Do you think the enrolment ceremony has given us a first hint at the fairy doll cast? it was interesting (and nice) for me to see kuzmicheva dancing the french doll
I think we got a glimpse of a potential second cast, yes.
What is the difference between the Mariinsky and Primorsky stages? How do they compare?
Primorsky Stage is a relatively new off-shoot of the Mariinsky Theatre in Vladivostok. It was launched as part of Gergiev’s plan to expand Mariinsky and bring ballet and opera to Russia’s furthermost regions. You can read more about the project here.
Do you know how companies chose dancers (specifically the corps) to go on tour? I have tickets to the Mariinsky at the Kennedy Center in two weeks and I am really hoping to see recent VBA grads in action (Borodulina, Yaromenko, Lukina, Korshunova, Zenin, Osminkin, Malyshev, etc.) They're performing La Bayadere, a large scale production where surely a lot of dancers were needed, however not a lot went on tour when the company went to Vladikavkaz a few weeks ago (granted, it was a smaller show)
It’s hard to tell... I think they take the more seasoned corps members on tour and tend to leave most of the new recruits behind, but I don’t know for sure. Malyshev is with the company in LA right now, so you’ll probably get to see him.
Thanks for posting The Scarlet Flower! Also, as someone outside of Russia, I was looking at the Bolshoi Cinema showings and Le Corsaire is up this month. I did some reading, and found that it's loosely based on a delightful poem by Lord Byron, "The Corsair," so this was likely what Tsiskaridze was referencing with his British student?
It’s more likely that Byron came up during a general knowledge conversation (though of course you’re right about “Le Corsaire” being inspired by one of his poems). Lord Byron is one of Britain’s most famous poets, so Tsiskaridze would have likely assumed that the student knew of him. Plus, Byron has seeped into pop culture and is often referenced in TV shows and online. It’s actually kind of hard not to know about him.
Case in point, Pam’s back tattoo in “Archer” (an excerpt from Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib”):
Dancers spend most of their waking hours training and performing, and unless they are really driven and hungry for knowledge, they are not very likely to dedicate a lot of time to studying. Which is fair enough.
This is what Tsiskaridze is trying to change now, and more power to him, but I don’t think he’s being very fair a lot of the time. He tends to compare his students to what he himself was like at their age, and they inevitably fall short of his expectations. But the thing is, Nikolai wasn’t a normal child. I don’t know many pre-teens who go through books like I go through tacos, find reading encyclopaedias fun, know and love opera to the point of being able to identify individual arias, can more or less give a guided tour of the Hermitage, etc. That’s what young Tsiskaridze was like. Some kids are like that, but they are few and far between. To expect this sort of thirst for knowledge from kids is not entirely reasonable, though I very much admire Nikolai’s efforts to pass on his passion on to the new generation.
By the way, this reminds me of a hilarious show I saw recently: Drunk History (a bunch of drunk Brits retelling episodes from British history and actors acting their stories out). They did a hilarious piece on Lord Byron. Mature content but super funny:
