Estelle

Actually, Lyon has been a modern dance company for something like 15 years... There were some ballet companies which became modern dance companies more recently: the Ballet du Rhin (based in Alsace) and the Ballet de Nancy et de Lorraine. Also the Ballet du Nord, after being directed by a modern dance choreographer (Maryse Delente) for a while, seems to be on the verge of disappearing (because of financial and political problems, it seems), and there also seems to be some serious trouble for the Ballet de Marseille. The Ballet de Monte-Carlo still has ballet-trained dancers, but its repertory includes more and more of Jean-Christophe Maillot's own works (whose style is quite hybrid), and for example he has removed all the Ballets Russes works from the repertory, and most of the new commissions have been to modern dance choreographers (e.g. Lucinda Childs). So I'm not sure it could really be considered as a ballet company now... The only remaining ballet companies in France are, as far as I know, those of Toulouse (Ballet du Capitole de Toulouse, whose director is Nanette Glushak), Bordeaux (Ballet National de Bordeaux, whose director is Charles Jude) and perhaps Nice (but it's a smaller company and I don't know much about it). However, unlike the POB, none of these has a long tradition of ballet (for example, in the period before Glushak's arrival in Toulouse, it was a small company performing mostly in operas), and so they are heavily dependent on local politics and quite fragile, a change of direction could easily destroy all the repertory. However, I'm not sure it has much to do with the style of the POB corps de ballet... As it was already said, its uniformity of style is due mostly to the fact that nearly all the dancers come from its own school (and even some dancers who were initially schooled elsewhere, like Platel, Guérin, Lormeau, or more recently Martinez or Pujol, often spent one year in the POB school before joining the company) and so have received the same training. Also there's a question of training by the ballet masters of the company themselves... I'd be interested in hearing from the people who saw the company in the 1960s or 1970s (Alymer ?) , was the corps de ballet as uniform back then ? The dancers of the company aren't so similar physically indeed (for example, there's quite a lot of differences between, say, Marie-Agnès Gillot and Clairemarie Osta), I think the feeling of similarity comes from the similarity in style. Alexandra wrote: Actually I'm not very convinced about Bart's explanation about a "deliberate plan"... It seems to me to be a typical "Parisianist" idea, i.e. the way some Parisians think that France is equal to Paris, and the rest of the country doesn't matter. France is indeed a very centralized country (even though it has become a bit less centralized in the last two decades), with most of the political, economic and cultural institutions in Paris, and many of the decisions are made in Paris by some people who don't care much about the artistic life in other cities (and also most of the press is centralized in Paris), so for example the changes of other ballet companies didn't interest much the people of the Ministery of Culture, or the press... But the reasons for the changes were mostly, as Alexandra said, economic (contemporary companies cost less)- and perhaps also, to some extent, political (some lobbying of modern dance people complaining that they didn't have enough money). Oh, yes indeed ! Now there is almost no opportunity to see some ballet in most French cities (and I'd say, given this year's POB repertory, no that much in Paris either )

I agree about the weather (on the other hand, if you don't like hot summers, you'd rather go to Nantes ;) ) But I'd add one thing about Marseille and Aix: yes they are not far from each other, and Marseille is much bigger than Aix. But the trip is short only when one has a car (and when there are no traffic jams), because the trains and buses are not especially great... Well, it also depends on how much time you have.

Thanks for the review, Helene. Actually, even though I live in France (and haved lived in Lyon for three years, and then live there again since last month) I have had very few opportunities to see the Lyon Opera Ballet: they don't perform much in their hometown, and most of their tours are outside France. You asked about what kind of company is it: well, as far as I know the dancers are supposed to be ballet-trained, but their repertory includes almost only modern works (for example, this season they have performed works by William Forsythe, Russell Maliphant, Christian Rizzo, Angelin Preljocaj, Philippe Découflé, Trisha Brown, Sarah Michelson and John Jasperse). It used to be a ballet company until the 1980s but under the direction of Yorgos Loukos (since 1988, I think) its repertory has become entirely modern dance- so, alas, there is no more ballet company in Lyon, France's second city. And that's quite typical of what happened, or is going to happen, in most French cities. I guess the problems of style you noticed probably are the result of that bizarre policy (ballet-trained dancers dancing nearly no ballet works), and unfortunately we're going to see more and more of it in France (and there are rumors that the Ballet de Marseille is going the same way ) It seems that Loukos is quite influential in the world of French dance (he also is the director of a dance festival in Cannes) and quite good at PR, but I'm not convinced by his artistic choices. There is no hierarchy in the company, and most of the pieces they perform have rather "anonymous" roles so that nobody really stands out, and actually I couldn't name a single dancer from the company. I saw them once in Forsythe's "Second detail" four or five years ago during a tour to Martigues, and I remember thinking that it looked a bit like some kind of fashion defile, especially because of the coldness of the whole piece (and I didn't understand what the woman in the white toga was supposed to mean either). I had also seen them in "Jardi Tancat" once in Lyon, and hadn't noticed the same problems as you, but I had never seen that work on stage before (only on video), and also it came after such a boring work by Andonis Foniadakis that it was a kind of relief to see it...

Well, I attended a performance of it tonight- and my main feeling is that staying at home would have made me save some time and money I was so disappointed by that program that I actually left at the intermission, something which almost never happened to me. I found the choreography really dull, with alsmot no link with Bach's music (which actually sounded somewhat soporific- but perhaps it'd have sounded different with a better choreography), and no recognizable style (a lot of running, walking and crawling sprinkled with a few ballet steps, and some pas de deux which mostly looked like some acrobatic competition with ugly looking lifts). I especially hated the costumes: not two of them were the same, but all of them had rather sad greyish-black-blueish colors, most were assymetric (for example a dancer with a unitard but with one bare leg and one bare arm), and all were especially unflattering for the dancers' lines: for example, try to imagine a tall male dancer with a shaved head, wearing a sort of transparent (black with dots, like some kind of widow's veil) long dress, revealing some black underwear and a sort of black tie- not exactly good looking. The sets were almost unexisting (four large horizontal colored stripes) and the lighting was about as dull as the choreography. There also were some dialogues in... Japanese, and I wonder how the audience was supposed to interpret that. On the whole, that was a really boring evening, and after the 50-minute long first part, I decided that it was enough and preferred to leave. And all that was all the more frustrating for me as I hadn't been able to book a seat in advance (managing to get the Biennale's standard on the phone seems to be nearly impossible, and their answering machine makes one wait forever), I had bought a ticket at the last minute at the box office, but there were only tickets in the two most expensive categories, and so I spent more that expected- only to get a seat very far from the stage with a not especially good sight line (the Lyon Opera doesn't have a convenient shape, and its room is very very high) and to notice later that there wer literally tenths of empty seats in the cheapest categories. I do hope that it's not a deliberate policy to sell only expensive seats and that it was just a lot of people didn't show up, but I regret they couldn't sell those seats, and really the ballet wasn't worth the expense. :angry:

Hi Hjete, I live in France, but unfortunately I'm not very knowledgeable about dance schools... Nantes is a bigger city that Aix-en-Provence so perhaps the choice will be larger, but I'm not sure. I've found thos URL about ttwo dance schools in Aix, but know nothing about it: http://www.aix-en-provence.com/danseclassique/index.html http://www.aix-en-provence.com/solange-savine/index.htm There also is a Conservatoire de Musique et de Danse in Aix: http://www.mairie-aixenprovence.fr/v2/arti...?id_article=993 and one in Nantes: http://www.conservatoire.nantes.fr/ I've never been to Nantes and have only visited Aix briefly, but both cities are said to be pleasant to live in, both with a large population of students and an active cultural life. The climates differ quite a lot (more mediterranean in Aix, sunnier and quite hot in summer), but I think both places would be a good choice. May I ask in which school/ university you'd plan to study ?

Béjart is very well-known in France, and some of his works attracted a new audience to ballet in the 1960s and 1970s (my mother still remembers with emotion some performances with Jorge Donn she saw around 1970 in Paris...), also he worked with several generations of Paris Opera Ballet dancers (but it was complicated because he was angry with the company's direction for several periods...) His works still fill big theaters, however he often receives mixed reviews (some critics who are interested only in modern dance find his works "too classical", while some others liked his early works but find his more recent ones a bit too narcissistic and with a bit too many texts, videos, etc. and not much interesting dance). The last Béjart program I saw was at the POB two seasons ago, I had enjoyed his "Firebird" (even though some parts of it looked a bit dated, and also Karl Paquette is no Michael Denard), while his creation for Manuel Legris was one of the most boring and empty works I've ever seen (even Legris couldn't save it), and his "Mandarin merveilleux" looked a bit too morbid and dark to me.

Thanks, Alexandra ! I'm looking forward to seeing all those dancers (hoping that I can get a seat, because I haven't had enough time to take care of it, and I've just realized that the booking has been open for a while... )

No, there isn't any detailed info on the casting on the web page of the Maison de la Danse: http://www.maisondeladanse.com/New_version...5/spec/p_12.htm But it seems to say that it will be the same group of ten dancers as in London.

Thanks for your answers, Alexandra and diane. That sounds quite interesting, especially as there is so little ballet to be seen in this festival, and also small ballet companies need to be encouraged. I don't know yet if I can manage to see some performances (and having to wake up every weekday at 5:30 PM because of my new schedule doesn't help ) but I'll try.

The German company Balletmainz will perform in Lyon in a few weeks, during the Biennale de la Danse. As far as I know, it had never toured to France before, and was I wondering about what kind of company it is... It will perform an evening length work by Martin Schläpfer, "Kunst fer Fuge", on Bach's music. The program notes only say that Schläpfer comes from Switzerland and has been a dancer with the Basel Ballet (direction Hans Spoerli) and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and then artistic director of the Bern Ballet, and then in Mainz. So at least that means that he had a career as a classical ballet dancer. Has anybody heard about that company and that choreographer?

The Biennale de la Danse of Lyon will start in a few days, and, as I have recently moved to Lyon, I'm trying to know a bit more about what will be shown. Unfortunately for me, nearly all the works of that festival are modern dance, but I'm wondering about a few of them. And among them, there is a triple bill of works by Mauro Bigonzetti by the Aterballetto company. I know the Aterballetto is a company of ballet-trained dancers, but know very little about Bigonzetti. I vaguely remember seeing something by him once several years ago, and it had looked to me like a kind of sub-Forsythe... Are there some people here who could tell me a bit more about his style ? The three works of the program are "Vespro", created for NYCB, a work on Stravinsky's "Les Noces" and another called "Cantata".

No, the program in Lyon is quite different: it includes Robbins' "In the Night" and "Suite of dances", and two sworks by Benjamin Millepied ("Double aria" and a new work). And given that there is very little ballet to be seen in Lyon (the Maison de la Danse and the Lyon Opera mostly show modern dance), I think that's a great opportunity for the Lyon audience to see some good ballet.

It was announced yesterday that the famous photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson passed away on August 2. He had become a photographer in the 1930s (after some paintings and drawings) and had founded the agency "Magnum" in 1947 with three other photographers. The logo for Balanchine 100 was inspired by a famous photograph by him. Anecdotically, his first wife, Ratna (or Retna) Mohini, was an Indonesian dancer, and Lincoln Kirstein had written some of the texts of the book "The photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson" in 1947. Some biographies or obituaries in French: http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=228546 http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-...6-374607,0.html http://www.courrierinternational.com/artic...culture&bloc=01 and in English: http://photography.about.com/library/weekly/aa082399a.htm http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/cb/index-bio.htm http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/cartierbres...1276090,00.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/cartierbres...1276468,00.html A few portraits by him: http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/cb/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style...allery/bresson/ And some other photographs: http://www.photology.com/bresson/

Very interesting indeed! There is a page in English listing all the productions of "La Sylphide", but unfortunately the page with all the casts doesn't exist in the English version of the site... http://www.kgl-teater.dk/dkt2002/bournonvi...en/sylfiden.htm

http://www.lalibre.be/article.phtml?id=5&s...7&art_id=176742 That article (in French) in "La libre Belgique" says the conseil d'administration (board) of the Ballet de Marseille has chosen Frédéric Flamand, but the choice still would have too be confirmed by the minister of Culture. However, it adds that there has been no official announcement about it, neither by Flamand, nor by the Ballet de Marseille, nor by the ministery of Culture. The second half of the article deals with the changes that would be caused by Flamand's departure for his company Charleroi/ Danses, which is by far the most subsidized dance company in Wallonie (the French-speaking part of Belgium) with 3 million euros of subsidies (500000 of which are "re-distributed to other companies"): it seems likely that if Flamand leaves, the company will probably disappear. I do hope that there still is some hope for another decision (and doesn't it seem weird that, out of 64 candidates, the administration of the Ballet de Marseille couldn't find more ballet-oriented potential directors ? I remember that when Pietragalla was chosen, among the candidates were Jean-Paul Gravier, who had done an excellent job with the Ballet du Rhin, and also Ib Andersen- compare the shapes of the Ballet de Marseille and that of Arizona now... ) because now it sounds like a lose/ lose situation: loss of classical repertory for Marseille (if the officials really want a big modern dance company, why on earth can't they fund it without killing the ballet ?) and loss of its main company for Wallonie (which already had lost the Ballet de Wallonie a few years ago). And the near silence of the French press about all that really confirms that it really doesn't give a damn about ballet... How saddening! By the way, Marc, have you seen some works by Flamand ?

Thanks for your very interesting review, Naoko S ! And you were lucky to see Laurent Hilaire in two works, as in Paris he unfortunately dances less and less... Which works were performed in the program A ? Yes indeed, Hervé Courtain will leave the POB at the end of this season, he's already listed as a soloist n the web site of the Grands Ballets Canadiens. It's really sad for the Paris audience, as he was in my opinion one of the company's most talented male dancers, with a fine technique and a great stage presence, but unfortunately he never was given many opportunities to perform interesting roles... He had already left for one season to perform with the Boston Ballet, then came back, and now he probably leaves permanently (I'm not sure, but I think that the POB dancers can't take more than one year off to dance with another company). Well, I hope he'll enjoy working with the Grands Ballets Canadiens, and that his career there will be as successful as that of Rachel Rufer (former POB dancer, now principal there).

Well, "La libre Belgique" wrote "Peter Jacobson, le directeur des Ballets de Suède", but I guess if they called Michaël Denard "Michel Denart", they probably can't spell "Petter Jacobsen" either... :grinning: It seems that the official results will be known monday. By the way, in my previous list of French companies, there are two that I didn't mention: the Lyon Opera Ballet and the Ballets de Monte-Carlo. Both hire ballet-trained dancers, but their repertories have gone farther and farther from ballet. For example, the repertory of the next season of the Lyon Opera Balle includes works by William Forsythe, Russell Maliphant, Christian Rizzo, Angelin Preljocaj, Philippe Découflé, Trisha Brown, John Jasperse, and Sarah Michelson. For some reason I never understood, some French critics call that kind of company "neoclassical" sometimes... The Ballets de Monte-Carlo used to have a ballet repertory, including a lot of Ballets Russes works and more than ten Balanchine works, but its director Jean-Christophe Maillot has programmed more and more of his own works, plus a handful of crossover works by Childs, Kylian, Forsythe, Hoche... On their web site, the only Balanchine works still listed as "in the repertory" are 4 Ts and "Stravinsky Violin Concerto", and all the Ballets Russes works have disappeared (while they still were performed during the first seasons of Maillot's tenure). I'm afraid that, if Flamand is chosen in Marseille, even if he's supposed to stage some classical works as well, the same kind of situation would be likely to occur (and, as far as I know, his own works are farther from ballet than Maillot's).

It seems that a new director for the Ballet of Marseille will be chosen very soon. Here's a link to an article (in French) from "La Libre Belgique", dating back from June 23th, mentioning the final list of 6 candidates chosen among 64: Frédéric Flamand (Belgian choreographer, director of Charleroi danses), Sasha Waltz (German choreographer, co-director of the Schaubühne in Berlin), Michaël Denard (former POB principal, and former director of the Staatsoper Ballet of Berlin- his name is spelled incorrectly in the article), Robert North (former dancer of the Graham company and former director of the Scottish Ballet), Yves de Bouteiller and Peter Jacobson: http://www.lalibre.be/article.phtml?id=5&s...7&art_id=172589 According to that second article, dating from July 22th, Waltz and Denard were not candidates any longer, and Flamand would be the most likely choice: http://www.lalibre.be/article.phtml?id=5&s...4&art_id=176254 It also is mentioned in that article from "Libération" dating from July 24th: http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=225931 There also was an article about it in the Belgian newspaper "Le soir", but it no longer is freely available. I can't help finding it extremely worrying. The Ballet de Marseille is the second most subsidized dance company in France, and one of the only remaining ballet companies in France (even though its repertory already tended to include more and more contemporary works under Pietragalla's direction). The officials who are to choose the next director had announced that they wanted the company to remain a ballet company... but several of the candidates they chose clearly are not ballet people (I know nearly nothing about de Bouteiller and Jacobson, but North primarily was a modern dance dancer and choreographer, and Waltz and Flamand are modern dance choreographers). Their last choice of director (Pietragalla) mostly was motivated by some questions of fame and publicity, and now they really don't seem to care at all about the company's repertory- and also about the fact that there is very little need to have a ballet company in Marseille, if there is not enough French ballet companies for its students to find a job after graduating! Among the French ballet companies, several have been transformed into modern dance companies in recent years (sometimes they still hire classically trained dancers and dance some ballet once or twice in a season, but I don't think they still can be called ballet companies, given their repertories): the Ballet de Nancy et de Lorraine after Pierre Lacotte's departure, the Ballet du Rhin after Jean-Paul Gravier's departure, the Ballet du Nord which went throught several crises (early death of Alfonso Cata, financial problems with Jean-Paul Comelin, problems to find a director, and more recently Maryse Delente fired for moral harrassment) and now seems on the verge of disappearing completely (a few months ago the modern choreographers José Montalvo and Dominique Hervieu refused the direction of the company which was offered to them, saying that its financial situation wasn't clear enough, and so far no new director has been chosen). Those decisions were motivated partly for financial reasons (modern companies generally cost less), and sometimes also because the people in the ministery of culture or in the cities who took the decision despised ballet and found modern dance more "fashionable"... The only remaining ballet companies outside Paris are those of Bordeaux, Toulouse, Nice... and Marseille, but until when? And very sadly, nobody in the French press seems to pay any attention to it

One cinema in Paris will be showing "You were never lovelier" next sunday, and I was hesitating to attend it (I'm not especially knowledgeable about musicals), and thought that this forum could be helpful- and indeed it is, that one-year old thread has convinced me that I definitely should see it!

Ostrich, in which company did that deaf dancer perform ? And did he really manage to stay in time ? Also, since peasant pas de deux involves two dancers, was there also a female dancer backstage, for the partnering parts ? That seems quite incredible...

A belated note to say that I went to Bordeaux to attend a performance of the last series of the season, on June 20, and was quite happy of my trip It was a well-balanced Balanchine program, showing different sides of his talent: one Tchaikovsky tutu ballet ("Serenade"), one pas de deux on French piano music ("Sonatine"), one Broadway-style ballet ("Who Cares") and one black-and-white leotard ballet ("The Four Temperaments"), all of them staged by John Clifford and performed very well. I'm not very familiar with the company, and it was hard to single out some dancers, but I especially appreciated the musicality of Emmanuelle Grizot in "Sonatine" (she also performed brilliantly in "Who Cares" and as the Choleric in "The Four Temperaments") and, while the guest principal Igor Yebra was perhaps a little bit too "showy" in "Sonatine", he was just perfect in "Who Cares" (plus he's really, really good-looking ). I also liked Yeruult Rinchindorj and Magdalena Lonska in the "Sanguinic" part, and Charles Jude still looked wonderful as the Phlegmatic (when I saw him, it made me think once again of that enthusiastic review by Sylvie de Nussac, about a decade ago, in which she was wondering if he had sold his soul to the devil to still look to young... His face has aged a little bit since then, but his silhouette hasn't changed much, and he really has wonderfully expressive hands.) The theater (the salle Antoine Vitez of the Conservatoire, and not, unfortunately, the lovely Grand-Théâtre) was full and extremely enthusiastic- now I wish they would tour with such a program, especially as next season there will be very little Balanchine to be seen on the French stages...

Naoko, I'm looking forward to reading your comment about what you saw! Tonight I just saw a performance of it with Benjamin Pech and Delphine Moussin in the main roles (actually it was quite hard to get a ticket, and I ended up with yet another one of those awfully uncomfortable "reduced visibility" seats, but well, it was worth getting sore feet ;) ). I really appreciated a lot that performance, and found Delphine Moussin very well suited to the role, light, musical and expressive, even though she sometimes was technically a bit weak. As far as I know, this season is the first time she gets to dance it (twice, the first one was a few days ago), and I'm glad to have been there! Benjamin Pech was technically brilliant (that role is full of complicated variations, I remember an interview of Michaël Denard in which he said it was the most technically demanding role he had danced), and also quite expressive and moving, also Dorothée Gilbert was a charming Effie. And the corps de ballet was in top shape too. The only negative point was the orchestra which was quite average, and perhaps also the chemistry between the two main dancers could have been better.

The casts have been updated on the web site: http://www.operadeparis.fr/0304/fiche_597_distri.html and so Stéphane Phavorin officially replaces José Martinez. Pity for Martinez, and I guess his fans must be quite disappointed, but at least it gives an opportunity to Stéphane Phavorin, a talented sujet who often has been forgotten by the direction (and also suffered from some injuries who slowered his career) to dance a big role.

Thanks for posting the link, Rosmarinus, I had heard about it but had forgotten to post it. That's a pity for Legris fan, as I'm not sure he might dance James again, given his age (turning 40 this year). I was a bit surprised to see that the video will be filmed with Mathieu Ganio, who is very young and has never danced that role before (and perhaps a bit tall for Aurélie Dupont?) But as far as I know, among the present principals, Hilaire and Belarbi don't dance that role any longer,Le Riche won't dance it this time (perhaps because of a tour in Spain? I don't know), Bart is absent for injury unfortunately, so the only other choice would be Martinez but he's supposed to dance with Letestu. And probably they don't want to film premiers danseurs, even though Benjamin Pech is quite experienced in that role. Well, we'll see! I hope that it won't be too stressful for Mathieu Ganio: dancing the role six times, with two different partners (Ciaravola and Dupont) and being filmed during three of the performances, that's not the easiest way to start his career as an étoile!

Oh yes Leigh, he's worth adding to the list