271 replies to this topic

[Jayne]

Helene, on 13 May 2013 - 05:05 PM, said:

Fateev certainly didn't get the idea of a bone-thin ballerina from PNB in 1999.  Patricia Barker had been Kent Stowell's muse and first cast for quite a while by then, and she had well-defined muscles and wasn't a waif by any means.  Carrie Imler was on the rise, and neither she nor Lisa Apple, Julie Tobi!sson nor even Kaori Nakamura are the uber thin, all~legs types.  Linette Hitchen and Louise Nadeau were probably closest in type to a Somova or Skorik, but they were never as prominently cast.

I'm not implying that he learned this aesthetic while at PNB - I think he is trying to match Balanchine's ideal of the bone-thin girl that became normative in the 1960's.  Balanchine works have received more favorable reviews at Mariinsky after Fateyev returned from a year at PNB.  So he must have learned something.

I have no idea what he thought of rising Carrie Imler, but she definitely looks more like an old school Kirov ballerina than Skorik's modern match stick look.

[cubanmiamiboy]

canbelto, on 13 May 2013 - 08:11 AM, said:

Regarding aesthetics, I remember watching a video where Natalia Makarova was coaching Uliana Lopatkina in the White Swan pdd. At one point Lopatkina unhurled her legs in a rather stretched attitude, and Makarova asked her why she was doing that, when the choreography calls for an arabesque. Lopatkina got rather defensive and said, "Aesthetics." Makarova asked her to try the other approach and Lopatkina got even more defensive and said "I don't LIKE it!!!!" My impression is that at the Mariinsky, aesthetics (in particular, a long, stretched look) is more important than ever.

How funny...canbelto.  You reminded me a conversation that I had maaaaaany years ago with a friend of mine, a ballet lover.  I was still living in Cuba, and my mother, who was here, had send me a video of a Russian SL.  We watched the VHS at my place, and at one point my friend commented "Oh, look...just like all the Russian ballerinas, doing attitudes instead of arabesques".  Wow...and that was a zillion years ago...