Paul Parish

This is a sidelight -- but it may throw give some perspective on this question. I've been reading Virgil Thompson's reviews of NYC musical life from the 50's (which were published in the NY Herald Tribune), and am struck by how frequently he refers to national styles in both conducting and in composing music. Toscanini, in particularly, though he was NOT American, created the "American" style of conducting by eliminating all but analysis of the musical structure from the performance. It's curious, but Balanchine created a similar way of looking at dancing by makng work that emphasized the structure of the music it was choreographed to, and putting the steps together in such a way that the dancers would be STRONGLY tempted to follow the logic of the music in dancing the steps -- the rhythms fit, and the athleticism of the dancers discouraged in most the "emoting" one would have expected of a European dancer. -- though of course Violette could dance with all her Frenchness, and Allegra could be out of this world in her own way, and Maria in her very different other way.... Point is, Thompson is fine with all this -- it does not seem prejudicial -- he feels that European music and conducting has many schools, and each has its own ethnic understanding of where anybody would slow down or speed up or hear echoes of earlier music and let the audience "overhear" those associations -- that's what it means to have a long tradition behind you. And Americans don't have those traditions of feling and it would be phony to pretend, thats simply the way it is. He also thinks that the great European-born conductors (Koussevitsky, for example) shouldn't conduct American music, they just don't get it. Koussevitsky, by the way, was Bernstein's mentor, but still, he shouldn't conduct Copland or Bernstein. What's particularly relevant about this is that Thompson's period is THE great period of both Broadway theater and of Balanchine' dance theater -- and the other thing is he acknowledges the tremendous influence of what we'd now call African-American material -- jazz in music, and Lindy-hop in dance. Certainly Lindy is frequently mentioned by Denby, the GREAT Denby, as a noticeable element in Balanchine's material -- from the tilted pelvises to the cool demeanor to the strong accents to the hardedges to the steps themselves (Concerto Barocco was VERY jazzy in its earliest days, as Marie Jeanne never tired of saying, and it is STILL full of shag and Charleston steps). Many of the odder moves in 4 T's are African-derived. Thompson's writing is really fascinating. The MOST fascinating thing about it is how highly he rates his reader's intellectual capacities, and that these were published inthe DAILY NEWSPAPER. He seems to think his readers want to know what's going on, and he gives the the real deal. I'll NEVER think of the 50s as a conformist era again.

We should cherish this recording for what it is: a truly magnificent performance of the title role. Spartacus tests to the limit Dickie Buckle's belief that "Ballet must be BEAUTIFUL!" Spatacus is a really ugly ballet, but it IS great. Volchkov looks like a remarkably beautiful Crassus -- it may work. (It's Aegina who has to be ugly.) And Acosta looks just from this clip ideal for the role -- born for it. His heart is in it.

well, Sander O and kfw, it's not simple; remember the hatred Raven Wilkinson described so vividly, coming towards her from other African-Americans --

he's got a goofy groove going, like Snoopy frolicking -- there IS something wonderful about the way the kids pick up his step and do it with him.

JMcN -- thank you! Steel girders might be the explanation at Zellerbach HAll in Berkeley, too -- And Ms Feijoo has 3 things going for her, to help her dance silently: 1) she's a principal, so she gets the best shoes; 2 she dances mostly solo, so she can KIND OF dance her own trajectories, going where hte light is good and hte noise is not bad, and 3) she IS divine.

Whose choreography? Lavrovsky's or Grigorovich's?

For me, perhaps the BIGGEST news in that wonderful documentary was how much I loved the way Baronova danced. I'd only seen photos, and to my mind, the photos of Toumanova were far more intoxicating. But the way Baronova moved absolutely enchanted me. Of ALL those people, the way she danced looked to me the most musical, the wittiest, the most natural, the most beautifully phrased -- no matter what the role, she was always right.

Could you be more specific? the black swan's variation starts out like that... What's the music like ? Who wrote it? what's the style?

EAW, that is truly wicked. Come sit next to me.

the Soviet heroic style had its propaganda uses, and they didn't fit too closely with Balanchine's aestheti-- in fact, he "got it" with htose guys and hated it. BUT Paul Taylor kind liked the hunky heroic look, and so did actually Martha Graham, though she didn't go so much for letting the guys steal the show; Gerald Arpino could have used him. In an earlier day, Ted Shawnwould have loved him. Jerom Robbins could use him in the Walpurgisnachty flamboyant section of The Seasons. Vladimirov looks magnificent when hthe line is not heavily turned-out; Acteon shows the beauty of a turned-in line and movements that go to the knee, and Vladimirov is wonderfully sculptural thgughout htat variation. I DO have a problem with his lines, and his technique in more classical pieces like Bluebird; in those sissonne faillis, his loft is marvelous, ity's GREAT the way he goes UP-- but it';s the coming down: in the landings his back collapses as his standing leg goes into fondu; he moves out of it qukcly and makes a strong recovery into the assemble that follows, so hte pitch forward is very fleeting, but still, it's ugly.

I LOVE his Acteon. Thank you, Amy.

I don't like his form much, but I DO like his trajectories. THat sissonne-failli ought to be a temps de poisson, with a beautiful arching shape in the air and arms en couronne -- but I've seen it done with even less style by some very clean male dancers who turn it into nothing more than a preparation for a really big assemble. It's quite neglected at SFB, where the Sleeping Beauty is otherwise rather stylishly done.

Thanks, rg --

CHristian, what do you thinik of Balanchine's version? or Vainonen's? I admire Balanchine's first act beyond anything. And Vainonen's is also wonderful, in a different way.

THanks, Mel, for that fleshing out of the account. Back in the early 80s, a soviet-emigre scholar Alexandra Orlova published an article in a scholarly journal arguing that Tchaikovsky was ordered to commit suicide. It became the official story when hte New Grove DIctionary of Music accepted it and then for several years the matter was aired in hte papers. THe following is from the New York TImes, 1981: "Mr. Brown's article goes on to tell of research by the Soviet emigre musicologist Alexandra Orlova suggesting that Tchaikovsky took the poison on orders from his old classmates, who had convened a hasty ''court of honor'' after learning of his liaison with a nephew of Duke Stenbock-Thurmor. The Duke had written a letter of protest to the Czar, bringing the longsimmering matter of Tchaikovsky's sexual carryings-on to the point of official scandal." [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D02EFD9163BF935A15754C0A967948260] Solomon Volkov, in his extended interview published as "Balanchine's Tchaikovsky" (1985) makes it clear Balanchine believed this. BUt soon other scholars , notably Simon Karlinsky of Berkeley, who had welcomed the theory at first, found that the evidence did not warrant the story -- he really did drink a glass of "possibly" cholera-contaminated water at a restaurant and die of cholera as a result. Four docrtors attended Tchaikovsky's deathbed, and all confirmed that it was cholera that killed him; three was also a subsequent investigatino of hte restaurant where he drank the glass of tainted water and found that they had NOT disinfected the water. Many newspaper sccounts appeared informing hte general public about the state of the debate. It was finally espablished firmly that it was chlera -- if there had been a death-wish, fleeting or determined, in the drinking of the glass of water, that remains of course a possibility. Karlinsky told me that the suicide-by-arsenic-theory seemed to be widely held among Soviet intellectuals but they'd been blinkered by misunderstanding of the mind-set of pre-Revolutionary St. Petersburg. But the story of Tchaikovsky's suicide has great mythic power and probably keep coming back, since it provides such a fitting death given his noble-melancholy personality and his deep insecurities, which you can hear in the music -- many of us want to believe it. The fact that it is not true does not keep it from having a resonance that is even more poignant than the "Russian roulette" way he drank the glass of water after being warned not to. His death IS linked to the rebirth of Swan Lake, since the the white act of hte new Ivanov/Petipa Swan Lake was rushed into readiness for the Tchaikovsky Memorial concert. That was its first performance. I still feel that the END of Bourne's Swan Lake is the only one in which the choreography matches the cataclysm that's there in hte music.

When Bourne's version was new, it was widely believed that Tchaikovsky had committed suicide on order from very high at the imperial court, to prevent public exposure of his homosexuality which would disgrace Russia, since his music was so widely known and loved. Balanchine died believing this. SO calling the ballet "Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake" evokedTchaikovsky's homosexuality and his fate and eased the way into seeing a gay-man's tragedy told in poetic terms. Subsequently, scholars learned that Tchaikovsky was NOT persecuted in fact for his homosexuality, that the tsar and his court were NOT like hte Soviets who fiercely suppressed homosexuality, in life, in art, and especially in artists (who were supposed to live exemplary lives), and that the case for Tchaikovsky'ssuicide was a myth that grew up among intellectuals during hte Soviet era who saw Tchaikovsky as having had a foretaste of hte oppression that THEY were living under. THe name change was certainly required by law -- the company that had managed Bourne still owned the old name. Without Adam Cooper, the show lost its center -- another very classical dancer could probably have held it together, but putting a heavy man in the role made it gross. I would bet my life that the show DID improve Prince Charles's chances of marrying Camilla. And if you've read this far, you may wonder how I could mistake Quentin Crisp for Clement Crisp, but in fact I always get their names mixed up.

There are wonderful photos of Marie-Jeanne in a version of this costume in hte latest issue of Ballet Review, which came today -- main difference is that hte whole basque is beige, except for half the ruffle at the collar-bone, and the skirt's very short. She looks great in it. ATM711, did you see Marie-Jeanne in this ballet? If so, I'd really envy you. I'd love to know what she was like. She's quoted as saying it was not so "Fokine-y" in her day, but very sharp. Do you remember it that way?

O GO for it Helene, but you'll be sorry.

Amazing hte scrutiny this photo warrants. Well, to MY eye, her ankles don't look retouched. The highlights are where the bones would cause them -- in particular, on her left foot, there's a big highlight where the lateral (oops, no, the internal) malleolus -- i.e., the knob at the end of the tibia -- would cause one. So that doesn't look like airbrushing. ANd hte little horizontal lines would be natural wrinkling that silk tights would cause -- silk doesn't stretch like nylon, it doesn't recover its shape so well, and over hte ankle it would get over-stretched (as it famously did at the knees). And on top of that, if there WERE ribbons there, the shoe wouldn't be so loose down by hte arch -- and on both feet the shoes look loose there, more-so on the left (which actually gaps a little) but even on hte right it's not tight there. RIbbons are sewn right at those points to pull the shoe towards the instep. THe poor ballerina has short calves, big heels, and thick ankles, a lot like mine.

I overstated what I meant. Of course, it's good for yuong dancers to see read a lot, and experience other art forms. THe imagination needs nourishing -- though it can be gotten from Nature as well as art. Trisha Brown spent a LOT of her time roaming the woods in the year or so in high school when she was recovering from a disastrous illness, and a lot of her inspiration still comes from there, they say. But she already had the temperament and imagination to absorb that. Some people would have seen that and not felt much -- and some people who're exposed to a great dal of fine art don't have a real appetite for it and are -- well, sometimes it SEEMS as if -- they're actually diminished by it. Many artists find they have to limit the amount of other artists' work that they see -- John Lennon said he didn't listen to other musicians' work except t o see what use he could make of it. And of course there was the New York painter who bought a fellow-artist's drawing and erased it. "The anxiety of influence" is what this is called. Thomas Mann wote a splendid piece of experimental fiction, "The Blood of the Volsungs," about spoiled rich kids who were fed so much art they became incorrigible elitists.

Teresa Stratas did a Dance of hte 7 veils in in hte 1974 film of Strauss's opera "Salome" looking a lot like Allegra Kent -- mostly rolling around on hte floor of course, but when her face came into view, she looked a lot like Allegra.

looks like a hat to me.... It IS arresting to think that Serenade was ever danced in such costumes. She looks such a teen-ager.

The thing one would want from wider culturation is stimulation of the imagination. But you can lead a horse to water.... I'm struck by how imaginatively Carlos Acosta writes about his impoverished childhood in Cuba; when he says of his father, "On moonless nights his black skin was camouflaged by hte darkness, and to find him, you had to follow his cigarette smoke as it floated in the air." That's the most poetic sentence I've encountered all year. No wonder he's a star -- with an imagination like that, all he needs is a medium to work in.

I haven't seen Kolpakova's, but of the other two, I prefer Semenyaka's -- though the lighting is dark, and there's something deadening about the filming. It does look like a vision start to finish - the court dances are so stately, they look like chess-pieces moving by magic -- all the court-dances are wonderful, especially love the pas de quatre where all four hold hands and do intricate pas de bourrees. Taranda is indeed a sensation: preening macho thug; it's simultaneously tremendous technique, great acting, and psychologically astute. Sexy he is, but no-one in their right mind would really WANT him. There's no possibility of relationship. Semenyaka is beautiful in every variation, especially the one with the scarf, and in the grand Hongroise pas, she's wonderfully gracious: the trajectory of her arms from the hand clap to a la seconde is a thing of unparallelled majesty -- the rotation in the shoulders that brings them from parallel into turnout just blows my mind, it's so beautiful. I've never seen any other dancer make me feel the action like this. On the other hand, Plisetskaya's attack and follow-through is the greatest thing ever, shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwNEryJCCKU. This is just a clip of a dance seen through a pearly haze, but I think it's glorious, and even MORE a vision. I'd buy it if the Bolshoi would re-issue the whole thing.

Viggo DOES resemble Misha at times, sometimes it's VERY close.