8 replies to this topic

[Jane Simpson]

Just to show we don't all see things the same, I saw Makarova's Swan Lake several times and I couldn't STAND her: the way she slowed the music right down for the Act 2 pas de deux used to make me want to scream! She came over to me as very studied and completely unspontaneous, as if she'd had 103 rehearsals and would never change a movement of her little finger (whereas Kirkland, who probably HAD had 103 etc, came over as if she was making it up as she went along. Not in Swan Lake, of course - I only saw her as Juliet and Aurora.)

[Giannina]

There's a tape of Makarova rehearsing one of Robbins' ballets with Robbins.  He's telling her to dance ON the beat and she says she isn't doing that because she wants the dancing to "flow". "It'll flow, just do it on the beat", pleads Robbins.  No meeting of the minds there!  Makarova did play with tempo and was a fanatic about "phrasing".  I have much of "Swan Lake" memorized but not all of the solos.  Unlike Jane I would often get the impression that Makarova was making up her "Swan Lake" 2nd Act solos as she went along.  It's as if she was thinking, "I think I'll show them a little [name a step] here; I feel like throwing in a [name another step] here".  I forgave her just about anything.
Giannina

[This message has been edited by Giannina Mooney (edited 11-12-98).]

[Alexandra]

Thanks, Jane, for having the courage to say what I've been wanting to say!  I was not a Makarova fan either.  Partly because I was a Fonteyn fan, and loved the Fonteyn body and Fonteyn classicism.  I saw so many dancers in ABT who could have been "after Fonteyns" change their line to be "after Makarovas."  Also, she never moved me.  I remember the Giselles, so beautifully danced, and I'd be all set to be swept up by the mad scene, but the same sense that she was calculating about what she was doing -- all too aware of her effect -- stopped it.
The one thing I adored Makarova in was the Don Q pas de deux.  In that, the playing to the audience, the snapping of the fan, the whole show, was in the right key.  (Strange, in the one performance of her Kitri in the full ballet that I saw, she didn't have the same effect and seemed, of all things, rather palid.)
alexandra

[Jane Simpson]

I did finally see a performance by Makarova that moved me very much - quite late in her career she did John Cranko's 'Onegin' with  English National, and in the last scene, where she rejects Onegin, I felt she finally let herself go and she was fantastic! I was very pleased that I could at last feel part of the ovation she got.

[Dale]

I saw Makarova do Swan Lake and it was very beautiful but the white acts were soooo sloooow! Same with Giselle.