Ari

All of Jane Austen.

In addition to giving generously to selected companies, I would fund a new series of Dance in America programs on PBS -- with me in charge of programming. And I'd also fund a series of dance programs from all over the world -- telecasts of performances originally broadcast in Europe and elsewhere that we ordinarily don't get to see.

I was motivated to buy my first ballet ticket by seeing ballet on PBS, and I'm sure that many others would do the same if they were exposed to it.

Oh, Silvy, what a treat you are in for! :huepfen:

I think my favorite Astaire/Rogers is Swing Time. It's Fred and Ginger as ordinary folks, not rich and glam. The plot isn't much (none of them are), and Fred's sidekick, Victor Moore, is annoying, but the musical/dancing numbers are divine. The music is by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, and is a hit parade of They Don't Write Them Like That Any More. The big dance numbers are Pick Yourself Up, Waltz in Swing Time (which is actually not very good, as Ginger is off form here), Bojangles of Harlem, and the biggie, Never Gonna Dance, which is a corker. In addition, there are two beautiful non-danced musical numbers, The Way You Look Tonight and A Fine Romance, which are heavenly. This movie was recently adapted as a Broadway musical called Never Gonna Dance, which was lovely but did not run very long -- audiences these days like rock stuff like Rent, apparently.

My second choice would be Top Hat, which is probably their best known film, and The Gay Divorcee, which is like an early study for Top Hat (the plots are very similar). And there are some wonderful moments in Follow The Fleet, especially the Let Yourself Go and Let's Face the Music and Dance numbers. And I have a special fondness for Roberta, their second movie and one that is seldom shown on TV here in America, although it is on video. You can really see their partnership taking off in that film. As a ballet dancer you might laugh at Shall We Dance, in which Fred plays a famous ballet dancer, Petrov, ne Peter P. Peters from Philadelphia, PA. The "ballet" sequence at the end, with Harriet Hoctor, is a horror. :speechless:

Once you've seen the movies, you might want to look for a copy of The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book by Arlene Croce, which is out of print but definitely worth searching out. What she says about the films is as incisive and exciting as everything else she writes.

Have fun, and let us know what you think!

ABT used to have a more American repertory before it became "American" Ballet Theater. In the 40s, they did American-themed work such as Billy the Kid and Fancy Free, but that seems to have died down around the time they appended "American" to their name. (Although the fashion for national-themed ballets also went into eclipse at about this time.)

What American style of ballet? I wasn't aware that there was one.

I know you don't like Balanchine, Hans, but he is usually recognized as having developed a distinctively American style of ballet -- fast, bright, clean, and energetic.

Oddly, Villella emphasized in pre-preformance how careful Balanchine was to cast specific roles for particular dancers, which makes it a bit surprising that he'd cast the Stravinsky VC on different types than B. did.

When outsiders are brought in to stage a new work, aren't they usually allowed to choose the dancers? Or does it vary from situation to situation? I'm speaking of the general practice in companies everywhere -- I don't know MCB's policy.

MCB gave two programs at George Mason University this weekend – Villella’s The Neighborhood Ballroom on Saturday night and an all-Balanchine program on Sunday afternoon.

I enjoyed The Neighborhood Ballroom more than I’d expected. I’d been wary, because social dancing is meant to be danced, not watched, and today’s ballet dancers usually have no background in the social dancing of previous times (the ballet spans the eras of the Belle Epoque through the 1950s). I thought they did very nicely, though, and Villella’s choreography adeptly balleticized the waltz, quick step, fox trot, and mambo and maintained my interest. For a company whose repertory is dominated by a single choreographer, MCB adapts to other styles quite well. They did a very respectable Patineurs several years ago at the Kennedy Center, one that looked more Ashtonian than a 1998 performance I saw the Royal Ballet do. The four acts of Ballroom could have used a bit more story, though. The company’s men looked particularly good here.

This afternoon’s program was Ballo della Regina, Stravinsky Violin Concerto and Rubies (yes, “Rubies,” not “Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra,” as it’s usually billed when presented without Emeralds and Diamonds). Mary Carmen Catoya sparkled in the ballerina role of the first ballet, and her dancing had the clarity, if not quite the speed, of Merrill Ashley’s. Mikhail Ilyin was superb in the male lead. He made his beautifully precise dancing look so effortless -- unusual for a Russian dancer -- that the audience did not at first realize the difficulty of what he was doing. He has an appealingly modest demeanor, too. The demis were disappointing, except for the third (Tricia Albertson?), but the corps looked splendid.

Stravinsky Violin Concerto, on the other hand, had some serious problems. The recorded music (uncredited in the program) was too slow, and this dragged down the dancing. But as the ballet went on it became clear that the rather heavy, earthbound performance couldn’t be blamed entirely on the music. The staging, by Bart Cook and Maria Calegari, didn’t lift and sing. It plodded, and this is a ballet that has to take off. It’s unusual to see MCB dance like this, because one of its hallmarks is the zest and spirit the dancers bring to each work, especially Balanchine’s. Some of the choreographic details were sloppily rendered or left out – for instance, in the first pas de deux, the ballerina is supposed to let her head fall sharply to the side when she hits a pose entwined in her partner’s arms, and this didn’t happen. The casting was problematic, too. The second pas de deux contrasts the fragility of the woman with the massive calm of the man, but Jennifer Kronenberg is a powerful dancer who looked like she could dominate Carlos Guerra. Guerra is also not as pure a classicist as Peter Martins, and this robbed a solo passage, in which the dancer is made to twist and turn in and generally look as unclassical as possible, of tension and therefore interest. Similarly, the contortions of the first pas de deux were made on a dancer (Karin von Aroldingen) who had a solid, ungiving body, but Deanna Seay is quite supple and bent and twisted easily, even gracefully – which made nonsense of the choreography. I’d like to see Seay and Kronenberg switch roles. As for Isanusi Garcia-Rodriguez, I hardly noticed him, and this is odd because this is the role that Cook used to dance.

Rubies is one of MCB’s signature works, and it was a pleasure to see it again. But seeing it so soon after New York City Ballet’s production, I noticed certain differences between the two that I hadn’t before. MCB’s style is full throttle, and that is exhilarating. But this headlong, high intensity approach allows for no light and shade in the quality of the movement; moments of delicacy or tenderness that add piquancy to the predominantly sassy, emphatic dancing are lost. I think NYCB’s production offers a richer experience, but MCB’s has its own pleasures, too.

This is the review in the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was posted on the Links thread of Friday, April 16 (registration is required to read the article):

For 'R & B,' Pa. Ballet keeps the beat brisk

I don't think ABT wants to move into the State Theater. They're happy at the Met, a more prestigious address.

Kchessinska actually had two imperial protectors -- though not at the same time. (After all, she was a prima. ) Tsar Nicholas II dispensed with her when he married, and she then took up with one of his cousins, and had a child with him.

Not all offstage couples make good onstage couples. Although Patricia McBride liked to dance with her husband, Jean-Pierre Bonnefous, she actually danced better with Helgi Tomasson. And Kyra Nichols and Daniel Duell were sometimes paired when they were married, but physically and stylistically they inhabited different worlds.

I think ABT's tendency to hire foreign principals stems in large part from their "buy it, don't develop it" approach towards star-making. If they continue to look outside their own company for ready-made stars, they are going to find mostly non-Americans, except for the odd crossover from across the plaza. This spring, they have imported Roberta Marquez to dance two performances of La Bayadere. I know nothing about Ms. Marquez; she may well be a brilliant and exciting ballerina, but she is not a "name" who is going to sell out the house the way, for instance, Svetlana Zakharova, another spring guest, might. The company could just as easily have given those two Bayaderes to one or two of its own dancers, possibly helping them develop into stars. If they had, the chances would have been greater that at least one of these dancers would have been American.

Thanks for that report, flipsy. The company is coming to the DC area next week with the same program.

I thought Iliana Lopez had retired? Or perhaps the press accounts of her and her husband's "final" performances were talking about their last performances in Florida?

So what happened between then and now?

The change in the Royal Ballet has been a slow evolution. I'm not as familiar with the history of the company as some others on this site, and I hope they'll chime in, but I can point to a few events that helped bring about the change.

When Ashton stepped down as company director, his successors were not very interested in preserving either his ballets or his style. MacMillan wanted to stage his own ballets, which had a completely different esthetic than Ashton's. The dancers became adept at dancing MacMillan's style, and had difficulty switching over to Ashton on the occasions when Ashton's works were programmed. They tended to dance Ashton (and the classics, for which Ashton and de Valois had shaped their own company style) in a MacMillanish way, which differed radically from the previous style. Then the RB school abandoned the teaching of the Ceccheti system, on which the Ashton/RB style had been based. The absence of good homegrown choreographers who worked within the company tradition meant the acquisition of the work of choreographers whose style was even further away from what Ashton and de Valois had worked so hard to establish.

It should also be noted that the Royal now hires dancers from all over the world, not just the EU. Alina Cojocaru, Irek Mukhamedov, Inaki Urlezaga, Thiago Soares, Tetsuya Kumakawa, and Robert Marquez are among the dancers from non-EU countries who are dancing or have danced with the company recently.

But I can tell you that the company I see today looks almost nothing like the Royal Ballet I saw for the first time in 1976. The loss of that heritage is a real tragedy.

Go over the program for the ballet you just saw and cross off the names of the no-shows and write in the names of their replacements (if you know them).

I'm afraid the only way to figure out what's wrong with a performance you don't like is as much exposure to the choreographer, dancers, company, and style of the work as possible. Mostly that means seeing a lot of different performances, but knowledge gleaned from good criticism and journalism, and, as kfw says, Ballet Talk is also very valuable. The more you know about the various elements of the experience, the better you'll be able to isolate what it was that didn't work.

But why is it that at NYCB, sixteen of the twenty-two principals are American? How do we explain the almost opposite proportions of American to foreign dancers at the two companies?

Hans @ Apr 14 2004, 10:52 PM

What about those who "get it" but still don't like it?

Alexandra @ Apr 14 2004, 11:29 PM

Well now, there we have a discussion. One position would be that if you really get it, that means you like it -- or at least admire it . . .

I think there's a difference between liking and admiring. For instance, I admire the work of Antony Tudor. I recognize his craft, his taste, his poetry. But I don't like his ballets. The prospect of seeing one on a program makes me grateful that the company is presenting quality work, but doesn't lift my heart or make me eager to go. Understanding that difference is what I expect in a professional critic.

Obviously, all critics have likes and dislikes, like all other humans. Unlike other humans, they are paid to analyze and elucidate what they see for the benefit of their readers, and in order to do so they sometimes have to write from the head rather than the heart. If I were a critic and had to review a Tudor ballet, I would try to understand what the choreographer was trying to do and write about how successfully he did it. I wouldn't ignore my emotions -- I don't think a critic should do that -- but I wouldn't let them interfere with my better judgement. And if I saw very little of the Tudor repertory, I would refrain from making statements that implied that I had wide experience with it. This is what most British critics do with Balanchine (yes, Ms. Brown, I stick to my guns) and it bothers me.

I didn't mean to be insulting to anyone, Alexandra. It's true that many, if not most, critics outside the United States (and some within) don't "get" Balanchine. The reason I single out the British, as opposed to other foreigners, is that British and American culture springs from the same source and usually has more in common than with the culture of other countries. So I expect greater understanding, and am puzzled when it isn't there.

I think your generalization about British critics is true, hockeyfan. I approach all British writing about Balanchine with the expectation that the author will not "get it." This is based on years of reading many, many British critics, including good ones.

In addition to the exceptions that you and Alexandra mentioned, A.V. Coton was a critic who made a real effort to understand what Balanchine was doing. I have a collection of his writing that was published in the 1970s (he wrote in the 1950s and 60s), and I was surprised and impressed by his open mind.

An interesting question is, why don't the Brits get it? I know that in the formulative years of the Royal Ballet, there was great loyalty towards the home team on the part of the critical community, and that devotion may have made it hard for them to understand a different approach to style and repertory building. One of Arlene Croce's classic lines is, "Every country recognizes two classical styles -- its own and Russia's." But I would expect truly good critics to be able to put aside their personal tastes and appreciate good art for what it is.

High culture now fears popular culture so much that it insulates itself deliberately from it.

This may be true in literature (the Jonathan Franzen/Oprah brouhaha comes to mind), but it certainly isn't the case in the performing arts. What we have there is the opposite -- institutions of high culture laboriously trying to "get hip" (I'm afraid my slang is woefully old fashioned). Ballet companies doing rock ballets, opera companies advertising that opera "isn't as bad as you think," adaptations of classic drama that manipulate the text in order to "update" the production for "relevance" -- the problem is that high art is ashamed of itself and is trying to become pop art.

But, generally speaking, I think Applebaum has a point about the high/low divide, and I think it's a legacy of the 1960s. Ever since it became OK to rebel against the Establishment, we've tended to see things in black and white -- either you're a traditionalist or an innovator. There's no sense that you can build on tradition and develop it and create new work out of it. Applebaum mentions Broadway musicals as an example of middlebrow culture (in the best sense) and I think she's right. Look at the virtual disintegration of the musical in the last forty years -- pop music composers don't want to write for the musical theater any more because it's too traditional, doesn't have that attitude or edge of rebelliousness that is de rigeur in pop culture these days.

Interesting list, GeorgeB fan. I'd replace von Aroldingen with Patricia Wilde, a ballerina for whom Balanchine made Square Dance and Raymonda Variations, among other ballets. While von Aroldingen was important to Balanchine personally, I think that Wilde's legacy has been more lasting. I'd also like to see Kyra Nichols in there, but it's tough to say whom she should replace -- Ashley seems the likeliest candidate, but they're so hard to compare, each so important but for such different reasons.

The last thing I saw them in was a strangely overwrought Balanchine version of The Cage about the time of the Balanchine Celebration.

Do you at all remember the out-of-character-for-Balanchine work that they revived during the 1995 Celebration for Maria Calegari and JE?.

Are you talking about Variations for a Door and a Sigh (Variations pour une porte et un soupir)?

carbro, I've been told that recordable DVD players currently have two competing formats for digital recording, and that it's not known yet which will prevail -- kind of like the VHS/Beta standoff of twenty years ago. The person who told me this recommended waiting until this issue is resolved before buying a DVD recorder.

Thanks, Estelle. That is a fantastic schedule, emphasizing the company's heritage. I wonder if this is the first time that Monica Mason has been able to plan a season entirely on her own, rather than having to deal with leftover plans made by her predecessors. If so, it makes me hope that the powers that be will waive the mandated retirement age for artistic directors and let Mason get the Royal back on track.

T'Sani was a superb partner who could take on the most nightmarish partnering assignments and make his ballerina (and the audience!) feel secure. While I never saw Patricia McBride do the second movement of Brahms-Schoenberg with her original partner, Conrad Ludlow, I never saw her dance it better than when she was dancing it with T'Sani.