It looks like Phil Jackson won't be coming to ABT's front office or to coach - not at this time. Knicks fans have reason to live: Troubled club now in Phil Jackson’s hands
––––––––––
Kristina Shapran will dance the lead role in Giselle at the 2pm matinee on Wednesday, November 12 when the Mikhailovsky pulls into the Koch Theater this fall. Tickets are on sale now.
What has the new artistic advisor to the general director been up to? Maybe Altynai Asylmuratova will make the trip with the company, fall in love with New York, and want to stay.
Speaking of Giselle, when Baryshnikov was running ABT, he took Gelsey Kirkland and himself to Minneapolis to dance Giselle. Next month, the city not only isn't getting ABT's A-team, it's not getting the B-team or even the T-team. Not very thoughtful of amurika's national ballet company.
––––––––––
The 2014 Jerome Robbins Award will be presented to the Paris Opera Ballet on June 19, 2014 at Palais Garnier in Paris. Outgoing director, Brigitte Lefèvre, will accept the award on behalf of the company. From Ms. Lefèvre's written acceptance addressed to the Robbins Foundation:
As I am about to leave the company I served with passion for over twenty years, I receive this award with a particular emotion. I cannot help but express my gratitude to Jerome Robbins. I had the pleasure of hosting him in the 1990s when he came with four of his ballets which brought the number of his ballets to fourteen that have entered the rep since 1974. The Paris Opera Ballet owes so much to Jerome Robbins. Through regular visits with his "second family" as he liked to say, several generations of performers have experienced first‐hand the diversity of his work.
––––––––––
Wendy Whelan indicated in a recent interview for an article in The Atlantic that she will officially retire from NYCB during this coming fall season.
Today, Whelan is making small progress with her injuries; she has starting doing light exercises. However, she intended to be back on stage this month for her freelance dance project, Restless Creature, but had to postpone the tour due to delays in her recovery from hip surgery.
She still plans to appear in the NYCB’s spring season—but in City Ballet’s fall season, she told me, she was bidding goodbye to ballet. She will retire.
“I’m gonna go,” she said. “Because I’m hoping that that will take the pain away.”
Comments