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ginnywithag

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Hello Everyone,

I am a dancer living and working in Antwerp, Belgium. I suppose you can say I am from Houston, although I have lived in several places since I lived there. I love Europe, I love ballet, and I enjoy reading everyone's comments on this website. I enjoy reading reviews in magazines and newspapers, but I am also interested in hearing anyone's reactions to ballet- not only the professionals in the dance field!

I found this website while doing a bit of research on The Royal Ballet of Flanders before I joined the company. I found everyone's comments enlightening and very accurate. It was helpful to read this outisde impression of the company.

I finally joined the site after being a reader for some time. So I say "Hello everyone!" and I look forward to more interesting conversations ahead.

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Welcome and please add you wisdom to the site. It's a fantastic learning lab for ballet and the arts in general.

Thank you for the welcome. I hope to have many opportunities to watch performances on my "off time" this season, and promise to report back.

So far I have also been reading many reviews and comments about Forsythe on here....I like that many people feel so differently about his work. I also enjoyed a review of the Marinsky Theater's La Bayadere in I believe the BLOG section. Wonderful to have so much to read!

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Welcome to Ballet Talk, ginnywithag; it's very nice to have you with us. Glad you've been enjoying the board; we hope you'll also enjoy sharing in our discussions. We all love ballet, and we especially love to TALK about it!

Giannina

I wanted to talk a little bit about what I read in the BLOG section I mentioned before. For RBF's last shows in NYC, Forsythe came to rework some sections with us before the shows happened. He especially worked with us on the drama and skills of miming....somehow a lost art. Naturally with Forsythe, we exaggerated this and it became somehow funny as a joke on itself. While we were working on this part, he was saying how surprised he was that many young dancers in this generation do not know even the simple "normal" ballet gestures for miming.

I had to agree that it isn't taught as it should be...in most places. I certainly wasn't taught much because I wasn't trained in a large professional school attached to a company. I learned most gestures from watching performances, learning certain roles, and studying videos. It is becoming a lost part of the art in a sense that an untrained audience member may not understand it. I would hope that someone truly "speaking" while miming could convey the message without the audience being studied in the miming language. After all, the classical ballets do tell stories and these miming sections can be the most boring and confusing moments!

It is interesting to me, because several people on ballettalk mentioned that Forsythe doesn't perhaps like classical ballet, but I believe a part of him is totally in love with its' theatrical foundation and high drama. I myself would like to see more rave reviews of fantastic miming sections!

Just one opinion to throw out there. =)

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After all, the classical ballets do tell stories and these miming sections can be the most boring and confusing moments!

Your comment resonated with me. I can remember hating miming sections years ago. I think that one of the silly reasons I told myself for so many years that "I don't really like most full length ballets." But in recent years, I've "found" miming. I now see it as beautiful (when done well). About that same time I also found that I started to love the traditional full lengths too. I'll bet there is no coincidence there :smilie_mondieu:.

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After all, the classical ballets do tell stories and these miming sections can be the most boring and confusing moments!

Your comment resonated with me. I can remember hating miming sections years ago. I think that one of the silly reasons I told myself for so many years that "I don't really like most full length ballets." But in recent years, I've "found" miming. I now see it as beautiful (when done well). About that same time I also found that I started to love the traditional full lengths too. I'll bet there is no coincidence there :flowers:.

I suppose one of the reasons for the often occurance of bad miming sections would be the lack of preparation time. Naturally when learning and preparation time is short the dancers and staff focus on the difficult technical areas, and then the other parts suffer. It is a problem I believe many companies have when putting on several programs within a short time of each other- there is so much to do and so little time. I can imagine that earlier in ballet history the actual story telling aspect was more crutial in giving a successful show. With improvments in technique and higher expectations on the dancing moments....the acting areas have not always been the focus as they once may have been. Anyone know what I am talking about? Why has this changed....or was it always this way?

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It was not always this way. Here's a brief interview with Yvonne Mounsey. She throws the technique vs. artistry ratio into a somewhat different perspective, "You could say that in the old days, maybe because they didn't have this technique, they made up with the emotional side." She seems to favor ballet as it is danced today.

I wonder where was that moment in time when the two hit a happy balance? I suppose it was at different times with different companies, and depending on different viewers.

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