Fleurdelis

9 hours ago, Quinten said:

  Note the multiple debuts of Vaziev favorites Anastasia Denisova (3), Antonina Chapkina (3) and Ekaterina Besedina (2).

Could you please tell us more about Ekaterina Besedina, especially the facts that have led you to conclude that she is a Vaziev favorite?

9 hours ago, Quinten said:

Faith Borisenkova Ivan Alekseyev - Mazurka 
 

Faith? What a joke! If this is how the Bolshoi posts the casts, their website management team has hit a new low.

On 4/2/2018 at 5:58 PM, atm711 said:

It's more than just the fouettes that are problematic...(I can forgive that!)  Years ago an ABT ballerina (Nana Gollner) did 32 Changements in place of the fouetees, the easiest of all ballet steps!) and  there were few complaints about the rest of the performance........or for that matter about the Changements....they were excitingly performed with high ballon and she pulled it off....

Incredible, this video is pretty bad. I agree, it is not just the fouettes. I too can forgive a technical mishap here and there, I have heard even Plissetskaya often replaced the 32 fouettes with a circle of tours. But Misty's spins here were off balance, the diagonal was out of rhythm and her arms were inexpressive and ungraceful. I saw her very few times and must say I quite liked her, but that was in modern works. Is this video representative of how she does the classics, or was it a particularly unfortunate evening?

What was so special about Cornejo's turns that elicited the shrieks? He is a wonderful guy, but pretty much any self-respecting ballet dancer can do what he did.

On 3/28/2018 at 3:55 AM, Gnossie said:

So?  That's what Roland thought about Vasiliev, HIS opinion. I am in my right to disagree with him, as I did for the last few years of his life. 

Also, one would think that nobody knows better than the choreographer himself but I've seen more than a couple choreographers do some very debatable choices.  

So that. I am also in my right to present various opinions, especially quote those of the author of the works himself, which, at least to me, carry a lot of weight.

And then, here is what Petit himself said about Ivan Vasiliev: "I would like to make a special note of this boy. He is exceptional, extraordinary. I do not remember ever seeing a dancer of his level. A very, very big artist. He is phenomenal, simply flies on stage. Plus the most tremendous charisma that makes you empathize with him".

That was said about Vasiliev in La Jeune Homme et la Morte.

In the words of Marcus Porcius Cato: "It is a hard matter to save that city from ruin where a fish is sold for more than an ox."

As long as people in Moscow are willing and able to spend a whole month's earnings on a ticket to a ballet performance, even such draconian measures as demanding passports to buy tickets (like airlines do) will be helpless against scalping. 

Ah, Vorontsova! The Tonya Harding of Russian ballet!

On 3/2/2018 at 12:37 PM, Laurent said:

Yana Salenko "good solid"? Salenko is absolutely exquisite, she is currently a dream model for professors of dance of the strictest academic standards, her dancing is studied by many ambitious young dancers around the world as an example to follow.

These standards? Hope not.

23 hours ago, mtthwbrehm said:

I think that having designated claques in the audience is a good thing. It makes the audience more engaged and more inclined to shout "bravo" and applaud as well. As long as claques aren't doing anything horrible to dancers behind the scenes, it seems to be a good institution. 

I thought about this too. Come to think of it, in all the time I went to the theater, and it is a very long time, not once did I witness anyone try to disrupt a performance (if one does not count various protest groups in Western Europe whose agenda typically have nothing to do with ballet). I only witnessed people talking during a performance and voicing their displeasure with certain dancers, but this disruption only affected those sitting immediately around them. Maybe someone can share a different story, but it seems that today's claques are a distant cry from the ones in horror stories from 19th century France.

23 hours ago, mtthwbrehm said:

At the Mariinsky, without claques, you could hear a pen drop at the end of variations. At some performances, I made it my duty to applaud loudly. Only a performance of Swan Lake with Victoria Tereshkina had a lot of true ballet fans in attendance. Tereshkina was the only Mariinsky performance I attended which had multiple curtain calls. 

Mariinsky audiences are very fickle, but if they get going, it can be very rewarding.

23 hours ago, mtthwbrehm said:

At the Mikhailovsky the case was worse. The entire audience were tourists from cruise ships who had no idea what they were watching. I saw a performance of Nacho Duato's Sleeping Beauty and I had to start applause for Princess Aurora's (Angelina Vorontsova) entrance. I had never been more upset.

Nacho Duato's Sleeping Beauty is a puzzling piece that is hard to get excited about regardless of who dances it. Try Flames of Paris or Laurencia with Ivan Vasiliev there, that small theater house gets so rowdy, you'd be scared for your life.

9 hours ago, MadameP said:

Yes, I think you are right that she would have wanted to dance her debut because that is what her father would have wanted, but that did not make it any easier for her. 

Probably made it excruciating. She has a very busy schedule ahead of her. I will drop her flowers in support on a night when she is dancing.

5 hours ago, Helene said:

Beyond the extortion aspects, I think that the next worst aspect of claques and of vociferous factionalism and uber-fan behavior is the tendency for audience members and potential ticket buyers to start to dislike dancers based on these external behaviors that have little to do with the dancers.

I have to remind myself of this every time a perfectly fine and appropriate technical feat is greeted by shrieks from the teenagers in the audience.

For some reason, teenage shrieks are something I'd more readily associate with audiences in America. In a way it's a good thing, it means that ballet audiences are getting fresh blood in, and this art form may yet have a new lease on life.

45 minutes ago, Marta said:

Just to insert my two cents:  I saw the broadcast of DQ and I thought Smirnova was weak and insecure as Dryad Queen.

Just to insert my two kopecks: I disagree with you and I thought that she was very poised, confident and elegant.

34 minutes ago, Mashinka said:

When a Royal Ballet dancer lost her mother in the most distressing circumstances she was given indefinite compassionate leave.  Clearly such niceties don't exist in Russia.

Before slamming Russia, let's consider a possibility that Zhiganshina actually wanted to dance Aurora that night because this is what her dad would have wanted her to do. He was very excited about her ballet career.

15 hours ago, Helene said:

I disagree.  In some houses there are known claquers, and this has been acknowledged by some dancers, for whom this is a shakedown with implicit threat, and there are distinct patterns of applause by claques.

I just start with the assumption that if claquers are paid, it's a shakedown, while others are over-the-top people.

I'd still think it's conjecture, unless one offers some specifics, such as "I saw so-an-so receive a suitcase of money from a dancer, and then I saw him clap that dancer, and his clapping followed a distinct pattern that went like so-an-so." But no one has done this here, so far I only saw people make references to some amorphous claque without providing any evidence as to how they know it is claque. Just because we know that there are claquers at the Bolshoi does not mean that the applause coming at a specific moment is from them.

If over-the-top people are ballet fans that get excited over a certain dancer, frequent the theater and also have a distinct patter of shouting or applauding, would it also qualify them as the claque? I wouldn't think it's fair. Or if, for example, there are distinct patterns heard in how the audience claps, say, Alexandrova, who was quite vocal in some interview about never paying the claquers, would it be fair to claim that she was being disingenuous? I wouldn't think so either.

3 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

In Act 1, Zhiganshina began her extremely premature debut as Aurora. There was basically no entrance applause, her performance was very nervous and stiff, and whatever bravos were heard came from the same claqueish voices heard during every Bolshoi broadcast. 

 

Zhiganshina's dad passed away just a tad over a week ago, which must have been a devastating blow for the poor girl, so her ability to gather herself and make this debut happen in the first place is downright heroic. If I was in the audience, and, lamentably, I was not, I would have applauded her too, and done so on my own free will, not claquieishly.

Saying which dancer gets claqueish and which dancer gets genuine shouts and applause is as much of a conjecture and speculation as there can be. Basically, a way of saying that "if audiences applaud an artist that I like, they do it genuinely, and if they applaud an artist I dislike, it must be because of the claque that got paid".

14 hours ago, Quinten said:

I wasn't there to be sweated on, unfortunately, so it would be nice to have your confirmation that at least one of the current Bolshoi ballerinas can do chaine turns [nearly] as fast as Ananiashvili.  Thanks!

 

I believe the question was addressed to me, as it came in response to my message.

I cannot comment too much on the speed of Ananiashvili's chaines. I saw her several times and they were good, as far as I can recall, but is it really the speed of the chaines that she is best remembered for? Anything is possible, but I am not so sure about this.

If you meant Stepanova, looking at the diagonal of lead ballerina's chaines in Etudes, pretty much every Bolshoi dancer I saw in that role did them pretty fast, including Kovaleva, I can't say that I saw Stepanova do it any better or faster than anyone else. When it comes to speed and precision, my money would be on Krysanova, now there is some real virtuoso technique, maybe if there are videos out there it is possible to compare and contrast.

As for the sweat, of course, all dancers sweat, it can sometimes even be sexy and attractive. What I am referring to is that Stepanova's October Etudes was a particularly sweaty, arduous and joyless affair, her partners very inexperienced and somewhat careless, which seemed to cause extra stress and strain on her, understandably so, and left a tortured impression with me. Which, unfortunately, overshadowed the chaines and things like that.

12 hours ago, Quinten said:

Yulia Stepanova has a blurringly fast chain turn.  Somebody who saw her last Etudes in person actually complained it was too fast, like a circus trick.  

If this was the October performance, I can see why because I was there. She was sweating so profusely that sweat drops that were flying off her spins could have splattered over the front rows, I certainly regretted sitting so up close as being able to see it.

On 1/29/2018 at 4:48 PM, Mashinka said:

I last saw Alexandrova a matter of months ago in Raymonda pas de deux, plenty of finesse there .  For me performing steps accurately rates highly and Alexandrova gives the choreographers text without cheating through flawed technique.  

I saw a younger pre-injury Alexandrova in Raymonda (Zakharova had just given up on dancing it, so I had no other choice). While her technique was indeed flawless, her characterization had all the finesse of a sledgehammer, which she unfortunately brings into every single one of her roles, whether appropriate or not. And no, this is not Bolshoi style, you could never say the same about Ananiashvili, Maximova, Bessmertnova or even Plisetskaya.

Listening to the interview, I am impressed by what an incredibly inspiring, charming and high-character young man he is.

If I may take a stab at your original question: I think MadameP hits it right on the head when she says it is important to look at various aspects of a dancers performance, including correct technique, epaulement, arms, musicality, phrasing, presence, and ability to inhabit a role.  I would add to this that technique is only a means to an end, in classical ballet it allows the dancer to move beautifully, strike beautiful poses, make smooth transitions and, most importantly, express and play a role in a way that moves you. And the better command of technique a dancer has, the better they are able to do that. But technique cannot be an end in itself. If a dancer possesses sound technique, but is completely devoid of any expressiveness, personality or acting ability, watching just this technique will be bland and boring, like drinking distilled water that feels dead on the lips. What's great for an exercise in a ballet class may not be so great on a stage in front of an audience. Here I am not talking about performances of plotless pieces that emphasize technical virtuosity, a truly virtuoso performance still requires a dancer to be expressive in addition to possessing technical talent. 

I agree that it is incorrect to approach ballet as if it were figure skating, scoring it primarily on the difficulty and quality of execution of a certain element. Having said that, if a dancer has poor technique, her or his dancing would visibly appear as incomplete, sloppy and unsatisfying, even to an untrained eye, and this would also mar the impression of the dancer's role. So would a consistent inability to perform certain standard elements in a classical dancer's arsenal. If someone repeatedly stumbles on fouettes night in and night out, it is a serious problem indeed. But if you have just seen one of the most breathtaking Odiles or Kitris of your life, why would you care whether she then makes 32 spins and not 30 or even 28? (as long as they are in synch with the music) Conversely, if she has just delivered a bland and lifeless performance with hardly any personality or conviction behind her role, spinning 32 perfect rounds would be just as meaningless and useless.

I think Vaziev's goal at the Bolshoi is to maintain the core beauty of classical ballet where good technique and compelling expressiveness are finely balanced. Which is why I think he favors dancers like Smirnova, who, despite whatever anyone claims here, is the epitome of a ballerina with graceful beautiful technique in a graceful beautiful body form combined with incredible acting ability that is not just compelling and convincing - it is spellbinding!

10 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

Her Queen of the Dryads that day was pretty terrible, and she received tepid applause. 

Tepid applause, really? More like your pants are on fire...

So, if the leg is raised in front of the body, it is tasteful. And if behind, it is vulgar. Is this how it works?

And let's remember that there was a claim made earlier that technique itself can be vulgar. So, if that's the case, context shouldn't matter, right?

And what makes Guillem any better than Zakharova?

7 hours ago, Gnossie said:

Obraztsova is a whole other deal.

 

Somova doesn't do 6 o'clocks!????? We must be looking at two different videos, if that isn't picking up the leg then what is! Guillem didn't raise her leg that high. 

Extensions aside, mother of cheesus, Somova was ATROCIOUS in that video.

Obraztsova does 6 o'clocks

7 hours ago, Gnossie said:

Still not as extreme as the Russians, and she didn't held her leg up there forever, she wasn't showing off. 

What do the rules say about the maximum amount of time one is allowed to hold one's leg up before being considered vulgar?

11 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

The 190-degree split is a blight.

Is this tasteful?

As an aside, I believe the fashion for high extensions was introduced by Sylvie Guillem, and then extensively imitated by Svetlana Zakharova. Shall we consider both of them vulgar?