volcanohunter

It's Day One of the Prix de Lausanne. The stream is hosted by Cynthia Harvey and Jason Beechey.

Girls' class taught by Clairemarie Osta, girls' variations coached by Monique Loudières, boys' contemporary class taught by Armando Braswell.

The Stuttgart Ballet has been forced to cancel performances of Mayerling this weekend.

Currently venues in Ontario are capped at 50% capacity. As of March 14th they should be back to 100%. Therefore, the National Ballet of Canada is switching around its schedule so that the mixed bill of Elite Syncopation, After the Rain and new ballets by Alysa Pires and Siphesihle November will play to 50% houses (ditto for A Streetcar Named Desire), while 100% of tickets will be on sale for The Sleeping Beauty.

The Twitter account Dancer on Film (discovered thanks to @naomikage) is a great source for cheerful dance videos. For example, Joan Leslie and Tom Patricola doing "Somebody Loves Me."

I've seen outbursts at the stage door, although they weren't directed at the entire corps.

Similar scenes of the corps being reamed out are present in other behind-the-scenes news reports and in "Bilet v Bol'shoi" TV programs produced (amazingly) in house.

On 1/23/2022 at 7:35 PM, On Pointe said:

The Bolshoi has bought into the aesthetics of rhythmic gymnastics for its female dancers

Can we actually call it an aesthetic? It seems more like an anti-aesthetic to me. I often say that ballet suffers from a bad case of not seeing the forest for the trees. I, for one, think that ballet's current ideals of line and proportion are not objectively beautiful and should be reevaluated honestly. It often happens that insular fields gradually develop ticks and mannerisms, which are accepted by the initiated, but which appear odd or peculiar to the outsider. I think of this when I see the strange twitches of English-style ballroom dancing or the bizarre gestures of synchronized swimming (both of which I may catch a glimpse of, maybe, once in a decade).

Everyone in ballet would probably agree that on a stretched foot, the top of the big toe's metatarsal should line up with the ankle bone. Difficult to stand on pointe otherwise. If a stiff ankle prevents a dancer from stretching his toes at least level with his shin, we would probably agree that this is not a nice line. But does it follow that bulging insteps are desirable? Beyond that, is it really a good thing for a dancer's stretched toes to be level with the back of the heel rather than the ankle? Ballet values flexibility. The bulging insteps and hyperextended knees often come with the bargain. I think it would be wrong, though, to assume that this necessarily has to be the case. Among the Bolshoi's leading women, Alexandrova, Kaptsova, Nikulina, Shipulina, Stashkevich, Stepanova, Kretova and Vinogradova do not have hyperextended joints. None of them has tight hamstrings. They were all there before Vaziev arrived six years ago and began favoring exaggerated physiques.

I think we now see that a dancer can be too tall, too slender, with a head that's too small and body that's too plaint to be stable. They're called "willowy," which is like a euphemism for elongated, angular and emaciated.

Personally, I dislike banana feet and hyperextended knees--a lot. I don't like the meandering, wavy (un)lines, because they dilute the visual outline of the body. I think of the impact of Zizi Jeanmaire's rapier-like legs in Carmen and how Alessandra Ferri, for all her dramatic skill, looked flaccid in the same choreography. I think banana feet look terrible in chaînés, and how is the corkscrew effect of a hyperextended knee during a pirouette any better than a bent knee? I remember seeing Claudio Coviello doing double tours in Giselle with his toes stretched so hard that they pointed sideways, his feet like criss-crossing sickles. It was not a pretty sight.

Often times the conventions don't even make sense. Princess Aurora begins the Rose Adage on stage left, with her suitors standing to her right. So she does an à la seconde with her right leg to six o'clock and gives each of them in turn an unobstructed view of her crotch. What sort of a courting ritual is that? Basta!

On 1/23/2022 at 7:35 PM, On Pointe said:

The corps looks like an ensemble of beautiful clones,  with very little personality on view.

Indeed, the Bolshoi's corps now dances like joyless little automatons. Little wonder, given how the AD screams at them. 

On 1/23/2022 at 8:47 PM, Drew said:

The Bolshoi of the 60s/70s is long gone--like the NYCB of that era. Vaziev may be injecting more of his own aesthetic into the company (for good or ill) vis-a-vis his more immediate predecessors but the company he came into was already a different one from the Bolshoi of Maximova etc.

Watching the various films of Spartacus in chronological order, it's undeniable that each new iteration is weaker than the one that came before. However, it's not as though a distinctive Moscow style was entirely gone by the 1980s. Dancers like Alexandrova, Shipulina and, on the other end of the height scale, Kaptsova are distinctively Bolshoi in style. They are all now in their 40s, but the point is that they joined the company in the late 1990s and came into their own in this century. 

I firmly believe that Vaziev has no right to inject his own sham aesthetic into the Bolshoi. If a Balanchine or Neumeier or Maillot builds/transforms a company into a vehicle for his own choreography and artistic vision, that's one thing. But directors of great and venerable institutions like the Paris Opera Ballet or the Royal Danish Ballet or the Bolshoi are caretakers of a stylistic legacy that must be preserved, and they have no business imposing their fetishes and preoccupations on them. Under Vaziev the Bolshoi style is being eradicated at a rapid pace, although it was already taking place under Filin, who also liked importing the hyperextended, trained somewhere other than the Moscow Academy.

On 1/24/2022 at 3:27 AM, Drew said:

...when Tikhomirova took the stage as the Neopolitan Princess in the ballroom scene. The difference between her and the other dancers was palpable--she danced her solo with such life and rhythmic energy that the other dancers looked faded and dull.

Vaziev has very little use for Tikhomirova. She was favored by Filin, but she no longer dances many of the principal roles she once did. She still dances Ramzé, Prudence in Lady of the Camellias and occasionally Olga in Onegin. Possokhov made the role of Polina in The Seagull on her, although it is a quasi-character role on heels. (In any case, Tikhomirova's performance is a caricature, whereas her alternate, Anastasia Meskova, is excellent and very true to life; you instantly recognize a sort of woman we all know well.) Tikhomirova no longer dances the Sylph (which was always misguided casting) or Swanilda, Gamzatti or the cabriole variation, Marie, Ratmansky's Mireille de Poitiers or Ballerina, the pas de trois from Swan Lake... Myrtha would seem an obvious role, but no. She often appears as the Street Dancer. As strange as it may seem, Vaziev doesn't seem much interested in women who can jump.

Like Maria Vinogradova. Apart from Igor Tsvirko, promoted to principal dancer for services rendered, the dancers Vaziev has been advancing are not recognizably Muscovite. The person who earned a promotion to principal dancer but didn't get it is Vinogradova. Not that I'm a great fan, but her work over the past year in Orlando, The Seagull and Master and Margarita, her technical strength, versatility and the number of times she danced two performances in a row should have been strong arguments in her favor. Her extensions are at least as high as Zakharova's. But Vaziev doesn't seem interested in a dancer of Moscow schooling with straight legs and a big jump. (I don't really like the flattened fingers of the Moscow school either, but it is part of the style.)

By my count, I have seen the Bolshoi Ballet 97 times since 1979, although the largest proportion of those performances have come in the last few years and in Moscow. I missed all of last season, but I have been back since the borders reopened to American tourists. I have seen all of the company's principals and soloists, so my opinions are based on my live experiences. When I attended Don Quixote in October I was hoping for a different Queen of the Dryads, but I was there to see someone else. Experience has taught me to be wary of Vaziev's protégés. His newest find horrified me, and I won't be seeing her again if I can help it. The discombobulated Italian fouettés and the legs flying up in the diagonal of oversplit non-jumps made me want to cover my eyes. I haven't been inclined to follow up by watching videos.

There are a number of Bolshoi dancers I avoid if possible, including one I once came close to booing. I am no fan of Smirnova. Zakharova also. I have seen her, of course, but there were just as many times when my tickets to her performances were returned, re-sold or unused. I'm neutral on most of the dancers, but have enormous affection for a handful of the 20+ year veterans now being pushed aside, and with them the Bolshoi style, which is criminal.

On 1/23/2022 at 1:30 PM, Buddy said:

I didn’t realise that the Bolshoi doesn’t have a Coryphee level above Corps de Ballet

The Bolshoi does have a coryphée rank. It is one of three ranks within the corps de ballet: artist, artist first class, artist first class - coryphée. Incoming corps members may be hired for any one of those levels. In her day, Angelina Vorontsova, for example, was hired as a coryphée. To look at a list of the Bolshoi's corps, it is impossible to determine to which category each dancer belongs. Prior to 2015 the Bolshoi published a full company list at the back of the souvenir programs for each production, the ones the ushers call "librettos." On those lists the coryphées were teased out and listed between soloists and corps. Traditionally, there were about 25 of them. The most recent list I have is from 2014. Among those dancers, two are now soloists, one is a first soloist, and one is a leading soloist. About half of the remainder have retired, and the others are still coryphées.

1 hour ago, its the mom said:

I believe there were several she invited as "guest artists" and they ended up joining the company. I am sure there are others, but those that come to mind are Jurgita Dronina, Jeffrey Cirio, Gabriele Frola, and Emma Hawes.

It's not unreasonable for dancers to want to "test drive" a company before moving. In the case of Dronina and Frola, they initially maintained dual allegiance to the National Ballet of Canada. And you can understand why Dronina might have been somewhat frustrated in Toronto. For example, James Kudelka declined to cast her in his (horrid) Swan Lake, while ENB gave her Odette-Odile. When Covid and quarantine restrictions made a trans-Atlantic career impractical, Dronina opted for Toronto; no doubt she had to consider what was best for her family. Frola severed ties with Toronto and chose London. A number of dancers have left the National Ballet of Canada in recent years, so Dronina, Frola and Hawes were not alone in seeking greener pastures.

Not all ballets are keepers. But I wonder how many of Tomasson's 195 commissions are still being performed. (Does that number include his own works?) It will also be interesting to see how many of Rojo's commissions will stick after she has left ENB.

5 hours ago, BalanchineFan said:

Most ballets rehearse with a rehearsal pianist, but I don't think that's possible with the vocal music in Liebeslieder, or at least not possible to the extent that NYCB usually rehearses with piano. 

Brahms wrote more four-hands piano music than any other composer. He produced four-hand versions of all his major works, including his symphonies, overtures, string quartets, even Ein deutsches Requiem and Liebeslieder Walzer. The ballet absolutely could be prepared with only rehearsal pianists. Singers are also total pros at learning independently, and they come to rehearsals completely prepared, knowing their parts top to bottom, backwards and forwards. You'd be amazed at how little time they need for rehearsal before a show. One day with the dancers and each other would be sufficient. But the choreography would demand a lot of rehearsal time, and sadly it's not a ballet in constant rotation. I agree that it's a perfect "pod" ballet, so I hope the management takes that into consideration when planning outbreak-proof repertoire.

In this case the stream was up a bit longer, I'd guess about 60 hours, but sadly not forever. I watched the full program four times and Liebeslieder seven times in total. It was a fabulous way to spend the weekend. 

For me Liebeslieder is always an extremely potent incentive to return to New York. (And I know NYCB would never consider performing the piece without singers, but there is a strictly four-hands version of the score.)

In an interview published in the Globe and Mail Rojo insists she never "poaches" dancers from other companies. (Indeed, this happens a lot in Russia but is considered unethical in the West.) So any new "star" arrivals would apply at their own initiative, and it's been pointed out that this happened frequently under Tomasson.

But she also talked about imitating the way theater companies approach Shakespeare productions, so I would expect a lot of "reimagined" classics, budget permitting. 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/article-montreal-born-dancer-tamara-rojo-plans-on-opening-the-conversation-as/ 

Is the pay better?

Madama Butterfly from Valencia, with Marina Rebeka in the title role

It's common in programs to denote a maternity leave with an asterisk, but I imagine it's up to the discretion of the dancer. Some may be superstitious about announcing their pregnancies, others would prefer to avoid speculation about the reason for their absence. 

I think a legitimate question is whether Copeland will be able to return to the stage. She will turn 40 in the autumn, and returning to performance shape at that point won't be easy.

As of this moment, the Robbins/Childs/Balanchine program is still streaming from Vienna. I've watched it four times. Liebeslieder Walzer I've now watched five times.

https://play.wiener-staatsoper.at/event/0a2c4bf1-21f0-4992-8635-fe0489d76e31 

If things didn't work out for her under Rojo in London, how likely is it that Kochetkova would follow her to San Francisco?

I have seen Sergeenkova and she fills me only with shock-horror, a example of what happens when "desirable" qualities are taken to their extreme. But Vaziev openly says that he intends to turn her into the new Zakharova: just like Zakharova made her mainstage debut under his directorship while still a student, so did Sergeenkova 25 years later, last spring as the Queen of the Dryads. Of course the young Zakharova also filled me with shock-horror, but she did move with basic coordination. Two and a half generations on, everything is that much worse. Severely hyperextended knees, feet so flexible that Sergeenkova needs to wear a very hard (hence loud) shoe with a very high vamp and a big elastic across the instep, so that on pointe her foot looks like a question mark rather than a smooth curve leading to the platform. Naturally, she can turn her pelvis inside out, but these extensions seem disconnected to her torso, her arms are angular and gawky in more taxing technical passages (though this may improve if she gains more strength), and of course there is the 210-degree, drop-crotch split jump with zero elevation. After I saw her Queen of the Dryads I determined that I would never see her in anything else. If this is the future of ballet, I quit.

What is truly distressing is that ballet fetishizes some physical qualities so much that it seems not to have noticed that they have veered into the freakish. There is no more "line," only angles and bows, harmonious alignment has been lost as spines are curved and twisted and arms placed into awkward positions to accommodate ridiculous à la secondes, rail-thin dancers with weak cores resemble marionettes whose limbs seem disconnected to their torsos.

None of this is really Sergeenkova's fault; it's the body nature gave her. But these grotesque distortions have been encouraged by her teachers, and sadly they are prized by the man who (tragically) runs the world's largest ballet company.

On 12/29/2021 at 8:16 AM, volcanohunter said:

Well, I'm beside myself with anticipation. On January 14, God willing, the Vienna State Ballet will livestream Jerome Robbins' Other Dances, Lucinda Childs' Concerto and George Balanchine's Liebeslieder Walzer. 19:30 CET/1:30 pm Eastern. These are usually available on demand for 24 hours after the livestream.

https://play.wiener-staatsoper.at/event/0a2c4bf1-21f0-4992-8635-fe0489d76e31

I have to say, I didn't know what to expect from Martin Schläpfer's leadership, especially after seeing his own ballets, but I'm sold on his programming.

The cast for the performance streaming now:

Other Dances
Hyo-Jung Kang, Davide Dato
Igor Zapravdin

Concerto
Marie Breuilles, Natalya Butchko, Laura Cislaghi, Sveva Gargiulo, François-Eloi Lavignac, Duccio Tariello, Daniel Vizcayo

Liebeslieder Walzer
Claudine Schoch, Roman Lazik; Elena Bottaro, Denys Cherevychko; Liudmila Konovalova, Zsolt Török; Maria Yakovleva, Masayu Kimoto

Yipee! The house is streaming. Here are the casts for today's performance:

Other Dances
Hyo-Jung Kang, Davide Dato
Igor Zapravdin

Concerto
Marie Breuilles, Natalya Butchko, Laura Cislaghi, Sveva Gargiulo, François-Eloi Lavignac, Duccio Tariello, Daniel Vizcayo

Liebeslieder Walzer
Claudine Schoch, Roman Lazik; Elena Bottaro, Denys Cherevychko; Liudmila Konovalova, Zsolt Török; Maria Yakovleva, Masayu Kimoto

Sonatine is included on the New York City Ballet in Paris disc, filmed in 2016 with Megan Fairchild and Joaquin De Luz.

In Gerdt's day, male dancers nearly always wore wigs.

And not just the 50-somethings.

The practice continued for decades. (Photo from 1950)

In the performance of La Bayadère broadcast from La Scala, the dancers weren't masked on stage but the supers were, as was much of the orchestra. (At higher rate than in the pit of the Vienna State Opera, in any case.) There were also no children in the dance of the Golden Idol, and the two young girls in the Manu dance were replaced by adults. Regardless of the measures taken, the premiere had to be delayed by a week, two subsequent performances were canceled and five others have been postponed.

I am willing to take Tamara Rojo at her word when she says the reason for the delay is lost rehearsal time because of Covid infections within the company. New York City Ballet has delayed the start of its winter season for the same reason.

Calling off performances on 18-20 January, refunding tickets or reassigning them to other dates, only to reinstate those dates and cancel performances on 13-16 January instead looks nothing like a deliberate strategy to consolidate tickets. Being box office coordinator must be an awful job these days.

The National Ballet of Canada has postponed performances that were scheduled for the first weekend of February in Ottawa.

The Asami Maki Ballet has cancelled a performance of Don Quixote scheduled for January 8th because of a confirmed infection and several other dancers feeling poorly.