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the following from ABT, today May 20: << Please note the following cast changes for performances of the repertory program: In Ga�t� Parisienne on Tuesday, May 20, the principals will be HEE SEO, MARCELO GOMES and CRAIG SALSTEIN In Theme & Variations at the Wednesday matinee, May 21, the principals will be SARAH LANE and DANIIL SIMKIN. >>

the hanging and leaving in place multi-act stage production settings is definitely cost-cutting. to hang, strike and re-hang such productions would take many more hours of stagehand labor.

wondering on my antediluvian PC w/ Win 7 (at least it's no longer XP!) if it's odd that the links posts tend to say "posted today" even when some of the items are familiar and thus were posted in the days' past - this would seem to be a change, if mem. serves. or is it just me, all around? no hurry in replying. and thanks in advance.

Baryshnikov definitely danced the full of Balanchine's HARLEQUINADE w/ NYCB. i have a house prog. from Nov. 22, 1978, with a note that this was Baryshnikov's debut as Harlequin; Patricia McBride was Columbine,Stephanie Saland, Pierrette, and Denis Lamont, Pierrot. if mem. serves, it was one of the roles in which he amplified the grand pirouette called for in the choreography with a sauté move, presumably with Balanchine's approval, similarly to the embellishments he added to the choreography for a similar turn in Balanchine's TSCHAIKOVSKY PAS DE DEUX. for the next season NYCB, McBride and Baryshnikov were pictured on the cover of the house program in their leading HARLEQUINADE roles. (see scan).

thanks, N for all the video observations, tho' i'm not sure who danced in the SWRB vid, but Brian Reeder is the name of an American dancer - w/ careers, out of SAB in NYCB, Frankfurt B, and ABT. he's too young to have been in a 1970s SWRB production, unless someone else was named Brian Reeder. currently Reeder is resident choreographer of Ballet Next. btw, Gillian Murphy made one of her first 'big showings' at ABT dancing the fouette segement of the girl in blue, not sure of the date... p.s. added later: i just looked up a listing for a SWRB film of PATINEURS w/ none other than Brian Shaw as the Blue Skater - such slips are frequent when writing about dance and dancing: Clive Barnes once filed a review of Taylor's ARDEN COURT calling it ARDEN FOREST; Kisselgoff filed a rev. of Smuin's Rodin-inspired "Eternal Idol" naming it "THE FALLEN IDOL" - so easy to do...

for lack of better identification(s), the flying jumps traditionally associated with the "blue" skater in LES PATINEURS were called "butterfly jumps" in and around the British dancers working w/ Ashton, and indeed as noted by Natalia, were more parallel to the stage, than the more vertical moves executed by Logan Learned. depending on the execution of this version of the move, there is a sometime reflection of a floating, flying jump familiar from the vocabulary of traditional, theatrical, Chinese acrobatics. the closest 'standard' move to what LL does might be what i believe gymnasts call an 'ariel.'

yes, if my none-too-precise memory serves, the movable unit Johnson set, vertically hung plexi-tubing, was arranged and re-arranged for various ballets during the festival. Kirstein's 'vision' for the scheme was an "ice palace" tho' i don't recall anyone's really seeing the end result(s) as such once in place. i rem. vividly that when the tubing was unpacked and about to be hung in the background it reeked of whatever those plastic fumes are called and more or less left some stage workers running for the exits until the stuff could be aired out and acclimated to the auditorium. thus for SERENADE i esp. recall an arrangement that set the tubing at a strong slicing diagonal across the back of the stage against, again if mem. serves, a blue cyclorama - lit by Bates. btw, can you tell me here, KFW, if the visual description you give above comes from some writing about the ballet or from a photo/illustration? w/thanx.

with regard to decor for SERENADE, to the best of my knowledge it was performed without decor since 1936, when "Scenery by Gaston Longchamp" was done away with. a MoMA exhibition a few years back of stage designs included Longchamp's gouache showing the 1935 background, probably commissioned by Kirstein; it was strikingly deco and almost futuristic in its sleek and somewhat spare configuration and uncanny space-defining elements. the only sense of a setting with NYCB came in the form of 'piece d'occasion' 'unit' set of plexi-tubing (by Philip Johnson) in place throughout the '81 Tchaikovsky Festival, where the movable elements were specially arranged at a strong art-deco-like diagonal for SERENADE. i haven't yet seen the CBC setting. it would seem that in most cases Balanchine agreed, or at least didn't object, to some special decor behind his ballets when they were filmed for tv. Peter Harvey, who designed the original JEWELS, was mostly responsible for the sometimes eccentric sets behind the ballet's in the Dance in America/Choreography by Balanchine series.

agreed, the footage above is clearly from Le Coq d'Or.

these clips are likely from the recent BBC telecast of "Ballet in the Blitz" - the SYMPHONIC V footage was recently found, in the BBC program 95-year-old Henry Danton speaks about the time and this footage. there's some question as to the cast - the 3rd woman, i.e. not Fonteyn or Shearer, Gillian Lynne thinks it shows her and not the originator of that role, Pamela May. f.y.i. RAKE'S PROGRESS is a ballet by Ninette de Valois

though Jack's question is, o'course, more than reasonable, i'm afraid that most NYers tend to refer to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts as The Library, forgetting at times that not everyone is a New Yorker, etc.

i don't understand German, but something's skewed about Pathé's ident. of Balanchine's NUTx in the "Hamburg" clip. CHOREOGRAPHY BY BALANCHINE has a '65 staging noted for Cologne, so that might be the source of this footage.

if the question here is the identification of the dancer as Giselle doing the back-traveling sequence of entrechats, is looks very like Verdy to me. also what other dancer in a historical promo of this sort would Boston B. feature: Verdy's Giselle perfs. w/the troupe were a coup for E. Viriginia Williams. admittedly this is brief and hardly sharp footage but it records the 'look' on record one place or another i've seen for Verdy's Giselle; i don't have Haggin nearby. my sense is that the Giselle clipped into this is clip is Verdy.

i have no info at this point re: Goldner's RARITAN essay and it's availability on line. if i learn it can be linked, i'll post about it.

the single GISELLE entry in CHOREOGRAPHY BY BALANCHINE, item no. 234, concerns a scene in Ballet Theatre's '46 staging, which Balanchine himself set. Balanchine was seeming of more than one mind about the 'old' ballet: on one hand if Volkov is to be completely trusted, and no recordings of Balanchine's saying what Volkov says he said to him exist as far as is known, Balanchine called GISELLE one of the 'great' ballets; on the other, he was said to have more or less sniffed when certain of his dancers said they might be leaving NYCB because they wanted to dance other ballets, GISELLE, per se: Ah! Giselle-itis! as an aside, it might be noted that Nancy Goldner has an essay in, or at least soon to be published by, RARITAN about GISELLE, largely w/ regard to Violette Verdy's performance in it, about which she writes most enthusiastically. she expresses quite definite opinions about Fracci's Giselle, which are hardly positive.

f.y.i. Sarah Jessica Parker in the Host's Chair The Leonard Lopate Show Tune in Wednesday at noon on 93.9 FM and AM 820 Sarah Jessica Parker fills in for Leonard Lopate. On Wednesday, she’ll be speaking with dancers Gelsey Kirkland and Michael Chernov about starting a dance academy, and with two principal dancers in the New York City Ballet. She'll also talk to MoMA director Glenn Lowry, who discusses the future of the museum and what goes into producing major exhibitions.

Stearns was out of YAGP, apparently he's injured.

f.y.i. scans of 3 carte de visite photos of, left to right, 1] Elise Parent, who danced Moyna in "Giselle" for the revival performance danced by Marfa Muravieva. She also subsequently danced "La Paix," during the 1870 premiere year of COPPELIA, when the concluding dance was not a pas de deux, but a concluding divertissement; "Paix" led into a "Danse de fete," a pas seul for Swanilda. 2] one Mlle Moncelet, about whom i know little, but whose photo here seems to date from 1863. 3] Leontine Rousseau, who performed on the 7 Virtues and Vices in the 1852 Paris production of "Orfa," a ballet arranged to a scenario by Henry Trianon and a score by Adolphe Adam. She also performed as one of the Three Graces in the entr'acte L. Petipa staged for Wagner's Tannhauser in 1861.

the first clip seems to be Clustine's SUITE DE DANSE, in which, if mem. serves, Serge Peretti wore pointeshoes, when he danced the male role performed here by Lifar. this is NYPL's cat. listing for he ballet: Suite de danses : Chor: Ivan Clustine; mus: Frédéric Chopin, orch. by André Messager & Paul Vidal; cos: Pinchon. First perf: Paris, Opera, June 23, 1913; Paris Opera Ballet.//Revival: Paris, Opera, Feb 20, 1922; Paris Opera Ballet.

f.y.i. some glimpses of Zakharov's LOST ILLUSTIONS from 1935 (music by Asafiev), focused on Ulanova's portrayal of Coralie. the group photo is an illustration in a Russian book: SOVYETSKII BALYETNIE TEATR (1917-1967) V. Karasovskaya, editor. the portrait photos come from little, almost-match-book size fold out booklets produced during the years of WWII, where, in addition to all else, paper was undoubtedly scarce.

bottom line: the SLEEPING BEAUTY entr'acte is a fine piece of music, which Balanchine 'noted' when he included it in his NUTCRACKER.

surely the Entr'acte symphonique, while written with Auer in mind was composed BY Tchaikovsky?

f.y.i. newsphoto of Makarova, who is no doubt feeling the loss of Ivan Nagy even more than most. the caption seems to have left out the word "week" after "six-and-a-half." i recall the time frame rather well as i was in London for the Kirov Ballet's season at Royal Festival Hall that summer.

George Tsypin's work for the opening ceremony reflected in large ways some of the design scheme he provided for Ratmansky's SHOSTAKOVICH TRILOGY last spring at ABT. likewise, the beaded collar/aureole Moses Pendleton first devised for his troupe, Momix, and then reworked for Diana Vishneva's "Beauty in Motion" bill, was used to multiple effect(s) for the Swan Lake/dove-of-peace moment featuring Vishenva in Sochi. the commentators mentioned Tsypin but not Pendleton.

among the dancers who performed the soloist woman in "Rubies," in addition to M. Morris, were Renee Estopinal and Karin Von Aroldingen and likely? Gloria Govrin, in Balanchine's day that is. many more has done the role since. maybe Wilhemina Frankfurt...