93 replies to this topic

[MakarovaFan]

Bonnette, on 19 January 2013 - 02:17 PM, said:

She is mesmerizing...and that last link is very intriguing!

I agree, Bonnette -- it's hard to take one's eyes off Tanny.  Can't wait for the documentary and am glad Ric Burns is producing it.  Thanks, pherank, for the beautiful photos, especially the Metamorphosis shots.

[Jack Reed]

Quote

Oh, and evidence of hidden treasures:
http://www.worldcat..../oclc/438155528

Oh!  Victor Jessen!  The maker of the film of Gaite' Parisienne on the VAI 4384 DVD.  Aha!  Yes, let's pray that sees the light of day.

Meanwhile, over in the Ballet Videos forum, we have been talking about the 1954 French film of Western Symphony, not mentioned in this thread so far, which has LeClercq and Jacques d'Amboise in the fourth movement Rondo; in a slightly-battered black-and-white print, it's on a French web site, ina.fr (where the Rondo begins at about 20:15).

(As you can see if you open the link, the NYPL catalog dates this film to 1957, but Bernard Taper, in his biography Balanchine, dates LeClercq's polio onset as October 1956, so I suppose it may have been shot in the earlier year and then released in the later.)

[Bonnette]

Thank you so much for posting those links, Jack, I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of the video. Wasn't she sparkling, saucy and captivating! I'm having terrible bandwidth problems tonight, which was my good fortune in this instance - for I got to see many of the performances in slow motion (with quite a few interspersed stills, LOL). Utterly delightful.

[pherank]

MakarovaFan, on 19 January 2013 - 04:47 PM, said:

I agree, Bonnette -- it's hard to take one's eyes off Tanny.  Can't wait for the documentary and am glad Ric Burns is producing it.  Thanks, pherank, for the beautiful photos, especially the Metamorphosis shots.

You're very welcome - I do periodic searches on the Internet for images, and Tanny is one of the persons I've been most interested in finding decent photos of. It pays to do searches periodically since the availability of images changes. Someone on eBay just spent a lot of money on an original photo of Tanny and Jerome Robbins together, and if you scroll down on this page you can see an image of the photo - pretty great stuff:

http://www.ebay.com/...=p2047675.l2557

Jack Reed, on 19 January 2013 - 07:09 PM, said:

Meanwhile, over in the Ballet Videos forum, we have been talking about the 1954 French film of Western Symphony, not mentioned in this thread so far, which has LeClerq and Jacques d'Amboise in the fourth movement Rondo; in a slightly-battered black-and-white print, it's on a French web site, ina.fr (where the Rondo begins at about 20:15).

Really great find, Jack - I was so hoping that I was going to run into the same type of film of La Valse, on the Web, but not yet.  ;)

[pherank]

Just a few more.  ;)

Concerto Barocco. Tanaquil Le Clercq, Diana Adams
http://24.media.tumb...2lkvo1_1280.jpg

George Balanchine, Tanaquil LeClercq, and Truman Capote
http://www.corbisima...d-truman-capote

At rehearsals
http://www.corbisima...cq-at-rehearsal

In her apartment
http://www.corbisima...n-her-apartment

Apollo at New York City Ballet with Andre Eglevsky with Diana Adams, Maria Tallchief and Tanaquil LeClercq. Photo by George Platt Lynes
http://mariakucinski...10/imag0742.jpg

Getty has some 'at-home' photos:
http://www.gettyimag...aquil Le clercq

> Search on 'George Balanchine' on the Getty site and you'll see some interesting publicity photos (there's a bunch of Harlequinade and early Apollo images for example). Here's one of the famous images:
http://www.gettyimag...-photo/89043422

That's all for now.

[pherank]

I posted a link to the Perry Ballet Collection photos in the video and photos forum, but I thought these gems should be shown here (downloadable too!) -

http://digital.lib.b...r/nosort/ad/asc

[MakarovaFan]

pherank, on 20 January 2013 - 11:22 PM, said:

I posted a link to the Perry Ballet Collection photos in the video and photos forum, but I thought these gems should be shown here (downloadable too!) -

http://digital.lib.b...r/nosort/ad/asc

pherank, thanks once more for the lovely photos.  The La Valse picture is stunning and haunting in a way.

[bart]

My favorites are the two very strange shots from Illuminations.  I've never seen them before.  They are so much better than the standard stage shots one sees in ballet books.  For an example o the same episode, shot on stage, see 113 of Repertory in Review.

In the middle photo, LeClercq looks alarmingly like ...  Alicia Alonso. Not the look one would expect from a character called "Sacred Love."

Love the Hayden , Magallanes shot.  Strangely, Hayden (Profane Love) wears one pointe shoe with the other foot left bare.  Sacred Love wears a PAIR of  pointe shoes -- as one  would expect from a proper classical choreographer.  

From Rep. in Review:

Quote

LeClercq recalled the Being Beauteous adagio in which the ballerina is partnered in a number of precarious balances, lifts, and turns by four men, including a series of arabesque turns on pointe with a partner catching her by one arm.  It was Balanchine who helped her most, technically, with this section.  She found Ashton very detailed and helpful throughout.

`

Nancy Reynolds -- and Lincoln Kirstein -- write so much about Illuminations, which I've never seen..  I wish I could have made it to the 1967 revival, with Mimi Paul in LeClercq's role,  Nina Fedorova danced it too.

[Bonnette]

Thank you from me, too, pherank - exquisite.

[pherank]

bart, on 21 January 2013 - 06:11 AM, said:

My favorites are the two very strange shots from Illuminations.  I've never seen them before.  They are so much better than the standard stage shots one sees in ballet books.  For an example o the same episode, shot on stage, see 113 of Repertory in Review.

In the middle photo, LeClercq looks alarmingly like ...  Alicia Alonso. Not the look one would expect from a character called "Sacred Love."

Love the Hayden , Magallanes shot.  Strangely, Hayden (Profane Love) wears one pointe shoe with the other foot left bare.  Sacred Love wears a PAIR of  pointe shoes -- as one  would expect from a proper classical choreographer.  

From Rep. in Review:

Quote

LeClercq recalled the Being Beauteous adagio in which the ballerina is partnered in a number of precarious balances, lifts, and turns by four men, including a series of arabesque turns on pointe with a partner catching her by one arm.  It was Balanchine who helped her most, technically, with this section.  She found Ashton very detailed and helpful throughout.

`

Nancy Reynolds -- and Lincoln Kirstein -- write so much about Illuminations, which I've never seen..  I wish I could have made it to the 1967 revival, with Mimi Paul in LeClercq's role,  Nina Fedorova danced it too.

Thanks for this information on Illuminations, Bart - I too am fascinated by these images. I wasn't familiar with this particular ballet, but love the crazy Ballet Russes/Modernist look of the costumes. The La Valse publicity shot is one of the better ones I've seen. There was a series of these done involving Tanny and Francisco Moncion, but I can't seem to find 'the whole ball of wax', and in high-resolution. I'd like to do an illustration or watercolor painting based on one of these La Valse images in the future.

Now that I've seen a number of signed photos, I know that officially, Tanny spelled her last name, "Le Clercq" (with a space). I think her family/relations have since dropped the space between the two words.

[Bonnette]

pherank, on 21 January 2013 - 01:10 PM, said:

Now that I've seen a number of signed photos, I know that officially, Tanny spelled her last name, "Le Clercq" (with a space). I think her family/relations have since dropped the space between the two words.

I'm glad to know that, pherank...I'd never seen an autographed photo of her before now, so I'm doubly grateful for your posts!

[Quiggin]

bart, on 21 January 2013 - 06:11 AM, said:

Love the Hayden , Magallanes shot.  Strangely, Hayden (Profane Love) wears one pointe shoe with the other foot left bare.  Sacred Love wears a PAIR of  pointe shoes -- as one  would expect from a proper classical choreographer.  

[Mostly a digression about Illuminations]

Profane Love – Melissa Hayden – got better notices than Tanaquil LeClercq's Sacred Love in the original reviews: "The astonishing Melissa Hayden fairly tears the scene to tatters with the passion of her performance of the evil genius" (NYT).  "There are things about it I've never forgotten," says Irene Oppenheim in Threepenney Review, such as

Quote

Melissa Hayden, who dances with one toe shoe and one bare foot that has ever since epitomized for me that grating in Rimbaud’s poetry between bourgeois and bacchanal, between the dangers of propriety and dangers of abandon.

It's poor Rimbaud who gets the bad reviews – "the dirt and squalor of his life, the garbage can from which he picked his diamonds" (Clive Barnes 1967 revival), "the sordid and brutal elements of a singularly violent existence" (John Martin 1950). Perhaps this was to deflect from the gay subtext which seems pretty intense in the Perry / LeClercq photo.

According to Martin Duberman, Lincoln Kirstein commissioned Illuminations to give Ashton "new excitements," and he generally wanted Ashton to break free and take over Sadler's Wells from "Ninetter de Valore".  New exitements included – according to Julie Kavanagh – a full frontal unclothed drawing of Nicolas Magallanes by Tchelitchew which Kirstein sent to Ashton as a possible love interest.

Illuminations seems to have been very successful and was regularly performed for over ten years. Anatole Chujoy wrote that it was one of the works that “justified the existence of New York City Ballet.” It was included in the 1968 edition of Balanchine's (& Mason's) Stories of the Great Ballets, then quietly disappeared from the 1977 update.

[pherank]

Quiggin, on 21 January 2013 - 10:11 PM, said:

Illuminations seems to have been very successful and was regularly performed for over ten years. Anatole Chujoy wrote that it was one of the works that “justified the existence of New York City Ballet.” It was included in the 1968 edition of Balanchine's (& Mason's) Stories of the Great Ballets, then quietly disappeared from the 1977 update.

Having 'grown up' on Rimbaud and Baudelaire poems, I'm definitely interested in seeing Illuminations. The question is, can any present day company do the work justice? It sounds to me like there's been a creative gap of 20 to 30 years with almost no performances (except by the Joffrey). Kind of hard to imagine anyone picking up the thread with the same level of creative energy, and all details in place.

[Quiggin]

pherank, on 21 January 2013 - 10:34 PM, said:

Having 'grown up' on Rimbaud and Baudelaire poems, I'm definitely interested in seeing Illuminations. The question is, can any present day company do the work justice? It sounds to me like there's been a creative gap of 20 to 30 years with almost no performances (except by the Joffrey). Kind of hard to imagine anyone picking up the thread with the same level of creative energy, and all details in place.

Denby says of Illuminations – and of Picnic at Tintagel –

Quote

Each has sound workmanship and each has first-rate passages. I find the subject matter of each too magnificent to suit their official style scores, to suit either Ashton's own wonderfully intimate and ironic poetic eye. The more trivial the subject, the deeper and more beautiful is Ashton's poetic view of it.

What company could capture that tone or necessary clarity today? Could the Royal? Miami? The Dutch National Ballet? There's a characterization that Arlene Croce makes, and Irene Oppenheim quotes – perhaps it's a clue – about a particular skill of Ashton's: the equivalent of "a master draftsman whose pen never leaves the paper."

*

The Rimbaud line that is the basis of the ballet: "J'ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage / I alone hold the key to this savage parade."

[pherank]

Quiggin, on 21 January 2013 - 11:11 PM, said:

The Rimbaud line that is the basis of the ballet: "J'ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage / I alone hold the key to this savage parade."

And a great line it is.  ;)
The ballet's visuals do fit well with that evocative statement.