sandik

Vilella's comments at the end of the essay are indeed very interesting "Farrell didn’t marry Balanchine in his lifetime, but she has become the wife of his nights." This is perhaps a question to discuss in a more general forum -- the role of the acolyte or the muse in maintaining a repertory once the creator is gone. The first impulse is usually to say that the muse is an invaluable part of the equation, but Villela seems to imply that isn't always the case.

We must have pulled our copies off the shelf at the same moment! (my personal favorite -- Pick Yourself Up from Swing Time)

As well as the Croce books, I'd recommend John Mueller's "Astaire Dancing," which has some great analysis of key dance numbers as well as minutage of the film action. When he's not a big-shot professor of political science at Ohio State, he's a dance history scholar, and is working on a series of Astaire DVDs with commentary tracks. I'm not sure when they're due out, but I believe he's got a distributor in place, so that's something to keep eyes open for.

Ashton's Wedding Bouquet is full of fun (both laughs as well as smiles) as much for the visual humor as for the Gertrude Stein text. And there are some very funny bits in his Facade. (the milkmaid...)

Lucky duck!

Monotones Theme and Variations 4 Temperaments

I don't want to be argumentative, but because I've taught at the University of Washington, and because the history of dance in Seattle is something I've been working on for a number of years, the pedant in me is clamoring to speak. Dance was first taught at the UW in the Physical Education department, and continued there until the 1960s until a parallel program was started in the School of Drama. The PE department, which transmogrified in the a Kinesiology program (and which did a number of studies on dancers until they were closed due to budget cuts in the 1980s) continued to include dance, primarily modern and ocassionally folk forms. Dance remained as a "program" in the School of Drama until the 1980s, when it was transferred to the School of Music, and was later shifted back to Drama, where it is today. Bellevue Community College has had an active dance program for over 25 years, lead originally by Carolyn Darrough who I think came to them from the UW -- their performance group, the Eastside Moving Company stages an annual show on campus and has done outreach performances in the past. The emphasis right now is primarily on jazz and hip hop (they have a tendency to support the dance forms that students arrive having already studied), but in the past they were more focused on modern/contemporary dance. Many local choreographers have set work on them. Thanks for letting me go on a bit -- please return to the previous discussion!

Thank you for the example -- there is artistry in many human endeavors, from the physical to the mental, as well as the more technical underpinnings -- in this, dance is equivalent to cooking and logic and carpentry and, though the hitting part makes me queasy, boxing.

I'd just let them be "ballet competitions". Doesn't change my perception that the question: "Is ballet a sport" is essentially meanless. I think you, and I, and many others would be surprised to see "Ballet" listed in a college brochure as one of the "sports" they offer -- listed right there with "Baseball, swimming, and badmitton" -- be the ballet offered competitive or not. Without making a claim one way or the other, there are several colleges that include ballet as one of the recreational activities (listed under sport) that they offer. And there are still colleges and universities whose dance programs are housed in physical education programs. The PE teachers were often the first members of a college to embrace dance training and to host dance performances. You can discuss the athletic aspects of ballet (there's a story in the Seattle Times today about physical training for athletes that includes a Pacific Northwest Ballet soloist) without "reducing" ballet to sport.

Oh, I like this very, very much! Many thanks for posting it!!

Shouldn't this be "after Ivanov?"

For years they never had to think at all about competing nights since they shared the Opera House -- I wonder sometimes what kind of efforts they make about scheduling. The gods help us if the opera ever gets its own facility!

Fracci had a great deal of success in Romantic-era work in her own dancing life -- it doesn't surprise me that she's turning to that repertory as a director. Richard mentions the Portrait of Giselle video, where she does talk about that part of her career, but there's also a video of early Romantic ballets (sorry, the name of the program escapes me right now) with Fracci, Alonso, Thesmar and Evdokimova in selections from Sylyphide, Robert le Diable, and Pas de Quatre where they all speak at length about the period and the style.

I'm fine with the costumes for Diamonds (especially the champagne color for the soloists and corps), and the women in Emeralds, but the men's costumes in Emeralds and Rubies make them look short, and the gathers at the tops of the sleeves make their shoulders look hunched even when they're not. And the green light on the scrim in Emeralds matches those mints that everyone used to serve at wedding receptions.

Good point -- I know there are other works to that score, though I haven't seen them and can't speak to their style. This is one of those times that I really miss Bob Joffrey, who had such a sense of responsibility to the past.

Second week of casting for Jewels is up http://www.pnb.org/season/jewels-casting.html Mostly additional performances by previous casts, except for Rubies on Thursday, with Jodie Thomas and Le Yin making debuts.

Not sure where to find it, but there's a wonderful photo of Cole coaching Marilyn Monroe, I think for the Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend number, or maybe something from There's No Business Like Show Business. He was instrumental in helping her develop her dancing style -- he never really got the credit he deserved, as a performer, a teacher, or a choreographer.

This is just stunning. I love the static quality of it, especially in the hands.

Speaking as a journalist, I was thrilled that Richard Campbell got front page, above the fold placement for this story -- the arts don't usually get that kind of "hard news" preference. He got a similar space when he broke the news about Stowell and Russell's retirement, and good for him!

Remember that Petipa was raised in the Paris Opera version of Romanticism, and brought those experiences with him to Russia.

Tangentially, there is a recent murder mystery set in and around a dance company that is embroiled in creating a ballet version of G.E. The bits and pieces of a scenario were quite believable. Cannot remember the author at the moment.

Hadn't thought of Tudor, but yes, these characters would be very familiar territory for him. And there are legions of Janites who are willing to purchase many, many things!

What an interesting question. I'll have to mull this over. I will say, though, off the top of my head, that keeping Balanchine's comment about mothers-in-law in mind, Pride and Prejudice would be a challenge!

I went back and asked myself one of the original questions for this thread -- is ballet elitist? Well, yes, it is, in the same way that baseball is elitist -- as far as the performers/players go, it is supposed to be a meritocracy -- the best people rise to the top. As far as the audience is concerned, you can be an elitist (knowledgeable about the skills, history, arcana of the activity) or a curious amateur. I am, I suppose, a part of the elite audience for dance, and the amateur audience for baseball. As an observer, the experiences are very different, but the people that promote baseball don't try and dumb it down to get me in the door. They don't feel obliged to apologize for the complexity of their sport.

The truly crazy part of this is that it's an excerpt from a version of "Swan Lake." It seems the majority of these performances come from fairly young dancers who've combined their training with gymnastics, where the aesthetic prefers hyper-limber bodies and extreme extensions. I agree with Helene that we don't see much of that reflected in performance today, except for some school shows. I was thinking about the different timelines in development while I was talking to some friends about Patricia Barker's upcoming retirement. As people have mentioned above, young dancers often acheive great physical facility before they really know how to use it in the context of the art form. One of the pleasures of watching an artist develop over time is seeing them mature, watching them bring the riches of the art form to the anatomical skills they've got, and seeing what they do with the combination. As disorienting as it might be to watch these ultra-flexy kids, I'm not sure I'm ready to panic -- it's like watching a teenager go through one of their gawky phases. You have an empathetic twinge, but you know it will get better with time.