leonid17

"Mr Mitterrand said the US' behaviour, in seeking his extradition, was callous and "horrifying". I wonder what descriptive terms he would apply to Polanski's acts with his young victim. Given his admission in his book, it makes him sound like "Birds of a Feather........." What is acceptable in law between consenting adults remains quite different to the acts of both Mr Polanski and Mr. Mitterand's admissions. Given that alcohol and drugs were administered to a child of 13 which presumable affected her ability to make clear consensual judgements, surely the crime of Mr Polanski is not just a sex crime it is also a crime of violence. If, we are on a world wide slippery slope in respect of child abuse ( as statistics indicate) and we believe that prosecution and hopefully imprisonement and shame is a deterrent, Mr Polanski's sentencing has a significance that goes beyond his personal notoriety and hopefully will give encouragement to young people to come forward and denounce perpetrators of such crimes.

Living in England, I found it interesting to read that the law on rape dating back in some states from the 17th century was only changed in 2008 when the U.S. Supreme Court banned the penalty of death for people convicted of raping a child. The opinion makes it clear that the court believes the death penalty is appropriate only in cases where the crime results in death. This ruling overturns laws in six states that allowed the death penalty for the rape of a child and as a result commuted the death sentences of two men on death row in Louisiana to life in prison.

Thanks for reminding me about the magic of 10 posts. Carol Bishop Gwyn has already written a short and most interesting study on Celia Franca in which appears to already have a direct quote from Leo Kersley Miss Franca's first husband. http://people.uleth.ca/~scds.secd/English/...Bishop-Gwyn.pdf

I personally could not put a penny of my money into the pocket of any person who is deemed to have committed a criminal act against a child no matter what their real or perceived status may be. To do so, would to my mind, be an act of condoning.

Miss Franca's first husband who appeared in her ballets is still with us and quite lively. I run into him quite often. I would have contacted you direct but your personal messenger is disabled. Regards Leonid

Tatiana Legat born 8th April 1934 was a pupil of Yelena Shiripina and was an outstanding classical and demi-caractere senior soloist. She was never a ballerina in the proper sense of the word although she danced Gamzatti in Bayaderka , Kitri and Street dancer in Don Quixote, Zarema in The Fountains of Bakhchiserai and apparently also danced Maria in the same ballet. In 1962, Madame Legat was awarded the title of Merited Artist of RSFSR not to be confused with a People’s Artist of the USSR and I would suggest that she is perhaps wearing the badge because it is probably an ‘official’ photo’. Such photographs with awards being worn were I suggest, for home consumption as they were never seen wearing them in the west as far as I know. She was married to Yuri Soloviev and they had a daughter Yelena. Madame Legat has an excellent reputation as a teacher and the outstanding dancer Sarah Lamb speaks highly of her time spent studying with her.

I am surprised how little has been actually addressed to the victim in almost all of the posts of this thread. It as if she is a not a real person in this whole affair and her experience is not the significant evil event. All the reported legal shenanigans are about selling newspapers not about justice for the victim. Stuff the supporters of Mr Polanski whose absolute world - wide status once again is not as an artist but as a child rapist. Get the legal process right and swift for the sake of the victim and the accused. The world is watching this case and American society needs to show the world that it can operate its own laws in the name of justice using timely procedures. This is a case that never went away and the inability of American justice to bring this high profile perpetrator to court is being covered in the international press and I suggest the failures leave a bad taste in the mouths of good people in America and everywhere that newspapers are read. I am glad that Mel clarified the US law in respect of the statute of limitations for legal prosecutions. Ps http://www.reporter.bz/archive/view/3463/

But we should keep a sense of proportion here. Some of those extraditions involved heads of state and their lieutenants who committed profound crimes -- not just a significant transgression, as is in Polanski's case -- such making a wiping out a whole generation of students, creating a whole class of "disappeareds," as what happened in Chile in the 70's. You forget to mention that governments are pursuing abroad, evading, murderers, torturers and sex offenders etc. Do you not think all of them should be brought to trial? You mention, "That we should keep a sense of proportion. What sense of proportion is to be taken here? You must know what took place and you call it, "... just a significant transgression". I simply do not see how such an act can be forgiven in such a manner. What point on the heinous scale of an admitted crime do we measure the level of criminal action being taken. As you know heinous means abominable or shockingly evil. This is a question of morality and it needs to confirmed by the society wherein the crime took place. What Mr Polanski admitted to imposing upon a child is to my mind worthy of prosecution and if found guilty a long prison sentence should be served as would happen to any other person who commited such a heinous crime. If the extradition papers were not already prepared long ago and now on there way, I would if I was an American want to know why?

Thank you Robert for posting the cards of two dancers I saw dance in London. Tatiana Legat was the quintessential senior soloist of the Kirov of that time and most people in London fell in love with Zubkovskaya. Dancers of this type no longer exist in the Kirov. You sat up straight when they entered and you were amazed when they finished dancing. Plastique, musicality and a real stage fillingtheatrical personality was possessed by both of them. Zubkovskaya who graduated from the Bolshoi Theatre School had the beauty of an old painting of a Madonna which is not revealed in this photograph.

Justice is not well served when people known by self admission to have committed a criminal act evade justice by moving to countries which have dubious moral standards, as has been witnessed in the past. There are many countries in the world including the USA who are pursuing other elderly men and women to bring them to trial. I think all the Hollywood types who have supported Mr Polanski have done little to dispel the popular if incorrect image that many people in the US film business and show business, act in a manner that would once have been called degenerate. In the UK feeling are running quite high. In The Daily Telegraph a reader has written, "Yes, the girl was forced, but even if she weren’t, 1. She was 13 years old, and 2. He fed her drugs and alcohol. She had no capacity to consent. He was 44. He has admitted to all of this, both at the time and in subsequent interviews. The original charge of rape was reduced to sex with a minor as part of a plea bargain. The judge threw out the plea bargain because he was outraged that rape of 13 year old would only get you 42 days in jail. Polanski then fled." Another writes, " We know what he did to provoke the US justice system’s wrath. That is unless you condone plying a 13 year old girl with drugs and alcohol, then sodomizing her against her will? The more liberal newspaper "The Guardian." also carries readers explicit comments in a similar vein. ReL Abbatt's post, I understand there have been attempts in at least four other countries to arrest Mr Polanski including England. This is not a question of Mr. Polanski's cultural status or his age it is his vile wrongdoing to which he admitted guilt.

In the US most of the time sex crimes against minors are also taken very seriously these days, to the point that many offenders, even after their release from prison, can barely find a place to live or a job because of parole limitations and sex offender registries. Whether you think those are a good idea or not, it seems odd to me, and out of synch with US public opinion, for prominent Americans to claim that Polanski's suffered enough, or variations on that theme. I fully remember the horror felt when this was breaking news. It made Mr Polanski despised around the world except by those perverts who seem to be in some numbers in our societies. Last night on UK television there was a programme on internet grooming made with the co-operation of the police. It was not an edifying experience. The girls involved were between 12 and 14. It was a sting operation and the men were all arrested and at least one was married and had children of his own. In England the number of sex offences upon children is rising annually. The number of registered child offenders in the UK appears to be less than 40,000 but a number have disappeared from current records. There is in the UK a special schools programme for children to warn them of the dangers of talking to strangers on line which has so far reached 4.000,000 children including sadly 5-7 year olds. For me and no doubt others, it is sad to witness yet another loss of an aspect of childhood. When one reads that in the USA, " Despite the passage of mandatory sentencing, electronic monitoring, and other measures like registration requirements, notification programs, and Amber Alert broadcasts, challenges to managing sex offenders remain. One in five girls and one in ten boys are sexually exploited before they reach adulthood, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The number of registered sex offenders in the United States is more than 600,000. Every 40 seconds a child is reported missing or abducted, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. That translates to over 2,000 children per day, and over 800,000 per year." richard53dog, says, "I can well understand that Polanski has some truly terrible demons. He's gone through tragedies, really awful ones. But he chlose to work and live in the US, those that live here HAVE to abide by the US legal system, as flawed as it often it. Without it, we would all be worse off as a society, more like a Third World dictatorship where justice is truly arbitrary." His victim has tried to put behind her the experience as a child having sex with a 43 year old man. If he had been prosecuted when the rape took place, no doubt she would have had anonyimity. She and her family may now have to relive the experience all over again in the full glare of the press. Mr Polanski's is a fugitive from USA justice but yet to judged a criminal according to the law. His escape from justice may have been inspirational to paedophiles in the USA.

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Francis Mason. I first encountered him in London when he presented a series of dance films at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. I enjoyed "I Remember Balanchine," and am sad that so many ripened fruit are dropping off the tree leaving an unclosable aesthetic gap in ballet and dance commentary.

I have seen a sublime Juliet by Raissa Struchkova and extraordinary performances by Nina Timofeyeva. The demands of Russian audiences for full bloodied, passionate, even flashy, temperamental, fun performances that excite, sometimes seem extraordinary bad taste to other countries audiences. When you have seen these two great ballet dancers at their very Western best, you can put their other performances in perspective. A divertissement ballet programme historically by its nature is meant to border on entertainment. The great artists in such programmes can go beyond the choreographic context of a full length ballet and perform for instance, the last act Don Quixote pas de deux in an entertaining manner which might just be deemed vulgar in its original context. In the hands of lesser artists, the same degree of exhibited technical ability would for me be classed as simply vulgar. How to evaluate vulgarity is not so difficult if we are all using shared aesthetic values. But if that was the case in general, some dancers would posibly not have the opportunity to develop artistry.

It's rare for me to agree with every word of a post, but Simon G's sums up my own views exactly. David Bintley has managed to retain the English style of dancing in Birmingham whereas successive RB directors have not. For many years I've preferred both the BRB and, making allowances for their more modest repertoire, ENB, to watching the stylistic mishmash that currently characterizes RB Performances. If I were a young British dancer I'd avoid the RB like the plague. It's is even rarer for me to agree with everything that Simon G has to say, but I think his appraisal is shared by many who once regulary supported the Opera House Royal Ballet much more than they do today.

Errol Addison who was a Cecchetti pupil and appeared in the corps de ballet of Diaghilev's ballet who gained a real reputation as a teacher, did when I was in a group and he holding court, naughtily rather than nastily said, " That Mona Inglesby had a prosthetic toe that would become dislodged and once fell out of her shoe on stage." I do not think this event could be a possibility, but it was typical of Errol Addison's sometimes off colour humour. It also probably confirms why she lost her ability to balance which hitherto had been a feature of her very strong technique.

I agree, she still looks beautiful and such an interesting face.

Thanks Ballet fan for starting this thread. Not everyone experienced or otherwise, recognises greatness in particular dancers and the cognoscenti of ballet, are frequently reluctant in their canonisation of a dancer as they always look to the past for comparison. I have always believed that there is in the experience of classical ballet works, when given in great performances, a therapeutic and healing power. Dancers of the past were fully aware of this power and its responsibilities. Anna Pavlova was one among many who epitomised such awareness. What separates great artists of the past from many of the leading dancers of recent years, is that they desired to learn how to surrender themselves completely in becoming a role and from this a powerful conviction of truthfulness in performance was achieved. Such artists understood the abiding historical moment of a performance in which they create an allegorical experience that deeply reflects, rather than merely imitates the human condition and as such, is instructive at a deeper level of experience which they considered and and were often made to consider as a responsibility. In story telling, the artist dancer projects a view of human life that resonates at a deep level of experience even when they symbolise a rose, a Californian poppy’s obedience to the sun, symbolise youth as rushing spring waters or give extraordinary experiential meaning to the death of a swan. The ability of great artists the past to move their audiences was real and they did this in service to their art not their ego. They were often tough off stage about their status, but on stage, there was a deep transformation of a kind that appears to be seen less often than in my younger days of watching ballet. Carbro importantly points out, “ Interestingly, the roles you cite many of these ballerinas in are ones made on them by choreographers who knew them well: Fonteyn in Ondine, Pavlova in Dying Swan, Ulanova as Juliet. One presumes the choreographer sees an essential quality in the woman that he can mine for the choreography. That helps a lot!" I think that the tradition of the support and creation of ballerinas is today viewed with distrust by directors who are in general of a lesser calibre than in the past and who see perhaps genuine star ballerinas as an independent, usurping influence upon their cadre power. I do not know if you can take this as an example of such insecurity, but, when questioned on the absence of senior dancers in the company's recent visit to London, Fateyev of the Kirov has recently gone so far as to imply that classical ballet is only for the young. I find this an extraordinary statement having watched Kirov dancers since the beginning of the 1960's and seen some dancers only reach absolute great heights of interpretation and projection in their middle to late thirties and I do not think any academic classical ballet company will survive critical examination if it follows such a path as seems to be the one Mr Fateyev has laid out before them. I think that Christian is correct when he mentions, "These PRIMAS didn't believe in the "Less is best" mantra back then..." and in some companies, he may be right that they are seeking an "homogenized phenomenon" but NIFOM thank you very much.

On the "Dancing Times" website, there is a taster of what the book may be like, with Jann Parry outlining her approach to the subject. http://www.dancing-times.co.uk/2009Sept/DiffrentDrummer.pdf

Details are on Boston Ballet thread.

RG The Russian Ballet Encyclopaedia overseen by Yuri Grigorovich gives the Bolshoi premier date as June 27, 1949.

I believe anything and everything that is attributed to Errol Addison. I watched him teach class over a long period of time. He was an excellent teacher of boys and helped to form many RB dancers. He was also the most outrageous but warm and friendly character of his era.

The family was posh and Anglo-Irish. They were land owning and a military family. Her father was a Lt. Colonel and a great, great grandfather fought in the The War of American Independence. But as so many posh people do drink Guiness you are quite right to question her tipple.

Great story.

The New York Times carries a correction to the article “Admiring the Man Who Made Ballet Modern” By JULIE BLOOM Published: August 21, 2009 It is as follows. "This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: August 23, 2009 An article on Page 14 this weekend about the arts impresario Serge Diaghilev misspells, in some copies, part of the name of the company he founded in 1909. It is the Ballets Russes, not the Ballet Russes. The error also appears in an accompanying picture caption and in a capsule summary referring to additional images on nytimes.com of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’s exhibition “Diaghilev’s Theater of Marvels: The Ballets Russes and Its Aftermath.” This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: August 25, 2009 An article on Sunday about the arts impresario Serge Diaghilev misspelled, in some copies, part of the name of the company he founded in 1909. It is the Ballets Russes, not the Ballet Russes. The error also appeared in an accompanying picture caption and in a capsule summary referring to additional images on nytimes.com of “Diaghilev’s Theater of Marvels: the Ballets Russes and Its Aftermath.” And a correction in this space on Saturday and on Page A3 on Sunday misstated the name of the institution that is displaying the exhibition. As the article correctly noted, it is the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; there is no “New York City Library.” What a pity they still got it wrong. The 1909 season of Russian Ballet at the Chatelet Theatre was was not called Ballets Russes it was called Saisons Russe. It was not until 1911 that the company was called Ballets Russes.