volcanohunter

What's really disheartening is that dancers seem to be honored less and less frequently. In the early days of the Kennedy Center Honors, dance was represented almost every year. But since the beginning of the new millennium, there have hardly been any: 1978 - George Balanchine, Fred Astaire 1979 - Martha Graham 1980 - Agnes de Mille 1981 - Jerome Robbins 1982 - Gene Kelly 1983 - Katherine Dunham 1984 - 1985 - Merce Cunningham 1986 - Antony Tudor 1987 - Alwin Nikolais 1988 - Alvin Ailey 1989 - Alexandra Danilova 1990 - 1991 - Nicholas Bros. 1992 - Paul Taylor, Ginger Rogers 1993 - Arthur Mitchell 1994 - 1995 - Jacques d'Amboise 1996 - Maria Tallchief 1997 - Edward Villella 1998 - 1999 - Judith Jamison 2000 - Mikhail Baryshnikov 2001 - 2002 - Chita Rivera 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - Suzanne Farrell 2006 - It's a pity Fernando Bujones didn't get the award before his passing. (Nora Kaye, Tanaquil LeClercq, Melissa Hayden...) Classical music still seems to be holding its own, but ballet is fading fast from the public imagination. Have we really run out of great American dancers?

Thanks for the information, Geier. As soon as Alberta Ballet schedules a Hattori ballet, I'll be sure to post the information.

Oh, dear. I think I'll pass this year.

Thank you, Carbo and Bart, for the warm welcome.

This may be of interest to those who were surprised by the omission of the last section of Emeralds. I had already seen the DVD, so I was more than a little miffed when it was deleted unceremoniously from the PBS telecast. I wrote in to complain, and this is the reply I received: "Thank you for taking the time to write. We are sorry that you missed the final section of Emeralds. Schedules vary from station to station. To find out why the program was preempted it would be necessary for you to contact KCTS directly." This led me to believe that it was KCTS Seattle that shortened the broadcast, but judging from this thread, no one saw the last section. (Talk about passing the buck!) It's ironic that PBS chose a still from the missing last section to put on the front page of the Great Performances web site. I realize that PBS has to divert some time from each program to list their corporate and private sponsors, but I do wish they could have found an extra five minutes to show the ballet in its entirety.

Thank you for the welcome, Helene. I'm hopeful I'll find other Alberta Ballet viewers on this forum. From what my very bad German allows me to understand, Yukichi Hattori went in search of new challenges, and since he and Galien Johnston are a couple, they wanted to go to a company that would take them both. Galien was born in Lethbridge, not too far from Calgary, so it's a sort of homecoming for her. If anyone comes across any additional information, I hope they'll share it here. You're right, Alberta Ballet does have a high turnover rate. Several former members are now with Boston Ballet and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal, but so many others have come and gone that it's hard to keep track. If it's true that Alberta Ballet now has 27 dancers, that means it's larger than the Royal Winnipeg Ballet for the first time. I'm glad Alberta's oil revenue has finally turned into something useful.

Hello! I'm very happy to have discovered this forum. Though I have lived in western Canada for many years, I am a native New Yorker and consider myself fortunate to remember the days when great companies filled the stage of the Met all summer long. I'm pretty sedentary now, but my first career was as a dancer (modern, mind you). I'm still an avid dance fan, though my viewing tastes have definitely shifted back to ballet, my first love. I do my best to keep up with developments in the ballet world, watching as many DVDs as I can get my hands on and taking in performances whenever I travel, which isn't nearly as often as I'd like! If there are any Alberta Ballet subscribers out there, I'd particularly enjoy trading impressions with you.

Does anyone know anything about Yukichi Hattori's decision to join Alberta Ballet? Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Alberta Ballet and have the highest respect for its artistic standards, but I'm still amazed that a dancer would trade in a soloist position with the Hamburg Ballet for Calgary, especially since he was such a favourite of John Neumeier's. I see that Galien Johnston is also making the move from Hamburg to Calgary. I suppose Albertans ought to be grateful!