80 replies to this topic

[mbdance]

I would think so. I'm just saying that if a dancer consistently cannot do a step as difficult as that they shouldn't perform it on stage. However, that ususally happens during the end of a dancer's career. That's just my opinion.

[bart]

This isn't Odile.  Nor is it, to be honest,  Swan Lake.  It's not even a woman.      But for those who want to see a fast, powerful fouette sequence from Paquita, I suggest Olga Supphosova from the Ballet Trockadero de Montecarlo production, about 1 and a half minutes into this YouTube video:
http://www.lankou.co...h?v=URk7oCa69yY

It does make one feel that an attitude of feminine triumphalism ("I LOVE this power!") makes the fouettes work best.  Is that the case with Odile, too?  (It helps that Supphosova's partner is a dimwitted young man who makes much too much out of his  VERY long sequence of simple changements immediately following her triumph.)

[michaelbaker]

ralphsf, on Jul 1 2001, 10:22 PM, said:

Sorry, I don't buy that Plisetskaya couldn't do the 32 turns. Look at her in the Little Humpbacked Horse video, and you'll see that she tosses them off without so much as a drop of perspiration. Where do you get this idea she couldn't do them? I think this idea was spread in Makarova's book in the 70's. If anything, Makarova had a hard time doing them... she was a magnificent dancer but not the strongest technician. Correct me if I'm wrong but, as I understand it, the version of Swan Lake Plisetskaya danced was the version by Gorsky from the 1920's which didn't use the 32 fouettés and that this had nothing to do with Plisetskaya.

was reading through peoples' comments on Odile and her fouettes when I came  across someone's comments on Makarova. She came to guest with my company in Swan Lake and I consider her to be the definative Odette/Odile but I do concede that there were nights where she struggled with those damned fouettes. It didn't alter the fact though that she was one of the greatest ballerinas of her generation.

someone else asked what do ballerinas substitute fouettes with (apart from obvious pique turns). someone at the Royal Ballet (i think it was nadia nerina) reportedly did 32 entrechat six instead. she could do the fouettes effortlessly as well.

thanks for the great site

regards
Michael

[Mel Johnson]

Yes, it was Nadia.  She was one POWERFUL dancer, and she let the entrechats-sixes into the Black Swan coda as a commentary on Nureyev's interpolation of the same device into Giselle earlier that week.  I don't believe that she did it more than once.  That it is still remarked upon to this day is an indication of the effectiveness of her protest.  There's nothing quite like peer group pressure.

[Sacto1654]

If I remember correctly, the 32 fouettes in the "Black Swan pas de deux" from Act II of the Petipa/Ivanov version (Act III as it's known in the West) was put in to showcase the dancing ability of Pierina Legnani, who was the prima ballerina assoluta of the Imperial Mariinsky Ballet at the time it was first performed in 1895--she was one of the first ballerinas to do all 32 fouettes without stopping.

It's so hard to do that I've only seen a very small of ballerinas on video do it: Ulyana Lopatkina and Svetlana Zakharova on DVD home video, Alicia Alonso, Maria Alexandrova, and a couple of others on online video.

[cubanmiamiboy]

Tricks are not ballet.  True.  But both psychological interpretation/artistic maturity AND command and mastery over tricks-(32 fouettees included)-have been exposed many times out there as a strong reality, so when one comes across a ballerina-(or a dancer for that matters)-who struggles with one of the two aspects, she gets hard to swallow...