Ari

I didn't mean to imply that Ferri should have danced Aurora if it was the wrong role for her, but if she was so weak that any tutu ballet was completely beyond her abilities, why was she a principal dancer?  I imagine that they saw her great talent and potential and simply promoted her too fast.  To promote someone to the highest rank in a world-renowned company and then tell deny them roles because of their technique sends mixed messages IMO because to a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet, technique should really not be an issue.  Whether her temperament is right for Aurora is one thing, whether she's technically capable of performing lead roles with one of the leading ballet companies of the world is another.

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I'm inclined to agree with you, Hans, but as Jane said, Ferri came to prominance largely because MacMillan liked her and cast her in his ballets, which relied more on dramatics than on classical technique and style. The company couldn't ignore the preference of its then leading choreographer. That, of course, raises the whole issue of why a classical company like the Royal chose as its principal choreographer someone interested in a style so alien to that of its founding ethos, but that's a question for another thread . . .

Last night Francia Russell, in a post-performance Q&A, answered a question about how roles are cast.  Her answer was two-fold:  to create the best cast for the audience, but also to give younger dancers the opportunity to grow, so that the next crop of dancers would be ready to assume the roles.

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I would add a third: to give dancers the opportunity to use the roles to develop certain aspects of their dancing -- technique, expressiveness, presentation -- even if the role itself is not one to which they are wholly suited. Balanchine did this all the time, both in solo and corps casting. Putting Merrill Ashley in Emeralds and Swan Lake to develop her adagio and refine her placement is an example. Of course, deliberate miscasting that is too extreme is unfair to the audience, and there were times I felt cheated, even though I knew the rationale for the casting and trusted that Balanchine's strategy would pay off in the long run.

I loved Kistler's early performances in the role because she was a dance creature, and the video of her graduation workshop shows remarkable dancing for anyone at any stage in her career.

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Video? There's a video? I mean, I was there, but . . . there's a video? Where did you see it? Are all the SAB Workshops available on video for viewing by the public?

I'd give anything to see a tape of the 1978 Workshop with the 13-year old Peter Boal bringing down the house in a children's ballet. If there's a tape, maybe they'll show it at his farewell performance.

I think it all depends on the quality and amount of assistance they get. Just throwing a kid onstage without preparation -- emotional and moral as well as artistic -- could do more harm than good. But if the director chooses the dancer wisely -- i.e., avoiding those too immature to cope with the responsibility -- and then gives them the resources with which to handle the assignment, it could work out well.

Of course, being in the corps for a while can help a dancer more than he or she may at first realize. I imagine it takes a while to get used to being onstage and coping with the vagaries of performing, such as learning to adjust to different tempos, partners, circumstances. And performing itself is so different from just executing the choreography (pace, Mr. B!). The anonymity of the corps may be the best place to learn all this.

Then there's the issue of what repertory the company is performing. In Balanchine's day, even the most talented dancers spent years in the NYCB corps before being officially promoted. Part of that was Balanchine's insistence on seeing a significant change in the dancer before dubbing him a soloist, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that dancing Balanchine's ballets takes some getting used to even by dancers trained in his school, and putting in your time in the corps was the best way of acclimatizing oneself to his style. It was fascinating to watch how he would put a dancer in a specific ballet in order to develop a particular quality or aspect of their technique. (I'm talking about corps assignments.)

Of course, Balanchine's ballets make great technical and stylistic demands on the corps, but many other choreographers' ballets just use them as stage-dressing, and to be stuck for years doing that can be pretty oppressive for someone capable of greater things.

The ideal situation would be to give potential soloists their solo opportunities (with the necessary support) but also give them the comfort and safety of corps and demi-solo work until they're ready to stand alone.

Thank you for that information, Condor. I'm sure there are many who will want to pay their respects.

Discount tickets for Wednesday's performance of Swan Lake (Herrera, Bocca) will be available at TICKETplace from 11 am to 6 pm. Price is $42.80. TICKETplace is located at 407 Seventh Street, NW (between D and E Streets), between the Gallery Place (Red Line) and Archives (Green/Yellow Lines) metro stations. They accept only credit and debit/ATM cards for payment.

I also like the lower bun look, although that wasn't the hairstyle Balanchine preferred.

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I believe that the "high bun" look came into vogue at NYCB because Suzanne Farrell wore it, and all the girls tried to emulate her. I'm not aware that Balanchine ever expressed a preference one way or the other.

I wanted the Balanchine calendar, but (cheapskate that I am) waited until the New Year to get it for half price. But a check of every calendar seller in DC and northern Virginia revealed no calendar (they'd had them before!). Finally, when I was in New York a couple of weeks ago, I broke down and bought one for full price at the NYCB Gift Bar. I justified it on the grounds that the money went to a good cause.

This is a very strange article. It meanders around a number of topics (the nature of stardom, personal beauty, personality, the company's preservation of the Balanchine style, casting policies) without developing any of them. All it says is that Rockwell is bored by current NYCB ballerinas.

It reads to me like he had to churn out a Sunday piece and hadn't a clue what to write, so he sat down and just let it flow. I hope this isn't representative of what we're in for in the next (however many?) years.

I suppose it's fair to pick apart the technical aspects of a certain performance. You did pay your money.

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Ballet lovers analyze dancers' performances because they love the art and want to see it thrive. They (or at least those of us here at Ballet Talk) don't see a performance as a commodity for which they've shelled out money, and what we do here is not the balletic equivalent of product reviews on Amazon. We all appreciate the fact that artists work very hard, and are grateful to them for doing so. But like all artists, they have to recognize that the people for whom they're performing have opinions about what they see, and some of these may not be to the artists' liking. Here at Ballet Talk we have certain rules for our discussions, and one of them is that posters should be aware that the dancers may read what they write and to phrase whatever negative criticism they might have tactfully. Anything rude or cruel is deleted from the board. As you say, 32tendu, we are all here because we love ballet and this is one way of supporting it. But support doesn't mean unrelieved praise.

My own prize for less-than-gallant on the matter of feminine attractiveness still goes to Serge Diaghilev.  He changed the name of The Sleeping Beauty to The Sleeping Princess because, he announced publicly, none of his Auroras were beauties! 

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I read that the change was due to the fact that in England, where Diaghilev staged his Beauty (or Princess), theatergoers knew "The Sleeping Beauty" as a pantomime, and Diaghilev didn't want them confused.

So, will she not be dancing at all before 2006?  Or is she just not dancing at the Met?

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Since Ananiashvili is withdrawing from these performances due to health reasons (not stated in this latest press release, but announced previously) I assume that since the Chicago engagement is before the Met, she won't be dancing there, either.

Very sad. I was hoping she'd be here in Washington now.

Well, I wasn't going to mention it since I'd already trashed most of the rest of the performance, but since you asked, carbro --

Zhong-Jing Fang was one of Giselle's friends in the first act. I was very much looking forward to seeing her, based on the rapturous reports of her performances in Symphonic Variations in New York, but was very disappointed. Her long, thin arms were brittle, and her long neck strangely stiff, making her head seem unduly large and awkwardly set atop her body. Aside from that she danced well enough, but the extraordinary qualities that everyone reported seeing in the Ashton did not come out here. Perhaps in another role . . .

About Part, I didn't notice the technical weaknesses that Juliet saw. She began the second act rather low-key, but by the end had achieved a majesty that almost rivalled van Hamel's. I'm eagerly looking forward to her Swan Lake next week.

He could also have argued that it's a critic's job to seek out the most interesting and serious work being done in the art form he's covering, and if that happens to occur in non-mainstream movies that don't get widely distributed, so be it. At least they will eventually become available on video.

I once vowed I'd never see another ABT Giselle, but the lure of Part in a big role and Ferri in what might be her last Washington performance proved irresistible. In the event I was glad I saw Part, but would much rather have preserved my memories of the young Ferri.

ABT's Giselle has always looked the same, through numerous changes of sets and costumes and blocking. One set scene trundles on after another; you can almost see the rehearsal studio emptying out as another group of dancers comes in to practice their bit. Nothing hangs together, no one onstage (except Gennady Saveliev, that wonderful character dancer, as Hilarion) displays the slightest emotional investment in what they're doing. I never get the sense that any of this matters to anyone. It's just another op'nin, another show. Yawn.

Ferri can no longer do the choreography, so she substitutes steps, waves her arms a lot, and, in the second act, overemotes. (I prefer a cooler, more classical Wili.) Her persistent knuckling over also bothered me -- has she always done this? I haven't seen her often enough over the years to know. I would guess that her very high arch makes this a hazard.

Part was a fine Myrtha, and seems to have resolved whatever weight issues she once had. Unfortunately the same can't be said for Monique Meunier, who was Moyna. I thought Sascha Radetzky was very poor in the peasant pas de deux: no line, no center, bad partnering. He seems to have been pulling Erica Cornejo out of her turns, so it was hard to judge her performance.

I wish I had better things to report. Maybe tonight's Fokine program will be better.

Writing in the Dark also contains material not published in the other books.

It's available at bargain prices ($6.99 hardcover, $8.99 paper -- yes, that's right) at BookCloseouts.com.

Johnson's flirtation with Nazism is discussed in this week's New York Observer by Hilton Kramer:

From Johnson’s F.B.I. file, which the bureau began assembling during the war, Mr. Schulze retrieved a letter, believed to have been written to a friend in December 1939, when Johnson was back in the U.S. This is the key passage: "I was lucky enough to get to be a correspondent so that I could go to the front when I wanted to and so it was that I came again to the country we had motored through, the towns north of Warsaw …. The German green uniforms made the place look gay and happy. There were not many Jews to be seen. We saw Warsaw burn and Modlin being bombed. It was a stirring spectacle."

I daresay that for most of us, this chronicle of perfidy amounts to something far more significant than a "passing admiration for Hitler."

The fact is that notwithstanding his aesthetic and intellectual talents, Philip Johnson remained at heart a cynic, an immoralist and a profoundly corrupted character—in short, an evil influence.

Well, "the Red Shoes" is a great thing, but I DON'T think Shearer was an interesting dancer in that movie, in fact, I find her Odette smug and crisp and inexpressive and if I’d been at the Mercury I’d have booed her and hurled things, and I doubt very seriously if I'd have liked her in Cinderella -- she might have been kind exciting in “Ballet Imperial,” but that's a different kettle of fish altogether....

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Shearer said in an interview (I think it was the one in Barbara Newman's book Striking a Balance) that she hates to be judged as a dancer based on The Red Shoes, that it was not representative of the way she really danced.

Discount tickets for the Thursday performance of Giselle (Ferri, Bocca, Part) will also be available at TICKETplace on the day of the performance for $42.80.

And Monique Meunier was Bathilde.

Tickets for Wednesday's performance of Giselle (McKerrow, Stiefel, Wiles) will also be available at TICKETplace from 10 am to 6 pm. Ticket price for Wednesday's performance is $42.80. Other info is as in the above post.

I seem to remember a dancer from the 70's.  I think her last name was D'Angelo, and I believe she danced with the Joffrey Ballet.  She was pretty impressive in the air.  Right?

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Ann Marie de Angelo. Yes, she had a powerful jump indeed. Arpino did one ballet for her, I forget the name, in which she was the sun or something, and began the ballet with gargantuan leap onto the stage. Quite a beginning. (The rest of the ballet didn't live up to it.)

In Israel we have a saying, which can be loosely translated as: "A person who has to cite Hitler/Nazism in an argument has lost the argument." 

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That's a wise saying. And while invoking Hitler may be an extreme example, I think that anyone who resorts to political correctness to validate his argument probably doesn't have much of an argument to begin with.

One wonderful partner who hasn't been mentioned yet is Joseph Duell. His physical strength and modest personality, and apparent fascination with what his partner was doing, made him the ideal cavalier. And his height was an added blessing. I miss him, as a dancer as well as partner.

Tickets for tomorrow's (Tuesday's) performance of Giselle (Kent, Carreño, Abrera) at the KC will be available tomorrow for half price ($38.45) at TICKETplace, Washington's half-price ticket booth. It is located at 407 Seventh Street, NW (between D and E Streets) between the Gallery Place (Red Line) and Archives (Green/Yellow Lines) metro stations. Hours are 10 am to 6 pm.

I don't know where the available seats are, but the orchestra is a pretty safe bet.

He also kept it out of rep for quite a while during the '70s, despite having Martins there to do it. When I first started going to the ballet, it was one of the works I most missed seeing. Balanchine didn't revive it until 1978, when Baryshnikov joined the company. He definitely did it "demi-caractere." Perhaps Balanchine was waiting for a dancer like him who could do it the way he wanted.