Regrettably, it appears that Jose Manuel Carreno will not dance in the ABT Gala program according to changes uploaded to the calendar today. He had been scheduled to dance the Thais PdD with Diana Vishneva. She will now dance with Jared Matthews. Our first opportunity to see J.M. will be during the Saturday matinee of La Bayadere with Julie Kent.
The Sleeping Beauty PdD from Act III had been assigned to Natalia Osipova and David Hallberg. However, the calendar now indicates that Herman Cornejo and Xiomara Reyes will dance it instead of the R&J PdD. Osipova and Hallberg will dance the Act II PdD from Giselle. (Haglund has a call into Yogi to see if including this PdD from Giselle in the Gala makes the season an "official" one, but it's probably a bit of a stretch to expect that Yogi will buy that argument.)
According to the program, Osipova will be followed by Veronika Part (Black Swan PdD) who will be followed by Vishneva. Haglund thinks that it will be a delightful exercise to compare Osipova's qualities to Part's and Vishneva's.
It is fitting that Angel Corella will anchor the Gala evening with his solo performance of David Parsons' Caught. How nice it will be to give the audience an opportunity to express its gratitude to this magnificent artist who has anchored so many seasons for ABT. What a shame it is that ABT decided to deny him a full season of performances and in doing so deny the audience so much joy.