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I have just finished Sokolova's wonderful book Dancing for Diaghilev and have been trying to find out about her life after Diaghilev died, which is when the book ends. Does anyone have any suggestions for resources I could follow up?

This dvd is available from netflix: Yvette Chauvire: France's Prima Ballerina Assoluta (1987) Yvette Chauviré: Une ètoile pour l'example This stirring tribute to acclaimed French ballerina Yvette Chauviré examines the legendary dancer's life and career through the lens of rare performance footage capturing her in action -- both on stage and behind the scenes. Highlights include Chauviré engaged in private coaching sessions with the likes of Sylvie Guillem and Monique Loudières, as well as performing in scenes from "L'écuyere," "Le Péri," "Giselle" and "The Dying Swan." Starring: Yvette Chauviré, Monique Loudières Director: Dominique Delouche

Mackrell writes about how 'There is no sense of family in dance now' in this article. (Posted in Wed May 26 links.) The videos of Ashton, mentioned in these posts, are such an example with Ashton talking about how he watched the young students all the time, watching their development and looking for talent. And part of the familiarity with a dancer (character and abilities), must be a major part of the impulse behind future works. What do others think about her article?

Review of Rolf de Mare. Reviewed by Graham Watts. . . . . "de Maré was a serious rival to Diaghilev" . . . . "In their respective contributions to culture, there’s no doubt that the Ballets Russes won, hands down, but it also seems clear that the cutting edge experimentalism of Les Suédois – which lasted for less than five years - provoked a response from Diaghilev towards an ever-more modern approach to ballet, which stretched the boundaries of his own company in its final years."

Dream pas de deux masterclass "Sir Fred Ashton coaches Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell in the final pas de deux from the ballet, then Dowell passes his own tips on to Karen Paisey and Philip Broomhead." 5 parts

"An American Type," a posthumous novel by Henry Roth, who died in 1995, came to publication largely because of the editing of Willing Davidson, a fiction editor at The New Yorker." New York Times article. "The writer Henry Roth was a tortured, hard-luck case who at the end life enjoyed an unexpected redemption. Blocked for decades, full of doubt and self-loathing, he began writing again in his late 80s, even though crippled by rheumatoid arthritis, and finished four new novels, two of which he lived to see into print before his death in 1995. Now, almost miraculously, there is a fifth, “An American Type,” which W. W. Norton will publish on June 7."

Here is the link.

Does anyone know more about this dvd that has appeared on Amazon: "Margot & Royal Ballet"? This item will be released on July 6, 2010.

In Danilova's memoir she said that Myrtha's role was more substantial, when she was in Russia, than it is today. . . that originally the role was danced by a ballerina and now it is danced by a soloist. (page 147 of Choura) Is this correct?

Thank you!!

Ilyaballet (a teacher at the Bolshoi) just posted this video saying: " Can not watch it to the end - scary."

Here are the latest revelations about Orlando Figes article from the Independent and article from Mail Online. What a shame... so unnecessary and damaging to his own reputation. The historian unmasked himself as the writer of several scathing reviews of books by contemporaries including Robert Service, Rachel Polonsky and the novelist Kate Summerscale on the shopping website Amazon. He originally denied authorship and then claimed that his wife had penned them. The professor of Russian history at Birkbeck, University of London, who has previously been engaged in at least two legal disputes with other historians, has been accused and cleared of plagiarism, and received hate mail while an academic at Cambridge. One colleague who did not want to be named described the most recent episode as "the tip of the iceberg".

Here is a quote about the censorship attempts during Diaghilev's visit to America in 1916. (From Judith Mackrell's biography of Lydia Lopokova.) On 25 January a legal injunction was passed against both Scheherazade and Faune, requiring Diaghilev to lighten the Slave's make-up and restrict the Faun's climax to a mute expression of longing. But even with these changes, censorship continued to plague the company throughout their tour. In Boston the mayor gave instructions that the Russians were permitted to bare only their toes; and in Kansas City, Captain Ennis of the Police Department gave stern notice that no lewdness was permitted on his watch. As he reported proudly to the Kansas City Star, 'Dogleaf, or whatever his name is couldn't understand plain English [so] . . . I told a fellow [the interpreter] "This is a strictly moral town and we won't stand for any high brow immorality. Put on your show but keep it toned down." I told him we didn't want to make trouble but if the show was too rank I'd come right up on stage and call down the curtain.'

Article by John Rockwell. I espoused similar views during my tenure as chief dance critic at the NYT (both of us pay due homage to Balanchine's genius; it's his latter-day influence and pedantry that are so troubling). Amusingly, I was also attacked as a sexist. Kaufman concludes her lead graf with: "Crotches -- cranked open, screaming at you to notice -- hit a new expressive high mark," and remarks later that a dancer "flashes her crotch at us a few more times." I tell you, girls can get away with this stuff while us boys get blasted. Life is SO unfair...!

You are right. When he became a soloist in Hungary he was advised to change his name from Rabovsky as it was not Hungarian. So he became Istvan Rab. When Rabovsky escaped to the West he changed his name back to his real family name.

Interview with Sorella Englund. Dance Magazine. April 2010. You are famous for your interpretation of Madge the Witch in La Sylphide. Do you coach men and women differently in that role? It’s about the personality of the human being dancing the role. There have been differences: Most men have a strong need to make it a power game, because their partner (James) is the same sex. Most women come with different ways of revenge, often more complex. I have never planned a different process for men and women. I could just see that it came out that way. Men have a huge dignity: “I am stronger than you, and you’re not kicking me out of this room!” For women, it is a sexual rejection: “I am not attractive.” I have wondered what it would be like for me as Madge were James to be danced by a woman. Then I might make it a power game. “Who are you with your skinny little waist to tell me what to do? I am older and wiser, so just go home and grow up!” It’s incredibly individual.

There are a couple clips on youtube. Search: Ondine Yoshida.

Here is one response to twitter: article entitled "Computer Program Wants to Free Scholars From Computer Distractions". In order to be free, the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau claimed, humans must sometimes surrender a measure of freedom. Fred Stutzman, a Ph.D. student and teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science, may not have had Rousseau in mind when he created the “Freedom” application. But he does believe that to escape the siren song of social media, scholars might need to freely impose restrictions on themselves. “When there’s wireless everywhere,” he told The Chronicle, “how do we really escape the Internet?” Mr. Stutzman’s answer is to relinquish one’s right to surf the Web to the supervision of a sort of robotic schoolmarm. Freedom is a shareware application that users instruct to disable their computers’ network adapters for a fixed period of time, leaving them unable to browse the Internet for up to eight hours.

It would be interesting to know if any studies have been done on the effect, if any, of tweeting during an activity - such as a performance. I am not so concerned about a dancer tweeting because if you are not interested you don't have to follow them. I do wonder though about the effect of tweeting on the performer's concentration and mood.

has opened a new channel with a wonderful 'teaser': "Vaganova and Tarasov, two most amazing russian ballet teachers started to work on this project.Two school worked together, but World War Two stop this project for 5 years. After the war in 1948 Vaganova and Tarasov finished this amasing film about Methodology of teaching ballet."

on HBO: Jacques D'Amboise and Bill T Jones on the HBO mini-series "Masterclass" that follows @YoungArts. It premiers April 18.

is going to be closed.

Rudolf Nureyev - Celestial Attraction (2010) is on Amazon for pre-order to be "released on April 27, 2010". One concern is the back of the cover mentions "re-enactments".

"THE GETTY PROVIDES FREE ACCESS TO THE BHA ON ITS WEBSITE As of April 1, 2010, the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) will be available free of charge on the Getty Web Site. Free Web access to BHA is an advantage not only to all traditional users of the database but also to such potential users as institutions in developing countries and independent scholars worldwide, who until now have been unable to afford access to the BHA. Since ending its collaboration with the Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST)–CNRS in December 2007, the Getty has been searching for partners to continue the production and distribution of BHA. This process has been complicated, and with no suitable arrangement immediately available, the Getty decided to act on its commitment to the scholarly community by providing access to BHA directly from its own Web site. “The Bibliography of the History of Art has been an indispensable resource for scholars and students for many years. We are delighted to announce that BHA will be available on the Getty Web site. We remain firmly committed to making the present BHA accessible to all,” says Thomas Gaehtgens, Director of the Getty Research Institute. BHA on the Getty Web site offers both basic and advanced search modules, and can be searched easily by subject, artist, author, article or journal title, and other elements. To search BHA, please visit, http://library.getty.edu/bha. Note that the database search includes both BHA (covering 1990-2007) and the International Bibliography of Art (IBA), covering the years 2008 and part of 2009. The Répertoire de la litterature de l’art (RILA), one of the predecessors of BHA, with records that cover 1975-1989, will be online by May 1."

An interview in the Telegraph. At a talk he [Morris] gives as part of the MMDG’s season at the Brooklyn Academy, he was asked whether he saw himself as a ballet or contemporary choreographer. “I make up dances,” he replied. “If nobody comes to your shows, then it’s modern dance. If everybody comes to your shows and no one likes it, is that ballet? I don’t know.”