23 replies to this topic

[Farrell Fan]

Thanks, everybody, for these reviews. Since nobody mentioned my all-time favorite Girl in Green, I feel in necessary to do so: Delia Peters.

[Alexandra]

Ah, Delia Peters.  She's a lawyer now, I'm told (by one of her clients )

And thank you for posting, kfw.  I'm glad I didn't imagine that the house was full, or nearly full, at the performances I attended

I didn't write much about "Sandpaper Ballet."  I was interested in your comments -- you got more out of it than I did   I've liked some of the other works Morris has done for ballet companies (and usually like what he does for his own company) but, perhaps I'd heard so much about this one -- everyone loves it, surefire hit, etc -- I was disappointed.  I thought the jokes were tired, and the vocabulary limited. I don't see a point to burying a dozen or so good soloists in what's essentially a work for a corps de ballet.  I got very different reports of audience reaction -- where I was sitting opening night, there were very few laughs.  I wondered whether people realized it was supposed to be funny. The person I was with had the same reaction.  But others, sitting elsewhere, said that everyone around them was chuckling madly all the way through.  I didn't get the visual effects you describe either -- but that may have been because I was sitting very close.  It was just GREEN GREEN GREEN -- no, Giannina.  Not that kind of Green!  What you write sounds much more interesting, and often happens when one is farther from the stage.

I'd forgotten to write something about Tan and Maffre -- it speaks to their ability, but also to Tomasson's taste as a director.  Both have phenomenal extensions.  The legs fly up as though they're weightless.  And, as a teacher friend of mine (who's no fan of the Extreme Extensions of certain Head-Kicking Ballerinas either) said, "And so it's not an issue, just a beautiful extension of their natural line."  The extensions are so high, light, quick and natural that they don't seem like a trick, and the leg floats back down before you're quite sure you saw it go that high.  Another example of how technical "advances" can look like art, or not, depending on the way they're danced.

[dirac]

Like Farrell in the old footage from the Midsummer Night's Dream film shown in "Elusive Muse."  The leg sweeps up and down, up and down in one swift fluid movement and you sit there thinking, "Did she just do that? Did I just see that?"  (I can only imagine what it looked like to the audiences of 1966.)


Those Sandpaper Ballet costumes gave me a headache when I sat up close.  Others are crazy about them, so I thought it was me. But then I am not a big Mizrahi fan and kind of wish Morris wouldn't use him so much.  Those costumes he did for the revival of "The Women" probably had Adrian turning in his grave like a cement mixer.

[LMCtech]

Dirac, I agree with you. I don't like the Sandpaper costumes, mostly because of the color. They fit the piece though.

[Alexandra]

I thought they were INTENDED to be annoying, like the music

[dirac]

That's probably true, but surely there must be a way to achieve a similar effect without leaving the audience squinting.....

[LMCtech]

Maybe a different color green?

[Paul Parish]

It's probably no accident that they're pretty much the same shade of green that Mizrahi dressed hte swamp-nymph Platee in for Morris's staging of the Rameau opera-burlesque of hte same name, though poor Platee looked rather like Margaret Dumont with her pearls and lorgnette -- she also had green fingers that extended into little suction cups, which she'd wiggle at us when the mood struck her, and green flippers with which she did fan kicks when everybody else was doing fan kicks.....

I think the costumes are hilarious, but I can't begin to say why..... so's  the ballet.....

[glebb]

I'm with you Farrell Fan!  I liked Delia Peters in Green.