volcanohunter

Although I hate the idea, paper playbills will gradually disappear. There have been times when I have pulled out my phone during a pause to read a digital program. It's inevitable that if venues give viewers a QR code instead of a printed program, phone use inside auditoriums will increase, especially since a lit screen is easier to read in the dark than glossy paper. It's a repeat of performing arts organizations encouraging audiences to tag them and use hashtags on social media posts. This inevitably resulted in more people taking photos and videos during performances, since it was undeniably exciting to be reposted by a company or star performer with a large online following. And the internet is addictive. I can still remember attending the Proms at Royal Albert Hall in the summer of 2016 during the Pokémon Go craze and seeing a man directly in my sight line playing it straight through the concert. He probably wasn't the only one.

It's a hideous Muscovite tradition.

I'll preface this by saying that I have seen Julian MacKay dancing in the flesh only once, in Chopiniana, and I was not especially impressed. That piece is stylistically challenging, and I didn't think he'd grasped it. But recently when watching him as "Romeo" in the stream of Ratmansky's Tchaikovsky Overtures, I was impressed with how he imbued a grand pirouette with dramatic meaning, something Osiel Gouneo hadn't managed as "Hamlet." The overwrought "Spanish" elements in the variation are probably a consequence of his Russian training, but he is nowhere near as preposterous as, say, Vladislav Lantratov or Denis Rodkin in this pas de deux. Their performances are begging for a drinking game: down a shot each time Basilio shakes his hair. I was more bothered by Madison Young's variation, specifically the bent leading leg in the glissade before each saut de chat.

Yes, they said it was John Neumeier who asked whether the curtain could be left up because he was convinced it would help sustain the ballet’s mood for the audience. (Neumeier always watches his company’s shows from the audience--front row, house-right side in Hamburg, so he has a thorough understanding of audience behavior.)

Smirnova is not dancing the lead in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's Frida this month, but on 18 February she is performing at the Dance for Ukraine gala at the London Paladium. https://lwtheatres.co.uk/whats-on/dance-for-ukraine-in-aid-of-the-arts-in-ukraine/ And on 17 March she is scheduled to appear at the Ballet Icons Gala at the London Coliseum, although the casting for that gala is notoriously "fluid." https://balleticonsgala.com/

The final gala will stream today at 15:00 CET (9:00 am Eastern). Watching requires a Medici.TV account, but, if I understand correctly, not a subscription. https://www.medici.tv/en/ballets/prix-de-lausanne-2024-rising-stars

The final

The company just posted this little excerpt. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/87hWMyw4f7uQTVR5/?mibextid=xfxF2i

Round one:

Day 4 morning session Added: afternoon session Day 4 highlights:

Day Three highlights Full morning session Added: afternoon session

Rivera by Al Hirschfeld

A huge loss. May she dance for eternity.

Day 2 highlights Day 2 morning session Day 2 afternoon session

For completists, Day One in its entirety

Dancers already know that they are thought to lack A, B or C, because they are told so by artistic staff and/or because they are not cast in certain roles. But I agree that it's a bad idea to raise red flags for the audience, even when a choreographer is confident that a dancer will exceed expectations and surpass perceived limitations.

I assume you mean publicly. Internally these sort of discussions would happen all the time.

Here are highlights of Day One of the Prix de Lausanne, including classes taught by Clairemarie Osta, Julio Bocca and Elisabeth Platel. Hosted by Cynthia Harvey and Jason Beechey.

The credits listed Naxos and medici.tv. I assume that eventually there will be a DVD/Blu-ray and that the film will be added to the Medici library. I can understand why Pathé Live did not want to dilute the audience in any way yesterday. It's been two years since it last presented a ballet, and it has to persuade cinema chains that there is an audience for it. With the exception of a single specialized cinema in Toronto, Canada hasn't seen a Royal Ballet cinemacast for years. The largest chain, Cineplex, had dropped the Royal Ballet (possibly because the ROH insisted on screenings of operas as well, but the chain has a contract with the Met, so that was impossible), but continued showing the Bolshoi. (In my experience, attendance for both companies had been equally modest.) During the 2020-21 season the Bolshoi was open, but cinemas in most of the world were not, so there were no new broadcasts. Rather than showing the repeats Pathé Live was offering, in the autumn of 2020 Cineplex opted for several Australian Ballet performances from the single season of cinema presentations the company attempted a few years earlier. (But which was not continued, presumably, because the audience was too small to make the enterprise profitable. Those films are now in the Medici library.) Cinemas were open in my neck of the woods, but while I attended those Australian Ballet screenings (wearing a KF94 mask in a sparsely occupied auditorium), I can't imagine that they were especially profitable, because most cinemas in the country were closed. By December 2020 they were closed in this area as well. I've added this long preamble to say, that when Bolshoi cinemacasts returned (briefly) in 2021-22, the Cineplex chain did not carry them. Ballet simply disappeared from Canadian cinemas, so even this Giselle was not a given.

Interesting. I would be extremely surprised if anything filmed for broadcast in 2023 were not HD or Ultra HD. I looked at the description of a forthcoming National Theatre presentation, and it doesn't say anything about being filmed in HD either. I assumed that was a given. I also wish a full cast list were available. The credits zoomed past too quickly at the end. I have always thought that watching ballet on a cinema screen comes closest to recreating the kinetic energy of a live performance. I got a very visceral sense of this during the first variation of the peasant pas, and it felt fabulous. I hadn’t seen a ballet in a movie theater since the autumn of 2020. In between I watched a lot of streams at home, and I'm grateful the option exists. But watching at a cinema is a far more exciting experience. There were also about a dozen viewers at my screening in an auditorium that accommodates 65 people, including wheelchairs. When I last attended an opera in the same auditorium, I'd say there were about 30-35 viewers, which is up from a year ago. But as I mentioned upthread, the opera played at two other cinemas in the area, and I don't know what attendance was like there. I'm perennially disappointed that I don't see young bunheads at these screenings. In my day, we didn't have classes or rehearsals on Sundays. Presumably they weren't dancing today. P.S. But it has to be said there were very few people at the multiplex, period. It was snowing, my tires were struggling to get any sort of traction, the parking lot was nearly empty, no one was standing in line for popcorn...

Yes, the voucher system is handy for people who don't want to deal with rigmarole of refunds. Although I'm sorry to say that I've received quite a few vouchers along the way.

I'm sorry to read that. I encountered the same thing during the Osipova-Acosta Giselle. Twice! There were no problems at the multiplex, where I attended. In the immediate vicinity there are three cinemas that typically show Met broadcasts, and Giselle played at the smallest among them. There were about a dozen people in attendance, mostly people in their deep retirement years who braved snow and icy roads. The credits listed both Medici TV and Naxos, so I assume at some point the ballet will end up streamed on Medici TV, and Naxos will distribute the DVD, although presumably it will be released on the Bel Air Classiques label.

Mark Monahan interviews Cojocaru.

I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping that you will share your impressions of the performances.

The National Ballet of Ukraine has just begun a tour of Canada, with a program similar to the one it presented in Florida in 2022, featuring soloists and a small corps. The tour is raising funds for the Olena Zelenska Foundation toward humanitarian war relief. Quebec City - January 15 & 16 Montreal - January 17-20 Ottawa - January 21 Toronto - January 24-27 Winnipeg - January 29 Regina - January 31 Saskatoon - February 3 Vancouver - February 5-7 Edmonton - February 10 Calgary - February 11 https://nationalballetukraine.com/