Paul Parish

I'm writing a piece abou hte gala for Dance viewtimes, balletnut, so haven't said anything about it yet -- but Mme Jakobsen's Polonaise is set to the great one from the last act of Onegin, I'm sure (though I haven't yet double-checked it yet, and i might be wrong) I remmebr when the curtain was still soewn and the orchestra began with all those flourishes, the hair stood up on the back of my neckand I thought 'o boy, it's a polonaise!!' (I never read the program till after hte show, so it can take me by surprise; more fun that way.) I recgnized that I'd heard that music at SF opera just a month ago, when they did Onegin -- it was really moving, very well-sung BUTit was lamentable in its dance-scenes. I haven't read what Stephaine said about hte gala yet (I don't read other critics till I've written my thing, normally), but I DID read her excellent review of the opera, agreed with her on every point. SFO staged an awful ball-scene to that music. Basically, they had a huge self-lighting chandelier handle all the movement-interest in that act, and the opera chorus struck a lot of poses very awkwardly. Mme Jakobsen's polonaise is kind of like a grand defile -- like EVERYBODY comes onto the stage, starting with the tiniest children, doing the polonaise step, in single file, another group in couples, groups and groups and groups -- glamorous teen-agers in pointe shoes doing piques in passe or other semi-fancy steps, handsome soldierly boys looking gallant, and ending up with the smallest people you've ever seen crossing hte stage in front of everybody else, a total throng, and then they do a big porte de bras and hand it all to yu like a gift. It's a really sweet grand gesture, and everybody loved it. It was great having Mme jakobson live and work among us; she did a lot for this school and company, we're all sorry she left, it was good to remember her. It's cool that Tomasson wants to keep alive the connection of SFB to the great Russians who've worked here: he kept Anatole Vilzak's trepak in his new Nutcracker, and this polonaise made a kind of consecration of the house to emphasize the importance of training and tradition as he starts his 20th season. I'll say, the performance was just part of the evening, like at a royal wedding -- first \comes the performance then the ball -- the audience filed out of hte operahouse, walked across the street to City Hall, and ate and drank and danced hemselves. I didn't get home till quarter to three.

I thought he was crude, too, till I saw his "Raymonda," which contains much that is exquisite and delighted me beyond measure. And Bessmertnova was a fabulous creature, as fantastic in her way as Suzanne Farrell (who also got the bulk of the film roles). NOt that I wouldn't welcome more Maximova... Marc, what have you got to say on all this?

re Balanchine and Vaganova -- with respect to rg, i had it from one of my teachers (who was a soloist at City Ballet when the Kirov brought Sleeping Beauty to New York) that Balanchine, at least sometimes, greatly admired the way the Kirov dancers were dancing. It was NOT the way NYCB dancers moved -- but she (Barbara Adams) was crazy about Sleeping Beauty, all hte dancers were beside themselves wanting to dance it, and Balanchine said "No, we won't do it until you can dance like THAT." She understood him to be saying NYCB couldn't pull it off.

What needs to be there to make Fancy Free work is the feeling that the ballet takes place during war-time, and that the future of everybody rests on the strength of heart of boys like these, who're at this moment taking a break and can forget about dangers that they will have to go back to. It makes for a particular kind of nervous energy in them, and in everybody else-- if they weren't cocky, you wouldn't be able to imagine them actually doing any of the fighting that sailors will have to do -- so you have to cut them some slack, and the girls on stage are doing that for us..... And they've got to be sweet-natured at heart, for thousands of reasons..

Well -- it's true, Fonteyn did get a fantastic lucky break VERY early in her career. Ashton was mad at Markova, who'd become very grand after dancing Giselle and disdained performing in his little ballets. When Markova left the Sadler's Wells ballet to form a company with Anton Dolin, she thought Ashton would come with them, and didn't realize perhaps how seriously Ashton had had it with her, for she persisted in asking him. So he set about making Fonteyn into a Markova; giving VERY young Fonteyn Markova's old roles and making them work for her. And of course, the Sadler's Wells director, de Valois, saw Fonteyn as the future of the company and pressed her on Ashton. Ashton also at first found Fonteyn intractable, stubborn, and unmalleable -- he'd finally had it with her, they had it out, she broke down in tears, and agreed to co-operate. Mothers? Check out Suzanne Farrell's mother, who was almost as determined as the BQ -- though in a very American, mid-western way. Class in the old days? Well, "The Red Shoes" has a few glimpses of company class -- I think I remember Massine assigning something like 32 rondes de jambes en l'air.... Ballet in England was not yet institutionalized when Fonteyn was a girl -- like ballet in the USA, it was transplanted there by Russians, esp by former members of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes -- Balanchine and his school in the USA, the "mothers of British ballet" in England, Miriam Rambert and Ninette de Valois. The death of Diaghilev was almost as cataclysmic for ballet as the Russian Revolution was. Richard Buckle's infectiously readable biographies of Nijinsky and Diaghilev will maybe give you an idea of the great tradition and the shocks it went through after the Russian Revolution, once the connection with the Imperial School was broken and they could not go back to Russia for more training or for new dancers. The Ballets Russes training was not purely classical -- esp under Massine, it became almost a character company. but also, classicism changed as new choreographers emerged wanting new qualities. There's a lot more moving around in choreography today, there was a great deal more holding a position "back then" -- both can be difficult (e.g. what comes after a leap? it's standard training now to use a saut de chat as a preparatoin for a pirouette. In the old days it was more standard training to use a grand jete as the preparation for a long pose in arabesque fondue....) These develop different kinds of strength. Fonteyn had beautiful placement, beautiful proportions, and wonderful musicality.... Her way of dancing, the choreography and its values, favored a look that was an abstraction of womanliness but not VERY abstracted -- not nearly as abstracted as Balanchine's, which virtually abandoned the bust as a center of interest. Fonteyn 's whole figure, and especially as Ashton wanted it, with a highly "worked" torso, had marvellous and very specific plasticity above the waist -- higher legs would have spoiled the spiraling lines of these ideal positions. About a year ago Alexandra posted a photograph of Fonteyn on pointe in a low passe with the torso bent back in a fantastically deep cambre – she was not inflexible, far from it, but her appeal was not centered in the legs.

I have to agree with Alexandra, another van Vechten would NOT be a bad thing. He was honest, generous, grateful, modest, observant, excitable, and fascinated by the discoveries he made. I'm myself very much in his debt. As I read him, Mr Rockwell is floundering -- he sounds like someone who's juggling other people's ideas, but trying with the best will in the world to indicate that he's hopeful and progressive and friendly towards his enterprise. It's not cool these days to say openly that you feel modest in the face of your great predecessors, but van Vechten and Martin are indeed great predecessors. Perhaps like Martin, he will have the opportunity to learn a great lesson in public; it can not have been easy for Martin to change his mind about Balanchine, but he did it -- and changing your mind is probably the most difficult thing for a person in such an exposed position, the cynosure of all eyes, the most observed of all observers, to do. We must not make that more difficult for him than it already is. THe most disturbing thing he thinks, to my mind, is that dance's past is short; the history of classical dance may be short, but the past of dance goes back at least as far as the species and may precede the era of language, and indeed, we may wonder if we are the only animals that dance -- not just birds but also fish and especially seahorses have been thought by serious people to dance on special occasions (birds when courting, seahorses every morning). It sounds to me that Mr. Rockwell understands that dance is going to be his teacher; it will be something he measures himself against, and not vice versa.

All I can say is, if she went across the stage in that sous-sus, I'm IMPRESSED......

Wonderful images, RG, thank you.... And i think that IS Mark Platt -- he lives here, and he still looks pretty much like that in profile

Charieloki, Thanks for that report on Sherri LeBlanc in Square Dance. We've really loved her in SF. She has JUST retired from SFB -- a wonderful dancer, she had a fantastic range. My favorite thing I ever saw her do was Liebeslieder Walzer (in hte role I think is associated with McBride), where she was young, ardent, incisive, intensely romantic in a way that took my breath away. It was great artistry. Her last wonderful role here was as an Amazon in Mark Morris's Sylvia( he used her a great deal over the years, in all sorts of works, and she could dance with weight and majesty as well as brilliant lightness). She was fantastic in Sylvia. and had a quality in the upper body that I can only call flowing, like you see in the Valentine Hugo drawings of Isadora Duncan. It was to the big waltz in hte first act when he Amazons let down their hair and relax in hte glade -- the quality was completely appropriate to a warm summer afternoon's dancing (even Amazons have their lyric moments), and she epitomized the paradoxical luxe et volupte of that dance. She danced memorably the Russian girl in Serenade -- incredibly musical. I saw her sister that day in the lobby holding her baby girl -- "I brought her to see her mom dance." Her sister of course is Tina leBlanc, who is by the way out of this world dynamite in Square Dance, which she did here last year and made it look completely effortless, like a kid on a skate-board tossing off miracles like they were nothing.... In the finale, when she stepped onto pointe over and over with unbelievable speed and rapidity and absolute evenness of attack, like a pianist doing the jeux perlee, I was nearly out of my mind with delight -- it was true allegro, it made you so happy you were beyond laughter.

THe Cuban ballet did Coppellia in Berkeley on a stage too small for them, in shoes that were SO loud you knew they must have had to bake them with glue in them - -well,m aybe not, the stage here IS hard -- but Lorna Feijoo was just enchanting as Swanhilda-- she was light, easy, her bossiness came naturally as a result of natural quickness, it reminded me of the guy in highschool two years ahead of me who was always telling everybody what to do -- but since he was so intuitive he knew already what everybody wanted to do, knew it before THEY did, -- he was just naturally hte leader of that group and totally loved by all... She was fantastic, no matter how difficult the step, she was always in character.... But my favorite version is NYCB's (I only know the tape). McBride is simply a riot in the part. All her geekiness, those brittle cabrioles, who cares -- it fits the role completely, and she's SO willing to DO THE MIME -- sjhe's really enjoying it, trying to get Coppellia to come down from that balcony and dance with her, come play with us!! and then her parody of old Coppellius's walk, it's so juicy, so funny, and so accomplished, it stands up to the comic-elder walks that you see in the great Indonesian dance-theater epics, where tehy've really made a great art out of spavined gaits. What puts it over the top for me, however, is Balanchine's character dances -- nothing tops his mazurka. The new stuff he added to the last act, esp Swanhilda's variation, with its flying assembles to pointe, is wonderful, but nothing tops his mazurka. I've showed it to a class of children who immediately made me stop the tape and started doing pas de bourrees on their heels and -- we had to study it and just turn them loose for a while, we're talking about 12 year-olds. And I was totally with them -- it is an enormously satisfying dance, to ENORMOUSLY satisfying music. It probably helped that the kids had already heard and danced to this music MANY times -- but hey, that's true of many ballet chestnuts, and they don't stop the show. His czardas is pretty great, too..... Choura, you've REALLY made me want to see Heidi Ryom at the center of that production... What I love about the Balanchinee/Danilova verion (which I guess is St Leon's at heart -- that's who's credited in the mason/balanchine stories of hte great ballets, though Merante did hte first version, st leon re-did it for St Petersburg, and Petipa re-did THAT) is that it's a character ballet. Martinez's version for ABT ,which I saw Gregory do, was a vehicle for virtuoso classical dancing, and though she was amazing, it's her hops on pointe while doing a 360 degree promenade and a continuous devellope from front through to arabesque that I recall, not a mythic creature who was like THE life force up against a mad scientist (and Swanilda is WOMAN against the machine, and of course she wins, cuz there's NOTHING stronger than swanilda) But I sure wish I'd seen hte Danish version.... it sounds like a separate vision, and really wonderful....

This is not my idea, but it DOES work.. I was for years on a jury that selected the winners of hte Isadora Duncan Awards, and the committee chair came up with this method: go to a stationers'. Knock yourselves out: buy all the art-gum erasers, protracters, and white-out you think you'll ever need, but then get FOCUSSED-- FOR THIS you'll need -- a loose-leaf binder, one per year, and a whole box of window-pages (pace, Mel), with 3-hole edging so you can insert the pages in the binder -- Fill the binder with window-pages. Mark the binding with the year (e.g., "Programs 2005"). you then insert chronologically into hte windows the cast-lists and as much of hte program as you don't want to rip off and throw away. If you go 3 times a week, you might need two binders per year. The binder goes on a book-shelf, next to those from the year before. A serious librarian will of course object to he clear-plastic window-pages -- I guess after 5 years you have to reassess the situation; but in hte meantime, it's really pretty tidy, and not much harm comes to the documents.... they're not printed on acid-free paper themselves, so eventually they'll dry up and crumble.... but maybe later you'll have time to sort and copy them. Scanners will be much faster in 10 years.... Jane's solution is of course the best, this side of having your librarian and scrivener handle all this for you, but you need room for a filing cabinet.... for this you just need a couple of feet of shelving....

o what fun!! Karsavina Pavlova Fonteyn Sibley (VERY beautiful woman, and with Karsavina's coaching, she had exquisite line) Farrell Kent Paul Verdy Adams LeClerq Thesmar lis Jeppesen Rose Gad Maximova Carolyn Brown Julie Diana

There;'s lots of different ways of taking "modern" here -- but thanks, Canbelt0o, for starting suh an interesting thread. The ideas that appeal to ME the most have to do with "dance imagination" rather than technique; LeClerq, Spessivstseva, Doubrovska. Marie-Jeanne may have a claim here -- not that any of us can see ANY footage of her dangicing, but if you read the accounts of how she danced, and the kinds of things Balanchine ASKED HER TO DO in the original ballet Imperial -- she was a thrillingly spontaneous jazzy dancer, who could do anything, and do it very fast.

Thanks Chiapuris -- I too am AWFUL at manipulating the quote feature -- I did not realize I had made it atribute the quote to you.... And i also apologize to everybody for the "severity" f my style. I did not mean to sound severe. I was just trying to figure out how to say what I meant. I should prbably have softened it.... I did LOVE the Bolshoi's Raymonda. And I did think Antonicheva was lovely -- she danced the opening night in Berkeley, and there are several problems with that stage -- first it is so small -- she had to rein herself in at every point. And it's a rather hard stage. And of sou\rse, it's not raked.

Teachout writes really well -- I love his style. And he has insights.

Yes, Amy, MANY people have seen Agon as VERY New YOrk. Ifyou've never read Edwin Denby's reports on ballet-- he was the best writer in English EVER about dancing -- you owe yourself the favor. He wrote about Agon when it was new. I think it's reprinted almost complete in Balanchine's Complete Stories of the Great ballets.... a book everybody ought to have. But he's been reprinted in paperback several times, and Denby's writngs are ALSO books anybody who loves ballet should have. i read him all the time, for pleasure. He reviewed for hte NY Herald Tribune during WWII, and a lots of his pieces are short accounts -- fun bed-time reading --short, and FULL of insight and excitement.

Well, it's true, Krysanova WAS fabulous. But.... Raymonda is a MUCH more difficult role than Krysanova's -- it's generally admitted to be the most difficult ballerina role of all. She does so much unsupported dancing. Raymonda has 6 or 7 solos in every style, they exploit every aspect of the techniquefrom big jumps to hops on pointe to hops in deep arabesque fondu to extremely exposed solo adagio -- she piques to arabesque, rolls down into fondu with the back leg at 100 degrees, then steps straight backwards onto pointe in passe, rolls down into fondu, repeats that, then takes one tiny extra step and repeats ALL THAT on the other side, at an extremely slow tempo. And that's only the adage. IMHO it's actually a sign of a great company when those who perform supporting roles are particularly delightful in brightening their corners.

Thanks, Natalia --Riabinkina and Plisetskaya -- did you see THEM? What were they like? Did you think P was de trop (as some have suggested elsewhere)?

Let's hope that not only the Royal BAllet but also other ballet companies begin showing us more Ashton. I love his ballets. San Francisco Ballet has had Ashton in the rep for decades -- Fille, and also the Dream pas de deux and maybe some more. (Fille was acquired by Michael Smuin and has always been popular here.) We have some dancers who're good at Ashton. Tina LeBlanc was a fast-footed, great-hearted Lise with the Joffrey before she came to SFB, and warmer and sweeter when she danced it here. I'd love to see her do it again. Elizabeth Loscavio was an enchanting Lise, WHAT pretty leaps. Also Kristin Long, who was gorgeous in the corps when they did it last, has the epaulement and hte bounding leapz and the sunny, unaffected temperament to make the role beautiful in an extremely satisfying way. Our dancers were not very effective in the Dream pas. But last year we saw some Ashton new to us. Julie Diana! alas, she's left SFB and joined Pennsylvania Ballet, where I hope they value her, since we've lost one of our MOST important dancers, was perfect for the Thais pas de deux -- her looks are right, her face is right -- like a dark-haired Sibley, with huge eyes, bee-stung lips and a very long neck -- but even more her musicality, her breathing, and her manners (which are almost convent-bred). She was very fine, though not perfect, as the lead in Symphonic Variations. She is an SAB product, but she CAN do an Ashton arabesque, square, and with the right feeling in the back, exquisitely modelled through the ribs. Her travelling sissonnes were not as startling as a real Ashton dancer would have made them -- but then they didn't have much time to steep themselves in the style, since they were coming right off their 2-program Balanchine tribute. And Elizabeth Miner, who danced one of the "side ballerinas" in the second cast of Symphonic, also had the right look, very good head positions, a high breast-bone, the right feel for the line. Although Miner came from SAB, she had Ashton training while still living in Portland, OR, from ELizabeth Remington. And Brett Bauer was a glorious piece of sculpture in the White Monotones, nobly proportioned, glacially calm; everything he did was immaculate. It was more a way of being than a chain of doings.

THank you Thalictum, for those kind words. Wouldn't you have liked to see Maximova as Raymonda? I'm still not down from my high after Grigorevich's Raymonda -- I was told it would be very fine, but I was not prepared for how intensely I enjoyed almost every moment of it. I'm kind of wild to keep seeing it. Don't let them GO!!! Grigorevitch didn't try to fix what wasn't broken -- unlike Nureyev, whose 4th act we've got in the rep at SFB, with all its ludicrous extra little stomps.... THe only thing missing was a ballerina really at her stride. I'd love to see Ananiashvili in this production.

Nothing made me think she'd done it except my wish to see her do it, and my sense that the current Bolshoi ballerinas don't seem to have -- maybe the stamina, maybe hte experience of pacing the role, maybe the radical strength -- to make the character shine. but Maximova (whom I saw live only once, past age 50 then, though she looked really 17) seemed forever young. I didn't realize she was considered only a soubrette -- her Giselle was certainly great of soul. I should say I'd bet Ananiashvili is wonderful. (We've just seen Antonicheva and Allash, of whom I preferred the latter. I understand Gracheva is highly regarded in hte role, wish I'd seen her.)

it's simultaneously hilarious, poignant, and gorgeous.... esp Franklin, simply gorgeous.... thanks, RG..... choice....

Did any of you see her? It must have been wonderful -- what WAS it like? How did she pace the role? What were the qualities of the variations? How private was she at the beginning? She must have openend up (I'm guessing) -- when did it happen?

It's a beginning....... sounds exhilarating, like (for a pianist) being able to play Mozart well enough to hear the music without getting so drunk on hte music you can't keep going.... actually, it also sounds like a tree in a wind must feel... i.e., the excitement generates so much tension it's hard to stay relaxed enough to reconfigure as fast as you must without snapping....

could I ask you to eflect again on scenes de ballet -- or was it danses concertantes? what's it feel like in your muscle memory after giving it your kinesthetic identification? There's some reason, something metaphoric, implicit in what you're saying about facetings and postions cascading through the troupe, from one person to the nest... (there's some kind of fascinating process going on, what is it? I've never seen the ballet, sure wish I had. Please. Help me out.