volcanohunter

Now Manuel Legris is injured as well, after Hilaire and Moreau.

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

I must admit I was mesmerized by his showy, fluttering hand technique the first time I saw him, conducting the Queen of Spades about a dozen years ago.

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.

And aren't they dancing too much ?

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.

There's one new injured dancer every day, it seems, and we haven't even got to the opening nights of Giselle and Coppélia - wonder how the company will manage to survive until January !

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 I believe may in fact be American by nationality as that is certainly where his family lived. Both dancers had fairly wide associations with MacMillan's choreography.

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.

I was there on Sunday and was profoundly moved by “Song of the Earth.” I’ve read about the ballet but this was my first viewing and perhaps it’s my own age, and the fact that I’ve lately lost people close to me, but the concept that death is our companion all through life - a shadow perhaps or a mirror image of us - was deeply moving. I’m not sure exactly why I was so personally effected; I can only admit that I was. I can understand why it’s considered one of MacMillan’s master works.

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.

I saw “Gloria” many years ago when the Royal Ballet came to Toronto and was completely blown away by the ballet. I rushed out the next day to buy tickets for another performance. Jennifer Penny, Julian Hosking and Wayne Eagling were the dancers for those performances and I can remember all these years later just how wonderful they were. That last moment of the ballet when the lone soldier stands at the top of the trench and looks back at the audience and then drops out of sight was chilling....it made palpable the sense of loss, of countless young lives destroyed. A whole generation gone. When the National Ballet scheduled the ballet several years ago, I told all my friends they just had to see it because it was so great. But when the company performed it the ballet just didn’t have the same impact for me. I’m not sure if the coaching was faulty or if the dancers just didn’t get it. Perhaps the music and the history resonates more deeply with the British and the Royal Ballet dancers could feel a real emotional attachement to it. Who knows.

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.

In recent years, the NBoC hasn't performed a lot of MacMillan's non-narrative works. The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, and Manon are all quite popular. But as for plotless ballets, I can only remember "Solitaire" (which I think is also quite accessible).

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.

Kind of off-topic, but has anyone ever seen Pisarev do a Don Q?

Unfortunately I haven't, but he'd probably be perfect for the role.

Here's something from the realm of fun facts. Today Nina Ananiashvili became godmother to Nikoloz Saakashvili, son of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. The godfather is Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko. Here's a photo of the christening:

news.yahoo.com/photo/061123/481/20762625b8834529bf788d711fbde1f1/print

Alberta Ballet has launched a contest for tickets to its production of The Nutcracker in Edmonton and Calgary. Note that the web site states, "All entries valid regardless of correctness!"

www.albertaballet.com

No word on whether tickets are up for grabs in Vancouver, Victoria and Spokane also.

Thank you! I've seen a few pictures of Almeida, but no clips of her dancing. I think next year I may go on a BBC archive hunt and report back should I find anything.

Ami, the only clips I have of Almeida are from the 1985 telecast of the Royal Ballet's Nutcracker. She dances Columbine in act 1 and the dance of the mirlitons in act 2, though telling the dancers apart in that selection is difficult since all of them are wearing identical caramel-coloured wigs. That film also features Jonathan Cope as the Mouse King and in the Arabian dance. It may not offer much of a glimpse of Almeida, but it's worth seeing for Lesley Collier's magnificent Sugar Plum Fairy and the incredible stylistic unity she shares with Anthony Dowell, something sadly absent from the performance of Miyako Yoshida and Cope 15 years later. Not that I blame Cope. Originally he was to have danced in that broadcast with Darcey Bussell, but she became injured. Why the Royal Ballet decided to replace one of its tallest ballerinas with one of its smallest is beyond me. (Call me funny, but I often resent seeing tall male dancers "wasted" on little ballerinas.) On balance I definitely prefer the older performance. Yoshida is no Collier.

If you plan to go clip hunting, it would be worth investigating whether Ashton's Ondine was filmed when it was revived in 1988 with Almeida in the title role. Now that's something I'd love to see.

volcanohunter, I'd LOVE to hear about Almeida's Aurora

This discussion began on the Darcey Bussell thread, but I would also love to hear what other posters remember about Maria Almeida, a fabulously gifted dancer with a frustratingly brief career.

I saw Maria Almeida dance Aurora not long before her self-imposed early retirement. Suffice it to say she was the finest Aurora I've seen. I never saw Gelsey Kirkland's Aurora, but I imagine that the experience must have been very similar. Edward Villella once described Kirkland as having "steel-like legs that are doing the most fantastic technical feats while the upper body is soft and lovely as though nothing were going on underneath." Almeida managed the same in Sleeping Beauty. She had wonderfully gracious classical style, in the best tradition of the Royal Ballet. Naturally she had gorgeous feet and fabulous extensions, but in her case, and this is pretty rare nowadays, I never found myself admiring them for their own sake. Her port de bras were exquisite, which is not a given these days either. She radiated femininity and serenity, so her princess was entirely believable. I have often found the vision scene a little frustrating, its static formality failing to live up to Tchaikovsky's ecstatic music, but Almeida was the sort of dancer who could make the poetry of the scene really come alive. I wish I could remember more details, but it was one of those rare performances that were so enchanting that my analytical brain shut down and I let myself be carried away by the rapture of it all. I can tell you it was the only time I wept during the Rose Adagio.

I don't know whether there are many films of Maria Almeida in the BBC archives, but I would dearly love to be able to see more of her. It's still a bit mystifying that a dancer who was so talented should have walked away from it all. Jonathan Cope, who knows her better than anyone, and who's obviously partial, said in an interview last spring, "She had everything, aesthetically, technically, artistically and was the greatest loss to the ballet world ever. God had given her everything but he hadn’t given her the desire and she doesn’t feel the need to get up and dance. She is perfectly happy now." No doubt this is very frustrating for all those with lots of desire and less talent!

Unfortunately, the only time I saw Bussell perform live was early in her career and at the time I found her dancing a little bit gauche. Her Lilac Fairy compared unfavourably with Maria Almeida's Aurora, much in the same way that her Gamzatti on video seemed crass when compared to Asylmuratova's Nikiya. (I agree with beck hen there.)

But like FauxPas I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to see Bussell as her career developed. She's obviously extremely gifted, and I'm sure that choreographers and the Royal Ballet's management found ways to put her talents to excellent use.

Although I'd love to see Dupont or Osta in the role.

I wonder if there aren't some theatrical politics involved here. Both Dupont and Osta are well represented on video, but prior to Emeralds, I believe Pujol was seen only as the White Cat in Sleeping Beauty.

On the other hand, this reasoning doesn't make sense from the male perspective, as Nicolas Le Riche has been filmed more often than the other male etoiles, though not in classical roles. I'm worried that Pujol will look puny next to him. Why not pair her with Benjamin Pech instead, as he only has a Bluebird to his video credit?

Personally, I would have liked to see Delphine Moussin as Giselle, but as she's injured, that's a moot point.

It's typical of this paper -- enough detail to persuade that the reviewer was actually present at the event -- but a level of incomprehension that makes you wonder. The reviewer has decided that the "story" consists of a progression during the performance from shyness to confidence, something that (I suspect) few others in the theater observed or, if they did, considered to be very important.

It is a peculiar review. It's almost as though the reviewer went into the show with a preconceived take on the performance and was determined to make it fit regardless of what she saw. I'm guessing you didn't see a sudden explosion of confidence, bart.

Not The Tiller in the Fields, especially with the rest of the list. ( )

What was so awful about it? Do tell.

And I thought we were all supposed to be loud and obnoxious!

A single day spent driving through the streets of Rome would convince most Americans that they are actually among the most hung-up people on earth

I would hope that ABT wouldn't limit itself to just one program. You'd have to present more familiar works like Lilac Garden, Dark Elegies, Pillar of Fire and The Leaves Are Fading, but also ballets seen less frequently like Judgment of Paris, Undertow and Dim Lustre. Definitely Romeo and Juliet. Perhaps the Royal Ballet could be persuaded to take Shadowplay on tour. Ditto for the Royal Swedish Ballet with Echoing of Trumpets. Does anyone out there think a revival of Tiller in the Fields is worth attempting? I never saw it, which is why I ask.

For TV viewers in Canada, Artv is broadcasting the Paris Opera production of Rameau's opera Les Boréades, which features choreography by Edouard Lock performed by La La La Human Steps. Take it or leave it.

Air times:

Monday, 20 November at 7:30 p.m. ET

Friday, 24 November at 1:00 a.m. ET

Saturday, 25 November at 5:00 a.m. ET

www.artv.ca/emissions/fiche.asp?numero=1984

For Bell ExpressVu customers, a free preview of Artv is running until December 15, which would allow you to catch a rebroadcast of the St. Petersburg 300th anniversary gala on December 12.

And the Romeo I saw at ABT last season was danced, with no signs of vague embarrassment, by the very American David Hallberg.

I certainly never meant to suggest that all American dancers are necessarily poor actors. Obviously ABT does have American principals, as do companies abroad, but for some reason or other they are a minority in companies that are heavy on narrative ballets. I mean, there must be a reason why 72% of ABT's principals, 78% of San Francisco Ballet's principals and 82% of Boston Ballet's principal are not American. (I'll be the first to state that this sample is not scientific.)

Perhaps it's because Americans are used to being self-effacing. One thing I do remember about that NYCB broadcast of Swan Lake was part of the conversation between Beverly Sills and Darci Kistler where Sills asked about a hypothetical scenario in which Kistler found herself at odds with a choreographer. Without hesitation Kistler replied that she would defer to the choreographer. Certainly this is not always the case. In a South Bank Show program about Sylvie Guillem it was implied politely by others and more bluntly by herself that she never hit it off with Kenneth MacMillan because she was not willing to defer to him in this way, at least not until he gave her a convincing reason. Perhaps this difference in approach is why American dancers sometimes strike me as having less dramatic teeth. Or maybe Americans are simply less demonstrative by nature.

I have definitely seen dancers looking embarrassed in certain works. I've never seen an American look comfortable doing Spectre de la Rose, for example, whereas dancers like Manuel Legris have no inhibitions about that ballet's, um, flowery mannerisms. I've also seen many Sugar Plum Fairies that were less than regal, Kitris that were less than fiery and Giselles who weren't completely heartbreaking.

The acting in The Nutcracker is minimal at best, particularly for the adults, so I wouldn't count on that providing good training for a tragedy like Romeo and Juliet. Sure, all Americans are familiar with Romeo and Juliet. But can we honestly say that American actors put Shakespeare's play across as convincingly as their English colleagues? This sort of thing requires specialized training and practice. I don't see how narrative ballet is any different.

I'm sorry to sound like a self-hating American!

if mem. serves and sources were reliable, it seems that around '04 when farrell was asked about staging DON Q for nycb she understood that the kirov ballet was interested in staging the work and at that time remained committed to that request from st. petersburg. what happened then, and how much was expressed 'interest' and how much a more formal deal i cannot say.

what one can say is that the kirov 'plan' did not come to pass and that farrell decided to do the staging herself in concert w/ nat'l ballet of canada.

the rest is recent history.

Sorry to keep discussing this when the intended topic is Romeo & Juliet, but I'm a bit confused. Why not stage Don Q for the NYCB, Mariinsky, NBoC and any number of other interested companies?