Old Fashioned
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Posts posted by Old Fashioned
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Anyone received the season brochure yet? The cover image shows Mireille Hassenboehler lying in a pool of water with white feathers scattered around her. The only thing you see her wearing is a flesh colored tube-top. Give up? It's a promotion of Welch's new Swan Lake.
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Ah, I'm jealous. I'm going to have to plan road trips for a couple of these programs.
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For Jerry perhaps Ask LaCour, he seems to be using him more. For Lise who else but the reigning French belle, Sylve?
I thought of Sylve, too, although she doesn't have the temperament I have in mind. I was thinking more along the lines of someone "cute," like Megan Fairchild.
As for Jerry, the dancer has to be stong, athletic, AMERICAN (or American-like)...and being devastatingly handsome doesn't hurt, either.
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The fiance did dance briefly in just a dance belt
Yes, there was quite a bit of that in the last McIntyre work I saw. Fetish?
I'm glad to have seen it and it was interesting, but I won't be running out to see it a second time this week.That's the impression I get from most of his ballets.
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"American" has always seemed to me a score that must be handled cinematically. It veers suddenly between themes, and Gene Kelly's choreography, with the camera's quick (for its day) cuts handles it . I wonder how Wheeldon will manage these musical traps on the stage.
I wonder who will be Jerry and who will be Lise.
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And then there's the story of how Balanchine hated it when his dancers used rosin because it creates that squeaking sound and put dancers in soft shoes for a section of Midsummer Night's Dream because they made too much noise in pointes.
Antonicheva's shoes must be unusually hard. In every picture I've seen of her she has lovely insteps, but the shank looks barely bent and makes it appear as though she has low arches.
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I'm a greedy girl -- I want them all. The version on the pianoforte and the version on the Steinway -- the Sleeping Beauty from the 1890's, the one from the 1990's, and all the ones in between!
I think we all do.
I love the Sergeyev productions of the classics, but I also want to see them in the form closest to our knowledge of the originals. Are we forever to be stuck with a Swan Lake with a happy ending, since no one else in the world seems intend on creating a traditional staging? I do hope these new-old reconstructions can live alongside the Soviet productions. -
I think if you add another ranking, it'd just stew up more jealousy not to mention make the transition from corps to soloist a bigger wait.
I think this is true. Recently at a local company a couple of ranks have been added to the traditional "corps, soloist, principal" statuses and I would find it awkward to be promoted to one of these new ranks, especially if it's a title all to yourself and a few of your colleagues who were previously in the same rank as you were promoted at the same time and able to skip the new title.
Or if you had been anticipating a promotion and then not actually being given the one you want. Not that I know how any of the dancers feel...this is all speculation. -
I think that the programming of serious dance work is sometimes to blame. Outisde of the biggest cities, when there is a mixed bill, a single Balanchine comes first. There, in splendid isolation is this genuflection to "art," with appropriate polite applause. This is followed by something familiar (which alludes more directly to popular culture) by Tharp, Caniparoli, Stroman , etc. You can feel the audience heating up. Hey, we understand this. We are meant to leave the theater feeling good, with most of the people around us talking about how much they enjoyed the later works.
This was how ABT programmed their recent tour to Houston. Started off with Mozartiana, and then Pillar of Fire followed by a Kylian. The Balanchine received lukewarm applause while the stirring Pillar and "witty" Kylian (what was it called again?) received wild cheers. Of course, I can't expect ABT to tour with a triple Balanchine bill, but I would have preferred to see it that way.
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The recurring melody in Turandot was taken straight from a popular Chinese folk song.
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Like carbro, I get an error message and remain unlinked. That's okay as long as I'm not missing any photos of Suzanne.That would make me unhinged.
Hehe, there is one. It's a fairly common one, so you've probably already seen it. It's Farrell caught in grand jeté as the Sugar Plum Fairy.
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Thanks for the link, Clara. My favorites are the one of Nina Ananiashvili posing in arabesque in La Sylphide and Margot Fonteyn in the Rose Adagio. Exquisite. I loved seeing those pure lines juxtaposed next to the contortionists.
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At first Homans goes into a lot of the history of Russian ballet under Soviet rule, but then she finally gets to the point of her article by making the claim the "new-old" reconstructions of the Petipa classics are useless in trying to bring back the Imperial style of the originals. Many people here seem to applaud the effort, and I was wondering what people think of Homans' assessment.
In short, the Kirov is trying to give itself a new history--the history it might have had but for 1917. Vaziev and many of his ballet masters belong to the Yeltsin generation, and their disdain for the Soviet era is palpable, and understandable ...But this dismissal of Soviet aesthetics raises a serious problem. Ballet has no universally accepted standardized notation, and so the "text" of a dance exists in the minds and the bodies of those who perform it. ... The "classical tradition" is thus little more than a fragile chain of memories passed down from one generation to the next. Vaziev and his team are breaking the chain and removing many of the Soviet links, yet they depend on teachers and coaches whose careers were made in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. And these Soviet veterans feel that it is the accomplishments of their era that are being lost and betrayed, with dire consequences for the future of Russian ballet.
[Edited to shorten the quote. It is fine to summarize and/or to quote about a paragraph. (The rules are posted here.)
I hope the sense of Homans' point is clear from what remains, and that this is enough to continue the discussion that Old Fashioned has started.]
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A new article in The New Republic. Haven't gotten around to finishing it yet, but I thought I should post this here instead of Links for discussion purposes.
Jennifer Homans writes:
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Leningrad became once again St. Petersburg, the Kirov followed suit and reverted to its own former imperial title. In the West, this posed a problem. The Kirov was famous--it had given the world Nureyev and Baryshnikov--but few knew of the Maryinsky. As a result, the company is now the Kirov in New York, London, and Paris, and the Maryinsky at home in St. Petersburg. This problem of nomenclature points to a vexing post-Soviet dilemma facing Russian ballet today. The Kirov was, after all, an arm of the now-discredited party-state. Should the company close the door on its Soviet past, re-open Peter the Great's "window on the West," and rush to "catch up" with Europe and America? Or is there something of value worth preserving from the ballet of Soviet times? -
I also like the lower bun look, although that wasn't the hairstyle Balanchine preferred.
I believe that the "high bun" look came into vogue at NYCB because Suzanne Farrell wore it, and all the girls tried to emulate her. I'm not aware that Balanchine ever expressed a preference one way or the other.
Sorry, when I said that I was thinking about the section on hair in Suki Schorer's book, which I know shouldn't be taken as gospel and does not necessarily reflect Mr. B's own thoughts on the matter. Here's the quote:
More often, he wanted the hair pulled back and off the face to help reveal its features. The hair could be secured in a flat, hig twist or bun...Its arrangement should not obscure or shorten the line of the neck but should usually give the illusion of lengthening it.I looked back on some photos of pre-Farrell ballerinas, and while some donned low buns (and others did not), those were not what I had in mind. I was thinking of the Giselle look with the hair pulled over the ears or those rolls (sorry, I have no idea what to call that hairstyle) popular with English dancers.
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He does seem to confuse beauty with glamour, and it is not a glamorous age. Personally, I think most dancers would look better if their hair weren't so scraped back--the looser hair and the lower buns of the 50's I think is much more flattering, but of all the issues to raise, that is a pretty trivial one.
I also like the lower bun look, although that wasn't the hairstyle Balanchine preferred. It's true that Rockwell is confusing beauty and glamour; I don't find today's dancers any less pretty than a previous generation. Danilova wasn't conventionally beautiful, but no one can deny she was glamorous.
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I can't imagine any ballerina looking like that nowadays. It's just a different time and that sort of glamour is now the exception rather than the rule. It's not the dancers fault and it's not the company's fault for not "cultivating" them.
That's also true of today's celebrities. Very few come to mind as glamourous.
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By the time we did 'Tales of Hofmann' in 1950, I was a totally different kind of dancer. And also, Freddie Ashton did the choreography for that, we did longer takes, and one really could dance. I'm not ashamed of my dancing in that at all; at least it was genuine dancing. It gave the idea of the way one could dance, which I never felt 'Red Shoes' did at all."
She's also impossible not to like --
You can't help caring about her.
I must get my hands on "Tales of Hoffmann."
You're right, Paul. There is a magnetism about Shearer that's unexplainable. Just looking at her pictures and having seen "Red Shoes" makes one adore her and want to learn more about her. One of the most touching pictures I've seen of a ballerina- which happened to be in the Daneman bio- was of Shearer holding her baby. No, she isn't dancing, but her face is glowing with such pure joy as she looks upon her child that it warms your heart.
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It does seem unfair to judge a dancer of whom we have seen little of. This is off topic, but Margot Fonteyn didn't become who she was just through sheer talent. de Valois kept Fonteyn in the spotlight while keeping other dancers, no matter how talented, out. I get the impression from reading the Daneman biography that we would have different opinions on these dancers had so much attention not been focused on the prima ballerina assoluta.
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They perform frequently in NYC, though, don't they? I'm moving next year.
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The Trocks were in Houston this past weekend...I've been dying to see them forever but didn't go. I'll have plenty of chances next year, though. I wonder why they haven't been reviewed in the Chronicle yet.
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I've never seen him (my generation is so deprived), but I would imagine Edward Villella would be among this group.
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Looks like Stanton Welch caught the Swan Lake tinkering bug.
The biggest event will be the February 2006 premiere of Welch's new Swan Lake, replacing Ben Stevenson's hallmark 21-year-old production. The famous white tutu scenes of dancing swans and Odette-Odile's solos won't change, Welch says, "but everything else is up for grabs."Other ballets (or "ballets") included in the season are:
Cranko's Onegin
World Premiere by Christopher Bruce
Kylian's Forgotten Land
Welch's Wildlife
Welch's Velocity
Welch's Play
Welch's Indigo
Welch's Divergence
World Premiere by Brian Enos
a December gala
guest company Les Grands Ballets Canadien in Ohad Naharin's Minus One
Traditionalists get their candy, too. George Balanchine's Western Symphony, Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Gloria and Stevenson's Don Quixote are also on tap.Oy vey! That sounds almost condescending, and the classics are NOT candy. Why not take the metaphor to the next level and give us pacifiers?
And slowly the Stevenson rep gets phased out while newer works take place...
Perhaps Mr. Rockwell might like a job at the Chronicle. He would be in good company.
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Anothony Dowell and Barbara Bears. Or Dowell and Janie Parker.
2005-2006 Season
in Houston Ballet
Posted
It's just a silly marketing strategy. I'm pretty sure the new SL will still be danced in classical white tutus (unless Welch has decided to tack on an Act V: an underwater pas de deux of death for Odette and Siegfried!" BTW, there's another SL image inside with Sara Webb and a topless Zdenek Konvalina lying in the pond). Houston Ballet has been trying to promote an image of "Ballet is sexy!" these past two seasons. The 03-04 brochure featured Naomi Glass on the cover wearing a black body tight in a straddled position on the ground (see picture in link above- like that) and the 04-05 season brochure cover had Romeo & Juliet lying in bed together.
Funny you should say that; the title of the article is "Shout-out to youths," and it quotes Welch saying he wants to hear more "hootin' and hollerin" at performances.