I was at the Stuttgarter Ballett tonight for a performance of Cranko's Taming of the Shrew. Reid Anderson announced prior to the performance to the audience that principal Jason Reilly is NOT leaving (for National Ballet of Canada) but would instead be in Stuttgart for a few more years. I know there was a lot of press and excitement in Toronto when it was announced he was returning.

Oh, dear. And the National Ballet of Canada had posted his bio on its web site and so forth.

http://www.ballet.ca/thecompany/principals/jason_reilly.php

An article about Jason not leaving Stuttgart Ballet (in German)

http://www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de/stn/...-ausschlag.html

It was in several local Stuttgart papers today.

Could someone please translate this german news for us?

I would love to know why he is staying in Stuttgart and wonder if the article explains it.

Any reaction from NBC so far?

They're removed his name from the list of principal dancers on their web site, but there's been no press release, and the Canadian press hasn't published anything yet, no doubt, because they're unaware.

Based on the bing translator (Microsoft's newest search engine), he decided to move back to Canada and NBoC to spend more time with his family, but as his last performance drew closer, he realized he wanted to stay in Stuttgart. bing translates his quote as "I have understood increasingly in recent months, there is simply no perfect solution, I must accept a certain amount of dividedness as part of my dancer career", says Jason Reilly."

The article is using the metaphor "Home is where the heart is" to describe the shift from Toronto to Stuttgart.

http://www.microsofttranslator.com/BV.aspx...-ausschlag.html

It takes 15-20 seconds for the translation to resolve to English. The "percent completed" is shown in red in the left hand corner.

Thanks to IM Translator for giving me the fairly good English translation (with a strong German accent) that allows me to summarize as follows:

The major factor seems to be the big repertoire he can dance at Stuttgart, especially Cranko. As the time to dance his last performance (Petruccio in Cranko's Taming of the Shrew -- a.k.a. Of The Recalcitrant Taming) he began having more and more second thoughts. He has lived and worked in Stuttgart for 12 years.



For those of us not familiar with this dancer -- or the National Ballet of Canada's hopes for him -- I'd love to hear what you who know it think of his work.

Oh that is disappointing for us Canadians:(
I've only seen him in Cranko -- R & J and Taming of the Shrew -- and in those, he was excellent. Very confident technically, and a strong partner with natural acting abilities. I was looking forward to seeing more of him. Hopefully even though he is staying with Stuttgart he will still be able to come do some guesting at NBoC.

The National Ballet of Canada does have Cranko's Romeo and Juliet, Onegin and The Taming of the Shrew in its repertoire, though perhaps it doesn't perform them as often as Reilly would like. It's probably been ages since the company performed Pineapple Poll.

In fact, thanks to Paquita's reference to Karen Kain on the cover of a women's magazine, I just noticed that Onegin, which will be performed in June, is being redesigned by Santo Loquasto. I hope the company isn't on the verge of making a terrible mistake. Susan Benson's redesign of Romeo and Juliet was a disaster. Would it be too much to hope that the company's massive deficit could scupper this move?