katharine kanter

Afraid I'd to have second Estelle here. The point she raises about no choreography, is relevant I think. Ann Williams, in a review she did for ballet.co on a POB performance a couple of years back, referred to something like a "curious dissatisfaction" she experienced, a kind of feeling of emptiness, in the troupe, if I recall her terms. I often feel that I am watching well-drilled, and exceptionally COMPETITIVE marionnettes - with one or two notable exceptions. The stuffing has been kicked out of them. This is not meant as an expression of disrespect for some very hard-working and disciplined people, but there has got to be something more for it to be art, rather than the Radio City Roquettes. One always thinks of the French as irrepressible, as bubbling over with life and enthusiasm. Well, that may have been true at the POB and the School at some remote period, possibly in the year of Dante's birth, 1265 to be precise. The POB, and the Opera School, do not give one the impression of institutions that one would want to work in, or for. There is a general atmosphere of tightness, carefulness and coldness, which is quite depressing. Is that an objective in life ? Can that be right ?

I've said this before, but, if it's worth saying once, why not twice - or more, for that matter... The sort of "work" I've described above is absolute rubbish. The people who choreograph rubbish fight tooth and nail to get commissions from the top CLASSICAL companies. Egregious example - Blanca Li, a gymnast and night-club artist with no classical training, who gets on like a house on fire with someone, only her hairdresser knows for sure, in the POB, and has got commissions to "choreograph" if that is the word, on the company. Not a workshop mind you, the company at full throttle, including a few étoiles thrown in for good measure. After bombing out with "Sheherezade" at Garnier, we suddenly find Blanca Li catapulted into the top spot at the Deutsche Oper unter den Linden!!!!! She quit after a few weeks, but that's another story altogether. Choreography today is 99% dancer-driven. No matter how dire your choreography is, a classical dancer, bursting with commitment and superb technique, will be called in to make it LOOK like art. The same piece of litter choreographed on a "modern" dancer whose technique is, shall we say, limited, might not go down a treat with the Board of Directors who have just shelled out a £150,000 commission for the "creator". But for us wizened oldies - A sow's ear by any other name, would smell as....whatever

For those who do not read French, the above posted by Estelle, corresponds to an audit on labour matters. The Paris daily Libération quotes the following lines, with reference to the POB School - I've given the French expressions alongside, it is all terribly sensitive in this country, and I don't want to be accused of exaggerating. This is Libération now, quoting the Report by an outside firm called "Socialconseil": "lack of discussion about pedagogy, public humiliation of the teaching staff, offensive behaviour (indignités) to both adults and children.... denial of physical suffering (déni de la douleur), attacks on personal dignity (atteintes à la dignité), discipline by psychological terror (sic), harsh language (outrances verbales)

Solor, I have been told precisely what you have written above, by more people in the trade than I care to recall. So you are not alone - you were just bold enough to resign what it started sapping your joy in dancing, rather than allowing yourself to turn sour. And you are bold enough to express the dim view you take of "modern" art, in public. Personally, I am not a fan of Petipa, but that's neither here nor there. It brings us back to the quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, which has been raised in various forums on this Website. I take my Hat Off to any theatrical artist who refuses to go out in some of the degrading, ludicrous, rubbish slithering across our stages at the moment. And as you well know, the Refuseniks will often be "punished", by not being cast in the classical stuff they are good at. There's a battle on at Paris at the moment - someone in the Town Council doesn't want to pay for a "sculpture" called something like Me and Me. It's a live parrot, in a cage, with a tape recording of the artist playing, reading the words Me and Me. Then you recall the story of the charwoman who scrubbed away Jacob Beuys "sculpture" called Fettfleck, which was just a great lump of butter on a chair. Beuys' insurance company sued the Museum's Management, I think it was at Dortmund, for not protecting the whopping Fettfleck. I think Beuys lost though, that was about twenty years ago. Then there was a man at Frankfurt, forget his name for the moment, he had "dancers" come and throw pigs' blood all over their naked bodies, and do something with the symbols of Christianinity that I don't think I should repeat on a family Website. He was in the employ of some official institution. There is also some weird professor who's got an exhibition of dead, embalmed human bodies with which he tours Europe, I think he calls it "art", and the British Customs people tried to stop him from bringing it in on hygiene grounds, but they failed, UNFORTUNATELY. I mention these examples from non-balletic fields, because classical ballet is none of those things. It is not a fraud, it is not an imposture, it is not sick and morbid, and it is not wool-over-the-eyes. It is a highly technical, carefully thought-out system for expressing musical ideas in a clear and UNIVERSAL way that , with a bit of effort, is accessible to the layman's understanding. I've written elsewhere about the absolute crap that is being thrust down our throats at the Paris Opera at this very moment - dancers m.......g on bidets, pink plastic s..... organs tied to the girls' monokinis....stars of the opera going out topless... and I do mean topless. The choreographers who do this sort of thing to dancers, many of whom are just kids, KNOW they are destroying their minds, but the high salaries are paid to the régisseurs and the choreographers dearie, not to the dancers. Would you have gone down on stage like that ? Would you have allowed your self-respect to be trampled on ? You got out, while the going was good. We have got to stop madmen from DETERRING and DISSUADING intelligent, well-adjusted kids from entering the trade, by putting on shows like this, so bad, that they make Liberace look like Rudolf Serkin.

With apologies to Private Eye, from Pseud's Corner: This is Ashley Page speaking, taken from the Scottish Ballet Website: "My plan for the immediate future is to work from classical roots towards a repertoire which will range from the neo-classicism of Balanchine through the spare brutalist edge of the likes of Forsythe and early Petronio; a fresh look at the 19th Century classics with the crucial addition of Ashton and MacMillan - my natural territory. A vital extension of this mixture is the inclusion of work with a softer, more humanist nature (...) not forgetting the essential ingredients of new commissioned work by both home-grown talent and the most vibrant and searching creators from further afield." Could someone PLEASE explain what is EARLY Petronio ?

Arthur Mitchell, on tour here in rainy Europe for the past fortnight , in an interview with Debra Craine of the Times (4th November 2002) Debra Craine writes: "It was the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King which sent shock waves through the black community in America, which inspired Mitchell to do something to help Harlem, where he had shined shoes as a boy... yet Mitchell believes that today, with so many more opportuniteis available to black kids in the deprived inner cities, the situation is, ironically, evn worse." Mitchell speaks: "When I saw the anger and frustration of these young people in the 1960s, I knew we had to do something positive for them. Yet today things are worse than thirty years ago when I started the company. Young kids are killing and stabbing each other in high school. Kids have been desensitised by technology; they spend hours each day playing with computers. How can you ask that child to be compassionate ? At Dance Theatre of Harlem we try to ignite the passion, and when you ignite the passion you tap into the compassion."

You GAVE away a ticket to see the adorable Cojocaru ! You ARE an angel ! Let us recall here that Lynn Seymour, who was right up there with Galina Ulanova in my little book, could not pull off the 32, and was wont to stumble towards the orchestra pit after 11 or 12. Did that stop her ? Well, it did stop her from turning the rest, because she'd just ditch'em - and then get on with the rest of the play. Depending on your physical construction (e.g. very swaybacked), you may not be able to get through them properly no matter how many hours you put to the grindstone. Does it matter ? The girl is too fragile, and frankly, the choreography should be altered so she does not have to suffer through them. One can allow oneself do that, when faced with a woman of that calibre. She probably spends most of the ballet worrying that it will Shortly be Expected. Swan Lake may, overall, be a little too technical for her. Moreover, it requires great stamina, and she does not have it. Which brings us back to a point I have modestly tried to make elsewhere, that the things she was taught in Kiev are Not Good for the Body. Anyway, asfor projection at a distance, let us bear in mind that we are dealing with a girl who is just over five foot tall. Very small dancers, like Elizabeth Maurin, Monique Loudières, or Laetitia Pujol, have all had difficulty, despite their great charisma, in projecting on the large Bastille stage. And, lastly but not leastly, Bournonville's own favourite dancer was Juliette Price, about whom he wrote something like "her refined style of dancing did not project well at a distance, and had to be viewed at close range to be properly appreciated".

If you look up on Internet the Salt Lake City international piano contest, you will note that a Swiss lad called G. Pescia, if my memory serves me aright, won this year with Haydn and Mozart. You may not be familiar with the music trade, but in such contests, people are expected to strut their Pagannini stuff - Rachmaninov, Liszt, anything, so long as it's contorted. This is the first time in many a year that anyone has won a major international competition, by simply playing "easy" works, properly. You are no doubt very professional in your work, and know that there is no such thing as "easy" in art. It is harder to excute a simple enchaînement freely, musically, with elegance and taste, than to fire off a bit from Le Corsaire, where all the public will notice is "how many" or "how high". Read the interview with Pescia, it's quite instructive. He wanted to impose a certain concept, and he did. If you are entering competitions to try to get into a top company, I suppose one might see the point. If you are already well on the way to where you want to be, you might want to concentrate your firepower on more important things. One should bear in mind that a Jury is not Mount Olympos. The jurors are not Gods. They are just ordinary men, who have somehow or other become "a success", and who will often prove to be as susceptible to mercantile, show-biz considerations as any shop-keeper. There are exceptions, BUT.... Where has the competition frenzy taken us ? It has taken us to the point that there are people today - including the ladies - who can turn ten, even fifteen pirouettes. There are girls who toss off the 32, with doubles and triples. I'm not, in theory, against that - why not, for fun, occasionally. But, overall, where has that got us ? What have we proven with it ? It's been done before - in the circus.

The leading teacher in Spain over the last fifty years has been Maria de Avila, of Saragossa. She trained Trinidad Sevillano (principal with the Boston Ballet, the RB et al.) and Arantxa Argüelles (formerly principal with the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the RDB), as well as a number of other stars whose names escape me for the moment. Maria de Avila is a glory of Saragossa, to the extent, that the Mayor has got her up on their Website as a separate "attraction". She was a well-known artist at the Liceu in Barcelona, until she married and had several children. Once her children were grown, she resumed teaching. Maria de Avila is now nearly eighty, and was, for a too-brief period circa fifteen years ago, the head of the National Ballet of Spain, until pitched out by intrigants. She has her own school in Saragossa, and her daughter Lola de Avila has or had, a school at Madrid, which has trained several people who are now, if I'm not mistaken, in the POB's corps de ballet (perhaps Muriel Zusperreguy ????). To find Maria de Avila, type Zaragoza in the Spanish language, and her name, into a search engine. I am too broke to travel to Saragossa to interview Maria de Avila, a thing I much regret. If anyone else could do so, it would be a "load off my heart".

Could have something to do with the roll-through, or lack of it - although I love Mel Johnson's "conic section" explanation !!!!! In Russia, if I'm not mistaken, one rises onto pointe with a tiny spring. In France, and most Western countries, one learns the roll-through. Orthopaedists tend to favour the roll-through, though wouldn't they, the old dears ? Perhaps people who know Cecchetti could enlighten us - did he not teach the spring as well ?

From the Telegraph Dancers on MacMillan (Filed: 29/10/2002) Dancers who worked with Sir Kenneth Macmillan describe what it was like to work with Britain's greatest choreographer David Wall, balletmaster at English National Ballet. Original Crown Prince Rudolf in Mayerling, 1974 "I realised from the scenario that Crown Prince Rudolf would be probably the biggest role ever made for a man, but it was only when it all came together that we realised the scale of this deep, complex, rather depraved creation. "When Lynn Seymour, Kenneth and I were in a studio, we'd take enormous risks artistically and technically, depicting the sexual activities. It wasn't pornography, but there were moments when one almost felt that it was. But it never worried us because whenever one worked with Kenneth, one did trust him very much."

Theodore Bale in the Boston Herald blithely writes (must have been on or around 26th October 2002), "It's no coincidence that John Cranko's magnificent ballet, ``Onegin,'' is convincing and persuasive in a manner similar to the HBO television series, ``The Sopranos.'' Both are centered on a kind of Shakespearean character development, with episodes of romance, violence, self-evaluation and redemption. I discovered recently that "The Sopranos" - in case any of you out innocents out there were wondering - is an American soap opera, glorifying, or rather banalising, the Mafia to such a degree, that there have even been DEMONSTRATIONS in the USA by American-Italian organisations, to have the thing stopped. Just so you know. And as for "Shakespearean" - Theodore, hello ?

Olga Spessivtseva is perhaps the most shocking example of what we appear to be discussing here. There are little-known facts about Spessivtseva, ones that do not appear in all the blurbs about her life. At an exhibition somewhere or other, I stumbled across a biographical note, as follows. It seems that immediately after the Revolution, as she was rocketing back and forth between Russia and Western Europe, Spessivtseva became "romantically involved" if that is the word , with an NKVD operative. He would get Olga up in the dead (!) of night, take her down to the Liubianka or whatever it was called, line up prisoners in front of her, and ask her which she thought should be shot. And he would have them shot. Other times, he would take her to the morgue, and present her heaps of the dead. I believe that it was in 1919 that she suffered her first mental breakdown - what a surprise ! - and was interned out in the countryside for several months. Now, few know such facts about Olga Spessivtseva, and perhaps, one were better off not to. She nevertheless enjoyed, and still enjoys, the highest reputation amongst other dancers, higher even than Pavlova. Because she could dance. Would one be so bold as to say that about a certain self-enraptured amateur photographer, whose interest in her own bod and its various hidey-holes, recalls an eleven-month old disporting itself in the bath ?

every night, there are tickets up at 5 euros. They are advertised as no visibility, but witha bit of craning, you can see the stage fairly well. I bought one last night.

Might this be the opportunity to recall to everyone's attention , a recent interview with Ross Stretton where he spoke of the need to drive the dancers to NEW LEVELS OF FITNESS ?

From Ismene Brown's March 30th 2002 interview in the Telegraph, with the High Priestess Herself. "There was also her shocking photo-shoot in French Vogue. It is not unusual to see ballerinas in fashion magazines. They make elfin, maidenly clothes-horses, their modesty in front of the camera radiating a more delicate, timeless sort of femininity. When Guillem did Vogue, she wanted to do something "free and 'appy. Natural, simple, joyful. It was the real me, non?" So she photographed herself in the nude, with not a scrap of make-up on. She was accessorised only by her undressed hair and a bashed camera. "Outrage ricocheted around the world. 'I think it was the picture with the two legs apart and the camera in the middle mostly,' she says, deadpan."

Gang, good news along the rumour pipeline - see Ismene's Telegraph piece today - Mlle. Guillem may be in the running for Ross Stretton's job ! To give us the full flavour, allow me to quote Ismene's interview with the priestess herself, on March 30th of this year: "There was also her shocking photo-shoot in French Vogue. It is not unusual to see ballerinas in fashion magazines. They make elfin, maidenly clothes-horses, their modesty in front of the camera radiating a more delicate, timeless sort of femininity. When Guillem did Vogue, she wanted to do something "free and 'appy. Natural, simple, joyful. It was the real me, non?" So she photographed herself in the nude, with not a scrap of make-up on. She was accessorised only by her undressed hair and a bashed camera. Outrage ricocheted around the world. "I think it was the picture with the two legs apart and the camera in the middle mostly," she says, deadpan." Taste, style, intelligence, she has everything. And she even knows how to use a camera ! "Natural, simple, joyful". What in heaven's name is the ROH Board waiting for ?

seen that little jewel ? The performances were on september 17th and 18th, and it would be most interesting to hear how the Danes see it.

A fortnight ago, had the opportunity, at one of those fearsome galas, of seeing both Lorna Feijoo of the Cuban National Ballet in a pas de deux from La Bayadère, and Zakharova in a pas de deux from Le Corsaire. In terms of style, poise, musicality and sense of the period, Lorna Feijoo, who, in terms of appearance, is not precisely Aphrodite floating on a cloud of sea-foam, was far superior to Zakharova. I find that worrying.

Dear Miss Miller, > > Please excuse the typos as I m writing on an Italian keyboard. > > I am a dance columnist in Europe, and have just learnt that the New York > > Magazine is to eliminate Miss Tobias column. I first met Miss Tobias at > the > Royal Theatre in Copenhagen many years ago, where she is a well-known > figure > respected for her competence and seriousness. If I m not mistaken, the > Danish > people have even decorated her with an Order for her Oral Record of the > Royal > Ballet there. > > It is a mistake to eliminate your dance column. First, many people have > told > me that they first became interested in dance by reading an unusual > article > about it. Audiences for classical ballet are dwindling just as newspapers > and > òmagazines "save" money by slashing coverage. I have noticed that Clive > Barnes > seems to get about three lines for his reviews. In three lines, you > cannot do > anything worthwhile, except perhaps write an epitaph for a tombstone. > > Second, it is essential for the profession to have knowledgeable OUTSIDERS > who > have nothing to gain by propitiating the dancers or artistic directors, > examining their work from another, more objective standpoint. If you get > rid > of people like Tobi Tobias, standards will slip. The art form will become > a > cocktail party peopled by luvvies. > > Lastly, classical dance is objectively important. It must be covered. It > > cannot be ignored unless one s objective is to promote ignorance. > > Yours truly, > > K.L. Kanter

Dear Miss Miller, > > Please excuse the typos as I m writing on an Italian keyboard. > > I am a dance columnist in Europe, and have just learnt that the New York > > Magazine is to eliminate Miss Tobias column. I first met Miss Tobias at > the > Royal Theatre in Copenhagen many years ago, where she is a well-known > figure > respected for her competence and seriousness. If I m not mistaken, the > Danish > people have even decorated her with an Order for her Oral Record of the > Royal > Ballet there. > > It is a mistake to eliminate your dance column. First, many people have > told > me that they first became interested in dance by reading an unusual > article > about it. Audiences for classical ballet are dwindling just as newspapers > and > òmagazines "save" money by slashing coverage. I have noticed that Clive > Barnes > seems to get about three lines for his reviews. In three lines, you > cannot do > anything worthwhile, except perhaps write an epitaph for a tombstone. > > Second, it is essential for the profession to have knowledgeable OUTSIDERS > who > have nothing to gain by propitiating the dancers or artistic directors, > examining their work from another, more objective standpoint. If you get > rid > of people like Tobi Tobias, standards will slip. The art form will become > a > cocktail party peopled by luvvies. > > Lastly, classical dance is objectively important. It must be covered. It > > cannot be ignored unless one s objective is to promote ignorance. > > Yours truly, > > K.L. Kanter

Beethoven dealt with this question throughout his life, and with ever-increasing intensity, and density, in his later works. Today, his Missa Solemnis still seems wildly inventive. People still have not figured out everything that is going on there. For example, the use of ancient Greek modes (forward to the past, jadies and lentilmen !) integrated into our own well-tempered tonal system, so as to create what a friend of mine has just described as "hitherto unknown keys", which I think does express the concept. Our friend Beethoven could do that, because he was a master of the laws of composition. You can see a note written in his own hand, "Bach, der Urvater der Harmonie" - Bach, the true and original father of harmony. He never said, nor thought, that he would get rid of all that, the advances made by the musical scientists before him. Classical ballet is, in a way, the child of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. It is still in its infancy, as a dramatic form. In terms of its technique, the thrilling breakthroughs Gaetano Vestris made teaching at the Paris Opera in the 1810s and 20s have never, never been fully exploited, and certainly never surpassed, notably his work on épaulement, and the steps of great elevation. To see a Bournonville enchaînement is for me at least, a moment of the keenest artistic excitement, my head spins - I am projected back to that very moment in time, when Vestris and his co-thinkers, forced technique ahead and thereby heaved classical ballet up onto the path that had been carved out by Leonardo. We have only just begun. To move forward, we have got to master what Vestris was teaching then. There's no way round it.

IMO, music is THE issue. Bournonville said that "ballet is the first-born child of music". Could I change but one thing in ballet training today, it would be to bring in rigorous training in music, similar to that of the youths at the Leibzig Cantorei: sight-reading for singers, singing, possibly an instrument, and music theory. That alone would relaunch the "factories to produce genius". What distinguishes all classical dance forms, including most especially those of the Indian sub-continent, from the rest ? The turn-out. The turn-out is a scientific breakthrough. It was, dear readers, INVENTED by some genius, at a certain point in history, perhaps 2500 years ago or more, as ancient Indian sculpture shews. It corresponds to the debate about temperament and scientific pitch, in classical music. Equal temperament was already being experimented on in China in about 600 BC, as sets of temple bells from that period attest. That would roughly CORRESPOND TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF TURNOUT ! Is that not amazing ? As anyone who has danced classical ballet knows, there is something inevitable about the correspondence between the turn-out with the ancient, but ever-new, forms it calls up in the body, and classical music. It wells up from the sub-conscious mind. I am not quite sure how it operates, but it does. This will require more thought. Alexandra is right when she says that pop music today is a manufactured product. It is a purely mechanical piece of goods. When one sees the likes of Peter Schaufuss up at Holstebro putting up one "ballet" after another on rock music, and raking it in, one may perhaps be so bold as to form a view regarding his motives, from fields other than the artistic. Incidentally, the two ablest fellows in the POB corps de ballet, Messrs. Thibault and Phavorin, are both skilled musicians ('cello and piano, respectively). The POB étoile Manuel Legris has been an opera freak for decades. The Hamburg Ballett principal Lloyd Riggins plays the piano. Why do those gentlemen all stand out in a crowd ? Because they UNDERSTAND MUSIC.

In response to a quote from KB: "The Royal was founded on the spirit of a dream of a national company for the whole of the UK. It was founded by a pioneering dream of the ideal of ballet as an art form, an ideal that has more or less reshaped the way the whole world views, practices and appreciated ballet." That is precisely what De Valois wanted. No-one has ever said it more succintly. Schiller's ideal of the theatre. KB, whoever you are, you should write articles and fight to get them published. Not only can you get your ideas across, they are important and polemical ideas.

what you have said has the ring of truth. One wishes that Artistic Directors, and theatre management in general, were but so honest, and so outspoken.