Paul Parish

Balanchine technique -- o WHY do I think I know this? I read it somewhere -- in RELEVE is to spring onto the balls of the feet and then roll through hte toes. And the reverse coming down. I saw a video of Kyra Nichols dong this and it was astounding. But that was 20 years ago and I'm probably misremembering. The Cecchetti method, and Vaganova took it from him, is to spring onto the pointes, moving the toes inward to where the weight was centered before the releve. THe old Russian way (i got this from Vaganova's book) was to roll through the feet, in hte French manner. And in taking a pique, teachers give a lot of attention to which edge of hte box touches the floor first. In Freeds, which have a wide square box, this might be easier to control han in the pointier Russian shoes. WOuld someone who knows better than I confirm this? Further random lore -- when hte Royal Ballet performed in France after the war, French critics were amazed by the quietness of the English dancers'[ shoes -- "divine silence." In any case, the releve is not nearly so noisy as landing from jumps. I have certainly seen a teacher have a pointe class do their sautes again and again and LISTEN, getting them quieter and quieter -- and ask them to dance as if they had a headache, or a basket of eggs on their heads -- it DOES soften the footwork. Sometimes it seems to be the stage itself that's noisy. In Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, where the Kirov and Bolshoi havve been performing for hte last few years when htey appear in the Bay Area, there's a section of hte stage that seems to be noisy -- it's like between the first and second wings, moderately downstage. Every ballet company makes more racket in that area -- doing the same steps further upstage OR downstage, it's not so loud.... TYhe Kirov's fairies, the Boklshoi's swans, the Stuttgart's Veronans, the Cubans in Coppellia, (who seemed VERY loud, though NOT Lorna Feijoo, she was quiet -- and we were figuring they had to keep their corps shoes going as long as possible)... But it happens with everybody. Maybe it';s hollow under the stage there? Maybe there's some sounding-board effect that brings the sound forward from there? THere's a sprung floor, so that's not hte issue.... Very strange.

To see how EXTREMELY attractive Youskevitch was as a man, an actor, and as a dancer, check out Gene Kelly's movie "Invitation to the Dance," which is kinda dated of course but was a noble, brave attempt to make a whole movie that was 3 one-act ballets. Youskvitch has a big role in the first one. It's kinda backstage, and his style is too big for the movies -- BUT you get a great idea of what a stage animal he was. And to see him in a version of the Black Swan pas de deux -- which looks to me like it might have some touches of Fokine in it -- check out this clip from 1958 with Alicia Alonzo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIAPuE3VNso They're both wonderful, and he's so much her cavalier you might have to watch it again to see how high he lifts her in those cabrioles without giving any evidence that he did anything at all to help. It's a really beautiful, poetic performance; I'd never seen it before just 5 minutes ago, and I am quite under its spell. It's actually very tender.

THe puzzling figure in the first photo (the woman on hte left, who looks rather like Toumanova in the face but not in the body) makes me think (since both legs are turned-in and she's in second position, not fourth) that they are not doing grand jete at all but a sissonne (perhaps sissonne failli) or grand ecarte, since her position is just not plausible as any stage in a grand jete. Photos of Nureyev in grand-jete moments that look peculiar turn out to be of him in a grand failli, which is usually more a preparatory spring leading to a big-deal step than the big deal itself -- grand jetes are almost always the big deal in the phrase, and are (usually -- sorry, this is a kinda-big generalization) given more care to mold their form.

The gesture she's making, with the index fingers pointing? What's up with that? It looks like so many hip young stars making their entrance onto a talk show. Actually jimmy Slyde, the great tap dancer, would do that gesture, too, at the end of a phrase -- towards the end of his life, so maybe he'd picked it up from the kids

My favorite is probably Flower Festival -- he keeps his shoulders down, and the lines are fantastic; he keeps it simple and clear, but of course it's way heroic. Still, it's modest. They're ALL modest -- Corsaire, Don Q, etc. Check them out. Wonder what you all will think.

SO thoroughly deserved. I saw her in the late 60s and loved her performances -- I'[d say she was maybe like Vaganova or Nijinska, a superb classical dancer who was too strong-looking to be given the dainty roles. But there's no faulting her lines, her aplomb, clarity, elevation, plie, softness in fondu, speed; her batterie was like Nijinska's must have been, brilliant and fleeting and full of wit. What I remember was how she talked with her feet. She was the girl in yellow in Dances at a Gathering, which means VERY fast; Myrtha was wondefully chiselled when still, but she could jump so high and alight so softly it softened the harsher edges of the character and made her beautiful. She was such a complex, wry, dazzling character as the hostess in Les Biches. I loved her performances. Congratulations to her.

Courtney Elizabeth. She was the goddess of the SFB new w works festival -- seemed like she was in every ballet, sometimes (in Paul Taylor's) the star, but always dong her part wonderfully.

We don't just laugh at Alain. And we don't laugh at him harshly. He's protected by his simplicity from understanding too much, and nobody dislikes him. As Glebb says, he has a dark moment of realizing he's been fooled -- but his spirits don't suffer long. We laugh at and with virtually everybody in the ballet that we like -- that's part of its charm, and maybe of its mysterious way of seeming to "say something about the human condition" -- la comedie humaine -- but in such a mild way there's no demand to take it seriously. We get to see the things they can't see about themselves -- there's a fair amount of comedy made by putting us in a position to see what's behind somene's back. It's funniest about Alain, but also when Widow Simone is falling asleep, and when Colas is hiding behind the sheaves and Lise's miming "when I am married" -- not to mention the cows who've got their behinds facing us directly in the Lancaster's hilarious scenery. But it's gentle comedy -- nobody's perfect, we see more of the big picture than any of them ever do, except perhaps Alain, who gets the bird's eye view when he's caught up into the heavens. The very funniest thing I've ever sen in the ballet was David Bintley's nose -- which he made look enormous-- as he played Widow Simone one year when he was setting a ballet on SFB. Bintley sat in the cart on the way to the picnic, looking back and forth alternately at Alain the cretin and Colas the swain -- i.e., showing one profile, then the other, as the cart rolled across the stage -- Widow Simone was thinking, wavering, already on the way to agreeing to let her daughter marry the boy she loved. It was really wonderful, an awesome performance. Part of what's sunny about it is that people think they need to hide their secrets -- in this ballet, there are lots of secrets that tumble out into the open, and it doesn't do anybody any harm -- to the contrary, it lets the sunshine in and everyone fares the better. In that respect it's liberal and liberating and part of the upsurge of optimism about human nature that brought us the American and French Revolutions and the 1960s.

Fascinating, wonderful topic. Can't wait for some answers. I've always wanted to see Esmeralda. Meanwhile, you HAVE seen the dvd -- what is the ballet like? how many acts? What kind of scenery, what kinds of groupings, plastique, group dances, solos? Music? does she have a goat? What do you like about it? There are a fair number of photos, of Kchessinska, especially, in hte role -- have you seen them? Does the imagery of the ballet jibe with any of the old images?

I saw Alexander Grant in the role way back when, and I thought then that he was so sweetly cretinous, he had something like a holy fool about him -- his umbrella united him to the heavens somehow, andhe did not have enough worldly wisdom about him to survive, but aside from his vanity, he's a spotless soul.... like Harpo Marx without the cutting up. I don't know enough about Asperger's to guess, but your observatino strikes me as very plausible. It could be a very effective way to create comic stylization. Ashton was famously a great mimic -- if he'd seen someone with Asperger's, he might have been able to give a full imitation.

Colas was one of the first great successes of Marius Petipa as a dancer, in Bordeaux. It's always appealed to me to think that Petipa came up with "DOn Quixote" as a way of using the same story -- our girl gets rescued from having to marry a rich foolish suitor that the parent INSISTS she marry, and gets to marry the guy she wanted all along, which is a fable of a revolutionary idea (the woman gets to choose) -- as a hook to hang all hte Spanish dancing he learned in his 3-year job dancing in Madrid, when he got a chance to choreograph something big and splashy in St Petersburg. Petipa certainly kept Fille alive in St Petersburg, as well as doing DOn Q several times over. One wonders if hte mime scene goes all hte way back. Karsavina , who taught it to Ashton, learned it from Pavrel Gerdt who'd partnered the divine ZUcchi, who'd starred as Lise in Petipa's production. Wonder if it was the same that Petipa had seen in the 1840's, and if it was Vestris's -- or maybe even Dauberval's in all its essentials to begin with? THe Royal Ballet's DVDF on mime has a long sequence teaching the mime scene which is EXTREMELY affectingly performed (by Sarah Lamb?) There is by the way an astonishingly detailed and amusing and impressively knowledgeable account of the history of "FIlle" at Wikipedia. The list of choreographers who kept the ballet alive is itself a hall of fame -- Petipa's production was a revival of Taglioni's. Makes for excellent reading -- I must quote the following: "A feature of the Ivanov production was the use of live chickens on stage. One evening when Preobrajenskaya danced the role of Lise, her rival, Kschessinskaya, let all of the chickens out of their coups during her variation, with many of them landing in the orchestra pit and even on the laps of many of the musicians. Preobrajenskaya kept on dancing as if nothing happened." ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; PS THANK YOU, Nanarina, for that wonderful account of your life backstage with Fille. It's wonderful to know about all that. We don't really know about the quick changes; the REAL time backstage is quite different from the stage-time the audience is aware of.

i'm sure sandi wasn't saying the shoe fit HER. I write about dance, too, and I thought what you said was funny.

A friend of mine, a former dancer, saw it last year in Paris and loved it. DIdn't get a lot of details, except that her husband (who's not a dancer) loved it even more than she did. The French dancers who've moved here and dance with San Francisco Ballet ALL seem to have a great sense of humor and a natural feel for gesture, so I bet they do do it well. But htat's just my guess. Still, I know what you mean about its Englishness. In fact, Edwin denby commented on its mild gentle Englishness in his review of Fille and wondered if Americans would feel the charm. As Glebb recalls, it does seem to go from highlight to highlight -- but it does that without ever going for some over-the-top feat of bravura. Even when Lise is leaping about or spinning in hte midst of all those ribbons there are no show-stopping effects --

Proulx is a wonderful laconic writer. She uses few words to tell stories of hard lives -- there's an excellent one in the new Yorker about a month ago of a heterosexual couple who come to grief in the great Montana blizzard. Modern classic.

That guy who played Ray Charles in the movie really looked like he was really playing and singing -- eh even looked like Ray CHARLES singing. Actually, you could believe he was Ray Charles LISTENING to the music, he was that good.

Lucy, one of the excellent pianists at Berkeley Ballet Theater, brought up this question after class this morning. How early did the Apotheosis fall away from the production history of the ballet? The entrances are all there in the score, and WHERE IS CARABOSSE? Which leads to this question: Since Cecchetti doubled as BOTH Carabosse and Blue Bird, what did he do at the Apotheosis, when one would suppose both characters were required to present themselves? This question has probably come up before -- RG, Doug, and Alexandra probably konw the answer, and maybe more of us -- but I don't, and would like to.

"Fille" was the first ballet I ever saw, and I didn't realize how much it had changed my life because its appeal was so fresh and as you say charming. i'd been deilghted -- within an inch of my life, I'd been delighted. There wasn't a second of it that wasn't marvelous -- but I had not been overwhelmed at any point, though maybe , in fact I'm pretty sure I felt tears in my eyes when Lise was imagining having her children. THe thing I remember being surprised by -- in fact, amazed by -- was that I'd felt I understood every second of it, but could not understand HOW I understood; it's as if I had second sight. That fascinated me. It was almost an accident that I went -- I was a student at Oxford, and a classmate and his girlfriend insisted I had to go see it with hem. THe terain trip was not difficult, but it WAS a trip to go up to London -- Saturday matinee at the Royal Opera House, very cheap in those days; it wsa Leslie Collier's debut in a full-length role, 1969 or 70. After that I was going back by myself or with them whenever i could get away. Nanarina, you might want to know that Ashton choreographed it because "Karsavina was always begging him to revive it." he got the mime scene directly from her.

Maybe Zakarova is afraid it would get out on youtube and ruin her career in politics? She shouldn't worry -- there are nude photos of Arnold Schwarzenegger up on the net, and it didn't keep him from getting elected governor of California, and when he runs for president, he'll succeed in laughing it off....

What have you done? I am in love with your dog - or maybe I just want to come and live at your house. I had to go back and look at Tanny a 3rd time -- she has SUCH beautiful eyes. And I totally believe the story about your friend. She does LOOK LIKE TANNY.

What a beautiful dog -- has both modesty and star quality, a fabulous combination, and beautiful legs to go with them; in fact, that picture of him(?) in hte hamper with the front legs stretched forward and crossed delicately at he ankles made tears start to my eyes. and what a fantastic wardrobe mistress. ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; edited to say Ok, now I get it; Tanny is hte brown greyhound, and benvolio is hte white pup. Sorry ,i got so excited i popped off be fore hte montage was complete. Indeed, Tanny is extremely well named; there are moments in which the dog seems to be channeling the ballerina, and of course, they have the same witty nose. Ben seems very sweet, also well-named.

Petipa prided himself on his ability to DANCE the lezginka, if I remember right, -- probably like the way Bournonville prided himself on his tarantella. There are millions of lezginkas to be seen on Youtube right now -- kids from hte embattled Caucasus republics -- Chechnya, Gerogia in particular -- are being filmed by proud parents and friends in outbursts of lezginka-ing on the bus, subways, in parking lots, from Moscow to Los Angeles, sometimes with gunfire in hte background and OFTEN with machine guns in evidence. there is STRONG patriotic feeling, in some; the dance is a symbol of a fighting spirit that can be flat-out warlike. it is a THIRILLING dance, with very fast footwork and rife with macho stunts: double tours landing on hte knees, prancing knuckled over on the pointes in soft kid boots, and a magnificent posture with shoulders thrown back and arms stretched out like bird-wings, and sudden flailings of hte elbows that whip the forearm in front of the face (as in the famous photograph of Nijinsky in Festin -- if he did oiseau d'or on opening night, he was photographed doing the lezginka. THe costume Nijinsky wore is from Bakst's production of Russlan and Ludmila, which was revived by the Kirov Opera and brought to San Francisco -- we saw it here about a decade ago -- fantastic production, out of this world wonderful -- and hten the last act took all of us who know the old Nijinsky photographs into a strange kind of nostalgia, for there they were the old photographs come back to life. here are some clips: jewish Gorsky kids dong lezginka for Purim: 3-year-old doing lezginka on hte street: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrlyNVLSl80...feature=related in jeans, with a Donald O'Connor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mVGUvYOLoM...feature=related with soldiers, strong patriotic sentiment, from the movie 12:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ-bCv8AVmM&feature=related warlike chechen lezginka with helicopters and bombs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ-bCv8AVmM...feature=related Moiseyev-style professional production by Erisioni company [FANTASTIC performers] in Paris: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SX_87KefK0

The Oakland Ballet did a FANTASTIC Fall River Legend here about 20 years ago -- starring Summer Lee Rhatigan as Lizzie, Erin Leedom as the ghost of her mother, Allison Deane (if I remember right) s the wicked stepmother. They made us sweat. It was like a Barbara Stanwyck movie, or a novel by Ivy Compton Burnett. Lizzie was not primarily scary -- she was abused, and she had our sympathy throughout.

That's such a good question, Amy -- I think you're right. Cubanmiamiboy could maybe say a LOT here -- I notice several things. Physique IS part of it. She's a lot like her sister, who's of course a principal dancer here in SF, but like many cCUban dacners, she's not particularly long-legged, and the upper body is VERY engaged in the dancing. THe way she carries her head and uses her eyes are freer and warmer and socially engaging, friendly. But the legs are very grounded, the pelvic floor is very very strong -- we see this in hte Cuban men and in hte women -- they've got incredibly strong standing legs. She dances like a Balanchine dancer in some respects -- look how she floats above her legs, how big she moves, and how free and daring she is in her attack. THose releves are sensational. And most of all, she's SO musical.

She had a wonderful relationship with Jerome RObbins -- very hot, from the accounts I've read, completely absorbing. This is a wnoderful photo. It's such a hilarious ballet. I saw ABT do it on tour in the era when Baryshnikov had just taken over and the company was so beautiful. Susan Jaffe did this role; later on in hte program, she also did hte ballerina in Ballet Imperial -- in both of which ballets she makes tremendously grand exits, walking nobly into the wings. In the Tudor, of course, she's sending up the "Russian ballerina" pretentiousness -- but in Imperial, there was a carryover as she walked off with more than usual dignity -- she didn't fade away, and it somehow suggested that she was taking hte ballet into another space entirely, with brighter lights, loftier ceilings, wittier courtiers, heartbreaking poets....

I've been a fan of hers since the CUban Ballet brought Giselle to Berkeley -- she was fantastic in the role,, wonderfully musical, light, and so strong -- she could jump all the way across the stage in a couple of bounds. She's wonderful in this video of Tchai pas with Damien Woetzel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8lNWDfzcCY She dances SO big!