Joffrey performance

[dragonfly7]

Hi,

I was able to catch the Joffrey's gala performace of the Diaghilev ballets last night and came away both inspired/awed and yet with some questions. I wonder if anyone had insights.

In "Rite of Spring", I noticed that most of the dancers had their feet obviously turned in, even maintaining this through curtain call. I understand that Nijinsky choreographed it - does anyone know if this had an explanation/philosophy, or that was just simply part of the dance and I'm trying to "read" too much into the dance? After noticing the feet placements, I started to pay attention to how it would affect the dancers' technique and started to see that some of them didn't really turn their feet in during some parts. That distracted me because it seemed like there was no uniformity in the execution -- some had slightly turned in feet, some had very turned in feet, others wavered between slight and not at all.

But since this was done during the dawn of modern dance, am I getting too particular about this? I don't know why, but it really bugged me! Also, there was a part where a whole section of female dancers did chaines two rows after another, and the ones in the last row had some girls crashing into each other! I keep telling myself that I can only DREAM about being as good as they are, but the sloppy turns kind of called attention to themselves. It's strange, because I am just a non-professional adult ballet dancer and should be more forgiving about the rigors of being on stage -- but, there's a "but still" lingering in my mind. Hopefully someone can dispel it!

All the other ballets were wonderful, though, and especially because I am taking ballet, I appreciate all the little moves much more. Like when the acrobats in "Parade" did royales looking like feathers, I wanted to say, "Did you see that!!!"

Thanks, anyone, for reading this ranting.

[Alexandra]

Thanks very much for your review, dragonfly. I moved it over to the Joffrey forum; I think some people may have missed it.

I think that "Sacre" comes from ballet's character dancing more than modern dance. Petrushka, in that ballet by Fokine, has turned in feet, too, and Bournonville wrote in the mid-19th century that "pantomime is the ballet of the turned in feet" so that's very much out of ballet's traditions.

Two nights after I first saw this reconstruction of "Sacre," I saw an American Indian company dance a program of their traditional dances, and I was stunned by how similar some of the movements were. Lots of turned in feet!

Can't speak to the two lines crashing into each other Accidents happen!

I'm by no means a "Sacre" expert, so I hope others will chime in here! Thanks again for posting, and sorry no one commented for such a long time!