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Revisions, New Versions?


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Greetings again from the Bluegrass State! We finished the ballet I had come here to choreograph today. Something that pleased me about it was that I had used this music (by Rameau) before in 1995. I was dissatisfied with the ballet I had done at that time and made a completely new work to the same music. I'm much more satisfied with my efforts now (it's also interesting to see what seven years has done to me as a choreographer - even as a person, since that shows in one's work).

To move this to a more general topic, I was musing on the idea of revisions and new versions. I've re-used music for completely new works at least four times. I've usually learned a lot from the shortcomings of the previous ballet, although in one case (Stravinsky's Octet for Winds) I don't think I succeeded either time.

I can think of several times Balanchine completely re-used music - Valse Fantaisie has two versions, Mozartiana has (I think) three. I once talked to Barbara Horgan about an earlier, lost version of the female duet in the first pas de trois in Agon. She felt he had re-done it because after two years in repertory, he understood the music better. Are there people who have seen some of the earlier versions? Did you think that the later version was an improvement?

I was also trying to think of other choreographers who did multiple versions of a work. Was that Ashton or Tudor's method? When they felt they hadn't quite gotten something right, I wonder how they dealt with correcting or refining their vision.

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Leigh, there's another piece of music that Balanchine set twice--Stravinsky's Violin Concerto. The first version, called Balustrade, was completely different from the 1972 version. For one thing, the two middle movements, which in the later version were assigned to two separate couples, was danced (by Tamara Toumonova and partner) by a single couple. I don't know how different Divertimento #15 is from Caracolle, but I'm sure he made some changes.

Of course, Balanchine was constantly tinkering with his ballets, sometimes for practical reasons (the steps didn't suit the dancer) and sometimes for no apparent reason other than he wanted to do it. In the three instances that come to mind right off the bat, I preferred the earlier version in all of them.

In Symphony in Three Movements, the first movement ended with the first male dancer (Helgi Tomasson in the original) re-entering and dancing at the same time that the diagonal of 16 girls unfolds into open positions. Balanchine deleted the boy's solo sometime in the late '70s, but every time I see the ballet my mind keeps inserting the boy back into the picture.

In the Garland Waltz from The Sleeping Beauty, there was a lovely moment that disappeared soon after the premiere--perhaps the next season they did it. At the time when the 16 couples and 16 children form a huge ring, linking hands, and the music gets high and tinkly, the women and children used to take one step into the center, link hands, and dance around in a circle. It was a meltingly touching moment, and again, my mind insists on putting it back in whenever I see the ballet.

Finally, I've always preferred the original ending of The Four Temperaments to the one that Balanchine made in 1977 or so, when it was filmed for TV. He said at the time that the change was necessary because of the limitations of video, but then he added that he'd always wanted to change the ending anyway.

Among other choreographers, Twyla Tharp did two versions of Deuce Coupe for the Joffrey. I never saw the first--did anyone? Mel?

[ March 23, 2002, 10:18 AM: Message edited by: Ari ]

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Ari -

From what I've read about Caracole, (my source here is the supplemental notes at the back of the Balanchine Collected works volume) interviews done with Jerome Robbins, Diana Adams and others confirmed that Caracole and Divertimento No. 15 were by and large the same. There definitely have been changes in Divert as time goes on (there's a famous story of a promenade in the third pas de deux that got deleted when Erik Bruhn and Allegra Kent fell down trying to do it.)

I do think it's interesting that often the changes are debateable. The Balanchine Trust has a policy of setting Balanchine's final version of a work, but somehow to me, this makes death the arbiter of his art. Even personally, of the ballets I've redone, I far prefer the '99 version of one ballet to the '95 version, but I have a friend who always mentions with regret that I dropped the older version. He preferred it.

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I was in the Air Force on fulltime active duty when "Deuce Coupe" was originally performed by the Joffrey. By the time I got out, Twyla had set "Deuce Coupe II" on the company. The first state featured her dancers and the Joffrey dancers working together, and the second was all Joffrey. The music was by the Beach Boys in both cases, but a different selection and remix for each. The graffiti painters disappeared for "DCII", as well.

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I hope Jane Simpson or Helena, or both, will see this and answer re Ashton. I have vague memories that some of his earlier ballets -- or the THEMES in those ballets -- were reworked later on, for a bigger stage and bigger company.

Some were modified slightly for a bigger stage -- "Facade," I think -- I'm winging it here. Many were discarded when they moved to Covent Garden because they would have looked too small on the larger stage. He didn't want to rework them. (He didn't like to rework. I think for him ballet was painting, in one sense. You worked on it until it was to your liking -- with that particular cast -- and then it was done. You didn't decide that Mona would have been pretty in pink a week later.)

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Estelle, I did some checking in the Complete Works catalog - it looks like Palais de Cristal and the '48 version of Symphony in C did not involve changes in choreography, although corps parts were doubled up to allow the ballet to be performed by a smaller cast. It seems that Balanchine's revisions to the ballet were later, and like Serenade or Concerto Barocco, a series of changes over a period of time.

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