Apollinaire Scherr on NYCB, 10 February 2006

[Leigh Witchel]

[Admin note: The following item in today's links has caused some comment, and I've opened this thread to continue the discussion:

Balanchine's sly wit at play.]

Wow, does Scherr really mean to say that Balanchine's intent in Symphony in C is satiric?

[Farrell Fan]

And to call "Stars and Stripes" a "Cold War piece" is idiotic.

[oberon]

Who would name a child Apollinaire?

[Helene]

Who would name a child Apollinaire?

Presumably the critic's parents. But we can discuss what the writer has control over, which is the review.

[carbro]

Wow, does Scherr really mean to say that Balanchine's intent in Symphony in C is satiric?

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Looks to me like the piece suffers from too-hasty writing. Donizetti may poke affectionate fun at the conventions Scherr mentions (and others she doesn't), but it is not a satire, and most certainly not a "skewering".

And to call "Stars and Stripes" a "Cold War piece" is idiotic.

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Isn't she just placing it into the context of its creation? Can you imagine something like Stars coming out of the Woodstock era? And this, incidentally, is satiric.

[Paul Parish]

Well, Stars and Stripes makes me laugh out loud, just because the ideas are inherently hilarious -- Liberty Bell always makes me laugh, and so does the corps of boys -- some of the combinations are just so clever. I can't speak for Ms. Scherr, but I think I understand her, and I agree -- in 4th movement Bizet, when the girls start doing sous-sus over and over again I always start to laugh.

As for Stars and Stripes being a Cold War ballet, you might want to read Naima Prevots' book, "Dance for Export; Cultural Diplomacy and hte Cold War" before deciding that the idea is ridiculous. Scherr's phrasing is abrupt, but she has little space and we don't know how she was edited. Anyway, the idea has scholarly backing. Prevots's study is serious and for a scholarly work quite readable. The State Dept. had a full-tilt program to counter the Soviet's cultural exports, esp the Bolshoi's sensational Socialist-realist ballets. I once took a dancer-friend from Argentina to see it at the SF Opera house and was amazed to hear him shout "US out of Latin America" -- several TIMES. But how could I rebuke him? He spoke from his own experience.

Full disclosure -- I've known Apollinaire Scherr for 20 years; we met in ballet class in Berkeley. She chided me soundly for arching my lower back too much in attitude.

She was right. I don't always agree with her, but I think she's serious. She certainly knows dance from the inside -- a life-study of it, including the North Carolina School for the Arts.

Edited February 11, 2006 by Paul Parish

[Kathleen O'Connell]

Hmmm … Irony never struck me as being a Balanchine hallmark, and I’ve always assumed that he exploited the expressive possibilities of ballet’s various conventions – hoary though they might be -- for all they were worth and in all seriousness. Ballerinas in saloon girl or twirler get-up are ballerinas nonetheless; the twirlers are elevated – the ballerinas are not debased. I don’t think that the choreographer who said "Put sixteen girls on the stage and it's everybody. . .put sixteen boys on stage and it's always nobody" would consider the dozens of ballerinas in Symphony in C’s finale an “absurd conceit.” (He might not have considered “stampeding herd” an apt descriptor, either …) The "dazzling effect" is the point, not a cloaking device, for heaven’s sake. Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir is about the only Balanchine ballet I’m inclined to view as a pure send-up, and it’s certainly not a send-up of what one might have seen on 19th century the opera stage. This is not to say that Balanchine doesn’t have fun with the conventions – and Donizetti Variations may be taken as a case in point -- I just don’t think underlining their silliness or absurdity was the persistent subtext of everything he did, which is what Scherr’s piece seems to imply.

[Leigh Witchel]

What Kathleen said. There's wit and there's satire. Balanchine definitely did both, but I'm not even sure that what Scherr mentions in Donizetti (the gag with the solo) is Balanchine's. Off the top of my head, it's changed over the years; what I vaguely recall it being (and I could be off-base - can't recall where I read this) is that the lone girl walked around to each of the "frozen" dancers and waved her hands in front of their eyes, trying to snap them out of it. It didn't work, so she shrugged and "assumed the position" herself.

As for Symphony in C, I just think Scherr's off-base. She's taking her own feelings about the moment and projecting them onto the choreography. It may be witty, but it isn't satire.

[kfw]

As for Symphony in C, I just think Scherr's off-base.  She's taking her own feelings about the moment and projecting them onto the choreography. 

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It sure sounds like that to me. When Balanchine said that after his death his ballets would no longer be his ballets . . . here's a twist I wonder if he anticipated.

[Paul Parish]

Well, I don't think it's satire, either --

not sure why you think Scherr is thinking it's satire.

There are many other forms of wit than that. And Balanchine was certainly witty, and most of his favorite dancers -- Danilova! LeClerq! Tallchief! McBride! Farrell! --are witty, too.

(I don't get the charging elephants image either, but I'm assuming it's the excitement of the charge she's trying to emphasize-- and that's certainly appropriate. They're not ladylike dancers, English-style, "where to be awake is vulgar already." I guess she's referring to the effectt it has on her when they're doing all that taquete and pounding their pointes into the floor, very fast, left rightleftrightleft rightleftright, which is incredibly exhilarating)

[bart]

A wonderful discussion!

As to Stars and Stripes as a "cold war piece": I can't imagine that this what what Balanchine intended. Nor do I remember people feeling this -- or, I should say, expressing this -- at its premiere in the late 50s.

However, with the coming of the Vietnam War -- and all the passions and divisions it engendered here at home -- there were many Balanchine fans who could no longer enter into the joyfully innocent patriotic spirit of the piece, and a few who are still uncomfortable when seeing it performed.

This has nothing to do with Balanchine and everything to do with the changing cultural-political contexts in which a work of art is performed and perceived.

[Leigh Witchel]

Well, I don't think it's satire, either --

not sure why you think Scherr is thinking it's satire.

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In the finale to Symphony in C, the choreographer cloaks the absurd conceit of dozens of ballerinas stampeding forward like a herd of elegant elephants under the moment's dazzling effect.

That quote. Sure, there are witty things that are absurd conceits, but take it all together and I think she's talking about satire. We should probably just ask her

[Adding] Bart - Read Lincoln Kirstein in "Thirty Years at the NYCB" discussing Dag Hammarskjold's reaction to Stars & Stripes at the time. He found it a disturbing display of nationalism. I find it more innocent than that, but that reaction was around at the time of the premiere.

[kfw]

Read Lincoln Kirstein in "Thirty Years at the NYCB" discussing Dag Hammarskjold's reaction to Stars & Stripes at the time.  He found it a disturbing display of nationalism.  I find it more innocent than that, but that reaction was around at the time of the premiere.

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Kirstein writes that Hammarskjold didn't understand the context and thus didn't get the musical parody. He then adds that the ballet's finale "brought out a loud and wryly enthusiastic demonstration, which was itself a parody of patriotism," a judgment he offers no defense of. It's to be expected that in times of national division the meaning of patriotic displays is up for grabs, but what I find lacking in is any grounding in the specifics of the work itself.

[Amy Reusch]

I confess, I always read Apollinaire's reviews whenever I see them... even when I have my doubts, I just enjoy her way of turning a phrase.

I couldn't say whether Stars and Stripes was intended as a Cold War propaganda piece, I wouldn't presume... but I do think it's pretty referential to 1950s American patriotic displays and the 1950s were surely the heart of the cold war.

[Farrell Fan]

Isn't she just placing it into the context of its creation?  Can you imagine something like Stars coming out of the Woodstock era?

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With Balanchine and Kirstein, absolutely yes. Didn't "Union Jack" come out of the U.S. Bicentennial?

[Quiggin]

For balance--especially on Symphony in C--here are some snippets from some of Apollinaire Scher’s other Newsday reviews. She seems to be a sort of American Quentin Crisp. What I like about her is that she writes about the actual architecture of Balanchine’s ballets--an inexhaustible subject--and his composers--more than just who danced well last night.

Symphony in C:

‘For "Ballet Imperial," Balanchine chooses Tchaikovsky at his most impetuous; for Symphony in C, a Bizet symphony so giddy in its exultation of Mozart that it borders on parody. Rarely does Balanchine make the obvious choice - Mozart himself...’

‘”Symphony in C," created for the august Paris Opera Ballet to a triumphal Bizet score, is a loving yet jesting celebration of ballet roots and excesses, featuring not one but four queen-ballerinas, each with her own ranked retinue.

‘City Ballet performs these works with particular pleasure, perhaps because the ballets affirm all those years the dancers spend in class perfecting their tendus. Sofiane Sylve, often merely a gorgeous manual of classical correctness, luxuriated in the grandeur of the "Symphony in C" adagio. Yvonne Borree, normally withdrawn in her chest, opened up for the rainbow arcs of "Concerto Barocco," with Albert Evans' large hand wrapped tenderly around her tiny ribs.’

Divertimento #15

‘The curtain rises on five ballerinas in daisy-yellow tutus, nodding to one another like decorous ladies on a string. Instead of Mozart's advertised theme, the choreographer uses the exciting opening salvo as an organizing motif: two declarative strokes of the violin followed by a wafting ribbon of melody. The dance variations are about hammering down the corners of Mozart's rhythmic box and then prying it open. All of the soloists Friday night did the work proud, but especially the alternately percussive and mellifluous Megan Fairchild.

‘In his classical virtues, Balanchine has often been compared to Mozart. "Divertimento No. 15," however, understands these virtues as Bach might. For the adagio, one ballerina becomes a fulcrum, another moves like an ellipsis, a third in a circle. All five together map out the central theme of classicism: translucency and balance. Like Bach, Balanchine unfolds his theme across all of his variations...’

[bart]

Bart - Read Lincoln Kirstein in "Thirty Years at the NYCB" discussing Dag Hammarskjold's reaction to Stars & Stripes at the time.  He found it a disturbing display of nationalism.  I find it more innocent than that, but that reaction was around at the time of the premiere.

Thanks, Leigh, for that correction. I was thinking of the friends and fellow attendees who were U.S. Americans, and had forgotten about others. As a kid from the lily-white, flag-waving, Sousa-phile suburbs at the time of the ballet's first performances, I was hardly aware that other opinions existed, must less ought to be considered. That lesson came later.

It really does point out that the "eye of the beholder" and the social context play a huge role in determining what our experience of a work of art will be.

[Leigh Witchel]

Symphony in C:

‘For "Ballet Imperial," Balanchine chooses Tchaikovsky at his most impetuous; for Symphony in C, a Bizet symphony so giddy in its exultation of Mozart that it borders on parody.

‘”Symphony in C," created for the august Paris Opera Ballet to a triumphal Bizet score, is a loving yet jesting celebration of ballet roots and excesses, featuring not one but four queen-ballerinas, each with her own ranked retinue.

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Thanks for the quotes Quiggin - looks to me like she does feel like there's an element of satire or parody in Symphony in C. I see better why she thinks that and she's certainly not off-the-wall, but I still don't agree. The Bizet was written when he was about 17 and was his first symphony; what she sees as parody I see as synthesis.

[Helene]

The Bizet was written when he was about 17 and was his first symphony; what she sees as parody I see as synthesis.

I'm not sure she was talking about the score, but of Balanchine's response to it and POB, for which he did the original choreography. The score was a graduation exercise for Bizet, which was one of the reasons it was "lost" for such a long time. It had just resurfaced when Balanchine set it.