Paul Parish

THanks for the alert on that Ken Russell/Vivian Pickles film -- is it in circulation, do you know, Mel? One point that should maybe be made for those who don't know much about Isadora is that she most certainly had a profound effect on hte choreography of Frederick Ashton -- if you knew that he did a solo for Lynn Seymour in the manner of Isadora Duncan, to Brahms waltzes, but you didn't know much about Seymour, it would be possible to think the piece was perhaps a parody, or a spoof -- It's in fact quite hte opposite, in fact it's SO absorbed in the intense mystique of Isadora's expressive soul that I've been at perfornmances where some in the audience laughed, they couldn't believe that this voluptuous barefoot woman running towards us, veils flying, like a ship in full sail, with hands full of rose petals dripping from her fingers scattering onto hte stage, was FOR REAL.....but it was, and it was both awesome and preposterous at the same time. Pavlova and Isadora were two of the greatest influences on Ashton -- and all those tilts of hte torso he was constantly asking for, all that fluidity in the upper body, and the fast fast footwork were both features of Isadora's dancing..... He described memorably how Isadora ran -- "leaving herself behind" -- which is hte way most modern dancers run, esp those of Paul Taylor and Mark Morris -- but Ashton loved it and built it into his aesthetic.

There are several dancers who perform Isadora's works. The beautiful Annabelle Gamson has been recorded in an hour-long dance in America doing some of the softer, more haunting dances in a truly magical way -- her phrasing is like breathing, her movement has gravitas -- the dance MEANS something.... I'd really recommend it. Isadora came from San Francisco and she had an important colony of disciples here in the Bay Area -- from which another performer emerged, Lori Bellilove, who excels at Isadora's later constructivist era dances -- About ten years ago she performed as a guest artist with the Oakland Ballet here, and few who saw that program will ever forget it -- the great events of that evening were Isadora's "Revolutionary Etude," which is loosely based on Delacroix's painting "Liberty leading the People" --and the "Mother." It's been a long time, and it's like remembering a dream – it almost feels like they are the same dance, but some of the imagery is SO vivid still – the music I think was Chopin and Scriabin. These are works in a less Art Nouveau, a more angular style – “Mother” actually has work movements in it, it's from the era of communist idealism, and it's "about" a universal theme -- maternal sacrifice, drudging work, selfless devotion -- and, sappy though this may sound, its rhetoric is tremendously powerful -- maybe because its imagery has been copied so many times -- the woman on her hands and knees soaking and wringing some rag, washing the stairs, is all suggested in her dance, which is nevertheless NOT literal-minded.... She falls to the floor from a high releve in second-position attitude, and from there she bends her elbows at right angles, plunges her hands, and pulls "something" up, several times -- the movement is like that in Nijinsky's "Afternoon of a Faun," very stylized and particular, with a great deal of muscular tension.... It's a fantastic piece, and Bellilove (who's built rather like Wendy Whelan, not at ALL like Isadora) has the physique and temperament to make it seem a powerful abstraction.....

In her autobiography, Mathilde Kchessinska -- I KNOW I haven't spelled that right -- who was a dazzling performer, the tsar's favorite, the ballerina assoluta in St Petersburg, wrote about how exciting SHE found Isadora - -if I remember right, Kchessinska said she stod on her chair and cheered when she first saw Isadora....

that is so true, dirac, about having those words on that page... video is NOT hte same......and what about Square Dance, not to mention Baiser de la Fee or Figure in the Carpet..... Darling Carbro, what does dear Albert Evans have to do with Haiku, and has he become a choreographer? How can those endearing young charms he has in such abundance today return even 4 percent in 50 years?

First, I have to say I'm not a choreographer, so what I'm going to say comes only from LOOKING at a lot of choreography and thinking about what separates the "masters"... but what they've got that the others don't is not really a "look" or a technique, thoug they usually do -- the BIG thing is overall rhythmic organization..... >>> learn Irish or Scottish dancing, or any form of folk-dancing that features geometric patterns of steps... Learn "Thread the needle" (which Balanchine based the adagio of Concrto Barocco on ), spindles, skip-chains, all the shuttle-and-weave patterns (again, Balanchine used these ALL THE TIME), allemandes (BAlanchine used these ALL THE TIME -- they're the basis of finger turns, but MUCH MUCH more -- the pas de deux in Diamonds features these)... floor-plans, and hte trajectories of whole lines of steps, are the part that inexperienced choreographers tend to not have mastery of -- these have to be there like hte settings for jewels -- big extensions, fancy pirouettes elaborate solos have to be organic to hte overall rhythm and action or else they just clog everything up.....

I'm amazed at how much I love Lavrovsky -- I can't figure out why, not really. It must go deep -- I think there'll always be dance-lovers who care about him. Wordsworth said he wanted to write something "the world would not willingly let die" -- it's a good way to put it. What's kept Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, et al alive (as Charles Rosen has said) is the artists who wanted to play that music; similarly with Shakespeare, the actors and directors want to DO that. Likewise with choreography -- dancers want to do Balanchine, it's fascinating to them as movement and as a panoply of effects.... It was fascinating to see Jewels last week here, to see hte situations where it looked like the dancers had just tied themselves into some unslippable knot from which they'd never be able to escape and then, with a simple half-turn, walked right out of it.... not just in Rubies, where it was part of hte atmosphere of challenge, but very much so in DIamonds, and even in the "somnambulist" pas de deux in emeralds.....

Unlike modern dancers, ballet dancers are rarely taught composition as a matter of course. An exception to this "rule" is the School of the National Ballet of Canada -- this was pointed out to me by Julia Adam, a very talented choreographer in San Francisco whom I interviewed a couple of years ago when she got her first commission at SFB. She had a already won an Isadora Duncan Award for choreography for work set on another group.... She made a big point of the training at NBC: not only about how they were specifically taught composition, but also how they were taught to differentiate different techniques as styles -- e.g., she was taught how to do a "Balanchine ecarte" == which of course means being able to imagine using a particular "palette" of lines and actions to create the “world” of a ballet... and from there you're well on your way. As someone noted above, most college dance departments are modern dance depts -- ballet may be taught in a phys ed program, but "dance" is usually modern, except at Indiana and North Carolina School of the Arts... college departments always have choreo requirements.... I’ve also noted that most of the choreographers I really love had GREAT familiarity with folk dance -- Balanchine, Petipa, Robbins all had this familiarity, and of course so does Mark Morris...... it means they have a deep deep deep wealth of rhythms to choose from....

Arlene Croce memorably complained about the COMPANY, that somebody should let down a banner from the balcony that would say "We are WATCHING you!" SHe also mentioned that "Don't bother me, I'm busy" look --

the no dogs award will not be presented every year.....

Frankly, from a san francisco perspective, I look at Stowell's first season and I wish I lived in Porland --I want to see everything on hte list, everything -- it's just fabulously promising...... Our roster is mighty fine, but our repertory down here has got some dogs in it' Stowell's first season looks aesthetically marvellous....

I KNOW Anya Linden, what a lovely person she is; she's from Berkeley, California, and occasionally comes thorugh to visit my ballet teacher, her childhood friend Sally Streets; they both studied as children with Dorothy Pring in Berkeley, before Anya went off to London and Sally to NYCB.

I agree with you a thousand per cent about the cambre -- ESPECIALLY in the first variation (THE ONE PRECEDING HTE rOSE ADAGIO) -- what makes those sauts de chats SO beautiful is hte cambre a the crest of hte leap - if it weren't Aurora, you'd think it was Kitri -- except that there's nothing peasant about it -- it is so elegant it looks natural(!!!) to see the head reach back like that at the top of the jump....

Silvy, you've got a fabulous experience ahead of you, if you haven't seen SIzova dance Aurora -- the only version I know of is the video of Sleeping Beauty where she dances with SOloviev -- it's a little weird, since one of hte great dancer-teachers -- Dudinskaya, I think -- dances Carabosse, and there's TONS of extra choreography for Dudinskaya in a grotesque mode which mostly comes off OK(but somehow the filming process makes her look small and prevents her from making any truly tremendous effects)... But SIzova is astounding -- her first variation, all 20 seconds of it, is simply heart-stopping -- she absolutely flies through hte air, more fairy-like than any of her fairies, the sauts de chat are unbelievable-- I've watched them over and over in slow motion, never seen feet like that, nor such beautiful co-ordination of every aspect of a jump into something that looks as natural as the white-cap on a wave, and as artificial as a statue of gold by Cellini.... and hte wedding variation is very beautiful, also -- though I find it not very moving; for some reason she does a version of it that truncates the Russian dance, adding extra soutenus and such with baroque arm gestures rather than hte corkscrew wrists.... I THINK this is what people are referring to as he wedding pas de deux, rather than an "Aurora's Wedding" variation -- for "Arora's Wedding" was just a western European/USA 1-act version of Sleeping Beauty, useful for performing on tour, etc. IT's a Ballets Russes thing, invented by DIaghilev-- htey don't use it in Russia, (Again, I'm not SURE of this, but I don't think so.) So what you're looking for is hte Kirov Sleeping Beauty, 1964-- F0nteyn did an Aurora's Wedding, not a great moment for her -- though SIBLEY is on that tape in Bluebird-- which i think you've seen

Anther feature that Alexandra doesn't mention in her excellent summary is more a matter of breath -- it's inherent in the choreography, where there'll be (say) a line of VERY small steps and then a larger jump, the whole phrase having ups and downs to it like waves. So the dancer's image contracts and expands like a person breathing, which makes the whole really quite artifical process look mysteriously natural, familiar, and appealing.

Blackbird b, It occurs to me to mention for you the Queen of hte Dryades variation fomr DOn Q, which Muriel Maffre has been dancing here -- and she's EXTREMELY tall -- she looks magnificent in it..... It's GRAND -- though it's not really a dance, it's too formal and square... starts with a petite jete, releve in a huge ecarte, from which you tombe and jete sideways, from there releveinto a huge ecerte that mirrors the first one -- repeat that..... you know, it's probably GOrsky, its ideas are all retreads, very reminiscent of other variations (lilac Fairy's sissonnes and pirouettes from 5th), but it's a tremendous display of aplomb and line, and it has a lovely manege, and it could be satisfying to DO.... But both you and Silvy should consider Aurora's wedding variation -- I've seen dancers of all sizes make something of it, and the thing about it is, it really does have a power to move you. Diaghilev was enchanted by it.... there's such a variety of angles and plastique to it, such possibilities for phrasing, for contraposto in hte upper body -- short dancers with good turnout can look FANTASTIC in it, for the lines are full of spirals -- and you can/may decorate it almost at will -- or at least, I've seen it done that way so much -- the balances after the sissonnes-changes I've seen in sous-sus, passe, attitude, various head positions, just so long as you look like a gold statuette that belongs at Versailles in every one of the balances, you're doing just fine -- But hte thing that gives you the MOST room is the Russian-dance passage -- the steps forward on pointe to hte violin solo, with the corkscrewing wrists; when Joanna Berman did that here in SanFrancisco, she did it with so MUCH feeling, it made me cry -- her arm movement was so full of feeling, it came from deep in the back and wasn't just a matter of wrists but had a great deal of heart in it, and it felt so passionate-- it put me in mind of the way Isaac Stern used to play Juliet's dances (Prokofieff's) as encores, with SUCH feeling and love well, Russian,but it also brought to mind the ecstatic arms-overhead dancing of Jews and Palestinians and Uzbeks... you've got a lot of room to cool it down or let it well up in your own way.....

Hey, Silvy, thank you!! I'm SO glad it was worth your trouble -- I thought from the kinds of things you were sensitive to, that you'd like hte way these dances give them something to get their teeth into..... And look at this thread! all these variations -- since i looked in last, the replies have really multiplied!! That's great -- a whole library of ideas here. Let me add, that -- well, Blackbird ballerina, this probably would NOT work well for you, since it's petite allegro --that Cupid;'s variation in the Dryades scene of Don QUixote is stealing hte show here every night in the new production of DOn Q in San Francisco -- it's is incredibly effective, specialy because hboth dancers Ive seen do it have looked SO comforable and happy in the role.... It probably helps to have a petite build -- you need to run on pointe and have a delicious temps de fleche and a good balance in attitude front -- I can't remember the last time i saw a pique balance be so effectiveas as hers. It's just a wonderful dance, it fits its music so naturally,it's sparkling and vivacious and pretty, it's just the PRETTIEST thing.... She is dancing while everybody else onstage is still, and htey're arranged in complex patterns while she darts about -- mostly on the diagonal up-left to down-right -- so the variation would be less effective as the ONLY thing going on on-stage... but it should be still effective.

Wel, I miss Tina already -- she'd have been a fiery Kitri. THough she may not be as interested in dacing such aggressive roles now as she used to be -- since hse had her first baby, she's become a softer, more reflective dancer..... I guess all I mean is, she's really expanded her expresive rnge. Ballet Nearby, I too will never forget those lifts in Giselle -- I didn't see the particular effct you're describing, for I was following the line of her back as she arc'd through hte air -- it was comparable to Vasiliev and Maximova, how hig, soft, effortless, poetic.... they were wonderfully attuned.... And i agree, I miss Julia Adam -- she was ALWAYS interesting, and never hte same -- so versatile. She could be an exquisitely delicate fairy one evening and a brassy dance hall girl another, with very sexy legs..... But I agree with Dirac, it feels like bad magicv to talk about who you're going to miss...... Roman Rykine must be in town visiting -- I'd swear I saw him in hte audience the other night (I saw MAkarova, too, for sure, but she lives here.) PS BalletNearby, I HAVE had a similar experience watching the light gleam on a dancer's shoes -- it was watching a video, and I was watching Allegra kent in one of my all time favorite things, hte grand pas de deux from the second act of Midsummer Night's Dream - -when I came to (that's the only way to put it) I realized I'd just been watching her HEELS -- one minute she was in second position, the next in fourth, back to second, back to fourth..... I was mesmerized....I guess i'm bragging, but it feels preposterous to admit paying such devoted attention to such a thing -- but it was as if my life depended on it.... But it's TRUE, that's what we do -- we're just watching ,and sometimes these visionary things happen, when the phenomena seem to go numinous; you think 'there must be a better world, for I think I've just seen it') we should maybe make this a thread of its own....

I never saw him live, but ..... he sure comes through on videotape. His timing was really exciting. The moment the standing foot pointed was like a knife in hte heart.The bending-over backward-backing-out exit in Melancholic was astounding, but it wasn't hte only part of hte dance that registered as a shock -- the falls! What did he do? somehow he was falling over backwards and at the last second, like a cat, he turned to face it and hit the ground face-forward. landing on his fingertips, it seems like -- it was danced with such intensity, Eifman-level drama, not in his face or eyes, not histrionics, but in hte body, and not so much in the plastique, as in the action..... Leigh -- I wish you'd say more about what his notes were to Peter Boal; from the quote about despairing of ever achieving a real arabesque line.... can you sing some more of that? Fascinating.....

I did NOT see the triple saut de basque, alas.... sauts de basque are SUCH dangerous steps.. seems like people twist their knees in them all the time.... Yes, I Saw Guennadi standing in the aisle, too -- he didn't look uncomfortable -- But this role isn't one a person could undertake if he wasn't in prime shape -- it's like Tristan, it makes SUCH heavy demands -- 3 (or is it 4?) acts. virtuoso pirouettes, virtuoso jumps you've never seen before, one-arm press lifts -- walking AROUND with her up in a one-arm press lift, not to mention tours in that turned-in bent-kneed position, and arabesque swivels on high half-toe with the knee bent -- and nearly everything finishes to hte knee, with a back-bend yet..... Boada made all that look like a kid on a skateboard -- with such high spirits, such good nature, such sweet rascality.... It was a phenomenal performance.... But I have to say, since people are getting -- me too, I am also -- getting all fired up about the irony of his getting fired on the eve of such a triumph, HIS EXPRESSIVE RANGE IS LIMITED. THis is not personal -- in fact, i've been at a dinner party he came to and his demeanor that night was so modest and gracious, I can hardly imagine anybody famous handling themselves better these days. I'm talking about his stage personality. There's no doubt he'd be delightful in Coppellia (but that's not in the SFB rep). He's a top dog -- heroic all right, but it's got to be very earthy. Don Q is almost the first thing he's done since Etudes (which was the first hting I saw him in) in which he looked right -- and what made Etudes all right was that way he put the pedal to the metal and pulled those pirouettes together and pushed the finale over hte top. He was NOT great in Prodigal Son, though he could jump big, he was prosaic and heavy as the character. He was NOT any good AT ALL in that Baryshnikov piece (can it have been Vestris?)... He WAS fabulous in Magrittomania, bu he couldn't have done the lead.... (I don't mean the steps, I mean the affect would have been all wrong, it's way too dark and alienated.)

Ballet Nearby let me tell you, how I envy you that you’ve also seen a second cast -- and welcome to Ballet Alert-- what a wonderful first post -- hope to read more of you - Don Q was, I agree, totally sensational opening night. Everybody but the Don himself was outrageously adorable.... the mimes were fantastic, gamache stole hte show.... ANd Boada was a fantastically charming rogue -- not only can he do double assembles flying through the air at a 45 degree angle, he's screamingly funny when he's lying on hte floor, "dead," and Kitri's trying to revive him, and he puts his hand on her breast, and she's shocked and furious and delighted but has to play along because her FATHER is there.... -- But let me tell you what happened at the curtain call!! You didn't see this! At the end, after flipping her fan open on every double fouette, and finishing in a sous-sus she held for about 16 counts, like a knife stuck in the floor, (I couldn't sit still, I think I jumped up and cheered at that point, there she was STANDING there....) It was about 55 seconds from then till the end of the ballet -- come the bows, when they handed her her flowers -- a bouquet the size of a bath-tub, red lilies -- Lorena took one look at them and HANDED THEM to Joan Boada, her partner (who I know you know, and the whole audience knew, had just been told a week ago that his contract would not be renewed)! She then took him forward and presented him to the audience. Talk about non-verbal communication! WHAT a magnificent gesture. It was just heroic, absolutely in keeping with the performances they'd just given -- one of the greatest things I've seen on this stage here----- reminds me of Maria Bylova with the Bolshoi, who threw her flowers into the pit... she'd danced Myrtha..... You couldn't tell if it was in homage to the musicians, or out of contempt for the commissar who'd sent them to her, but it was magnificent, and definitely defiant... Lorena's gesture was SO handsome -- obviously spontaneous, just her response to the fact of the flowers, enough to cover a coffin, huge red lilies.... In a way it was defiant --not necessarily of management, I think she knew what a sympathetic vehicle Helgi had just given her. and how deeply it validates her way of being onstage -- more a defiance of fate, let the chips fall where they may, I support my fellow artist and countryman -- What we'd seen and LOVED in the performance was very much the Cuban temperament, a kind of nobility in adversity that sets great store by unconquerable high spirits -- I don't expect to see it in Kristin Long or Yuan Yuan Tan, though I admire both very much -- it takes a whole lifetime to develop that. The first thing Lorena did that truly amazed me was the curtain calls in Gala Performance..... I was shrieking. She was funnier than the Trockaderos, and as with the Trockaderos, the reality was so powerfully there behind the parody -- she wants us to love her. So she was milking the bows, wrapping herself in the curtain, going WAY beyond anything I'd seen van Hamel do in the role when ABT had danced it here.... but the thing was, she was NOT outstaying her welcome... the more she did the funnier it got, and the more I wanted it to go on...... When she finally did leave the stage, it was because she'd had enough.... Until this production, I thought this kind of Don Quixote was a joke at the expense of Don Q -- which i think was Balanchine's view...... But after seeing it, I think it presents a KIND of ideal, and that on opening night we saw this ideal when she handed him those flowers --

IT LOOKS LIKE A WONDERFUL SEASON TO ME-- As a San Franciscan, I'll never forget seeing Stowell's first season here -- a man who was willing to pay as much attention to his glissades as to his pirouettes and grands jetes was a man of a new order. What legs, what attack! and in a ballet like New Sleep (Forsythe), he made pristine geometry look hot and menacing. And his last night here was a tremendous occasion -- a full house came to see him dance at the top of his form in a way he'd invented for himself, a manner that transcended accuracy and had become a high form of play. He'd created the roles in several of the ballets, and in Balanchine's Tarantella he'd remade the role, idealized it, made it a kind of pastoral, full of play, so he'd let his pirouettes slow down, spiral off-center, enjoying himself; the assemble-sixe that Villella landed and exploded instantly into an echappe, Stowell sailed through the air like a javelin -- without beats -- with a ballon that reminded me of Fadeyechev's cabrioles (which, remember, sailed along for a long time with the legs softly assembled before they opened)... and then exploded upon landing into the echappe... Every time the ballerina re-entered, it was a different one of his favorite partners -- so he danced it with Joanna Berman, Tina leBlanc, and Kristin Long, but seemed no more taxed by dancing this killer role aat top speed than any of them (and that after having danced most of the night already). It was very mindful dancing.... His season deserves to be popular -- and it probably will. Look what he's got. A roster of Balanchine's most enjoyable works – Balanchine’s Nutcracker has the world's best party scene; Rubies is a great crowd-pleaser; Serenade may be hard on people who've never seen that sort of thing before, but I bet there'll be people who come back just to see if they can get a better fix on it, and there'll be a core of people who see every performance and beg for more. The score for Firebird will by itself fill the house, and Possokhov, we've seen here, can make ballets that raise the roof. I don't myself like his Medea very much, but the audience went wild. I'd myself LOVE to see his Firebird. And Julia Adam is protean -- her umpteen ballets so far have been each as different as possible from the last. She's terrific at choreographing steps and phrases that upper-level students can own and commit themselves to. But her first ballet, a hilarious comedy, was set on the strongest virtuosi at SFB, to some ROCK SONGS. I wouldn't be too surprised if her piece gets an underground buzz in the beer-halls of Portland and all the kids showed up to see it. Good luck to them all.

I discovered the site when Rachel Howard told me she'd been to BA and I should come check out all the posts that had gone up n the site about an article I'd written in Ballet Review -- Seems like I was reading them for 2 or 3 hours. What I'd said about Lucia Lacarra had hit a nerve -- I was fascinated to see how one post sparked another, how the posts kind of flocked or swarmed around a topic -- IT was great to see how much people CARED... whatever view they had, I could see how someone would feel that way. Atm711 had started that thread and thought I had a LOT of nerve (I probably do) we’re good friends now. I was impressed from the very beginning how informed people are, and how much they care. I come back, as the Loving Spoonful sang, because of "the great relief of having you to talk to..." Actually, I take it back -- Rachel was not the FIRST -- she was the proximate cause, but not the first. The first was when a ballet school director who shall be nameless, but Ms X you know who you are, told me she read Ballet Alert religiously but would NOT post, sounding like Odysseus tied to the mast so he could hear the sirens' song but not f get tempted to do something he'd regret. She impressed me -- the tone of her voice made it clear, this was the real thing....

I put a poll on here just for fun, and listed some of my favorites in no particular order. What are yours? Obviously, some of ballet descends directly from European martial arts -- esp. from fencing -- consider the importance of the lunge-pose. But in what era was serous swordplay introduced into ballet? Nutcracker? I guess there was SOME kind of fighting all the way back in Lully's ballets for Louis XIV-- if the Soleil conquered the forces of night and chaos, there must have been SOME show of force -- I find myself thinking that fancy rapier-work comes AFTER the swashbuckling movies -- like with the Soviet Romeo and Juliet. But I don't know why I think that.... Anybody know? Were there swashbuckling ballets in the era of the stage-plays (what would they be? The count of Monte Cristo, maybe, the Three Musketeers... Did Esmeralda have a lot of street brawling in it?) But maybe it goes back to Le Corsaire and Don Quixote?

Thanks, Mel.... wow, the first version of Giselle was only half dancing, the ohter half ws pantomime.... here's a quote from a review for anybody that's interested.... [The author] moves on to a wide range of topics, including the relationship between the gestures of the singers and the movements of the dancers, and the distinction between dance that represents dancing (entertainment staged within the story of the opera) and dance that represents action. Smith maintains that ballet-pantomime and opera continued to rely on each other well into the nineteenth century, even as they thrived independently. The "divorce" between the two arts occurred little by little, and may be traced through unlikely sources: controversies in the press about the changing nature of ballet-pantomime music, shifting ideas about originality, complaints about the ridiculousness of pantomime, and a little-known rehearsal score for Giselle.

Alexandra mentioned this book in a comment on the Maryinsky historical revivals -- it sounds like a fascinating scholarly study, that details (among other things) just what parts of the Giselle that we know were in the very first versions.... I think many of us would like to know more about this, and also about this book.... who is the author? Do you have any links to reviews? What other ballets are discussed?