Paul Parish

I have always imagined that "I made it myself out of a hundred and thirty-two keychains" refers to Allegra Kent's readiness to do creative recycling -- to make a purse out of old tights, or -- she made something, like a chain-mail bodice (but not that -- I just can't remember what) out of a couple hundred safety pins.... She mentions this in her autobiography. And Gorey LOVED Allegra. PS She loved HIM-- if I remember right, when Gorey died, she wrote a long sweet memoir of him for Dance Magazine that made their relationship seem ... well, words fail me. With a sound track by Satie.

I'd join those in praise of Legris -- the most wondreful thing about him is that he seems to like being the rose. It's so clean -- he's strong, soft, silken, beautiful, delicate, fluid, and musical -- it's especially the musicality. And he has a real feel for chasse. He reaches down into the floor, the downs are deep and rich and velvety, so the ups really come up from he downs, like temps lies that leave the ground -- which may be why he never seems to have a problem with breath. It must be a puffer, but his breathing seems just to keep on expanding, to get easier and easier. So i'd concentrate on getting the breating to feel easy.

WELl, Ashley Wheater is a fine ballet master -- a decent human being, and also someone hwo loves ballet so much he will be tough love for the company. But Stage Left, I want to know why your friend loved it. What did s/he say? it may not have mattered that those things happened if s/he was following some through-line that WAS clearly expressed.

I think Englund as Madge is attracted to James, and that's what we see when he dies -- ahw knows it but it is a thron in her flesh, but when she loses even that last shred of a chance, it hits her as regret -- but then she scorns her weakness, and she's beat him in THIS respect, so she triumphs, but there's no joy in it. That's how I read it. But no two ways about it, Englund's is a GREAT performance.

dancerboy, I believe the Moscow Stanslavsky Ballet premiered Bourmeister's version of swan Lake in hte 1950s, and it has enjoyed a large audience ever since. Stanislavsky was of course tha great genius director who invented a system of training actors in psychological realism (the basis of "Method acting) which has dominated the theater in Europe and America for almost a century. SO Bourmeister's ballet emphasizes the psychological dimensions. The company brought it here to San Francisco a few years back, I saw it and found it brilliant -- full of interesting novelties, but more important, it had a headlong dramatic sweep that was theatrically coherent and quite compelling -- it emphasizes the psychological drama, where the difference between the prince's public face and what's going on inside him is a very painful discrepancy. In the Moscow-Stanislavsky production, it's more the prince's story than it is Odette's -- but it DOES make sense, and it seemed to me very exciting (though overly lurid in Act 3 -- McKenzie's version for ABT seems to get a lot of its lurid ideas from the Moscow Stanislavsky version. I agree with the description Allan Ulrich wrote here: http://www.voiceofdance.com/Insights/featu...500000000000133 So it's an impressive major version of Swan Lake: but the main thing I'd say about it is not how any one famous excerpt is danced but the way all the parts add up -- at least, when you see it live in the theater. not sure how it would look on a video, or in excerpts.

Thank you, Bart, for those quote s from Feneon.... priceless. it hardly seems an oversimplification to say that Duchamp brought this ideal to New York, planted it , and it took root. Remy Charlip''s dances work in a vein like this (not to mention his rewrite of Hamlet, "Young Omelettte," which is like walking on eggshells....), and on a grander scale, works like the fabulous "Antic Meet" of of Merce Cunningham. Satie seems to be the patron saint of them all, and HE had -- what was it, 10 suits of pearl-grey velvet, which was the only costume in which he ever appeared in public?

"oh no, he's going to jump" I have heard myself saying that, too. he sounds like a very smart guy and wonderful company -- wish I'd seen him dance.

Wow, Domingo -- that will be really something. Orestes is truly haunted -- the Furies comee up out of the floor and crawl all over him, it's like a nightmare -- but the character is SO twitchy, only a very great singer can temper the rawoutbursts and make him likeable -- Pylades really helps, since he's so devoted to his old friend, it calms US down some -- but Orestes is like a soldier back from Iraq who's SEEN THINGS , really disturbed (remember, he's killed his own mother, becaue she killed his father) and is a really jagged study in character disturbance -- bo Skovhus wrestled with it here and did fine but wasn't great -- but Domingo has a chance to make it great. Will Levine conduct in New York? The conductor is the real story-teller here -- everything really depends on all that - -the orchestra is such a participant in hte drama, it's thrilling. Fantastic productoin -- and I have to say, i LIKE the choreography -- yes, the moves are often arbitrary, kinda telegraphese, but the way it's all orchestrated pays off. It looks more than a little like Mark Morris's Dido and Aeneas -- the black dresses, the stabbing moves in particular -- but they're appropriate, totally appropriate to the ambiance and hte progress of the action, and some of hte quiet moments, when meaning accumulates and the sense of consequences working out logically and inevitably, just simply overwhelms you -- these are really awesome, real total theater.

We had this production in San Francisco a few months ago, with different singers but the same productoin -- I saw it twice -- the audience was completely riveted, and at the end theentire house stood and cheered -- which doesn't happen a lot in the opera house. The whole time I was watching it, I found myself thinking, Marie Nntoinette probably saw this when it was new -- I was partly feeling that way because it seemed as urgent now as it must have when it WAS new. I too was really moved by Pylades -- his music is so beautiful, his devotion to his friend is so poignant and so touching. he's the only person whose emotins are not tormented -- Orestes is hounded by the Furies, Iphigenia is so torn by her conflicting loyalties -- without Pylades, there would be no sympathetic character who had a simple good emotional nature. Our Iphigenia was Susan Graham, who was a fine singer and an equally fine actress/dancer -- and the whole show was choreographed, every move was set to the music -- the moment the knife first appeared was thrilling. I'd urge EVERYONE who has a chance to see this to GO GO GO. I suppose everybody knows that Balanchine choreographed Gluck's other famous opera, Orfeo, for the Met over 50 years ago (it was a huge success wit hthe critics, though management hated it), Mark Morris has also staged it -- twice; for his own group a decade or more ago, and just recently for the Met. Gluck is a seriously under-rated creator of TOTAL THEATER. Every move is choeographed.

What about the apron? I think she should have an apron in the first act -- pretty of course, white against a blue skirt is usual -- but something that makes it clear that she has demands on her time, work to do, when she's not picking daisies and .... So when she says she should go back in the house, the costume backs her up -- not that we WANT HER TO-- but it's one of the constraints on her, so that when Bathilde's dress goes sweeping by, we suddenly begin to feel the difference. Bathilde's dress should NOT have an apron.

Treefrog, how lucky you are to have a producition of Giselle you can get to know. After seeing Ananiashvili dance it with the Bolshoi ca 1989, it seemd to me a very serious thing -- a kind of saint's life -- the first act shows her passion and death and the second act her first miracle. Oakland Ballet danced it that way, too, in Franklin's staging, as a tragedy --really moving. SF Ballet dancces it more as something pretty -- more exquisitely, with lots of extra laciness whch I don't think it needs or even really benefits from, though Tina LeBlanc rises above that and makes it tragic. I've been lucky to be able to see it a lot. but the first time I saw it, with Sibley and Dowell no less, it did not lay a glove on me; it was only after a while that I started to realize how deep and how great it is. Mr balanchine wrote a wonderful piece about it in his book, "Stories of the great ballets." He calls it the 'Hamlet' of ballet. I really recommend that book, and certainly his little essay on Giselle. Good luck to the joffrey with their "Giselle." I love the ballet beyond anything -- for many different kinds of reasons -- A) all that JUMPING. It's just wonderful to see a ballet with women jumping , and those phrases are SO beautiful.

I think it's great that Arpino says what he thinks. In the movie "the Company,' the director is said to be omodeled on Arpino, and I have to say, i really liked him. And he hollered from his box, and he told the Italian-American civic group that conferred an award on him to be nicer to their dancing sons than they'd been to HIM -- it made me want to cheer.

By the way, Gorey makes a cameo apearance in the Lavender Leotard -- tha't's him wearing the mink coat, seen from the back -- unless it's Robert Greskovic, wearing the mink coat that Gorey gave him from his collection.

There's at least one of Gelsey (kirk 09) that will peel your eyes.... unbelievable!

Raymonda -- I like ALL of her variations and LOVE the one with scarf and the grand Hungarian one. Terpsichore's variation is Dance itself. Odette's variation, though it's beautiful, is impossible to make moving-- Semyonova's is the best I 've ever seen.

Excellent questoin, scherzo!!! I have strong feelings on this, since the one with the little hops and pas de chevals looks like a folk dance set on point and I adore it, and the other one, wiht the gazillion passes is rhythmically banal and a terrible disappointment, IMHO. The Bolshoi always seems to dance the latter, so my HUNCH is that it's by Gsovsky or somebody. The former version is in the Kirov's rep, and I'd like to think it's by Petipa (since he liked folk dance steps) -- there's an OLD video of Toumanova (or is it Tallchief?), Kirkland also is on tape looking real skinny, not at her best, in that one... San Francisco Ballet's version uses this version also -- not sure, Christian, does the Cuban version use this one? It would be I THINK, in Alonzo's Ballets Russes tradition -- but in Havana, the Bolshoi connection may have prevailed. Actually, I'm not nearly as certain about this as I sound, that's just the way I've pieced these together -- i would love to know the truth.... RG, Doug?

Excellent QUESTION!!!

All wonderful examples, and I'd especially reinforce White Swan and Symphony in C, and Agon pdd.... Agon is SO much about trust.... but I'd add some comic pdd -- Titania and the donkey is so incredibly sweet, and Tarantella -- if it's danced as a flirtation (as Mc Bride and Villella danced it), and not just a set of tricks -- is a fabulous thing.

Karsavina had entrancing eyes.

All dance is local, especially ballet -- you have to be in the same house with ballet to really feel the power of hte art. ABT USED to be arguably the national company because they toured widely, and it was possible for people all over hte country to see them, at least once a year, in the flesh, in 3D, across the footlights. Since the late 80s they've toured a lot less, though recently they've been making their presence felt again across the country. New York City Ballet stayed in New York City, almost exclusively, and built up a fantastic relationship with people in reach of the theater. Mr Balanchine's ballets were being danced all over the country by the regional compmanies, so there was THAT kind of presence -- the choreography was alive and growing all over the country, but not as danced "in the way Mr Balanchine liked," by his own dancers.

I think of Kyra Nichols, recently retired but still famous, as a lyrical dancer -- it's in the phrasing, and rather, as if the whole body were singing. A "dramatic" dancer often cuts the phrases into emphatic jagged fragments -- which the music may allow, or even demand. A lyrical dancer's phrasing will usually be more rounded than that. Actually, nichols also had dramatic powers -- she was very funny as Titania in the pas de deux with the donkey, in A Midsummer Night's Dream -- but that is a role with a lot of lyricism to it, to make the fairy qualities comethrough.

Is Mark Goldweber no longer with the Joffrey? THAT would be a big loss.

Ashley Wheater has made MANY fans in his time here in San Francisco -- as a star dancer, as the best partner of his day, as ballet master, as a scintillating Drosselmeyer in Tomasson's new production of The Nutcracker, where he's a very cool, totally hip uncle, as ballet master, as teacher of the open classes the public gets to see, onstage at the opera house, where his combinations, and his panache in showing them, are extremely stageworthy.... He'll be really missed around here. But he's likely to be a very good thing for the Joffrey. All the best to him -- and to them all -- in Chicago.

Old-Fashioned, that's a PERFECT example of the tulip at its most open; they often /usually hold the fingers and thumb closer together, though still distinctly separated. Nelli Kobakhidze (here's a link to Danish Ballet Journal http://www.dropshots.com/hookham#date/2007-03-08/23:29:26) has this to a beautiful degree. It's a Bolshoi thing, and I wouldn't be surprised (though I do NOT know) if it were a holdover of Moscow ways that orient more to Asia than to Europe. I remember being told by a Javanese dancer that they have several versions of their sacred dance, the bedoya -- on a scale from ritual to theatrical, the most sacred version, the dancers keep their hands "like closed lotus buds,' and in the most theatrical, the hands are hyperextended, like hte full-blown flower, fingers actually curling back. I've been taught in the other, the St Petersburg-based Ballets Russes Franco-Russian tradition, just like you; in fact, my teacher corrects our hands by having us drop the arm, relax everything, let the hands swing, and look at the finger-groupings -- now raise that to second positoin -- that's it, she says. It does seem to be what the hand does when it's most liquid and relaxed.

THe women of the Bolshoi Ballet have a remarkable, highly stylized placement of the fingers that I've never seen elsewhere -- the fingers extend, almost to the point of curving BACK, but the whole hand is held like a tight budded flower, so it looks like a slender tulip. It's actually very beautiful, and the more you study it the stranger but lovelier it becomes. Examples are legion -- Bessmertnova's hands exemplified this look. Ananiashvili, when she danced the DYing Swan, used her fingers in a mesmerizing way which can be seen in a youtube clip -- she'll close a phrase by letting the fingers curl in as if they were wilting; it's especially noticeable in hte curtain call, where it's almost like a Photoshop effect. What incredible atention to detail!