ABT has made more alterations to the spring season casting. Marcelo Gomes has been deleted from Gillian Murphy's cast of Ashton's Cinderella and replaced by Alex Hammoudi. On the heels of the end of the season, Gomes is slated to perform in Matthew Bourne's The Car Man at Sadler's Wells; so maybe this was just an accommodation to release him earlier for that. ABT considers Ashton's Cinderella the least important part of the season, anyway. That's why they loaded it into the final holiday week, and that's why there is no mention of it or anything of Ashton's in the Anniversary Gala.

Stella Abrera gets the opening night Lilac Fairy in Sleeping Beauty and Cassandra Trenary will be Princess Florine to Daniil Simkin's Bluebird. Wait until everyone gets a load of the clumsy Clydesdale clomping and hillbilly port de bras of the opening night's Diamond Fairy. . . .

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WWD previewed the costumes for Peter Martins' production of NYCB's La Sylphide. Who knew that the designer who Martins used for his production at Pennsylvania Ballet 30 years ago and is using again for NYCB happens to be a part-time usher at the Koch Theater? Haglund wonders if she is the usher who once arm wrestled him to the ground to confiscate a bag of cough drops. "You can have cough drops but not the bag." 

Yesterday Haglund watched a La Sylphide dress rehearsal and was mighty impressed with it all. He came right home and ordered tickets to several more performances.

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Free outdoor dance performance:

Paul Taylor Dance Company, Parsons Dance, and Ballet Hispanico will perform at the inaugural Hudson River Dance Festival on Pier 63 @ West 23rd Street in Chelsea on June 17th and 18th at 6:30PM. That early-ish start time is only listed in one place on the Hudson River Park website and is the usual start time for Park events. The email sent out about the event didn't include any mention of time at all. It might be a good idea to check again on the start time in mid-June.