Balanchine: Casting, Choreography, Employ

[Leigh Witchel]

I thought it might be a good idea to seperate the conversation on Balanchine, at least for the time being. I'm really interested because I know and love it best, but I think it's different enough from the 19th century repertory at minimum to muddle the issue.

I've got to run to work, but promise to add more later.

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Leigh Witchel - dae@panix.com

Personal Page and Dance Writing

Dance as Ever

[leibling]

Good- now maybe I will feel a little bit like I know what I am talking about. Can we start with Jewels? On another thread, I think Alexandra talked about classifying dancers by the roles they dance in Jewels. We may have to invent some category names.

Emeralds- this is romantic in nautre, as far as I can tell. Edward (Villella) says it is french romanticism, to be exact.

Rubies- american jazz. Plain and simple.

Diamonds- well, here in Miami, this is an example of the "grand, imperial russian manner and style"... I'm not sure if it is so straightforward as that. I think the Farrell role is considered to be a "muse"/goddess role, but maybe the ballet as a whole escapes my own classification abilities.

For some reason, when I think of the Verdy role in Emeralds, the word soubrette comes to mind. I'm sure that is way off- base- but I guess it could be a "classique" role. (Classique romantique !!!). The second variation- danseuse noble, maybe? Rubies is demi-caractere for the couple, and a jazzy danseuse noble ?? Could she belong to Alexandra's "black line" ? Diamonds, I just realized is probably danseuse noble... there are references to Swan Lake and Lilac Fairy (in the scherzo, she bourees side to side, while moving her arms across her body- somebody- Arlene Croce, I think- pointed that out as a direct reference to Lilac Fairy)- both previously defined as nobles.

This is only a simple attempt to define these- so I'm curious to hear everyone's opinions.

One more thing- I just thought of Apollo- the female variations- Calliope=c classique, Polyhymnia= demi-caratere, and Terpsichore= noble (of course)-she is also defined as a muse/goddess role.

[Alexandra]

leibling, I'd classify them exactly the same way you did. I'm just guessing, of course, but my guess is Emeralds, classique; Rubies, demicaractere; and Diamonds, noble. Or, maybe Diamonds is now neoclassical I wrote this somewhere else. The Lilac Fairy role changed in the 20th century, the mime part danseuse noble, the dancing part "neoclassical" -- tall, but long legs, not classically proportioned. Whether this is now an official "employ," I don't know, because I can't ask Noverre

It's interesting that in Nancy Reynolds "Repertory in Review," she mentions, I believe, that Balanchine originally had a Sapphires section, for Melissa Hayden and Arthur Mitchell. I don't know what employ Hayden was (noble?) but I think Mitchell was a demi (Pucks usually are demis).

[Leigh Witchel]

I think it's more complicated than that, Alexandra. Mitchell did Divertimento No. 15 lead and the Agon pas. Balanchine may have wanted a Puck who was a good deal taller than his Oberon. I think Balanchine had an "exotic" strain of casting (often color was involved, but it was more than that, I'd put Luders into it) and I think Mitchell was in that line.

Emeralds also has sub-genres within its genres. The pas de trois is given to an elegant shorter man and two women. Rubies has another Balanchine sub-genre in it "The Second Ballerina" - she's tall in Rubies or Brahms-Schoenberg 1st mvt (Pat Neary and Govrin originated) (and usually in Ballet Imperial too) and shorter in La Source and Walpurgisnacht Ballet. Often she's a contrast to the principal couple (tall if they're short, etc)

Hayden's classification is a conundrum to me, because she did the entire repertory. She did every movement of Symphony in C for instance. I really think her classification in Balanchine's mind was "used wherever needed." When he made roles on her, it's as difficult to classify - 2nd variation Divertimento No. 15, Agon 2nd pdt, the lead in Stars & Stripes, the Ricercata in Episodes, Titania in Midsummers, Princess of Persia in Figure in the Carpet, one of the Liebeslieder women (the one with the beautiful "swimming" pas de deux).

Apollo is nasty also because time and Balanchine's rethinkings are a factor. Danilova alternated the role originally with Alice Nikitina (Danilova was Balanchine's choice, Nikitina was an obligation) and Danilova's version was more aerial. And Danlova was not a noble. This is another role Farrell's presence changed when she got it, just as she changed Symphony in C. Why would all go gray trying to figure out how to classify the man's role. It depends on who you saw dance it!

And what to do about dancers like Marie-Jeanne? She originated the ballerina roles in both Concerto Barocco and Ballet Imperial. In both cases, it's almost a totally different ballet now.

I think Balanchine is going to be hell to decode, but I also think that the classifications we talk about interested him, even if he wasn't thinking deliberately about them, especially when they rubbed against each other. I think that's why Ib Andersen was cast with Farrell in Mozartiana - for the contrast of a classique man with a noble woman. I think the fact that Merrill Ashley danced like a classique but was built like a noble is what provoked Ballade, and also her casting in Emeralds.

Sorry to have been so desultory!

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Leigh Witchel - dae@panix.com

Personal Page and Dance Writing

Dance as Ever

[Alexandra]

I think leibling went through "Jewels" quite thoroughly. I was agreeing with her and mentioned only the principal roles.

Leigh, I think with Balanchine, it's not just that the classifications interested him, but that they were part of his background and education, and that he was either using them, or not using them, consciously (well, maybe subconsciously, but the point is, he understood them, in the same way a classically-trained painter knows all the rules of composition and color before he paints that black on black canvas, and that's why his black-on-black painting looks different than mine would).

It's also difficult to tell because we have no way of knowing when he was making do, experimenting, or saying, "Eureka! That's what I want to change it to now." There are stories of Balanchine (as any choreographer) becoming fascinated with a dancer and trying to use her, stretch her, and then finally saying, "Well, she's just not a good dancer."

From what I know of backstage in the Bournonville repertory casting -- and I think the general principles are the same in any well-run company -- there were times when someone was "miscast" to stretch, times when that was the only person who could possibly dance the role, whether by technique or temperament because everyone else was injured, and times when there was a particular individual who might be so interesting in a ballet that he or she was cast in it although it totally changed the role -- BUT it was usually "put back" to the more standard interpretation following. If Balanchine had lived longer, Kistler may well have redefined the roles that Farrell redefined.

Two very extreme Danish stories, in brief, both Hans Brenaa ones. He was infatuated with Mette Bodtcher because of her beauty, especially the line of her head and neck, and wanted to see her as the Sylph. She had no jump, she had a great deal of trouble with much of the choreography. He had to reset the whole ballet because the head/neck line he loved was the opposite profile from the traditional. (She got about three performances, and then life returned to normal.) In another instance, the two Franzes in Coppelia were injured and he had to find a third. There was a corps boy whom no one would think of as a Franz, but he could do the role and had a forceful personality, which the Danish version of Coppelia remains. However, he was not funny. So Brenaa changed the entire slant of Franz's character to make him a bit of a bully and the leader of the village boys. This dancer kept that interpretation, the others, when they came back to the role, were the silly, funny boy again.

Back to Balanchine, I think it's very difficult to speak about him definitively. He's been dead for nearly twenty years, and what is being danced now -- accurate or not -- is very far from his hand. It may be frozen, it may have deteriorated, but it doesn't have his imagination and knowledge to guide it. Also, I've always mistrusted the notion that the development of NYCB and the Balanchine repertory are a linear progression: that what he did in 1966 was "better" -- or more advanced, or what he really wanted -- than what he'd done in 1945. Was Farrell an infatuation or an epiphany? We can't know that.

[This message has been edited by alexandra (edited March 20, 2001).]

[leibling]

It is true- we cannot define Balanchine, the man, now. He used so many formulas and molds, only to redefine himself when someone new came along. We can try to define his ballets- at least they are set steps- and we will alwys find at least one case that will prove everything wrong.

Here is a question that may help- who are the dominating personalities that we remember from the Balanchine years ? Farrell (of course), McBride, Peter Martins, Violette Verdy, Melissa Hayden... do you think it would be interesring to try to make a timeline of sorts with the emergence of different dancers and their roles, and then who took over those roles and what they then created ? (they in the last phrase meaning the dancer inheriting a new role). Even as I type this, it seems that it would be a tremendous amount of work, but the patterns may be interesting. (If I were a student, I have a feeling that this could serve as my thesis!) A "family tree" of Balanchine dancers and roles.

[cargill]

Among Balanchine ballerinas, I think you have to include Tallchief and Diana Adams. He made such glorious works for them, and so diverse. Adams was Liebeslieder as well as so many more modern ones.

[Alexandra]

I think a "family tree" of dancers and roles would be fascinating. When I first became interested in ballet, I tried to figure out Balanchine ballets, and the then-current roster of dancers, by tracing roles back through Nancy Reynolds' "Repertory in Review." I remember being very confused by some of the "lines" I found, although they make more sense to me now. Bart Cook, for example, a rather light, very flexible dancer, was taking over nearly all of Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux's roles -- thicker body, very elegant. Bonnefoux could dance Apollo (only in Paris, I think, not in New York, although I may be wrong) but I can't imagine Cook in that role. But they shared many other roles. At the beginning, I think, Farrell took over a lot of Diana Adams' roles, and I think you could make a case that, although they're very different dancers (Farrell wilder, if you will), they're the same employ.

One of the biggest questions is "Apollo." Balanchine had D'Amboise and Villella, very different body types, at the same time, and, as many people have noted, the role seemed to change when Martins came. Not only did it become more classical, but more abstract. Is this part of late 20th-century streamlining, or because Martins was not a good actor and could not do the jazzy-baby steps convincingly? I have it from a NYCB dancer -- I hope I can trust posting this in a private forum -- that Martins told him, when they were watching videos of Apollos, that the Farrell/Martins version was something out of the line of Apollos and not to look at it for his own interpretation. As the dancer (not quoting Martins, I think) said, "Balanchine had those two beautiful bodies and wanted to use them."

leibling, it would make a great thesis -- but it would also make a great book. Something to think about when you get tired of dancing

[cargill]

When Peter Martins was being interviewed by Leslie Stahl a couple of years ago (for the Friends of NYCB, I think) he mentioned that Balanchine had always told him the Apollo was a demi-charactere role and slightly gave the impression, to me anyway, that Balanchine wasn't truly satisfied with his approach. Stahl didn't follow up on that like she should have, and there wasn't time for questions afterwards, so nothing else was said.

[Drew]

I find Alexandra's comments about classifications being part of Balanchine's "background and education," something that impacts his work even when he's not deliberately invoking it, to be useful for thinking about this. Otherwise, reading this thread, I have been a little skeptical about bringing traditional emploi to bear on his work. I'm partly won over, but only partly, because so much of Balanchine's vision seems to have been organized around his relations, as a choreographer, to particular dancers. The process suggests a very different idea about what a choreographer does, even what he "is" than more generically oriented conceptions. I know Balanchine described himself as craftsman/cook -- but that's obviously a bit of rhetoric and maybe even deliberately obfuscating...

I also started thinking about a relatively recent exhibit of Picasso portraits (at the Guggenheim??); it essentially defined Picasso's "periods" as a portrait painter through his relationships to/visions of different women in his life. The portraits did arguably have some relation to traditional "types" in the history of painting -- but the curators made a pretty persuasive case that the types were overdetermined by the more particular creative, and at times personal, relation that unfolded between artist and "subject." Ballerina roles are not just "portraits" but I think something similar occurs in Balanchine's work ... albeit in the context of formal problems specific to ballet. (Against my own argument, one might respond that in both cases -- Picasso and Balanchine -- the way they related to particular women was influenced by the way they "saw" their art, not the other way around.)

Certain Balanchine roles "descend" from nineteenth-century ballets. Leight Witchell mentioned Theme and Variations and Sleeping Beauty. But in the nineteenth century ballerina "type" is already a very complex affair in which the individual ballerina/star seems to be put her stamp on the genres to the point of redefining them (pun intended -- think Taglioni). And a great Aurora is not necessarily going to be able to dance a great performance of Theme and Variations -- and vice-versa. With the Bolshoi, Ananiashvili and Uvarov did, in my opinion, dance the second movement of Symphony in C, a descendant of Act II of Swan Lake, as if it WERE Act II of Swan Lake and the result -- not uninteresting to watch -- inadvertently exposed the gap between Balanchine and Ivanov...Ironically, it may be because Balanchine superimposed his own vision so thoroughly on the genres that his ballets allow so successfully of being transformed by different dancers of different types: Marie-Jeanne to Farrell...

For the above reasons, I think a family tree of dancers would, in a way, be the most appropriate way to try to figure out what is happening (or not) with Balanchine roles and "type." Ideally, it would include the dancers he first worked with, including the first ballerina-wife, Tamara Geva...and certainly include figures like Toumanova (Mozartiana, Cotillion, roles that point forward to LeClerc and Farrell) and even seeming exceptions like Losch who was not really a ballet dancer. (Perhaps there is a bit of the neo-romantic, Tchelitew designed ballets Balanchine did for her in something like the Elegy that opens Tch. Suite Number Three?)

One other aspect that would have to be added to the Balanchine mix -- "American" types! Heroines from movies and musical comedies. Didn't he tell Kirstein he liked the idea of coming to the country that gave the world great girls like Ginger Rogers? (Bit of a joke perhaps, but not entirely.) There may only be a handful of ballets in which this becomes explicit, but certainly it's implicit all over the place...Shades scene in Bayadere refracted through Ziegfield...

In trying to think of Balanchine ballets where more traditional types may be active -- I wondered about A Midsummer's Night Dream but quickly found myself confused. I'm confident describing the act III pas de deux as classique, Puck as demi-caractere, Bottom as character or even (with donkey's head) grotesque...But Oberon? short, fast, danced by Villela also seems demi-caractere? Yet with Boal certainly became Classique...If there were such a thing, Titania -- a tall role -- seems like a noble seen from a comic point of view? but perhaps her dancing and her fairy status renders her classique? In tone the lovers seem demi-caractere -- they almost fit with a straightforward eighteenth-century definition of demi-caracter...Hyppolita, though, would seem like another noble. Maybe it's only my ignorance that makes this seem so tricky...I actually thought of this ballet because I do think, whatever the traditional emploi, Balanchine does have a kind of "amazon" soloist that often returns in his ballets ...and in AMND -- and Coppelia -- we get her literally. (Less literally, the tall girl in Rubies...)

One other thought. Apollo was mentioned above as a demi-caractere role; I wonder if Orpheus could be considered a noble role...This ballet was revived, not too successfully, for Baryshnikov and then recast with Martins. I have been told by a someone I trust --I'll repeat for a private forum only-- that Balanchine later thanked Martins for his performance. I realize that without more detail, people may doubt whether to trust the anecdote so I'll just add that, in my own opinion, the rather elegant, weighty, and archetypal Martins performance, was considerably more effective than Baryshnikov's. Baryshnikov seemed to give the role a deliberate pathos that is far from "noble" and that, precisely, did NOT work. He "acted." He was ligher than Martins, too, in the quality of his movements throughout the ballet. The Orpheus story does fit the noble mould, since it involves a heroic-human quest that elevates the hero above ordinary humanity. I don't know who created this role (my ballet library and I are separated), but that would, of course, fill out the picture...

[This message has been edited by Drew (edited March 24, 2001).]

[Leigh Witchel]

Just to add to the confusion. . .

The original Titania was Melissa Hayden, who's quite short. It may have been meant for Diana Adams, though. Orpheus was done for Nicholas Magellanes - roles he also danced during that era were 1st movement Symphony in C and Sanguinic - but I think Orpheus has to fall outside this argument because Balanchine's working so much with a vocabulary that comes from German Expressionism, rather than a classical tradition.

There are several streams running together in the Balanchine repertory, classical ballet, expressionism and popular theater as well. I agree with Drew, I think when they flow into one another they muddy the water of the argument.

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Leigh Witchel - dae@panix.com

Personal Page and Dance Writing

Dance as Ever

[leibling]

Thanks , Alexandra, for the idea... maybe someday...

I have a question- who is "Losch" that Drew mentions in her post ?

[Leigh Witchel]

Tilly Losch was Edward James' wife and the star of Les Ballets 1933, which James financed. Balanchine did three ballets for her in the season, Errante, The Seven Deadly Sins and Beethoven Waltzes.

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Leigh Witchel - dae@panix.com

Personal Page and Dance Writing

Dance as Ever

[Mel Johnson]

I don't think Titania was originally aimed for Diana Adams, unless there was a whole other Oberon in mind. The casting already had a "short/tall mismatch" joke in it with Francisco Moncion as Duke Theseus partnering Gloria Govrin as Queen Hippolyta.

[leibling]

I've been thinking about Leigh's comment about the sub-genres of Emeralds. I had a long essay prepared all about Emeralds and its supposed motives, motifs, etc. but then it didn't seem to fit on this forum- not really referring to casting and employ. Anyway- I already digress- the pas de trois, as Leigh mentioned, provides additional genres to consider, and the best I can say is that the two women may "grow up" into other roles in this way... the hopping variation relates to the first ballerina role in Emeralds, and as I type this, my imagination sees her maturing also down the jazzy path to the McBride Rubies role. The second pas de trois variation - with the soft port de bras and swirling movements seems to point to the second ballerina in Emeralds, and once again, eventually stretching the imagination to include Diamonds pas de deux. This is not to say that the pas de trois women should be cast with the same women or types that I mentioned- only that at a glance, it looks like this is where "young" dancers would be heading as they grew up. It is because the pas de trois is usually cast with shorter people that I say young. The man, on the other hand- is already a mature role. He is the leader of the three, and could be the same type or person to be cast for Rubies. The other two men in Emeralds seem to do little more than attend the women they dance with- most notably with the man in the "walking" pas de deux. He is most like a ghost. The other male figure has more interaction with his partner- he is more alive. However, I cannot see a connection with the other men in Jewels from these two as I can with the pas de trois man/Rubies.

Somewhere, on some thread, someone mentioned that in classical pas de trois, the two women are meant to contrast with one another- this is exactly what they do here. And I thought that Balanchine was just being clever !

[Alexandra]

All interesting points, leibling. The idea of contrast is something I'll bet many choreographers today don't consider -- at least, not in this way. I hope eventually that on this forum we'll start trying to breakdown all the many subgenres -- I don't have names for them, but someone else may -- that are within the larger categories.

I hope you'll post your longer essay either here, or on the main site.

[Ari]

I'm bumping up this old topic in light of Perky's thread on Balanchine and Emploi.

[perky]

I LOVE reading this sort of stuff. Thanks for finding it and bringing it back