Stuart, thanks for adding Galina's review. I was hoping to find a review from Kevin Ng, who sometimes visits our site and also attended many of the Festival performances, but haven't seen anything from him regarding the Festival.

But back to the topic at hand -- Casting (such as it is) for the Ondine performances is now on the Mariinsky web site. (Sophia, this is for you )

For May 3, Ekaterina Osmolkina, Evgenia Obratsova and Leonid Sarafanov are listed.


For May 5, Olesya Novikova, Yana Serebriakova and Vladimir Shklyarov.

Stephen Legate, a principal dancer with San Francisco Ballet, had something interesting to say about this during a pre-performance interview this past Sunday. He mentioned that while Balanchine was fulfilling to dance, it was "brutal" on the body. When asked why he said that, he said that the attack required in the footwork tends to cause problems like stress fractures, Achilles tendonitis, and other foot and lower-leg issues. He also mentioned that almost everyone on stage was dancing with some kind of injury.

It's not really that surprising that repetitive stress injuries arise from particular styles of choreography, if even something as benign as typing can cause RSI. In the Royal Ballet's yearbook a couple of years ago, there was an interview with one of the physical therapists who said that they can tell what kind of choreography is being danced depending on the injuries that started coming in. Ballet itself is brutal on the body even for the classics: in a recent LA Times article, the author asserted that ballet dancers do about 2 million small jumps a year --- how is that for repetitive stress?

But let's not kid ourselves: we don't expect football players and other traditional athletes to never suffer an injury, so why should dancers be any different? Does Forsythe's choreography cause more injuries? I have no idea, but if that's the standard we're going to apply, I doubt anyone would be dancing anything.

--Andre

What you say makes a lot of sense, Andre. One of the most taxing situations I heard about was the ENB's "Nutcracker" a couple of years ago, when there were 60 odd performances around the country - essential for the finances of the Company, but VERY hard on the dancers: repetitive strain syndrome indeed.

Interesting dicussion. I read that LA Times article Andre, and it was quite informative. I enjoyed it very much.


Did anyone else take objection to the comment in the article about dancers/dancing being less strenuous (or was it "almost as") than major league sports?

That comment hit me when I read the article. In my view (and hasnt this been medicall proven?) ballet dancers are more finely "tuned" physically -- and they use their entire bodies -- and flexibility is demanded. Football players and most other athletes have much lower levels of proprioception, and less control/bodily awareness in general.

Football players are total wimps compared with dancers, they roll about in agony on the pitch with the sort of injuries a dancer would get up from and carry on dancing. Pathetic!

And by the way, I mean real injuries not faking it to get awarded a penalty.

Things seem to change very very quickly at the Mariinsky concerning the casts, as Evgenia Obraztsova and Leonid Sarafanov will also dance on Friday's performance replacing both Olesya Novikova and Vladimir Shklyarov (information given by Kevin Ng on Dansomanie).
There's a curse on Ondine!

Yes, that was due to Shklyarov's back bothering him. This makes 4 Ondines for Obratsova -- she has danced the leading role in each of the 4 performances of the ballet so far.

The Aztecs forbade use of the wheel. It could only be used for children's toys.

The marvellous Franco-British aircraft Concorde is now in a museum.

It no longer flies. That is forbidden.

Too much progress is bad for you eh, like those men who refuse to lose their hair as they get older - Leads to Sickness, eh?

Even so, every time I raise the issue of injuries provoked by current aberrations, people act as though I had invented the wheel, or Concorde, or threatened to, or something equally dastardly.

I did not.

Classical dancing, at the present time, seems to be one of those lost-in-the-outback activities that are deemed to be a Science-Free Zone:

"don't bother me with the facts about anatomy - my mind is made up!"

Anyway, just so's yers knows that I'm not the only oddball goin'on about this, there's a fun discussion over at ballet co, where one "Wulff" has cited no less an authority than Joan Lawson.

Try this on for size:

http://www.ballet.co.uk/dcforum/happening/5609.html