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corps dancers we love as if they were stars,, veronique d


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is the first section of a fascinating, unsentimental, and deeply moving quasi-documentary "spectacle" made out of this topic by Jerome Bel featuring the POB dancer Veronique Doisneau; it's too late to make some such thing for Renee Estopinal, but Doisneau's case surely is representative of her class.

"I never became a star. I was not talented enough and was too fragile physically. The ballets I loved most to dance are those of Marius Petipa, George Balanchine, Rudolph Nureyev, and Jerome Robbins. Those I did not like to interpret were by Maurice Bejart and Roland Petit."

A girl after my heart.

Wonder what you all will think.

Sorry if this has been posted before -- It's news to me, and I wanted to share it.

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On the original "Corps Dancers we love ... " thread, Lovebird singles out Ms. Doisneau, here. Otherwise, there are scattered mentions of the film/ballet scattered over BalletTalk, but no real discussion. I just watched the segment you link and expect to get to the rest in the next few days. Has anyone else seen the whole thing?

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I just watched the segment you link and expect to get to the rest in the next few days. Has anyone else seen the whole thing?

I saw it on stage at the Paris Opera some years ago.

That was rather interesting, and quite moving (it was just before she retired), but I found it a bit too long, sometimes too static, and not very well suited to the large stage of the Paris Opera.

I wish I could have seen Ms Doisneau in more substantial roles, earlier in her career (for example, she was chosen by Jerome Robbins for the role of the "girl in blue" for the POB premiere of "Dances at a gathering" in 1991- no small honor, considering that most of the other roles were premiered by étoiles or premiers danseurs).

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From a thread about boring ballets

Sorry, but I am going to disagree strongly here with what seems a universal opinion on BT. I like this piece on so many levels: formal, because it makes us pay attention to parts of the structure of a dance that occur while Le Grand Star is performing (this kind of taking apart is something music has done for years, btw); emotional, b/c it makes us consider the life of a corps dancer--who in the French system is fixed in status. I think we have more than enough opportunities to watch soloists do their thing in ways that raise our pulse; it's poignant and revealing to have a corps dancer's role--and life--explicated in a way that makes us think.

Hear, hear!

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