cubanmiamiboy

Ah...that swan !. That could have been another reminiscence of Balanchine from his time with the Imperial Ballet.

From the MCB staging I do remember the knights on the stage sides with a couple of girls leaning on their shoulders a la Chopiniana. There were all white swans...no blacks in sight, and a rather funny mechanical swan sliding across the stage in the very start. It looked very mid-century to me.

It is absolutely necessary. Substitute the word "Balanchine" by "Petipa" in your sentence and you will get a fact that indeed happens. Well, I was trying to make the Balanchine lovers (afraid Petipa training would change them) feel better about MCB continuing to explore the classics. You are scaring them again, Cristian! LOL No need to be afraid, BB. Balanchine lovers have their territory marked over here already. On the other side, I'm sure the dancers and audiences both would be VERY grateful would the classics find a permanent house in Miami.

It is absolutely necessary. Substitute the word "Balanchine" by "Petipa" in your sentence and you will get a fact that indeed happens.

Isn't that the case of Nioradze, Natasha...?

Balanchine's comprised staging of the white acts is indeed part of MCB's repertoire, and the troupe of swans was there, so I don't think is a matter of number of dancers available but rather of certain lack of ability to take the warhorses by their horns, permeated probably by economical reasons AND some fear-(notice that this is my assumption). But a ballerina-(or a troupe)-doesn't get any points by avoiding the big roles...they rather lose, and so the audience. We all know the strength and ability of a dancer to assume those fouetees permeated roles and XIX Century demeanor has a limit, and sometimes when I see our wonderful Delgados o Catoya o Panteado onstage, I wonder...will they ever be given the opportunity...? Our great Seay retired sans any Aurora in her resume, and Catoya and Panteado are right there in the borderline. They don't have the luxury of many years ahead to wait. Yes, the floor rolling is interesting at times, but when I went to see Cunningham's company in their last tour before the folding, I immediately had the same feeling as when I saw Duchamp's "Fountain" in the Guggenheim. It was a curiosity...a sign of artistic rebellion/searching from past times, but now a mere curiosity that didn't convey what it initially intended to.

Yes, if they use the pre-professional students from the school, and they can use soloists as the little and big swans. Extras acting as ball guests in Act III can work as well. When the company staged that embarrrasing Aurora's Wedding, it was clear that the problem wasn't about the number of available dancers, and the solution doesn't lay simply as "Oh well...we're a Balanchine company, so whatever.."

The point is an easy one,bart. A full length successful SL needs to be done to keep the very essentials of the art form in a ballet company. MCB is a ballet company, not a modern dance troupe. The last name Ballet is there for a reason, and yes, even if Balanchine is a strong part of its lifetime, it is at the end Miami City Ballet, not Balanchine Ballet, and that fact needs to be completely accepted and carried on. Then, all that floor rolling and bare footed stuff and Taylor and Twyla and so on and so forth should be interesting complements once and for all the company has finished with the task of mastering the very basic product of the art form. A full lenght SL could be costly, but Petipa is the very bones of every self respected ballet company, so it needs to be done over and over with the required reverence and mastership. 500 years from now the art form will keep surviving ONLY if the classics are still being produced and performed. All that Morphoses business stuff are nice experiments, but in the long run they have and will have a limited time, after which dancers, AD's and audiences will go back again at producing and watching yet another production of one of the classics. I don't know too much about Farrell and McBride and all those ballerinas who were able to survive and become internationally known without the essentials, but I firmly believe that their success had to do with the fact that they were part of something new that at the time was probably working just fine and didn't required for them to do anything else, but whatever that was, it is not new any longer. Graham and Merce and some others were also something new, and they too had dancers that were lucky to be there at the right time and the right place to show the novelty to the world, but that was it...the mystery of the BALLET pathos-(with its share of Auroras, Giselles, Swannildas, Odiles, pointes,tutus, tiaras, reverences and barre language)-has been able to go along all the rest and win in the lung run. Whatever the formula is, it has worked for many years, and people both on and offstage have accepted it and kept it where it is. MCB needs to be part of that too, and our great ballerinas deserve the great roles. And we the audience need them, want them and are rightly entitled to them too just as NewYorkers and Mariinsky goers.

I wonder why the Mariinsky makes Rothbart looks so monstrous... Anything better than the Swamp Thing, BB...

What Lopez needs to do is to bring Odile to the company once and for all. A full lenght SL is long overdue. A trying at putting together the ill fated company's "Aurora's Wedding" would be VERY healthy also, along with SL, to the basic stylistic development of this dancers whom have had almost no exposure to Petipa-(huge mistake, IMO).

To see real stylistic diferences, get THE trilogy...Ulanova/Fadeyechev, Alonso/Plisetsky and Fracci/Bruhn. The bits of Markova/Dolin and Fonteyn/Nureyev on Youtube are priceless too.

I was watching Sylvia yesterday with my mom and she asked me "why this beautiful Petipa choreography is not that known as SL or SB", and she was surprised when I told her that it was not Petipa, but rather Ashton's display of the Petipa language. She LOVED the ballet. I'm taking her to NYC to see it !

The captions are so interesting..."She can stand on her toes on one foot for nearly 60 seconds.." on Toumanova's balance, and how about the "Stalin Price laurate" on Semyonova..? I wonder how people would take that info back then...

I've seen Osipova live just a couple of times, as Gamzatti and as Kitri, and although she's certainly wonderful technically, she doesn't do it to me in terms of exuding that royalty needed for O/O. Even her Gamzatti didn't have enough of that. Another exact example of this is Cuban Viengsay Valdes, which even being the strong technician she is, is never enough mannered in the right ways for the crowned roles. Both are great Kitris but not so good princesses.

The damage has been done to Skorik anyway, just as it was with Somova earlier by such too early promotions. For Skorik to break the image of the incapable dancer will take wonders. Has Somova succeeded in doing so...? I don't think so.

Perhaps Gomes is too discreet for his own good. If you put Nureyev and Gomes in two theaters side by side, Gomes would sell five tickets to tens of thousand for Nureyev. Nureyev danced with his whole being - whatever you think of his technique - and thrilled everybody. He was the one who broke the mold. And again this straight-acting advocacy, at least in outline, reads like an entry in a 1950's magazine column addressed to African Americans on how to behave if they want to get ahead - that they will have to work twice as hard, etc - To paraphrase Ellen Willis, when Nureyev got it on, he got it on with everybody, and it was an essential part of his special appeal, I think. And it didn't detract from his chemistry with his partners but rather enhanced it. But he did break the mold - he was the product of a certain time and place, very much of the Sixties and Seventies. Completely different atmosphere now and in some ways a more restrictive one, paradoxically. I saw this quote from your follow up post after I posted my initial response - we were thinking along the same lines, plainly. I have always suspected that Nureyev appeal had/has to do more with him as a sole product...not necessarily as a partner. Then, my assessment could be detrimental after the fact that I, of course, never got to see him danced live, but instead got to know his dancing via recordings, like the Giselle with Seymour or the SL with Fonteyn. None of those two speak to me, in terms of "The" male partner the way Gomes does. Gomes for me embodies the idea of that in order to convince society as a masculine ballet dancer you don't always have to write in a book about being either a marginal straight kid vandalizing the streets of Havana or a straight ex boxer youth from the streets of Queens. Gay guys from quieter streets can do the job as well also.

I love your boldness... (taking notes on the straight forward technique here and now.. )

Getting my point clearer. Gomes is my poster boy-(and i know to others too)- when I need to 1-Show a masculine ballet dancer, and 2-Show that male ballet dancers, included gay ones, doesn't equal sterotyped mannerisms-(a widely accepted idea, we like it or not). Are there too many out there like him..? Probably, but Gomes is right in the spotlight, being in Dance magazine or The Advocate magazine. I admire people so willing and able to break such old and damaging steorotypes, and Gomes has done so like nobody I can think of. Yes, there are two different things being intertwined here, personal and professional issues, and he has done a hell of a job to present a very attractive final product and come across as a winner.

All of the above is true. Gomes, being gay, has faced the monumental task of trying to erase that particularity in the audience mind when he's interacting with a female partner onstage, particularly at the numerous times where sexual attraction needs to be portrayed...hence with a higher amount of difficulty than it could be for straight dancers in order to be credible. I think he has carried like few others the very important message that one essential point of ballet-(as with other scenic arts)-is the game of "make believe", and he has done it like no other great gay ballet male star before or during his time-(definitely way over Nureyev, who even being a legend, accounts for not being convincing at times on that matters). Weren't many film stars of the past very afraid to loose their appeal to female audiences in the case their homosexuality would be put in the public spot...?-(Hudson comes to mind immediately). Don't we realize that there are VERY few actors or dancers who have done what Gomes did...? It takes courage to be out there with such a sensitive-(and not completely accepted)-side of your life completely exposed AND usually portraying roles that requires the bailarin to look and act like THE macho man..(Albrecht, Franz, Spartacus, Desire, etc...). Bravo Marcelo!

Part, like some other ballerinas in the past, REALLY had to work hard to be where she is. I'm sure she had to deliver countless nights of good stuff besides her "off nights" in order to convince AD's AND the audience tu put her where she is. She completely deserves to be the well liked ballerina that she is today because she has shown a whole career to account for. Personally I would never dare to have an absolute opinion on her whole trajectory based on the couple of "off night" performances I saw of her-(Sugar Plum and Lilac)-because obviously there has been much more than that, for which I can account also based on her Nikiya, which I also saw. But that's not the case of Skorik and her catapulted undeserved promotion in such early stage of her career. I also remember Krassovska's comment on the BR documentary about Danilova and the fact that the fouettes "were not her cup of tea", but then, just as some of these examples of less than perfect technique bearers, by the time Krassovska saw her, Danilova had created a name and a respected position within the ballet world that could justify her lack of certain abilities. Again, that's not the case of Skorik, or before her, Somova for all that matters.

Still can't get over that useless list... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiMexLfLf_o

Amen. And besides...I'm really sick and tired of the idea of dancers-(rather than Ballerinas)- that are said to be "wonderful" but then they can't deliver proper technique-(yes, 32 fouetes for Odile and Kitri included...sustained balances for Auroras and soaring jumps for Myrthas). Still, they are so lucky to get praised for "artistry", and "lyricism", and "suplessness" and "being willowy" and so on and so forth. Basta! You either get the whole package together or not. And if not, then you're not still a BALLERINA. Remember that distinction that wonderful Mme. karsavina mentioned in Dolin's documentary of Giselle..? "No, I was a soloist...oh, no...yes, I was already a Ballerina!" That differentiation happened in that very imperial stage now Skorik attempts to walk thru...

Transitioning from Villella to Lopez and from Lopez to "ropa vieja"...I LOVE it..!

Paul...there was no Odette. It was during a gala performance. Here's a post about it.. http://balletalert.invisionzone.com/index.php?/topic/34361-vaganova-today-by-catherine-pawlick/page__view__findpost__p__291322

VERY sceptical here...but then, I guess I'm the one who got to catch that early, unfortunate performance of hers that still wins the title of "worst Odile ever" in my 25 plus years of ballet watching. Maybe I was in the wrong place at the wrong time...?