Paul Parish

If you were to list four "bloody crucial points" about the art of Marius Petipa, what would they be? Or make it the ten most significant things about him as a choreographer -- imagine you were giving a lecture to the rest of us, what would be the things you'd MOST want to bring out? Say you had an hour (55 minutes), what would be your priorities? What clips would you show us? Seriously -- if you thoguht we REALLY wanted to know, to be enlightened, turned on, to have his world opened up to us -- what would you say?

The dance recording that always makes me cringe (aside from Toumanova's peg-legged Don Q variation, she's just poking at the floor) is Gene Kelly's "Be a Clown" with the Nicholas Brothers.... because the Nicholas Brothers totally outclass Kelly and make kelly's choreography look like kitschy hokum -- they can't help it, they're really trying to do his white-bread moves, and they've got NOTHING to DO but jerk from pose to pose. Their deep joy in dancing makes Kelly's look like tooth-paste salesmanship....

Sherri did "Lambarena"? No wonder there's interest in that ballet cropping up on the boards.... We REALLY miss her here in SF. What a WONDERFUL dancer I take it she did the allegro solo -- you guys should know that that solo, with all its jumps and all that torque in the back comes at the END of hte ballet, when she's already danced her shoes off.... but by then Evelyn (Cisneros, for whom the ballet was made) was riding high, she had such amazing stamina. Tina danced it here last year -- I never saw Sherri do it, WISH I HAD, but she has the willingness to go to her edge, and to USE her back -- which could make that solo really joyous. I really wish I'd been there.... and justdoit, let me echo Leigh's remark about what Balanchine liked -- "Perfect is boring" all his dancers say he wanted ENERGY. When Darci Kistler was a kid at the barre one day she kicked so hard in the grand battements she knocked herself off her standing leg and fell down - and Balanchine (as the story goes) said "Now THAT's what I want to see!" His wittiest saying, wickedly funny, about the Royal Ballet's "correct" style, was how "in England if you're awake it's vulgar already."

THanks, guys -- keep it coming. I seem to be fascinated with Raymonda right now and would love to hear about great performances anyone has seen. It would also be great to hear of videos/dvds of real contenders. Is there a great version available? More than one? of the whole ballet, or of "Raymonda Pas de Dix"? And has anyone one this board DANCED it? (GINA NESS, how about you?) What's it like to do it? I love the fusion of character movement and advanced classicism.......

Amitava said"To be honest, if it was acceptable to clap, I find many transition movements, choreography sequences, and manner in with even seemingly simple moves are made, far more impressive that doing 32 turns. Somehow I cannot but help that a lot of the audience may not appreciate the true core spirit of the choreography, and get carried by the more pedestrian (well perhaps not the best word, but you know what I mean) aspects of the dance. It would be nice to have soft murmur type of bravos as a compromise I guess for special moments. " Oh yes, I know exactly what you mean, and in fact I usually do say things like "beautiful!' under my breath when somebody does something with finesse. And at flamenco concerts, you'll hear people saying "Ole!" in quiet tones -- it's not like "Bravo!" which is usually shouted at the end, but rather it's usually pretty quiet, often in the transition from one phrase to another, and said in satisfaction, as if the English translation would be "yes." And indeed, that does sound like the voice of someone who's following the proceedings at a very deep level.

barbarafn, it was created for Evelyn Cisneros and was a wonderful vehicle for her personality and technical strengths. She was capable of great warmth and joy in dancing and was very strong -- it was made to make a strong dancer look like all the warmth of he earth. Her costume, by Sandra Woodall, was on the cover of Dance magazine that year -- a wonderful clinging silk dress, mostly red, that left her free to move and looked like red light refracted through a prism, dappled with many colors in patterns that reminded people of African designs. I wrote a long enthusiastic description of it in Ballet Review in 1995, so if you can find that issue you could read a lot about it in detail. Briefly, Caniparoli collaborated with two great west-African dancer/musicians who live in the Bay Area, Dr Zak And Mme Naomi Diouf, to fuse west african steps, rhythms, and movements for the spine and arms with ballet -- very beautiful. It was probably the biggest hit of that year in SF. It's been staged all over the world. The first cast was outstanding. To my mind none of the revivals have showed the rib-isolations, the beautiful (and very difficult) off-center placement of the spine, the big undulations through the back which were a BIG part of the excitement of the premiere -- Julia Adam REALLY put her back into it, as did Hoisington, David justin was magnificent in a different way, and Askia Swift was out of this world with the fluctuations in the lumbar spine -- They made it really thrilling. I'd post the review, but I don't have it on my hard-drive. but Ballet Review may be in your library. Why do you ask about it? How have you heard about it?

Leigh, I wish to God i could remember it all in really accurate detail. To make these comparisons, it would be easier in a sense if I'd just been taking notes and cataloguing the similarities -- but I wasn't. I saw the Stanislavsky first, and then ABT's quite soon after -- I remember talking about the similarities with George Jackson, who had also been struck by some resemblances, I believe, which makes me more confident. I also wish that everybody could see the Moscow/Stanislavsky version, which I really admire. Lots of theater/ballet people in SF saw it and felt the same -- it was staged in a small, Broadway-style house, like the Golden Gate Theater (where by the way, the Moscow Classical ballet had appeared fifteen years ago, our first sight of both Maximova and Malakhov). The Moscow/Stanislavsky version is really intelligent dramatically -- rather old-fashioned in terms of steps, a pas de quatre in the first act that made me feel like I'd been sucking on violet pastilles -- but it streamlines the action in a way that makes real theater sense -- like those high walls, they create a claustrophobic atmosphere that heightens the momentousness of everything, make you feel the kingdom NEEDS an heir, and make it seem likely that someone’s going to do something precipitate (“far un precipizio,” as the y say in Italian opera). And Act 3 is lurid in the extreme -- ABT's is actually less so -- Odile is almost a hallucination -- which is kinda cheesily effected by von ROthbart's enormous red cloak. In the Spanish dance, the lead female dancer disappears behind vB's cloak, the Prince looks bewildered, then Odile steps out as if she WERE the Spanish dancer and then disappears behind the cloak and things are "back to normal" -- IF I REMEMBER THIS RIGHT, it was hallucinatory to me and I wondered IF I HAD seen it myself! And doesn't Gomes get particularly into the act in the Spanish segment? I wouldn't be surprised if McKenzie owed something to Bourne's version – I hadn't thought ot THAT. Yeah, the prince is passive and bewildered in those versions. ABT's version turns lots of the Stanislavsky vB's charlatanry hypnotic-command into dance-command-- an arabesque balance held for like 8 counts in utter stillness, and girls swooning to DANCE with Gomes.... that the Stanislavsky kept in the form of mime. ABT's ends up feeling more decorative, less primal -- thought the technique on display is amazing, it doesn't translate into making you BELIEVE in von B's power (as he technique on display in la Sylphide makes you believe that the Sylph is mildly supernatural) but you just feel ABT's stumbled on a real clever pretext.... My feeling is that the Stanislavsky has greater integrity....

Rockwell seems not to know how astoundingly lurid and shocking McKenzies's version of Act 3 was to all of us who knew really traditional St Petersburg-derived versions of "Swan Lake." It's one of the bizarre things about his appointment -- holes seem to open up in his knowledge and just gape at us -- Alexandra, I could HEAR your jaw drop. "Canonic" it is not (not yet). BUT..... for anybody who's seen the Moscow Stanislavsky Ballet's venerable version of "Swan Lake," McKenzies's version will look VERY familiar, for he's stolen most of his original-seeming ideas from their production (notably, the compellingly dangerous sexy Act 3 von Rothbart), disguised them slightly to make the theft less obvious and also to exploit GOmes' virtuosity (which the Stanislavsky's can't match), without taking the Stnanislavsky's wonderful tall craggy sets (even the first act is set in a sunken garden, the Queen Mother enters down a flight of stairs up right), which set up the ultimate jump off the cliff and make it magnificently telling. SO ABT's is in a sense more in the tradition than I would have ever thought -- a Moscow tradition. If the Stanislavsky hadn't come through SF a few years back and shaken us up pretty good -- for strange as it was, the Stanislasky's was NOT foolish, like Zefirelli's or messy (like parts of Makarova's), but a development in line with Gorsky's ways of making the Petipa ballets make more sense theatrically and psychologically, and that IS the Moscow tradition.

In San Francisco we've been really blessed with her students -- Tina and Sherri LeBlanc, Kristin Long, Vanessa Zahorian, Julie Diana, Jeff Stanton, Zachary Hench. I have to agree with blizzardqueen, their training has not inhibited them but set them free to go up and come down when they choose -- VERY different dancers, dance personalities. All of them musical, too.... perhaps that's Tomasson's choosing. but maybe Marcia Dale Weary can even teach MUSICALITY.

Monica mason was a great Myrta live -- I saw her in 1970 or 71, will never forget it -- she was adamant, but she wasn't mean. it was like hegel's view of tragedy, where evil is not really the characteristic of the antagonist. But for EVIL, one of the greatest villainesses I've ever seen was the stepmother in "Fall River Legend," as danced by the Oakland ballet, who took deMille's ballet seriously and delivered it like it was Martha Graham, somewhere around 1990. It was a stunning experience for us, almost on the level of "les Noces." That company had powerful interpretive dancers, and they were downright anti-Balanchine in their determination to dance dramatically and with conviction. When ABT came through with it just a year or so later, everybody in it looked a little embarrassed to be dancing in this old thing. But Summer Lee Rhattigan was simply amazing as Lizzie Borden, and Alison Deane was really horrifyingly cruel to her as the stepmother. That axe just gleaming away in the stump down-stage left, waiting....

I'm of 2 minds about the clapping that starts on count 13 of the 32 fouettes --it annoys me sometimes, but on the other hand, I like it when the audience gets excited, and would just for once in my life LOVE to be in the house when the audience stopped the show and made the performer do that whole variation again -- "Bis! Bis!" they'd cry, and Sublimova would "have to" do her variation all over again; it used to happen all the time. Even at the movies, famously those of the Nicholas Brothers, audiences regularly made the projectionist stop the movie, rewind, and show the "Down Argentine Way' dance again, and maybe again. What happens in the fouettes, I think, is that the audience is unconsciously counting, and when the number starts to equal the largest number of these exciting things in a row that they can imagine (i.e., 16), they can't contain themselves -- it's a form of premature ejaculation. Maybe as a guy I am more likely to forgive. They always stop clapping when it gets to 17 or 18 and she's still going -- I'd like to think that it's because they're non-plussed that the event so far exceeds what they could have imagined that they are stunned -- but sometimes it's clear that they just realize that they were wrong. If the ballerina is tiring, of course, the end of the applause is demoralizing for everybody – and so often the ballerina IS beginning to lose it, or has planned badly and began with extra doubles and such, which she has to drop as she lowers her expectations and finally hopes just to make it to the end without losing her balance altogether. BUT…on those wonderful occasions when she’s still building her phrasing, getting her second wind, and maybe throwing in surprise doubles on a whim (as Sibley used to do), the REAL end is overwhelmingly exciting. Of course, it takes either A) a staggeringly spirited performance or B) a largely naive audience for the first 16 fouettes to make more than a smattering of applause (given how often at galas we see this stunt), and who wants to feel like they're part of a houseful of dorks? But I still really like it when the diva is delivering and the audience is losing it. The phenomenon of the clapping-early is related to the way we know if the song says "moon" at the end of the second line, it's almost certain to say either "croon," "spoon," or "June" at the end of the fourth -- it just means the audience is tuned in, has got the beat, and is anticipating what's coming -- and that's a good thing. That's what you have to have as a basis....

Alexandra, The Freddie Franklin link no longer works-- could you give us a current URL to the "living History" piece? What a great idea, for McKenzie to cast Franklin as the tutor..... Such things should happen more often -- At SFB, we ought to see Vollmar onstage at court in Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. Way too often, the extras are just that -- tall kids from the school who have no idea how to comport themselves onstage.

Which do you think has the most of what you like the best? I recently saw Sylvie Guillem's performance in JUST the variation on an old tape -- which I both admired and found creepy, over-refined. Her detailing is awesome, but the phrasing is ..... je ne sais quois. I preferrred the way it was DANCED -- this is going to sound weird -- recently here live in Berkeley by both the Bolshoi AND the Trockaderos, in terms of timing, the moment when the falling backwards turned into bourrees, etc. Guillem's by contrast seemed contrived and superficial.... though, good lord, WHAT a surface! Those feet, the petite batterie she did WITH them! The porte de bras! the hauteur! Do you like her loud handclap? (Yes, I say) Do you li8ke her hip-thrusts (no, I don't). Are they authentic? It IS a magnificent performance. But is there one better? Which do you like best?

how many dancers do you have? what are their strengths? what resources do you have for costumes/lighting? Can you afford silent pointe shoes?

THere's a WONDERFUL photo of Lifar as Apollo on hte cover of this season's Ballet Review.

My thanks, too, Chiapuris-- you make it present, I'm quite excited.... I'm pulling fr Krysanova, but the Matvienko duo seems to have had God on their side that night...... It's wonderful when BOTH dancers are really on. Wish I'd seen that, it sounds so fully realized.

maybe it's like creme de la creme -- in effect, cake flour, the softest.... the cool thing about the fairies is the variety in hteir music and their dances -- each one so particular, so vivid, and so different.... i think of their toe-hops as Petipa's way of showing the latet in pointe work, but with a very poetic aim -- he makes them tiny like Shakespeare's fairies (who used walnut shells for their carriages), like dragonflies and other creatures that can run around on the surface of water. Ah, the bread-crumb fairy is my girl.... there was a great thread about this several years back, and I dug out my Wiley and quoted Petipa's detailed and poetic instructions to Tchaikovsky, how he wanted to hear the sound of hte bread-crumbs falling in the music. I can't find it exactly again, but Petipa loved what Tchaikovsky provided, the little plucked-string sounds making a delicate melody..... It was VERY beautifully danced in SanFrancisco (where Helgi Tomasson renamed her the Fairy of Tenderness and set it at a quite slow andante) by Shannon Lilly, who did hte toe hops with a silky, soft, exquisite quality and exquisite line in he upper body.... there's some controversy about this variation, Sergeyev's version does not have a quick temps de fleches at the end of the phrase (which most Russians now use, and TOmasson used in his). That was certainly the Royal Ballet's version, until Makarova's staging -- I wonder if she changed that(???) Jane, Mel, Glebb, do you know?

just re-read this thread, and wow, Mel, you really said it. For the Bournonville Celebration the RDB has issued a DVD of the "schools" -- i.e., of the set Bournonville classes -- so the rest of us can see what Mel's tlaking about. There's also a wonderful video of 50 Bournnville combinations, danced by Rose Gad, who's divine in it, and Johann Kobborg (sp), who's almost equally wonderful -- and it gives you a chance to see the very particular steps he used (such as pas de bourree to second position, or the hobble steps which some people call Danish Bourrees, since they're many close little steps that stay in plie and almost always precede a medium-grand jete and make it look light and floating and effortless, and hte exquisite Danish tombe pas de bourree which looks almost like cabriole pas de bourree, the timing is so light, and hte wonderful little turns in sur le coup de pied. O they are delicious......)

Off-TOPIC... Sorry, guys this is really silly, BUT I always thought the expression was "hear! hear!" (like, "Listen to this woman!"), not 'here! here!" (though "There, there" is definitely correct, and "their, their" is not).

Irish dancing is intoxicating..... Last week in San Francisco the Ethnic Dance Festival presented Murphy's Irish Dancers, a folkloric association that's been going here for decades, and their kids are entrancing. Especially the tinies -- there were kids out there who looked four or five years old, demonstrating remarkable mastery (and presence of mind). There was by the way nothing creepy or exploitative about this to my eye -- it looked likeh they were enjoying themselves, thinking hard (that "don't bother me, I'm busy" face was seen much of the time) -- But I felt no harm at all in that. It's food for thought, how kids love to solve movement problems no wonder they play the computer versions of pinball)... The most fun of all was to see the Chinese dancers in the lobby after the show trying to learn the Irish steps. They'd just done a willowy Manchu ballet, looking like Les Biches (I wondered if Nijinska had ever seen one of these court ballets from the early twentieth century), wearing marvellous shoes with a white 3-inch box platform in the middle of the foot, under the instep. And they could DO some of the irish steps, and they weren't afraid to fall down trying. Edited at poster's request to insert link. This link will take you photo of a Chinese dancer from the festival. She's on the left side of your screen -- just scroll down a bit.

THERE ARE so many different kinds of bourrees-- Pavlova's (that I've seen) were very agitated, with the front knee quite bowed and the back leg chasing the front -- totally appropriate for the Dying Swan. She may have used a very different action for Giselle..... For chaste bourrees, nothing surpasses Suzanne Farrell's in the Preghiera of Mozartiana, which uses Bouree a GREAT deal and has many different kinds of bourrees in it (turned in, turned out, pencil-straight legs, knees slightly bowed) -- she moves like a plume of sand..... But the exotic, voluptuous bourree emphasizes the flexibility of the ankle - -and of course only dancers whose ankles HAVE a great deal of stretch can do this. With every step there's a pulse at the very top of the foot, like a rapid heartbeat -- it's a hyperextension, of course, which somehow creates the optical illusion that the leg has gotten longer, it bows at the ankle, and the feet themselves seem to be taking the steps, the back foot seems to knock the other forward. Absolutely intoxicating sight, fantastic in roles like Juliet or Thais The foremost proponent of bourrees like these in my memory -- I can still see her doing these, the feet look like pearls, the very ribbons gleam -- is a dancer many of you may have never seen, Corinne Jonas, who was a student of Maria Vegh in Marin County and ballerina at Houston Ballet, and ended her career at Diablo Ballet near San Francisco.

Wish I'd been there to see all this. Wonderful that they DID do it --especially after preventing the Cubans from dancing Sylphides last year, to hear that their version did have a real heart-beat. Just read a WONDERFUL review of it by Apollinaire Scherr in Newsday..... by a roundabout method, was referred by a friend to the link on Ballet.co, so if you missed the link to it that was doubtless posted here a week ago, here's the URL again http://www.newsday.com/features/printediti...-features-print What I love about it is it's so poetic: she's writing in Newsday, of all places, of the Romantic stage as "the mind of man" and the relation of the sylphs to the nightingale's song in Keats's "Ode", the "murmurous haunt" that the dancing Sylphides evoke. And she's really good on Petroushka, too.

It's very exciting to read your reports... Thanks Natalia for organizing and translating, and Chiapuris, for reporting from the sessoins... I'm pulling for Krysanova, but she's the only one I've seen -- totally fell in love with her when the Bolshoi came here (Berkeley, California) last year; she was a soloist in Raymonda. Her technique was very fine, but her DANCING was out of this world.

I sure wish I had seen the show -- I've TREMENDOUSLY admired the clips of Dulcinea's dances that were shown in PBS's Farrell video. But I have to say, I am very impressed by Rockwell's review. I have never seen him write better -- he's done his homework, but put that in the background, and gone with a mind open to a complex spectacle, the most expressive moments of which will be danced. If he's too generous, I couldn't say -- but he's certainly responded with a large imagination, and to the piece itself, not some idea of what it should have been..

"Anyway!" O it's so musical.That's the best. I'm learning so much from this thread....