Paul Parish

Yes, Quiggin, re Elizabeth Miner. It was great to see her back, and in GREAT form.

Thanks, Andre, and Quiggin, both for your discussion of these new ballets. I share your concerns; here's what I wrote about htem for the SF gay weekly, the BayArea Reporter: 'To see the kind of show that’s making SFB famous abroad [i.e. mixed bills of new works], you should check out SFB’s Programs 6 and 7, which opened at the Opera House last weekend and will run there through Wednesday of next week. Both are mixed bills of new work – the oldest , Petrouchka, was a sensation in Paris exactly one hundred years ago.... THe other ballets on the programs are all 21st-century. Two of them are brand-new to us, and one was just made a few months ago for these dancers, who have taken to it like a hungry man to a steak. This ballet, NUMBER NINE (by Christopher Wheeldon) sweeps across the stage like a series of storms, scouring the eyes and leaving you feeling braced and enormously refreshed and wondering what just happened to you. The other ballet, Chroma, new to us, comes from London (where it won the Lawrence Olivier Prize at its debut 5 years ago) and looks at first viewing like a sci-fi version of the blues, like Etta James’s “I feel uneasy” [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW-DeWNjyAw] set in motion and articulated by a new multi-racial breed of dancer, possessed of finest motor skills on the planet. “Number Nine” (I do not know why it's called that; it is Wheeldon’s 7th ballet created for SFB) sends 24 dancers moving at a mad rush to the drastically propulsive music of Michael Torke's Ash. It's virtually a disco beat, unrelenting, with the major displacements in decibel levels and tone color. It’s the kind of beat that can drive a night-club crowd into trance (and the audience was screaming at the end). The dancers on opening night were fantastically alert -- they had to be, the moves are so sharp, so clear, so risky. There are places where streams of dancers move through colonnades of other dancers like water through a hydro-electric dam, or set up a line of sculptured forms 1-2-3-4-5-6, just like that, all pointing like bird-dogs at the same place) and then the whole set up dissolves, the stage empties, and more rush on. Or at least I think I saw that -- each new image scrubs the last one off the mind, which leaves you exhilarated, breathless, and remembering only the colors -- lemony gold for the 16 corps dancers, turquoise, carmine, key-lime for the principals. The strongest after-image I have left, and the only one I'm certain of, is the gorgeous Myles Thatcher poised like the Nike of Samothrace, center-stage, in the opening tableau. THe new Wheeldon piece closes program 7. His last-but-one ballet, Ghosts, formed the opening of program 6 and turned out to be the most satisfying of all the works. It gives a great role to the ballerina Sofiane Sylve, a sovereign diva whose majestically objective dancing is matched by a generosity of spirit that makes her a presiding presence over this melancholy, silvery slow-motion wonder. The dancers’ bodies sink and subside, float, are eddied about, like the passengers ofhte Titanic seen through to the end from the perspective of the gods, as a cosmic event. The other new- to-us ballet, Chroma, closes that program. Chroma also looks at human life from a compassionate but remote distance. Wayne MacGregor has made this piece to Stravinskian re-orchestrations of the “alternative-rock” music of The White Stripes (Jody Talbot, re-composer). He uses very strange, bird-like movements that nevertheless seem totally appropriate to the searing, fascinating music coming from the orchestra (brilliantly led by Martin West). This is not typical ballet. It's as if he tried to ignore the bones and made hte moves come from the viscera, from very deep inside, as if the spine were a snake, or a swan’s neck – it’s not pretty, but it IS fascinating. Seen against the vast off-white stage setting -- itself a monumental piece of architecture, designed by John Pawson -- the dancers look very vulnerable. They’re wearing very little, some kind of underwear, “short teddies,” perhaps? The garments look towels tied under the armpits. They look vulnerable, but not afraid, not in the least." .......... Sorry for quoting myself, but I can't say it any better. I'm going back to see Nine again tomorrow, to see what i think of its structure. I think what I disliked about it was the music, not the ballet. Will report. I won't get to see Chroma again. it looked less impressive than the videos on Youtube of the Royal -- perhaps because the set looked too small for our stage here -- at least from the orchestra. In the RB videos the set overwhelms the stage, whereas here, from hte orchestra, it seemed puny..... maybe they built it to hte wrong scale, or maybe it just doesn't go high enough. Perhaps from the boxes and upper rings hte 'container" holds the dance == but from the orchestra, the the white box is too short, and hte black curtains which mask the theater walls up to the proscenium are an embarrassment.

THank you thank you thank you for alerting us to this. If anybody should be interested, this video appeared on youtube today ( , and ) Quality is bad, but I think it's still worth seeing.

Thanks, Helene. The Opera House in San Francisco is a really beautiful building, and (aside from the unfriendliest mirrors I've ever encountered -- the HUGE ones on hte ground floor, by the elevators? which always make me look truly insignificant) -- I always feel thankful for the way it makes you always aware of where you are and how to get where you're wanting to go. There's always room to move at the opera house -- not so at the new Symphony hall, or at the Yerba Buena Theater, where the corridors are such bottlenecks that you have to fight your way to the water fountains or the bar or the bathrooms; and there's no mystery at all as to how to find your way to your seat: the floor plan is such a clear gestalt, it's easily grasped; such simplicity is not easily achieved, it's like good freeway design, the flow of movement feels natural and graceful, and th very welcome. The steepness of the stairs in the balcony is unnerving, though. I get serious vertigo up in the gods. Thank God, I can walk up the stairs and get out at the back -- I can't walk DOWN those stairs at all, the height is too scary. Quote name='Helene' date='02 April 2011 - 07:52 PM' timestamp='1301799172' post='283901'] I'll never forget how mortified I was the first time I was in Munich, having traveled overnight from Bonn and ready to catch another overnight in Vienna, in jeans and a casual shirt, and I bought a student rush ticket to hear "Die Schweigsame Frau". I assumed student rush was up in the nosebleed seats or in the very time side boxes with limited view, but my ticket was smack in the middle of the orchestra, and the seating was continental seating. The glares I got as I made my way to my seat from the patrons who had paid over 100DM for their tickets burned holes, but not one big enough for me to slink into. I've never been able to take the Met seriously. Perhaps it's because when I first went there, I had heard tales of the old Met and was a bratty teenager in the '70's during a huge shift to the casual, but it's always reminded me of a pretentious 1960's living room, except for the front curtain and chandeliers, the latter a gift from the Austrian government. New York State Theater was a people's house, as was City Center. McCaw Hall in Seattle has a big fancy glass wall between it and the Phelps Center (PNB building), but the rest of the building looks like an airplane hangar, and it's easy to park at the last minute and rush over the sky bridge into the hall and ignore the padded lobby walls that change from soft jewel tones to soft earth tones depending on the light and go straight to my seat. The inside is plush but comfortable deep red and aqua. This might seem odd to people in San Francisco, but as a visitor, being an opera buff, and knowing how important San Francisco Opera is to opera history in the US, plus how important the Christensen brothers were in establishing ballet in America, War Memorial Opera House would be a special place even if it weren't in a part of town where the buildings tell a different story of wealth and aspiration than in either New York or Seattle. It's hard to ignore what it represents, both as a memorial and as a civic monument, and it sits across from another Beaux Arts beauty, San Francisco's City Hall. Whenever I enter the lobby (third photo in the Wikipedia article linked above), there's a voice in me that says, "Watch your posture. Mind your manners. Respect this place", and I feel like I'm in a sanctuary walking up the side staircases with the cool, scalloped brass handrails. I'd be more likely to dress up to attend a performance here than in any of my "homes".

Leigh Witchell is a flat-out dandy and it looks good on him and since he visits tailors his clothes FIT and that's all it takes for them to be comfortable. And he has posture to spare, which is what it REALLY takes to make clothes look good. More power to him. I'm grateful for the gallery of clothes-horses at the museum. Really shocking how much more elegant Anna Wintour is than anybody else. Fascinating image, when you can't even see her face. Gorgeous clothes. I was surprised to see things that remind me of what priests wear in church; that thing Hamish Bowles is wearing is a clerical garment, a cope, cut off at the hips.

Great topic, Cristian. I was a grad student living in England. My first Giselle was Antoinette Sibley, with Anthony Dowell; they were making a debut of some kind, I THINK as a pair, and sadly, I wasn't moved much by their performance itself -- I was really impressed by the hoopla, which involved daffodils being thrown down from the upper balconies onto the stage until the dancers were ankle deep in yellow flowers. It was almost on the scale of a political demonstration, and maybe for that reason I was struck by the staginess of it all and kinda repelled. I loved Sibley and Dowell in Swan Lake, it was one of the great experiences of my life -- it was early in my career of going to the ballet and the first major disappointment, though I'd noticed already that sometimes things that were supposed to be great did not make me feel much of anything. When I first read King Lear, I didn't see what all the fuss was about, either. I didn't feel the power till later -- Alicia Alonso's in Berkeley in the 70s, Makarova and Dowell in Berkeley, Lorna Feijoo's in Berkeley with your great Cuban ballet, and Sarah van Patten's this year in SF are the great performances I've seen live.

THe Romantic movement, of which Giselle is a sterling example, was a revival of the Romantic traditions of the middle ages -- the romances of Arthurian legend, tRISTAN AND iSOLDE, THE TROUBADOURS, oops caps lock -- Point is, in THAT tradition love nad marriage were mutually exclusive. Lancelot loves King Arthur's wife, who loves him in return; Tristan loves Isolde, who is King Mark's wife but loves him in return. In NONE of these stories would it be acceptable at all for hte lovers to be married.... she is his mistress, and he languishes for love, praying that she will "grant merci" -- This has probably been said before -- probably by Mel -- but may be worth saying again.

Thanks for posting these, Christian. WOnderful stuff.

Love it! his hand is beautiful.

THANK YOU, Helene, for posting this. I've seen a lot of Taylor, but never seen this before. I think Miami COULD do htis -- but the attack, the weight, will have to be tremendous, and not what ballet dancers are used to. The piece is tremendous They actually match up to the art-deco histrionics of Stokowski's version of this sublime piece -- -- it's all there in Bach, the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is not for sissies, it's flat-out GOthic! but iut's hard not to picture the opening of Fantasia as he conducts this, and the abstract light show that accompanies the music seems to have influenced Taylor's imagination quite a lot here, in the pelting way the dancers attack your field of vision.

O Christian, thank you for this wonderful post. You are SO right, especially about Swan Lake and Pd4 -- it's wonderful to see a company that really cares about STYLE. And yes, there's no question they know how to parody Mme Alonso, and they do know how great she was. Five years ago, when hte Trocks were in Berkeley, I wrote about them for Danceviewtimes, Alexandra's online magazine. THe piece began thus "The Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo have been laying them in the aisles in Berkeley this past weekend (presented by CAL Performances as their homage to the comic muse). The Trocks will be giving gender theorists dissertaion material for generations to come. But theory aside, why is a performance of theirs so satisfying? I have several times found their version of "Swan Lake" or Pas de Quatre" more fulfilling than those of a legitimate company. How can it be that a travesty company can sound the depths and illuminate the heights like this? "They can't even point their feet." Well, they CAN point their feet-though they sickle them a lot, and often don't pull their knees either. It's NOT as though they can't, and one of the secrets of the company style is that when they remove the parody, and go for high style, they can show you lines as beautiful as Tallchief's-maybe not Guillem's, but in fact they've now got some loose-legged guys with penchées as tall as the Ritz, and as the technical levels continue to climb (as they very manifestly have, since the days in the early 70's when Anastos started the company), they'll get even closer to Parnassus than they already have. Perhaps that's the secret-as Arlene Croce pointed out in a great essay on the Trocks way back when-every ballerina is a metaphor. All they can do is give us a perspective that gives us a glimpse of the ideal, seen for a moment, in the ebb and flow of everything, from an angle discovered by a genius-a moment that will have to dissolve in real time but that will live in the memory forever. That's what the Trocks are best at, understanding the rhythm of revelation, the hierarchy within any ballet of the moments when deeper and deeper beauties are revealed, If you'd liketo read the rest of it, it's here: http://www.trockadero.org/danceviewtimes.html

Hello, sf-herminator Thanks for your report. PLEASE post again and say more. Meantime, I THINK I can contribute something re Altman/Chung -- which is that Ms Altman subbed for Sofiane Sylve on opening night, and it's Ms Sylve we need to burn our candles for. I admire her enormously, as perhaps do you. Ms. Altman had a HUGE success in the role. I'm reviewing the performance for my newspaper, the Bay Area Reporter, and so can't say much more right now till that piece comes out (wednesday online, Thursday in hard copy).

Balanchine is following Picasso into a fascination with the forms of African art -- Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein was one of his first exercises in incorporating hte African mask into European art. Balanchine used many African-based forms, which were right there on the surface of American popular dancing -- the Charleston, the Lindy hop, Savoy-style, used many African postures and movements, the pevic tilts,, the alternating turn-in-turn-out, the Charleston kicks he uses so much in the black-leotard ballets were moves that came into American popular dancing from our African-american fellow citizens.... Gotta run, will add more to this later maybe.....

Sofiane Sylve and the new soloist, Vito Mazzeo --

Christian, I find that a desire to be respected is widespread nowadays -- especially in our "classless" society, it's the people at the actual bottom of the social ladder who are most sensitive to matters of honor and respect. In the restaurant where I work, there are many refugees who are on the staff with me, and it's very interesting becoming friends with them and finding out what's a big deal in their cultures -- but in every one of them, I find there's a sensitivity to disrespect that comes at least in part from the fact that the dominant culture here in California doesn't get the fine points of what matters to them. My friend X, from Peru, who is a janitor and a musician, and a very fine musician, is a case in point -- a very masculine guy, but also very finely tuned to the nuances of respect with which he's treated. And I think that's what reverence refers to -- not to superiority, but the finer sense in any person , that there's a soul in here, why do you not consider my feelings? I could give many more instances, but what I think is inherently valuable about ballet is that EVERYONE deserves this reverence. When I teach a yoga class, I always turn at the end of the class and make a "Namaste" to my students, and I feel that it is exactly the same gesture as at the end of ballet class when I do reverence to the teacher -- who has in fact given me so much. Yes, they are the master/mistress, but their authority is universally acknowledged as deserved because they KNOW THEIR STUFF and can TEACH you something that you want very much to learn. And in such a case, there is no dishonor in acknowledging their superiority. As the old Shaker hymn says, "When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed." Reverence is NOT inconceivable in a democracy; in fact, it's (as Major Mel implied) required, or the polity cannot hold. ...... Also, there are some ballets like Concerto Barocco, and the Preghiera from Mozartiana, which are FULL of reverences -- the Louis XIV reverence ("making a leg"), bows of all kinds, even gestures of prayer -- in Mozartiana, the ballerina actually goes from a "Namaste" into a bent-over-backwards pose in the take-my-heart position. And almost every penchee arabesque reads to me as a reverence of some kind. .............. One more thing -- VRSfanatic has hit the nail on the head -- it's an expression of gratitude. at least in this country, the reverence concludes with the teacher saying out loud "Thank you very much."

Thanks, guys, for the correction.

Balanchine was devoutly religious, and sometimes he uses religious imagery. I did a study of this once and wish I could remember everything as vividly as I did when I wrote about it for Ballet Review back in the 80s. But you may find this helpful. In the first movement, the "Pregheria" of Mozartiana, Balanchine is setting steps to a hymn by Mozart (that Tchaikovsky orchestrated) -- Mozart was setting the words to a religious poem by Thomas Aquinas, Ave verum corpus, which is an ode to the body of Christ (born of the Virgin Mary, who died, Balanchine believed, to save us). There's no overt religiosity in the dance -- well, at one point she does put her hands together in the gesture of prayer, and that's pretty unmistakable --but in fact the imagery reflects loosely the ideas and imagery of the poem. There's a moment at the beginning, where the Virgin Mary is mentioned where the ballerina lifts her arms slowly overhead and goes past the rounded position till her forearms are crossed, that is said to resemble the statue of the Virgin Mary at the church on Bleecker St that Suzanne Farrell regularly attended; There are several liturgical gestures/poses included in this dance, especially the arms lifted wide overhead, which the ballerina does facing upstage at a climax in the musical phrase, which is a gesture the priest does at Mass at the words "Lift up your hearts" -- this pose has been represented in religious paintings and statues. There's a moment in Don Quixote where Dulcinea dries the Don's feet with her hair, as Mary Magdalen does for Jesus, which has been depicted on many holy cards.

About not putting hte heels down and hte American way of dancing. 1) The Lindy hop was the great social dance of the early twentieth century -- the dance that belongs to swing music, everybody did it. Lindy hop dancers did not put their heels down, they danced like cats, on the balls of their feet. not on HIGH half toe, but with the weight way forward over hte metartarsals. ANd they could dance VERY VERY fast. 2) Balanchine is said (many places) to have admired hte way Danish dancers jumped. he brought Stanley williams from Denmark to teach in a style where in plie the dancer was already ready to be "on pointe." THe Danish placement is over the balls of the feet. Jennifer Homans claims that Danes bound and rebound so easily because Bournonville, the author of the Danish style, had a short achilles tendon (implying that he had to bounce out of his plie, which is very plausible). 3) I'ts also claimed -- by Joan Brady, in "The Unmaking of a Dancer" -- that Carol Sumner danced like this in class and Balanchine told everyone to dance like Carol." Brady is hostile ot ballet and to Balanchine, but this claim seems to be widely accepted. Sumner became a soloist in NYCB and danced a huge variety of roles, and upon retirement taught at SAB before opening a school of her own.

Richard, I agree. He seems best in roles where he's enigmatic and moves in fascinating ways and you can be intrigued and never satisfied. Many fashion models are hte same -- Decades ago, Karen graham -- I THINK that's her name -- was the very beautiful model for Estee Lauder in all hte print photos. They made the HUGE mistake of having her do TV ads in which she said a little something, and as soon as she began to speak the thrill was over. but in My Own Private Idaho, he HAD lines and delivered them satisfyingly. It's just that the role let him hold back everything you wanted him to give. "They that have power to hurt and will do none, that do not do that thing they most do show ... they are the lords and masters of their faces." you can resent it all you want, but THEY have the power.

I've seenthem all before -- surprised this evening how much more I prefer Fonteyn to the other ladies -- and Tallchief over Ulanova, even. , for her vividness nad clarity. FOnteyn seems to live in this style, and be somehow relaxed and breathing in hte midst of the rigors and hte "height" of this style. In hte past I've loved Ulanova in this very same clip, but after seeing FOnteyn do it I was very impatient with her--maybe, the choreography/music wear out their welcome fast, and whichever ballerina goes first has the advantage. i LOVE htis dance, but it is not something I want to see often.... And maybe it's just my mood this week. i'm still fighting off a cold..... Thanks for posting, Christian.

Helene, unless I'm mistaken, Fullington and Boal are making NO attempt to reconstruct the original production -- all this is based on Petipa's version for St Petersburg, with some added color in the mime that goes back to the original. Yes, there's reference to the original score and annotations for the original Paris version, but all the steps PNB uses would come from Sergeyev [Petipa's version]. We don't know much -- do we? -- about where Petipa changed things and where he left it the same -- except that PROBABLY the parts of the pdd that are identical to Sleeping Beauty pdd (the supported soussus, developpe front, fouette to attitude, penche) seem PROBABLY pure Petipa.... Certainly those lifts in the pdd are modern variants -- the sweep backwards before the pique looks a lot like the Cojocaru version and are NOT what Vasiliev and Maximova did, not what Seymour and Nureyev did... They are REALLY beautiful, but they're from now, not from then....

I completely agree about the Bournonville feeling - A dance-historian friend here pointed out that there was no mention of the fact that Petipa rarely choreographed male variations but left them to the virtuoso performers, and that the man's variation was probably choreographed by Bournonville's star student Johannsen, who went to St Petersburg and was principal dancer in Petipa's time. The "50 Bournonville combinations" video documents this pair of steps -- single air tours in opposite directions back to back -- as part of the Bornonville syllabus. In any case, THESE dancers made the steps look very graceful, including the air tours in both directions. Perhaps other dancers can't make them look so satisfying -- but there's a heavenly sparkle to the girl's, especially that sissone around the corner, and a sweet softness to the boy's which is less dazzling but more grounded and appealing than the all-beating-all-the-time variant the director decided upon, which looks very exciting but kinda giddy. ............ Editing to add Congratulations to everybody. The presentation in itself was fascinating, especially Marian Smith's uniformly interesting information about the annotated autograph score esp the human voices to be heard in the music. [Though I'd like to add that even the printed scores have SOME indication of voices -- for example, there's the "rire satanique des Wilis," i.e the satanic laughter of the Wilis -- which is written above the piano reduction of the score I've used from in the UC music library, the kinda terrifying long trill that occurs just before the Wilis run Hilarion (and later Albrecht) onto the stage -- it's the same sound MS Smith calls Giselle's giggle. ANd just a side note -- Helgi Tomasson's production also includes Berthe's mime speech, and it's very welcome, very effective; I've seen it delivered powerfully by several powerful mothers, including Anita Paciotti and Katita Waldo.

it's 2011 already and I'm just getting around to you thanking for this, Miliosr -- but you're right on the money, and Macaulay is ALSO very good on McDoanald. i remember seeing him with the Limon company, wonderful performances, and beautifully sculpted, powerful things they were -- he brought this Limonesque cleanness and strength with him to hte Morris company, along with the musicality that Limon's work required, and created a kind of monumental image in hte new repertoire that balanced against the equally monumental but perhaps more balletic work of Lauren grant and David Lowenthal.... Actually, that's not quite right -- I've seen hte Limon company do a monumental performance of Tudor's "Dark Elegies," than which no ballet company nowadays could do a better version. But what I should say is that MacDOnald could bring that weight and grandeur of old modern dance to the MM company that was incredibly valuable as a bass note, against the much lighter ways of dancing that belong to so many others of the company. It's fascinating to see how many valid ways of dancing there are within the Morris company -- it's rather like an orchestra, the mix is so full of variety of tone.

Thanks mel, and thanks, Drew. So far, asking people I know who have studied the treatises and can stage Baroque and 18th century dances, THEY don't know -- so I doubt that any website that doesn't cite a source can be authoritative. "There is a picture from the Renaissance showing someone holding onto a chair...." Maybe Doug knows? Jane? Alexandra? Let's keep asking.

The story's gotten so much attention, SOMEBODY's forced Youtube to take it down.