Jump to content
This Site Uses Cookies. If You Want to Disable Cookies, Please See Your Browser Documentation. ×

Toughest Evening Length Ballet for Male Principal?


BalletNut

Which of these ballets do you think is the hardest for a male dancer to perform?  

32 members have voted

  1. 1. Which of these ballets do you think is the hardest for a male dancer to perform?

    • Don Quixote
      6
    • Swan Lake
      3
    • La Bayadere
      1
    • Giselle
      7
    • Spartacus
      11
    • La Sylphide
      4


Recommended Posts

I am missing the button for the "other" check box ...

My vote would be Spartacus: there is so much powerful dancing in it - tremendous jumps, turnings, press-lifts ... and the hero has to bridge the gap between war-scenes and the more lyrical ones to be convincing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm withholding my vote (but not my opinion :wink: ) until I think things over a bit more thoroughly.

La Sylphide: ATM makes an important point, except James doesn't have to do any heavy lifting, which can drain stamina.

Don Quixote: Basil has lots of strenuous partnering, as well as big, heroic jumps, etc.

Sleeping Beauty: Desire doesn't even appear until halfway through the darned thing.

:beg:

Dachnitsa may have fingered the real toughie, but it's not as prominent in the US balleto's mind as the other options BalletNut offers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think there should be an "Other" choice. If there was I'd vote "Other" for James in Lacotte's reimagined Sylphide.

It's an hour and a half long and he dances at least 45 minutes. Beats, jumps, everything and he's not spared the lifts. Wrong for the period, entertaining for the audience, exhausting for the dancer. I get tired just looking at him :beg:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I picked Spartacus, after a recent re-viewing of the Mukhamedov performance on video. But chrisk217 is very persuasive about James in the Lacotte Sylphide

The first is big, athletic, obviously requiring great stamina. The other demands speed, lightness, and strength of a rather different sort.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Welcome to Ballet Talk, Kellyaire. I hope you'll find your way onto our Welcome forum so we can get to know you better. :angry2: Anyway, MacMillan's ballets do seem to have their fair share of lifts, don't they? Unfortunately, there are only so many slots that the software will give you for polls!

You're welcome, dachnitsa. :yucky: Now I'm interested to see Spartacus. (I presume we're talking about the Grigorovitch version, correct?)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm with Hans --

If you want to see something made to look impossibly easy, check out Vasiliev and Maximova in Giselle -- he lifts her overhead again and again as if she were weightless. The Soviet version of the Act 2 pas de deux is as heroic as Spartacus, but none of the effort can show, you can't even THINK of it, and all you see is her trajectory.....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am with Paul and Hans.

I remember Alicia Alonso saying that Albrecht was a very difficult role for the male partner (I heard it from herself at a master class I attended back in 1991 in Buenos Aires). I think Also Anton Dolin suggests the same in his book "pas de deux", if memory serves me well.

I would add that the hands should not be seen as "gripping" Giselle, as she is a spirit.

Also I very much admire Vassiliev and Maximova in second act pdd - it is just incredible

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...