Paul Parish

I am shocked by the AP photograph of Volochkova, which makes her head look so small, it almost looks like a digitally altered tabloid joke-picture......

ANybody talked to Alexandra?

Ya feets too big, ya feets too big, ya know i can't love ya cause ya feets too big.... Just a glancing side-light -- Markova was said to be very hard to lift. (Can I be remembering this right?) I don't know where I read it, but I have a distinct memory of a complaint by one of her partners that Markova did NONE of the lift herself, no jump to get it started..... Volochkova sure seems to be winning hte PR war -- but maybe she's the Madonna of ballerinas (not an original idea on my part) -- And then some: if she can get the New York TImes to come over and MEASURE her, she's the Phineas T BArnum of our age.And if she can toss her fan and catch it (musically, of course) in DonQ, I hope I get a chance to see it.... Maybe she'll move to my fair state and run for governer. THey've delayed the election... next thing you know, they'll re-open the candidacies...

WONDERFUL photograph -- but it's hard to believe it's that old, unless the ballerina had JUST put on her tights -- I remember Gisella Christensen, who danced -- or rather was GOING to dance -- this role when it was premiered in NYC-- telling a bunch of us how silk tights used to bag at the knees, how nothing you could do would keep them from stretching (maybe i'm remembering Nancy Reynolds reporting this story as an instance of Gisella's down-to-earth, gentle manner, I know I've heard her tell it, too); the gentleman's tights show some tendency towards wrinkling, though he has beautifully straight knees -- but the lady looks like she's wearing nylon.... Maybe she is? Maybe it's not a rehearsal but a moment staged to LOOK like a rehearsal?

but Silvy, do not despair -- at least one of the performances on that "Balanchine Celebratin" video is out of hts world: Elizabeth Loscavio (as the girl in blue) gives one of hte greatest dance performances on video ever (in my opinion), superior to any other version of that dance I've ever seen -- and I've seen the video versions with Marnee MOrris and Heather Watts. And Judith Fugate is not bad in Patricia McBride's "Fascinatin Rhythm" role -- maybe I only say that because I'd expected her to be boring and she's not, which is such a relief. But she is in fact charming in the role -- it's a wonderful solo, that features a clever quote from Bournonville's Flower Festival at Genzano, "jaazzed-up" and hilarious.

A UC prof just back in Berkeley told me he'd seen this program -- free in the park -- and been enchanted, the high point of his travels. he'd spent lots of money on tickets to performances that were not as exciitng and satisfying as this one. The dacners were exact and buoyant, it sounds. He thought it was a wonderful evenng.

Thanks, Marc--

A friend writes me: "There was another short item about the Kirov warehouse fire in yesterday's NY Times. It mentioned that the St. Petersburg season will nevertheless start as scheduled on October 10th. That made me curious, so I went to the Kirov's web site. The opening night is the Opera, but the ballet will be performing 10 times in October, starting with the 11th and 12th. In that case, whom are we going to see onstage in Berkeley, I wonder. " What a good question, I say. THe Kirov plays Berkeley October 7-12. Anybody got an idea?

About 10 years ago, the head of the dance dept at UC Berkeley (David Wood, who had been a star in the Graham Company, husband of Marni Thomas Wood, father of Raegan and Ellis Wood, all famous dancers) made a concert piece based on the discovery that in superconducting conditions electrons pair up and (as the physicist who really DID discover this put it) "seem to dance." I've seen the dance several times -- Prof. Wood was a skilled choreographer and his work is well-made, well-edited -- it had a lot going on, I wouldn't mind seeing it again. It was filmed by PBS for NOVA and used to illustrate an episode about superconducting; the physicist (Myron Cohen? not sure) said he liked it. And a couple of years ago -- well, maybe 6 or 7 by now -- Margaret Jenkins made a stunning full-evening piece called "Fault" in conjunction with a group of Berkeley geologists, Prof. Bruce Bolt being one of them, in a consortium put together by the UC Berkeley Center for Theater Arts. Since we HAVE faults around here, and earthquakes on them, and had a BIG one 10 ears ago that brought the freeway down, it was about something that was on everybody's minds; needless to say, Jenkins's work was not as closely illustrative as Wood's. Elizabeth Streb engaged in a similar process with some Berkeley physicists a couple of years later, the "results" of which I can't tell you anything about. But the greatest comment I've ever seen on an earthquake was the night Muriel Maffre danced the adagio of Symphony in C at the Opera House DURING an earthquake. There'd been a little shock during the first movement, but that's allegro, and it kept hitting you with new ideas and distracting you from it, and before long you’d forgotten anything had happened. But the adagio is SLOW -- I never had any idea HOW slow till there was another little shock, we all felt it, just as Muriel was unfolding her leg in second. Nervous people started getting up, gathering their possessions -- not everybody, not even very many, but there was a noticeable rustling of stuff, and they pushed their way out and were well up the aisles already as she began the huge penchee -- and when she put her nose on her knee the house exploded in applause, and all those scurrying people turned around to see what they were missing........ Oh God it was fabulous, to see the image of courage in homage to her art under circumstances like that.

Dancerboy, it may be a matter of taste -- Of course Glebb has an important point, and Watermill's is a version of hte same thing -- more rehearsal time ... But..... Mr B cared much more for energy than line. I'm pretty much quoting Kyra Nichols, whom I interviewed years ago, not long after balanchine died. She brought up the issue of lines herself and said that mr B didn't want perfect lines, he wanted ENERGY and her whole body kind of made a starburst as she said it. (Ms Nichols herself is one of the few NYCB dancers whom English and Russian dancers regarded as correct.)

Counting is an issue for musicians as well as for dancers. I remember for my senior piano recital, when i was playing the adagio from Beethoven's Pathetique sonata, even though it's very songlike, it was very important to count. (The temptation was to rush the sixteenth note accompaniment, for it is difficult to play all those little notes quietly enough so the melody sings out about them -- they need to be very even.) Stravinsky is a special case -- for his music IS rhythmic. "The Rite of Spring" is a famous case, with Nijinsky standing in the wings calling out the counts to the rattled dancers as the audience rioted. A lot of real folk music has rhythms that are not based on 8 counts. Even the blues has a 12-bar structure, and in Russia and Hungary, not to mention the Balkans, there can be 7s or 13s or varying phrase-lengths. "Rite" is based on Russian folk songs -- Millicent Hodson tells the story that when she recently went to Russia to set her version, they came to one passage in the music and everybdoy started to cry and sing along, the dancers ALL knew that music from their childhoods, but didn't know it was in Rite of Spring.) I THINK Kyra Nichols would be able to dance much of Stravinsky’s music without having to count -- certainly in Apollo she doesn't look like she's counting. And in the adagio of Agon, it did not look like Allegra Kent was counting, nor did it look like Violette Verdy was counting in the pas de trois; on the other hand, in the last movement, they've GOT to count. Thing is, if the rhythm is regular, you feel the difference between 8 and ONE without having to think about it. If you're doing Scottish dancing, and you're in a figure in reel-time where the top man chassees down the center and meets the lady from the bottom and they swing in the center and go back to place, for a total of 8 counts -- once you've gotten familiar with it, you don't really have to count that -- for the melody has the counts built into it, and you really have to let yourself FEEL the swing of it and make the natural adjustments you have to, to get yourself onto the right foot. On the other hand, UNTIL you get familiar with it, you've absolutely got to count it. But if you're dancing Mark Morris's "Gong," which is set to some minimalist music that's modeled on Gamelan, where both the rhythm and the meter are unfamiliar, counting is like landing an airplane in fog, your life is going to depend on minding your co-ordinates. Maybe the issue at bottom is the distinction between rhythm and meter -- in some music (and in some dances) the rhythm is more in the foreground than the meter, and vice versa. Meter is like the geometry of time -- it sets the measures. Let's use an example from poetry, since it uses words, which can be written out. Ballad-stanza is a simple meter -- duh DUM duDum duDUM du DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM duh DUM duDum duDUM du DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM Arise, arise, Mary Hamilton, Arise and say to me, what thou hast done with thy wee bairn I saw this morn weeping by thee. I put him in a little boat, And put him out to sea, That he might sink or he might swim, But he'd never come back to me. The rhythm is a more primitive thing that coexists with the meter, which pulls against the regularity of the meter (without which it would be too chaotic) and puts the muse in the music -- and tells the ballerina when to step out ahead of the downbeat and when to dawdle or nail it. Here's another example, I can't resist it: Iambic pentameter is a meter and the following 2 and a half lines are iambic pentameter, but they have very different rhythms: "Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story " Another pentameter with a very different effect, also from Hamlet (after he's stabbed Polonius): "I'll lug the guts into the neighbor room"

Silvy, she was a ballerina, for sure -- but her ways were so gracious, she did not ever impose herself on the audience, which means that she could sometimes astonish you when she'd appear as a soloist, for then she would just blaze. I'm thinking of the peasant pas de deux performance she gave which is recorded on tape in the very best Giselle I know of -- Baryshnikov's, with Makarova. It's a Giselle everybody should take a look at -- Makarova is deeply , deeply absorbed in her role, Baryshnikov plays Albrecht as a prince on the verge of a nervous breakdown, who is only happy -- indeed, he is only CALM -- when he is in Giselle's presence. Van Hamel is a magnificent Myrta, everybody is remarkable -- and Tcherkassky is simply dazzling in the peasant pas. She isn't troubled by any of this drama -- she just loves to dance -- pas de chat pas de chat, brisee, entrechat-quatre...... SO beautiful.

oh atm711, I have to mourn with you, what a shame you don't still have those copies of "Ballet" -- I've never seen an issue, but I've certainly seen articles reprinted from it, and they were absolutely first-rate! Denby outdid himself, he wrote as if to his best friend, and is most like a poet in those pieces -- everything else seems guarded by comparison. And Buckle himself....well, his style is indescribable, but the point is it was HIS way of saying what he wanted to say, and though it was flamboyant, it was transparent -- like Sargent's way of painting. ANd i'm sure the magazine was beautiful -- -- beautiful like Dance Ink wanted to be (and often was).

Mark D and all y'all, I'd also get balcony seats for Don Q -- the Cubans in San Francisco, Lorena Feijoo and Joan Boada, who were both trained in Cuba, were unbelievably wonderful in SFB's recent production of DonQ. They really understood the style. I never thought I'd think Don Qt was anything but a trashy riidiculous crowd-pleaser -- as it was I found myself thinking here was a new kind of ideal theater -- one of daylight and comedy rather than moonlight and tragedy, but really magnificent in its way. ANd hte toughness of life in CUba -- if the Buena Vista Social Club is a guide, which is most of what I know -- the way hte spirit obviously has to rise above conditions of want and need just to keep the car in running order, was exactly what gave the lead couple their brio. And i thought Feijoo could be mentioned in the same breath as Plisetskaya and Terekhova. I wouldn't miss their DOn Q -- to see a Kitri who's killed and plucked and broiled the chicken they had for dinner but NOT been ground down by the toughness of life; there was a blazing defiance in Feijoo that I'll never forget -- there was nothing mean about it, .

I agree with Carbro -- we've seen them twice in Berkeley, in Giselle and Coppellia ( both times I saw Lorna Feijoo, who's now a MAJOR reason to go see Boston ballet - -she was marvellous in both, and God knows, hte demands of hte roles are VERY different) THey are a great company. They can't afford new shoes, but they sure can dance -- Rock-solid technique, and real ability as mimes....... I'd definitely go. ANd their virtues are such that the 4th ring will have a good time......

The hand on the shoulder may be a character move, but it IS actually used in technique class in Cecchetti. Cunningham also has exercises that use it. It helps seat the shoulder-blade and rotate the humerus, I think. (It was never explained.)I've had to do grand battements in that position and pirouettes.

I just happened upon this thread -- it's 2 years old already -- but I have to say that the relationship between Dicky Buckle and Edwin denby has been a continuing inspiration to me. What Denby wrote for Buckle is perhaps hte freest, most intoxicating, poetic writing he ever did about dancing and its appeal. Buckle was the first critic I read that had the kind of enthusiasm I felt for the ballet, and i read him rather the same way I read Thomas Mann or listened to Tchaikovsky -- it was a pleasure I would not want to have to defend, for I might incriminate myself, the agreements go SO deep. "Ballet must be beautiful!!"

You could find out a lot about your original question, Silvy, and your thesis question, too, Danciegirlmaria, by looking at the half-hour long videotape of "50 Bournonville Enchainements," as demonstrated by Johann Kobborg and Rose Gad. They represent the technique (though there are other combinations, such as a set of entrechats called "the dark steps" which seem to a regular part of weekly class, that I've seen on another RDB video concentrating on the rehearsal-to-stage process, which are not among those on the "50-enchainements" tape) The technique looks designed to protect the dancer's body -- there is a lot of attention to educating the standing leg, reminding it to fondu correctly (though the whole body is used, notably the head). The more you look at these dances, the more you see -- I'm sure you will see things that I haven't, the combinations are so detailed, and a dancer will see things the public does not. The sort of thing I'm thinking of is, for example, in one combination a saut de basque leads directly into detournee, in another it leads into grand jete ( i.e., the first one must come straight down, the second falling forward); again, an entrechat-quatre is preparation for a single pirouette in coupe, which should probably be thought of as a sissonne-simple-releve that turns, for the emphasis (slight as it is) is on the finish in coupe-back. It's, as Gertrude Stein said of Paris, "peaceful and exciting." (Rose Gad actually BEATS a grand jete -- so does Kobborg -- without making it look like a stunt.) If you can do these combinations, you will have developed a quiet center. The combinations are all of them charming dances. Over and over, you see beautifully modulated use of small and large steps to create marvelous patterns that direct the eye in surprising but not startling patterns across the dancer's body. It is strangely charming to see that Kobborg has trouble landing a double tour without having to bounce out of some position into a fifth, since everything else he does he does SO perfectly -- and no mater what, both of the m are unfailingly musical The combinations were notated by Hans Beck in 1893, and have been selected by Vivi Flindt and Knut Arne Jurgensen; there's a book that goes with them which I don't have (yet). Bot hare available from Dance Horizons Video/ Princeton Book Company, POBox 57, Pennington, NJ 08534. I should add, the dancers are among the loveliest creatures you will ever see in your life.

ATM, many many thanks..... wha an intriguing little essaya - atually, though it's short, it's really pithy.... Where did you find htis?

re women's entrechats -- Karsavina tells how cecchetti taught her to do entrechat-huit: "Just do entrechat quatre and do another entrechat quatre before you come down" -- she said it worked for her. And Gloria Govrin told me herself that she used to do entrechat-dixe. (Rodney, she was a VERY tall student at the School of American Ballet swhom Balanchine took into the company - "Big Glo," as they called her, was the first Hippolyta in Balanchine's Midsummer Night's Dream, she had a sensational role in the Arabhian dance in his Nutcracker --is now director of the SFBallet school).

Dear Glebb, What a generous, open-ended question. I've seen Monotones danced by the ROyal Ballet (Dowell was in it, and Lorraine, not sure about Mead), the Joffrey (can't remember the cast), and at San Francisco Ballet (I remember for sure that Lawrence Pech was in it, he had the style SO right he seemed to lend it to the others -- who may have included Ashley Wheater, who came here from the Jofrey and was I THINK also in the Joffrey cast; it would suit him, he has the fondu, hte stretch, the line, the musicality, and he's a fantastic partner.) I've seen both I and II and do greatly prefer the white one to the green but would be very happy to see both together again. About green I don't have anything to say. (If I'd seen it with Sibley I'm pretty sure I would, but I didn't ). It's a great work -- likea tripartite moon-child, or saltimbanques going through a Rosicrucian ritual. It has that quality Fellini could get with the clown in la Strada, that the mime in the white got in Les Enfants du Paradis -- the poetic, wonder-struck, floating, not-of-this-world emotion personified in the three dancers, who move like birds or fish, with a group mind. I haven't seen it for nearly ten years, and SINCE I saw it last I've become familiar with early Merce Cunningham pieces (like Septet) which were performed to Satie's music and have a very similar atmosphere -- mysterious, haunting. Fabulously beautiful sculptural effects arise as if from nowhere and dissolve. Caroline Brown (who was a very pure Cecchetti dancer) looked more Sphynxlike than ANY of Ashton's dancers, great as they were -- the entire atmosphere of Monotones is present in Brown's performance. I wonder if Ashton could have seen Septet -- it was I believe among hte Cunningham pieces that were shown in London, when Cunningham had no following in hte US aside from a few modern painters -- until hte reviews came out in London, it was a smash, all of the London dance world was agog, and New Yorkers woke up to find one of hteir own was famous and great and about to come home. I have a video of Septet if you would have any USE for making your own comparison; I'd be glad to share it with you.

To pick up on a secondary thread, in case you're interested, Rodney, I can tell you a bit about the Fokine ballet from "Russlan and Ludmila." It's been presented in San Francisco. In fact, a few years ago, the SF Opera presented the whole fabulous opera "Russlan and Lyudmila"-- one of the great opera-house experiences of my life. For SFO had collaborated with Gergeyev and the Maryinsky and had reproduced from the original designs Bakst's production, whose sets and costumes Diaghilev brought to Paris -- in the finale, there was the costume that Nijinsky wore in "Le Festin" on a splendid dancer who proceeded to do the Lezghinka, with his arm in front of his nose. The last act ends with a ballet, but there's a big one earlier, which as Mel noted is all made up of women. There are reasons inside the very fantastical, Ariostoesque opera why it's all women-- the scene is a seduction-vision, prepared by a sorceress. (The dancers are like the shades -- none of these women really exist). The sorceress, as I remember, is trying to remove one of the main characters from the competition -- to get Lyudmila's Arabian suitor to forget his quest and go back to Arabia. So this Armide-like witch (who's offered him hospitality at her castle) conjures up images of his own harem back in Arabia, who do a kind of Arabian dance very much addressed to the singer-prince..... Each of the women is distinctive, he knows each of them already -- or rather he THINKS he does, he doesn't know they're phantoms manipulated by a sorceress -- and each makes her own personal appeal to him. They should be in harem pants, but usually aren't when the ballet is presented by itself (I've seen it once done by the SFBallet school). Notice the Arabian plastique. In the opera, the singer is a contralto playing a man -- who sings a gorgeous nostalgic aria as s/he gradually falls asleep, which leads directly into the ballet -- a fantastic transition. The whole opera is full of spectacular coups de theatre -- there's a wizard who's in love with Lyudmila who sets all the action in motion, and who when he's really worked up flies around in the air on a wire, with a 10-foot-long white beard following him like the tail of a kite. The music is delightful in the extreme -- rather like Rossini, even more like Mozart -- infectious, witty, very changeable, full of colors and moods....

That's pretty witty, Major Mel....... Yes, that gentleman kneeling here next to the cow holding a model of the cathedral in his left hane is the local wool-merchant atoning for his sins.... Chitresh Das, the great Kathak dancer who has lived in Marin COunty for a couple of decades adn taught his art to a couple of generation of American dancers now, has a piece in his repertory that was commissioned by some potentate in India -- a Maharaja, If I remember right, where he uses all his mastery of stamping his feet and shaking his bells to make hte sound of a locomotive entering a railway station -- including hte echooes of the train off the Iron girders. (The prince was crazy about trains.) Das seems very proud of it; it's like one of those showpieces that Renaissance painters did to demonstrate all hte aspects of their mastery..... It IS an astounding performance-piece.

My heart goes out to you, Grace.... You WERE, as Alexandra says, bending over backwards in this piece -- and to have them hit you when you're in deep cambre is NOT at all gracious, nor courteous, nor becoming -- not in a ballet nor in life. I hope it was the marketing people and not Simon Dow who rang you up... marketing people are not ALWAYS awful -- I have a dear friend who’s a marketing director, in the sports racket, even, wonderful guy -- on the other hand, MOST ARE. PR folk are always friendly, but the suits in the marketing sanctum are often "what's in it for us?" types. You have a sensibility, which indeed WAB helps you to cultivate, and your situation as a critic also helps you to cultivate -- but it's not in their interests to have sensibilities, au contraire, im Gegenteil!!! Hmmm, I'd better stop this; I'm having too much fun. But I will say, you should maybe have a drink with Simon Dow in 6 weeks or so -- and tell him SanFrancisco still remembers him fondly -- but DO NOT take this criticism to heart. Those ingrates...

I'd have to back up the difference in "breeding" -- Kitri is a heroine, Don Quixote puts his lance at her service because he recognizes that magnificent capacity for defiance of any evil, which suits his understanding of nobility -- but she was not bred under gentle conditions. I think the difference between the two women is that Kitri is a heroine but not genteel, and her shoulders need to be squared, like a man's -- whereas Paquita's lines should be all spirals, and her shoulders should curve -- magnificently -- and her chin-line should be high but not defiant. Like in Shakespeare's WInter's Tale, where the princess is raised by shepherds -- in this kind of story, "native" refinement shines through. Kitri has done her own laundry, she's killed and cooked her own dinner, she's met many indignities, and it colors her manners; Paquita may have done hte same things, but it should not have colored her sensitivity more than slightly. It's as if her sheets have never turned yellow. (My own aunt Virginia called her mother a few weeks after her marriage and asked "what to do, her sheets were turning yellow...." Do you have such genteelisms in Uruguay, Silvy?)