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volcanohunter

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Posts posted by volcanohunter

  1. 6 hours ago, Drew said:

    Mr. Drew and I didn't think it looked like HD, and now that I've checked I see it doesn't seem to have been advertised as HD. HD would certainly be better visually,  but other than that and the overly busy camera work during the big corps de ballet sequences in Act II, no complaints from me. 

    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.

    4 hours ago, BayStater said:

    I returned home and declared that I wish attending the ballet was always that easy: a ten-minute drive, I didn't have to dress up, chairs were big and comfy, and parking was free! There were about a dozen adults watching at our suburban multi-plex. I've never been to any of the opera films they also show there, so I don't know how today's attendance compares. 

    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. :dunno:

    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...

  2. 39 minutes ago, Helene said:

    I can’t remember when this happened — maybe a Bolshoi Ballet program or a Met Live in HD — but the Scotiabank multiplex in Vancouver had people outside handing out vouchers for a free ticket to anything except maybe a live boxing broadcast.  I’m surprised the theater didn’t make it good on the spot.

    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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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/ 

  5. 2 hours ago, Drew said:

    And I had been imagining the backstage area is better for a large dance company at the Koch....is that not so?

    Oh yes, the backstage area at City Center is almost nonexistent. The building wasn't designed to be a theater, after all.

  6. Yes, there's no reason why Ailey should make any sort of changes or concessions.

    On 1/11/2024 at 1:58 PM, FauxPas said:

    Also there is a new venue downtown, the Perelman Performing Arts Center near the World Trade Center.  They could do a week there.

    Judging by diagrams, the largest performance space there seats about 450 people and has no orchestra pit, so I have doubts about its suitability for a Nutcracker.

  7. 2 hours ago, Helene said:

    But the only performances in Western Symphony I remember are the Leclercq and d’Amboise film excerpt from the Balanchine doc and Stephanie Saland in the second movement, also on film.

    My memories of the films with Le Clercq, Alexopoulos (Dance in America) and Jaffe are very strong, so the next time around when I saw the ballet with a young Sara Mearns in the rondo, the breakneck tempo just about gave me whiplash. At that point I thought that NYCB's quest for speed had gone too far. 

  8. It will be interesting to see how Ratmansky deals with those pieces of music, which are very slow and not emphatically rhythmic. When choreographing Wartime Elegy he decided to use not only Silvestrov, as originally intended, but added some archival dance music to speed things up a bit. It's difficult to imagine a Ratmansky ballet without allegro.

  9. On the one hand, the stream on January 9th is a great way for those who haven't seen the production to familiarize themselves with it. But from the point of view of the distributors of the new film, the timing is unfortunate. I suspect a lot of people would rather watch at home free of charge rather than trek out into the snow, big screen and Olga Smirnova notwithstanding. 

  10. Certainly it was Bel Air Media that chose to distribute this film. It could have elected not to distribute it. It's dipping its toes back in the ballet-in-cinema market after a two-year hiatus, but it hasn't yet gone full-in by broadcasting a complete season from the Dutch National Ballet (which I would welcome!) or by broadcasting the ballet live, the way it broadcasts the Comédie-Française live.

    Then there's the marketing, with a poster of Olga Smirnova and her name across the top, and the Dutch National Ballet logo in the lower left-hand corner. And the blurb begins with the text "The ultimate romantic ballet, performed by former Bolshoi Ballet principals Olga Smirnova and Jacopo Tissi, who fled Russia and joined Dutch National Ballet, where this ballet is filmed." Never mind that Tissi was a Bolshoi principal for less than two months, that's how the film is being sold to audiences. Although I would have certainly attended, does anyone honestly think that Bel Air Media would have broadcast a performance starring Jessica Xuan and Davi Ramos?

    Actually, the published clips don't make me inclined to see Smirnova's performance. But I will be there with bells on, not just because I like the production, but because ballet-in-cinema is a use-it-or-lose-it proposition. It's frustrating and heartbreaking that the Royal Ballet no longer has distribution in the North American market. The Paris Opera Ballet disappeared from American cinemas almost as soon as it appeared. If this reboot fails, it's unlikely that American distributors or even Pathé Live will try again. 

  11. A thread had been started by @AB'sMom here: 

    I am very glad that Pathé (Live) is returning to broadcasting ballet performances. Smirnova and Tissi had danced in the final Bolshoi live cinemast two years ago. It does show a certain lack of imagination on the part of Bel Air Media that it thinks such a broadcast requires ex-Bolshoi dancers in the leads. There's a lot more to ballet out there.

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