volcanohunter

You may also want to add Agnès Letestu dancing "La Cigarette" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko2MEjQzVTs

No, I didn't travel to Berlin for it. All I saw was a brief report on DW-TV around the time of its premiere. But I am impressed with how quickly it's been made into a DVD. Six months from premiere to video release is pretty speedy turnover. Right now Patrice Bart is choreographing a ballet about Percy Bysshe Shelley for the company. I wonder whether we'll get a DVD of that one, too. http://www.staatsballett-berlin.de/spielpl...p;id_language=2

As sandik mentioned, it's very rare to find a modern dancer who hasn't been cross-trained. I'd taken years of ballet, character and jazz dance classes before I ever stepped into a modern class. When I was working as a modern dancer, I continued to take ballet class four times a week and supplemented my classes with Pilates. I don't think this is atypical. I only encountered a preoccupation with purity from one ballet teacher who objected to non-dance training as unnecessary.

The details are still sketchy on this one, so bear with me if I have to add more details later. Arthaus Musik will release a DVD and Blu-Ray of Mauro Bigonzetti's Caravaggio in the UK on June 1 and in the US on June 30 (possibly). The Staatsballett Berlin production stars Vladimir Malakhov, Polina Semionova, Beatrice Knop, Mikhail Kaniskin, Dmitry Semionov, Elisa Carrillo Cabrera, Shoko Nakamura, Michael Banzhaf and Leonard Jakovina. The ballet is set to a score by Bruno Moretti, based on the works of Monteverdi. The performance is 93 minutes long, with an additional 29 minutes of bonus footage on the disc. There's no entry on the Arthaus Musik site yet, but on another site I found that the UPC for the DVD is 807280146394, and for the Blu-Ray it's 807280146493. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/...83926&s=dvd http://www.staatsballett-berlin.de/spielpl...p;id_language=2 trailer: http://cb-player.de/en_EN/29368

Here is a link to a French television report about an exhibit on Nureyev through the prism of his costumes currently taking place in Moulins. It includes brief comments from Christian Lacroix and Ezio Frigerio. http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/culture/0,,4407006...-costumes-.html

Exactly. As though the reason for the absence of great composers today is orchestras playing too much Beethoven. If only they played more contemporary program music (is there such a thing?), the talented would-be composers out there would feel less inhibited and start composing great music. Somehow I don't think that Beethoven needed to be shielded from Palestrina, Monteverdi, Bach and Mozart in order to thrust his artistic revolution on the world. I'm sure that the young composer of today loses nothing by immersing him- or herself in Beethoven, just as the young choreographer can only gain from prolonged exposure to Balanchine.

There must be some reason why so much of Balanchine is actively performed while most of Massine, sad to say, has disappeared. For the record, I have absolutely nothing against narrative ballets. I also believe that the narrative vs. non-narrative dichotomy is a false one. The problem isn't that today's choreographers favour abstract ballet. The problem is that there are no choreographers with the genius of a Balanchine or an Ashton or a Tudor out there. Why would shifting emphasis to short narrative ballets succeed in manufacturing that genius?

Isn't this the strongest argument against ballets that "reflect the realities of contemporary American culture"? Wouldn't Office Space: The Ballet seem equally alien to audiences 25 years from now? Haven't Balanchine's ballets "aged better" precisely because they're abstracted and more archetypal as a result?

Possibly, but I suspect you'll end up with pallid Ashton and Tudor imitations.

If ballet is stagnant because there aren't any geniuses among Balanchine's choreographic disciples, what leads her to believe that imitating Ashton or Tudor is going to produce that genius?

I have to admit it seriously dampened my enthusiasm for the DVD.

A trailer for the program has been posted. http://www.emergingpictures.com/stravinsky_trailer.htm

Here are a few additional screening dates. May 23 in Hunter, NY June 6 in Coral Gables, FL June 7 & 8 in Albany, NY A detailed cast list is now posted. Don Quixote - Vladimir Ponomarev Sancho Panza - Anton Lukovkin Lorenzo - Igor Petrov Kitri - Olesia Novikova Basil - Leonid Sarafanov Gamache - Vladimir Lepeev Espada - Andrei Merkuriev Street Dancer - Yekaterina Kondaurova Flower Sellers - Yana Selina, Yana Serebriakova Queen of the Dryads - Alina Somova Cupid - Yevgenia Obraztsova Mercedes - Galina Rakhmanova Tavern Owner - Alexander Efremov Gypsy dance - Polina Rassadina, Nikolai Zubkovsky Oriental dance - Ti Yon Riu Fandango - Elena Bazhenova, Karen Ioannisyan Variation - Olga Esina The trailer that mariinskyfan mentioned is also linked. http://www.emergingpictures.com/don_quixote_trailer.htm

I've attended a number of HD ballet screenings at the cinema, albeit most of them weren't live. I recommend it. Seeing dancers magnified and seemingly eating up vast quantities of space as they move goes a long way to restoring the energy of dance lost in translation to film. But again, you may end up seeing things you'd rather not see. In the vision scene adagio from Sleeping Beauty, Alina Cojocaru went from a very high à la seconde directly into a very deep penché, and seeing what happened to her magnified hip socket in the process bordered on freaky. It didn't have the same unsettling effect when I watched it later on my TV set.

The DVD is scheduled for release on July 14. Amazon isn't taking orders yet, but the ASIN is B00274SIA6 for future reference.

A French television report on the POB's new production of Cranko's Onegin follows Clairemarie Osta and Manuel Legris from early rehearsals to dress rehearsal. http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/culture/0,,4401423...a-garnier-.html

Because the promotion takes effect on May 18th.

The cast sheet listed only the three leads, and the final credits rolled by quickly, but from what I could gather, the dancers in this performance were: Nikiya - Tamara Rojo Solor - Carlos Acosta Gamzatti - Marianela Nuñez High Brahmin - Gary Avis Rajah - Christopher Saunders Aya - Genesia Rosato Golden Idol - José Martín Fakir - Kenta Kura Solor's Friend - Valeri Hristov 1st Shade - Yuhui Choe 2nd Shade - Lauren Cuthbertson (Hikaru Kobayashi in the ensembles) 3rd Shade - Helen Crawford I found the performance a little disappointing. If a third DVD of Makarova's production is to be released, there ought to be a very compelling reason to do it, but I didn't see it today. I expected more of Rojo. Technically she was very accomplished, and her balances were remarkable, but since her performance will inevitably be compared with those already filmed, I have to say that her earthly Nikiya was not Asylmuratova class, and her Shade Nikiya was not on par with Guérin. I wasn't entirely happy with the way her entrance was filmed because the camera seemed too focused on other characters, and the props weren't handled as well as they could have been. The scene with the dagger wasn't timed well (I think Rosato was too slow to grab Rojo's hand) and, more importantly, the snake bite didn't register strongly. The dropping of the antidote wasn't filmed properly either, the consequence being that a number of audience members who hadn't seen the ballet before didn't fully understand what had happened. It wasn't until they read the synopsis subsequently that they realized that Nikiya had already died. Perhaps Acosta's performance came across strongly in the theatre, but it didn't on screen. His dancing didn't take off until the engagement party, but while his jumps were very fine, the turns were less so. Since the film was a composite of two performances, I can only conclude that he didn't turn cleanly on either night. I was happy to forgo Bolle's slight, self-satisfied smirk at the end of his nailed pirouette sequence, but if Acosta's publicity machine is going to market him as the "world's greatest male classical dancer," I don't think it's unreasonable to ask why Bolle's solo dancing is more secure technically. It goes without saying that Nuñez had no problems with her turns. Her variation and coda were sensational. The women's corps was a little ragged, and in the D'Jampe dance they almost looked hunchbacked. Were their scarves too short for them to stand up straight? It wasn't until the last act that they seemed to get in sync. The POB this wasn't. Still, I was happy as soon as the curtain came up on the engagement party, because there at the front of the ensemble was Sergei Polunin executing wonderful entrechats six. At one point in the subsequent adagio, I was so struck by Hikaru Kobayashi's penché arabesque that I found my eyes veering toward her instead of Nuñez. Probably not the intended effect. Among the Shades, Choe was excellent, and if Cuthbertson wasn't Letestu calibre, she was more secure than Viviana Durante in the RB's previous film. Full marks to Gary Avis. The audience seemed to like Kenta Kura best, and he did whirl and jump very impressively. If I were to buy the future DVD, it would be primarily for Nuñez, and probably only if I could unload my Zakharova-Bolle disc first. I certainly didn't dislike it, but I didn't love it either. What would really be of greater interest to me at this point would be a film of Malakhov's production with Polina Semionova.

In the final report we follow the excitement of the audience attending the 'Jeunes Danseurs' program including, most touchingly, an accompanying husband won over to the art form and the parents of Héloïse Bourdon watching their daughter perform the White Swan adagio. http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/culture/0,,4400717...a-l-opera-.html

I, for one, love these ballets, all of which I first encountered as a teenager, and wouldn't hesitate to buy a ticket to see them live or filmed. But while I'd like to think that Emerging Pictures is paying tribute to a Ballets Russes anniversary year and counting on the relative popularity of Stravinsky, at least in comparison to other 20th-century composers, to sell tickets, the simple reality is that this program was available, having been filmed by French television. http://www.arte.tv/fr/art-musique/Maestro/2090356.html If relatively few Mariinsky and Bolshoi productions have been filmed in recent years, this limits the options of distributors, who may be happy enough to screen the ballets, but probably wouldn't put up the money needed to film them in the first place. I think much the same situation surrounds the La Scala ballet presentations. I hardly think that Mediterranea and the forthcoming Pink Floyd Ballet are the most obvious audience grabbers, but since that's what RAI is filming, and since Emerging Pictures distributes La Scala performances, that's what we're going to get. Had it been up to me, I would have filmed their new Coppélia, but there you have it. http://www.teatroallascala.org/en/stagioni...elevisione.html

I'm not sure it's such a big risk, and I certainly don't think it's aimed at the general public. In most cases the triple bill will receive one screening only, and movie theatres don't fit nearly as many people as opera houses. The program is playing at cinemas that have been screening operas and the occasional ballet for some time, so the presenters are probably fairly confident that an audience for this programming is already in place. I'm glad that someone is finally taking a chance on a triple bill. Where I live we've been getting Opus Arte programming for a little over a year. We've been offered the San Francisco Ballet's Nutcracker; the Royal Ballet's Sylvia, Romeo and Juliet, Tales of Beatrix Potter, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, La Fille mal gardée and Manon, with La Bayadère screening this weekend and, I'm guessing, Swan Lake coming soon; the POB in Cinderella and La Dame aux camélias, the Bolshoi in Spartacus and the National Ballet of Cuba in Don Quixote. To be honest, I am beginning to worry about what will happen once Opus Arte, which has been "borrowing" ballet programming from other distributors already, "runs out" of evening-length narrative ballets to screen. The ballets alternate with opera presentations, and while the operatic repertoire is nowhere near exhausted yet, there are only so many story ballets out there. So I'm very curious to see how this bill fares because I would very much like to see more programs like it.

In Thursday's report, we follow Richard Wilk as he prepares for his final performances before retirement, Brigitte Lefèvre as she inspects rehearsals that seem to take place in every available nook and cranny, and Clairemarie Osta and Manuel Legris as they rehearse the "mirror" pas de deux from Onegin, culminating in the ballet's premiere. http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/culture/0,,4399210...a-reveles-.html

On May 19 on the Supraphon label is releasing a DVD of Jan Kodet's Goldilocks, set to a score by Vladimir Franz and performed by the Ballet of the National Theatre of Prague. http://www.qualiton.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?S...RAPHON+DVD+7018 http://www.narodni-divadlo.cz/Default.aspx...b=3&ic=4995 The Amazon catalogue number is B001RIGCEW.

In Wednesday's report, the costumes head for Australia, Jean-Guillaume Bart gives class, Dorothée Gilbert gets a costume fitting and shows off her dressing room, and Fabien Révillion takes to the stage. http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/culture/0,,4396199...a-passion-.html

As I recall, the Palais Garnier was built over a subterranean lake, which undoubtedly made construction difficult. The lake figures in Gaston Leroux's Le Fantôme de l'Opéra. I have to say that the real thing is nowhere near as grand as the soundstage lake used in the 1943 Claude Rains film.