Paul Parish

let me add to the von Aroldingen list my FAVORITE role of hers, the "horsing-around' girl in WHO CARES? There is an old video of this floating around, from way back when it was new, and the way she danced that role was the best BAlanchine ever came to the American tomboy athletic girl who likes being the way she is -- like a prologue to Erin Brockovitch.... She just throws all those steps away, no matter how hard, her attitude is like a kid's on a skateboard -- of course it's hard, swhat's the point if it's not HARD, but hey, it's cool, and get a load of THIS!!! She made those beats so tasty, and the jumps in second with a full turn, she made it all look so casual..... Paul oh yes, and the girl who knows she's going to be left -- that's bang on, Alexandra. Monica Mason was splendid at that at the Royal Ballet -- as the hostess in Les Biches, I can STILL see her, and the girl in green in Dances at a Gathering, such witty feet, sad-funny, I totally lost my heart to her..... She was too strong-featuredd, I was toldd to let her play Giselle -- they always gave her Myrtha. Of course, she was the greatest Myrtha I've ever seen.....

Leigh and I were swapping thoughts on the way dancers' LIMITATIONS could inspire a choreographer -- it was on hte Fonteyn thread, and started by noting that she did NOT turn well and so on, but he went on to describe a piece of choreography he'd tailored to several of his dancers to make VERY differently gifted dancers look like they belonged in the same piece..... Check out what he wrote -- it's really smart.... But in fact, this not an isolated situation. The Ballets Russes sstyle grew out of this. Diaghilev had to use what he could get (Rambert was a modern dancer) when he was caught outside Russia and couldn't get any more Maryinsky-trained dancers -- and it resulted in a whole style of "classical" dancing that wasn't "really " classical, but was closer to "character" dancing. In the original Apollo, Lifar was not a good classical dancer -- the ballet has changed a LOT with time, as better- and better-trained men took over the role, but if I had my druthers, I'd still rather see Lifar, with his 17-inch waist, his moxie, and his twisty plastique.... Anybody else got some favorite dancers, roles, or ballets that were built around the particular strengths AND LIMITATIONS of particular dancers?

Leigh, it's compltely fitting that you as a working artist should reject psychological interepretations of the work -- any artist has to. The whole world saw Balanchine's life in his works -- the way he felt about Allegra in Bugaku, the way he felt about Suzanne in Don Q, Midsummer Night['s Dream........ where he managed to be hilarious about it....... And of course he said it's not autobiographical, and people didn't flat-ourt contradict him, because what's the use? I for one DO see a connection between Robbins's creating hte "most charming sailor-boy" role in Fancy Free for himself and his traumatic draft physical which made him 4-F on grounds of homosexuality -- in real life, he did not serve in hte military at all, they WOULD NOT HAVE HIM, but on stage he's our boy.... It's wonderful that he found a way to contribute so much in a fictitious guise, it's a kind of alternative service......

Leigh, it's compltely fitting that you as a working artist should reject psychological interepretations of the work -- any artist has to. The whole world saw Balanchine's life in his works -- the way he felt about Allegra in Bugaku, the way he felt about Suzanne in Don Q, Midsummer Night['s Dream........ where he managed to be hilarious about it....... And of course he said it's not autobiographical, and people didn't flat-ourt contradict him, because what's the use? I for one DO see a connection between Robbins's creating hte "most charming sailor-boy" role in Fancy Free for himself and his traumatic draft physical which made him 4-F on grounds of homosexuality -- in real life, he did not serve in hte military at all, they WOULD NOT HAVE HIM, but on stage he's our boy.... It's wonderful that he found a way to contribute so much in a fictitious guise, it's a kind of alternative service......

Dear Patricia-- this is fascinating but I'm confused...... is hte met a ballet company ? Is this ABT's doing? WHo choreographed it? ANd why in the world did they use new sets and costumes by Hockney when Picasso's originals are such works of art? WOetzel is a wizard, for sure -- but I want to know, what did the ballet look like? PAul

I'd really like to see some of your work sometime. i was very interested to read about how you create on your dancers, and the clear way you put the facts about what dancers you get to use. I think about those things a lot, especially when I think about he Oakland Ballet, which was for 25 years a demi-caractere ballet company, in a class of its own..... Guidi selected dancers for a lot of reasons, including some very 70's use of the casting couch -- but they had a great flair for dancing. Lots of sickled feet, that sort of thing, but hte PHRASING! Guidi could not get long-legged pretty young dancers unless they were short (like Janet Carole, my god what a beautiful dancer -- beautifully trained by Danilova, feet so flexible and alive they were like small animals, luscious flexibility, hilarious wit, what a passionate mover, painfully painfully shy except on stage....) so he used brilliant dancers who'd had children adn wanted a second career, oddly built dancers who could really move, and made a virtue of the same necessity Diaghilev had had to when he couldn't get dancers from the Maryinsky any more. Not even Joffrey was so committed to continuing the tradition of the Ballets Russes, the Massine-Nijinska-Lichine character style that used weight and rhythm so powerfully.... Their versoin of Fall River Legend was much better than ABT's, their Les Noces was in some ways better than the Royal BAllet's, THeir Billy the Kid was better than the joffrey's, their GIselle was like a Lillian GIsh movie and broke your heart, because htese dancers were not sophisticated enough to be embarrassed by hte "dated" aspects of hte material..... When I was in Poland at a dance festival a few years ago, I realized that in Oakland you could see 5 or 6 ballets by Nijinska that none of my Polish dance friends had ever seen -- the Chopin COncerto, Les NOces, Les Biches, Bolero, Le Train Bleu; Nijinska choreographed the Chopin Concerto in Warsaw, and escaped with her young ballerina Nina Youshkevitch in 1938 in the nick of time... it was Mme Youshkevitch who taught the ballet to the Oakland dancers....

thank you leigh, thank you thank you -- that's absolutely fascinating...... Paulsounds like aa piece I'd love to see, too..... gotta rush off to class or I'd say mmore....

I've just found my way to this topic via the NEW SITE SOFTWARE -- which means I'm lost, but I followed an interesting post by Ralph sf to his "I don't get it" comments about Foteyn. o tempora, o mores! Her style is now so old-fashioned -- and by Balanchine standards, it ALREADY was; but the way she danced does come through on video tape -- no she did not have a great jump, no she was not a great turner, yes, she was "lowinocteyn" (as the Trockaderos put it). But she had glorious placement, and she was wonderfully musical, and she had incredible human sense. She was a real poet, a fantast with a tragic sense. Look at her old Swan Lake -- she looks like a woman under a spell who WANTS THE CHARM TO BE BROKEN..... it takes a great deal of intelligence in a ballerina to realize that the idea of being turned into a swan is charming but REMAINS A CURSE -- hardly anybody plays the role these days as anything but one of life's most glamorous moments -- they forget that this is not just dress-up, this is not just an excuse to look as exotic as hell -- it's an opportunity to imagine what it would be like to become trapped in such a fantasy, and how you'd want OUT. Fonteyn's body would not let her go too far into becoming the bird -- she was not very flexible, her extensions were not high, her knees were not rubbery, her back in particular would not allow her fantastic effects of plastique. But she was beautifully proportioned, beautifully, rotated, and her line in arabesque was noble. Furthermore, her placement was so good she could balance easily and forever.... bUT THE DIFFICULTY OF SCULPTING HER BACK INTO ARABESQUE IS A FACT, IT IS SOMETHING YOU CAN FEEL, AND IT PAYS OFF-- IT ACTUALLY ADDS TO THE PATHOS OF HER oDETTE. It makes us identify kinesthetically with Odette's suffering..... if that arabesque were easier, we'd lose the dimension of her public duties -- she is the queen of the swans, this is not just about HER, she has all of them in her charge, like a lieutenant trying to get his squad out of the battle of the Bulge alive... See that performance, how momentous it is. She builds to a climax in the back-bend in attitude; it's so much more powerful than anybody else's -- it's not just a stunt, that's where Odette declares herself, "I give up, I'm in your hands, for God's sake please save me" -- the fact that her body WON't do easily what any female dancer in Leigh's company (no offense, Leigh) can do with much greater amplitude and much more easily is what makes it look like THIS IS IT, it makes the gesture register as a turning point.. Fonteyn had those qualities in hr own character, and she brought them to the role. Similarly, as Aurora, she was someone you'd want to grow up to be queen and take over the governance of the state... This does make her liable to criticism as dutiful, or overly decent -- and who wants that at the ballet..... well, it COULD get tiresome. BUt she wasn't overly decent. She could hang out with GENET, for Christ's sake, and it didn't bother her if he seemed to have the police on his tail.... And I'm convinced that if they'd shown up, she'd have covered his tracks and given the cops a false scent. In her autobiography, she talks about how her husband, after he was paralyzed by his would-be assassins, asked her to kill him, since he couldn't do it himself. She says she agreed to do it if the doctors gave them no hope. I believe she came through for him, and that she came through for her public in a similar way....

I know this was long ago, y'all, but I saw the ballet rather a lot when you were posting these The smililng SFB dancers... Their default face is to smile; the sweet thing about it is that -- as with the Cunningham dancers -- they smile when they see each other. Maybe in Symphony in 3 they're smiling because they're nearly colliding with each other and acknowledging each other as they race by. In the first movement, what they're really doing is counting -- the leads in pink have one set of counts (in 5s, I think), the girls in black are I think in 7s, and the gilrs in blue are counting some different meter altogether. Julia Adam told me this (she danced one of hte leads). They also present a heftier profile than City ballet dancers would-- this rather healthy look could make them look like cheerleaders by comparison to the more haggard creatures one is used to. (I tried to introduce a smiley here, but it didnt happen......) I agree, when I first saw the ballet (danced by City Ballet on tour to Berkeley in 1988), it looked like warfare to me - -something about hte first-movement principals made me think of a lion jumping onto a horse's back.... I was very excited and confused by it. SFB made it exhilarating, especially when Lucia lacarra did that manege of pique turns amidst all that hubbub, it was like bumper cars, and it didn't FAZE her....

Leigh, you are very kind to suggest that it looks like i'm doing this systematically. Nope, I've just jumped in, and it's so exciting to be in contact with the impressions of people writing in the heat of hte performance, I'm kind of just wolfing it all down.... Arch Higgins was a pipe-cleaner skinny kid at the studio when I started taking classes as an adult beginner. He was already full of dreams of dancing, reminded me at that stage of what Anthony Dowell must have been like-- I was taking Janet Carole's afternoon class with them, and one day twisted my right knee. To give myself something to do while I was recovering I came up with a scenario and music and sets for a recital-piece for them that Janet choreographed, a 2-act version of Andersen's Snow Queen featuring him as Kai (the boy who gets the magic splinter in his eye) to Schumann's Album fur die Jugend, pieced out with larger piano music, spooky and wonderful. Arch was brilliant; it was a great experience for me. So I'm very attached to him..... when they were here, he danced a lot in Martins' new work, made it come off, and had a tiny part in "the Concert," the guy who sold the ballerina the hat -- which he did as if he were Stephen Frye. His takes on her choices were priceless, he rolled his eyes discreetly, at one part it looked like he had a plum in his mouth....... It was a small part, and he KEPT it small, but I was... well, all I can say is, I may be partial, but what usually happens if it's a friend of mine and it's not stage-worthy, I'm embarrassed. Arch did not embarrass me.... And I like him very much in Agon; his timing and imagery seem absolutely right.

THank you, guys.... YOu know, I'd give a LOT to have seen Verdy do it -- she had the brio, the warmth, the attack, the deep turn-out, hte epaulement, the manners it takes to fill the role out.... What do you think? THink they'd have it at the Dance collection? I may need to come to New YOrk.....

So that's what appened to Lindy Mandradjieff!! What a fine dancer; she shone in the corps here, and got a lot of soloist parts. Was she just on for hte Saratoga season, or is she with NYCB now? By the way, just for selfish reasons, How's Arch Higgins doing? He came out of Sally Streets's studio (as did Kyra Nichols, but that was before i started taking class there). [ March 23, 2002, 12:50 AM: Message edited by: Paul Parish ]

I wish I'd been able to be there -- it's so exciting to listen in on City Ballet fan conversations by reading the board -- out here in SF, we tend to believe that the City Ballet audience could STAGE a ballet if they had to... We last saw them on tour through here a couple of years ago, and it was clear that the Martins ballets were extemely difficult perpetual motion things and very well-rehearsed. THe Adams violin concerto actually moved me -- WHelan and Askegaard (Sp?) were an astounding couple -- or rather they're the ones I remember; were there 2 couples and she danced with Jock SOto? it's kind of a smear in my memory, with his beautiful legs and her entire incisive presence the lasting impressions. They between them had parcelled out the masculine and feminine traits in such an unusual way -- he's the voluptuous one, she's all strength and steel, but what an intelligence she's got, what sweep, what power, what command, and how emotional it got me; I was really swept up in it.... The Balanchine rep did not look NEARLY as well-rehearsed, and Square Dance seemed like it would be more fun, more idiomatically phrased by SFB dancers than it was by, oh I don't remember who the Ciy Ballet principals were..... I kept thinking it would be great to see Elizabeth Loscavio and Kristin Long in that, it wouldn't be so chopped up and spit out. Which brings me to Loscavio, who was the glory of our company 5 years ago, a dancer I can't get over losing (to Neumeier in Hamburg). HER debut in THeme and Variations came to mind when I was reading about Stafford's (and Nichols's, also, in a recent post). Loscavio's last performance of Theme here (with Tony Randazzo as her parner) was just astounding; it took the roof off. It was in Berkeley, where the audience is more responsive to modern dancers than to classical dancing, and it looked initially as if they were just going to go along with this "for the sake of the argument." But before long you could feel these tremors running through he crowd, she was eating it up, and THEY COULD TELL. But her first performances a couple years earlier were tentative --"diffident" is a word somebody used about Stafford, and well, that's not exactly it, but sort of.... She NAILED it, but it was lifeless; for example, the pas de chats happened too fast in that variations with the pirouettes, coupe soutenu, coupe pas de chat, which depends for its effects on our seeing passes flash at us in exactly hte right rhythm.... the diamonds snapped shut before they should have, and it all felt very thankless... My guess is it's a ballet that takes quite some time to figure out the pacing of -- unlike Ballo della Regina, which Loscavio had already done, it made her a star, she was on top of it and exhilarating and fantastically incisive in Ballo from hte first -- Ballo is certainly a bravura thing and fantastically difficult, but is maybe a better ballet, it's a more musical ballet... All you have to do is to dance it, if you can -- it doesn't take any extra PRESENCE.... Myself, I don't find myself actually ENJOYING Theme until the big theme wells up after he's started lifting her; from then on it's a joy, but up till then, though there are great bits, and much that's impressive, nothing is wrong, and i love all the music, it's arbitrary, somehow, like a kaleidoscope -- unlike Concerto Barocco, which is just as abstract, but more inspired, it seems to me... I'm not sure I believe this, just wondering if it's true, and wondering what others will think. I certainly don't mean to hurt the feelings of people who love Theme; I haven't seen the performances you have (though we may well all treasure Gelsey's performance, which was superlative, both strict and generous at the same time, and it suited her cleanness and incisiveness and need to inscribe her personality on the world.....) It certainly does call for brio... I never saw Alonzo -- did any of you? When did it enter the City Ballet rep? Rather late, I think -- Tallchief never did it, did she? Tanny? Allegra? I've heard Alonzo wore midnight blue and was a magnificent creature in it... [ March 23, 2002, 12:28 AM: Message edited by: Paul Parish ]

THAT was quick, ALexandra....

Hi, Linsusanr -- I think I'v got the trock video somewhere -- private-messge me and we'll see what's up. I'm going to Eifman tomorrow night -- will you be there?

I certainly agree with linsusanr that Boston has something to look forward to in Roman Rykine...... he is a noble dancer, in every way, from the way he points his feet to the way he offers his hand to his partner... We've rarely seen male dancing of this refinement -- such wonderful feet, such turnout, such beautiful carriage.... His short neck is his only physical drawback-- it makes it seem as if his shoulders are riding up, so in the wrong costume he can look anxious or cross and out-of-sympathy with his partner..... He is an attentive partner -- as Albrecht in Giselle, he and Tina Leblanc had perfected the lifts so that it reminded you of Maximova and vasiliev, which I think is VERY high praise.... He's grown stronger as an actor; a couple of years ago, in La Sylphide, he danced beautifully but didn't really BELIEVE in the world of the Sylphide -- you didn't believe he was running out the door looking for her glade in hte woods -- he just ran out the door. In Act I of GIselle he was still, well, disengaged, but in ACT II he was really THERE. I hope Boston considers getting Migrittomania, which Yuri Possokhov choreographed on Rykine: Possokhov (who's also a fellow-RUssian SFB principal) made Rykine's modest decency into a great theatrical virtue -- the ballet is full of virtuosity, but even more it creates a "world' where everything seems surreal, everyone is phony except Rykine's character, it's quite poignant.... It's a good ballet; even though it does horrible things to some venerable Beethoven, it's theatrically justifiable, and Beethoven will survive... My friends who know Rykine say he's a great guy, wonderful to work with, modest to a fault.... [ March 22, 2002, 08:46 PM: Message edited by: Paul Parish ]

About Farrell's smile -- Farrell has a great grin, but it is not a beautiful smile. Her face without a smile is a very beautiful face. Her face was in hte 60's also very similar to the face of a great British model, Jean Shrimpton, who was really the iconic face of the mid-60's/Vietnam-war era -- unlike Vanessa Redgrave, who had a lantern-jawed pre-Raphaelite face that Lady Bracknell might have approved, Shrimpton and Farrell shared a vulnerable sad-eyed hexagonal face with a slightly pouting overbite, not a noble face -- in fact, rather a "weak" profile -- but a face that might look back at you from a child begging in the street that you'd started to say "No" to.... or the child in the foreground of a painting by Rubens who looks out at us and whose eyes ask, "WHy don't you do something? HOw can you let this happen?" -- the ancestress of the OXFAM face. A lot that Barthes said about the mask of Garbo -- the "snowy solitary face" -- applies to Farrell. I don't mean to push this too far... Farrell could be queenly in the second half of Chaconne, and in Diamonds; but the way she looked made Dulcinea (early) and Mozartiana (late) come to life before she ever started to move.... the amazing thing was that once she started to dance, the illusion became even more compelling rather than less. Farrell never had to USE her face to do this -- she did have to control her smile and open her eyes and look into a better world, if that was appropriate, and let her face be subordinate to the work the rest of her body and soul were doing when she danced. I't's an accident of fate -- Margot Fonteyn's face also resembled a very famous face, that of hte young Queen elizabeth II, and that suited her place and time and repertory... In each ballerina's case, she doesn't have to fake it... it IS her face, it just happens to be the face of her times....

I wish you'd seen Emeralds the night Lorena Feijoo and Julie Diana danced the leads....... Julie's walking pas de deux was like sleep-walking, she could have walked out an open window she was so otherworldly..... and Lorena had that quickUP slow down, suspended quality of Violette Verdy's variation to a remarkable degree; her shoulders didn't have that voluptuous roundness that Violette’s did, but the way the impulse traveled up the spine and lifted the crown backwards was out of this world, she was going in several directions at the same time, which may be a “French Romantic” feature (Faure's music is French, Violette is French, in fact her name Verdy means "green") but it looks a lot like modern-dance suspension to me, like in those Valentine Hugo drawings of Isadora.... (On that subject, I remember Janet Reed telling me that Balanchine was very modern – it was not about placement, it was about “keep moving”” THat variation has a unique dynamics to it (in music they'd write sforzando-piano, where the singer initiates with a lot of force and immediately drops down to very quiet -- it's not harsh, it's like ice cream melting on your tongue, at first it's VERY cold and then it softens. The releves are like suddenly she's up, and then she stretches out hte develloppe til the last possible second, and the body is the last, the head and shoulders are going into cambre as the standing leg is starting to melt down, VERY CREAMY, oh it was SO BEAUTIFUL... It's the same with the pique turns, the first one (in passe) is fast, the second in attitude is stretched out to the last possible second, and hte pique itself happens like an arrow, and Violette got her shoulders into the act, which made it even MORE stretched out. Lorena didn't do that, but the leg just went sailing by.... THe walking pas de deux -- Julie Diana's feet were so beautifully bevelled, like the way a Kirov dancer presents her foot, ankle forward, you know how they shape them like a baguette diamond? Her steps were as accurate as the escape-action of an old-fashioned clock.... Well, if you haven't seen Emeralds, it's set to a quiet, lush andante that goes at a walking pace, with a bass line that pulses like a clock ticking, and a couple enter and walk around the stage on pointe (well, he's on half toe) and occasionally she stops in a sudden arabesque, and like her arm will hit a position and then on each tick keep moving like the second hand of a watch, the next time her leg will jerk-jerk-jerk-jerk up, all the way to six o'clock penchee, and hten the walking will resume with no warning -- or else she'll failli into a deep lunge and hte walking resumes with no warning from there.... What made her performance so cool -- well, first of all, she was dancing with Damian SMith, who's a VERY sympathetic partner -- was hte way she never telegraphed what she was going to do next -- it unfolded inevitably, like fate.... (Rmember how your teacher said, just because it's hard doesn't mean you get more time to do it.... well, that lesson pays off, if you learn it, in dancing like this.) I'd had a long frazzling day that Friday before I went, worked 8 hours at a restaurant, and I was afraid that Emeralds would be so quiet it would just put me to sleep -- but totally hte opposite -- I tuned in to it and calmed down, it was like a good dream, but I had total recall. [ March 20, 2002, 11:26 PM: Message edited by: Paul Parish ]

Dear Robert, I am confessing my ignorance of that fact -- which is kind of embarrassing, since I not only could have read it in your book, I DID read it in your excellent book -- but I have not been around anybody who had a copy to borrow or sell. I'd love to see one.

Ronny, I am so glad you asked this question -- it is a GREAT question, one I think about almost every day, and as life goes on I come up with different reasons........ I'm remembering my teacher Sally Streets, who one day remarked off-hand, "Ballet is one of those things you do in order to find out why you do it...." That struck me as profound -- that ballet is a kind of quest, it's something I do in order to find out about myself... partly to master my inner world, to see if I can find my way around inside myself well enough to (say) get my left foot to push from the toes as it leaves the ground and heads for my right knee as I spring up onto the right foot and start to turn..... and I'll go back again tomorow, just as if I were a 14-year-old with the potential of a career in front of me, to see if I can do it better tomorrow... ("Paul to toes, Paul to toes, do you read me?") I'm sure we're all familiar with that. I also love the way ballet tells me where I am, in a more general sense -- knowing where my front side-back-sides are, my orientation toward the audience, and having that special relationship with the center of the earth, the fantastically rich sense of where DOWN is, it makes me feel expansive and confident, I KNOW WHERE I AM, in a way I don't so often in life. And then I can get all that into my unconscious, my toes act like antennae, I don't have to think about it but can listen to the music and respond and dance, even in class....... I also like the way time passes when I'm dancing -- it's so eventful; when I was a boy, every five minues was full of events. Now that I'm an adult, it seems the day goes by incredible fast, the week goes by so fast, half the month has gone by, and what happened? But in class, or dancing, time slows down, and lots happens.... That's partly why I go to the teachers I go to -- Sally, and Susan Weber (who also teaches here in Berkeley) give you such interesting combinations, they appeal to the imagination so strongly, it's like going to a movie at 9:30 in the morning..... Well, there's always the stuff where you feel like if I have to do another grand ronde de jambe en l'air coming from the back, I'll keel over..... but actually, they don't give much of that, and they DO use the music appropriately -- rondes de jambe en l'air feel very different when you do them to a tango than they to a waltz (they're fatter circles when it's a waltz). Sally will actually vary the accent, so you'll do several in a row, but the emphasis on the first is the pull-up on the back of the thigh as you bend the knee,on the others it's on the roundness of the little circle as it comes forward..... And Susan's got me so I can feel my low ribs when they start to go out -- fantastic development... That belongs on the brag board..... I'm not a kid any more, and I didn't start dancing ballet-- I started with rock and roll, and I loved it -- the bop, the funky chicken, the dog, the QT, the twist, the birdland, the funky Broadway, all the funkies, I really loved those... soI have to say, there are kinds of ballet I don't like, because they're too square.... as dances. I don't like it if it's not musical. The kind of class that GETS me square, I LOVE that...... i'm one of those twisty people ,so it's harder to keep my ribs in place or my shoulders over my hips -- so a class that can help me get squared off enough to do a double tour and land is a great class.... But a class that's glissade jete glissade jete glissade assemble E-CHAP-PE makes me feel ground down. the kind that wakes me up , well, Sally gave a very simple combination the other day, first thing in the center, where you did tendus in second coming forward, 4 of those, with an over pas de bourree, tendu under, pas de bourree under, and a tendu over. It was almost the same moves, but really the foot version of a tongue-twister -- EXCEPT, and it's a BIG exception, the whole thing had this delightful rhythm, it fit the music like a glove, and felt like a dance. [ March 20, 2002, 09:23 PM: Message edited by: Paul Parish ]

Brendan, -- thanks so much for contributing that passage --

I too am a big fan of Farrell -- though i was not at first, she seemed stuck-up to me, I preferred Patricia McBride...... Then I started to notice how extremely musical Farrell was, and then I started to notice that she'd be smiling -- to herself -- when she was facing upstage, and she'd wipe the smile off when she faced us again, and that intrigued me. Intrigued me no end..... and then I started to notice how witty her dancing was, and how fascinating her timing was, and again, HOW MUSICAL.... THE PBS video -biography of her has many clips of her dancing, and you all should see her in the two selections from Don Quixote, it is simply unbelievable, the dancing is so spontaneous, she's like smoke -- it is THE GREATEST DANCING I've myself ever seen....THis video may be available in your public library -- check it out.... [ March 19, 2002, 09:20 PM: Message edited by: Paul Parish ]

Dear Begum, There was recently a Turkish star in the cunningham company (maybe Turkish-American?): her name is Banu Ogan (Oban?), wonderful dancer with a very dry wit, she could do ANYTHING... I hope you have a chance to take a Cunningham class -- it is a wonderful technique, very satisfying to do, for it makes you feel so clean-- the geometry of it is like ballet class, though you work from first rather tahn from fifth, so hte turn-out feels more open, less crossed... They spend a LOT of time on high half toe; indeed, Cunningham dancers have THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FEET There are a lot of kinds of penchee, tilts of all sorts, and many twists of the torso that require even more pulling-up-out-of-the hips than a bellet dancer is already used to, and ways of orienting, and re-orienting yourself in the space that are based in Cecchetti's "8 directions of the body' but extend it much further (for example, a simple exercise in hte center might end having changed the "front" by 90 degrees, so you'd repeat (or reverse) facing the side; this is very simple, but it's still quite strange if you're always used to facing hte mirror,; I find it wonderfully refreshing. You may also be asked to chasse in second while tilting hte torso 45 degrees to the front, side or back, and then to reverse that the next go-round... so these tilts don't just happen at the "Barre", they happen while you're doing pas de basque or jetes or sissonnes or swivels in coupe.... and they're really fun....

I've never seen anythning but the rescensions -- Nureyev's, balanchine's, etc. -- but once on a video I saw Danilova talking about that variation, "is Arab song," and she tilted her head back and I found myself desperately longling to see her do the whole ballet..... I think you need a ballerina with a spirit like Danilova's -- I'll say it again, like a Tolstoy heroine (I'm thinking of Natasha Rostova, not ANna Karenina), high spirited, witty, poetic, someone you'd want to fight your way home to if it took you ten years -- more like Penelope of Ithaca than Helen of Troy. Actually, someone with typical Hungarian virtues -- wit, direct emotional connection, capacity for fantasy..... very big on wit....

Thanks Leigh, for the great topic .. and to all y'all for the thoughtfulness of this thread. Also for hte reference to Bintley -- I didn't know that about him, but I'm not surprised -- his "Sons of Horus" became a kind of church for a some of us in San Francisco about 7 or 8 years ago, when AIDS was taking people so fast -- its first year out, "Horus" made people nervous, and the public kind of laughed it off, but the second year it just became a kind of grave event, we accepted it and were grateful..... Also Bintley's widow simone -- he was here setting something, and he danced the mother in Fille..... Our mimes treat that role as a kind of extended Mother Ginger, but Bintley in the role was very funny but also a plausible mother, and in hte scene where they're in hte cart on the way to the picnic, Bintley kept showing us one profile, then the other -- his nose itself is, shall we say, a pointer of some great significance -- looking back and forth between Lise and Alain, and you could you see "her" thinking, "my daughter would never go hungry", "He's a congenital idiot," "She'd never go hungry," " He's a congenital idiot....." It was hilarious, but it wasn't funny... What a privelege for us to see great theater in that role.....