volcanohunter

Helene, it will be interesting to see which of Mitchell's songs is used in the ballet, given their diversity. All that's been revealed about the music score so far is that it includes a previously unpublished and unrecorded song. If the ballet has an environmentalist theme, I'm sure "They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot" will also be included. I hope that taoofpooh, who will probably be the first poster to see the ballet, will fill us in. I know that at least some audience members are going to see the program for reasons other than Joni Mitchell. In autumn I talked my sister into going to the ballet for the first time in many years. She went, husband in tow, and they both loved it, especially a piece by Jean Grand-Maître. Since then she's told be several times how much she's looking forward to Alberta Ballet's next program because she can't wait to see another ballet by "Mr. Grand Master." (Honestly, what a tough surname to live up to.) Thanks for that bit of info, ViolinConcerto. As far as I know, this is Stanners' first position with a dance organization, so I'm glad to see her immersing herself in ballet. Naturally, I would be thrilled to see Alberta Ballet acquire more Balanchine ballets, though I'd also like to see them consolidate the Balanchine repertoire they have already. I'd very much like to see a revival of Prodigal Son; I think Yukichi Hattori and Christopher Gray would be terrific in the lead. It's been years and years since Alberta Ballet did Donizetti Variations, so it's high time to bring it back. However, I think more jazz or tap lessons are in order before they take another crack at Who Cares? Their performance last spring was strangely stiff. Years ago, when Ali Pourfarrokh was director of the company, he introduced a couple of Tudor ballets to the repertoire. I'd like to see them back for his centennary. But I'm getting ahead of myself. If The Fiddle & the Drum brings in some new audience members, terrific. I hope some of them will be interested enough to stick around for the future. And if two television specials help make "Alberta Ballet" less of an oxymoron for the rest of Canada, I'll be pleased as punch.

I know what you mean. Balanchine rarely choreographed on the pulse of the music--that would be altogether too simplistic--and that pd2 is like the exception that proves the rule. Q: What can you do on the pulse? A: Walk. That "exception that proves the rule" comment comes from the June 1983 issue of Ballet News, in which Kenneth LaFave wrote about Balanchine's approach to music: On the Choreography by Balanchine DVD Karin von Aroldingen and Sean Lavery most definitely walk on the beat, so I assume this is how Balanchine taught them to dance it. I think Osta was trying to do this also, but I get the feeling that Belarbi had other ideas.

Today the Canadian Press published a story about Alberta Ballet's collaboration with Joni Mitchell, which will be premiered next month. It's high time the Canadian media took notice of the company, but I can't help wishing it had happened under different circumstances. Joni Mitchell's Alberta Ballet production sparks unexpected worldwide attention I'm not crazy about ballets set to pop songs. I watched a retrospective of Maurice Béjart's ballets on television last night, and I really could have done without the bits to U2 and Queen. (I'll admit that I found dances set to Jacques Brel and Barbara much less objectionable.) On many levels I can understand making a ballet to songs by Joni Mitchell. She's a Canadian icon and she comes from Alberta. Jean Grand-Maître doesn't make bad ballets, so it's not as though I'm dreading this program. But it does bother me that a choreographer can spend years making fine ballets to beautiful "serious" music and get precious little attention in the national press, but as soon as he recruits a pop music legend, the newspapers are all over it and a TV broadcast is lined up. Obviously, undertaking this project was a very shrewd move from the marketing point of view, and I expect the final product will have a great deal of aesthetic merit, but from where I sit, the really big deal about Alberta Ballet's next program is that the company will be performing Balanchine's Serenade for the first time. Why aren't the local papers in a tizzy about that?

SanderO, I may have found a piece that fits your bill. I was watching L'Amour, la danse on television, a show that strings together excerpts from many of Maurice Béjart's ballets. Among them was a dance for about 12 women to "Casta diva." Since it was identified in the credits simply as "Casta diva," I don't know whether it's part of a longer ballet or a freestanding piece. Given the nature of the performance and the venue, all the music was canned, so diva egos didn't factor into the equation. And in case we're still counting concertos, we can add Béjart's Concerto 21 to the list, set to Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 21 with an approach that is anything but neoclassical.

His R&J is available on DVD, as are his version of Sleeping Beauty and a program of shorter works. I saw La Belle on television. It's peculiar and I can't say I cared for it. Roméo et Juliette La Belle Miniatures

I'm not sure whether this is what you're after, but John Neumeier is an example of a choreograher who specializes in evening-length narrative ballets rather than one-act plotless works. I don't know how unusual he is in producing narrative works, but there aren't that many choreographers who produce evening-length works on an annual basis. Consider his output of evening-length ballets over the last 10 years: 1997 - Sylvia 1998 - Bernstein Dances; Images of Bartok (3 ballets) 1999 - Messiah 2000 - Nijinsky 2001 - Winterreise 2002 - The Seagull 2003 - Preludes CV; Death in Venice 2004 - 2005 - The Little Mermaid; Songs of the Night (2 ballets) 2006 - Parzival - Episodes and Echo Not all of these are strictly narrative, but a majority are. If you look at the repertoire of the Hamburg Ballet during any given season, narrative works definitely outweigh repertory programs. As for his choreographic style, that's harder to define. Though I have seen only a portion of his ballets, his style strikes me as eclectic, with some ballets more neo-classical and others closer to modern dance. Which reminds me... Elizabeth Loscavio left her post as principal dancer with San Francisco Ballet to join the Hamburg Ballet as a soloist because she wanted to dance dramatic ballets. She subsequently became a principal in Hamburg.

Is anyone planning to attend Friday's gala at La Scala? The scheduled program is... not especially surprising: Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux Alexandra Ansanelli & Federico Bonelli Diana & Acteon Marianela Nuñez & Maximiliano Guerra Giselle, Act 2 pas de deux Polina Semionova & Mathieu Ganio Grand Pas Classique Viktoria Tereshkina & Leonid Sarafanov Don Quixote, Act 3 pas de deux Svetlana Zakharova & Denis Matvienko Le Jeune homme et la Mort Darcey Bussell & Roberto Bolle Petite Mort Sabrina Brazzo, Marta Romagna, Mick Zeni, Deborah Gismondi, Riccardo Massimi, Antonino Sutera, Stefania Ballone, Andrea Boi, Chiara Borgia, Fabio Saglibene, Andrea Volpintesta & Caroline Westcombe The pairing of Semionova and Ganio sounds intriguing. Have they danced together before?

Laurent Hilaire had planned to put an official end to his performing career during the POB's run of Giselle, but injury intervened. Now the news is that his farewell performance will take place on 14 February, during which he will dance in Apollo, with Agnès Letestu as Terpsichore. Song of a Wayfarer will also be added to the program, which Hilaire will perform with Manuel Legris. http://www.operadeparis.fr/Accueil/Actualite.asp?id=105

Gillian Murphy perhaps? You're right, those dancer bios aren't going to list every single teacher and school, though I suspect most dancers would be proud to list the SAB, even if they did spend only a couple of weeks there. The National Ballet of Canada does tour very little, though it still maintains its biennial tour of western Canada. It used to be that the NBoC began its season (sorry for using the term imprecisely) in odd-numbered years by going west in early autumn, while Les Grands Ballets Canadiens would do the same in even-numbered years, and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet would visit western Canadian cities every spring. However, tours by LGBC have now become infrequent, and complete RWB western tours usually take place every other year. The RWB still considers itself a touring company since it does 45 shows on the road versus 25 at home. I believe the Paris Opera Ballet does break up into smaller groups to visit other French cities periodically (it took Suite en blanc and L'Arlésienne to Blagnac in November and will perform a similar program in Tours this weekend), and it's not at all unusual for small groups of POB dancers to organize performances outside Paris, something along the lines of "Étoile X & Friends." The troupe is large enough to conduct a tour and perform at home simultaneously. In June it will take Swan Lake and Jewels to Australia while presenting a new production of La Fille mal gardée in Paris. In the case of the Bolshoi, the troupe can probably split into three parts so that, say, one group goes to the United States, another goes to Spain and a third performs in Moscow. I have very fond memories of being an adolescent in New York when visiting companies filled the Met during the summer. Nowadays, the only tours you're likely to see are by the Bolshoi or Kirov. I can't help but wonder if they're able to deal with the costs because their dancers aren't paid properly.

This isn't an example relevant to the United States, but Dominique Khalfouni left her post as étoile with the POB to work with Roland Petit in Marseille, and she remained there until he retired.

Small world! Larsen also danced with Alberta Ballet after PNB. I can understand dancers who move from company to company until they find I a work environment they find really fulfilling, whether that means the corps of a large company or prominence in a small company.

How do you define a large company? Are you thinking of the 235 dancers of the Bolshoi Ballet, the 150+ dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet, the 100 dancers of the Royal Ballet or the 70 dancers of San Francisco Ballet? That's quite a range. There are extemely interesting companies in the 45-60 dancer range, such as Miami City Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet and Hamburg Ballet, and they aren't very much alike. Pacific Northwest Ballet and Eifman Ballet are smaller, but certainly not unimportant. Some companies are considered important even though they have fewer than 20 dancers, such as Cullberg Ballet, the Forsythe Company or Aterballetto. Ballet British Columbia has only 15 dancers. You'd think a city like Vancouver could sustain a much larger company, but as a troupe that focuses on contemporary ballet, that size is adequate for their needs. The company in my parts, Alberta Ballet, has 27 dancers, and I've certainly seen many young dancers use is as a springboard for their careers in cities more impressive than Calgary and Edmonton. But I've seen lots of ballet refugees pass through here, too: Owen Montague, once a principal with the National Ballet of Canada and Nederlands Dans Theater, wound down his performing career with the company, as did Ronda Nychka after a long spell with Béjart Ballet Lausanne. Several dancers from Ballet du Nord took refuge here after that company was turned into a modern troupe. As for the ability of smaller companies to mount good ballet productions (I assume you're referring to 19th-century classics), that depends very much on the strength of its school, since senior students will be recruited to fill out the corps. (Personally, I wish smaller companies wouldn't attempt these productions.) Much more important than size is who runs the company. John Cranko transformed the Stuttgart Ballet from a provincial company into one of worldwide fame, and with its 65+ dancers it's still more important than the Ballet of La Scala, which has more than 100 dancers. (No offense intended to Milan!) So size isn't everything.

Which reminds me, in the film The Ballerinas Carla Fracci as Carlotta Brianza performs the three "swoons," and given the size of the powdered wigs that Fracci and Richard Cragun were wearing it's hard to imagine them doing it any other way.

Off the top of my head I can think of ballets set to Ravel's Piano Concerto, Brahms' Second Piano Concerto, the Barber Violin Concerto, Bruch's Violin Concerto, Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 9 and Concerto for Flute and Harp, Gershwin's Piano Concerto, Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Winds and Concerto for Two Solo Pianos, Martinu's Double Concerto for Piano, Two String Orchestras and Timpani, Bach's Double Violin Concerto, Brandenburg Concertos and several of his piano concertos, Shostakovich's Piano Concerto no. 2, Adams' Violin Concerto and Prokofiev's Piano Concerto no. 5. Allegro Brillante is set to Tchaikovsky's incomplete Third Piano Concerto, and Chopin's piano concertos form the basis of the score to John Neumeier's The Lady of the Camellias, though they're not necessarily played in order. [Correction: the complete Second Piano Concerto is used as the score to the first act, and the second movement of the First Piano Concerto is used in Act 3.] I'm sure there are others I've forgotten and many more I haven't seen. And although I agree that there is a difference between the voice and other instruments, this hasn't stopped choreographers from using song cycles and vocal liturgical works. Neumeier has choreographed Bach's Magnificat and St. Matthew Passion, Handel's Messiah and the Mozart Requiem. Other ballets set to vocal religious music are MacMillan's Gloria and Requiem, Kylián's Symphony of Psalms and Soldiers' Mass, and Uwe Scholz's The Great Mass. In recent years Alberta Ballet, my local company, has performed Jean Grand-Maître's Celestial Themes, set to Tallis' Spem in alium, Edmund Stripe's Unquiet Light, set to some of the longer sections of Tchaikovsky's Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and Emily Molnar's Portrait of A Suspended Grace, set to Pergolesi's Stabat Mater. Many of these works are heavy on choral music, but song cycles are used also. Think of Tudor's Dark Elegies, Balanchine's Liebeslieder Walzer and Seven Deadly Sins, MacMillan's Song of the Earth, Béjart's Song of a Wayfarer, Rudi van Danzig's Four Last Songs and Neumeier's Winterreise. I don't know whether anyone's ever attempted to choreograph a ballet to the complete Des Knaben Wunderhorn, but William Forsythe set a pas de deux to "Urlicht." Glen Tetley choreographed a couple of ballets to vocal works for the National Ballet of Canada: Alice, to David Del Tredici's Child Alice, Part One: In Memory of a Summer Day, and Tagore, to Alexander Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony. Alexei Ratmansky's Russian Seasons would be another recent example. Among other vocal works, Stravinsky's Les Noces and Orff's Carmina Burana have been tackled more than once. So while I do understand Leigh Witchel's point about structure or lack thereof in contemporary choreography, previous generations of choreographers apparently did like to rely on the structure provided by symphonies, concertos, song cycles and liturgical works. Then I've been very lucky in my ballet-going experience. Perhaps you have been lucky, or perhaps I have been unlucky. I can't think of a performance of Swan Lake during which the playing of the "White Swan" pas de deux hasn't made me cringe. In my North American exprience, the sounds coming out of the pit are usually inferior to the quality of the dancing on stage. This probably wouldn't be the case at the Paris Opera or Vienna State Opera.

Great instrumentalists are also extremely compelling, but choreographers don't hesitate to set ballets to all manner of concerti. Of course, at the ballet you're unlikely to hear a great violinist or pianist. The same would probably apply to sopranos. Modern dance choreographers seem less reluctant to use operatic arias. I've already mentioned Margie Gillis' Rivers Without Bridges for Alberta Ballet and Mark Morris' Dido and Aeneas. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker certainly isn't shy about using operatic music. Duke Bluebeard's Castle Ottone, Ottone Mozart / Concert Arias, un moto di gioia (okay, not exactly operatic) April me

In some of his films, notably Follow the Fleet and Second Chorus, Fred Astaire begins a number as band leader and turns into solo dancer as the music progresses. Of course, I'd never expect a conductor to be able to tap like Fred Astaire, but some music is so danceable that it's hard not to break into a dance. This doesn't concern conductors directly, but I attended a new music festival during which a clarinetist danced. He wasn't a trained dancer, but the choreography had obviously been rehearsed thoroughly. Unfortunately, the choreographer wasn't credited in the program. I have to admit that it made the atonal clarinet concerto much easier to sit through.

In my experience it isn't always a good thing. The Baroque specialist Ivars Taurins, or "Marionette Boy," as I like to call him, spends a lot of time prancing around on the podium and I have to struggle mightily not to giggle when he's conducting. He's very energetic and enthusiastic but extremely awkward. I suppose I wouldn't object to a conductor whose movements were beautiful to look at.

This comment was made in the context of the debate around Simone Clarke, one of two British principals at the English National Ballet. Why is it that Britons are now a minority in the principal ranks of Britain's ballet companies? Is there a deficiency in the way British ballet students are being trained? Is this training incompatible with the current repertoire of local companies? Will the influx of foreign stars bring about the downfall of the English classical style? Since I have few opportunities to observe British companies first hand, I'm very interested in the opinions of posters from Britain and whether they see the lack of British principals as a problem.

The Times weighs in: Sugar plum fairy v the forces of darkness

The DVD will be released on 27 February, as art076 has already pointed out, and can now be pre-ordered at Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/Minkus-Bayadere-Scal...t/dp/B000M2EBX8

The DVD is now listed for pre-order at Amazon, to be released on 27 February. http://www.amazon.com/Tchaikovsky-Swan-Par...t/dp/B000L43QJ2

I'm not so sure about that. In a recent issue of Dance International magazine Marc Haegeman used a similar turn of phrase to describe the many productions of Swan Lake that Zakharova has appeared in. Like Cliff, I have wondered about this, although I'm also curious about how dancers keep entirely different versions of a given ballet straight. For example, has Vladimir Malakhov ever confused the Cranko and MacMillan versions of Romeo & Juliet? Presumably it shouldn't happen if a dancer has had sufficient rehearsal time.

This version of the story includes the reference to Ballet Talk: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070112/stage_..._ballerina_dc_1

I was looking over the preliminary casting for the Balanchine/Brown/Forsythe program and I was intrigued by the casting for Agon. Scheduled to dance the pas de deux are Marie-Agnès Gillot, Agnès Letestu or Stéphanie Romberg with Kader Belarbi, José Martinez or Hervé Moreau. I didn't realize that Belarbi was tall enough to partner any of those women. They all strike me as enormously tall.

Sorry, I must have an out-of-date edition. I was quoting the Canadian Book of Common Prayer (1962). It may be translated differently in other countries.