Denver

ENB has only announced their schedule for the 2017-18 season through January 2018. Does anyone know when they typically announce their spring schedule? (I'm planning a trip to London next spring and am hoping I can combine visits to the Royal Ballet and ENB.) https://www.ballet.org.uk/whats-on/season-overview/

And some of us are really disappointed! I saw him in some spectacular Instagram clips with Houston and was so pleased to see him in a couple of performances this spring with San Francisco Ballet. I was so looking forward to seeing more of him with SFB. Now I'm hoping ENB announces their spring schedule for 2018 soon, so I can see about planning a trip to the UK to see him there!

The theaters at Lincoln Center (Met Opera House, State Theatre/Koch) have been checking bags for many years. They also "wand" every person entering. New this year at the ABT spring season at the Met: a bomb-sniffing dog stationed at the entrance. The museums also have been checking bags for many years. Some (e.g., the Neue Galerie, home of Adele) have you walk through a metal detector, too.

The most intriguing puzzle: why did Balanchine put all the swans in black, except for Odette? He reportedly ordered the black fabric himself. When asked why he was doing that, he only answered, "well, there are black swans, too." That's all I've been able to find in various sources. If others have discovered more explanation from Balanchine, please share! http://www.nycballet.com/Slideshows/Ballet-Detail-Slideshows/Swan-Lake-Balanchine.aspx

Friends of Covent Garden just sent out e-mail that they will announce the 2017-18 season on April 5.

Her 1976 Push Comes to Shove, had a prelude by Joseph Lamb and a four-movement Haydn symphony: http://www.twylatharp.org/content/push-comes-shove-dance I wonder if she's thinking of something along those lines. Whatever...this might be worth a trip across the Pond for some of us later in the year! Please keep us posted.

The New York Times just posted this story on-line: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/arts/dance/romanian-ballet-companyloses-its-leading-lights.html?smid=tw-share

I saw most of this on a good high-speed cable internet connection. The visuals were okay, but the sound was atrocious throughout. I attribute that to inadequate equipment for this ambitious venture. Still, I want to applaud their efforts and encourage other organizations to try this, though perhaps on a more limited and realistic scale.

I'm just hoping he brings CarMan with Marcelo Gomes to City Center in NYC!

Steven McRae will take over the Pennefather roles, in the first week of Romeo & Juliet this September. Three in one week! This just appeared on the Royal's web site: http://www.roh.org.u...nneth-macmillan

It's valuable intellectual property. When you acquire rights, you pay different amounts for North American vs. worldwide, live performance vs. recordings, etc. The Balanchine Trust is very fussy about unauthorized use of their copyrighted choreography, as are the copyright owners of work by Robbins, Ashton, MacMillan and others. It's all valuable property.

Perhaps others here know more details, but there is a problem performing the complete Vienna Waltzes anywhere other than North America, as NYCB only obtained North American rights for the Richard Strauss music. In the 2008 tour, they got some sort of last-minute agreement from the R. Strauss estate, but they would need to do that again for a 2016 tour to Paris.

I was in the audience, sitting orchestra-right so I had a clear view of the fall, which was stage right in the back. She was doing the zig-zag entrechats. She was down for several seconds. Loud gasps from the audience. Huge cheers when she got up and finished the variation. Do take a look at the Ballet Alert thread, which has more detail. E.g., they omitted a few things at the very end at the grave, which might have been a decision to let her get off-stage for good at the end. She was clearly limping when she came on for the curtain calls. Myrta (Veronica Part) rushed over to escort the conductor onto stage, a task usually handled by the lead ballerina. No announcement this morning (Friday) about cancellations of the remainder of her engagement here (two Bayaderes and one R&J), so we'll stay hopeful that she's okay. (She had already cancelled her performances in Ratmansky's new Sleeping Beauty.) I don't think most were impressed with McCrae, but we had just seen Marcelo Gomes, Herman Cornejo, and Roberto Bolle in recent days with other partners, so those comparisons were unavoidable.

Those of you with a philosophical interest in dance might appreciate a brand-new article on "The Philosophy of Dance," just published in the on-line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanfor.../entries/dance/ SEP is a very well-respected source in philosophical circles. It began with a major grant from NEH and continues with a panel of editors who conduct serious peer review of submissions. This is the first time SEP has published an article specifically on dance. The author (not me!) studied classical ballet at New York's LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts before deciding to pursue a more traditional academic education in philosophy. She is currently a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Dayton.

Gridley, CA, is a small town located near Cal State Chico to the north and Cal State Sacramento to the south. Both have dance programs with beginning ballet classes. Many California State University campuses have a generous program allowing anyone over 60 to enroll in classes for a modest ($3) registration fee. I suggest he get in touch with either of those departments by e-mail to see what he might do. It's a safe bet that those dance programs have (at a minimum) student recitals now and then. http://catalog.csuchico.edu/viewer/13/THEA/MTHDNONEUM.html http://www.csus.edu/dram/ But the best option seems to be the Sacramento Ballet, both for performances and some open adult beginner classes at their school: http://www.sacballet.org/

In downtown Denver, Manon was $18 ($15 for seniors and children), the same price as Legend of Love this Sunday. No reserved seating, but with a nearly-empty theater, that wasn't necessary. Whatever the market will bear, I guess. And with the scheduling (Thursday night and Sunday morning), those theaters would have been sitting empty anyway.

Perks are so widespread in the ballet world in the US (NYCB, ABT, SFB, etc., etc.) that you have to figure they know people will not just donate from the goodness of their hearts. Early purchase options, open dress rehearsals, program recognition, etc. -- the packages of perks vary, but they all seem to have them. This is also true of memberships in US art museums, which charge hefty admission fees. For international visitors to the Royal, that early purchase is especially valuable, as we can't even deduct the cost from our income taxes.

It's impolite, I suppose, to wonder how age is impacting their technique and she no longer does certain roles, understandably. It was mildly surprising that Paloma Herrera, who will be 39 next summer, is doing the new SB for her retirement, but she did the previous McKenzie-Kirkland version, so perhaps that's not much of a stretch and her technique doesn't seem to have deteriorated significantly. Julie Kent will be 45 when she retires in June and people have been wondering for years when she would. Wendy Whelan is 44; she has talked poignantly in recent interviews about having various roles taken away (before her recent ailments) because she just couldn't do them any more. (Of course, Ratmansky and Wheeldon are actually choreographing a new piece for her retirement performance this Saturday.) Marcelo Gomes (35?) said in an interview last year that he couldn't do Bayadere any more and he's not cast in that in the ABT season next year. But here's another surprise: Osipova-Gomes and Vishneva-Hallberg for Giselle? Many would have expected the reverse. And another: Bolle partnering Kent in her retirement, not Gomes? Kent-Gomes are such good friends and frequent partners.

The Met schedule, with principal casting, has been posted on the ABT site: http://www.abt.org/calendar.aspx?startdate=5/1/2015 Another surprise: Vishneva in Ratmansky's new Sleeping Beauty, with Gomes (along with one each of Giselle, with Hallberg, and R&J, with Gomes).

Mikhailovsky tickets are available at a 25% discount until November 10. It looks like it is available for all performances: http://www.nytimes.com/ads/emailads/tw/mikhailovskyballet/20141015/TicketWatch.html This is interesting...Osipova and Vasiliev got a lot of attention in their performances with ABT in recent years, so they are known quantities among the dance fans in NYC and they are both performing quite a lot during the NYC engagement. I don't recall seeing discounts that substantial for either ABT or NYCB in recent years, except for an occasional 1/2 price offer for NYCB at the same-day TKTS booth at Times Square.

Thanks for the info on the Mayerling presentation at the Met -- but that was in 1983! Has any American (or Canadian) company produced it? Has Royal toured it in the US since then? So we might wonder why not, as presumably artistic directors in North America have seen it somewhere or knew about it. The historic story is actually fascinating (it inspired Edward Norton's film The Illusionist).

I've been reading this thread with great interest and I'm as puzzled as most of you are. Let me note that we don't have a lot of opportunities to see MacMillan in the US, at least in recent years. Last season, ABT presented his R&J and Manon, both warmly received by audiences. MacMillan was Associate Director at ABT for five years in the 1980s (when Baryshnikov was Artistic Director), but only made two new ballets there. I vaguely remember Wild Boy as a vehicle for Baryshnikov that disappeared when Baryshnikov left the company. http://www.kennethmacmillan.com/kenneth-macmillan/biography.html I don't recall Mayerling being presented in the U.S. and confess that, after seeing a DVD, I don't miss it. I adore R&J and Manon, but Mayerling didn't seem to have the wealth of thrilling PdD of the other two. (Perhaps I would appreciate it more in the theater.) Let me add that Robert Gottlieb, the brilliant dance critic now writing for the New York Observer, refers to "my firm embargo of the schmaltzy Manon" in his review of the ABT 2014 Met season: http://observer.com/2014/07/the-season-at-american-ballet-theatre/ (Gottlieb was the editor-in-chief at Knopf and brought us a wealth of great ballet books in the '70s.) Someone here thought that Americans are too prudish to appreciate MacMillan. While there are ridiculously prudish segments of American culture, you don't see them at the ballet, so I wouldn't put much stock on that. We can see much more Ashton: The Dream, Cinderella, A Month in the Country, and Sylvia, just in the last year. His ABT rep: http://www.abt.org/education/archive/choreographers/ashton_s.html

At least when they want to play New York - I don't know about other cities. Mikhailovsky is a known quantity to ballet insiders, but not to most Americans. Osipova was scheduled to dance a lot with ABT at Lincoln Center in June a couple of years ago and planned to dance with Mikhailovsky at Lincoln Center after ABT closed, but ABT invoked their "non-compete" clause and the Mikhailovsky engagement was cancelled. At least the schedule had not yet been announced and no tickets had been sold. I think everyone recognized they could not sell that company without her as the headliner. For the November 2014 engagement in NY, many of us on another discussion board noticed that she was listed with Royal Ballet in London the same week she was listed for Giselle in NYC! Our panic lasted for weeks, until her Royal schedule was changed so she could get to NYC. Now we just have to hope she doesn't cancel for injury or illness, which seems to happen a lot!

In a May 2014 interview, Acosta said he is choreographing a new version of Carmen for September 2015. Of course, this far out, it's very possible those plans will change. I will be in London for a professional meeting in mid-September 2015 and I am delighted that the Royal Ballet will be starting its season September 22, whatever they are doing -- but I'll hope it's Carmen with Acosta! For the spring 2016 performances, I assume they'll be announced in spring 2015 as part of the season announcement for 2015-16 - easier for trans-Atlantic travelers to plan for. Thanks for all the helpful advice! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay-festival/10855436/Carlos-Acosta-Im-retiring-from-ballet.html

Many thanks for all this helpful information. I tried sending an inquiry to the "customer service" contact on the ROH web site and promptly got a message back from the house manager: "The Ballet begins on Tue 22 September 2015 and runs until 11 June 2016 as currently planned."