volcanohunter

Actually, that's Georgian folk dancing, though you'll also find similar dancing among other peoples of the Caucausus, such as the Chechens, for example. Performances by Georgian dance troupes inevitably includes a male dancer hopping across the stage on the knuckle of one foot a la Giselle.

Only on video. His stagings of Petrushka, Scheherazade and The Firebird are included on the DVD Return of the Firebird. However, these were adapted especially for film. [Edited to add:] Stage performances of his reconstructions of Scheherazade and Firebird are included on the Mariinsky's Fokine DVD (The Kirov Celebrates Nijinsky), filmed at the Théâtre du Châtelet some five years ago.

Alberta Ballet's The Fiddle and the Drum (choreography by Jean Grand-Maître, music and projections by Joni Mitchell) will air on Canada's Bravo network on Monday, October 22, at 8:00 p.m. ET/5:00 p.m. PT. Evidently, "Canadian Content" quotas are good for something. Without them I fear there would be as much arts programming on Canada's Bravo as there is on its American counterpart. Here's the relevant link to Joni Mitchell's web site: http://www.jonimitch...date.cfm?id=368

Most Kudelka bores me to tears, unless, as in the case of his Swan Lake, I'm too angry about the travesty of it all to fall asleep. As long as we're ragging on the rep of Canadian companies, I'll add that I admired the early work of Mark Godden but couldn't make it through either his Magic Flute or Dracula. In both cases I abandoned the theatre not far into the second act. However, I would like to cast two votes in defense of Les Noces and Liebeslieder Walzer, two of my all-time favourites.

I have seen his St. Matthew Passion and found it to be extremely beautiful and deeply moving. The impression you get is that the dancers, united by a singular sense of purpose, have come together to act out a Passion play (so the fact that Neumeier used to dance the part of Jesus didn't seem egomaniacal). Nobody shows off, principal dancers seem willing to perform secondary roles without hesitation and everything about the performance rings completely true.

I grew up listening to the (1877) score of Swan Lake and had the whole thing committed to memory long before I ever saw the ballet (my first was the Petipa/Ivanov/Ashton/Nureyev production for the Royal Ballet with the Leslie Hurry designs), so from my point of view, the waltz ought to precede that coda. It's the music to Odile's variation that I can't stand: such a boring, inconsequential piece from a musical standpoint. I generally don't like Nureyev's tweaking of classics (I grew up with his Sleeping Beauty, too), but I'm glad he found a way of restoring the waltz to Swan Lake. I could never really make my peace with its absence. As for his rationale for including it, surely it could be discovered. The POB dancers involved in the original production are still living. Has anyone ever come across any comments on the subject from them?

My sister and I are also planning to make this trip, though we're intending to hit London first in order to get to Ghent for Dialogues of the Carmelites before heading to Paris.

Carolina Aguëro, who danced Aurora in all six of the Hamburg Ballet's performances of The Sleeping Beauty this spring, has been promoted to principal dancer. Edvin Revazov, who created leading roles in John Neumeier's Death in Venice (Tadzio) and Parzival while still in the corps, has been promoted to soloist. Former apprentices Marissa Jiménez, Anna-Lena Wieg and Matias Iaconianni have been promoted to the corps. New dancers to the company include Israeli Ben Shitrit, who joins the corps, and three new apprentices: Mayo Arii from Japan, Yun-Su Park from Korea and Alexandr Trusch from Ukraine. Principal Heather Jurgensen and soloist Niurka Moredo have retired, and corps members Anja Behrend and Percevale Perks have also left the company. http://www.hamburgballett.de/e/ensemble.htm

Eastern affiliates of the CBC will be showing the 2003 film of James Judelka's The Firebird tomorrow afternoon, Sunday, July 15. The film features Greta Hodgkinson, Aleksandar Antonojevic, Rex Harrington, Rebekah Rimsay and the National Ballet of Canada. As far as I can tell, it will air on Maritime stations at 12:00 p.m. ET and Quebec and Ontario affiliates at 1:00 p.m. ET. The CBC will begin showing the U-20 World Cup game between Chile and Nigeria at 2:00 p.m. ET, so viewers further west are out of luck unless they've got access to eastern stations via satellite or digital TV. http://www.cbc.ca/programguide/program/index.jsp?program=Sunday+Encore ://http://www.cbc.ca/programguide/prog...=Sunday+Encore ://http://www.cbc.ca/programguide/prog...=Sunday+Encore ://http://www.cbc.ca/programguide/prog...=Sunday+Encore ://http://www.cbc.ca/programguide/prog...=Sunday+Encore

Here is a glowing assessment of Mlle. Cozette: Cinderella in Hollywood http://www.culturekiosque.com/dance/reviews/cinderella.html

This has probably been in the pipeline for some time, but Opus Arte's next dance DVD will be a POB performance of Songe de Médée and MC14/22. Of course, I wouldn't exactly describe Angelin Preljocaj's works as ballet, but this release would give the Royal Ballet and the POB three DVDs each in the Opus Arte catalogue. If the acquisition of Opus Arte is supposed to enable "the Royal Opera House to capture and disseminate the work of The Royal Opera and The Royal Ballet more widely than ever before," I'd suggest they step on it and get those promised RB DVDs to market. http://www.opusarte.com/pages/product.asp?ProductID=207

Among today's news links was a story about the revamped Ovation channel. I don't find this approach at all encouraging, since the "broadening" of programming in the name of "accessibilty" seems to lead to the inevitable disappearance of "high art" from the schedule rather than converting viewers to it. It makes me wonder yet again why previous attempts at performing arts television channels such as A&E and Bravo (both in the U.S. and Canada) eventually jettisoned their serious arts programming. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, funded primarily by tax payers and presumably less dependent on market forces than commercial networks, recently cancelled its (admittedly disappointing) performing arts program, even though it aired only one hour a week, four months out of the year. The CBC's Francophone counterpart, Radio-Canada, cancelled its Sunday-evening arts showcase many years ago. And the face of the PBS pledge drive has certainly changed. Long gone are the days when concerts by opera stars accompanied by CD giveaways were considered big pledge draws. I apologize if my post sounds like yet another hopeless complaint, but I'm really at a loss to understand why so few people out there seem to want the same sort of television I'd like to see. So, ballet lovers, what on earth is the problem? Is there any hope the situation will ever change?

Until recently the Hamburg Ballet had identical twin principal dancers, Jiří and Otto Bubeníček. However last autumn Jiří moved to the ballet company in Dresden, after spending the first 13 years of his career in the same company as his brother.

France's TF1 network posted a report on Sacred Monsters on its web site yesterday: http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/culture/0,,3471765...kram-khan-.html

Congratulations to Estelle and Philippe!

The 1977 film of John Neumeier's Josephs Legende, set to the score by Richard Strauss, is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Josephs-Legende-Sub-.../dp/B000NVL49M/ It features Kevin Haigen as Joseph, Judith Jamison as Potiphar's Wife, Karl Musil as the Angel, Franz Wilhelm as Potiphar and the Ballet of the Vienna State Opera. A few brief clips from the DVD are available at the Deutsche Grammophon web site. http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/webserie...&objRank=15

The DVD is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/Die-Kameliendame-Sub.../dp/B000OFOSOA/ The Deutsche Grammophon site includes some brief clips under "track listing." http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/webserie...&objRank=14

I wonder which of these productions is likely to be filmed for television. Surely not Romeo and Juliet again.

On Wednesday, June 6, France 2 evening news ended its broadcast with a story on Jean-Christophe Maillot's unconventional take on The Sleeping Beauty, titled La Belle. Skip ahead to the last report of the broadcast. http://jt.france2.fr/20h

I had read somewhere that both Rossini and Tchaikovsky used the melody to the anthem "Vive Henri IV." Liszt also produced a piano arrangement of the tune. You can listen to a brief clip at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Liszt-Fantasies-para...l/dp/B000002ZVY There's also a funky 16th-century-style arrangement on this out-of-print disc: http://www.amazon.com/Music-Age-Discovery/...les/B0000287Z9/

Matjash Mrozewski's A Delicate Battle, featuring the National Ballet of Canada, will air on Canada's Bravo on Monday, June 18, at 8:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. PT.

Bravo.ca will be showing this program again early Monday morning, June 4, at 7:00 am ET/4:00 am PT. The version with French narration will air on Canada's Artv: Monday, June 4, - 10:50 pm ET/7:50 pm PT Tuesday, June 5 - 10:20 am ET/7:20 am PT & 2:45 pm ET/11:45 am PT Wednesday, June 6 - 1:50 am ET/10:50 pm PT (June 5) Saturday, June 9 - 12:50 am ET/9:50 pm PT (June 8)

Bravo.ca will repeat this series Monday mornings at 8:30 am ET/5:30 am PT on June 4, 11, and 18.

I've long been sorry that there haven't been more Royal Ballet releases on Opus Arte. I had hoped that Opus Arte would release the RB's telecasts of La Fille mal gardée and Sylvia, but they never materialized. Now perhaps they finally will. On the other hand, I don't like the idea of any opera house monopolizing a DVD label. I can't imagine the Royal Opera House being eager to release rival productions that could potentially outsell its own. A monopoly like that wouldn't really affect the Paris Opera or La Scala, since they release most of their productions through TDK anyway. But what about other houses? At this point the Royal Danish Ballet and the German companies are largely shut out of the DVD market, and I don't think this acquisition will help them any. On the operatic side, Opus Arte has released many productions from De Nederlandse Opera and Spanish houses. Will this continue? At present the Opus Arte catalogue of dance productions is tiny: only 19 DVDs, including six slightly older telecasts from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, most of are available in North America from Kultur, and several modern dance performances. Clearly there's lots of room for expansion. Does anyone know which company will be releasing the POB's Giselle filmed last December? I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that the POB had released its Swan Lake through Opus Arte because the TDK catalogue already included La Scala's Bourmeister version. Since TDK has released La Scala's Giselle, was the POB looking to release its version through Opus Arte also? I'm wondering because one of the glaring absences on the video market is a Royal Ballet Giselle. It'll be interesting to see whether Opus Arte decides to release multiple versions of ballets. Its opera catalogue includes multiple Don Giovannis, Aidas and Ring Cycles, and its ballet catalogue includes two Swan Lakes, but apart from Kultur, most DVD companies seem reluctant to offer consumers more than one production of any given ballet.

I's sometimes wondered about this. "ma-SEEN" is French. I always assumed that the dipthong "mya" (or "mee-ah" said very fast until it all blurs into one, bendy syllable) is the way it would have originally been spoken in Russia. What's important to remember is that iotated vowels like ya, ye, yo and yu serve two functions. At the beginning of a word, or if separated from the preceding consonant by a hard or soft sign, they are in fact pronounced as Y+vowel. But if the iotated vowel comes directly after a consonant, the Y isn't pronounced. It's just an orthographic way of indicating that the preceding consonant is softened: CyV= C'V. Russian includes a fairly unusual group of softened labial consonants (M, B, P, V, F), which you don't run into too often (and which are extremely difficult for non-native speakers to learn to pronounce!): Perm' (p'erm'), step' (s't'ep'), ljubov' (l'ubof') or, in the relevant case, mjaso (m'asa). For English-speakers I suppose the easiest way to describe the first syllable in Massine (Мясин = m'as'in) is as something in between MA and MYA, with the M turning a little soft thanks to a Y pronounced really quickly, as bart says. Incidentally, in the film Nijinsky, Alan Bates as Diaghilev pronounces the name more or less correctly: MYA-seen.