Paul Parish

Glebb, I also find this ballet very moving, more than I can really account for. The songs themselves are heart-breaking, and don't "need" the ballet. It might be worth it for you to look for one of the great recordings of them by the English singer Kathleen Ferrier, whose interpretation has not been surpassed. She was a sniger who could make Schwarzkopf and von karajan break down and cry. I haven't seen "Dark Elegies much, but two of the best performances have been by the Oakland Ballet and by the Jose Limon Dance Company, both of whom broght great weight and power to the performances. The Limon women did NOT wear pointe shoes, but their feet were like daggers in the glissades, their jumps were magnificently shaped, and all their work on releve was so strong, their feet were so beautiful, I was convinced this was a valid way to dance hte ballet. It seems obvious that Tudor was making some kind of homage to Central European modern dance -- the costumes, the dancers' lines, the simplicity, economy, the formations, the use of ritual, the idealization of the earthy common people and their dance, all seem to owe a lot -- well maybe to Les Noces (if he ever saw it, of which I'm not sure -- Ashton did, he worked with Nijinska in Rubenstein's company, but i don't know that Tudor did) to Rambert' s background in German modern dance. It looks Wigman-esque to me. It's a great ballet.

hockeyfan/Helene -- I actually like Zahorian a lot, you can't help it, she's got gumption. She's not very musical -- but then, neither was Spessivtseva, and even Balanchine adored her... You don't have to be musical for everything - -but I think to make "7 for 8" interesting, you DO -- I really miss Julie Diana in the adage role. wish I'd seen Nutnaree Pithit-SUksun (sp?) in the role, for though Tan has a fascinating line in it, I don't find her phrasing musical, and it dulls that part...... But again, I'm SO glad you came down to see these shows, and it was wonderful to get your response, in so much detail.

THis is a terrible shock. Like many people, I know his actual dancing mostly from the "Mozartiana" which is available on video. What vitality and WIT!!!!Thsoe steps he makes so scouring, so incisive, WHAT ENERGY!!!!! And as Leigh says, he was a very important link in keeping he Robbins rep alive an in shape. THis is so saddening.

Thanks for the detailed report, GWTW -- We in SanFrancisco really are eager for word on Julie Diana, whem we really miss for her musicality and tenderness; she's an old-fashioned girl, was our best Juliet, her Giselle had dimensions to I had NEVER seen before... when she saw Bathilde's dress, it was..... we could feel her response as if from hte inside. SHe really has an imagination. I think One more for my baby is meant to have some struggle in it -- I saw it in Berkeley 10 years ago with Tharps own company, and herself in that role -- and it was almost "Show me the way to go home", a hilarious drunken mime scene as much as a dance.... It's not politically correct to do comic drunk-acts any more, but ten years ago that wasn't so fierce; Thapr was off balance most of the time, if I remember right, and at one point I think she fell off his back (ormaybe she was just about to -- I can't remember the detail, just that it bowled me over). Was there any of this quality to it? As I recall, when ABT did the ballet the very next year it had lost most of its detail.

Malakhov came to SanFrancisco with the Moscow Classical Ballet in about 1990, and danced Adam in hte creation of hte world -- he reminded me of Bambi, SO young, , vulnerable, not on his legs yet (asa character) fabulous in every way, those feet!!! but eveything about him was consistent. He had the refinement of temperament to go with those proprtions, and a complete technique, so there was no self-indulgence. We all adored him. Cyril Pierre lived and danced here for several years, with his wife Lucia Lacarra, who was a sensational but controversial dancer here. There was no controversy about Pierre -- he is a powerful and imaginative soloist and a superb partner.

Sibley, sibley Sibley Lovebird you are so right....--she shimmers, her whole upper body is winged. That video is mostly kinda awful, except for Sibley -- Fonteyn is uncharacteristically awkward as Aurora; the best things on it are Gerd Larson as he queen (she is fantastic), Park as one of hte precious-metal fairies, and this absolutely transcendant performance by Antoinette Sibley as Princess Florine. It's not just technique, of which she has plenty -- it's the beauty of her line, the softness of her breathing, the delicacy of her head positions, the remarkable flexibility of her torso -- she's rarely straight up and down -- though her legs are very true and her aplomb is fantastic, she does her double ronde de jambes in the coda with her torso at quite a tilt -- beautifully lifted out of the hips, but the tilt is almost Cunninghamesque -- very classical, truly beautiful, and at high speed. Her lines are unbelievable. And all of it is so dancey, musical in the extreme.

Cool site, Daniil -- congratulations on your win at Varna. the photos are fantastic -- basilio show a lot of style, and your legs look great in that entrechat-6. You look SO young. How old are you in those pictures?

Modern dancers do roll around on hte floor a lot -- but they actually jump from crouching positions, even lying down positions, and also will do jumps that end up lying down -- I just saw Pau Taylor's Company B" at SF Ballet, and in Tico Tico the guy does 2 coupe jetes in a rw, the second of which turns into a log roll -- he lands through his fot and somehow gets his whole body onto the floor and rolls over and over liek three times -- at TOP SPEED....... It's incredibly exciting......

Thank you guys, esp. Hockeyfan, for your thoughtful and very detailed comments. They really should think about what the balcony can see. From the orchestra, the black on black in 7 for 8 are just right, and the ballet gleams in a beautiful way -- like the way a piano sounds -- but we're not looking at a black marly background.... You're SO right about the ghost of Loscavio in 7 for 8 -- that's a really inspired observation -- but if you'd seen Tina leBlanc in that part, instead of Zahorian -- to my mind, lebLanc is irreplaceable in this ballet, and Zahorian is just not musical enough to make it look like dancing. LeBlanc makes her phrasing SO clear, esp the syncopations. I'd walk all the way from berkeley just to see that circuit of the stage where she does 3 FAST pique turns in two bars of triplets (on ONE two THREE four FIVE six), and then does two contre-temps in usual time (ONE two three FOUR five six), repeating the whole thing 3 times as she circles the stage.... Zahorian does it but it doesn't sing.... Loscavio would have made it hilarous, LeBlanc makes it tangy. I wrote a long piece about it for DANCEVIEW TIMES last year, I'd be grateful if you'd check it out, wonder what you'd think, and also please take a look at http://www.danceviewtimes.com/2005/Winter/06/sfb2.htm about last week's program 2. I'd just add something about Maelstrom. i love that ballet, but the first several times I saw it, I didn't know what hit me and was very puzzled by it. I still don't y understand why it's called that -- it certainly doesn't have a Balanchinean hierarchical structure, there is certainly no ballerina (though Maffre and Miner kept taking my eye and seemed to be deeply in on the secret of hte piece, to get it and know where the proper emphasis lay). In the adage I love the way the dancer's body "breaks" on that "odd" note after the ornament -- Morris has got 2 ways of doing it, for a dancer without a partner, they do a double ronde-de jambe en l'air and on the extension suddenly flex hte foot, breaking from ecarte to efface; for dancers with partners, they're on pointe, the standing knee bends and the angle changes (is it to efface? I can't remember, I just remember the way hte light hits them changes suddenly as the configuratoin changes, and then that position gets promenaded) -- it is SO beautiful, and SO appropriate to the quality of the music... Will you go back and see it again this week? I think Maelstrom is maybe the most beautiful new ballet in the last 10 years, and -- well, I could be wrong, but I think the only place in hte world you can see it is San Francisco. i'm definitely going back. ........................................................ Just for the record, I was wrong. There are so many errors in print, I don't want to perpetuate another. Just saw 7 for 8 again today, and that passage in 7 for 8 is FOUR pique turns followed by 2 sets of kinda jazzy contretemps/walk-arounds, it's not in triplets at all but in duple time -- though it DOES feel syncopated, somehow, the piano is doing some dazzling passage-work, and leBlanc's attack is supremely musical here. Tomasson has made it for her greatest strength, her aggressive attack out from hte hips -- that frappe-thing, she has SUCH rapid-fire brilliance in piques. It's dazzling in Square-Dance, too, where she does dozens of piques faster than you can believe.

Oh, Hans, that is SO TRUE!!!! I wish I'd seen her teach -- but anyone hwo wants to see great jumping has got to check ot her performance as Aurora in the weird Kirov Sleeping Beauty with DUdinskaya dancing Carabosseup the stairs and into the palace. Sizova's first variation is NOT to be believed. You've GOT to see it -- epaulement, line taste, refinement, and kicking herslef in hte back of the head at such a speed she really only has time to tear herself from the ground. She's more fairy-like than any of her fairies, and if you watch it in slow motion, though she does put her heels down, she seems really to be jumping from her toes....

Merce himself was a famous jumper -- an astonishing jumper, by many accounts ("he could jump halfway across the stage with one grand jete"). There are many phoographs of him in mid-air in dazzling positions. He also had an equally astonishing ability to change direction with no preparation. One of the great jumpers in his company in hte 70's was Ellen Cornfield, who's shown in the air in 2 photos in Herbert Migdoll's "Dancers Dancing" (amidst Andy Warhol's inflated silver pillows in "Rainforest', and beside a Rauschenberg set in "travelogue"). Foofwah d'Immobilite may have named himself after a piece of music by Eric Satie, who holds a high place in the esthetic of Cunningham and Cage. "Les Immobilites" I think it's called. In any case, Gafner was a fabulous jumper, and in his era Cunningham started using fifth position quite frequently, and Gafner did beats and all kinds of petite allegro in those works. A glorious dancer. Paul Taylor uses jumps a GREAT deal in his choreography. "Mercuric Tidings" is non-stop jumping, aside from the adagio. he uses a lot of folk-steps -- the turned in cabriole, or cracovienne, he uses a LOT (I love them).

THanks for the link, Amy-- I just read it and see nothing to bother me -- it's plausible that this ballet is only intermittently interesting, reminded me of a lot of ballets I've seen with not enough fantasy in them, and not enough catchiness built into the rythms and every arabesque is first arabesque -- pieces I've wanted to like more than I could. Actually, his tone sounds sweetly supportive and like he's TRYING not to offend anybody, while not pretending he enjoyed a ballet that he didn't. Myself, I remember just how disappointed I was by ABT's performances of Nine Sinatra SOngs, which came through BNerkeley less than a year after Tharp's own company had danced it -- I thought it had lost almost everything I loved in it in hte transition. IT was FABULOUS on her company, which knew her style, and on whom it had been made, and hey knew how to make it swing. ABT was awfully bland by comparison. There's a 'contemporary ballet' company here in he Bay Area called Company C who're about to do "Nine Sinatra SOngs" -- coming up soon -- and I'm hoping they'll hit pay-dirt. Htey have a very jazzy attack, the dancers are good, the directortrains them in a BAlanchine-school hip-thrusting sharp-footed way that may or may NOT actually turn out to be useful in doing Tharp's work -- what I remember enjoying about it was the phrasing, the incredible silliness of Tharp's own dancing in "Show me the Way to go Home" or One more for the Road or whatever it was, where it actually looked somehow like she was trying to sneak back into the house through a basement window..... I know she did NOT do that, but htat's the afterimage I have. Red Skelton could not have been funnier. There was another dance, was it "Strangers in hte Night"? that had something of the feel of a tango to it the way her own company danced it, that girl was like Rita Hayworth, oh so juicy, incredible fire, sumptuous phrasing.... ABT didn't have ANY of that. SO what can you say?

Holy mackerel, Andy!! 2-foot vertical from First? Voranger, you said? Where does she dance?

So good to see this wnderrful thread come back to life. Terekhova is a magnificent artist -- what skill, and what imagination.I wish I'd seen her Myrtha. But Mette-Ida Kirk; my God!! In hte last year I've seen some videos of her dancing that thrilled me so my bones sang. She was an amazing creature -- like the return of spring, like winter ice breaking up, the spring in her was so exciting. There used to be a little whippet in hte cottage at the front who as a young dog sprang around the yard like nothing I'd ever seen before, except maybe a Wili. If Myrtha can have that quality, like a flame leaping around a log, , you believe this is supernatural -- or if not supernatural, then an archetype of the eternally natural, the hidden thing that in ordinary life we don't see but that underlies everything.

well, I am sorry I said such unpleasant things about Shearer's unfortunate appearance as Odette in the Red Shoes. I don't really doubt that she was a wonderful dancer on other occasions. We all have bad days, that was one of mine. I do wish I'd been lucky enough to see this year's performances of Cinderella -- I agree with Cargill that the jester's complexities are a sign of Ashton's genius -- the jester sees he's about to be displaced by Cinderella, and his dances are inflected with these emotions -- and the sheer brilliance and fantasy of the divertissements are enormously satisfying. (I felt that way when I saw the Bolshoi's Raymonda -- so grateful for all those wondeful court dancews, such wealth of invention across the board.) All I meant was that on top of all those values, the thing that put Ashton's ballets over the top was the love interest, deeply built into the courtesies and attentions of the pas de deux -- so that within the bounds of decorum you could have characters swept away on currents of emotion that i don't feel welling up in hte dancing in Cinderella. To the contrary, the strongest emotion I felt watching the video was in the last act when Cinderella showed them the shoe -- Sibley made a tremendous moment out of that, but it's not a dance moment at all. With regard to Crisp's being able to see Fonteyn's eyes, perhaps he had press tickets -- maybe they gave him a good seat. It is also the case that dark eyes are much more legible from a distance than blue eyes. ................................................................ I just went and read what Shearer says in "Striking a Balance": here it is: The trouble with the dancing in that film was that it was so cinematically worked out that we were very lucky if we ever danced for as long as one minute. It was usually half a minute and then they would cut. Well, you can't really get any steam up that way, or any flow -- you can't really dance. This is why I'm sad that it's what I'm always remembered for. People can just look at it now and think,' Oh, that's the way she danced,' but I was just at a stage where I was about to make a big jump forward, technically, artistically, in every way. By the time we did 'Tales of Hofmann' in 1950, I was a totally different kind of dancer. And also, Freddie Ashton did the choreography for that, we did longer takes, and one really could dance. I'm not ashamed of my dancing in that at all; at least it was genuine dancing. It gave the idea of the way one could dance, which I never felt 'Red Shoes' did at all." I have a lot of respect for that. She's also impossible not to like -- so she must have been an engaging entertainer ( I mean that in the highest sense, someone who is making something happen for you.) And what she says about her frustrating experience being in the Red Shoes echoes what it was like to go from the joy of Legat's class-- which she says even at the barre always made her feel like she was dancing -- to the classes she had to take after he died, which were always 8 of this or 32 of that and NEVER let you feel like you were dancing, "not even in the center". it's clear that she was very sensitive to this, to the sense of fantasy and life of the one and the grinding mechanical chop-chop of the other. It makes me wonder if the clipped tone of her Odette doesn't reveal the frustration that the director was rousing in her -- In any case, thank you all for pointing me back to Newman's great book and to the Shearer interview. You can't help caring about her.

32tendu, Afterimages is the book I'd start with -- it is SO smart, it made a huge impressoin on me. you just find yourself in honest touch with a mind that's busily trying to sort out everything that she experiened in hte theater and feel her way back through her memories -- the "afterimages' -- to the experience itself and understand it....... It was a fantastic thing to be alive when all that was happening, and to have her to read about it, as part of your life, like watching the Beatles go from teeny-boppers to poets and philosophers...

adagio generally looks best on leggy dancers, whether they're short or tall -- proportions are much more important than actual size, but even more important han that is the quality of hte dancer's imagination (and /or ability to take tcoaching) A dancer with short legs can make the dance look like it's about hte back and arms if she inflects it that way, and her lines will go on forever if she's truly musical. There are so many qualities a dancer could embody -- one who can dance sstaccato when that's called for, legato when THAT's called for, big when that's called for, "small" at the times that's called for (like "Rossignol") -- even heavy when that's called for, luscious, gooey, crisp, oozy, smoky, pell-mell, apparitional.... Plisetskaya was good at ALL these.... I got her autograph once, after waiting an hour a nd a half -- I was shocked to find that evenb in high heels she was so tiny, She had seemed to control the entire stage, all that space was charged with her energy.

It's great to see this question come up again -- thanks Andy, for picking it up -- for in the months since Alexandra originally asked it, Ashton has been on my mind a lot, and I've slowly changed my mind about this. I would have said yes, and now I'd say no. I'm sure you didn't ask this as a trick question, Alexandra, but looking at it now (I'm at exactly that stage in the biography where he's choreographing “Cinderella”), there's a glaring fact about it -- Cinderella is NOT typical -- FOR ASHTON, it is strangely unromantic. And probably because he couldn't choreograph it on Fonteyn – she was out of he picture a that point. Ashton's ballets are usually FULL of lyrical tenderness, there’s at least one pas de deux that's as sweet as honeysuckle – not cloying, but genuinely sweet -- for the main characters. Denby complained, and he was right, that “Cinderella” does NOT have that gestural truth that makes a classical pas de deux suddenly a magnificent revelation of love. When he was working on “Cinderella,” Ashton was at odds with Fonteyn. She had "betrayed" him and gone off to work with Petit, who'd done a sexy chic/shocking piece on her and she'd been the toast of Paris as a sex-pot ("la derriere de Margot" was all the rage). Ashton had hated that as an idea, and hated her for abandoning him -- he was often pissy that way. When she came back he made a piece for her that was very strained, and she tore a ligament in it and was sidelined for months -- while the 3-act Cinderella was all set up by de Valois already to be choreographed, so he had to do it then and to use someone else -- I'm not sure it was Shearer he set it on, but she danced it, of course.... Well, "the Red Shoes" is a great thing, but I DON'T think Shearer was an interesting dancer in that movie, in fact, I find her Odette smug and crisp and inexpressive and if I’d been at the Mercury I’d have booed her and hurled things, and I doubt very seriously if I'd have liked her in Cinderella -- she might have been kind exciting in “Ballet Imperial,” but that's a different kettle of fish altogether.... In any case, the kind of skimming, walking on air, radiant choreography Ashton made for heroines LIKE Cinderella does not show up IN Cinderella -- In answer to your question, I'd say that "Fille mal Gardee" is quintessential British ballet and "Cinderella" is NOT -- even though Sibley goes a long way towards making Cinderella a tender and lovely woman -- Sibley was a very great dancer, what an imagination, and what technical resources to express herself with! Much greater I think than Shearer, but we have so little documentation of her dancing that Cinderella is almost all we have to go on. "Cinderella" is not, because of this absence of a real lyrical core for the ballerina, something heartfelt (the biggest thing there is is her entrance at the ball, when she floats down those stairs in a trance, but that's not really a pas de deux) of which there is SO MUCH in Fille, in Ondine, in Daphnis and Chloe, The Dream, The Two Pigeons, even in Symphonic Variations, for all its austerity.

Dunno, Old-Fashioned, but my hunch is that criticss here are waiting out of courtesy to Cal Performances, who're presenting them AGAIN in the Bay Area later this season. the Trocks did have a one-off in San Rafael a week or 2 ago. Don't miss them. there are certain values in their dancing that are REAL ballet values but you don't see them anywhere else, they're so old-fashioned. And besides, the more you love ballet, and the more you know about it, the funnier they are.

Amy, thanks!!! Blush… I’m not sure I'm all that wise about this....... Elevation is one of those mysterious things about which some things can be said but they don't seem to cover much.... One thing is that short dancers LOOK like they've jumped higher than tall dancers for purely mathematical reasons -- if Maxim, who's 4 feet tall, jumps a foot vertically, The top of his head will be 5 feet off the ground, and he'll have jumped one fourth of his height; his body will take up 4/5 of the space he's jumped. but when vadim, who's 6 feet tall, jumps one foot and his head's 7 feet off hte floor, he's only jumped one/sixth of his height and his body takes up 6/7 of the space. SO Vadim would have to jump more than a foot to look like he's jumped as high as Max has. Another is that elevation tends to fade markedly after 25; only the young can jump really high (like only young men make truly amazing advances in mathematics -- you can speculate a lot, but WHO KNOWS WHY that is?) It also stands to reason that strength will relate to the length of the levers and the powers involved -- short bones make short levers, big muscles make (usually) for lots of power, so chunky little folks should have lots of elevation. But we've all seen too many people with hard tight little muscles have a great deal more strength than you'd have thought, and big muscles aren’t always as strong as you'd think. Now for some anecdotes -- Gloria Govrin could do entrechat-dixe. She did all the men's combinations, and would try to out-do d'Amboise. She also broke a Pilates machine with her bare strength. Karsavina could do entrechat-huit, and in one of her books she's got a VERY interesting chapter on Giselle's ballottes -- about how they are a step of elevation. Already by the mid-twentieth-century, Giselles were doing those ballottes as low jumps, and she protested, they should be high. Karsavina also has a great chapter on fondu as "the mechanism of the jump" -- she talks about perfecting jumps at the barre without the full effort, perfecting the “gesturing” leg while gradually increasing the strength of the jumping leg, esp the landing, by developing strength and accuracy in fondu. And another on "staying up power" as the skillful USE of elevation (which means she's really talking about about five things at once, including of course proper co-ordination of each separate effort -- arms, working leg, head, etc -- and NOT wasting effort in movement that doesn't go UP). Check it out. "Classical Ballet: The Flow of Movement." She writes well, she's thought about what her body knows, she is SO smart, so interesting. Another thing that helps create the effect of elevation is a deep soft landing. The poet in Les Sylphides -- i.e., Nijinsky's role -- has a slow mazurka solo that has a very pronounced depth of landing built into it. He does not jump high, but he lands deep. Young Nureyev can be seen dancing this fabulously on an old Royal Ballet tape, when he was young and could still jump. Really clean, really poetic, sweeping. You have to watch it several times to realize that he's hardly using any elevation.

not to mention the false eyelashes.... o the heartbreak

BALLERINAS HATE IT WHEN HTE PARTNERS HAVE SWEATY HANDS.... or hands like meat-hooks. Nerves!!!!!! It can be hard for the audience to see, often, but some very attractive male dancers have been nerve-wracking to the ballerinas.... not going to name any names. On the other hand, the dancer who can really tune in, stay calm, and help just enough-- in San Francisco, that's Damian Smith -- himself a very strong technician, and a very musical dancer, he is more than reliable, by all accounts, they love to dance with him...

Fadeyechev at the Bolshoi......... noble simplicity on hte grandest scale....

Kyra Nichols... Baryshnikov had the most astounding jumps I've ever seen -- when he first came here, in Giselle, the jumps he did when he first visited Giselle's grave and realized that she was somehow 'present" came like realizations to HIM -- the performer did not telegraph the effect, and the character was overwhelmed with the realizatoinss, which literally lifted him into the air...... I've never seen any illusion be so complete. we saw NO effort, only emotion..... he ran around the stage twice, with mounting excitement, and suddenly he was in the air (and very high).....

god how annoying.. Leigh, any idea who that email was FROM?