Balanchine's 1958 Nutcracker.

[Helene]

We shut down a consolidated thread because it had a big target on its back, and we were not interested in helping the Trust do what it thinks is its job.

We've never had a rule about posting Balanchine videos: we've had a reminder at the head of the videos forum that posting them not only targeted the videos for removal, but also that the publisher's entire account could be shut down by the Trust.

[Dale]

There has been recent word that many of the CBC Balanchine recordings will be released in 2014 in the same way the recordings of Maria Tallchief and Jacques d'Amboise were. Hopefully some of the recordings we've discussed here and elsewhere will be among them. I am investigating this news.

[cubanmiamiboy]

I was aware of that before starting this, and that is why I tried first to show them in the John Clifford's page format-(maybe he can show them..? I don't know).

[Helene]

There seem to be some Balanchine-affiliated people whose videos have remained up, including Clifford's. I'm hoping this is a good sign.

[canbelto]

The ONLY thing I don't like about the 1958 performance is Diana Adams as SPF. She just seems too chilly and aloof for SPF. Her smile is very forced, like she's the type of person who'd never touch chocolates or hang out with little kids.

[cubanmiamiboy]

I think that's just what I like of her characterization..! "Let's forget about the whole children stuff and get down to ballet business.."

[kfw]

I think that's just what I like of her characterization..! "Let's forget about the whole children stuff and get down to ballet business.."

Interesting. I don't read her that way, and I think that would be a very inappropriate and thus unlikely attitude for her to have taken, since the children are at the heart of the ballet's story. What canbelto reads as chilly and aloof and forced, I read as 1950's formal and mannered - not unlike, though to my taste much more pleasing than - June Lockhart's manner as hostess and narrator. It may also reflect what Adams described as her difficulty in letting go and relaxing on stage.

[Jayne]

I thought the camera work was very well done, expansive and panoramic when it needed to be. I wish modern camera work was so well positioned for ballet.

[Mme. Hermine]

I tend to think,though,that this is somewhat because of the live performance situation. you can see stagehands here and there wandering in and out of shots, and I had thought she looked as though she was keeping her eye out for a cue or some such thing.

[Helene]

Funny, that's the performance that made me pick those twenty years as my time-capsule choice. Different strokes.

[Mme. Hermine]

Oh I like it a lot. But the experience of live ballet on television in a somewhat cramped studio with closeups like that one must have been odd.

[Jack Reed]

I think Adams had a bit of bad luck this time. Of these three dances, her tempos sound the most rushed - "Coffee" doesn't sound rushed at all, though I must say Mitchell looks under-utilized - and as Clifford points out, her dance is "shortened for television," besides. But I'm glad to have what we have here. Of the handful of Nutcrackers I've seen, I think Mr. B's remains the best.

(Yes, the camera-work is better than we can take for granted - the 2011 NYCB PBS Nutcracker demonstrates that.)

[Paul Parish]

I thought she [Adams] was wonderful -- very light and fairy-like. the tempi are quick, she can never let her weight go back into the heel, since she's got to flit off right away into the next thing -- but that's what it's like to be a fairy. And i thought she was gracious throughout.

BTW, they were probably dancing on concrete floors.

[rg]

slightly off or on topic here, i rem. when corresponding w/ Arlene Croce about Adams on film as Myrtha in a truncated, studio-filmed GISELLE, that it was worth seeing, even as the performance in question was given "in a broom closet."