pherank

Hi Terez, When I saw SF Ballet performing Scotch Symphony, it was, as you say, "charming and light-hearted", and professionally executed, but lacking in the enigmatic air I think it is supposed to convey. Balanchine has created an homage to La Sylphide, with nods to Scottish dance and the Scottish military tattoo (which Balanchine saw performed at the Edinburgh Festival of 1952, and the military tattoo definitely influenced his later Union Jack ballet). I was rather bothered by the painted backdrop SFB used in the staging - it just didn't seem to be of a very high standard. And that kind of thing sticks with me in a bad way. Of course there will be people who say that Scotch Symphony has devolved into something less than what first premiered with Maria Tallchief. The flavor and nuance are gone, or altered to something not originally intended. I can't really comment on that, especially since there is no filming of the ballet from the early years - only a made for TV version - restaged and rechoregraphed for TV (and TV sound studio) that is JUST NOT THE SAME. [Note: I believe that Scotch Symphony was the first Balanchine ballet attempted by the Russians (the Kirov/Mariinsky), but I need someone else to confirm this. It would be interesting to know why that partiular ballet was chosen. Was it assumed to be the one most technically 'doable' (by dancers with a Vaganova school training), and accessible of his masterworks at that time?] Suzanne Farrell on Scotch Symphony: http://www.kennedy-center.org/explorer/videos/?id=A74300 Ratmansky's In Foreign Lands was very pleasant to watch, but it is a fairly derivative work. And I have to say, of all the Balanchine works that we can relate Foreign Lands to, it is Scotch Symphony that probably fits the best. There would be no Foreign Lands without Scotch Symphony. Which made me wonder why they were placed together on the same program, but I suppose Tomasson had no idea what In Foreign Lands would turn out to be like - he no doubt expected to have 3 completely different pieces (as he tends to favor that on a mixed bill). Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour is really popular with the dance public, and deservedly so. He pushes the envelope with his choreography more than Ratmansky generally does, and is quite clever and dramatic. He is as close to a successor for Balanchine as we are likely to have these days. But Wheeldon is still a ways from changing the way we look at ballet, and completely revitalizing the art form, as Balanchine did in the last century.

I know what you are saying, Bart, there's a kind of innocence to this production/approach that is easy to regard cynically, academically, but the extraordinary artistry of Plisetskaya, her spiritual quality, renders my cynical reflex mute. I feel foolish saying anything negative about this. I'm reminded of modern music critics who talk about the great technical skill, and flying fingers, of various modern 'guitar gods', but nobody laughs listening to a scratchy, technically primitive performance of Robert Johnson playing and singing "Hellhound on my Trail". It transcends technique and 'showmanship' to be a work of art. And that is what ultimately impresses me - more than any practiced 'professional' performance. I agree about the simplified camerwork - there's rarely a need to have a lot of camera trickery when showing dance. I'd rather be given the same view as front row, dress circle and let me see things for myself.

I could ask where she learned Flames of Paris, but I probably shouldn't delve into it - probably learned the parts while brushing her teeth.

Perhaps that is my real name, and I just can't hide from it! Nice to hear your thoughts on Zhivago - "the snow was practically a character in the novel" - Yes! And I happen to love that sort of imagery, so the descriptions of the weather will stay with me perhaps longer than the philosophizing, but it was all good for me. I've always remembered the chapter "Snow" from Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain - part of my personal mythology. I'm realizing that I just can't remember what Russian Literature book I read first, and it rather bothers me. I know that Dostoyevsky's The Idiot came early, and I was personally very affected by that book and still count it one of the most important readings in my life. During my adolescence I read a huge amount of European Literature and philosophy, especially in highschool (when I thought it was important to know all the 'classics' before going to college - How innocent is that!). So Russian Lit books are scattered throughout my reading history, but in no particular order.

Ms. K. is something of a force of nature - most people would be exhausted by their company routine alone, but she is constantly involved in guest performances in other parts of the country/world, and intersperses dancing engagments with support for artist friend's projects, interviews, fashion shoots, and documenting her life on Twitter... http://instagram.com/p/YJ4WxUgHqB/# http://instagram.com/p/YHABJDEUZW/# One of my favorite Masha tweets (kind of says it all): "I'm very excited to go to Tokyo because I'm gonna reunite with my iPad that I left at the Munich airport a few months ago"

From YouTube commentary on The Nutcracker ballet: "By far my favorite part of the entire ballet. I would kill to be a snowflake." “The beautiful always retains the freshness of novelty, while the astonishing soon grows tiresome” --August Bournonville "My first real collaboration with Stravinsky began in 1928 when I worked on Apollon. I consider this the turning point of my life. This score, with its discipline and restraint, with its sustained oneness of tone and feeling, was a great revelation to me. It was then that I began to realize that to create means, first of all, to eliminate. Not a single fragment of any choreographic score should ever be replaceable by any other fragment; each piece must be unique in itself, the 'inevitable' movement. I began to see how I could clarify by limiting and by reducing what seemed previously to have multiple possibilities." --George Balanchine Wording as used by Lincoln Kirsten in "Thirty Years": "I began to see how I could clarify, by limiting, by reducing what seemed to be myriad possibilities to the one possibility that is inevitable." --Balanchine Final stanzas from Frank O'Hara's "Ode to Tanaquil Le Clercq" [Dated June 7, 1960 in MS 102, first published posthumously in Paris Review 49, 1970] you were always changing into something else and always will be always plumage, perfection's broken heart, wings and wide eyes in which everything you do repeats yourself simultaneously and simply as a window "gives" on something it seems sometimes as if you were only breathing and everything happened around you because when you disappeared in the wings nothing was there but the motion of some extraordinary happening I hadn't understood the superb arc of a question, of a decision about death because you are beautiful you are hunted and with the courage of a vase you refuse to become a deer or a tree and the world holds its breath to see if you are there, and safe are you? ------------------------------------- And, a favorite general quote about life - "Life is life, and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die." - Baron Bror Blixen quoting from ancient Coptic

Thanks, I'm glad to hear that there's someone else reviewing the SF Ballet performances this season. I look forward to reading your future comments.

I guess you're going to get to see Symphony in Three Movements then - I wish I could be there too, but it won't work out for me this year, as I decided to see the Pacific Northwest Ballet too this season, and there's only so much money for these trips. ;)

The Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation seems to be liked by a lot of people - and hated by others. And the Manya Harari and Max Hayward translation (which I read) gets the same kind of reviews. Pasternak was primarily a poet, and the language of this book is poetic in the Russian, so it is apparently difficult language to capture in both literal meaning and stylistic impact. You might be better off getting the book for free from your library - maybe even checking out a couple of the translations at the same time to compare. At any rate, the descriptions of life in St. Petersburg, and small towns in eastern Russia near Siberia, are priceless, and certainly relate to the lives of Russian dancers who came from that world. I've always been interested in hearing about life in Imperial Russia - and I have absolutely no idea why. ;) Dr. Zhivago, if nothing else, is a great chronicle of events in Russia, and that was probably why the book was banned by the authorities - they didn't want anyone to know what really went on in people's lives during the revolution and creation of the USSR. http://www.amazon.co...d=ATGX6W1IK2XMN http://www.amazon.co...=Doctor Zhivago >> I just remembered something important: Zhivago is full of patronymic names (naturally), and it becomes incredibly confusing trying to remember who everyone is. So what I now recommend to anyone starting a Russian novel is to create a kind of family chart with the names and a brief description below each naem, so that you can see visually the relationships between the various characters. It really helps to have something to refer to. I really can't understand how the Russians keep things straight in their minds when reading a novel - using first and middle names alone seems like a crazy way to keep track of people. Or, you can use someone else's list! (But there will be more characters to add to this list) http://www.sparknote...characters.html

Yes, that's a great image, partly because it shows a different side to Tallchief, but I also like that it is an unposed snapshot. The powwow must have been really great to take part in.

Whew! Point well taken, pherank. AD Films dropped the ball. This - and many of the other clips linked here - is on VAI DVD 4234, The Art of Maria Tallchief, my copy of which gives smooth, sweet sound, steady in pitch, and an image so much clearer than this one you even get the light gauzy effect somebody put on the screen in Scotch (but you can see them fine through it). So maybe consider this as a kind of preview. There were several copies of the VAI disk offered on Amazon when I checked a few minutes ago; everybody use the ad on this page, okay? I was a little surprised by this bad digital transfer - there may be a better version online somewhere. I too have seen the ones on DVD and they look a fair amount better (although the blurry vaseline lens effect used in Scotch was just a bad idea that can't be undone). I thought this Indian Country news item would be of interest: Osage Ballerina Maria Tallchief Walks On at 88 http://indiancountry...walks-88-148780 I like the term, "walks on"...

I forgot to subscribe to this thread, so didn't see your comment until today. I am a fan of director David Lean, but I think it is felt by many of us that the film has its 'issues'. Though interstingly, for me at least, I came to appreciate Julie Christie's acting in that film AFTER I read the book. Then I realized that she was able to nail certain aspects of the book character - so I guess it's only the weepy Omar Sharif that still bugs me. ;) The book is looooooong (more than a 3 hour read), but so rich - I didn't want it to end. I happened to read it at the right time for me. Either that, or the writing just won me over and kept me in its thrall. It has some of the best snow and winter weather descriptions I know of (I happen to love that kind of thing). Some of the book is so visceral for me, that I'm more reminded of a film like Larisa Shepitko's "The Ascent", than Lean's tearjerker melodrama. I don't have the book with me to find one of those passages, but there is also a lot of philosophizing that is quoteable (I found these sections online) - “About dreams. It is usually taken for granted that you dream of something that has made a particularly strong impression on you during the day, but it seems to me it´s just the contrary. Often it´s something you paid no attention to at the time -- a vague thought that you didn´t bother to think out to the end, words spoken without feeling and which passed unnoticed -- these are the things that return at night, clothed in flesh and blood, and they become the subjects of dreams, as if to make up for having been ignored during waking hours.” “To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.” “And now listen carefully. You in others--this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life-your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you--the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it.” "Now what is history? It is the centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death. That's why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, that's why the qrithsymphonies. Now you can't advance in this direction without a certain faith. You can't make such discoveries without spiritual equipment. And the basic elements if this equipment are in the Gospels. What is the supreme form of vital energy. Once it fills the heart of man it has to overflow and spend itself. And then the two basic ideals of modern man- without them he is unthinkable-the idea of free personality and the idea of life as sacrifice." Interesting article on Pasternak: http://www.guardian....nak-translation

Maria Tallchief and Erik Bruhn - Don Quixote PDD (1961) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVMrsSndnq0 Maria Tallchief and Andre Eglevsky in Scotch Symphony >> Beware the really harsh and garbled audio track - you may want to turn your speakers way down http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAb5EIHfjO4 Stills and short footage (silent) of Tallchief at Jacobs Pillow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDbYI9-qjL4

I've always loved a video of Maya Plisetskaya in Death of the Rose (an old black and white version that I don't think is currently available online). And last night, I ran into this 1978 Roland Petit version of Death of the Rose (La Rose Malade) on TV (with Maya) - and I thought it was pretty wonderful. An entire workshop on the use of arms. I just don't get to see this type of dancing these days. [Maya Plisetskaya & Valery Kovtun - note that the obnoxious titling does disappear after a few seconds]

Well put, Cubanmiamiboy - that's basically what I was pointing out (though not as eloquently).

I've started to look about for some nice quotes - here's one from Paul Mejia (choreographer, nycb dancer, artistic director, and, Suzanne Farrell's ex-husband). It also naturally refers to Balanchine since it is from the book "I Remember Balanchine"...

Ah, but would she have wanted something more? ;) That their lives, and careers, were intertwined, I think is obvious to us all. My sore point was just in the NY Times labeling. This person's life has ended, and who were they? A "Balanchine ballerina". Not a bad thing at all, but it doesn't explain why she needs to be mentioned on the front page of the Times. In your words, "Tallchief was the cornerstone of Balanchine’s young company". So of course there's more to the story than just Balanchine's contribution. I see this type of headline in the arts press everyday: people being identified according to their relation to Balanchine, or Diaghilev. The practice is lazy and superficial, imo, and it just makes gods out of B and D but doesn't actually do so much for everyone else involved in the art.

The NYTimes.com front page has the following lead in: Maria Tallchief, Balanchine Ballerina, Dies Ms. Tallchief, a daughter of an Oklahoma oil family, found her way to New York and became one of the most brilliant American ballerinas of the century. She was 88. I take exception to the declaration that all her importance lies with Balanchine - there's nothing without Balanchine! - which is just wrong. I'm an admirer of Balanchine the artist, but these other people had lives, and long careers, and there is so much more to a life than "they danced under Balanchine". I've always thought of Tallchief as being the first American Prima Ballerina. That's big. That's enough. She also happened to have been trained by Russians, and danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and so had a Russian-style of stage presence that wasn't seen in any of the following Amercian dancers - a grandes dame. And her father was never an "oil man" to my knowledge. When oil was found on Osage lands, they eventually sold out, "packed up the truck, and moved to Beverly - HIlls that is." Very American.

The NY Times link has changed to: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/arts/dance/maria-tallchief-brilliant-ballerina-dies-at-88.html

Thank you for letting us know - very sad, but it will renew interest in her accomplishments - if only for a while.

Hello DB: I'm quoting from your posting so that you receive an email directly - we have some information for you that might be of interest.

2013-2014 Season at Segerstrom Center for the Arts The International Dance Series includes performances from Diana Vishneva, Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and Natalia Ospiova & Ivan Vasiliev. http://www.scfta.org...aspx?NavID=1054 Diana Vishneva: On The Edge World Premiere Event November 6, 7, 9 & 10, 2013 SEGERSTROM HALL Choreographers: Carolyn Carlson and Jean-Christophe Maillot Diana Vishneva, internationally acclaimed and award-winning prima ballerina of the Mariinsky Theatre and American Ballet Theatre, returns to Segerstrom Center in a special world premiere event to showcase her remarkable virtuosity. The program will include all new works choreographed for her by Carolyn Carlson, director of National Centre for Contemporary Choreography in Roubaix and of the Atelier de Paris at La Cartoucherie de Vincennes in Paris and Jean-Christophe Maillot, choreographer-director of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo. Karl Lagerfeld will design her costumes. Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev January 24–26, 2014 SEGERSTROM HALL Choreographers: Marcelo Gomes – World Premiere Maurius Petipa – from final scene of La Bayadère Roland Petit - Le Jeune Homme et la mort Natalia Ospiova, prima ballerina of American Ballet Theatre and the Royal Ballet, and Ivan Vasiliev, a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, are without peers as today's greatest dance couple. They perform throughout the world to sold-out houses and standing ovations, including many performances at Segerstrom Center. During their return to the Center, they will perform The Kingdom of the Shades scene from Petipa's La Bayadère, Petit's Le Jeune Homme et la mort as well as a world premiere by Marcelo Gomes, principal dancer with American Ballet Theater. Gomes, who is expanding his additional career as choreographer, also created a work for Kings of the Dance in 2011 featuring Ivan Vasiliev. >> I'm trying to visualize how Osipova will dance the Kingdom of the Shades by her lonesome - perhaps with mirrors? ;) So there must be a ballet corps in there somewhere...

Yes, thanks for this long interview - always better than a few quick words. ;)

Nice to hear that there are new people coming to SF Ballet performances - top companies need the support as much as the small, regional companies. Hopefully you've seen some wonderful productions, and heard some great playing/music from the ballet orchestra.

Hello DanielBenton, It's best if you ask a specific question, or make a specific comment on something, but, it sounds like you need to read: Stravinsky and Balanchine: A Journey of Invention Professor Charles M. Joseph (Author) A fascinating book, leaning perhaps more toward Stravinsky in its analysis, that does delve pretty deeply into how Balanchine went about choreographing for Stravinsky's music (I believe it even mentions the Elephant Polka done for Ringling Bros. Circus). Both of Nancy Goldner's "Balanchine Variations" books are must reading to learn about the individual masterworks. Another great Balanchine book would be, "I Remember Balanchine" by Francis Mason, which is basically a collection of short "essays"/rememberances from many people who worked with, or for, Balanchine. Everyone had a different experience of the man, so you have to piece together his personality, and techniques, from the varied memories. Certain people, like Marian Horosko, touch on his choreographic process, and others talk about more personal matters. But the entire book ends up being a great window onto a particular world of art and the personalities that make it go round. Also, the Bernard Taper biography, "Balanchine: A Biography: With a New Epilogue" is a great read - especially the first half; unfortunately it gets to be rather 'light' in the last half, skirting many important issues in favor of making it all sound warm and fuzzy and wrapping the story up with a big bow. But the first part of the book (about Balanchine's early years) makes it all worth it.