Paul Parish

I take it back, Divertimento is -- well, I've only seen it once, and it wasn't an inspoired performance, the variations were so-so, except for Stacey Cadell, who was fantastic -- but I believe everybody........... Mozart is fantastically singable..... and whistleable, I used to whistle hte little ordeal-march from hte MAgic Flute when I'd go for lte-night walks, it would attract dogs, they'd lik,e to walk with me, and then I'd feel safe........... but he doesn't make ME want to dance so much as sing.....

Minkus feels really good to dance to -- though I find some of his music as ugly as Prokofieff's (the entrance of the Brahmans, in Bayadere Act I, is just hideous, and there's not even a good reason for it to be so blatty -- whereas the way Prokofieff piles up dissonances to express the duke's wrath DOES correspond to the sight of dead bodies in hte street.....) OF hte composers NOT on hte list, I'd have to say that Bach is very danceable, Mozart is not -- Concerto Barocco is proof, but even in class, the well-tempered clavier preludes are almost all based on dance forms and feel great to dance to -- as dancey as Strauss polkas... It takes a good pianist to make Bach FIT classroom combinations, though, for his music is not in standard 4's and 8's -- though it doesn't sound unbalanced, it is not square at all -- One of the pianists where I take class does wizard things with Bach -- I have a CD of his I use to give myself a barre at home, it's a good alternative to Lynn Stanford -- and it's because the rhythms are right and hte music is dansante in its conception. Actually, Rudi's CD is great -- i'll give him a plug. Our teachers use it a lot when a pianist can't make it, and the grand allegros are great. You can get it from the Capezio stores in Oakland and SanFrancisco..... Rudy Apffel Also Stravinsky -- it's amazing how danceable his music is ,and how -- even when it sounds strange -- how strong hte SPIRIT is in it. I just got home from the ballet, and the last piece on hte program was kind of a spoof of socialites in the audience -- it's called Black Cake, and is in modern evening dress, good-looking black dresses and high heels for hte ladies -- and it had a big funny pas de deux to Stravinsky's Scherzo a la Russe -- which sounded a lot in places like music from Petrouchka, and the couple dancing were a lot like puppets, droll, sad-funny, and Yuri Possokhov actually reminded me of Petrouchka, sort of irrepressible and kicked-around at the same time, unstoppable.... It was raucous, but it was perfect music for dancing........

Minkus feels really good to dance to -- though I find some of his music as ugly as Prokofieff's (the entrance of the Brahmans, in Bayadere Act I, is just hideous, and there's not even a good reason for it to be so blatty -- whereas the way Prokofieff piles up dissonances to express the duke's wrath DOES correspond to the sight of dead bodies in hte street.....) OF hte composers NOT on hte list, I'd have to say that Bach is very danceable, Mozart is not -- Concerto Barocco is proof, but even in class, the well-tempered clavier preludes are almost all based on dance forms and feel great to dance to -- as dancey as Strauss polkas... It takes a good pianist to make Bach FIT classroom combinations, though, for his music is not in standard 4's and 8's -- though it doesn't sound unbalanced, it is not square at all -- One of the pianists where I take class does wizard things with Bach -- I have a CD of his I use to give myself a barre at home, it's a good alternative to Lynn Stanford -- and it's because the rhythms are right and hte music is dansante in its conception. Actually, Rudi's CD is great -- i'll give him a plug. Our teachers use it a lot when a pianist can't make it, and the grand allegros are great. You can get it from the Capezio stores in Oakland and SanFrancisco..... Rudy Apffel Also Stravinsky -- it's amazing how danceable his music is ,and how -- even when it sounds strange -- how strong hte SPIRIT is in it. I just got home from the ballet, and the last piece on hte program was kind of a spoof of socialites in the audience -- it's called Black Cake, and is in modern evening dress, good-looking black dresses and high heels for hte ladies -- and it had a big funny pas de deux to Stravinsky's Scherzo a la Russe -- which sounded a lot in places like music from Petrouchka, and the couple dancing were a lot like puppets, droll, sad-funny, and Yuri Possokhov actually reminded me of Petrouchka, sort of irrepressible and kicked-around at the same time, unstoppable.... It was raucous, but it was perfect music for dancing........

WIth respect to everybody involved in this thoughtful discussion, I feel I need to stand up for the difficulty of figuring out what it is you actually think -- and if THAT's what you're doing, I think you're entitled to use the words THAT COME TO MIND, that you actually use when you think, rather than when you speak with people who aren't your friends, or for the record, because thought happens fast, when it happens -- when it comes it's not like a flower opening, it's more like electricity........ If you're writing, you can usually go back and edit..... ANd with friends, well, if you're dishing a performance, that's what you're doing ("I thought the way she attacked those fouttes was downright gaudy"), but if you're trying to figure out WHAT you think, I think it has a "chilling effect" to have to be mindful of the respect due to he ladies and gentlemen whose dancing you're discussing.... their work creates the world we live in, and is not merely a private matter. "THe truth is no respecter of persons." THough it's NOT cool to say you hated it (or her, or him) till you've left the theater....

WIth respect to everybody involved in this thoughtful discussion, I feel I need to stand up for the difficulty of figuring out what it is you actually think -- and if THAT's what you're doing, I think you're entitled to use the words THAT COME TO MIND, that you actually use when you think, rather than when you speak with people who aren't your friends, or for the record, because thought happens fast, when it happens -- when it comes it's not like a flower opening, it's more like electricity........ If you're writing, you can usually go back and edit..... ANd with friends, well, if you're dishing a performance, that's what you're doing ("I thought the way she attacked those fouttes was downright gaudy"), but if you're trying to figure out WHAT you think, I think it has a "chilling effect" to have to be mindful of the respect due to he ladies and gentlemen whose dancing you're discussing.... their work creates the world we live in, and is not merely a private matter. "THe truth is no respecter of persons." THough it's NOT cool to say you hated it (or her, or him) till you've left the theater....

I've heard that she's coming here, and that we have every reason to rejoice.... including a dancer who can MOVE to inspire Tomasson to choreograph some ballets with a real kinetic interest in them again after several years of overheated spectacles....

one "modern" choreographer who seems to understnd pointe at least a little is Mark MOrris -- but hten he did ballet before he ever did "modern," and his company class for his "modern" company is a ballet class -- a "Healthy ballet class," Joanna Berman calls it ... In his solo for her, "Later" (as in "see you later") which I htink is beautiful, he uses pointe steps sparingly -- almost like Bournonville, where many of hte pirouettes will be on half-toe, not pointe..... Morris uses lots of steps on half-toe-- piques in second travelling sideways; bourrees on half toe, in second and in fourth, chaines (a la Balanchine, who used a line of chaines on half toe finishing with a double-soutenu on pointe at the end o many bravura passages, where Petipa would have used a line of step=up turns ending in a double). Berman has extremely good feet, and can use low, middle, and high half-toe as well as pointe effortlessly, with imperceptible transitions.... So in Later, the steps on pointe have a finished, polished quality that gives a highlight to the phrase, emphasizes hte curve -- sometimes they're dramatic, like hte last releve in 3rd arabesque -- which would NOT be so dramatic if he'd used pointe indiscriminately. It's a subtle, subtle dance, the more I see it, the more I admire the way it's wrought....... It's not extraverted, it's not an attention grabber, but the more you look at it, the more you see things like this subtle use of pointe, and the gorgeous buttery softness of her footwork becomes a theme in itself.......

PS -- I was there a different night from DIrac -- who all did you see in Continuum? Did anybody stand out for you? Just curious.... A big difference was that hte night I was there Pierre-Francois Villanoba danced in l'Arlesienne. Estelle, you asked about him earlier -- this was in fact his comeback from an injury -- to his foot, I believe -- he hurt himself on hte European tour, just after Sept 11..... He was superb in hte role..... I wonder if it takes maybe a Frenchman to put Petit across; he and Lacarra were VERY tuned in to he VERY peculiar style of the piece, which is simultaneously very classical (my mother who was from New Orleans would have used the wrod "faisandee" have I spelt it right -- to describe the over-refined pointes and hte pathos) and at the same time markedly CHARACTER -- using turn-in, and peasant poses stolen from Les Noces -- but hte two principals were deeply in character and made hte idiom make sense in a way that when I saw Solomakha in it last year, I didn't find him convincing..... The boy has got to be haunted by the girl from Arles who never appears, except insofar as her presence haunts HIM -- and Villanoba was -- well, he was carefulin hard steps, like hte double tour to grand plie -- he waited quite a while before descending into htat plie -- but MOS of hte time, he was really phrasing htings , distorting hte shapes of classic steps, and adapting hte timing, to show hte psychological states.. I was totally with him, and I think Estelle, you'd have been proud of him..... Solomakha, by the way, was completely convincing in Dances at a Gathering, as the boy in Green -- he was kind of like Lensky in Onegin -- in the poem, not the ballet -- ardent, young, soulful, sweet, poetic -- very complex pirouettes were just rhapsodies of feeling..... so was Yuri Possokhov, as hte boy in purple- -- RObbins was born Rabinovitch or -witz or something like that, Russians understand him.... Petit is a different idiom..... Solomakha is wonderful most of hte time, as hte prince in Sleeping Beauty; in Swan Lake, he's soulful as Nureyev....

It was also "let's have another pas de deux night... Death of a Moth is , like, 5 pas de deux, with a passage or two for corps boys-- very hard dancing, too -- intricate, lots of plastique, and lots of well, flailing in hte pas de deux -- though Ginastera's music CALLS for this.... It's music that's very hard to take, it's so nervous and distraught..... But Nicole Starbuck was fabulous.... Continuum is mostly pas de deux as well...... and too many promenades...... there's an interesting passage where Julie Diana does a solo to hte same music she just did a pas de deux to, with the wonderful Damian Smith..... (both dances, if I remember right, ended up in the fetal position on the floor, but what you were asked to notice was how she placed the palms of her hands on things). Kristen Long got to be happy, and she was beautiful. In fact, they all gave swell performances. They wear dark green leotards and belts (pink tights). I actually really liked the piece, though A) a dance friend said she did virtually all those exercises in a "lets' see what we can do in a Balanchine idiom" class THarp taught 20 years ago in New yOrk (including hte solo to the same music you'd just done a duet to)..... and B) Alonzo King's "Alkan," of 5 years ago or so, maybe 8, was very like "Continuum" and really more intersting -- set to resonant, stark, haunting piano music (by ALkan) and exploring a neo-classical idiom, with stranger and more intersting solos -- I remember a dancer running across the floor on pointe, shaking her legs in front of her like they were snakes -- her body was hanging back, her legs were out in front of her behaving in the strangest way, adn she was doing all this BY HERSELF -- it was Derbra Rose, uterly fantastic...... Nora Heber (who's 6 feet tall, nearabouts, on flat) was freaky-beautiful, with miles and miles of legs in a supported adage that floated in a haunting eerie sort of way, very edgy..... black leotards and belts, pink tights....

There's an 8some reel in Mark Morris's "A Garden" -- pretty simple, but VERY fast -- pas de basques and dos-i-dos, and it's very tricky getting through the middle to the other side....... they're just flying -- it's in the "Courante" section 3 more performances this week at SFB And again, back to Cerrito.....

There's an 8some reel in Mark Morris's "A Garden" -- pretty simple, but VERY fast -- pas de basques and dos-i-dos, and it's very tricky getting through the middle to the other side....... they're just flying -- it's in the "Courante" section 3 more performances this week at SFB And again, back to Cerrito.....

It's a great topic..... And it's got lots of potential meanings for people.... Depending on what YOU actually value in dancing. Someone who always hits fifth, yes, indeed; that's a very likely candidate. Someone who dances "honestly" -- But my feeling about a dancer's dancer is not that it's someone who's a technician but rather someone whom dancers tune in to -- maybe hte performer's personality is not big, or greedy for attention, or dazzling in proportions and line, but there's a kind of continuity of sensibility that carries through all hte phrasing, so that the dancer repays attention – and in a way that provides a kind of consolation that dancers feel grateful for, as if they were paying attention to the fact that you might be paying attention to them and didn't fudge things just because they're in the background or the passage is irremediably ugly or thanklessly difficult ("hard and ugly," in my friend Judy Bean's phrase) A dancer's dancer is the opposite of the gross attention grabber, who sell their sex-appeal or dramatic flair, the Michael Flatleys of the ballet world. Kyra Nichols used to be a dancer's dancer; she somehow became a ballerina as her temperament blossomed. Many ballerinas are dancers’ dancers. In San Francisco, we have some stars whom hte audience doesn't appreciate as much as the dancers do -- even given his popularity, Guennadi Nedviguine is known by dancers to be earth-shakingly beautiful, way beyond what the public at large apprehends. Erika Johnson at Diablo Ballet is a dancer all our local dancers are dizzy in love with -- she is so quiet, so calm, so musical, so private, the continuity of her dancing is so lucid by hte end of the piece you don't know how to thank her, because she never seemed to ask for anything from you -- never "don't watch this bit, please, it's so awkward," never "pull for me and I'll do it for you,' she never vamps us, even in hte tackiest cheese -- and some of their choreography is pretty cheesy -- she's never sullied by it, nor does she condescend to her material, she never sniffs at the cheesiness, she always does things on time and not when it's convenient...... Joanna Berman -- but I've said so much about her, I'm in danger of being confused with her agent... But if I could say one more thing, a dancer's dancer, and Joanna exemplifies this to the highest degree you'll find around here -- shows you the DANCE in the steps.... Like Gielgud showing you the poetry in the drama, a dancer's dancer de-emphasizes the jagged dramatic moments that could stop the show and makes you feel even in hte most vertiginous difficulties Petipa or Balanchine could present, the similarity the passage has with dancing as folk dancers understand it, something made up of rhythm and posture and attitude and accent and "sweep." She lets you see the grapevine step in a series of glissades that change, or failli pas de basque, or in any of the many academic combinations that grapevine is the basis of….. I'd add Lucia Lacarra to my list based on her dancing recently -- the way she brings out the czardas in the "Hungarian" duet in van Manen's "Black Cake." It's brilliant artificial comedy, especially in DANCE terms – she makes pictures, of course -- hte same huge develloppe devant (and fondu on hte standing leg) as in Petipa's Czardas in Swan Lake -- but also in hte sweep of the movement, her momentum, the fabulous timing alternating languor and attack -- she MAKES it feel so Hungarian.... you see it, it's there over and over, and each time it's beautiful, and preposterous..... and so intentional. So you see in its stormy lovers' quarrel there are simultaneous allusions to Pina Bausch and William Forsythe, and to apache, but also to their 19th-century antecedents in Hungarian/Spanish-gypsy passion-dance. And her understanding of the imagery and rhythms of l'Arlesienne, a very peculiar ballet, wow! Her lines of course were stunning, but so was her continuity, her timing -- you saw EVERYTHING, the stance with one foot turned out and the other in parallel, the care she gave to phrasing the smallest gesture was all in keeping....

GOOD QUESTION!!!-- First of all, Mel, You've made my day.... I think it's really quite mysterious why we call them by their first names, it's kind of "tribal," not anything anyone of us can change.... It's LIKE SAYING "Serenade" INSTEAD OF "SERENAHHD' -- AS IN "he sang her a serenade last evening, playing on the guitar, the whole rigmarole, like it was 19th century Italy" -- Arlene Croce led a small crusade to get pople to call the ballet serenade instead of "serenahhd," and about 3 people picked it up; I tried for a few days, but I couldn't keep it up. It's like the things teen-aged girls wear to take class-- in Suki Schorer's day, they all wore rubber baby panties over their tights, GOd knows why... now it's those cute knit shorts (at least at BBT, where the teenagers take class with the rest of us on Saturdays -- these fashions are almost impossible to go against, God alone knows why.....) When I write for publication, I say Farrell -- but when I'm talking about her, or thinking about her, I call her Suzane -- Once at a Question and Answer session where she was the guest, i actually called her that by accident in front of everybody ("this question is for Suzanne" -- I wasn't thinking about how to present myself, I was just trying to phrase the question.... later, when she was answering someone ELSE's questino, I realizd what I'd done and was really mortified..... Maybe it's like with Christians, who call the son of God "Jesus," and his mother "Mary" -- maybe that's how much they mean to us.....

GOOD QUESTION!!!-- First of all, Mel, You've made my day.... I think it's really quite mysterious why we call them by their first names, it's kind of "tribal," not anything anyone of us can change.... It's LIKE SAYING "Serenade" INSTEAD OF "SERENAHHD' -- AS IN "he sang her a serenade last evening, playing on the guitar, the whole rigmarole, like it was 19th century Italy" -- Arlene Croce led a small crusade to get pople to call the ballet serenade instead of "serenahhd," and about 3 people picked it up; I tried for a few days, but I couldn't keep it up. It's like the things teen-aged girls wear to take class-- in Suki Schorer's day, they all wore rubber baby panties over their tights, GOd knows why... now it's those cute knit shorts (at least at BBT, where the teenagers take class with the rest of us on Saturdays -- these fashions are almost impossible to go against, God alone knows why.....) When I write for publication, I say Farrell -- but when I'm talking about her, or thinking about her, I call her Suzane -- Once at a Question and Answer session where she was the guest, i actually called her that by accident in front of everybody ("this question is for Suzanne" -- I wasn't thinking about how to present myself, I was just trying to phrase the question.... later, when she was answering someone ELSE's questino, I realizd what I'd done and was really mortified..... Maybe it's like with Christians, who call the son of God "Jesus," and his mother "Mary" -- maybe that's how much they mean to us.....

Thanks, Cerky -- wow, my hair is standing on end, from just reading about it -- the cards, the gun, the double tour, the contraction, the cigarette.... what theater!! doesn't need a word....just inevitable, that sequence is his fate... I wish I'd seen you... Paul

Mel, I wish I'd seen you dance this role -- sounds like you hav hte feeling AND the build for it -- i wishI'd seen you dance, period... you know, Nijinsky himself was not a tall, classically poportioned dancer. On the contrary, he was a short dancer with bulky muscles, but with a long neck and a fantastic way of carrying his head and arms, a wonderful ability to pull his lines in hte air, and (well, I guess) a poetic nature.....

I'll go.... I love that way of dancing -- I love the jumping, hte lightness, the arms, the soft landings -- you have to MOVE to dance like that, it's not just all poses, it's pictures in the air God, you should have seen Joanna Berman tonight -- talk about MOVING...there are so many different kinds of movement in the piece, grapevine steps of every description (as glissades, as piques sideways), an adorable combinaion that starts with a petite jete and releves into an attitude croise with Giselle arms, and pique pas de bourree.. Well, I'm NOT really off-topic, for hte dance has a lot of romantic port de bras- not to mention a SChubert impromptu for music -- but the main motif is an arm gesture based on giselle arms turning into arms "a lyre" (in BLasis's phrase) -- basically, middle 5th opens to 3rd arabesque, and then the palms turn over and hte elbows droop.... at hte end, when she turns her head sadly in hte other direction, it looks very romantic, poignant -- not heavy, but deep -- empty armed..... the very last gesture, on the last notes of the music, she goes to the pianist, bows to him..... the feeling is like that in Schubert's great song, "an die Musik" -- "you noble art, in how many grey hours have you lifted me into a better world......" My favorite soprano Lotte Lehmann closed her farewell recital with it, but could not sing it to the end....... It's a beautiful dance -- it would suit Kyra Nichols........hmmmmmm, maybe I'm just thinking that because it was lit by her brother, Alex Nichols, who has rescued it from the oblivion it seemed sunk in when we first saw it at the ballet gala, before a real lighting design had been worked out.... But no, it's made for a ballerina who DANCES , who moves like a song.....

Dear Pumukau, We certainly remember Simon Dow from when he danced here in San Francisco, a dozen years ago -- Tracy-Kai Maier, may she rest in peace, loved to dance with him. She always said he made her feel she could do anything, he was THERE for her.... I believe he could inspire a group of dancers....

Great topic, Glebb... Did you do the mazurka? What was it like to dance? Looks like the jumps are all soft, to deep fondu -- must take a lot of stretch and a lot of breath.... And of htecourse the pas de deux, your cabrioles would have to be so clear and so distinct ath te same time as you're being totally in touch with your partner, who's bourrees are going to show it if you jar her at all -- and aren't you both going BACKWARDS most of the time? What a beautiful ballet....... at, I THINK the second ballerina -- the blonde, WONDERFUL dancer -- is SIbley-- the one who does the quick jetes onto pointe and the tour jetes ending in arabesque looking peek-a-boo under the arm.... couldn't b e Beriosova, or could it? Nureyev was very poetic in that mazurka -- so soft, so musical, such beautiful line... And Fonteyn is so musical, the way she coupes and launches into her bourrees, it's dreamy.... The Oakland Ballet -- I know, I must sound like their PR agent, God knows it isn't so, they've been an EXASPERATING company, but they DID do a beautiful Sylphides -- though they never filled the male role adequately, the ladies danced it beautifully -- well, it was such a pleasure to see it LIVE, in 3-D-- certain effects that are VERY beautiful, you have to be there to see... like at some point when everybody's dancing downstage right, the ballerina by herself upstage Left (it was Lara Deans Lowe who made me see this) does a long-sustained arabesque allongee that points to them...... maybe I hallucinated this image (it's the sort of thing a video cameraman might leave out altogether, since you have to see hte whole stage-picture to see it); it hangs in my imagination, though, as almost aharmonic convergence, something LIKE that must happen -- maybe "the miseries" (the Moyna and Zulma of Les Sylphides) were doing something, or maybe it was the ballerina and her partner and it was the seconda donna who made this reverence to them, but it was a WONDERFUL effect, very very quiet.... The last time they did it, Phaedra Jarrett danced one of the supporting variatinos with such an exquisite softness in the upper body, such generous qualities to the breath, you could feel Isadora Duncan inspiring Fokine’s project, that way she had of making the movement start in the breath that you can still see in Valentine Gross's drawings of her....

I thought it was beautiful last night.... wonder how others felt.... There WAS a problem at the opening night gala, but it was the darkness - they hadn't "finalized" the lighting design, and it was way too dark. Alex Nichols has lit it poetically, but by day -- maybe late afternoon, he's suggested some melancholy somehow, but you can really SEE it..... they also changed the black tights and shoes to pink, which makes HER look more beautiful -- and her hair is up, ditto.... when I saw it last night, it was SO moving, so subtle, so expressive, so full of the experience of dancing, the life of a dancer, classes, rehearsals, ballets -- some of her lines are oh, so beautiful -- like memories of ballets, there's a releve croise with a wonderfully cocked head, looking down the downstage arm (as if there was scent of violets coming from that direction, or something.... you could hear her coach placing her head) very nuanced, poignant, but not sad -- I kept thinking of the MArschallin talking about how you must let things go when it's time, "mit leichtem Hande..... today or tomorrow, the day is coming, it will come entirely on its own, , but it will come...... hold and let go, with light hands, let it be easy, hold and let go.... If you don't, life will punish you, and God will have no mercy....." I'm going back tonight to stand... I hope everybody goes. Even if you don't like it, it'll be interesting why not.... Not everybody likes Berman -- though I remember David Howard telling me how much he DID.... SHe's not diamantine, even at top speed she's soft and creamy..... I love her quality, I love the way she tastes the movement..... Paul PS Just got in, it was not so good tonight, or maybe I wasn't so god....... But it's tuypical for me, the second time, nothing's ever as good as it was the first time....... The stage seemed darker -- the audience was restless, the people weren't receiving it...... My back was hurting.... Funny, I went to the ballet once after burning myself, Macleary and Park made me forget it entirely; when I came out of hte theater, I noticed a red blotch on my arm and realized I had had betterthings to think about.... It was still beautiful, but did not feel so momentous -- until hte end, which was suddenly even more powerful than last night......

BW, I believe you... it sounds like an exhausting evening for you. and it sounds like Grigorovitch can't get the best dancers any more...... But here WAS a time when people claimed he was the worlds' greatest choreographer, as others claimed that Ashton was, and Americans claimed that it was self-evident that Balanchine was.....

BW, I believe you... it sounds like an exhausting evening for you. and it sounds like Grigorovitch can't get the best dancers any more...... But here WAS a time when people claimed he was the worlds' greatest choreographer, as others claimed that Ashton was, and Americans claimed that it was self-evident that Balanchine was.....

Not having seen ABT's Swan Lake, I'm curious -- could McKenzies be muc worse than Peter Martins'a, OR Baryshnikov's? (The latter was really quite dismal, though it was strangely refreshing when hte swans clapped their hands a bit, Like Raymonda, in hte last act... Actually that waasn't refreshing at all, it was just final confirmation that Baryshnikov had come to regret ever taking on this task..... HTough the second year, he dancers seemed to have roped it in and figured out how to dance it DESPITE the production.....) I do believe that McKenzie's might be bad -- though Giselle, when htey danced it here last September, was really quite quite good-- except for Paloma Herra. But Stiefel was wonderfull, and hte corps in hte second act were tight......

Not having seen ABT's Swan Lake, I'm curious -- could McKenzies be muc worse than Peter Martins'a, OR Baryshnikov's? (The latter was really quite dismal, though it was strangely refreshing when hte swans clapped their hands a bit, Like Raymonda, in hte last act... Actually that waasn't refreshing at all, it was just final confirmation that Baryshnikov had come to regret ever taking on this task..... HTough the second year, he dancers seemed to have roped it in and figured out how to dance it DESPITE the production.....) I do believe that McKenzie's might be bad -- though Giselle, when htey danced it here last September, was really quite quite good-- except for Paloma Herra. But Stiefel was wonderfull, and hte corps in hte second act were tight......

thanks, Liebs, for sharing htat.... what a privelege to be there and see that.... I was just replying to Kirovboy on another thread -- "feet and flexibility" -- and realized that what I was saying belonged here.... BAryshnikov belongs on htis list -- he made extraordinary use of a short chunky body, had to fight to get to do "noble" roles like Albrecht.... But with the way he used his FEET, and his immense understanding of how to pull his legs out of the hips, to pull his lines, how to "dance turned-out," and how to think through every transition so he was never seen from an unthought-out angle, and on top of that his immense gift as a mime, he made himself extraordinary..... Feet are not something you have, they're something you DO -- even feet like Malakhov's or Guillem's, they work them... Baryshnikov didn't have freaky-beautiful feet, but he used them so -- rather, he still does.... Last time I saw him, at the not-very-popular program he did in honor of the post-modern Judson dancers, there was a good house but it was n't full and I got a lesson in feet . A friend who is a dance historian, but also a ballet teacher, was sitting in the front row, and at the intermission she got me to come sit next to her and "watch Baryshnikov's arches" She'd been the night before and "seen hte show", tonight she was indulging herself in what she was really interested in-- just watching Baryshnikov use his feet, all the time, even WHILE HE WAS JUST STANDING ON THEM..... barefoot, you could really see it... his feet were very dry, almost like a chicken's foot in texture -- not very appealing, but very useful if you're dancing barefoot on marly -- and he NEVER rolled over, there was always , even in fondu, air under his instep. watching him work his feet was -- well, I can't put words to it, but it was like mind over matter, his feet were like ideas, you thought about them because he was thinking about them, and when the time came to point or releve or jump (which wasn't so often, this was post-modern dance, but still it happened) and his foot "appeared," it was like the white cap on a wave, part of a beautiful process......