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Does that stuff of 32 fouettes really exixt???


roger

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Many have atributed Odile the performing of 32 fouettes, I have studied that the music is kind of composed so as to perform only 30 fouettes at muscial tempo, with each musical space, and close the coda turns with 2 en dehors turns only, not many ballerinas do this even, beacsue, if they do not failed to try to perform the continuos 32 fouettes just doing 31 or 30, losing one or two during the subsequent turns in musical tempo, they use a double turns in the middle of the coda, and so the music do not serves the 32, not even the 30, you see, To perform 32 fouettes in odiles coda, the bbalerina cannot use doubles turns, and has to kind of go faster withouht jarring with the music (to avoid losing beauty in tempo-turn) and take as her a small space of musical tempo in each fouette, to gain such space of musical tempo to peform two more fuettes and 30+2 equals 32, beacause the musical tempo has 30 musical spaces, SO you never see that 32-fouette stuff, just try to find videos to chek it up, or contact me to rogelio@flex.uh.cu to comment more about or to talk more about real technique and virtuosness in ballet, mainly coda turns, real real, not circus performace, but nice and beautiful virtuos steps, mainly turns, performed with real technique and pure beauty., as tamara rojos coda in le corsair on july 15 2010, during Royal ballet perfomrance in Cuba, where she uses turns a la second and ended with four en dehor turn, follwing the music in each turn-fouette.

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SO you never see that 32-fouette stuff, just try to find videos to chek it up,

To answer your basic question (hard to read your run-on sentence post without any paragraph breaks or capitalization and all the typos!), one doesn't have to look any further than Nina Ananiashvili to find 32 simple fouettés:

It starts immediately, so don't forget to count the very first one that she is doing as the clip begins!

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SO you never see that 32-fouette stuff, just try to find videos to chek it up,

To answer your basic question (hard to read your run-on sentence post without any paragraph breaks or capitalization and all the typos!), one doesn't have to look any further than Nina Ananiashvili to find 32 simple fouéttes:

It starts immediately, so don't forget to count the very first one that she is doing as the clip begins!

Good example Marga, Nina was a recent ballerina that concentrated on very fast, showy single fouettes. she rarely added pirouettes but restricted her virtuosity to not using her arms in the earlier part of the sequence to increase momentum (she would typically hold her tutu edges with both hands for the first 8-16 turns. With her great speed and clean form, she made a great impact just doing the single turns.

This example is the exact opposite but I came across it this morning, it was on the side bar of Nina's youtube clip. KAtherine Healy is sort of that tantalizing "what if", namely what if she had gone on to a conventional ballet career.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANo-uE8wtdI&feature=related

Here she does a minimum of fouettes, sort of an extreme example of what Roger is describing. At most she does 22 actual fouettes but fills out the sequence with about a half dozen pirouettes with amazing multiple rotations. I'm not good at counting revoutions but did she do 6 at one point???????

I'm going :off topic: but when I remember Healy, it's this clip, on the ice rather than in pointe shoes. Her sense of movement here just takes my breath away each time I look at it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooM0ow-7n1g

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I'm not good at counting revoutions but did she do 6 at one point???????

I watched that yesterday, too. Yes, it is indeed 6. This is not a good example of Healy's virtuosity. It's one clip I'm sure she would like to see taken off youtube. She actually was a great dancer, too, in addition to her figure skating. What a talent!

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I can only hope that I could do as well as Roger did if I wrote such a post in a language that was NOT my native tongue.

Sorry, but paragraph breaks, sentences, and capitalization exist in Spanish, too!

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Sorry, I think I entered a site where people are not so sensitive as I believed them. I thought I would be finding nice people here, but now I can see someone very "cultured" trying to correct my punctuation marks. Just kidding! I could certainly have done it better, just that I have no much time to surf. On the other side, I have never found an Odile-32-fouette video. Actually, I can not see videos on line. Someone to check whether each of those 32 fouettes has the working leg a la seconde when the supporting leg is completely on the floor with the slightest of en dehors. Besides, are they following the music without jarring with it in any time of the sequence? Good luck!

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I found Roger's musical detail in relation to the number of fouettes absolutely fascinating.

I have never tried to count the number of fouettes as I prefer to take in the overall performance rather than just the technical wizzardry and anyway I get so carried away I am sure I would lose count.

Off topic but on following the youtube links for Katherine Healey I came across lots of clips of Sir Frederick Ashton's R&J which took me down a very happy memory lane. Thanks

Edited to change one sentence to hopefully make more sense!

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I presume it can be more than 32 when some ballerinas do doubles and triples in place of a single (how else would the music work)? Last year at PNB, I had the pleasure of watching the fabulous Carrie Imler do some 6-8 doubles, and if I remember right, a triple at the end. I don't attempt to count during a performance, but I'd love to do so if I got the chance to view the tape of that performance.

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In the early 90s, ENB used to split into two parts to tour to smaller theatres. I saw Lyudmila Semenyaka in Crewe flashing out the fouettes so fast that the accompanying pianist could not keep up with her! It was fabulous to watch - and in Crewe.

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say 32 pirouettes for perhaps 24 fouettes

Yes, I could see that conclusion, however, what I'm confused about is how doing doubles and triples work with the music. It seems obvious to me (but perhaps I'm wrong) that a double takes less time than 2 singles, and a triple even less time than 3 singles. But there is a consideration working against that too since clearly a double takes longer than a single.

So something has to "give". I don't know the answer, but I've always assumed that when a ballerina does a double instead of a single that counts as 1 fouette (as was pointed out it's 32 fouettes, not 32 pirouettes). Since the double must take slightly longer, I've assumed that the conductor carefully watches the coordination btwn the dancer and the orchestra, and when doubles or triples occur the conductor slows the tempo ever so slightly to keep the next fouette in sync with the music. It's hard for me to believe that a double counts as 2 fouettes because then an even larger speed-up of the orchestra would then be necessary in order for the ballerina and the music to stay in sync and to end at the same time.

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Very interesting!

It would seem that in a "typical" production the orchestra simply plays what it plays and the ballerina does as she likes. I presume the original music was written to somehow sync or coordinate with exactly 32 single fouettes at some reasonable pace, but that in practice the ballerina has the latitude to do whatever she likes within that time period. She knows when the music will end, and she knows that 32 single fouettes "fit" that music, but she can (with practice) divide that time period up in other ways......including this example of 27 fouettes with 37 turns. (For one, I'm glad these artists "individualize" this famous moment in ballet and make it their own.)

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I think typically the orchestra just does its thing and Odile does her thing. As long as the tempo stays the same, the dancer should know from rehearsal what she can fit in. (I did once see a performance where the orchestra's tempo increased during the can-can bars -- the result was not good.)

Also, I'm not sure how the 32 fouettes fit in with the history of Swan Lake. (I'm going to go look at the Swan Lake history thread to see if this has already been discussed.) The Black Swan pas music typically used today is not what Tschaikovsky originally composed for the ballet. 32 fouettes was a trick done by Pierina Legani. I assume the other ladies who danced Odile weren't doing 32 fouettes (or maybe they were?) It wasn't until the '90s, I think, that doing the fouettes became standard. In the recordings of Pliesetskaya she does pique turns and chaines, for example, and some dancers did 16 and then piques or chaines.

Also, to me the fouette music in SL is not really suited to fouettes (in the way the fouette music of Don Quixote is, for example). The music changes half way through -- a lot of dancers use that point to switch from doubles/triples to singles -- but I find it odd to have the music change on the same step like that.

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Janet, now you've really got me thinking! I've never seen this sequence from Swan Lake where the ballerina failed to complete the steps. Has anyone seen that, and what do the dancers and the orchestra do in that case?

cinnamonswirl, excellent point I had not considered. The music was written before the 32 fouettes became the "thing to do". So obviously my presumption that the music fits the 32 fouettes is incorrect. If in your research you discover, in big picture terms, what choreography was set originally to that passage, I'd be interested to know.

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Janet, now you've really got me thinking! I've never seen this sequence from Swan Lake where the ballerina failed to complete the steps. Has anyone seen that, and what do the dancers and the orchestra do in that case?

I did. It was disaster. Maria kowrowski got *maybe* halfway through, going more and more off-center the whole time. then she just fell out of them.

She tried to improvise. Went into an arabesque. But was so discombobulated it was impossible to go on. So she walked to the side of the stage and just stood there while the orchestra played on...

Really one of the most painful moments at the ballet I have ever sat through.

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Mimi Paul had a situation similar to the one described above when she danced Odette/Odile at ABT soon after leaving NYCB.

if mem. serves she got through about half her intended number and stood stock still, as if frozen in headlights.

as Balanchine was wont to say at opportune moments: Better don't do.

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