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Ballets with no dancing


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This article got to me. (It's also on today's Links.) A preview piece about Robert Weiss's new "Firebird" that compares it to Balanchine's, relies on a noted Balanchine expert (Francis Mason), who talks about how boring "Firebird" ballets are, because there's no dancing in them. A Prince "can't dance" because he just stands there and supports his partner.

A preview of Robert Weiss's new "Firebird" for Carolina Ballet, the premise of which seems to be that if the dancers aren't constantly jumping and turning, they're not dancing.

Leaping flames

When the curtain came down on the opening night of "Firebird" at the New York City Ballet, the audience erupted. It was 1949. Helped by a stunning young Native American ballerina, Maria Tallchief, the great Russian choreographer George Balanchine was on his way.

"People stood and screamed," remembers veteran dance writer Francis Mason. "[Tallchief] could dance like a house afire -- which she did."

Mason is not so complimentary about Tallchief's partner of the evening, Francisco Moncion. "He couldn't dance a step," the critic says. "He supported her."

But then it hardly mattered. "Firebird" has always been a showcase for one dancer, the ballerina who portrays the fairy-tale creature rendered from cobbled-together Russian legend by Michel Fokine. It's the first ballet Igor Stravinsky wrote, commissioned by Serge Diaghelev for the Ballets Russes, and its combination of three elements -- the delicious score, fantastic, pageantlike costumes, and the bravura title role -- has maintained its popularity over the decades.

But it's an anomaly: a ballet in which, strangely enough, there isn't a lot of dancing.

I wonder if most balletgoers also see ballet this way? I think it's one of the great myths of 20th century American ballet -- that some ballets do not have a lot of jumping and turning because the dancers couldn't dance, and that a ballet that doesn't showcase virtuosity is inherently boring. This view, to me, does not acknowledge ballet's history, the fact that there are several different types of ballets, and, most importantly, the fact that there is beauty in quiet moments, and that the linking steps, the small steps, are just as important an element of classical ballet as are the big steps -- and that character dancing has a place in a classical ballet.

But what do you all think?

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One thing for sure: there is no dancing in the last scene of NYCB's Balanchine-Robbins Firebird. None at all. That's one reason the ballet has always seemed vaguely disappointing to me, no matter how great the ballerina's performance. The other and perhaps more important reason is that the Firebird is not at the wedding. Monsters, children, and adults are all there, slithering, running, or parading, but where is the Firebird? Shouldn't she have been invited? The Dance Theatre of Harlem version has her crashing the wedding from above, which is an improvement. I'm not very familiar with the original Fokine, and I've never seen Maurice Bejart's version. Although I didn't like Francis Mason's maligning of Moncion, I too am looking forward to Weiss's Firebird.

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I'm not taking issue with Alexandra's discussion on whether a dance needs to be all about motion and activity to be a dance, but is it possible that Moncion was actually not as strong a dancer as Tallchief? I don't know that much about him, are there films of his performances commonly available (I believe he's in the film of Leclercq doing Afternoon of a Faun. In the clip I saw at her memorial, my attention was entirely on her.) There were always exceptions, and "couldn't dance a step" sounds like hyperbole, but it does seem that in general in the United States at that time, the men did start later than the women and were at a lower overall standard.

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Again, define "strong as" and "dancer." They were different types. (I saw Moncion do Faun very late in his career and I don't remember who I saw him do it with, so perceptions don't necessarily correlate with technique or athleticism. Not that we're talking about baseball. :) ) The point is that the Prince in the Firebird isn't supposed to "dance a step." This isn't because Balanchine couldn't figure out steps for him to dance -- boring old him -- or that Moncion was so inadequate he couldn't get through the most simplistic of solos, but because this is one of the instances where "dance" is more broadly defined and includes supporting a partner, miming ["the dance of the turned in feet"] and court dance as dancing, noble dancing. The Firebird is a demicaractere role, as are many of the Romantic heroines, and she dances quickly with movements suggestive of a bird -- a bewitched, magical creature who could perform extraordinary movements, which the Prince, according to this aesthetic, could not.

FF, I'd argue that the Firebird shouldn't come to the wedding. That's the real world, and she has no place in it. The processions, the stateliness, is in Stravinsky's music, I think. It was written to match the libretto for Fokine's version, but Balanchine would be responding to the music (as would Wheeldon).

What bothers me about this approach to writing about ballet is that it's so completely grounded in what's before one's eyes at that moment, and all the assumptions are as though nothing else exists in the world, before, during or after. The Prince doesn't dance -- he's incompetent. There's not a lot of dancing in the finale -- the choreographer couldn't think of any. Or was too hidebound, too stuck to tradition to think out of the box.

If someone's bored by the end of Firebird -- or the monster dancers, or the ballerina's solos, or the whatever -- that's fine, that's personal taste. But I think it's worthwhile trying to discover the REAL reasons for it.

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Again, I'm completely in favor of torpedoing the fallacy that the person who can do the most steps is the better or best dancer, but I'm not sure "strong as" and "dancer" are that elastic as terms. As ballet dancers, no matter what "type" we are, we take the same class every day. It honestly is pretty obvious, even across gender, who can and can't do a step and who is a stronger dancer than whom. I'm not saying better or worse if a great dancer can't do 32 fouettes or whatever the trick of the week is, but "can" or "cannot" is pretty much laid out for you. If someone says "he can't dance a step", it goes a bit too far, because a lot of very good dancers are bad at tricks, but I actually know in some sense what they mean. Conversely, I recall a dancer whom I described as "being really good at steps, but she couldn't dance." Even so, I'd still describe her as stronger than a dancer who couldn't do the step.

That being said, I completely agree we really don't need any more princes who can't act and are dull unless they're in motion. And the notion that a dance isn't a dance unless there's a constant barrage of dancing isn't just wrong, it's damaging.

Moving back to the article, I think the conception of Firebird as all dancing, all the time may be just as dissatisfying as they think the more mimetic version is. A constantly dancing Kostchei is probably about as convincing and menacing as a constantly dancing von Rothbart. And the wedding scene is an apotheosis. I don't care how rhythmic it is, the music was not written to be danced to.

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I saw the Ballet Theatre version with Markova and Dolin (Diana Adams was the princess!) and the Prince did very little dancing , and worst of all, he looked like one of Santa's helpers in the awful red and gold costume. Francisco Moncion was not noted for his technique, however there were many like him in ballet companies at the time. They were considered good partners with a dramatic flair, and looked good on the stage.

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I suppose it comes as no surprize, but I am appalled at the idea of criticising Firebird because there is no jumping and turning for the Prince. I was lucky enough to see the Royal Ballet's version, with David Wall (not with Somes, unfortunately), and he was riveting. A real Russian--s semi-barbarian--prince. Every step was so meaningful. And Goncharova's apotheosis, where he slowly raised his hand in time to the music, is so powerful. The Firebird doesn't bless the wedding--she isn't the Lilac Fairy. She only saves the Prince because she promised, but she hates him.

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I have only seen 'Firebird' twice.

I saw the beautiful Lourdez Lopez at NYCB, and later saw the ballet performed by DTH.

In my opinion, the music makes it impossible for the fairy tale to be set anywhere but Russia, so as much as I loved the company and it's performers, the DTH version did not work, for me.

Reading the previous posts on this thread makes me long to see 'Firebird' again.

Do Royal Ballet and ABT have the Fokine version?

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Welcome back, Mary! All good points -- thank you for making them. I think the key to the "but there's no dancing" is for the performance to be so strong you are satisfied watching it, but I've seen performances like that and still gotten into conversations that begin witih "but there was no dancing" and go the route of "that's because he can't dance."

Glebb, I agree with you on the Russianness of "The Firebird's" music, too. It's grape picking music, not cotton picking music! And yes, ABT did have the Fokine Firebird (that was broadcast the same night as the Kirkland/Baryshnikov Theme and Variations, I believe, with Cynthia Gregory as the Firebird) as did, earlier, the Royal (which is also on film, with Fonteyn and Michael Somes). Royal Ballet films of performances always look a bit self-conscious to me; they know they're being filmed and They're Going To Do The Right Thing. Their movement was freer in live performance.

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I experience the same disconnect with the music of Firebird set in other places than Russia as I do with the music of Creation of the World (Milhaud). The music in the latter is relentlessly urbane urban, the Blaise Cendrar libretto, relentlessly travelogue primitivist. It's all French, but the former is Place Pigalle, the latter, the old French West Africa.

One of the reasons that there's so much undancing in the Firebirds which use the 1911 score is that there were several effects which were cut during the first week of the original run because of various malfunctions in animals and machinery. The mime to cover had to be figured out on the spot, and sometimes didn't cover!

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