piccolo

I am excited by brilliant technique. But I remember personality.

Great art -- in both the fine arts as well as performing arts -- is something you connect with emotionally. Technique can be stimulating but a great personality can reach inside of your core and make you feel deeply.

I am excited by brilliant technique. But I remember personality.

Great art -- in both the fine arts as well as performing arts -- is something you connect with emotionally. Technique can be stimulating but a great personality can reach inside of your core and make you feel deeply.

Ballet movies are to me what Star Trek movies and shows are to a Trekkie. I don't care if it's good or bad, I'm going to go see it. Sometimes, it's good. Sometimes, it's bad. Sometimes the story sucks but you get treated to a few minutes of exquisite dancing. At least it's out there for the general public to see.

Ballet movies are to me what Star Trek movies and shows are to a Trekkie. I don't care if it's good or bad, I'm going to go see it. Sometimes, it's good. Sometimes, it's bad. Sometimes the story sucks but you get treated to a few minutes of exquisite dancing. At least it's out there for the general public to see.

Perhaps Peter Martins wants ballets to be created today that you can just tell will continue to be danced long into the future. New classics need to be choreographed. Opera has the same problem. There are a lot of new works being done but getting them on stage for a second run or even third run is almost impossible. Companies and audiences are willing to create new work but no one seems to be willing to keep the creation alive.

"Patrick Bissell, a well-renowned dancer,

says that “it’s not easy to partner very thin dancers…they scream out all of a sudden because you pick them up…it makes you very tentative about how you touch them” (Gordon, 1983, p. 151)."

It's also really hard to partner when you're high on cocaine...

I have always despised "arguments" where the author states what they want to state and then tags on a footnote or reference. You can't go look at each reference for every sentence and so the argument reads as though it is logical and based solidly on fact, when it is not.

Definitely not an A paper.

My mom took me to my first ballet class when I was four years old. Twenty-seven years later, I still go to class. I simply cannot imagine not having ballet in my life. I have worn out VHS tapes watching the same beautiful performance over and over. I am constantly overcome with the feeling of "I have to dance now!" and I will go scampering around my house - twirling here, an arabesque there, trying not to knock over my husband.

Ballet is beautiful. I love everything about ballet. I dance because it is my life.

I want to buy Swan Lake on video or DVD but I really didn't like the selection on Amazon. I have seen clips of a SL with Natalia Makarova and Ivan Nagy -- does anyone know if that is available? Or I'd appreciate any SL recommendations.

thanks

I have the DVD and like it a lot although I agree that you need some ballet training for it to make much sense.

One note if you have the DVD version: Make sure you go to Deanna's Ballet Diary. (Each dancer has a little video diary.) Watch the short clip where she does these amazingly quick tendus. Wow!

FYI - Betsey Rowe and Steven Wistrich are former Stuttgart Ballet dancers who are now the Artistic Director and Resident Choreographer, respectively, of City Ballet of San Diego.

I'm curious. Do any of you United States Forum people live in a town that has more than one professional ballet company? If so, are they all doing well or do they struggle?

Some towns seem to be able to support several companies while others can't even support one. (Case in point: Los Angeles.) I could go searching the web but I thought I'd start here for answers.

Thanks.

A late post but a post nonetheless.

My first opera was La Boheme at Santa Fe Opera. I didn't have a strong reaction to it, one way or the other. My brother and I sat apart from my parents and I seem to remember our amazement at how well the soprano sung considering she was dying of consumption...

I just recently saw Tosca for the first time and it blew me away. If any of you see this message, go and see Tosca or buy a good recording of it. It is great opera. That Puccini was something else! :rolleyes:

I just finished reading Edward Villella's autobiography "Prodigal Son: Dancing for Balanchine in a World of Pain and Magic" and he talks about Verdy a lot. FYI for you Verdy fans.

I was helping with Christmas dinner so I only saw bits and pieces of the production but I don't remember having seen another Nutcracker where Clara and the Prince actively dance during the ethnic dances in the second act. Is this the way the Royal Ballet always does it? Does anyone else do this?

Were the Prince's leaps as gorgeous as I thought they were?

I work for a non-profit organization and we will call subscribers if we haven't heard back from them after we send them at least two renewal notices in the mail. Since they have already heard from us in the mail, our subscribers are rarely unhappy to hear from us by phone. They are usually glad we called to remind them. Or, we get useful information about why they've decided not to renew, at which point we stop contacting them.

My personal feeling is that I don't mind being called occasionally by organizations that I support. I definitely loathe getting calls (and usually at dinnertime) from organizations that I have never heard of. My husband has gotten quite adept at turning the tables on the telemarketers and making sure they never call again. For example, if you are getting a lot of calls from long distance companies, try this: Tell them you are moving to Bahrain (or some other faraway country.) Then when they counter that you'll need long distance to call your friends in the U.S., you say that you have a government job and will be using Bahrain's phone system. Honest, it works. We haven't been called by a long distance company in three years.

I believe stars can be good for ballet in general. A symphony will get patrons to come to a performance by talking up one famous work and then have the audience sit through two other, less well-known pieces before the headliner. This introduces the audience to other works but leaves them satisfied because they also heard the piece they came for. Can't ballet also do the same? What if you came to Sleeping Beauty to see the famous ballerina who was playing Aurora and found yourself really intrigued by the ballerina who danced the Lilac Fairy? In one way, isn't this what the Nutcracker is to companies everywhere? It is the "star" that gets people to come to the ballet and we all hope that they love the ballet so much that they come back and see all the other wonderful ballets we dance.

So, I guess I'm saying the stars can be good for ballet.

I'm right handed. I turn much easier to the right - or when my left leg is in releve (for both en dehor and en dedans turns.) I believe my left leg is more flexible as well.

Another part of your research could be finding out which eye is dominant during spotting in a turn. Do piques across the floor with a patch over your left eye. Now do the same turns again with a patch over your right eye. Which is easier? (It will be different for different people.) :rolleyes:

ABT's performance in San Diego was fabulous. I attended on Friday and Sunday. Having never seen Julie Kent dance live before, I was delighted that she replaced another dancer in the Bruch piece. Even my father leaned over during the performance and asked, "Do you know who she is?" "Yes, Dad. That's Julie Kent." "Wow, she's really good." I guess I've trained him over the years...

I actually really enjoyed "Jabula." There was definite Alvin Ailey influence but I like that. The main girl (I don't have the program with me) had fantastic stage presence and was a gorgeous dancer. The group choreography wasn't terribly complicated, not that it needed to be, however, the choreography between couples was quite interesting.

I also enjoy Giselle. I do have a problem with sky-high extensions in a Romantic ballet but that is my only complaint. Irina really made a transformation between the girl in red for the Bruch piece on Friday and Acts I and II of Giselle. I wasn't impressed with Carmen Corella as Myrta now that I think about it.

I am so glad that ABT didn't cancel these performances. They so easily could have. I felt the audience was trying to forget Tuesday as hard as the dancers were using that energy in their dancing. Thanks again, ABT, for performing for us!

Just checking in. I can now put it out of my mind sometimes and then I read the posts here and it all comes rushing back. It's taken me almost a week to read the New Yorker because I can only take in so much.

Glad to hear everyone's ok.

I'm assuming the fact that I'm almost completely unaware of what any ballet companies are doing outside of the U.S. (with the exception of the Royal Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet and Stuttgart) is more indicative of a lack of touring funding (either for myself or the ballet company) than anything else...

Somehow watching a dancer "push" the choreography seems more human than a perfect performance. I have a tape of Suzanne Farrell doing "Apollo" and at one point she is pushing her penche so hard she nearly topples over. But in the context of the piece, we have a goddess giving all of herself for her art and it seems to be a more perfect interpretation of the movement than a perfectly placed penche might have been.

"Mistakes" in choreography are possibly those moments when you all of a sudden furrow brow and wonder, "what just happened?"

I cannot imagine a better performance of MacMillan's Romeo & Juliet than the one with Fonteyn and Nureyev. It is still a great ballet with other people in it, but it doesn't achieve perfection. However, I do have to limit my comment those times when just the two of them are dancing together. Not that the rest of the ballet isn't nice but simply that I don't recall the other parts quite so vividly.

On a shorter note, I think Balanchine's Apollo is right up there with the best of them. I know that Balanchine changed the end of the ballet at one point but that doesn't affect its status in my mind.

Gigi, most big cities have a chapter of AFP (Association of Fundraising Professionals.) The website is: http://www.nsfre.org/

I would check with them and see if they are offering any courses or can point you in the right direction.

Another option would be to call some of the larger performing arts organizations in San Francisco and talk to their grantwriters. Informational interviewing is a great way to get good information!

I started taking ballet classes at a very young age when my family was living in Japan. It is just something I have always done. However, I remember being transported by dance fairly early on as well. The first magical performance for me was seeing Alvin Ailey perform. The whole evening was amazing but Revelations was the most electrifying thing I had ever seen. I also remember seeing the Royal Ballet do Manon when I was very young. The emotional content really moved me.

In the opera world, there are many patrons who will totally reject any production of a "classic" opera if the setting is changed from the original. I find this interesting on two levels: one, that their primary interest isn't the music and two, that the context into which that music has been placed can be extremely important to people.

My initial reaction to Alla's first post was "why can't her friends just enjoy the visual aspect of Giselle." However, after reading everyone's extremely insightful posts I realize that separating the two is probably impossible. Like a painting or opera, a ballet cannot be disentangled from the culture (or individual mind) that created it and best that we can do is to either educate ourselves about the context or speak more carefully if we decide not to.

I have not had a chance to see Sylvie Guillem's Giselle but is there a whole lot of "updating" happening in the ballet world?