eabock

Oooops! Correction. Bonne Bouche was a Cranko ballet, not an Ashton creation.

Ashton was not included in the October 3 bill, but that evening's performance of Commedia was fun for this Ashtonian, and I thank drb for confirming my feelings in his admirable review. However, I thought the set and costumes added a lot to the fun. Made me expect wit and joy -- the way Osbert Lancaster's set and costumes added to the fun of that now lost and politically unacceptable Ashton classic, Bonne Bouche

Perhaps to demonstrate that Anton Walbrook was not running Sadlers Wells, no matter what movie audiences may have thought

Cathy, My wife and I will be in Amsterdam around Nov 20-25. Wiill the new season have begun by then, do you thiink? Ed Bock

Glorious occasion Wednesday night with added surprise of seeing Durante & Kumakara. (Hadn't realized they were the pillars/founders of K Ballet company.) Audience enthused by each presentation, but loud vocal cheers came from different sections of the house as fans "bravoed" their respective companies. Significant Japanese representation in international audience, including one gorgeous white kimono-clad (corporate or official wife?) beauty. Entire last 6-8 rows of orchestrta were empty. Advice to those attending future performances of Ashton 1930s classic 'Wedding Bouquet" tonight and' later this week: This ballet is filled with witty Ashton spoofs of (a) wealthy lady who was trying to 'get him to marry her, (B) Ninette de Valois, © Gerturde Stein, and others. To appreciate these in" allusions, read pp 200-204 of Julie Kavanagh's great biography, "Secret Muses -- the Life of Frederick Ashton" before you come. Ed Bock

I attended the Alston comany last tuesday night and was so immensely impressed by the choreography and the dancing that I rearranged my schedule, got rid of a ticket for ABT, and went back to see it again on Wednesday night. My dance sectator experience was formed by attending Ashton ballets at Covent Garden in the late 1940s. Since then, much of my dance viewing has been of classical ballet, mostly in London, NY, and DC. But the Alston dances this week were so enjoyable for me that when I am next in London I will look first for the Alston company program and second for what the RB is putting on. It was the first dance on the Alston program, "Brisk Singing" (to parts of Rameau's Les Boreades) that most raised my spirits and my appreciation of what dance can achieve outside the restraints of classical ballet. It had form, it had joyful creativity, it had stylish, fast-paced performance by dancers free from point shoes (or any other shoes). The choreography had style and taste and exhubereance and dynamic lovliness. I can imagine Ashton enjoying this pertormance - and learning from it -- especially the movement (can one use the term "pas de deux" in modern dance?) danced by Sonja Peedo and, I believe, Martin Lawrence. I feel I am doing a favor to classical ballet fans, especially RB fans, by alerting them to the marvels of this choreographer and this particular group of dancers. Still a few nights left at the Joyce. Ed Bock

The Special Collections Library of Penn State University has an exhibit, "Dancing by the Book: European Dance and Dance Notation, 1531-1801 through Jan 30 2004. The Library recently received the Mary Ann O'Brian Malkin Collection of Early Dance, 1531-1804. For an illustrated announcement of the exhibition, see http://www.libraries.psu.edu/pubinfo/news/...inExh_1003.html Edwin Bock

Jane, I'll try to review the Bonne Bouche materials you kindly listed above when I go to the J. Robbins NYPL library next week. (Budget cuts have forced that library to open only in the afternoons now.) Four of my days in England will be spent in Oxford attending the Waugh centennial conference. (Sept 24-27) Has anyone made a ballet in which Waugh appears? A short, energetic and somewhat comic person -- might be fun to depict. (Perhaps a pdd with Nancy Mitford, or maybe in a ballet version of Brideshead?) Do you think any retired members of the RB who worked with Svetlana would be willing to talk about their recollections? I will get to work on the Theater Museum as you suggest. Hope to see you in London. Ed

Jane, Pleasant to be in touch again -- with you being helpful as of yore. Many thanks. Here's a coincidence: I found that Ballet Annual in the second-hand section of a Barnes and Noble store right next to Franks biography of Svetlana Berisova -- the same book, you may recall, I was looking for when we went to the old ballet bookshop. Its cover largely intact. That made me think of our expedition -- and now your helpful advice seems to close the circle. Not quite closed. I will be in London the last two weeks of September. Any additional Cranko-Beriosova hunting grounds come to mind? Ed

I'm trying to locate a scene by scene description of the dancing in this Cranko ballet. I saw it performed in 1953. (see Ballet Annual 1953, pp31-35.) Can anyone suggest where in New York or London I might find details and photographs? Edwin Bock

Manhattnik, that little spitfire! Perhaps M would reveal, here and now, if he is a little spitfire, a medium-size spitfire, or a greeeaaat big spitfire -- so that I have a better chance of overhearing him the next time we are in the same audience. (His comments might be more bland if he assumes his remarks were being overheard by the _father_ of a dancer! But I dearly hope not.) Several years ago, M and I were both in the audience watching Ananashvilli take curtain calls at the Met when a hefty gentleman, shouting loud 'Bravoi's heaved large bouguets at her. In the old Ballet newsgroup, the experienced M enlightened us about ABT bouquet- throwing protocol. I now put a similar query to him: at last Thursday's SFB performance that is the subject of this thread, who were those men shouting loud 'Bravos' from the rear of the Grand Tier at every oipportunity, deserved or undeserved? Were they local relatives of the dancers or semi-pros like the man who threw the bouquets at Ananashvilli? Or, perhaps, minority spitfires?

Toward the end of "Night", at Thursday's performance, I actually thought of Manhattnik's motto: 'Every dance is too long . . .", not realizing he was also in the audience. However, I loved that ballet -- such a relief after the heavy, ponderous 'Paquita'. Unlike M, I would run to see 'Night' again. And I would run even faster to see any SFB performance with Vanessa Zahorian and Guennadi Nedviguine. They had wit (GN outstandingly in"Solo") verve, and an aeronautical lightness that seemed terribly scarce in "Paquita". Ed Bock

Does anyone recall the death of an admired young English dancer who fell off the stage during a rehearsal? Perhaps 4-5 years ago.

Fedor (or Fydor) Lopukhov was the older brother of the Diahilev-Camargo Society (1920s-1930s) dancer, Lydia Lopokova. She married the famous English economist, Maynard Keynes. Keynes biographer, Robert Skidelsky, notes in vol. 2 that: "Balanchine arrived at Tilton (the Keynes' country home)on 9 August (1929) to practise the score, taken from Moussorgsky's "Khovanshina", on a grand piano specially bought from the Courtaulds. 'With Keynes,' writes Balanchine's biographer, 'he got on beautifully, for Keynes loved to talk about ballet, and Balanchine loved to talk about money.'" Ed Bock

Query for Leigh and ballet teachers: Are children who have taken ballet quieter and better behaved when in the audience than children who have not?