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

Recommended Posts

I am currently obsessed with the 1973 film of Valse Fantaisie with Leland and Clifford and this made me wonder a bit about the 1973 recordings of NYCB. I've read somewhere that there were 15 ballets filmed. I know of Symphony in C, Liebeslieder, Agon, Serenade, Concerto Barocco, Pulcinella, Violin Concerto and Valse Fantaisie. Does anyone know which were the other 7?

Also I was wondering if anyone (from the NYCB or the Balanchine trust) has ever tried to buy the uncut video from the German production company and stitch them back in a more rational, less annoying manner :P

Link to comment

to date, there has been no indication, so far as i can tell, from the balanchine trust, etc. about any urge to re-view all the film footage from berlin, 1973.

off the top of my head i'm aware of: DIVERTIMENTO FROM BAISER DE LA FEE, TARANTELLA, EPISODES, VIOLIN CONCERTO, STARS AND STRIPES, which leaves two more to name.

Link to comment

I'm surprised nobody else remembers this; one of the first,(if not THE first) pbs ballet shows used these films for a presentation consisting of serenade, tarantella and duo concertant. this aired in spring 1975. as i remember, with introductions by clive barnes. i believe it was titled simply "three by balanchine"

Link to comment

indeed three of the Berlin NYCB films were shown pre-DanceInAmerica.

prior to that there were NET films of dance, including the 2 ballet ones noted below. these may be the telecasts that mel recalls. (all these credits come from the NYPL cat. the first two, from 65, are in the dance coll. as motion pictures; the latter two are videocassettes.)

New York City Ballet 1965. 30 min. : sd. b&w

(U.S.A.: Dance, no. 4)

Telecast on WNET/13 in 1966. Producer: Jac Venza. Director: Charles S. Dubin. Written by Bo Goldman.

Choreography: George Balanchine.

Costumes for last three ballets: Karinska. Performed by members of the New York City Ballet Company.

Summary: Balanchine briefly discusses his views on dance (throughout program). Comments by the male dancers precede each of the four works performed.

CONTENTS: Agon: Pas de deux. Music: Igor Stravinsky. Danced by Arthur Mitchell and Suzanne Farrell. -- Tarantella. Music: Louis Gottschalk, orchestrated by Hershey Kay. Danced by Patricia McBride and Edward Villella. -- Meditation. Music: Peter Tchaikovsky. Danced by Suzanne Farrell and Jacques D'Amboise. -- Grand pas de deux. Music: Peter Tchaikovsky. Danced by Melissa Hayden and Jacques D'Amboise.

Robert Joffrey Ballet 1965. 30 min.

(U.S.A.: Dance. No. 3) Telecast on WNET-TV, New York. Executive producer: Jac Venza. Producer: Virginia Kassel. Director: Karl Genus. Author: Bo Goldman.

CONTENTS.--Pas des déesses: excerpt. Choreography: Robert Joffrey. Music: John Field. Performed by Lisa Bradley, Ivy Clear, Noël Mason and Nels Jorgensen.--Opus '65: excerpt. Choreography: Anna Sokolow. Music Teo Macero. Performed by Margo Sappington, Richard Gain, John Jones, Ian Horvath, and Dennis Nahat.--Ballet and modern classes by members of the company.--Gamelan: excerpt. Choreography: Robert Joffrey. Music: Lou Harrison. Costumes: Willa Kim. Performed by Lisa Bradley and Nels Jorgensen.--Incubus: excerpts. Choreography: Gerald Arpino. Music: Anton Webern. Costumes: Lewis Brown. Performed by Lisa Bradley, Ian Horvath and Robert Blankshine.--Viva Vivaldi: excerpts. Choreography: Gerald Arpino. Music: Antonio Vivaldi. Costumes: Quintana and Anthony. Performed by Robert Blankshine, Luis Fuente and artists of the Robert Joffrey Ballet. Company members also appearing in the film are Chartel Arthur, Zelma Bustillo, Diana Cartier, Edwina Dingman, Susan Magno, Marjorie Mussman, Trinette Singleton, John Cristofori, James Howell, George Ramos, and Michael Uthoff.

Three by Balanchine 1975. 60 min. : sd. b&w.

Telecast on May 21, 1975 by WNET/13, New York on the series, Great performances. Dances filmed in 1973 by RM Productions, Munich in cooperation with Unitel, directed by Hugo Niebeling. For WNET/13 telecast, narration by Clive Barnes and visuals by Emile Ardolino.

Choreography: George Balanchine. Conducted by Robert Irving with the Orf Symphony Orchestra. Narration written by Clive Barnes. Performed by members of the New York City Ballet Company.

CONTENTS. - Serenade. Music: Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. Danced by Karin von Aroldingen, Susan Hendl, Sara Leland, Kay Mazzo, Jean-Pierre Bonnefous, Peter Martins, and artists of the New York City Ballet. - Tarantella. Music: Louis Moreau Gottschalk, as arranged by Hershey Kay. Danced by Edward Villella and Patricia McBride. - Duo concertant. Music: Igor Stravinsky. Music performed by Gordon Boelzner, piano, and H. Cees Van Schaik, violin. Danced by Kay Mazzo and Peter Martins.

City Center Joffrey Ballet / WNET/13, New York ; directed and produced by Merrill Brockway. New York, N.Y. : WNET/13, 1976. (60 min.) : sd., col

Telecast on the Dance in America series on January 19, 1976 by WNET/13, New York.

Members of City Center Joffrey Ballet perform works from the company repertoire. Interspersed are documentary sequences of rehearsal and interviews with Robert Joffrey, Leonide Massine, Kurt Jooss, and Gerald Arpino.

Olympics: The torch bearer / choreography, Gerald Arpino ; music, Toshiro Mayuzumi ; danced by Russell Sultzbach -- Parade: Dance of the Chinese conjuror / choreography, Leonide Massine ; music, Erik Satie ; sets and costumes after Pablo Picasso ; danced by Gary Chryst -- Astarte: brief excerpt from 1967 film / choreography, Robert Joffrey ; music, Crome Syrcus ; danced by Maximilian Zomosa and Trinette Singleton -- Remembrances (excerpts) / choreography, Robert Joffrey ; music, Richard Wagner, performed by Stanley Babin (piano) and Donna Roel (contralto) ; costumes, Willa Kim ; danced by Francesca Corkle, Jan Hanniford, Paul Sutherland, and members of the company -- The green table: Scene I, The gentlemen in black ; Scene II, The farewell / choreography, Kurt Jooss ; music, Frederic Cohen ; costumes, Hein Heckroth ; danced by Christian Holder (Death), Robert Thoma (Standard bearer), William Whitener (Young soldier), Charthel Arthur (Young girl), Dermot Burke (Old soldier), Diana Cartier (Guerilla woman), Trinette Singleton (Old mother), Gary Chryst (Profiteer), and others -- Trinity (complete) / choreography, Gerald Arpino ; music, Alan Raph and Lee Holdridge ; danced by Donna Cowen, Starr Danias, Pamela Nearhoof, Dermot Burke, Gary Chryst, Christian Holder, Robert Thomas, and members of the company.

Link to comment

I din't know if it's "legal" to post a link to the Chinese site www.tudou.com, but they have the 1973 Concerto Borocco posted here - http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/AnusOmR8-UM/#. The leads are danced by Patricia MacBride, Carol Sumner, and Peter Martins.

Fantastic, thank you! Watch it while you can--I'm sure the Balanchine Trust is abuzz with international lawyers now, cooking up ways to get it off the Internet.

Link to comment

Yes, thank you, thank you! And the multi-colored Mariinsky Symphony in C (or most of it; on first viewing, I think there are slight abridgements at section transitions, maybe to relieve us of extended applause?), which follows immediately, is very good to see, too, and easier, IMO; there are still too many closeups, but it's more straightforward. Not a bad performance, apparently staged by John Taras, I believe, who takes applause at the end.

Link to comment

I wonder if this was before Dance in America -- with the filming done, if I recall correctly, in Germany? Lots of jumpy camera work and dismembered bodies? I remember the Serenade (Leland as the Russian Girl?) but not the two duets, I'm sorry to say.

You might be sorry if you did remember the duets, carbro; Tarantella had an inky, black-on-black quality, hard to see, and Duo Concertant was the occasion for the notorious cut away from the dancing onstage to a stepladder in the wings, and other sins. True, we did get a lot of glimpses, but still. The Serenade was the best-shot of the three, in spite of the larger cast. (I stress that "best-shot" is a relative term.)

Link to comment

I din't know if it's "legal" to post a link to the Chinese site www.tudou.com, but they have the 1973 Concerto Borocco posted here - http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/AnusOmR8-UM/#. The leads are danced by Patricia MacBride, Carol Sumner, and Peter Martins.

what a joy to watch, especially with so many spiral shots from my old 4th ring perpective. I don't like the close ups though. I spotted a young Delia Peters, dont recognize others. I didn't start going until 1978.

Link to comment

It is a little choppy but I love the wide angle lens' depth of field here; I forgive those close-ups as it pulls wide... one feels much closer to the dancers & dancing than the "live" shoots usually allow for...

The cinematography of the German recordings vary wildly from gloriously watchable (Symphony in C) to wildly inducing of puke (Liebeslieder and Episodes).

Went quickly through Tudou (Potato? Treasures from the ground?). Most of the other videos (including the Mariinsky SiC) seem to be mirrors of clips that were on Youtube, reposted at various qualities. there's an interesting documentary on Anna Pavlova and another longish clip on Tsiskaridze talking about Pavlova. Most of the video clips seem ill-labeled or wholly unlabeled.

(edited about five minutes later after I did a more thorough search)

Going through it, I found the following clips:

1. (dubbed into French) - a video on the proliferation of Balanchine everywhere (it was released in the late 1990s)

2. Balanchine Celebration (tape one? tape two? Possibly both parts) includes Western Symphony, Agon, Who Cares?, etc)

I'll refrain from posting the links, but I will also observe that there are also quite a lot of _whole_ Russian performances, including a Ananiashvili/Filin Giselle (1997) and various other captures of DVDs in wide release.

Link to comment

I see Merrill Ashley in the corps of "Concerto Barocco". I lasted about three minutes before I became carsick.

And to think, that's one of the more watchable ones. La Valse suffers from too many jump cuts, but one of the worst is Liebeslieder, in which the director continually zooms in and out of the women's skirts as they were twirled about...

I'm dying a little just thinking about it.

Link to comment

Besides Delia Peters and Merrill Ashley, the corps includes the two Susies -- Hendl and Pilarre -- and Christine Redpath.

I find the camerawork very disorienting, even though I know the ballet well. Some shots are on a diagonal from downstage left, some on the diagonal from downstage right, some straight on. It would have helped to have some kind of markings on the backdrop to clarify the spacing. This is the biggest difference between viewing dance live and on film. In the theater, you are stationary and the relationship between dancers and space is obvious. When the camera keeps changing perspective, something fixed is needed.

Link to comment

Those observations, with which I couldn't agree more, bring to mind, IIRC, what sounds to me like an ultimatum, from Fred Astaire to the director George Stevens: "Either the camera dances, or I do." That is to say, The camera will settle down, or I'm out of here. Granted those dances were made with filming in mind, but the result of their settled perspective is that, 75 years later, they're still worth seeing.

Link to comment

how do you watch the video at all? it starts for me and then stops every few seconds. i'm assuming i need to sit through an ad(s), but can't figure out what to do?

You can hit the pause button and then attend to something else while you wait for the whole thing to load (as indicated by the line at the bottom filling with yellow). Once it does, you should be able to play it all back without it stopping. At any point while it's playing through the first time, you can move the cursor back to the beginning and watch the part that's already played. You may have to hit the play button more than once, or hit it before you hit the full screen icon, to get it going. Good luck!

Link to comment

This Concerto Barocco is the BEST Christmas present I can imagine. I've watched it twice so far and agree with the comments about the video techniques. I was especially disconcerted by the director's fondness for starting a movement (eg. jump) in long shot and cutting to extreme close up before the move has ended. On the other hand, some of the Busby Berkeley overhead shots show just how complex and fascinating Balanchine's movement patterns could be.

What a great work this is. No amount of invasive camerawork can spoil it.

And what a gift to be able to see Patricia McBride in a (for me, uncharacteristically) serious role. She is stunning. You can see her technical strength and serene confidence, especially if you compare her with the the female soloist who joins her in the ensembles. Carol Sumner seems to tire before the end; McBride, in a much more demanding role, looks as though she could go on forever.

I hope I never lose the visual memory of this performance. For me, it balances McBride's Coppelia, which shows the more familiar sunnier, lighter side of her dance personality.

Bonus gift for me: to be reminded what an extraordinary partner Peter Martins was. Has any other NYCB dancer shown such elegance and (even more amazing) concentration in the way he goes about attending to his lady? Gorgeous.

Helene: thanks for the confirmation about Merrill Ashley; I thought I saw her darting across the screen a couple of times. Thank goodness for that unforgettable chin.

Does anyone have a cast list for the corps? They have the liveliness and energy often missing in Balanchine performances nowadays but very characteristic of the golden years of the New York City Ballet.

I wonder whether there are other future stars, in addition to Ashley, contributing to those amazing patterns, combining both elegance and life force, that Balanchine created.

Thank you, Imspear, for the link. :flowers:

Link to comment

Does anyone have a cast list for the corps? They have the liveliness and energy often missing in Balanchine performances nowadays but very characteristic of the golden years of the New York City Ballet.

The New York Public Library online catalog often displays lots of data on the dance videos in its collection, but trying to answer this very good question, I couldn't find any of these videos - the ones shot in Germany in 1973 - and I find it incredible that some of them can be floating around in cyberspace but not be in the NYPL archive. Did I do it wrong? I went to nypl.org and entered some likely-seeming search terms in the box in the upper-right corner of the page, like "Balanchine Barocco video," which brought up 56 hits, some of them pretty interesting, but not this one. Similarly for Symphony in C, the one with Kent and Ludlow, mentioned by emilienne and others, whose praise of it I heartily endorse. As I do bart's comment following his question, alas...

Link to comment

here are the items in the NYPL dance coll. that i could find; i'd have expected more but unless they are very oddly catalogued, they seem, surprisingly, not be in the collection.

(re: listing full corps de ballet credits, i don't think in the case of this film, which doesn't include the corps de ballet names on the footage, the names would be noted in the library entry.)

Three by Balanchine (Videotape)

Imprint: 1975.

Description: 1 cassette. 60 min. : sd. b&w. NTSC. ; 3/4 in. (U-matic)

Notes: Telecast on May 21, 1975 by WNET/13, New York on the series, Great performances. Dances filmed in 1973 by RM Productions, Munich in cooperation with Unitel, directed by Hugo Niebeling. For WNET/13 telecast, narration by Clive Barnes and visuals by Emile Ardolino.

Choreography: George Balanchine. Conducted by Robert Irving with the Orf Symphony Orchestra. Narration written by Clive Barnes. Performed by members of the New York City Ballet Company.

CONTENTS. - Serenade. Music: Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. Danced by Karin von Aroldingen, Susan Hendl, Sara Leland, Kay Mazzo, Jean-Pierre Bonnefous, Peter Martins, and artists of the New York City Ballet. - Tarantella. Music: Louis Moreau Gottschalk, as arranged by Hershey Kay. Danced by Edward Villella and Patricia McBride. - Duo concertant. Music: Igor Stravinsky. Music performed by Gordon Boelzner, piano, and H. Cees Van Schaik, violin. Danced by Kay Mazzo and Peter Martins.

Agon [videorecording]

Imprint: 1973.

Description: 1 cassette. 25 min. : sd. color NTSC. ; 3/4 in. (U-matic)

Notes: Produced by RM [Reiner Moritz] Productions, Berlin.

Choreography: George Balanchine. Music: Igor Stravinsky.

Performed by members of the New York City Ballet: Anthony Blum (in first pas de trois), Karin von Aroldingen (in second pas de trois), Allegra Kent and Arthur Mitchell (pas de deux), and others.

SUMMARY: Made-for-television recording, involving unusual camera angles.

Link to comment
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

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