Paul Parish

THanks Leigh -- and thanks rg, I see it was you who started the original thread, not surprised... The DVD of Russian Ark also has "extras" -- including a short documentary about hte WInter Palace that makes you FEEL the presence of the water all around it, the god-like scope of the whole Palast, the powerful resemblance to Versailles, and the devotion of the many people who've worked there under the Soviets (which must parallel exactly the devotion that underlay all the intrigues of those at the Kirov Theater, the wig-makers and the dancers and the dressers and everybody devoted to keeping the beautiful dances from losing their perfect details), the incredible tenacity of the people as they held out against the 900-day siege during WW2, the ways they protected the paintings during that time when htey were freezing and any old piece of wood that could be burned for heat was nearly priceless -- you can see how they fought to preserve these collective treasures like they'd fight for their souls, if you have to give up your life or your soul, which would it be? That last may seem far-fetched, but since the whole of "Russian Ark" is an apparition, and the "eyes" we see it through are those of a man who's just died in some accident and doesn't know WHERE he is but is constantly asking questions of the visible ghost of the Marquis de Coustine (who finds the young soul's curiosity unamusing), it's ALL about the soul of RUssia -- the museum is like the Ark, NOAH's Ark, which rode out the flood) the long tracking shot is almost like the Tibetan Book of the Dead --it's a guide to the soul showing the way to the new home....

There must be a Russian Ark thread already, I just can't find it.... Just rented the movie, am STUNNED by it -- especially the final scene in the ballroom, with Gergiev himself conducting the mazurka from "A life for the Tsar" (Glinka) and the Mariinsky orchestra playing it and 600 dancers dancing it, SO BEAUTIFULLY -- it looks enough like the court doing the mazurka in Swan Lake to make my head spin -- But the WHOLE way the movie uses the Winter Palace, with as a guide a French diplomat who starts out by criticizing the Russians for copying Versailles and by the end in love with the place and convinced that this place IS another Versailles -- well, he doesn't say so, but his emotions have completely changed, by the end of the movie he is Russian, and dancing the mazurka with Pushkin's wife (who's been fighting with Pushkin all evening, like Olga did with Lensky)..... I haven't read much that's thoughtful about Russian Ark; there's been plenty that's respectful, so I finally got around to watching it -- but most of what I've seen/heard has been about it's being shot in one single take, which is not by any means what's interesting about the movie.... What's GREAT is the fantasy Sokurov's brought to life using all these techniques. Somehow the whole project puts me in mind of Petipa -- the scale, the detail, the crowds, the geometry, the alternating of small groups and large, the hierarchy of many nations within an empire, the processions and pageantry, the episodic intensifications, and in particular the heightened interest in entrances, the contrasting tempi, the creation of a sense of place, and the BEAUTY of it all, and how much that beauty matters.

well said, Mel.... BUT you guys-- rhythm is a mathematical thing -- there's lots of dancing that really is 90 percent in the rhythm, and in deed, the difference between danceable and "listening" music isreally in hte math of the rhythm section.... It's no disgrace ot count, though REALLY tricky rhythms are so tricky you have to feel them, you don't have time to htink them out -- but there are PLENTY of ballets wehre counting is crucial. At the first performance of the Rite of Spring, Nijinsky and ARambert were shouting out he counts from the wings so the dancers would have a hope of moving at the right time. Mark Morris's ballets have very tricky counts. And from what I've heard from people who've stage Balanchine's balelts -- like Theme and Variations -- there are all sorts of places where the accent is OUT where you'd think it would be IN,and so on -- even for the principals.....

I'm with carbro -- I LOVE the wrapping of the foot-- the heel comes forward, the toe goes back. the knee goes sideways, and the leg comes up because it ROTATES...... it's the most beautiful thing

Sorry folks this is OFF_TOPIC -- But I have to confess, I don't know squat about Squat except that my little magpie heart jumped for joy when I saw that word in Helene's post and discovered that she was goddess of parking. I immediately invented a cabillion other domains she could have sovereignty over, and am in fact sketching out a little ballet for Squat and hte seven little Scruples... in the pas de deux, I think Squat will do all the supporting but none of the liftng; some of her court will have wonderful lapses -- cool ways of falling. I haven't gotten very far. at least one should slink, and another could enter on skates and climb the rigging in some curious way, there could be a down-at-heels scruple who could do a 3-legged walk ( the kind like Bill Irwin does where you wear a trenchcoat and there's a fake leg but the audience can't tell which one it is) to some music with an irregular metre, sort of hoboish but charming....

Hans, I'm with you, I WISH they'd put the old SB out on DVD -- but if they aren't allowing regisseurs out to even hte Bolshoi, htey may withold it to make sure the rest of us CAN'T study the text..... I think it was Bakst who designed Diaghilev's "Sleeping Princess," not Benois --AND, man am I not sure of this, but I believe I've read that Nijinskaadded the fish dives to this version. DOug would know that -- maybe Faux pas also -- what were the original steps in htat part of the Act 3 pas de deux? Actually, in Russia, they do supported inside turns into a swoon rather than a fish (I think it's so in hte K Sergeyev version under discussion here, save the fish dive for the end.) i SURE WOULD LOVE to see the panorama..... but never have.

Cargill, I TOTALLY agree with you there -- bureaucracts' requirements don't inspire artists at all -- even a stupid king can ask for things that give an artist something fun to do. I remember Chitresh Das, the Kathak guru who lives in the Bay Area and has taught a LOT of daners now the classical style of India, telling the story of a dance he was about to perform, a virtuoso solo created for a maharaja who loved trains - he wanted a dane that would mimis the sound of a big train coming into a station and coming to a complete stop. Das showed us how he as gong to make all the sound effects, including the echo off the I-beams, down to the escape of steam at the end as the brakes let off their pressure, and then performed the whole thing, which was about 10 minutes long -- he'd already done a thunder-storm earlier that evening, in a dance that showed the wrath of Indra (who sent a hurricane to drown a village that had abandoned his worship and gone over to Krishna -- oh! the mother's faces, the terror on the faces of the children, and hte little finger of krishna, who raised the village up on top of a new mountain and saved them) -- What a fabulous evening that was....

me three on the "pretty ordinary looking"-- There's way too much merely bourreeing around -- for Lilac in particular, but in the birthday scene, when the whole country should be falling asleep, 'even hte fire on the hearth,' you don't see any of that, there's just lots of bourreeing around....

Dirac, you're right...i am sometimes so naive I have no respect for myself the next morning. But I burn candles to Squat, the goddess of parking and SO MANY OTHER THINGS, like how to get down off your high horse..., and thank Helene once again for pointing me in the right direction. SFB DOES have a lot of classics in the rep -- Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty in respectful productions, Don Q in a version that's really well put-together, La Sylphide, Giselle, and (it's not a classic, exactly, but it IS a dramatic ballet in 3 acts) Helgi's version of Romeo an Juliet.... and we could use another charismatic star.

Thanks, Ed, for bringing al this up, and in such a thoughtful way. How by the way are you doing? Where are you now. I'm no Republican, but at the moment I think DanaGioia is doing a good job a the NEA -- given current conditions, I don't know how it could be faring better. The money they're spending, at least on dance, is conservative in a way, but it's not throwing money down a rat-hole -- au contraire, it looks like they're dong some serious backing of the Martha Graham company, which 25 years ago might have looked pretty foolish but right now is looking like a very good thing -- they're wanting to present those ballets to people who've had no chance of seeing them, which not only is a good thing in itself, it keeps the company together. Cargill, I agree with you in general, absolutely, but I'd have to say well, Concerto Barocco was the result of a government-funded good-will tour project, and that's no mean feat. Also, I'd say that Lavrovsky's Romeo and Juliet was a great government-sponsored project -- to my mind, it's possible to read it as anti-Stalinist, though to a stupid censor it conforms to the Pravda line. The crushing power of the state is presented as SO monstrous that it seems to me an indictment of the very comissars who approved it. The same goes for Spartacus, though it's so ugly (esp the music) that it loses some stature, despite the nobility of its theme and hte massive integrity of its composition.

THEY ARE expensive-- Good luck with hte star casting -- but the thing to remember is how amazingly good the orchestra is, just BLAZINGLY good, and the incredible quality of the corps.....

dirac wrote: I wonder how true that is if you're in her league. A ballerina is by definition NOT quotidian. It would certainly be true if you were actually interchangeable with other job-holders, and it IS common practice now for people in the highest positions -- but there's something marvellously old-fashioned, gracious, upstanding, lady-like, to my mind, about doing it this way. I admire her for it, and think it sets a wonderful example to a fearful public. ........................... It would be WONDERFUL if she came to San Francisco. the coffee is very good here, so is the bread, you can't beat it. Our museums, alas, are pretty sucky, but the music's VERY good. Newspapers are terrible, it's true. But it almost never snows. Temperature right now is 72 degrees...... Roses grow without any help. Geraniums are weeds.

Oh yes, Helene, in that version I've seen with Gelsey Kirkland, that section for the ballerina and her court is ravishing.... Bart, how I envy you getting to see a Prodigal presided over by Villella. and i love the idea of there being 15 of his ballets in your top 5 -- that's REALLY good..... But something in the way you said "story ballet" made me think of his Nutcracker, which IMO is one of his greatest works, ESPECIALLY the first act -- I have been very ready to believe that his Don Q is a great ballet because I've always thuought that his handling of the story in Nutcracker is consummate storytelling, so vivid, so poignant, so economical -- the symbols are all fully accounted for realistically, his additions (like the bed, or Marie's crown) are all motivated in a completely natural way when they first appear, but transformed exponentially (like the tree) when the time comes for them to take on their full meaning.... By contrast in Prodigal, there are certainly things (like the fence, and the Siren's cloak) that get transformed ingeniously, and the ingenuity is stunning, but it's not really awesome like cutting the crown off the mouse king and putting it on Marie's head, which just totally takes my breath away, or the way the bed sails out the window into the night and takes you to the other world......

Well, this is like desert island discs -- impossible, and fun.... Helene I agree with you that apollo belongs in the 5 -- and I'd also say that ballet Imperial does NOT. Curious, I'm kinda swayed by Marie-Jeanne's opinion, which is that BI is "not a great ballet" -- similarly, dancers I admire say that T&V is not a great ballet, and I AM inclined to think they're right-- not till you get to the pas de deux, and from then on it does sweep me up -- in Particular, there's a moment where it takes off -- finally -- as he carries her backwards beating to the descending part of the melody. Western is my favorite of the "popular" ballets, Tanny's role is SO funny, it transcends everything. My list -- if it has to be five -- would be Serenade, Apollo, Barocco, Bizet, and 4 T's tied with Agon. I actually prefer 4 T's, which is semi-dancer-proof -- but a great Agon is a greater thing than a great 4 T's. Miss Congeniality is Western.

Solor, my heart goes out to you. To have finally encountered Plisetskaya --even in video! I've seen this one, too --and loved it, it's adorable. If you liked this, check her out as the Persian slave girl -- in "Prince Igor," was it? My Lord! I saw her live in about 1973 in Berkeley, CA, where she headed a little group of stars of the Bolshoi. I was sitting in hte balcony and did not much enjoy the evening. Nina Sorokina was doing grand jetes that went nowhere -- now that I think about it, the Zellerbach stage is small, and the Bolshoi stage is large, and Sorokina probably had to cut everything down to fit the room she had.... but she kept throwing that leg up and coming back down in the same place, and I was wretched. But then Plisetskaya came out in Petit's "Rose Malade," not a great work of art, BUT.... as soon as she started to move, i found myself in a quandary -- what's wrong with me? I can't SEE her. It took me a while to figure out that I was in tears -- Actually, the remarkable thing about that piece was that her movements were incredibly sudden -- her arms seemed to snap, one at a time. It was a pas de deux, and she was lifted, I THINK, from the get-go and probably never put down, but I must say I have no actual memory of he piece except that her arms seemed to break at the elbow and that I was in total emotional uproar and I waited an hour to get her autograph and I told her she broke my heart and she said "Don't break your heart" and signed my book on the centerfold where there was a 2-page picture of her as Carmen and she wrote her name all over her standing leg. It sound like you haven't seen her Swan lake -- the absolutely greatest Odile I've ever seen....

ah yes, that 1987 tour -- Semizorova did Aurora's act 3 dances, beautifully, and then ran forward to bow, like Olive Oyl -- she was so shy. Darling child. And Bylova! What a magnificent creature. She danced Aegina in Spartacus, tore it UP! And at the bows, the huge group bows at the end, Mukhamedov kept sending everybody else forward to bow, it was wonderful to see such self-possession and modesty in a dancer on whom so much hinged. And when they gave Bylova a bouquet the size of a bath-tub, she came forward and threw it into the pit! What did that mean?!? I've wondered about it ever since, but it was the first indication I had of what a strong personal connection their dancers are accustomed to having with their audience -- like a Gospel singer's with the congregation, or a Flamenco dancer's with the public. It made me think of the advantages of living in a country where everybody doesn't have television and feels personally grateful to someone for entertaining them.... Where people in great cities are accustomed to having live artists impinging on their consciousness..... Our dancers don't seem to believe that people are really watching them; I guess under the Soviets, people were used to hte idea that EVERYBODY was watching them, that all of life is a stage -- scary, of course, but exciting.

In 1987 I saw the Bolshoi do act 1 of Romeo and Juliet and act 2 of Spartacus (with Mukhamedov)-- both by Grigorovich. In SanFrancisco, but they might have done that program or a similar one in New York.

I make a lot of noise at performances, sometimes at the end of a variation, even -- if it was really well-danced, sometimes I can't help myself. For some reason, Sarah van Patten makes me do this rather more than most. And i don't know what's going to come out of my mouth -- sometimes it's brava!, sometimes it's "you go, girl!", sometimes it's 'wow!" but at the bows, for some reasons, what I seem to say is "hooray!" -- and hte weird thing is, it comes out when the dancer actually bows -- like at hte moment when s/he drops her eyes, that's when the impulse takes me.... I've almost never felt like booing at the ballet. At a modern dance performance once, where a man was doing unspeakable things to a bag of hamburger, I hollered "demasiado!" (since everything about hte show was in Spanish). And he stopped. There've been times at the opera lately where I wanted to boo hte stage director -- at SF opera, they've started "choreographing" the chorus, who have to come on and DO THINGS which they are obviously embarrassed to do.... the whole section of the audience around me will be seething with embarrassment and indignation at these bizarre stagings (for exmple at the ball in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, which normally has a real ballet to the Polonaise, the chorus did some very awkward step-halt things for 15 minutes, while a colossal chandelier lit itself via som fantastic mechanism that caused little flames to run around it for nearly the whole 15 minutes, which was obviously some designer's hare-brained idea of how to make up for the lack of a ballet.... I REALLY wanted to boo that idea and everybody responsible for it -- but not the chorus, who had merely to suffer, it wasn't their fault. And only a few months later, something equally ludicrous was perpetrated on hte wedding dances in Tchaikovsky's "Queen of Spades" -- the singers looked SO embarrassed, and we were all beside ourselves. But this seems to happen much more often in opera.... Oberon, I'm surprised you SURVIVED booing Danilova. i think I'd have asked you to step outside.

Well, Zerbinetta, that's like making a flower-arrangement out of thistles, oak branches, blackberries, artichokes(ok, bigger thistles), etc -- it can be done beautifully...... the thing about Spartacus that makes it impressive is the intellectual rigor with which everything that's NOT appropriate has been omitted. My favorite trashy ballet is Light Rain -- esp the adagio, with its ne-hooch-kooch music (it sounds like an X-Ray of "Shimmy Shimmy KoKo Pop") and all those legs wafting around like tentacles....

What a shock-- it seemed the world was all before her! I saw her live only once, as the novice in the Cage, in which she was electrifying. but from what I've read, and videos I've seen, she had such a huge range -- and could connect with the core of so many different roles....

Dear Mashinka, Could you tell us a little more about this pas de deux/ I have always wanted to see Jakobson's Spartak, the plastique from photos is poignant and intriguing (those I've seen I believe featured Plisetskaya) -- I've always wanted to know what the continuity was like? How stylized was it? How did mime and dance relate? A number of Jakobson's wonderful choreographic miniatures were performed here in SanFrancisco about a decade ago, by a company from St Petersburg -- I was very impressed -- and have since always wondered how his large pieces work. Thanks, RG, for posting these pictures.

Well said, Drew. Especially the bit about it's easier to dismiss ballet altogether than it is to dismiss petipa.

Hey Richard, thanks for that -- there's some good news there. What I've found with old tapes is that the new machines track SO differently that old tapes are often unreadable. I'm kind of in despair about this, but I've kept the old machines even after I've had to stop using them (eating tapes, etc) hoping against hope that if necessary I'll be able to find someone to make that old motorola work again....

Joseph, I'd keep the videos.... Just in case.... One thing about cds and dvds that's gotten little attention is that they can FAIL -- a scratch or a warp, or some accident, and ALL the information on the disk disappears, and it's irretrievable. it doesn't happen often, but it CAN happen. I'd box the videos, sstore htem in the basement -- of your mother's house if you have to. And if I remember right, store them vertically, not flat.

Mel, I totally agree with you about both of those -- and I should say, Oakland Ballet made a truly convincing case for Fall River Legend. but re Spartacus -- I don't agree that it's a bad ballet. It IS an ugly ballet, but I think it's a great thing, and its ugliness is absolutely necessary to the kind of greatness in it, like some twisted ancient tree that's growing in the desert or hanging onto some mountain crag.... "Spartacus" actually seems to be archaic, it has an epoch, a style, a "register" of images and rhythms that allows a kind of heroic ideal to get portrayed -- the tenacity is the point, Spartacus's ability to hold on and endure not just cruelty but massive indifference to human rights and not sink into despair. It couldn't be beautiful, but it can be sublime....