Paul Parish

Nureyev and Bruhn were lovers. This is all in the biographies -- Kavanaugh's is exhausting but exhaustive -- every sentence is clotted with detail -- but well worth reading. Otis Stuart's is kinda breathless and scandalous but a page-turner. When he first came west Nureyev felt his technique was still very raw; he put himself to school with Bruhn, whose classicism he admired beyond anything. He learned Bournonville's La Sylphide and Flower Festival and modeled his style on Bruhn's [though of course he still flared his nostrils and all that]. Fonteyn said she was surprised how much this tiger was concerned to improve his technique -- and said he improved HER techinque, esp with turns -- he corrected her shoulders and the turns became more reliable and easier.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vy9qAtnKUY

Izvestsia reported this? " In addition, the victim Filin had intimate relations with Malandina, Natalia Alexandrovna, who was fired at the initiative of the victim as a result of a conflict that arose, as well as with Vinogradova, Maria Viktorovna, and Smirnova, Olga Vyacheslavovna.Conflicts also arose between Filin and [Anton] Getman in the course of their professional activities. Currently Prorvich, Maria Alexandrovna, lives with Filin." Is there basis for these slurs? Have the ladies in question come forward? Commented at all on these things? I see that Catherine says Isvestia is on Tsiskaridze's side and implies that these charges are false as well as scandalous -- but Catherine, do you KNOW they are false? If they are not false, is there any evidence that they were consensual? American standards of power-playing, in paticular of sexual harrassment, obsess us all of course, but they are far from universal -- and they are almost the opposite of what one would expect in a hierarchical society, but the potential for scandal -- and for using such material as red herrings. And it's also the case that of course dancers form relationship with other dancers -- nobody else knows what they go through, and another dancer will be able to "get it" [as the City Ballet show has made clear] -- whether or not there's angling for advancement, there's a serious need for companionship. What a great soap opera! "Who can you trust?"

THanks for posting, pherank. I have seen Sarah van Patten stop the show in the middle of an adagio [within hte Golden hour]. She is an awe-inspiring dancer.

Absolutely GONE on it. I'm watching the first episode again. Yes, dancers are ridden with anxiety and so full of hopes and fears about their immediate futures that if you ask them to tell you about it, they will, and you'll be sorry. Ask ME about my left hip and o my God will I tell you but you'll be sorry you asked. And how I made my port de bras so interesting? Dancers are hella fun to be around, there's a unique sense of humor -- but they're not interesting to TALK to. But Lincoln Kirstein said that long ago, It can't be helped. The poor are always with you. But the show is fabulous. I don't get any sense of manufactured conflicts. Perhaps Amasar and Chase are not sucds as they seem to be -- maybe they're emphasizing such diversity as exists in the company -- on the other hand, ther hearts are in the right place. The guys who had to put up with shit because they wanted to dance are well-represented. I'd like to see somebody who is OPENLY gay, but maybe they'll get around to that. And -- though I'm gay and write for a gay paper -- I accept the fact that not all male dancers are gay, maybe not even these days MOST of them, since it HAS become a real job. I don't mind Andrew Veyette being married to a woman he seems to love -- in fact, I think they're adorable -- and it's also cool that he dances with someone who's more his own size and not his wife. What I really love is how well the material is presented -- jete battu in slow motion -- o my god they don't brush AT ALL -- they keep the sitz bone down, but there's barely contact of the TOE with the floor before the leg degages -- so THAT's the co-ordination [at least if you're in pointe shoes]. It's just so honest. And Peter comes across very well -- like Brigitte Lefebvre in the Wiseman documentary, he's plausible as the guy at the top -- "the dancers really cast themselves." I can see why they accept him as director -- I can see why Balanchine cast him as the new director, he sees who he's got and how they mature and what might be to come.... Those are my first thoughts. I'm GONE on it......

MORE GELSEY VIDEO! And wonderful, too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGAXPd_JEus In Balanchine's Tarantella -- without music, alas, but as I watch it I can hear the music. Fantastic performance -- she gives great respect to McBride's creation, keeps to McBride's big effects all the way, but throws her head back on her travelling steps and does her Rockettes-kick with her own attack and REALLY sits down in the echappes; also a fantastic Suzy Q exit, almost as if this were Bulerias.... Funny, , funny, funny, she's a scream in this. Also interesting that she's not bothered by obsessive perfectionism. The rhythm is perfect. But she stays in character: in entrechat-quatre, she doesn't pointe much; in pique turns, she over-crosses her passe and doesn't turn out a whole lot -- just like Patty. Not sure who her partner is. He's not bad.

Thanks, Helene!! That was quick! Yes, Sandi: "I know that these kind of changes happen very differently in different places, but even with that caveat, this seems really awkward" Well, it IS convenient for Tsiskaridze, since the same Tuesday he starts his job he was supposed to testify in Moscow at the trial of dmitrichenko, who's up [let me remind you] for throwing acid in the face of Filin which many think he was incited to do by Tsiskaridze. Dostoyevskian. There's a opera in this. But who could write the music?

Me, I can't wait to hear what ismene Brown has tosay about all this. It's probably much more than we can imagine, coming from non-artistic interest-groups -- coming from Putin down, and Tsiskaridze has made many contacts with relatives of Putin's advisors. If there's 8 ounces to the pound of truth in this report: http://ismeneb.com/Blog/Entries/2013/7/23_Blogger_reveals_how_they_really_got_rid_of_Bolshoi_chief.html, then the real question may be, can Gergiev-the-empire-builder keep his position with Tsiskaridze in town? Since Putin doesn't care about art at all, and Tsiskaridze is a master-intriguer....

When I first saw this, I assumed they were using hte I-Beams as barres. Now I wonder -- what is Madame screaming about? and i notice the last girl in the row is amazingly serene and it looks like she's doing a penchee in 4th arabesque on her own....

wonderful writer, unique voice.

She was a wonderful performer!. I too only saw her on video -- great Giselle, and extremely vivid amid the restraints of Bournonville.... she seemed to relish the exactness required. The Ballerina Gallery has a number of pictures of her, including this one of her in Rubies. I wish I'd seen her dance that. http://www.ballerinagallery.com/pic/ryom01.jpg

Berkeley Ballet Theater performed it back in the 90s, which if memory serves is when I saw it. I believe Robert Nichols played the dandy. They danced it well: It was a sweet, funny little vaudeville. [They also did Balanchine's Valse Fantaisie, the smaller version, in which Kyra Nichols guested with her brother.] Marina Eglevsky lives and teaches in Berkeley.

Thanks for posting that, Alexandra. "The real hero's the guy with the kid." I'll drink to that.

o AMy, I don't agree -- I like the crazy direction of Jean Negulesco, the dance reflected in hte mirror and all that. I think the ballet benefits from the condensation, and I enjoy the way the whole thing feels both trivial and expensive, it suits the music. Mit Schlag!

Kathleen O, you may enjoy Ratmansky's delicious "From Foreign Lands," which San Francisco Ballet is planning to bring to New York in October. When I saw them perform it at Stern Grove last month, it made me laugh out loud. And Sandik, I'm with you -- I'd LOVE to see "Dances at a Gathering" this year. Preferably tomorrow.

Tharp's new piece for PNB could be wonderful. She is musical - -and this music -- even if you haven't heard of Toussaint -- is potentially a fabulous score for a ballet. Toussaint's never become nationally famous, but from New Orleans to memphis he is revered as a performer and especially as a song writer. Not sure what Tharp will use, she'll doubtless pick her own bouquet -- but the celebrated songs he wrote include Time is on my Side, Working in a coal mine, Mother-in-law, and some we loved in the south that never got a lot of play outside, like "It's Raining" and Ruler of my Heart," and "I wish someone would care" three of the greatest blues songs ever. He is a great lyric poet, and then there's the music! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vliI_iJuKcw

Dear Volcanohunter, your point is beside the point. Yes, the market for classical music recordings has rather collapsed in the last few years -- but still they're doing light years better than ballet recordings. What residuals is Suzanne Farrell getting? Three tenors may be a low taste, but it sold and sold and IS still selling. We have to face it, recordingss of classical music are almost as good as the live experience -- sometimes even better. And if you think about it a minute, none of us thinks that recorded ballet is anywhere near as good as the live experience

There are many ins and outs to this topic -- but the VERY big elephant in the room is that dance doesn't record well when compared to music -- which means that MOST PEOPLE don't want to see ballet on screen. Those of us who do are a small number -- which doesn't matter on YouTube, but it does matter when it comes to selling enough tickets to make your investment back. Think about this -- the "Nutcracker Suite" was one of the best-selling records in the country in the 30s, but the only film version of Nutcracker that had anything like a big audience was Disney's cartoon for Fantasia; and Fantasia didn't sell all THAT well. Dance does best as animation; tap also does well, because you can hear the weight in the relative loudness of the taps; but generally speaking, the physicality of dance disappears on screen -- and ballet in particular loses most of its magic. Opera stars make HUGE amounts of money, because of the sales of their recordings. Dancers, all except the super-stars, live like the middle class. And even the super-stars depend on live performance for most of their incomes.

you can watch it on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmnnhq_ZXlw

I saw the trailer, Helene -- it came through in California. Very sketchy, some nice flashes of rond dejambes, a pirouette with a VERY turned-out passe, Darci teaching, some of the boring things dancers say.... Doesn't mean the series won't be good.

Btw, I agree, Tereshkina's fantastic in the variation where she piques forward and back -- the fondus are ravishingly soft and perfectly placed, I've never seen that one before kept so simple and pure, and yet so generous. ANd I LOVE the way she travels those changements on pointe -- she covers MOST of that diagonal, and the whole thing is full of allegria [like Patricie McBride flying across hte stage in an assemble to pointe in Balanchine's Coppellia [sp???? how DO you spell that]. Semenyaka's beautiful costume -o yes, it IS beautiful -- is Virsaladze's. I will never understand why people don't like his designs -- I think they're wonderful. Yes, it looks like Ivanhoe -- but it OUGHT to.... Sir Walter Scott is responsible for la Sylphide and a whole lot of Romantic medievalism.

Thank you Pherank!!! Great topic! Wonderful examples! Please everybody, keep posting stuff you like. Meantime, here's a curiosity -- the Hellzapoppin dance, reset by some computer whiz to its original song, which was Count Basie's very popular Jumping at the Woodside. Frankie Manning choreographed it and dances in the number -- he's in the blue-jean overalls -- and set it very wittily to Basie's music. But the movie producers were not willing to pay Basie's fee and got an in-house composer to write a swing tune that would fit the steps to save money on production costs. Most Lindy Hop fans agree it's good in both cases, but that the dance is sweeter, funnier, more stylish, and more musical to Basie's music Two versions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdWgHtTau48 she second has a better picture but i don't like th sound as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTp2dIYWn0A

What a great ballet -- you can't lose, finding more wonderful dancers who make the part theirs in their own ways. And in SUCH different ways. Plisetskaya is awe-inspiring -- Kolpakova is equally thrilling, but in a completely different way -- and she does entrechat-quatres-to-pointe instead of changements-to-pointe in her version [so does the amazing Novikova]. But my favorite is Semenyaka -- the way she rotates and expands her arms from the shoulders in the clapping variation is one of the wonders of the world http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8pmvZIcXfQ it is expansive, great-hearted, generous, and commanding all at once. The arms are parallel when the hands clap, and then as they they turn out they spiral in several planes, with a Baroque circle at the elbow, en route to second position, and when they arrive rise into a kind of "Lift up your hearts" gesture. This is a romance heroine of high imagination -- I don't know who coached her -- she worked with Ulanova, but that was probably long before this: still, there is something wonderful about her temperament and imagination that Ulanova's protetegees tended to have [Maximova, too], and I miss it in Tereshkina, strong and beautiful though she is.

Thanks you Christian, for posting that. Fadeyechev is absolutely wonderful. So is she, and much of what we see in this clip has to do with the way they dance together [though some of her dancing is as good as it gets -- rather like Lorna Feijoo's, her pas de basques float and fly and make you hear the music, they sing so. The piques with the grand rond de jambes are so musical, they're like a dream. The lifts are probably a combination of her musicality and his. I'd go even further and say that Fadeyechev is -- by way of letting Nerina shine, and by giving her the kind of attentions that would make you cherish him -- making the case for Albrecht as someone who is whether he knows it or not falling further and further in love with her -- as are we -- so that when the disaster comes, it will take him as much by surprise s it does her, and his remorse will be real and tragic. This IS a great first act, one of the best, most spontaneous, I've ever seen. I love hte way she uses the space -- there is so little OF it, but she makes her solo so expansive, especially in the steps that are normally thrown away, like the tombe/chasses.

If you're willing to look at ballet on video, you might want to look at the Makarova/Dowell version for the Royal Ballet from 30-odd years ago -- the Royal's version is based very closely on the Petipa/Ivanov version from the 1890s, and has the only satisfying version of a tragic last act -- it's in good taste throughout, Makarova was a very glamorous "modern" version of the swan [high extensions, very slow white adage], and Dowell's acting is as good as his dancing which is first-rate.

beautiful!!