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katharine kanter

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Everything posted by katharine kanter

  1. There are no serious ballet performances until October when the Maryinski people get here, unless one counts a couple of modern-dance thinggies with people writhing all over one another, at dire but well-subsidised venues... On the other hand, the Opera Garnier has an absolutely beautiful museum, with paintings, sets, costumes and rare books. The books can, under certain conditions, be consulted. It should be open six or seven days a week year round. The Opera Garnier also has a little bookshop, with the European dance magazines, postcards, some lovely picture books, as well as pretty souvenirs, mainly suitable for adolescents. One can also shop there little pots of honey from the beehives on top of the Opera House (yes !). You can also sign up for a tour of the Opera Garnier, and perhaps visit the studios were people like Spessivtseva rehearsed (!!!). Opera Bastille is very modern, and only worth touring to see the stage machinery, and the costume workshop if they'll let you in. They might. The main open class centre in Paris is the Centre de Danse du Marais, located at 41 rue du Temple. This is a vast centre, where all sorts of dance including classical ballet, is taught. There are at least three professors teaching advanced to professional level classical ballet throughout the summer. Those will tend to be at about noon. One of the most renowned private schools is that of Monique Arabian, located at number 6 (?) rue Chaptal in the 9th arrondissement. Many of her students are now in top companies, including the POB. I am not sure whether she teaches in summer. There are also open classes at the Salle Pleyel, rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré, at the centre directed by Jennifer Goubé. A professor with a high reputation amongst professionals, who sometimes teaches at the Centre de danse du Marais, and sometimes at another centre the name of which I've temporarily forgotten, is Wayne BYARS. I cannot recall the place, but it will come back to me. There are other well-known private teachers, but they are getting on in years, and I am not quite sure whether they are still teaching, notably Max Bozzoni. Otherwise, much of the teaching activity in France in the summer, takes place at summer schools out in the provinces. The Centre Beaubourg museum has a library, with a large dance section, including both books and some rare film. Although I do not believe the collection compares in any way with that of the New York Public Library, there may be some French film you might want to catch up on. One might also suggest a visit to the reputed shoemakers, the largest being Repetto, located at 21 rue de la Paix near the Opera. Their selection of pointe shoes is, to put it mildly, vast.
  2. What KB has written here about Cranko's choreography is, IMO, very perceptive. The point you make, KB, about how Lynn Seymour reacted at the opening of the mirror scene, astonished me - that would indeed, change the course of the play. "Cringeworthy" as KB has so aptly said, is Cranko's pas de deux in a nutshell. I also find them quite frightening, and dangerous. When I could still dance, I never liked lifted myself, at all, and having since found out about Bournonville, that prejudice has of course been strengthened. Those Cranko or Macmillan-style lifts, which are now rife throughout the ballet world, the man and the woman climbing all over each other, she dragged upside down along the floor, and, horror of horrors, that awful flip in the air only to land SPLAT on the man's shoulder. ARGH ! How ever does Cranko get away with it ? He gets away with it, precisely as you have said, because there are people like Lynn Seymour or Alina Cojocaru dancing Tatiana.
  3. Celia Franca, founder of the National Ballet of Canada, on a Proposal to choreograph to Verdis's Requiem to commemorate the events of September 11th 2001 in New York (from the Ottawa Citizen, 11th July 2002) "The Requiem stands alone. It doesn't need any embellishment. I'm speaking as a ballet dancer and I love ballet, but I feel I also have respect for music. I think it's a matter of respect for the way Verdi wrote it, and Verdi didn't write it with ballet in mind," said Ms. Franca, who regularly attends dance, theatre and orchestra performances in Ottawa. "It's not that I don't like Brian, but I just think this is in bad taste. To embellish a work that stands alone is the height of conceit." Mr. Macdonald said that other requiems, including those by Mozart and Fauré, had been choreographed over the years, but Ms. Franca said "two wrongs don't make a right. The only good thing I can say is that at least the artists involved will be paid."
  4. The trend, over the century, has been to hyper-specialisation and technicity. Dancers can only dance. Actors can only act. Singers can only sing. And pantomime artists evolve in sullen silence, while classical musicians will, as a rule, look down upon all the above. Without going whole-hog the other way and subscribing to Wagner's Total Theatre theories, it may not be otiose to recall that classical dance is supposed to be a THEATRICAL art form. It would accordingly be more profitable, at least from the audience's standpoint (!), for a classical dancer to be a skilled actor and mime as well, than to be able to turn that ningth pirouette. I cannot comment on what the Maryinski people are up to in New York with their Bayadère, not having seen it. Could it be that the Russian style of mime is clumsy ? Are there people out there reading the site who have seen both the Bournonville mime, and the current Maryinski/Bolshoi mime, who might enlighten us ?
  5. (Autumn 2001 - on the Covent Garden Nureyev production) Don Quixote - interviews on BBC 2 Newsnight Extra 'Philip Hensher:This is such a depressing statement of intent. This awful piece is so dreary. It's full of the most idiotic miming. It's just such an old-fashioned awful thing, with the most awful score. I can't believe that they couldn't find anything more exciting to start with. The orchestra just plainly couldn't be bothered, and I don't blame them. The designs could have been executed 50 years ago. This was one of the most depressing, boring evenings I could have imagined spending. It gives ballet a bad name. It is very difficult to see the cultural merit of this. "Kirsty Wark:Was there any emotion in it for you? John Carey:None whatsoever, nor any intellectual content. That's the trouble. Here's this glittering audience, paying a great deal for their seats, and the intellectual content is less than a first-class football match. Much the same skills are used, and this is thought to be high culture. "
  6. "(...) While many of the great stars of mid-century Soviet ballet were sturdily built and of average height, today’s Vaganova girls and young women reflect the now-popular fashion-mannequin ideal: height that comes from eerily long legs, slenderness bordering on emaciation. The training for the female contingent stresses two elements, one being suppleness in the spine. This was part of the old Russian school, but it was used in the past to create pliant, musical dancing, not for the easy thrill of uncanny acrobatic contortion. The second element dominating the present school is the cultivation of a preternatural flexibility in the hip joint, which permits an extension of the leg so high, the toes seem to be rapping at the door of the heavens. This mistaken preoccupation affects all of the adagio work -- and, oddly, some of the allegro work too -- to the detriment of dancing. It ruins harmony of line (a pillar of classicism and formerly a Russian specialty), weakens the dancer by depriving her of a secure center, and fractures the desired flow of movement into a meaningless chain of discrete steps. From the New York Magazine, March 16th 1998 (On the joint SAB-Vaganova school demonstration)
  7. THE ARTS: A cloud over Dance Umbrella BALLET LONDON: Financial Times; Oct 5, 2001By CLEMENT CRISP Ohad Naharin's Sabotage Baby. '(...) The cast wears dun-coloured outfits that hang depressingly to the ground - the dancers look like the Sodom and Gomorrah League of Health and Beauty, and behave in suitable fashion. Angst is their favoured sport, together with writhing and despairing journeys across the Barbican stage. Seek not for reason, or even imaginative felicity. This is a piece that has been produced in glum association with Nederlands Dans Theatre and has all the trademarks of gloom and introspection, while sense flew out of the window long ago. The choreography - such a big word for such a tiny effect - is predictably anxious and unrewarding. As the evening wears suicidally on, four figures on stilts, sporting teeny feathered knapsacks and expressions of direst menace, totter above the common herd (and few herds have looked more common than these straining performers). I hoped they might have come from some pest-control agency. A closing sequence offers the uninviting spectacle of the cast's buttocks, generously displayed. Strictly for fans of cellulitis. "
  8. Antony Noa is an American professor. "Turn-out: Verb or Noun ?" "Students, dancers and teachers often speak of a dancer being ‘turned-out’ as if the position was static (or otherwise refer to it as a noun). (...) I consider turn-out to be more of a verb, by that I mean an action as opposed to a static position. (...) "This view places emphasis on the active engagement of the muscles to achieve leg rotation rather than on the actual degree of rotation achieved. "I have known dancers who have extraordinary turn-out but cannot execute turns or jumps with the same level of extraordinariness. (...) It could be that since they have great turn-out they do not feel the need to be engaging the muscles needed to turn out the leg. When a dancer is not constantly turning out the legs, they lose the tensile strength needed to control the hip area, and thereby lose mastery of the upper torso where all movement control resides."
  9. William Forsythe, to the Telegraph (London), a couple of years ago. Telegraph: Forsythe says one major inheritance from Balanchine is his use of the ballet position known as epaulement, which involves complex counter rotations of the body, including the shoulders, hips, hands, feet, head. As he says, "the mechanics of epaulement are what gives ballet its inner transitions. It's essential to a lot of my thinking." He takes this position one step further by what he calls disfocus. The dancers don't gaze out, but "stare up, roll their eyes back." Like a hypnotist might suggest, he asks them to "put your eyes in the back of your head." Their movement becomes "very water-like, shaky, unusual and serpentine". He warns: "Don't try this with too much furniture about."
  10. Josephine Jewkes, formerly principal dancer with ENB. "More generally, we dancers believe that the trend nowadays is for a more aggressive style of movement (taken to the limits by Forsythe in ballet and DV8, Jeremy James and Per Jonsson to name but three in the contemporary world), but the human body meanwhile has not greatly changed; simply that those with less extreme facility are being challenged further by the examples of a few with acrobatic flexibility which was previously labelled 'unclassical'. This is now becoming the norm. (This is known as 'progress'.)"
  11. Susie Crow is a former dancer, now a teacher in London, and one of the curators of the MacMillan celebrations. I cannot remember where I originally saw this piece. "I would like to pick up on the point about the development of technique, dancers today commonly being able to do things that were rare feats of exceptional virtuosity years ago. I think this cuts both ways. "Technique moves on and changes, but just as some things get better other things get lost. I am sure we have all seen performances by dancers which do not reach the technical as well as interpretative standards set by the originators of a particular role. As an example, I had to look at video of the same ballet in performances from the 60s, 70s and 90s. Technically the earliest performance was the finest in terms of precision, speed, ballon, agility and use of the torso. "Ballet technique seems currently to be pursuing a particular line of athletic development which has a lot to do with certain types of body shape and line and extreme flexibility. This may be progress in one way but perhaps is retrograde in others. There are other types of dancer attribute arguably more important to the survival of the art form which are in danger of being overlooked if selection procedures continue to head down this narrow route.
  12. From the New York Magazine, August 6th 2001 "I wouldn't call Guillem a ballerina myself, though she is undeniably a star and a phenomenon. She's fascinating to look at, with her lithe, long-limbed body, her uncanny ear-scraping extension, and her truly exquisite feet -- extravagantly arched and feral in their articulation. Onstage she has the kind of charisma that draws every eye to her. But she's not expressive or poetic; her sleek cool forbids that. She doesn't have the power of imaginative suggestion that arouses the viewer's own fantasy. And her movement lacks rhythmic and textural interest; her dancing has that remote, uninflected quality typical of postmodern culture. "I believe, too, that her ballet technique is circumscribed by her rigorous childhood training as a gymnast. (As a pre-adolescent, she was short-listed for the French Olympic team.) That extension, of which so much is made it can be called her trademark, is certainly anti-classical, and her turnout, basic to the body's posture in classical dancing, often seems to give way to the parallel stance of the athlete (…)
  13. "There follows Preljocaj's view of Le Sacre du printemps. Preljocaj battles with Stravinsky like a man fighting an avalanche: the encounter can be said to be either ludicrous or insolent. It is certainly unwise. Modern dress of the most dismal kind, and an action that is no more than a protracted striptease in which six couples are involved. The women start the piece by removing their knickers, and we guess all too easily what portends. Bras, bare chests, simulated copulation - foreplay as tedium - and finally one hapless woman finds herself naked, flailing about on a grassy dell and behaving with those bad social and sexual manners which are the lingua franca of such stagings in Europe. The piece is foolish, lumpily done by cast and choreographer, and is about as erotic (voyeurs please note) as blotting-paper. It is the least convincing realisation of Rite that I have ever seen. The score is given a glossy performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra which accords ill with the rough-hewn frolics on stage. The programme notes are specially crafted for Pseuds' Corner." Clement Crisp in the Financial Times, 2002
  14. AA - "when you work with a teacher who has been around for 30 or 40 years, he or she will tell you immediately what has been lost and why". MH For example what has been lost? AA "When you watch a video tape of dancers of the old generations, for instance Galina Ulanova, Marina Semyonova, or a bit later Natalia Dudinskaya, you can see a certain coordination of body and arms, a musicality - you might call it ‘singing with the body’ - and above all an emotional depth to the dancing which no longer seem to exist today. The technique was present alright, but it was never there just for the sake of technique. The accent was first and foremost on emotion. However, now it’s all about high legs. I consider that a serious problem. All we seem to think about today is how high the legs can go, but there is hardly any concern anymore about form, plastique, harmony, and about what’s coming from inside, about soul. That’s something we lost."
  15. In reply to Alexandra's posting about the Paris Parrots, allow me to say that there is a part of the Props Laboratory at the Opera here that has developed quite a little specialty in Animals, including, most notably, Unicorns and even Lions, if that is any satisfaction to our readers. The renowned Animal Laboratory can be seen and heard at full throttle in the current, incredibly beautiful, Bruno Besson production of the "Magic Flute". I always find animals, particularly dogs, but I try to be broad-minded, very absorbing, and have thus been recommending this particular Magic Flute to everyone, mainly on account of the Feathered and Furry, as the singing is somewhat under the weather all round. The final scene, with gracefully undulating, diminutive Lions, is an absolute show-stopper, at least in my rather puerile book. I forgot to mention, now that we are on the subject of Parrots, that Papageno's costume was the finest, most elegant imitation of a Parrot I've ever seen - it was astounding, without being risible, if I may be so bold as to say so. There were just enough feathers to be credible, but not so many, as to be thoroughly bizarre. Which brings us back to the Parrots. I wonder whether the ones in La Bayadère belonged to the same species ?
  16. Re: Karsavina "I was quite disappointed at the poor technique (bent knees in tour jetes, not hitting fifth when landing her 'cats), but then again this was c. 1920! She did have fabulous turnout, and she hung in the air when she jumped." (quote from Styplyty, above) One might want to reflect upon whether there may not be some relation between the sort of technique Karsavina had been taught by the likes of Enrico CECCHETTI (!!) and the fact that, as you say, she "hung in the air when she jumped", and had "fabulous turnout". The purpose of jumps, is, essentially, to give the illusion of flight. Everything must tend towards that end. Would one not be willing to sacrifice certain things, notably a fully crossed fifth, in order to FLY ? The "Figaro" weekend supplement here in Paris, has just published an interview with Laetitia Pujol, the new étoile. Allow me to say that this is NOT meant as a criticism of a sensitive and dedicated young woman, but as a GENERAL remark on technique as it is taught today. In one of the photographs, she poses in arabesque at the barre. Her supporting foot is so turned out, the toe virtually looks backwards, while the same knee, clearly, looks forward. If one traces the angle between where the toe looks, and where the knee looks, one is missing perhaps ten to fifteen degrees of REAL turnout. Mlle. Pujol is renowned as an outstanding technician. And she IS damn good. But the professors and dancers who may perhaps read this page will know precisely what the implications of those missing degrees are, somewhere along the pipeline. To get that hard, shiny, photogenic lacquer painted over all movement, we are, nowadays, systematically sacrificing quality of movement, and intrinsic stability of the skeleton. That is one, very important reason, why dancers of the calibre of a Beriosova or a Tallchief, no longer emerge.
  17. About fifteen years ago, American friends sent me a video tape entitled "The Story of Giselle". On it, introduced by Patricia McBride, there is a longer interview with Anton Dolin, and with Spessivsteva herself, unfortunately from the madhouse where she died a few years ago. Far and away the most important dance clip on the film, is what appears to be the only extant film of that woman dancing, about 90 seconds of footage from Act One of "Giselle". Scrutinishing that clip, one realises that Spessivtseva was, very plainly, one of the greatest technicians of the century. One might imagine, from the still photographs, that she was somewhat "droopy", wrapped in dreams. Wrong ! That "hovering" quality one sees in the still photos, is shewn, by the action clip, to be the product of perfect stability, coupled with attack, speed and strength. (I might add, that Alicia Markova was not far behind - the same video has one or two minutes of her in allegro passages from Act II of "Giselle". All one can say, is that there is not a single woman, on any stage today, anywhere in the world, with that sort of footwork) The clip thus puts paid, once and for all, to the notion that technique is far better today. The leg may well have become a baseball bat, as Alexandra has so cunningly put it, and girls may well turn six turns, but can they dance ? Spessivsteva - or Markova for that matter - manifestly could.
  18. Does anyone out there have any news from the current POB tour to Brazil ?
  19. As Mel Johnson just said, "If they do it right, the mime IS dancing!" Bournonville uses dancing mime. It is not a matter of the action grinding to a halt, and then people waving their hands about, but rather FURTHERING the action, on the music, through mime. Many people have been turned away from mime, because they have been depressed by the Marcel Marceau concept of "silent mime", the agonised, still silence of IMITATION. In the classical ballet, mime is not IMITATION OF REALITY. Mime in the hands of a master, like Jules Perrot, or Bournonville, is action. It is intended to express things that one cannot, or might not wish, to put into steps. Kirsten Ralov, who had been a great Bournonville dancer in her day, once said : "audiences today cannot stand the mime because they cannot CONCENTRATE. They are in a rush to "get on with the dancing". One must let the mime break over one like a great wave. It then rolls seamlessly into the dancing". One should also bear in mind, that even in "Giselle", many mime passages have been cut out, notably by the self-styled Great Innovator, Serge Lifar. Hilarion, for example, was to mime kissing the ground under each of Giselle's steps. I know this because Michel de Lutry, who was taught this by Karsavina when he danced the role, told it me.
  20. Ed, I read in the press a few weeks back - perhaps some could enlighten us - that a former Royal Ballet soloist has set up a private school in Copenhagen for MEN only, perhaps to avoid young men becoming discouraged from dancing, by the sight of us ladies rushing about dressed in pastel colours !!! Does someone reading this Website remember his name ? IN any event, I believe that several former principals and soloists have their own schools, and/or give classes in private studios. Or, you could ring the Royal Theatre, ask for the Secretary of the School (which is within the Royal Theatre itself), explain your situation, and ask them to recommend private classes to you. The Danes are extremely friendly and helpful, and they are very keen on Americans !
  21. "There is a danger in shifting from one style to another. The body is subjected to contrary positions, antagonistic effort. Far more accidents occur now, than ever before. Dislocated shoulder, a heretofore unknown injury, is now commonplace. Why ? Because of those off-centre movements, one's partner yanks out an arm as far as it can go: there's nothing to prevent the thing from popping out ! Professors are now required to know something of anatomy, well and good. But such knowledge would come in useful for choreographers too. It is not enough to have ideas, one must know how to apply them. The human body is not a machine, that one bolts on, or off, at will. In the USA, things have become dramatic: a career lasts ten years, after which, the dancer is a wreck (cassé). He's tossed out, and someone else is hired. In a few short years, at NYCB, everyone had changed. I enquired anxiously: "But what about Mr. X ? Miss Y ?" and I was told, "he tore this, or that, three times, she's had a knee, or a hip, or a back operation…" Let me shout it out: Stop ! Save the dancers ! Claude Bessy, interview in L'Express, a weekly newsmagazine (Paris), May 9th 1986
  22. Rudolf Nureyev, Interview in the Paris daily, Libération, January 6th 1989, with Michel Cressole "I would like one out of the five years at the Opera School to be devoted to Bournonville. His long sentences, his complex, unusual steps, must be entirely familiar to those who would become a choreographer." Original text: "Je voudrais aussi qu'une année sur cinq à l'Ecole soit consacrée à Bournonville. Ses longues phrases, ses pas compliqués, inhabituels, doivent être connus en totalité pour être chorégraphe".
  23. "The audience was so emotionally touched that, at the end of the show, various spectators crossed the narrow bridge above the orchestra pit onto the stage to hand floral bouquets to their favorite dancers among the 22 soloists who performed tonight. One fellow even got on his hands and knees up on that stage, to kiss the feet of his favorite ballerinas!!! Ah -- only in Rossiya! What emotion! Blame it on the White Nights?" My oh my ! Jeannie ! You're bound to start a stampede of dancers leaving for Russia ! Sounds like the public's got their hands tied to the arm-rests out here in the West. Well, at least SOMEONE cares about art . Though I'm not too sure what old Ludwig van would have said about the foot-kissing bit ?! That sort of thing certainly makes up for any logistical hitches the art world in Russia has to suffer through !
  24. "Strike a pose", and we even see that in ballet, the trend is an emphasis in favor of the sculptural over the kinetic. " You've said it in a a nutshell, Leigh ! that is our problem ! We've forgotten that dancing is supposed to be about dancing. Could we not leave sculpture to the sculptors ? As for the low retiré, as you all know, in the Bournonville school even today the retiré is at ankle height for pirouettes. If one sees the dance as something fluent, tripping off the tongue as it were, why not ? Whereas, the high retiré is indispensable to a harder, jerkier, more spectacular style of dance. It fits into a mode where we have abandoned the "pas taquetés", the terre-à-terre and in-between steps, for the Biggies and the Punchies. We have been in the latter mode for a long time now Can one imagine Forsythe having retiré at the ankle, or at mid-calf ?! And scraping the retiré up even beyond the knee is coherent with That Thing, the Hyperextended développé. Again, by moving the retiré higher, as you all know, one gets greater impetu, and hence, more pirouettes. Being able to toss off multiples is an Absolute Value nowadays. Personally, I would have thought that two nice ones is gud n'uff, and then get on with the dancing bits, but I seem to be in a crowd of one, most of the time. Would love to see that film footage you've been reviewing. Lucky you...
  25.  Celeste Jiménez (bailarina del BNMC): “The loss of Prof. Vicente Nebrada is a very sad one ineed, he was the choreographer par excellence of our country. Although it is some years now since I worked with him, it was thanks to him that I became a professional: in 1977 he chose me from amongst the Lidija Franklin school's students, to join the troupe of the Ballet Internacional de Caracas, at a time where ballet here was at its high point. I thus had the honour to share a rehearsal studio with him, and of course dance his wonderful work, for which I am eternally grateful, and also, proud”.  Carlos Tapia (former dancer with the Ballet Nacional de Caracas): “Nebrada represents a major stage in my life, and it is to him that I owe my professional level, and shall always be grateful for his artistic and personal help. He was the patriarch of ballet in this country, and I am proud to have been a son of his. I do love him, and shall never forget him”.  William Alcalá (ex bailarín y coreógrafo del BNC): “For me, Vicente Nebrada represents a recognition of life, respect and love. Qualities and virtues that he always taught. I owe you my professionalism, my growth as an artist, as you ever allowed me to enter into the creative process in each role I performed. You were an inspiration, and a discipline. I thank you for allowing me to be the artist I am. Your son, your student, and your friend, for ever”.
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