Paul Parish

Stumbling around in the youtube archives, I hit on the peasant pas de deux from Giselle with young Roberto Bolle and a beautiful dancer, Beatrice Carbone, whom I'd never heard of before nor seen anythng of. At la Scala -- she has a fine musicality, lovely epaulement, wonderful feet, lovely sense oftiming -- kind of a Danish look to her ROmantic style. I loved her. ANybody know anything about her? THis was from about 10 years ago...

What fascinates me about it is how simple the choreography is, and how important mime is to the success of the dance. there is not ONE arabesque in it, nothing that advertises itself as technical except (a little bit) the backbends. She's either bourreeing or she tombes -- she falls three times, always out of a cambre that reaches up and off balance and back--the first three are lunges, sort of. THe first two she arches back; the third she fals more forward, and as she recollects herself she lifts her face and shows us her tragic eyes, and reaches towards us like the starving child in an oxfam poster and your heart constricts and you almost feel you helped her get back up with your moral support (like when you clapped for Tinker Bell). The fourth and last fall is different: she makes her arms go really rigid, and the technique of hte fall is different. She falls more sideways and onto the back knee, with just a passing action over hte front foot to soften the fall: and she bouncesit has an interesting rhythm to it, which lets her stretch out hte front leg (like Odette), but it's with a little spasm, one htat is NOT particularly elegant, or rather, it is not idealized, it IS a spasm and communicates loss of control and pain and fear She gets to the line as if by accident. It is simple, direct, powerful, and very poignant, and her last little jerks are amazingly like Petrouchka's. I was expecting it to be more jerky -- since it's been posted by the Kirov itself, perhaps it's been remastered somehow? It's also fascinating how the image flickers -- like when the flicks flickered. it puts me in mind of how much early movies owedto ballet -- stories told in music and movement, where the rhythm of action carried the meaning and there were (almost) no words needed.

Sorry everybody, but I LOVE Ananiashvili's Swan. I do happen to like the details, but if I didn't, I think I would still be impressed y her conviction and hte relentles logic of her interpretation. THe key to it all for me is hte hands -- it's like they're trying to extend and extend and hold onto the air -- even in the bow -- the clip's on yourube -- there's a moment where the fingers wilt. i find it singularly compelling.

ngitanjali, that is a REALLY beautiful gown -- frankly, it simply looks classically beautiful, to me, and I can see Audrey hepburn wearing it. But then, I must have been Indian in a former lifetime -- when I saw Monsoon Wedding and the guy was eating the marigolds, it made me feel so good, because I've been snacking on marigolds for years.

I agree with Helene about the children. I think with respect to Nutcracker, all adults should aspire to the condition of Drosselmeyer. All women should wear saris if they have them. Last night for SFB's opening I wore a navy blue suit, a pale gold mock-turtleneck of hte type Leigh was describing, and my santa hat and a scarlet faux-ostrich boa, and felt perfectly in costume. The kids looked at me with understanding smiles, and so did my friend Zempoalla.

Balanchine was the best. He needs to be an old bachelor with an obsession for gadgetry, someone who'd blow his nose on his handkerchief after taking it off the nutcracker he'd just fixed -- eccentric, queer in the old-fashioned sense (and maybe in ours), whose bridge back to society is made through his fantastic understanding of what appeals to the imagination of a child.

THanks, Carbro. That's right neighborly of you. I thought Bolle was swell as Aminta; hadn't seen much more of him than that (though I think he wore less onstage in that ballet than he does in this ad) till now -- it's good to see he's as good in contemporary looks as he is in classical.

Good LORD, Marga, that's a hot photo of Tanny.... Have mercy.... Mel, are you talking about the foot of the lady doing saut de chat or of the ballerina in B+?

I think the ballerina might be Tanny -- it looks like her nose to me, also her cheekbone. I've been watching her and jacques in Robbins's faun on youtube -- almost daily, FABULOUS little film, off the d'Amboise DVD. (I've got to buy that.) It's fascinating how her face recomposes from different angles -- she had a fabulous face, with a striking aquiline nose. I think this really might be her. The legs look a little thick for Tanny's, but hte angle and the side-lighting may be playing tricks on hte eyes. It DOES also look like Jacques.

Well miliosr i think you're just full of wisdom, and I can't wait to read your thoughts on hte outcome. And yes, when Mel really came out to meet Maks, she had a personality as big as his -- you wonder if she brought out that whip to let him know she knew he needed to give her more credit.... But that's doubtless his choreography. You wonder with a pair like this, whose ideas were whose. Mel certainly has ideas. The great thing about the waltz was how restrained and classic it was -- aside of course from the travelling splits, which put me in mind of Agon -- so many of the great set figures were in it, and SO WELL DONE. I wish I knew more about ballroom ; I do Lindy hop myself (which is of course a MUCH greater form than Jive, but that's another matter), but Lindy's a special case. Mambo rhumba tango hte various waltzes foxtrot are all genres with "thought-out" values, and they're all wonderful , Myself, I think Tharp's 9 Sinatra Songs is one of the great ballets of the late 20th century, but i want to see it danced by ballroom dancers.

miliosr, (and sidwich), thanks for your reporting on this whole series. Now that I've seen Miss Scary Spice in her paso dobles and her waltz, I get it -- she's a natural performer, she's strong, fast, strking, fleet footed, and she's got imagination -- she can really show you Spanish high fifth, and make you feel that spiralling line as something you feel as well as see. And you're right about Maks not letting her shine -- wonder if it was part of a strategy or just his hunger for attention, or maybe just something that happens when a strong man doesn't pull back -- we see this at San Francisco Ballet a lot, the men are SO visible, and all but the strongest women seem to be slightly flickering.... DWTS had a really good year -- both pairs of finalists were really fine. It was great to see a delicate man like Helio come throughand dance so big.

I didn't watch the season, but have just watched Helio's last 4 dances on youtube, and my God, what a talent. I guess race-car drivers must have fantastic reflexes-- he's SO quick, so responsive to her. and he's got a very strong core. look at him in those red pants, you can see his transverse abdominis doing what it orta. and he's responsive to the music -- he even praises the musicians. For someone under that much pressure, he's really LISTENING -- I love his temps leves -- he's in the air at exactly the right time, just a flash. Now I've got to go watch Mel and Maks -- she was VERY impressive in the one clip I did see. I wish i'd seen them do Tharp's Sinatra songs instead of MCB.

Wow, thanks Helene! Now THAT is Ecarte devant. And it's Victoria Leigh. Beautiful! It's a wonderful story, Ms Leigh; thanks so much for sharing it with us.

By the time they were videotaping Swan lake, the lakeside mime scene, where Odette introduces herself to the prince, had gone out of fashion; Makarova wouldn't do it in the RB version with Dowell, though it was traditional in the Royal Ballet's production. There's a wonderful youtube clip of Sibley and Dowell teaching the mime scene -- and I remember Sibley DOING the mime scene so it was one of the most memorable things in the whole evening. Myself, I think the mime scene is beautiful, and perfectly intelligible, and more moving than the lifts that have been put in its place. In any case, to show the ballet to students, it's hard to find a version with the mime scene in place. Does anyone know of a version? And if there's more than one, which do you prefer, and why?

Re Fokine -- I've got an interesting sidelight about how hard it is to please someone who REALLY wknows what it should be like. When HTe SFopera and hte Kirovf collaborated on reviving the FABULOUS Bakst production of Glinka'sFABULOUS opera "Ruslan und Ludmila, " which contains two ballets, both by Fokine, Mme Jakobson told me she thought the ARabian ballet just didn't have the style -- it's a scene in which Ludmila's Arabic suitor is lulled to sleep by a magic spell in which all his harem from back home dance for him (the dancers were from the Kirov, I THINK), and it should be sdeuctive -- each one of hte dancers should greet him as she goes by, with her hand across her nose as in Mr B's Arabian, she should LOOK at him pleadingly (of course, in her own personality). I didn't recognize that dance, but hte OTHER one was basically 'Le Festin de Pierre,' sets and costumes for which are famous fromk old photographs of Diaghilev's early seasons in Paris. In it Nijinsky did hte Lezghinka, and lo, there was the set, the costume, the postures, adn hte dance -- though it was not Nijinsky, it gave me SOME perspective on what a magnificent thnig ANY production at the Maryinsky must have been, since this was just a divertissement in an opera made onthe grandest scale, with the most deliciously sparkling Rossini-esque music, and a wizard with a 10-foot-long beard who flew through the skies trailing it behind him, casting spells. Russlan had his work cut out for him, even though Ludmila DID love him. WHAT a fabulous opera!! No wonder Balanchine loved it.

You said it, Choura.

Bart, the great thing about Oakland is that they weren't too sophisticated to appreciate the strengths of these ballets. The main reason for the success is probably that Guidi was willing, and eager, to commit time, time, time to the artists. I wasn't there, so I have to go on what Guidi has told me, and he exaggerates -- but he told me that Loring took (somthing like) 5 weeks, full days, to set Billy the Kid; that means the dancers really know what to do, they're in on like the ground floor in terms of motivation, quality of movement, weight, accent, staccato, legato, how inward, how "pushed." Same with Massine and the rest. One result was that on a program with 3 pieces, there'd be only ONE that was really up to snuff -- but that one was often REALLY worth the wait. Fall River Legend, for example (de Mille's Lizzie Borden story) was like a Barbara Stanwyck movie -- it got very hot in that theater. Tremendous experience for us. There was nothing old-hat about it -- you felt like everybody there knew what murderous family tensions were like, and this was holding the mirror up to Nature. Oakland is not a suburb.

Oakland Ballet did a lot of the ballets under discussion -- including a VERY exciting version of Les Noces. As Nijinska's daughter said, they dance it with the right weight. They also did a hilarious version of Cakewalk -- Boris lived within 10 miles of the studio; and must have supervised the production. Richard Chen See, who's now with Paul Taylor, once told me that he worked very hard to please her in his role -- I guess he was an interlocutor, . He had very sharp footwork, excellent batterie, and he made his role elegant and witty. (He was also the spectualor in Green Table, which likewise called for very "knowing" feet.) Abra Rudisill, a brave and tiny ballerina did the queen of hte Swampo Lilies and made the leap that Mel mentioned with great gusto and from a tremendous height -- I don't remember who caught her, but it was probably Ron Thiele, the former baseball player who was Oakland's leading man and most reliable partner. (Thiele was a very fine dancer.) They did Le Train Bleu with a lot of flair; the golfing Prince of Wales was Don Schwenneson's best role ever - he was a little geeky and raw-boned, though well-trained, and in plus-fours he hadthe perfect combinaoitn of stiffness and grace and good manners the part absolutely required. Susan Taylor, whose sharp features, made her look almost cartoon-like, was sensationally charming as the tennis-pro ballerina, swatting at imaginary tennis balls..... I reviewed it back in 1989, and I quote: "In Train, Bleu, I felt like I was looking at hte ancestor of all my favorite cartoons. The dancers were so clear, their edges so brightly defined, I kept thinking htey had the same kind of outline the Bugs Bunny or Wilma Flintstone have -- and the scenery, painted by the sculptor Henri Laurens in stylized zig-zags, put me in mind of the Hanna Barbera school of drawing. Taylor herself looked like a cross between Wilma Flinststone and Katharine Hepburn. She had complete command of the stage -- and when she took a swing with her tennis racqet andthen raised her back leg in arabesque, her image grew and grew and grew. Abra Rudisill did an amazing imitation of Betty Boop,or of hte character Betty was based on. And Michael Lowe (alternating with Mario Alonzo) drew cheers as the cheeky acrobat, all brilliantined and full of malarkey, initially danced by the young Anton Dolin. Oakland did NOT do Les Biches well -- but then I'd seen the Royal Ballet's production, with Monica Mason as the hostess. Oakland's hostesses -- Summer Lee Rhatigan, and later Lara Deans Lowe, were actually very fine -- it was the boys, who didn't have clean sixes, and the corps girls, who weren't stylish enough, that let them down. Oakland's little lesbians, Julie Lowe and Abra Rudisill, were actually VERY fine -- but the corps have to be fabulous or else, and they weren't. Oiakland also did a better version of Lew Christensen's "Jinx" than SFB did -- it was extremely well prepared,with Chris Christensen conducting, and the dancers captured the sense of the circus troupe as an organism with something sick about it; the ensemble was very fine, all the parts fit and added up to smoething greater than their sum. With MOST of these ballets, it's style, timing, energy-state, creatureliness that makes the thing work -- or not (which means, it needs lots of rehearsal). SFB's Filling Station was most recently done with all the mime timed squarely to the beat -- which I'm told by those who should know, is NOT the way it was. It sure looks stupid this way My hunch is that it did NOT use to look stupid. .......... Oh, and Oakland did lots of Massine, with him there setting it. Michael Lowe, who was one of the main dancers, told me that Massine would set the head positions, the upper body generally, before showing them the steps, for he cared enormously about the posture, the lines of the whole body. They did Boutique, one of hte symphonies, and I think some more. Also they did Tudor's Echoing of Trumpets (not to mention Lilac garden and dark elegies) -- which has rarely been seen anywhere. Powerful piece, somehow bright and dark at the same time. I hope gina Ness will talk about Christensen's ballets -- she knows his work better than maybe anybody else onthe boards. By hte time I saw any of his ballets, they all were looking slapped together (except Oakland's "Jinx").

It was a wonderful experience to see a company from St Petersburg here in San Francisco about 10 years ago do a whole program of Jakobson miniatures. Mme Jakobson was still living and teaching here then (she was by the way a VERY great asset to the SFBallet, both school and company), though I believe if I remember right she was out of town and did not see the show -- have no idea what she'd have thought. I took the modern dancer/choreographer Remy Charlip to the show -- he was like me extremely engaged by the dances. However much they may fallen from their original perfections, it was still a wonderful show. Remy, who's Jewish, felt extremely touched and simpatico and felt a kinship to Jakobsen in MANY dimensions, but especially in the overtly Jewish pieces. I'm NOT Jewish, but I felt the same way. By the way, there's a YouTube clip of the fabulous Ninel Kurgapkina in Jakobsen's RAVISHING "Rosenkavalier Waltz" which will give SOME idea of how electrifyling the particulars of a dance can be, and how great performers can make something very difficult look spontaneous and carefree. They dance with a lot of props in this piece as if it were nothing. The cane, the fan, the costumes themselves dance. It will bear any amount of scrutiny and remains fabulous.

Congratulations, dancerboy -- your costume sounds very appealing, and also that making it was a way to help get into the character. Like carbro, I have to say, it was wonderful of you to invite us into your process, and I'd bet there was a whole claque of us here at BA pulling for you. I hope you get to do the piece again somewhere. Check around -- there must be benefits of all sorts that would welcome you onto the bill.... Merde!

of classical dancers, I'd say manuel legris, who's always marvellous-=looking no matter whathte role -- and he looks different from role to role; and Jaime Garcia Castillo of SFB, who's beautifully made and also has a noble, elegant, pure way of using his physique. Among modern dancers, David Leventhal (of hte Mark Morris Dance Company) is always beautiful.

Thank you, Christian, for putting it so clearly -- I'm very moved by what you say. And I believe it, it's the truth. Giselle is one of those great works of art that shows us what we value, what we live by. As Carbro pointed out, it's still news. I've always thought of Giselle as a kind of saint's life, the first act showing her passion and death, the seoncd her first miracle.

Oh yes, Renata.' ll never forget "Partisans." I'll never forget the effect it made when the curtain first went up on the company, standing at the barre in their boots -- the audience wnet wild just to see them standing there, so READY! I've rarely felt so much excitement. it was a wonderful evening in hte theater. I think every ethnic dance company owes a huge debt to Moiseyev. The Ballet Folklorico de Mexico, which is a wonderful company, applies his principles to the staging of folk material -- and I think the major companies from Africa do too -- as did the various companies we've seen here in Berkeley from Uzbekistan, etc -- wonderful companies -- including groups like the fabulous Hungarian National dance cos, who were "behind hte iron curtain' when we saw them.

I'll add in what I can about Christensen and the choreographers that worked with or were restaged by Oakland Ballet (Loring, Massine, Jooss, Tudor, Nijinska). And also Smuin (his Romeo and Juliet was really good). Maybe Gina Ness will talk about dancing in Christensen's ballets -- i think she was in "Norwegian Moods" and some others. Funny, the best production of jinx recently was Oakland Ballet's, not SFB's. And WHAT was Filling Station like before they started dancing everything square on the counts? but enough for now -- till next week.

I still think Legris comes close to the ideal -- the quality of his attention to her is above all the finest thing. And he is personally so beautiful. More beautiful than Malakhov. His jumps are so much airier than Malakhov's, whose sautes in arabesque remind me of Alicia Alonso's in Pas de quatre -- they're TOO SMALL.... Legris's are generous without being in any way show-offish, in fact he keeps it a refined but large version of a simple and lovely thing. he's SKIPPING -- the main thing it should have is the feel of skipping. It's not big and heroic, it's fun -- it requires natural sensuality, unconscious sensuality -- like the softness of the rose petals, andthat quality of having depth to htem that roses have. RUb a rose against your cheek; get a friend to blindfold you and hold a rose and move around and make you find it with your sense of smell. See what expressions come into your face and neck as you actually smell a rose that's over your left shoulder.... If you've never done any social dancing -- many ballet dancers haven't -- try actually dancing with a partner and see what it feels like to share a center and move as one. Waltzing would be good, but ANY form of partnered dancing will teach you something about how to pay little attentions to the person you're leading and responsible for.