PRobin5478

I want to thank everybody for the warm welcome to this site. I'll try to keep coming back as much as I can. This isn't a list.serv and doesn't load your mailbox with a constant stream of mail. Which is good and bad. But I've got you bookmarked. That's a start. (Bart, I should clarify that , of course, NYCB and Ballanchine was/is first and foremost my #1 love. Once I was exposed to them, that was it, pretty much. My wife and I have a friend who is very involved with the company and would tell us which performances and which casts to see. We saw the great classic Mr. B. -- Agon, Jewels, and all the masterpieces -- with all those great dancers.) For now, on to the World Series. The finer things in life.... Peter

Hi from LA. My name is Peter, and I found this ballet list from a recommendation from Opera-L, an opera list that's run out of the City College of New York. I love dance (really, I mean, just ballet) ... and theatre ... and film ... and all kinds of music. I decided to seek out a ballet list (though I'm on too many lists as it is.) I first got "into" dance as a teenager. As a watcher, not a doer. I grew up on Long Island in the 50s and 60s. I saw many plays, Broadway musicals and, finally, ballet. My first favorite dancers were Gwen Verdon, Donna McKechnie, all the Fosse dancers, the Michael Bennett dancers, the Onna White and Gower Champion and Jack Cole dancers, Sven Svenson, Tommy Rall, Jerome Robbins and Ron Field's dances for "Cabaret" and Eliot Feld ... and finally, Lisa Bradley in Astarte with the Joffrey Ballet. The Joffrey Ballet at City Center in the late 60s. And The Green Table and Allesandro Zomosa and the Sixties and Ballanchine and Villella and Damboise ... and ABT. Barry Nishkov and Gelsey Kirkland ... and the goddess Suzanne. Erik Bruhn and Carla Fracci! Living in New York was and is a great thing. Now I live in LA, and there isn't much good ballet out here. (I don't go to modern dance at all.) The NYCB has been out there ONCE in 17 years! But sometimes we go down to Orange County -- that's "The OC" -- 'cause there's real money down there that brings down some first class dance. The current Kirov stand -- ballet AND the orchestra AND a RING CYCLE -- cost big bucks. My wife and I took in the Kirov Swan Lake. We would probably have wanted to see the R&J but we had tickets for the LA Opera MANON the night before. So Swan Lake it was. We saw the matinee and, though Diana V. while not the greatest thing I've ever seen, was a REAL dancer. The real thing. She reminded me how much I love dance. How much I more I need to learn about it. I know nothing!!! So I know that there are real experts out there -- just as there are experts on Opera-L from whom I learn MUCH. I know that there are people on this list who have FORGOTTEN more about ballet than I'll ever know. That's the good part. So teach me. Tired now, There's a Law and Order on, Peter in SoCal

[Newbie posting; I'll confess.] I saw the Sunday matinee performance of Swan Lake by the Kirov. This was not the cast that was first reviewed. But it is the cast that was reviewed BEST. Lewis Segal in the LA Times kvelled over Diana Vishneva as Odette/Odile. He gave her one of the best reviews I have ever read (and I've read a million.) He called her "triumphant, redemptive ... emphasized emotional values without sacrificing purity of style and technical refinement ... hearts raced as she suddenly flew across the stage ... we were watching some glorious, elemental improvisation ...." See what I mean? She was very, very good ... but not that good. The Odette was magnificent; the Odile less so. Nonetheless, to paraphrase Mary Mc Carthy, "a fine dancer, a distinguished dancer ... all right then, a great dancer." Miss her at YOUR loss. Peter in SoCal (a comparative desert for ballet -- BRING BACK THE NYCB NOW!!!!!!)