Paul Parish

I LOVE the 50 Enchainements -- Rose Gad is jst an exquisite thing, and johann kobborg is elegant, manly, modest, clean, honest -- But those are etudes ,like Chopin's -- they aren't like hte dances in hte ballets,which you must see. I've got an old commercial tape of Napoli -- is it still in print, I don't know. And I BELIEVE there's a commercialtape of the production of La Sylphide which has been shown on Bravo or A&E, which is one of hte very best films of a ballet I've ver seeen. I really recommend it. Napoli has a weird section, where Gennaro rescues his girl from Neptune's grotto to the music of "O Sanctissima" -- well, it's weird to me, since we sang htat hymn a lot in MAy when I was a kid and i loved it, but it's strange to find it turning up in a ballet. I gues it's no weirder than seeing someone hold up a crucifix in a vampire ovie, but Virgin-Mary magic is just not something I've run into in the theater much...... It's so Pio Nono.... Still, the performances in Napoli are wonderful, it's a loveable ballet, and the way Bournonville builds a fiesta has got to be seen to be believed. It's a little like WHo Cares, the last act -- first there's lots of wonderful shaggy dancing, and then there's even more wonderful, dancving on top of that....

At SFB, it's probably Damian Smith -- he's not only a great dancer imself, he's the cause of great dancing in others. "Great partner" doesn;t begin to indicate how musical he is, how attentive he is.. And he always really GETS the ballet -- his whole way of moving can change, depending on hte tone, style, quality that's called for. And he has a huge emotional range -- he can be really funny (he nearly stole the show as Camacho in Don Q), he can be ferocious, lyrical, cruel, generous, radiant, bitter, classical, modern....

Mell, you are a funny guy.. Yes, it seems that way to me too -- just think how many versions even of hte Black Swan there have been for ballerinas with knees that wouldn't do the fouettes -- some of the greatest dancers of the last century -- Maya Plisetskaya and Antoinette Sibley (during the last part of her career) did another set of brilliant turns rather than the fouettes. Balanchine rechoreographed ballets for new circumstances -- for new dancers, or for television -- passages that weren't effective on TV got excised, and he came up with something that would photograph better. Violette Verdy did a whole buncho f steps in Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux that nobody else does -- a fabulous sequence of attitude turns (like 8 en dedans in a row), if I remember right, from watching it at the NyPublic Library.....

If I were a lady, I'd take a Spanish fan to any performance where I might need o tap someone brightly on the shoulder and ask them to behave themselves. Chinese fan would work just as well. But I'm really with pumukau, if the audience is enjoying themselves intelligently, it doesn't bother me; in fact, I like it if the audience sawys a bit during hte waltzing, and at Flamenco performances or Gospel concerts, if there isn't active commentary from the audience ("SING it, baby"), I feel like there's nothing going on, and the performers are visibly dismayed. It's NOT television. The artists are there, in the same room with you, and if you're with them, they feel it and give to you. (Check out the wonderful interview Donald O'Connor gave Mindy Aloff, on the Danceview link, about how much he loved to perform at the Apollo and other houses where the audience was LOUD and alive and egging him on. http://www.danceviewtimes.com/dvny/feature...39;connor.html) i remember in london, when I went to the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, the Brits amazed me -- they weren't "proper" at all, certainly NOT a stiff-upper-lipped audience; they didn't impinge on each other, but they made a LOT of noise at times, ate chocolates during hte performances, swayed during the waltzes (beat time in various ways), applauded when the ballerina made her entrance, and the hero, bravoed a lot, rushed down to the brass rail at curtain calls, and made the dancers bow and bow and bow. I'm not a total Anglophile, but I've adopted their style in this respect

Hi, Jane-- Marina Eglevsky told me in class this morning that she will be setting the "Sylvia pas de deux" and the "Glinka Pas de Trois" (did she say Minkus? I don't think so) in Moscow early next year for their Balanchine celebration... whether or not they will bring those to London, hmmmmm.... Both would be something to see.... Glinka is SO HARD, I've never seen anybody be able to pull it off -- but the Bolshoi might could.... Can't tell you about the rest...

Hey lilliana, thanks for the report -- this is hte first I I've heard of it, so even though it's just across hte Bay, Ballet Alert once again has the news first! They ARE a brave group of dancers -- I once saw Muriel Maffre do the adage of Symphony in C during an earthquake, it was magnificent the way she maintained her concentration and focus and led hte whole company through it. There were several aftershocks -- about all she noticed of it was that she rolled down from pointe once. She REALLY got an ovation that day. Who was dancing during ht blackout? Any mishaps? At what point did hte lights og out? Before the show started, o during? By the way, you seem to know some of the inside stuff -- do you knw who that TINY litle girl was in hte first act opening night? I bet that child can do entrechats quatres -- she was SO precocious!

MYBKid, the idea of DOING that dance on the spot is hair-raising -- well, if you knew the Trepak thaat Anaole Vilzak choreographed for SF Ballet, it would make you pause-- it's fantastic fun, but SO HARD-- pirouettes on top of pirouettes, double tours on top of double tours, split jumps and periodically you stick your heel out in efface and go "Hey!" and then jump and spin some more -- it;'s incredibly exhilarating ot watch, but a couple of dancers have told me it's like getting yourself beat up, to do it.....

Thanks for clarifying that, rg-- Gordeyev's company never made it here; though we heard about it (an dhe of course was famous), we never saw them. Vasiliov's company is the one we saw. Thanks again.

In Berkeley we call this a Grand Ecart -- ("ecart" means spread wide open) It's a classical step as well as a character step. It's a spring from two feet, landing on two feet, like a changement where the legs go wide (unlike a sissonne, which lands on one foot). Grands ecarts are done in both second and fourth, and with straight knees or in attitude. Examples from choreography I'm familiar with crowd into my mind. In SFB's Chinese Tea, the male dancer does a series of grands ecartes in second and fourth, and usually some Italian changements throwh in for variety. And in our Trepak, the "Russians" do them too. But in Ronn Guidi's Nutcracker (at OaklandBallet), the Snow Queen does them -- as high as she can, Janet Carole did them at 180 degrees; and in Sally Streets's "Waltz of the Flowers," the butterfly does them (not very high) alternating with soutenu turns. In The William Tell pas de deux, include in NYCB's Bournonville Divertissements, the ballerina (young Darci Kistler on my tape) has a fabulous passage of jumps including a releve echappe, a medium-height (45degree) ecarte, and entrechat (quatre or sixe, I can't remember); it's a marvellously airy, beautiful combination....

When I got to Oxford in 1968, "old Tolkien" (he had a son, Christopher Tolkien I believe, who was still around) had gone to that land whence no traveller returns, but my old English tutor, the FABULOUS Elaine Griffiths, boasted that she and her students at St Anne's College had pursuaded Tolkien to publish hte Lord of hte RIngs. He had written it, during hte war - i.e., world war 2 -- when civilization as he knew it, and common human decency, looked just as threatened as it looks in the trilogy. As was common in Oxford, he'd kept the manuscript "in a drawer" and occasionally showed it to his friends, while going about his real work, editing mediaval romances and epics. He felt pretty bleak about it all (he LIKED bleak stories -- he compared Beowulf to bitter ale, and was content to think this poem he loved so much would never be popular). Miss Griffiths orchestrated a campaign to soften him up, using tea, sympathy, and young ladies. She was very proud of her success. I adored her -- reading Beowulf with her was one of hte great experiences of my life. I'd never seen an intellectual like her before -- it was so thorough-going, but such a generous activity, nothing pinched or bluestocking or Bostonian about it. She had the only private copy of the OED I've ever seen -- it took up 3 feet of space on her book-shelves. She was a great scholar in her own right, everybody in Oxford admired her, though she never published anything, except The Lord of the Rings.

I believe the Fantasia ballet was choreographed, in its basics, by Baronova's husband, David Lichine, and the animators created a very shrewd parody of his work. If you want odo some research, Marie Adelaide, I think there's been a fair amount written about this, and you COULD find out quite a lot. Lichine may have had a BIG hand in it, down to the fine details -- I don't know, but he DID had a gift for comedy -- he choreographed Graduation Ball, which is still widely popular, and evne after all these years, it can still be very funny..... RG, I wish I'd seen the Moscow Classical Ballet do the Dance of hte Hours. They came to San Francisco in 1990 or so, played in a little Broadway-style house on Market Street, but they were quite marvelous. Ekaterina Maximova was dancing with them -- the only time I've ever seen her live, she was probably nearly 50 but looked like a CHILD..... She danced some Bejart Romeo and Juliet pas de deux in a white unitard and just tore me UP. I took Sally Streets with me, and she was crazy about her, too, said Balanchine would have been very interested. And on hte same mixed bill Vladimir Malakhov played ADam in the Creation of hte WOrld, and HE was simply visionary.

I would love to konw more about Pushkin.... a very important man.

I'm on for the Rossignol and la Chatte -- and Baiser de la Fee -- despite the reports that stravinsky wrote fabulous but undanceable music for he end, I still wish I'd seen it...

I wish WE'd gotten bayadere..... What is your theater like? Is the stage big enough to hold the sets (when the Paris Opera Balletwas here, even the SF Opera House was too small, and thetemple had to be put flat on hte ground, with no staircase -- so when Nikiya made her entrance, she could not point her foot and announce herself... the Shades scene had t do without at least one layer of backdrop, so it looked quite peculiar..... and if they'd come to Zellerbach, where the Kirov danced, there would have been even less room.... SO I was thinking maybe wwe didn't get Bayadee because it wouldn't fit into Zellerbach.. Though maybe that wasn't it at all - -and anyway, the maryinsky may not have as big a stage as the palais garnier..... But what is YOUR theater like? DId hte production look good?

thalictum, what ballets DID you see in Detroit?

Me, too -- I can;'t wait to hear more. Just thinking about it, Lulu seems to be the likeliest subject for an extended ballet in quite some time. Ever since you posted, ive been going around singing "Bang bang Maxwell's Silver Hammer,' and realizing I was thinking about "Lulu."

Did Fritz get to dance with his mom? Did the Nutcracker=Prince cut the crown off the rat king and crown Marie with it? If so, did not that not seem important? Could they not sustain hte mood of wonder while hte bed swept around the stage and out into hte night?

GOlab17, I DO agree with ou about how great dancers can be who don't have that greyhound look -- Oakland ballet had a whole roster of dancers who didn;'t look like that but moved in marvellous ways -- Julie Lowe comes to mind right away, a dancer of wonderful quietness -- and then there was Lara Deans Lowe, who WAS super-skinny but still didn'tl ook BaLANCHINEE-Y -- oops, caps lock again -- both of them had, well, have wonderful imaginations for dancing..... Erin YaRBOROUGH... how many others.... Patti Owen. I am sorry you didn't get to see the cast you mentioned in COmpany B. Please keep posting. I'm one of many who want to hear wha it'sl like in Portland. Did you like Nutcracker? (It's not typical Balanchine at all.)

Sandik, I'm sure that's true for me, too. I saw SFB first, and I loved Company B, saw it over and over. But I think it's also really interpretable at two different levels -- one is 'archetypal," the other "realistic." THe Taylor company's version is earthier, LESS musical, more realistic; the ballet version is airborne, larger in movement, larger in energy, more gleeful -- larger than life, and it's very satisfying. Which doesn't keep "There will neeve be another you" from breaking your heart -0- but it's not about these PARTICULAR people, for me it was about my parents' generation, the whole ballet explained more about how my parents met and fell in love and how such different people could come to get married than anyting I'd ever seen before.... so I filtered it through my family mythology, and since both my parents were ghigh-minded and idealistic and rather un-fleshy people, the idealized versoin of hte ballet actually fits more closely into my family romance than the earthier version. If my parents had been earthier people, well, I'd be different myself..... and so would the works of art that really speak to me. bUT cOMPANY b IS A GREAT BALLET, AND i THINK IT SPEAKS TO many PEOPLE -- WHICH IS ONE REASON i THINK (oops, caps lock) it's a great thing Stowell has done for Portland, to bring them a ballet really worth seeing.

Don't mean to be a pest, but what happened in that room? And whose ballet was it, Tomasson's or Stowell's? The Taylor Company's performance of Company B was MUCH grittier and darker than SF Ballet's, which was lighter and higher-spirited ( as goes with the higher center of gravity in hte dancers) but I thought equally wonderful. In theTaylor Rum and Coca-COla, for example, that girl looked like she might not be able to control htese hooligans; in SFB's Joanna Berman was the goddess of hte isles, she was in no danger at all -- but it was I thought equally valid. At SFB< also, ERic HOisington made Tico-TIco something really dangerous -- it was mysterious, tremendous.... but he DID have the weight you're talking about, he came out of hte North Carolina school of hte Arts and had been a modern dancer. Did you feel that Company B gave the OBT dancers the kind of challenge that could make them grow, or was it just beyond them altogether and a mistake? PS What did Ms Roper dance? What is she like? I've never seen her.

Where did you read Gergiev's remarks, Mel? (Can you read Russian?) I'd be VERY interested t read more.... The Kirov's performances here were not as problemmatic as those in London (where I have it on excellent authority they were dancing works they really did not KNOW), but still, the Fokine was beautifully played by the orchestra but quite upsetting to look at, especially if you saw it more than once.

I think Costas is a great dance photographer, and I was proud to be asked to contribute. I haven't seen it yet, but I think of it as HIS book, an extended photo-essay with some real long captions. (On the other hand, I can't wait to see what Verdy and Paul wrote abut Emeralds, and Tomasson about Baiser de la Fee, Tallchief on Firebird, Farrell on Mr. B's Don Q, just for starters. These are the key participants, ANYTHNG they say will be gold.) Alexandra should feel some influence from her book on Kronstam on my short essay, since it's about La Sonnambula (one of Kronstam's great roles), and I was inspired by what he told her about the ballet.... Thanks Dale for listing all the contributors -- You've really whetted my appetite to see it now.

Hey Golab, i'm ok with your expressing your feelings about the show you saw. Go AHEAD. I wish I'd been there to see it. What else was on hte program? HWat was good about Rubies? Were there flashes of good stuff anywhere? Please, GO INTO DETAIL....

two things- first, I should say thatI'm only speculating about hte situation in SF -- it doesn't look disastrous or anything, and I certainly don't kow anything official, I just observed that things weren't looking so prosoperous and ...... Scond, there IS one other important function of Nutcracker -- it is the ballet that many people see if they see no other. And if they see dancing that opens their eyes to a new art form thay MIGHT come back for the repertory season.... SO the family matinee might be a way to expose some folks who wouldn't otherwise have seen any concerted movement -- other than a sports event -- into thinking, you know, I want to see some more of that.... so they save their nickels fpor the Firebird....

Well, watermill, it's certainly a mistake on their part not to lower the top price -- but the pipers must be paid, and there are a LOT of pipers for Nutcracker (though hte overture is scored for chamber orchestra, and certain variations are very quiet -- hte Sugar-plum Fairy's is so quiet you have to LISTEN -- the big climaxes in hte grand pas take a lot of musicians to produce.... And musicians make more money than dancers, and will be doubtless getting residuals for the recorded performances.... I don't mean to rebuke you, I'm just thinking this out after seeing just how much quieter it was opening night in SF for Nutcracker -- the house was not packed, and the money that was coming in from the boom-era people is not there any more. THEY'RE going to have to cut somewhere.... Maybe do like WHite Oak did, just commission new works to chamber music or piano.... Or let more dancers go. Or cut back on outreach (but the community won't like that, and besides, that's the future audience, they can't do that). Where WOULD you cut?