Ray

Well, it might be more accurate to say that there was an expectation that they would know, especially the class who would normally attend the opera. But I'm sure there were plenty of new-money burghers in the original audiences who didn't know an Aetreus from their elbow.

Thanks, Helene! Is that scene included in the libretto? If so, I wonder if Paul can tell us how the other production (the SFO one) handled the scene, if they included it. I can imagine the use of video here, grainy and horror-filmish.

http://www.balanchine.org/balanchine/introduction.jsp Thanks--I just sent them quite a list of corrections, such as that there was no "Joffrey Ballet Chicago" in 1967. I bet they'll get a truckload more from the rest of the BT cohort!

I meant to reply to this earlier. Do we know that the database will be regularly and systematically updated (i.e., is there dedicated funding for that)? The format of the original books included lists of all productions, which are growing exponentially with the passage of time. And productions will be remounted and "refreshed," too.

One amusing find: the entry for Serenade lists, among 1935's performances, "August 10-11 Philadelphia: Robin Hood Deli." I know they performed in some crazy venues in the early days, but a deli? (Perhaps the venue was really called the Robin Hood Dell?) Good thing it wasn't created there--the production might've included pickles!

The Met production on the radio today sounded great (with an exception, more below) but perhaps those who have seen it can tell me what the opening pantomime looks like. The exception? The Met chorus, which I find myself disappointed with more and more these days, especially in pre-Verdi operas. The placement of the broadcast mikes only exacerbates balance and intonation problems.

As this thread shows there many interesting stories. But how many of them would actually pass what we might call the "Balanchine test." That is, something that would make direct and immediate sense in dance terms? Not relying on prior knowledge of the plot. And not requiring elaborate pre-performance explanation or program notes. Hardly any. So many of the narratives we've mentioned depend on/revel in language. That's why Shakespeare's hard enough for theater companies to perform.

I didn't know about Drigo, but if memory serves, Balanchine used the Valse Bluette as a Pas de neuf in his one-act Swan Lake.

Alas, they're no longer up. There is a link to a video clip here... Great music and hot bodies (literally: you can see the sweat) is about the best I can say about this piece of work.

..............or Lost in Translation

Doesn't the movie end happily? I can't remember what happens, exactly. Is that happy ending somehow untranslatable to point shoes and glissades?

"Should" might be a strong word for these ideas: How about Rashomon (the Kurosawa film in which a crime witnessed by four individuals is described in four mutually contradictory ways)? Four different variations, in the broader sense of the word... Or, another film with repetition-with-a-difference, this time humorous: Groundhog Day. At the start he's pulled into the dancing, but soon he knows the steps even before the others have taken them...at the end he gets to dance a brand new dance, etc. (sounds kinda cheesy now that I've written it out!). And the "Punxsutawney Polka" has already been composed...

The DVD is also available through Netflix. I don't see any links to clips at the link you provided, volcanohunter--just a link to track details.

Thank you, Herman!

Bentley quite likely just wanted a former dancer turned biographer to give insight into Nureyev's art -- the reason he was a celebrity in the first place, and the only reason, celebrities being a dime a dozen, his biography is worth reading. I completely disagree. Celebrities and their stories may be a dime a dozen now, but a Soviet defector male ballet dancer-as-celebrity was an unparalled cultural phenomenon in the 1960s--he was and remains, in fact, a cultural icon. (And would we say that Elvis was a celebrity icon only because of his singing? Or Marilyn Monroe only because of her acting?) Even as a former dancer and avid dance viewer, I'm really more interested in the rich and complex story of how Nureyev became an icon than in the less layered (but still significant) story of his development as a dancer. I think that Kavanagh is trying to deliver both stories.

I'd LOVE to see PAMTGG, bad costumes and all (although I'm glad you brought it up first, Bart)! I wonder if someone like John Clifford could put it back together?

Without having read the book, I’d say that in a biography of Nureyev, celebrity and artistry would intersect and at times be inseparable (Gottlieb made a related point in this direction when talking about the significance of the Fonteyn-Nureyev partnership on the Rose show), and this is inevitable given the nature of his career. No, they are not the same thing, but he was both. Absolutely. And, judging from critical response, he often performed celebrity better than dancing, choreographing, or running a dance company. (Of course, one of the paradoxes of Nureyev is that he attended class as regularly as the bath houses.) Bentley's comment feeds a romantic fantasy of the absolute separation of artist from celebrity--even though, ironically, romantic artists can be said to have been the first "celebrity" writers, composers, and musicians.

The grand jete pic is Pat Wilde for sure.

Yes, and it's a bit sad to think that NYCB probably won't do this version again. Did Suzanne ever dance it, by the way? Maybe her company could revive it...

As a former dancer, I notice that audiences don't always realize how hard a particular step is--and what a dancer has accomplished by executing it--while they clap wildly for things that a dancer can do with relative ease/reliability (such as anything involving "the splits" or high extensions).

I'm not sure about that profile--it also suggests Nora Kaye to me (she was in City Ballet from '51-'59 [right?] and, I believe, danced Swan Lake). Yet the long limbs do help make the case for Adams.

It was a courtship scene: a doc played by John Stamos and the hospital's with-it chaplain "Julia" are coming out of the theater after a date; the line shows us that she's sophisticated and he's a real guy's guy. (They actually have, for network TV, quite an extended discussion about the Willis.) Then they go to his apartment and rip each other's clothes off. So much for Gautier! NBC only has 2-minute replays of past episodes--guess which scene ended up on the cutting room floor--but you may be able to find it on YouTube (the episode aired 11/15 and is called "Coming Home" I know, I should be reading War and Peace.

A slight change of topic, but this is really too fleeting to start a whole thread for, alas: Did anyone notice on ER 2 weeks ago that not only was Giselle mentioned, but GAUTIER as well? Probably the first and last time on primetime network TV!

Heading South (Vers le sud), in French (subtitled) and English, with the amazing Charlotte Rampling, about middle-aged upper middle-class white women who vacation in 1970s Haiti for sex with Haitian men (talk about a film that Hollywood could never make--it really gets into all the cultural contexts); and Other Peoples' Lives. A MUST see. A surprisingly uplifting German film that won last year's Oscar for best foreign film.

A potentially hot topic! It seems that we can talk about it in reference to a lot of different things--i.e., was NYCB better when the company had to struggle as opposed to now (are they in a 'decadent' phase)? I think it's a fraught and ethically complicated question, full of paradoxes--I mean in the Soviet era, ballet was probably funded better than it is now, so there might have been more "freedom" in a material sense for dancers pursuing their craft than now, yet artistically there was a poverty of creativity (not that rampant capitalism has resulted in that much artistry, to be sure).