volcanohunter

Laurent Hilaire is recently unemployed. I hope he is being considered for the job. He is somewhat less Nureyev-crazy than, say, Legris, and is less likely to replace existing productions.

It's been four five years since the last Moscow International Ballet Competition (it didn't happen last year because of Covid), so the 14th edition is scheduled for June 3-11, though I suspect it will be a lot less international than usual. So far the only jury member listed is Yuri Grigorovich, though the organizing committee includes both Nikolai Tsiskaridze and Vladimir Urin. (Golly, those meetings must be something.)

https://moscowballetcompetition.com/en/

Also in June, the Bolshoi has scheduled the traditional gala of past Benois laureates, but it appears there will be no "competition" this year, since a performance of Swan Lake has been scheduled on the night the main event should have taken place. So far the Benois site is silent on the matter. I'm guessing the selection of past laureates will be mostly domestic.

Brendan Saye is joining the Vienna State Ballet next season, further depleting the National Ballet of Canada's male ranks.

On 4/1/2022 at 9:26 PM, pherank said:

...variations from classical ballets in its program, which are attributed to the works of Marius Petipa, the outstanding Russian choreographer of French origin, but which in fact were created by the Russian choreographers of the 20-21 centuries - Gorsky, Chabukiani, Balanchine (Balanchivadze), Sergeev, Vainonen, Lopukhov, Gusev, Ermolayev, Grigorovich, Nureyev, Vaganova, Burlaka and others. 

If this is Tsiskaridze's demand to get rid of the awful Soviet accretions in "after Petipa" productions, then I am 100% in favor.

I wouldn't expect a faculty member to react any differently. 

Favoritism at arts competitions is pervasive. The same charge is made against music competitions all the time. Although frankly the most egregious example is the Benois, where jury members also nominate the candidates, often their own subordinates. 

Effective tomorrow Igor Zelensky is resigning as AD of the Bavarian State Ballet, citing family matters. 

https://www.staatsoper.de/igor-zelensky-verlaesst-bayerisches-staatsballett

It is an initiative by the Ministry of Culture.

Sarah Kaufman's piece on "What it's like to be a Russian artist now," including comments by Makarova on Smirnova's decision to leave. ("It is quite a good step, quite courageous and mature to take that drastic step.")

https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/04/01/russian-artists-putin-ukraine/

To be sure, Netrebko can't go back to Russia. But she doesn't live there. Perhaps she spent more time there during the 2020-21 season, when theaters in other countries were closed. But for the past 20 years she has been working primarily in the West.

I'm sure her name is being dragged through the mud on the RUnet right now, and no doubt it's worse than when she acquired Austrian citizenship some 15 years ago. But if things get very hard on her family in Russia, she will be able to get them out. Exit visas haven't been reinstated just yet.

1 hour ago, Marta said:

Demaning purity of position from Russian artists  is not reasonable.

It is not being demanded of the vast majority of Russian artists. Other Russians are singing at the Met right now without issuing statements, as far as I know. Netrebko was different because she aligned herself with Putin during an election campaign. It may have been a purely superficial connection. Perhaps he thought her endorsement would add glamour to his campaign, though it's not as though the election results were ever in doubt. More likely, she thought it would score her points in the corridors of power. Then Putin turned the world upside down, and her employers wanted to know: did her endorsement still stand? She may have been willing to retract it, but she was a bit reluctant to repudiate Gergiev, perhaps because she had been his protégée. The fact is, though, that he is an integral part of the regime, and he became an albatross around her neck.

3 hours ago, pherank said:

I guess the lease is due on that Italian villa.

Oh, but what about the Gergiev fire sale? 

Netrebko says she met Putin only a handful of times, but press reports have pointed out that she endorsed him during the 2012 presidential election. Actually, it was a bit more than that because she was registered as an official campaigner on his behalf, though I have no idea how much campaigning she actually did. Those sorts of details are more than my digestive system can stand. She wasn't always politically neutral, so I can understand why her employers wanted explanations. And yeah, she wants her international career back. It's bound to be more lucrative than what Russian opera houses can offer right now, and she is 50, which is not young for a soprano.

Not surprisingly, Jacopo Tissi is rejoining La Scala Ballet. For all intents and purposes his time as a Bolshoi principal lasted two months.

Anna Netrebko has explicitly condemned the war and is planning to resume performing. So far the Met isn't convinced.

In place of The Art of the Fugue, the Bolshoi will revive Vladimir Vasiliev's Anyuta, which the company hasn't performed in its entirety since 2016.

https://2011.bolshoi.ru/performances/en/11111/

Plenty of the company's dancers have done it before, and it will fill the gaps left by the withdrawal of Ratmansky's ballets.

https://2011.bolshoi.ru/en/performances/14/roles/#all

On 3/27/2022 at 11:52 PM, Drew said:

The funny thing is I just realized a few minutes ago (looking at Instagram) that numerous Russian ballet dancers (prominent and slightly less prominent) in addition to the ones I named above are still posting--were posting today. Some of them are doing Instagram "stories" which don't have comments and only stay up a limited amount of time and disappear....others are posting regular photos etc.

There's this disturbing reporting from the NYT.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nokia-pulled-russia-vast-surveillance-182920313.html

Those dancers ought to be more careful.

I don't know what the "difficulties" are: whether uploads are slow, or the workarounds are failing, or something else.

I've known people with internet addictions. We all know inveterate posters. Some people can't resist the temptation. 

Today I saw a post from a Russian account that suggests Instagram is becoming increasingly difficult to use. Under the circumstances, I would rather not name the account. 

2 hours ago, Drew said:

People on Instagram can read whatever posts they want

Presumably this is precisely the reason for blocking the site. It's not Tutu Tuesday that the government fears. 

I noticed that some dancers whom I don't follow, such as Zakharova and Skorik, have made their accounts private, which I don't think they were before.

The new AD of the Stanislavsky is 25-year-old Maxim Sevagin, a graduate of the Vaganova Academy who joined the company in 2016 and staged a new production of Romeo and Juliet earlier this season. By local standards it was considered radical.

I'm not inclined to stick up for Urin, but Ratmansky also canceled on the Mariinsky, and I don't see anyone criticizing Gergiev about that. And to continue performing works by a choreographer who had withdrawn permission would make all choreographers wary of working there.

Smirnova is not a serf, Russia hasn't reinstated exit visas (yet), and she isn't the first dancer to leave the Bolshoi. Although her departure does seem to be a very sore point. In the Russian press Vaziev was at pains to point out that she hadn't resigned but that had taken unpaid leave. (As though she could return.) That's happened before. Dancers continued to appear on the roster until their contracts ran out. If the Bolshoi immediately removed Smirnova, Tissi and the Brazilian contingent from the roster, it would look like a major exodus.

Gergiev may get this mega-reward for his loyalty, but it will drive the Bolshoi into even greater international isolation.

A couple of weeks ago the Italian press was reporting that Gergiev was trying to offload his 20 (!) properties in Italy. So to compensate he wants control of yet another opera house? And with it command over the careers of a couple of thousand employees?

Now that Gergiev has more time on his hands...

https://operawire.com/putin-invites-valery-gergiev-to-unite-bolshoi-theatre-mariinsky-theatre-compares-west-to-nazi-germany/

What a potential nightmare. 

10 hours ago, silvermash said:

The Paris Opera is organising a Concert for Peace in support of the victims of the conflict in Ukraine on Sunday 27 March at 8pm at the Palais Garnier.
It consists of an evening of ballet, concert and opera.
With the participation of Etoiles Stéphane Bullion, Mathieu Ganio, Dorothée Gilbert and Alice Renavand, First soloist Marion Barbeau, sujet Simon Le Borgne and  two Principal dancers from the National ballet of Ukraine, Katerina Kukhar and Alexander Stoyanov
https://www.operadeparis.fr/en/season-21-22/concerts-and-recitals/concert-for-peace

 

"Pace, pace mio Dio," "Patria oppressa" and "Va pensiero" are tragically appropriate selections. 

If people are being arrested for holding placards with asterisks or nothing at all written on them, eventually the crackdown will reach the VPN users. For now, though, it's very easy to spot people posting on sites that are supposed to be blocked. I guess prolific posters can't help themselves. I hope they won't come to regret it.

I know it works because I've done it myself! The last time I was in Russia, probably for the last time, I turned on my VPN in Amsterdam and it stayed on. I was able to access banned news sites because the interwebs were convinced my phone was in the Netherlands. All the ads I saw were in Dutch.

In truth it would have made more sense to go through a server in Latvia or Finland. I had turned on the VPN in order to use the Wi-Fi at Schiphol Airport more securely, and I forgot to switch locations before my flight. Oops.

Perhaps Khoreva would like the authorities to believe that her accounts are being run from elsewhere. I don't know whether other Russian dancers are still posting openly on sites that are supposed to be blocked.

P.S. VPNs can't circumvent everything. For example, Wikipedia won't let you edit articles while connected to a VPN. Some apps make you jump through dozens of hoops if you're using a VPN.