You might know the gorgeous Misty Copeland from the Prince music video “Crimson and Clover,” for which she was hand-picked earlier this year. If not, perhaps you saw her in this month’s W, where her rock-solid calves are put on display in one of the mag’s editorials.

I think she’s quite beautiful, beyond her oft-given title of being ABT’s first African-American soloist (although in truth, she is one of two African-Americans to be given the opportunity in the past two decades). Born in Kansas City, she didn’t begin training until the age of 13. And yet, she’s since skyrocketed and signed onto ABT’s studio company in 2000 and was promoted to soloist in 2007. Watch her in this excerpt from David Fernandez’s “Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.” Ah-mazing.

Is this ballet for you?

Go if: For the past few years you have overdosed on too many Nutcrackers and would like to see something different. You are dreaming of a White Christmas, sleigh bells in the snow, etc.

Skip if: Cute and/or nostalgic Edwardian Christmases are not your thing.

Sarah Lamb, José Martin & Mara Galeazzi in Les Patineurs. Photo: Johan Persson /ROH ©

Background

British ballet owes a huge debt to Sir Frederick Ashton, one of its most important choreographers and a big advocate of classical tradition. Ashton was born in Ecuador in 1904 and grew up in Peru where his father was in the diplomatic service. He became spellbound by classical ballet after seeing Anna Pavlova on tour in 1917. Upon arriving in Britain he started training as a dancer but shortly thereafter, encouraged by Marie Rambert, he turned to choreography.

Despite his late start Ashton’s professional aspirations in dance led him to admire and embrace classical tradition in ballet. He once opined: “The idea so often expressed that classical technique is hampering to artistic expression is erroneous and misleading”. Upholding the Petipa heritage he developed his own style, which combined academically unorthodox movements with classical ballet, and created a vast repertoire for the budding British ballet company which would soon become The Royal Ballet.

Ashton was Balanchine’s contemporary but while Mr. B – another classicist who admired the beauty of dance – opted for abstration and minimalism Ashton approached it from a different perspective. Rather than reduce ballet to bare essentials he tried to convey warm feelings and an idealised image of the world, often focusing on narrative. All of these qualities are evident in Les Patineurs, one of his earlier works.

The Ballet

In Les Patineurs we can see Ashton’s beautiful world at play: scenes commonly found in an ice-rink over Christmas season, with couples romantically skating hand in hand, the bravura teen dazzling the crowd with his daredevilish spins, beginners clinging onto whatever is in front of them to avoid the humiliation of falling on ice. All of these moments are wrapped up in gorgeous 1930’s scenery and Edwardian fur-trimmed outfits.

The inspiration for Les Patineurs came from composer Constant Lambert. Lambert admired Giacomo Meyerbeer’s opera Le Prophète which featured a short comic relief sequence with dancers on roller skates. He reorchestrated the piece and showed it to Ashton who set to choreograph a new ballet which preserved the lighthearted nature of the original work.

Alexandra Ansanelli and Valeri Hristov in Les Patineurs. Photo: Johan Persson / ROH ©

The result was a 27-minute long plotless yet accessible ballet, with choreography that makes the dancers look like they are ice skating and scenes familiar to anyone who has ever been to an ice rink. It is an ideal work for first timers and balletomanes alike, especially for those keen on observing early Ashton. The ballet demands a supple upper body to cope with the fluidity of movement combined with fast footwork for the lower body. The result should look easy and simple, even if the movement’s fundamentals are demanding, as in the duet for the two Red Girls.

Les Patineurs follows a classical structure of divertissements, virtuoso variation, a central pas de deux and ensemble pieces that form a complete whole. Each character has a specific role with various social interactions taking place at the ice rink, with an overall mood of sophistication, enchantment and wonder.

Around the World

Les Patineurs has been staged by many ballet companies and grew extremely popular in the US where it was performed by American Ballet Theatre and The Joffrey, both versions having been telecast in the 70’s. ABT’s production boasted designs by the great Cecil Beaton, with forest green instead of blue for the virtuoso soloist’s costume. More recently, it has been added to Sarasota Ballet’s repertoire.

Music

The music for Les Patineurs was arranged by Constant Lambert who orchestrated different selections from Meyerbeer’s Le Prophete together with the aria “Bel Cavalier” from L’Etoile du Nord.

Les Patineurs has been recorded by the National Philarmonic Orchestra, conducted by Richard Bonynge. The score is available through Amazon and tracklisting is as follows:

Entrée and Pas de Huit
Variation (blue boy/skater)
Pas de Deux (white couple/the lovers)
Ensemble
Pas de Trois
Pas de Patineuses
Ensemble
Galop Finale

Cindy Jourdain and Laura McCulloch in Les Patineurs. Photo: Johan Persson / ROH ©

Mini-Biography

Original Choreography: Sir Frederick Ashton
Music: Giacomo Meyerbeer (selections from the operas Le Prophete and L’Etoile du nord). Arranged and orchestrated by Constant Lambert.
Original Designs: William Chappell
Original Premiere: 16 February 1937. Vic-Wells Ballet, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London.
Original Cast: Mary Honer, Elizabeth Miller, Harold Turner, Margot Fonteyn, Robert Helpmann, Pamela May, June Brae.

Sources and Further Information

1. Dancing Ashton by David Vaughan. Dance Magazine, July 2004 [link]
2. ROH Entry for Les Patineurs, A Short ballet with music by Meyerbeer. [link]
3. Frederick Ashton and His Ballets by David Vaughan. Ashton Archive, 2004. [link]
4. A Spinning, Twisting Tribute to Ashton, With Skaters and Pigeons by Alistair Macaulay. Dance Review. New York Times, December, 2008. [link]
5. Sarasota Ballet entry for Les Patineurs. [link]
6. Ballet: A stylist Joffrey Patineurs by Anna Kisselgoff. Dance Review, New York Times, January, 1983. [link]
7. Frederick Ashton by John Percival. ROH Programme Notes for Les Patineurs/Tales of Beatrix Potter, December 2007.

Is this ballet for you?

Go if: you want to treat your kids, godchildren, nieces and nephews or even perhaps the kid in you.

Skip if: Bah humbug!

Dream Cast

Sugar Plum Fairy: any ballerina who can do proper gargouillades

Alina Cojocaru as The Sugar Plum Fairy. Photo: Bill Cooper / ROH ©

Background

The Nutcracker is a major example of a balletic twist of fate. The very thing critics and audiences objected to at the time of its premiere 117 years ago – its appeal to children – is what turned it into such a bankable classic. From your local end of the year ballet school presentation to the most lavish productions for the big companies and every kind of thing in-between (even Nutcracker on Ice), Christmas season has now become saturated with Nutcrackers everywhere.

Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the same Imperial Theatre Director who had brought together Tchaikovsky and Petipa for his ambitious project The Sleeping Beauty had imagined a new ballet to be based on the book L’Histoire d’un Casse Noisette by Alexandre Dumas père. This was a story he knew from his time in Paris as a diplomat and which Dumas himself had adapted from Ernst Theodor Amadeus (E.T.A.) Hoffmann’s Nussknacker und Mausekönig (The Nutcracker and the Mouse King) from 1816.

Vsevolozhsky managed to secure Tchaikovsky and Petipa’s collaboration again but Tchaikovsky only agreed to write for The Nutcracker on the basis that he would also be able to work on his opera Iolanta. Because Petipa had fallen ill he ended up working mostly with the choreographer’s assistant Lev Ivanov. Although Tchaikovsky’s music was appreciated (but again thought too symphonic for a ballet) the production was criticized, mainly for the lack of logic relationship between its two acts. The Nutcracker received only 14 performances initially. Some critics thought there was not enough complexity in the story and “no subject whatever”. To critics and audiences alike, the Nutcracker was a luxurious piece but one that was “made for children”.

The Nutcracker in the West

Although it was not considered much of a hit in Russia The Nutcracker kept being performed throughout the theatre year (at that time it was not yet heavily associated with the Christmas season). In the West, however, it boomed. First seen in scattered pieces, with the Arabian dance transplanted into the Ballets Russes’s Sleeping Princess and with Anna Pavlova’s take on The Waltz of the Snowflakes, London audiences soon got the first full version.

Most versions have some links back to the original but by the time they were staged much of the choreography had been lost and/or changed. This meant that Ivanov’s original Waltz of the Snowflakes had to be reconstructed from notations (presumably incomplete) made in St. Petersburg before WWI.  Likewise, Ivanov’s Grand Pas De Deux in which Prince Coqueluche (Koklush) spread out a veil gently gliding the Sugar Plum Fairy as if she were on ice (or icing sugar) has been revised or scrapped in most versions although Balanchine’s Nutcracker still pays homage to it.

Elizabeth Harrod as Clara and Alastair Marriott as Drosselmeyer, in The Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker. Photo: Johan Persson/ ROH ©

Perhaps the biggest downside to so many different Nutcracker versions over the years has been the progressive watering down of E.T.A Hoffmann’s original story and its aura of mystery, rooted in the German Romantic movement. Hoffmann’s tales often include fantastic elements coexisting with folklore (another example being Coppélia) which are sometimes ignored in favour of the ballet’s child friendly aspects. However, some versions of the ballet seek to preserve the Romantic layers and its mystery, notably Nureyev’s version for the Paris Opera Ballet (POB) as well as Sir Peter Wright’s for The Royal Ballet and for Birmingham Royal Ballet.

Versions

The first complete Nutcracker was staged in London by the Vic-Wells Ballet in 1934, based on choreographic notation by Nicholas Sergeyev. Ten years later saw the first US version by San Francisco Ballet (1944) and another ten years brought George Balanchine’s blockbusting version for NYCB (1954), now staged every year by several US ballet companies. By the 1980s, 300 separate productions were touring the US.

Sir Peter Wright’s versions

Sir Peter’s 1984 version of The Nutcracker for The Royal Ballet, still performed by the Company, stays close to Hoffmann’s original tale. It emphasises Drosselmeyer’s mission to find a young girl – Clara – who can break the curse imposed by the Mouse King on his nephew Hans Peter and thus restore him to human form. References to Nuremberg and German Christmas traditions are present in the settings, with a kingdom of marzipan featured in Act 2. Equally successful is his 1990 version for The  Birmingham Royal Ballet, this one closer to the Russian tradition of having Clara double up as the Sugar Plum Fairy, but with a slight twist: it is Clara’s alter ego ballerina doll who turns into the Fairy.

Jamie Bond as The Prince in Birmingham Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker. Photo: Bill Cooper / BRB ©

The Odd Ones

Nureyev’s production for POB has a clear emphasis on symbology and the subconscious: Clara wanders down the stairs at midnight to find her family and friends turned into rats and bats while Drosselmeyer transforms into a handsome prince.

Mikhail Baryshnikov’s 1976 popular version for ABT turns the Christmas dream into a coming-of-age tale. There is no Sugar Plum Fairy nor Prince Koklush, the focus being Clara’s encounter with the Nutcracker Prince as orchestrated by her Godfather Drosselmeyer. As the ballet ends so does Clara’s fantasy.

More recently the ballet has seen a flurry of ironic takes. In Mark Morris’s The Hard Nut (1991) the Stahlbaums are a suburban family with a fake Christmas tree, bad hairdos and too much to drink, the second act Arabian divertissement being a trio for oil sheiks. In Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker! (1992) Clara lives in an orphanage run by Mr. and Mrs. Dross and tries to win the heart of the hunky Nutcracker prince.

Story

These myriad versions make it impossible for us to list all the differences and twists in the various Nutcrackers around the world but the storyline is more or less always the same:

Characters

• Herr Drosselmeyer
• Clara (or Marie, or Masha)
• Nutcracker Prince (or Hans Peter)
• Sugar Plum Fairy
• Her Prince Cavalier (Prince Koklush)

Act 1

A Christmas party is taking place at the Stahlbaum’s, parents to Clara and Fritz. Drosselmeyer brings his goddaughter Clara a gift of a nutcracker doll.  Children being children, Fritz eventually grabs and breaks the Nutcracker doll much to Clara’s dismay. Drosselmeyer fixes it restoring peace amongst the youngsters. Guests depart and Clara suddently sees herself surrounded by a fantasy world, where the Christmas tree grows giant and dolls and soldiers come to life to battle with the mice who have also grown to Clara’s own size. She sees her Nutcracker doll leading the battle and being attacked by the Mouse King. She throws her slipper at the Mouse, liberating the Nutcracker who turns into a Prince. They embark on a magical journey, their first stop being the Land of Snow where snow flakes waltz around them in patterns, as if blown by the wind.

Act 2

Clara and her Nutcraker Prince arrive at the Kingdom of Sweets where they are greeted by the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince Cavalier. They are invited to watch a series of divertissements representing exotic travels and various different sweets: Chocolate (Spanish dance) Coffee (Arabian dance) Tea (Chinese dance), the Russian Trépak (Cossacks), Mother Ginger & the polichinelles (in certain versions), along with the dance of the little pipes/Mirlitons and the Waltz of the Flowers. The celebrations close with the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince dancing a grand pas de deux. The curtain usually falls on Clara waking up back at home wondering whether it was all just a dream.

Roberta Marquez and Valeri Hristov in The Royal Ballet's The Nutcracker. Photo: Dee Conway / ROH ©

Music

Tchaikovsky died in 1893 not knowing what a big success his work would achieve. He had been burned twice before writing for ballet (with Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty) so he was less than enthusiastic to do so again but Vsevolozhsky convinced him on the basis that he would also be able to write the opera Iolanta which interested him more and which premiered on the same day as the ballet. Paradoxically, his Nutcracker score became, over the years, the more celebrated of the two works.

Having received the joint commission, Tchaikovsky started on The Nutcracker writing to his brother Anatoly in March 1891 that “the main thing is to get rid of the ballet; as to the opera I am so fascinated by it that if I could have two weeks of peace I would be sure to finish it on schedule”. As he embarked on a trip to Berlin and Paris en route to an American tour that same year he heard of the death of his sister Sasha.  Perhaps for this reason a hint of sadness  and nostalgia permeates The Nutcracker’s haunting score.

He finished composing the ballet on 6 July 1891 having added to it a novelty instrument which he had bought during his tour in Paris, the celesta, which he used to give The Sugar Plum Fairy her characteristic sound of heavenly bells.

An essential Nutcracker Spotify/Ipod playlist should include the below tracks:

Op.71 – Overture
Op.71 – Act 1 – No. 1 The Christmas Tree
Op.71 – Act 1 – No. 2 March
Op.71 – Act 1 – No. 6 Clara and the Nutcracker
Op.71 – Act 1 – No. 7 The Nutcracker Battles the Army of the Mouse King
Op.71 – Act 1 – No. 8 In the Christmas Tree
Op.71 – Act 1 – No. 9 Scene and Waltz of the Snowflakes
Op.71 – Act 2 – No. 10 The Magic Castle on the Mountain of Sweets
Op.71 – Act 2 – No. 12a Character Dances: Chocolate (Spanish Dance)
Op.71 – Act 2 – No. 12b Character Dances: Coffee (Arabian Dance)
Op.71 – Act 2 – No. 12c Character Dances: Tea (Chinese Dance)
Op.71 – Act 2 – No. 12d Character Dances: Trépak (Russian Dance)
Op.71 – Act 2 – No. 12e Character Dances: Dance of the Reed Pipes
Op.71 – Act 2 – No. 12f Character Dances: Polchinelle
Op.71 – Act 2 – No. 13 Waltz of the Flowers
Op.71 – Act 2 – No. 14a Pas de deux: Intrada
Op.71 – Act 2 – No. 14b Pas de deux: Variation I (Tarantella)
Op.71 – Act 2 – No. 14c Pas de deux: Variation II (Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy)
Op.71 – Act 2 – No. 14d Pas de deux: Coda
Op.71 – Act 2 – No. 15 Final Waltz and Apotheosis

Mini-Biography

Original Choreography: Marius Petipa/Lev Ivanov
Music: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Original Designs: M.I. Botcharov with K. Ivanov wit costumes by I.A. Vsevolozhsky
Original Cast: Antoinetta dell’Era as the Sugar Plum Fairy, Pavel Gerd as Prince “Koklush” (also known as Prince Coqueluche or Orgeat), Nikolay Legat as The Nutcraker Prince and Timofei Stukolkin as Drosselmeyer.
Premiere: 6 December 1892 Mariinsky (also credited as 17 December 1892)

Where to see it in the UK

The Royal Ballet – The Nutcracker is in repertoire at the Royal Opera House from November 26 to January 1st. For booking details visit the ROH website.

Birmingham Royal Ballet – The Nutcracker is in repertoire at the Birmingham Hippodrome from November 27 to December 13. For booking details visit The Birmingham Hippodrome’s website.

English National Ballet – The Nutcracker, with choreography by Christopher Hampson, is in repertoire at the London Coliseum from December 16 to January 3. For booking details visit the ENO website.

Sources and Further Information

1. Royal Opera House Nutcracker podcast
2. The Royal Ballet’s Nutcracker Programme Notes.
3. The Nutcracker History by Gerald Charles. Ballet Met Notes for The Nutcracker, November 1998 [link]
4. Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker/Swan Lake/The Sleeping Beauty Highlights. Naxos Recording with the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra. [link]
5. The Refined Product of a Great Artist: Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta by Hugo Shirley. Opera Holland Park. [link]
6. Nuts, Sluts, Rats and Bats by Judith Mackrell. The Guardian, December 2001. [link]
7. How to Design the Nutcracker by Ismene Brown. The Arts Desk [link]
8. Breaking Pointe: The Nutcracker is a Gift that Takes More than it Gives by Sarah Kaufman. The Washington Post [link]
9. Wikipedia entry on The Nutcracker [link]

Assalammualaikum dan salam sejahtera. Disini saya tertarik untuk membicarakan tentang surat arahan berkenaan membenarkan PIBG membuat keputusan dalam menentukan kadar kutipan untuk yuran tahun 2009 bagi sekolah masing-masing.

Disini wujudnya pendapat atau pemahaman wang yang dikutip itu hendaklah diberikan kepada pihak PIBG untuk diuruskan oleh PIBG. Inilah persoalan yang perlu dijelaskan hampir setiap hari oleh saya dan sahabat saya. Oleh itu saya akan memberikan satu perumpamaan yang mudah bagi pengurus sekolah dan guru-guru dan wakil PIBG untuk memahaminya.

1. Didalam surat arahan tersebut hanya menyatakan bahawa memberi kuasa kepada PIBG untuk menentukan kadar kutipan yang dipersetujui dalam mesyuarat PIBG sahaja, tidak ada pula kandungan yang mengatakan ” Wang kutipan yuran hendaklah diakaunkan ke akaun PIBG “. Oleh itu pekeliling lama dan arahan yang terdahulu masih termaktub.

2. Berkenaan dengan kadar yuran yang diputuskan tidak memerlukan kelulusan oleh Pegawai Pendaftar tetapi adalah labih bagus dan baik sekiranya satu salinan kadar yuran yang diputuskan diserahkan kepada JPN Negeri sebagai ” Makluman ” sahaja.

3. Arahan Perbendaharaan 69 ; Kebenaran bertulis untuk memungut wang. Oleh yang sedemikian pengurus sekolah perlulah mengeluarkan surat kebenaran kepada guru kelas untuk memungut wang yuran seperti yang telah diputuskan pada mesyuarat PIBG.

4. Wang bantuan kerajaan untuk PIBG (di Kumpulan Wang Kerajaan ) masih lagi dalam tanggungan pengurus sekolah. Oleh itu PIBG hendaklah merencanakan aktiviti dan dibayarkan oleh pihak sekolah ( mengikut budget yang diterima )

Sekiranya masih ada kekeliruan sila tinggalkan komen anda.

Sekian Terima Kasih.

…. SIY ….

Berdasarkan perjanjian kantin antara pengusaha kantin dengan pihak kerajaan yakni
“sekolah”. Pengusaha kantin dikehendaki untuk membayar sewa kantin untuk tempoh 24 bulan berdasarkan kontrak perjanjian yang dipersetujui.

Contoh Tempoh Perjanjian :
1/1/2006 – 31/12/2007

Berdasarkan tempoh perjanjian diatas, satu masalah telah timbul dimana pengusaha kantin
yang tamat tempoh akan keluar pada bulan 12 manakala pengusaha kantin yang baru akan mula berniaga pada bulan 1. Masalahnya ialah barang-barang pengusaha baru hendak dibawa masuk pada bulan 1. Oleh sebab itu ia menjejaskan masa atau peluang berniaga ketika murid-murid berada di sekolah.

Okey, kembali kepada pengecualian bayaran sewa kantin. Bayaran sewa kantin hanya boleh dikecualikan apabila tamat tempoh perjanjian pada bulan 12 dan pengusaha tersebut mengosongkan premis tersebut pada penghujung bulan 11. Maka dengan itu barulah pengusaha kantin yang baru dapat membawa peralatan mereka untuk beroperasi sepenuhnya pada bulan 1.

Pada pendapat saya penyeragaman tarikh perjanjian hendaklah digunakan supaya tiada pertindihan seperti ini akan berlaku.

Contoh Tarikh Yang Dicadangkan :
1/12/xxxx -30/11/xxxx

[Tip of the cap to our own Frozen Activist for the tip on this!]

According to the Anchorage Baptist Temple, it’s time once again to get your God on. This is the image sent out with the Wal*Church’s latest newsletter, advertising their brand new Adult Bible Fellowship Class. Yes, in case you just glossed over that fun fact, this is designed for adults. This should go well with the last two sermons, now available to stream from the website, entitled “Where Does the U.S. Fit in the End Times?” and “Are You A Good Soldier of Jesus Christ?” (a timely sermon delivered three days after the Fort Hood tragedy. Classy.)

Enjoy the ABT’s original artwork. I’m sure that video will follow soon.

[Originally published in The Northern Light on 11/10/09 as an op-ed. It struck me as relevant to share, in light of President Obama's quick visit to Alaska's Elmendorf Air Force Base today, highlighted by the refusal of Governor Sean Parnell to greet our nation's executive - a shameful act of disrespect to the highest office in the land and an act of negligence regarding his own office's duties and responsibilities as executive of our state. It was originally taken from a piece I wrote about how inspired I was by the positivity expressed when I attended a lecture by Venezuelan Ambassador to the US, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, but I altered the focus for the Northern Light to reflect specifically on the devolving nature of our politics here in the states.]

Trying to find enthusiasm in politics today is much like trying to find logic on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page.

Thinking back to the Obama campaign, and all the pop culture references that were birthed through YouTube videos and Hollywood advertisements – which will surely grace the “answer” side of Trivial Pursuit cards for generations to come, I’m reminded of a more hopeful time. A time when our wars seemed possible to end, global warming was being touted as something we could fix, rather than a slumping poll topic, and positive health care reform seemed inevitable, instead of “God, I hope this doesn’t screw us if it passes.”

Here in Alaska, amidst our own recent scandals, Anchorage Baptist Temple sermons and gubernatorial sociopathy, I recall watching former Mayoral candidate Eric Croft’s eyes light up, back in April, as he talked about an emerging Anchorage. An Anchorage where people were finally rallying around the concept of a community centered on investing, improving and embracing this town as our home and planning for its prosperous future, rather than a weigh station before retirement delivers us to warmer climates and the gated, colorless monotony of a suburban lifestyle.

But now, foreboding signs plague us at every turn.

We see it in the democrats’ miserable failures to take stands for values that are supposed to represent the unwavering backbone of the party, but have fallen dead on the floor, as if someone cut power to the teleprompter.

Where did we outsource our optimism? Each time I hear President Obama, Sen. Harry Reid or Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi I feel deflated. Every word comes out as if they are suffering from the most debilitating hangover on record.

I need you to stop looking like you just traded the “robust” public option to Joe Lieberman for the bottom third of his 40-ounce to bridge the gap to the end of the day.

I need Congressman Grayson to stop using his newfound platform to facilitate his novelty addiction to starting websites that offer nothing constructive, other than to tell progressives what they already know: The system is broken, the “Blue Dog” corporatist sell outs have less spine than the single celled organisms that control our biology grades, and the Republicans are neither listening or coming up with solutions; unable to hear anything in the midst the trumpeting of the word “no”.

Malaise should never be a party platform. Obstructionism should never take precedent over ideas. But in reality, the Republican Party – once proudly defined by great American leaders like Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt – is now dominated by paranoid antics from the likes of Rep. Michele Bachmann, and struggling to find a voice, therefore settling for a disturbing tan, under the leadership of John Boehner.

There is a schism forming in both parties. This might result in a healthy reaffirmation of party affiliation to many, which remains to be seen. But, it may very well culminate in plummeting turnouts and declining attention spans.

These off-season elections were not as much a referendum on Obama’s presidency, as they were reactions to weak candidates and deep frustrations.

Last year’s national election brought 41percent of Americans to the ballot box. 2004 offered us a turnout of just below 40 percent.

In Alaska, we actually experienced a dip in statewide turnout, despite our own Governor Facebook being on the republican ticket; 48 percent in 2004 to 47 percent last year.

And, in Anchorage, last May delivered a run off election for mayor between Dan Sullivan and Eric Croft. Although Sullivan won handily with 57.3 percent of the vote, he mustered only 10 percent of Anchorage voters.

Speaking worlds to the current appeal of both parties, while freeing up Mr. Sullivan’s schedule to praise Wal-Mart and show off his veto pen at every occasion, all with a nifty sounding title.

We are caring less and less. We are disillusioned, disappointed and running out of hope quicker than snow on Mount Kilimanjaro. There are anomic periods of excitement like we saw during Obama’s campaign and again over the summer with the tea party protests.

But these efforts all seem to lack in stamina, and are receiving little to no encouragement or follow up from our elected representatives, who never seem to work nearly as hard for us as we do for them, and increasingly sound like we should be talking them down off of a ledge. In harsh economic times like these, shouldn’t that be there job?

Maybe we need to stop calling each other communists, racists and whatever else pops into our heads and sidesteps any sort of filtration system.

Empires crumble by nature. The human condition only lubricates the process. In terms of needing to buck up and face the problems together, time’s not exactly gaining patience.

We’re either all in this together, or we’re all going down with the ship.

Alexei Ratmansky. Photo: MIRA / ABT ©

As long as there are choreographers like Alexei Ratmansky around our hopes for the future of classical ballet as an art form are renewed. Now one of the world’s most sought-after choreographers, Ratmansky started his career as a ballet dancer with the Kiev Ballet in the Ukraine. Dancing soon took him out of Eastern Europe to various companies in the West where he was exposed to different choreographers and styles. Absorbing all these influences he started developing his own choreographic language, a personal mix of influences by Petipa, Bournonville, Ashton, Balanchine and Tudor woven into narrative or abstract choreography.

His achievements as the Bolshoi’s Artistic Director and a winning streak of new works, including those for New York City Ballet (NYCB), put him center stage. This led to his recent appointment with American Ballet Theatre (ABT) as Artist in Residence, a role tailored so that Ratmansky can create new work for ABT whilst continuing to choreograph worldwide.

While we follow his ABT career with interest and keep crossing our fingers for more of Ratmansky’s work in London, we leave you with some interesting facts & web notes on him.

Alexei Ratmansky in a Nutshell

Alexei Ratmansky was born in St. Petersburg in 1968. He grew up in Kiev, Ukraine where his father – a former gymnast – worked as an aeronautics engineer and his mother as a psychiatrist.  At the age of 10 he was accepted into the Bolshoi Academy (Moscow Choreographic Institute) to train under the guidance of Pyotr Pestov and Anna Markeyeva. His classmates included former ABT star and current Berlin Staatsballett Artistic Director Vladimir Malakhov, current Bolshoi director Yuri Burlaka and Bolshoi star Nikolai Tsiskaridze.

From early on Ratmansky showed an interest in experimenting with choreography but despite his talents in performing and in creating dances he was not accepted into the Bolshoi. Instead, he joined the Kiev Ballet as a soloist, dancing leading roles in the classics. During this period he met his soon to be wife, fellow dancer Tatiana Kilivniuk and juggled his dancing career with studying at the Choreographers’ Faculty of GITIS (today, The Russian Academy of Theatre Art – RATI). There he had the opportunity to stage his first ballet, La Sylphide-88. Set to Shostakovich’s music this was a short work given in one single performance.

In 1992 while on tour in Canada, Ratmansky and his wife were invited to join the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. He continued creating small pieces, mainly for Tatiana, and became familiar with the works of Tudor, van Dantzig, Neumeier and Balanchine.

He quit The Royal Winnipeg Ballet and returned to Kiev in 1995 as a freelance dancer but left again to join The Royal Danish Ballet in 1997. During his seven years in Denmark, Ratmansky immersed himself in August Bournonville’s works. There he continued to create choreography whilst also becoming a principal dancer (2000).

Nina Ananiashvili soon spotted his talent and asked him to create short works for her international tours (the Golden Mask Winner Dreams of Japan, set to taiko drumming and flutes). The touring of these works boosted Ratmansky’s profile and led to his first commissions by the Mariinsky Theatre and the Bolshoi.

In 2002, he staged Cinderella for the Mariinsky and, in 2003, The Bright Stream, for the Bolshoi, as part of their Shostakovich celebrations. The Bright Stream had been originally created in 1935 by Fyodor Lopukhov to Shostakovich’s music but immediately discarded given Stalin’s disapproval of “peasants on pointe”. Because of this Lopukhov was fired and Shostakovich never wrote a ballet score again. Reinventing the choreography on top of the original libretto, Ratmansky turned this “rejected ballet” into a great success.

Alexei Ratmansky Photo: MIRA / ABT ©

The Bolshoi Years

Golden Mask Prize winner The Bright Stream led to Ratmansky’s appointment as the Bolshoi’s Artistic Director in 2004. His mandate was to focus on modernising the company and reconciling the new repertoire with the classics.

The Bolshoi’s five years under Ratmansky have been celebrated as a golden age. The company rejuvenated and regained artistic credibility with new works. For Ratmansky it must have been a draining period with a lot of compromising and pacifying different personalities and artistic egos,  leaving him with little time and energy to choreograph. He has said in the past that Russia is not very friendly to choreographers given its emphasis on the classics and inherited traditions, with certains dancers limiting themselves to new opportunities and holding on to the belief that they can only be creative within the boundaries of the old repertoire.

During Ratmansky’s tenure 25 new ballets were acquired for the company including works by Balanchine, Roland Petit, Twyla Tharp and Léonide Massine. In addition to The Bright Stream he also successfully restaged lost ballets such as Class Concert, The Flames of Paris and a lavish and critically acclaimed reconstruction of Le Corsaire.

In addition to developing dances Ratmansky is also credited with nurturing and creating opportunitities for such new talents as Natalia Osipova, Ivan Vasiliev, Ekaterina Krysanova, Nelli Kobakhidze and Denis Savin, while also showcasing the artistry of dancers Maria Alexandrova, Ekaterina Shipulina and Svetlana Lunkina, by casting them in new roles.

Veronika Part, Marcelo Gomes and Paloma Herrera in Ratmansky's On the Dnieper. Photo: Gene Schiavone / ABT ©

From Bolshoi to ABT

Early in 2008, rumours started circulating of Ratmansky departing to NYCB as resident choreographer, to follow in the steps of Christopher Wheeldon. But the terms of NYCB’s offer would have restricted his ability to create work outside the company so, instead, he decided to join ABT as an Artist in Residence, a role that gives him enough freedom to pursue other collaborations.

Ratmansky’s Ballets

For Ratmansky, classical ballet can be kept alive as long as its human content is relevant, narrative being a particular trait in his works. Ratmansky often mentions that while for George Balanchine, one of his influences, it was all about the steps and abstraction, for him the steps are part of a conversation that blends craft and passion.

His works are considered musical and fluid, probably a direct influence from his experience with Bournonville. He considers his choreography to be instinctive, the product of an analytical reaction to the score and physical response to the music (he used to put on music and film himself to observe how his body reacted naturally). That explains his preference for a more naturalistic port de bras, open chested stands, patterns that are circling, dynamic and constantly shifting, with suggestions of folk dance, as is the case with his Russian Seasons.

Some of Ratmansky’s works

• A Fairy’s Kiss (Tchaikovsky, 1994) – Kiev Ballet
• Capriccio (Stravinsky, 1997) – Bolshoi
• The Charms of Mannerism (Strauss, 1997) - Postmodern-Theatre
• Poem of Ecstasy (Scriabin, 1998) – Mariinsky
• Middle Duet (Hanin, 1998) – Mariinsky
• Turandot’s Dream (Hindemith, 2000) – The Royal Danish Ballet
• Bolero (Ravel, 2001) –  International Ballet of Copenhagen
• Flight to Budapest (Brahms, 2001) – International Ballet of Copenhagen
• Nutcracker – Re-staging after Petipa (Tchaikovsky, 2001) – The Royal Danish Ballet
• The Firebird (Stravinsky, 2002) – The Royal Swedish Ballet
• Cinderella (Prokofiev, 2002) – Mariinsky
• Le Carnaval des Animaux (Saint-Saens, 2003) – San Francisco Ballet
• The Bright Stream (Shostakovich, 2003) – Bolshoi
• Leah (Bernstein, 2004) – Bolshoi
• Anna Karenina (Schedrin, 2005) – The Royal Danish Ballet
• Bolt (Shostakovich, 2005) – Bolshoi
• Russian Seasons (Desyatnikov, 2006) – NYCB
• Middle Duet (Hanon, 2006) – NYCB
• Le Corsaire – Restaging after Petipa, with Yuri Burlaka (Adam, 2007) – Bolshoi
• Jeu de Cartes (Stravinsky, 2007 ) – Bolshoi
• The Flames of Paris – New staging with use of original choreography by Vasily Vainonen, based on original libretto by Nikolai Volkov and Vladimir Dmitriev (Asafiev, 2008. )
• Pierrot Lunaire  (Schoenberg, 2009) – For Diana Vishneva as part of her show Beauty in Motion
• Concerto DSCH (Shostakovich, 2008) – NYCB
• The Little Humpbacked Horse (Schedrin, 2009) – Mariinsky
• On the Dnieper (Prokofiev, 2009) – ABT
• Scuola di Ballo – Restaging after Massine (Bocherini, 2009) – The Australian Ballet
• Seven Sonatas (Scarlatti, 2009) – ABT
• Don Quixote – Restaging after Petipa (Minkus, 2010) – Dutch National Ballet

Awards and Honours:

• Golden Mask  for Dreams of Japan (1999)
• Golden Mask for Best Choreographer, The Bright Stream (2004)
• Knighted in Denmark (order of the Danish Flag) for his contribution to the arts (2002)
• Benois de la Danse for Anna Karenina production for the Royal Danish Ballet (2005)
• Golden Mask for Best Choreographer, Jeu de Cartes (2006)
• Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for The Bright Stream after the Bolshoi’s London tour (2006)

Paloma Herrera as Olga and Marcelo Gomes as Sergei in Ratmansky's On The Dnieper. Photo: Gene Schiavone / ABT ©

Videos

The following short extracts should give you an idea of how rich and varied Ratmansky’s choreography is and how widespread it has become.

• Extract of Russian Seasons as danced by Dutch National Ballet [link]
• Pas de deux from Anna Karenina, danced by Gitte Lindstrøm and Mads Blangstrup from The Royal Danish Ballet [link]
• Nina Ananiashvili in Leah, from Ratmansky Gala at the Bolshoi [link]
• Le Jardin Anime scene from Ratmansky’s Le Corsaire, with Svetlana Zakharova as Medora and Ekaterina Krysanova as Gulnare [link]
• Extract of Bolt, featuring Denis Savin, Anastasia Yatsenko and Andrei Merkuriev [link]
• Diana Vishneva and Andrei Merkuriev in Cinderella [link]
• A short feature on Scuola di Ballo for The Australian Ballet [link]
• Alina Somova and Vladimir Shklyarov in an extract of The Little Humpbacked Horse [link]

Extracts of Reviews and Selected Praise

Of The Bright Stream:

The final offering of the season was The Bright Stream. In 1935, when Shostakovich’s sunny score was staged in Moscow with choreography by Fyodor Lopukhov (and initially much liked), it drew down Stalinist wrath as “balletic fraud”, wholly irresponsible in portraying the nature of collective farming. It has been Alexey Ratmansky’s achievement to rehabilitate the piece, by rescuing the score and taking an amused look at its narrative and, most significantly, at the aesthetic and political conventions of ballet in the 1930s. Clement Crisp at the Financial Times (2007) [link]

Alexei Ratmansky, who completely rechoreographed it for the Bolshoi in 2003, didn’t have to worry about toeing the party line and was free to do whatever he wanted with Shostakovich’s jolly music and Piotrovsky and Lopukhov’s lighthearted libretto. His new production honours them both with wit and compassion, and a stream of wonderful — and very funny — choreography…All in all, the best new ballet to come out of Russia in years. Debra Craine at the Times (2006) [link]

Of Bolt:

Though I hope other choreographers will give sharper visual style to this unusual and instantly appealing music, I feel that Ratmansky deserves the highest credit here. He may not have produced a definitive new Bolt, but he has given the full ballet score to the world to play with, a marvellous gift. Ismene Brown at The Telegraph (2005) [link]

Of The Little Humpbacked Horse

This ballet is life-affirming and rich in humanity. Ratmansky’s choreography is masterly, and has a clear form and shape. His narrative is clear, and each scene is of the right length. The final transformation scene of Ivan into a young tsar is effective and witty. The two classical duets are full of heart-warming tenderness. The duets for Ivan and the Humpbacked Horse in Act I are spirited and lively. Kevin NG at The Saint Petersburg Times (2009) [link]

Of On the Dnieper:

Ratmansky, as always, produces lovely movement—the solos for both men are particularly telling. And he never loses his touch with groups of dancers, their extended passages both coherent and effective in themselves and reflecting the emotional trajectory of the story. Robert Gottlieb at The New York Observer (2009) [link]

Mr. Ratmansky gleans every bit of story possible from the Lifar-Prokofiev original and makes the most of it. (…) What Mr. Ratmansky captures beautifully with these characters (and less eloquently with Natalia, described in the program as “grief-stricken yet noble”) is what it is like to be torn by opposite emotional impulses. The choreography’s other felicities include some lovely subtleties of ensemble and striking instances of dancers standing or moving with their backs to us. Alastair Macaulay at The New York Times (2009) [link]

Of Russian Seasons

His “Russian Seasons” finally received its world premiere on Thursday evening at the New York State Theater, and it was worth the wait (…) It would be too easy to say that the choreography owes its originality to its inspirations from folk dance, though it does make happy use of such dancing. Mr. Ratmansky is a fountain of movement ideas, with sweeping stiff arms and vigorous floor-stamping and clapping and every sort of catlike pose, from freshly funny to deeply tragic. Intimations of character and personality never get in the way of pure dance. John Rockwell at The New York Times (2006) [link]

Leaving the theater, I could have danced for joy, especially if I had been choreographed by Ratmansky. A new choreographer has come to light – and the dance world is a better place. Clive Barnes at The New York Post (2006).

Of Concerto DSCH

Concerto DSCH is an endlessly suspenseful choreographic construction, with passages of breathtaking dance brilliance. Again and again, you find yourself thinking, “I didn’t realize this was going to happen after that,” and “What exactly were those steps that flashed by just now?” Better yet, it’s marked by tender pure-dance poetry. Alastair Macaulay at The New York Times (2008) [link]

Certainly “Concerto DSCH” seems at first glance – even second glance – a weird name for a ballet, but Alexei Ratmansky’s new work created for New York City Ballet on Thursday night is a gold-plated, copper-bottomed hit. Clive Barnes at The New York Post (2008) [link]

Sources and Further Information

1. Alexei Ratmansky’s Biography from the Bolshoi’s Website [link]
2. Alexei Ratmansky’s Biography from the Benois de la Danse Website [link]
3. ABT’s Alexei the Mild? by Robert Greskovic. The Wall Street Journal. June 2009 [link]
4. Interview with Alexei Ratmansky by Natasha Dissanayake. Ballet.co Magazine. July-August 2004. [link]
5. Freelance Freedoms. Alexei Ratmansky in conversation with Marc Haegeman. Dance Now Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4. Winter 2008/09.
6. Ballet’s future Russian Ahead by Leigh Witchel. New York Post. October 2009. [link]
7. Ratmansky Takes Manhattan by Marina Harss. The Nation. September, 2009. [link]
8. Bolshoi Director May Take Job at City Ballet by Gia Kourlas. The New York Times. February 2008 [link]
9. For Bolshoi Ballet, Two Steps Forward, One Step Back by Nora Fitzgerald. The Washington Post. February, 2007 [link]
10. Alexei Ratmansky and the new Bolshoi by Margaret Willis. Dance Magazine, November 2004. [link]
11. New Home, New Job and New Moves for Alexei Ratmansky by Roslyn Sulcas. The New York Times, May 2009. [link]
12. The Bolshoi in Paris: An interview with Alexei Ratmansky by Patricia Boccadoro. Culturekiosque, February 2004. [link]
13. Alexei Ratmansky by Roslyn Sulcas. The New York Times. November, 2009 [link]

Daniil Simkin. Photo: Enrico Nawrath / ABT ©

If you follow dance on the internet chances are you will have heard of Daniil Simkin.  He is the whiz kid (not just dance-wise but also tech-wise) who arrived last year from Vienna State Opera to stir some fresh buzz into American Ballet Theatre’s soloist ranks. His virtuoso dancing and various gala appearances, including the prestigious World Ballet Festival in Japan, have drawn a solid fanbase from every corner of the globe and Daniil draws on multi-platform social media and Web 2.0 to stay in touch and connect with all these fans.

We caught up with Daniil ahead of ABT’s trip to China later this week. He was kind enough to answer our questions about his ABT repertoire, his social media projects and to share his plans for the upcoming gala evening “INTENSIO” in Athens this December.

You are now in your second season with ABT. Can you tell us how it’s going? Any new roles/debuts on the horizon? Which roles do you expect to dance in the upcoming tour to China?

DS: So far my second season has been great. I will be touching a lot of new ground and will be expanding my horizons during the MET’s spring season, dancing in Twyla Tharp’s Brahms Hayden Variations, the great Jerome Robbins ballet Fancy Free, in Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Dream (as Puck), probably in Paul Taylor’s Company B, in addition to dancing my current roles in our classical repertoire. I have also been understudying a few Principal roles in the classics since I have performed some of them with other companies, but I have no scheduled performances in those yet.

During ABT’s tour in China I will be performing ‘Everything doesn’t happen at Once‘ by Benjamin Millepied and ‘One in Three‘ by Aszure Barton, both created for ABT and premiered during its Avery Fisher Hall season this Fall. Both pieces are extremely different, but very enjoyable to perform. I am very much looking forward to the tour, especially because it will be my first visit to China.

Daniil Simkin in Benjamin Millepied’s Everything Doesn’t Happen at Once. Photo: Gene Schiavone / ABT ©

Speaking of the Far East, can you briefly share your experiences at the World Ballet Festival in Japan this past summer?

DS: The World Ballet Festival was an unbelievable experience. Just the fact that I was sharing the stage with people like Sylvie Guillem, Aurelie Dupont, Manuel Legris, Alina Cojocaru, Johan Kobborg, Marianela Nuñez, Svetlana Zakharova, Leonid Sarafanov, Tamara Rojo… It gives me goosebumps. One of the most memorable moments was probably receiving corrections & pointers from Sylvie Guillem. Luckily my first show, a full-length Don Quixote, happened at the very beginning of the festival. Not everybody was there yet so I was able to concentrate on my show without thinking too much on who might be watching in the audience!

You are one of few classical dancers currently using social media to connect with your audience. How did you get into it and what are you trying to achieve in all these different platforms (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.)?

DS: I have always been interested in computers and any technology-related gadgets. Some boys are drawn towards cars and motorsports, whereas as a kid I was drawn to computers, science and gadgets. I spent more time on my father’s first computers than he ever did. Then came the Internet and its ever-increasing presence in our lives. Luckily I was born in an age when everything was just starting. I was designing personal websites by myself in my spare time and once codecs for videos became more efficient I put in there videos from my competitions as downloadable clips.

Then one day I saw one of my clips in somebody’s MySpace page and found out somebody else had uploaded two of my clips and was selling a DVD of it on YouTube without my permission. I was shocked. Because of that I decided to put my own videos onto YouTube, otherwise others would. I also started to use MySpace after my competition in Jackson (2006) since it was the perfect way to keep in touch with a lot of the US dancers I had met there.

From there it was not a long shot to Facebook and Twitter. I was the second professional dancer to use Twitter, after San Francisco Ballet Principal and good friend Maria Kochetkova. I had fun updating my status and therefore kept doing it, until twittering was the next popular thing for pretty much every and anyone. Nowadays all of my platforms are interconnected, which means that my profile and my work can be discovered through different channels. If somebody gets to know a little bit about what I do from watching my YouTube videos, this person can then have a full picture through my Facebook page, Twitter and my personal website, which is currently in the process of being upgraded to a new, fully integrated, Web 2.0 version.

Daniil Simkin in Aszure Barton’s One of Three. Photo: Photo: Gene Schiavone / ABT ©

With all of this, my aim is to demystify our work as ‘professional dancers’. Our profession is surrounded by clichés and prejudices from misinformed people. I am trying to show that we dancers may be a little different from everybody else, but in essence we are human beings with routines, likes and dislikes, social lives and passions like everyone else. In short, we are not so different or more special than the office worker sitting in a cubicle, we just have different workspaces.

People in dance talk about the need to promote ballet more widely and yet, few actually do it. Why do you think there are so few dancers/choreographers in social media channels and have you encouraged any of your colleagues to use them?

DS: To quote a twitterer “I must do something” always solves more problems than “Something must be done” (Author Unknown). In the end, we as the dance world ARE the ones who have to change, not our surroundings, the media, etc. In my opinion classical dance is not more popular because in the dance world we tend to be more conservative than innovative. We have to change our mentality and prejudices towards copyright, media, replace them with openness and transparence. Only when the majority understands that this is the key to the future, will we succeed. In my opinion protectionism in these days of Internet/Web 2.0 can be destructive. That’s my two cents.

I have been encouraging some of my colleagues to participate in the Web 2.0 movement, but unlike most of the other professional fields, ballet is very physical and is very little connected to technology in its everyday routine. Therefore dancers are not as open to embracing the possibilities of technology as they could be.

What do you think major ballet companies should be doing to draw new audiences and to keep engaging them?

DS: The same things I mentioned before. Project more openness and a certain fearlessness in their PR. Fear is the biggest enemy of innovation and it prevents them from progressing, from opening the art form towards new audiences.

It is clear to me that the artistic mission of ballet companies should be to maintain a healthy balance between proven classics and innovative work with new ballet choreographers. Basically it is guarding a basis while nurturing experimental directions, but in reality, only big scale companies have the luxury to do both these things. The smaller the company, the harder it will be – budget and quality wise – to maintain a high level of both. Which doesn’t mean it is not a goal to strive for or one that’s unreachable.

Can you tell us more about the gala you are organizing in Athens this December? Why this particular location and who will be guesting?

DS: After performing in the ‘Svetlana Zakharova & Friends’ gala in Athens last year I was approached and asked to organize a similar event. The Gala evening is called ‘INTENSIO – An International Ballet Gala Presented by Daniil Simkin’. ‘INTENSIO’ is a play with the words ‘intense’ and ‘intention’. It describes the evening quite well in that it is not going to be just a clean dance evening, we are trying to merge different media into a ‘mashup’ for an entertaining evening. My father is in charge of the stage design and video projections specifically designed to support the dance on stage, as some pieces will be integrated with video. It is an exciting project for me and a new approach towards the usual ‘gala’ evening you see so often.

So far the following dancers will be performing (+ another couple to be announced)

• Daniil SIMKIN – American Ballet Theatre
• Alina COJOCARU - The Royal Ballet
• Lucia LACARRA – Bayerisches Staatsballett (Munich)
• Cyril PIERRE – Bayerisches Staatsballett (Munich)
• Daria KLIMENTOVÁ – English National Ballet
• David MAKHATELI – The Royal Ballet
• Irina KOLESNIKOVA – St. Petersburg Ballet Theatre
• Semyon CHUDIN – Moscow Stanislavsky Ballet Theatre
• Marie LINDQVIST – The Royal Swedish Ballet
• Dragos MIHALCEA – The Royal Swedish Ballet

Daniil Simkin in ABT's Giselle. Photo: Rosalie O’Connor / ABT ©

How do you see your career evolving 5 years from now, what would you like to have achieved & which roles do you aspire to dance?

DS: I tend not to look too much into the future. Life experience showed me that it is healthier and better for me to enjoy the things I have now and share the beauty of life right here, right now. Having said that, dancing the Principal classical repertoire is one of my priorities in the near future and I would also love to go back to school, at least part-time or to learn remotely. Right now I am too busy and I don’t have enough time, but hopefully in the future I will be able to do that.

What’s in your ballet bag?

DS: Different things for different occasions… If I am running from studio to studio rehearsing, then it would be:

• Water with added Magnesium
• Different kinds of warm ups to keep as flexible and as warm as possible (normally consist of 4 or more items+ warm up boots or warm up socks)
• Headband to keep my hair in place (which tends to be long enough to bug me)
• Sansha Pro 1C skin colored ballet slippers
• Toe spacers for my big toes + medical tape to stick them
• iPhone + a2dp Bluetooth Nokia wireless headphones
• 2 different stretching bands: One from Chacott to stretch my split and extensions and one Thera-Band to warm up my feet

Last but not least, COOKIES to keep my bloodsugar and mood up and to give me an always needed sugar-fix!

More about Daniil:

1. The New York Times on Daniil in ABT’s Le Corsaire [link]
2. W Magazine on Daniil’s relationship with the Internet [link]
3. Daniil’s Official Website [link]
4. Daniil on Twitter [link]
5. His Facebook page [link]
6. His YouTube channel [link]
7. Intensio Gala Information from Elliniki Theamaton (venue) [link]

Is this ballet for you?

Go If: You like intensely physical dancing molded from contemporary choreography. Tetley’s work is as a balanced mixture of classical ballet and modern dance. You like greek mythology and/or ballets drawn from literary sources, in this case, a Jean Cocteau play.

Skip If: You are allergic to colourful 70’s style bodysuits or you are a Petipa purist who doesn’t fancy ballet crossed over with Martha Graham.

Rupert Pennefather and Marianela Nuñez in Tetley’s Sphinx. Photo: Bill Cooper / ROH ©

Dream Cast

Sphinx: Gillian Murphy (ABT), Marianela Nuñez (RB) or any strong-but-alluring technician (NYCB’s Ashley Bouder would be great in this role)

Oedipus: Ethan Stiefel (ABT), Rupert Pennefather (RB) or any Greek hero-looking dancer

Anubis: Edward Watson (RB) or any edgy/virtuoso dancer (NYCB’s Daniel Ulbricht would be a perfect complement for a Bouder Sphinx)

Background

Glen Tetley. Photo: ROH © Martha Swope

To understand Glen Tetley’s unique style, one needs to go back to his roots. Few choreographers have been able to so harmoniously mix influences from so many different schools of dance. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Tetley started training as a dancer at the late age of 16 after seeing Nora Kaye and Hugh Laing in American Ballet Theatre’s production of Romeo & Juliet. A move to New York and a random visit to a friend lead him to become the understudy in a Broadway production ran by none other than Jerome Robbins, who immediately recognised Glen’s talent and potential.

While performing on Broadway, Tetley continued to train intensively in dance. He studied modern dance with Martha Graham and Hanya Holm, classical ballet at the School of American Ballet (SAB) and with Anthony Tudor. He became very interested in the stylistical impact Asian movement could make on modern dance. Given the frictions between modern and classical dance at the time, he shut himself in his studies and carried on with a paralell degree in Chemistry (NYU), which allowed him to explore opportunities in theatre and literature at the University. With this foundation he built not only his own dance vocabulary, but enough ideas to develop as a choreographer.

Tetley’s style is a blend of notions from all these various dance schools. His choreography has the fluidity and lyricism of classical ballet but also the impact, athleticism and breadth of movement that comes from modern dance, which is very open and fills the stage. Classical dancers often say that dancing Tetley’s works have helped them become better dancers.

Context & Storyline

Tetley’s inspiration for Sphinx came from his passion for literature. The ballet is his personal take on Act II of The Infernal Machine, a play by Jean Cocteau. It was originally created for ABT on ballerina Martine van Hamel to the music of Martinů’s Double Concerto for two String Orchestras.

The Myth of Oedipus:

In Ancient Greece the myth of Oedipus was passed down from one generation to the next. First references to it date back to 7th century BC with Homer and Hesiod and, a few centuries later, via Aeschylus and Sophocles who wrote their own accounts of Oedipus’s tragedy from a combination of several different sources.

Oedipus was the son of Laius, king of Thebes, and Jocasta. He was abandoned at birth owing to a prophecy by the Oracle of Delphi who foretold Laius and Jocasta that he would kill his father and marry his own mother. To avoid this fate, his father binds his ankles together with a pin and instructs a shepherd to take the boy away and kill him. The shepherd, full of pity, leaves the baby in the hands of another shepherd from Corinth who takes him to king Polybus and queen Merope. They  adopt him and name him Oedipus (swollen feet).

One of the key incidents in the story is Oedipus’s encounter with the Sphinx. The adult Oedipus hears a rumour that he is not the biological son of Polybus and Merope. Suspicious, he asks the Delphic Oracle who his parents really are. Instead of answering this question the Oracle tells him that he is destined to kill his own father and wed his mother. Desperate to avoid this fate and still believing Polybus and Merope to be his true parents, Oedipus sets on a journey to faraway Thebes. On his way he encounters a Sphinx which serves as a gatekeeper. In order to pass and to avoid being eaten by the creature all travelers must correctly answer a riddle. The sphinx serves Oedipus the following riddle:

What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening?

Oedipus is the first traveler to answer correctly. He responds:

Man: as infant he crawls on all fours, as an adult he walks on two legs and in old age he relies on a walking stick.

The Sphinx, defeated, throws herself from a cliff onto her death.

Cocteau’s play:

Oedipus and the Sphinx by Gustave Moreau, 1864. Source: Wikipedia

Jean Cocteau’s The Infernal Machine is a rework of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King) where the Sphinx is not a beast but an immortal woman who has grown weary and longs to fall in love with a human, in this case Oedipus. Cocteau kept its ancient setting but gave the dialogue a modern treatment and added a third character, Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead, who is allied with the Sphinx to kill those who don’t answer the riddle. Given the play’s focus on fate vs. free will and other contemporary themes, Cocteau’s Oedipus could be any young man searching for his own identity, while Thebes could be any major city, with its problems and vices.

The Ballet:

Tetley’s ballet recreates The Meeting of Oedipus and the Sphinx (from Act II of the play). For the Sphinx he introduced elegant angular arms and dynamic footwork given that the mythological creature is originally a winged lion with a human head.  To represent the ominous Anubis and his warnings to the Sphinx he choreographed vigourous solos with fast turns and jumps, while Oedipus dances adagio sections and a very demanding pas de deux with the Sphinx, full of complex lifts.  The immortal woman-Sphinx falls in love and yields to Oedipus, revealing to him the answer to the riddle. Confronted by Anubis, Oedipus raises several fingers and waves his hands in “reply” to the riddle. The Sphinx loses her power and Oedipus leaves unharmed without so much as a thank you for the answer. The ballet ends with the Sphinx  returning to her winged platform to die under the ever watchful eyes of Anubis.

Music

Initially Tetley had commissioned an original score from Paul Chihara with whom he had discussed the story, but he ultimately disliked the material proposed. Turning to his music collection, he uncovered Bohuslav Martinů’s Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and Timpani and decided to use it in his ballet. Czech composer Martinů (1890-1959) was a big exponent of Neoclassicism His compositions often reference Czech folk music but with a prominent role for the piano, which point to his admiration for the works of Debussy and Stravinsky.

Sphinx is part of the Royal Ballet’s Autumn triple bill, which runs from 4 Nov – 18 Nov. For booking and further details, visit The Royal Opera House Website.

Mini-Biography

Choreography: Glen Tetley. Libretto based on Jean Cocteau’s The Infernal Machine (La Machine Infernale)
Music: Bohuslav Martinů
Designs: Rouben Ter-Arutunian
Costumes: Willa Kim
Original Cast: Martine van Hamel, Clark Tippet, Kirk Peterson
Premiere: Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C., 9 December 1977

Sources and Further Information

1. Wikipedia Entries for Glen Tetley [link] and Bohuslav Martinů [link]
2. Glen Tetley: Obituary by Jann Parry. The Guardian, January 2007.[link]
3. Wikipedia Entry for Jean Cocteau [link]
4. Bohuzlav Martinů Institute Website [link]
5. Jean Cocteau (Critical Lives Series) by James S. Williams. Reaktion Books, January 2008. ISBN-10: 186189354X [link]
6. The Royal Ballet’s 2009/2010 Season Preview, Press Release [link]
7. Renaissance Man: Glen Tetley at 78. Interview by Karen Webb. Dance West Magazine, June 2004. Via Critical Dance [link]
8. Review: Now That’s a Riddle: A Dancing Sphinx by Anna Kisselgoff. The New York Times, October 2001 [link]
9. Discover Sphinx. ROH Discover Ballet Webpage [link]

So I sat down and watched ABT’s Don Quixote with Cynthia Harvey and Baryshnikov.  I actually hadn’t seen a full production of DonQ before, only the countless variations and grand pas de deux on YouTube.  For whatever reason, the roles of Kitri and Basil seem to be epitomized by many, discussed and compared more than any other role I can think of, and apparently if you’re a good Kitri/Basil that means you’ve really achieved something in ballet.  Personally, I’ve long wondered why this ballet seems to be at the top of so many peoples’ favorites lists, and I’ve decided it’s because nobody is evil and nobody dies.  In that sense, it’s perhaps easier to relate to the characters because most people don’t have pure villains and melodramatic deaths in their daily lives.  But something like parentally encouraged betrothals (while different in modern times) still has some relevance.  DonQ is one giant celebration with a lot of fun moments and I suppose for dancers and fans alike it can be a relief to escape from the intensely serious and have some lighthearted fun.  And if you know me, I’m all about lighthearted fun and having a good time.  I would probably label DonQ as Petipa’s attempt at a sitcom.

However, while watching this DonQ, I found myself extremely confused.  For one thing I’ve owned the soundtrack for a couple of years (yes, even without having seen the ballet.  Buying it seemed like a good idea at the time, even if I can’t find the words to rationalize it now).  Things were out of order, and certain flourishes are not in the particular recording I own.  Perhaps it was the placement of the camera mics, but the french horns were raging off the charts, especially in Kitri’s act I variation and the flutes were noodling like crazy during the fouettes for the coda.  It made the soundtrack bizarrely unfamiliar, and somewhat disturbing.  I also got lost with the libretto, because I only read the synopsis from The Ballet Goer’s Guide, which lists four acts.  However, what I so carefully failed to read in the little history blurb was that Baryshnikov cut a lot of content and switched the order of the dream sequence and tavern scene, for a total of three acts.  Apparently it was his way of rationalizing certain aspects of the libretto, but I ended up getting lost anyway.  Like the scene where he fakes his death and somehow manages to trick Kitri’s parents into letting them get married made no sense to me…I just didn’t get that from what was actually being performed on stage.  And I don’t know what Basil pretends to stab himself with in other productions, but the humongous barber’s razor just made me laugh, and was impossible to take “seriously.”

There was a lot going on though…like random bits by Gamache and corps members in the coda that I’ve never seen in other clips and on the topic of those characters, man alive does DonQ boast a big cast.  So big, in fact I didn’t quite figure out who everyone was.  Obviously I recognized Kitri and Basil, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Gamache is impossible to miss (and one of the highlights of this production)…but who’s Espada?  Lorenzo?  Mercedes?  And that Cupid thing…what’s her purpose?  Queen of the Dryads?  Will the REAL Dulcinella please stand up?  Who are all these people and why are they in this ballet?  And why is the ballet even called Don Quixote when he has next to nothing to do with the main plot?  It’s all difficult to rationalize and made me feel like I’m might just start seeing monsters in lieu of windmills any minute now.  Although I’m sure many of these characters don’t appear in the novel, perhaps having read it would at least provide insight into the character of Don Quixote himself (I read that Nureyev himself thought Don Quixote was a fool, until he read the book).  As it stands, I have not read the book and my only conception of Don Quixote is from that cartoon Don Coyote and Sancho Panda.  That and the fact that Don Quixote is the name of a chain of convenience stores equivalent to CVS, but in Japan, with the most obnoxious jingle on Earth.  While you shop, you are subjected to this heinous tune with the lyrics “Don, Don, Don, Don, Ki…Don Ki-hooooo-teeeeeee” the ENTIRE TIME.  I’m still haunted by it, so I’ll spare you the jingle, but here’s the opening for the cartoon, for anyone else who wants a taste of nostalgia:

So back to the ballet…I wasn’t a huge fan of the “after Petipa” choreography, as it was…kind of boring (eek!).  There wasn’t much substance until the man himself, Baryshnikov stepped onto the stage.  I actually found it rather bombastic that he would produce and choreograph a ballet on himself.  Not that it couldn’t or shouldn’t be done…I’m just skeptical that one man can really do it all.  Not even Carlos Acosta starred in his own ballet, Tocororo, which I think is important if you’re going to put your name on something.  It’s one thing to do a solo or a piece, but an entire ballet requires a watchful eye from where the audience is sitting, and so that when there is an audience they do indeed get the entire picture of the ballet as a whole.  Personally I think it’s a lot to ask of an audience to have them sit through a couple of hours of ballet just to see the star.  Of course we pick which castings we want to go to, but we want to enjoy the entire ballet, not sit around and wait for it to highlight one dancer.  There was fantastic dancing being done from supporting cast members like the colossal Patrick Bissell and Susan Jaffe, but it didn’t seem like there was much care to make them look good.

Baryshnikov was fantastic and did amazing pirouettes en dehors in arabesque which are kind of a signature move for Basils (and I think they are among the witchiest pirouettes of ALL TIME.  Those and en dedans a la seconde…I hate those), but I loved Cynthia Harvey and she made the production for me.  She was saucy and coy, elvish and frisky.  She was everything she needed to be at the appropriate moments and a wonderful technician to boot.  I was so captivated by her that she was far more memorable to me than Baryshnikov.  She was positively brilliant in act I, and is well worth the watch.  I just hope anyone else who watches this as their first Don Q isn’t as ill-prepared as I was! (and seriously pay attention to the french horns and low brass in the second variation…WHAAAAT?!?!)

We are back with another edition of Bag of Steps. This time we look at every turning trick designed to make us go “whoa” and typically reserved for the grand finale, such as in the coda from a Pas de Deux .

Turns include female and male pirouettes and their offshoots. For the ballerina they are the signature bravura step, the ability to turn in 32 fouettées being her ultimate technical benchmark. For the danseur they are powerful wizardry tools, especially those multiple turns generated from a single impulse.

Pirouette

Spin. A complete turn of the body on one foot. The supporting foot can be either on pointe or demi-pointe, with the working leg positioned sur le cou-de-pied, in arabesque, à la seconde, in attitude, etc. Legs give the impulse from a deep plié in preparatory position, arms control the turning speed and the head is the last part of the body to turn away from an imaginary “spotting” point and the first to hit the point again once the body completes the turn.

Pirouette en dedans: a pirouette which turns inwards. The body turns towards the supporting leg, so if the dancer turns on the right foot, the dancer turns to the right.

Pirouette en dehors: a pirouette which turns outwards. The body turns towards the raised leg, so if the dancer turns on the right foot, the dancer turns to the left.

A dancer from Pennsylvania Ballet demonstrates a sequence of pirouettes en dehors.

Grand Pirouette, Pirouette à la seconde (also, Tours à la seconde): Pirouette with one leg raised at 90 degrees. These are typically performed by men. Starting from fifth position with a grand battement into second position, legs lower into demi-plié to propel the turns. The arms start in second position and close in first, the right leg is raised into second with a swift movement for each turn en dehors.

Mikhail Baryshnikov does a Grand Pirouette in this video of ABT’s Don Quixote.

Fouetté

Whipped. In this step the raised foot undergoes a short “whipped” motion as it passes in front of, or behind, the supporting leg to the opposite direction. There are many types of fouettés. Here we will focus on those en tournant (ie. while turning).

Grand Fouetté en Tournant (Italian Fouettés): Starting in arabesque, the dancer goes from a deep plié into a series of relevés en pointe or demi-pointe while swinging the back leg to the front. The arms move from first to fifth position. In a half turn, the body moves away from the lifted leg and ends in arabesque (or attitude, with the back to the audience). In a full turn, the leg is held devant until the body shifts through arabesque to start the movement again with the leg swept from the back.

Yekaterina Kondaurova does a series of (full) Italian Fouettés in the Queen of the Dryads Variation of Mariinsky’s Don Quixote. Move forward to the 1:21 mark.

Fouetté Rond de Jambe en Tournant (Russian Fouetté turns): Starting on fourth, the dancer does a pirouette en dehors and then a demi-plié (fondu) while the working leg is thrown à la seconde. While the supporting leg relevés to pointe the dancer turns bending the working leg’s knee and passing the foot from behind to the front of the supporting leg. At the start of the series the arms open in second position to follow the leg and are brought into first while turning.

Svetlana Zakharova throws a sequence of fouettés en tournant during the coda of Don Quixote’s Grand Pas de Deux.

Fouetté Rond de Jambe en Tournant (Cecchetti Fouetté turns): Instead of extending the working leg à la seconde, the dancer throws the leg towards croisé devant en l’air, sweeps it à la seconde and turns while bringing the working foot from the side to the front of the supporting leg.

Tamara Rojo executes Cecchetti style Fouetté turns in the same Don Quixote coda (adding a couple of multiple pirouettes). Move forward to 9:52 to watch.

Piqué Tours

Piqué means Pricked or Struck.

Piqué Tours en dedans (or Pirouette Piqué): the dancer steps en pointe onto a straight leg and turns while the opposite leg is brought into passé (so the turn is done towards the supporting leg).

Polina Semionova does a series of piqué turns (en dedans) en manège, at the 1:34 mark, in Giselle’s first act variation.

Piqué Tours en dehors (or “lame ducks”): the dancer steps en pointe onto a straight leg, half turns to place the opposite leg on the floor and picks up the original leg into passé. The turn is then done away from the supporting leg.

Svetlana Zakharova does a series of “lame ducks” at the 1:47 mark in Swan Lake’s Odette’s Variation.

Tours Châinés (or Tours Châinés Déboulés)

A chain of “rolling balls”. In a diagonal, straight line or in circles, the dancer does a series of rapid turns on pointe or demi-pointe. When moving to the right, the turn is on the right leg and at the end of the turn the left foot is placed on the spot where the right foot began.

At 1.21, Alina Cojocaru zips through a series of châinés (and some piqué turns sur le cou-de-pied) in this fragment of Ashton’s Cinderella.

Note. We recommend you also have a look at videos featuring such notable “human-spintops” as  Maria Alexandrova, Gillian Murphy, Natalia Osipova, Tamara Rojo and Viengsay Valdés, not forgetting male dancers Carlos Acosta, Misha Baryshnikov, Ángel Corella and Leonid Sarafanov.

The Antony Tudor Ballet Trust Blog will be launching, along with our website: www.antonytudor.org

So far this earnings season, 77% of companies have posted EPS numbers in excess of their estimates.  This is extremely high from a historical perspective, and shows just how much the street analysts have underestimated the recovery in the market.

As we have said before, however, this earnings season is all about revenue.  It is much easier for a company to post good EPS numbers as they slash costs by cutting staff and capital expenditure.  Much harder to manufacture is revenue numbers, and this earnings season is separating the former from the latter. This helps explain why, despite the high percentage of EPS beats, the average stock has actually declined 0.72% on its reporting day (Source: The Bespoke Investment Group, found here).

I noticed this trend during last quarters reporting season.  The companies that reported first all benefited from EPS expectations that had not been adjusted up enough to match the cost cutting that was being implemented.  During first few weeks, the majority of companies beat expectations, and their stocks took large leaps on those days that they posted.  The euphoria spread to their respective industry peers, and by the midway point the market was feeling pretty good.  However, while formal expectations didn’t increase drastically, whisper numbers for the later-reporting companies did until finally they were too high.  So when those companies actually reported, they fell short and the stock dropped.

I have no insight as to whether this will happen this earnings season, but I would say it is a definite possibility, especially in industries like health care and technology where the vast majority of companies have seen large jumps in share price as they handily beat expectations.

-AH

Disclosure: Long T and MSFT.

Samsung UN46B8500/UN55B8500

I could not help but to post about this beautiful LED LCD TV from Samsung. I went to my local ABT Electronics store in Glenview, Illinois when I saw this TV in person for the first time. The simplistic design and its uber-thin body (1.6 inches at its thickest point!) was engineering bliss. For picture aficionados, the Samsung 8500 series achieved the best black levels on any HDTV except for the legendary Pioneer Kuro thanks to its local dimming LED technology. This Samsung also has 240Hz refresh rate to reduce motion blur and provide smooth picture quality (unnecessary if you ask me, but I’ll take it). Ports? It’s got plenty with 4 HDMI inputs, 2 USB inputs, VGA-style PC input, 1 component-video input (convertible to accept composite video), RF input, optical digital audio jack, and Ethernet port. Speaking of the Ethernet port, you can get Yahoo widgets on this thing to display stocks, weather, news, YouTube, etc. Best of all? Its an energy-efficient TV.

Available in 46 inches or 55 inches.

1.6 inches thick

Credits to CNET.com and Abt.com

Humanity affords itself a strange duality.

I’ve been one of a small group of folks here in Anchorage that has told Jerry Prevo, of the Anchorage Baptist Temple, to go sit in the corner.

I had never heard of the man until my (then fiance, now) wife and I attended a barbeque last spring which was an informative/social event centered on the topic of a city ordinance, which later would be revered as the controversial Ordinance 64, that extended equal protection under the law to include sexual orientation. We met a lot of amazing people that day with whom we are still in close contact.

As I’ve written before on this blog, I wasn’t particularly caught off guard by this ordinance. It seemed pretty clear that equality was a common sense concept, and this was obviously something that had just slipped through the cracks up until this point. Heather and I made sure to save the date so that we could voice our approval of patching up an archaic sleight of legislature.

When the day came to pass and we went down to the Loussac Library to attend the Assembly meeting, we were introduced to a shadowy operation, quite in the same vein as blunt force trauma to the head, by the name of the Anchorage Baptist Temple, lead by Jerry Prevo. They preached the gospel according to nuts, and stated bluntly on that occasion, among others, that homosexuality was an abomination, a perversion, you name it; it was pin the tail on the bigoted talking point.

Most of the people who regularly view this blog know exactly what became the result of those assembly meetings. Hours of scripture citations, judgments, misunderstandings, alongside the gross negligence that would tip a scale and mislead a city to believe that Leviticus, Revelations, and Deuteronomy outweigh Community.

It sickens me. I’m a straight, white man. I won’t apologize for it, as I did nothing to incur that status. But all of these other people who also were, as a majority, white heterosexuals, who showed up with hateful and mass produced signs (which we should have seen as a precursor to the health care debate) made me ashamed of myself; my color, my orientation, my being. I walked away from each Assembly meeting devastated, because the LGBT who were brave enough to come to stand up for their rights (which didn’t exist) and speak in front of a hostile crowd, and who didn’t even know if they would make it out alive – and I don’t mean to use hyperbole, the first meeting sounded like a riot was forming outside, and there was at least one arrest – was heartbreaking for me. I had made a lot of friends over those days in the assembly chambers; friendships that I hope to report decades from now as the lasting and most fulfilling. I felt so goddamned ashamed that I couldn’t stand up and tell these bigots to shut up, go home, read a book, and get over their hate.

I’ve been reviewing the video tape of Jerry Prevo’s 38th Pastoral Anniversary. It’s been sitting on my computer for a couple weeks now. I started to look over it; to edit it. I literally ended up withdrawing from life for a week. If you are a regular to this blog and noticed that nothing new has been posted, it’s because, put bluntly, shit added up.

It hurts to watch Jerry Prevo. Gryphen from the Immoral Minority asked if I wanted to come see the 38th Anniversary live; he did an amazing and brave post about it on his blog. I couldn’t imagine walking into that “church”. Alaska Commons is not an anonymous blog (probably an oversight, in retrospect) and ABT has made their disapproval of me very well known. This site, and my email inbox, now has a devoted, albeit small, group of trolls who threaten and denigrate me at every opportunity (I had an op-ed in the Northern Light a couple weeks ago about the concept of holding doors open for people and driving safely, and got blasted for that!). We’ve had to go unlisted, and have had a few public issues. Even one earlier this evening, at Fred Myer, where a man locked eyes with me and stood in my way, demanding an apology.

Weird times.

I want to thank a few people. Like I said, I literally withdrew from the world this past week. I got scared. I saw the footage from the 38th Pastoral Anniversary of Jerry Prevo and I saw how some of the public who recognized my wife and myself from the media surrounding the True Diversity Dinner, and I became very fearful, to the point where I holed up inside my home office and tried not to come out.

The people involved in the meeting which Heather and I attended on Friday, who are planning the next steps we can take as a community after this ugly summer, are an inspiration, and I want to publicly take the time to thank them. I won’t name names, but everyone who was there knows who they are.

Thank you.

As for the footage of the ABT 38th Pastoral Anniversary, there’s a hell of a lot of crazy. And I will get through all of it. For now, here’s a piece I put together combining the struggle for AO64 and a whole mess of insanity from the Anchorage Baptist Temple. Spread it around.

And, by the way, for the few of you out there who were fighting for equality back in the ’70s and ’90s, we’ve been doing some research. Bumper stickers are on the way.

20h02 – Glo 27 / Record 12,5 / Band 4 / SBT 3 / Rede Tv! 1 / Cultura 1

What a week… We saw saw the Dow break above the 10,000 barrier and some of the biggest and most influential names in the market have reported a mixed bag of earnings that have been interpreted in an equally mixed way.

Intel (INTC) posted great numbers and although they rocketed up on the news, they have since given back all of the gain and then some. Buying on the good news would have hurt and they also set the earnings bar high for other reporting companies.
Earnings: Beat
Revenue: Beat

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) in my opinion posted ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good earnings’. Unfortunately the street was looking for ‘Great’ and the shares received a 2.5% slap on the wrist. I recently purchased JNJ towards the end of September at $61.38 because I have been trying to take a more defensive posture as we continue at these high levels on the S&P 500. I still stand by these convictions although I wouldn’t pull the trigger to buy more unless it fell into the mid 50’s.
Earnings: Beat
Revenue: Miss

Abbott Labs (ABT) is another diversified healthcare company we own that has a nice healthy dividend of % but has been lagging the market since the bottom in March. Their earnings were well received after the lowered bar from JNJ, who stated that consumer defection to generic drugs were a big contributor to the disappointing sales numbers.
Earnings: Beat
Revenue: Beat

J.P. Morgan & Chase (JPM) posted fantastic earnings across the board, setting the bar high for its competitors as earnings season plays out.  Revenue leaped to $26.62 billion from $14.74 billion, and their Tier 1 capital ratio jumped to 10.2%, up from 8.9% in the year ago quarter. The bank has expressed some misgivings about the future, and has increased its consumer lending loss provisions by over 60%, and non-performing assets have more than doubled since Q3 2008.
Earnings: Beat
Revenue: Beat

International Business Machines (IBM) reported what I felt were good numbers but not enough to justify the bidding up of their shares leading into earnings. IBM still looks very strong fundamentally and I think this bad reaction to their earnings can be used as an opportunity to accumulate (more on this in a later post).
Earnings: Beat
Revenue: Miss

Google (GOOG) reported fantastic earnings, beating the street in both profitability and revenue.  Customer paid “clicks” increased both sequentially and year-over-year, but the average price paid per click by advertisers fell.  CEO Eric Schmidt said the worst of the recession is behind them, and that the company could make one or two “big acquisitions” per year from here on out. Their revenues grew substantially and their Traffic Acquisition Costs (TAC) fell during the quarter.
Earnings: Beat
Revenue: Beat

Goldman Sachs (GS) posted fantastic profitability, but revenue levels were enough to concern the street. Nearly all sector revenues were down sequentially, except for trading and asset management which benefited greatly from the 15% rise in the markets during the quarter.  Going forward, GS will benefit greatly from being the strongest Investment Bank due to greatly diminished competition, but will be hurt in its strongest business if the markets go south again.
Earnings: Beat
Revenue: Beat

Bank of America (BAC) posted poor earnings, slipping to a loss of $.26 per share compared to a profit of $.15 in the year ago quarter.  This highlights the ongoing struggle of consumer banking, as it deals with high unemployment and increasing amounts of non-performing assets.  In this light, the company announced it has increased its loan loss provision account to $11.7 bn, up from $6.45 bn a year ago.
Earnings: Miss
Revenue: Miss

General Electric (GE) reported great profitability, but poor revenues causing traders to drive the stock down 5%.  GE Capital was the main anchor on the company, with its profit declining 87%, but surprisingly NBC Universal was a bright spot with a 13% rise.  Jeff Immelt talked of a tough environment (he noticed!), but that he saw signs of stabilization in GE Cap.
Earnings: Beat
Revenue: Miss

Overall, it looks like the previously strong companies are getting stronger (GS, JPM, GOOG, INTC), while the environment remains troubled for companies who have underlying issues (BAC, GE). IBM dropped after reporting but we view the results positively.

Lucid Markets Team

Disclosure: Long: TSM, JNJ, ABT, IBM, GOOG, GS, BAC, GE, IBKR, JPM

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

• External imperatives
• Gain control
• Advancement
• Solve problems

Conventional views of impact: WHAT THE WORLD WANTS

When we think of having an impact, we usualy think of doing something to satisfy the needs and requirements of the places where we live and work. We seek impacts that solve problems, remove threats, and advance the current status of what we know and know how to do. Asset-Based Thinkning builds on this conventional wisdom by showing you how to connect what you want to make happen to what the wider world needs from you.

ABT INSIGHTS

• Internal imperatives
• Lose control
• Fulfillment
• Seize opportunities

ABT perspectives on impact: WHAT I WANT TO MAKE HAPPEN

ABT impact starts with setting your sights on the results you want to make happen – on the visions that inspire and motivate you most. Generating personally meaningful visions to pursue helps you prioritize external demands and determine how you will respond to them. With ABT you also connect each of your personal visions to the mighty cause you feel born to serve. This dual focus creates momentum and a whole host of unexpected, beneficial outcomes.

THIS IS YOUR TIME. CLAIM IT!

Making an impact is rooted in what you were born to do. Your impact comes to life at the intersection of your present actions and the furture you want to create. Impact comes in all shapes and sizes. Your impact may be starting a business, changing a law, raising teenagers, or reducing crime or illiteracy. Many people have multiple agendas. Most of us are attracted to more than one mighty cause in the course of a life time.

Regardless of how broad or narrow your agenda, how many or how few your desires, the Asset-Based Thinking approach to making an impact is the same. The impact you seek in your outer world must be fueled by the assets of passion and purpose from your inner world. When the imperatives of your outer world and inner world intersect, you know that it it “your time.” You are ready, willing and able to “claim it,” own it, and run with it.

Your Signature Impact

Two key ABT Impact Perspectives will help you achieve the future you deserve and increase the odds that your Signature Impact will make a difference. Reflect on each – then move forward with purpose and passion.

ABT Impact Perspective #1: People Trump Process and Procedures

Impact means moving from the current reality to the future reality you desire. Being clear and specific about the future you seek and how it is better than the present is essential. When you think “impact” think “change.”

Describe the changes in beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors required of you and those you intend to impact. This mind’s eye comparison creates a magnetic pull mechanism that propels you and others forward. You reach your destination in less time with energy to spare.

ABT Impact Perspective #2: Your Enthusiasm Inspires Others to Passionate Action

The bigger the impact you seek, the bigger the shared effort that is required. Your ultimate impact is in direct proportion to the magnetic pull of your enthusiasm and passion for your mighty cause.

Enthusiasm sustains you (and others) during the ups and downs. Enthusiasm fuels determination and creativity and sparks hope and resilience. Best of all, it’s contagious.

Don’t make the mistake of going it alone. Build an enthusiastic core of positive conspirators from the very beginning. You can’t miss.

MAKE DESIRE MORE IMPORTANT THAN FEAR

Recent findings in health care research show that fear of death does not motivate human beings to sustain healthier lifestyles. Even hear attack survivors will not change their lifestyle (e.g., stop smoking, start exercising, lose weight) when told they will die if they don’t. Attention-getting scare tactics and fear of dying motivate only for a while – on the order of 90 days. Why? it turns out that the fear of death becomes so overwhelming that we put it out of our minds. And when we keep waking up in the morning, even when we didn’t exercise the day before, the motivating power of fear diminishes.

Research confirms that when it comes to forming healthier lifestyle habits people respond to the potential rewards. The promise of achieving more energy, a better sex life, and increased happiness is what fuels sustainable changes in behaviors.

ABT AXIOM: Focus on what you want (not avoididng what you don’t want). Desire-driven goals stimulate motivation, build enthusiasm, and ignite the passion you need to define and achieve the future you most desire.

BE COMMITTED

Your skin in the Game

When you pursue your mighty cause and peronal visions it’s natural to want to be in charge. After all, it’s your vision! Instinctively you want to hold yourself 100% responsible and accountable. With that much skin in the game, it is tempting to want control over all the variables.

Control V.S Commitment

Striving for control is tempting, yet ultimately defeating. Instead of being in constant control, concentrate on being steadfast committed. Then you gain ground either by being in the driver’s seat or by giving someone else the wheel.

Positive Paradox

Think of the path to your future as a dance between who and what is in charge. Sometimes you take the lead over opposing forces – sometimes those opposing forces lead you. On your adventure, you can be sure that you will encounter opposing forces… ABT prepares you to make the most of them. And don’t forget that you will meet positive forces along the way. ABT helps you let go so those forces propel you forward.

BEAT THE ODDS… CHANGE THE GAME

Bigger Challenge = Bigger Impact

Beating the odds means succeeding despite the fact that the probability of winning is low. When this happens, you change the rules of the game.

Being powerful and influential enough to “change the game” in any arena of life is intoxicating and exciting. Especially if your aims connect to wider-world benefits. It just doesn’t get any better than that:

• Your confidence and courage grow
• Your gratitude expands
• Your know-how moves to the next levels

Role Models

Lance Armstrong beat the odds by triumphing over cancer and used that as his driving force to change the sport of cycling forever. “Live Strong” is a mantra and a movement. Seven consecutive Tour de France yellow jerseys form an amazing record that provides others with hope and inspiration. 

Starbucks beat the odds that people would actually pay $3.00 for a cup of coffee and changed the game in the coffee business. A neighborhood gathering place with a premium coffee experience is now the standard for the industry. 

 In 2005, Australian physicians Robin Warren and Barry Marshal were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering that stomach ulcers are caused by a strain of bacteria. Warren and Marshal fought for years to override the prevailing theory that ulcers were caused by excess stomach acids. Thanks to their game-changing beliefs, antibiotics have replaced unnecessary surgery in the treatment of ulcers.

TRADE ENRAGED FOR ENGAGED

The devastation of 9/11 will long be remembered. What also lives on in our memories are the remarkable acts of leadership and recovery aftermath. Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided us with a prime example of Asset-Based Thinking. He made heroism more important that terrorism. He biased his attention (and the attention of the entire world) in favor of the heroic acts of courage and compassion displayed by firefighters, police, civil servants, and the general public.

Like Giuliani, people everywhere found wats to let their feelings of hope, compassion, and gratitude override their more negative emotions.

By paying more attention to what inspires you and heartens you, you make better decisions and have a bigger positive impact than when you are at the mercy of anxiety or rage.

Let Emotion Reign

Emotions govern our thoughts, decisions, and actions more than we imagine. New findings in the field of neuroscience refute the conventional wisdom that emotions are subservient to rational thought. We’ve all heard the admonition, “Don’t let your decision be clouded by your emotion.” In practical terms this just isn’t possible. Emotions do influence our thoughts. Here’s how the process works.

Negative Emotions -> Set off alarms -> Trigger Deficit-Based Thinking

Positive Emotions -> Release Incentive Indicators -> Trigger Asset-Based Thinking

During 9/11, both sides of the emotional spectrum were at work. Fears and anger provoked DBT scrutiny about what went wrong. Simultaneously, the emotions of compassion, hope, and pride promoted recognition of what went right. We celebrated those who rose to the occasion, and recognized and praised the good in people.

Both emotion channel provide important inputs. When you emphasize positive ABT emotions over negative DBT emotions, your impact come faster and goes deeper.

Remember… emotions reign. Be aware of how you feel. Stack the deck in favour of positive emotions with Asset-Based Thinking, no matter how challenging the circumstances.

LIVE LEGACIES NOW

In his commencement address at Stanford University, Steve Jobs (founder of apple) revealed that he looks in the mirror every morning and asks himself:

“If I die tonight, will I be glad that I did what I am planning to do today? If the answer is ‘No’, I change the plan.”

This questions keeps him on track, clear, and on purpose. It’s not a morbid filter; just the opposite. It is a filter that enriches and inspires him to live his legacy now – before it’s too late.

Leaving a legacy makes your life more meaningful. Living you legacy changes the game. Imagine how invigorating and reassuring it would be to know that what you are doing right now is contributing to your legacy. Imagine how inspired others would be if they saw you building your legacy in the present.

There’s something I know about you that you may or may not know about yourself. You have within you more resources of energy that have been tapped, more talent than has ever been exploted, more strength than has ever been tested, more to give than you have ever given.

JOHN GARDNER

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

• Knowledge and Expertise
• Material Wealth
• Authority
• Status and Fame

Conventional views of power: WHAT YOU HAVE

When it comes to power, most people think of accumulating material wealth, status, authority, knowledge, and expertise. These are potent external sources of power. As such, they provide you with control over a vast array of resources – from money , to land, to market share, to intellectual property. While building large reservoirs of external powet may be useful, it is not enough for getting results. There is another source of power equally important and often more vital to your leadership and your success.

ABT INSIGHTS

• Unique talents and strengths
• Passionate pursuits
• Values and beliefs
• Mission and purpose

ABT Perspectives on power: WHO YOU ARE

Instead of relying primarily on external power sources to fuel your progress, look deeply inside for what can move you forward. You have a huge reservoir of internally generated power just waiting to be tapped. Internal sources of power derive from who you are – not what you have. Your internal power is defined by your Signature Presence – your unique combination of passions, capabilities, qualities, values, and beliefs. Signature Presence power gives you what it takes to get results when externally derived power is not enough.

THE WORLD BELONGS TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP

Showing up is a straightforward act, but it’s HOW you show up that makes all the difference…

and that is not as simple as it sounds. Showing up emphatically can feel awkward at first, too bold, even over the top. It takes intention, practice, a bit of bravado. Each of us has to find and develop our own way of “showing up.” The way you show up will influence everything else that follows. Showing up is a powerful asset for making an impact in all aspects of your life.

Just think about all the ways people show up and make their “presence” known. From bursting in the door quietly slipping into the back of the room, from entering with a swagger to blending in, from slipping a note under the door to sending a singing telegram… there is no one way to show up. But there is one right way that’s perfect for you and you alone. Remember, in ABT terms that’s your Signature Presence… once you step into it and step out with it, your impact will grow exponentially.

STAND FOR SOMETHING… IT’S YOUR PERSONAL PLATFORM

Leadership sage Warren Benis once said, “A point of view is worth 50 IQ points.” He knew that when you live by the power of your convictions you stand taller, sit straighter, and speak more confidently. You raise the level of your game. Others know you as “a force of nature” – someone who will not be deterred and who doesn’t give up.

• People crave clarity … your voice rings clear when you stand for something.
• People want wisdom … your mind creates meaning when you stand for something.
• People gravitate toward hope …  your ideas and promises hold sway when you stand for something.

Create personal platforms to advance your important causes and agendas. Each personal platform should reflect the values and passions that underlie your beliefs. Let it declare your point of view … reveal what matters to you … and it will call others to action. Write, speack, and visualize the personal manifesto that bodly expresses where you stand. Don’t be afraid of making “my” and “I” statements.

“I” and “my” are powerful words that communicate and deliver your character and commitment.

 Taking a Stand That Stands the Test of Time

Your Personal Platform:

Once articulate, it gives you solid ground on which to stand. It infuses your opinions and actions. It provides a filter through which to see the personal platforms of others. You know instantly if someone is speaking and acting in consort with deeply held beliefs that mesh with yours. Examples of well-articulated personal platforms abound and surround us.

• Commencement Addresses
• OpED Letters
• Eulogies
• Political Campaigns

Seek Them out. Be Inspired.

Personal Platform Essays:

In 1951, radio pioneer Edward R. Murrow invited Americans from all walks of life to write essays about their most deeply held beliefs. In the aftermath of WWII and the earlier years of the Cold War, Murrow believed that these essays would help people see more deeply into the heart of American values. He was right.

Murrow’s “This I Believe“ essay series transcended all boundaries and barriers and enabled his listeners to rally around a set of shared beliefs.

TAKE YOUR STAND

No matter what your cause, status, or life stages, the act of articulating your Personal Platform releases a rich reservoir of power. For most of us, the crafting process can be intimidating or daunting, but well worth the effort. You will feel more powerful almost immediately. Here are some simple ABT Personal Platform guidelines to help you.

Focus. Be bold.

Select a specific topic that reveals your deeply held beliefs. Create 5 declarations that befin with “I Believe _______ about _______.” Be clear and concrete. Don’t hold back. State your beliefs in vivid, unequivocal terms that will be provocative and motivating.

Remember signature moments.

Reflect on pivotal moments that helped shape your beliefs about your topic. These pivotal moments could be interactions with family members, mentors, or teachers, or insights and emotional awakenings gained by reading about or witnessing events.

Get personal.

Tell personal stories that describe how these beliefs show up in your everyday life. Be specific and sensory. Describe the internal impact of your beliefs on what you say and do and on what others say and do in response.

Write. Edit. Hone.

Articulate your personal platform as an essay or “manifesto.” Use your own words as you would actually speak them. Weave together your “I Believe” statements with your personal story.

Drive it.

Read your Personal Platform out loud. Record it. Play it. Feel it. Believe it.

BE AUTHENTIC BY DEMAND

In everyday paralance, the word “demand” refers to harsh – even coercive – power that insists, pushes, and cajoles. In the language, “demand” has a very different connotation.

From the stage, to have “demand” means to possess the power to captivate and capture the minds and hearts of the audience. An actor with “demand” is so magnetic that the audience cannot resist their gaze, their voice, or their energy.

The actor’s message and meaning are so engaging that the audience is no longer watching the actor perform. Instead, the audience is experiencing the actor’s reality.

The secrest to cultivating the irresistible, magnetic, theatrical brand of demand is to thoroughly embody your message. That’s right – feel your message through your body. Remember, speaking and writing are physical actions. Join forces with your whole body as you would a musical instrument.

Find that soulful place deep inside where the fire in your belly can fuel what you are saying. Finding your voice energizes your message and magnetizes your power.

EXPOSE YOURSELF

When you reveal who you are… your values, passions, regrets, doubts, and dreams… you become authentic, genuine, real. The more transparent you are about your personal experience – the “good” and admirable alongsode the “bad” and embarrassing – the more people will trust you, identify with you, and want to be around you.

You have probably taught to believe that your personal power is bolstered only by the best of who you are and what you have accomplished. Conventional wisdom such as “put your best foot forward,” “show them what you are made of,” and “let them see your good side” is sound advice. However, it is only half the story. Exposing the real, most vulnerable parts of yourself is counterintuitive.

As soon as you start admitting mistakes, it’s natural for confusion and agonizing doubts to creep in. It’s easy for a downward spiral to start.

However, with the right ABT mindset and a little perseverance, you will be able to see right through those doubts. You begin to see that your vulnerabilities are among your most valuable personal assets.

Your shortcomings and flaws actually increase your personal power exponentially when you reveal them for the sake of setting an example, righting a wrong, or accomplishing a greater good.

SPEAK WITH SUBSTANCE, SIZZLE, & SOUL

For most people, speaking is like breathing. We do it naturally. It comes easily. It is necessary and vital to living life. We thrive on conversations and interactions of all types. Speaking becomes exciting, energetic, and a source of power when you place yourself in the “showing up” frame of mind. You then instinctively realize that whenever you speak, you owe it to yourself to do so with purpose. You want to have a certain impact. Speaking in a way that reflects your Signature Presence is one of your most complelling assets and a potent form of power. Learn to use it wisely. Think of that power of speech as a combination of three basic assets.

Asset #1: Substance

The content of WHAT you say (e.g., facts, ideas, formulas, directions, strategies, etc.)

Asset #2: Sizzle

HOW you engage people (e.g. your tone, pauses, volume, resonance, interaction); How you craft what you say (e.g., stories, metaphors, analogies)

Asset #3: Soul

WHO you are (e.g., your passions, desires, aspirations, and values) and WHY your message is important to you.

YOUR 93% ADVANTAGE

Most people spend the majority of their preparation time on the substance of what they want to communicate. Unfortunately substances accounts for about 7% of why people will remember and believe in what you say.

Communication research reveals that the elements of sizzle and soul pack the most power into your impact… on the order of 93%.

People remember what you say when you provide stories with vivid sensory detail (sizzle). People believe you and trust you when they can see that your message is important to you on the deepest level (soul). People assess your integrity and credibility when you speak. Listeners have Geiger counters for authenticity.

When something is worth saying, when the stakes are high, when you want to use yourself and your personal power to your best advantage, remember to include “sizzle” and “soul”. Before you speak, ask yourself these powerful questions:

1. What is my message in one sentence? (Substance)
2. How will I engage? Entertain? Make my message memorable? (Sizzle)
3. Why is this so important to me? Why am I saying what I am saying? (Soul)

As audience members we know if we like the speaker or not in the first 20 seconds. You don not have 5 minutes to warm up. If you have not grabbed the audience before you begin to speak, you have a lot of catching up to do.

GIFFORD BOOTH

MAP YOUR LIFE – LOVE YOUR STORY

The ultimate way to unleash the power of your Signature Presence is to see yourself in action across your lifespan. This gives you a powerful form of self-awareness that helps you bring your whole, best self forward into the present and the future.

When you examine how the episodes and events of your life have unfolded and how key moments have shaped you – your Signature Presence will shine through.

You can discern which forces have shaped you into the unique, talented person you are.

When you scan the phases of your life retrospectively, looking for who and what had the greatest umpact on you, the story of your life begins to tell itself. The story illuminates nuances and subtleties about you that you never noticed while they were happening.

With the benefit of this type of selective attention you can see even the most familiar aspects of your life in a whole new way. Your story crafts itself from the memories and imaginations of your Signature Experiences – experiences that engraved themselves in you. Your story is like a mirror and an X-ray at the same time.

It reflects who you are as a whole person and feature by feature as well

Examining the story of your life “up to the moment” illuminates the foundation of your purpose, passion, and potential. It gives you laser vision into the unique core of who you are and what you were “born to do”.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pale in comparison to what lies inside of you

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Here we are going into yet another earnings season.  We saw Monday how the market has rallied significantly from the March lows and the major indexes are even up in positive territory for the 2009 calendar.  The DJIA is up 51% from its absolute lows of March, and the S&P 500 has rallied more than 61% from its absolute lows in March.  If you look at the December 31, 2008 closing bell levels, the DJIA is now up about 12.75% and the S&P 500 is now up more than 19% year-to-date.

But almost as always, there are still some key very large and/or very active stocks which have not recovered anywhere close to the same amounts with the overall stock markets.  Some of these lagging stocks are Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT), Altria Group Inc. (NYSE: MO), American Water Works Company, Inc. (NYSE: AWK), Burger King Holdings Inc. (NYSE: BKC), Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ: ENER), Genzyme Corp. (NASDAQ: GENZ), Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR), Orbital Sciences Corp. (NYSE: ORB) and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT).  Two similar situation stocks that are Leap Wireless International Inc. (NASDAQ: LEAP) and MetroPCS Communications Inc. (NYSE: PCS).  We wanted to explore the forward values and relative performance, and the consensus estimates based upon Thomson Reuters data.  Only two of these stocks have market capitalization rates under $1 billion, and almost all are very actively traded and well known in their sectors.

Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT) is on deck to report earnings this week and it was surprising how far it has lagged to some of the large peers.  The good news is that it has started to participate in the rally with a 10% gain over the last month.  Saying it has ‘only’ recovered by 21% from its April-May lows shows how well the market sentiment is and how well other stocks have performed.  But shares are only about 10% higher from the early March inflection point lows.  Abbott trades at about 12.2-times normalized 2010 earnings estimates of $4.12 and the stock carries a 3.2% dividend yield.  Guidance was spotty before and obviously the sector has political risks into 2010 and beyond because it is tied to healthcare.

Altria Group Inc. (NYSE: MO) might not be a shock that it has lagged if you believe that smoking is a dead industry in the future.  But the one recognition that has always been the case is that Big Tobacco has always survived.  Things are even good enough that it recently juiced up its dividend and appears to have enough earnings power for plenty of dividend coverage for the future.  It is hard to bash a stock that has risen 28% from the March lows, but this greatly lags the performance of Philip Morris International, Inc. (NYSE: PM), Reynolds American Inc. (NYSE: RAI) and Lorillard, Inc. (NYSE: LO).  The Big-Mo trades at just under 10-times a normalized estimate of $1.85 EPS for 2010 and its dividend yield is almost 7.5% now that it has been hiked.  This only needs to rally about 14% to hit 52-week highs, so this is just representative more of nearly-dead money rather than anything that looks or feels sinister.

American Water Works Company, Inc. (NYSE: AWK) is in that long-discussed great sector of water, but as a utility.  It may just be more shares sold and the risks of more shares being sold, but this one has effectively been dead money ever since it came public (again).  At almost $20.00, shares are up about 23% from the absolute lows. That looks to be well under all of its larger peers here in the U.S.  This stock and sector does have a premium considering the utility status, but analysts are looking for growth from 2009 to 2010.  This one trades at less than 14-times normalized earnings estimates of $1.46 EPS for 2010.  America’s largest water utility did hike its dividend for August and it now yields about 4.2%.

Burger King Holdings Inc. (NYSE: BKC) is supposed to be in a class of eating-out that wins in recessions via fast food and very casual dining.  It seems like that crazy looking king character in commercials that scared so many kids has also scared investors.  This company has only recovered some 13% from its recent 52-week lows despite only trading at about 12.2-times its Fiscal-2010 (June) earnings estimates.  Its market cap is just under $2.4 billion.  The much larger, and far better-run, McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) has not exactly been a performing beast this year, but its shares are up 25% from lows.  The Big Whopper would also have to rally almost 50% before hitting 52-week highs.  Unfortunately, its dividend yield is only about 1.4%.  For this to start performing again, management is going to have to do a better turnaround plan than what it has managed so far.

Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ: ENER) is one where the figures are actually a tad better than what is reflected because of the solid gains seen on Monday.  Before Monday, this one was not even 10% above its 52-week lows and shares are still under the inflection point lows in the market during March.  Despite this being one of the old top solar stocks for traders, it has failed miserably to bounce when you consider the bounce of the major solar players.  First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) is up over 75% and Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (NYSE: STP) is up almost 200% from its absolute lows over the last year.  Unfortunately this is expected to post a loss for all of its Fiscal 2010 (June) and estimates are $0.28 for its following Fiscal 2011 (June).  There is no dividend and this is likely to trade around how well oil prices do and on its own guidance and not its trading based on how the market does.  This is down from a 52-week high north of $48 and down from a peak of $80 back in the Summer-2008 highs.  No dividends are to be found here.

Genzyme Corp. (NASDAQ: GENZ) did recover from lows in August.  This troubled biotech giant is up about 20% from the absolute lows in August and ‘only’ up about 16% from its lowest close of $48.19 in August.  The reason here is simple.  Serious manufacturing issues resulted in contamination issues, and the company is effectively under a red flag warning by the FDA.  But this also trades at a much deeper discount than most of the large biotech stocks.  It would take close to a 50% rally for this to challenge its old 2008 highs.  The question that exists here is not over whether it still has an addressable market, but whether it can get its house entirely back in order before competition comes on in 2010.  Like most biotech companies, it has no dividend.  Earnings estimates are now all over the place, but it trades at roughly 14-times normalized 2010 earnings.  Even if you take a median estimate over an average estimate for 2010, that forward multiple is only around 15-times 2010 earnings.  Of course there are still risks here, but that is why the stock is already down so much on its woes.

Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) was also up on Monday as an analyst upgraded the stock on valuation.  But the stock is still a laggard compared to rival Safeway (NYSE: SWY).  The company’s latest earnings report kept it from rallying because it was still experiencing difficult pricing and that has kept its shares from rallying.  We have barely seen a 15% gain since March’s lows.  Its 2010 ends in January 2011, but it trades at 10.4-times the $2.14 estimate.  This is representative of a mature grocery sector and the discount to Safeway is small but still there:  Safeway is up 24% from its lows and trades at 11-times the comparable forward earnings.  Analysts are still looking for growth and this would have to rally over 30% before its 52-week highs came back into play.

Orbital Sciences Corp. (NYSE: ORB) may seem the riskiest of all these underperforming stocks as its main operations are in small space and rocket systems, as well as GEO satellites for communications and broadcasting and LEO spacecraft that perform remote sensing and scientific research.  But effectively, the company is a pure-play on space operation and exploration, including deep space.  This stock is still down about one-third from a year ago and is ‘only’ up 22% from its lows in March.  Earnings estimates have come down over the last quarter but there has not been a significant downgrade worth noting from analysts of late.  With the government purse being tight and with the Obama administration reportedly considering privatizing much space exploration, a wild card exists here.  Loral Space & Communications (NASDAQ: LORL) is considered its top comparable stock, and that one has risen exponentially from its lows.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is supposed to be the winner in the recession, right?  Yet don’t go looking for it to be the golden child of stock performance.  And its 2.2% dividend yield might not sound like much.  Wal-Mart is under $50.00, and is only about 8% above its 52-week lows.  It would also take ‘only’ a 20% gain for Wal-Mart to challenge its 52-week highs.  And year-to-date the stock is down 10%.  It seems that its policy of dropping guidance and its same store sales reporting has not been as rewarding as it would hope.  Now the valuation question for the world’s largest retailer.  This trades at about 13.7-times a normalized 2010 earnings (actually Jan. 2011) estimate of $3.92.  Wal-Mart is still growing.  It would also seem as though that as long as there is an army of unemployed and as long as the notion of thrift is semi-secular, then this is lagging and cheap. Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) trades at about 14.5-times 2010 comparable estimates, but Target has also almost doubled from its absolute lows.  Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ: COST) has rallied 50% from its lows, despite a much higher forward multiple.

Leap Wireless International Inc. (NASDAQ: LEAP) and MetroPCS Communications Inc. (NYSE: PCS) are two very similar companies that have been gross disappointments.  Despite the overall wireless sector being a tough space and despite fairly low performance even from the leaders, these two have been an outright disappointment by every single measurement besides being great performers for short sellers.  As there once was a merger on the table (which was blocked) and as these are both in the no-contract or pre-paid wireless sector, we are only going to mention the performance metrics.

• Leap Wireless is down close to 40% year to date.  The stock is up about 15% from its 52-week low.
• MetroPCS is down over 45% year to date.  The stock is also not even 10% off of its 52-week lows.

Leap is now expected to lose money in 2010, and if the $0.69 estimate is right on MetroPCS then it trades at about 12-times 2010 estimates.  Unfortunately, that is 20-times a 2009 estimate for MetroPCS.  We won’t go as far as to predict a merger here, but a proposed merger this time around could be out of need and not out of greed.

Again, the estimates are based on Thomson Reuters estimates and share performance is based from the weekend when a static snapshot existed equally among all.  Many of these estimates will change throughout this earnings season.  Despite the rally, there are still some very large or very active stocks which have just not participated.

JON C. OGG
OCTOBER 12, 2009

We may have had earnings season officially start with Alcoa this week, but next week will be the real week for the launch of earnings season.  We now have an index to track the top 500 companies by market cap on a real-time basis via the 24/7 Wall St. Real-Time 500, and these top 10 earnings next week are generally among the top market caps and/or trading volumes.  In technology we have to look forward to Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), and IBM (NYSE: IBM).  General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) is the conglomerate and Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL) is the oil entrant.  Financial leaders JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS), and Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC) are all due.  Tied to BioHealth are Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) and Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT) on deck.

We have detailed the estimates on an earnings basis as far as estimates from Thomson Reuters, and we have also included how much these stocks have rallied since the start of the July quarter and how much these are up from the March 9 closing date that has been widely recognized as the last day of the mayhem before the rapid snap-back rally came into play.

Tuesday, October 13

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) is the first of the tech giants to report.  Estimates are $0.27 EPS and $9.02 billion in revenues; next quarter estimates are $0.34 EPS on $9.5 billion in revenues.  Since the end of June this is up 22.5% and since the March 7 close this is up 63%.

Consumer products and medical and drug giant Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) is the first to report in each group.  Consensus estimates are $1.13 EPS and $15.18 billion in revenues, while Q4 consensus is $0.98 EPS on $15.51 billion in revenues.  Since the end of June this is up almost 9% and since the March 9 close this is up 34%.

Wednesday, October 14

Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT)    has a consensus figure of $0.90 EPS and $7.72 billion in revenues, while its Q4 is expected to be $1.17 EPS and $8.48 billion in revenues.  Abbott has greatly lagged the market. Since the end of June this is up 7.2% and since the March 9 close this is up 9.1%.

Jamie Dimon and friends at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) is the first of the banking giants on deck.  Estimates are $0.49 EPS and $24.8 billion.  Since the end of June this is up almost 34% and since the March 9 close this is up 187%.

Thursday, October 15

Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) is no longer the top by market cap, but it is by far the most active stock of the big banks.  Estimates are -$0.21 EPS as of today.  Since the end of June this is up 55% and since the March 9 close this is up over 300%.

Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS) is the first of the bulge bracket investment banking firms, or the bank holding companies with no banking operations.  Estimates today are $4.24 EPS.  Since the end of June this is up over 28% and since the March 9 close this is up 156%.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is expected to post earning of $5.37 EPS and revenues of $4.21 billion.  Google does not offer guidance. Since the end of June this is up 22.5% and since the March 9 close this is up 78%.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) is expected to report $2.38 EPS and $23.37 billion in revenues, and next quarter estimates are $3.38 EPS and $26.68 billion in revenues.  What we will look at most is its backlog, which was listed at June 30 as $132 billion at actual rates compared with $126 billion at March 31, 2009.  Since the end of June this is up 20% and since the March 9 close this is up 51%.

Friday, October 16

Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC) estimates keep changing, and the Ken Lewis departure is just another added wild card.  Estimates are currently -$0.06 EPS on about $27.5 billion in revenues.  Since the end of June this is up 32% and since the March 9 close this is up over 300%.

General Electric (NYSE: GE) is another wild card as the company does not like to offer guidance now.  We have consensus estimates at $0.20 EPS on about $40 billion in revenues.  Q4 estimates are $0.24 EPS and $42.58 billion in revenues.  GE Capital is the likely focus here as investors are going to be looking for continued profit discussions.  Since the end of June this is up 39% and since the March 9 close this is up 122%.

Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL) is the first of the oil services giants that we saw on deck.  Consensus estimates are $0.26 EPS on $3.42 billion in revenues.  Analysts have a hard time pinpointing this one through the year because of its location change and its change in international operations.   Since the end of June this is up 37% and since the March 9 close this is up 81%.

As a reminder, all of these estimates can and are likely to change some between now and the earnings dates as analysts make their last minute changes.  Peer earnings reports are also likely to create changes to some of the earnings and the whisper expectations for the companies.  There is also the chance that earnings dates can change and that other key stocks will try to report or make guidance comments ahead of their top competitors.

You can join our open email distribution list to get updates each morning on analyst upgrades and downgrades, top day trader alerts, IPO’s and secondary offerings, Warren Buffett and other guru activity, M&A and more.

JON C. OGG
OCTOBER 9, 2009