Paul Parish

In Homans's history of ballet, I can't remember any discussion of WHO introduced barre work, nor when. In her discussion of Vestris the younger, the barre is already present. Anybody know? Mel,do you? What evidence is there?

'How's the new outdoorsy ballet workin' fer ye?' which, god knows, would be another form of ballet death knell. WELL-said!!!!! I don't know that it’s at all necessary to see women on pointe in the light that Mr. Macaulay sees it. For me, women on pointe are MORE independent, freer, than anyone in a soft shoe. Alonzo King, to name only one, is using pointe work in pdd that are shared-center -- he's not supporting her any more than she is supporting HIM, they're often pulling away from each other, or knotted up in the kinds of tangles Balanchine used in his more advanced work -- Mr. B was not much into lifts -- Forsythe's most cantilevered pdd -- well, I’m thinking of 'in the middle, somewhat elevated,' so that's decades ago now -- but still, the partners are very equal, each is working hard, and if he's stronger in some ways, she’s stronger in others. And the pointe shoe gives the dancer a huge advantage -- if you don't have to use your calves but can do the work with the feet themselves, dancing is not so tiring., the toe-box is a real power assist, in many ways. Mr. Macaulay seems to be, at least at the moment of writing, caught up in the idea that the toe shoe marks women as the second-rate sex, or the idealized, unreal one, or the one that needs the strength of men to hold them up. But he knows better.... dancing on pointe is easier on the body than jumping all the time. men have to retire young, women can go into the late forties with very little loss of strength since pointe work is low-impact and does less harm to the body than big jumps.... I'm exaggerating for effect -- but still, what male dancer was able to dance as beautifully into his forties as Kyra Nichols was into HER forties? We’re a romance-starved people right now -- when the new romance arrives, it will surprise us with its features; it will probably bring back the old thing in a new, hitherto unimaginable way.

Fonteyn really understood phrasing -- she knew when the image had to be ready. HThose fish dives are miracles of co-ordination, with the result that everything was in place before you could see what had happened, so all you can see is hte radiant conclusion. And yes, indeed, Somes was Mr Yummy....

"Idiot" used idiomatically like this means "the guy offended me."

I may not agree with myself tomorrow morning, but right now I feel it's necessary to say, as a "published critic" myself, that the audience is always being asked to forgive something that is less than ideal, and we'll go along, up to a point. But if the dancer looks wrong for the part, for WHATEVER reason, that dancer is going to have an uphill fight. Let's turn this away from the feminine mystique for a moment, just for the sake of the argument. Who of us can imagine Vladimir Malakhov making a success as Spartacus? Yes he's a beautiful dancer, with a fantastic technique, a poetic soul -- but HE LOOKS WRONG FOR THE PART. Nothing about the way his body looks or functions suggests the grit and stamina and heroic strength that are pre-requisites. Carlos Acosta is equipped for that role -- it does not matter that he is -- shall we say African American? His skin-color and racial features in no way disqualify him for the role, given the OTHER qualities he brings to the part. Baryshnikov famously had to fight to get the role of Albrecht, but the poetic sensitivity and profound gifts he has and always had as an actor made the case, and even in relatively hide-bound Leningrad he made a huge success in the role. Danilova once said that it took her several performances after a lay-off to regain her stage-presence; and we see it all the time with performers, that when they return from vacation they look out of shape and unfocussed. It would be best for a critic to skip opening night and wait till the previews were over -- but the ballet companies don't have previews, and opening night is NEWSWORTHY. DO they still have it? Is the company headed for the cellar this year? BASEBALL players have to put up with honest criticism -- and baseball players also benefit from an audience that is not so sentimental and is willing to analyze what they saw. The term "emploi" is used in ballet to define the "kind" of dancer who belongs in what kind of role. No less an artist than Carlo Blasis made it a cardinal point, that a strong, bandy-legged dancer might have great success in character roles but should NEVER be given a role in the "noble" emploi; by contrast, an astute director would never cast Audrey Hepburn as the Wicked Witch of the West, nor Margaret Hamilton as Holly Golightly -- there'd be NO CHANCE of popular success. This is not just obvious -- it is THE LAW. Kirstie Alley will never play Juliet, except maybe off-off Broadway, in a Charles Ludlum-style production. Speaking of Margaret Hamilton, I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned that David Hallberg has the same profile that she does. He is a noble dancer of the first water, and we all forgive him his nose and his chin -- but who of us has failed to notice this flaw? It doesn't incapacitate him, since he is able -- like Lynn Seymour (whom Macaulay mentioned) by the power of his imagination to project an image so idealized, and with such power, that we only see the aspects of his performance that matters. The clips Hookham has posted on YouTube of his Albrecht with the Bolshoi are transcendently noble and beautiful, in their musicality, style, and deployment of the technique. Beautiful, beyond anything I've myself ever seen in this role, whether live or on screen. If I were writing about him for any of the papers I write for, I would criticize nothing and praise everything.... for his odd face does not matter enough to detract from the glorious rhythmic design he's created in this portrayal. What matters is what he makes you see. If with a dancer what you can't help seeing is how much worse they danced than last year, you have to say so -- as gently as possible, unless there's something about the performance that is flat-out offensive. In my case, I can sometimes simply bite my tongue and say nothing -- that is to say, not review the performance at all. No artist likes to be ignored, and you can sometimes express your displeasure by saying nothing. Your editor may let you do that -- but not often. You DO have to say what you think.

VC, Croce is not writing a review but a "review article,' and obeying the conventions with energy and style. This is the kind of essay the NYRB specializes in, has done so since its inception -- the writer is an authority and is expected to say everything they want to on the subject that the book being considered brings up, and it's assumed that the reader will be a scholar/intellectual and want to be stimulated to further thought. The LONDON Review of Books -- the NYRB's sister publication, I've subscribed to both over the years -- is even more astounding in its general level of "pronouncements." I prefer the LRB, since it's less grindingly earnest, and the level of knowledge with which the critic is armed is at least as high as the NYRB's.

THank you for posting the link. The review is an extensive and vigorous essay; it's great to see that strong mind at work again. It looks as if NYROB has now made the entire article available on line. Here's the link.

Fabulous..... THanks for the extended quote from Denby; that's he gospel truth........

Your daughter is a friend of my heart. my friends have a 2-cab rule -- you may not discuss hte performance until you are in the SECOND cab of hte evening, nad truly on the way home -- since SOMEONE mightknow ne of hte dancers, and it would be terrible if you said something detrimental htat dispirited them.... SOmetimes I'mve ready to get in the second cab after we've gone one block....

There are many issues involved, especially if you ARE a dancer and have actually danced Balanchine. But the biggest of these is this -- ballet does not record well, unlike opera -- with ballet, 90 per cent of the excitement is lost if you don't see the great performance live. The 3-d experience, the kinds of things that happen in your brain as you focus on whatever it is that is so appealing to you that you make extra effort to actually see it happen, that, and the mystery of the weight transfer -- those things only register when you're in the real presence. Video is a flat-screen medium that robs the figures of weight, so it's hardly a miracle that they move so gracefully. Which means that your own local dancers, if they're good enough, are the ones you love -- wherever you are, in Tulsa, San Francisco, Seattle, New York. And different companies dance Balanchine differently -- SFB does not clarify the steps as sharply as NYCB, but does emphasize the sweep of the phrase in a wonderful way. But the result is that ballet is LOCAL-- and New Yorkers not only have a troupe brought up on Balanchine, they have a troupe they can FOLLOW-- for decades they've been able to follow the casting, posted in the lobby, and follow the dancers: corps (remember Renee Estopinal?) as well as principals. if it was Kyra you wanted to see in Diamonds, you could save your money and spend it on her; if it was Darci, you could blow off your mother in law and go to the ballet DARCI's night. I am not a New Yorker, but that's what I imagine I WOULD have done. I do live in the Bay Area, and i know that a decade ago I'd blow off my best friend to see Loscavio in Ballo, and now I plan if I can to see van Patten when possible and Zahorian in any of Patty's roles -- she is OUTSTANDING in Dybbuk and Opus 19, like Schwarzkopf in Capriccio, the only person who makes those ballets make sense, and she makes them glorious. OK -- so whoever you form your taste on makes other companies look peculiarly mannered. Denby covered this subject pretty much a-z. BUT ALSO, IF YOU DON'T SEE THE RIGHT PEOPLE DANCE A CHOREOGRAPHER LIKE ASHTON, IT'S NOT VERY LIKELY THAT HIS PARTICULAR OOPS, CAPS LOCK..... SHALL WE SAY, SWEETNESS -- Ashton is sweet like honeysuckle, it's not cloying, it's intense and glorious and not cheap in any way -- but it is also EXTREMELY difficult to dance Ashton with amplitude and full musical value, EXTREMELY difficult -- the whole body must dance, the upper body must be as pliant and willing to tilt VIOLENTLY, as willing as a modern dancer's, above arrowy footwork that is in fact as fast as Balanchine's, and there are very few who can do it and maintain a limpid flow of movement. I formed my taste on Ashton -- but it did not take me any time at all, the first time I saw Balanchine it was heart-breaking; San Francisco Ballet was dancing in Berkeley, a concert with Christensen and Balanchine, and Christensen was lots of fun and Symphony in C just made me weep, Betsy Erickson was out of this world beautiful in the adagio -- and in fact, I've never seen anybody except Allegra Kent on video approach the musicality and daring of Erickson's performance -- when that high melody kicks in and she dives into those penchees, Erickson was like a swallow, she swooped and soared and turned twice and swooped again fearlessly, like a swallow, i was GONE..... The fact is, Balanchine is one of the great imaginations of the modern era. It's partly the style he created, it's partly his ability to keep making new things and KEEP ON making new things, always responding to the music, so there is a lot of Balanchine you can get to know and a lot of Balanchine NYCB can present, but the main thing is, he had a great imagination, and we were SO lucky.... In France, when a poet is asked "Who is the greatest French man of letters?" they say "Victor Hugo, alas...." As if we had to say that Edgar Allan Poe was our greatest poet, alas. WE don't have to say that, since we DO have Walt Whitman, alas.... But we do NOT have to say "our greatest choreographer? George Balanchine, alas.... there is no 'alas' to it. We can say, "Hallelujah!"

two things -- Mravinsky is an awesome ocnductor -- his version of Tchaikovsky's Pthetique is staggering..... ANYTHING he conducts by Tchaikovsky is worth seeking out. Totally unrelated, Darci's Sugar Plum Fairy is up on youtube... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5Y0wFJDFOg&feature=fvw check it out......

thanks for the link, jane -- fasscinating article. yes hte Danes DO have a wonderful lightness of style, and it's a fascinating hook to hang a new beauty on. Much more interesting than the SwanLake premise he used last time. i'd love to see this production. Yes, it's a new production, but not for the new house. I got to talk to Wheeldon when I was last in Copenhagen and he told me some of the background - it's written up here if you're interested.

Is this a new production? I saw Christopher WHeeldon's name amidst a lot of Danish... The RDB's Beauty matters to San Franciscans because it was Helgi Tomasson's production, which is also danced here, that they've been dancing for a while, and it was at the RDB that Yuri Possokhov was the prince and made the connection with TOmasson that brought him here, where he is now resident choreographer. TOmasson's production has many beauties, but it is really too small for the SF Opera House -- the Garland Dance is really too small, only 18 dancers if I remember right -- though it must have filled the small stage at the old opera house in Copenhagen. Their large new house probably needs a larger.... but I'm just speculating. Is this a new production for the new house?

Forgive me, Innopac, if this seems oddball -- But Im taking you seriously what's good choreography? Can you never recognize BAD movement design? Almost anybody can tell when a freeway interchange has been badly designed -- if there's a bottleneck that forms every day, or two lanes of traffic have to "weave" (we actually have an example of that around here). A party can be badly choreographed, if the drinks, dance=floor, noshes are placed where gridlock is forced upon hte crowd.... Good choreography is like the movement of the planets -- everything is proportional, exccept in the degreeto which hte dance requires conflict, and THAT is grounded in a deeper geometric balance of vectors. Actually, I'm suddenly reminded of how in Balanchine's Symphony in 3 Movements -- the music is war-torn -- there is a place where the ballerina circles the stage doing a big manege of pique turns, but the corps de ballet looks like a field of asteroids that she might collide with -- it's cleverly made so from the front, to US, it looks dangerous but not so in fact.... thoguh of course, collisions DO happen when dancers get off course. I take exception to the idea that the corps comes in when we get tired ofhte principals. The corps in classical works participate in the fates of hte protagonists, and make up the world the princpals are responsible for. (cf Swan Lake) They are 'the people,' or sometimes the more elemental forces. I do not like Lar Lubovitch's Othello -- the music is so ugly -- but he uses the corps de balllet in a tremendous way throughout, especially in hte storm scene where the are the winds and the waves and hte threat of shipwreck, and also the storms of Othello's psychological descent into madness and chaos. ALso, there's very deft choreography with the handkerchief -- Lubovitch plays with it like a card-trick, or a shell game, getting it from Emilia, planting it on Cassio -- it was a real magic act, i wish I could remember how brilliantly it was plotted so it took place under the cover of a social interaction, staggeringly clever. On the other hand, desdemona's dance with the handkerchief when she's first given it is banal.

me too -- I'd liketo see the rrest of it. DO they show much in hte classroom? The kid are SO modest. But of course, ballet is the school of courtesy. The accents are a little hard to make out -- even though I lived in England for 3 years, still, I had trouble occasionally with the narrator's accent. Where exactly IS Elmhurst?

Lithuanian for Lesbian? Thank you. THe genius Karamazov sister Sarah Felder of SanFrancisco has a HILARIOUS juggling routine in which she tosses things in various orbits while telling a story about how she discovered she was a ...juggler. Ok, hte piece is called Lipstick Lesbian, and she spent the first 90 seconds painting her lips bright red with a very gooey lipstick while explaining how "Lipstick Lesbian" refers to a kind of dyke who does NOT exchew the feminine mystique and only then starteds tossing her balls, there's NO misunderstanding that juggler stands in for Lesbian as she worries about how she'll tell her parents, etc. But I've never run into '0Lithuanian.' There's a rich set of simple substitutions for "gay man' that have been and maybe still are in use among gay men -- starting with Urnian, or Uranian, or Bunburyist, from the Oscar Wilde era, through "friend of Dorothy" and "[he's] family" -- and of course, "poet" goes a long way back... But I haven't run into many such for Lesbians. Johnston was clearly a genius. Last time I tried to buy "Marmalade me Now," it was out of print and Amazon had used copies stating at 125 dollars......

Mezentzeva was worshipped because of her musicality and her refined sensibility -- I looked for it in vain till I saw her do white swan for the kids in "Children of Theater street, " -- I mean, CHECK IT OUT, that's one of THE greatest white swans I have EVER seen.... Somova doesn't have that. They may be similarly articulated -- you're very aware of their joints, and they move like moon-landing creatures, with three-part legs (thigh, shin, foot) The Russian technique moves the foot to and from pointe with a slight spring, so it moves altogether in one piece and looks at its best like a baguette diamond but even at its best it's noticeably jerkier than Balanchine's method, which calls for rolling through the ankle and the metatarsals and then springing onto the toe -- and a certain body-type makes this look noticeably jerky to American eyes. But it was Balanchine who said "the bones must show" -- Gelsey took this too far into anorexia, but the way she let you see the geometry of the dance in the angles of the bones themselves made her dancing truly thrilling -- the muscles just move the bones into place, and the bones do most of the work. With Somova, it can be very exciting to see those limbs deployed, especially since the amplitude is so great and her lines can be very beautiful -- not always, for sure, but as Denby said of Toumanova, whose dancing he found a LOT of fault with, the next day one had only a searing memory of terrifying extensions. I certainly get that from Somova's Diamonds -- the very first passage, where they do a bird-like courting dance and then he takes her hand, her first sautes in arabesque just blew my head off.

Pavlenko was indeed mesmerizing in hte adagio -- I remember the feeling that I was looking deep into her eyes all the way through. She is so poetic, so deep, and as a woman, she's very beautiful. I was struck by how much she looked like hte young Elizabeth Taylor. She was weak in hte scherzo, though. Me, I'm not crazy about DIamonds; I find Farrell's performance on the "Dance in America" video not very interesting. I never saw her doit live, and i'm sure that was a very different story. But I wasn't there and didn't see it. Kyra Nichols was marvellous when I saw her live. julie Diana danced it here with SFB, very like Pavlenko -- huge eyes, deep pools of melancholy, beautiful performance. Sarah van Patten is tremendous in hte role, almost like Lopatkina, who is by far my favorite -- with Lopatkina, I find the phrasing astonishes me, the whole thing is cryptic and mysterious to the highest degree and every moment is a surprise. But the performers who've bored me in it are legion. I won't mention any names. i don't find Somova boring. QUite the opposite, she has star quality, her very fine-boned limbs etch a very vivid line. She seems coltish and very young, she seems younger than she actually is, which is EXCELLENT for Balanchine. Though she's not fascinating, she makes a case for this ballet that it's kinda Melisand-ish, which carries over the echoes of Faure's music that I find very pronounced, so the echoes of Emeralds in the honr-calls all make it feel like some frail moon-child girl is trapped in a tower in hte forest somewhere, and Somova can evoke these romance-heropine qualities by her spectral pale thin-ness and her fey qualities. I think she's much better as a moonlit creature than as say kitri (which she danced here in Berkeley, unconvincingly) or Odette, which calls for gravitas....

I don't hate her in this [Diamonds pdd]. It's a lot better than I expected, musically, nad I have nothing wrong with her lines. The promenade in passe is beautiful, much of it is in fact beautiful, the "Diana shooting hte arrow"poses are well-considered. She's not Lopatkina or Farrell, the musicality isn't wonderful. But this role was built with very high extensions in the first place, and her clarity in extension is quite acceptable.

I wishI could see CA. I for oneloved Veronique Doisneaux. I found it amazingly judicious, thoguhtful, a retrospective on a good middling career to which hte artist had devoted herself. As she said, she'd had a vertebra ermoved from her back; the question of being a principal dancer never came upnand she never pushed it. The piece is mostly hated I guess because ofthe section in which she demonstrates the performance she hated doing -- namely posing in the background of Swan Lake; but she also showed us a dance she adored performing, the "running girl" first shade in Bayadere, which she danced impeccably though without star quality. I found it very poignant, her devotion to the art, her honesty, the unsentimental assessment she made of all she had done. They also serve who only stand and wait.

The detail is fantastic. What Ashton wants is fascinating -- and if he's hard on Sibley, look how she comes through for him. The ways she can tilt, dip and swoop without losing the continuity is already MILES ahead of the new couple Dowell is coaching, who don't come near what he and Sibley were able to deliver.

Thanks, Christian. i agree about her honesty. She's almost like a Balanchie dancer that way -- at lesat in the things I like -- Corsaire is simply fabulous, and Odette's transformation -- the dramatic sense is powerful, but it's not about herself, it's about hte choreography or the music, the natural BIG questions that the dance itself raises. And of course in Corsaire she has a real consort in Acosta. About Black Swan, I find the choreography rather threadbare, and her partner, though he is beautiful, is too refined for her. What I find most extraordinary is the vehemence of the comments posted on youtube -- my Spanish is good enough to taste the contempt that posters have for those who disagree with them about VV. I've never seen such flames before....

There's NO inherent antipathy between art and competition. Oedipus Rex was written for a tragedy competition -- the ancient Greeks were VERY competitive, and in fact all the great tragedies were written for competitions. So were the Odes of Pindar. There's no inherent antipathy between popular art and great art; though they often diverge, they don't have to. Rubens's paintings were popular; Victor hugo's novels were popular; Tchaikovsky's music was popular, so was Beethoven's, so was Count Basie's and Louis Armstrong's. Popular AND great. Competitions in our day ARE rather dumbed down -- but they don't have to be. Frankly, I'd love to see Viengsay Valdez and Carlos Acosta enter a competition and do "le Corsaire.'

I love the Magic Flute clip. She's not just a great balancer -- though her aplomb beats anything. There's a lovely delicacy in her dancing that makes her feats of control generous and gracious, and she's always dancing through the moments of stillness.

There are many ways of dancing Apollo -- not just the noble one. Villella was rather a rascal, but he was thrilling and it worked, by all accounts. Henning Kronstam was very exciting, really edgy, for a big dark Dane. When Gonzalo Garcia danced it in SF, he was not my favorite -- but he WAS first cast, and he looked amazingly like d"Amboise, who'd set it. He was extremely eciting, and several peopl whom I respect a lot -- Leigh witchell in particular -- felt like they'd seen a revelation. Me I preferred the noble style of vadim Solomakha, who was sweet-tempered and so beautiful in the role I could barely contain myself. The closest comparison I could make would be to say that he put me in mind of Anthony Dowell.