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Recognizing a ballet from a photograph?


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I was looking in a catalog of a mail order company, and something caught my attention: on the pages about TV, on one of the featured TV sets there was a picture of a ballet.

So, can anyone help me identify this ballet?

It's hard to depict it precisely, but here's a try... There are 9 dancers on the photograph: six

male dancers and three female dancers, all of them in white (or pale yellow or beige, it's hard to distinguish). The female dancers have rather long tutus, pointe shoes, long white gloves (a bit higher than their elbows), small white ear-rings (perhaps pearls), necklaces (probably golden-colored) and something on their heads, perhaps a kind of small tiara.

The men wear tights, and tops with long sleeves (large at the elbow level but narrow at the shoulder and wrist levels). One sees only their backs, so I don't know how the front of their costumes looks like, but it looks like a costume that could be worn in a work like "Romeo and Juliet", for example.

The background is dark, and the only visible elements of the set is a metal gate, which is almost open and looks a bit like wrought iron with some gold on top (a bit like the entrance of a large park, for example).

The dancers are like that:

(backstage)

F1 F2 F3

M1 M2 M3

M4 M5 M6

(audience)

with F referring to female dancers and M to male dancers. The female dancers are in arabesque (left leg around 90 degrees, right leg on the floor, not on pointe), facing the audience, with their right arms raised and their left arms horizontal (approximately parallel to their left legs). The male dancers are sitting on the floor, showing their backs to the audience, their right hands on the floor and their legs extended at the left. The men M1-2-3 seem to look at the female dancers, while the three other men look at the left side of the picture and extend their left hand (palm facing what would be the left wall of the stage).

Well, it's just curiosity, but I wonder if someone on this board could identify that ballet...

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Well, it seems that no one is inspired... but that's not surprising, considering how unprecisely I depicted the picture (and how hard it is to recognize a ballet from a single photograph).

I'll try to scan the photo and put it on a page (but I'm not very optimistic about the results,

as it is small and rather dark...)

I had forgotten to add that there might have been a higher number of performers on stage at that moment (at the left and at the right of the nine dancers).

Perhaps I should start derivative threads with topics like "Do you know some ballets where the female dancers have gloves?" "... where the sets look like a wrought iron gate?"

The only works coming to my mind with gloves would be the last part of "Vienna Waltzes" (what is on the Balanchine Celebration video- I don't know the rest of the ballet), and perhaps Massine's "La Symphonie Fantastique" but I'm not sure.

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Estelle, could it be something by Lifar? The boys feet....the poet shirts...the ratio of men to women?

I actually forwarded your description -- which I think is excellent! -- to several colleagues, but no one knew, or at least no one responded, which makes me suspect that it's a ballet not well known in America.

Another gloves ballet is Lifar's Icare. The revision, with the girls in fusia gloves and hair like Audrey Hepburn, was very '60s. Ashton's La Valse also has the women gloved, if I'm remembering correctly.

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Thanks for answering!

Well, it might be some Lifar, but the only Lifar work that I've seen so far is "Suite en Blanc" (the reason being that it's the only Lifar work which has been programmed since the early 1990s, except "Istar" and "Romeo and Juliet" in galas),

and it doesn't look like "Suite en Blanc" to me

(I wouldn't swear it, as it was in 1996 and I saw it only once... But the costumes do look different.)

I have never seen "Icare", but next season the Ballet de Bordeaux is going to dance it in Paris, so I hope to see it then (I'm keeping my fingers crossed). Fortunately Charles Jude does care about the Lifar heritage. I don't know which version they'll perform. (And they will also perform Massine's "Le Tricorne"- another work of the POB repertory that is getting neglected).

The sets of the photograph reminded me of "Soir de Fete", but I think the costumes were different (but again, having seen it only once and five years ago, it's hard to be sure)...

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Estelle.

It's Ashton's Les Rendezvous in the Billy Chappell decor. If I looked harder I might be able to guess which Royal Ballet company it was - I suspect it's the company now called Birmingham Royal Ballet. It's a moment in the ballet immediately following a dance for the six men of the corps, after which the women join them three by three.

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Thank you, Alymer. When I saw the photo I thought the women (especially the arms) looked like Les Rendezvous, but not the men. But doesn't the Chappell have a little white picket fence rather than big iron grates? Perhaps it's a different staging. In the Les Rendezvous I saw (with ABT, which was supposedly a revival of the Chappell decor, I thought -- RG will know) I remember the women's dresses as quite different.

Estelle, when I saw the taken-off-TV video of "Soir de Fete" it reminded me very much -- in its structure as much as its setting -- of "Les Rendezvous."

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Wow! Thanks Alymer! :D

(Did you recognize it before seeing the photo or after? ;) )

I had told my fiance that surely on balletalert there would be someone to recognize the work- and it worked!

Now I wish Ashton's works would be present on the French stages and not only on the French mail order catalogs...

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Just looked at this thread, and sorry for belated reply, but yes, it is Les Rendezvous. One of my few useful traits on this board, since you all can talk choreography til you and I are blue and I still won't be able to picture it.... but yes, I can generally identify a ballet by the costumes!!!!!

The newer costumes have the marvellous polka dots and cunning little hats, I believe.....

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Estelle, this was a marvelous question. I only didn't respond because I didn't know the ballet. You described it to perfection. I think you should make this a regular Ballet Alert feature--scan in some obscure photo, and let people identify it

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Thanks Nanatchka- well, perhaps it'd be a funny feature (I must have read too many detective stories as a kid ;) ) but it doesn't happen to me often to find photographs of unknown ballets (I've had a look at the rest of the catalog, and even to the previous issue, but the other photos are non-balletic things like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the Rialto bride in Venice, the Saint-Peter Basilique in Roma, etc.)

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This isn't so much an obscure ballet, as an obscure photo, since it's of the corps. Most people probably don't have a scanner at hand -- or, more importantly, a web site to post a photo on so they can link to it -- but it is a nice idea. I had thought of something similar when going through old books -- a photo of a dancer in her chubby youth, for instance, or a dancer quite famous in his or her decade but obscure now -- and see how many people could recognize. Maybe that could be a new Ballet Alert Quiz someday :)

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I recognised the ballet the moment I saw the photograph, not from the description. But that was really because I couldn't imagine that an Ashton ballet would appear in a French catalogue - not because your description was poor Estelle. Alexandra, Chappell did several designs for early productions but this is the one which was used by the Royal Ballet for around 30 years until the latest redesign commissioned by Dowell for the Covent Garden company. I don't know which version ABT uses - there is one where the leading woman wears a beautiful grey tarlatan dress decorated with red roses, which is what Markova wore - but this version has always had the big park gates. The women all wear effectively the same costume, the difference being in the colour of the ribbonsof the trimming and head dress, and I think the pas de quatre girls wear wrist length gloves.

When there was an earlier thread about redesigning ballets I had meant to post something about the Rendezvous designs, so I'll take the opportunity now.

Whether or not you like a decor is pretty subjective - it depends to an extent on personal taste. I didn't much care for the designs that Dowell commissioned, but what I thought was completely unforgivable was that the new decor meant that all the exits had to be changed as there were no longer gates at the centre back of the stage. It made a considerable difference to the patern of the ballet and I fear it's a sign of the disrespect with which most of Ashton's works are regarded by the Royal Opera House.

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david vaughan's book, naturelment, gives a full accounting of the changes to 'les rendezvous' over the years.

i too think this must be a staging by the sadler's wells royal ballet, as today's birmingham royal ballet was once called. (thre is even a video around of this company's performance of the work, led by marion tate and david ashmole.)

the only decor i know of the sundry varieties mentioned in vaughan is the chappell, w/ it's gated park fence. it was never white pickets to the best of my knowledge, tho' when abt staged its version w/ chappell's designs. there were memorable, fleecy, chalk-white clouds against the bright blue sky that might get one thinking/recalling white pickets. this design scheme, given some variance to scaling the fence and gate for the various stages, is the only one i've known, until the most recent anthony ward designs.

the costumes are pretty much the way they've been, once the originals, in deeper colors, were changed for this look.

before seeing the picture estelle posted, just from the initial post by estelle, i thought of ashton's 'valse noble et sentimentale,' but quickly checked some pictures of that work and realized it didn't jibe w/estelle's overall description.

both ashton's and balanchine's versions of 'la valse' have long white gloves as part of the women's costuming.

but there are any number of other examples of 'long white glove' ballets, which could be easily noted by a quick flip through any decent picture book of royal or new york city ballet repertory. and as estelle indicates, out any number of paris opera ballets also probably used such gloves as part of the women's attire.

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