innopac

Thanks for the alert!

Was it done before the elastic crossovers became popular?

In this youtube (at 0:12) Farukh Ruzimatov sews his ballet shoes to his socks. Would this be unusual to do? I wondered if he did it because he was wearing socks rather than tights. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7nuu23SHK0&playnext=1&videos=buZsJQh8hL0

Congratulations to tendu.tv Quote from the Guardian: "The best live arts sites" Link "With one proviso, this is the place to go for dance. The proviso is that you have to go to America first, because the content is not yet viewable abroad. That will soon change, they say, but in the meantime the footage on sadlerswells.com, rambert.org.uk and article19.co.uk (plus YouTube) is as good as it gets."

Ninette de Valois has a funny story in her memoir when she is talking about her music hall experience. In her view the orchestra was in the habit of taking charge of the conductor. "... there is the true story of an aggrieved old orchestral player who reprimanded a zealous new conductor at a London music-hall with the following: "Hi, guv'nor, with us--if you please.'"

A friend told me that in 1911, at a performance in Milan, Chaliapin was thrown by a horse but was able to finish the opera with a badly sprained foot. We were wondering if any of you have stories about animals being used on stage? Here is a story I enjoyed about an animal being made up to look more realistic and the problems it caused. We could think of the following examples of large animals used in ballet -- are there other instances? Don Quixote - horse and or donkey Esmeralda - goat Giselle (Bintley) - horse La Fille mal Gardee - pony Pharaoh's Daughter - pony

How is the fundraiser going now? Has the situation improved? I notice that on BT for Dancers the fundraiser thread gets "bumped" quite frequently so it comes up when you view new content. I wonder if it would be an idea to do the same here. Everyone is so busy reminders don't go amiss.

Thank you GNicholls for telling us about the Bata Museum website. I love this pair.

Here is a passage about the difficulties conductors faced when attempting to navigate through the pressures from balletomanes, claques and internal company politics. I imagine Telyakovsky was thinking about Kschessinska when he wrote this.

Article from The Slovenia Times 02.07.2010.

Have you tried the disks in a dvd player or computer? "MPEG-4 (.mp4) MPEG-4 is an International Standards Organization (ISO) specification that covers many aspects of multimedia presentation including compression, authoring and delivery." Source

Is this video of Dudinskaya in Raymonda from "The Glory of the Kirov"?

How did you insert the videos?

Have a look at medici tv. Lots of music and documentaries. A couple of offerings for ballet: click on VOD and then choose Dance.

Thanks Helene

I hope you don't have "BT board update" scenarios in your dreams, Helene! What a mammoth task. And to add to it I have another question Before you could search and get either a list of threads or quotes from posts with your search term highlighted. Is this still possible? Thanks for your help.

How do you remove the gender from your description next to your post? I notice that not everyone has gender mentioned. For example Helene does not. Thanks.

From a thread about boring ballets Hear, hear!

Interesting -- I hadn't known this either. From wikipedia Bono was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1994 to represent California's 44th congressional district. He was one of twelve co-sponsors of a House bill extending copyright.[9] Although that bill was never voted on in the Senate, a similar Senate bill was passed after his death and named the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in his memory.

A youtube comment dated 3 months ago says about Thibault "So glad he has FINALLY become an etoile.I shall look to following his progress." Is this correct -- has Emmanuel Thibault become an etoile?

Fascinating kfw Thanks! Atwood also says the following (The Parisian worlds of Frederic Chopin. Page 210.): "At the Comique the chief claqueuer, Albert, was even more stringent in his demands [than Auguste at the Opera], insisting that the public be kept out of all first-night productions." "Although its virtues were dubious, the claque persisted in an organized form until the last quarter of the nineteenth century." See also this quote from the book. Fanny Elssler is mentioned.

I have been reading a bit about the claque in Paris at the time of Chopin and was surprised to read the following which got me thinking and I would be interested to know what others thought about the role of the claque -- past and present. Although some people considered the claque a corrupting influence on the opera and theater of its time, Theophile Gautier rose to its defense. "If the claqueurs were suppressed," he claimed, "the public would be shouting for their return within a week." Why? Because of the many benefits offered by the claque. For one thing, it gave encouragement to deserving new works that an uninformed audience might not appreciate at first. Furthermore, by delaying the failure of an expensive production, the claque protected jobs and allowed the work to gross some money before it closed. finally, the stimulation of the claque often whipped up the artists to perform better than they might have otherwise." The Parisian worlds of Frederic Chopin by William G Atwood. 1999. Page 210. Bart has previously asked some interesting questions about the present day claque in Russia: quote: We have a number of posters familiar with ballet in Moscow and St. Petersburg today. Is the ballet scene today anything like that which existed in the 90s? Does the claque still exist? If things are better, what has happened to bring about the changes? How is truly creative work -- and the identification and advancement of talent -- possible in such an environment? quote: Thank you, Mikhail, Natalia, and all. I've heard of claques at La Scala in the past, but did not know how powerful they are in Russia. sad.gif I have so many questions and hope some of you can answer at least some. Since money seems to be central to their motivation and power, where does this money come from? Is there so much cash floating around in Russian ballet? Do individual dancers have managers or protectors who can afford to pay for the claque's approval? Why does the management of the theater permit it? Have dancers -- especially those attacked by the claque -- ever spoken out or taken action against it? How does the ordinary, regular ballet audience feel about this -- and respond to it when the claque is in action? And finally (thanks for your patience): are there any notable examples of claque-like organization and behavior in theaters outside Russia today?

This article in listed BT's 17 June 2010's links does not give the full story: "the Kremlin had called for a public relations counteroffensive that would paint Zionism as “a vanguard of imperialism.” A large press conference was arranged with “acceptable” Jews, including the prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya and the comedian Arkady Raikin, vowing loyalty to the Soviet Union and denouncing Zionism as expressing “the chauvinistic views and racist ravings of the Jewish bourgeoisie.” According to wikipedia Plisteskaya "was forced to be member of the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public by being threatened with having her passport revoked." I wonder that the author of the article didn't include that information....

Thank you so much, leonid. I will try and track down Peggy van Praagh's memoir. Perhaps Sokolova is mentioned in that. Dancing for Diaghilev is such a joy to read. For me it is up there with Theatre Street. I am curious to know how much editing Richard Buckle did to produce the book. Here is one memory of Sokolova I just found: The highlight of the refurbished repertoire was Les Sylphides, restaged for us by Lydia Sokolova. This was an inspiration for all of us. She breathed new life into the production and coached me in the Prelude, an experience that I never forgot. She illuminated for me this lovely, simple solo in a sensitive way that was surprising for a dancer who had been famous for her character work in the Diaghilev company. She wafted about the stage "listening to the voices," clad in a full-length mink coat and a little cloche hat. She also generously helped me with the Girl in Le Spectre de la rose, which I danced with Alexis Rassine. Alas, she came only for the London season. We adored and revered her--a warm, down-to-earth Englishwoman who had an enormous contribution to make to English ballet but, it seems, was never asked. "Dancing for Joy: A Memoir, Part Three" by Brigitte Kelly. Dance Chronicle, v22, n3 (1999), pp. 359-418