volcanohunter

Armand is definitely reading Marguerite's diary at the end. http://www.hamburgballett.de/e/rep/kameliendame.htm

I can understand your doubts, smokeyjoe. Two years ago Kirk Peterson was nominated for his ballet Othello. I can't imagine that any of the jury members actually traveled to Calgary or Edmonton to see it, but I did have the misfortune of sitting through it, and the ballet was perfectly dreadful, a complete waste of time and space. I can't see Alberta Ballet reviving it, no matter how much was spent on the production. Of course the ballet didn't win the prize, but I was absolutely astonished that it was nominated in the first place, and I have to admit that its inclusion pretty much exploded any idea I may have had about this prize being some sort of ballet "Oscar."

B.C's Knowledge Network will air three ballet-related programs on Wednesday, June 9, starting at 9:00 p.m. PT. 9:00 p.m. - Royal Winnipeg Ballet: 40 Years of One-Night Stands is a documentary about the early years of the company. 10:00 p.m. - Flamenco at 5:15 is a documentary about flamenco classes taken by senior students of the National Ballet School of Canada. I haven't seen this film in years, but as I recall the students included future National Ballet principals Martine Lamy, Owen Montague and Rex Harrington. 10:30 p.m. - A Delicate Battle is the filmed version of Matjash Mrozewski's ballet featuring the National Ballet of Canada. The programs will repeat starting at 1:00 a.m. PT. Knowledge Network is available outside British Columbia on satellite service from Bell (ch. 268) and Shaw Direct (ch. 354).

Now I'm officially envious. Over the next year six performances by the Paris Opera Ballet will be beamed to more than 100 cinemas in France and Europe. La Petite Danseuse de Degas (Patrice Bart/Denis Levaillant) - 8 July 2010 La Dame aux camélias (John Neumeier/Frédéric Chopin) - 16 September 2010 Swan Lake (Rudolf Nureyev/P.I. Tchaikovsky) - 2 December 2010 Caligula (Nicolas Le Riche/Antonio Vivaldi) - 8 February 2011 Coppélia (Patrice Bart/Léo Delibes) - 28 March 2011 Les Enfants du Paradis (José Martinez/Marc-Olivier Dupin) - 9 July 2011 Presumably all of them, except Lady of the Camellias, which was performed earlier this seaon, will be beamed live. I do wish they would take pity on those of us living on the other side of the Atlantic! http://www.operadeparis.fr/cns11/live/onp/...dex.php?lang=en

I'm always grateful to quick-thinking people who capture these moments on their cell phones and the like. Personally, I find this nomination particularly inspiring. I may be wrong, of course, but I'm guessing that Bullion is the first cancer survivor to become an étoile. http://www.culturekiosque.com/dance/inter/...Bullion367.html

Congralutations to him!!!

A bit but I came across a listing for Graeme Murphy's Swan Lake on British Amazon today. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tchaikovsky-Graeme.../dp/B003O2AHSG/

Here's the info we've been looking for. It's the recent TV biopic, plus Fonteyn dancing the second act of Swan Lake, The Firebird and Ondine. If I'm not mistaken this Royal Ballet film hasn't been available on DVD in the U.S until now. http://www.bfsent.com/item_detail.asp?number=31000

I have the first pressing of the DVD released by EMI Classics. Assuming you have the newer edition, it would seem that both version have the same options. Does your DVD also include Neumeier's English and German introductions? The background on how the ballet came to be is very interesting and basically tells you everything you need to know about the production. If anyone's unfamiliar with the staging I'd suggest watching it first.

Where Peter Wright's Nutcracker is concerned, he has said that "there's very little of the original Nutcracker remaining" in his production, only 10 mintues or so of the original choreography. http://www.ballet.co.uk/dcforum/happening/7094.html#49

For Francophones, here is a nine-minute television interview with Agnès Letestu. There are also a number of clips from the POB's current run of La Bayadère which obviously don't require any knowledge of French. http://videos.tf1.fr/infos/2010/agnes-lete...ev-5859992.html

The infrequently used Sapphire variation from Sleeping Beauty is written in 5/4 time. Nureyev changed the gemstone to gold and turned it into a male role, but he used the music.

The short answer is, yes. So I'll admit to jumping on planes to New York also. Yup. Consider what I have to look forward to season: a company of 30 dancers, not remotely competent in the Petipa style, attempting Sleeping Beauty, a lousy production of The Nutcracker and a trashy pop extravaganza for the third year in a row. If not for a program that includes Balanchine's Serenade and a couple of touring (modern) companies, it wouldn't even be worth the effort.

PBS has posted a trailer: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/episodes/la-...w-the-film/988/

If I had to venture a guess, the kids are probably quite unaware of what they're doing. I remember being a kid in jazz class, which always involved performing "isolations," including pelvic rolls and thrusts in all directions, and I'm sure my 8-year-old mind never understood it to be sexual, even if that's precisely what it was. Of course I agree completely that adults ought to know better. If it were up to me, jazz dance wouldn't be included in any dance curriculum until students were at least 15 or 16 years old. Even in the context of training professional dancers I can't imagine it would be necessary at an earlier stage. The problem is that many kids think it's fun, as opposed to "boring" ballet class (even the "ballet" movie Center Stage adopted this line), and among children not studying dance formally, it's likely to be the only sort of dance they know. I remember being outraged when my television provider changed its "theme packs" to mix "family" and music video channels that had previously been segregated. It never occurred to the company that parents who want their children to watch Discovery Kids may not want them to watch MTV. I lodged my protest with the satellite company, but there was no great outcry over the change, so I have to assume that many parents don't consider the misdirection, as perky puts it, of popular culture onto their kids as a problem. But the kids are absorbing the culture, and if you were to ask youngsters on school playgrounds to reenact the latest raunchy music video, they probably could, so I'd be willing to bet that the failing isn't limited to the parents of the little girls who went viral on You Tube.

The building where I work houses a theatre that hosts these sorts of competitions annually, though I don't know how young the kids start. You can't miss the made-up girls with glittery hair and shiny costumes, nor, for that matter, can you miss the mothers. Just last week as I was leaving the building I found myself walking behind a mother and her teenaged daughter with matching platinum blonde hair, black eyeliner, skinny jeans and silver shoes. Being the "serious" dance student in my family, I never took part in the competitions. (I couldn't get out of jazz class fast enough.) But my sister, who wanted no more of ballet and character class, took jazz and tap recreationally at a local studio with her school mates, and she did compete once or twice. My mother found the whole thing distasteful so this didn't last long, and it wasn't quite as raunchy a couple of decades back. Even in those tamer days I found watching pre-pubescent girls doing jazz routines unsettling, but the numbers of participating girls (I never saw any boys) were huge. For the parents who'd transported their daughters to many evenings of the rehearsals, sewn their costumes, curled their hair and made up their faces, participation in these competitions seemed to be the crowning achievement of their children's dance training. Since there are so many people doing it--probably at most dance studios beyond the hoity-toity world of ballet schools--I'm guessing that the parents are just inured to the weirdness of this subculture and look upon it as normal.

The U.S. release date is June 29. Amazon is now taking orders for both formats.

The crowd seemed to love it.

For those who weren't able to watch it live, the opera is now available on demand. http://liveweb.arte.tv/fr/video/Don_Quicho...e_de_Bruxelles/

Bel Air Classiques will soon release a DVD and Blu-Ray of Heinz Spoerli's production of Swan Lake with Polina Semionova, Stanislav Jermakov and the Zurich Ballet. The European release date is May 21. There is a trailer on the Bel Air site. http://www.belairclassiques.com/ There are also some photographs of the production on the Zurich Opera House site. http://www.opernhaus.ch/de/programm/detail...tellID=10328065

I'm very sorry to hear about this. I suppose I secretly wished that she would always be with us as a living link to the Golden Age. I never heard Simionato live, but I grew up on her recordings and have always adored her singing. Requiescat in pace.

I just noticed that one of "my" PBS stations, Seattle's KCTS, will be showing the film on Wednesday, June 16, at 8:00 p.m. PT. Apparently it will be aired under the Great Performances banner. New York's Thirteen has it scheduled for the same night at 9:00 p.m. ET, so hopefully it will be aired nationwide. http://proweb.myersinfosys.com/detail.php?...p;air_id=394030

For those of you with region-free players, the DVD is selling on British Amazon for £5.99. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002WJAJ4E The North American version can also be pre-ordered on Amazon.com, though it won't be released until December 7, 2010.

Arte Live Web will broadcast Massenet's Don Quichotte from De Munt/La Monnaie on Saturday, May 8, at 20.30 local time, or 2:30 p.m. ET. The production stars José van Dam, Silvia Tro Santafé and Werner Van Mechelen and will mark van Dam's farewell to his hometown theatre, and probably his retirement from the opera stage. http://liveweb.arte.tv/fr/video/Don_Quicho...e_de_Bruxelles/ About the production: http://www.lamonnaie.be/demunt-1.0/program...amp;language=EN

Usually I don't leave either. Although on occasion I've been forced to wait a good long time for suburban trains and buses, I actually prefer to take my time and avoid the initial crush of people in the subways. However, if I've really hated a performance and actually made it to the end, I will leave as soon as the curtain's down. The alternative would be to stay and boo, which would a good deal less polite than ducking out in the darkness. I live in a car-dominated city by virtue of its absurdly huge surface area and long stretches of frigid weather, and I have a feeling that many people opt to leave performances as quickly as possible to avoid spending 30-45 minutes trying to exit the parkades. Whenever I see the seemingly endless rows of cars trying to make their way out of the parking garages, I'm reminded of the opening of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence: