cubanmiamiboy

How about McBride's coaching session with Dolin...? Was she preparing to dance the role as a guest somewhere or she was just there for the video purpose...?

Giselle is definitely an iconic role. Still, one can see that many ballerinas from all periods have been able to pull out better Odettes/Odiles than Giselles. The role is usually chosen for retirement purposes also, as if saying good bye in the grand manner. I can think of just a handful of women that have been capable to incorporate different styles of dancing, as to be successful either in the romantic style, Petipa-pancake tutu era and well into the revolutionary waves of the XX Century-(either Balanchine, Massine, Tudor, Ashton, Robbins etc...). Names that come to my mind right away are Markova-(Giselle, Swan Lake, Massine's Rouge et Noir, Tudor's R&J, Balanchine's Jeu de cartes), Alonso-(Giselle, Swan Lake, de Mille's Fall River Legend, Massine's Aleko, Balanchine's T&V)-, Kaye-(Giselle, Tudor's Pillar of Fire, Robbins' The Cage)- Fonteyn-(Giselle, Swan Lake, Ashton's Ondine)- Kirkland-(Giselle, Don Quixote, Tudor's The Leaves are Fading, Balanchine's Firebird), and some few others. On the contrary, there seems to be a wave of dancers that always felt the role somehow out of their scope. For some reason today's ballerinas tend toward trying to conquer all the styles at once, although in the past it seems to me that wasn't the case. I always thought that Plisetskaya had never danced the role, but I found the pic below, so I guess I was wrong. Patricia McBride can be seen being coached by Dolin in the role in the Portray of Giselle video. Did she dance the role at all...? I thought that Danilova hadn't danced it either, and in Markova's memoirs Alicia declares that Alexandra preferred to dance Myrtha instead only to her Giselle, but I actually have seen a photo of Danilova in the role in Beaumont's The Ballet called Giselle. I also think that Kseshinskaya and Preobrajenskaya never danced it. Who are other famous ballerinas who never danced Giselle...? Plisetskaya

If living in such a nightmare is needed in order to be part of that institution, then whoever can go on carrying such weight is certainly a champion. If I was a dancer today I wouldn't have any desire whatsoever to belong to such environment. This is a barbaric thing that ought to be watched from far away distance and never dare to be part of. Fair or not, when I see the company in London, I will be thinking..."so this is the troupe in which all that was generated...". Horrible, barbaric, almost unreal... Get out of there, Hallberg...

I will try to make it for the Ashton and Tudor's works. Thanks, BB for the heads up!

I also noticed that Garcia Rodriguez is out of the roster-(he had been very inactive for a long time). Congrats to Rebello and Cerdeiro.

Ah...how lovely!

I love Maria's tutu..!

Bravis!!

And I believe he's been dancing in "Newsies" on Broadway also. I always felt he wasn't completely satistifed dancing classical ballet only. we certainly miss his dancing down here.

Amen to that. (BTW...did she ever dance Giselle...?)

I remember from Bing's book his recalling that the loosing of Callas was indeed a hard move to take on, but one that became necessary at one point.

Ah, but would she have wanted something more? ;) That their lives, and careers, were intertwined, I think is obvious to us all. My sore point was just in the NY Times labeling. This person's life has ended, and who were they? A "Balanchine ballerina". Not a bad thing at all, but it doesn't explain why she needs to be mentioned on the front page of the Times. In your words, "Tallchief was the cornerstone of Balanchine’s young company". So of course there's more to the story than just Balanchine's contribution. I see this type of headline in the arts press everyday: people being identified according to their relation to Balanchine, or Diaghilev. The practice is lazy and superficial, imo, and it just makes gods out of B and D but doesn't actually do so much for everyone else involved in the art. I guess I don't necessarily see it as laziness, or an insult to Tallchief's achievement; it seems reasonable to me to refer to Tallchief as a muse to Balanchine. I sort of understand the thought. In her memoir, just as we can read from many other ballerinas that once were the focus of B's creations, she clearly remembers the time and place when she knew...she felt that Balanchine had lost interest in her and was about to move on to another woman dancer. In certain way they knew that this was a huge wall for their careers, for which for many of them-(not necessarily Tallchief, as we know she danced out of City Ballet scope)-Mr B was the epicenter of their professional life. I have read two different thoughts on this from two other great ballerinas related to their desire to try not to be only remembered as professional products of Balanchine: Alonso and Kirkland. The first one having never considered the idea of changing companies, even after having tried the sweet taste of success in Balanchine's uber masterpiece-(and we know also that Balanchine, just as he overpassed later on young Rudi, never had interest in incorporate this sort of diva-like personalities into his troupe)...the second one deciding to get out and explore-(Farrell can be quoted as declaring this move Kirkland's grand mistake, but then...was't her Giselle and Kitri great achievements in her career...?). It is not an insult to name her as a "Balanchine ballerina"...it is definitely not untrue, but there were also other achievements of her, I believe, without him.

Hmmm...I will check that out too. Thanks for the update, volcanohunter!

Oh my...I need to print this and put in up hight in my apartment... Please...if anyone plan to be in London as well, let me know se maybe we can organize a little get-together post performance or something. That would be fun! Mashinka...I will send you a PM.

Flash flash! Cubanmiamiboy will be in London! I planned my yearly European vacation this year around the Bolshoi appearances. I was originally going to go to Russia, but the London tour was too attractive to let go, so I'm in! I bought tickets already fo me and my mother. Swan Lake, 07/30 with Alexandrova/Skvortsov. Bayadere, 08/03 with Smirnova/Loparevich/Krisanova and 08/05 Sleeping Beauty with Kaptsova/Ovcharenko. Can't wait!!!

RIP, Mrs Tallchief.

So sugary...

It is VERY distracting. If Academy Awards were given here, the MET would be competing with more force for the special effects category rather than artistic direction or leading/supporting roles. Even if you don't want to, you keep looking at that thing's twisting and shape changing, and wishing that nothing will go wrong...(which in fact wasn't the case during Rheingold). They need to "clean" the stage and try to go back to more elegant, less effectism oriented productions.

From the very moment they need to "defect" and give up national Cuban rights of property, instead of just asking and getting permission to come and go to both Cuba and US-(something any of the two countries would had granted them)-they are tecnically political refugees. There's still a wave-(if a minority, true)-of us Cuban that didn't come here out of hunger, but I understand we're no more in 1959, and that the 98% of my peers start traveling back and forth in between the two countries as soon as they get permanent residency-(one year and one day after landing here). If anything, I really hope they could make it to MCB and inflict some new life in the current aging pleyade of Principals. Let's see.

The Machine was H I D E O U S, Abatt! At one point the whole panneling got stuck while twisting and a stage hand had to come and start lowering the individual panels one by one. A lot of noise was also being produced backstage at the time, I guess due to it. I couldn't stand that device. The whole thing looked more Cirque du Soleil than MET. They need to get rid of it.

What a wonderful concert abatt! If that wasn't enough, on my way out I was roaming thru' the exhibition room just in time to catch a ballerina dancing one beautiful "dying swan" on a distant TV screen. When I approached it to look at it closer, I then saw it was no other than Prima Kirkland...oh, how wonderful she was...!

Yes indeed, Helene! I'm also gonna be at the MET tomorrow for Das Rheingold! I'm freezing here-(there were like 200 degrees in Miami when I left on the 3th), but I'm having a lot of fun. . I was actually lucky enough to catch a glimpse of one of the four renderings of "The Scream" by Munch(one of my all time favorite painters)- this afternoon at the MOMA. More to come..!

Cubanmiamiboy is in the city for a much needed mini-vacation! Tonight I'm gonna go to the all-Wagner program of the Bostonian orchestra at Carnegie Hall, led by maestro Daniele Gatti. Anybody going by any chance...? http://www.carnegieh...hony-Orchestra/