EvilNinjaX Posted November 14, 2007 Share Posted November 14, 2007 I recently received a fairly large shipment of ballet DVDs, including: LOPATKINA variations VISHNEVA variations Stars of the 21st Century Nina Ananiashvili One Moment in My Life Soloist of the Paris Opera Ballet Agnes Letestu Regards sur une Etoile and the Czar's Box of: Lopatkina Vishneva Zakharova Ruzimatov Makhalina Zelensky Asylmuratova + Zaklinsky i haven't been able to watch all of them yet (natch). I have watched the Lopatkina and Vishneva variations discs and they are quite good. I couldn't understand any of the lengthy dialogue bits, but my Russian friend watched them and liked them. She said that she always thought that Lopatkina was the more thoughtful and intellectual of the two and the discs bore that out. Where Lopatkina explains the motivatoin behind the character as she is doing the La Bayadere variation, how she might be given to moments of losing control, etc... Vishneva counters with fairly banal notes like "always close into 5th position when you do the en dedant pirouette here... and then ..." I'm trying to free my schedule up a bit so she and i can watch it together and give me the play-by-play (so to speak). Stars of the 21st C has some absolutely gorgeous dancers and dancing, unfortunatley this is an example of the worst possible camera work and editing possible. FOr the most part, the dancing it totally ruined with extrmeme close ups of faces and the like. I am so disappointed. The Soloists of the Paris Opera Ballet is an aggregation of two previously exisitng VHS videos. The highlight (for me) is the Sylvie Guillem + Legris Grand Pas Classique. The Nina documentary is quite interesting, though again i can't understand anything! Some cute footage of her as a little girl ice skating. Quite a bit of the video here is also subject ot poor camerawork. There are some sequenecs where she is in class and instead of seeing ANY of the combinations, we get a couple of minutes of Nina's facial expressions closeup. -goro- Link to comment
EvilNinjaX Posted November 15, 2007 Author Share Posted November 15, 2007 ... and if there are any Russian speakers (or Japanese readers) who want to help me do a subtitle track for these dvds, lmk... -goro- Link to comment
naomikage Posted November 16, 2007 Share Posted November 16, 2007 ... and if there are any Russian speakers (or Japanese readers) who want to help me do a subtitle track for these dvds, lmk... -goro- I don't have enough time to make a subtitle track, but I can tell you some memorable quotes made by Lopatkina and Vishneva in the Variations DVD. Link to comment
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