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Paul Parish

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About Paul Parish

  • Birthday 02/19/1947

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  • Connection to/interest in ballet** (Please describe. Examples: fan, teacher, dancer, writer, avid balletgoer)
    dancer, student, teacher, fan, writer, balletgoer, YES!
  • City**
    Berkeley, CA

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  1. It's so sweet, re-reading this conversation. Rest in peace, glebb. Sandpaper comes back into SFB's rep next week. Alexandra, the Post must have messed with their links -- I tried to read your review, but the link isn't working, alas.
  2. And she was the best Kitri I've ever seen -- nobody else comes close. Awesome performance.
  3. Well, just before that instagram was taken, Arthur Mitchell was standing up -- he left his hand in hte same place and fell to the floor, and Allegra stayed on pointe, though her standing leg has turned in and her neck shortened and the left arm is a little out of whack -- he is about to skitter around on his back to his left, which pivots her to the left to croise [if I remember right] and put her foot down. She may be on the move already.... So this is a classic case of ballet being contemporary dance; Balanchine was very much about dance being MOVEMENT moving through positions, not just posing.
  4. I like the British usage; i went to grad school there and adopted some Briticisms [ though by no means all -- I still say "fetch" and "y'all"] -- but this one appeals to me because it's emotionally right, and I use it in reviewing when what I'm really talking about is company performance [if I've got the dancers on my mind]; if I'm referring to the institution, I'll usually use "its." I treat it as one of those entities that can be both a mass noun [e.g., "so much water"] or a count noun [e.g., "so many chairs"].
  5. Thank you Mme Hermine. Yes, Aurora does the move - -and Fonteyn did it with great amplitue and authority and musicality == and a really nice recovery, too. At the end of Symphony in C, Balanchine has all 4 ballerinas lined up across the front of the stage and they do this move on the final note of the symphony, and they [with the support of their cavaliers] hold the arched pose in a final tableau, without returning to vertical. Aurora does hte move as the "finish" of a supported releve pirouette, with the working leg in passe [aka retire] and a cavalier standing behind her to help hold her "on her leg." Swanilda does a much simpler move -- or it WOULD be simpler if she had a cavalier to hold her up -- she does a pique sideways bringing the working leg to passe [where the knee is bent so that htat foot touches hte knee of the standing leg]; and having established her verticality on the standing leg she arches sideways without losing her aplomb. The big difference is she doesn't have a man standing behind her holding her up.
  6. LOVE it! So that's Nancy Johnson Sally Bailey, Nancy Johnson, Conrad Ludlow [who's been coached to play it as a nervous wreck, probably by Lew Christensen....] in the galloping pd4 Johnson reminds me a little of Carolyn Brown. all I know is that Nancy Johnson is terpsichore I really like it, too -- it has a definite character, a mystery that's real, and their movements have moods behind them-- they hold out, and join in for their own reasons, it's like watching animals in a zoo, you see they have relationships.... Thank you for posting this.
  7. Thank you both, Pherank and Sfcleo, for those fascinating posts. Thanks for doing the research; I enjoyed both those clips, and -- well Alexandrova and Osipova are both thrilling even if they DON"T do the the 'quick reverse" [which they most certainly do not]. I still want to know more. Maybe Cecchetti invented it? [he did a restaging in 1894 (when Petipa was sick?)? In any case, Pherank nailed the move with her clips , so now we know what we're talking about [and what to call it for shorthand -- "The quick reverse"]. Did you notice how much bigger Vanessa's cambre was?? Masha did it very classically, correct, and Vanessa really went over the wall! !Pherank, it sounds like you've danced this role! -- wish I'd seen you do it. How hard is it? -- I think this move belongs to the Ballets Russes tradition and goes way back [but GOd knows how far: maybe Nijinska made it up?] In any case, I first noticed it in a small production starring Lauren Jonas [who's now artistic director of DIablo Ballet]; she was incredible, she was just amazing, in this little show with a small audience just like those the Ballets RUsses used to have when they toured the entire USA in the 30s, playing every town with an auditorium. Oakland Ballet used to do a Ballets-Russes-based Coppelia, probably staged by Frederick Franklin [who was Franz in Balanchine's famous version in 1947 of which Danilova was the star -- which was the basis for his NYCB version in 1974, which Danilova helped him put together for Patricia McBride]. Let's keep asking.
  8. As I was reading up on Coppelia for my review, what I kept wanting to find out, and haven't been able to, was the origins of Swanilda's sudden unsupported tilt in passe -- you know at the end of her big 1st act variation, she poses on pointe in retire/passe and suddenly takes her whole torso sideways. Frances Chung did this with amazing aplomb. [so did Masha, with less power.] Question is, is that move Cecchetti, Petipa, or St Leon? It's such an arresting image, and so powerful! Aurora does it, with the prince's support, in the wedding pdd in Sleeping Beauty. Obviously it affected Ashton, who was ALWAYS asking his dancers to tilt in hte upper body.... Balanchine used the move at the end of Symphony in C, when all FOUR ballerinas do it [supported] on hte last note. But Swanilda does it with NO help, only some angels there to hold her up. Of course she's going to defeat Dr Coppelius. Her mime shows her to be a strong-minded girl -- but this step in particular shows her power, her aplomb, her grounded force. DO you know where it comes from? Is it a ballerina's trick, like the fouettes, something a student of Cecchetti's came up with and said "look what I can do?" on hte other hand, it may be something Petipa saw St Leon's ballerina do? Did Giuseppina Bozzacchi do it? Inquiring minds need to know. RG, Doug, Alexandra, do you know? PS thank you Pherank for posting Ann Murphy's EXCELLENT review of Coppelia from the San Jose Mercury: it's a joy to read, very well-informed [she knows the ballet well and actually learned some of the friends' variations in Cecchetti class] -- a wise report from a good judge.
  9. Thank you all -- this is so sweet! I'm with you. I miss her. I saw our mutual friend Verna after SFB's Coppelia last night and wondered what she'd have thought of our dancers. It would have been so great to have the three of us hash it out. I have so many questions to ask her, about dancers I think she'd like. But also, I associate her with certain places in Berkeley -- i met her here, on BA, but in person, I met her in Berkeley, where she'd come to attend an inauguration of a scholarship program that a relative of hers had founded. I never pass the dorm at Bowditch and Channing without "seeing" her, with a red bandana tied around her head, where we first met. It was new at the time, and we went into its coffee shop and talked for a long time. Besides, I want to start a new topic ["Swanilda's side-bends"] but have forgotten how, and she'd have been the first person I turned to for help.
  10. Kronstam's production [with Hubbe, Englund, and Jeppesen] has the advantage of Kronstam's powerful mind organizing the whole production; it is magnificently integrated in its psychology, and in the tempi, tone -- and then there are those performances! Evdokimova and Thesmar are both superior to Jeppesen in lightness, mystique, and silken execution.... truly amazing performances; but Jeppesen's tenderness makes the whole drama seem plausible, she's lovable like neither of the other two are. I couldn't say no to her....
  11. Dirac, thank you for remembering Haggin -- a wonderful critic, fantastically observant. Yes, he was the first I ever encountered who wrote about the dancer's production as many music-critics write about a singer's, and indeed, his phrase "the ballerina operation" gave me a lot to think about. I think of Garis, whom I studied with at Berkeley when he'd come out here as a guest professor, as being in much the same mold as Haggin. And thanks, Helene, for the tribute to glebb [though I still can't find any of his posts about Violette, and they showed her in such a human light].
  12. Beg, borrow, or steal the old video of Agon with Violette as the castanet girl -- she was vivid in everything, but the way she danced that role is singular, sparkling, radiant, sovereign, and nobody else danced it like that. It's truly startling, the way she made it seductive was nothing like the way most NYCB dancers do it, since it was so perfect, so restrained, but so sudden, so impulsive, she melted into a that attitude effacee like a rainbow, soft, but very very fast. The coquetterie was intense, but in no way obvious -- It was pure offering. Nor did she need you to takethe bait -- she was sovereign. That's what made her Girl in Green so remarkable -- she wasn't needy in any way: she put it out there, as we say, and the boys for some reason did not take it, but she was in no way humiliated nor rejected, they didn't dare and she wasn't going to rebuke them. THe people who would have the most to say, she has outlived: well, maybe Villella will say something. But Robert Garis, the critic who loved her most, he's gone; and the Ballet Alert fan known as Gleb.... Mark Goldweber, the virtuosic star of the Joffrey -- has been dead for 15 years now. But his posts were once the sort of thing you lived for -- and he talked on here about how when he was a teen-ager, and moved to NYC to go to SAB, he boarded with Nellie and her mother and spoke of her with such feeling. He was himself so sensitive, and such a colossal virtuosic talent, his every insight into her genius was precious. I can't get he search function to bring up his posts -- but maybe Helene can find them? I can't also help missing Carley Brodeur at a time like this -- she would have had much to say that would help console those of us old enough to have seen some wonders, and to help the younger folk understand what they have missed. And she would have posted Gleb's remarks already.
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