assoluta

Guillem was unique, no doubt about it, and very much misunderstood, then and now. Praising her above any reasonable limits became a habit, almost a cult, in some balletomaniac circles which is even more intriguing if one notices that the highest praise she garners for things she did wrong (like her Raymonda variation).

Some are, some do not care. And I know principals in top companies who do not care…

Absolutely! Your pronouncement deserves to be quoted again and again.

Not being familiar with the details of their 'dance education' I cannot compare the experience of Ashton, Tudor, or Robbins, with the experience of some of the stars of modern ballet stage like Preljocaj to whom what you did say applies to full extent. Preljocaj even when he was working with the dancers of the Opéra in Paris, himself was unable to complete a regular daily class. Unlike numerous stars of modern choreography, however, I have no doubt, that Ashton, Tudor, and Robbins (after his infatuation with Balanchine's work), held the idiom of classical dance in very high regard. "Benefit rather than a hindrance". For me it sounds like asking whether "knowing less" is a benefit compared to "knowing more". My cautious answer would be: sometimes, perhaps, but almost always as an exception, not as a rule. The greatest problem that I see with the current state of choreography, and I mean here those who stage works for major ballet companies, is precisely their lack of the total command of the "vocabulary and phrasebook" of classical dance. This problem is acutely visible in the work of choreographers who get far more praise than what their works deserve. I don't think it is reasonable to expect great literature from people who have limited command of the language in which they write and speak. Why then to expect great choreography from those who have similarly limited command of the choreographic language, and they substitute for the language they are not fluent in, some idiolect that some may praise for its originality, others for its weirdness, but almost never for its beautiful and rich phrases?

Guillem's whole career is so unusual that it hardly is of much help here. There are other dancer's characteristics and these are individual in most cases, that need to be taken into account when we talk about injury proneness.

Officially — not, unofficially — yes.

"Major schools" may be in pursuit of physical perfection but later we don't see it on stage. Today the ballet world is increasingly dominated by dancers with looks of athletic engines. Perfectly fit for the work of choreographers who treat them as anonymous "bodies". Ours is not the era of Diaghilevs or Ramberts, unfortunately, yet in every era artists need masters to develop, to grow, to mature. What kind of masters do young choreographers have today? Most of those "Masters" did not even master the full vocabulary of classical dance, even though some may have developed their own idiosyncratic vocabulary and choreographic language. A very serious obstacle for talented young choreographers is that they need somebody who would support them and show their work. The opportunities presented to them are very limited. Either you develop your choreographic talents being a member of a big company like the Royal Ballet,if you are lucky to be supported by the Artistic Director, or you may never be able to realize any talent you have. The most interesting and talented people, I am afraid,today are precisely in the latter category, even if some of them managed to win major prizes at major choreographic competitions judged by the stars of the past. In the West practically no Artistic Directors would take a risk of putting on stage a production of somebody without a stamp of approval from the media, unless that somebody is his (or somebody's important) protégé. This is why "innovation" that Artistic Directors like to brag about is often a fiction: every year we get from them predictable mix of Forsythes, McGregors, etc., which to me at least is of strictly limited interest. At many smaller companies the Artistic Directors nourish their own choreographic ambitions and are jealously excluding all outsiders (with exception of those few Big Names) from even getting close to their dancers. This is happening, essentially, because most of them have a fairly realistic assessment of their own skills and they are right to be genuinely afraid that allowing a skilled outsider would immediately pose a mortal threat to their own position as a choreographer. No matter how brilliant and imaginative, and skilled you may be, without access to highly professional dancers it is impossible to create anything of real value. I am too well acquainted with the situation in this regard at many companies to have any illusions that we are going to see a new Ashton, Tudor, Cranko, or Massine, any time soon.

I was deeply disappointed with the ABT version with Baryshnikov when I first saw it many years ago. Showy in a shallow way, not an iota of elegance.

Unfortunately, ruined by terrible camera work…

Looks like you haven’t been over here for a long time or we have a very different idea about what does modern mean. Being different from the rest of Europe doesn't mean not modern , just different.

I would have politely declined it.

Thank you for the review that reads like a report from an Action Art performance which, in a way, the first programme of the season at the Opéra was. I have my own thoughts about it based on what I saw. In one word: I don't think it was worthy of the artists who were employed.

I would even go further and risk to say that some of those much recorded dancers are not so "star", while some of the ones never recorded were actually greater stars to public and professionals alike.

I have had similar misgivings about Diamonds as you do. The allure of Diamonds to dancers may be based on misunderstanding what is all about, and it is not about "shining", neither it is about "emotions". To my eyes it is a rather formal piece, quite French, in fact, except not French Late Romantic (like Emeralds), but rather Ancien régime. This is perhaps the reason why I am least satisfied with Diamonds most of the time when watching Jewels.

You are making a good point, David. I understood FLOSS' comment, however, differently, namely that Lady MacMillan could be the one who made the decision which recent recording of Manon to choose for being issued on DVD. I find this unlikely. This is very different from giving an approval when approached by a party intending to issue such a recording for sale. In fact, denying an approval would require some serious reservations about the quality or integrity of the production that is supposed to bear her late husband's name.

Since the DVD in question is being issued by the Opéra, there is a completely straightforward explanation here, no need to blame Lady MacMillan. Dupont have been for 2 decades a darling of Madame Lefèvre (to the detriment of some stunning dancers of the company who were never recorded on DVD despite the fact that they were a lot more interesting), and now she is directing the company herself.

This is not a DVD of the original American documentary but a version specifically aimed at the German speaking audience. I also got it from Amazon Germany.

Coaching by Natalia Makarova, a real pity so little has been filmed. If they did the whole La Bayadère rehearsal with Makarova, and made it available, that would be of incalculable value for young dancers anywhere.

This is what I do -- I don't waste time (and suffer from frustration), I watch the video recordings later, except that I don't trust the companies, get the whole streamed video material and then assemble it for watching myself. Over 16 hours total of useful footage. The most interesting so far (from the professional point of view) seems to be Vaziev's rehearsal of Emeralds. I often hear soloists in Western companies complaining about the quality and quantity of coaching they receive. In contrast, Vaziev's approach is an old style attention to the tiniest technical detail as if the soloists were students at a ballet school. This certainly must be benefiting them a lot. Striving for perfection is the essence of ballet, after all. If you watch this segment in the future, take into account that this was their first stage rehearsal. Nobody escaped Vaziev attention, not even the least conspicuous corps member, most of it was directed, of course, at the soloists: Zhiganshina with Soares, Turazashvili with Alexeev, Khokhlova and Shrainer with Gainutdinov. An excellent opportunity denied to regular ballet goers to have a very close look at each of these dancers, all of them junior except Khokhlova, and especially so at Zhiganshina and Turazashvili. After Emeralds the attention switched to a rehearsal of The Golden Age where the main forces of the Bolshoi were employed. Akimov's morning class at Bolshoi was also interesting to watch. Boris Akimov at 70 is simply amazing. One could have a close look at a number of Bolshoi dancers, the principals (in the order how they were lined up along the wall): Stepanova, Rodkin, Lantratov, Chudin; the leading soloists: Kretova, Tsvirko, Vinogradova; the soloists and first soloists: Parienko, Tikhomirova, and at least a few really interesting corps dancers (effectively coryphés): David Soares, the youngest "star" of Bolshoi, Alyona Kovalyova who had a major debut yesterday in Diamonds, in her first month with the company, another recent Vaganova graduate, Ksenia Zhiganshina, and Anastasia Denisova. I am not going to burden the forum with my comments about other companies' segments, especially so that they are all available now on YouTube.

Not HD, I am afraid, only 720p.

Placing Sleeping Beauty in the idealized world of Louis XIV is an essential part of its charm. This is the reason why the proper costumes and the decorations are so important. There is a room for different takes, especially in terms of arrangement of the choreographic text, as Konstantin Sergeev's version for example demonstrates, but not by "modernizing" the content.

The problem is not with what you call "political interference", I don't see any, in fact. It has been an established custom that supervision of national cultural institutions is a prerogative and duty of the state. The problem lies elsewhere and we are observing it in several countries in Europe now. Incompetent, cowardly, gutless state functionaries who primarily care about being elected/reelected are bowing to all kinds of pressures from the demagogues of "progress". The result is that now a number of national ballet companies have been, or are in the process of being transformed into author's theatres which is ruinous to the state of ballet in those countries. The dancers in the national ballet companies became hostages of cowardly state bureaucrats. Children in state ballet schools, some with a pedigree spanning centuries, are horrified by the perspectives lying ahead of them in the future. I know many dancers in those companies and practically all of them are unhappy about the situation, until recently however, they were so afraid of their bosses that they would speak about it only in a hushed voice. The current situation in Berlin sets up a precedent and I am very glad that now certain fundamental questions can be discussed in open. Duato, Bigonzetti, Waltz, Pastor, and so on, have right to run their own companies where they can experiment as much as they want, where they can build their artistic vision, but they have no right to experiment with national institutions that in those countries are the focal point of ballet education and transmission of the balletic art. Vladimir Malakhov addressed precisely this point in his recent public statement about the crisis at Staatsballett Berlin.

I will not say anything beyond what I said (I weighed my words carefully). The source is the dancers within the company themselves, some really frustrated with how Mr Millepied has been portrayed in English language media as some kind of Prometheus "punished for his desire to bring Light to the humankind".

Yes, FLOSS, yet the hurry Mr Millepied was sacked was not at all due to what was given as an official reason -- that easily could wait if that was the case, it was to avert a scandal of catastrophic proportions for the image of that venerable public French institution. Whatever Dupont does and in whatever manner she governs l’Opéra, she is simply incapable of causing the crisis Millepied did.

It is an edited version of the combined footage of their closing night performance and the previous performance with exactly same cast.