Too exciting!
Jared Matthews will debut as Albrecht in the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's opening night of Giselle on March 7th at Centennial Concert Hall in Winnipeg MB. He is scheduled to dance opposite RWB principal Vanessa Lawson who will be dancing for the first time this season - having been out with a knee injury, but is now recovered.
Good luck, Jared! Cannot wait for Chicago!
So it appears the international community as a whole is now taking pity on ABT soloists? Great for them, but how pathetic for ABT to keep us away from all these dancers who are clearly in demand.
Posted by: Kay | February 17, 2012 at 05:43 PM
True. It seems they have to get away from McKenzie in order to develop.
Posted by: Haglund | February 17, 2012 at 06:19 PM
how wonderful for him. i wish i could see it.
Posted by: robin | February 17, 2012 at 08:08 PM
Me, too. I really think that the Chicago Giselle is going to be remarkable. I wish one of the Giselle matinees at the Met would be scratched and rescheduled with Jared and Yuriko.
Posted by: Haglund | February 17, 2012 at 08:50 PM
Brilliant!!
Posted by: little ballet junkie | February 17, 2012 at 09:48 PM
Does ABT ever replace scheduled casts for reasons other than injury? I was excoriated on a ballet web forum for the smallest suggestion that replacing a dancer for any reason other than injury might actually take place.
Posted by: Angelica Smith | February 18, 2012 at 11:54 AM
Of course they do.
ABT's changes may not be as arbitrary as they were ten or fifteen years ago when they would move a great-selling cast around during the week of Swan Lake just to plump up subscriber sales on a weak-selling night.
These days, ABT's bigger crime is knowing far ahead of time when someone is not going to be able to appear, but failing to change the cast to TBA or another dancer until the last minute. They just let people go on buying tickets and subscriptions thinking that so&so will dance when they have known for a while that so&so will not dance.
I used to give them credit for stopping just short of lying about noninjury/nonillness subs – the Playbill errata slips for noninjury/nonillness changes just wouldn't disclose a reason for the changes. However, there was that recent season when Roberto Bolle cancelled most of his performances due to injury, and then immediately ran off to Europe to dance around buck naked in Mats Ek's weirdo Giselle. Give me a break.
Posted by: Haglund | February 18, 2012 at 02:47 PM
Ah, there's nothing like validation!
Posted by: Angelica Smith | February 18, 2012 at 06:48 PM