Paul Parish

Rodney, If I may call you that -- i almost envy you the pleasures in store for you as you get to know Balanchine better. He was a man who could choreograph for circus elephants, and he could appreciate which of them were the better dancers (Hilda, I think was the name of his favorite). As Ashton loved those dancers he found in Harlem to do his "Four Saints in Three Acts," Balanchine also had a great appreciation for non-ballet dancers -- the fantastic tap-dancers the Nicholas Brothers, and Ray Bolger, and hte African dancersrs of Katherine Dunham's company, whom he built "Cabin in the Sky" around, are only a few. Within the ballet world, he appreciated the special gifts of individual dancers so much there are hundreds of stories about how he could -- and did -- choreograph dances like a tailor fitting clothes to the dancers' special gifts.

Mr. Edgecombe, I wish there were footage of Marie-Jeanne for us to see that would allow us to know what her dancing was like. I think in a sense, when Tanaquil le Clercq arrived, Balanchine DID have that leggy creature you think he was waiting for. But I think there's a lot of evidence that Balanchine adored the way Marie-Jeanne danced (Allegra Kent, too). But from what I've read and heard, Balanchine was fascinated not only by Marie-Jeanne's speed, but by her dance imagination (as he would be again in even greater degree by Kent's and especially Farrell's). She had fast, very long feet -- so when she went on pointe, the change in imagery was quite startling -- her legs became very long. I have met Marie-Jeanne, and she told me when I asked that in Ballet Imperial he asked her to "do something jazzy" in all those places in the first movement cadenza where the ballerina now does a double swivel. She said she couldn't tell me exactly WHAT it was she did, but she threw herself into it, it was a wild move, and he loved it. I met her about 10 years ago at the home of the ballet's seconda donna, Gisella Caccialanza (who married Lew Christensen and settled in SanFrancisco), who was a very different sort of dancer, but rather a similar person -- down to earth, sweet to the core, both of them such refreshing, lovely people. Mrs. Christensen had been Cecchetti's last protege, and had left Italy with her mother for the US while still a teen-ager. I HAVE seen home movies of HER dancing in the 30's - -from when Ballet Caravan was on tour in South America -- and her dancing was light, soft, VERY fluid and supple. The film showed her at the barre and in some partnered work and a little in the center, but did not show the jump she was famous for -- but she could do double saut de Basques, famously. ATM711, I can well imagine Tallchief as being a much more vivid and memorable personality in hte second-girl role than Caccialanza.... Tallchief has a formidable side to her stage personality....

I was certainly sorry we lost Meja -- he was, as I said, a thrilling dancer. WIth respect t Stowell, I'd like to add that Cheryl Flatow wrote so well about him , with such a clear understanding of his talent and artistry, that she made it easier to understand his development. Her essays over the years in the SFB programs were extraordinarily fine -- she gave you the real deal, to an astonishing degree when you consider that the program book is a publication of the marketing department. I miss her essays as much as I miss some of our finest dancers who have gone on.

Sorry, Mme. Hermine, you are right.There IS a lot to say for Smuin (though I'm often exasperated) -- his "Romeo and Juliet" is not only better than Tomasson's, it's better than Cranko's, and in some ways better than MacMillan's. maybe I made it sound like I don't think there's room for a great gesture-based company. I got carried away, perhaps. I take every possible opportunity to lament the loss of Loscavio, and i have to say, i didn't realize she was at SFB already... She IS local, like Shannon Lilly -- both were trained by Danny Simmons at Contra Costa Ballet (I think). TOmasson featured her immediately -- she MADE his COntradanses. His first year, we were VERY aware of Loscavio. Certainly Berman was here (she's local, trained by Maria Vegh at Marin Ballet), Berman was a VERY vivid creature as the "other girl" in Smuin's "Hearts," his last great ballet for SFB (a retelling of Les Enfants du Paradis, which I thought was a fantastic ballet). In fact there was a tremendous dancer with your last name, or something almost the same, whom Smuin built "Hearts" around -- whom Helgi did NOT keep -- which is as good an example as I could come up with of the differences between SFB before and after. Meja -- or was it Mejia? -- was a THRILLING dancer, danced with his heart in his throat, with weight, power, momentum, he was over his edge all the time, he made it but you could not believe he wasn't going off the rails, it was enormously exciting -- there was a manege of double sauts de basques -- or something like that -- at the climax of the ballet (which was set, very cleverly, and sensitively, to Piaf songs). The role he was playing was that of Baptiste, so all that white satin costume was floating and flashing like a flag in a hurricane), and I think the house went so on a roar, the noise was unbelievable. We were all out of our minds. But his dancing was romantic, not classical -- and under that costume...? Helgi put Stowell in that role -- when it was done the next year -- perhaps to challenge Stowell, perhaps to kill the ballet. Stowell did try, but he wasn't ready to smolder, bank his fires, and then turn up the heat like Mejia did -- it was very early in his career. I think he DID respect the role, I konw he danced an excerpt from it at benefits. Some other dancers Tomasson kept were Christine Peary (who was not very turned-out but was a demon on pointe, she was thrilling in Forsythe's corkscrewing pirouettes), Jamie Zimmerman, Grace Madduell, and of course Cisneros -- and he has kept Anita Paciotti (who had been with Oakland Ballet before she came to Oakland), who finished her career as ballerina blazingly in Smuin's Medea -- a tremendously theatrical ballet, which Dance Theater of Harlem has in its rep (but since it's set for them by Cisneros, who danced Creusa, not Medea, the title role when I saw it last was not filled out to its largest possibilities). he also let Attila Ficzere have a grand finale in Don Juan (which had been made on him). And Val Caniparoli has had MANY opportunities.... Smuin is a very clever man, and he has a great way with STEPS that he's not given credit for.... my reservations have to do with a laisser faire way he has with his dancers, who get away with murder. He's probably too nice a guy..... in his latest, Zorro, which had a LOT of fine invention, the effect was ruined by Claudia Alfieri's clueless, generic bunhead "interpretation" of the ingenue. He should have taken her and pasted some convent-girl style on her, but.... Reyes would do gargouillades at hip height, but he wouldn't do a decent glissade. TOmasson DID keep Reyes, and made him tidy up his glissades -- he had to do 8 of them in a circle, Bournonville-style, in Tomasson's Poulenc Concerto..... He didn't stay long.

All I can add is that Lorna Feijoo and Roman Rykine are dancers I'd walk a mile to see-- When Helgi Tomasson took over San Francisco Ballet, there was a huge turnover -- and the "new kids" he brought in had a completely different way of dancing from Michael Smuin’s -- it went from being a gesture-based aesthetic to a --how to put it -- musically-based aesthetic.... The phrasing was different, the new dancers had dance-flair. They could really do the mazurka step, they really cared about their action -- how, say, they finished their glissades, as a matter of dance style. Over the years he got them to enrich their phrasing potential -- Elizabeth Loscavio, who must have been born with it, her musicality was so spontaneous, like Ella Fitzgerald's, was in that crew, and she danced virtually every night, in the corps as a soloist, as the ballerina. Christopher Stowell also -- Tomasson wasn't afraid of hiring short dancers, and Martins had passed him over since there weren't enough short girls at City Ballet to put him with -- and WHAT a career Stowell had here. Like Loscavio, he started out as a bright, light dancer with feet that talked to you -- and danced all the time, in small and in large roles, and learned over the years to soften and deepen his phrasing, to land like a Russian, with more weight, and not be always about the arrival -- he became a remarkable artist here, with many many possible ways of phrasing a dance. I just use him as an instance, but it certainly HAS paid off for us in San Francisco for a director to select a kind of dancer he wants to work with, and then take them from there and develop them. And of course, Tomasson hired Nissinen, who was a great asset to SFB…. This could be a very exciting period for Boston Ballet....

Slightly off-topic -- re that Ballet Review interview with Christopher Wheeldon by Francis Mason -- Mason himself lived in Philadelphia as a teen-ager and went to Philadelphia Orchestra concerts religiously, every Friday night, he told the Dance Critics' Association only a month ago -- so his jaunty remark (I'm paraphrasing) that Philadelphia ought to be able to train enough swans, this is Swan Lake! is I'd bet expressing admiration for hte way Philadelphia (home of that famous orchestra) rises to an occasion like this and will do things right. PS I really wish I could see that company -- and sure would like to see Company B. IT's a great ballet; I think it will be around for a long time. SFB danced it for several seasons. Joanna Berman was the Rum and Coca Cola goddess of the islands, Ashley Wheater was O Johnny, Christopher Stowell was the Bugle Boy. Grace Madduell was heartbreaking in "There will never be another you," and Eric Hoisington was over-the-top astounding in Tico-Tico. It was spectacular dancing, and it was also really disturbing. That's been at least 5 years now, they're all gone now...... I'm absolutely ready to see it again.

Subscription is the best way by FAR to get the magazine - -which is ALWAYS worth reading (OK, I write for them myself, but I'm not exaggerating, every issue is worth it -- and subscribing is the best way to get it; their distributor sucks, few news-stands carry it.)

Yes , manhattnik -- Lorna Feijoo should be a FABULOUS Kitri.... I would make the trip from NYC to Boston t see her do it if I could. Feijoo was a wonderful Giselle, and a wonderful Swanilda, which we saw her dance here with the Cuban ballet -- very different in each, and a marvellous dance-actress in both. her sister, Lorena Feijoo, who is now a ballerina in SF, danced the best Kitri I think I'll ever see, really in the tradition of Plisetskaya and Terekhova, blazing with joy, in Helgi Tomasson's new production here - -which may be the best thing he's ever done. I realize these are lots of superlatives, but I've never seen such pure academic dancing given such idiomatic flair, made into such an emblem of personal consciousness.... She was a real heroine, and when Don QUixote put his lance at her service, everything made sense....

THis is slightly off-topic, but there's a BEAUTIFUL performance of the lead role in the Vivandiere pas de sixe by Yelena Pankova on a Kirov compilation.... sorry I can't be more specific, just went and looked through my videos and can't find it, but the performances are lovely from everybody, and she is radiant indeed.... It's quite a recommendation for St Leon.... of course, it's listed in BAllet 101, the INVALUABLE book by Robert Greskovic (every dance library should have it) -- the Kirov in London, 1988; her partner was Sergei Vikarev.

As an American from Mississippi with a grandmother from New Orleans who spoke Creole French and said "soignee" with a STRONG stress on the second syllable, who won a prize for my French studies at Ole Miss where I learned that my grandmother's French was extremely provincial, and who then studied English in England at Oxford, and had my pronunciation sniffed at by New Yorkers and Brits and everything in between, i had some time to think about how hte two countries differ in pronouncing French -- and hte issue seems to be that French is a language that does NOT have significant stress-accents, whereas English does (both versions) -- and so ANGLICIZING means deciding where to put the stresses in words that didn't have them originally.... on different sides of hte Atlantic, English speakers apply stresses to syllables that basically SHOULDN"T have them, while ignoring the syllables created by terminal "e's" (Jean is a one-syllable word, Jeanne has two syllables, and -- well, by this rule, Estelle should have three -- but perhaps she will correct me).... In England, Englishness is understood to inhere in the sacred right of hte first syllable to get the stress -- as in ENGland; so French words are allowed to retain their Frenchness by having the second syllable accented -- so Desiree in England is pronounced with a strong stress on hte middle syllable ("Des-- EAR--ay"), in the US with accents on the first and third ("DEZ-uh-RAY"), and in France with equal stress on all three syllables.... but words that hte ENglish REALLY want to appropriate are taken in like CARriage and GARage and VENison and PULlet and BALlet, which all get the stress where it goes in a true ENGlish word, on hte first syllable In different parts of the United States, the same rule is applied variously -- In the port cities, the British way seems to be prevailing. But inland, even in Oakland I've heard people speak of the JofFREY BaLLET -- the full, exotic, outlandish glamor of a non-ENglish word would be lost if the stress fell on hte first syllable..... French also doesn't aspirate plosives-- "Petipa" would NOT have aspirated p's -- no explosive puff of breath on either one, so it would sound almost like "Betiba......"

Thanks for posting that, Jeannie -- this is terrible news, not off-topic at all, not in the largest sense. I've had the Stanislavsky on my mind a lot since -- the production lives very well in the mind, it actually grows, because it is so coherent and intelligent...... especially compared to ABT's version, which I just saw in a flying trip to New York. ABT’s is extremely expensive-looking and seems to get all its IDEAS from the Stanislavsky, but to second-guess those ideas right away and make a good-looking but incoherent entertainment out of them.... To wit, act I has got the same super-shy peasant girls, the court-lady who kind of throws herself at the prince, but leaves OUT the queen’s ladies in waiting!!! The queen enters ALONE, which is just ersatz…. It’s like a vampire that can see himself in the mirror. McKenzie DID use the sunken garden, high levels of cliff and wall, and a very active, over-the-top evil Rothbart, complete with a staging of the prologue in which Odette in her nightie gets enticed into his power and zapped.... and Rothbart doing totally implausible egregiously gloatingly evil things at court......

I used to go to the Royal Ballet sort of the same way, Kurvenal -- back in 1969, when Ashton was still in charge of hte company, I was a student at Oxford, 60 miles from London -- but you could get all the way to Covent Garden by train and subway in just over an hour, and i'd buy a CHEAP balcony seat for about 50 cents, spot an empty seat down on the orchestra floor, and run down and grab it.... the ushers colluded, they were very sweet about it, and I saw a lot of shows from very close up, which at that time was thrilling for me -- now, I'd rather see stuff from far enough away to get hte picture, even upstairs, but then I wanted to be close, front-row close, and I always rushed down to the brass rail for the bows to drink the energy straight from the fountain.... It was thrilling to see Antoinette SIbley and Lynn Seymour standing there, 6 feet away across the pit, sending energy all the way up to the gods..... Not to mention Nureyev, but today, I don't remember his bows, i remember Sibley's -- my GOd, what a great dancer she was....

I'm with Carbro, Kurvenal -- I'm VERY eager to hear more. "GO LONG!" BY the way, I find your screen name poignant -- wasn't Kurwenal Tristan's faithful friend, whom Isolde kinda muscled out of hte way at the end? There's an ancient traditional poetic form, called "the lay of the last survivor" -- "I alone have lived to tell this tale." The stories you're telling have something of that quality -- that bathtub in the middle of he kitchen doubling as a table, the vibration from the printing presses running like magic finger s through the floor..... DId you know Remy Charlip -- modern dancer, lived downtown for FREE, I think, or 5 dollars or something in a building with no heat or something, danced in Merce Cunningham's first company, designed costumes, painted, drew, wrote children's books, took 2 or 3 classes a day -- I'm not getting ANY of this right, he told me this years and years ago when he first moved out here to San Francisco, so I'm misremembering all the details, but I do have hte FEELING he gave me, of New York being a place where artists were free to gather and do what they do and collaborate adn blow each others' minds, and you didn't have any money but you didn't NEED any.... and everybody went to City ballet and went up that back staircase and sneaked in and Edward Gorey was there every performance..// believe me, there are LOTS of us who really want to know these things. I do wish I'd seen Illuminations -- and that "Sylvia " pas de deux -- I don't know if you saw it danced later, by Cheryl Yaeger and Julio Bocca, back in hte late 80's, but they made it a HEAVENLY thing -- was it the same steps? had Mr B changed it?a simple petite jete turned into a lift was one of hte prettiest things I have EVER seen..... I thnk my teacher Sally Streets was in Opus 34 -- .... wan't that hte one where everybody was all bandaged up for one section -- they asked Balanchine "what does this mean?" and he said "Don't worry, the critics will tell us..."

"It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; -- but when a beginning is made -- when the felicities of rapid motion have been once, though slightly felt -- it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more." Jane Austen, "Emma," vol 2, chapter 11, paragraph 1.

"I am a cloud in trousers" -- Balanchine (quoting Mayakovsky).

THe first "ballet" I ever saw was at college, in Oxford, Mississippi -- the Ballet Folclorico de Mexico -- character dancing, you might say, but SO vivid, I have near-total recall of the show -- the hidalgos' quadrilles with the couples in maroon, with the ladies quail-feather hats, the deer dance (which is a LOT like the Dying Swan), a vaquero and his lariat, dances for women in swirling colorful skirts, with bottles of wine balanced on their heads, and as the first-act finale, la Bamba -- the song was popular at the time on hte radio, Trini Lopez's version (or was it Richie Valenz), and they DID la Bamba, with lots ofheel-stamping and cries of "Arriba!": it's a wedding dance-- the bride takes hold of the end of the groom's cummerbund, and he spins out of it, like Apollo out of hte swaddling clothes, and then they laid the sash -- it's 10 feet long, at least -- on the floor and kicked it into a cryptic design with their heels, and folded it over somehow, and then lifted it up and showed it to us, and it was a true-love knot, and it brought the house DOWN -- Which I remembered VERY vividly when I saw my first "ballet," La Fille Mal Gardee, in London a year later (1969) at Covent Garden at a Satruday matinee -- it was Leslie Collier's debut in a major role and she was dancing Lise, and when they did all that cat's cradle and stuff with the ribbons, I thought of la Bamba and was thrilled..... What I remember about Collier at that point was her footwork, which my attention got called to a lot, and which was indisputably strong, tidy, and quick, and her nose, which did not make enough of a statement for me to take her very seriously. A ballerina (I'm afraid I feel) does not need a chin, but it is very hard to command attention without much nose.... What I remember about FILLE, on the other hand, is that i LOVED it, and that I was fascinated to contemplate an experience where I felt I'd understood everything DOWN TO HTE GROUND without there being a word spoken; I wondered how that could be, and it led me back to Covent Garden, again and again, esp to Swan Lake, which really bowled me over, esp Sibley and Dowell in it -- that left me so moved I couldn't applaud until the very last bows, I couldn't even start to get out of my seat till people were on their way out of hte house...... Fille didn't do that to me, but I DID love it, especially the mime scene, and Alain (it was Grant), and Lancaster's hilarious sets -- the painting of the prize bull over the hearth, the idyllic, almost preposterously happy spirit of the WHOLE thing, the picnic, the storm, and all those wonderful inventions with the ribbons -- like a private language the lovers spoke; I remember for sure a cat's cradle, and they also do a true-love knot, don't they?

Unless I'm mistaken, Walter Terry was the critic at the New York Herald Tribune who was called up to military service for World War II, whom the great Edwin Denby substituted for until the end of hte war, when Terry returned and took over his old job. (And Virgil Thompson, a SUPERLATIVELY great music critic, had a hand in hiring them bth.) Terry is one of those people I've always wanted to read but have never found a copy of. I can certainly believe he's a pleasure to read a little of every day. I reread a little Denby every few days. If you don't know Denby's books, "Looking at the Dance" -- which is made up MOSTLY of short pieces he wrote for hte Herald Trib -- and the more reflective essays in "Dancers, Buildings, and People in hte Street" -- are IMO the best things ever written in English and they're very easy to get hold of in paperback, and you owe yourself hte pleasure of his company....

I've got to add my voice to the chorus -- it is WONDERFUL to read these reminiscences -- . The things you drop by the wayside -- Robbins's finely tuned turns, for example -- open up vistas that are simply fascinating. Please keep adding to these as the mood strikes you -- if some dancer reminds you of , say, Violetta elvin -- or whoever-- please start up an entry and let it take yo uwherever it goes.... I can't say how refreshing these posts have been for me. What was Danilova like in Scheherazade? Zobeide, my Lord!

I saw the Stanislavsky last night, and my response is very mixed...... though on the whole I found it very engaging. The company is really fine -- young, good-looking, strong, especially the men... the jester was too much in evidence, though he WAS adorable.... Beautiful legs, marvelous double saut de Basques in double passe, beautiful grands jetes in second and 4th, beautifully centered pirouettes, but too many of them.... They don't turn out much... I did not see the first cast, but would have to complain that the leads I saw were not strong enough as dancers for their roles, and didn't have enough going on as actors (which is odd for this company, which is famous for its acting) t make me care. I DID like them, personally -- and I must say, they both really looked the part, esp the ballerina, who resembles the great model Verushka. But she did not dance well unsupported. The white adage was very beautiful, the petites serres were an almost imperceptible shimmer, it was exquisitely sensitive dancing -- but in Odette's variation, I found myself holding my breath, trying to HELP her through it..... Her sissonnes were labored, and the releve ciseaux were quite strained..., especially since in their version the back leg goes to a very high penchee on a fondue -- the fondu did NOT melt, the leg went to a very high place indeed, but it looked like way too much of a struggle, which ruined the effect.... Similarly, her fouettes were among the ugliest I've ever seen, and i found myself really afraid early on that she would not finish them -- the working foot looked somehow like a fist.... she did all 32, but it did not cast any spell, and it broke through the atmospheric effects Bourmeister was trying to develop.... which were REMARKABLE, though I think they'd be too lurid even if the principals were having a great night. But it certainly is a engaging treatment of the ballet -- I can see why the Paris Opera Ballet made it their version.... it IS theatrically convincing. In SF, they're playing a Broadway-style house -- the stage is just barely big enough for it, and the pit can only house a very small orchestra -- but the music was beautifully played, and the stage looked marvelous. The production makes great use of height -- von Rothbart has a whole cliff, not just a rock, and menaces us from a prodigious altitude. The action in act 1 takes place in a sunken garden -- the queen makes her entrance , after an impressive parade of ladies in waiting, down a flight of stairs at the back -- this all kept opening up the small space, and also reinforcing the hierarchies that make this story so charged with consequence -- a wrong decision by the prince will not only doom the swans, it will doom his own people. For those who've only heard about this production- -which dates from the 50's and is deservedly famous -- you should know that Bourmeister went back to the original score for many of his ideas -- and used music that Petipa cut or transposed (esp the Black Swan music, which Tchaikovsky intended for the first act). The first act was marvelous -- a lively court scene, with a hint of Giselle to it -- a group of pretty peasant girls, with baskets of strawberries, are courting the young men in quite innocent dalliance when the Queen and her ladies arrive, and the queen does NOT approve -- which had the interesting effect of making me wonder if I approved. After the queen rebukes the prince, her ladies are persuaded to remain, and the rest of the dancing -- which includes a lovely adage for 2 couples, really beautiful -- transpires between the prince's gallants and these ladies. so it makes a social scene that's rather deeply imagined. If Act 3 weren't so lurid, I'd have to say I admire it..... even though Alexandra is right, Bourmeister's character dances and grand pas are not as beautiful nor as rhythmically exciting as Petipa's. But the staging is remarkable -- the potential brides receive each their own presentation -- in big poses, linked with pas de bourrees -- that show them more distinctly than we're used to, without making any of them "interesting" or any threat to the ballerina. The arrival of Rothbart changes a stale quarrel at court into an EVENT -- too lurid, but dramatically intriguing. All the character dances are his work, and they may all be illusions -- the lighting goes all twilight-zone, and the men's retinue flap huge red capes during the Spanish dancer's number -- and out from behind those capes periodically steps not the lady in the mantilla, but Odile. Spanish is the one great dance in this act --- esp since her arms wreathing overhead are very reminiscent of swan arms. The other character dances are less distinctive -- what's wonderful about them is that they are all played TO THE PRINCE and not to us: we see them of course, but we see them very much as an enticement to him. The black swan when it comes, is danced to a medley of A) the music Balanchine used for Tchaikovsky Pas de deux, B) that oboe tune Nureyev used for Odile's variation in his Swan Lake, and C) the coda Ashton used in his Swan Lake pas de QUatre.... The sticking point in this act for me was the luridness of it all -- the lighting, the capes, but most of all the unmitigated gloating of Rothbart, and the shameless brazenness of Odile, who was indeed magnificent in the adage but could not keep that up throughout the act. The evil pair are too sure of their quarry -- you can't see how he could be fooled by this claptrap -- especially since Odile was not at all fascinating in her variation. In Act 4 the choral dances for the swans were surprisingly moving, as was a pas for Siegfried and Odette; at the end the stage floor-cloth started heaving in big waves, it caught us all by surprise and brought your heart into your throat -- "he's drowning!" (It's exactly the same effect Nureyev would use later in his version for Vienna -- except that in Bourmeister's version, Siegfried's willingness to die for love breaks the spell, her feathers disappear, she becomes her old self again, and they're united forever.) The corps were very fine -- especially in the way they adapted to the tight floor space -- there were many near collisions, some actual bumping into each other, but they did not let on to us how frustrating this must be --though they complained about it under their breath to each other. What they must not have known was that we could HEAR anything they said, and there was a lot of joke-cracking going on.... The 4 little swans were wonderful.

hey Ed, WHO exactly did you hear is going from SFB to Portland/ Would that be Kester Cotton and Kathleen Martuza? I haven't heard where they're going, but they've been FINE dancers confined to the corps, andthey're definitely laving and going somewhere else..... SHe in particular danced a demisoloist in the finale of Diamonds SO beautifully it was one of hte minor glories of hte season, so musical, every impulse was right...... ANd he's been accurate, in the spirit, strong, handsome, always in everything.... hate to see him go, hope he gets the opportunities he wants....

Ah, yes the tissue -- Anybody else remember the Kleenex still hanging from Baryshnikov's face when he took the bows after Theme and Variations...?Just stuck to his chin, if I remember right -- obviously (i semed to me) it had disintegrated as he wiped off some sweat... Things happen -- one measure of a dancer is how well they behave when things go wrong.... I'm sure Glebb has a garage-full of stories of that kind.... one of my favorites is about Kyra Nichols when she was still a kid dancing around here, it involves a contact lens on hte floor in the middle of hte stage and doing a super-deep swoop in a balancee, picking the lens up, putting it on hte tip of her tongue, and doing her fouettes with it safely tucked away there.... I can't wait to see Ansanelli..... A bloody nose would be a LOT to contend with....

Swanilda is a difficult role -- for one thing, it's ALL EVENING... for another, the dancer has to manifest dancing and acting energy, which are very different, and make it look easy; and for another, the last act is the hardest..... Balanchine''s new choreography for her has her flying through the air in assembles to point, she lands like a pogo stick and keeps going.. there's also a series ofpirouettes in attitude -- doubles, I thnk, that CHANGE (from front to back, or back to front, I can't remember which, but that was a Patty thing -- she did something like it in Tarantella, a diagonal of tarantella turns on pointe, alternating atitude front and back..... it's gut-wrenching HARD)... So congratulations to hte new principal dancer Alexandra Ansanelli -- she's proved herself a hero, and saved the day. That's a great way to hit hte top....

I wish I'd been there -- Nobody's mentioned -- though it's not news, and I understand how Ansanelli's fans, and I'm sure I'd be one, are gratified by her success, both gratified for her and grateful TO her -- my favorite thing, so maybe the corps was dull -- but I'm crazy about Balanchine's Act 1 character dances, which are among hte finest things, IMHO, he ever did -- that Mazurka!! oh my God, the pas de bourrees on hte heels, the jumping up and down! the most fun a dancer ever has is in those dances, it looks like to me..... are they not doing them with gusto these days?

Dear Glebb, Thank you for posting those quotes from Isadora -- it's very touching, to see how she's not going to give up her principles, but, though she can't account for how it can be, she's got to admit that those 2 ballerinas were ravishing.... and it's great to see that the admiration was mutual.....

The original soloist girl was Gisella Caccialanza, Cecchetti's god-child, his last protegee-- she married Lew Christensen and moved to San Francisco and became a ballerina here. She WAS A FABULOUS JUMPER -- SHE had a famous double saut de basque, and Balanchine was setting his latest version of Symphony in C on her -- the jumping girl, 3rd movement == when she tore her Achilles in rehearsal and was replaced for Ballet Society's opening night by Beatrice Tompkins. (She recovered from her injury -0- perhaps the first ballerina to make such a comeback -- and danced for a couple of years in Christensen's company in SanFrancisco.) So it's entirely plausible -- indeed, it's likely -- that the first version of Ballet Imperial had double saut de basques. There are old movies of her taking class on that famous trip that Balanchine's company took to south America in 1934 -- these turned up in Christensen-family archives and were shown for the first time at her memorial service, I guess now about five years ago. The remarkable thing was how fluid and supple a dancer she was -- a prodigious jump, but also a DEEP cambre, fantastic fluidity in every joint Though she had not a lot of turnout, she made wonderful use of what she had). I live near San Francisco, in Berkeley, and I met her several times -- first in a hospital, where she was visiting Anatole Vilzak after he'd had some serious illness. Thereafter, I never saw her when she wasn't being an ambassadress for ballet -- except once when she invited me to lunch to meet Marie Jeanne, who'd come for a visit. She'd burned a chicken, and was very funny about it -- actually, she'd roasted ht chicken and only burnt the sesame seeds it was covered with, about which she was totally hilarious. What a darling person she was. Marie-Jeanne, too, sweet, funny, unpretentious, with that earthy sense of humor so many dancers have -- nothing vulgar about it, but so very matter-of-fact. Marie-Jeanne took off her sandals and showed me her famous long feet--"yep, and long toes, too.' Beautiful feet. She praised Gisella -- "the perfect Cecchetti dancer, just perfect," and Vladimirov, and showed me how he raised his shoulders in high fifth, and how his wrists drooped, very Fokine. (But if you know the photograph where Balanchine is showing Swan Lake to Villella and Allegra Kent, it's a lot like that). It was a warm Sunday afternoon in one of the unfashionable suburbs south of San Francisco, the Christensens had a comfortable sunny ranch house on a hillside, and I'd brought a gift from Francis Mason, who'd found a copy of Cecchetti's "Letters to his godchild" ("Whatever you do, do not omit your battement serres -- at the end of every day, stand at the foot of your bed and do battements-serres before you go to sleep") -- i.e., letters o the young Gisella, -- and asked me to present the book to her. What an entree! (I'd gone to see Mr. Vilzak on an ultimately fruitless errand for Francis Mason, to interview him for inclusion in "I Remember Balanchine" -- but Mr. Vilzak did not have much to say on the subject, He ws still not feeling well -- when I came in, Mrs. Christensen was sitting with him; she was dressed as for church, but without a hat. When I arrived, she excused herself and went down the hall to visit another patient, her sister-in-law, Ruby Asquith.) Marie-Jeanne had a lot to say about Ballet Imperial -- which she did not consider a great ballet (by contrast with Concerto Barocco, which she knew WAS -- IS a great ballet -- though it was very different then). Ballet Imperial was also very different then -- Balanchine did not ask her to do those notoriously difficult double swivels which the ballerina now does in the opening cadenza and cause such a shriek of rosin on the marley-- "He said, 'Do something jazzy' -- so I did something crazy. And then again..... and again -- none of those things were set -- I just 'did something,' very jazzy, they were all crazy moves..." I got the very strong impression that the two women were old old friends who really liked each other, that both of them had long ago lost the muscle memory of what they had done exactly in those roles but knew what the general feeling of them had been, and had been -- especially Marie-Jeanne -- quite dismayed to see how the roles had been adapted over the years -- esp Barocco, which had been "very jazzy" -- much in the same way that Caroline Brown and Remy Charlip had have told me they've seen the pungency of their roles change over the years as Merce Cunningham's company has grown more facile and less flavorful I have to apologize, I realize I'm quite sentimental about Gisella, she was one of those sweet dancers with hardly enough evil in them to be a ballerina at all..... As the baron said of the hero in "Grand Illusion," she "was able to make you forget she was famous." But I hope these reminiscences will be of value to fans of the ballets she helped to create.