Jump to content
This Site Uses Cookies. If You Want to Disable Cookies, Please See Your Browser Documentation. ×

One variation..and a time lapse.


Recommended Posts

Second variation, first clip-(after Lifar)- is Jorge Esquivel, from Cuba. The ballet has been continuously performed there sans permission since de late 1940's, as danced by Alonso and Eglevsky. And that is how I got to know it. Imagine my shock the first time I saw, around 2001..NYCB, the bare staging, the absence of the birth and Parnassus scenes and the white tights.?

 

Edited by cubanmiamiboy
Link to comment

d'Amboise's looks the cleanest to me.

 

The problem with the new version may be that "Apollo" is often presented on stages – such as NY State Theater – that are much bigger than the stage it was originally choreographed for, so everything had to be spaced out more and the movements made to look bigger.

 

As with "Serenade," there were many changes and much tinkering to "Apollo" over the years.

 

Alexandra Danilova:

 

Quote

Today, it's a different ballet. For one thing, the steps for Terpsichore's variation are different. What I danced was lighter, smaller, and quicker. i did fifth, arabesque, fifth, arabesque – nobody does that anymore. And then I did sissonnes – my version as jumpier than the ones done today. Balanchine changed it when Suzanne Farrell learned the part, because she couldn't jump so well – she's taller than I am, and she couldn't move as fast. For example, in the first part, she goes down in plie and turns on a bent knee in arabesque where i did sissonnne en tournant, jumping and turning at the same time. It's the same movement, really, but with a different accent - my accent was up, hers is down ...  

 

Going up on the toes was what everybody expected to see in a ballet, going down on the heels wasn't, but we didn't call attention to it by making one movement graceful and the other movement awkward – we gave each movement equal weight. Our job was to make it look as if we went on our heels all the time, as if it were not a big event, no more unusual than opening and closing the arms in pirouette. 

 

 

Leto's birthing movements might have not been original –  according to one source, they seem to have come from some Martha Graham exercises Balanchine saw a student do.

 

Anyway thanks for posting those comparisons.

Link to comment
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...