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Back to the Future


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If you can travel back in time, what original or famous ballet production or dancer(s) that you've never seen perform but wish you had, would you go see and why?

For me it would be the original Petipa and Ivanov production of Swan Lake. I would have love to see exactly how much of today's performances actually comes directly from the original choreography. I also would love to finally see if the 50 year old Pavel Gerdt (Siegfried) truly needed assisted from the younger dancer who played the original Benno. Finally I think I would have enjoy watching prima ballerina assoluta Pierina Legnani, the first ballerina who successfully executed thirty-two consecutive fouettes.

I would love to have been in the audience at the Theatre de Champs-Elysees in Paris in May of 1913. I would love to have been part of the passionate reaction of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes production of Vaslav Nijinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps. I wonder just how much of a negative reaction did Igor Stravinsky's masterpiece really got from the audience.

Of the performances I would have like to have seen, George Balanchine's Jewels is just one of them. I wish I had seen the dancers would inspirited him to create this wonderful work. Violette Verdy and Mimi Paul in Emeralds, Patricia McBride, Edward Villella and Patricia Neary in Rubies, Suzanne Farrell and Jacques d'Amboise in Diamonds. Performances I understand that has never been surpass.

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Actually, I think we've been round and round about Pavel Gerdt and the pas de deux a trois (both of them) in Swan Lake. Gerdt was a premier danseur noble, and if one looks at the parts of the White Swan pas de deux where Benno is active, one finds that Siegfried is doing all of the lifts, and Benno does promenades and holds Odette in poses. Funny sort of help, if Gerdt needed any. Actually, he's doing a sort of low-key mime, indicating to the audience, "Isn't she beautiful?" That's what a danseur noble did. It may seem like an odd convention to audiences today, but much in favor in the High Petipa era.

Me, I want to see the original of The Carnival of Venice which was a sort of extravaganza in the style of La Fille mal Gardée, where the dancers not only danced, but sang and told jokes!

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