Paul Parish

Thanks, Natalia. So far butterflysamar seems mostly interested in kondaurova -- which is understandable, but I wish [selfishly] that s/he would just put up EVERYTHING -- at least Titania and the divertissement and the lovers [and Bottom], since I love everything I've seen. Sandra Jennings gave an interesting interview. I wonder what she thinks of the results.... sigh

If I remember right it was DOlgushin who came with a group from ST Petersburg to San Francisco with a program of Jakobson miniatures -- a show I will never forget for the impact it had on me, though I've lost most of the detail. I remember it was highly detailed but that none of the details was the point -- the point was that this was a highly inflected idiom, but it was the phrasing and character that mattered. best I remember hte blind girl and hte Jewish scene. I took Remy Charlip to see it. Remy was blown away -- those values were very close to his [every little movement has a meaning all its own). Dolgushin -- if it WAS Dolgushin's group, whoever they were the was the senior person and hte director -- danced something noble -- Icarus? -- in a unitard and was a stunningly beautiful man still. Whatever, he was playing a youth who came to a tragic end, and his own youthful figure, combined with hte maturity of his experience, gave it weight and majesty, and a kind of Housmanesque/Wilfred Owen melancholy that was totally appropriate. This pas is a wonderful homage to Balanchine -- close in spirit, without ever getting too literal in its admiration.. It DID seem very knowing -- echappes in the same musical place, arabesques voyages in the same place, failli assemble in the same place -- but always with a difference -- and with enough virtuosity to jazz the folks who want tricks, but with plenty of connection between hte stars and wonderful accuracy of placement and imagery to please the cognoscenti -- and the good taste to know that piques with the retire very low can be just as beautiful as those with a high retire. The steps he gives the ballerina she makes very very beautiful. The butterfly jumps -- I don't know what to call them, it's like a quarter tour jete to attitude, or jete passe with a quarter-turn, or Vaganova pas de chat with a quarter turn -- have a wonderful lightness for both boy and girl are Kinda Bournonville-esque, and also remind me of those Villella did in Rubies - -so the connection there may be Villella. Anyway, the register of steps he's working with has a harmony to it that makes it like a "missing link" between Flower Festival and Tchai pas.

Here's Dolgushin dancing fantastically -- same music as Balanchine's Tchai ps, but other [very good] choreography -- whose? Jakobson? Poetic, brilliant, modest. Noble dancing.

THanks, Natalia, for posting that noble fragment. Beautiful placement of the head! WOuld love to see more. Please post more as it turns up.

Let me second Quiggin's list - -ANYTHING with Mary Ellen Moylan -- Not that i've seen them, but those I didn't know were there and she's legendary and i've never seen footage of her except in the dance of hte sugar-plum fairy. What I HAVE seen there that you should see in your 6 hours is Violettte Verdy in Tchaikovsky pdd. Also Farrell in the CBC Concerto Barocco with Conrad Ludlow -- visionary. Contrast her and leclercq -- Tanny makes hte adage a sunny happy thing, Suzanne takes a whole minute longer and it's tragic. Both are valid. AMAZING. And Tanny in Western symphony [4th movement] -- kick ass hilarious. ANd check out Balanchine as Drosselmeyer in his first Nutcracker. Happy viewing.

O Helene, I do not think Tereshkina would be good for the act 2 pdd -- Nothing against Tereshkina, she is a magnificent dancer, and truly classical, but her qualities are all wrong -- it needs to me someone small and moonstruck, like Allegra Kent-- Obrastsova would be excellent [but hasn't she left the company]? Pavlenko, Ayupova type. She needs to be someone who never telegraphs what's coming.

It also has to be a small ballerina with a big danseur -- or at least , that helps. Kent was not tall, and d'Amboise was a VERY large man -- which created overtones of protection on his part, and heavenly delicacy on hers. Ayupova would have been ideal....

Natalia is SO right -- that is a ballerina role of the first importance. That is the most beautiful classical choreography in the whole ballet. Nothing of Titania's is so purely beautiful, though much is delightful [like the pdd with the donkey]

Dear George, thank you for all that -- WONDERFUL, and thanks for the step-by -step directions., they are priceless. I still think that standing foot is rolling over -- notice the medial malleolus of hte ankle is dropped and the lateral one is raised -- the angle through that axis is nearly three degrees of tilt (look at the line of the Achilles) -- and though as you say she HAS got her pinkie touching [good gir!! and the 5th metatarsal down), she's still rolled the arch nearly flat. In hte Somova immages you cite, only that first arabesque is aesthetically objectionable. That is a very ugly arabesque. In hte video, , that arabesque is a passing moment that began as a rond de jambe from a grotesquely misaligned develloppe a la seconde (in which she raised her hip to hte point where hte pubic bone was at a very rakish tilt). I find the second position much uglier than the arabesque. She was leaning towards the standing leg quite a bit before the rond de jambe, which took her into profile in arabesque de cote, and by the time he'd promenaded her around to face us she was indeed way off to the side -- on hte other hand, she did NOT look awkward, tense, or heavy -- and from that arabesque she chasse'd back into a tour jete that landed equally off-square but without any evidence of strain and passed through it easily into the next thing.. Perverse. In a ballet like Bayadere, though it's classical, a certain amount of Romantic approximation is acceptable, as it would be in Giselle, where no position should be "true." Even in Sleeping Beauty, in hte vision scene, a laterally pencheed attitude can be acceptable -- but only in hte vision scene..

Thank you for these stop-action photos -- what a fabulous resource! Have you made them yourself? HOW???? The action in hte man's hips and legs in the fish-dive shows how much he has to hold back and hten how much he has to DO when the moment comes. Fascinating!! In that photo of the tendu to the side, looks to me like the standing foot is rolling over

Dancers when they're tired are in greeat danger of injuring themselves further -- Back to italian fouettes -- fouette means to whip, and it's the leg that whips the BIG difference is that "Italian fouettes" are HALF-turns derived from flic-flac, whereas fouette pirouettes are WHOLE turns derived from rond de jambe en l'air, Flic-flac is a slicing motion, and rond de jambe is a circular motion -- but in each case, the movement of hte leg provides impetus that can be used for flipping around. Italian fouettes usually begin with a releve in ecarte devant (second position on hte diagonal), then brush through first on that same diagonal into a releve facing the back corner which molds into an attitude croise as the torso comes around to face the audience.I love hte way Maria Alexandrova does these - -she's the dancer who made me see Gamzatti as an interesting character, mostly through the gusto with which she poured int oher grands jetes and these italian fouettes; I found myself thinking, 'she deserves to be happy' and followed her forever after with some sympathy throughout

Great! It will be good to go back and study the differences -- e.g., Florine's variations. They went by so fast!

I find the entrechats more haunting, the brisees more desperate. I've seen both done as tricks, which broke hte mood completely -- but I've seen both done poetically, and in each case they belonged to a large and subtle interpretation of the role. Let me praise San Francisco Ballet's Tiit Helimets in this role -- and at the moment in question. He's entrancing in this passage --his feet are almost as beautiful as Hallberg's, and his lyrical way of performing the sixes makes something astoundingly prayerful out of the series of them, like a mantra, or the Rosary, where the repetitions bring the intention to hypnotic focus -- it's paradoxical,since it staysthe same but fluctuates (like hte Willis trembling bourrees) --you're seeing eternal sous-sus, as if through tears.

Thank you for posting these links. What an imagination! We shall not look on his like again.

Scrappy notes Legat's variation was pretty wonderful. Much of interest in this, though the transmission was very choppy, terrible, in fact -- disrupted very frequently, and it stopped for a full 60 seconds at one point, on TOP of which the commercials would burst in right at any time, of course at the peak of a dance. So I'm not sure what I learned -- I did not see any bourrees for the man in the bluebird coda, which I THINK he asked us to notice -- the Bluebird DID do chaines, could that be what Doug was talking about? I DID like to see the ballerina dance a ring around her man. Seemed to be wedding-magic to me. Gold and sapphire variations deadly boring -- no wonder they got cut. Well, lecture demos are always kinda drab. Antoinette Sibley danced Florine SO much better than that, the whole body alive and aflutter. Korbes was lovely most of the time. They all had some good moments - the developpes a la seconde instead of the fish dives were surprisingly effective -- but it's very hard to judge how to take any emendation.... And i'm pretty certain that in 1895 the black swan 's adage did not have supported grands jetes a la seconde at 90 degrees -- those were glissades. 90 to nothing.

Sorry about the snarkiness -- and I admit it, that's a fair cop, I did say it snarky. But o god where did I read this, somewhere: Balanchine said that the only male dancer who had real plastic possibilities was Lifar -- otherwise, it was only women whose bodies were proportioned right and were flexible enough for their positions to be really beautiful. but Lifar had one-in-a-million looks. balanchine himself was rather short with a big head and he knew it. Re Apollo -- the rest of hte argument is that the shortened Apollo is like a classic torso -- it only suited the really classical dancers (of whom Boal was one, along with Martins) but with Martins's legendary pallor and coldness onstage, the "character" parts of the ballet (including the Graham floor-writhing, the Charleston steps of the handmaids, and the baby Apollo's first steps) were out of keeping with hte values the dancer could project. Hubbe looks to me like someone who could manage both -- he and Kistler are like children, so warm, endearing, playful. he can do the noble thing, and so can she, so the performance -- even just those 30 seconds -- is astonishingly rich, almost paradoxical. Gods and muses must have been kids once too -- though the only myths I know about such are about the childhood of Krishna.

Since I've just seen Don Quixote, -- the overture (it's hilarious -- and I can't stop hearing it). The section of Scotch Symphony where the guys in kilts stop hte hero from moving towards the Sylph Phlegmatic the finale of 4 Temperaments the very sad slow gavotte/bourree that starts act 4 of Swan Lake in Ashton's version, where all the swans are grieving [and four and ONE TWO three and uh four and one and two] "The man I love" 'Someone who'll watch over me'

Two things -- THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for posting the Hubbe/Kistler version. Even that short clip is a revelatoin. Incredibly intimate and touching. They're like chi\ldren. It's one of hte most wonderful PApollos -- and Terpsichores -- i've ever seen. second -- Balanchine seems to have been willing to change Apollo for each new dancer.Villella, he told, 'Apollo's a rascal.' Martins, who learned the role from Henning Kronstam, Balanchine coached in a completely different way, completely re-arranging the tone and atttack.... He may have removed the prologue for Martins's cool, perfect Apollo: This idea isn't new, maybe I got it from Garis, who gave a long section in following to speculating why and how Balanchine could cut Stravinsky's music. And as for Lifar, that was all about Lifar's 17-inch waist.

THanks, Quiggin -- all that sounds very plausible to me. Thanks for the Meyerhold set -- I'd never seen that before --perhaps it's only a period resemblance, the different levels, and the prevailing blacks and browns, but it reminds me of Leger's set for the 'Creation of the World.'

The first that springs to mind is the Waltz Girl's Waltz from Serenade Swanilda's first waltz the entr'acte from Sylvia (o GOD, I love that) The cancan form "Orpheus in the Underworld" the third movement from 'Symphony in C' 'Breadcrumb Fairy' from Sleeping Beauty, and Panorama 'Simple gifts' from Appallachian Spring

Peggy R, I saw the last performance of the program, and Ciapponi was dazzling as the red-sox girl. This from the balcony! I wrote about the Friday night show for the BAR; http://www.ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=dance&article=202 "San Francisco Ballet dances these three works in a way that is its own, and acceptable, but if you've seen the ballets before they look distorted. The big difference is that SFB is a man's company, where the men are expansive and the women hold back. They "lower their voices." They smile a lot, soften their shoulders, repress their wilder ideas. Whereas Balanchine's company was a woman's company – the women were strong, square-shouldered, high-energy, incisive, dramatic creatures, stars with the charisma of Katharine Hepburn, and a way like hers of being recognizably modern American women. Not all of them were as abrasive as Kate, but each was sovereign in her way." WOnder if you'd a gree with that.

I agree with Sandik, that is A BEAUTIFUL DRESS! And it's certainly classic in feeling. Me I think the guys' costumes are about as uglifying a garb as I've seen on stage and have never ever liked them We'll have to see if the new designs are in fact an improvement, bl=ut back velvet on top sounds good, as does hte collarbone of crystals.. I wouldn't mind seeing them have a head-dress, so long as it stayed close to the head.

Thank you ALL. it certainly looks like a Coppelia I'd like to see.. Jane, what's the word on deValois's participation in the production? Was she not involved? [Hard to believe.] The designs, lighting, plastique are all wonderful -- as is her tutu.

I love love LOVE the way Spesssivtsiva opens her arms on the pique arabesque - -from high fifth the upper body blooms as he arabesque endures -- her arms are so soft and "natural," Blasis-esque in every pique, the finger-tips are so alive. I don't think I've ever seen this quality in any other GIselle, not in this solo -- they usually "hold" the arms-- "drier," as Fonteyn would say. This is all so radiantly simple -- she looks like Snow White, if I may say that without prejudice. Thank you Mme Hermine.

Thank you, Christian, for posting haina -- beautiful in every way. the sharp precipite, the arabesques so pure and so light, perched like a bird on a bough -- everything about it, lovely generosity in performance. This diagonal is taught by Frederick Frankilin when he sets Giselle. oakland Ballet does it. I haven't see n Dance Theater of Harlem's in some time, but I believe they did it. It's the Ballets Russes version.