volcanohunter
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Posts posted by volcanohunter
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Alastair Macaulay notes that owing to the indisposition (but not injury) of Khaniukova, the opening-night cast featured Shevchenko as Giselle, Tiutiunnyk as Albrecht, with Gogidze as Myrtha.
(He also produced a quick review.)
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The Australian Ballet sent out an e-mail announcing that World Ballet Day will take place on November 2 this year. With only two of the original five companies remaining, and a nine-hour time difference between eastern Australia and the UK, it will probably be difficult to produce a continuous stream of programs, but I expect there will be a glut of company classes taking place simultaneously in the Central European zone.
QuoteWorld Ballet Day returns on Wednesday 2 November 2022 to unite the dance community across the globe.
Over the course of the day, rehearsals, classes and behind-the-scenes exclusives will be streamed for free across 6 continents, offering glimpses of ballet’s biggest stars and up-and-coming performers.
Following on from the success of last year – which saw over 50 companies take part – it will showcase the very best of the art form, both in terms of its long history and its vibrant future.
The Australian Ballet will open the day at 11am. Join us on YouTube to watch for free.
Visit australianballet.com.au/world-ballet-day or follow us on social media for updates.
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Today the Vienna State Opera began its streaming season with Bizet's Carmen, starring Elīna Garanča, Piotr Beczała, Slávka Zámečníková and Roberto Tagliavini, and conducted by Yves Abel.
These streams are usually available for about three days. Registration is required, but free and very simple (e-mail and password).
https://play.wiener-staatsoper.at/event/c7fc91f9-caf6-4c52-b28d-6eeb61314ab0
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His colleagues are reporting that Oleksandr Shapoval, formerly a leading soloist of the National Ballet of Ukraine, who danced with the company from 1993 to 2021 and subsequently taught partnering at the Kyiv Ballet School, was killed in battle early this morning in the Donetsk region.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CianuWMoy4T/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CiacYFTDR05/
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Olga Smirnova is rehearsing Neumeier's Third Symphony of Gustav Mahler with the Hamburg Ballet, apparently the "angel" of the last two movements.
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Here's a photo of the ROH curtains.
Close-up on the second slide
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Perhaps someone can find a permanent link, but on Instagram stories I've seen photos of the Royal Opera House curtain with the "EiiR" initials on the lower inside corners covered in black fabric and awaiting new letters.
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On Monday, September 26th at 9:30 am Eastern, the National Ballet of Canada will livestream company class taught by AD Hope Muir. The stream is free, but registration is required. The link is in the tweet below:
I watched Muir teach her first "class on stage" (an annual tradition in Toronto) in March, and her class was very interesting. Combinations of steps were often unusual, such as putting in a fondu where dancers expect a rond de jambe en l'air. There was lots of work sur le coup-de-pied at the barre, with emphasis on speed and clear footwork in the center.
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The Royal Opera House canceled its programs yesterday, and it must have been a last-minute change given that Queen Elizabeth's death was announced at 6:30 pm, and Don Giovanni was supposed to begin a half hour later. (The relevant tweet was posted at exactly 7:00 pm.) Otherwise performances seem to be going ahead as planned, apart from the day of the funeral.
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Oops. I had actually meant to post the link to Ratmansky's Zoom conversation on September 7th here.
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On Friday, September 16th, PBS Great Performances will air Black Lucy and the Bard, performed by the Nashville Ballet. Based on Caroline Randall Williams' book and Paul Vasterling's ballet Negro Lucy, Redux.
As always, check local listing.
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/black-lucy-and-the-bard-about/13909/
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The London Ballet Circle is hosting a Zoom conversation with Ratmansky tomorrow, September 7th, at 7:00 pm BST/2:00 pm Eastern. Tickets for non members cost £5.
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Detailed casting has been posted:
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I haven't the foggiest notion about the sort of people who own £41 million mansions in Kensington Gardens. For several years whenever I saw an episode of Bilet v Bolshoi, it began by acknowledging the sponsorship of the Blavatnik Family Foundation. I had no idea what that was and assumed the sponsor was domestic.
On the one hand journalists write that Blavatnik keeps a low profile.
On the other hand, buildings are named or renamed after him:
"In 2016, he donated a tidy (confidential) sum to London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, which renamed the entrance hall of its new extension for him, and Tate Modern’s Switch House extension was renamed the Blavatnik Building after he donated £50 million. In 2020, he donated £10 million to the Courtauld Institute in London; the year after, he put up nearly half the funds to buy a £20.1 million rare manuscript collection for the U.K. organization Friends of the National Library."
https://www.artnews.com/art-collectors/top-200-profiles/len-blavatnik/
Whatever the needs of the Nureyev Foundation, Blavatnik could cover them without putting a dent in his fortune.
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P S. Until mid-July the Bolshoi's TV program "Ticket to the Bolshoi" began with the acknowledgement: "This film was created with charitable support from the Blavatnik Family Foundation," but in the most recent episode it was gone, which I suppose to mean that Blavatnik is trying to distance himself from Russia and accusations that he made his fortune thanks to Putin.
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On 5/12/2022 at 3:56 AM, California said:
Still not clear what funds are being raised for, other than (possibly) the Nureyev Foundation.
One of the gala's "producers" is the UK's richest man, Leonard Blavatnik, whose philanthropy and political donations have come under scrutiny repeatedly. Personally, I wouldn't be inclined to spend money on the gala in any way, shape or form.
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The Nureyev gala will be available on demand on Marquee TV from September 6. I'm guessing for subscribers?
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In her Instagram stories Igone de Jongh has posted a tiny clip of Christine Shevchenko rehearsing the pas de deux with Alexis Tutunnique.
Also, posts indicate that Elizaveta Gogidze and Oleksii Kniazkov will dance the matinee on September 17.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch89BvdjsZI/
This production has been a huge opportunity for Gogidze, a strong and versatile dancer with lots of personality, but whose biggest role thus far has been Myrtha (which she's also dancing in this production). The National Ballet of Ukraine favors tall, elongated leading women, so she has been shut out of principal roles thus far, but Ratmansky is putting her technique to good use, as you can see on the third slide, where she does all 14 entrechats that the music allows at high speed:
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I'm certainly not accusing you of that! But I can see from reactions by people who actually lived under Gorbachev that they really bristle at the hagiographies being printed about him, because they get the sense that the deaths of their compatriots are ignored and count for nothing, and because they are sick and tired of facile westsplaining by people who never experienced what they did. (An especially easy trap to fall into when observing comfortably from across an ocean.)
If Gorbachev is being lauded for a "bloodless" end to the Cold War, I have to point out that it was not bloodless, that he advocated "openness" but sometimes resorted to obscurantism when the former really mattered, and that he "refrained from violence," except when he didn't.
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8 hours ago, Fosca said:
Germans are eternally grateful for a peaceful reunion of their country.
Yes, this accounts for the diversity of reactions to Gorbachev's death.
Tbilisi in 1989
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-04-11-mn-1600-story.html
Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, even though what happened in Azerbaijan at the beginning of that year was an unholy mess.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-01-23-mn-590-story.html
I get the uncomfortable feeling that since there was no violent crackdown against central Europeans, people lionize Gorbachev, overlooking what happened further east, because it happened to lesser humans.
As for ballet, Londoners queued for days for Bolshoi tickets in 1956, when Gorbachev was working for the Komsomol in Stavropol. By 2019 the queues were long gone, and the presenters were offering a discount on Bright Stream tickets.
I absolutely acknowledge that Balanchine first entered the Kirov repertoire in the late 1980s, in what, I suppose, was an attempt to repatriate him.
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I'm sure the relevant news reports can be accessed from the NYT.
On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl's fourth reactor exploded. The following day Sweden, not the USSR, reported elevated radiation. On May 1, 1986, May Day parades took place in Ukraine and Belarus despite the radioactive cloud hovering overhead. It would be difficult to overestimate how much the handling of the disaster undermined public trust in the Soviet government.
In December 1986 he replaced the head of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR with an ethnic Russian with absolutely no connection to Kazakhstan. The protests that followed were quelled a few days later, but it's still unclear exactly how many protesters were killed.
On January 11, 1991, Soviet Army tanks from Pskov rolled into Lithuania. Lithuanians refer to January 13, 1991, as Bloody Sunday. It was civilians against the military. January 13th is marked annually in Lithuania as Defenders of Freedom Day. The casualties were miniscule compared to what is happening in Ukraine now, but it nevertheless was an armed attempt to force Lithuania back into the USSR.
Russians despise Gorbachev for "losing" their empire and the economic chaos and lawlessness that followed his rule. Other peoples who lived in the USSR despise him for his clumsy attempts to deny them their independence.
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Let's not forget that Gorbachev tried to cover up the nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl plant, and hundreds of thousands of people, who hadn't been told what happened, marched in May Day parades in irradiated towns and cities. He sent tanks into Vilnius in an attempt to thwart Lithuanian independence and ordered the violent dispersal of protests in Riga, Tbilisi and Almaty.
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Dance producer Paul Godfrey, currently working on bringing the United Ukrainian Ballet and Ratmansky's Giselle to London, has a more inside view than most:
"By the mid 1990s Godfrey was working with the Kirov and Bolshoi, managing their tours to the Coliseum and the Opera House, overseeing both technical production and management.
During a period of 10 years or so Godfrey brought many Russian and Eastern European ballet companies to the UK and produced around 150 performances a year.
When the Russia-Ukraine conflict began, Godfrey knew it would be the end of an era for his work. 'Like everyone else I tried to persuade myself that the war wasn’t going to happen. I was due to be working with the Bolshoi and had a tour lined up which was cancelled.
'Simply put, on 24 February 2022, it was goodbye to 35 years of my life. I knew I would never get to work with the Bolshoi again. There was no time for sadness, regret or doubt.
'Those relationships would change. A huge number of people left Russia, but many are there still there keeping quiet and unable to speak.'
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Godfrey is grateful to have had the opportunity to work with and for the [UUB] dance company. 'Of course the long-term goal is to disband, we don’t want to keep everyone as refugees, but at least these dancers will go back home having worked with some of the world’s top coaches and choreographers.'"
https://www.thejc.com/life-and-culture/all/dancing-for-ukraine-ballet-company-made-up-of-refugees-from-the-war-to-perform-giselle-at-the-london-coliseum-2LFZGizpPIgPZ9mz9zza9n -
Because I'm not sure she's getting enough credit in the English-language press, I think it's important to recognize that the United Ukrainian Ballet is the brainchild of Igone de Jongh. She was touring the Netherlands with her own show when the bombs began raining down on Ukraine, and her stage partners, National Ballet of Ukraine dancers Stanislav Olshanskyi and Alexis Tutunnique (Oleksii Tiutiunnyk), suddenly became refugees. She found sponsors, received permission to turn the former premises of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague into a rehearsal space/living quarters/day care, brought in Kylián and Ratmansky to work with the troupe and quickly organized performances of Giselle in the Netherlands and London, a tour of Swan Lake in Australia and a bunch of other stuff. I'm quite in awe of her competency, and if the country ever needs it, I suspect she could step in as prime minister of the Netherlands.
Interesting that the Guardian article quotes Vladyslav Detiuchenko because he is a modern dancer, a good one, and he probably never expected to be leaping about as a peasant in Giselle.
These features are Dutch, but the dancers were interviewed in English.
I'm sure the relevant news reports can be accessed from the NYT.
Sarah Lane
in Dancers
Posted
Thanks to our naomikage for finding this interview.
https://metropolisjapan.com/spreading-wings-swan-lake/