Paul Parish

Yes, but was he MADE to leve?

Does anybody know much about Eugene von Grona? Certainly Hitler persecuted the lovers of swing music, including the dancers. Was von Grona on Hitler's list? Was he threatened with being sent to a camp? Did he have to escape? How did he come to found the Negro Ballet? What was the choreography like? Who were his dancers? Did they go on to other companies? There's a link to a piece of his choreography here: http://www.nfo.net/video/vid4.html It looks v Busby Berkeley in its formations and schematics. Is it typical, does anybody know, of hte rest of his work?

Not all of Balanchine's ballets came to their present owners through his will -- some (I think) were given away during his lifetime... But first of all, is there a list anywhere of who owns what now? Secondly, it would be good if it were annotated, with indications of how the transactions took place, and if anybody'y already left a ballet to a third party. THis could be a ph d thesis, I guess -- but probably the research has already been done.

Fascinating in so many ways-- First of all, Russell's commentary is SO intelligent -- re Bach, re the timing, re the corps especially. And the demonstrating is SO beautiful!! But also, it's fascinating to see the kinds of articulation she's getting -- this looks MUCH more like Tanny's 50's Barocco than Suzanne's (both were broadcast -- on Canadian Broadcasting? I've seen tapes) -- the arabesques are not so high [i.e., not 6 o'clock], the quality is less melancholy -- Tanny's quality in it was actually "sunny,' even in the adage, which is not nearly as slow as Suzanne's, which was a whole minute longer than Tanny's.

I heard from George Jackson that it was well attended, and that the speakers came. He said Marvin Hoshino spoke very well. There were performances. Peter Quanz had choreographed the Schumann/Heine lied "Wehmut" for ABT's Jared Matthews; NYCB's Rebecca Krohn and Ask la Cour did the Walking pas de deux from "Emeralds"; and... Blakeley White-McGuire and Samuel Pott the Bride &Groom duo from "Appalachian Spring". He also mentioned that Clive Barnes's memorial comes within a few days.

Jack, I'm CERTAIN you're right. I've often thought so myself. Francis's bullshit detector was first rate, and so was his eye for talent. And he knew how to make the case for it. After WW2 the American Information Service asked him to come work in Washington and he said, "That wasteland? Never!" "But we need you -- what would you LIKE to do for us?" "Send me to Belgrade" "What! Belgrade? On't you want London or Moscow?" He replied, no, but that Marshall Tito was trying to make some distance between himself and Stalin and was open to Americans, and if he went to Belgrade Francis could bring American artists and show them some of hte virtues of free-thinking, and he did, and brought dancers and exhibitions by photographers and painters and many people behind the iron curtain saw them, the crowds for the Family of Man were waiting all night... The ability to think like that was partly inherent and partly the result of a really liberal education, and St Johns's Great Books method had a lot to do with how independently he could think. Great man.

"Bei mir bist du schoen" is a fabulous song, it was the Andrews sisters' breakthrough. THey were Jewish. Ella Fitzgerald did a version with some strong Klesmer allusions, it's wonderful. There's a huge overlap between German and Yiddish, which is itself a German word ("Judisch").... "Shane" is also a dialectal German pronunciation of "schoen" -- (cf the 60s American pop song "Danke schane") Rhinelanders say it that way. My grandfather, who lived in New ORleans, was hte grandson of an ALsatian who landed in NO after fleeing the Franco-Prussian war, and that's how he said "schoen" -- Schoen's Funeral home on Canal st is (was?, not sure if Katrina left it standing) a familiar midtown landmark in New Orleans, and it's pronounced "shane." "Bei" is also an expression familiar among pople of German or Jewish descent-- as in "how's by you?" (meaning "how are things with you"). Now, here I had thought Yiddish incorporated some German. Or are we having a little leg-pull? Anyway, as we can hear in the promo clip (around 1:27) the Andrews sisters pronounce it "shane", with the lips un-extended and the mouth open, rather than "shoen" (I have not learned how to type "o-umlaut"), with the lips extended and the mouth not so wide. Does that make it Yiddish, not German? But as to holding dances in reserve, this is very much a repertory company: Several years ago, when they were adding Sonatine, they had a rash of injuries just before my weekend, and there were about as many substitutions on the list as printed cast, in everything; I got the third cast of Sonatine, even though they usually lead off with first cast on Friday evening, and the performance quality looked like old times in the New York State Theatre (except maybe for a couple of "blank spots" where apparent internal understanding seems to lapse)! (They can play "musical chairs" or any other game that's required.) And in other difficulties, they quickly step into something originally unscheduled but utterly ready to go when you see it.

Mel, I agree -- Sylvia is a beautiful pdd. When Cheryl Yaeger ([sp?] used to do it with Julio Bocca, it was one of hte lightest, most beautiful things I ever saw.

I like the video -- it makes me think they're taking it seriously, in the right way. I like the fact that Andersen has designed the show as well as directed it -- he doesn't go fpr magniloquence, as a speaker, but I think he is deep as well as sincere and believe this may well be a more serious, more coherent Swan Lake than ABT's or NYCB's or.... Obviously it won't be as opulent as some -- but I sure wish I could see it.

Thanks, Carbro -- It's good to hear that from someone who was there and saw it and isn't just speculating. Yes, Mofid is glorious, and she has that virginal quality -- but alas, the resolution's so weak it's hard to tell. Tanny is still the best I've seen on film, with Jacques -- they're both so simple, and yet the effects are so stunning. As a partner, technically, yes. But in this ballet I never got from Martins either the sensuousness or the wonder that are so intrinsic to the role. Mofid had the wonder, and as for the sensuousness -- in buckets! He was, for me, THE best in this role of his era, perhaps even to the present. The resolution of this video is so poor that I can't see it (although I know it's there). Still, I think Farrell, at any age, had a virginal quality that works here, overriding her real-life maturity.

Hey CHristian -- I love "Company B" -- it explained to me how my parents came to meet and fall in love and get married --but I don't think there's any need to be prepared for it. It's self-explanatory, you can't misunderstand it. Not everybody likes it, but that's just taste. Miami ought to do it very well. I can't wait to hear your feelings about it. PS I'm very impressed by Villella's introductions -- they're pithy, to-the-point, and the words are very well chosen. He says a LOT in a 60 second spot.

"Reason not the need,"[says King Lear, to his daughter, who's just insulted him again]. "Our basest beggars are in the poorest things superfluous. Allow not nature more than Nature needs, mans' life's cheap as beast's. Thou (indicating his daughter, the princess, who's just thrown him out of her house) art a lady: if only to go warm were gorgeous, Why nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st, which scarcely keeps thee warm. but for true need, ye heavens give me paitence, patience i need! You see me here you gods, a poor old man, as full of grief as age, wretched as both. if it be you that stir these daughters' hearts against their father, fool me not so much to bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger, and let not women's weapons, water-drops, Stain my man's cheeks. No you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both, that all the world shall -- I will do such things, What they are, I know not yet, but they shall be The terrors of hte earth. you think I'll weep; No I'll not weep; I have full cause of weeping[storm heard at a distance] but htis heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws Or ere i'll weep. (o fool, I shall go mad.) (And he heads out into the rain and the storm because he's so angry and so helpless he'll show them.....) ................................................ That's what art is for. And Swan Lake goes as far in this direction as King Lear goes, but not with words..... good luck with your paper.

I buy it totally. Literary theory fits sub-literature better than it does the real thing. So far as we are cncerned, it's like analyzing hte semiotics of bad music videos, because the really good ones are too complex -- not to mentin the great ballets, which aren't vernacular enough to be considered at all. Great poetry is highly compressed. It IS true, the unbearably obscure poetry of the mid-century was ALSO compressed, but not like the great simple lyrics that had always held the attention: "Western Wind, when will thou blow the small rain down can rain. Christ, if my love were in my arms and I in my bed again." is a lyric you can't forget -- it WILL not let you go. it's 500 years old, simple as dirt, but it's still got a hard-on. Similarly, Word is to the kitchen gone and word is to he hall, and word is gone up to the queen and that';s the worst of all Arise arise Mary Hamilton, arise and say to me, what thou hast done with thy wee bairn I saw this morn weeping by thee. I put him in a little boat and put him out to sea that he might sink or he might swim but he'd ne'er come back to me." And then they hang her It will make you weep. Last night there were four Maries, tonight there'll be but three, Mary [White,] and Mary [brown,] and Mary Carmichael, and me. Poetry is like Petipa -- it's highly selected, there's a lot that is NOT there, but hwat is can lay you in hte aisles. Which doesn't mean there aren't great pieces written in diary form -- "The Things they Carried" holds you because of its intense imaginative concentration, though, and not because it's factually accurate -- the facts are plausible in hte extreme, but what makes them tell is how imaginatively intense hte prose is. WHen I was teaching English myself, what i saw work was literature that they were arguing about when I entered the room. Primo among these was a novel by DH Lawrence caled "The Rainbow" -- half the class had signed up to read that book, they didn't even know what it was, but it was called the Rainbow, and htat made tehm sign up EVEN WHEN the class did not fit their schedules. I have never seen a groupd of people perform like these before or since. nearly half hte clawss got and A or a B+ -- they were off the charts. And it was hte books that made it happen -- great literature inflames hte imagination, and anything else is just a chore to study. Thoughts? I would be interested to hear the opinions of any BTers who’ve had any (relatively) recent experience in the humanities department or are currently studying literature and related subjects - or who might have chosen to do so but elected not to. Older BTers with recollections of English departments of the past are also welcome to chime in.

This is NOT a no-brainer. Polanski made "Knife in the Water" -- which may have been nominated for an Oscar, but also was vilified when it opened -- "most critics vociferously demanded to know what the film was about." if you haven'[t seen it, don't judge Polanski. The rhetoric of his opponents is invariably fundamentalist. I don't buy it. That's me.

We live in a populist era, and since the word vulgar means 'opf the people," it's unfashionable, borderline dangerous to call anyone vulgar. And it's almost unheard of for anyone to actually exhibit genteel behavior. But those are the basic differences -- noble is on another plane altogether. Most of what people object to in Alina Somova is what my mother would have called "common' -- indeed, she thought Ginger Rogers was .common." Lopopatkina's extensions are JUST as high as SOmova's but the intentins evident in the way she moves make it clear she's working from a very deep place, and even those who'd protest against her extensions would not want to call her vulgar. Somova parades her ambitions, like Mae West. She wants you to like her and will bowl you over to get your attention. She thrusts her pubic bone forward, hurls herself into her fouettes, and generally behaves way too much like Lydia Bennett (the forward younger sister in Pride and Prejudice). But audiences love her, and I confess, i like her despite my better judgment -- though she's way wrong for almost every roile and makes SO little effort to get into character, she's always just being herself. One of the interesting things about the way Makarova danced Swan Lake was that she made Odile vulgar -- it distracted people from the wrong-headedness of her Odette, who's way too seductive , by making her Odile kinda shockingly brazen... though by today's standards, with Swamp Thing at ABT, Makarova's pelvic bumps look restrained... ABT's Rothbart and Odile are definitely vulgar.... Jeremy Collins was a vulgar dancer, IMHO, so is Tom Delay (though he IS entertaining).

There was a WONDERFUL article in the Manchester Guardian about Swayze as a partner that made me cry -- the writer was ABSOLUTELY right, the qualities he conveyed are those of the partner who is FOREVER there, and they carried through in to "Ghost" where he didn't dance at all but DID convey the idea that he was still there, the spirit was still strong -- and if the spirit of fidelity is gone, who wants its body? He embodied the idea of fidelity, show its appeal without making it look foolish or weak but on hte contrary resourceful, devoted, powerful, attentive, and eager to do more, and masculine. That's doing quite a lot. If it's hard to find an actress these days who can plausibly portray virginity, it's JUST as rare to find an actor who can make you feel he's faithful. And if you haven;'t seen him dance with his own wife, look here:

We've got to agitate. This is an issue of scholarly access to a great library. SO we've got to take this beyond our boards -- to the blogs, to theTimes, the Wall Street Journal ["the undersigned scholars of the Academic Dance deplore and denounce," etc., " "Mr Balanchine himself would not have condoned this," etc. Call your congressman, start agitating for changes in the law to expand protections for the free interchange of information, etc. We're not just a bunch of hobbyists -- this is really a matter of academic freedom, freedom for students and scholars to have access to libraries, and Ketinoa's channel was a library I visited constantly. As Hans pointed out, where else could one see two complete versions of the reconstructed Sleeping Beauty. And the coaching sessions!!! The commentary and the syllabi, the performances, the syllabi -- the variety of classes possible within the Vaganova system, all of this K opened up to students hungry to know....

I love you guys.... it's so sweet, a little bittersweet, to read this and hear your voices. Because the question can hit you so differently when you resonate with another person whose love of ballet you really feel. Like right now for me I'm feeling what Gianina said -- the way San Francisco Ballet dances "Within the Golden Hour" takes me SO deep into the heart of what I feel ballet is, it's my current heart-throb, the ballet I kinda ache to see again. And that's a kind of favorite, isn't it? It's the one that's been on my mind the most, and indeed back over the weekend, I had several flashes of wanting to see Martyn Garside twisting into those glorious positions the corps has in the ring section, of wanting to see his quick little duet, of wanting to see Katita's little waltz steps, and Sarah van Patten reaching out forward in that "After the Rain' pose -- well, it takes that cantilevered reaching to a whole new level, reaching like the idea of reaching.... But basically, it's Concerto Barocco I "always" want to see, and Swan Lake that made a balletomane out of me, but which without Sibley and Dowell I'm not sure I really want to see again.

CompNY b IA great dance. It explained how and why my parents came to marry each other....... Corbin's reflections at the end of the interview about WW2, and how the ballet reflects it, go really deep. The interviewer is a little trigger happy, but don't let her throw you off. She gets him to say amazing things.

Indeed, she was -- Sarah Sessions, the tallest girl in the corps and a wonderful dancer. She was a great "big swan," she was terrific in Agon, and she was really good in modern dance-y things like Othello and Company C. She's also the poster girl for Ballet.co.

What's available? WHich one do YOU like best? And why?

Nanarina et all, thank you so much for this FABULOUS thread. It is wonderful to learn so much about the costumes, their construction and care and handling -- the video is extraordinary, since he tells us so much about how cloth, dyes, trims change over time and under performance conditions. I'm not surprised that the costumes stretch to fit, but I certtainly did not know it. ANd it's wonderful to see the close-up detail of the laces -- I'm especially struck by the angle at which the beads were sewn onto those little tags that hung from hte bodice of the TnV costumes down over hte sikrts -- very interesting angles! I would NEVER have guessed that....

THe examples you give are excellent, BF -- in particular, Plisetskaya in "Rose malade" speaks to me, since I saw her dance it here iN berkeley CA and was almost blinded by my own tears. What you say fits the case.

"Mime Matters" is enormously valuable. I posted something about it quite a while ago, re the passage in it where Anthony Dowell and Antoinette Sibley teach the mime scene from Swan Lake -- which is wonderfully imaginative and gives some idea of what they two were like in that ballet.

agreed- there's kind fo a rough transition musically as the second camera-take enters, which makes your comment all the more likely... thank you, thank you for tracking down the call number Yet another reason to come to New York