Paul Parish

If you're thinking about seeing the Robbins program -- and it's a great one -- and you have the time, it might really pay off to put some research into the Dybbuk. There's a fantastic movie THE DYBBUK from 1937, from the great Yiddish theater of Warsaw, that I'd rank with the Passion of St Joan and Vampyr and the Kabinet of Dr Caligari, and Vampyr, as film art, which made me understand the material Robbins was trying to handle. I've seen the ballet and admired it but just been at a loss -- after seeing the movie, a WHOLE lot more than just Dybbuk falls into place -- Fiddler on the Roof seems like an attempt to make sure that this time it will be unmisunderstandable, even though it's at the heart of it a much slighter thing. EDITING TO SAY -- well, after re-reading Jowett's excellent biography, I realize Robbins made Fiddler before Dybbuk. And lots about it remains murky -- but the pas de deux became trackable, especially the 'mirroring' section, gained a lot of resonance for me. Reel has got Dybbuk, so has Netflix. Not much time left, sorry, but it might be worth it.

I think it looks good enough and works GREAT - I especially like the way the PMs are like hand-delivered. It's almost gracious. Congratulations, and thanks.

Good LUCK, Helene! d'accord there, rg.

THanks, Dirac... I'd edit that post, since it's been moved from the Oscar Awards thread [but the site software won't let me] --so let me just explain the reference to hte "bellwether," which may seem to come from left field. I was bouncing off a metaphor in an earlier, intelligent comment of Carbro's that the Oscars have sometimes been bellwethers, pointing towards desireable changes in social attitudes. Also, without getting too personal, I'd add that my father's Texas-pioneer world-view was diametrically opposed to my mother's New-Orleans-civilized outlook on life, and it's taken me most of my life to come to having much of an appreciation of my father's reality -- though he was right about so many things (such as the Civil Rights movement), and Mama was wrong, it was Mama I loved, not him. I've been thinking all day about him, and how quiet and misunderstood and undervalued he felt and knew he was. My father's only close friend was a black man, my mammy's husband, which embarrassed Mama. Daddy loved Jesse as much as Ennis loved Jack, though I have no way of knowing if the relationship was sexual or not. It's not unheard of in the South for 2 men to care more emotionally for each other than they do for anybody else in their lives.... I'm increasingly inclined to think it maybe was sexual; it certainly had a romantic feel to it, but then, it was like comrades-in-arms. When Jesse was dying, he turned out to have AB negative blood, the rarest type, which was almost impossible to get, even if you were white (this would have been about 1963), and Daddy drove all over the state trying to get blood for Jesse's transfusions. He got it, too. "Jesse died in my arms, son," was all he'd ever say about it. Well, I guess I did get real personal, but it shouldn't do anybody any harm. I'll go ahead and post it.

I'd love to know about "Satanella" myself. The first I ever heard of it was in the discussoinsof this year's moscow competitions, where it wasone of the set pieces....

Sally Streets teaches sur-le-coup-de-pied pirouettes, and is constantly coming up with ways of having us do LOW COUPES (which is local shorthand for sur le cou de pied back), often as a preparation for attitude back, and just as often as the position AFTER attitude back, to train the pelvis to feel how it has to change

Solor, I agree with you about the tragic feeling in the White Swan adage (and feel that way about the lakeside scene in general). On the other hand, Tchaikovsky DID have "secret traumas," and his music isfull of sudden affrights and tremendous alarums -- the first movement of hte Pathetique has subsided into incredibly deep tranquility when suddenly all hell breaks loose. In Mravinsky's great recording, there are passages so shattering I'm always shaking afterwards. Tchaikovsky certainly DID try to kill himself in the late 1870s after his marriage failed.... ANd no less a pundit than Nadia Boulanger used to ridicule him for being hysterical. If he did not go through Oscar Wilde's trials, the parallel is not very good anyway -- Wilde was not given to hysteria. Back in the 80s, when the Soviet scholar Aleksandra Orlova's contention was believed -- that Tchaikovsky killed himself in 1893 because he had been ordered to by some secret court, to prevent his homosexuality from becoming a scandal -- a parallel to Wilde's suffering after his trial was very plausible. Poznansky controverted that effectively, but not until the late 1990's, and the suicide story had become official, even making it into the Grove (the encyclopedia ofmusic). Volkov says Balanchine believed it (Mr B died before Poznansky's criticisms were published). Indeed, the Tchaikovsky Festival seems to have come not too long after Orlova's article was published in 1980. And some scholars believe it still. Not all queers are insecure, but Tchaikovsky's insecurity seems to go way back -- there was something painfully wrenching about his separation from his mother -- with which Balanchine sympathized (if Volkov can be believed, and -- though that's a wonderful book -- Volkov's veracity has been hotly contested re his book about Shostakovitvh). Nobody doubts that Tchaikovsky WAS profoundly unhappy about the instability of his intimacies....

I haven't read Poznansky yet, Solor, but I'm planning to -- he knows more about Tchaikovsky than anybody else writing in English. He's had access to Tchaikovsky's archives, many things that were not known, or would not have been publishable under Soviet censorship, he's brought to light -- and he obviously loves Tchaikovsky. He also knows a vast deal about life in 19th Century Russia -- one small but important example, that it was not a major problem to be homosexual in high society, where it was not particularly frowned upon. That was a problem for the Soviets, but not for the Tsars. (If you look at the wonderful SOviet bio-movie of Tchaikovsky, you'll find in 3 hours NO mention of his homosexuality.)

Hans, you said a mouthful. I SO agree. It's been a problem for the Paris Opera Ballet, and it's spreading to the Kirov -- weakness in the waist is fatal to a ballet dancer's dignity.

Well, the issue that's not getting mentioned is , how much is ballet a spectacle, and how much is it a matter of kinesthetic fascination? If it's a spectacle, the look of the dancer is paramount, even if they can barely dance. The more it's a kinetic affair, the more the dancer's ability to make interesting reconfigurations of the body, gracefully, comes absorbs the interest. Sometimes the dance is about punching it out; sometimes it's about cursive mocvement, like handwriting -- but the more the emphasis is on the kinetic factors, the more interesting a person who moves well will become, and that can over-ride questions of runway-model proportions, the way the body looks at rest. Look at a dancer like desmond Richardson -- at rest, he's a chunky, hunky guy -- but let him do a tendu orgrand battement and all these amazing lines appear -- he's SO flexible, his feet point so beautifully, he's suddenly transfigured into something godly. Maybe this is less so, for most people, with chunky women -- but I myself think Lauren Grant is one of the most beautiful classical dancers around, even though she's a short, very muscular dancer in Mark Morris's "modern dance" company. She has in fact got fabulous turnout, and that makes short limbs look long -- especially in flight. I'm certain I'd have swooned over Legnani -- still shots don't do her justice, but descriptions of her incredible aplomb, the quietness of her balances, and her wonderful finesse in the most difficult maneuvers -- no less an authority than Petipa himself said so -- make me think I'd have preferred her to a gloriously proportioned but weak ballerina like (you supply your own favorite name here).

the girls are great, but I like the guys skit, too -- sweet and charming and some wonderful fealress leaps.....

Wow, Bart, that was eloquent -- How I wish I'd seen ANY of those performances. Thanks, Paul

I agree, she seems just SUCH an appealing person. I wa also struck by the good sense of Finis jhung, who interviewed her -- i've bookmarked his site and will check back there now and then. He's a famously humane teacher, so I'm not surprised, but I just really liked their rapport and his maturity, as well as hers.

The marriage of Figaro has a little ballet when -- is it Barbarina? and the peasants bring some gifts to the countess -- it's kind of pastoral, and could be very pretty in a Bournonville style. The dancing to Papageno's magic Glockenspiel is brief but it is a fabulous opportunity to show beasts being brought under hte spell of music - I haven't seen, but I would LOVE to see, the recent Magic Flute in New York with the puppet-theater feel to it. can't remember who the choreographer is, I'm ashamed to say, considering how excited I was by the reports of it I read.

Hear, Hear, Leigh!. If it's any comfort, the pas de deux from Reflections IS the entire adagio movement from the Mendelssohn symphony, and it excerpts extremely well -- it is the heart of the ballet. Though the rest of it has tremendous fizzy energy and it would be great for y'all to see the whole thing. Leigh did a good review of it in Ballet Review last year. "Fire and ice."

Solor, Thanks for all that info -- The questions concerning who wrote the music are nothing conpared to the questonis as to who choreographed the dances -- and the "fan" variation, for example, may have the fan as a staple, but what the steps are can vary a GREAT deal from Bolshoi to kirov...

Faux Pas, I'm sure you are right -- All I'm saying is that the Kirov's current version is closer to Gorsky's than the Bolshoi's -- NB the Bolshoi's grand pas de deux has clearly degenerated FAR from Petipa's, has quite a boring variation for kitri, no pas de cheval's

To add to Rg's post -- I haven't re-read it, but Souritz's excellent book "Soviet Choreographers of the 1920s" made it clear that the Kirov's version of Don Q is closer to Gorsky's than the Bolshoi's, because Lopukhov admired it and was a diligent curator and tried to keep the "sparks" of it exact while at the Bolshoi it was undergoing "whatever" -- so it seems reasonable to think that it would be closer to Petipa's. as rg said -- the main changes Gorsky made were in crowd interactions.

Hey Funny Face-- Thanks for going back to N O to help out! My mother's family is from there for generations and generations, and I can't tell you how heartsick it's made me to know the state New Orleans is in -- "sola, perduta, abbandonata." I know parts of town aren't in too bad a shpte -- the area around St Philip St where I lived one year seems to be fine, but I know my grandmother's house on Canal Blvd was washed away, and I gather the cemetery is inaccessible, too. I'm trying to picture your classes -- what street are y'all on? I'd love to know. MERDE!!!! and Happy Mardi Gras!

Youoverthere, you raise some interesting questions. It sounds like Bourne's Swan Lake really shocked you. I sympathize. I had hte opposite response to yours. Bourne's version made me cry and cry, especially at hte end -- but I appreciate your sense that Swan Lake is precious, and htat one's response to it is a matter of great delicacy and something that needs to be defended. Swan Lake does come close to being holy. I did not feel that "Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake" (which is what they call the video, which is the only version I've seen yet) was commercial entertainment, but rather is a consistent and radical but compelling reinterpretation of the myth, with a great classical dancer, Adam cooper, in the role of the Swan. I don't know what "Swan Lakes" you've seen before -- the version that broke MY heart and made me a balletomane was the Royal Ballet's -- Ashton's version of Sergeyev's reconstruction of the 1895 original. It was a lot like a Shakespearean tragedy. and I felt that Bourne's version kept true to those values, while updating it to the era of Princess Diana/Fergie. Most Ballet Alert folk seem to disdain Bourne's version -- though some of us don't. And balletomanes as fastidious as Clement Crisp have admired it. Admittedly, he's a Brit. but I agree with him almost word-for-word. If you're curious, here's the link to his thoughts on the matter: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/e18f3fb0-4a51-11d...000e2511c8.html

that earlier thread is really worth reading. i'm expecially intrigued by this: "I once wrote a piece on this, in the early 1980s, comparing the long, lean Dallas Cowboys to shorter, stockier, Washington Redskins, postulating that coaches made body type choices in much the same way choreographers and balletmasters do." by Alexandra the Wise, of course I'd REALLY LIKE to read that paper. how subtly subversive of her to pick football, instead of basketball, whrere hte height requirememnts are so obvious there's almost no discussing them. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, And it''s also true, ballet attracts teen-agers who want to sacrifice themselves to justify their existence, to deserve their place in the world. If their parents, or insecurities it's hard to find any cause for, drive them to this, nevertheless, it's the case there ARE such people, and ballet gives them an objectively almost impossible standard to reach for, and it can't be helped.

Starring Becky Wright - o how poignant.... THanks, rg Has anyone ever seen it? Glebb? Mel?

So much of thiat comes from 1983, from Gordon's book. It's certainly changed in the schools -- the one I'm most familiar with has regular consultations with nutritionists, and the girls who're looking anorexic get a very complicated kind of attention, designed to ease hte pressures they feel. but kids who want to dance often get obsessive and don't believe their teachers could mean that -- anorexia is about control, food is secondary. Gelsey could not believe that Balanchine wanted her to dance with more ease, "more like Fred astaire.' you wonder what else she could not believe. Could she REALLY believe he wanted an overbite? It WAS fashionable at the time -- not only Suzanne, but every fashion model was showing plump lips and 2 front teeth, from Jean Shrimpton to Twiggy, so she was certainly only cottoning onto a fashion-plate of the time -- The problem with ballet is you have to be beautiful. It's like the movies -- you DON'T get to play Juliet if you're not pretty. Not even in Peoria. Occasionally someone like Barbara Streisand breaks a taboo -- her nose DID things in Funny Girl, and -- but that was almost counter-cultural. The Balanchine body, by the way, is also the Merce Cunningham body. and it's the Florenz Ziegfeld body -- Balanchine was always trying to get Suzanne to GAIN a few pounds. (Though he did, I admit, like them skinny.)

Yes in deed, really beutiful feet -- but the first thing I noticed was how lovely she is through the ribs.

A dance historian asked me -this. Couldn't say, so I'm turning to y'all. Anybody know of a work called "Valentine" by Eugene Loring?-- or, a work called Valentine?