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Two new prinicipal dancers for Bavarian State Ballet at Munich: Virna Toppi from La Scala (Dresden Semperoperballet before) and Maria Baranova from Boston Ballet (Hamburg before). Denis Vieira comes from Berlin State Ballet as a soloist to Munich.

New in the corps de ballet: Tomoka Kowazoe, Margaret Whyte, Chelsea Thronson, Jana Nenadovic, Mariia Malinina, Madeleine Pastor and Valeriia Sklotskaya. Principal dancer Ivy Amista and demisoloist Mia Rudic will return after their baby break.

 

Nancy Osbaldeston, Natalia Osipova, Sergei Polunin and Vladimir Shklyarov will return as guests next season.

 

Arianna Maldini and Jan Spunda are leaving for Nederlands Dans Theater.  

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The complete roster changes from Hamburg:

 

Madoka Sugai and Jacopo Bellussi are the new principal dancers, Florian Pohl and Lizhong Wang were promoted to solo dancers. Félix Paquet from NBoC follows Hamburg Ballet as solo dancer.

 

Not only Carsten Jung, Carolina Agüero and Karen Azatyan are leaving, also soloists Mayo Arii and Dario Franconi and the corps de ballet dancers Sara Coffield, Sara Ezzell, Graeme Fuhrman and Pascal Schmidt.

 

The new corps de ballet members from 2019/20 are: Victoria Bodahl, Chiara Ruaro, Louis Haslach and Roberto Perez (former apprentices), Artem Prokopchuk and Emiliano Torres from the Bundesjugendballett (Junior Company) and Ana Torreqeubrada from the Hamburg Ballet School.

 

New Apprentices for next season: Francesca Harvey, Alice Mazzasette, Mirabelle Seymour, Lea Sjövall, Lasse Caballero, Alessandro Frola and Lennart Giesenberg from Hamburg Ballet School. The former Apprentices Diogo Maya and Airi Suzuki will go to the Bundesjugendballett.

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  • 1 month later...

Johann (or Hans) Kresnik, an important choreographer of the German Tanztheater tradition, has died on 27 July 2019 in Klagenfurt, Austria, at the age of 79. He was famous for his very controversial, political pieces in a style that he himself named "choreographic theatre". He worked at Cologne, Bremen, Heidelberg, Berlin, Vienna and Bonn.

 

In the annual critics' survey of the German magazine "tanz", Berlin State Ballet was named Best Company of the year. Best production: Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, "The Six Brandenburg Concertos", Best Choreographer of last season: Lia Rodrigues from Brasil. Best dancers: Friedemann Vogel from Stuttgart Ballet and Jan Casier from Zurich Ballet. Too many different ladies were nominated by the 25 critics on the ballerina side, none received enough voices to win.

 

At Wuppertal Dance Theatre, the former Artistic Director Adolphe Binder, who was dismissed in July 2018, won two lawsuits against the town of Wuppertal: her dismissal was unjust, she will keep her job. Which is a problem, as Bettina Wagner-Bergelt was appointed in January 2019 as new Director of the company. Further complications to follow...

(See here for the dismissal story)

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

Some more dancer news from Berlin State Ballet: Aya Okumura and Tara Samaya join as Soloists, Weronika Frodyma and Luciana Voltolini were promoted to Soloists.

New Demi-Soloists: Dana Pajarillaga, Harumi Terayama, Paul Vickers, promotod to Demi-Soloists: Sarah Hees-Hochster, Lucio Vidal.

 

In September, Iana Salenko returns after her baby break.

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Sim, I think will take a while until they decide if Adolphe Binder is reinstated (apparently she wants to have her job back) or if Bettina Wagner-Bergelt stays on. Right now they are trying to find out who in the town council of Wuppertal was behind the defamation of Binder that led to her dismissal. It seems it was more important for the Pina Bausch Estate and the town of Wuppertal that the plans for the new, state-funded Pina Bausch Centre should not be disturbed by any trouble inside the Tanztheater Company, so someone decided to get rid of Adolphe Binder, because there were tensions between her and the (former) company manager. The more you read about it in the German papers, the more it seems Adolphe Binder did a very decent job in trying to find new choreographers whose works could complement the huge Pina Bausch repertoire, but ultimately the fame of the name Pina Bausch was more important for the town of Wuppertal and maybe also for Bausch's son who is trying to establish the Centre.

 

If you read German, go to the newspaper Wuppertaler Rundschau and search for Bausch, lots of background articles there:

https://www.wuppertaler-rundschau.de/suche/Bausch/

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Not even a month after State Ballet Berlin was named "Best Company of the season" by Germany's "tanz" magazine, they have to postpone their premiere of Marcia Haydée's "Sleeping Beauty" by half a year. It's not a choreography problem, the production was created in 1987 at Stuttgart and has been staged by some other companies since then, it seems to be a problem of the sets and costumes, which will be created for Berlin by Jordi Roig.

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8 minutes ago, Angela said:

Not even a month after State Ballet Berlin was named "Best Company of the season" by Germany's "tanz" magazine, they have to postpone their premiere of Marcia Haydée's "Sleeping Beauty" by half a year. It's not a choreography problem, the production was created in 1987 at Stuttgart and has been staged by some other companies since then, it seems to be a problem of the sets and costumes, which will be created for Berlin by Jordi Roig.

aarrgh I was planning a trip to Berlin to see it and Bayadere.  I don't want to see Swan Lake. Why can't they just borrow Stuttgart's costumes!!!

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9 hours ago, toursenlair said:

Why can't they just borrow Stuttgart's costumes!!!

 

Because Sleeping Beauty is playing at Stuttgart until February and they need their costumes. I'm very sorry for you, Katherine!

Even if they borrowed the costumes, they would have to build Jürgen Rose's sets which were hand-painted for all three acts, all the beautiful roses and the autumn forest in act 2. Lots of costly hours for the painters... The Berlin stage is much bigger than Stuttgart, they could not borrow them. Frankly, I don't think any company could afford Rose's sets and costumes today, they were incredibly expensive even in 1987. That's why Haydée's production gets new costumes and sets everywhere else.

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3 hours ago, Don Q Fan said:

Thank you for the unfortunate news about Berlin's SB I had hoped to do the weekend where SB and Bayadere are both on. Hmm will rethink. 

 I saw Bayadere yesterday again. Mostly to support Iana Salenko as Nikia who returned 4 months after giving birth to her second son. Which turned out to be dangerous for her and she had to fight for her life. So she is my absolute Super Mom and hero right now.  It was also her role debut. Also, Daniil Simkin as Solor and a fabulous Evelina Godunova as Gamzatti were a delight to watch, as is the entire production. If you can endure the mimics 😆.  I would highly recommend Bayadere. It's just one of the most precious traditional ballets; you gotta love it. From the soloists to the corps to the little students from Berlin Ballet School, the audience gave them lots of applause. 

Edited by Sabine0308
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I am pleased to hear of Salenko's successful debut in Bayadere the production is great as I saw it last year.  As I see they are doing Swan Lake instead of SB I will probably go for the weekend with 2 Bayaderes and one Swan Lake as I quite like their Swan Lake.  I had not known Salenko had problems with her pregnancy, poor woman she seems so "on top of it" on her Instagram posts!  Kudos to her anyway for such a speedy return to work. O very much hope I will see her on one of the Bayaders but in the meantime I have her Diamonds to look forward to in October!

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Casting for Roland Petit’s Coppélia at Bavarian State Ballet: Luigi Bonino, who is also one of the coaches for the production, will play Dr. Coppelius. Swanilda will be danced by Laurretta Summerscales and Virna Toppi, Franz by Osiel Gouneo and Yonah Acosta.

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On 17/09/2019 at 13:13, Sabine0308 said:

@Don Q Fan Iana Salenko's story is documented by a writer, most chapters are in German but the recent stories are in English too;

https://uwemuellererzaehlt.de/2019/09/11/the-little-william-is-there-2/

 

We have tickets for her Giselle in October.💐

I can read German so I'll check it out -  thank you!!

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 18/09/2019 at 14:56, Angela said:

Casting for Roland Petit’s Coppélia at Bavarian State Ballet: Luigi Bonino, who is also one of the coaches for the production, will play Dr. Coppelius. Swanilda will be danced by Laurretta Summerscales and Virna Toppi, Franz by Osiel Gouneo and Yonah Acosta.

 

Some more casting news for Munich's Coppélia:  Osiel Gouneo is out.

Swanilda: Laurretta Summerscales, Virna Toppi or Maria Baranova. Franz: Yonah Acosta, Denis Vieira or Dmitrii Vyskubenko.

 

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21 hours ago, Angela said:

 

Some more casting news for Munich's Coppélia:  Osiel Gouneo is out.

Swanilda: Laurretta Summerscales, Virna Toppi or Maria Baranova. Franz: Yonah Acosta, Denis Vieira or Dmitrii Vyskubenko.

 

 

So sorry to hear Osiel Gouneo is injured.  Do we know how serious?  Fracture or strain?

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On 07/10/2019 at 13:27, Angela said:

 

Some more casting news for Munich's Coppélia:  Osiel Gouneo is out.

Swanilda: Laurretta Summerscales, Virna Toppi or Maria Baranova. Franz: Yonah Acosta, Denis Vieira or Dmitrii Vyskubenko.

 

 

Shall I reveal who is going to replace Osiel Gouneo in Coppélia on 26th October in Münich, or would you like to?  

 

He’s flying in from his own tour to help out ...  there won’t be much rehearsal time ... at most two days if flights work out 🤞

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47 minutes ago, FionaE said:

 

Shall I reveal who is going to replace Osiel Gouneo in Coppélia on 26th October in Münich, or would you like to?  

 

He’s flying in from his own tour to help out ...  there won’t be much rehearsal time ... at most two days if flights work out 🤞

 

Such news should only be put on the Forum if it is already in the public domain.

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