Estelle

The POB will perform "The Sleeping Beauty" between Nov 25 and Dec 31, at the Opera Bastille.

The detailed casts haven't been announced yet on its official web site:

http://www.opera-de-paris.fr/?Rub=Fiche&Genre=Ballets&Id=711

but here are the dancers who are listed:

-for Aurore: Aurélie Dupont, Marie-Agnès Gillot, Agnès Letestu, Clairemarie Osta, Laëtitia Pujol, Zvetlana Zakharova

-for Désiré: Jean-Guillaume Bart, Manuel Legris, José Martinez, Mathieu Ganio, Roberto Bolle

I've also heard that Mélanie Hurel, Myriam Ould-Braham, Benjamin Pech and Christophe Duquenne will be understudies for the main roles and might dance it, but nothing official has been announced yet.

On Manuel Legris' web site, it is announced that he will perform with Dupont on Dec 24, 27, 29. However, as usual, the dates are likely to be modified at the last minute...

The pairings are likely to be; Pujol/ Bart, Letestu/ Bart or Martinez, Zakharova/ Martinez, Gillot/ Martinez or Bolle, Osta/ Ganio...

My mother was going on about how much the 1st ring box tickets cost her host, and I kept thinking "what a deal!!"... I still don't think she had the amount right... could it really only have been US$100? 

That's getting a little bit off-topic, but the top prices for the program your parents saw were:

-120 euros (=about 150 US$) for the premiere (including the défilé and "Sonatine")

-80 euros (= about 100 US$) for the rest of the series

The top prices for most of the other programs of the season are 80 euros (in Garnier) or 75 euros (in Bastille), with Pina Bausch's "Orphee et Eurydice" being more expensive (130 euros) and a few modern programs and the POB school show being less expensive.

That's less expensive that in some other theaters abroad, but on the other hand the Paris Opera is the French institution with the highest subsidies, so that people already pay for it indirectly by their taxes...

The oldest season brochure that I have here is from the 1997-98 season, back then the highest price for ballet tickets was 395 francs= 60 euros.

I'd have to check it, but I think an earlier version of the Défilé was made by Aveline, before Lifar, but it was Lifar which staged it with the present version (on some music from Berlioz's "Les Troyens").

Yes, I guess it is not really surprising that Lifar managed to arrive last on stage- he didn't exactly have a small ego !

I have no idea if something similar existed before Lifar... And actually, I don't know either what is the history of the company's hierarchy, except that:

-the title "étoile" was first given by Lifar around 1940 (the first ones being, if I remember correctly, Solange Schwartz, Suzanne Lorcia and/or Lycette Darsonval)- technically, it is "premier danseur étoile", and I guess that before that, the "principals" of the company were only "premiers danseurs"

-there used to be two more ranks in the hierarchy (until the 1960s, I think): there used to be "petits sujets" and "grands sujets" (instead of just "sujets"), and "premiers quadrilles" and "seconds quadrilles" (instead of just "quadrilles")

-the annual competition is said to have been started by Marie Taglioni around 1860, when she was a professor of the company

It would be interesting indeed to know a bit more about those details of POB history ! When I have some time, I'll try to see if I can find something about it in Ivor Guest's books, as it probably is the best source about it (by the way, is Ivor Guest still active ?), though I don't remember reading much about it...

The stage of the Palais Garnier in Paris is raked (and I think that of the Opera Bastille isn't, which sometimes makes things a bit difficult for the dancers, but I'm not sure). Also one studio in Garnier is raked the same way as that of the stage.

I wonder if the stages of the previous Paris Operas (e.g. that of the Rue Le Peletier) were raked too ?

Thanks for the link, Watermill!

But it is a bit strange that in that text, the word "meurt" (dies) is misspelled every time it is used !

Yes indeed, I think Major Mel is right: it desn't have to be understood literally, it's just an interjection meaning more or less "go to hell", and people say it instead of saying something positive in order to prevent bad luck.

I'd add that, in French, it's not specific to dance, some people would say that, for example, to a close friend taking an exam, or having an interview for a job (but only to someone close, because it's not a very polite expression ! Some people also say "I tell you the five-letter word" or "I tell you Cambronne's word" when they don't want to pronounce it.)

For the POB, I think it has changed quite a lot in the last two decades...

For example, "Etudes" used to be a "house specialty", as it was one of the most often performed works in the repertory (and also that version was created especially for the POB), but it was absent from the stage for almost a decade before being performed again this season, so the younger dancers are not so familiar with it (even though they did a good job), and neither is much of the audience. Lifar was the house specialty for decades, but the present direction seems to have decided to forget it completely

I guess that one can say that Nureyev's productions of "Swan Lake", "Romeo and Juliet", "The Nutcracker", "Don Quixote", "Cinderella" and "Sleeping beauty" have become POB specialties. And also, in the modern/crossover repertory, Preljocaj's "Le Parc", which has been performed over and over and over, especially during tours,

and Fortysthe's "In theMiddle, somewhat evelated".

Probably Lacotte's "La Sylphide" would be in that category, too.

Oh, and there also is, of course, the Défilé. Not really dancing, but they do it well, and the audience enjoys it !

Amy: the room your parents saw behind the stage is the "Foyer de la Danse", and the only moment when the audience can see it is the Défilé (usually, there's a kind of iron curtain between it and the stage). Moreover, it has a lot of mirrors, so that during the Défilé, the stage looks even deeper than it really is.

I think it can be seen on some paintings by Degas.

amy, the program your parents saw was the first night of the "Lander, Bel, Robbins" program mentioned in that topic:

http://balletalert.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17694

What a pity that nobody had explained to your parents the way the Défilé works, and also how the evening was built. Fortunately their friends prevented them from leaving too early, as they'd have missed the two most substantial works of the evening !

I understand that some people were unfuriated by Jérôme Bel's work (though it seems to have been well received on most evenings) as it is rather ill-suited, to my opinion, to the large stage of the Paris Opera. And surely it must have been a bore for your parents if they don't understand French.

What do they think of the rest of the program ? And of the Palais Garnier itself ?

As this thread is a bit redundant with the other one, I'm going to close it- please reply in the other thread...

Helene, do you think it would be so much more expensive to commission new ballets rather than new crossover or modern works ? Perhaps there would be some possibilities to commission a short ballet (not necessarily a full-length one) with some not too expensive sets and costumes, I don't see why it'd be more expensive than modern works...

Thanks for the information- I agree that such plotless works are not easy to describe !

http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=242013

An article by Marie-Christine Vernay, quite enthusiastic about Flamand's nomination

(the title means more or less "Frédéric Flamand saving the Ballet of Marseille"). Not very surprising, considering that Ms Vernay clearly doesn't care about ballet (she seldom reviews it and really doesn't seem interested in it).

Yes, "Apartment" was premiered by the POB, a few years ago. I've never seen "A sort of", what sort of pieces is it (which music, how many dancers, etc.) ?

You mentioned people complained about the music. For "Apartment", was it recorded, or played on stage ? At the Paris Opera, it was played on stage by the group "Fleshquartet", I had found some parts a bit noisy indeed, but some other parts were OK.

Thanks for your review, Jasper ! Could you tell us which works by Mats Ek they performed ?

I remember seeing on TV a video of Jardi Tancat, I think it was filmed in the late 1980s or early 1990s with the Nederlands Dans Theater (which had created that work). However, it probably isn't available commercially.

Hmm.... if a majority of POB's Corps dancer felt the same way as she did, it really would give me a gloomy picture for the company's future.....  Easy to imagine she liked dancing Balanchine works, which is just fine, but to hear she DISLIKED doing Bayadere gives me a big chill - and what an irony as we ballet fans go to a theatre to see THEM in this particular ballet.......

To be precise, it was not the whole ballet that she disliked, but just some parts of it which were quite hard physically (especially when they had to dance it tenths of times in a row).

And thanks for your thoughts on other casts - I really envy you for having seen Legris in the ballet.  Are you going back to see more of this programme?  If so, please let us know how Mathieu will have tuckled this nightmarishly demanding role....

I don't live in Paris any longer (we moved to Lyon), so I won't be able to see some other performances. I hope some other posters will be able to see it and will post their comments... And yes, it will be a very demanding role for Mathieu Ganio, so shortly after his promotion !

I think the politicians know exactly what they're doing. With most audiences modern dance is much more popular than classical tutu stuff, which is much more intimidating, and doesn't seem to be "expressing our emotions" as directly and naturally.

Frankly, I don't believe it's the case there. It also was the local politicians who had chosen Pietragalla (who was supposed to maintain a classical repertory), and as far as I know, their decision was based mostly on her fame as a Paris Opera Ballet principal (and also the fact she was known thanks to some cosmetics advertisements...) I wouldn't make bets on their knowledge of dance. And it's possible that the unfortunate experience with Pietragalla made them behave the opposite way, i.e. refuse to hire former ballet principals.

And while I don't know much about Frédéric Flamand's works, I'm not really convinced that modern dance is more popular with French audiences- especially as much of the modern dance which is shown in France is quite far from "expressing emotions naturally" (and I'd say a lot of companies survive mostly because of state support, as they don't exactly fill the theaters). I don't know what the audience figures are for the various kinds of performance, but for me the popularity of modern dance over ballet in Marseille is far from obvious (and Frédéric Flamand is virtually unknown in Marseille).

The Dutch National Ballet does triple bills regularly, with, say, a Balanchine piece, a Paquita and a fresh choreography based on ballet technique. The contemporary piece always gets the ovations. I overheard a patron telling his companion once that it was such a relief you don't have to worry  whether all the dancers move in time in contemporary stuff.

When you say "contemporary", do you mean "fresh choreography based on ballet technique" ? I'm not sure I understand well what you mean... Unfortunately, in France "fresh choreography based on ballet technique" is very rare (excepts one or two attempts at the Paris Opera by Jean-Guillaume Bart or José Martinez, and perhaps Thierry Malandain, who seems to be quite successful in Biarritz), and Flamand's works are not at all based on ballet technique. And from what I saw at the Paris Opera, many of the modern works added to the repertory in recent years were received quite tepidly and didn't survive their first season (e.g. Duboc's "Rhapsody in blue", Gallotta's "Nosferatu", Hoche's "Yamm"...)

BTW the Dutch National Ballet employs tons of dancers from France, from Toulouse, from Monte-Carlo, from Nice, from all over the place  -  enough to keep one Amsterdam cigarette store in business.

Err, do you mean that the French dancers smoke more than other dancers ? Well, at least it's good to know that some French ballet students manage to find a job in the Netherlands. By the way, it's a pity that the Dutch National Ballet almost never tours to France !

I wondered about possibilities for graduates when I saw the Conservatoire's spring program.  There were five young women who looked extremely promising -- with stagecraft and allure as well as technique.  Where will they dance?

I don't know, it seems to me that some of the Conservatoire graduates often go to companies like Monte-Carlo, Ballet du Rhin or Ballet de Lorraine (but they'll get little opportunity to perform some real ballet here) , or to some German ballet companies

(but there are fewer and fewer of them, too).

One of the things that irks me about the current blending trend is that much contemporary dance uses ballet technique -- in the sense of the strength and athletic aspects of it, though not its sensibilities. 

And also in the sense of "balletic" bodies, I thin (slim, flexible, long-limbed... But not to use them in an interesting way).

Maybe this is just because I was a dancer, but . . .dancers like ballets with lots of dancing.  They don't like ballets with very little dancing.  I guess I'm just not fascinated by that fact.

Well, I didn't find that surprising either. The only "interesting" aspect of that part for me was that it was an opportunity to really see what the corps de ballet got to do in one part of Swan Lake act 2, as she did dance it on stage alone, but even that was a bit too long.

Also I remember talking with a former POB corps de ballet dancer, and she mentioned some corps de ballet parts were especially hard, for example she especially disliked some parts of "La Bayadère" as it was easy to get some cramps... On the other hand, she said that she did like most of Balanchine's corps de ballet parts.

About the rest of the program: "Etudes" made me think about some sort of Olympics too... but well, for me it's in the "guilty pleasures" category, a bit like the Défilé. I was quite disappointed by the music, which isn't especially interesting, and was played especially badly by the Orchestre Colonne (which sometimes sounded rather like the Fanfare Municipale de Trifouilly-les-Oies, or Dry Gulch Civic Orchestra- I've been told that they were booed in one of the following performances). But I really enjoyed the two casts that I saw: Manuel Legris, Jean-Guillaume Bart and Laetitia Pujol on the 24th and Nicolas Le Riche, José Martinez and Agnès Letestu on the 25th. All of them were brilliant (and they do look great with those white costumes ), in the first male role Bart was a bit more restrained than Martinez but both were great, and in the second role, while Manuel Legris doesn't jump as high as Nicolas Le Riche, he has a special joy and musicality that are so unique and so enjoyable... I had found Pujol a bit disappointing last season in some works, but that kind of "technical" role suits her well. Also it was an opportunity to see the good shape of the corps de ballet, with quite a lot of sujets which have been the "backbone" of the corps de ballet for years, like Nathalie Aubin, Laure Muret, Laurence Laffon, Sandrine Marache, Christophe Duquenne, Emmanuel Thibault, Stéphane Phavorin...

However, I think that there are some other works in the repertory which also would have been an opportunity to display a large corps de ballet, like for example "Suite en blanc" (or "Palais de cristal", but it was danced last year), with an infinitely better music...

Naoko, no need to apologize about Jérôme Bel's profession, actually the program notes were a bit confusing, and indeed there was about zero real choreography in that work!

Unlike you, I didn't dislike "Glass Pieces" (and indeed it was pleasant to see some real dancing after the Doisneau piece). As you wrote, it does look a bit dated. But I liked the choreography, especially in the last part with the male corps de ballet and the way it is used to form ever changing patterns on the stage (it did look much better on the 24th when I saw it from the amphitheatre than on the 25th from the 1eres loges de côté). Also I liked the second part with the corps de ballet moving in the background, as some sort of Egyptian bas relief (I don't remember the English word), and its hypnotic music. And my husband liked it so much that for once it was him who insisted that we should get some tickets for a second performance

It is sad.  Not because there's anything wrong with contemporary dance, but because it's replacing ballet rather than co-existing with it.

Yes indeed, it's really "to rob Peter to pay Paul" (in French, "déshabiller Pierre pour habiller Paul"). At least I hope that it won't mean that Flamand will take his own dancers from Charleroi to replace some Marseille dancers (I suppose that the Marseille dancers have steady contracts, as it is generally the case in France, but I guess it's quite easy to make people resign if one makes them understand that they have no chance to be cast and makes them feel unwanted).

Anyway, if I were a French ballet student's parent, I'd be seriously worried about my child's job opportunities in France, with fewer and fewer companies remaining. And one wonders about the logic of training ballet dancers in the Marseille school (which was founded in 1992, under Petit's tenure) while not needing ballet dancers any longer in most French companies.

It's official: the new director of the Ballet de Marseille and of its school is the Belgian modern dance choreographer Frédéric Flamand:

http://fr.news.yahoo.com/040927/202/42iw4.html

He'll become the new director of the Ballet de Marseille on December 1st, 2004. He has been the director of the company Charleroi Danse (successor of the late Ballet Royal de Wallonie) since 1991. Eric Vu An, former POB dancer and presently director of the (small) Ballet of Avignon, will be "ballet master associated to the artistic direction". I do suspect that Vu An is mostly a pretext so that ballet fans are not too angry...

So Flamand, who is by no means a ballet choreographer or ballet dancer, will be the director of a company which was so far supposed to be a ballet company (even though Pietragalla already had added quite a lot of modern works in its repertory) and

of one of France's main ballet schools. How logical...

I can't say I'm happy about that decision. There had been several articles about some local politicians (who probably know as much about ballet as I know about cardiology) wanting to choose Flamand, but Brigitte Lefèvre (for once defending ballet) being against that choice. It seems that Vu An's choice was a sort of compromise- but I don't believe much in two-headed directions, nor do I believe in companies which dance one ballet a year and modern works the rest of the time.

I wonder if some dancers will prefer to leave the company (but given the scarce opportunities to get a job in France, they might have not many choices). Also, nothing has been said about what will happen in Belgium with Charleroi Danse, and also in Avignon (as I guess Vu An can't have two full-time jobs).

If some people are familiar with Flamand's works (Marc ?), I'd be interested in hearing more about it... But so far, nothing makes me optimistic about that change.

And it really seems that French politicians (in that case, especially, from what I've read, the mayor of Marseille) don't think that the French audience outside Paris deserves to see any real ballet (even though they had publicly said after Pietragalla's firing that the next director should be someone with a strong ballet experience and that the repertory should remain classical). How sad !

Alexandra wrote:

"Contemporary dance is so much more accessible."

Actually, I find much of it not so "accessible", and often just boring or impossible to "understand" (but perhaps it's a characteristic of some French modern dance choreographers: music which is a mixture of noises and texts, dark lights, little movement, no characters, no plot...), and a lot of modern dance companies depend a lot on state support and don't fill much the theaters. But indeed there's a problem of people never getting any opportunity to see some ballet, and often their idea of ballet is just Dolly Dinkle's school annual gala, which they were forced to attend once to see little cousin Susie, and which didn't exactly give them a positive idea of ballet...

Well, I realize that my exposure to ballet when I was a kid and teen ager in Grenoble was about zero (my parents had attended some ballet performances in Paris before I was born, but there wasn't any to see in Grenoble, and we didn't have any ballet videos), but I still managed to get interested in it when I was 17, thanks to one book I had been offered several years before ("Beauté de la danse", an anthology prefaced by Gilberte Cournand) and one TV program about Nijinsky. So sometimes one just needs a little spark However, now there is even less ballet to see on TV, and I wouldn't have seen much ballet if I hadn't lived in Paris for a few years.

sandik: here's a link to a biography of Yorgos Loukos on the web site of the Kennedy Center:

http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/ind...7&source_type=A

He started studying ballet quite late (his biography said he was an architecture student, so it probably means he was older than 18) and danced with the Casino de Paris (not a ballet company...), then the Théâtre du Silence (a small modern company founded by Brigitte Lefèvre, now the POB's artistic director, and the late Jacques Garnier, both former POB corps de ballet dancers), then the Zurich Opera Ballet, then the Ballet de Marseille (as a dancer and then as a ballet dancer). He became the Lyon Opera Ballet's associate director in 1984; its co-director in 1988 and director in 1990.

He also is the director of the Cannes Dance Festival since 1992.

Thanks for your review, Naoko !

I saw that program twice (on the 24th and on the matinée of the 25th- unfortunately not the premiere with the defile and "Sonatine" ) More comments later, as I have to go to bed, but to answer your question about what Véronique Doisneau said about "Swan Lake": mostly that she hated that kind of corps de ballet work, as the swans have to stay still for such a long time and it can become exhausting. Like you, I was wondering about the interest of showing such a piece on the stage of Garnier, as it hardly says more than what most dancers say in an ordinary interview, and there isn't a single bit of original choreography (Bel is a choreographer, but so far I've mostly heard about various "scandals" about his works, for example having a dancer urinate on stage or things like that ) Also, it must be indeed quite frustrating for the non-French speaking audience- usually people don't expect to suffer from language problems when they attend a dance performance (I do remember a similar problem when seeing a work performed by the Ailey Dance Company in Lyon, whose sountrack included a long text in English: I could understand some of it, but it was often a bit too fast for me, or with an unfamiliar accent, and understanding the text required too much concentration for me to pay attention to what happened on stage... Choreographers should be conscious of such problems.)

Alexandra wrote:

but the Parisian answer to that might be, we are at the top exactly because excellence is located here. And then one gets into a question of whether the best is drawn to one center, and the art grows from that yeast, or whether the center sets up the insititutional framework to force that condition. And I wouldn't want to try to answer that one!

Well, I don't believe in the "excellence is located here" argument (all the more as for example, the POB school students now come from all French cities). I guess it's mostly the result of historical conditions: the POB was created by Louis XIV during the period of absolute monarchy, which also was a period of extreme centralism in France, and it has evolved from there. I think no other city would have had enough money and power to create a similar institution wihout support from the state, and the state never cared to create another company. Well, there probably are also some demographic arguments (Paris is the biggest French city, and so has a larger audience), but for example in Germany, which is a far less centralized country than France (it was unified far more recently and its political structure is federal), there is a far larger number of ballet companies (even though that number is decreasing, mostly because of financial problems, as they get less public support) and not really one far above the others. I don't think there could have been another French company as big and with as large a repertory as the POB, but it's sad to see that there wasn't even an attempt to develop other decent ballet companies in other French cities (and also that the POB, which is financed by the whole country's taxes, tours so little in other cities-not everybody can afford to go to Paris).

About last year's scandals: well, the press hasn't talked about it in a while, and I guess that the fact that Claude Bessy retired probably calmed a lot of things. I think that it was more than just a matter of discipline and rigor, quite a lot of things seemed a bit abusive (and especially the lack of medical and nutritional advice for the students- there seems to have been some improvements from that point of view- and also a somewhat nasty atmosphere- Aurélie Dupont, who can't exactly be accused to speak out of bitterness, talked about it in several interviews). However, Watermill, I have never heard of "resignation (or firing) of some long time top faculty": you might be confusing several things, as Christiane Vlassi (former POB principal, and teacher) had to resign a bit abruptly (perhaps there was a question of age limit, but I'm nor sure) and was not in good terms with Claude Bessy after that, but as far as I know it was not linked to the "abuse" scandal. Some things I find a bit worrying about the way the school works, are the fact that the students are so exclusively focused on getting into the POB that some of them completely stop dancing if they don't get into it (not even trying to join another company- what a waste!), and also that its atmosphere might exclude people who are too sensitive or independant-minded and that might be one explanation for the lack of choreographers coming from the school.