Kerry1968

@Dirac: I suspect you're right, and that Crawford was actually around 5' 3".

Speaking of short actresses, there's a well-known photo of Mary Pickford and Anna Pavlova, with the latter en pointe in her Fairy Doll costume. The link to the Getty images is here: http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/anna-pavlova-and-mary-pickford-on-the-set-of-the-thief-of-news-photo/2643499

The photo makes Pavlova look enormously larger than Pickford. Is this just an optical illusion? Because I always believed that Pavlova was a very tiny ballerina.

On the commentary track to the Best of Everything DVD, author Rona Jaffe notes that Joan Crawford, contrary to expectation, was quite petite -- she was barely over 5 feet tall. What makes this even more interesting is that, on the rare occasions when Crawford and Norma Shearer consented to be photographed together, Shearer was actually smaller than Crawford!

Was Ann Blyth (~ 5' 1") taller than Joan Crawford? She seems to be so much shorter than Ms Crawford in Mildred Pierce.

I didn't think I would like Sylphides, b/c I thought, "How could an abstract Sylphides be better than the original La Sylphide (different ballet altogether)? Sounds silly!" But then I saw the Nureyev version that I got from Netflix and then two others, and now I LOVE this ballet! It is truly gorgeous. I like it better with the crumbling castle as opposed to a Kirov version with a pastoral scene. Since they are spirits, a nighttime haunted atmosphere seems better.

I love the ballet too, although I have always thought the sylphs in Les Sylphides were only incidentally sylphs. That is to say, I think Fokine is evoking Marie Taglioni as the Sylph, rather than the Sylph itself, and that the ballerina's task isn't to channel Sylphiness so much as it's to channel Taglioni-ness.

Going along with that, I have always liked a certain artifice (ie lack of naturalism) in Les Sylphides stagings. Either woods or castle-ruins are fine, because both are appropriately Romantic settings. However, I think the main thing about the mise-en-scene is that the stagings should NOT be naturalistic. The audience should not be transported to woods or castle ruins, but rather to the 19th century theatre.

Just my 2 cents.

Solor and Gamzatti live happily ever after.

I would agree, however, that Byron's longer works get left out of college surveys, and that narrative poems longer than "Rape of the Lock" generally don't get covered. Byron's best work is not easily excerpted or redacted, unlike "In Memoriam" for instance, whereas lyric poets writing in shorter forms are ideally suited for a 10 week college survey. It's the nature of the (university) beast. I remember years ago when the decision to omit Longfellow from the Heath Anthology of American Lit was made, there was quite a bit of controversy. Narrative poetry does not fare in the current pedagogical environment.

I really don't believe Byron is terribly neglected. He is still taught in undergraduate English courses as one of the big five: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Blake being the others. Critical editions of Byron's poetry appear in print, as do scholarly monographs, popular biographies and even the occasional magazine article (like the one you linked).

On the other hand, Thomas Moore, Walter Scott, Robert Burns et al, are truly neglected, and by that I mean totally ignored by scholars, and - it seems to me - rapidly fading from the collective memory.

I wish I knew how to check if my computer's DVD drive is set to a specific region.

I thought this would be a fun topic to explore. Which ballerina has or had the most beautiful of the following features:

1) Legs

2) Feet

3) Arms

4) Hands

Feel free to add other features if you like.

My favorites are:

Legs: Maximova/Bessmertnova

Feet: Maximova/Ferri

Arms: Makarova/Besmertnova/Plisetskaya

Hands: Makarova/Fonteyn

The OP's list is the best one

I was just watching a clip of Bessmertnova in Chopiniana, and marvelling again at how beautifully proportioned she is.

The POB costumes are great! The fabrics look brocaded. The sets, on the other hand...the main colors seem to be grey and brown.The ballroom at d'Hervilly's palace looks like a subterranean dungeon. Not cheery at all.

@Leonid: thanks for the background. That helps a lot.

does the Cojocaru/Kobborg dvd of the Royal Ballet in Wright's production exclude Berthe's mime?

certainly it was in place for the company's HD telecast of the production with Nunez and Pennefather.

The mime is included in the DVD w/ Cojocaru and Kobborg. I suppose it's the same mime as in the Nunes/Pennefather (which I haven't seen). In the Cojocaru DVD, Berthe's tale of the wilis centers on Myrtha specifically: the veiled and queenly Myrtha appears and calls the wilis from their graves, she hears the approach of an unsuspecting man and commands the man to dance till he dies of exhaustion.

Just wondering, because if a wili is the spirit of a jilted girl, rather than of a frivolous girl (who loves dancing), then perhaps Berthe's recounting of the wili legend is her way of slyly commenting on Loy's character.

On balance, I think the mime helps to give the story the narratological arc of real tragedy, since Berthe can see the train wreck coming, even though she seems powerless to prevent it. By contrast, Odette's mime seems more like simple explication, adding little to the drama of Swan Lake

Is Berthe trying to warn Giselle that her excessive love for dancing will lead to Giselle's death and wilihood? Or is Berthe trying to warn Giselle that Loy's a useless wastrel who will desert her at the altar?

I thought up this topic after reading and responding to the one on specific productions. I have only seen one live production, but I have seen many more on video. So, what do you think is the best production of Giselle captured on video? The worst? The most unique?

Old thread, but I'm a new member, and will take the opportunity to add my 2 cents. The handsomest videos IMHO:

Best Production: Dutch National Ballet (Blu-Ray Disc Kultur 2009)

Runner up: Ballet de l'Opera National de Paris (Blu-Ray Disc TDK 2009)

2nd Runner up: The Bolshoi Ballet (Blu-Ray Disc Bel Air 2012)

I love when contemporary dancers are asked in interviews to name their influences etc. Usually, they'll mention dancers from the immediately preceding generation. For a seasoned principal today, that might mean Sylvie Guillem or Nina Ananiashvili. But occasionally, a young dancer (for instance, Maria Kochetkova) will name someone she can't possibly have seen on stage (for instance, Maximova), and those are the ones that really register in my brain as being sort of timeless.

Maximova is a dancer who has stood the test of time.

The Sky's the limit. Hopefully we will be seeing her here in the USA this summer, either as Swanilda in DC or one of the other ballets in California.

Wow, that would be a GREAT. I mean, Swanilda in DC.

Also worth investigating, Divine Dancers: Live from Prague (DVD/EuroArts 2006). It's a gala, but it does include a very lovely (and too brief) excerpt from Manon danced by Polina Semionova and Igor Zelensky. There's also a little interview in beginning where Semionova says that Manon is her favorite ballet.

Thanks, Kerry1968. I have not seen it. Was there anything in particular that you liked about it?

Oh yes. The subject matter (the daily lives of Carthusian monks in the Grande Chartreuse ) is interesting to begin with. But beyond that, Gröning's method of treating the subject is profoundly respectful. Because Gröning doesn't interpret what he sees.

There is no narrative to speak of, and no extra-diegetic matter (voice-over, music, etc) to help the viewer along. In short, the film makes no attempt to be an entertainment. It proceeds at its own pace and in its own way: 3-hours of tableux, with hardly a word spoken.

Nevertheless, the images Gröning captures with his camera are very powerful, and have a way of sinking into a viewer's consciousness. Sometimes, at the office, I'll find myself thinking about something I saw in the film: an old monk, racked with arthristis, working in his vegetable garden.

Definitely It's a Wonderful Life.

The holiday ritual of watching the movie has probably robbed it of some of its force. The movie is not only darker than is generally supposed, but also very frank in its treatment of family relationships (e.g. sibling rivalry, the fraught relationship between father and son). And the movie is especially frank in its treatment of the intimate relationship between man and woman.

For instance, there's a wonderful moment in the film where George arrives at the Granville House the night of his honeymoon. It's raining, and George enters the threshhold of the house, where he is greeted by Mary, wearing an apron and fixing up dinner. There's a POV shot from George's perspective: the camera pans to an open door, through which George glimpses laid out on the bed his pajamas and Mary's nightgown. The scene would be remarkable enough if it stopped here, with its delicate promise of sex. But the scene doesn't fade to black immediately. The camera registers George and Mary's expressions: George's astonishment, and Mary's care and solicitude. To use a cliche, the scene isn't about sex so much as the emotions which go along w/ sex, and this makes the scene very intimate indeed.

The best documentary I've ever seen is Into Great Silence by Philip Gröning.

Of the 10 recorded Swan Lakes I have on tape and disc, the one I watch oftenest is Lopatkina (2007), and this is entirely (or almost entirely) because of her Odette. I don't find her Odile to be dramatically compelling, but still enjoyable because Lopatkina moves so beautifully.

Of Swan Lakes I've seen in person, the one that made the deepest impression was San Francisco Ballet in 1988, because it was the first ballet I ever saw live! It'd be a great big lie to say that I recalled any details of Evelyn Cisneros's dancing. What I do recall is the very great pleasure she gave me and clapping till my hands were numb.

There's a very famous photograph of Lola Montez from about 1850, showing the dancer holding, and presumably enjoying, a cigarette. In 1850, people would have interpreted Montez's decision to be photographed with a cigarette as a blatant rejection of bourgeois conventions. In 1850, ladies did not smoke. Nor did gentlemen, for that matter, since the pipe and cigar were still the preferred smoking instruments among the leisured classes.

It's interesting to see how smoking bans in the US and Europe are causing the meaning of the cigarette to revert to what it had been in the mid-19th century. The cigarette has again become an way of expressing social defiance. I have a feeling that smoking will always have a certain cachet among writers, dancers, actors, etc because artists as a group are transgressors: people who challenge conventions, push limits, and so on.

Thanks for the welcome

Hello,

I'm obviously new to the forum. I'm not a dancer, just someone who loves watching, reading and talking about ballet and ballet dancers.

Just a brief explanation of how I came to be here. Back in the 80s, I saw videotape of Natalia Bessmertnova in Giselle and Swan Lake, and instantly became hooked. When I finally got to see these ballets performed by actual human beings, I was even more hooked. I still get excited about seeing full-length story ballets, and will crawl barefoot over bottle caps to see my favorite dancers in my favorite ballets. I also have an ever-expanding library of performances on DVD and Blu-Ray.

I'm looking forward to talking with you all!

Kerry