Top Ten Companies

[Ostrich]

I recently read that the Royal Danish Ballet is one of the world's top ten ballet companies. That set me wondering which the other nine are.

I'll give it a quess:

British Royal Ballet

Paris Opera Ballet

Bolshoi Ballet

Mariinsky Ballet

American Ballet Theatre

New York City Ballet

That's 7, together with the Danish Ballet. Which are the other three - Stuttgart Ballet? National Ballet of Canada? What about the Japanese?

[vrsfanatic]

The Japanese at this time have one full time professional company, in Tokyo, that I know of. They have many small student companies where the dancers pay to be members, not the other way around! They have a few very talented professional choreographers who work both in Japan and internationally though. They have very talented teachers who are producing very good students. Each school seems to have its "company", although the students/dancers are not paid to work.

[Ari]

When the world's leading companies are spoken of, I've always heard them referred to as the Top Seven -- the ones you mentioned, Ostrich. There are others which would dearly like to be considered internationally ranked (San Francisco, for one), but I've never heard them called that by anyone other than themselves.

[Ostrich]

Funny, I wonder where they got the top ten idea from. It was in a theatre program that I read it.

vrsfanatic, thank you for that info about the Japanese. The Japanese must be very ballet crazy to be prepared to pay to perform! Any idea what training method they usually use?

[Old Fashioned]

How about National Ballet of Cuba or Municipal Ballet Theatre of Rio de Janeiro? Trying to turn the focus away from Europe and NYC.

[vrsfanatic]

The Japanese dancers/teachers I know, have a general Russian background. While I was in Vaganova Academy there were about 14 Japanese students (all in the upper levels), my first year and 25 in my 2nd year. At that time, they were members of the existing classes with the Russians, but I have heard that now they have their own classes, as had been done during Communism with some groups of foreign students. I did have one Japanese apartment mate who was a teacher, although she was not studying in the pedagogy program.

I taught in a Russian Pedagogy program in Japan, 13 years ago, where most of the teachers, I was told, had studied RAD. Last year, while judging a competiton in Japan,, most of the students had trained either in RAD or some form of Russian. I leave in a week for Japan again and I will ask more questions about the teaching and training background of the Japanese students and teachers.