leonid17

The Pefect Partnership is widely available including on ebay http://cgi.ebay.com.au/PERFECT-PARTNERSHIP...107153001r19876

You are correct, but sadly it is not a stage performance.

I have not seen a DVD available just devoted to "Marguerite and Armand" with Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot. There are two interesting clips on youtube from this work and details about its filming at http://www.nureyev.org/rudolf-nureyev-main...-rudolf-nureyev I find the films unsatisfactory as a record of the actual performance of which I believe I saw every performance given in the Royal Opera House.

At balletmet you can find a published list of Balanchines ballets together with a brief biography. See http://www.balletmet.org/Notes/Balanchine.html It will be interesting Nanarina if you can find any errors or omissions in this list. However earlier in the year Sarah Kaufmann stated, "Of the more than 400 ballets Balanchine created in his 79 years..." see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...9050704620.html

Thank you Robert, it sounds quite a fitting tribute.

Richka Thank you for your touching post about Mr Zoritch. Christian gave a link to a photograph of Mr Zoritch and I thought some might like to look at the full George Zoritch website. http://www.georgezoritch.com/frame.html ADDED There is an obituary at http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/metro/315926.php The photograph of Mr Zoritch posted above was taken by Leonid Massine.

I have heard he died Sunday November 1, in a Tucson hospital aged 92.

Not always a reliable source but for what its worth see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Von_Grona or http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2604410/bio For anyone really interested see: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,758485,00.html and http://books.google.com/books?id=6DHlQJcMp...ona&f=false

I now think you are quite about the birth year of Harry Asmus who died in 1977. I had thought perhaps that he was a child performer in "Show Boat." Details of the time he spent with Ballet Theatre can be found below. http://catalog.nypl.org/iii/encore/search/...amp;suite=pearl

Like yourself I got caught up with the Diaghileviana period in London during the 1960's when both the Royal Ballet and London Festival Ballet revived works from the Diaghilev Ballet Russe which engendered greater interest than normal with the Sotheby's Ballet Russe Sales which were an extraordinary opportunity to see and handle material from that companies productions. It was during these heady times when sale seemed to follow sale that Dickie Buckle stood up to announce that the signed front cloth by Picasso for Le Train Bleu had been bought for the Theatre Museum to be established in Covent Garden (now sadly defunct.) The Theatre Museum was significant for balletomanes in London as it was the first museum in our city to exhibit significan ballet material. Of this tragedy Alexander Schouvaloff wrote, “Realizing that the V&A had no intention of allowing the Theatre Museum to grow or be successful I managed to find an American publisher and bookseller who would have sponsored a performing arts bookshop, a famous restaurateur who would have run a decent restaurant, and a venture capitalist who was prepared to put up a million pounds. Were the trustees pleased? Were they delighted when I found these Prince Charmings to solve all the problems with financial kisses? No. They put the museum to sleep.” To many balletomanes it was a knife in the heart. There were protests and feeling so strongly about the effort Buckle and others had made to get the museum off the ground. Dickie Buckle had always been an alert and knowledgeable critic unafraid of exhibiting his prejudices which many of his readers shared. When his book on Diaghilev was published its readability won over many readers and its minor errors were not confirmable in that era. Dickie Buckle met so many of those who helped make the Saison Russe and the Diaghilev Ballet Russe and it is these first hand accounts that helped him to bring the era to life. All of his books make happy reading for me. Arnold Haskell's book on Diaghilev was jointly written with Walter Nouvel and it is Nouvel’s contribution that makes it a significant work as he was with Diaghilev from the beginning of the Ballet Russe, until the founder producer’s death. Sjeng Scheijen book continues to irritate me as I struggle through it. It less academic than I expected given the authors academic background and the access I assume he had, (sorry I must have picked up this bad habit from reading his book) to material while Cultural Attaché to the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Moscow. Of course his book is an achievement in part, but for anyone seriously interested in Diaghilev who has had access to Russian language studies and other materials materials on Diaghilev, I would say what my essays at school sometimes had written at the bottom, "Could do better."

The woman is blonde enough to be Pearl Argyle and English performers appeared in Charlot's revues at El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. However I think Miss Argyle generally looks more beautiful in other photographs than in the one published by rg. Miss Argyle retired from the stage in 1938 when she married the American film director Curtis Bernhardt(Kurt) settling in Hollywood where she had two sons, Steven Bernhardt (1937-1999)also a film director and another son Tony. However as to the Harry Asmus I know of, he was born in 1934 and did not make his first stage appearance until 1946 well after Mis Argyle's retirement from performing. Was there a Harry Asmus Senior, also a dancer? However, there is also something clearly wrong with the legend on the reverse of the photograph as the names have been obviously added more recently in a hand similar, but not close enough to the original text. When I first saw this photograph on ebay I somewhat doubted the attribution.

Not as a first reader on Diaghilev as it is densely written over 500 pages and written in a curious English. However there is new information but there are so many irritations such as assumption without evidence and he mentions someone dying before a war and does not say which war, some errors in dates, doesn't indicate OS or New Style when giving dates and far too much about homosexuality which has never made anyone either an artist or an extraordinary manager of a ballet company. I am not convinced by his interpretations of Diaghilev's sexual relations or the physical aspect of such relations which are not described therefore, not confirmed. For me he needed to define what sort of homosexual relations he is talking about. He might have also considered that having someone lying in bed beside you as affectionate company is quite different to the many sexual acts that one can know of or read about. I attended a talk by the author in London two weeks ago called "Diaghilev the Inner Man". Given the average age of the audience was probably above sixty and mostly female he refrained from the catalogue of Diaghilev's sexual activities and spoke interestingly, in fact much more so than in his book. I have to confess I am still ploughing through this book annotating so many pages that I keep putting it down in frustration. There is however some significant new information to be found but I just wish the author knew a little bit more about the ballet. If you are seriously and I mean seriously interested in Diaghilev's life I would buy it, I did, discounted on Amazon before its published date. I read a review in The Times by someone called Bee Wilson which was not at all about the book but about Diaghilev and stunningly had Nijinsky dancing "The Firebird". No excuse. A total disgrace. Do art's editors still read books? PS You can still get the book at a discounted price on Amazon - Diaghilev: A Life by Sjeng Scheijen

I am sorry to say this error is just one of the many irritations to be found in this book, whose problems are compounded by seemingly poor translation and inadequate editing.

Edgar Allan Poe reviled by some in previous generations is now to shown respect with a re-burial and a tombstone. In this the bi-centenary of his birth, Mr. Poe is still read across the world and has been the inspiration for composers, film makers and dance makers and no doubt many others. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8301128.stm The Edgar Allan Poe Museum can be found at http://www.poemuseum.org/

Thanks GWTW for posting this. It is the kind of diplomacy which must have been going on for some months and confirms what I said earlier, which was the general public do not know what efforts are being made by President Obama to further world peace. The America Secretary of States high profile visits to many countries promoting closer links and understanding through mutual trade, the Ambassadors and the Diplomatic corps and the current deployment of American peace keeping troops around the world all emphasis the building of relationshi[s with once belligerent nations. Currently, " Home to a volatile mix of ethnic Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, northern Iraq is a key battleground between Baghdad's Arab-led government and leaders of the largely autonomous Kurdistan region, who claim bits of the oil-producing north along its border as their ancestral homeland. Defusing such tensions is crucial as U.S. troops, who have mediated between Kurdish and Arab leaders over the past year, prepare to withdraw from Iraq by 2012. The Unites States Institute for Peace reports, "... the first face to face meeting between U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke and Iran's deputy foreign minister Mohammad Mehdi Akhoondzadeh on Tuesday at an international conference on Afghanistan? " On September 23, 2009 "...President Obama's meeting today with the top troop contributing countries to UN Peacekeeping. " President Obama personally has been vigorously attempting to bring peace in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. The real war will never get in the books said Walt Whitman nor I suspect does the efforts for real peace. I am sure there are many more Americans of good heart who pray sincerely for peace and support President Obama's efforts than those that have responded cynically to the award of the Nobel Prize.

I have seen 16 revivals of ballets produced by Serge Diaghilev therefore I can only speak for what I have seen. I would be happy to watch each one of those ballets again and again, but not necessarily year after year. They are definitely much more than watchable than many works that have followed and they remain important art works of the 20th century. Of the other 32 ballets Diaghilev produced, which I have not seen, many were never meant to last and were in a good number of cases staged as little more than a pièce d'occasion because his "special audience" did not go to see ballets over and over again as they have done in succeeding years. These ballets were all performed by outstanding artists and those ballets that I have seen revived by the Royal Ballet, Festival Ballet and Western Theatre Ballet, were all given in highly successful performances re-inforcing their historical status. You write, “I don't have my notes but according to Alice B. Toklas and Boris Kochno, the audience had changed greatly by the mid twenties -- the smart people weren't going any longer." One reason, is that both in London and Paris some were dead or older, the First World War change the pattern of behaviour of the upper class (I don't understand the expression "smart people" which sounds journalese), with many of them having lost family members. There were also societal changes and "new money" changed the audiences by the mid-1920's. You also say,"...and the real innovative work was being done in Russia," What evidence is there of successful ballets surviving or were even staged in Russia in the mid 1920's. Furthermore, when you write "-- that's why Diaghilev commissioned Prokofiev to compose "Le Pas d'acier" and why he hired Balanchine who had cut his choreographic teeth on the Russian avant garde." Successful and lasting ballet of the 1920's seasons were: - Season 1920 Le Tricorne ( Massine / De Falla), Season 1923 Les Noces ( Nijinska / Stravinsky), Season 1924 Les Biches ( Nijinska / Poulenc), Season 1928 Apollon musagète ( Balanchine / Stravinsky), Season 1929 Le Fils Prodigue [The Prodigal son] ( Balanchine / Prokofiev). Diaghlev had used the music of at least 28 different composers for ballets by the time Prokoviev arrived. It was his policy to bring variety of musical styles to his audiences, not his desperation that brought about Prokoviev's employment. How meaningful is it to measure a work which is not comparing like with like when you say/ “but does "Sheherazade" -- as much as say "La Bayadere"?" Scheherazade holds up very well if given in an excellent production which in my opinion has not been seen since the 1960's. The tragedy of this discussion in the case of the RB is that a academic classical ballet company would go out side their genre to stage so called modern works that could be dance be modern companies. I truly can find no logic in having dancers study at school for eight years then the slog of regularly going to class to maintain their turn out and technical vocabulary only to be asked to perform a kinf of modern dance and not a ballet.

Whilst looking for something quite different in the State Ballet of Georgia website, I found in the repertoire listing the following, Premiere - From Siberia to Moscow see http://www.opera.ge/eng/viewevent.php?opti...date=2009-10-25 Ps Hope this has not been already posted

With respect, how does anyone outside those secret meetings of heads of governments and their senior advisors know what his accomplishments have been. I have never read anything in our press how our Prime Minister carried the day at a meeting or President Obama likewise because it is not fully reported. It seems to me that it his diplomacy that has gained him support and I do not know how many years you have to wait to read the official papers of Heads of State and Senior Diplomat meetings. As I am sure you are aware there is much government business that is not aired in public. I think it is unfair to undermine the nomination process and the deliberations of the Nobel Prize committee who I am sure know much more of President Obama's real worth than do others.

How could he possibly? What do you do with an enemy that is sworn to destroy the west. He has been in power less than a year. What is wanted is a some kind of stability in the region as an absolute secure peace will probably not be gained because of the nature of the fanaticism of the insurgents who are related to the terroist groups that we all fear in the west. The region is not Europe, nor is its terrain like the Second World War was fought on. What Obama can only do is promote peace and this he has said he is committed to this. The Prize reflects on the moral standing of the U.S. When announcing the prize the former prime minister of Norway, Thorbjoern Jagland, said: "Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. ... Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population." What is it that the critical Americans don't get.

To be fair to Wayne McGregor, here is his statement in its entirety. The sentence that was left out is printed in boldface. Responding to the question, "Could Diaghilev exist today?", McGregor answers: Some of the work Diaghilev put on stage WAS, if not actually "awful," at least unsuccessful at the time and forgotten today. Much of what we remember about Diaghilev -- and what has been celebrated in the many exhibitions this past year -- are his collaborations (artistic, but also sexual and social). Diaghilev's company was breaking new ground in so many ways and the record of the ballets that have survived to this day is evidence of his lasting significance. The fact that attempts are being made to revive works out of the repertoire for decades gives credence to his personal stature and his companies works. A number of his works were definitely outre but apart from Les Sylphides, Giselle and The Sleeping Beauty they were all an experiment of some kind.

Thank you bart for all of your comments,. To me at a distance there is more than U.S. cynicism involved and I suspect that will be the feeling in other countries is that they can detect not just anti- Democratic Party feelings against him receiving the Prize, but a sense of President Obama’s racial heritage being taken in to account by those making heavily biased comments in some of the U.S. press. As regards Afghanistan the Americans did not start destabilisng the region. President Obama inherited a war in which experts had guided himself and the former President to pursue. If there are complaints about the Afghan war you cannot know why the Presidents advisers have told him to continue to proceed in military matters in that arena. The answers have been fully covered in the press over the years. You have in the U.S. a President who is a man education, erudition an effective speaker and defender of America and its policies abroad and a promoter of America in a most positive way. PS He also wrote two good books

Diaghilev's Saison Russe and Ballet Russe broke new ground. It was sophisticated in general and took ballet in a mammoth leap into the 20th century. Mr MacGregor stages works that have so many visual and sound aspects of stimuli all going at one time, I find them akin to brainwashing techniques. Perhaps some London critics might look into this. PS I believe Mr MacGregor is little more than a clever publicity stunt for gullible people and for second rate critics who with their support, want to be seen as being at the cutting edge of dance , which his works are certainly not. How could Mr Macgregor express support for the great magician when every thing he produces moves further away from art and closer to technology. Given her background in the RB repertoire, I find it very hard to believe that his appointment was entirely of Dame Monica Mason's choosing.

I think President Obama has given hope to many in the world following his election and his speeches distinguish him from a good number of Presidents I have heard in my lifetime. This Nobel Peace Prize may seem premature to some, but he has given hope to millions who have not always understood the policies and merits of recent Presidents and look forward to an era when a real effort for peace in the world begins to become a reality. We in England get a lot of TV coverage of the American political scene from various viewpoints and of course some of us have various American newspapers delivered daily to our email in box. The rest of the world watches America in a way that never existted in the past and that is due to the impact of President Obama. He had been in our homes talking to us all across the world not just to the American people and I am sure the months of his and others electioneering were watched over here more avidly than at any other US Presidential election. He has brought much of the rest of the world closer to America than it has been for many years. That’s what President Obama achieved and that’s why I support his receiving the Nobel Peace prize.

I was drawing attention to the fact that the majority of paedophiles are not sex abusers and to add, that sex with children is frequent associated with abuse of power or the perversion of power as described in the context of the Catholic Church in America, which has paid out more than 2 billion in compensation to child victims of sexual abuse in their care. Polanski's victim was of course, in Polanski's care. In both cases the compensation is not enough. The trauma of sexual abuse carries it with a legacy of varying debilitating conditions including, post traumatic stress, depression, mania, anxiety, phobias, long term eating disorders, learning difficuties, problems with sociialising and is associated with an increased incidence of age- concurrent and adult psychopathology etc. When you say, " I don't think Polanski is a pedophile in the compulsive sense. " I think you are right as researchers have found that the frontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in cognition and reasoning, was less active in patients with “extreme paedophilic behaviour.

I think there is a problem of using the word paedophilia in this current context as not all persons in this classification are sexual abusers. I understand national psychology institutions are looking to change/clarify the terms of description of typographies curently established. As to slippery slope in the present context, you are right that many more children are brave enough to speak up and as I described earlier sex education in England is informing children in a way probably not allowed in many countries. I have to assume that child pornography was not that widely available in the past. The internet changed all that and I see no reason not to believe that such sites may be seen as encouragers for those interested in sexual abuse of children given reports of the content of videos seized by police that had been downloaded from the internet. " The thing is though that Polanski and Priests are high profile and will be actively and vigorously tried both in court and in the media, but they are the tip of the iceberg in terms of the ongoing abuse of children happening daily througout the world, crimes and cases which will never be known or see a court room - 30 year old cases of high profile members of society is one thing, it's peanuts compared to the real face of child abuse." I think it is much more than "peanuts." I believe it is a symbolic confirmation of the desired morality of the majority of most populations and a smack in the eye for those that condone Mr Polanski's cruel act.