balletomane blog

It's not confirmed yet, but they are usually pretty accurate.

Yes, I'm super happy for Smilevsky. I was actually surprised that he hadn't débuted it already as it seems like a natural role for him.

On the subject of Smilevsky, two other things:

I'm really enjoying his recent pairings with Koshkareva! I think they look wonderful together.

Dmitry Vyskubenko as principal

Maria Koshkaryova as leading soloist

what do you think?

I think Maria Koshkareva as a leading soloist makes a lot of sense. I still want Putintsev promoted first and foremost, but Koshkareva has the rep. and the talent. She's consistently performing leading roles and, in my opinion, has been improving steadily since her rocky first season and so she should get the recognition of the promotion. I especially was very impressed by her Aspicia début this year. I also recently watched her in the Mad Scene of Giselle and was struck by her acting ability. Since then I've been wondering how she'd be as Juliet.

As for Vyskubenko, I'm a little indifferent. It was definitely going to happen at some point and he's a strong dancer, so i definitely wouldn't say the promotion is undeserved. However, (as with Gerashchenko) I wish they had waited a couple more years so Vyskubenko could be a little more solid and consistent before the promotion. I wouldn't have minded a few more dramatic roles from him first, like Romeo, Crassus (or Spartacus), and Ferkhad. Within the next two to three years we should have lots of principal dancers who will be retiring so I'm not sure why they didn't wait until then? Regardless, congratulations to them both!

I completely agree with you that she is perfect for the Act 2 pas de deux. I thought she did beautifully there and really throughout all of Act 2. I also enjoyed her performance in Act 1, but as you said, Masha is not a role as natural for her as say more regal and elegant parts like Raymonda or Odette/Odile.

She's just never going to look as much like an excited child dancing in the party scene as dancers who are 5'2"-5'4"-ish and more sprightly, like Maymula, Kokoreva, or Shrayner.

Given all of this, I thought she did a lovely job and it was an altogether successful début.

1) first place YAGP in any country of your choice

2) first place Vaganova Prix

3) first place Prix de Lausanne

4) first place Moscow Ballet Competition

By now, a lot of you probably already know about Yana Peneva, an American dancer, formerly a Stuttgart Ballet soloist, who joined the Mariinsky Ballet this season as a Second Soloist. I didn't post anything on it at first because I thought it best to see more of her on stage, but now that she's had a few débuts, I wanted to share my thoughts.

So, for starters, I know there are a lot of strong opinions about her (as well as the other new recruits Ryoma Hudzeleu and Alexei Orohovsky) starting straight out as a soloist given how many strong in-house Coryphées and Corps de Ballet dancers the Mariinsky already has and part of me does feel that these three dancers could have started as coryphées. That being said, I've really liked what I've seen from Peneva so far. She's a beautiful dancer and fits with the style of the Mariinsky really well, especially considering she's not even a Vaganova graduate. I first saw her performance in Big Swans and Pas de Trois from Swan Lake and thought she had great potential, but I enjoyed her Queen of the Dryads début even more. There are some stability issues that are natural for a dancer of her age, but as a whole she's a really strong recruit.

So many companies, like the Royal Ballet, ABT, Vienna State, etc, have a lot of issues actually making strong soloist and principal dancers in their own schools. Just looking at the Royal Ballet, a majority of their dancers were either only at the Royal Ballet School in their final years as students, were taken as Prix de Lausanne dancers, or recruited from other companies. Out of their 21 principals (P.S: that's WAY too many principals), only 13 ever went to their school, and of these 13 dancers at least 3 were only at the upper school. For most companies this would be pretty good, but considering that RB is one of the best companies in the world, you'd think their school should be producing most of their principals. And just as importantly, this distribution is the same or worse among the soloist ranks.

Contrastingly, the Mariinsky really has the opposite problem. Every principal but I believe Kim and Parish have been Russian/Eastern-European/former USSR born, and similarly for the soloists. All that being said, I think it's actually refreshing to get some new dancers that have alternate backgrounds. Certainly dancers like Kim, Nagahisa, Osawa-Horowitz, and Mazzi bring something unique to the company and I feel the same way about Peneva.

So as long as Peneva's growth with the company is not too rushed, I think this is a strong choice for the company. Additionally, there are a lot of current soloists who are or will soon be retiring, meaning the Mariinsky really should have the funds to promote dancers like Savelieva, Osetrov, Ustyuzhanina, etc. And Nuikina has left the company for Vienna State Ballet, meaning yet another spot has opened up.

So that's all for my rant! Here's a few videos of Peneva below that I really enjoyed. Please note that her Giselle variation was from three years ago when she was only 15!