Taking a Snooze on Sleeping Beauty

 It's that difficult time of the season again – when rare opportunities to see favorite soloists and corps members shine must be weighed against the anxiety and disappointment produced by watching a corrupted production of a classic. 

 

Haglund will see only a few, or a couple, and save his dollars for Swan Lake.  He will be skipping Saturday evening's performance in protest of ABT allocating its very, very scarce resources toward training a Bolshoi ballerina guest artist to dance a very basic classical role that her own company has not yet seen fit to assign to her.  In casting the Bolshoi ballerina guest artist, ABT has literally cast aside one of its own rising stars and an audience favorite, Sarah Lane, who proved herself as a sparkling and beautiful Aurora in previous seasons. 

 

The Bolshoi ballerina guest artist no doubt will hold her Rose Adagio balances from here to the end of time and will vault herself higher than LeBron James, but Haglund doesn't care.  When the self-proclaimed America's National Ballet Company casts aside its own home grown and remarkable talent for the slick tricks of an import, it's time for patrons to reassess where they demonstrate their generosity.

 

Ditto for Romeo and Juliet.

Comments

[K]

Agreed. I find the situation to be a lot less comfortable than when Vishneva or Nina A joined as guests.

I saw Sarah Lane in her debut in Beauty in CA, and she was great. It's a shame she and other soloists aren't getting the opportunity to carry a 3 acter; where is the next home team female principal going to come from if not from them?

[K]

I do feel terrible she got mugged though! Poor thing

[Haglund's Heel]

Haglund hears ya. They are spending a lot of resources on Cory Stearns' development but not on any of the company's women. I guess they view importing as a best practice. Sad.

Yes, the mugging was very unfortunate and she must be traumatized by it all. Truly awful.