toursenlair

a bit odd for him to leave just after being promoted, no? capybara, you're welcome to come and see him in Toronto!

Has left the Royal Ballet, moved back to Ottawa, and will be dancing with the National Ballet of Canada in the fall (Winter's Tale and Romeo and Juliet) and Nutcracker seasons on a temporary contract.

Here's a fun map that shows how many times you'd have to walk up the stairs or escalators at various tube stations to have climbed the equivalent height of some of the world's tallest mountains. Apparently 166 times up the stairs at Covent Garden equals climbing Mt Denali in Washington State. I did the stairs at Covent Garden once, and it felt like Everest! And since I hate those rickety lifts, now I get off at Leicester Square or Holborn and walk! http://www.timeout.com/london/blog/this-tube-map-shows-how-you-could-climb-mount-everest-on-the-underground-110515

but they don't announce their programming for July till much later.

Robert Parker tells the story of one pigeon (the one on the Young Man's shoulder) who took a great interest in Robert's hair (much stiffened by hairspray and thus apparently good nest-making material) and started to peck away at it.

I had to stop and take a moment when I read this, Janet!

I started watching the backstage footage and found it very boring. Not that exciting to watch people standing around, or stretching and yawning (even Ivan Vasiliev can't make yawning exciting).

according to Zakharova's website she will be performing in the live broadcast of Lady of the Camellias. http://www.svetlana-zakharova.com/calendar/

it's facing Karajanplatz (the end of Karntnerstrasse, opposite the Starbucks), towards the back of the opera house, just past the opera shop. Unfortunately however, there's another door on the opposite side that dancers sometimes use instead when leaving.

Fonty, I realize you are trying to inject some humour into this, but I fear it trivializes the point that I (and Misty Copeland) was making. Very few of us look like ballet dancers, but your analogy doesn't fit. Imagine if, in addition to not looking like the ballet dancers you see on stage, you lived in a society where for decades people like you who didn't look like ballet dancers, in addition to not being able to perform with the Royal Ballet, were systematically banned because they didn't look like ballet dancers from certain schools, universities, restaurants, theatres, public transport, not allowed to vote or to marry ballet dancers, were unable to find jobs, etc. , and where your ancestors only five generations ago were enslaved because they didn't look like ballet dancers. Wouldn't you then think, if you went to the ballet and didn't see a single person dancing who looked like you, that it was just another part of society in which you were not welcome?

What's sad is that for years people of non-white racial background felt that they were not welcome at the ballet because they never saw anyone who looked like them performing ballet.

I have attended Misty Copeland performances (Coppelia) at the Met in NY and I can tell you it is overwhelmingly obvious that she is attracting African-American audiences to ballet.

re Misty Copeland and population proportions: approx 13% of the US population is African-American. ABT has only one African-american ballerina (Misty). They also have Calvin Royal and Gabe Sheyer in the corps. That's 3 black dancers out of 84. I think Misty may have a point.

I don't think that Ratmansky's Don Q should be considered an attempted reconstruction of the original in the way that his Paquita and Beauty are. There is no Stepanov notation for Don Q. This, from the booklet that comes with the Ratmansky Don Q DVD: "no written record survived of either of the two Petipa versions... or those dating from 1900 and 1902 by Gorsky"... "The productions of Don Q that are danced today are the result of 140 years of performance history... That is why , says Ratmansky, the version he has made for the Dutch National Ballet should not be seen as an original choreography or as reconstruction of the original version. 'We simply don't know what was original'. Despite several of his own additions, however, his production remains a traditional work. 'I've made use of all the information I've been able to find, all the versions I know, and all the famous dances and steps traditionally associated with the ballet. And using that as the basis, I make my own decisions, with great respect for tradition.'"

That's Marco Goecke's Spectre. He's resident choreographer at STuttgart and all his ballets are twitchy like that.

American Ballet Theatre announces their spring New York season casting (may-July) the previous October, for most roles anyway. some remain TBA. Other N American companies usually announce casting 2-3 weeks before. New York City Ballet used to announce casting one week before, but they now do it 2 weeks before, mostly at the request of the dancers, as I understand it. The tradition was one week before because audiences were supposed to be interested in the choreography more than in any particular dancer. But hey, my feeling is, we pay the bucks for the tix, we should be allowed to have our preferences as to which dancer to see! The dancers themselves found out the casting at the same time as the audience, and as a result could never plan their life more than 7 days in advance, and the dancers' union asked for more lead time on the casting.

I have said this before and I will say it again. If we choose to make a commitment in terms of plane tickets, expensive ballet tickets, hotels, etc. we have to take a risk that the person we hoped to see may be injured. It's not fun, but we have to take the risk knowingly, and not be angry at anyone if it doesn't work out. No one forces us to cough up the big bucks to go to a distant ballet performance. I say this as someone who has travelled literally halfway around the world to see a particular dancer and been disappointed.

The Benois de la Danse facebook page ( https://www.facebook...LaDanse?fref=nfI hope this counts as an official source) has just announced: Artem Ovcharenko, premier of the Bolshoi Ballet and the participant of the Benois de la Danse Youth Project, has been approved for the role of Rudolf Noureev in the film by director Carlson Smith. The shooting will be done by a team from London especially for the BBC. (The video is in Russian so I can't verify, but I'm sure someone on this forum can). Certainly Ovcharenko has a striking facial resemblance to Nureyev.

Well the Cast list button definitely wasn't there when I first looked, but is now. Also just from a useability point of view, I think it's very cumbersome to have to click on each performance and then click back to the next one to find out who is dancing when. Say I really wanted to see Samara Downs as Odette in Birmingham. I'd have to click 20 times before I found her.

I can't find the casting anywhere on the site (I'm on firefox)

Zakharova. WHAT a surprise. NOT. would be nice to see some of the Bolshoi's other ballerinas sometimes. I understand they do have other ones.

presumably a shorter version?

Alex Jones.

in French: http://culturebox.francetvinfo.fr/danse/feuilleton-lecole-de-danse-de-paris-fabrique-des-reves-detoiles-219637

I think not ABT. They were originally mentioned in NBOC's press release but then NBOC issued another press release almost immediately with no mention of them.