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Remembering Patricia McBride in performance


bart

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"Liebeslieder Walzer" is performed in the duo piano version. Conductor Robert Irving was one of the pianists in the original season. I'm not sure how long he continued.

On another topic, Patricia McBride is interviewed briefly in the new Verdy DVD. But she is also filmed sitting quietly next to Bonnefoux as he is interviewed, and she looks beautiful.

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This may have been in '72, but as I recall (and unfortunately I wasn't there) the Stravinsky Festival was wall-to-wall Stravinsky. No fauns -- or even Swans.

The Stravinsky Festival was indeed wall-to-wall Stravinsky, but there was a faun involved -- not Debussy's but a Stravinsky

song suite for mezzo-soprano and orchestra called The Faun and the Shepherdess. Long time fans of the New York City Opera will remember the great mezzo Frances Bible, who performed it. Thanks to the wonderful little book "The Stravinsky Festival of the New York City Ballet. by Nancy Goldner, I can report that it was done on the third evening of the Festival, June 21, 1972. I may have been there but doubt I would have remembered it without this indispensable book.

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I'm a little surprised that nobody else has mentioned this particular role, so I will. As it has been more than twenty years (yikes!), my memory may well be faulty so please everyone feel free to correct!

The role I remember Patricia McBride dancing in almost as vividly as Tchaikovsky PDD is her role as the Pearly Queen. Obviously it's not her greatest role, but she so conveyed a sense of "isn't this great fun to dance" to the audience that I can still visualize it well today. Partially that was the result of her wonderful interaction with and warmth toward whoever her partner was that night (so well described by others above) but partially it was her great big smile, which on others might appear rather un-ballerina-like but on her never did. I used to sit toward the front of the orchestra and remember marveling at how heavy that costume must have been because you could hear it clacking whenever she turned sharply. She never - at least the nights I was there - seemed the least affected or slowed down by it, much less thrown off by the weight of it. It was perhaps that sense of centeredness that, as much as her joy in dancing, I remember best.

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The role I remember Patricia McBride dancing in almost as vividly as Tchaikovsky PDD is her role as the Pearly Queen.

Thanks for noting that, Victoria. I was fortunate to see her dance that role once in 1979, with Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, whom I guess she had by then married. As you said, she was warm and vivacious -- and unforgettable.

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Those who didn't get a chance to see the Costermonger pas de deux onstage with McBride and Cook (as Pearly Queen and King) might watch out for it in a video archive, as it was broadcast in a PBS program called "Gala of Stars 1983" in March of that year.

I don't know -- I doubt, actually, that it's the role she'd most like to be remembered for, but she did always seem genuinely to enjoy the fun of it, not least when the donkey which pulled the cart with them (and two little girls) in it out on the apron ad libbed.

One evening this only consisted in taking the cart off into the (audience) left wing ahead of cue, leaving the dancers to run off waving to us, but another time -- well, McBride improvised some large melodrama expressing distress and disgust for a few moments, completely in character, until Peter Martins, already suited up in his bell-bottom whites for Royal Navy to follow, emerged from the right wing with a broom and dustpan to clean up the mess while we howled and roared and clapped. What had "our" company got itself into this time? But they showed themselves the equal of anything.

(Remembering this reminds me how Croce had concluded her review of Union jack, unusually, a long precis, with the words, "Union Jack is like that -- grand, foolish, and full of beans." An understatement on these occasions.)

But Rubies and Scotch were among the "big" roles that I remember her in most fondly. Just these three roles mark an enormous range, and she made them complete.

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I think it wasn't responsible, even if it was possible, to think about NYCB without reference to Farrell, while she was there. It's not exactly that Farrell set the standard, but if anything, she happened to exemplify Balanchine's... approach. (I was going to say his philosophy.)

You could say that Balanchine chose Farrell to set that standard and exemplify his approach. Which is not to take anything from McBride, but she didn't hold that kind of symbolic role in the company or the Balanchine repertory, as important as she was to both.

McBride was Edward Gorey's favorite ballerina.

I hope the question isn't impertinent, but do you know this from having spoken with Gorey, or do you have it from a member of his circle of devotees who sat with him during intermissions, or---? He *was* devoted to McBride, I'm sure, but in interviews gives the impression of being no less devoted to Allegra Kent. He also mentions Diana Adams, on occasion, and---less frequently---Jillana, Helgi Tomasson, and Maria Calegari. In any event, I only know this from interviews with McBride, Jillana, Villella, Peter Anastos, and others, and from burrowing deep into his interviews. Curious to know if he or someone told McBride was his favorite.

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Not impertinent in the least. It's entirely secondhand information and from print. It's been so long I can't quite recall, but I either came across the information in an obituary, or possibly Ballet Review, or both. I am certain I read it at least once.

I can't speak for our friend rg but I believe he has written on this board that Diana Adams was a very great favorite of Gorey's, as much as McBride if not more, which assertion should be searchable using our engine. The relative position of both ladies in Gorey's hierarchy of ballerinas would be interesting to know. When I'm not near the girl I love, I love the girl I'm near, etc. :) Looking forward to your book.

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Thanks for jogging my memory regarding the RG quote, which does indeed appear on this site and certainly has an authoritative ring to it. (There's no arguing with firsthand knowledge of Gorey, acquired over 25---was it?---years of friendship!) Interestingly, while I gather from RG and published sources that Gorey esteemed Adams and McBride highly (highest?), he seems to have had something like an actual friendship with Kent. To be sure, he refers to her almost as frequently (if memory serves---and it may not!) in his interviews. Having just spent a delightful hour or so on the phone with McBride, I *can* say with some authority that she knew Gorey only as a worshipper from afar, although his fur-coated, tennis-shoed presence at performances and rehearsals was unmissable, if there is such a word. One thing that *is* certain is Gorey's status as conscientious objector to the cult of Suzanne Farrell. He was famously not a fan! (In the Gorey interview collection, _Ascending Peculiarity_, he does admit to having given her a chance, initially, but says she succumbed to "mannerisms.")

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I was thrilled to read that Robbins actually was inspired to begin imagining Dances by observing McBride and Villella working together, intimately and with great concentration, in a studio.

I think Bart is referring to Robbins seeing Villella and (I'm not sure it was McBride) in the studio inspiring "Afternoon of a Faun."

I also remember McBride dancing (I saw her from 1979 through her retirement), and she was always, aside from technically spot on, emotionally honest, warm, caring, and perfectly musical. My favorite role of hers was late in her career, the last pas de deux with Bart Cook in "Liebeslieder Waltzer."

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dirac's memory is correct. :flowers: In Arlene Croce's Gorey interview entitled The City Ballet Fan Extraordinaire, published in the NY Times in 1973, Croce quotes him as saying that

 

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currently, Patty McBride is surely the greatest dancer in the world. Of course my favorite dancer of all time is Diana Adams; she was miraculous. She was crystal clear, absolutely without mannerisms, and she had one of the most beautiful bodies I ever saw in a ballet dancer--flawless proportions, those ravishing legs. Technically, well, she could make anything look effortless, like the Siren in Prodigal Son. And the Second Movement in Symphony in C is consecrated to her as far as I'm concerned--the way she could make it one long, seamless legato line.

 

He goes on to mention "the single greatest performance I ever saw:" Adam rehearsing Swan Lake:

 

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She had no make-up on and a ratty old whatever dancers rehearse in, and she was chewing gum, and she walked through half of it, but it suddenly had all the qualities . . . She was the kind of person who could extend herself on stage: her dancing made everyone else's look great.

 

Writing that after seeing almost every performance for 17 seasons, he can visualize the entire repertory, Croce quotes him as saying

 

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I can see everyone doing everything now. I have now reached the point where I can see Patty McBride doing every ballet, even those she hasn't danced.

 

Also, in a 1984 Boston Globe piece entitled The Perfect Penman, Richard Dyer mentions Gorey

 

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praising his favorite ballerinas, who include Allegra Kent, Patricia McBride, Maria Calegari, and especially Diana Adams. to whom he dedicated The Gilded Bat.

 

Both articles are found in Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey.

 

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13 minutes ago, kfw said:

He goes on to mention "the single greatest performance I ever saw:" Adam rehearsing Swan Lake:

 

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She had no make-up on and a ratty old whatever dancers rehearse in, and she was chewing gum, and she walked through half of it, but it suddenly had all the qualities . . . She was the kind of person who could extend herself on stage: her dancing made everyone else's look great.

 

This reminds me of a clip that George Jellinek once played on his program, "The Vocal Scene":  Maria Callas, in street clothes, was at a rehearsal of "La Sonnambula." The was a brief period of marking before she broke into a gorgeous, full-voiced interpretation of the sleepwalking aria.  The recording wasn't commercial, and you could hear bumping and moving and the conductor kvelling audibly about her performance.  One of the most breathtaking things I've ever heard.

 

Dancers routinely describe Balanchine demonstrating in street clothes and street shoes as the most beautiful dancing they've ever seen, and McBride describes Balanchine demonstrating in this podcast.  On film, for me, one of the most beautiful was in one of Dominique Delouche's documentaries, "Comme les oiseaux," in which Vladimir Vasiliev coached and partnered Monique Lourdieres in the Act II pas de deux in street clothes and shoes.

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3 hours ago, kfw said:

dirac's memory is correct. :flowers: In Arlene Croce's Gorey interview entitled The City Ballet Fan Extraordinaire, published in the NY Times in 1973, Croce quotes him as saying that

 

 

He goes on to mention "the single greatest performance I ever saw:" Adam rehearsing Swan Lake:

 

 

Writing that after seeing almost every performance for 17 seasons, he can visualize the entire repertory, Croce quotes him as saying

 

 

Also, in a 1984 Boston Globe piece entitled The Perfect Penman, Richard Dyer mentions Gorey

 

 

Both articles are found in Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey.

 

 

Many thanks for the confirmation and the quotes, kfw. :)

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1 hour ago, dirac said:

I had the exact same thought, or fear, sandik. I have taken the liberty of editing the title to read "Remembering Patricia McBride in performance." If bart's out there lurking, I hope he won't mind. :)

 

Thanks -- it's been a fraught time lately.  Betty White had a birthday just recently, and the note I saw about it read "Betty White -- 2016 survivor."

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