Free Republic

American journalist and commentator Tucker Carlson was spotted at the play "Spartacus" at the Bolshoi Theater on Saturday. People online are now speculating if he is there for an interview with Russian President Vladamir Putin. Pictures published by the Russian news agency, Mash, on its Telegram feed revealed the sighting of the well-known journalist

It’s a seasonal ritual that countless families enjoy — getting dressed in their holiday finest and heading off to see a local production of the “The Nutcracker,” that candy-coated ballet that celebrates all things Christmas. It’s also a ritual that’s critical to the bottom line of many dance companies, which depend on those solid “Nutcracker” sales to get them through the rest of the year. In fact, one prominent company, the Atlanta Ballet, told me that 70% of its annual box-office revenue derives from its production of the holiday favorite

Maria Tallchief, of the Osage Indian Nation, died on this date in 2013. She had revolutionised ballet in America with her athleticism, commitment and skill. She was known for “dazzling audiences with her speed, energy and fire” and an “electrifying passion.” In Maria’s America, freedom, family and disciplined effort worked out fine. To see how beautiful she was in action click the link above or below in red ........

Britain’s Northern School of Contemporary Dance (NSCD) because it is “built around white European ideas” and is too “gendered”. The school has dropped ballet from its auditions process because of its “potentially contentious nature”, according to The Telegraph. “It is essentially an elitist form. Young people need to pay to take ballet classes as a general rule and for a vast number of potential students, they’ve not had access to ballet,” explained the head of undergraduate studies at the dance school, Francesca McCarthy, in comments to the notionally right-leaning newspaper. “It is a very specific form that is built around...

Paris (AFP) – Prima ballerina Olga Smirnova has quit the Bolshoi in Moscow to join the Dutch National Ballet, it was announced Wednesday, making her the first Russian to quit the fabled company over the war in Ukraine. “Smirnova was outspoken in her recent denouncement of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is making it untenable for her to work in her native country," the Dutch company said in a statement. Smirnova is one of the biggest stars of the Bolshoi and had already expressed her opposition to the war on messaging app Telegram earlier this month. "I am against...

VIDEOOn September 5, 2021 a black swan appeared in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and attracted a lot of attention as you can see. Does this very rare appearance of a black swan in the very center of China portend a Black Swan event? By strange coincidence, on the very same day the black swan appeared in Tiananmen Square, a fascinating documentary about Black Swan Events, "The Worst Kind of Surprise: Black Swan Theory," was uploaded to YouTube. You can see a few excerpts of it in this video but I highly recommend you watch the entire documentary in the link below.The...

Russia’s flagship “Combat Olympics” featured a peculiar ballet performance on top of tanks. Videos from the International Army Games 2021 (ArMI-2021) showed two ballerinas in tutus and pointer shoes pirouetting, arabesque-ing and pliéing to “Swan Lake” in a pas de deux with uniformed servicemen. The dancers' eyebrow-raising performance takes place two years after a central Russian volunteer military service staged an eccentric International Women’s Day photoshoot featuring armed and camouflaged servicemen posing alongside ballerinas inside an empty metro station. It also comes days after the 30th anniversary of the 1991 August coup, when “Swan Lake” played on a loop on...

CHICAGO - President-elect Joe Biden is considering former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a substantial and somewhat divisive figure in Democratic Party politics, to serve as his transportation secretary. Biden’s selection of his nominee to lead the Transportation Department is not believed to be imminent, and Emanuel is among multiple candidates in the running for the Cabinet position, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations. But his candidacy threatens to pull at the divisions among Democrats that Biden has largely managed to avoid as he begins to fill out...

Prima ballerina Kseniya Zakharova was accepting the audience’s plaudits for her debut as Juliet when she turned to find Romeo on his knee offering her an engagement ring.Premier dancer Nikolay Maltsev, 21, took not only Kseniya by surprise with his proposal, but the entire audience in the almost 1,800 capacity theatre - and the dance troupe. Picture: Novosibirsk Theatre of Opera and Ballet The surprise romantic encore during the certain call delighted the audience at the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre. Premier dancer Nikolay Maltsev, 21, took not only Kseniya by surprise with his proposal, but the entire audience in...

Peter Martins, who picked up the mantle from the famed choreographer George Balanchine to lead New York City Ballet over the last three decades, is taking a leave of absence in the wake of a sexual harassment accusation, the company confirmed on Thursday night. City Ballet and its School of American Ballet had started an investigation into Mr. Martins, 71, after receiving the accusation of past harassment, which was made in an anonymous letter. The two organizations jointly retained Barbara Hoey, the chairwoman of the law firm Kelley Drye’s labor and employment practice group, to conduct the inquiry. The specifics...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel used a private email server to communicate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, leaked emails reveal. Emanuel, a former House lawmaker who served early on in the Obama administration, sent an email to Podesta asking him to consider Brian DeSplinter for a position with Clinton’s campaign. Emnauel sent the email from the address “mayor_re@rahmemail.com.”The email address is still active, according to Mailtester.com, and is run through Google’s Gmail service. This is unlike Clinton who used a private email server based out of her Chappaqua, New York home.WikiLeaks published the email chain online Friday in...

Misty Copeland is more than one of the greatest ballet dancers in the world, now she’s quite literally a work of art. In the stunning new series of photographs by NYC Dance Project, Copeland expertly re-creates a handful of Edgar Degas’s most famous ballet works. The series, originally published by Harper’s Bazaar, is released ahead of a Degas exhibit coming to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Yvonne Chouteau was the epitome of a prima ballerina in the eyes of artist Mike Larsen. “When you were in her presence with her, she was THE prima ballerina. There's no other way to describe her. … We watched her move, and we could see her on stage all those years ago,” he said. “Truly, I cannot describe the loss. It seems like recently we have lost so many legends. And Yvonne was one of those. She was one of the legends — and not just in Oklahoma.” Chouteau, one of the five American Indian ballerinas from Oklahoma who gained...

Walter Piston (1894-1976) The Incredible Flutist (Ballet Suite) (1938) 00:00 - Introduction - Siesta in the Market Place 01:09 - Entrance of the Vendors 03:24 - Entrance of the Customers 03:53 - Tango of the Merchant's Daughters 07:20 - Arrival of the Circus 07:50 - Circus March 08:24 - The Flutist 09:59 - Minuet 10:39 - Spanish Waltz 11:31 - (Eight o'clock strikes) 11:50 - Siciliano 14:19 - Polka Finale Performed by Howard Hanson and the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra. Recorded by Mercury in 1958. Cont.

Aaron Copland ~ 1900-1990 This is the complete Orchestral Suite, not the Ballet Suite. (Apologies for my poor labeling of the piece as I somehow managed to note 'Part 2' twice; this was done when I created the video before YouTube allowed running times longer than ten minutes...) Copland's "Billy the Kid" was commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein for his ballet company, Ballet Caravan, in 1938. The hope was to create an "American" ballet, to counteract the Russian tradition so popular in ballet for centuries. The result, and I'll quote as I know the music but don't know ballet, was, "the...

My great-grandfather was a landowner in southern China prior to the communist takeover in 1949. Possessing about three acres of rice paddies and a lychee orchard placed him squarely in the “landlord” class—a group of people the new regime was determined to dispose of using “the greatest force,” as Mao Zedong put it. Accompanying and legitimizing Chairman Mao’s coming campaign of mass murder was the remolding of national arts and culture. “The Red Detachment of Women,” a 1964 Chinese ballet and one of many works glorifying violent class struggle, opened to New York audiences on the evening of July 11...

A ballet depicting the life and glory of their hero, Hugo Chavez, is the current rage among all good Chavistas. Barack Humble Obama, who has brought us greater peace, prosperity, happiness and even laughter than Chavez ever did, deserves far better. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNCPfYwALQc] Video linkBy Presidential Memorandum released on December 1st, Obama directed: Presidential Memorandum re. public  acknowledgment  of My unsurpassed greatness, December First, Year the sixth of the reign of Obama: By virtue of the authority vested in Me as the Dear Leader of the True American Revolution, We I hereby direct all Federal entities, and request all significant stakeholders, to collaborate in the creation of a...

Chicago's newest selective enrollment high school will not be named after President Barack Obama, as Mayor Rahm Emanuel had announced with much fanfare when unveiling the high profile school project. In a statement this morning, Emanuel said he would look for other possible names. “Over the last few months, my team has listened to questions and concerns from the community, ranging from location of the building to the naming of the school. We take that community input seriously, which is why – as we continue to look for a thoughtful way to honor President Obama – we will look for...

Misty Copeland has opened up about the systematic 'racism' in ballet that makes it nearly impossible for African American women to become professional dancers. The 31-year-old, who overcame tremendous odds to be the first black woman in 20 years to land a position as a female soloist at the American Ballet Theatre, told NPR that her success was 'a huge step for the African-American community.' 'I think that the reason [it's hard for black women to break in] is the racism and not wanting to change this very traditional art form that has been successful in the way it is...