Estelle

Naoko, I don't think that in France it is available as a DVD, it probably has been only televised (well, I haven't seen it, but I haven't had a TV for years so am often not very aware of what has been shown or not...) Well, I'm not a fan of Preljocaj's choreographic style, and while "Le Parc" is, among the few works by him that I saw, the one I disliked the least, I can't say I loved it (even though the cast I saw- Maurin and Legris- did quite a magnificent job). In general it seems to be quite popular for the audience, it is one of the few recent works created by the POB by modern dance choreographers (I wouldn't call Preljocaj a ballet choreographer) which hasn't been forgotten after one season (and also they often perform in on tour). I guess its beautiful music and costumes have some role in this success. I guess the cast in the video is the original one (Hilaire and Guérin)? Please feel free to tell us a bit more about that video (and the ballet itself), which parts you liked most, whether you noticed some other dancers, etc. Also, about Giselle, you're welcome to post your impressions about it (a "Giselle" thread was created last month) and what you found disappointing in Laurent Hilaire's performance. By the way, I realize that unfortunately there are not many available videos of him (the only ones I remember are Nureyev's "Nutcracker" filmed in the 1980s with Elisabeth Maurin and "La Bayadère" with Isabelle Guérin and Elisabeth Platel in the early 1990s).

The next POB season will be announced on March 8. The rumors I've heard so far (many modern works, increased prices...) don't make me feel optimistic. Well, let's hope it's not true!

There have been quite a lot of articles about the situation in Marseille, and now it seems that Pietragalla will definitely leave (she can't be fired because she's pregnant, but there are some negotiations for her resignation) and the dancers have cancelled their threat of strikes for the next performances of the season... http://fr.news.yahoo.com/040227/202/3o0zi.html

Thanks for your comments, Alexandra. Were there some protests when "La Ventana" was dropped in the previous festival? It doesn't seem very logical to revive some works for one performance only after 13 years- that's a lot of work for the dancers for only one evening, and they don't get any opportunity to get used to the roles...

(If it has already been posted in another thread, please feel free to delete this post.) The program for the 2005 Bournonville Festival of the RDB is available on that page: http://www.kgl-teater.dk/dkt2002/bournonvi...valen/frame.htm or http://www.bournonvillefestival.com/ (Edited to add the following:) It will include: "La Ventana" (staged by Frank Andersen) "Kermess in Bruges" (staged by Lloyd Riggins) "Napoli" (staged by Frank Andersen, Eva Kloborg, Anne Marie Vessel Schlüter, Dinna Bjørn and Thomas Lund) "La Sylphide" (staged by Nikolaj Hubbe) "Abdallah" (staged by Sorella Englund, Flemming Ryberg and Bruce Marks) "Le Conservatoire" (staged by Dinna Bjørn and Eva Kloborg) "Far from Denmark" (staged by Flemming Ryberg) "The King's Volunteers on Amager" (staged by Anne Marie Vessel Schlüter) "A Folk Tale" (staged by Anne Marie Vessel Schlüter and Frank Andersen) and a gala "Bournonvilleana" All work wil be performed only once, except "La Ventana" and "La Sylphide" (twice each). Alexandra and other RDB specialists, what do you think of it?

I don't know about the number of non-French students in the POB school, but as Alexandra wrote now the conditions are the same for EU citizens as for French citizens (as far as I know, non-EU people can apply only as "paying students" at age 14 or more, which normally doesn't allow them to take the competition to get into the company, but there have been some cases of "paying students" who became "normal students" after one or two years). Also this isn't a complete boarding school, as the school closes on week-ends, so it makes things more difficult for the people whose families are abroad (and even the French ones whose families are far from Paris). In the POB, there are now a few non-French dancers (well, perhaps they've acquired the French nationality after getting into the company, I don't know), like José Martinez (principal, Spanish), Eleonora Abbagnato and Alessio Carbone (both premiers danseurs, Italian), Kim Young-Geol (corps de ballet, Korean), Simone Valastro, Francesco Vantaggio (corps de ballet, Italian)... but not many.

In the last few days there have been tenths of articles about the Ballet de Marseille in the French press (including a lot of national newspapers), for example http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?Article=179816 http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-...6-353655,0.html http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-...6-353753,0.html It even made the evening news on all national channels... The company and the school are now on strike (for the first time in their history), asking for Pietragalla's departure. Pietragalla herself gave a press conference, saying that people accused her of moral harrassment but that it was herself who was harrassed. It seems that the minister of Culture has declared that it was time for her to leave.

Great news for the French audience (and for those who can get the French-German TV channel ARTE): they will show three works by Kurt Joos on Sunday March 28, at 8:15 PM!! :grinning: Unfortunately it won't include "The Green Table", but there will be "Pavane for a dead infant", and "The Great City", performed by the Ballet du Rhin in Mulhouse (staged by Anna Markard) and "A ball in old Vienna" filmed in 1935.

Viviane, the review said "Eurocrash", I think it was a pun on "Eurotrash" and the fact that the performings were bumping into each other on stage...

Are there some online photographs where one could see the previous sets and those ones? And were there also some changes in the costumes?The only set for "Jewels" that I've seen so far are those by Christian Lacroix for the POB production (annoyingly, the French press paid far more attention to the fact that Lacroix was involved than to the ballet itself :shrug: ) and I wonder what the others look like... Some photographs of the Lacroix costumes can be seen there: http://www.culturekiosque.com/dance/reviews/rhfjewels.html and also on http://www.enguerand.com/ (using "titre de reportages" and typing "joyaux").

Well, I think it depends quite a lot of the country one lives in. In France I've never heard about a dance company asking its subscribers for donations (and I think that if one of them tried it probably would cause much surprise, as here most people think that subsidizing dance companies is the state's (or city, or region) job), and probably it is far less common in Great-Britain than in the US...

Eeeeek! :green: Mashinka, I agree that, regardless of the critic, such a review would definitely drive a lot of people away!

It was released yesterday in France. It is shown in about 15 cinemas in Paris (including some big ones like the UGC- Les Halles), and about 5 in the suburbs, and in a few cinemas in most French big cities (two in Lyon, Grenoble, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Nice, one in Marseille, Aix, Rennes, Nantes, Montpellier, Brest, Clermont-Ferrand, Reims, Dijon, Saint-Etienne, Besançon...) Actually it seems that there is at least one cinema showing it in almost all of France's 95 departements, which is really not bad compared to many other films.

For me, it would depend a lot on the critic. For example, a positive critic by Dominique Frétard generally has a strong deterrent effect on me (by the way, that's even worse with some cinema critics- usually what they love in movies is exactly what I hate).

Here's a link to an article in "Le Monde", which says basically the same thing: http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-...6-352596,0.html About the audience: well, it's really hard to tell, all the more as I left Marseille in the fall of 2001, and also that when I had arrived there it was Petit's last season (and his sudden departure was a surprise to everybody, and even now it isn't very clear why he left in such a way :shrug: ) Also the repertory shifted progressively to include more and more Pietragalla works: for example, this season (2003-2004) in Marseille includes only a full-length work by Carolyn Carlson, two full-length works by Pietragalla (one being her own version of "Don Quixote"), and a triple bill with two works by her and one (modern) work by Tero Saarinen. They do perform some other works on tour, but not many this season (the only "classical" works in this season's tour are "Giselle"- well, you guess, Pietragalla's version- and Balanchine's "Stravinsky Violin Concerto"). By the way, the whole repertory of the company is listed there: http://www.ballet-de-marseille.com/reper.htm So it includes Pietragalla's versions of "Giselle" (actually at first it was staged by Eric Quilleré, but there were some disagreements between him and Pietragalla), "Don Quichotte", "Raymonda" act III , and some pas de deux and pas de trois from "Paquita", "Sleeping Beauty", and "Swan Lake", three other pas de deux (from "La Sylphide", "Flower Festival in Genzano", and "Grand Pas Classique"), five original works by Pietragalla ("Sakountala", "Ni Dieu ni maître", "Fleurs d'automne", "Ivresse", "Vita"), five works by Balanchine (Rubies, The Four Temperaments, Tzigane, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Who Cares), Richard Wherlock's "Strange Waltzes" and "Stetl", Claude Brumachon's "Les indomptés", "Les Voyageurs d'Innocence" and "Lola", Forsythe's "Approximate Sonata", Rui Horta's "Flat Space Moving", Paul Taylor's "Esplanade", Jacques Garnier's "Aunis", Carolyn Carlson's "Out of focus", Jiri Kylian's "Nuages", Maryse Delente's "Rite of spring", and that's all- not very much, considering that some of those works haven't been danced in a while... I don't know how popular Petit's works were in Marseille... It seems to me that his company toured a lot and didn't perform that often in Marseille; also the last season (the only one I attended) was pretty badly organized, as the calendar wasn't even available at the beginning of the season, there were no subscriptions, etc. From that point of view, the change of direction had been an improvement. I had the feeling that Marseille was far more a theater city than a ballet city (there were many active small theater companies and small theaters in the neighborhood I lived in) but it's just an impression...

There seems to be a big crisis at the Ballet de Marseille: http://fr.news.yahoo.com/040209/202/3mxpb.html To summarize what is written in the article: -last week, Marc Sadaoui, the administrative director of the company (Marie-Claude Pietragalla being its artistic director) has resigned. He had joined the company in June 2002, chosen by the Ministery of Culture because the company had some serious financial problems, and there were some problems of moral harrassment and illegal firings. So far Mr Sadaoui has given no explanation for his departure. -more than 80% of the people working for the Ballet National de Marseille and for its school (and especially 87% of the dancers) have written an open letter to Marie-Claude Pietragalla, asking her to leave the direction of the company. They protest about the fact that too much of the company's budget (it's the most subsidized company in France after the Paris Opera Ballet) is spent on Pietragalla's own works, that there are not enough tours, complain about the program for the 2004-2005 season, and about the negative working atmosphere... There had already been a few lines in the latest issue of the magazine "Danser", saying that Pietragalla would probably leave the company soon. It's really sad to see such a situation... It looks a little bit like what happened last year with the Ballet du Nord, whose director Maryse Delente was fired after some problems of moral harrassment (and now the company seems to be in big trouble: the ministery of Culture had chosen the modern choreographers José Montalvo and Dominique Hervieu, but they have also signed again a contract in the Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris, and say that there could be some big financial problems with the company preventing them from accepting its direction). Well, I've always been rather unconvinced by Pietragalla's direction, especially as I think that being at the same time a principal dancer, a choreographer, a school and company director, and also dancing as a guest for other companies, generally isn't a healthy situation- and I'm suspicious about the people who suddenly discover a vocation for choreography at a late age when they are given the direction of a company. Pietragalla was chosen mostly on the basis of her fame as a POB étoile (and also most people knew her name as she had been in some ads for cosmetics...) but she had no previous experience as a director. The whole advertising for the company was centered on her, which I found not very clever- if she leaves (that seems likely) then all the company image will have to be re-built again... Now I just hope that the next director will be someone really interested in maintaining a classical repertory. There have already been so many French ballet companies being transformed into modern companies mostly for financial reasons (and because it seems to be more fashionable for some politicians), and the main problem of most French companies except the POB is a chronical unstability: with every new director comes a new repertory, most of the dancers leave, etc. I do hope that this time most of the dancers will stay there (that was one of the good points of the company, I think) and that the next director won't be chosen on a basis of "fame" only. I've no idea who the candidates are, but when Pietragalla arrived (she wasn't even a candidate at first, it was the city of Marseille and the Ministery who asked her to come) the other candidates were very diverse, and included some ballet people like Jean-Paul Gravier (former director of the Ballet du Rhin) or Ib Andersen (lucky people in Arizona) as well as William Fortythe and the modern choreographer Régine Chopinot... There have been some rumors now about Carolyn Carlson, that doesn't make me feel optimistic

Oh yes, the fourth work that the Ballet du Rhin had performed was "A bal in old Vienna" (so the quadruple bill was the same as the one performed by the Joffrey Ballet in the 1970s), that was in the mid-1990s. I really regret not having seen it... But thanks to a google search, I found that they performed "The Green Table" again in 2002.

The Ballet du Rhin used to have those works in its repertory (and perhaps also a fourth one? I am not sure...), one of the first ballet performances I saw (around 1993 or 1994) included "The Green Table" and "Pavane" (along with "Lilac Garden" and "The Moor's Pavane"). Unfortunately, since Jean-Paul Gravier left the direction of the company, most of the repertory was forgotten, and so now it's impossible to see anything by Jooss in France.

paul, I think the German program you mentioned was the following? http://www.3sat.de/3sat.php?http://www.3sa...0324/index.html (I don't speak German- does it say that it showed the whole three works - "Concerto Barocco", "Symphony in C" and "Serenade", or only excerpts? Oh, lucky German people!!! ) (Oh, by the way, I was pleased to notice the first link "Lesen Sie"... :grinning: Except that they made a mistake (twice http:) so it doesn't work!)

Some more detailed casts (with also Myrtha, Hilarion and the peasant pas de deux) are available on the POB web site (link above). Also there have been a few changes, for example Wilfried Romoli was supposed to dance Hilarion at the beginning of the series, but now he's listed only for some performances on Feb 25th, Mar 2nd and 4th, and he'll be replaced by Yann Bridard for the other performances he was listed in.

Sorry for the mistake aboud Denard/ Guizerix, Françoise, and thanks for correcting it! Actually I had checked the cast on a video which is in the catalog of the New York Public Dance Library -http://www.nypl.org ) but it seems that it is a slightly different video (perhaps a video of the dress rehearsal- générale- instead of one of the performances, or something like that...)

I found "The Triplets of Belleville" quite odd- some parts were very original, but the whole story was so dark, and many of the characters so totally ugly (for example all the cyclists) that I found it a bit hard to enjoy...

I don't remember any Paris Opera Ballet dancer of Indian or Pakistani descent (but, unlike in UK, there are very few people in France from India or Pakistan). On the other hand, there have been several dancers with Asian heritage, like the former étoile (principal) Charles Jude, whose mother was Vietnamese, Miteki Kudo whose father is Japanese (her mother is the former étoile Noëlla Pontois), the former premier danseur Eric Vu An who had some Vietnamese ancestry (and also African), and more recently Kim Young-Geol who is from Korea.

The full casts are available (and hopefully, updated regularly) on the POB web site now: http://www.opera-de-paris.fr/0304/fiche_588_distri.html There already have been some changes: Jean-Guillaume Bart, who was supposed to dance the premiere, seems to be out He'll be replaced by Nicolas Le Riche). Also Marie-Agnès Gillot will be cast only at the end of the series.

I saw her too in "Ivan the Terrible" (perhaps we should open a thread about that program, by the way), and like cygneblanc and Françoise I found her wonderful (even though as a whole I was not a fan of that ballet), very lyrical and expressive... In fact the casting policy of the POB is a bit hard to understand in general, as they tend to cast the dancers in so many different roles (for example in "Diamonds" Marie-Agnès Gillot danced the second soloist in "Rubies" and also "Diamonds", Clairemarie Osta danced one of the soloists in "Emeralds" and also the first soloist in "Rubies", etc. I don't think that Delphine Moussin was cast in "Emeralds".) She's been cast quite often in the Robbins repertory too, for example I have a lovely memory of her in the first pas de deux of "In the Night" (she generally performed it with her husband Lionel Delanoë, actually they danced quite often together, but now he seems to be less in shape physically and often helps restaging the ballets) and she had danced in "Moves" in the first POB performance I ever saw (in 1993). Marc, could you remind me in which issue of "Dance View" her interview was published? Actually I didn't remember that she danced Kitri, but I remember seeing her as Odette-Odile (with Bart) and I had liked her performance (but she didn't get many performances if I remember correctly- premiers danseurs often get only one or two performances in a series, and that was even worse in the periods when there were more female étoiles...)