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ABT's Raymonda -- questions on the plot


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In her Arts Journal Blog has a long review of "Raymonda". One of the points she makes is that there are plot problems (other writers have made the same point:

The plot is a mess in this version.  Granted, the plot of Raymonda has been a mess from the get-go, but presumably it was more capable of suspending disbelief in Petipa’s time, when ballet libretti often preferred rampant fantasy to logic.  In ABT’s Raymonda, plot is almost gone, leaving confusion in its wake. 

This is what the audience needs to know:  It’s the Middle Ages and we’re in Hungary.  (Already you have misgivings.)  The exquisite heiress Raymonda, under the guardianship of an aunt, the Countess Sybelle (the spelling of the names in this tale is variable; I’m using ABT’s here), is slated to marry Jean de Brienne—suitably aristocratic, to say nothing of white, Christian, and a paragon of chivalric behavior.  But, uh-oh, here comes trouble, in the form of the Saracen Abderakhman, a knight in his own domain, granted, but in appearance a person of color, an infidel, and the kind of guy (like everyone from his world, Petipa’s audience might have agreed) who, taking a fancy to a young lady, feels lust rather than love and, finding persuasion (gifts of glittering jewelry, a show of gaudy regional dances from his private nightclub) ineffective, segues without any problem to attempted abduction and rape.

So you’ve got drama (if only melodrama) and conflict—eventually de Brienne disposes of the Saracen in a duel so that he and his fiancée can live happily ever after.  But here’s the key thing:  the conflict lies not in sword versus scimitar but within Raymonda’s consciousness.  She must choose between Jean de Brienne’s chaste love, which even her virginal self suspects may prove a bit dull, and the seductiveness of Abderakhman, who represents the sensual life.  She meditates on this forbidden love in a dream scene; what could be more Freudian?

ABT, however, partly through its mistaken desire to keep things zipping along, has not only left the story and its underlying theme unclear, it has also conceived and directed the heroine as a blank and Abderakhman as a ludicrously exotic idiot who represents neither serious sexual appeal nor serious threat.  You sit there muttering pitiably to yourself (or to the young woman sitting next to you, who has kindly plied you with much-needed cough drops), What is going on?

What do you think of this? Do you want more plot? Did what you saw make sense? Does it matter, or is it the dancing that matters? If you were staging "Raymonda," or advising on revisions to this one, would you want the story clarified and fleshed out, or left at is it is?

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I don't need a detailed replication of the original libretto, storywise, but I'd like to see a protagonist and an antagonist of roughly equal weight.

More importantly in this case, I want variety in the presentation of the piece. No full-length ballet I've ever seen has classical set piece upon classical set piece upon classical set piece, and then maybe a character dance or two and another classical set piece. Give me mime -- enough to make an impression. Give me character dances. Give me (I never thought I'd read myself writing this :thumbsup: ) processions.

When Balanchine compiled (and revised, granted) the dances from this ballet for R. Variations, kept it under 40 minutes. Concise, beautiful, and not trying to be more than it was. And something very different always follows it.

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Yes, I do think that a good, truly successful story ballet evening should have a strong story line to carry the evening, and it must also be clearly articulated as well. The dancing should be properly set in some sort of context; Odile's seduction is just another flashy pas de deux with fouettes, but it becomes more when you pile on the story of "Swan Lake" to the dance. A successful story ballet should be a good balance of enough clear story exposition to make the reason for the dance apparent, alongside the dancing that is already a given. I turn often to videos of the Royal Ballet in "Sleeping Beauty" and "Swan Lake" as excellent examples of how strong, clear mime is balanced against equally strong dancing, thus setting the dances in perfect context and moving things along interestingly.

Also the clarity is a big point, I think. The suggestion of story, without proper follow through, will make people in the audience simply scratch their heads and go "what is going on?", even if there is pretty dancing to look at; you're distracted by the loose shards of story hanging around, and are more disinclined to dismiss the evening as a failure because of its inability to effectively convery a story. I think this comes from early on, in grade school, with training on how to read literature for a story, and to know the elements of what do make up a good story - we end up trying to find a plot in everything.

That said, though, a story doesn't necessarily have to exist in a full evening ballet program. There just has to be something significantly interesting enough to propel the evening, like in Balanchine's "Jewels," where the choreography is significantly varied enough, and a visual theme in the sets and costumes strings them together, keeping your interest for all three parts.

And yet another exception, too, to all of this is that there also exists a time when the dancing and the stage presences of the dancers is significant enough to make the evening great even without a good, strong story. "Le Corsaire," for instance, was fun because most of the dancers cast in the roles made the most of it, danced at their most show offish, and hammed up the silly plot. So it was fun if not a deeply moving evening of ballet - call it a popcorn ballet.

So in sum, ideally I want a well-told story, but give me something else good enough to distract me and I might look the other way.

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Place the castle wherever you will, Provence or Hungary, just make it reachable sensibly by a Saracen knight traveling en suite. You could use Constantinople; both King Andrew and Jean de Brienne spent most of their Crusading time there. I've always thought that Abderakhman ought to be a sort of seneschal for de Brienne, and not mystically first appear in the "Sands of the Desert" as the second part of Raymonda's dream. Leave in the White Lady. When in doubt, ascribe things that still don't quite make sense to her. Leave in or re-establish the mime - the hell with getting home at such-and-such an hour. Give the audience their money's worth for their very expensive tickets. Leave in King Andy! He at least makes sense for the Hungarian flavor of the last act. He also used to lead off the "Danse des enfants" there with the Countess Sibylle. Do as you will with the interpolated mazurka from "Scenes de Ballet". If you must cut, cut that. Do move the male variation from the second act into the grand pas in the last act. It keeps de Brienne from looking like such an utter capon.

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I think one of the problems with the story of Raymonda--and in a way Corsaire, too, though it certainly has plenty of plot--is that it lacks some sort of otherworldy dimension. In a way it isn't abstract enough. These are basically real people (except the White Lady, and she always seems somewhat of an odd ball), and real people don't move like Petipa dancers. Whereas in Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Bayadere, et al., there is a mixture of real and otherworldly. There isn't really a moral dimension to Raymonda, either, which makes the ending of Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake so powerful. There is real good and evil, Siegfried has to make a choice (at least he thinks so, but really he is in control of outside forces, but there is real evil there, at least in the original). That is not to say that Raymonda isn't worth doing, I loved it and have been dreaming in lovely pastel shades for the past few days, but it is not a great, coherent work of art, like Sleeping Beauty. But then very few things are.

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I did not see the ABT production (I am on the other side of the world as you can see :blushing: ), but I have seen both videos of Grigorovitch's Raymonda, plus read a great deal about it, so I think I can comment on the following:

I have just received my May issue of Dance Magazine, where there is an article on Raymonda saying that Jean de Brienne does NOT go to the Crusades, but instead hovers around. In my opinion, the Crusades point is very important for the plot, as it justifies Raymonda's being assaulted by Abderakham - otherwise how could she had encountered Abderahkman with her fiancee around? Especially in Medieval times!!! (nowadays everything is possible, but not then!!!) Also the Crusades thing adds romance to the plot, which is so well mirrored in the music - it sounds medieval, especially in the first act, and just after Jean leaves for the Crusades. It is important to remember that many people immediately associate the Crusades with Middle Ages.

I am for trimming the plots it it makes the work of art more easily understood by the public, but not if it ends up leaving loose threads....

Anyway, just my opinion

silvy

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I've thoroughly enjoyed reading this thread.

I was struck by something art wrote:

Also the clarity is a big point, I think. The suggestion of story, without proper follow through, will make people in the audience simply scratch their heads and go "what is going on?", even if there is pretty dancing to look at; you're distracted by the loose shards of story hanging around, and are more disinclined to dismiss the evening as a failure because of its inability to effectively convey a story.

I'd agree with that. The same thing has happened with Swan Lake. The Queen Mother comes in and thinks hard, in the general direction of Siegfried, that he should be married. He thinks hard back that he shouldn't. Then she gives him a crossbow. He thanks her. Lots. In the second act, Odette doesn't explain who she is and how she was a swan a second ago and a woman now, but constantly says "Don't shoot!" to which Siegfired constantly replies, "swans shoot I not," as though they've just learned the gestures and love them and have to perform them over and over again.

It doesn't tell the story. It just tells you that once upon a time there was a story.

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"Allegro Brillante" doesn't need a "plot". "Swan Lake" does. I think any dramatic ballet should tell its story clearly, and not be embarrassed doing so.

I don't think anyone is saying that people go for the plot, but rather that in a narrative ballet, there should be a palpable, clear narrative. Otherwise, just do "Raymonda Variations." Do it three times, change the costumes. Who will know? :wink:

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My sentiments exactly. The Disney animators used to have a criterion for what they were doing. Did it meet the "plausible impossibility"? You know the sort of thing, Mickey Mouse is running and runs straight off a cliff. He doesn't fall until he notices that he's in empty air. Anybody who has ever had something happen to him/her that was in slow enough motion to figure out, but too fast to do anything about will recognize the feeling. If a dramatic ballet has a reasonable framework accessible to its audience, then all nature of dancing can be hung from it.

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I like the "plausible impossibility" rule -- thank you, Mel (and for such a good example of it).

I came late to the mid-century Soviet revisions. It was like looking at history backwards -- all of the "Freudian" Western interpretations of "Swan Lake" (led by Nureyev and Bruhn) and later "Raymonda" seemed suddenly much less revolutionary, and I wondered that people who HAD seen the Bournmeister and the Grigorovich versions in their salad days should have thought them so.

I think at the time, people grabbed the Freudian thread -- sex first, second and third. But looking at these productions now, I think their choreographers and dramaturgs were trying to bring ballet into line with developments in painting; abstraction replacing first representational art, then even abstract expressionism. (Now, or course, one doesn't need an aesthetic. One merely needs a collection of Notions.)

My position has always been that mime looks silly when it's delivered without conviction. The Bolshoi's "Bayadere," which they brought to DC a few years ago, had one of the most garbled narratives I've ever seen, and partly it was because the dancers were gesturing at each other, but they weren't using mime gestures. So it was as though they were saying, "Tank handkerchief murder murder murder love" -- with appropriate glowers, or pitters of the heart, perhaps, but I reacted to it as though I were hearing Romeo say, treating each syllable as though it were a pearl, "Hark! Desist! Juliet is the snow and cows battereth butterbeans."

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Well, you can't tell there's a plot if there isn't some coherency in choreography.....and you know what I'm always saying: bring back the good mime!!!!! You all know there's mime, and there's

good mime! I love the latter...

I go to Raymonda for the ballerina and the music, otherwise Cortege Hongrois or Raymonda Variations are just fine for my money......

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