Farrell Fan

BW, you're the greatest!

BW, the book Toni Bentley reviewed in the TBR is Meredith Daneman's biography of Margot Fonteyn. It's a wonderful review and convinced me I should read the book. I can't resist quoting from Toni's last paragraph: "Fonteyn's ashes were not interred at Westminster Abbey as many thought they should be, but rather, as she instructed, at the foot of Tito's tomb in an ill-kept cemetery outside Panama City. Hers is the smallest stone, Daneman reports, in the entire cemetery. Dame Margot Fonteyn literally took her humility to the grave." Bentley has been a wonderful writer since her days in the NYCB corps. That's why I bought and read "The Surrender." I found it disappointing because, if you'll forgive me, she examined her subject in too much depth. But even so, there were parts early in the book which were worth reading. She is currently working on a biography of Lincoln Kirstein. It should be great!

Surprise, surprise! "The Surrender" has been chosen by the New York Times Book Review in its Dec. 5, 2004 issue as one of the 100 Notable Books of the Year.

As a lifelong Democrat, I want to add my thanks to Mayor Bloomberg for his support of DTH. Another Republican, Joseph Bruno, majority leader of the New York State Senate, was instrumental in what appears to be a happy continuation of the NYCB residency in Saratoga. And I remember twenty or thirty years ago when the audience at NYCB was regularly asked to write to our legislators on behalf of restoring federal funding for the arts. The only person who responded to my letters was a Republican I'd thought unsympathetic to that cause: Sen. Alphonse D'Amato. It's good to have one's preconceptions shaken up once in a while.

Yes, through last season Victor Castelli, Jean-Pierre Frohlich, Susan Hendl, Lisa Jackson, Russell Kaiser, Sara Leland, and Christine Redpath were Assistant Ballet Masters. Glad that Aroldingen and Tanner have been added to the list and now are all Ballet Masters. Rosemary Dunleavy has been Ballet Mistress for a long time and continues to hold that title. This could raise questions of political correctness, but I have no desire to raise them. :rolleyes:

In the video "Dancing for Mr. B: Six Balanchine Ballerinas," Allegra Kent says that as a small child she wrote her mother that she wanted to be a "ballyreeny" even though she'd never seen a ballet. When she finally saw the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, she disliked "Swan Lake," "Gaite Parisienne," and, especially, "Scheherazade." She thought perhaps that even though she loved ballet, she hated ballets. The first one she saw that lived up to her mental picture of what ballet should be like was "La Sonnambula."

I've read both and enjoyed both. Gottlieb's is more informative, Teachout's is more fun to read. As for indexes, the most egregious example I remember was "5000 Nights at the Opera: The Memoirs of Sir Rudolf Bing." This was published by Doubleday (not exactly a University or small press) in 1972 with no index, making the book almost worthless.

Since I always sit in the third ring for the NYCB opening, I'm glad to have a friend who has the unusual ability to recognize celebrities just from the tops of their heads. But he wasn't there last night. Check the back of the NY Times Style section on Sunday, where they have photos of socialites and others at various parties and benefits. They usually do a feature on the opening. As for the security guarding the tables, I think most of those guys were tall waiters.

For me, the evening was more enjoyable than I'd expected. Martins's "Octet" showed him in an usually benign mood -- soothed perhaps by the Mendelssohn music. It harked back to the ballets he choreographed for the company's young men a couple of decades ago. If you count the two soloists, there were eight male dancers, to match the eight musicians in the pit. I agree with Oberon that the pas de deux for Kistler and Hanna went on past the point of ennui. I also agree that Wheeldon's "Liturgy" was the highlight of the night. Wendy's costume by Holly Hynes made her dancing seem even more stunning. Sylve and Askegard were beautifully elegant -- but elegance is not necessarily the quality one looks for in the Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux. I'm Old Fashioned got the standard performance from the usual recent suspects -- Kowroski, Ringer, Rutherford, Neal (nice to see him again), Marcovici, and Higgins. As usual, Fred Astaire was the audience favorite.

Thanks for posting this, harpergroup; it wasn't in my copy of the Times. Maybe it will be tomorrow. At any rate, I hope we hear from the Ballet Alert Saratoga contingent. Thanks and congratulations to all who worked so hard to keep NYCB at SPAC.

Thanks for your report, Carbro -- it's great. More! More!

Although Gottlieb's book is the more authoritative and comprehensive, I agree that Teachout's is more fun to read despite (or maybe because of) some dubious assertions. For example, of the New York State Theater: "The balconies are too high, the auditorium too deep, and unless you're lucky enough to be sitting in the first fifteen rows of the orchestra, you feel as though the stage is a mile or two away." That sounds more like the Met to me. Incidentally, Gottlieb's book counts Danilova as one of Balanchine's wives, for a total of five, while Teachout's credits him with only four wives but adds numerous, unspecified "romances" and affairs. I reiterate, though, that I enjoyed both books tremendously.

I don't know what someone who is new to Balanchine would make of Terry Teachout's book, but I enjoyed it immensely. It's quite different from Gottlieb's -- less a brief biography than a long essay by an opinionated spectator. He compares Balanchine to Matisse instead of to Picasso, as is usually the case. Why? As far as I can figure out, because he likes Matisse better. (So do I.) Though there are things to quibble with on page after page -- he finds a resemblance between Davidsbundlertanze and Liebeslieder; cites Serenade as "entirely plotless" in contrast to Apollo; describes Balanchine's early love life in the U.S. as "an endless series of torrid affairs" -- the net result nevertheless makes a compelling case for Balanchine's genius. In my misspent middle-age, I used to write book advertising and always studiously avoided the cliche "compulsively readable," but I finished this in one sitting, so the cliche was true for me. Incidentally Amy (and anyone else who's seen the book) what do you make of the photo on the front of the jacket? I had never seen it before. Though it calls to mind Tallchief's account of the last time she visited Balanchine in the hospital and he was choreographing with his fingers, he looks healthy and more like a puppeteer And the bandaids on his thumb and index finger are like what baseball catchers use to make their signs more visible to their pitchers. Weird. I hope someone can provide an explanation.

Dale beat me to it about "Theme."

In 1947, Alonzo originated the ballerina role in Balanchine's "Theme and Variations." In his Balanchine biography, Bernard Taper wrote: "Alonzo, always a splendid technician, seemed better than her best in this ballet, as if Balanchine had invented a new glamorous and radiant personality."

I mostly enjoyed Gottlieb's biography of Balanchine. It is a model of concision, and manages to weave Mr. B's personal life and professional accomplishments into a seamless whole. Among other things, I learned that Balanchine was as distraught when Zorina left him as he was years later when Farrell defected, and that he suffered anxiety attacks for years after Tanaquil le Clercq was stricken with polio. One small matter, however. It used to be conventional wisdom that when Mr. B accepted Kirstein's invitation to form an American ballet company, he agreed and said, "But first, a school." More recently, Jennifer Dunning, who chose that phrase as the title of her history of SAB, has written that it was Kirstein who said it. Gottlieb seems to attribute it to Dimitriev, but obscures the point by suddenly switching to the passive voice: "A few days after that, Kirstein was in Paris, meeting with Balanchine and Vladimir Dimitriev to sweat out the arrangements. On August 11 the three men got down to specifics, with Dimitriev laying down the law. Since leading Balanchine, Danilova, and the others out of Bolshevik Russia, Dimitriev had stood by, handling practical matters for them and sharing in their income. In the discussions now, two things were insisted upon: In America, they must start with a school, with the company to follow, and Dimitriev's presence was nonnegotiable."

On the evidence of the posters on Ballet Alert, undoubtedly serious ballet lovers all, Gottlieb is absolutely correct. Corps members are continually singled out, their performances brilliantly analyzed, serious questions raised when they are perceived to go into temporary eclipse, etc. The performances in Mozartiana are what's dissected, not the ballet.

Subtitled "Lincoln & George, excerpts from my memoirs," it was billed as the first seminar of the NYCB winter season, but the appearance of Jacques d'Amboise at the New York State Theater on Monday evening, November 8, was more than that -- it was a one-man show, or even a piece of performance art. There was no interviewer. Instead Jacques, wearing a body mike, appeared alone on a stage he had decorated himself with a pair of evergreen plants he'd bought earlier in the day. One, which he called George, was festooned with red ribbon. "Balanchine loved red," Jacques said, and never forgave the communists for appropriating it as their color. The other, Lincoln, was draped with golden ribbon. "Lincoln raised the money for us." He began with a long anecdote about Leslie R. Samuels and Fan Fox, benefactors of NYCB and the State Theater. Jacques and his wife Carrie (Carolyn George) were frequent dinner guests at their huge Fifth Avenue apartment. After Samuels, because of his friendship with Jacques, donated the money for NYCB's production of "Union Jack," Kirstein asked to meet him, so Jacques got him a dinner invitation. But Lincoln had a miserable time and during the evening Jacques lost sight of him. He'd sneaked out early, but had made his escape not into the Samuels's private elevator, but into a closet. Too embarrassed to exit, he stayed there for a good part of the evening. He talked of his National Dance Institute, which he started in 1976 with $3,000 of his own money, and 20 little boys. Within three years, there were 300 children in the program. He recalled asking Balanchine whom he thought the most talented of his many ballerina/muses over the years. "Allegra," was Mr. B's answer. He said Mr. B let him do anything without complaint -- go to Hollywood to appear in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" and "Carousel," dance on Broadway and TV, make guest appearances, whatever. "He's like me, he does what he wants," Mr. B said. But Jacques did not enjoy Hollywood. Kirstein called him "Buster" and took it for granted he'd take over from Balanchine when the time came. Jacques threw cold water on the idea from the start. As for Robbins, Kirstein was dead-set against ever entrusting NYCB to him, although Jerry had to be mollified by sharing the "Ballet Master in Chief" title. "Peter was the right choice," Jacques assured the audience. He spoke of the early days of NYCB on tour, and glowingly of Marie-Jeanne, Tanaquil le Clercq, and his own dancing children. Balanchine had wanted Jacques to marry Carrie on the same New Year's Eve that he married Tanny. Instead, they got married on New Year's Day. Still, for years they celebrated their anniversaries jointly. One of the most memorable parts of the evening was when Jacques demonstrated how he'd tinkered with Mr. B's choreography in "Diamonds." For this purpose, he even did a little imitation of Suzanne. His memoirs are supposed to be at the publisher at the end of this month, but he didn't think he'd have them finished in time. Toward the end, he recalled how he'd phoned Lew Christensen shortly before his death. "I don't have enough time," Christensen told him, "but I loved the way you danced." Jacques choked up recallling this. He told the audience how vulnerable dancers are. He finished by saying, "I was a dancer," and walked offstage. I hope somebody was taping this.

I'm currently reading Robert Gottlieb's wonderful little book, "George Balanchine: The Ballet Maker," and in the "Sources" section at the end, he writes: "I was also the editor of Suki Schorer on Balanchine Technique (Alfred A.Knopf, 1999), a remarkable anatomization of what Balanchine demanded from the dancers and teachers at the School of American Ballet. To the extent that Balanchine's ideas on dance technique can be codified, Schorer has done it -- with the help of countless anecdotes and memories of Balanchine in the studio."

Davidsbundlertanze was originally produced by the short-lived CBS Cable. So that might be at the root of the problem.

I was at the SAB Workshop too, and agree with Ari about what Kirstein said. Robbins was there, too -- and the sight of the four of them coming out together was profoundly moving.

I'm not surprised the title of the Trey McIntyre ballet -- "Pretty Good Year-- slipped dancelyssa's mind, as it seemingly has nothing to to with the music, Dvorak's Piano Trio No. 1, or with the energetic choreography, which conveyed nothing to me. Wheeldon's "VIII" provoked whoops and hollers from the audience, but I thought "Sinfonietta" came off much the best, although it looks better on the bigger Met stage.

I agree that in the Rudel years nobody ever mentioned the supposed acoustical shortcomings of the State Theater. I thought it was because there were great singers at NYCO then -- Sills, Neblett, Domingo, Treigle, Carreras, Molese, et. al. But come to think of it, Oberon is correct that in those days even smaller voices could be heard without need of "enhancement" -- a euphemism for amplification. The system in place seems to work better on some nights than others. It was disastrous at one point in "La Rondine" in September when the character Prunier sat down at the onstage piano to play his latest composition. It sounded like somebody turned on a boom box. I've hoped for years that ABT and NYCB would alternate seasons at the State Theater. But I've given up that forlorn hope.

Today is being celebrated as the 100th anniversary of the NYC subway. For the occasion, the NY Times ran a lengthy article by Randy Kennedy, starting on page one, which covered various subway lines at different hours of the day and night. The last paragraph of the article made me glad I read the whole thing: "As midnight approached last night at the Jamaica yard, a tower operator, Marianne Kreuter, was ending her shift. She was pulling the big levers in the room overlooking the yard, sending trains out into a new century. 'It's like choreographing a ballet,' Ms. Kreuter said as she flipped the switches on the control panel. 'And you can call me Georgette Balanchine.'"

My reaction was like chauffeur's. I not only found "The Jane Austen Book Club" easy to put down, I found it increasingly difficult to pick up. As a result, I never finished it.