volcanohunter

I imagine a diffculty here would be that dramatic time, ballet time and opera time are very different. (Sorry if my terms are clumsy.) "Dramatic time" is faster than "ballet time," which in turn is much faster than "opera time." Think of how long it would take for Pushkin's Tatiana to recite her farewell to Onegin. Then compare that hypothetical length with the length of the final pas de deux in Cranko's ballet and the final duet of Tchaikovsky's opera, which is quite long indeed. When Cranko was choreographing his ballet he used Tchaikovsky, but not a note from the opera. Likewise, MacMillan used Massenet for Manon, but again nothing from his opera. There have been several stagings of Lady of the Camellias, but the two versions I've seen used Chopin rather than Verdi's Traviata. Ultimately I think certain plots lend themselves more to some dramatic forms than others. I'll probably sound like a Philistine, but I think that Romeo & Juliet works better as a ballet than as a play. To my mind, the sight of two dancers pitching themselves recklessly at each other through space captures the exhilarating essence of young love much more effectively than even Shakespeare's poetry. (And definitely more effectively than Gounod's opera, which, to my ears, doesn't even sound like Shakespeare.) I think Othello works best as an opera. A tenor striving with all his might to be heard over a blaring orchestra while singing "Si pel ciel marmoreo giuro" captures the essence of jealous fury perfectly. (Besides "Sangue! Sangue! Sangue!" sounds so much better than "O, blood, blood, blood!") As for the ruthless politicking of Macbeth, I think it's best left to dramatic actors. Certainly, I've seen choreography to operatic arias of the Baroque period, but these ballets never attempted to put across the content of the original libretto.

I'd say that in Balanchine there's an acute awareness of the vertical axis, but the body itself is constantly being pushed off that axis. For example, in the opening sequence of Rubies, the dancers begin in a vertical position but they immediately begin to tilt forward and backward in relationship to the vertical axis: the pelvis is thrust forward and the torso tilts back, then the pelvis is tilted back and the spine leans forward, and so on and so forth.

Here's to wishes coming true. I really should stop being a snob and read the Edmonton Sun more often. http://jam.canoe.ca/Theatre/2006/12/15/2805682.html Well thank heavens for that And another interesting piece of Nutcracker news.

I attended The Nutcracker yesterday afternoon in Edmonton. The production itself, choreographed by Mikko Nissinen, is completely conventional, so I won't go into great detail. I wish I could tell you how much of this production was grafted onto his subsequent staging for Boston Ballet, but I haven't seen that version. As far as I can tell, Alberta Ballet is labouring under all sorts of injuries and is struggling to fill all the roles, despite the presence of eight additional dancers from Ballet British Columbia. So many cast changes were announced before the start of performance that I simply couldn’t keep track of them all. Several dancers seemed fit enough to do the party scene, but not act 2. Yukichi Hattori was excellent as the Nutcracker, soaring in the battle scene and using his hands very expressively in the second-act mime. Unfortunately, his scheduled partner was injured. Being too short to partner replacement Sandrine Cassini, Hamilton Nieh was her cavalier instead. In principle I don’t object to this sort of shuffle since I have never liked combining the Nutcracker and the SPF’s Cavalier in one role. After that big battle scene it seems very ungallant for the Nutcracker to abandon Clara in favour of the SPF. Nieh, though talented and equipped with a fine looking set of legs, was obviously a last minute replacement. He got through the adagio with only a couple of glitches, but his solo and the coda were cut, and the SPF’s variation was moved to earlier in the act à la Balanchine. Ungallant or no, I do wish I'd had the opportunity to see Hattori in the grand pas de deux because I’m guessing he would have been spectacular. Among the other dancers, Anthony Pina, who recently graduated from the Onassis School, was very good as the Harlequin and in the Chinese dance. He's light and speedy, with all sorts of flexibility and high elevation. Reid Bartelme, who has a fluid movement style, was also good in the Arabian dance, though I think he should consider using some body make-up before going bare-chested in harem pants. As it stands he’s just too blond and too pale for the part. Meanwhile his partner, Alexis Maragozis, was burdened by a dreadful costume. She may be Alberta Ballet's most agressively sensual dancer, but she's not especially tall or elongated and looked as though she'd disappear under all the beads on her bodice. She looked much more at ease in the simple tutu of the Snow Queen. It’s definitely time for Alberta Ballet to mount a new Nutcracker, if for no other reason than to get rid of the awful costumes by Paul Daigle in the current production. He manages to make all but the thinnest women look buxom and chunky, which certainly doesn't make for convincing snowflakes. The Russian dance was disappointing, despite of the loud ovation. I can’t believe that the company is completely lacking in dancers with good barrel turns. But the Flowers acquitted themselves well, with Ballet BC's Fei Guo as a delicate Butterfly, and Makaila Wallace from Ballet BC, Igor Chornovol and Kelley McKinlay did a good Spanish dance. In general I have to say that the dancers look much more comfortable performing academic choreography than they have in years past. They'd always look confident and uninhibited in contemporary ballets, but as soon as the Nutcracker rolled around they'd get that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look. I’m guessing that new ballet mistress Flavia Vallone is a positive influence. Since she’s spent most of her career dancing at La Scala, she also knows a thing or two about projecting in a large theatre such as the Jubilee Auditorium, which has been a weak spot of AB dancers in the past. Naturally, there were lots of kids in the audience. It would be sensible for regional companies to program another kid friendly ballet in late spring of each season to attract the pre-teen crowd. This season Alberta Ballet will be aiming to do that by reviving its Cinderella. Until then I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will survive its forthcoming Nutcrackers in Calgary and Vancouver.

Yesterday I watched the St. Petersburg 300th anniversary gala from the Mariinsky Theatre. The ballet selections weren't exactly the smoothest part of the concert. Gergiev conducted the Kingdom of the Shades and Polovtsian Dances at insanely fast speeds. I know that NYCB dancers are trained for speed, but I doubt whether even they could have kept up. On the other hand, he conducted the Dying Swan very slowly. The Le Corsaire pas de deux seemed to come off best, although the impression that Zelensky's solo created was so unmusical that I couldn't help wondering whether he and Gergiev were working at cross purposes. (If Zakharova was unhappy with the tempi she wasn't letting on.) I don't know what this means for Gergiev's performance with NYCB, but my guess would be that his allegros will be very, very fast and his adagios will be downright lugubrious.

More Alagna footage on France 2 today. This time he's singing outside La Scala since they won't let him in. Skip ahead to the last segment of the broadcast ("Roberto Alagna répond à la Scala de Milan"). http://jt.france2.fr/20h Actually, there's more entertainment value in the preceding segment on Candide.

I have heard Ganio express admiration for the Albrechts of Baryshnikov and Le Riche. Does his performance resemble theirs in any way? I have a difficult time imagining that it would since he doesn't resemble either one of them physically.

Didn't she dance a complete Nikiya in D.C. a few years ago? Or was it some other U.S. city?

I think many of us would love to see it. Why is it that Paris Opera Ballet telecasts make it to DVD reguarly, while the Royal Ballet's rarely do? Those of us on the other side of the Atlantic can actually see something of what goes on in Paris, whereas we can only read about dance in London. Already Brigitte Lefèvre has announced that the POB's Giselle will be coming to DVD in HD. Shouldn't centuries of Franco-British rivalry make Covent Garden eager to keep up? Of course I realize that if it were up to you, fandango, all of the Royal Ballet's telecasts would be available on video, but your post has made me wonder anew about the strange policies of the BBC, which readily exports television comedies and murder mysteries, but seems determined to keep the "high" arts of Britain hidden from the rest of the world.

There was a brief report on the POB's Giselle on the evening news of France 2 today. Click on the link and use the menu on the right to skip ahead to 34 minutes past the hour to see Aurelie Dupont and a little bit of Nicolas Le Riche. It will also be available under "Les éditions précédentes" for the next week. http://jt.france2.fr/20h And Johnny Hallyday is moving to Switzerland for tax reasons. (Seriously, I don't understand why producers of news programs think stories like this merit top billing.)

France 2 showed footage of the incident on its evening news. You can view it, for the next 24 hours or so, by clicking onto the following link: http://jt.france2.fr/20h It will also be available for the next week under "Les éditions précédentes." Use the menu on the right to skip ahead to the segment at 32 minutes past the hour. (Scala de Milan : les suites de l'affaire Roberto Alagna...) On a happier note, it's followed immediately by a report on the POB's Giselle, with Aurelie Dupont and Nicolas Le Riche.

What a pity. I remember that clips of the telecast were used in Schaufuss' "Dancer" series, which isn't available either. I've also seen a very grainy pirate of the entire performance, though without the interview richard53dog mentioned. What I have seen makes me long for a commercial release. Evdokimova's romantic style is exquisite, Schaufuss' virtuosity indisputable and the artistry of Larsen is a potent argument for retaining mime. I wonder what it would take to convince the BBC to pull this stuff out of its vaults.

Does anyone know whether Peter Schaufuss' staging of La Sylphide for London Festival Ballet has ever been available on video? I'm thinking of the BBC telecast from 1980 with Eva Evdokimova, Schaufuss and Niels Bjorn Larsen. (Something like my dream cast!)

Not that this relates directly to Diana and Acteon, but John Neumeier's Sylvia includes a pas de deux for Diana and Endymion in which he is obviously supposed to be sleepwalking. I wonder what sort of approach Petipa adopted.

I see that Legris has been scheduled to dance one performance after all. Thank heavens his injury is not serious.

Yes, but how did you feel about the incessant grunting? I sat three or four rows behind him when he was conducting Boris and, frankly, I wanted to throw my program at him.

That would be my question as well. I don't really understand why the company would schedule two full-scale works simultaneously, especially since the promotion exams also take place in December. Theoretically, the exams shouldn't be a problem, but when injuries to the top ranks force members of the corps to assume larger roles, it becomes an issue. I see that the company has been reduced to 4 Albrechts for 18 performances of Giselle and 4 Swanildas for 17 performances of Coppelia. I suppose that ABT principals would be envious of that work load, since most of them get only 1, maybe 2 performances of a given ballet during their season at the Met, but when etoiles and premiers danseurs begin dropping like flies, there's something very wrong.

Yoko Ichino was wonderful in the ballet: quick, feather light and very musical, capturing every flute and harp accent, and with fouettes that never travelled more than 2-3 inches. Her partner at the National Ballet of Canada was usually Kevin Pugh, a brilliant virtuoso dancer, but basically an introvert. He didn't have an exciting stage personality, so I could never really get excited about him. I believe their Act 3 solos and coda were included in a documentary about the NBoC called Bold Steps, which was made in the mid-1980s.

I'll admit to tailoring my travel plans to fit in the ballet. I was born in New York and have lots of family there, but I don't visit the city unless there's some worthwhile dance to see. (Apologies to my relations!) The same goes for overseas travel. If I see a particularly happy combination of ballet and opera productions in a given city, I plan my vacation to fit it in.

Do you have any idea why this happens? Should the company be performing at both theatres simultaneously? I realize that with 150 dancers the POB has the numbers to perform at two opera houses at the same time, but it does seem to run out of soloists along the way.

Thank you, kfw! I think Terry Teachout makes some oversimplifications, perhaps for the benefit of readers no longer familiar with the basics of dance. The issue isn't so much that "classical dance is a comparatively young art form that lacks a universally recognized canon of crowd-pleasing classics," it's that so many of the works that would have made up that canon have been lost. Ballet isn't much younger than opera, but unlike dance, music can be notated with relative ease. Plunk down an opera score before any competent musician and he or she ought to be able to play it on the spot. The problems with dance notation, on the other hand, are immense: the body has many moving parts, it moves through space, and how, in what rhythm and in which direction all those parts make their way through space have to be recorded. To record a ballet in Laban or Benesh notation takes a very, very long time, and companies are lucky if they can employ even one choreologist. There's nothing like universal notation literacy in the dance world. For most of its history, ballet has been passed down by a method akin to oral tradition, and I'd venture to guess that 99% of ballets have been lost along the way. It's not only new episodes of Dance in America that have become "as rare as funny sitcoms." All the "high" arts are suffering. There are also far fewer new recordings of classical music than there used to be. The studio recording of opera has become so expensive that new opera sets are practically an endangered species. The recording of classical music was never profitable, but record companies used to do it for the prestige value. They don't any more. (Perhaps someday all labels will be forced to adopt the Naxos formula of paying musicians up front with no royalties down the road.) I also don't think it's true that "Swan Lake-style classical ballet, with its tutus and Tchaikovsky, is 'irrelevant' to today's young people." Tutu ballets are just about the only ones guaranteed to sell out. The same holds true for classic symphonies, operas, exhibits of Old Masters and so forth. With each passing year I've watched the my city's symphony orchestra move away further from any sort of experimentation in favour of an ever narrower repertoire of the tried and true, while the local opera company has opted for a season of nothing but Italian opera. But I certainly agree that the "quality of new choreography has fallen off significantly." Somehow I don't think people go to the theater expecting a new ballet to be a masterpiece, though this may have been the case when the choreographic giants of the 20th century were still alive. Such expectations would have made going to the ballet a more thrilling prospect than it is today. It may also be true that some of today's choreography is incomprehensible to audiences, much in the same way that a lot of "serious" music, theater and visual art of the past century is incomprehensible to the average person. The creators have alienated themselves from the masses and only the "committed dance buffs" are left. I wish someone had all this figured out, but this is one of those really vexing questions I'm not sure anyone can answer. Why is Sting's "Songs From the Labyrinth" the no. 1 "classical" album in the United States? Why don't most of the people who buy Andrea Boccelli albums turn into bona fide opera buffs? Why don't most of the people that make an annual pilgrimage to the concert hall to hear Handel's Messiah turn into regular concert goers? Why don't the majority of people who go to see the Nutcracker turn into ballet subscribers? Does anyone know why arts organizations can't seem to "close the sale"?

Eagling was born in Montreal and lived in Canada for the five years before moving to California, which, in any case, makes him un-British by nationality. I always assumed that Canadian citizenship was a factor in winning him a place in the Royal Ballet. Am I mistaken in believing that membership in the Royal Ballet was once restricted to citizens of the Commonwealth? I had assumed that citizenship played a role in Nureyev's designation as a "permanent guest artist" with the company, as well as the fact that dancers like Marcia Haydée and Richard Cragun did not join the company after graduating from the School. Please correct me if I am mistaken. Perhaps I did not express myself clearly, but in fact I agree with you completely that the training and professional experience of Penney and Eagling, rather than their nationality, made then convincing interpreters of the Royal Ballet repertoire, particularly the ballets of MacMillan.

Sorry if I'm veering a little off topic here, but I think it's certainly possible for ballets to affect us differently depending on our life experiences. I remember seeing Tudor's Lilac Garden for the first time when I was about 18. Frankly, I didn't really get it. It wasn't so much because I couldn't grasp the Edwardian manners of the piece, but rather because I couldn't understand the contrast between Tudor's "bound" style of movement and the sweeping emotionalism of the music. I saw the ballet again when I was about 30 and on that occasion I was completely destroyed. I guess I'd learned more about living with disappointment by then. Subsequent casts and productions haven't altered the impact of the piece for me; it gets me every time. Perhaps it wasn't really a question of the dancers feeling a particularly British connection to the subject matter, since both Penney and Eagling are Canadian. But you were fortunate enough to see the original cast and I would think that the impact of creating the piece with MacMillan, for whom the subject matter obviously did resonate deeply, would have had a huge impact on their performances. I can see how it could be difficult for subsequent generations of dancers to recreate that intensity.

As far as I can remember, Manon is the only one of MacMillan's overtly narrative ballets the company has in its repertoire. Shrew and Romeo & Juliet were choreographed by John Cranko, as was Onegin. Besides Manon, the NBoC has performed MacMillan's Concerto, Elite Syncopations, Gloria, Solitaire and, of course, Song of the Earth.

Does anyone know why L'Arlésienne was not included on the DVD? It seems odd to include an interview in which Brigitte Lefèvre spends so much time talking about what a wonderful thing it was for the POB to stage a Petit triple bill and then show only two of the ballets performed.