pherank

Looking lovely at the San Francisco Symphony Opening Night Gala:

http://www.sfballetblog.org/2013/09/yuan-yuan-gala/

Rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous patrons at these galas seems to be a necessary part of the life of a principal dancer.

It's great to see this underrated (in my opinion) dancer being given the national recognition she deserves. Thanks for the link.

Nice cover story on Sarah at Dance Magazine.

Agreed - Van Patten certainly deserves attention for her technical and aesthetic abilities. From what I can gather, she appreciates mostly quieter, calmer pursuits when not in performance (aside from rooting for her favorite football teams), and isn't really inclined towards self-promotion (at least not like her company-mate, Maria Kochetkova).

Masha refers to this video clip as, "my first show with Mariinsky, Giselle: 2nd act, 1st entrance". I seem to recall from interviews that she had a problem with the stage elevator at the Mariinsky theatre - I'm wondering if it occured at this perfromance. Now I have to try and find that information...

thank you for this information. I'll be sure to share it. be careful, you just might become a producer!

Now there's a scary thought. ;)

The great Ballet Russes documentary does talk a bit about the Native American dancers from Oklahoma:

http://www.amazon.com/Ballets-Russes-Irina-Baronova/dp/B000G5SIBM

Another great conversation - thanks again. The part about the Alastair Macaulay article (which was much discussed here on the forum) was fascinating.

It's worth mentioning that there were originally 5 Native American dancers that made a big contribution to ballet in the U.S. (and arguably the world): Maria and Marjorie Tallchief, Rosella Hightower, Moscelyne Larkin and Yvonne Chouteau. And Jock can certainly be added to this group. I believe each of the "Five Moons", as they were referred to, danced with at least one of the Ballet Russes incarnations, and Hightower also went on to dance with the de Cuevas Ballet.

Maria Tallchief: [she was a prima ballerina at New York City Ballet.] In 1965 after retiring from dance, she served as director of ballet for the Chicago Lyric Opera.
Marjorie Tallchief: After retiring from dance in 1966, she and her husband became artist director of the Dallas Ballet. She also served as the director of dance for the Harid Conservatory in Boca Raton, Fla.
Yvonne Chouteau: In 1960, Chouteau and her husband, Miguel Terekhov developed University of Oklahoma's dance program. For 10 years, they also organized and directed the Oklahoma City Civic Ballet, now known as the Oklahoma City Ballet.
Moscelyne Larkin: In the 1950s, Larkin and her husband founded the Tulsa Civic Ballet and School, now called the Tulsa Ballet Theater.
Rosella Hightower: [After retiring from performance, she] taught dance in France at the Ecole Superieure de Danse de Cannes.

(Excerpted from: http://ndepth.newsok.com/five-indian-ballerinas)

The Great Performances section of the PBS website mentions Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty as part of their 40th anniversary programming -- did I sleep through this, or has it not run yet?

Well they'd better find time to show the performance as it's in all their marketing materials. ;)

But I'm still angry that (last year) after advertising SF Ballet's Nutcracker, they pulled it at the last moment to air NYCB's 1993 Nutcracker - because we can't see Macaulay Culkin often enough. Why show something well done, but not known by as many people, when you can show something that people are already familiar with? Genius!

I've heard nothing of actual air dates, but the important thing to know is that the documentary is a co-production with the PBS American Masters series, so we can expect to see it on TV sometime, and possibly on DVD.

Thank you for posting this, pherank. I have little knowledge of Salinger, sorry to say - I read Catcher in the Rye as assigned reading like everyone else, but it didn't spur me on to read more. I understand he was a hard man to get hold of and some fans seem to like naming their cats and children Zooey. Also something about Joyce Maynard. Opening the floor to more informed readers (and viewers of this movie), please speak up....

Hi Dirac, Catcher in the Rye is a downer, to be sure. ;)

I equate it, thematically, and in its cultural impact, to James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, and perhaps to a lesser extent with Kerouac's On the Road. I do think that the book is going to be more 'appealing' to young men than young women. As director John Hughes once put it, “At that age, it often feels just as good to feel bad as it does to feel good.”

I personally was more intrigued and taken by Salinger's books that involve the Glass family. They are a group of fictional characters that, as Wikipedia describes it,

"are all precocious, and have all appeared on a fictional radio quiz show called It's a Wise Child, which has, according to the stories, sent all seven Glass children through college. From 1927 to 1943, at least one of the children appeared on the show, beginning with Seymour and Buddy. It is mentioned in Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters that each child appeared on the show under a pseudonym as the Black children. Seymour was known as Billy Black, and Walt was Georgie Black. The Glass family lives in New York City; all the children spent most of their childhood in an apartment on the Upper East Side."

Glass family members figure in the short story, "Hapworth 16, 1924", and the books Nine Stories, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, Seymour: An Introduction and Franny and Zooey.

I believe in Franny and Zooey one of the brothers gives out a list of recommended reading, and at the time I first read the book (maybe 18 years of age?), I was fascinated by the sophistication of the list. Much of it was beyond me, but fascinating nonetheless.

Wikipedia gives the plot summaries of Franny and Zooey to give you an idea of what things are like (and they are short in length):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franny_and_Zooey

Part of what I found so intriguing was the juxtaposition of mid-century modern Americans, intellectual New Yorkers, grappling with Zen Buddhism and Hindu Advaita Vedanta concepts. Salinger gives us an intersting view of post-war America, in economic boom times, but also in a kind of spiritual malaise (shell-shocked from the war, as Salinger literally was). Those books have always 'resonated' with me. There is something oddly personal and interior about these writings. They remind me very much of the experience of stumbling upon a trunk of decades-old letters written by a family member or close friend. And the letters happen to reveal an entirely new perspective that you weren't aware of.

EDIT: And the exciting news for Salinger fans is that there are 5 unpublished works that are set for release beginning in 2015, I believe.

"One collection, to be called 'The Family Glass,' would add five new stories to an assembly of previously published stories about the fictional Glass family, which figured in Mr. Salinger’s 'Franny and Zooey' and elsewhere, according to the claims, which surfaced in interviews and previews of the documentary and book last week.

"Another would include a retooled version of a publicly known but unpublished tale, 'The Last and Best of the Peter Pans,' which is to be collected with new stories and existing work about the fictional Caulfields, including 'Catcher in the Rye.' The new works are said to include a story-filled “manual” of the Vedanta religious philosophy, with which Mr. Salinger was deeply involved; a novel set during World War II and based on his first marriage; and a novella modeled on his own war experiences."

Thanks, phrank.

Some of the social/political commentary on these videos is fascinating -- the one on the Big Apple, for instance, which gives a bit of the history behind one of the late 30s dance crazes. Or, the acerbic voice-over in the video that compares the more free-form aspects of swing with a decidedly formal, cafe-society version of the Lambeth Walk.

There's also the contrast between amateur videos of real people jiving in what almost looks like an improvisatory way and the more stylized versions that eventually showed up in nightclub shows or on the vaudeville stage. (Daisy Richardson, jitterbugging alone on an empty stage, creates a very strange image, when you think about it.)

It's also illuminating to watch the differences between the "free" almost dionysiac style of Boogie Woogie, for example, and then watch those other dances which seem more formalized (with rules that can be taught, gender roles strictly defined, etc.).

"Popular" dance" is a more complicated category than I imagined.

I'm definitely drawn to the odd juxtapositions, such as the voiceover in the Jitterbug/Lambeth Walk video. ;)

There's a running joke about how the French get their language from the Académie Française, and the Americans get their language from Junior High students. Which is partly true. And social dances in the U.S. owe a great deal to Junior High students as well.

I think these films help to demonstrate how much social dances are a 'living' language, or conversation, that constantly evolves, as a good conversation evolves too. The freeform element in many of these U.S. social dances is fascinating in itself: Is this also found in Latin American dances? Or do they tend to be more constrained?

Gaité Parisienne at Jacob's Pillow

http://danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org/dance/alexandra-danilova-frederic-franklin?ref=artist&refcar=/artist/c-d

You will see they also have a video link to Danilova dancing the Sugar Plum Fairy variation in 1952.

NY Times review by A. O. Scott:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/movies/salinger-a-documentary-by-shane-salerno.html

Mr. Salerno overplays his hand by making the war the key to nearly everything about Salinger, the primal wound that festers beneath the surface of his stories about young, rich, disaffected Americans. The idea that “Catcher” is a closet combat novel is provocative and not necessarily dismissible, but it needs to be argued with a sense of literary nuance, a sense of literature as something other than a message-delivery system, that is utterly missing here.

Mathilde Froustey and Yannick Bittencourt - Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux

Mathilde Froustey - Pas de Cinq de Suite en Blanc

Delibes Suite Pas de deux - Mathilde Froustey & Mathias Heymann

Has anyone seen this? Opinions?

While I very much admired aspects of Neumeier's ‘The Little Mermaid’, I still think it could be cut in half without damage to the story telling. Last season I missed ‘Nijinsky’, but the local reviews were not very favorable.

Just wondering if it’s worth giving up a ‘Giselle’ to see this one.

Note that Hamburg Ballet will also appear at Segerstrom Arts Center in Southern Cal to perform Liliom (known to Americans as Carousel) - 2/7/2014 - 2/9/2014

http://www.scfta.org/home/Events/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1475&NavID=91

Neumeier ballets do tend to be overlong, but they are almost always great spectacles (and there are only so many choreographers and companies that can put on this kind of grand ballet).

Meet SF Ballet’s Newest Principal Dancer: Mathilde Froustey

(from the SFB Blog)

http://www.sfballetblog.org/2013/09/meet-mathilde-froustey/

I'm impressed that she's already done volunteer work at Glide Memorial Church (very famous in the Bay Area).

A great compendium of African American popular dances:

THE SPIRIT MOVES: A History of Black Social Dance on Film

It was quite difficult to find a good, responsive, pliant, trusting partner of high school age.

Now that comment really made me laugh!

Minstrel Cakewalk

American Dance craze: The Big Apple

Big Apple dance at The Savoy Ballroom

The Jitterbug and the Lambeth Walk - check out the woman in the audience at 1:10

Daisy Richardson - 1940's Jitterbug Dancer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE2AUn_kvMY

Suzie Q dance with Ina Hutton and Orchestra

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FvJvcZMn3U

The Tranky Doo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKXdy7Fie2I&list=PLOB9NY2mkoHEG02X-c0KDAXwbWgOAwo6P

deBona might have been awful to Dr. Detroit. She might have ripped his guts out. However, if he wants a relationship with her, it's with with her, not with an alternate universe Alison who made other choices, just as if she ends up with Tilton, they don't get a memory-free do-over. I've never seen what seems to be his strategy working out all that well, emotionally at least.

I've been doing my best not to say anything about the personal relationship scenes - but, Dr. Detroit sent a rather strong message: not exactly of rejection, but more one of passive-agressive punishment. He's obvioulsy waiting for DeBona to jump through some hoops to prove herself. But his timing is way off - he should have come through for HER at this point. He's got to demonstrate that he respects her (and that would include DeBona's career commitments). I definitely get the feeling that he doesn't think she's doing serious things (like he is). DeBona just needs to get that the best thing she can do with her life is shuck it all and wait on Dr. D hand and foot. ;)

I do feel for DeBona because her other obvious option is to get back together with a rather "young" Rex Tilton, who really needs more time learning about life (ideally). But nothing ever happens when you want it to. Tilton has possession issues too, and spent the entire 1st season of the show being happy about DeBona's behavior.

And then there's Bennett talking about some rule she and Ruud have where they can't talk to each other at work. Seriously? How unworkable and childish is that? Well now we know.

Great descriptions, Bart. ;)

http://www.sfballet.org/tickets/production/overview/hamburg-2014?utm_source=mail2&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=14SubscriberHamburgBalletPriorityAccessMKTNG

I'm genuinely curious about this, and excuse me if the question is a bit silly... but I often find myself wondering if the lack of actual dance on the show has to do with copyright/permission issues.

I personally think that has an awful lot to do with it. And is probably why we don't hear much of the Prokofiev music accompanying the ballet. And any dancers that didn't sign on to the show will necessarily be omitted.

I watched episode #7 on the CW website. I think the show misrepresents "opening night". Indeed it's opening night for the lead cast, but according to to the cast schedule, Arolyn Williams and Tom Mattingly danced on First Night (Thursday Feb.14). In fact the Williams / Mattingly pair get 4 performances, Christianna Bennett / Rex Tilton get 3, and Katherine Lawrence / Christopher Rudd get 3.

Mr Rudd is also a Stepsister on the Williams/Mattingly nights.

All in all, I tried to focus on the snippets of Ashton dancing that could be seen in this episode, and for the most part the emotional side was focused on jitters, wigs falling off, and last minute injuries. If all the episodes were like this one, I could like the show more. I'm frustrated with Christianna, though, her husband tries to be attentive to her when she is injured, and she is cool to him. Then later she says he's not giving her what she needs in the relationship (implying more attention and time). Just the same complaint over and over.

"If all the episodes were like this one, I could like the show more" - unfortunately for me, I felt that this episode underscored everything I don't like about this program: no context for the ballet moments, but constant repetition of each person's relationship 'problem'. Bennett feels her marriage isn't working and the stress is ruining her dancing; DeBona can't decide between Doctor "Feet of Clay" Detroit, and Rex Tilton, who wants recognitiion, but is very nervous about having to earn it. And we literally hear about these situations 3 to 5 times an episode, every episode. It isn't the fault of the actual people/dancers that they are portrayed in this manner - these are the choices of the director, editor, writers (there are writers for this?!!!), and production crew.

As Jayne points out above, there are actually other dancers in BW - we just don't hear about them, and the cameras manage to never show the rest of the company in group scenes. Which must take some work, but I would rather that work be put towards educating the audience about the Cinderella ballet by Ashton, and ballet dancing in general. It's amazing that this show never takes the opportunity to explain why people would want to do this thing called "ballet".

The depiction of "opening night" was, as Jayne says, false - it was not the actual opening night for BW, and the entire episode made ballet performance look like a comedy of errors.

But we did get to see everyone in costume, even Ian, who promptly has more bad luck and injures himself right out of the production. The costume scenes were very anitclimactic for me. I have to stick with one of my original comments that BP is not really a show about ballet, it's about the relationships of dancers who happen to be in a ballet company. And what we see on-camera isn't necessarily representative of what is going on off-camera (especially with Bennett/Ruud).

The Black Bottom Dance shows a lot of style that I think was incorporated into Balanchine's Rubies. The dancers look very free and flirty, and I think that's what the Russians fail to capture. They try for overt sexuality, but they miss out on the fun sensuality. Maybe stagers who go to Russia should start out teaching the Black Bottom Dance, and then move on to teach Rubies.

Funny thing is, I had the exact same thought, and I suppose I've belabored the point elsewhere, but in order to understand the movements in a ballet like Rubies, you've got to immerse yourself in the social dance styles that it plays with, no? Dancers that have no exposure to American popular dances of the 20s and 30s are not going to get either the techniques or the references. Thus the cringe-worthy Russian performances of Rubies. Of course it would go the other way too: we can't just expect American kids to take to Cossack, Javanese or Flamenco dances, just because they are 'professional dancers'.

Many of the dancers in the videos are 'amateurs', and they are just phenomenal to watch. Incredible energy.

Here's another Black Bottom dance video, and it looks a bit like Ruby Keeler dancing...and there's some instruction on the steps to use.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsukq62fMA4

Collection of 1920s dances:

But first, the Demonic Dance from Metropolis with Brigitte Helm - Just 'cause - sure the dancing is silly, but the film making is sooooo great.

And the art deco aesthetic mixed with German medieval architecture, and expressionist nightmare visions - it all looks so very exotic now:

The Black Bottom Dance, 1926 (the "Varsity Drag" title is incorrect)

Cotton Club Dancers

Whitey's Lindy Hoppers

The Shimmy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcemYjTdvZ8

The Stroll (which still looks pretty cool):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrGLNtZ0rEg

Ginger Rogers dancing the Charleston in high heels:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myq6hg2gcWw

I've always been told that the first clip you posted was not Fuller. Here's a clip from The Bat that I think is Fuller. Some of you may have seen Jody Sperling's work -- she's reconstructed some of Fuller's dances, and has gone on to create new work using some of the same techniques.

Thanks for finding The Bat, Sandik. At first I was bothered by the lack of music in these films, but eventually it becomes quite mesmerizing...I hope there's no subliminal message coming across. ;)

Lumiere Brothers film of Danse Serpentine - dancer is perhaps Loie Fuller, but I've seen disagreement about this. One commentator suggested, "The Flame Dancer is Caroline Hipple Holpin or Papinta not Fuller".

You will need to close the annoying ad screens that appear on top of the video.