EricMontreal22

The presentation of the gifts *is* in both of the original productions though--Zhakarov's for the Bolshoi in '45 and Sergeyve's for the Kirov in '46--though I think the gifts may be a bit different (Sergeyev includes a cape which is used ot great effect when Cinderella enters the ball)--which gives me the thought they could have been Prokofiev's intentions (the 12 gnomes for the hours wer ein both too) I just guessed this was in Prokofiev's original version and was a way to show in dance form, what traditionally is done with magic effects (I mean it sure works bette rin classical ballet form thatn having Lizards turn into footmen, pumpkins into coaches etc). Prokofiev also said that Cinderella was written as a hommage to Tchaikovsky's ballets. As was mentioned here, the seasons music sounds more like a hommage to Glazunov's The Seasons ballet (my CD of Cinderella actually has a recording of The Seasons to fill out disc 2)--but I think the excuse for the fairies and their female attendants is also a hommage to the traditional Petipa "white act" (Act I Scene 2 of Raymonda, the Vision scene of Sleeping Beauty etc etc) And it is an excuse to get some gorgeous female corps dancing after having largely character dancing and mime in the first scene.

Rosa, in a few words you encapsulated for me what I find missing in Ashton's version. I also always found it odd that he says he dropped the Prince's trip around the world for time (when the ballet is very short, for a three act work) and cause he didn't like the music, when I find it some of the best music in the score! Oh well...

Jerome's naming names left him with quite the stigma--something I think it's easy to forget now. I'm not syaing this excuses--and certainly he never wanted for work at least on the stage--but it did make him an unwanted man in many circles. Even when he came to "doctor" A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum out of town (and saved it as the docu said) Zero Mostel was NOT pleased nor very eager to work with him at first--and I don't think he was all that happier with him when they reunited for Fiddler, although Zero knew he was the best man for the job.

That great Falling in the Pit story is in every Robbins book I've read so I have little doubt of it being true! LOL. It's pretty great--in a Summer show I did right after high school--a revival of Pajama Game actually--a similar thing happened to our egomaniacal director. He actually was MUCH nicer after his accident. Speaking of Pajama Game that always made me wonder--Robbins co directed it with Abbott but because of time commitments hired a fairly fresh and untested Bob Fosse to do the actual choreography. The big dance numbers were of course Hernando's Hideway, Once-a-Year-Day, Steam Heat and (not in the film) Gladys and Hines' Dream/Nightmare ballet "I'll Never Be Jealous Again" (which is also cut from most revivals but I love). Fosse restaged the big ones for the movie version--but Sondheim discussed how blown away he was by Robbins' staging of Once Was a Man. I wonder if anyone knows which numbers Robbins staged and which Fosse did? It would have been neat to hear a bit more about Robbins hiring him as well.

I got the Bolshoi 1974 Romeo and Juliet DVD with Vasiliev and Maximova last week and have watche dit in full twice now, and some of my fave parts many more times, so thought I'd try to write a brief review since I haven't seen it reviewed on here yet. First, here's a link to the DVD (it can be hard to find) on Amazon using Ballettalk's Amazon box to help support them: http://www.amazon.com/Prokofiev-Romeo-Juli...4760&sr=8-1 I have to say I'm really impressed with VAI--they seem to have done some good work finding obscure Russian TV broadcasts of perfromances that other labels don't know about or have forgotten--already this release from last year and their earlier release of the Kirov's 1980 Ryamonda with Kolpakova are some of my fave ballet DVDs and I think essentials for any collection. That's high praise considering that the quality itself, on either tape, isn't all that good (another reason I'm please VAI went ahead and released them anyway--knowing their historical and artistic worth and importance). So about those bad points... There are definetly some frustrating things about this recording, almost all due to it being a videotaped live performance on apparantly unsophisticated Soviet devices from 1974. The sound is mono, but it is pretty much great--Prokofiev sounds terrific, however the microphones seem to have been placed somewhere in the audience and there's more coughing on this tape, and during scene changes, talking than I've ever heard on a ballet or opera or concert DVD before. I guess it gives you a "you are there" feeling. ;) When I first began watching the DVD I was really worried--older Bolshoi performances are notorious dark it seems anyway but this was ridiculous--the curtain opens up briefly in the Overture to show a tableux and it took me a lot of pausing to realize it was Friar Laurence's place that we were seeing--and then the opening scenes in the town square when the sun slowly rises are next impossible to see much of anything. This slowly improves, but really the first 15 minutes or so are pretty rough going. However--stick with it and the filmign vastly improves--there are a few more dark spots in night scenes that are a bit hard to see, but they seem to have improved the cameras and lightings as it went on and there's nothing as bad--and most of it looks, for the time it was shot, very good. (The one real tragedy is near the end when Romeo hears that Juliet is dead, his solo is done in largely darkness with a dark outfit and it's not as easy as I'd wish to see--particularly as it seems to be Vasiliev's biggest solo. Thankfully though the "Balcony Pas De Deux" is much easier to watch). The actual filming is so so as well--it's not bad overall and we get a lot of full body and full stage shots which I appreciate but there are odd times when they focus on one person doing nothign and meanwhile you see that some poor guy is doing major leaps around her--because you see some bits of arms or legs. LOL I got the feeling the cameramen were told to focus on the ballerinas and not the male soloists so in duets often you don't see the man as well. But overall it's good... But what makes this DVD a must, for me, are two things. First of all, I had only ever seen Vasiliev and Maximova dance before in the Bolshoi Nutcracker. I don't much like that production anyway and they don't get all that much dancing so I wasn't quite sure what to think. They both are absolute perfection in this Romeo and Juliet. Maximova *acts* the role with such sincerity and such commitment and looks wise she really does look like a young teenager--so it's both an ideal performance and ideal casting. Sometimes when performers are acting in those huge theatres, the close ups of filmed ballet can make it seem over the top, but Maximova never seems fake (neither does Vasiliev for that matter--no small feat considering Lavrosky's staging is filled with amplified hand gestures, etc). Her technique is flawless and for a ballet where the acting is so important it's a winnign combination. Vasiliev is every bit the star I always read, from Arlene Croce and others, that he was. Effortless, athletic, a good actor, and of course handsome all add up to, again, perfect casting. And the charisma of the two of them is perfect (which helps because, without Shakespeare's words, even with Prokofiev's convincing music, you need some sort of instant charisma to believe the instant love between these two that even the best mime artists don't always have). The rest of the cast was good--I guess this was still at a very good period for the Bolshoi and Romeo and Juliet--even though the production was created for the Kirov--is a good ballet for them. In terms of the corps work it reminded me of how I imagien Gorsky's productions might have been as opposed to Petipa's--that's the only way I can explain it. The corps rarely danced or acted all the same, everyone clearly was given their very own character, and its this kinda energy that I think the Bolshoi thrives on (I wish there was a Kirov tape of this production to compare their style in it). The mime roles of the Queen and Nurse were especially strong as was the dance role of Mercutio (I felt Tybalt was maybe a bit too over the top melodrama villain--he needed a mustache to twirl--but wow Lavrosky give shim quite the death scene!) Which lead sme to my second reason for loving this DVD. I'm sorta a stickler (as anyone reading my threads knows by now--and liek I said in my review of the Prokofiev/Bolshoi Cinderella) for knowing what the "original production" of a ballet was like. I think, for a variety of reasons, the Soviet productions of the Prokofiev ballets--Cinderella and R&J in particular as I know Stone Flower had more problems--aren't given their due in the info on ballet out there--Ashton's Cinderella (unfairly if you ask me) has became for many people in the West the definitive Cinderella and MacMillan's (or even Cranko's or Nureyev's) R&J the definitive Romeo. I've seen two versions of MacMillan's R&J and it's a great ballet--but I have to say so much about Lavrosky's felt more authentic and right to me. I'm not sure if it's because I have a bias knowing this is the original Russian production (barring of course the different and pretty much unknown Czeck premier a few years before) and that influences me or what. What I most liked--and was surprised at--was how much mime was in the ballet. And this was early Soviet mime--NOT Imperial Russian code-ified mime. But "real natural" gestures. I know that shorly after the ballet premiered, both Sergeyev at the Kirov and Grigorovich at the Bolshoi (where he ultimately did his own R&J) started restaging ballets to almsot eliminate all mime--of any kind--but for a ballet like Romeo and Juliet Lavrosky's stryle feels dead on to me. The seperation of the intimate love scenes with the grand city and festival scenes is triking and works perfectly with Prokofiev's sometimes violent sometimes contemplative score. I'd always seen pics of the main Ball scene with that massive set and painting and been blown away but see the production I was also amazed at how--even by Bolshoi standards--it was so MASSIVE. Nearly EVERY little scene had a different set--not just the standard 3 or 4 for one ballet, and they used a technique I had only seen done in Broadway musicals of the time to allow this--dropping the curtain between scenes while changing the set, or having a smaller "drop scene" acting as a curtain and playing a little scene there. I've never seen this in ballet before--and for the most part I thought it worked ingeniously. There were maybe one or two too many scene sof people simply crossing the front curtain to travel somewhere else but it did give a good sense of going to a new place. While the sets and costumes are, very 1940s (and when this was shot looked liek they could use a bit of touch up) I think the whole look is striking and I prefer it in its rich patterns to the heaviness of the often praised MacMillan designs. I don't think I've seen the Bolshoi look as grand as I have for some of those settings. Wonderful stuff. It's too bad the Bolshoi seems to have dropped Romeo and Juliet from their repertoire (even the Grigorivich 1989 staging, which I'm curious to see on DVD to compare, seems to have been dropped as it's not on their website list) partly becauswe it's such a historical production but also becuase I think it's just a stunningly moving production with moments that feel like they work with Prokofiev's music better than any other version (maybe because Lavrosky got Prokofiev to edit and change some of his score--I don't think they got along...) Still, it's listed as part of the Kirov/Mariinsky's repertoire and I hope they keep it and in good shape--I'd love to be able to see it live at some point, I think the spectacle of the Market and Ball scenes ould be incredible. For me it's important to have a record of--the way I wish we did of the old Petipa ballet productions--and even with all the faults I'm so glad we have it with such genuinely awesome performers as Vasilieva nd Maximova. I've read some reviews that don't like how much mime is included and find the choreography technically dull--I always found it so appropriate and moving with the music and story that it never bothered me. (My one plot complaint is it felt like, if you didn't know the play, the part with Romeo not getting the Friar's message that Juliet wasn't really dead never came across).

I have to say, I see all the points here, but I'm in agreement with dirac. This was a documentary aimed largely at the uninitiated--I believe--and West Side Story and Fiddler are the two works that Robbins is best known for. Maybe it was because I love Broadway about as much as I love ballet that it didn't bother me--I was actually impressed and surprised with how much about ballet *was* covered. Certainly I hadn't seen a huge majority of those clips--whereas I had seen pretty much all of the Broadway clips many times and was disappointed in them (the Ed Sullivan performances of Cool and Maria are easy to find commercially and online, absolutely *nothing* from the stage production of Fiddler was shown though clips exist, very little from Gypsy focusing more on the TV movie version which was supervised by Robbins at least, unlike the Fiddler movie, etc). I guess my point is that someone watching it with a huge love and knowledge only of his Broadway work would have probably been as disappointed as Natalia and others eeem about the treatment of ballet--we learned no new insights at all, many of his more interesting and less successful shows like Billion Dollar Baby were hardly even mentioned (O would love to know where the footage of the Max Sennett ballet in High Button Shoes was from!) and virtually no new footage. To me, as a fan of both (but, I admit, I'm someone who knows much more about Broadway when it comes to Robbisn than his ballet work, something I hope to rectify soon), I felt they were balanced well. I wish the documentary could have been twice as long and we could have really gone in depth with his works, but... For what it was I felt it did a better than expected job. (Certainly, footage wise, we got about as much ballet as Broadway) Jack, thanks so much for the info on Faun! It's definetly next on my ballet DVD wish list. I always forget that there was a time when the CBC was very good at recording dance... Is the performance of Fancy Free they showed with Baryhnikov available anywhere? The original footage (shot from the wings?) of that ballet was fantastic even in its conditon--I was surprise dnone of the footage shot of the original On the Town that pops up in a lot of Broadway biopgraphies was used, even if fleetingly. Oh and they said the same thing on our, Seattle, PBS "Stay tuned for more Jerome Robbins". It was just the end credits, however.

I loved it, although having just read two books on the man I didn't really hear anything new (the aforementioned Mr B eruption aside). I was sorry there was next to no new Broadway footage--apparantly there was footage of Comedy Tonight from Forum but the rights were too hard to secure. They even used the Fiddler film instead of stage performances--ironic since, although the film largely recreated Robbins' stage choreography, Robbins was really unhappy with the film and said it was a completely different animal than the show he created for stage. However there was TONS of ballet clips that I had never seen before--it made me wish we'd get a show of those clips in full following the bio. In particular I was glad to see The Cage in part as well as the Chopin works which were gorgeous. They were wise to focus on his profesional life, although I might have liked a bit more of the personal stuff (I wondered if we got the Monty Clift stuff in there because he was a known star that audiences would know? Certainly he wasn't by any means the longest male relationship of Robbins'). As an aside, it's funny to see James Mitchell as one of the interviewed "talking heads" who I grew up with as Palmer on All My Children--I often forget he was such an accomplished ballet and Broadway dancer (even though of course he's Curly in the Oklahoma film's dream ballet).

Just a heads up that the Bayadere reconstruction is on Youtube! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30q_lUZUPLs...feature=related

I've changed my pre-order accordingly ;) Thanks for the reminder--

Wow it kinda looks like The Shades as staged by Busby Berkeley! But the dancing is WONDERFUL. Thanks for this!

A good 20 or so ballets have been notated in some form with fragments of many more, Cliff. I don't have my copies of the Harvard contents on me here but I think this Wikipedia list ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sergeyev_Collection ) is pretty much correct. Doug and others should be more knowledgeable than I, but I'd guess that there ar emany reasons more aren't revived despite the recognition of Petipa's name. Access to the notations, someone who can work from them and to the scores would be a big one. Many of these scores, if they exist, are probably in the Mariinsky Archives which they guard pretty carefully. I also am not sure there'd be a huge for a fairly obscure title with a plot no one knows and a score by someone like Minkus for most casual ballet audiences. The ballets that have survived usually have some reason why they have--and it'd be better for more companies to do, say Raymonda instead. Also they require big productions. As well most of the ballets that exist in notation form in close to full, that are full evening ballets and not one acts, are performed in some form already--the main exception seems to be Roi Candaule.

I find this whole return to old slashers kinda amusing. When I was first taking a film genre course in university I got kinda obsessed with how the cycle of slasher movies that proliferated when I was born--the Halloween clones from Friday the 13th to Terror Train to Prom Night to Happy Birthday to Me (a fave) and My Bloody Valentine. Of course before Halloween was the Canadian Black Christmas. Then the whole genre died off largely cuz it got too unpleasant and gory and misogynistic even for the fans that first liked it--and along came Scream which mocked the genre yet paved the way to a whole new cycle of these films--many (bad) remakes. And I guess we're still somehow in that cycle. Odd too is even though I'm 28, only 8 years or so from when I did an essay on the early 80s films and enjoyed watching every over the top minute--I now have a lot less tolerance for any gore. So I don't think I'll be rushing out to see Friday the 13th (I never thought the old ones were all that effective for scares, ANYWAY) Maybe I don't relish seeing teenagers sliced up as much as I did when I was a teenager? I do still love horror and am fascinated by it--and am kinda repulsed by the recent love of "torture porn" horror--Hostel, the Saw films... It just makes me feel kinda disgusted and saddened--not scared. With a slasher film (the kind I like anyway) part of the enjoyment isn't the gore but the viseral scares you get--like a roller coaster. It's almost catharthic. I don't find that at all with Hostel or Saw (the only two I've seen of that genre). If I wanna see a film examining how depraved and inhumane people can get I'd rather it be a sobering documentary than a film apparantly made for my entertainment (and I know that's a high horse stance to take when I own a copy of He Knows You're Alone)

I always cynically think one reason this is done is the same reason when older Broadway musicals are revived, the overture is choreographed or staged. They feel that audiences will get bored not being immediately *thrown* into the action. I dunno, not every stage piece needs an overture but I do think that there's something to be said for listening to the overture and letting it "get you into" the piece you're about to see. For me, seeing a live theatrical show I'm always a bit distracted till the 30 minute mark or so when I fully forget about my problems in life or at home, my surroundings and (if it's good) get thoroughly "into" the piece, be it a Tchaikovsky symphony, a Pet Shop Boys concert, Sleeping Beauty ballet or A Little Night Music on Broadway. The overture helps with this. I know in musical theare more and more "intense" pieces do without an intermission at all cuz they say it's so hard to "bring an audience back" after they've gone back out "to the real world" had drinks, chatted about the show, etc, and a short entr'acte can help. I just think that often some sort of instrumental overture gets people more into the feel of the piece than suddenly thrust into the action. Of course it seems nowadays many people spend the overture as time to talk to their friends, text people, and do other things--basically as "pre show music"... With Swan Lake in particular I sorta feel it gives away some of the surprise by showing us the backstory--and some of the magic (I feel the same about Nutcracker using the overture to show the nutcracker being cursed or similar things--like at the Royal, but not as strongly)

I take exception to "dumbing down" as a huge Broadway fan--certainly a work like Sondheim/Lapine's Sunday in the Park with George is as sophisticated and moving as any modern opera or ballet I can think of. There's some difference too--musical theatre places a lot more emphasis on lyrics that progress the story than on opera where lyrics are pretty much unimportant, and the dance tends to be more integrated whereas often times the ballet in opera was completely divorced from the opera (at its least essential often merely a pretty divertissement) Of course us ballet fans owe a lot to dance from opera--wasn't it the Ballet of the Dead Nuns from Meyerbeer's Robert le Diablo opera that many feel led tot he whole Romantic Ballet craze in France? It's interesting too when ballet and opera have been combined--I know there's a DVD of Rimsky Korsakov's "Ballet-opera" Mlada, which wasn't a big success when it premiered, that I'd like to see. Of course as Helene mentioned early opera integrated ballet to a much larger extent--it was part of the presentation. Opera in itself was largely created to try to recreat the Greek Tragedies which were all done to music originally--and to which we know dance also played a huge part, so I guess the intertwining of opera and ballet really goes back YEARS before the birth of Christ. Interesting about Dance of the Hours--the piece seems to be more famous than the opera it's from--I'm nto too knowledgeable about opera but have never even heard of it performed anymore. Are there other examples of this? I have seen Prince Igor (on DVD) and I knwo the Russian companies stills tage it but surely the Polovstian Dances are more famous than most of the opera as well.

Polovstian Dances is what instantly springs to mind. I also love the Pastorale in Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades/Pique Dame. I always wondered if any of Petipa or Ivanov's MANY dances in the Imperial Russian operas survived (I believe Ivanov did the original Polovstian Dances, but of course Fokine's brilliant versions have replaced his)

Thanks for all yoru help--Doug, I'm with you about the worth of Glazunov's scores (Raymonda is my favorite 1800's ballet, in fact, after Beauty). One aspect of these ballets I find fascinating, was brought up in Tim Scholl's From Petipa to Blanchine book--in a section that can be read on google books. He brings up the fact that these one act ballets, created first for the smaller Hermitage theatre, were, like earlier examples (notably Drigo's Awakening of Flora which the Mariinsky reconstructed so beautifully) in a way are both a throwback to earlier court ballets that were shorter variations on a theme rather than complex story ballets--and foreshadowed the return to these more abstract ballets by Balanchine. Russes D'Amour does have a story (more than The Seasons or Flora for that matter) but it's there more, it seems, to cause dances that are variations on this theme--the story is so basic even by ballet standards. If I ever become a billionaire and form a ballet company devoted to these old ballets I'd love to do them as a double bill (maybe even a triple bill with Flora of which Seasons seems to have so much in common). At any rate the scores are masterpieces for their time and deserve to be heard--and in the context they were created for. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id...1&ct=result is the link to Google Books online edition of the first half of From Petipa to Balanchine that mentions these works.

Thanks to everyone's help in this thread, I received my copy of the Bolshoi 1961 movie of Cinderella in the mail last week. I've since watched it all the way through twice... And this seems the best place to "review" it. I'm a huge Cinderella fan--a large part of my love for the work is because I appreciate how Prokofiev took his style and adapted it to a ballet score that he wanted to follow the pattern of the classic Tchaikovsky ballets, even dedicating the score to him. In some ways i think it makes a nice, Soviet companion piece to Sleeping Beauty (even if it's nowhere as ambitious, grand, or *long* as that masterpiece). Knowing the score for years, I never felt that Ashton's version quite *fit*--so I've been excited to see the original Soviet versions. I know that the ballet was commissioned by the Kirov, but for many reasons ended up premiering a year before at the Bolshoi. This led to two versions "rival" versions, Rotislav Zakharov in Moscow, and K Sergeyev's in Leningrad. It's a shame we don't have full video recordings of both of these works (and they're no longer in either repertoire)... Anyway back to the film--I admit I was disappointed at first. Kultur's DVD release is in *no* way restored, the sound and image is about what you'd expect from a public domain cheapie DVD of some movie from the 30s (not the 60s). But I bet they got the best print they could. It also felt "odd" at first--the sets which seem to be based on the original Bolshoi designs but a bit more elaborate feel neither quite like stage sets or like film sets, and the closeups and reaction shots come off as, frankly, cheesy nowadays. Also,knowing the score by heart the cuts to keep it 80 minutes were jarring (the ballet isn't a long one anyway--Prokofiev wrote just under two hours of music, but I'm certain much was cut from the stage version. But you know... by the Fairy of the Seasons variations I was almost completely won over. Maybe I just had to get used to the poor quality and the dated style of the filming. The whole film is so utterly *charming* and, maybe because it was the first version, even the odd touches feel right. I had read comments about Zakharov's production and choreography being disappointing to Ashton, but I loved how musical all his movements were. The corps in the Ballroom Act did perform simpler steps than I expected, but the details of the patterns they formed was astonishing and I bet it looked spectacular on stage. As for the leads, Raisa Struchkova *is* Cinderella. I'd never seen her dance before, and I was impressed most of all her how athletic her turns were, and how good her acting was. Actually, maybe because this was a film and not a filmed performance, the acting of everyone was one of the things that made it work for me. I loved how the choreography corresponded to this--the Step Mother somehow making pointe work look awkward, the Jester (who I'd never seen in any other production) and his athletic-ness allowing him to show off but being perfect for comic relief. And Gennadi Lediakh--a dancer I hadn't even heard about--as the Prince was perfect--romantic, determined, and with good humour. The humour of Zakharov's production also caught me by surprise in general--I'd never seen the "Prince searches around the world" divertissement staged before--and loved how it was done with such comedy and knockabout action--the Prince in his rush to test his shoe on every woman's foot leading to the male suitors around her chasing him down. Great stuff. (His turns also are *amazing*--maybe the old film just makes them look even faster than recent video taped performances, but wow) Being such a big fan of this ballet the whole film was exciting to see--in a way it would be like seeing the Imperial Ballet doing Sleeping Beauty only 15 years after it premiered. Yeah, it was "opened up" for the film, and I wish it hadn't been edited for time (and that we wouldn't get close up shots that cut away from amazing dancing going on elsewhere). And I wish it would be properly restored. But it's better than nothing--and actually is a much better viewing experience than I ever expected. It's a shame Zakharov's production doesn't seem to be staged anywhere--no, his choreographic text isn't as important as, say Petipa's classic ballets are, but it's always interesting to be able to "go back to the start" and see how it was first staged. I also have to say I like some of the weird Soviet touches that I believe were written into Prokofiev's original score--that Ashton got rid of--like those creepy gnomes to announce the hours of the clock (the filmed "midnight" sequence, while obviously utterly different on stage--was pretty amusing in its cheap effects!) I suppose Ashton's production ahs overshadowed this original one in the West--most other versions seem to be derived from it. And I know I'm probably alone in feeling this way, but watching the Soviet Bolshoi version just felt more magical to me. It's a shame that, this film aside, it seems to have been lost to the active repertoire.

I've recently become infatuated with this score (it's about 45 minutes on CD anyway)--as a Tchaikovsky geek, I love how it uses and interweaves so many of Tchaikovsky's orchestral melodies and matches them with new ones in such a clever way--and manages to be a hommage to the old Imprerial ballet (ie the very Sleeping Beauty esque Grand Pas de Deux). It's actually becoming one of my top 3 Stravinsky scores and I'd love to see it staged. Croce mentions it in After Images as one of her favorite Balanchine ballets, one that he never got the endign quite right and was constantly revising. She mentions hating the original ending which seemed like dancers crawling on a spider's web--yet in Denby's Looking at the Dance from the time it premiered, he loved it *especially* that original ending. It was commisioned for the Nijinska production but nothign seems to have remianed from this, I've never even seen images. Croce also mentioned a version by John Neumeier (who she doesn't seem to like much) that had a "beyond clever" concept of ballet dancers rehearsing a series of fairy tale dances--to which he added real Tchaikovsky ballet music for the "dancer" scenes. Croce thought its success was due solely to the concept, not the execution--but this version hasn't seemed to remain in any repertoire either.

Just bumping this thread to notify people that Roland John Wiley--the author of the amazingly comprehensive ballet books Tchaikovsky's Ballets, The Ballets of Lev Ivanov and A Century of Russian Ballet, as well as other pieces on Russian music, dance, and history, has a new Tchaikovsky biography out this June. Amazon is already taking pre orders. It's some 700 pages and promises to be a fully detailed biography, interspersed with seperate chapters giving the history and anlalysis of Tchaikovsky's major works (with special emphasis on the operas and ballets). I personally have high expectations for this. http://www.amazon.com/Tchaikovsky-Master-M...8536&sr=1-6

I've been looking for a good book about 20th century Soviet ballets and companies. I guess ideally I'd love something like Wiley's amazing A Century of Russian Ballet, but for the later era. I've found many books that discuss basics--and a couple of great 1980 books about the current Bolshoi ballet. What I'm looking for though is something that not only discusses the revival works of the old classics, or Grigorovich's Spartacus in passing as many books do. I'd love to know, for instance, what people thought of the "rival" Bolshoi and Kirov productions of Prokofiev's Cinderella in 1945 and 1946 respectively, at the time, or why Lavrosky's original Stone Flower was something of a flop, or how the Bolshoi began to predominate the Kirov when the capital was moved. (My specific interest is on the Soviet history of the three Prokofiev ballets--his biographies don't give much about the actual *productions* just the writing and problems getting Romeo and Juliet staged). Are there any good basic books on these things? Amazon does list a book from the 40s--and a 70s edition--called The Soviet Ballet by Juri Slonimsky (and others) that can be ordered used--would people recommend this book? It seems that with so much brilliant information on the Imperial Russian classic ballets and their world, I'd love similar info about ballet in the Soviet era. Thanks for any suggestions and recommendations!

Thanks to both of you, and for clearing up the image is from Act II. I suppose the basic settings for all three acts (excepting the dream I: ii) could almost be interspersed with each other. It is interesting to me that Virsaladze's set designs for the Kirov/Sergeyev version kept the drape/curtain motive for the roofs--maybe it just became part of the tradition for designing Raymonda in Petersburg (though I know immediatley before Sergeyev's more conservative version was the Vainonen revision that switched around some of the roles). Certainly Virsaladze's more stylized designs for the Bolshoi/Grigorovich version use a flowing curtain motive as well. It's too bad that for such a major ballet in Miyazaki's ouevre (at least for me--but definetly one that in Russia has survived the most--although it's fair to say that at the time ballets like Phaorah were probably more performed) seems to not have much archival imagery surviving. Doug--how complete is the Stepanov notation, do you know?

I really miss the show--yeah the format is cheesy but where else do you get to see so many different kinds of dance on broadcast tv? I actually only tuned into the Canadian show because I had been friends and danced with one of the choreographers, Paul Becker as a kid and teenager--and was surprised at how hooked I became. Alexandra was one of my favorites in the end, so it'll be interesting to see where her career goes.

Does that book cover all the various productions over the years? I'll have to check it out (I was trying to keep track of how many Beauties and Lakes they've done). dirac--Persian Fire is one of Holland's historical, non fiction books. I read it a while back and would really recommend it for anyone with interest in the subject--he writes so well that it's a pleasure to read. I'd really recommend any of Hollinghurst's other books--if you enjoyed Swimming Pool Library you kinda know what you're getting yourself into--a mix of arty intellecualism with homoerotic scenes (to put it mildly). His last novel, Line of Beauty won the Booker--and was adapted quite well for the BBC--and is maybe a bit heavier than his earlier writing but they're all great reading. (I know some feel his characters are unlikeable, which worriess me a bit since I relate to them so well... )

They have it from Japanese sites. hmv.co.jp is one (you can view it in English), CDJapan is another. I am not sure what the region code is though--Japan is NTSC (like North America) but is region 2 (like some of Europe)--however in my experience dance, ballet, and concert DVDs are region 0. This is the link I used. http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=IVCF-5151 It is preferable--it's beautifully letterboxed so you see every image in the intended frame. (have any of the Bolshoi ballet movies been similarly restored?)

With Prokofiev's score I think that's especially true. It's no secret that a horror movie without its music is hardly scary--especially for the "jump" moments.