grace

just a note to thank ed waffle for a fascinating post, which teaches me something i'd never thought about before. about Shakespeare and Beethoven, ed says - in response to the end of your post, ed: you seem to be implying that greatness requires having a revolutionary (or 'changing') impact. might someone not feel that mozart was greater, simply because he "moves" them more? (that's not a challenge, but rather a suggestion of another point of view - that 'greatness' and 'impact on the art form' MIGHT be different things (alexandra - i like your 'range' example) .

hmm...YOU know ME!... ;) anyway, you and i, leigh, are the only ones on the board at the moment....(what are you doing posting at 3 am, leigh?! at least it's daytime for ME. ) i believe that someone venturing such an opinion would NOT need to have seen ALL of the two choreographers' works - but WOULD need to have seen ALL OF the 'best' ones, and a LOT of the rest... they would need a good knowledge of ballet in general, and the values of ballet. they would need to be able to articulate what they value in (a) ballet or a choreographer, so that their final judgement on the matter might be able to be understood according to their own standards. what else?... i'll leave room for others... ultimately AN element of the decision MUST be subjective, to allow for differences in personal taste.

thanks marc. i'd be inclined to agree with him, re the absence from view of technical development in contemporary dance, since the phase/era/stage of graham & limon. i wish i had seen this method of his, because its underlying principles make sense to me. thanks for confirming that.

again, i'm with carbro! ;) victoria - thanks for another pic. the line is just simply NOT 'classical', IMO. a telling observation.

thanks. that was my guess. (i've never heard of a musicologist before!)

just as an aside, i know nothing of this man as a choreographer (except the amusing reviews i've read above...) but i believe this is the same Marc Bogaerts, who was extremely well-received as a guest teacher in sydney and melbourne, a few years ago, with a system (his own, i believe) for teaching ballet dancers to move in more 'contemporary' ways - (no i don't mean destroying ballet - i mean improving their ballet, and their employability, with an approach to teaching contemporary class which was much admired by other teachers.) i wasn't there - i can only report what i heard from reliable sources.

doug - when you refer to "having worked with the 1900 notations", can i ask you to clarify what KIND of notation you mean, please? thank you!

since this thread has taken a personal turn that i had not anticipated, i just want to clarify that my post had nothing to do with cojocaru, nor with makarova's staging of bayadere. i did not even look at the picture, because it is at the new york times site which requires registration to view it- i don't have that registration, so i didn't. i thought amy was just using the pic as an example, of what she wanted to talk about. having found her description more than adequate to get her point...that's where i began. i would hate anyone to think i was joining into any criticism of an indivdual dancer, especially one held in such exalted regard. apart from all of that, i agree with carbro's comments about good taste in jumps and arabesques.

su-lian. thanks for pointing that out. i DID mean '&' - but THAT means that what i had labelled '3','4' should have been be '2', '&' . i changed my mind, mid-post, about how to recommend counting it - and i forgot to edit everywhere i should have. i have corrected it now.

Amen to that!

this thread is a companion to Benesh 101 - The Basics, at http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...20&pagenumber=1 and Benesh 102 - General Concepts, at http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...&threadid=11067 in THIS thread i will endeavour to use the basic information conveyed in the '101' thread, to assist you to follow an allegro exercise, which can be viewed at http://www.dtol.ndirect.co.uk/bab7.htm i suggest you open two windows, so you can read this thread while viewing the allegro page. (three, if you can handle it: the third for the '101' thread!) i am aware - and no doubt you've realised this too - that the double page from the allegro book DOES provide (on the right hand side) a list of all the steps, in english and/or french. however, my aim here is to help you to TRANSLATE the benesh symbols (on the left-hand page) into the steps, rather than just to 'find out' what they happen to represent, in that particular context. reading from left to right across the first stave... in the '101' thread, we have already talked about the facts that:- - this is a 4/4 exercise, the music to be played 'allegro con brio' - the dancers starts in 5th position with the LEFT foot behind - the dancer is positioned (3/4 of the way) upstage centre, JUST to the right of the centreline - there is a musical Introduction of 2 bars of 4/4 - it doesn't TELL you how to count that 'Intro', but if you feel the need to count your way thru, i suggest you think in terms of 1&,2& for each bar - on the last count of the Intro, the dancer does a demi-plie: that, is, the knees are BENT and LEVEL, they GO DOWNWARDS and they GO OUTWARDS from the centreline. the two vertical lines at the end of the Intro, signal the beginning of a passage which will later be repeated (on the opposite side). (forget about that for now). in bar 1: count 1 - the two level symbols ON the floorline indicate two feet en DEMI-pointe in 2nd position count & - again you will see the demi-plie in 5th position, and you may notice that the feet have NOT changed. the left foot is still behind, so those symbols you've now read, have created an echappe to 2nd sans change. count 2 - the contact symbol 'hanging from' the kneeline indicates that the right foot is contacting the other leg JUST below the knee. in this case, it is to the SIDE of the leg (not in front or behind). count & - again, a demi-plie in 5th position - this time with the RIGHT foot behind, so counts 3 & 4 are a releve passe UNDER (with specific placement of the actual retire position). bar 2 indicates the very same movements "on the other side" are you with me? bar 3 indicates a releve passe under with the left foot, and another with the RIGHT foot. thus far, then: echappe sans change, releve passe under, echappe sans change, releve passe under, 2 releves passes under, then...(...bar 4 coming up next). that's as far as i'll go, till i find out whether or not you are still 'with' me. we need to learn one new piece of information before we can read bar 4.

good points su-lian. part of the problem also, is trying to take in too much new stuff without having good opportunities to re-inforce the most basic elements in your brain, first. i'm going to leave this thread briefly at this point, and start another, partly because it is getting long (3 pages) and partly because we are at a point where we could move on to a slightly different approach. so please look over at Benesh 103 - Reading Notation: http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...&threadid=11260

thanks pamela. not meaning to misdirect the topic, but could you ever so briefly contrast the swedish and the english cultures, in the superficial way which people DO? ;) i am familiar with living in london, but not sweden, and am curious to learn about that.

su-lian, i think comparing it to music is sensible. but i also think that, if you and i were together and i could show you things on paper or on a white board, then you would regard benesh as the easier of the two.

oh! IMOFO is one i just made up : "In My Old Fashioned Opinion"! IMO means 'In My Opinion' and IMHO means 'In My Humble Opinion' (you'll find i don't use that one very often!) ;)

Peregrin: i took your advice and had a look at the Bloch forums. regrettably i was very disappointed that they are so gossipy, being largely unmoderated, and apparently very tolerant (too tolerant?) of off-topic stuff - and even quite unsavoury stuff - at least it is unsavoury in my old-fashioned opinion!!! ....i suppose that would be IMOFO, as an internet abbreviation...(instead of IMO or IMHO). thank you very much for filling me in about them, as i was unaware of their existence, but i won't be going THERE in a hurry! i confess to very much enjoying the seriously focused approach which alexandra and the moderators foster, here.

just curious, pamela: if you don't mind my asking, are you swedish, or is the culture you live in NOT the one you were raised in? i'm NOT 'getting at' ANYTHING here, except just my curiosity as to whether your strong reaction is because you come from a culture which doesn't have this aspect, or not.

EXTRA PEOPLE! so far we have talked principally about notating what ONE dancer is doing. if more than one are doing the same thing (and/or some doing the "other side"), you can label *1* stave accordingly. e.g. 32 girls doing bayadere shades entrance, or 32 swans in swan lake act 2 - theoretically, at least, one stave alone could pretty much handle THOSE situations. for pas de deux, you use *2* staves, joined together by every bar line - that way the pair can be easily matched up on EVERY count. for a whole cast of different characters - think opening scene of petrushka, or any general milling around type of crowd scene - you use a different stave for each character, again often joining all the staves together, bar for bar, so that it can readily be seen on the page which character is doing what, when. have i covered all the usual options, there? if not, please ask.

i just noticed carbro's post: i'm a critic and i completely agree. i HATE those seats - but that's what i always get. if the theatre's not full, sometimes i sneak upstairs in the intermission, and reposition myself! ;) (i don't use opera glasses, though - our little city's dance venues aren't THAT huge, and i rarely feel that specific close-up detail of facial expression matters in dance.)like BW, i prefer 'immersion', but since i am usually at a performance as a reviewer, immersion is an indulgence i am usually denied.

interesting observation, dirac...they DO represent extremes, IMO, within ballet. or at least they DID, until mark morris, twyla tharp and billy forsythe came along.

umm...i haven't 'mastered' it! i completed the course and passed my exams - but no way have i 'mastered' it!!! its jolly complex stuff! and since doing the course, i've had little reason to use anything beyond the basic level, so i've forgotten things.a more straight answer would be that the intensive fulltime course for professional notators - which is what i did - is (approx) 16 months long. aah...now that's going back a way...i was young and foolish. that's the answer. ;)

blackbird: thanks for your question. all these various symbols that you are learning about provide a language in which to write the steps. so, (theoretically at least) anyone who learns how all the symbols are used, should be able to read any step that is written with them. however, in practice, the particular combinations of positions (and therefore symbols) that make up, say, a pas de chat, a pas de bourree or a waltz, become SO familiar that a practised notator will recognise such common steps, without having to read every symbol - just the way most of us read english now, without actually sounding out the spelling. make sense?

well said, dirac: i've certainly seen THAT from professional dancers, teaching. cabriole's post reminded me of a great performer who had both of those qualities (curiosity and humanity) : christopher gable.

at least this '101' thread has lots of views, so i know there must be more people looking in, than su-lian, diane, hans, cliff, peregrin and mel. aren't those movement lines cute (animated figure at the french site)?

the RAD gazette has an article about macmillan online at http://www.rad.org.uk/dance_gazette/feature9.htm i noticed this article linked to, at ballet.co & thought some of you might like to read it - if you haven't already.