20 replies to this topic

[dirac]

Lavrovsky will never be blue-chip, but there will always be savvy niche investors interested in him, I think.

Interesting point about works being kept alive because performers want to do them, and a little worrisome in a sense, because what happens if a generation comes along that has other fish to fry?

In ballet, the question is more urgent, because while Shakespeare is on the printed page and can always make a comeback, a body of work in dance can be lost in one generation.

[Paul Parish]

that is so  true, dirac, about having those words on that page...

video is NOT hte same......and what about Square Dance, not to mention Baiser de la Fee or Figure in the Carpet.....

Darling Carbro, what does dear Albert Evans have to do with Haiku, and has he become a choreographer? How can those endearing young charms he has in such abundance today return even 4 percent in 50 years?

[carbro]

Yes, sweet Paul, Albert Evans is the choreographer of Haiku, which many posters have enthusiastically praised on the NYCB Winter Season [2003] Weeks Three and Four thread.  (E-mail me if you want the specific notations.)   I have not been fortunate to have seen other samples of his choreography.  Yet.

I hope Evans' career as a choreographer is worthy of his talents, as his career as a dancer has not afforded him the range of opportunities that he clearly deserves.  That's the catch.  But I'll put my money into something risky if I believe in it.  (This is "Monopoly" money, is it not? ;))

[Mel Johnson]

Quote

Originally posted by dirac
Interesting point about works being kept alive because performers want to do them, and a little worrisome in a sense, because what happens if a generation comes along that has other fish to fry?.

Some works are reliably notated, and are, in addition, recorded as video, so there's a reproducability that didn't exist before.  It's not quite the same as getting it handed down directly from the choreographer, or a stager who had danced the work, but it's better than losing the work entirely.  J.S. Bach went through about a 75-year hiatus of performance tradition until he was "rediscovered" by Mendelssohn.  Those first revival performances of Bach might have been wrong-headed from the baroque standpoint, but at least they were there, and they were then able to be studied by musicians, to find out how to produce more proper period style.

[Calliope]

As someone who came to ballet late, I always wished that each company offered a series of some sort that showed beginning works and what's happening now.
It's unfortunate that ballet seems to feel it needs to keep changing in order to get new audiences in.  There's such a vast rep already in existence.

[Alexandra]

Thank you, Calliope   Why the ballet repertory has been reduced to A:  A Thousand and One Swan Lakes and, B: Works Whose Only Notable Attribtue is That They Were Choreographed Last Week is one of the great mysteries of mankind.  And says much more about the, er, breadth of knowledge of the current generation of artistic directors than about the ballet repertory.