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Heads-up -- PNB alum Jennifer Porter is making a new version of Firebird (contemporary setting, no Slavic references) for Ballet Bellevue (Meydenbauer Center, October 10-12), featuring live music. And Olivier Wevers' Whim W'him company will be guesting on the program, with his version of Les Sylphides, so it's kind of a Ballet Russe revision.

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From today's Links, between the eight regularly scheduled performances of Grand Rapids Ballet's new "Nutcracker," the private gala (which raised $500K, split with Hospice of Michigan's Pediatric program), according to a linked article in this one, and 4000 school children who saw it, at least 21K people saw the new production, which will tour next season. Choreography was by Val Caniparoli, designs by children's author Chris Van Allsburg, Eugene Lee, and Patricia Barker (costumes).

Congratulations to Barker and the company!

At this rate, Barker is amassing more actual experience running a company than the vast majority of AD's in North America had taking over a mid- to large-size company. :flowers:

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PNB just published this wonderful photo of Maria Chapman and her baby daughter by Stacy (Lowenberg) Ebstyne to Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/PNBallet/photos/np.270518957.688777437/10152759085393952/

It's got wonderful energy.

I hope the long tulle practice skirt means we'll see Chapman in the Don Q Dream Act. beg.gif . The reason Chapman has been out is in the photo, but I'm selfish, and I miss her dancing.

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Barry Kerollis just launched a new dance storytelling project:

Kerollis has teamed up with performers from English National Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Ballet Israel, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Washington Ballet, and Atlanta Ballet, and hopes to have a total of twelve different dancers share their stories via series of YouTube videos. After completing a video interview with each dancer, Kerollis will spend a week with the performer and his or her company, developing choreography that tell that dancer's story. The finished product will be a video that fuses the dancer's interview, story, rehearsal footage, and final performance.

"This project brings superhuman dancers down to their most human qualities and inspires people to share without judgment," Kerollis added.

http://www.phillymag.com/g-philly/2015/05/13/local-dancer-and-choreographer-launches-global-dance-storytelling-project/

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An interview with Kent Stowell on PNB's blog:

http://blog.pnb.org/2015/05/kent-stowell-on-the-pnb-orchestra-carmina-burana-and-more/

“When we came here, we felt that our only way to make PNB become viable was to try to be one of the best companies in the country if not the world, and that included live music. It was part of the survival of the opera and the symphony – we all had to share the cost of the orchestra; then it became a difficult scheduling and energy problem because they were overworked. And the amazing part was the simple psychological part of leaving – because we gave our check to the symphony, who paid the orchestra – they felt like they were working for nothing for us, because we didn’t write out the checks. It wasn’t physical. So when we started writing checks to the orchestra employees ourselves, they felt a real sense of being a part of PNB.
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We just received the following message from PNB:

As you know, our corps de ballet member Charles McCall retired from PNB at the end of the season. He is now ready to “unveil” his next work-in-progress project, and you - and all of your friends and family - are invited to attend and observe:

The Changeling Project


A FREE presentation
Cornish Playhouse
201 Mercer Street at Seattle Center

This Sunday, June 28 at 3:00 pm (followed by Q&A)
Thursday, July 2 at 6:00 and 7:00 pm


(The Thursday performances will be further development of the project based on feedback from the Sunday presentation.)

Charles, along with poet Adriana Campoy, was a recipient of one of Cornish Playhouse’s first Arts Incubator residency grants. Charles and Adriana are developing a poetry-music-movement piece entitled “The Changeling Project.” The work will center on the character of a changeling, a child of two worlds. In the piece, they will explore the balance between two different worlds that we may find ourselves in, either through blood in the form of mixed race, or by association in environments that differ from our internal worlds.

Adriana Campoy is a published poet whose dance training includes Velocity Dance Center in Seattle, Shawl-Anderson Dance Center and Berkeley Ballet Theater in Berkeley, CA, and Escuela de Baile Flamenco Jose de la Vega in Barcelona, Spain, among others.

Joining Charles and Adriana in this performance are Lauren Kirchner and Patrick Milian.

For more information about the Cornish Arts Incubator residency, visit cornish.edu/playhouse/arts_incubator or contact Rosemary Jones, Director of Communications for Cornish College of the Arts: 206.726.5169 or rjones@cornish.edu.

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Cornish College recently took over the administration of this theater and has been running this incubator program for local artists when the theater is dark -- it's pretty new, but several choreographers have already gotten a chunk of rehearsal/experimental time out of it.

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Barry Kerollis' interview + choreography project, called "Core-ography" is now a launched project on RocketHub in conjunction with New York Live Arts, which makes contributions tax-deductible (as allowed by law, etc.). The project page, which includes a video and lots of details about the project, is located at:

http://www.rockethub.com/projects/59298-core-ography-a-global-dance-storytelling-project#description-tab

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Barry Kerollis is also one of Ballet Arkansas' five Visions choreographers for its Visions Competition, in which five choreographers will present work on August 22. The prize will be a commission to expand the work for the Spring mixed rep program. Three dance professionals are judges, and the audience is the fourth judge.

The five choreographers are:

  • Barry Kerollis (Houston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet)
  • Boyko Dossev (Boston Ballet)
  • Aidan Deyoung (Smuin Ballet, Ballet West, Post:Ballet)
  • Tom Mattingly (Ballet West and of "Breaking Pointe" fame)
  • Ilya Kozadayev (Houston Ballet)
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I'm catching up with podcasts, and I listened today to the Balancing Pointe podcast with Reid Bartelme, who with Harriet Jung, designed the costumes for "Debonair," Justin Peck's ballet for PNB. (Bartelme and Jung have been designing for Peck since his early work.) I knew the name looked familiar, but didn't remember why until I learned from the podcast that I would have had seen him with PNB as a Professional Division student. He was a PD for a year and a half, and after he had The Talk with Francia Russell, and she told him there wasn't going to be a contract for him at PNB, joined BalletMet, then Alberta Ballet before he returned to NYC and danced with Shen Wei and then Lar Lubovitch, after which he studied full time at FIT.

http://balancing-pointe.com/84-designer-reid-bartelme/

My favorite part was when he described the training he got under Yoko Ichino, David Nixon's wife who stayed at the BalletMet school after Nixon left to become AD of Northern Ballet.

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In the re-opening the wound category, Jahna Frantziskonis is blogging for SFB about their tour to China:

http://sfballetblog.org/2015/10/china-tour-diary-week-1/

She was especially noticeable in Scarlett's new Fearful Symmetries last night. (Whatever the merits of the work, everyone actually looked great. But SFB's corps de ballet is so very stylistically uniform and cool that even a minor difference in training and temperature reads quite large in that company.)

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She was especially noticeable in Scarlett's new Fearful Symmetries last night. (Whatever the merits of the work, everyone actually looked great. But SFB's corps de ballet is so very stylistically uniform and cool that even a minor difference in training and temperature reads quite large in that company.)

Wow I loved Jahna in Fearful Symmetries - so fierce, sassy, edgy like I've never seen her before. So cool she had a little solo! I wish she was in Sunday's cast but look forward to seeing her in Drink to Me with Thine Eyes (and assuming she is in Rubies also).

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