Estelle

Daniil: indeed, this times it seems that the POB's web site would need some updating ! However, Romoli's promotion had been announced on the web site when it happened.

I went to Bordeaux too to see some ballet programs (probably not the same as you, Sophia, as it included some Balanchine ;-) ) and indeed Jude's programming was interesting. Let's see what will happen in court.

I agree about the absence of romantic repertory next season. Some performances of "Paquita" would have been welcome (even though it was danced recently), and it's a pity the Lacotte version of "Coppelia" hasn't been performed by the company (only by the school) for many years. Also there were some other reconstructions of his like "Marco Spada" or "L'Ombre" which might be interesting to stage again. And one name I forgot to mention is Bournonville: it seems that the company hasn't performed any of his works for at least two decades, what a pity (even though the Bournonville style is quite different from the POB style, I think it would be interesting for them to try performing it). Indeed, but some of their works were performed by the POB with great success in the 1980s and (for Robbins) 1990s, and I find that it's a pity they seem to be disappearing from the repertory (all the more as there is about zero opportunity to see them anywhere in France, as there are so few ballet companies and with such a reduced repertory). Actually I'm almost wondering about what can really be considered as the POB's "historical repertory" today... About Balanchine, well, our opinions differ since he's one of my favorite choreographers . I do like "Jewels", but regret that nothing else by him will be shown.

An article about it in the (London) Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly...1552071,00.html

Well, I see that Leigh replied before me, but in terms of ballet vocabulary, "Le Parc" is not classical at all. Also it has already been programmed very often in the last seasons, and while I find it not unpleasant to watch, for me I think much of its interest comes from the dancers, and not the choreography itself which I find a bit bland... What disappoints me in the next season is not a matter of being "radical" or not, it is that a large part of the company's repertory, and of dance history, is being ignored (and also that many of the works which are programmed have been seen again and again: why not programming other Kylian works than "Bella Figura" and other Balanchine works than "Jewels" ? There are many works which are already in the company's repertory and haven't been danced in quite a while). What about some Ashton, Tudor, Fokine, Nijinska, Robbins... ? But of course you're welcome to disagree, "à chacun ses goûts" Also I wish there could be more ballet companies among the guest companies...

Well, in my opinion the company's policy seems to be going in the same direction as for the present season, I'm afraid: a few classics, and a lot of modern works. I wish I could ! Not everybody has the time and money to travael to see some ballet... I live in Lyon now, and basically haven't seen any performance in months. I couldn't even manage to find the time to attend the POB school program, which was one of the only programs of the season I was interested in seeing Well, I guess one positive side of the next season is that even if I can't manage to go to Paris, I won't have too many regrets... :rolleyes:

http://fr.news.yahoo.com/050331/202/4c99n.html Acording to that article, the director of the Ballet de Bordeaux, Charles Jude, is being accused of moral harassment at the tribunal de Bordeaux by the company soloist Hélène Ballon. She used to be his girlfriend, and accuses him of having been cast far less after their separation, and having been threatened of firing. Another company dancer, Christelle Lara, also accused Jude; (Actually translating the article is not easy for me because I don't know the appropriate law terms in English).

Actually this has been changed recently to 42 for everybody (if I remember correctly, a former female corps de ballet dancers had won a trial because she had protested against gender discrimination about retirement), but the change will be progressive for the dancers who are close to retirement (e.g. some will retire at 44, 43, etc.) I'm not sure of the reason why the ages were different for men and women. I've sometimes read the age limit was chosen in a period when the company didn't have enough men in the corps de ballet, so they preferred to keep them as long as possible, but I'm not sure it's the real reason.

Actually, I do find that season disappointing, and not terribly more exciting than the present one (which is quite awful). Well, there are a few new things like Neumeier's "Lady of the Camellias" or some new Forsythe works, but I'm disappointed that the only Balanchine work they will perform will be "Jewels" which has been already performed a lot of times in recent seasons, and I don't expect much from the Béjart creation considering what his latest creation for POB looked like (the work created for Legris, I don't remember its title- I had found it extremely boring, and a waste of Legris' talents)- and I can't say I have a fond memory of "La petite danseuse de Degas". Also I wonder how successful "Nosferatu" will be, as it wasn't welcomed with much enthusiasm when it was created a few seasons ago... The only program I'd be looking forward to seeing would be the Ecole de danse program. But how strange that it's only the school which dances some Balanchine works like "Divertimento n.15", "Le Tombeau de Couperin" or "Who Cares ?", which would fully deserve to be performed by the company itself ! And the way Lifar is neglected again is quite shameful in my opinion. Do they plan to wait until there is nobody able to restage his ballets ? Also the 20th century neoclassical repertory is quite absent once again (no Robbins, no Tudor, no Fokine, etc.). cygneblanc, I have seen nothing from Le Riche so far, but like you I regret that Martinez and J.G. Bart have not been commissioned some works by the company so far (only for the school or the "Jeunes Danseurs" programs), as they do seem talented, and interested in using the ballet vocabulary. Sorry to sound so grumpy today, but I was so unhappy with the present season that I was looking forward to the announcement of the next one, and that's quite a letdown.

In French, Marius Petipa's last name sounds the same as "petit(s) pas", which means "small step(s)".

michella, as it deals with ballet teaching, I think that your question belongs to our sister site, "Ballet talk for dancers": http://dancers.invisionzone.com/index.php. If you have not already done so, you may want to register there. We ask that, for the sake of consistency, you use the same name in both places. Also, perhaps being a bit more specific would help you get more answers (giving examples, explaining whether you ask that question as a teacher, a parent, a fellow student, etc.)

As Alexandra wrote, I think much of the change was caused by economic reasons rather than artistic ones: for example, in Nancy the Ballet de Lorraine depended on the subsidies of the ministery of Culture, the region and the city, but the city (and perhaps also the region, I don't remember) decided to cut its subsidies, and maintaining a whole ballet company wasn't possible on a reduced budget... Also, I think there has been a lot of lobbying in favor of modern dance companies, and perhaps even some sort of "revenge" against ballet after decades when modern dance in France was almost absent and with very little subsidies... And probably ballet has never really been considered as "as noble" as some other arts like classical music or painting, which lessens its support among politicians, journalists, etc. (for example for decades there were many newspapers without a ballet critic, but just an article here or there by a music or sports (!) critic, and even one I think the state of the French dance critic is quite dreary- a lot of newspapers pay about zero attention to ballet). The only statistics I remember about some dance audience were the statistics for a small modern dance festival in Avignon (Les hivernales), if I remember correctly there was a majority of women but I don't remember the figures, but what striked me the most was in terms of social classes, as the "employés" and "ouvriers" (employees and workers) which are about 55% of the French population made less than 5% of the festival's audience (and the tickets were not especially expensive), while some other categories like students, teachers, "intellectual professions" were far more common among the festival's audience than in the general population. Unfortunately, I've never seen such detailed statistics about the ballet audience. But the modern audience doesn't strike me as far more female than the ballet audience, it might be a bit younger but I'm not sure. Also it probably depends a lot on the company and the dancing style... For example there are a few hip-hop company which probably have quite a lot of teen-aged males (and often from underprivileged backgrounds) in their audience. This is getting a bit off-topic, but as some people mentioned the proportions of males and females in various field of studies, and actually it's striking to see how they can change depending on the period and the country (which makes believe that genetics have very little to do with that), for example the proportion of women among math Ph.D is about 20% in France, while it is much lower in Germany (a country in which, more generally, far fewer women work than in France, partly because the child care system is organized very differently, and working women with young children often are seen very negatively), and much higher in Italy, Portugal, or Serbia (I once shared a room during a math conference with a Serbian young woman who was doing a math PhD in Pennsylvania, and said that when arriving in the US she had been surprised at first to see that there were some special programs to encourage girls and women to study math, because in her home country there actually were more women than men among math students...)

The POB dancer Emmanuel Thibault was born Emmanuel Conjat (he was listed with that name at the POB school). Zizi Jeanmaire's real first name is "Renée" (actually I don't know why she changed her first name to "Zizi", as its meaning in child speak can be a bit, err, embarrassing). Christiane Vlassi, Claude Bessy, Fanny Gaida and Carole Arbo (former POB principals) were born respectively Christiane Vlassi, Claude Durand, Caroline Arbonies and Stéphane-Laure Gaida (actually I found the last three ones in an administrative list of people who got the Ordre National du Mérite).

Oops, I realize I had missed the "preferably in English or French" part in your first post. There was a big book by Gérard Mannoni, with a lot of photographs by Colette Masson, published by the Editions Plume in the early 1990s, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available any longer. Also there was a special issue of "l'Avant-Scène ballet/danse" in 1985 with articles by many authors. Also Béjart himself has published several books, but they probably focus mostly on his biography.

Don't worry, your post is completely appropriate Are you interested only in books in English, or also in other languages ? There are several books about Béjart in French, but I don't know if the language could be a problem for you.

Effy, the next RDB season seems to be depressingly close to the present POB season: a lack of real classical ballet, no interest for the company's heritage (Bournonville for the RDB, Lifar for the POB), lots of modern works... And some Preljocaj again. I find it really worrying that two of the main ballet companies in the world, with the longest ballet tradition, seem to be so little interested in ballet now.

chrisk217: thanks for the correction, I had used the French word by mistake.

Hi Pamela, I hadn't read you for a while ! Your career is an interesting example indeed. I wonder if there are many examples of former ballet dancers who became dance historians ? Also I guess that it might be difficult to earn one's life that way, depending on the country one lives in... You wrote: Personnally I couldn't imagine a more pleasant activity, but I've always been "un rat de bibliothèque" ;)

Thanks for the explanation, Jane. It really seems that "Le Parc" has become one of the ballets the POB always brings on tour... But as far as I know, Guillem has never performed it, so I don't know how likely she'd be to perform in it. I saw Maurin and Legris in "Le Parc" (I never saw Hilaire and Guérin in it) and, though I didn't like that much the ballet itself, they were very good. Actually I regret not having seen Maurin more often, for example I'd have liked to see her as Giselle.

Naoko: I haven't seen any official announcement about the date yet. From Manuel Legris' site, it seems that Maurin's farewell will be his only performance of the season as Romeo (and I wonder whether it will be in fact his last Romeo ?) but the date is not announced there. Jane: I didn't know the POB will tour to London next season... Are they supposed to perform only "Le Parc", or also other works ? Maybe she will perform it as a guest dancer... Besides the initial two casts (Guérin- Hilaire and Maurin- Legris), I remember that "Le Parc" also was performed by Aurélie Dupont and Yann Bridard, but I don't remember if there were other casts yet...

The following article by Raphaël de Gubernatis deals with the problems of finding new careers for retired ballet dancers: http://www.nouvelobs.com/articles/p2103/a263619.html It mentions some special projects about it, especiall aDvANCE by Philippe Braunschweig (foundator of the concours de Lausanne ), and also a few companies which help their dancers during a transitional period, like the Ballet du Grand-Théâtre de Genève, the Ballet de l'Opéra de Lyon and the Ballets de Monte-Carlo. Some of the new careers mentioned in the article are quite unusual, for example an orthodox pope in Greece (!), a specialist in deaf sign language, a ski instructor, a cook, and even a judge (who managed to get a law degree during her dancing career).

As I had written in a thread about Laurent Hilaire, it is now known that Elisabeth Maurin, who is now 42, will retire next June, performing Juliet in Nureyev's "Romeo and Juliet" (her partner will be Manuel Legris). She joined the POB in 1979, and was promoted to étoile in 1988. She had been on maternity leave for most of the last season, but came back this season, and recently performed in Laura Scozzi's "Les sept péchés capitaux". Here's the official biography of Elisabeth Maurin on the POB web site: http://www.opera-de-paris.fr/?Rub=ToutSavo...ElisabethMaurin and also here's a link to an interview of her in "Dance View" in 2002, by Marc Haegeman: http://www.danceview.org/interviews/maurin.html and a few photographs of her: http://www.ballerinagallery.com/maurin.htm http://www.manuel-legris.com/maurin.html

I agree with you ! Well, the small article did mention he'd continue performing as an "étoile invitée", so there still is some hope to see him on stage. However, he already performed less and less, and not so often in classical roles... And I wonder if he'll dance something else than Romeo and Juliet this season. But for example, if "Liebeslieder Walzer" will be danced again (I hope so, as it has been danced only one season so far, and it was in an ill-conceived program in my opinion, with three modern works), I do hope that he'll dance it again. hockeyfan, thanks for your answer. I guess that Karin Averty was not far from becoming a principal then, but she was in a generation with many extremely talented dancers, and never got promoted, even though she was given quite a lot of principal roles. (Also, in more recent years, she was absent for more than one season because of an injury). I saw her last season in the Choleric movement of "The Four Temperaments" too, and liked her in that role. Actually, it will be her first Juliet... She might be a bit old for that, at 42, but that's a nice gift from the direction to end her POB career !

Ostrich, as Natalia wrote, There is a coat check (vestiaire) at the Paris Opera, but it's not mandatory (and it's free, and tips are forbidden). When one is in a "loge", there is enough room to put the coats in the back of the loge, but when one is in the orchestra seats or the amphitheater, it's really useful because there isn't much room around the seats.

Yes indeed, it's the end of an era... But well, they won't be totally absent, as some of them will be ballet masters (Hilaire, Delanoe) and also some teach at the POB school (including Elisabeth Platel who is its new director). By the way, in which roles did you see Hilaire and Averty ?