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Calegari and Cook


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Maria and Bart are back in Tbilisi setting a new Balanchine Program on Nina Ananiashvili's State Ballet of Georgia! The weekly newspaper Georgia Today gives the following generous excerpt from their article (more requires a paid subscription). The two former dancers talk about their experiences with Mr. Balanchine:

The Balanchine saga continues

Author: Natasha Warcholack

Bart Cook and Maria Calegari from the Balanchine Trust have been busy with work on the new Balanchine program (‘Chaconne’, ‘Donizetti Variations’ and ‘Mozartiana’ are premiered on November 26). I catch them between the rehearsals to ask what Mr. B was like to work with.

“Very demanding but nurturing” I hear in reply. Possessed with an innate ability to sense every dancer’s shortcomings, he devoted a substantial amount of time to help him/her develop them. Once he ‘invested’ in a dancer’s potential though, his expectations were high. “He was very strict and you had to be 100% all the time. He required the dancer’s full involvement and highest standards in the studio and had no time for ‘baby actions’ and ‘diva behavior’” continues Maria. His uncanny skill to perceive dance from an omniscient point of view gave him a deep-seated appreciation of Art, which meant that “you were not dancing for yourself, or for him, but for Art.” That brings some associations with the previous century’s Twenties’ manifesto of l’art pour l’art.

“We were all expected to be very professional, which is always hard work. We’re human beings after all, not just bodies; we have emotions, so nervous breakdowns are natural.” Maria recalls when once she burst into tears because she didn’t get the role she had wanted and stormed into Mr. B’s office to complain, but the master graced her with little attention. “Grown up people don’t cry” was his swift rejoinder.

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Georgia Today added a couple of paragraphs today:

On form

Author: Natasha Warcholack

Those familiar with Balanchine as ballet master, teacher and mentor might still feel challenged when it comes to defining the ‘Balanchine Style’ and ‘Balanchine Technique’, which paved the way to a unique approach to dance. Bart Cook and Maria Calegari from the Balanchine Trust explain.

“I prefer to say the Balanchine style” says Bart. “Style refers to preference, whereas technique is what it is. What Balanchine taught during his life and his life’s work was to take the ballet technique that he learnt as a student in St. Petersburg, and refine it, make it so that there could be more steps per measure, make it so that the dancers could go faster. It is indeed the same ballet technique, but it’s just his style to be faster and more danced, with the choreography to have more steps. And there are a few classical ballet steps that he prefers to use in a different manner than traditionally.”

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Bart Cook is interviewed in Georgia Today about three new ballets he has set on Nina's ballet company in Tbilisi.

This is Bart’s forth visit to Tbilisi, this time without Maria, who’s busy working on Mozartiana in Leipzig, Germany. So how has it been? “It has a good and a bad aspect because I work only with the principal dancers. That’s good because I can spend a lot of time with them, but at the same time would like to be working with the other dancers as well, but the ballets do not demand it. There is no corps de ballet this time. Anyway, I have learnt to love them dearly. I know how they think and they know how I think.”

The entire interview is available:

http://www.georgiatoday.ge/article_details.php?id=1001

An article on the program is posted under Georgian State Ballet (Other European Companies).

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