Paul Parish

Hey Sandi, Is Olivier Wevers getting OLD? Isn't he the kid whom Julia Adam made "Ou est Olivier?" for when he graduated from SFB School a few years back? He DID have a presence of an unusual kind -- which Adam made delicious hay out of, and it was fun trying to pick him out of each new crowd scene. Boal should get that piece for him -- well maybe not, but it was DELIGHTFUL. Can he still do "boyish"? Nobody I could compare him to except a comic actor I saw in a movie the other night, still with some of hte softness of a boy but precocious to a degree. If it's the same person, of course. but it sounds like it -- I wouldn't be at ALL surprised to hear that he could do Agon Sarabande and also Carabosse. And Gina, until I saw Maffre do Lilac (she's also VERY good at Carabosse, she alternates the roles) I'd never before seen a Lilac whose character was even more impressive than her classical dancing. but the ballet benefits enormously from having a real sovereign power visible in Lilac -- it gives the ballet dramatic tension. When Jim Sohm does Carabosse and Maffre Lilac, it almost stops the show -- and I'll never forget, on opening night of this production, many years ago now, the applause for Maffre when she came out for her bow was deafening -- until the audience bethought themselves and remembered that Aurora had not come out yet and they scaled it back, almost against their will, so as not to be rude to the titular ballerina. Marie Petipa, who originated the role, it says in the history books was a character dancer. I don't think this is jus a matte of wearing heeled shoes. What this actually means becomes more and more interesting to me. Amongst my top ten unfulfillable art-wishes is to see Petipa himself do the lezghinka at 60, and to see Marie Petipa do Lilac. Meantime, the whole world should come here to see Muriel do Lilac. It would be worth the trip.

the powerful upwards pull of the patella is breathtaking. Such beautiful thighs!

Ballet Nut -- you didn't GO? Why not?

Well, I also write officially, and saved what I had to say for our sister site. Here's the link to it http://www.danceviewtimes.com/2007/Winter/...fornianuts.html Check it out. Maybe some other SFB fans will bounce off it a bit. That would be great. I only saw two shows. Wonder what y'all saw, how you felt, and what you thought.

Mrs Grundy, go home.

I’m with Helene on this one. It does not go without saying that anti-immigrant feelings are fascist. If it were so, how could as celebrated an antifascist partisan as Oriana Fallaci have become so adamant as she did in her final years, on this very subject? It’s a shame that George Orwell is not alive to weigh in not only on this case but on all these issues on behalf of English decency. Political correctness was already going full-steam ahead during World War 2, and he fought it on a daily basis as the editor of a socialist newspaper, decrying the refusal of socialists – people on his own side – to see the horrors of Stalinism. He didn't like agreeing with Churchill, but.... Indeed, he could barely get Animal Farm published, the force of "progressive" opinion was so strongly protective of Stalin. Orwell's essay "On the Case of PG Wodehouse" might be a propos. Membership in a political party is a complex thing – I would not be a Republican if it came with a free Lexus, but I know Log Cabin Republicans who are sincerely trying to change their party from within. They get mocked on a scandalous basis for being the "dupes of the heterosexist hegemony," but I’m grateful to them for putting in the effort. Americans can hardly judge Ms. Clarke’s case, but her detractors really look intellectually lazy.

Top of my list, Sorella Englund as Madge. Taranda as Abderakhman. Derek Rencher as von Rothbart. Ashton and Helpmann as Cindrella's Ugly Sisters. Joseph Duell as the Rhumba Boy in Fancy Free. Peter Brandenhof (of SFBallet) as Hilarion and Gurn. David Bintley as the mother in Fille mal Gardee. muriel Maffre as the Lilac Fairy. Christopher Wheeldon as Marie's father in The Nutcracker. Balanchine as Drosselmeyer, and as Don Quixote.

I found "Songs of a Wayfarer ' really moving when I saw it 30-odd years ago in Berkeley, but I have few after-images from it. "Gaite Parisienne," on the other hand (which was also on the program), I remember in a lot of detail. I thought it was hilarious and thrilling and exhilarating. The dancer who was cursed -- "You will be very very short" -- tore up the house, just tore it up. (I think it was Victor Ullate.) Wonderful performance, wonderful show. At some point I also saw Bejart's version of "Bolero." Decades later, when I saw Oakland Ballet's reconstruction of Nijinska's version, I saw many of the same elements and appreciated Bejart's stripping away of non-essentials and increasing the hypnotic focus. It's a monumental realization of the theatrical possibilities inherent in that music.

I did not know he had married Heather Watts.

Bart, There's more to it than that. Balanchine liked energy, he liked it more than line, and a corps de ballet whose legs were all high but not the same height was fine with him. "Our lines suck," a great NYCB dancer once told me. " Mr B wanted to see you give it all, not hold back." (He was delighted when dancers fell. Once at the barre Darci kistler did a grand battement with such force she knocked herself off her standing leg. Famous story: he loved it and told everybody they should be dancing like that.) It's NOT appropriate for "Fille mal Gardee" or "Sleeping Beauty"; but it's totally appropriate for "4 Temperaments" or "Rubies" or "Stars and Stripes" or "Serenade." Balanchine did insist on musicality. If it was not musical, there was no place for it. But gymnastic, obvious strength, energy, strong attack were part of his aesthetic and NOT beyond the pale.

volcanohunter, I agree completely about the importance of weight for certain kinds of dance -- even within ballet, there are many places where it's crucial to make effects of tremendous weight. My first experience of great ballet was at the Royal Ballet, where von Rothbart was danced (by Derek Rencher) as a creature of immense weight, who sucked the lightness out of other people, and when Odette came back under his spell, her glassy bourrees as she left the stage had an energy that went down, down, down. Simliarly in the Capulet Ball, Juliet's father and Paris especially danced with tremendous weight, to tremendous effect -- they represented all the social forces aligned against the lovers, and they were no pushovers. I remeber when I first saw ABT do Macmillan's Romeo and Juliet, the triviality of this scene bothered me enormously. Old-time Bolshoi dancers could always dance with weight when it was called for, and both Lavrovsky and Grigorovich required it -- not all the time, but frequently. Graham requires it, of course, and Limon -- but so does "Dark Elegies." "Esplanade" would be no fun at all if those catches weren't WORK. But in the case of Bourne's Swan Lake, I think the swan was made on Cooper's power to control his line. He had gravitas. He did not dance light, but he was all about smooth suddenness and stunning line.

I take your point. I'd bet what Zakharova understands by 'modern" is deeply ignorant of what you're talking about, volcanohunter. But you piqued my interest by mentioning the style of Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, since I was terribly dismayed by the loss of otherworldliness when Adam Cooper, who was a superb classical dancer, had to be replaced. To my mind, it only works when the swan is beautiful in THAT WAY, like Grace Kelly, nobly proportioned, inscrutable, mysteriously reserved at the core -- when MB's Swan Lake came through here this year, the swan was alas unable to make the white swan happen -- he could do things, and he had a teddy bear quality that was at times powerfully endearing, but he was gross. Which is an odd twist on the usual problem -- Odette must be noble. Great Odettes are rarer than exciting Odiles. And in the end, he didn't signify (though Adam Cooper most intensely HAD).

Finger turns? By the time a woman is on pointe, she's a "foot" taller. Certain moves, such as finger turns, with hand overhead, are very awkward if the man is not tall enough for his hand to be above hers when her arm is outstretched. of course, a great deal depends on the length of the arms.

If I may return to Leonid's argument, he is making the case for British ballet, a style I love, and which first made me realize that dancing was something that could be thought about rather than just enjoyed. But in fact American ballet, in particular the style Mr Balanchine cultivated, DOES frankly incorporate acrobatics and gymnastics --"acrobacy," in the polemical phrase of Lincoln Kirstein. It's not a genteel style: kicks are high, the hip goes up, the lines are distorted, the energy is socko. Some works are restrained and classical, but many are not. In Stars and stripes the girls developpe high and grab the foor with the hand -- an old circus trick. one of the few technical steps Suzanne Farrell performed in the solo to Stravinsky's (what was it called? In Memoriam to Aldous Huxley??) -- she's mostly on hte floor, stretching, pouting, tossing her pony tail -- was a walkover into an arabesque. But of course, this was all occasioned by la Zakharova. I agree, she seems to be young and full of beans, and she also seems to say what she thinks more than is prudent. On the other hand, what do you expect from a kid who can do all that? I wish I'd liked her dancing more when I saw her, for though she was dancing Kitri, in the Bolshoi's production, and that would seem to give license for all manner of vulgarity, still, it dismayed me how little she seemed to relish the idea of Spanish style. She kicked herself in the back of the head without arching her back. It will be interesting to see what Ratmansky does with her. The Bolshoi seems to me to be a company full of energy and life and dancers who are bursting with talent.

And a dancer like Sean Lavery, who IS tall, looks REALLY tall because of the length of his legs -- while Peter Martins, who is certainly tall, did not look so much so because his legs don't take up so much of his body. I've been looking for a full-length portrait of Woetzel to check my impressions against, but can't find one. So I'll go on my memory. I'm picturing him in Stars and Stripes. He seems to have a big head because he DOES have a large FACE, SUCH cheekbones. It also seems that his torso is though not long, not short-waisted, and his pelvis is large, which will make him look shorter than he is. Also, he was dancing in that video with Margaret Tracey, who IS short but has super-long legs and doesn't look it next to him. But that is demi-caractere dancing, and he's divine in it -- so for him to project the right qualities, he needs to look broad-shouldered, cute, and cocky, but temper all that with a lot of care. I saw him once take class from Stanley Williams, well, it was the boys' class at SAB, and he took it as well. Williams of course corrected in whispers, and with Woetzel he didn't even say anything, he just looked at him affectionately and then at the standing leg with a slight roll of the eye. It was almost a conspiracy, the bond between them seemed so clear. What a privelege to see that.

Woetzel is a fabulous dancer. But he does not have ideal proportions -- his face and everything about his body makes him look a little rough-hewn. Whatever a dancer's height, if (s)he has a small head and proportionally long legs, s/he will LOOK tall from the stage unless there are other people onstage to rank them against. And then there's projection. Plisetskaya just comes to my shoulder (I got her autograph once, she wrote her name up the side of her leg in the photo of her as Carmen) -- but she took the stage with such incredible personal authority I was shocked to see how short she was in real life.

I was a shepherd when I was a child in Mississippi (raised Catholic), shivering in the living creche outside the church before Midnight Mass, and last night I was an angel in a dance ("O magnum mysterium") inside Newman Hall in Berkeley where I live now. Both nights, I got real cold. My feet are killing me today, but it was awesome last night channeling angelic energy, imagining that kind of being, and trying to make it visible to people. It's not easy connecting with one's own tradition, when it's so tarnished, but I'm starting to think it my duty. I was proud to see the local Episcopal bishop got himself arrested at City Hall, it made me feel less ashamed to have been or continue to be be a Christian. If there's any Christmas music I'd recommend, it's Joan Baez singing "The Cherry Tree Carol," #11 on her second album, right after "Barbara Allen," circa 1960. It's so beautiful, so moving. Merry Christmas, everybody.

I THINK it was VVV who choreographed the satirical ballet "Anyuta," which is (or was) available on video; it's set to Schostakovitch, i believe, and the music has a lot of bite to it. Maximova is brilliant in it. It's clever in some ways, corny in others. Not bad choreographer -- but WHAT a dancer. if you haven't seen the SECOND-act pas de deux from Giselle, you must. The lifts are unbelievable; all effort is concealed, the trajectories are so clear, and she floats SO high in them.

Stage direction --Eat a chicken bone. Line: "What a DUMP!" Elizabeth Taylor did this in "WHo's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," but it was already a piece of drag business: if I've got my camp history right, it was Bette Davis who did it in the first place.

Well, you guys scare me; my sympathies are with Alagna. If the director casts him as Radames, if HE believes in him, that counts for a lot. But it doesn't mean he went into the project with complete confidence. I remember an interview with Sena Jurinac in which she said if Karajan (or maybe it was Klemperer, can't remember, it was one of the conductors of massive authority) thought she could could do it, well, that gave her a lot more confidence. Thing is, it's the performers who're most likely to lose it -- to go mad onstage, even, like Spessiva -- who very often when able to concentrate can reach the most amazing visionary places. If Alagna was encouraged, and actually engaged, to go into a production he must have had doubts about, he's the person i'm concerned for. Me, I'm rarely on the side of the heckler.

RG, let me add how exciting it is to look at pictures like these -- Grat pedagogy is a glorious thing in its own right (as I guess is implicit in balanchine's decision to call himelf "ballet master"). I saw Nureyev and Mason in Swan Lake, Act 2 try a knee stand like that, which didn't come off the day I saw it. Actually, of course the ballerina was in a different pose, but the mount is very difficult -- But I find the group picture the most fascinating. So much energy, so beautifully restrained.

Dear rg, What testimony. Thank you.

THanks, Robert-- oh these are beautiful. Just looking at him standing still makes me cry. What MUST it have been like to see him dance. THank you Leonid. I think we can all see that he is presenting something supremely physical that is simultaneously really visionary, and that the hierarchy is clear, the body submits to the vision as the cavalier does to the ballerina. "I am a cloud in trousers," as Balanchine said, quoting (I think) Mayakovsky. What a cloud, and what trousers.

Wish we had Mr B's "Nutcracker" out here. I love it, it is a really great work, especially the first act, which is one of the greatest things he EVER did. SO poignant, so sweetly homesick, so marvellously detailed -- rather like Joyce's Christmas story, "the Dead" -- the one conventional thing each of them did, and far and away the best thing in that kind anybody did in the twentieth century. Every part is potentially rich. I remember the first time I saw it, coming from SanFrancisco, I didn't know what to expect really, but god, how it carried me back to the family Christmas parties I remembered from when I was a child, with lots of old people of whom I'd only heard from Mama's generation, and then also "the sofa people," my grandmother's old friends, whom she'd known since convent school. They were legendary, hardly people at all. In Balanchine's first act, I was fascinated by all the relationships, and among the characters, by the person who seemed most aware of them all, who was Marie's father -- the care and attention he paid to everybody, especially the grandfather! Is it his father or his wife's? Who was Marie's father? had to look him up, he had so much of the right feeling. It was Christopher Wheeldon. "Snow was general all over Ireland.' If you like "The Nutcracker," let me recommend that you read "The Dead," last story in "Dubliners."

I agree with Carbro about Plisetskaya -- absolutely, she found HER way to make it tragic. Pavlova's was prettier, more hectic, more like Blanche du Bois -- indeed, I'd say her swan was probably the deep deep background archetype for Blanche, the beauty who's outlived her time in every way. (off-topic) Pavlova is really an amazing dancer -- she's not the simpering thing many of us think her to be today. Her pirouettes were shocking; they had no preparation and came as Ashton said VERY fast out of nowhere -- only doubles but very fast. There's a tape of her at the beginning of a mostly awful documentary about Ashton that everybody ought to see, she's totally electric. Back on-topic -- here in San Francisco, our French ballerina Muriel Maffre dances “Dying Swan” with unsentimental, modernist almost existential authority; it reminds me of the way Mravinsky conducted Tchaikovsky's “Pathetique Symphony,” it rattles your bones. It's on a tremendous scale -- she's of course one of the tallest ballerinas that ever was, every bone that can be long IS long, she must be eight feet tall toe to toe in penchée arabesque -- so the scale on which she CAN dance is breathtaking. The challenges to her verticality are also great, and she'll risk SHOWING them. In some of the deep lunges she twists herself into positions you'd think she could never get back out of. There is NOTHING safe about it, it makes even Plisetskaya's look careful, and her tortuous épaulement puts one in mind of the ways the most extreme yoga positions can be approached as a potential oasis, to be relaxed into and as relief from some sort of bondage.... But only someone in extremis would consider such a course of action. She makes the whole thing an attempt to stretch the sinews, expand the breath, squeeze somehow past some barrier and slide out of some yoke that nevertheless has her in its grip and is slowly bringing her down; it is a contest that cannot be won. It is an agony for the creature, but Maffre the dancer has pulled it in just enough so that it is bearable for us to see. Everyone who has seen her do it feels this way.