Paul Parish

wow, those standing legs aren't turned out at all! somehow looks French to me -- the arabesques are very allongee, the torso almost in a straight line with hte leg. the hair looks 20s. But I'm REALLY just guessing.

Roberto Bolle? he's hella handsome, and looks fantastic in fashion ads.

I think it's part of her character -- she's going to be queen someday, she's got to be sovereign, able to stand on her own without collapsing -- it's a metaphor for that. But she can't just go for it. She's also got to be gracious in the midst of all these difficulties; she can't just look "Excuse me can't you see I'm busy." It's not necessary, and in fact it's kinda vulgar, to MILK the balances, make the conductor slow down, though the right dancer can work that to her advantage if she's being adorable in the process, and maybe just saves it for the last one. It's also OK if she is in transition from one to another -- she doesn't have to get the other arm all the way to high fifth (or 3rd as you call it Hans) every time, so long as her aplomb is solid through the torso and we aren't WORRIED about her, she can be using that hand to greet this guest from a far-flung land -- she MUST look intelligent, at least a little curious ("Have you come far?"), her eyes are at least as important in these moments as getting that arm en couronne.

No idea, your guess sounds good -- but my LORD, doesn't he look beautiful!

Many of us are familiar with DVD of the extraordinary "La Sylphide" that starred Huebbe, Jeppesen, and Englund --esp since Englund's Madge is so fascinating and has generated so much comment. Well, that production was directed by Kronstam. To get an idea of what he may have done to shape the rhythm and detail of THAT production, hte best guess one could get might be to look at how he directed Ryom and Lund in this Giselle film. It is one of hte most interesting documents about staging a great ballet that I have ever seen. Kronstam's insights go SO deep, they are the product of such strenuous thought and feeling, and they are so consistent.

He is amazingly handsome, with a more-than-passing resemblance to the greatest matinee-idol actor of hte mid-century, Lawrence Olivier If this is Skibine, he's a dish. In looking for a photo of him, I ran into a startling homonym on the web -- someone called George Skibine, a member of the Osage Nation of Oklahoma, took over the highest post at the US Bureau of Indian Affairs back in May. Can they be related? There is a well-known connection between the Russian emigre dancers and American Indian dancers (not just the Tallchiefs) , and there's a famously fine ballet company in Tulsa -- but still, this coincidence seems really striking.

wonderful picture, rg-- didn't she end up getting some more cats, Top and Middle?

Mona Vangsaae and Henning Kronstam in Ashton's? He does look noble enough and big enough, to be Kronstam, and her coloring and proportions are right.... golly rg you've got me going....

Ruthanna Boris?

me too, think she looks liuke Marie-Jeanne -- esp the way she's using her eyes, and the long feet. Beautiful line, arms and leg -- Crossed wrists -- hmmmmmm. Ballet Imperial?

Interesting, PP -- we share initials, I like that -- SF Opera house like Chicago's also has a relatively small sage-- the "usual" European ratio is the hte auditoriumn and stage are the same size, I believe. In SF, the stage is not small, but it is nevertheless NOT large. THe auditorium is almost twice the size of hte stage. When hte Paris Opera Ballet came to SF a few years back, they had to do La Bayadere with out some scenery -- the Shades scene looked peculiar, since they had to leave out one of hte darkest leafy framing drops, so hte stage was strangely bright with distant pale trees showing all too clearly -- and in the first act, the temple facade had to be so far forward there was no room for a staircase, and hte bayadere made her entrance without being able to point her foot and descend a flight of stairs -- she just stepped out onto the ground, and it was like NO entrance at all -- you didn't realize it was HER, the BALLERINA....

Given the gangly arms, and the outrageous head positions of some of the dancers, seems like some sort of Walpurgisnacht is a good guess. so Faust seems realy smart as a guess. And the frizzy wigs look like Nazimova's in her 20s remake of Camille, so Carbro, there's food for thought. The thing that struck me about the mis-en-scene is how much the stage looks like a smaller version of the SF Opera House -- it's almost the same curtain, gold, pulled up in 5 places so as to make a scalloped border for the proscenium; the heavy tassels, too -- and the proscenium legs are similar, though our proscenium is very high, there is a horizontal cut-off masking the flies (I think ours is just plain black). Our stage is bigger, but this one is set up to LOOK crowded. THe SF Opera House is in the SF Beaux Arts style, so the "look" of a French opera house stage may probably have been the architect's ideal. Wonder where this actually IS.... what they used for the location. opera comique? (I have no idea) ................................................. Well, guess what? Wikipedia has an EXCELLENT article on this (Lon Chaney) movie, and the opera was indeed Faust, and the film was shot THREE TIMES before a test audience could get excited about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_o...era_(1925_film) "According to Universal Studios, part of the set from the 1925 film has never been torn down and still stands. Inside soundstage 28, part of the opera house set continues to stand to the side where it was filmed some eight decades ago. Though it remains impressive, time has taken its toll and it is very rarely used. Urban legends claim the set remains because when workers have attempted to take it down in the past there have been fatal accidents, said to be caused by the ghost of Lon Chaney Sr.

I love the pas de deux (with scarf) from Mark Morris's Sylvia. It tells a story within a story; the whole adagio is governed by Cupid, who's placed Sylvia behind a veil, and there's a dramatic build as Aminta gains confidence in the hope that she is indeed Sylvia, which is confirmed when she reveals herself. (THere are lots of poses in which he supports her but the scarf is between them, and a lovely moment in which the scarf threads out between his fingers). The imagery is striking, fresh, and beautiful. His solo is overwhelmingly joyous and wonderfully difficult, with a virtuoso pirouette that dives into a renverse and comes around hte corner spectacularly; hers is piquant and brilliant, and the coda is delicious. It ought to excerpt well. And of course, the music is wonderful.

Thanks, Bart -- but if I said Tarantella by mistake, the Divertimento Brillante is opposite in character from BOTH Tchai pas and Tarantella -- which are similar in being virtuoso entertainments with big sweeping phrases and large emotional appeal. Neither Tchai pas nor Tarantella have the hectic geeky spastic choppiness of DB.... Bart, have you SEEN "Divertimento Brillante"? From what I remember of the production RG mentions, the CBC broadcast, it could NEVER substitute in hte public's affections for Tarantella; it's not very likable, the music and hte dancing are both brittle and geeky and hectic in their phrasing -- the piano part is written so as to encourage capricious rhythms, sort of cadenza-like, so it never builds up any sweep or momentum -- it is the opposite in its appeal from Tarantella, which builds and builds and overwhelms us with delight. I was thinking of the Glinka pdd as an alternative to the Tchaikovsky -- not that they are similar, so much, as that the both offered audience-pleasing opportunities for the dancers. I'm grateful to those who have spoken of Villella as a stage animal. I sometimes get to see him introduce the same MCB program 3 or 4 times, and I've been amazed at how confidently, consistently, smoothly he does it. What comes to mind is not the young Villella dancing; it's more like the older Sinatra singing -- mellow, beautifully spun out, with just a hint of the schmooze. He always walks out from the break in the curtain, center stage. A mike and stool await him. He appears almost shy when entering, as if not knowing what to expect. Then he sits and talks. Sometimes he says the same things, word for word, in each presentation. At other times, he takes off in an improvised and entirely unexpected direction. You can tell which ballets he prefers by the amount of time he devotes to them. Some works, get very little time indeed. Balanchine -- always -- is the Gold Standard. It's fascinating to observe.

THank you ALL--I've passed this info on to her, and will save it for myself.

A friend is desperate. She just got a great DVD via Amazon, but the seller failed to mention it was in PAL. Anybody know any quick solutions? Will copy places convert copyrighted DVDs chapters intact? (This is of course in Berkeley, but we have the national chains) I remember something about "Nero" allowing you to change the format from PAL to NTSC, but can't remember what that was or how it worked.... Thanks.

I sure would like to see "the Man who Dances." Villella is a performing animal. I was once attending a conference he was speaking at, we both got caught in an elevator, and in hte five minutes we were tstuck in there he told me 15 stories at least, with FULL moxie and eyes sparkling. And I was nobody, dressed down, just there to hear the talks. THe man is an entertainer -- and so is Jacques d'Amboise -- they might well have been rivals, for both are hungry for the chance to make you enjoy their company. i'm a total fan. Bart wrote: "Does anyone know why Glinkiana was quickly split up into separate short ballets? My dim memories of this from the late 60s was that it didn't really cohere as a single long piece, anyway. It certainly made sense for Villella have offered the pdd separately when guesting or for tv. It certainly worked as an alternative to Tchaikovsky pdd, which everyone had already seen many times. Bart, have you SEEN "Divertimento Brillante"? From what I remember of the production RG mentions, the CBC broadcast, it could NEVER substitute in hte public's affections for Tarantella; it's not very likable, the music and hte dancing are both brittle and geeky and hectic in their phrasing -- the piano part is written so as to encourage capricious rhythms, sort of cadenza-like, so it never builds up any sweep or momentum -- it is the opposite in its appeal from Tarantella, which builds and builds and overwhelms us with delight. The suite may well have felt "uncohesive." Valse Fantaisie is also odd - rhythmically odd, since (if I remember right) its phrases are 3 bars long -- DAAAH,dumbaDAHdah, DAAAH,dumbaDAHdah, which disturbs most hearer's expectations (since usually everything always comes in twos or fours), so hte whole surge of it -- and it does surge, surges a LOT, feels like pretty big waves on the sea of galilee... Glinka is a VERY great composer, he is to Russian music what Pushkin is to Russian literature, the genius who could suddenly do everything when before there was nothing. When SF Opera did his "Russlan and Lyudmila" here a decade or so ago (with Bakst's designs and Fokine's choreography, same version Balanchine danced in as a student), everybody went out of hteir minds, because it was delightful as Rossini, spectacularly beautiful, staggeringly great theater, and capable of hilarity of hte most champagne-like frothiness and we had no idea. (Here's the overture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX-gR-zzZgc...eature=related; a Russian would probably conduct it even faster. you'll notice when it works itself up to sounding Polonaisy, it sounds Tchaikovskian, like the finale of Diamonds or Theme and Variations.) Amazingly inventive, and beautifully sustained. All Russians seem to revere him like Tchaikovsky; certainly Balanchine. Gergeyev conducts the Mazurka from his "A life for the Czar" as the big musical finale to "Russian Ark," the ballroom scene at the Hermitage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEaRgxJ8NNU.

I didn't know that Croce had written anything baout Fantasia, but I am not surprised to hear that she admires it -- and glad to hear it. I looked it up, if anyone else wants to, and found it in "Sight Lines " as a section of an article about Alvin Nikolais called "Visualizations (pp 178-180). A usual, she's brilliant and pithy -- I wish it were longer.

What a great idea for a book -- and an EXCELLENT writer. Disney chorreography is seriously under-rated -- not by Chchoreographers (Mark Morris says upon any occasion that the best choreography for hte Nutcracker EVER was in hte Disney "Fantasia.") But dance-goers, dance-lovers tend not to give Disney proper respect. ALL Disney cartoons are balletic -- my current favorit is TOy Story 2; the scene in the airport, with the conveyor belts, is like Symphony in 3 movements.

My first guess was "Lady into Fox" but it's not in active rep. COuld it be for 7 Deadly SIns, for Allegra Kent as Anna/Anna? Or maybe "slaughter on whatever street," for Zorina as the strip-tease dancer? Inrtriguing, RG.

Wow, Carbro, that is SOME photo! This I did not know! Last I heard about J-P's marital status was that he was married to "some dancer." Some dancer indeed! Editing to add: Slow Dancing has its own website. Only one pic of Guerin -- not a projection -- but worth a look.

Sounds like the dementor's kiss in Harry Potter. It DOES sound horrifying. And I add my thanks to you for reporting on this. Just goes to show how strong the life in a classic can be.

"it's pretty much likeusing taking the original Tchaikovsky music and having the ballet done by a truly competent choreographer like Tchaikovsky wanted in the first place." well said, Sacto -- I agree. It's very intelligent. By the way, Lopatkina is really strong. I remember seeing her here in Berkeley in Diamonds dance the very difficult Scherzo as if it were nothing -- of course she was great in the adagio, but the other ballerina (Pavlenko) faded to nothing in rhw scherzo; but when her turn came, Lopatkina flashed with -- well, diamantine strength and clarity. So i bet she COULD do the Odile....

Thanks for those links, Marga -- her Giselle has a beautiful creamy jump, it's so lovely; and her Aurora, as you say, is everythhing she shouldbe -- warm, reserved, generous, lovely. I love the way she uses herwrists in hte violin solo, very "Russian." And she has thatwonderful gift of stillness. We did not see her much here. i reviewed her first appearance in the Nutcracker for danceviewtimes http://danceviewtimes.com/2007/Winter/01/californianuts.html and her appearance in the gala in Ashton's "5 waltzes in hte manner of Isadora Duncan" -- but I saw her VERY rarely during her stay on the roster. I remember watching her in class- effortless technique, uncanny softness.... but never had enough chance to get a good look at her.. Hope things go well for her.

Sacto -- I REALLY liked Maria Allash (I think it was Allash, I can't find the program, but it was a first soloist, not a ballerina) when the Bolshoi came through here a few years ago with it -- I saw two performances and preferred hers to that of a dancer of higher rank.... She was not the most diamantine technician, but she was the most alive -- a warm and lovely heroine she inflected everything -- and there's a lot of variety in her variations and pdd -- with a cantilena, a singing expressiveness that made the whole house fall in love with her.