toursenlair

1 hour ago, Bruce Wall said:

Several people have suggested 'culling' (don't really like the word) Balanchine's Jewels.

 

Maybe this will help.

 

Today I stumbled across JEWELS AT 50.  This was made for the work's 50th anniversary and surrounding the 2014 coaching sessions in Jewels for Pacific Northwest Ballet.  What an extraordinary ensemble Peter Boal has developed this Company into.  It is a shame that those who do not travel may never get to see them.  It was my thrill to see them in Paris this summer.  (I have already reported on it - but Boal's courage in pulling that young boy from the corps - Dylan Wald - for the opening Paris performance of Robbins' Opus 19/The Dreamer - a role I saw Boal excel in so many times himself with NYCB - will remain one of the highlights of my ballet going career.  Never before have I seen - at Wald's second performance - an audience applaud SO much after a first movement that it delayed the start of the second movement.  Wald SO deserved it.  I wouldn't blame people who didn't know the work for thinking the ballet had finished and even then they would have felt lucky.)  

 

In JEWELS AT 50 you see the sadly late Violette Verdy, Mimi Paul, Edward Villella and the abominable Jacques D'Amboise coaching.  Three of these originated roles in the masterwork that is Balanchine's Jewels.  D'Amboise's demonstration of how to do the kiss at the end of the Diamonds' PDD - an element he himself added - is entirely life-enriching.  The ease with which he knells in rehearsal belies the fact that both of his knees and both of his hips have now been replaced.  Masterful.

 

Enjoy.  
 

 

surely you don't mean abominable, Bruce????

He is 37, so not really that premature an ending to a career.

5 minutes ago, yvonnep said:

 

The 1968 recording of the original cast of The Dream is preserved by the Jerome Robbins Dance division at the Library of Performing Arts (LPA) of New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, New York.

 

And I think they also have the recording of Symphonic Variations here: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/87437fd0-4b52-0133-4044-60f81dd2b63c . It's been digitalised, so one doesn't need the staff's help to watch it. However it can only be viewed onsite on one of the computers at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of LPA. I haven't checked it out yet but judging from the cast information listed on the page, it is the recording you mentioned.

 

I'm now living in New York. Since discovering the archive that LPA had a couple of months ago I have paid several visits to it and had the chance to find a few hidden gems there: Act IV of La Bayadere by Fonteyn and Nureyev, Clips of Giselle by Fonteyn and Nureyev with Sibley and Shaw dancing the Peasant PDD, Sibley&Dowell&Seymour&Nureyev in balcony PDD in a promotion video of Romeo&Juliet, etc. There is a lot more to explore and I'm so grateful that NYPL has made an effort in preserving these recordings. I hope one day they will be able to digitalise all of them (right now they're short of funds as far as I know, so the digitalisation has been very slow).

Just thought I'd add to this that if anyone is visiting NY, you can get a free 3-day guest library card for the Performing Arts Library, which is at Lincoln Center. You may end up spending all your NY time at the library though! (when you're not at performances)

the competitive Final saw two gold medals awarded, to Monet Hewitt, aged 16 from New Zealand, trained by Joye Lowe at Philippa Campbell School of Ballet, and Joshua Green, aged 17 from Australia, trained by Karen Ireland at Karen Ireland Dance Centre.

Silver medals were awarded to Caitlin Garlick, aged 15 from Australia, trained by Karen Ireland at Karen Ireland Dance Centre, and Basil James, aged 16 from the UK, trained by the Faculty of Tring Park School. 

Enoka Sato, aged 16 from Japan, trained by Annette Roselli at Annette Roselli Dance Academy, and Jordan Yeuk Hay Chan, aged 16, from Hong Kong, trained by Yui Man Cheung at Jean M Wong School of Ballet were both awarded bronze medals.

Jordan Yeuk Hay Chan was also presented with the Margot Fonteyn Audience Choice Award, and the Choreographic Award for best Dancer’s Own variation was awarded to Joshua Green.

2 hours ago, Rob S said:

 

I raised that question with the listed contact on the pointe shoe appeal page after I recently won a pair of Yuhui's shoes in a silent (but deadly!) auction run by a dance school in Australia (the shoes were from the RB's Brisbane shows last summer)...over a month later I haven't had a reply, maybe she's too busy counting all those £39 donations that people are falling over themselves to give. Obviously they're not going to find homes for 6000 pairs every year but I thought a decent selection may bring in some money rather than we just see photos of shoes in a bin from various dancers on Instagram

The National Ballet of Canada sells signed used pointe shoes at their shop at the theatre. $35 for corps de ballet dancers, $45 for soloists, $60 for principal dancers. They do quite  a  brisk trade; I'm not sure how much money they make off them but it's pure profit.

They also ship a lot of gently used pointe shoes to the school and company in Cuba, where there just isn't enough money to buy all the pointe shoes they need.

I don't wish to speak for all of the women on the forum, but personally I find people staring at my chest a bit.... offputting.

Neumeier has done Bach's St Matthew Passion and Christmas Oratorio.

cinema screenings starting Sept 18 in the UK are listed here

https://www.nureyevthefilm.com/

28 minutes ago, Kate_N said:

 

As far as I am aware, that is not an accurate perception. Most large, internationally leading schools across the world take non-domestic students, and they must audition to be accepted. 

 

Usually, the non-domestic fee is the real full cost of the education; the domestic or home/EU student fee is subsidised.

For instance here are the numbers for Canada's National Ballet School:

Professional Ballet Program 2018-2019 Tuition

Canadian Students

International Students

5 hours ago, Jan McNulty said:

 

I loved Onegin when LFB (now ENB) used to perform it.  It was a performance on 26th May 1984 of Onegin that turned me on to watching ballet.  Years later I realised why ... I had seen Marcia Haydee and Richard Cragun!!!

 

They do Onegin in Paris and Copenhagen too as well as NBoC.

Also Budapest, Prague, Munich, Vienna, Milan, Hamburg....

1 minute ago, Anna C said:

 

I can't get the ROH page to open at all on ipad, Bruce - seems the problem is at their end, not yours.

I also cannot get it to open on Firefox on my laptop. The landing page for 2014-15 comes up! We're in a timewarp

22 minutes ago, Richard LH said:

 

One overseas event where Hayward  will guest very shortly (after Lagrasse) is the Vail Dance Festival, Colorado, along with Sambe.  I see that they also  did this last year, dancing the balcony PDD from Romeo and Juliet, so I guess it will be that again. It looks a lovely venue, (Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater). Anyone likely  to be out that way ?!

https://vaildance.org/event/international-evenings-of-dance-ii-2018/

Vail is beautiful and the festival is great fun. However, it's at an altitude of 8000 feet. I found myself short of breath just going up a shallow incline (and I'm pretty fit). They have to have oxygen in the wings for the dancers, and I hope Hayward and Sambe take full advantage of it. The year I was there, Sara Mearns from NYCB had to be airlifted to San Diego (sea level) because of quite severe altitude sickness.

Further to this, if anyone is thinking of going, be warned it won't be cheap.

1) the end of the run coincides with NY Marathon weekend, so hotels are crazy expensive (think $500US a night).... if you can even find one with rooms available

2) ticket prices are also crazy expensive:

$275

$225

$175

$150

$125

$75

$50

plus service charges on top.

I am no longer planning a group trip!

I am probably going to organize a group trip, maybe for the Thursday through Saturday. If anyone is interested in joining in, they can email me at toursenlair@gmail.com

I agree about the "astonishing".

and " Roščić intends to cut the number of ballet evenings ". !!!!! Vienna already has relatively few ballet evenings compared to opera. I don't understand! My sense was that ballet had become much more popular in Vienna under Legris, especially the big extravaganza ballets.

🙁

here's some perspective from this side of the Atlantic. I would be thrilled to be allowed to return a ticket even if it  meant paying a $7 return fee. We aren't allowed returns at all at the National Ballet of Canada. Your only option is to accept a tax receipt for the value of the ticket (which can be as much as $265). If you are a subscriber you can exchange into a different performance (no charge if you are a full-season, ie 6 performance subscriber, otherwise I think it is about $10 to exchange. The performance has to be in the same season. So I couldn't exchange a ticket for this June's performance into the coming performances in November. Single ticket buyers do not have any exchange options.

It is easier for NBOC dancers to share their time as they have four discrete chunks of performances (two weeks in November, three weeks of Nutcracker in December, three weeks in March, three weeks in June) whereas Munich is running pretty much nonstop from September to June. Also, it must be said that Jurgita Dronina hasn't been seen much in Toronto since she joined ENB (two Auroras and two Nuts).

37 minutes ago, Bruce Wall said:

What a FANTASTIC line up ... So wish I was there.  I'm going to do my very best to make it (and get a ticket for) next year

Bear in mind that getting a ticket is not easy:

For the Nijinsky Gala and “The World of John Neumeier”: Requests in writing (only via mail, with sufficient postage) will be accepted between September 24 and September 28, 2018 at the following address: Hamburgische Staatsoper, Kartenservice/Galabestellung, Postfach 302448, 20308 Hamburg, Germany. Requests and booking cannot be submitted in person and tickets cannot be purchased at the box office or via the internet. All requests will be handled in the order they were delivered to us by the German postal service. Please submit your name, address, customer number (if available), number of tickets requested (maximum of 2 tickets per customer and household) in legible writing (illegible requests will be discarded); please also choose between payment via direct debit or credit card. Accordingly, please submit your account information or your credit card information including the expiry date and verification code. Requests for the Nijinsky-Gala that had to be turned down last year will be treated preferentially if they reach us during the time period mentioned above. From October 29, 2018, we will inform only those whose requests can be fulfilled.

Francesco Gabriele Frola (he goes by "Gabriele"), who has just been promoted to Principal at NBOC, will be sharing his time between Toronto and ENB next year, as will his significant other, Emma Hawes.

This is a similar arrangement as with Jurgita Dronina, but I think you will be seeing a lot more of them than we do.  Jurgita performed two Auroras and two Sugar Plums in Toronto this year and that's it.

Gabriele is a very impressive dancer technically, and in the last year he has started to come into his own in terms of stage presence and acting ability.

I have just announced my schedule of group ballet trips for 2019. You can find it here:

http://toursenlair.blogspot.com/2018/06/tours-en-lair-ballet-holidays-2019.html

Please bear in mind that if your favourite ballet company does not appear on the list, it is not in any way a reflection on the company. It is very complicated determining which weeks offer the most ballet (and most attractive repertoire) in the least time in cities that are relatively close to one another, taking into account that my clients only want to travel between mid-March and July!

does anyone have more specific dates and rep?

3 hours ago, alison said:

 

And I'm coming to the conclusion that the general public doesn't really think of ballet as a comic art, more like a dramatic/tragic one in the same way that they do opera.

 

 

 

I think this is true. I showed Spuck's Le Grand pdd (mentioned above) to someone and she said "Who knew ballet could be funny?" Well of course, WE all knew that. I have a lecture that I give called "Ballet Laughs: The Unexpected Comic Side of a Classical Art" in an attempt to dispel this notion, and it never fails to evoke guffaws.

Not mentioned so far are the comic relief moments in otherwise serious/sad ballets, eg the drunk pdd in Manon, and one of my faves, the bakers' Rose Adagio and Cyrano's "man in the moon" solo in David Bintley's Cyrano, which I ADORED.  There are funny moments in Still LIfe at the Penguin Cafe, and I suspect in other Bintley ballets I haven't seen. I understand his Sylvia was quite funny.

The Merry Widow (Hynd)

Most of Justin Peck's ballets are very upbeat

Jiri Kylians Symphony in D (but I don't think anyone is allowed to do it anymore. But its on dvd)

Balanchine's Union Jack. Lots of Balanchine actually.

Here in Toronto, we only just saw the cinema broadcast of this program yesterday.

Just wondering.... has no one commented on the highly anachronistic Maple Leaf flag "flash" on the Canadian airman's bomber jacket sleeve? Canada didn't adopt that flag until 1965. Obviously it's more visible and screams "Canadian", although I'm not sure the character's Canadianness is crucial (he does also have "CANADA" on his shirt sleeve), though I know it's mentioned in the poem. All the same, it's a bit startling for a Canadian audience member.