Ballet Review: Le Jeune Homme et la Mort
Le Jeune Homme et la Mort – sometimes A Young Man and Death – has a clunky piece of choreography in it. You know the one, it’s dirty. Although I feel it’s our right to wear that dress…
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RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! It’s the Nutcracker!
Welcome to my annual repost of Nutcracker hell. I wonder if “Nutcracker season” is to a dancer what family holidays are to me: a terrible obligation one must drag themselves through, no way out, no way out. But…
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Joffrey Ballet’s ‘Le Sacre du Printemps’ and Unexpected Finds on eBay
Periodically I will find photos from the epic debut of the 1987 Joffrey Ballet “Le Sacre du Printemps” on EBAY. Now, mixed in are porn photos. WTF? These photos have the name Rima Corben attached. Now I could…
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Wearingtwogowns Takes the Gauntlet. And kills it.
Some time back, I wrote a post. Recently, I asked good – really good blog writers – to chime in. Gauntlet throwing being as dramatic as you can get, my annoying trick was taken up by wearingtwogowns.com whose…
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Exploitation in Art: The Case of Nijinsky and De Morgoli
Photographer Nick de Margoli was a buzzard
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The Dumb Side of Performance Art: Jan Fabre’s Controversies
Run! Run! It’s Jan Fabre! He’s staging pornography – German stuff. German stuff! (****WARNING: gross photos ahead****) Periodically I like to check in on Troubleyn and see if Fabre has been arrested or killed or married Marie Chouinard. …
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The Hidden Stories of Ballet’s Warriors: The Chosen Ones
Once upon a time I collected photos of each Chosen One performing in a different ballet. Wasn’t too hard to do. But finding them in their own skin, their own choice is hard to do and wanna know…
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From Nijinsky to Chaos: A Journey Through Controversial Ballets
HERE COMES BALLET SHADE #5. THIS is not going to be a post about Nijinsky’s recovered choreography of 1913. It’s going to be about the barf on the stage floor that only appears when an atrocity – an…
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How I Became a Digital Archivist of Le Sacre du Printemps
Or how to turn your toes in and your back on Swan Lake It was a long time ago when I began a Blogger Called This Is Not Swan Lake (igorandmore was the link as I was quite…
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The Impact of Clean Copies in Ballet Performances
And why we should all get to see them before people stop even watching it. I’m not joking. Why or how is lost to memory for me but I posted the first version of the Joffrey’s debut of…
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Behind the Scenes: Ballet Russes Images and Stories
(or the Ballet Russes photos I took from places) Recently my friend or rather a personal hero of mine named Millicent messaged me a photo of the Ballet Russes that included Massine and Stravinsky: who are the others.…
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An Insight into Millicent Hodson’s Illustrious Ballet Career
She is a powerhouse. That’s the word. Millicent Hodson’s name will be forever attached to and revered for the reconstruction of Le Sacre du Printemps though I am loathe to call it a reconstruction: restored. That’s the word…
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The Artistic Brilliance of Dancer Ana Lacerda
I have watched more crappy videos of the various courageous ballerinas who danced the role of The Chosen One over the last 12 years but I’ve pretty much stopped looking. It still boggles the mind that such a…
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Challenging Dance Norms: From Nijinsky to Jookin
(orig: May 2009) I’ve wanted to post this for a year. I can’t tell you why I haven’t except that maybe I’m not sure of the kid’s name and I didn’t want to seem like a dork calling…
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Stravinsky Said.
“My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes,…
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Three Russians and A Sun God
The Sun Dude Jarillo wants a virgin. For years I have thought I understood what it was about but really, I was on the periphery. That did not stop me from waxing ridiculous when I started this…
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The Rite of Spring Takes A Dangerous Turn (NSFW)
Izadora Weiss and Wojciech Misiuro , directors of the Baltic Dance Theater has done what no choreographer has been able to do with the concept and music of Le Sacre du Printemps: turn it into a traumatic experience.…
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The Rite Reasons, The Wrong Thing
I started this collection, this scavenging operation in 2007. I have made no money. It’s all been for the good of the people. Sounds lofty but listen, I am talking about people like me who are drawn to…
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The Nijinsky Inheritance
Act One Have you ever held a door open saying “after you” to which that person says “no, after you”? Although I can’t prove it, I’m almost certain that this exchange happened at such a level of ethereality…
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YOU ARE MARIA PLITZ
Here are the only photographed female dancers of the Ballet Russes’ first staging of Nijinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps from 1913.After 4 hours of trying to tease out the real names even with Lynn Garafola and Millicent Hodson’s…
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ROZA PUZYNOWSKA: more than dancing
Artist. The strokes to define it get broader and broader…but there is a pearl in every 50 or so clam shells. Artistry is free to be what it chooses, ask any jazz player who has never played with…
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Mary Wigman: Pioneer, Nazi, Nobody
Here is Mary Wigman a pioneer in expressionist dancing performing her “Witch Dance” which she debuted in Berlin in 1914. She was very influential in “creepy movement in film”, as the narrator explains. This is all very “silent-movie…
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HELLO BALLET BOYZ
remember me you dummies? Years back I got my hands on the Ballet Boyz’ “Rite of Spring” which starts out in a unique way but man I have never seen anything crash and burn so fast.…
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Throwing Ballet Shade et la Mort
You know why the English National Ballet only released small clips of Ivan Vasiliev in their 2011 staging of Roland Petit’s “le jeune homme et la mort”? Because he is terrible. He is trying to sell…
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The Joffrey Doesn’t Count
(Originally posted in 2013) I’ve spent the last few weeks studying Act I of the Nijinsky choreography to Le Sacre du Printemps, this on the heels of coming away wholly disappointed in the Sacrificial Danse performed…
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Let’s Talk About How Stupid Marie Chouinard Is
Three are consequences to coming out too strong. You know Marie Chouinard pissed herself on stage in her first performance, right? Well, she did. So where do you go from there? Considering I called her stupid in the title, you know this is not going to be a puff piece. I tried. I did. Especially…
My taxes better not be paying for this sh*t
On January 19, 2021, someone put that comment on Marie Chouinard’s”body remix” video which I posted in 2010. I want to date this guy. I was a syndicated Dance Blogger for a while. I was in the top ten and I knew this dance site never read my blog. As Kritina Knief put it , I…
The firsts will be first
Who is Heather Aagard? She was the catalyst for the Chosen One Collections, for this ongoing search to find every dancer who stepped into that Circle and danced herself to death. She was given the opportunity only once by the Joffrey Ballet and it changed her life. But there would be no photo no program…
le sacre du printemps: the collections 