Estelle

So, did anyone attend the Dance as Ever performances? Don't be shy!

koshka: it seems that, as they had to perform outdoors, they had to adapt the sets... I do remember seeing that spider-moment in the video, it was quite striking- but surely not possible to stage outdoors... Was the dancer who danced the role of the brother blond-haired? If yes, it's likely to be Karl Paquette (not exactly the reviewer's favorite dancer, and actually not really mine either :grinning: )

koshka, I'm glad you enjoyed it Is it the only program shown by the POB in Athens? And what kind of sets did they use (I've no idea if the original sets are suitable for an outdoors performence...)? Who danced Marie's brother? About food prices: shhh, don't give the Greeks bad ideas! :shhh:

atm, I think that Lifar made a work called "Guignol et Pandore" in the 1940s, perhaps it was the one you saw?

Well, I hope that you can get last-minute tickets- and that you'll tell us what you've seen!

Well, I have only seen some bits of that ballet on video, so I can't be very informative about it... But from what I've read: the choreography is by Roland Petit (whom I wouldn't really call "avant-garde"- well, perhaps he was considered as such when he started choreographing in 1944 but in general his choreographies use the classical vocabulary and the plots of his ballets are quite easy to follow, he's especially good at creating strong characters), and the plot is inspired by a play by Goethe, after a true story which happened to Beaumarchais (author of "The Barber of Seville" and "The wedding of Figaro") whose sister had been seduced by a Spaniard, José Clavijo y Fajardo. In this story, a young woman, Marie, falls in love with a debauched man, Clavigo, and gets more or less mad (reminds you of something? ;) ) when Clavigo abandons her; also there's another character, Carlos, who is Clavigo's evil henchman. From the excerpts I saw on video, I found the sets a bit too greyish for my taste, on the other hand I was happily surprised by Gabriel Yared's music (created especially for the ballet- I've often be disappointed by ballet scores by contemporary musicians). I don't know which cast will dance in Athens, but the original cast was Nicolas Le Riche (clearly one of Petit's favorite dancers) as Clavigo, and Clairemarie Osta (who happens to be his wife in real life) as Marie, there also was a nice role for Marie-Agnès Gillot as l'Etrangère. Here's a review about it in French (with two photographs): http://www.imagidanse.com/francais/presse/...02/Clavigo.html a preview in English: http://parisvoice.com/99/oct/html/dance.cfm a review in English: http://www.danceinsider.com/f2002/f0123_2.html Well, if you finally decide to see it, I'm looking forward to reading your review here! Edited to add: Mashinka, we posted at the same time. Your depiction of the Herod Atticus Theatre really makes me hope to be able to see it someday, what a lovely place it seems to be!

Thanks for the information, Dale. Does she also stage "Prodigal Son" and/or "The Four Temperaments" sometimes?

The casts have been posted on the POB web site (of course, they still might change at the last minute): http://www.opera-de-paris.fr/0304/fiche_58...581_distri.html The casts for Oct 3 and Oct 10 are basically the same (the principals are in bold letters): "Symphony in C": Pujol- Belarbi, Letestu-Bart, Gillot-Martinez, Hurel (Oct 3)/ Gilbert (Oct 10)-Pech "Prodigal Son": Letestu-Le Riche "The Four Temperaments": (themes) Averty-Paquette, Abbagnato-Bélingard (Oct 3)/Wiart-Thibault (Oct 10) , Moussin-Bridard (melancholic) Hilaire (sanguinic) Dupont-Legris (Oct 3) Osta-Bart (Oct 10) (phlegmatic) Le Riche (choleric) Romberg Also there are some small changes from what had been announced previously, for example Nolwenn Daniel isn't cast any longer in the 1st movement of "Symphony in C" (pity, she has been given so few roles since she was promoted to premiere danseuse), on the other hand Dorothée Gilbert (who had been so lovely in "Tchaikovsky pas de deux" a few months ago, one of the most promising young dancers of the company in my opinion) is cast in the 3th movement, and Emmanuel Thibault in the 3rd and Mallory Gaudion in the 4th.

atm711, do you remember who were the other dancers? Were they those of the original cast? Indeed you have seen so many great performances that you should write a book about it From what I've read, yes indeed, Michel Renault had quite a strong temper and was not easy to deal with. It is a bit sad for me that I've seen many of the names of the dancers of the first cast in obituaries since I started being interested in ballet in 1992: Lafon had died in 1965 aged 42, and Kalioujny had died in 1986 (after he stopped performing he had a career as a teacher, and one of his most famous students was Charles Jude), and then Renault in 1993, Toumanova and Darsonval in 1996, Ritz two or three year ago, Bozzoni in april 2003. I don't know about Bardin.

Here the media don't seem to pay any attention to that (perhaps they are too busy talking about the government budget deficit, the last soccer matches and some recent murders ) - but well, I think that I prefer that silence to silly comments about "ice-cream eating ballerina"- and Doris, I agree that it could be dangerous for young dancers, if they imagine that having such a weight and height is "too heavy" for a ballet dancer! Well, that's just an assumption, but sometimes when male dancers don't want to partner a female dancer isn't it more a problem of personality rather than weight?

Why is there only another one female principal (sorry, I'm not very familiar with the company)? Did the other ones retire, or leave for other companies, or is it a problem of injuries? And are there some soloists who are likely to get promoted to principal sooner or later?

Thanks for the information, Jasper! Neumeier's "Nutcracker" was performed by the Paris Opera about ten years ago (and there was a very special performance with Miteki Kudo as Marie and her real-life mother Noëlla Pontois as Louise, it was on Pontois' 50th birthday on Dec 24th and her last performance- I wish I could have seen it!) but strangely it never was danced again, though it had been quite successful. So finally Lacarra and Pierre stay with the Munich Ballet. What's the reaction of the Munich audience?

It is striking to see that nearly all of the Spanish dancers who have become internationally famous recently come from the Victor Ullate school: Angel and Carmen Corella, Lucia Lacarra, Joaquin De Luz, Tamara Rojo, now Jesus Pastor (and there's also Igor Yebra who's a principal dancer in Bordeaux)... I was not very convinced by the few choreographies of Victor Ullate that I've seen, but clearly he must be gifted to choose and train talented dancers! Here's a link to an interview of Jesus Pastor made in 2000: http://www.sundayherald.com/print12484

There is an announcement on the POB web site about an upcoming "passeport" on Sept 27 (generally a kind of open rehearsal). It mentioned "the new production of "Symphonie en Ut"- so it seems more and more obvious that it won't be "Palais de Cristal"... I wonder if it's just to be able to boast about something "new" (it would be perfectly stupid, but well... ) Also it mentions Patricia Neary (but it doesn't say which work she staged).

Dale, thanks for the link to the Tokyo Ballet page (perhaps it's just a photograph problem, but the costumes that I remember were quite darker than those ones... ). It says "And among that, to perform "LE PALAIS DE CRISTAL" is permitted only to Paris Opera Ballet, which was originally created for, and to The Tokyo Ballet"(sic). But that leaves the question of "who owns the rights" still open... Manhattnik, yes, it would be possible that the POB owns the rights of the ballet as it was created for the company (it reminds me of reading something about some of Nureyev's productions which said that the company had to pay no rights, or lower rights, to perform it as they were created especially for the POB, but I don't remember it precisely). And as you wrote, there also are some differences in the laws about intellectual property- as I had written in an old thread about it, there are two sorts of rights, "droit patrimonial" which lasts until 70 years after the death of the creator and which deals with the material aspect of things, and "droit moral' which lasts forever, can't be sold, and deals with several things, including for example the right for a creator to have his/her name clearly indicated when the work is performed/ published/ used/ etc., the right to refuse an adaptation of the work which would not considered as suitable, etc. Of course it can become very complicated... A recent example was when the son of the late novelist Marguerite Duras (who owned the "patrimonial rights" for her books) wanted to publish a book of cooking reciped of her mother, and her former companion (who owned the moral rights) didn't accept that book to be published (considering that she hadn't planned such recipes to be published, that the book included some texts by other people, etc.) I've no idea how it works when several countries with different rights are involved... Anyway, I've no idea if the reason why they don't perform "Palais de Cristal" has anything to do with rights, perhaps it has to do with the stagers, or with the costumes, or Brigitte Lefèvre prefers black and white costumes... Who knows? :shrug:

That company danced in Paris in October 2001, I couldn't see it but here is a review of one of their performances: http://www.imagidanse.com/francais/presse/...-01/Kylian.html Unfortunately it's in French only, but perhaps babelfish can help... Among other things, the article says that the company was founded in 1883, that it has 65 dancers and that its director since 1990 (provided it hasn't changed since the article was written) is the former principal Vlastimil Harapes. And also here's an interview from V. Harapes (in English): http://www.culturekiosque.com/dance/inter/prague.html Also, from a Google search, it seems that their "Raymonda" was choreographed by Grigorovich, perhaps there are some people here who know that version?

Well, if I remember correctly, Patrick Dupond finally won a lawsuit against the Paris Opera for unfair dismissal (it was a complicated story, and he had lost his first lawsuit but won the second one; basically the POB said they had fired him because he had gone to the Cannes film festival to be a member of the jury and so had skipped some rehearsals, but in fact it was shown that anyway his roles for that period had been cancelled even before he decided to go to Cannes and so he hadn't missed any necessary rehearsals, or something like that...) and so the Paris Opera had to pay him more than 200,000 euros. I guess that perhaps the Paris opera is lacking good lawyers, as they also had lost some lawsuits against conductors a few years before... But that situation is quite different from that of Volochkova, as Dupond's contract was a permanent one, and in general, even though the POB dancers are not civil servants, their position is quite "secure".

Thanks for that photograph, rg By the way, there's a smallish photograph of the first cast on an old page of mine: http://www.cmi.univ-mrs.fr/~esouche/dance/...es/palais1p.jpg Dale, when reading your comments, I feel even more frustrated about the fact that it seems very very likely that the POB will perform "Symphony in C" instead of "Palais de Cristal" next month (see the discussion about it in the POB forum: http://balletalert.ipbhost.com/index.php?s...showtopic=12702 ) There are so few opportunities to see "Palais de Cristal": the POB last performed it around 1994 or 1995, I saw it once then and that was all, I was looking forward to seeing it again... I've also seen "Symphony in C", by the NYCB in Edinburgh (twice) in 2000, but seeing them so many years apart I couldn't see the differences of choreography. Well, there still are some doubts about which choreography will be actually performed (the season brochures are quite confusing, the costumes are said to be "after Karinska", so black and white, but the choreography is said to be "Balanchine, 1947 (Paris)", and also on the POB web site one page says "Palais de Cristal" and another one "Symphonie en ut" ) but if they don't perform that of "Palais de Cristal", then I'll have some doubts about whether they want the choreography to survive: are there any other companies in the world still performing "Palais de Cristal"? And by the way, who owns the rights for each version?

rkoretzky, I understand your disappointment. I plan to write to Hugues Gall too- well, I have no idea of how efficient it could be, but at least the direction should know that some of the audience is disappointed and also finds that it's not honest to announce a ballet and dance another one. Perhaps also writing to the press would be a good idea- even though the French press isn't very interested in ballet in general, alas Actually, I think that you could write in English, Hugues Gall probably speaks English as he has to deal with people (singers, conductors...) from many different countries, or at least somebody from his staff must speak English too. But if you want me to translate it into French, no proble! Probably it's better to wait until we've seen the show, as complaining in advance would seem a bit odd. Yes it's hard to plan ballet trips in advance... But at least Darcey Bussell's pregnancy is a matter of private life (she is as entitled as anybody to decide to have children- and it's better to know she won't dance because of such a happy event than because of an injury ) and there's little to do about it, while announcing a ballet and staging another one is an artistic decision. Also some casts have been announced on the web site: no dates given yet, just the list of the performers for each ballet (the cast for each date will probable be given later). Here it goes: "Symphonie en ut" 1er mouvement Clairemarie Osta ou Laëtitia Pujol ou Karin Averty ou Nolwenn Daniel Jean-Guillaume Bart ou Kader Belarbi ou Hervé Moreau ou Benjamin Pech 2e mouvement Aurélie Dupont ou Agnès Letestu ou Delphine Moussin Jean-Guillaume Bart ou Manuel Legris ou Yann Bridard 3e mouvement Eleonora Abbagnato ou Marie-Agnès Gillot ou Stéphanie Romberg ou Fanny Fiat José Martinez ou Jérémie Bélingard ou Karl Paquette 4e mouvement Eleonora Abbagnato ou Nolwenn Daniel ou Mélanie Hurel Alessio Carbone ou Hervé Moreau ou Karl Paquette ou Benjamin Pech 'Le Fils prodigue" (The Prodigal Son) Le fils prodigue: Kader Belarbi ou Nicolas Le Riche ou Jérémie Bélingard La sirène: Agnès Letestu ou Marie-Agnès Gillot ou Stéphanie Romberg "Les Quatre Tempéraments" (The Four Temperaments) Les trois thèmes: Karin Averty ou Nolwenn Daniel et Lionel Delanoë ou Karl Paquette Eleonora Abbagnato ou Mélanie Hurel et Jérémie Bélingard ou Gil Isoart Delphine Moussin ou Nathalie Riqué et Yann Bridard ou Hervé Moreau Mélancolique: Kader Belarbi ou Laurent Hilaire ou Yann Bridard ou Hervé Moreau Sanguin: Aurélie Dupont ou Clairemarie Osta ou Laëtitia Pujol (strangely, the male partners are not listed) Flegmatique: Nicolas Le Riche ou José Martinez ou Yann Bridard Colérique: Karin Averty ou Marie-Agnès Gillot ou Stéphanie Romberg I'm a bit sad that Legris won't dance in "The Prodigal Son" or "The Four Temperaments" (if I remember correctly, he had danced the Melancholic when the POB last performed it) but well, at least he will be dancing in "Symphony in C".

Françoise, thanks for the information- I'm really disappointed Do you know why they decided to show that version (and why they didn't say it clearly when the season was announced last spring)? And why they still say in the brochure that the choreography is the 1947 one? Is it because of a problem with the costumes (I thought that perhaps it could be that, as Leonor Fini died a few years ago and perhaps there could be some problems of rights with her heirs?), or was there nobody available to stage "Palais de Cristal"? Or is it just that the POB's direction prefers "Symphony in C"? Indeed, if they wanted to show "Symphony in C", it'd have been better to invite the NYCB to show it, instead of depriving the Paris audience of an opportunity to see the only ballet of Balanchine created especially for the Paris Opera... :angry: socalgal: Copenhagen, Venice and Paris, that really sounds great

Something that I find a bit annoying is that, in general, the media pay very little attention to ballet and barely mention any "serious" news (great performances, death of a dancer, stagings of ballets...), but when it sounds stupid and superficial ("a ballerina who eats to much ice-cream") suddenly they pay much attention to it! :angry:

Thanks for posting a link to this review, Alexandra! It is indeed a good idea from the Scottish Ballet to post such reviews on its web site. I saw a similar program by the Ballet de Bordeaux in Paris in June at the Théâtre du Châtelet, except that there was some flamenco choreographed by Cristina Hoyos instead of "The Prodigal Son" (and the casts were a bit different, with Igor Yebra and Emmanuelle Grizot in "Le Tricorne" and Charles Jude in "Icare")- actually I'm feeling a bit jealous as I'd have liked to see Jude in "The Prodigal Son", it was said to be one of his best roles when he was dancing with the POB.

bingham: I hadn't noticed what was written on the web site about the costumes "after Karinska"- if I remember correctly, the costumes of "Palais de Cristal" were by Leonor Fini, not Karinska? The sets by Fini were abandoned, but I think the costumes were kept... On the other hand, for the choreography it is written "George Balanchine (Opéra de Paris - 1947)" and not "George Balanchine (Ballet Society- 1948)". Well, so far, all that seems confused and illogical I wonder if it's because of some problems with the costumes, or with the stager? Anyway, if they do perform "Symphony in C" instead of "Palais de Cristal", I think it would be worth writing to Mr Hugues Gall (director of the Paris Opera) to complain- they advertised "Palais de Cristal", not "Symphony in C" and so they should perform what was announced... :angry: rkoretzky, a cruise from Avignon to Châlons, that really sounds exciting The restaurant I told you about (rue Saint-Augustin) has its website (not a very weell designed one, I think) at http://www.domainedelintillac-paris.com/ and one can see the menu and book online (booking is necessary as it is rather small and often crowded). However, one problem is that there often is much smoke there (unfortunately, a common problem in many French restaurants ) Else there are quite a lot of restaurants in the Garnier area, especially on the boulevard des Italiens, ranging from fast food to very fancy ones like "Le Céladon" rue Daunou.

rkoretzky, so far I only have tickets for Oct 7th, but I might buy some other ones when they are sold at the box-office (the box-office opens exactly 14 days before each performance, and also the cheapest category of seats are sold only at the box-office, not by phone or online- not very good seats, but it can be convenient when one wants to see several performances in a row without spending too much!) Also, if you want to see more performances once you're in Paris, sometimes one can buy some tickets at the box-office on the evening of the performance (the performances are at 7:30 PM, but it's better to be there around 6 PM because there generally is a queue). Anyway, I hope that you'll both enjoy staying in Paris. In case you are interested, there also are some visits of the Palais Garnier nearly every day, which also include the library-museum (bibliothèque-musée) of the Opera, a nice place with some memorabilia like a pointe shoe of Taglioni, some paintings of famous dancers and opera singers, some sets and costumes... There is some information about the visits on the following page: http://www.opera-de-paris.fr/visit/rg_cont_v1_3.html but unfortunately only in French (but if you'd like me to translate something from me just ask ) socalgal, yes the POB usually lists the castings on its web page, but in general it is announced quite late (and of course sometimes there are last-minute changes because of injuries, sickness, etc.) When they are announced on the site, I'll try to post them in this thread. About that program: there have been some rumors that they might dance not "Palais de Cristal" but... "Symphony in C", which would really be weird as "Palais de Cristal" was premiered by the POB and much of the audience has been looking forward to seeing it again for years :green: I just hope that it's only rumors- I love "Symphony in C" too (I saw it in Edinburgh when the NYCB toured there) but it would really be a strange idea to dance it instead of the "home" production! :shrug: Well, it's a bit off-topic, but if you like Southwestern France cooking (foie gras, duck or goose dishes...) there's a nice little (and really cheap for Paris) restaurant not too far from the Palais Garnier that I can recommend.

vila, I didn't know that some Guédiguian movies would be released soon, thanks for the information! I've seen a handful of them- some on the "happy" side like "Marius et Jeannette" (another common point with "La meglio gioventu" is that it was made for TV initially, for the channel Arte) and "L'argent fait le bonheur", and some darker ones like "A la vie à la mort", "La ville est tranquille" (a good film but very hard to see for me, with several shocking scenes), "Marie-Jo et ses deux amours"... I don't know if Guédiguian is known outside France, even in France he wasn't well known (and his films weren't shown widely) before "Marius et Jeannette" in 1997.