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Barbara Milberg Fisher's memoir


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What a great interview -- thanks for the heads up, ViolinConcerto!

I thought this exchange particularly interesting:

You took issue with their portrayal of Balanchine?

I thought, "He can't have changed that much." People should know what it was like when I was there. I just kept thinking, this is not the Balanchine I knew. Nobody's perfect, no one's a saint, and no one's totally diabolical either. Well—except Jerry Robbins, God bless him!

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What a great interview -- thanks for the heads up, ViolinConcerto!

I thought this exchange particularly interesting:

You took issue with their portrayal of Balanchine?

I thought, "He can't have changed that much." People should know what it was like when I was there. I just kept thinking, this is not the Balanchine I knew. Nobody's perfect, no one's a saint, and no one's totally diabolical either. Well—except Jerry Robbins, God bless him!

Milberg was one of my first interviews a decade ago - she was in the original cast of Agon. She was fascinating and articulate; my notes at the end were "someone needs to do an oral history with this woman." Given her ability to express herself (After her dance career I believe she became a professor in English Lit at CUNY) I'm glad she decided to do it herself. It's on my list of books to get.

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Thank you for the link, ViolinConcerto - great reading. I’m looking forward to reading her book, too.

I’m a little confused, though, about the ‘griping’ she mentions in the recollections of others?? There’s Gelsey Kirkland’s book, of course, but apart from her most of what I’ve read about Balanchine that I can think of offhand has been at the very least respectful. (Edward Villella had some things to say, but I’d not call them gripes, exactly.) Many if not most have been highly protective of the man and his memory.

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I finally got to finish the interview and excerpt, and BOY! is that gripping -- especially about Balanchine telling her, and then miming for others -- how traumatic and nearly unsuccessful their leaving Soviet Russia was. Interesting that he didn't mention, or that she does not recount, how one of their party (I forgot her name) "accidentally drowned" days before their departure. Danilova's memoir and Tamara Geva's memoir are especially vivid about that incident (and one other book that I forgot the name of.....will someone please get me a spare memory!!).

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The excerpt reminded me of my own family. Both sets of grandparents escaped from Tsarist oppression and their politics were very firmly to the left. I grew up with my maternal grandparents living quite close, spending most weekends with them until I was a teenager. My mother's brother's children, the first of whom was born when I was 18 and only two months before our common grandfather died, grew up with my aunt's parents, who were allowed to emigrate from Communist Czechoslovakia only when they were old and infirm. In Czechoslovakia their farm was confiscated and they lived under an oppressive state, particularly as practicing Jews. My cousins grew up with their grandfather's politics and I grew up with the grandfather's they never knew, and both sets of politics were rooted in their own horrific experiences.

I adored their grandfather, and even if I didn't agree with his politics, I knew what drove them, and how politics was not theoretical to him. It was quite a lesson.

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I think it was Lidia Ivanova.

Yes, that's right. ViolinConcerto, perhaps the book you're thinking of is Gennady Smakov's book 'Great Russian Dancers,' which has a section devoted to Ivanova?

No, I have not read that, but thanks for the reference, and for her name. Everyone adored her as I recall.

The excerpt reminded me of my own family. Both sets of grandparents escaped from Tsarist oppression and their politics were very firmly to the left.
(Helene)

That's one of the reasons that the description and interview excited me so much -- I share that family/political background, and thus am what is called a "red diaper baby!"

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Read. This. Book.

Barbara Milberg Fisher has achieved her goal, to describe the period of a company and a Balanchine that are often flattened in other accounts, and is not about the subject. As the author writes in the opening of her "Acknowledgments" chapter, "A memoir, it turns out, is all about other people."

It's so different to read histories of the company that list the tours or mention a performance or a personal happening during one or the other. It's never really sunk in for me that NYCB toured Europe for five months at a time, and Milberg Fisher gives a slice of what it was like for her and the company.

It's a beautifully written book with a voice. So wonderful that the odd repeats and inconsistencies -- "Monthuic" vs. "Montheuil" in the chapter describing the "Calalonia Extremes" during the company's 1952 tour of Barcelona, for example -- are more jarring than they would be in an "As told by" autobiography. Not every professor of English can write in an appealing, analytical, clear, and unique voice, but while reading In Balanchine's Company, a little chime went off that I haven't heard since reading the work of another English professor, Norman MacLean.

Just under 200 pages, I didn't want it to end. So I was left to search the web for Ms. Milberg Fisher's book on Wallace Stevens. I don't even like poetry.

Arlene Croce writes in the "Foreword":

I celebrate the life of the dancer...

This perfect life, as I see it, is exemplified in the life of Barbara Milberg Fisher. I should wish to have led it -- provided of course, I could still have had my own life in the end.

Luckily, the woman who led this life appreciated it and has given her appreciation as a gift in the form of this book.

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I'm such a slowpoke, I just read the interview linked in the first post of this thread. The interview is fascinating, but the photo of Millberg Fisher by Maurice Seymour is absolutely stunning. I wish people still had those kind of rich portraits made, alongside the action shots we see today.

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Better late than never! :)

I really loved this book. It's very interesting to read a memoir of dancing for Balanchine by a dancer who wasn't one of his muses or star dancers. Maybe because of that the book isn't a "I danced this, he did this to me" kind of read, instead it's full of stories about the joy and rigors of touring for long periods and the special longlasting friendships that develope between dancers. I found the section on Tanaquil Le Clercq very moving and sad. She vividly brings to life the horror of that tour to Copenhagen where Tanny contracted polio. I was so affected by this chapter that when I finished it I put the book down and didn't pick it back up until two days later. I also found her observations regarding Orpheus enlightening. I've often wondered why people speak of this ballet as having lost it's power and intensity over the years. Milberg danced one of the furies at the premiere and writes of seeing it performed by NYCB during the company's fiftieth anniversary season. She was stunned by how different it looks. She mentions disturbing lapses and changes and the tameness and lack of intensity of the dancing. Her account helps fill in some of the pieces of the mystery of what happened to Orpheus.

I have only one critisism of the book. I wish it was longer!

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Better late than never! :)

I also found her observations regarding Orpheus enlightening. I've often wondered why people speak of this ballet as having lost it's power and intensity over the years. Milberg danced one of the furies at the premiere and writes of seeing it performed by NYCB during the company's fiftieth anniversary season. She was stunned by how different it looks.

Her candor in describing this was refreshing. I haven't seen 'Orpheus' since the early days of its premiere and was looking forward to seeing it this season; but I hesitate after reading her words. I can still recall the astonishment of the audience as the billowing white curtain (the best dancer on the stage?) consumed the performers. I enjoyed her book so much, it reawakened the whole period for me. I recall her as a student at SAB; but my impressions of her at the time was that she was usually angry at something.

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as an aside, the Furies dance always seems to have been something of wrinkle in OPRHEUS; denby thought it weak in the original and in '80 peter martins was asked to balanchine to revise it, which he did.

i've long heard how much of the ballet was lost in its later manifestations; w/ specific regard to the curtain, the NY State Theater auditorium must figure in the mix, since the effect has to work there in a much deeper and higher and larger space. the same is true for the action overall, which likely fit more 'carefully' on the city center stage.

i suspect in balanchine's 'ideal' world he'd have left the ballet to history and not brought it back to the stage at lincoln center; it's possible he was talked into a revival he didn't really want personally.

i've now scanned this photo of tallchief and magallanes around the time of the premiere, it's obviously posed but still relates to ballet's beginnings.

post-848-1175438947_thumb.jpg

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[now I don't know much about this ballet but] I really like this photo because I can see the pull of tallchief's elongated leg right down to her toes. And magallanes' energy can be seen through the calm thrust of his chest/below it and through his face and expression of [perhaps] desperation. He doesn't focus his energy like one might in a normal pose (like you're just 'there') but makes it look like part of the dance as his fingers aren't perked up and his eyes are in a different focus. and I do love his little mask!

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Re: Orpheus: Garis deals with it from the perspective of being in the original production (in the corps) and also re-visiting it as an audience member in 1998.

I got to NYCB after Fisher's (Barbara Milberg's) time and never saw thsoe first performances. My memory of the 1972 revival (entirely different cast, except for Moncion) was that, after many years of watching Balanchine's more austere, minimally decorated works, it seemed ponderous old-fashioned and not particularly involving. It's interesting that Robert Garis ("Following Balanchine"), who saw the same performances Fisher was dancing in (those with Magallanes and Tallchief), is highly critical of the ballet. This despite the fact that he considered (and still considers) Balanchine's other work at the time to be the highest form of art. Garis suggests that, even though Balanchine had a long history of fascination with the Orpheus story, this particular version came at at time when, aesthetically, he had already moved on and had little new to add to the form of "total lyric theater."

Among Garis's comments:

I can't find a moment in the whole work when some accent or note or tone in the dance suggests special qttention, concentration, focus, even any significant degree of interest on Balanchine's part -- rather the opposite: there is a depressingly moderate competence throughout that suggests duty rather than inspiration.
Specifically, he suggests that the set -- which forced the action of the famous pas de deux way down-stage was partly to blame:
... even the pas de deux seemed to me from the beginning thoroughly conventional in its realization of the famous dramatic sitaution -- what almost any choreographer would have done -- and I now see that Balanchine was in the most obvious way strapped and handicapped by not having the full three-dimensionality of the stage to work with."

Fisher, by the way, is quite sharp about the condition of the Orpheus she saw in 1998 during the NYCB's 50th Anniversary celebrations:

There's a phrase dancers use when they see hard steps made easier, little things left out. In the dialectivc of ballet shop talk, they say the thing has been 'watered down.' Dancers, like all professional theater folk, are fine-tuned to performances. The know how neglect of detail or lack of precision can destroy the build-up of suspense, deaden a whole production.
Her thoughts about other changes in the production -- including the replacement of the "ominous billowing" curtain by a curtain that remained motionless, and the suggestion that the dancers on stage "desparately needed prime rehearsal time ... [w]ith somebody who knew every aspect of the ballet and every step" -- are very interesting.

I got a great deal out of the Fisher book -- including some thoughts and opinions that would make wonderful discussion topics for Ballet Talk. Speaking just for myself, the writing seemed rather flat, monchromatic and impersonal -- though admirably clear and easy to follow. She is one of those writers who discusses feelings and even passions in the same voice that she uses to discuss thoughts and ideas. This is perhaps not the ideal approach when writing a personal memoir. There are some fascinating stories here, and some interesting glimpses of Balanchine at work and at rest, but they are told by someone who is not a natural story-teller.

Other than that, I recommend it highly for those who love Balanchine and want to know more about how Balanchine related to his dancers, how his company grew, and how his choreography took form.

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Speaking just for myself, the writing seemed rather flat, monchromatic and impersonal -- though admirably clear and easy to follow. She is one of those writers who discusses feelings and even passions in the same voice that she uses to discuss thoughts and ideas. This is perhaps not the ideal approach when writing a personal memoir. There are some fascinating stories here, and some interesting glimpses of Balanchine at work and at rest, but they are told by someone who is not a natural story-teller.

I wasn't going to say that, but I'm glad you did, Bart. Still, as you say, the book has many wonderful anecdotes and much food for thought -- and an index. It's a treasure I'll return to often.

In regards to Orpheus, turning to Nancy Reynolds' "Repertory in Review" for the names of still living dancers who were in the ballet in Balanchine's day, I find Jean-Pierre Bonnefous, Edward Villella, Arthur Mitchell, Kay Mazzo, Violette Verdy, and Allegra Kent. I wonder who staged the NYCB performance Fisher saw, and I wonder who is staging it this year. Is it too much to hope for a serious revival, or at least, for the time being, a Balanchine Foundation taping?

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i've now scanned this photo of tallchief and magallanes around the time of the premiere, it's obviously posed but still relates to ballet's beginnings.

In Haggin's 'Ballet Chronicles' there is an action photo of this very pose (Fred Fehl). The white billowing curtain is in the background. It differs in small details from the posed photo. Tallchief's r. wrist is pointed sharply upward, her r. leg is bent at the knee, but does not encircle his--and Magallanes is leaning slightly forward and looking more to his right...this is how they covered the stage before the white curtain took over :)

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Embarrassingly enough, I finally was able to read this. To carp on what is really a worthwhile book, I did find the writing a bit professorial. Given that she was a professor, maybe this should have been no surprise.

The Agon chapter was particularly fascinating to me as I had interviewed Milberg Fisher on the same topic in 1996 and was able to see the slight differences between what she said then and what she later wrote. We never talked about background (what was happening in her life and Balanchine's) and the context it lent was fascinating.

She mentions the nine poses in silence at the end of the female duet as a particular point. We did discuss this at the '96 interview and she mentioned it at the time. Something seemed off, because there are also nine arm poses today, only they are done on the last sustained note. I asked Barbara Walczak about this; she believed that the poses, though different than they are today, were always done at that point in the music and never in silence. I asked Fisher about it, she deferred to Walczak's memory and asked me to change that part. She's evidently gone back to what she originally believed. Balanchine completely redid that duet in 1960 on Francia Russell, who danced it with Jillana and unfortunately the original is lost.

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I am only now getting around to this book and I'm enjoying it. The flashback structure can be confusing at times and every once in awhile a literary allusion is strained, but altogether a wonderful snapshot of the company and Balanchine in that time and place. So sorry that we lost Milberg Fisher earlier this year. A remembrance by Mindy Aloff (who also writes on Sally Banes and Russell Lee).

Quote

......Barbara's musicality was advanced—one of the reasons that Balanchine enjoyed discussing music with her and invited her to choreograph part of the Bizet ballet. When I picked up the paper early this year and found that Serkin had perished, at the age of 72, from cancer, it was Barbara's prescience and first-rate taste that immediately came to mind. To spend time with her was a gift in itself.

 

 

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