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Simone Clarke and the BNP


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Not since the press coverage of people screaming for "Rudi !!!" in Boston long ago have I seen a story focusing on what was going on outside a ballet performance. I'm glad that different points of view are being allowed expression.

Thanks, GoCoyote and volcanohunter, for your speedy and efficient web searching.

Looking forward to the reviews of the performance..

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Not since the press coverage of people screaming for "Rudi !!!" in Boston long ago have I seen a story focusing on what was going on outside a ballet performance. I'm glad that different points of view are being allowed expression.

Thanks, GoCoyote and volcanohunter, for your speedy and efficient web searching.

Looking forward to the reviews of the performance..

For the sake of the ENB I regret all the attending publicity, but how was it to be avoided ?

Your reviews Bart, well at least two of them.

The Guardian: http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1989520,00.html

Independent: http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre...icle2149728.ece

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Both reviews were interesting. As for Mr. Barnbrook, it does sound as if the BNP did not send out the coolest representative, as he is clearly extremely stupid--you know, so interested in the dancing ('don't talk about the holocaust, only the dancing') while 'normally not attending the ballet' and quite sure that 'she's not racist--she's going out with someone who is not of her own race' but...that he hoped they wouldn't have children, because this was 'washing out the identity of this country's indigenous people.' However, he's 'not against mixed marriages'--therefore opponents of Ms. Clarke could not have hoped for a better BNP spokesman there, as he is in every possible way a phenomenon as an intellectual laughingstock. so 'she's not racist', but he is (although he's 'not speaking for the BNP' either. I have rarely read of such a thoroughgoing incompetent.)

The second review was interesting and little of it surprised me, although I don't really have anything to base this on. I would have expected an 'efficient performance' under the circumstances, especially since that's at least what she does most likely on a regular basis. Those who've mentioned seeing her have said approving and occasionally praising things about performances they've seen. A good many years back, I remember a couple of essays by Joan Didion and her late husband John Dunne in which they focussed on the phrase 'style is character.' This is an interesting idea, and one with much validity, even if it doesn't mean, as its crudest interpretation would seem to indicate, that we would not like the work therefore: Otherwise, the overly leisured style of Frank Sinatra would lose all its appeal the minute we read of his golf cart crashings in Caesar's Palace or the Sands, hanging out with Bugsy Siegel, etc., and innumerable other examples cited in this thread and elsewhere by all sorts of different fans and observers. There has always been an appeal to the sterilized in the figure of the Nazi, although I think that the 'style is character' is a guide and approach to work, not something literal--at least not always. Nonetheless, an 'efficient performance' is what one might expect in any sort of artist attracted to a

Fascist party, knowing, however, that this would not necessarily or always be the case. Of course, there is nothing disparaging in an 'efficient performance' as such; it just isn't enough, and you see them all the time.

Another thing that occurred to me is that this fierce little matter would have been different had the subject been of a much higher fame within her field. In other words, she is fairly well-known in the UK, but no household word. If we could have known and appreciated her art at least through publicity of her dancing before this business occurred, there would have been more sympathy for her--even though there is no particular virtue in this. Most of us had never even heard of her among English ballerinas, and so it was easier to concentrate on the story; it was even impossible not to. If it had been Ansanelli, there would have been (probably esp. good example because she had been with NYCB and therefore known to balletgoers in the US) a much greater mixture of the political and the artistic. As it was, it was a while before even a few spoke about sporadic attendance at her performances, and one said 'she delivers the goods.' Which apparently she does. However, if the Independent review is accurate, it was in no way an Olympian performance (if it was, I hope someone will tell us about it). This was what was needed under the circumstances for Ms. Clarke to truly gain supporters in a realpolitik (not just sentimental and general) way. That's not perhaps all that admirable either, but if she had been able to reach the pinnacles of performance that a Nureyev, Fonteyn or Farrell would have been able to do, she would have produced a Real Event in the performance itself. I know that the fact that she merely went ahead and did it at least very professionally did impress me some, therefore making her begin to truly exist more as a dancer outside the tabloid. But a magnificent, commanding and triumphal performance would have affected perception, whether or not it should from an ethical standpoint. From what we have thus far, it seems that she did not achieve this.

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If it had been Ansanelli

:)

<Throws salt over shoulder>

<Makes sign against evil eye>

<Grows tree so there is more wood to knock on>

Don't even say that hypothetically!

Brrrr. If anyone wants me, I am lying down in a darkened room, applying a cold compress to my forehead. Next you'll be asking us to imagine how we would feel if Ashley Bouder advocated killing baby Dalmatians for their coats. I just can't do it, man.

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Next you'll be asking us to imagine how we would feel if Ashley Bouder advocated killing baby Dalmatians for their coats. I just can't do it, man.

It's clear you meant this in a light and good-humored manner, but I should be specific and say that, no, I meant only if one of our known favourites was in exactly the same situation that Ms. Clarke was in, but then we hear the story after we have a real context for the person-as-artist--it's only human that we do not treat people 'fairly and equally' even if we think we should (and even if we try to). For most of us, the BNP was the first Simone Clarke context we had. She herself said she will be known as the 'BNP ballerina', but we would have viewed the story quite differently had we first thought of her as THE ENB PRIMA BALLERINA ASSOLUTA. By the time we'd heard about the performance, we were still nowhere near this, but we could have some sensation of her dancing as it exists right now.

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She herself said she will be known as the 'BNP ballerina', but we would have viewed the story quite differently had we first thought of her as THE ENB PRIMA BALLERINA ASSOLUTA. By the time we'd heard about the performance, we were still nowhere near this, but we could have some sensation of her dancing as it exists right now.
That is always the danger when a career is taken out of context, usually from afar. Not that many of us were able to track Volchkova's career or get a sense of her dancing over time, and until the brouhaha over her weight and firing, she wasn't on our radar.

Frequent ballet-goers to English National Ballet would have formed their opinion of Ms. Clarke's dancing long before the Guardian article outing her BNP membership was first published. Most of them don't live in the NY/Metro area, where the majority of our posters live.

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That is always the danger when a career is taken out of context, usually from afar.

Frequent ballet-goers to English National Ballet would have formed their opinion of Ms. Clarke's dancing long before the Guardian article outing her BNP membership was first published. Most of them don't live in the NY/Metro area, where the majority of our posters live.

I posted today, reviews of Simone Clarkes's Giselle to bring some balance as to why this subject was being discussed in 'ballet talk' in the first place.

Like many of your posters I keep in touch with the dance scene in New York, Paris, St. Petersburg via the media, websites and most importantly friends in those places whose judgements I value.

I have not checked, but have assumed, that most postings on this subject have come from American citizens some of whom live in the New York/ Metro area.

Of course it is easier to keep abreast and informed about what is happening in our own back-yard but for my own point of view I read a large number of postings about American dance and the issues companies and dancers meet because, I am interested in the whole area of dance performance and although I am not too interested in personal issues concerning named individuals, given the age we live in I do not expect much else than to find it so published.

Too much can be said about who and why Balanchine went to bed with so and so or the same for Jerome Robbins. We have become prurient societies otherwise we wouldn't read dance biographies that contain sometime as much detailed information of their sex lives of choreographers as they do of their actual creative processes.

It is the ballet world itself that has created the 'celebrity event' genre about dancers/choreographers whether they deserve it or not and the media reflects this in a manner most of us do not like.

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......Thanks, GoCoyote and volcanohunter, for your speedy and efficient web searching.....

Actually, no efficient web searching necessary. The headline/link appeared on Yahoo's home page (UK) along with a handfull of other top stories - I was surprised! And it must have been up there within maybe a hour of the performance's finishing time.

From a purely practical point of view the prospect of more protests, especially inside the theatre, at future performances must now be a serious concern to ENB and, you would think, Simone Clarke herself (not to mention the rest of the company!). I predict it will be solved 'in house' one way or another (and soon) and she will either leave the BNP and issue a low key statement to that effect or, more likely, retire early. (I say 'early' but at 36 it wouldn't necessarily be that early - I mean, who knows when she might have been planning to retire or wind down before all this started...?).

I'm only guessing though, and I've probably not read all the articles (nor do I really followed ENB as a company) but I just can't see ENB allowing future performances to be disrupted again on a regular basis and I don't think a messy public sacking is on the cards either.

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"retire early. (I say 'early' but at 36 it wouldn't necessarily be that early - I mean, who knows when she might have been planning to retire or wind down before all this started...?)."

ENB has a new artistic director in Wayne Eagling, Clarke is now, as you say, 36 years old and in my opinion (and I see the company quite regularly) not of the same calibre as some of the other female principals. Even before this latest scandal I was surprised to see her cast as Giselle, I wouldn't have said she was that kind of dancer. Myrtha perhaps.......................

That said, I'm sure she gave a competent and professional performance, despite the interruptions.

But I would guess that when the time comes for her annual interview with Eagling there may well be a suggestion that there won't be a lot for her next season and perhaps she might like to make way for some of the younger talent in the company.

Curiously, I suspect she owes her promotion to principal in part at least because of her British nationality. All the UK companies have a distinct lack of British principals and this is felt by some to be a problem.

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With all respect, England has a long, and in the long view honorable, history of public demonstrations and these can sometimes turn on a sixpence and go the other way.

A case in point, a crowd had seen a rather well-appointed coach headed for Hampton Court and assumed that the occupant was Louise de Kèroualle, one of Charles II's mistresses, and a Roman Catholic. The street scene sounded something like this:

CROWD: (General threatening, together with various mentions of boiling oil, tar and feathers and murder.)

COACH OCCUPANT: Peace good people, 'tis only I, Nell Gwynn, the Protestant whore!

CROWD: HOORAY! HOORAY!! HOORAY!!! :rolleyes:

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The Times opinion ends:

People who loathe their views may love their talents. It is high time that liberals, luvvies and political activists started either to defend free speech, or stopped pretending to.

I, being a New Jersey girl, had to look up the word luvvies:

1. facetious

Someone, originally in the theatre, but now also generally, who speaks and behaves in an overly pretentious or camp manner.

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