries in which it's clear how important a choreologist can be. In one episode of Peter Schaufuss' Dancer series, there's footage of him working on the creation of Kenneth MacMillan's Orpheus with Jennifer Penney. The dancers are trying to negotiate MacMillan's very tricky lifts and having a great deal of difficulty in the process. MacMillan mutters something along the lines of, "I can see this is going to take hours," after which the camera switches to the choreologist sitting next to him, rubbing out all the unsuccessful lifts from her score with a very large eraser. The documentary about the creation of Robert Desrosiers' Blue Snake for the National Ballet of Canada captures an injury to one of the soloists during the dress rehearsal (a moment alluded to in Robert Altman's The Company). What follows is a last-minute rehearsal in which Desrosiers teaches the relevant solo to another dancer, with a lot of help from the choreologist. Unfortunately, fluency in Benesh notation is very limited. Any orchestral player can read a score, but there are few dancers who can read Benesh notation with the same competence.

This is extremely naive. Over the past few weeks on this site there have been several news stories linked about the perilous state of dance in the United States. Dance companies are barely hanging on. Now is hardly the time to force these organizations to become picky about where their money comes from. You're free to try to convince them to alter their funding model, but I fear there will be no ballet companies left by the time you succeed. http://www.observer....is-modern-dance http://www.firstthin...0/07/last-rites Ballet needs all the friends it can get, and that includes friends of all political stripes. Administrations change frequently in Washington. You need your defenders in every camp. Besides how exactly is Koch's personal politics going to affect City Ballet's repertoire of plotless works? He's on ABT's Board of Trustees. Did he use his clout to veto the recent Alicia Alonso gala becase he objects to her politics? Evidently not. Did he stop ABT from bringing The Bright Stream to the Kennedy Center? No. Personally, I don't see too many reasons to be worried that these companies are about to be turned into propaganda machines for his or anyone else's agenda.

Sorry, I got sidtracked by my little rant there. Apropos sandik's question, the Goh and Alberta Ballet Nutcrackers have co-existed in Vancouver in the past. For many years Nissinen's Nutcracker was presented as a "joint production" of Alberta Ballet and Ballet BC, though usually Ballet BC's participation was limited to 4-5 dancers, never in the leading roles, as I recall.

Off topic, I know, but I hate Alberta Ballet's new Nutcracker. As soon as I saw it I wanted Mikko Nissinen's creaky old production back. I was expecting a lot since I'd always enjoyed Edmund Stripe's choreography, and he produced a charming Alice in Wonderland for the company, but his transposition to Imperial Russia doesn't work. He gets too many details about how the Orthodox celebrate Christmas all wrong (unless we're to understand that it's a German family living in St. Petersburg, in which case there's no point to changing the location), the story of how the nephew was turned into a nutcracker is told three times in pantomime, and killing the Rat King does not transform the Nutcracker back to his natural self, which sort of makes the battle anti-climactic in retrospect. [The transformation is the Snow Queen's job. Nothing to do with the Nutcracker's heroism or Klara's affection.] Zack Brown's set is mostly, well, brown in the first act and surprisingly spare in the second. [On second thought, it's more like Barbie Garden.] I never thought I'd see the day, but this production has actually cured me of my annual Nutcracker habit.

For those without Sirius subscriptions, these are the operas the Met will stream free of charge on its web site via Real Player. The operas begin at 8:00 p.m. ET, unless noted otherwise, and casting is subject to lots of changes, of course. Monday, September 27, 6:45 p.m. Das Rheingold Levine; Harmer, Blythe, Bardon, R. Croft, Siegel, Terfel, Owens, Selig, König Tuesday, October 5 Rigoletto Arrivabeni; Gagnidze, Schäfer, Meli, Silvestrelli, Surguladze Monday, October 11, 7:00 p.m. Boris Godunov Gergiev; Pape, Semenchuk, Antonenko, Balashov, Nikitin, Petrenko, Ognovenko Wednesday, October 20 La Bohème Rizzi Brignoli; Kovalevska, Grigolo, Opolais, Capitanucci, Shenyang, Parks Friday, October 29 Don Pasquale Levine; Del Carlo, Netrebko, Polenzani, Kwiecień Thursday, November 4 Carmen Gardner; Garanča, Cabell, Jovanovich, J. Relyea Tuesday, November 9 Così fan tutte Christie; Persson, Leonard, de Niese, Breslik, Gunn, Holzmair Friday, November 19 Il trovatore M. Armiliato; M. Álvarez, Racette, Cornetti, Lučić, Tsymbalyuk Monday, November 22, 7:00 p.m. Don Carlo Nézet-Séguin; Alagna, Poplavskaya, Smirnova, Keenlyside, F. Furlanetto, Halfvarson Tuesday, November 30 Carmen Gardner; Garanča, Cabell, Jovanovich, J. Relyea Monday, December 6 La fanciulla del West Luisotti; Voigt, Giordano, Gallo Friday, December 17 Pelléas et Mélisande Rattle; Kožená, Degout, Finley, W. White, Palmer Tuesday, December 21, 11:00 a.m. The Magic Flute E. Nielsen; Phillips, Miklósa, Thomas, Gunn, Robinson Friday, December 31, 7:00 p.m. La traviata Noseda; Poplavskaya, Polenzani, Dobber Monday, January 3 La fanciulla del West Luisotti; Voigt, Giordani, Gallo Monday, January 10 Tosca M. Armiliato; Radvanovsky, M. Álvarez, Struckmann Thursday, January 20 Simon Boccanegra Levine; Hvorostovsky, Frittoli, Vargas, F. Furlanetto Wednesday, January 26 La traviata Noseda; Poplavskaya, Meli, Dobber Wednesday, February 2 Nixon in China Adams; Maddalena, Kim, Kelly, Brubaker, R. Braun, R.P. Fink Monday, February 7 La Bohème Rizzi Brignoli, Kovalevska, Beczała, Phillips, Mattei, Shenyang, Scheunemann Wednesday, February 16 Iphigénie en Tauride Summers; Graham, Domingo, Groves, Hawkins Thursday, February 24 Lucia di Lammermoor Summers; Dessay, Calleja, Tézier, Youn Tuesday, March 1 Armida Frizza; Fleming, Brownlee, Osborn, Siragusa, Banks, van Rensburg Friday, March 11 Pique Dame Nelsons; Mattila, Zajick, Mumford, Galouzine, Markov, Mattei Wednesday, March 16 Lucia di Lammermoor Summers; Dessay, Calleja, Tézier, Youn Thursday, March 24 Le Comte Ory Benini; Florez, Damrau, DiDonato, Resmark, Degout, Pertusi Monday, March 28 Capriccio Davis; Fleming, Connolly, Kaiser, R. Braun, Larsen, P. Rose Wednesday, April 6 Wozzeck Levine; Goerne, Meier, Skelton, Siegel, W. Fink Thursday, April 14, 8:30 p.m. Le Comte Ory Benini; Florez, Damrau, DiDonato, Resmark, Degout, Pertusi Friday, April 22, 6:30 p.m. Die Walküre Levine; Voigt, Westbroek, Blythe, Kaufmann, Terfel, König Wednesday, April 27 Il trovatore Levine; M. Álvarez, Radvanovsky, Zajick, Hvorostovsky, Kocán Wednesday, May 4 Orfeo ed Euridice Walker; Royal, Daniels, Oropesa Tuesday, May 10 Ariadne auf Naxos Luisi; Urmana, Kim, DiDonato, R.D. Smith, Allen

Avery Fisher Hall was renamed after Fisher donated 10.5 million to the New York Philharmonic in 1973. According to the Deparment of Labor inflation calculator, that would be worth 51.56 million today. Going by that standard, renaming the Koch Theater for a 100 million donation does not seem unreasonable.

Right.

Both Hoffmann and Dumas call her Marie.

The Penguin edition of Hoffmann's story starts like this: Once Dumas finishes his prologue, his text goes: While in Hoffmann's story Stahlbaum is a doctor and Drosselmeier is a judge, who also happens to be an amateur clock maker, in Dumas' version Silberhaus is a judge and Drosselmayer is a doctor, who also makes mechanical toys.

James Kudelka's production for the National Ballet of Canada includes a female Bee soloist in the Waltz of the Flowers. I'm wary of Ratmansky borrowing ideas from Kudelka, though this would appear to be a male costume. Let's hope, at least, that Ratmansky comes up with better choreography.

For one thing, I think it can have beneficial consequences. Human pride being what it is, one-upsmanship can be exploited to positive ends. Zillionaire X donates a lot of money to get his or her name on a PBS program, a concert hall or an art gallery. Zillionaire Y wants to keep up and does the same or one better. If that's what it takes to persuade someone to donate their private collection of masterpieces to a museum where anyone can see them, I don't think it's a bad thing.

Starting on Saturday, August 21, at 12:00 a.m. ET, Canada's Artv will be dedicating most of its weekend schedule to dance. I can't say that ballet is especially well represented, but there are some balletic connections, such as the Paris Opera Ballet in Pina Bausch's Orphée et Eurydice, Alberta Ballet's The Fiddle and the Drum, two programs about Rudolf Nureyev (L'attraction céleste and Moze Mossanen's more dubious telefilm) and both versions of Uwe Scholz's Le sacre du printemps. There are also several examples of modern choreographers playing with pointe shoes (La chambre blanche, Amélia, Body_remix). http://artv.ca/emiss...d-de-danse.html

Based on that trailer, I don't think I want to go anywhere near this movie.

Those points sound pretty convincing to me, too, and they're the sort of thing that sound great when rallying the troops, but in the light of the fact that government spending on the arts is going to come under intense scrutiny every time the economy goes south, I do think it would be a good idea to be armed with better arguments. Certainly I think of the arts as an essential part of what makes life worth living, but given that hundreds of millions of Americans are managing without any opera, it's not a very good argument. The part about arts actually getting very little in the way of government money could be made more persuasively than it is. Years and years ago I remember that many people attending the Oscars wore lapel pins with stamps painted on them. They were intended to illustrate that the contribution of the average taxpayer to the NEA was equivalent to the price of a postage stamp. That struck me as a good illustration, but I doubt many people remembered it once the award ceremony began. I happen not to be much acquainted with Hollywood flicks, so I remembered the lapel pins and thought it was a pretty good argument. Too bad it was a one-off. But I'm also very wary of this sort of argument because it can end up sounding like: Don't worry. The government actually wastes very little money on the arts. It wastes far more money on other stuff. To which a person could easily responding that the government shouldn't be wasting money, period. I think that arts institutions could do worse than give concrete illustrations of how they contribute to the life of the community, economic and otherwise. I know it's difficult to measure, but my own experience with fundraising tells me that donors respond well to itemized lists of how money is spent and for what it's needed, as well as specific examples of how the organization benefits the community. But I acknowledge that I'm dealing with voluntary donors. In the case of state funding, this is more difficult to do precisely because people don't get much say in how the money is spent, and that's why the arguments have to be that much stronger. North Americans may be operating under a particular disadvantage because I don't think there is any particular sense of national pride associated with the arts, as I suspect there is in other countries. Years ago I was introduced to a retired Soviet general, and when he found out I was a dancer, he immediately said something to the effect of, ah, but our ballet is the best in the world. Can you imagine an American general saying something similar?

Katia et Volodia is now on sale at Berkshire Record Outlet at a reduced price. http://www.berkshire...ext=&filter=all

The DVD is available at a reduced price at Berkshire Record Outlet. http://www.berkshire...ext=&filter=all

Speaking of which, the menu at the Garnier cafeteria looks terrific. I'm so envious.