Paul Parish

I;'m with you, GIna-- Manuel Legris looked competely natural and absolutely beautiful in that Spectre costume, spinning, standing still, twirling his arms overhead, or doing cabrioles.... What art it must take to make all that look unaffected and natural. He's da bomb.....

How about standing room? does your opera house allow standees? In san Francisco, it's about hte price of a movie...... Ther eare some very deedicated standees here, some of whom may see nearly every performance of a ballet htey l0ve -- of course, our ballet is worth standing for... and the house is built so there are some pretty comfortable places to stand......

I remember a famous modern dancer telling me he thought she was the most wonderful dancer at NYCB in the Farrell years -- he preferred her to Farrell, whom he thought of a a dill pickle; kirkland was an exotic flower....

It says in the book that he's like ludicrously tall and bony. It takes a very imaginative performer to play Don QUixote -- Farrell herself IS that imaginative, though some other characteristics I think unfit her for the part/ he really has to be SO imaginative, lost in another world AT TIMES, and then intensely involved in interactions with whoever he's encountered, explaining himself and what he's up to, for a knight must be he pattern of courtesy, and it might reflect badly on Dulcinea del Toboso, and she might HEAR about it.... Luders is the only person mentioned who has a temperament like this -- he already looks haunted, which made him so good as Schumann.... he also has the bone-structure. I'd love to see him do it.

Have to agree with Lasercanary (sp?) that SFB's Baathilde was truly remarkable -- Pascal Leroy, who was a ballerina with the company a few years back, now teaches in hte school and always had a wonderful stage presence. She did nothing to upstage anybody, and yet she was quite fascinating, and I watched her constantly -- watching her watch everybody (especially Albrecht) and think.... She really was an aristocrat, and she was really a person -- you could see her think, and feel, complex feelings.

Am I right? I jus took a nap, never sure if what I think's true after waking up n sat afternoon -- that Allegra kent did bot h the second AND third movements of Bizet (SYmphony in C)? not on the same day, of course....

3rd girl Bizet -- that's what I want!! oh please. Or anybody in Serenade. Take that back, I wouldn't want to be one of the guys in Serenade. That's what I'd want. now that I get to think about it, i'd also love to be James in La Sylphide.

Since the subject has come up on several threads -- art vs technique -- what ABOUT the art, and what about the tension when the dancer was trying something at the very edge of what s/he was comfortable with -- I thought I'd ask people who, what, when did you see someone dance BEYOND their abilities? Atm711 was mentioning how in the 50s dancers did not have the rock-solid balance dancers seem to be able to count on now, and that's changed the quality of things in a way that's not necessarily an improvement (I'm paraphrasing, sorry atm711, I hope I got you right). THe image that comes to mind for me is a video of Marina Semyonova in Odette's variation -- she is NOT ON HER LEG, but I don't care -- it makes all hte more vulnerable and so brave. I guess it is the most poignant performance of that variation I've ever seen, I am incredibly moved by the delicacy and profundity of her performance. Her dancing has such conviction and style, follow-through, the energy and focus and continuity are SO right. Well, maybe i'm laying it on thick, but..... What images come to mind for you all of dancers whose whose artistry shone outdid their technique?

atm711, thank oyu for pointing that out -- that's a very important fact, the adrenaline-energy yuo feel coming form artists has a LOT to do with the emotions yu feel. When it's too easy, -- I often feel this in Swan Lake, actually, where the legs go up too easily and you dont feel the BACK working -- that the tragic feeling is smoething thie ballerina is not acquainted with..... Agon is SO edgy, the tension is so important to it-- though in fact in the performance Acocella showed, when Mitchell fell down on the floor, Adams stayed up -- for QUITE a while she stayed on pointe in arabesque de cote and actually promenaded to croise before she cam down... s either he KEPT HIS HAND RIGHT WHERE IT HAD BEEN, or she was ready for anything... but that's so much what that pas is about, I'll be there for you even if I'm falling down myself.....

Yo Bart, I think Acocella's audience was self-conscious and laughed because we were a lecture-audience, as opposed to an opera-house audience, who sit there in the dark and can be kinda anonymous...... it was nervous laughter, it felt like to me, and as she pointed out how hte siren sat down on his head, it was just amazingly obvious that the ballerina HAD indeed just sat down on his head... so you had to laugh. But it wasn't the inability of the dancers to control hte mood rather, CAcocella's audience was looking at a 2-dimensional video under lecture-conditions, where laughing was a way of encouraging Acocella to go ahead with her bad self. And let me second Leigh's feelings about Mitchell -- His memories are fanciful, entertaining indeed but not to be trusted. My jaw dropped the night he was talkng about Agon and said that' well, no, tanny had not come down with polio yet....." She most certainly HAD by that time. AND i have to say, Garis's idea that the cavalier's manipulations of hte ballernia's legs in Agon have SOMETHING to do with the physical therapy Balanchine was doing with Tanny's now-paralyzed legs, is absolutely compelling to me. Garis made the suggestion diffidently, used a great deal of tact -- which may have been necessary at hte time, when it was a new and maybe shocking idea. But to my mind anybody looking at the ballet now and thinking about how Balanchine was spending maybe an hour a day trying to get his wifes legs to move on their own power again (in hte 50's they seem to have thought that maybe you could regenerate the nerve-paths by manipulating hte muscles) -- to my mind that idea just seems compelling.

Dirac, thanks for that qualifying remark. I regretted the force of my statement after I made it -- there is great academic criticism (Johnson, Coleridge, Bradley on Shakespeare; the best criticism of ballet has been by poets like Gauthier and Danby, but as academics go Garis is very very good). I too have benefited from a lot of it. I dislike the current fashions, myself, though here are some great exponents practising in them. It's a style that began in France, and the Ggreat French exponents were wonderful writers. (Barthes is virtually a poet.) Unfortunately the Americans in their wake mostly can't measure up; it's a style that is SO demanding that only a few critics can use it without being overwhelmed by the size of the nouns they're trying to heave about. I must also say, that I only heard about Acocella's saying that "current academic criticism is toxic to the reader, the writer, and the subject' frm someone who was there and has herself a wicked way with words. But I am sure that she understood acocella and got the gist of it right. And indeed, I'd recommen\d Acocella's writings in defense of AWila Cather to anybody who'd like to konw what these issues are, and also to get some familiarity with a great writer who's seriously overlooked these days -- "The Professor's House" is a book I read on Acocella's recommendation, and I'm really glad I read it.

Ari, I think you've isolated an etremely imprtant issue. ANd you've reminded me how much we lost in San Francisco when Julie Diana left for Philadelphia. She could play a plausible virgin. I remember seeing her as a student in Suki Schorer's class and noticing htis quality in her then, and she still had it after almost a decade here -- her first act Giselle was our best by far There was an extraordinary hush that came over evrything when she saw Bathilde's dress go by. That was the first indicatoinof her suddenly having to imagine a world really beyond anything she'd known -- when she saw the dress cross the stage in front of her. most Giselles don't give you hte idea until they go lift the skirt; but she communicated it to us before bathilde had sat down. I don't know how she did it -- but it had the proverbial effect of "opening her eyes." and Carbro, I have no doubt that Kirkland was just as you say -- she had a special affinity with the character.

I was there at the talk, and have to say that I thought it was a very good thing. Acocella was -- among other things -- taking on the feminist critics who attacked Balanchine for exploiting the female body, and ultimately claimed that B gave women their whole bodies -- including the crotch -- to use as artists in a generous, free, and liberating way. (I can't remember her words exactly there.) It was really valuable for her to do this in a university context, for that's where the criticism came from. (Acocella had been broght to Berkeley as the Avenali Lecturer in he Humanities.) It was particularly strong that Acocella could point out that in the 80's, when feminism was "first-stage," it was necessary for them to make these attacks on Balanchine (she's not opposed to consciousness-raising and all that) and handsomely pointed out that Ann Daley (sp?) who's a fine critic, has taken a more nuanced position since. Also, for context -- Acocella's not keen on "academic" criticism, which she told a group of students a few days before, she considers to be toxic to the writer, the reader, and the subject. I agree with that assessment. I'd say she's taking a humane position aligned with the "wisdom" tradition, and opposing those of the "knowledge" tradition, which is right now involved in polysyllabic theorizing and career-making, in shocking disregard of the evidence. So it was a great thing that she brought her guns to bear on that. It's also true, i so agree, it was wonderful -- and a rare privilege -- to SEE the Agon pas de deux with Mitchell and Adams, complete, entire, filmed within a year of the debut, in a very grainy but totally legible recording made by the CBC. She showed the whole thing. If she'd had another hour, I wish she could have gone into all the issues raised by Allegra Kent's eroticism -- Bugaku, though, is not available on tape, but Kent's swooning manner with Agon IS something we can see (how she throws her head back, inviting Mitchell to drop her into those splits, and she goes all the way down). It would have enriched the talk without having in any way detracted from her point, that Balanchine empowered women dancers rather than demeaned them. she did say somethig I couldn't agree with, that dancers don't/can't go past the 180 degree penchee. I have to disagree with that, I've seen Joanna Berman go past 6 o'clock, in Tomasson's Concerto in d, and Darci Kistler also in Bizet. But this is a tiny point.

We're n hte same page -- it's everything at once, good DANCING... ps, I apologize for all those typos in that post... reeally awful.... Krysanova must not have been in it. You'd have remembered her. she had 2 big variatoins in Raymonda and just knoked our socks off. Much like Kobakhidze in phrasing, loft, clarity, but a rounder-faced, "prettier" girlier girl.....

Leigh, Nelli was fabulous here in Raymnda--yes, she did a variation in hte dream, and she was down front in the last act.... she and Krysanova -- you dind't mention HER!!! was she dancing in Boston? -- completely made me go crazy with delight. I wasn't just technical,. they dance like Americans, or rather, in he liberated Russian style -- relaly musical, such gusto in he action, when everything else is so clear what it reveals is wonderful phrasing.... are we on he same pak\ge?

I saw that 1976 performance, too, Talespinner-- and indeed, I'll never forget it. the fusion of dancing and acting was beyond anythng I've seen since. In act 2, when Baryshnikov went t try to touch Makarova, his hands went right through her body..... i know it didn't happen, but I DID see it -- the illusion was so strong, which means I guess that both knew how to make it happen technically and both knew how to stand by it emotionally..... And in the first act, Baryshnikov was a nervous wreck except when Giselle was around..... he already looked like he was about to explode..... how could he bring himself to tell her he was a prince? he DID NOT WANT TO BE A PRINCE. (And more than Odette wants to be a swan -- but that 's another ballet). On hte other hand, with Lacarra, I saw her on opening night, when she fell off point in the toe hops. Before that happened, she already seemed phony as Giselle; she WAS a beautiful wraith-like creature in act 2, but her act 1 had no conviction to me. The first act girl has got to be real. LeBlanc was real. I don't insist on Ulanova, I'll take Chauviree (Giselle as an aristocrat's love child, or grandchild), or Seymour -- a real peasant girl. Makarova had a very thoroughly thought- through characterization, and Ananiashvili was a high-strung, wrong-side-of-the-blanket Giselle; Kirkland I never saw, but she actuallyWAS Giselle, or a soul-mate, deep down. I seem to be the only person who loved Kristin Long in the first act. I wrote about it this week in Danceview, so I won't repeat myself. I admit the second act wasn't great (Elizabeth Miner was great, as moyna, and Nedviguine danced heroically).... But I loved the first. Those of you who did not like Long are pretty dismissive. you don't say why.What did you not like? WHY not?

I can't wait to see Part -- from all I've heard. but my qestion is, can Ballet Imperial be a more taxing role than Raymonda? She's got 6 or 7 solos, plus all the pdd....

Since the only purpose of art is to give you an experience, but it's an experience YOU have to have, you can go a long time feeling one thing about a ballet or painting or novel and later find that a new experience of it is radically different from the last one. I like re-visiting paintings and novels and ballets -- Some can be hard nuts to crack, others can be so easy that you can go years without knowing what they "mean" -- or even what they're SAYING. Lets’ talk about something other than ballets -- I remember being at a party dancing and my friend Jon was singing along to this song, a pretty pretty song by the Beatles, "How does it feel to be/ one of the beautiful/ people?" And i was shocked to realize that those were the words... I'd been listening to that song on the radio and nodding my head to it years already and never had a clue that it was ironic..... Beautiful PEOPLE? Second example: I bought a Penguin paperback of Ivy Compton-Burnett's "A house and its Head" at a train station and tried to read it on my trip and could not get through the first page. Got home, put it on a shelf, every year or so I'd try again. Could not get through the first page. Dame Ivy never identifies who's talking, and the story is almost all dialogue. Finally, after about 10 years, i got it -- I was shocked. It was horrifying. This was a family around the breakfast table and they were being SO cruel to each other, it was like Wuthering Heights. Once you heard the voices, the tone carried it; and the tones were unbelievable. It was hard to tell which was harder to accept: A) the sustained acceptance of the rules of conversational engagement among the family, or B) the venom, the naked contempt, the brazen-faced parade of such ugly behavior. But I had t be ready to suffer that, and it wasn’t till I understood more about my own family -- or had gotten far enough away from them to feel safe – that I was ready to see the resentments, rivalries, treacheries, sororicidal passions at play.

Dream-like-- Once when I was living in England, back in abut 1970, and had recently seen Sibley and Dowell in "Swan lake" I was stoned at a party and we were all dancing to "Black Magic Woman" and I had a vision of Sibley and sort of "turned into" her-- it's one of the truly great experiences of my life, though it's sort of a hallucination.... kinesthetic identificatoin recollected and relived.

Jane, let me second Dale's recomendaition of Garis's book as a way to place haggin, whom I consider agreat critic, and one of the greats in an era of greats -- and hte lucky ones, who were responding to Balanchine's new works along with everybody else, when they were new -- He's certainly abrasive, and he actually prided himself on it, or at least, on his analytic astringency -- Garis may make it easier to see how that could have seemed heroic at the time -- which was God knows, a VERY different time from now, when a daily paper like the New York Herald Tribune had critics of the caliber of Edwin Denby and Virgil Thompson, people who actually TOLD you things. Garis was MY teacher, so I'm biased -- though there's no law says you have to admire your teachers. I should say his example of honest engagement and response really inspired me. I admire his book "Following Balanchine" enormously -- it's an "Apologia pro vita sua," an intellectual autobiography concentrating on how encountering Balanchine became a process of self-discovery. A brave, generous testament; he's bearing witness, like a gospel singer, to his encounter with a kind of prophet. And Haggin was his first introduction to this kind of spiritual experience. If you take a look at the early chapters, you'll see how Denby and Haggin (SUCH different personalities) could both be heroes to a young intellectual such as Garis trying to find some sense of what was going on and what he himself ought to do. I don't know that this will make you like Haggin. But I do think it's great that you want to read him and give him a chance. It might be useful, in thinking about what value it may have had for Haggin to be so exacting -- why did he have to come up with expressoins like "the ballerina operation" to analyze how differently Verdy moves from the rest of us -- to consider the general gaseousness of standard American discourse in the US in hte 50s. I also wonder how much the contentiousness and shrillness came from the energies of gay intellectuals whose energy for SCRUTINIZING ballet was partly a sign of the times -- "Scrutiny" was the name of an important literary journal of that era -- and also tempting for closeted gays, for whom more open, "honest" comment might have left them open not only to charges of naivete but also to having their emotions legible enough that their homosexuality might be detectable. (I THINK Haggin was gay, but i can't remember why I assume that.)

I'm with pugbee-- most of my ballet dreams are GOOD dreams, actually , WONDERFUL dreams (though i have dreamt that i am about to dance and can't remember if it starts right foot front or back -- but that happens to me in class)... they're like the dreams I used to have that I'm flying over some green fields -- they're either dreams of thirteen turns a la Carrenyo, SO quiet and with a perfect spot, or that I'm jumping and here are wall these effortless beats happening beneath me....

Hans, I wsa wondering hte same thing about paloma Herrera -- not that she didn't have a fair amount of technique, but her temperament wasn't developed, and she became confirmed so early in some unfortunate mannerisms.... but worse than that, the deadness of her performances in the last few years make it seem that she lacks character, that that human development which should have taken place gradually, in its own good time, was rushed and may unfortunately never take place (as Michael Jackson may never grow up). I don't wish this upon her -- and, not living in New York, I haven't had a chance to follow her development. But I was certainly horrified by a performance as Giselle in which it was almost impossible to find her onstage,vshe was so drab. I'd write it off to a bad day, except that I see people who DO live in New Yorrk comment on this often enough to make it seem that there's a pattern.

I'd say Farrell was one of hte great beauties of hte sixties..... She looked astonishingly similar to one of the most fashonable models of that time, Jean Shrimpton, and English woman, a self-described "Cockney" whose refreshing lack of pretension suited the times as well. Shrimpton had huge eyes and a famously photogenic overbite; for a while in the late 60's all beauty magazines featured girls with their two front teeth showing. Gelsey Kirkland, who had naturally thin lips, like mary Pickford's, went and got a silicone implant in her upper lip to create that line. Farrell's face typified certain qualities -- vulnerability, inwardness in particular -- that were very important in that era. Her face and body made her beautiful even before she started to move - and then, there were those moves!

A quirky list Balanchine: Serenade, Symphony in C, 4 T's, Nutcracker, Steadfast Tin SOldier Robbins: Dances at a Gathering, Fancy Free, Fiddler on hte Roof, Glass Pieces, High Button Shoes Petipa: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Don Quixote, La Bayadere, Giselle Ashton: La Fille Mal Gardee, The Dream, A Month in hte COuntry, Enigma Variations, Monotones Paul Taylor: Big Bertha, Three Epitaphs, Company B, the Bach COncerto, Last Look Martha Gaham: Primitive Mysteries, Appalachian Spring, Lamentation, Deaths and Entrances, that New Mexico piece Merce Cunningham: SOunddance, Summerspace, Pictures, Rainforest, Septet MarkMorris: Maelstrom; l"Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato; Dido and Aeneas, Shroud of White; Jealousy Saint-Leon: Coppellia, la Vivandiere bOURNONVILLE: la Sylphide, A Folk Tale, Napoli, Lifeguards, Konservatoriet

The ABTvideo is very very fine -- and van Hamel and Renvall gave great performances. Thanks, Glebb, for clearing that up abut the pointe shoes..... SF Ballet danced it around the same time that Oakland was doing it, and they did not dance it as wel -- they didn't creat e the same sense of community, of people isolated in thieir grief but still profoundly in touch as a community. Oakland's were almost like a school of fish, the group mind was \s ostrong. BUT at SFB, there was a dancer who REALLY had it -- Grace Maduell, who later went to Birmingham Royal with her husband David Justin and I hear later retired, was SO eloquent in hte piece.She did hte great jumping dance, I think it was van Hamel's role. Maduell was a very distinctive dancer; I missed her the other night in "Company B," where she was the first to dance "There will never be another you" ten years ago. Her back was very expresive.