4 replies to this topic

[rg]

scans of
a] dress rehearsal of COPPELIA pas de deux w/ the Mikhail Baryshnikov and Alla Sizova (with a caption, curiously and presumptuously referring to Baryshnikov by his first name, tho' at least not as presumptuously as many later mentions, casually referring to him as Misha), from 1970, the year of Baryshnikov's debut performances in London's Royal Festival Hall, which marked my first views of the Kirov Ballet;
b] a studio shot of Rudolf Nureyev costumed and posed for LES SLYPHIDES, and which, one imagines, the stellar dancer still approved of in '81 when this newspaper print re-used the '74 photo.

Attached Files

•  AS&MBkbCopp70WM.jpg   258.68K   109 downloads
•  AS&MBkb70bk.JPG   57.27K   109 downloads
•  RNlSstudioBk.JPG   74.11K   92 downloads
•  RNlSstudioWM.jpg   126.43K   78 downloads

[California]

rg, on 22 December 2012 - 10:15 AM, said:

scans of
a] dress rehearsal of COPPELIA pas de deux w/ the Mikhail Baryshnikov and Alla Sizova (with a caption, curiously and presumptuously referring to Baryshnikov by his first name, tho' at least not as presumptuously as many later mentions, casually referring to him as Misha), from 1970, the year of Baryshnikov's debut performances in London's Royal Festival Hall, which marked my first views of the Kirov Ballet;

Some interesting little puzzles with that caption for a London engagement: it uses the American style for dates, not the European (which would have been 23 July 1970 and 5 September). But if an American wrote this, how do you explain the grammatical mistake: "The . . . Ballet have arrived. . ."? It's also interesting to see the spelling of Barishnikov with an "i" instead of "y" -- that spelling appeared a lot in the 1970s, but somebody settled on the "y" at some point. Although he did not learn English until after the defection, he says he learned French in school, so he was presumably familiar with the Latin alphabet and perhaps made that decision himself.

[rg]

interesting observations about wording.
it's usual, British style-English to use the plural verb with the collective noun, as in, in England, the parlance "the corps de ballet were in X form" as opposed to American: the corps de ballet was in X form.
maybe, and this is but a wild guess, when British style uses the ordinal number for a day, it may come after the month? while the cardinal comes before? as in July 23rd vs 23 July. tho' i suppose looking at this i believe i've seen "23rd July" as well.
perhaps the photo distributor was back and forth with serving American print outlets and thus caught some Yankee usage in the process?
my '70 programs and casting inserts are not handy just now, but if mem. serves, yes, Baryshnikov was spelt Barishinokov consistently then.

[Hamorah]

The British form of writing the date in the order of day, month, year only applies when writing it thus - 23.7.70. I think the more common usage would be to write July 23rd rather than 23rd July, although as rg notes probably both are acceptable. What a wonderful archive posting - thank you. It's interesting to see how bulky Baryshnikov's thighs were when he first came to England. They fined down later on in his career. Different training I suppose......

[Mme. Hermine]

now here's an obscure reference too, for some reason when i saw the photo of mb. with sizova it reminded me of a photo that had been used in white nights as showing him with his 'partner' helen mirren, with,i think,her face somehow plastered on it?  i don't have the film anywhere,anybody else remember this?