Estelle

There is an ad in the september issue of "Danser": the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (one of France's top dance schools) is seeking a "directeur des études chorégraphiques" (so far that director was Quentin Rouillier). It would be a job to lead two departments, one of dance studies (ballet and contemporary), and one of dance notation (Laban and Benesh). The director has artistic, pedagogical and administrative responsibilities. The profile is (the translation is mine): "a choreographic or pedagogical artist with an international career", "good knowledge of the structures of artistic education in France", "experience of leading a large dance teaching or creation organization" and "good skills of management, strong availability, fluent English". The deadline is october 28th, 2002 and the phone number for more information is: +33 (0) 40 40 46 03

It's interesting to see that the POB quadrilles Jean-Sébastien Colau and Lise-Marie Jourdain will join the NBoC. They have been dancing with the POB for a few years (and have also performed together in some competitions), but haven't been promoted (there have been few available positions in the last seasons...) I haven't seen much Jourdain, but Colau is a handsome tall dancer with a strong personality. I don't know if it's only a one-year leave, or permanent (the dancers are authorized to take one year off to work with another company, if they want to stay there for more than one year they have to resign from the POB. That's what dancers like Pierre-Francois Vilanoba, Rachel Rufer, Peggy Grelat, Delphine Baey, Marie-Gaelle Communal... did in recent years). I hope to read about Colau and Jourdain's performances with NBoC.

It seems that Pierre Lacotte is very busy with several companies since he left the direction of the Ballet de Nancy. (And what a pity that all the repertory he had built there has been totally forgotten...) I hope that we'll get some reviews of the performances of that festival, what a large repertory! Ina, thanks for the informations about "Undina". Do you have some information about "Princessa Pirlipat"? About the Bolshoi and Petit: "Passacaille" will be performed in october by the POB, if I remember correctly it hadn't been danced since its premiere about 7 years ago. I wonder if it is related to the fact that Petit staged it for the Bolshoi recently? I had seen the premiere, and in spite of the presence of Jose Martinez and Agnes Letestu (then only premiers danseurs or sujets), had found it somewhat boring.

I've had a look at the list of the alumni of the POB school hired by the POB since 1975, and there's no "Alexandra Neel". However, she might have come from another school, or might have been only at the POB school and not hired by the POB, or perhaps she changed her name. How old is she? By the way, when trying to find some information about "Alexandra Neel" on the web, one actually is more likely to find some information about the late great traveller Alexandra David-Neel, who was one of the first Western women to visit Tibet...

KayDenmark, just by curiosity, who are those "Stars of the POB"?

Actually, when reading Forsythe's message, I had the feeling it was something produced by Babelfish- and thanks for the comments, because I really didn't understand what he meant! Alexandra, I'm not so much knowledgeable about German geography, but perhaps if you lived there you could go rather easily to other German cities with a larger repertory, Germany still has a rather large number of companies with a varied repertory... But I agree that it can be a problem. Now in most French cities the only "home" companies are state-funded "centres chorégraphiques nationaux" directed by modern choreographers, and so when you don't like the works of Gallotta (in Grenoble), Monnier (in Montpellier), Saporta (in Caen), etc. you can only rely on touring companies, which often aren't very numerous.

saveta, I think it is the documentary by Nils Tavernier "Tout près des étoiles"which was mentioned in several threads some time ago. It was released in France one or two years ago, I saw it in a cinema in Paris. It was not in many cinemas, and didn't last that long, but I think that in Paris there is an audience for it: the documentary about Violette Verdy "Dancing for Mr B" was released commercially too, and also some years ago several ballet documentaries by Dominique Delouche. But in general it's rarely released in other French cities, or only for one or two weeks in small "cultural" cinemas.

Ari: actually, so far I'm just reading a basic "Lonely planet" guide, because it's the only one that I've found at a not too expensive price including also Ombria (and part of our trip- our honeymoon, actually : )- will include Ombria). dirac, I didn't find that Terence Davies's movie after "The House of Mirth" was "an inferior movie", actually I was prepared to be disappointed as very often it's hard not to be when seeing a movie after reading the book, and as at first I found that the choice of Gillian Anderson was so weird, but really liked it, and found that Anderson was quite good (even if not totally suited to the character). At least the story wasn't modified, unlike in many movies after novels (don't tell me about the numerous adaptations of Féval's "Le Bossu", my childhood's favorite book... ) For "The time of innocence", it was the opposite: I had seen the movie before reading the book, so I couldn't avoid imagining the characters with the faces of the actors. Ed, about Portugal, if you have an opportunity to see it, you might be interested in the movie "Captains of April" by Maria de Medeiros, dealing with the Carnation revolution of 1975.

Also, in some productions, there is another dancer playing Odette, but just for a few seconds at the end of act III: when Odile finally succeeds at seducing Siegfried and he asks to marry her, suddenly one can see very briefly poor Odette in the background, and Siegfried realizes that he's done a very, very big mistake. I saw it in Bourmeister's production (danced by the POB), Odette appears just briefly behind a sort of half-transparent curtain, so one can just recognize her costume (white tutu) and her characteristic swan-like hand movements. Of course, then it is another dancer, since the dancer dancing Odette in the rest of the ballet is on stage dancing Odile. But it is so brief that just choosing a dancer of similar height and build is enough...

Thanks for the information, Amanda. Actually, one can probably reconstruct the whole schedule using the subscription series and a lot of copying-pasting, but it's a bit tedious!

The subscriptions schedules for the 2002-2003 winter seasons are online on the following page: http://www.nycballet.com/nycballet/html/su...s_schedule.html But I haven't managed to find a "normal" schedule (by week, not by subscription series) on their website yet.

Treefrog, actually I liked "Desolation Island", it's just that I liked some others of that series even more! (By the way, I once sent a letter to my boyfriend via the Kerguelen islands: I just put a fake address in the Kerguelen islands on the verso, and his address as the sender's address. It came back with a stamped message "that person doesn't live at that address" about... three months later. So even if I will probably never go to that place, at least that little piece of paper did! )

I've just finished "Desolation island" by Patrick O'Brian (actually I had read several others in the same series which take place later, but that one was missing in the library): not one of my favorites, but it's still good to read about Aubrey and Maturin, and sometimes I found myself giggling in the metro. I'm reading "The three sons of Heart-of-Stone" by Mor Jokai (1825-1904), ranslated from Hungarian, which takes place around 1848 in the Austro-Hungarian empire, sometimes it's a bit melodramatic and also I'm a bit lost with some of the historical details, but on the whole it's very interesting. Also I've just started reading Julian Barnes' "Flaubert's parrot" (and now feel like reading more Flaubert). In my reading list for the next weeks, there is Wilkie Collins' "Basil" (recently translated into French), Isaie Spiegel's "A ladder towards the sky" (translated from Yiddish), re-reading some books by Edith Wharton and perhaps Raymond Queneau, and also some travel guides about Tuscany and Umbria. And cookbooks, like Nanatchka! Paquita, several years ago I've read "Adios a mama" by Reinaldo Arenas and remember finding it a bit disappointing, but I don't know "Before night falls". I've heard some excerpts of Nijinsky's diaries (is it the recent uncensored version? In the previous version, some parts had been cut by his wife) in a public lecture by Redjep Mitrovitsa, and itr was extremely moving, some parts sounded very logical and "normal" and some others were really bizarre and crazy, also he seemed to be longing for affection and understanding so much... (But I admit being also a fan of Mitrovitsa, I think I'd be happy just hearing him read a phonebook. :rolleyes: ) Tancos, it doesn't surprise me that Borges doesn't make you think of ballets: I love his books too, but to me they're generally so abstract that it's so different of the world of ballet for me...

Err, am I missing something, or are the answers #1 and #2 similar? Ms Miller's answers really aren't consistent: first it was about "painful choices" and "limited resources", and then about "time for a change", "new voice" and "broadening their audience". What next: "I heard some voices in my sleep telling me to fire Tobi Tobias?" "some men in black with big guns told me to do so?" "In order to broaden our audience, we've decided to hire Britney Spears as a dance critic, and to publish photographs of naked dancers?" It sounds as if she considers the readers who complained as a bit stupid... (and the paragraph about "having to innovate" really made me quite angry). It's a pity that there aren't other similar magazines willing to broaden the audience for their dance coverage by *hiring* Ms Tobias...

Err, am I missing something, or are the answers #1 and #2 similar? Ms Miller's answers really aren't consistent: first it was about "painful choices" and "limited resources", and then about "time for a change", "new voice" and "broadening their audience". What next: "I heard some voices in my sleep telling me to fire Tobi Tobias?" "some men in black with big guns told me to do so?" "In order to broaden our audience, we've decided to hire Britney Spears as a dance critic, and to publish photographs of naked dancers?" It sounds as if she considers the readers who complained as a bit stupid... (and the paragraph about "having to innovate" really made me quite angry). It's a pity that there aren't other similar magazines willing to broaden the audience for their dance coverage by *hiring* Ms Tobias...

On july 10th, I attended a performance of Béjart's "Le Concours" at the Opéra Garnier. The relationship between Béjart and the POB has always been complicated, there have been periods when the company performed a lot of his works, and when he created some works for it (for example "L'Oiseau de Feu" (The Firebird) in 1970 or "Arepo" in 1986), and others when everything was conflictual and he refused the POB to dance his works. In the last few years, Bejart and Hugues Gall (the Paris Opera's director) seemed to get on well, and the company performed his "9th Symphony" in 1996, and then "Le Concours" entered the repertory in 1999. "Le Concours" had been premiered in Paris in 1985 by Béjart's Ballet du XXeme siecle, and was danced later by the Australian Ballet in 1989 (probably during the period when Maina Gielgud, who used to be a Bejart dancer, was its director) and in 1996 by the Berlin Staatsoper. It was not illogical to have it performed by the POB, as some of its themes are linked to the company traditions: it deals with a ballet competition, and competition is essential in the POB's organization, with its yearly "concours annuel" determining the promotions in the company. Also, much of the musical score is composed of excerpts of famous scores of classical ballets, including "Giselle" and "Coppelia" which had been created by the POB. Unfortunately, for me it was so thin choreographically that it often was a pity to see how little it used the dancers' qualities- and the plot mostly was a collection of cliches. The story is the following: during a big international ballet competition, a candidate, Ada (Laetitia Pujol) , is murdered. There comes a police inspector (Manuel Legris), trying to find the murderer. Then we are showed several scenes in flash back, explaining Ada's life and who are the suspects. Her mother, "La Brambilla" (Delphine Moussin), was a famous ballet dancer, living alone after the end of her career, and very disappointed that her only child was a girl. Her teacher, Miss Maude (Claude Bessy), a former POB principal totally dedicated to her art, was very disappointed that she had left her to follow her first love, Ivy (Bruno Bouché), who himself was quite possessive and jealous. At one point, she put men's clothes to be hired for a TV show by the choreographer Michael (Karl Paquette), but he found out and was very angry with her. The she worked for a magician, the Grand Magic Pat (Yann Saiz), but it ended badly, and finally was involved in the rock shows of the star Angel Ben (Jean-Philippe Dury). As one can see, the scenario isn't itself very plausible. The "competition" part itself featured a jury with people of many countries, all of which very caricatural (a mannered and talkative French jure danced by Michael Denard, an over-the-top American one with Barbie-pink clothes danced by Marie-Agnes Gillot, two Soviet ones danced by Vincent Cordier and Florence Branca, and two excessively polite Japanese ones danced by Akihiro Nishida and Alice Renavand)- and there also was a very old lady (played by Zita Gordon-Gielgud) with a little dog, looking for her daughter all the time. I had decided to attend it mostly because of the dancers, and to have at last an opportunity to see Manuel Legris on stage before the end of the season. Well, I saw him, unfortunately his role (premiered by Jorge Donn) didn't have many opportunities to shine, as the inspector mostly looks dark and angry all the time while watching the other characters, but in the very few variations he got he managed to show his usual style and precision. The new principal dancer, Laetitia Pujol, was not very remarkable as Ada, but I guess that there is not much to do of such a role... It was nice to see Claude Bessy herself on stage, but her role was very caricatural, and the few dancing moments were in fact rather embarrassing to see, as they were not very well suited to a woman of her age and shape. Karl Paquette, a dancer that hadn't liked much when I last saw him, was very good as "Michael", and was one of the only members of the cast mastering well his voice; Yann Saiz was a classy magician, while Jean-Philippe Dury was absolutely wonderful in his few minutes on stage, with a crazy leopard-like unitard, punk hairdo, and making all sorts of bizarre noises which reminded me of Philippe Decoufle's weirdest works. Among the supporting roles, I also noticed Mallory Gaudion in a nice variation, and Jean-Philippe Colau who managed, don't ask me about the details, to make a lot of fouettes without his pants. The music, played by the PO orchetra, was partly an awful boring thing by Hugues Le Bars, and partly excerpts of classical works. The audience was quite positive, but to me it is a pity that the POB direction couldn't find something more substantial to finish the season...

It's interesting to note that in the FAQ it is written that among the works which are not protected by copyright, there are: "choreographic works that have not been notated or recorded". I wonder if it ever lead to some abuse... If I remember correctly, the copyright system in France also has a duration of 70 years after the death of the author of the work, but there are some special cases, for example the years of war don't count (so for example for someone who died in 1942 the count would start in 1945 only) and there might be a longer duration for the people who "died for France" (as soldiers, or in deportation). But for example, as far as a know, Ravel's "Bolero" still isn't in the public domain, and the copyright holders (some relatives of the nurse who took care of Ravel at the end of his life) earn huge sums thanks to it every year. It even caused some problems to choreographers interested in choreographing it, because the copyright holders asked for so much money that there would be about nothing for the choreographic copyrights... A difference between the US and the French law, as far as I know, is that in France there are two sorts of rights ("droits d'auteur"): the usual copyright ("droits patrimoniaux"), dealing with financial matters, and also the "moral right" (droit moral) which has no limitation in time, can't be sold or given while the author is alive, might be donated to someone else than the usual copyright, and deals with the integrity of the work, and some other rights (for example, for a painting or sculpture, the right to refuse its reproduction on postcards). A recent example when it was the will of the late writer Marguerite Duras: she gave the copyright to her son, and the "moral right" to her lover Yann Andrea. And some time after, Yann Andrea protested against some plans of Duras's son to include some of her texts in a book he disapproved as not representative of her works (I don't remember the details) and won.

ronny, I'm not very knowledgeable about that topic, but one thing I know is that there are indeed copyrights for choreography, and that a ballet company has to be concerned about the copyrights for the choreography, the musical score, and probably also the costumes/sets... Older works are in the public domain (for example Petipa's choreographies), so I think "copying" is not a problem in that case, but for more recent ballets it would definitely be a problem.

Actually, another reference which seems to appear a lot is the book by Benn and Walters, which is recent (2001) and does sound quite negative too. Has anybody heard about that book?

The POB usually does that; for example, recently one part of the company toured to Brazil with two programs ("Giselle" and "Jewels") while the rest performed "Le Concours" in Paris. But actually it's not so different from the usual situation in Paris: often the company is cut in two parts performing or rehearsing two different programs (for example recently "Don Quixote" and a Stravinsky mixed bill), and only some soloists or principals doing both programs. I don't know how it looks during the tours, but given the large size of the company, I think that it would not be possible for the whole company to tour at the same time... But the problem now might be the small number of principals: for example all four female principals toured to Brazil, and only one of them (Pujol) came back for some performances in "Le Concours".

Pamela, I found a copy of Richard Shead's book several years ago in a bookstore in Grenoble, and I agree that it's a really interesting book, with a lot of great photographs.

ronny, perhaps you could have a look at the web site of the Miami City Ballet (which is considered as a very good company): http://www.miamicityballet.org/ Story ballet are not very important in their repertory, but it includes at least "The Nutcracker" (George Balanchine's version), "Giselle", "Coppelia", and the 2nd act of "Swan Lake". For example, they will perform "Coppelia" in February and March 2003 in several places (Miami Beach, Ft Lauderdale, West Palm Beach).

Thanks for your reviews! It's great to be able to read about performances the French press would surely never mention... rkoretzky, could you please use the dancers last names and not only their first names? Sometimes it is a bit difficult for people like me who are not so familiar with the company to remember who is who...

Well, those people are not completely forgotten, as there is a big RER (a kind of subway) station just near the Opera Garnier called "Auber", and also Meyerbeer is one of the composers whose names are listed on the facade of the Opera Garnier (I don't remember the others, but will try to note it next time I'm on the place de l'Opera).

At the Paris Opera, there are at least two couples who are together on stage and off-stage (they have often given interviews together): the principals Agnes Letestu and Jose Martinez (Letestu is extremely tall, so Martinez is one of the only male dancers of the company tall enough for her), and the premiers danseurs Delphine Moussin and Lionel Delanoe (who have a child together). On the other hand, Nicolas Le Riche (principal) and Clairemarie Osta (premiere danseuse) are married, but rarely perform together, probably because of a problem of height (he's much taller than her). An example of "lasting" partnership at the POB was Michael Denard and Ghislaine Thesmar in the 1970s and 1980s, they sometimes performed with others but mostly danced together, especially in "La Sylphide" (Thesmar's "signature role"), "Swan Lake", "Giselle", some Balanchine works, and some reconstructions by Pierre Lacotte's (Thesmar's husband). From what I've read, they were well matched in looks (both blond-haired), height and style. There even was a book "Denard-Thesmar" about them. Another couple was Wilfride Piollet and Jean Guizerix (who were a married couple), they still perform together in some modern works. Pontois often was paired with Atanassoff. At the Paris Opera, Manuel Legris has partnered nearly all principals, but had a special stage partnership with Monique Loudieres (who retired in 1997). I've read so many excellent reviews about them that it makes me regret even more not to have seen Loudieres more often... At some period, there also were Hilaire-Guerin (who were promoted together in 1985) and Pietragalla-Belarbi (who had the same "Latin" looks), but after a while they performed mostly with others, I don't know why.