Originally posted by cargill
I think with a great choreographer anything can be danced, and with a poor one, nothing works
Which I thought of while reading a biography of Prokofiev. While writing the score for "Cinderella", Prokofiev "had concentrated on writing a ballet that was as danceable as possible. He wanted to create dances that would merge naturally from the story line, and whoud be caried, that would allow the dancers to do enough dancing and to exhibit their technique. No doubt Prokofiev wanted to avoid the arguments and humiliation he had encounterd in 1940, when the supposedly difficult and undeaceable score for "Romeo and Juliet" was disfigured and simplified against his wishes."
Since one of the dancers who objected in 1940 was Galina Ulanova, "R&J" must have been very radical at the time.
Arlene Croce called the repeated revisions by Leonid Lavrovsky, Adrian Peiotrovsky Sergei Radlov a "dramaturgical nightmare."
The author of the biography, Harlow Robinson, describes one scene when Lavrovsky had inserted a movement for Prokofiev's second Piano Concerto into the score. When Prokofiev refused to orchestrate it, Lavrovsky told him they would simply play the insertion on two pianos!
I recount this struggle that Sergie Sergeivich had because it seems with the immense technical resources that dancers have now that no score, as such, would be considered undanceable.
In much the same way that conservatory trained (perhaps overtrained) opera singers can pick up an incredibly complex score and credibly sight read it, I would think that dancers today, forged in the unforgiving crucible of competitions, would not find any piece of music too difficult.
Which is not to say, of course, that today's competition winner is superior to Ulanova, but that the current standards are much different than in the past and that these standards may make more music available to the ballet stage.
I would appreciate being corrected on this if wrong.
