leonid17

One of the bonds between cats and humans may indeed by a shared ability to hold resentments. leonid, I like Irina already! Basil would express his annoyance at something I had done by by going to the dog, often (as with Irina) after leeting some time go by, and swatting HIM. Oh! Not resentment it was just asserting that she was in charge not me. Basil sounds like my cat Irina who would also take a scolding out on poor innocent Katya. I am fond of the cat poems I have known since childhood especially Wordsworth's The Kitten and the Falling Leaves and T.S. Elliot's, Macavity The Mystery Cat even though they come back to me through painful memories of having to struggle to memorise them for a family party piece.

When talking about the search for a new Balanchine, for the sake of the discussion can it be confirmed whether or not Balanchine was a choreographer of ballets or a highly skilled artisan of dance works because they are for me quite different genres.

Thank you Bart for your touching story It moved me and I empathise with your feelings. From 1992 I had two sisters Katya and Irina. The first, the sweetest natured creature you could imagine constantly affectionate and she is still with me. Irina was a thug. A bird killer, a dog challenger and she physically attacked me if I had thrown a newspaper at her across the room as she proceeded to climb on the mantleshelf. She would then run out of the room but creep back later and attack me. Fearless she invented the word. However when it came to bedtime she was the first up the stairs and lay pressed up against me all night long. Poor Katya had to keep her distance. Irina died in February 2007. The pain has eased, but I can say I experienced a powerful sense of loss which lasted for a long time. I also miss my Irina on a level I didn't think possible. PS I like to read about the history of breeds arriving in England and tales of intrepid journeys made by cats. My late sister had a cat that walked from Chester to Windsor more than a hundred miles to return to their former home.

Ivan Nagy! This is a dancer who isn't referred to much on Ballet Talk -- but ought to be. Nagy and Kirlkand danced more in the 70s, didn't they? I remember more his partnership with Makarova. Also with Fonteyn. I remember him as a handsome elegant prince with noble bearing and an excellent (and thankfully not flashy) technique as well.

Money, of course. But it would also help if writers would stop writing that ballet is dead, praising nonballet choreographers for "daring" to make a ballet that didn't use pointework -- if ballet was valued in some way. (I worry about creativity in dance generally, of course, but limiting remarks to ballet, I'd say the above.) I would be very interested to read what others think about this. I write from my London perspective because that is what I have. I obtain a wider view through international friends and newspapers and of course this board. I am with you on the critics Alexandra and what worries me in London is the lack of an extensive background in classical ballet and dance of a good number of our critics. Such critics that we have, overtly support dance works simply because of the credo (To paraphrase)” …that they are new and old classical is for a cultural elite and not of or for ordinary people.” How wrong can they be? As any balletgoer knows, the majority of an audience is made up of people who have to work for a living, or are retired, certainly not members of the financial elite. In general, important classical ballets are today less valued by critics than they once were and not just by critics. To be specific, young dancers of the Royal Ballet are becoming seasoned in a company whose choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton gave it its status through his works and the development of many dancers. Yet, they are going to dance for goodness knows how many seasons without any knowledge of many of his celebrated ballets. I have touched on creativity being blighted by lack of opportunity in my todays Balanchine post.

I want to address the second part of your question first. Right culture in the ballet arena they find themselves in, right encouragement, right guidance, right opportunities and a highly developed astuteness in playing the right politics to gain support from influential voices. I think in recent years artistic directors have lost the power they once had and decision making has moved towards marketing departments and media profile and of course accountancy. You can see this in the repetitive programming that ballet companies are undertaking to be certain of full houses, which in general precludes the employment of younger talented or potentially talented choreographers. The economics of ballet has not changed just because of the recession, it has been happening over a period of time and the ubiquity of certain sure fire ballets around the world confirms this. I have encouraged a number of choreographers over the last 30 odd years who have undoubted talent and have had choreographic successes, but are now facing the challenge that their purely classical works are considered elitist and this is shown in the growth of dance works amongst academic classical ballet companies. I am sorry to say that most critics have become mechanical in merely writing reviews without talking about the parlous absence of new classical choreography. When you ask what made ballet a fertile ground for Balanchine, I endeavoured to answer this in my post of June 2 which I am going to quote at length and for which I make no apology as it indicates the circumstances that made Balanchine which can never reproduced as the time has past and certain values with it and Balanchine most importantly learnt to how to make his future. "There can never be another Balanchine because the circumstances that enabled his latent talent to arise; only existed in him and the era in which he lived as a young man cannot be replicated. Balanchine came into the Imperial school and the Maryinsky Theatre at a time when attempts were being made to change the tradition. He embraced the putative soviet tradition of expression through music, as inspired by his mentor in actuality, Feodor Lopukhov. Being musically trained at the Petrograd Musical Conservatory (Petipa trained at the Brussels Conservatory of Music) he had an advantage over many budding choreographers. When Balanchine took the NYCB to Russia, it was not just the choreographic skill that gained him admiration, it was also the athleticism of his company a flowering of what early soviet choreographers had tried to achieve but failed, due to conflicting political influences. When he left Russia, little did he know that he would be catapulted into an arena of giants and become one in the process. Lincoln Kirstein tells us that when Balanchine reached Western Europe, he had the taste of a young Soviet revolutionary. Balanchine’s first real success was with the “constructionist” ballet “Le Chatte”(1926), where we see him working with the significant founders of soviet Russian constructivism the Russian brothers, Gabo and Pevsner. In "Apollon Musagete", we find Balanchine looking back and forward with its story telling in a minor key his dancers only echoing the attributes of goddesses and his use of geometric poses far removed from the poetics of Petipa he knew in his youth. In "Le fils Prodigue", we see echoes of the use of the methodology that soviet realism had sought to achieve. With Balanchine’s extraordinary musical background he was to find in Stravinsky a creative relationship that was extraordinary if not always straightforward. Balanchine was entirely a man of his own time and events occurred through others that nurtured, protected and enabled him to create in a manner that no other 20th century choreographer has enjoyed. It was also George Balanchine’s destiny to be born into a highly cultured family in a Russia where culture had a great status even when it had to fight to maintain it status in the early revolutionary period. Where Petipa had witnessed the great choreographers of the Romantic period and learnt his craft, Balanchine had Diaghilev to support and encourage his talent from which two great masterworks appeared and the rest is history. Balanchine was also blessed by having a number of great dancers at his disposal almost throughout his whole career."

Thanks Robert for drawing attention to this revival. Another relation to the Swineherd ballet of Bournonville, as it was also based on the Hans Christian Anderson tale, is Nijinska’s “Les cent baisers” (The hundred kisses) first staged at Covent Garden on 18 July 1935 with Baronova as the Princess and Lichine as the Prince with music by Baron Frederic d’Erlanger and designs by Jean Hugo. You can read an English translation of the tale at:- http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/...wineherd_e.html .

Carlos Acosta and Guest Artists at London’s Coliseum - Go to: http://www.eno.org/whats-on/whats-on.php?i...son=forthcoming From ENO website "At last, Carlos Acosta returns to the London Coliseum with an entirely new version of his Olivier Award-winning show. Featuring dance stars from The Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, The Bolshoi Ballet and Ballet Nacional de Cuba, this is the London dance event of Summer 2009. " Cast: Carlos Acosta,Miguel Altunaga, Begona Cao, Florencia Chinellato, Veronica Corveas, Roberta Marquez, Steven McRae, Amilcar Moret and Arionel Vargas. Sadly Nina Kaptsova who it thought would dance a pas de deux from Spartacus is now not taking part. PROGRAMME Part 1: Overture Ben Stevenson's Three Preludes, Ivan Tenorio's Ritmicas, Frederick Ashton's Rhapsody, John Neumeier's Othello, Azari Plisetski's Canto Vital, Part II: Kim Brandstrup's DK60, Derek Deane's Summertime, Michel Descombey's Dying Swan, Ramon Gomez Reis's Over There, Miguel Altunaga's Memoria, Georges Garcia's Majisimo

Drew, thank you for your post which I really enjoyed reading. I wish I had seen half of the performances that you saw.

I also think she would have been terrific in Ondine. The marvel for me of her Aurora was that she made every moment seem spontaneous as if it was all really happening in the now and had never been seen before. Only great artists can achieve such miracles.

Has anyone been to see the "Diaghilev's Theater of Marvels" Exhibition at NYPL? I think many people would be interested to hear http://broadwayworld.com/article/Diaghilev...PL_626_20090626

I absolutely agree. To my mind the RB moved into the 21st century mode of the creative marketing of a celebrity product in the way that regrettably many distinguished performing artists have allowed themselves to be used in the scramble for wealth. I do not think this was Mis Bussell's aim as she often exhibited real joy in performance, but at the time it appeared to me to be a ROH strategy. If they didn't have a world class ballerina they would create one. There is absolutely no doubt that Miss Bussell had technical abilities that set her apart and she had a winning way in certain ballets, but for me that inner aesthetic connection with the art form was never made in any of the classics. In an interview with Ismene Brown published in December 2001. Clement Crisp doyen of English critics talking about the major classics and Coppelia stated, “There is not a single dancer in the company (RB) of native training who I think is fit to dance those ballets. Ismene Brown, “Not Bussell?” “No” replied Mr Crisp. Ismene Brown, “Yoshida?” “ No replied Mr Crisp….They are no more than First Soloists, essentially if we look at performances of “Swan Lake”, “Beauty”,”Giselle”, “Coppelia”, with the eye of time and by the absolute standard of the world.” It’s all a question of how your standards have evolved and established as to how you view particular dancers and I think Mr Crisp is not extreme in his view, nor was he when he said that, “He would rather see the "Trocks" dance "Giselle" than Guillem.

I re-read my post and I think I do not lay personal blame on Miss Bussell but merely comment that she did not for me become a real interpretative artist. I think in my later post I confirm her abilities but they were for me left wanting. I agree with your analysis of the Dowell regime, but I would also say I feel there was a desperation in the camp to present a leading English dancer of the Royal Ballet as a proto ballerina. What you say about her lack of appropriate development by Dowell, may well have played a part in her not reaching greater heights. I personally never saw such a potential in Miss Bussell.

Mashinka I think that's slightly unfair, Britsh audiences have always had a tendency to take umbrage and be somewhat ungenerous to those they perceive as interlopers; and in this case the civic pride of audience members wasn't in accordance with the critics. Indeed when Kirkland first appeared with the company the RB was definitely heaing towads its most lacklustre state in decades. The critics however, didn't agree, having read the reviews from that period they showered her with superlatives and couldn't praise her highly enough. Indeed Ashton and De Valois were of the same opinion, and hoped to form a longterm relationship with her sabotaged by her much publicised problems. You are right in part that there is an insular section of the London(not British) ballet world that that only admires the Royal Ballet. They are not typical of the Opera House audiences to which I belong, that has in my long period of attending the ballet ( Some years short of Jane Simpson) warmly welcomed and admired a number of overseas guest dancers. I was reluctant in going to the Royal Opera House on 25th July I980 as London was experiencing a heat wave and the temperature was so high and the air-conditioning in those days was not so efficient. If I had not attended, I would have missed the opportunity of seeing Gelsey Kirkland with Wayne Eagling in Romeo and Juliet. Miss Kirkland, my diary tells me, “...revealed the emotional and psychological demands that MacMillan had created in the role in a manner not seen since Lynn Seymour.” I could not imagine such a performance happening with the Royal Ballet as the last nail for its coffin had been forged for some time. With some admirable dancers but no ballerinas in the Royal Ballet in 1980, Miss Kirkland was a startling revelation. I felt here was an extraordinary performer who carved marvellous emotional shapes in the air with her body and exhibited a plastique hardly ever seen at the RB in those last few years. (The Royal Ballet rarely do plastique). The cast, a proper one at that time, included Michael Coleman, Derek Rencher, Michael Somes, Leslie Edwards, Gerd Larsen etc, rose dramatically to the occasion. Mr. Eagling was gallant and met the dramatic and technical pitch which Miss Kirkland established. I was not alone in my admiration for Miss Kirkland amongst a highly receptive audience, on that very hot night. It was George Balanchine that taught Miss Kirkland to move organically , but it was herself that made the brain/body connection in her later period wherein her commitment to portray rose to a level above most dancers of her era. Here is one born and bred Londoner who welcomes"interlopers" amongst the Royal Ballet. In fact what would they have done without them in both the recent and distant past. PS Watch the aformentioned video again and witness the plastique.

Really? How extraordinary!

At 3.00 am I was suddenly wide awake from a deep sleep and I immediately thought I would reply to Simon G and I penned something and then discovered I could not find his post to answer points he had raised. As I was awake I ploughed on. I can only write from the point of view of my own appreciation of individual dancers which has been formed by greater connoisseurs of the art than me and the dancers I have seen. To become a ballerina, one expects a principal dancer to have much more than the technique or the ability to give a fully dramatic evocation of a role. They have to suspend their off-stage personality to achieve an envelopment of a role in a process that suspends the critical faculty of the audience, drawing them in to that highly achieved creative act of both the story telling choreographer and the significant composer. Many dancers can exhibit the technique required for a role and many can add a layer of dramatic expression that catches an unsophisticated audience who become emotionally linked with a performance. It is here, that the blurring of the lines between a dancer and a ballerina becomes difficult to ascertain. Has there been the appropriate technical expression or have we only seen perhaps, the outstanding technical ability of a particular dancer. Or, have we seen a brilliant dramatic theatrical expression that goes beyond the balletic expression. There have been in my time a number of powerfully dramatic principal dancers whose metier, given they had a voice to match, seemed more appropriate to the legitimate theatre. The blurring of the lines is a difficult one for a ballet connoisseur when spectacular dramatic force of a performer is witnessed. If I particularise such dancers as Lynn Seymour, Marcia Haydee and Alexandra Ferri, two of these important dancers, despite their full-bloodied dramatic performances, never went beyond what was generally considered acceptable but one other, left the role behind and we witnessed a performer laying on layer after layer of dramatic expression which pleased an unknowledgeable audience. It is in the becoming of the role in either a seemingly minor or major key, here one might example Beriosova and Seymour, that the dancers complete mastery of transforming story telling as a truly balletic art form, enables them to triumph. A ballerina is a dancer who in performance selflessly commits herself to become a role at a level where you stop seeing the dancer as a person as they become one with the art of the choreographer and composer meeting them at an equivalent level of inspiration. I have friends who always found Darcey Bussell to be the perennial school-girl even when the role was clearly that of a mature woman. I know what they mean, although I cannot absolutely concur with this opinion. I think it was something to do with the athleticism of Miss Bussell’s build and her attack on the choreography, which lacked an organic expression. Miss Bussell was a hardworking dancer of that there is no doubt and her physical attraction was undoubtedly recognisable to many in an audience. In London, it appeared to me that she had a strong female following. For me it was in the lack of her becoming a role and instead performing the role that always found me applauding her because her achievements were real, but I never cheered her. Darcey Bussell was a significant dancer, of that there is no doubt. Ballerina? Not for me. Darcey Bussell in her last years with the Royal was in competition as a favourite dancer with Tamara Rojo and Alina Cojocaru. She retired aged 38 remaining a very English type of girl and woman and I think that was part of her attraction to a large section of the audience in London and perhaps elsewhere. Alistair Macaulay gave her a valedictory review in the NYT for her last performance with the Royal Ballet. PS Now that the sun is rising I am going back to bed.

The problem for me and for others was that Miss Bussell never fulfilled the ballerina status in any sense of the word and I saw her dance every role she was given by the Royal Ballet. She was for me a marketed product that was not that well bought, by the regular knowledgeable paying audience. She was not a Kolpakova or an Osipenko, nor a Komleva or Yevteyeva or a Bessmertnova, or a Maximova or Ananiashvilli nor a Asylmuratova, not even a Nerina and definitely not Sibley that alone a Wells and certainly not a Seymour, Beriosova, Samsova, Haydee or a Chauvire or Fonteyn. There are also a good few others to mention that were greater artists than Miss Bussell. I give her full marks for trying as it is impossible not to give her full marks for trying. Sadly upon often viewing, that is what she became for me, trying.

The colours looked perfectly authentic and the sets were a revelation when I saw the Kirov performances. Oddly enough the only problem you felt from the top down was that the company did not really believe in the work as suitable for the modern Kirov. I absolutely believe in the Hodson and Archer reconstruction which captures as much of the original as is probably possible and is not far off the mark from the original when you look at all the sources that are available. I feel that the vividness of the palette used in the costumes are correct and the patterns most certainly. However the type and quality of present day lighting I would suggest, is a long way away from the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées of May 29, 1913. If you compare Roerich’s palette in his paintings of the era you see the same blues and mauves of the backdrop for Part 1 of Rite as you do the vivid yellows, orange and red and browns of the costumes. The richness of colour can be seen in an early Rite costume in the V & A collection at http://www.vam.ac.uk/tco/collections/costu...udio/index.html Neumeier I remember was once upon a time, dismissed by many critics, but he is now established as one of the most important choreographers in Europe. The clips are definitely interesting as an indicator and they possible mean more than a photograph or the written word to people of today

John Neumeier's take on "Le Pavillon d'Armide" looked interesting and the dancers all moved beautifully and as if they belonged on the stage. To me Thiago Bordin looked most like Nijinsky in the "La Danse Siamoise" and the costume looked pretty splendid. In general I had problem with the faces looking to modern eg (The Prodigal's father and The Siren). In general I also found the height of dancers as being too tall and too slim and a distinct lack of emphatic weight in the performances of "The Prodigal Son" and "Le Sacre du Printemps". In "The Prodigal Son" the male corps looked to me at times like an athletes to music routine. What I did like was the fact the the programme lasted 3 hours 15 minutes with two intervals. That is what I call value for money. I am grateful volcanohunter for posting the link and I am sure as ever, that the impact in the theate is quite different to that of a film. Nest week in Hamburg a guest company the Ballet de Lorraine will perform Les Noces / Mariage / Petrushka on July 7 and 9. On July 12, the Hamburg Ballet present and extraordinary gala see http://www.hamburgballett.de/e/gala.htm which echoes a wide range of works performed by the Diaghilev companies. With revivals of Neumeier's highly successful "Nijinsky" and his "The Legend of Joseph" Hamburg Ballet has celebrated the idea of a Diaghilev centenary much more than most other companies. Ps There is also a trailer for Neumeier's "Sylvia" at http://www.hamburgballett.de/video/sylvia.html

Lynn Seymour's age has nothing to do with Ashton's casting or his inspirational take on Turgenev’s play as firstly he needed a dramatic actress and Seymour, was renowned as such and in such a way, that few that have followed her in this role or others she created, have been able to come close to any of her original outstanding performances. Ashton subtly characterised his roles and developed his cast in such a way that they remained entirely integrated within their parts in spite of the febrile atmosphere that Natalya Petrovna's behaviour inevitably creates. In the play, Natalya Petrovna is actually 29, Seymour was 37 years old, Beliayev in the play is 21 and Dowell was 35, Rakitin in the play is 30 and Derek Rencher was 44, Vera is 17 and was played by Denise Nunn who was a junior member of the corps de ballet. Natalya Petrovna is not married to a much older man he is 36 in the play and he was played by Alexander Grant who was 51 and a very clever actor. Age had no meaning in any of their remarkable performances. The age of the dancers had no relevance as they perfectly revealed the households tense relationships as the ballet evoked the boredom that can arise in a country house in a hot summer. Ashton in this ballet as ever reveals a gift for portraying characters from a past era. The legendary Moscow Olga Knipper at the age of 41 has a tremendous success in the role of Natalya Petrovna and the originating actress Elizaveta N. Vasileyeva could not have been only 29 years old as the first performance of this play was given for her benefit performance. It is Natalya Petrovna’s story of a self-inflicted predicament and her soon to be passed obsession for a younger man. But there is not really any sadness or torment, as Ashton’s presents an outsider’s gentle view of the folly of the situation. This is achieved with the lightest of touches, combining refined amusement with the bittersweet charm of Ashtonian lyricism. I am glad you like Putrov he is progressing every year. But I am sad at the loss of Ansanelli who has achieved a lot in her time with the Royal Ballet. PS Edited to clarify a statement,

Thank you all for your reviews and comments on the RB it makes me here in London, feel in touch with what is happening with their performances. I sometimes forget to check what is in Dance View Times and I think Alexandra has also written an excellent review of the triple bill widely discussed above and it has a stunning picture of Eric Underwood, who is impacting more and more on the London audience.

I was tantalised on first viewing, but on second viewing it became clear that a talented person had animated photos of himself or another. I really liked the fun of it.

There is hardly a ballet biography written it the last 20 years that isn't flawed in some way or other. What is the worst sin for me is when events are mentioned or discussed to which there were no witnesses. Rudolf Nureyev suffers more than most he a most distinguished artist deserves better. Of the biographies for me, only Diane Solway's biography comes nearest to being both accurate and acceptable. I am still waiting a betterl biography of this man who invoked an extraordinary experience for so many over a long period of times. Dame Margot Fonteyn in death, has been generally vulgarly exploited in mostly unreadable books and this most distinguished artist and woman. never leaves the pages that have been written. I am still looking to find a biographe that reveals the woman I admired for 30 years across the footlights and who I briefly knew in her older age. I was totally in awe at her elegance beauty of spirit and her wholehearted belief in people as being important in themselves. Recently I heard a number of her most distinguished colleagues talk in hushed tones about the beauty of this person, her kindnesses and assistance and her absolute dedication in performing even when not fit to do so and come off stage and go into her dressing room where it was revealed that her feet were bleeding and was then only concerned about talking about the people who had come to visit her. Her work ethic was legendary and little of her sincerity is portrayed in her biographers and the real women, is lost in a milieu created by scandal sheet journalism. If she had a fauit, it was that of an innocent nature. The only two books in the last few decades that I have read and enjoyed as a portrait of a life associated with dance are, Alexander Meinertz's biography of Vera Volkova which made me weep at her treatment by Ninette de Valois and the gang at the Royal Danish ballet. I have also enjoyed the autobiography of Tamara Finch who, I met through the author Nesta MacDonald in which she colourfully describes her extraordinary testing childhood in a matter without any self pity and colourfully portrays her balletic life with the Ballet Russe. You feel this is a woman who always stood strong even when cruelly betrayed. PS I would also love to read a biography of Delibes. I know their is a book by Janet Mullany, (2005) but have yet to read or even find it.

Mike, there's nothing to explain, McGregor is the master of fatuous artspeak. Never has so little been said in so many words, with so little sense. Something about empty vessels making a lot of noise springs to mind whenever I read a McGregor diatribe but at £30,000 for a half hour of "work" he's laughing all the way to the bank. And I didn't even like the piece either. When I saw it it was on with 4 Ts and DGV. Talk about the sublime leading the blind (the sublime being 4 ts), in case my metaphors mixed confusingly. If it was only only £30,000 for his ballets I would still mind but not so much. I believe his fee for Infra was considerably more. Why when there are talented ballet choreographers across the world that need work to survive, does an academic classical ballet company employ a dance maker except for publicity and pandering to the ant-elitist dance critics. I hope the season is successful for the dancers and yes you are lucky having "A Month in the Country."

With what authority can you make such a statement you are after all like the most of the posters here merely a member of any audience. As you used two sentences the first patronising and the second without substantiation and what I read as pomposity, I wonder what her friends in the company will think of what you wrote let alone herself when she reads it as she surely will be shown it.It is odd in a serious discussion about sincere committed artists to hear such a vulgarism as, "...she constantly fails to wow me vis-a-vis the hyping in Russia." You later say, "Wonderful poser. Ballerina? No way,IMO. I have to ask you this question, do you read what you write?