Ed Sullivan Presents Ballet Legends

[miliosr]

I didn't see a topic about this:

http://www.sofaentertainment.com/sullivan-...ends-p-185.html

[Mme. Hermine]

how interesting!

i wonder if the group from the joffrey ballet in 1966 doing some of viva vivaldi included bobby blankshine?

[Mme. Hermine]

woo hoo! it did!

as well as...

[Jack Reed]

Holy cow! You can see the dancing! Easily! Anybody know who the television director was? I think they deserve some credit. Thanks for posting this, miliosr and Mme. Hermine.

Oh. For those of us who don't know the old Joffrey company so well, is Blankshine the brown-haired boy? "Woo hoo" is right!

[Amy Reusch]

The brown haired boy who can float!

And what was going on with his spotting in the chaînés near at the end? I could swear he was suddenly spotting over his shoulder...?

Makarova didn't look much like herself there... surprising...

[bart]

The Spanish dancer: Luis Fuentes?

It's good to see a bit of Viva Vivaldi again. Not to mention Ted Kivitt. Both bring back memories.

Re: Makarova's unfamiliar "look." Was this right after her defection?

[Mme. Hermine]

i think they got the date wrong, she defected in the fall of 1970, didn't she? but tv.com has this listing for November 1970, so it may have been right after she defected:

http://www.tv.com/november-15-1970-dick-gr...results;title;8

Looks like luis fuentes to me in that Viva Vivaldi clip

bobby was absolutely wonderful and what a treat to get to see him so young!

[Mel Johnson]

Yes, Luis and Bobby "ruled" the last movement of Vivaldi in those days.

[bart]

Jack raised the issue of the quality of the filming.

Holy cow! You can see the dancing!

I was surprised at how clear it was and how little obrusion there is from the hyperkinetic camera work we often see today.

A question about the look -- The bodies seem heavier, shorter, more solid than I recall those dancers in life. The black legs of the men in Viva Vivaldi look like oak trunks. Makarova has none of the elongated slenderness I recall from her US career. Kivitt, a well built guy on stage, looks like a linebacker in the tv studio.

Was there something about tv cameras and/or studio llighting in those days that created such an effect?

[Mme. Hermine]

Actually the photography of the men in the Viva Vivaldi segment seemed pretty true to life to me.

Makarova was more substantial-appearing in Russia than after she defected, as I remember.

Mel, any idea who the rest of the Joffrey dancers are?

[lmspear]

I didn't see a topic about this:

http://www.sofaentertainment.com/sullivan-...ends-p-185.html

When I saw this post the first thing that ran through my head was: "Please, please, please, let there be one of Villella's appearances be available at last." Nothing was listed in the information for the dvd. It feels like history is being erased (or at least a favorite part of my childhood). :-(

[miliosr]

A question about the look -- The bodies seem heavier, shorter, more solid than I recall those dancers in life. Kivitt, a well built guy on stage, looks like a linebacker in the tv studio.

Was there something about tv cameras and/or studio lighting in those days that created such an effect?

Kivitt looks much "blockier" in the Ed Sullivan clip than he does in the ABT Giselle film from the late-60s or the PBS ABT special from a few years later. So, the filming style may be part of it.

I do wonder, though, if our expectations of what a male ballet dancer "should" look like have changed over time. I wonder if someone like Kivitt, who was definitely built like a football player, would advance in today's climate. He would probably have to go to the Bolshoi or Paul Taylor's company!

[Mel Johnson]

Mel, any idea who the rest of the Joffrey dancers are?

It's kind of tough, given the small screen, but I think I could pick out Haynes Owens among the men, and Marjorie Mussman among the women.

[Helene]

I do wonder, though, if our expectations of what a male ballet dancer "should" look like have changed over time. I wonder if someone like Kivitt, who was definitely built like a football player, would advance in today's climate. He would probably have to go to the Bolshoi or Paul Taylor's company!

He could join PNB, too.

[Jack Reed]

Regarding the absence of video of any of Villella's appearances, would it help you to bear your pain, lmspear, to know a little of the reason? When Villella was here in Chicago with MCB in October, he spoke a couple of times and took questions after the last performance, down in the front of of the Auditorium Theatre, and somebody asked him what he thought about videos of his dancing. My notes are necessarily sketchy and impressionistic, but here is what I got:

Q: Videos of your dancing? E. V.: I've never thought about that, I live in the present... Like athletes, we constantly break records... I leave that to others. These guys [gesturing behind him, toward the curtained stage] is my achievement. I hope it's sufficient. [audience applause]

What I get out of this is that he's taken up with training his company to ever greater ability, just as he pushed himself, and maybe he thinks his dancing from years ago doesn't measure up to today's standards. I think his point of view is different from ours, it's a performer's point of view. He's just not interested. *sigh* (I've seen a few of those videos.)

Which brings me to

I was surprised at how clear it was and how little obrusion there is from the hyperkinetic camera work we often see today.

"hyperkinetic"! I love that! If bart is talking about today's "Dance in America" and "So You Think You Can Dance", he's talking about the directing work of Matthew Diamond, a former dancer I believe, so, a person who's gotta move, right?, and while that probably served him well in his performing career, when he works behind the cameras with the same point of view, it drives some of us dance-watchers nuts. I feel like I'm trying to see what's going on from a very unstable, moving platform, and it's hard.

A question about the look -- The bodies seem heavier, shorter, more solid than I recall those dancers in life. The black legs of the men in Viva Vivaldi look like oak trunks. Makarova has none of the elongated slenderness I recall from her US career. Kivitt, a well built guy on stage, looks like a linebacker in the tv studio.

Was there something about tv cameras and/or studio llighting in those days that created such an effect?

With regard to dancers' build over the years, in my experience, television can distort. I think the height and width of the picture and the "linearity" of it -- whether all parts of it are to the same scale -- are independently adjustable.

I used to adjust analogue televisions for this, using the big CBS "eye" trademark sometimes to try to get a round circle, especially when family members -- back in Ed Sullivan's days! -- complained that people looked short-legged and big-headed or the like. And today I happen to have next to the computer one of the "Choreography by Balanchine" DVD's where the cover image looks stretched horizontally. (I certainly saw Merrill Ashley and Dan Duell onstage enough to know what their proportions really were.)

On the other hand, comparing dancers within the same video, like the soloist boys in Viva Vivaldi, seems like it ought to be valid.

[kfw]

When I saw this post the first thing that ran through my head was: "Please, please, please, let there be one of Villella's appearances be available at last." Nothing was listed in the information for the dvd. It feels like history is being erased (or at least a favorite part of my childhood). :-(

lmspear, if it would bring back memories, you could look for the videotape "A Trip to Christmas: The Bell Telephone Hour," a 1961 broadcast featuring Jane Wyatt, The Lennon Sisters, John Raitt, Jane Morgan and, yes, Edward Villella and Violette Verdy! Naturally they dance a Nutcracker pas de deux.

[dirac]

I didn't see a topic about this:

http://www.sofaentertainment.com/sullivan-...ends-p-185.html

This is great, miliosr. Thanks so much for posting this.

[4mrdncr]

I do think the body aesthetic has changed regarding dancers' weights, which would affect our perception of what is pleasing or acceptable. However, though the shape of screens and pixels have changed with the digital age, the apparant extra weight of performers in the past is also due to the tv cameras then which required enormous amounts of light to function properly.

For example, I remember doing a 'reflective baselight" reading across a set once at 250+ footcandles, (it was much higher at the individual "incident" level readings). I think cameras now use about 25 footcandles. There was also a 'lovely' phenomena known as "bloom" if someone was wearing light-colored clothes, which gave everyone an extra halo/aura; white itself was banned, so camera tubes wouldn't get a "burn" which permanently destroyed the tube's 'pick-up' at the burn point. (Chrome on passing cars, snow, beaches, even bald heads, all were problems. Did I mention "Swan Lake"?!) High-contrast clothing also caused problems.

So hooray for progress, better cameras, lighting, and trained bodies both before and behind the camera.

Hope this wasn't too OT.

[carbro]

Isn't it also true, 4mrdncr, that the old tv technology projected light by a horizontal scanning of light/dark segments, which would have emphasized the horizontal, since the vertical was static? This would have remained in the tapes utilizing that technology.

But yes, the predominant body types have changed radically. Still photos make that clear.

[4mrdncr]

Isn't it also true, 4mrdncr, that the old tv technology projected light by a horizontal scanning of light/dark segments, which would have emphasized the horizontal, since the vertical was static? This would have remained in the tapes utilizing that technology.

Well sort of... (I am NOT a video engineer, but this is the basic idea of how old-style tv images were created by ancient cameras--and their even more ancient directors :-)

a) The light reflected by the subject into the camera was split by a prism (or was it a dichroic mirror?) into 3 component colors--red, blue, and green--which corresponded to the 3 pick-up tubes of the camera.

b) When the image was recreated on a television screen, the pixels--red,blue,green--which are arranged on a CRT into 525 lines in the US system. (Sorry, don't know how many pixels per line, but all 3 colors are present) are illuminated by an electronic beam that recreates the original light in the order it was received.

c) This beam scans horizontally across, first the odd numbered lines (illuminating the pixels in the original order) top to bottom. This creates a "field".

d) Then the beam stops and there is a "blanking" so the beam can return unseen to the top, where

e) It then scans the even lines creating a second "field". Two fields = one frame. Generally NTSC is 30 frames/second. PAL has 625 lines at 25fps.

f) Today, the number of "scanlines" still determines, to some extent, the quality of the image; more lines equals more info and/or a better image? (This difference in scanlines and frame rates between NTSC, PAL, SECAM was also due to the difference in the power systems used), but I think most other info is communicated thru the digital world of 1's and 0's, which aren't horizontal or vertical at all. (Tangentially, though, it's also all related to the interlace vs. progressive arguments of the digital world.)

APOLOGIES TO ALL for any technical inanities above, and being majorly OT.

[bart]

APOLOGIES TO ALL for any technical inanities above, and being majorly OT.

On the contrary, 4mrdncr, Speaking as one who is a passive, unthinking consumer of this technology, it's fascinating to learn about how it actually works. I appreciate your expertise. Many thanks.

[Jack Reed]

4mrdncr's explanation takes me back to when I was a kid and Mom gave her budding science whizz a book called Television Works Like This, possibly the 1948 edition listed on our sponsor's web site. (I think I remember the 1948 cover, but it's the 1953 edition that's shown; I do remember the authors' name began with "B".)

With bart I welcome 4mrdncr's post, and in fact I want to take it a step further: The biggest thing I got out of the Bendicks' book which seized my mind at the time was how you get a two-dimensional thing like a picture (which has height and width) to go through a one-dimensional thing like a wire (which carries a flow of electricity in a line, like a pipe carrying water), and the answer was, you scan it, as 4mrdncr describes, across it in* a line and then in* another line just below that one, and so on down the image from top to bottom, picking up the brightness and color of each point (or "pixel") along the way and sending that information along the wire, and then the same process happens when the one-dimensional stream of "data" or information is displayed at the end of the transmission, scanned back onto the screen of the picture tube, regardless how the picture information is transmitted or stored in between. How ingenious, I thought!

However I'd like to correct carbro's idea -- if I understand her post correctly -- that because horizontal scanning is used in television, there's inherent horizontal distortion of the image. I think that the electronic transmission of the data, or even the adjustment of the camera in the first place, just makes this distortion possible (versus the wholly optical system of cinema, essentially a sequence of still photos, where this distortion is unlikely). Video is not inherently accurate, in other words, and many adjustments have to be set properly, which takes time, and time is money, etc., so they get skimped sometimes. (Imagine splitting up the image in the camera 4mrdncr describes into three parts, each a different color, and eventually getting them back together again perfectly! That's very complicated.)

*maybe better if I'd said, "along a line"

Edited November 28, 2009 by Jack Reed

[4mrdncr]

But regarding FILM: What about '3-stripe Technicolor'? That too, took 3 (red, yellow, blue? Or is it yellow, cyan, magenta?) different colored versions of the same image and combined them to create "glorious Technicolor" so visible in "Wizard of Oz" and "Gone with the Wind"---and after the system was sold to China (in the 70's?), a lot of "glorious" color Chinese films to this day. (It's also why those old Hollywood films retained their original colors, while the newer ones with 'vegetable dyes' faded to pink and then needed much money/processing to restore to true color. At least digital saves us from that.)

[Jack Reed]

With regard to 4mrdncr, if I understand the technique described, there's still a sequence of monochrome images, in triplicate, one in each of three colors, so the proportions of the subject are preserved optically, in contrast to the electronic system of television, where the electrical "data" recording the picture can be manipulated more freely, including unintentionally, in other words, distorted.

With regard to Mme. Hermine's point about the date of the broadcast (Post #7), now that I've received my disc, I've heard Sullivan say in his introduction she had defected a few months before; and to SOFA Entertainment's credit, they give the date tv.com gives on the Youtube page (

) in the block of text to the right of the comments space, November 15, 1970. So the documentation for this disc is a little shaky, but so what? The best of the performances are solid! Well worth the price, I'd say. (Only excepting that this is a "blue disc", "burned" by a laser, and less likely to last as long, I think, as a pressed disc, like most commercial DVD's and CD's have been up until now.)

[Quiggin]

Yes this is fascinating.

I was really interested in all this quirky American early technology at one time and and even thought of writing a musical on Technicolor called the Natalie Kalmus story (maybe better as a subplot for a Don Dellilo novel). Redheaded Natalie Kalmus, the estranged wife of the Technicolor inventor Herbert Kalmus (they lived in the same house but in different wings), was the Technicolor color consultant on all the films to make sure the colors used would meld with the quirky process.

Technicolor was filmed actually on two strips of black at white film, one of the strips was a bi-pack with a filter, then the three masters were dipped in pure dyes and printed on a very flammable nitrate, later safety acetate, base. (One smells like gunpowder as it decays, the other vinegar.)

Kodachrome, the beautiful film Ann Barzel used to film the Ballets Russes and other companies, was a somewhat similar process invented by two itinerant string quartet members, Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, working as freelancers at Eastman Kodak in some leftover basement space. It too uses black and white film which is dipped in very stable color dyes during processing.

Early TV programs were recorded as Kinoscopes, filmed directly off a live monitor, faithfully capturing all the fishbowl distortions of the early television display tubes. In part that's why everyone is so short and voluptuous and the movements variable in Pas de Dix with Andre Eglevsky and Maria Tallchief.

4mrdncr's descriptions of the problems of flare (and footcandles) are intriguing because I remember watching for those big black somewhat beautiful (and dangerous) flares of light. You see them in Kinoscopes of Cape Canaveral launchings and in the tragic events of Dallas 1963.

There seemed to be a change in monitor tubes -- less distortions -- as early videotape was developed to keep records of live shows so they could be repeated in the summer months. The early videotape process seemed to have a strange low contrast, powdery, mothwing-like quality to it.

It's interesting having to correct the choreography for the technology used. The technology of our own time probably is just as distorting -- probably worse -- but we don't see it yet.