leonid17

Names are correct and I believe that Dolin may be in the costume for Aucassin et Nicolette. I will check when I return home from my office.

Helene, I believe, was speaking to the heart of Ballet Talk -- and why those of us who love and want to learn more about classical ballet gather here. We also have a separate forum for "Modern and Other Dance," and that is where this particular discussion is being held. Apologies.

Elsewhere today Helene writes, "Ballet Talk is a site to discuss issues, history, music, and performances of classical ballet. " Why is the subject being discussed? In England we have a similar example of this 'dumbing down' type programme on our TV with a live audience.

I hope we don't lose sight of this question. Or of the matter of why contemporary CLASSICAL ballet tends to the other extreme: ignoring almost entirely major social or political issues of today. ( I remember reading the Miss Croce article and agreed that you don't have to see something to comment upon it if you have enough information on the subject. I have from across the pond, read reviews of Jones's work together with interviews he has given and wondered how the dance-world in London would respond to some of his works and doubted that I would want to see them. This is not because I do not think the issues he addressed are unsuitable for dance, they are just unsuitable for me. Because he has an audience, and a right to make works, I say more power to Mr. Jones method of expression as I am against arts fascism. Let every artist create their own genre and let audiences respond in their numbers. I am not especially inclined to want to see social or political issues of today in classical dance realistically expressed, which Bart suggests are ignored in classical ballet as subject matter. Classical ballet is not reportage. I only want to receive the message I want to receive and in the genre I prefer. My taste for dance include a very wide range of expression and I admire a number of companies/choreographers who operate within their own stylistic genre which is not classical dance. Realism per se in art is impossibility, because art by definition uses its devices to communicate on a different level to that of a visual documentary. I go to the theatre to see a 'universal' representation of the human condition not a particular one. Whilst Kenneth Macmillan had a more than moderate success with his original production of 'Rome and Juliet', his tackling the subjects of such as Anastasia, Isadora and Mayerling were disappointing to me in the extreme. Why, because his language of realism, went for me, beyond the art of the genre, to a level of crudity of expression that seemed either to be a failure of inspiration or an impelling desire to shock. The subjects were 20th century and well-known if not absolute current. For me he attempted to use what I can only describe as a phony realism, as the actual events are unknown in their particulars. Call it artistic licence if you like but where is the artistic truth of the genre of the company he was working with. I don't think he was expanding the classical dance repertoire but he was certainly changing it and a vulgarity of histrionic emoting became acceptable to many members of the clssical ballet audience. MacMillan did not create a new genre as examples of his choreographic mode can be found elsewhere. I am not sure that 'realism' has a place in the classical ballet theatre because it has resonances for me that are anti-theatrical. The dance theatre is a place where the ‘world’ is re-constructed into a model which employs physical and mimetic metaphors as its language to communicate. No one actually sleeps with anyone or really dies on stage but in a convincing performance we believe this has happened. Art is about the evoking or the representation of a psychological experience and in the theatre the depiction of what is real, does not need realism to do this. You do not see blood when a ballet dancer performing Mercutio is run through, but great dance actors convince you that you are watching a tragic event and you respond emotionally caught up in the passage of events that had happened and what must surely follow. There is nothing in one's personal experience of today which we might term as real (apropos realism), that is different from that of civilisations of the distant past. How so called realism is depicted in modern dance is no more real than that it is in classical ballet. In both cases a theatrical mode is employed with more or less subtlety in some cases more than it others. The resulting experience of the audience is dependant upon the sophistication of both the creator and the viewer. 19th century classical ballet firmly deals with real life physical and psychological experience as Bart states. As a sophisticated art form, 19th century classical ballet does not employ anything as prosaic as realism, but uses the elevated art forms of allegory, symbolism and allusion to stimulate a response in the viewer which can have a deeper resonance than real life events seen on television news, because of the power of the performance combined with the receptive mode that we adopt when in a theatre. If audiences cannot see the portrayal of various psychological types and the takes on moral and social values in early ballets, it makes me wonder if I am watching what everybody else is watching. In the life which is referred to as real, we experience beautiful, shoddy and tragic events which stimulate psychological responses. When an art form is employed in a sophisticated way depicting people and events both real and invented, it also stimulates psychological responses. To give an audience an ‘in your face’ experience of realism, says to me that the creator lacks a sophisticated theatrical skill. ‘Little is more’, is to me a vulgar expression but it conveys my views on so called graphic ‘realism’ on the dance stage. Allusion is the stylistic device in the theatre which conveys more subtly and more effectively than any amount of realism because, the viewer engages at a psychological level in an individual way to what is being performed and the experience becomes highly personal and heightened because of their own experience of life plays a part. Alexandra states correctly that classical ballets “… deal with timeless emotions/questions/issues in a way that is suited to the language, customs and ideals of the art form.” The best artists recreate in their works, the human condition at a level of experience that can arouse disturbing, or elevating responses in the viewer. Is there not human tragedy in Giselle and La Sylphide? Classical ballet is after all an art form not a visit to the bull-ring. Whilst art can be appreciated by everyone in their own way, the arts deserve to be discussed in ways that endeavour to meet and understand the values of the expression of the form/genre, rather than criticise the methods it chooses not to use. The popularity of 19th century classical ballets is not waning and it appears to me it is ever expanding. Ask the question why? It is not just the music. It is not just the scenery and costumes. It is the the mode of expression and the performance by good artists that make this a fact. Modern regular audiences of classical ballet may be tired of the repertoire that is presented perhaps because they believe they are entitled to the 'fix' of the 'new' which typifies the era we live in. I certainly have seen more than 200 performances of "Swan Lake" yet I still find some felicitous detail today which I had not appreciated before. Dare I say going to watch classical ballet is for me a serious thing. It is not in your face entertainment though there are some dancers who think it is and Directors of Ballet companies allow their audience pleasing tricks to take place. Studying ballet technique doesn't open all the doors to the appreciation of the classical ballet genre. I think like any other art, if you are seduced by its creative appeal, learn to appreciate it for what it is and not what it might be. Classical ballet remains the most popular dance form in the western hemisphere and h is now conquering the middle and far east. Curiously enough eastern dance forms are becoming popular in Europe as the best companies reflect a dedication to the truth of the values of the genre in its historic style of dance expression. It may be that eastern classical dance may become more popular for modern audiences than 'modern' dance. When one thinks of the success of the Rambert Ballet and Nederland Dance Theatre in the 1960's and and 1970's one wonders where this popularity among the London dance audience disappeared to. In London, Tango companies are successful in medium size venues as are Flamenco dance companies. Modern dance companies appear to attract new audiences but is generally companies like Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor that have the biggest success. The problem that beset the classical ballet world today, is its failure to produce any choreographers of real standing. I would suggest that this is also the problem that besets modern dance and perhaps Bill.T. Jones in his physical dance expression is filling a gap that some of the dance audience wants to experience. AMENDED 7/10/2006

Swan Lake in my experience is today rarely given in performances where the mime passages are complete or, fully integrated in a seamless production. The greatest exponent if this ideal integration in the role of Odette/Odile was Dame Margot Fonteyn wherein powerful story telling was told quite clearly to everyone, but then only in some of the productions she appeared in and only with some of her partners.

My feeling is that when one notices the physical gifts of a dancer all art is lost. Technique is part of the art of dance, but only a part and physical gifts are part of technique but only a part. To put it crudely if a dancers physical gifts are 'in your face' you are not watching an artist but an athlete wherein physical strength is on exhibition. Classical ballet dancers need to strive for physical excellence which then needs to be assimilated into the art to which they belong. Along with others I can marvel at physical prowess in dance, but this is not what the ART of classical ballet is all about. When you watch Sofiane Sylve in the clips on the website 'Youtube' performing six pirouettes I am not offended by the physical and technical attainment and it doesn't for me appear to be 'over danced'. But when you see physical expression that takes athleticism to a level when it remains just the physical expression of an athlete dancer and not an artist in a role, even if it only in a variation, count me out because I watch classical because it is an art I appreciate. I have seen very well-known male dancers in a manege within a classical variation, physically heave themselves upwards from a plie into an elevated turn with a power driven change of direction, exhibiting a visibly strong push off and the arms flung high. I consider it acheap effect that will always appeal to thrill seekers, but not to those that have witnessed truly artistic performances. The best of character dancers who frequently represent a more physical side of dancing might seemingly be entitled to employ such physicality, but they do not do so. Why, because character dance in classical ballet has its own aesthetics. Lets get back to what classical ballet aesthetics should be, the triumph of technique and art melded as one. where everything is achieved seamlessly and comprises a whole rather than being punctuated by the art being ledt behind to exhibit visible physical effort. Edited 29/09/06 as original written inhaste.

It has been announced that the Theatre Museum in London is to close in January 2007 due in part to the lack of funds needed for its development. A subsidiary of the Victoria and Albert Museum the collections will once again be housed in that Kensington museum. There are lots of questions that come to mind in a negative sense about this decision, but the good news is that the V & A will hold a major exhibition in 2009 to celebrate the centenary of the Diaghilev Ballet where one hopes that Picasso's stage cloth for Parade will be on view. It had been hoped that a joint arrangement with the Royal Opera House to resolve the the difficulties could be arranged but it was announced yesterday that this was not possible.

With so many young dancers unemployed or looking to move on (and upwards) the La Scala Milan ballet is holding Competition and auditions for Male Dancers 7 October 2006, 01 pm and for Female Dancers 8 October 2006, 09 am. More details on website(In English) at http://www.teatroallascala.org/

Well done Bart. The score for the Dix ballet was from various composers as follows: von Künneke, Schönberg, Hindemith, Weill, Strawinsky, Blake, Blacher, Berg, Zimmermann first performance Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 1993. Only problem is we still have not discovered the film or firmly identified the ballet. PS I have searched dozens of TV channels in Germany and rest of Europe for the broadcast originally referred to with no luck.

Was this Classic Arts showcase, where they show revolving clips of ballets, operas, classical music, movies, recitals, etc.? If so, as far as I know, they only show clips from commercially released (or about to be released) DVD's or tapes. I have also searched and cannot find a film of the ballet but I wonder if the whole ballet was shown on television. I don't know about German television at that time but recordings of ballets made just for televison have happened often in the UK and have so far never been commercially released. In the case of the DVD's of Petit's ballets that have been released they are of his most successful works after all his oeuvre must extend to more than 50 ballets at a guess.

I think that the ballet in question may have been by Roland Petit who has staged the evening-length "Dix, or Eros and Death". His ballet was based upon paintings by Otto Dix, a well-known artist of the Weimar Republic who completed a series of bleak etchings full of despair of World War I which Petit I believe used a metaphor for the impending Nazi regime which followed after Dix's period. The ballet was originally staged in Berlin's Deutsche Oper in 1993. Dix was a bitter witness to the horrors of trench warfare and later he often used religious images in his work and perhaps the imagery of the cross and the hanging bodies were Petit's allusion to this.

I would like to add some further information to this article by Cyrus Parker-Jeanette as it contains some errors and misunderstandings. Adolph Bolm was not born unto an intellectual family per se, his father Otto was first first violinist and assistant conductor of the Mikailovsky Theatre in St.Petersburg. Adolph Bolm entered the Imperial Theatre School at the normal age and not after an audition at 16 years of age. He graduated in 1903 not 1904 and was a pupil of Platon K. Karsavin(1854-1922) Tamara Karsavina's father. Although Beaumont first quoted that Bolm organized Pavlova's first tours abroad it is most unlikely as negotiations between an impresario Edvard Fazer, the Swedish Ambassador and the Imperial Theatre Director Teliakovsky for these tours took place in St.Petersburg following Fazers contact with Pavlova. The senior male dancer though now less famous than Bolm on the first 1908 tour was Mikhail K. Oboukhov (1879-1914. As regards the competition with Nijinsky, Bolm never essayed any of the high status roles his colleague did. From all reports, it would appear that Bolm was an outstanding character dancer of a quality that was superior to any other Diaghilev male dancer. The reason that Diaghilev did not return to America was not because the danger of crossing the seas during wartime but a morbid fear of the sea. Bolm being the first choreographer of 'Apollo' is important and fairly unknown, but he also choreographed a version of Stravinsky's "The Firebird " for Ballet theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House premiered on 24th October 1945 with scenery and costumes by Marc Chagall the cast being: Alicia Markova, Anton Dolin, John Taras, Diana Adams Bolm wrote a memoir that was published in 1926. Most of this information has been freely available for many years, but full credit for the new research must go to Johanna Laakkonen's outstanding research in "Unravelling the Canon" - Edvard Fazer and the Imperial Russian Ballet in Berlin 1908-1910 Licentiate's Thesis, June 2003. University of Helsinki, Faculty of Arts, Institute for Art Research.

Makes me think of one of the comments in the "Ballets Russes" film. Nini Theilade (who sounds like someone you'd really like to get to know. "Utter charm," as carbro says. And a lot of intelligence.) laments the formalism of the young ballet students she meets today. She wants to say to them: "Be warm -- TELL me something!" The role of a classical ballet dancer may be seen as to express the ability to combine and integrate within a theatrical performance that is artistic, aesthetic and dramatic, a technique that is academic in intent but may be tempered by a less than natural physical placement. When you think of Tikhomirov and Geltser under the direction of Alexander Gorsky at the Bolshoi, were encouraged to achieve a physical and dramatic expression that integrated classical ballet technique. It was if not to put it too crudely, either a revolutionary change in approach compared to the Maryinsky or a ‘pandering to’ the lack of aesthetic/artistic values to meet the Moscow audience expectation of that day which some thought. Fortunately the process survived and the Bolshoi had for many years an identity which was quite different from any other ballet company Alexandra quite rightly drew attention to the “… sincerity in Tikhomirov’s performance” and I would like to recall conversations I had with English dancers whose careers with Pavlova overlapped those earlier dancers era. I asked the obvious question about this legendary dancer’s technique. They told me in class she worked extremely hard and for the younger members of her company who had not seen her at her technical peak told me but not ruefully, that Pavlova was particular about placement in the class but looked for and screamed at rehearsals, “hear the music, feel the music, be beautiful, become the dance”. An older member of her company told me explicitly that Pavlova’s technique was extremely strong when she was with her company but when Pavlova danced every rule could be forgotten when she sought to achieve a physically beautiful line.” Expressivity was demanded of us by Pavlova and never fall off point. On stage Pavlova lived every role as if her very life depended upon it.” Their Maryinsky counterparts however were taught to strive for a clean academic execution in an aesthetic context and employ dramatic means once the role was technically achieved. All of this was before the ‘selective breeding’ programme that Vaganova would aspire to (and sometimes taken up in extremes today by others) and began to achieve at the end of her life with, slim, longer legged female dancers strongly placed with higher extensions and bigger jumps. The clear delineation between the Bolshoi approach and the Maryinsky then and now remains apparent. Whatever you may consider to be the aesthetics of dance' The Bolshoi later produced dancers like Vasiliev and Maximova of whom Erica Cornejo in an interview with Hanna Rubin in Dance Magazine last year said, “They were stars beyond technique”…”they were expressive- a light came from their bodies.” In saying this I think the historical raison d’etre of the Bolshoi approach to performing roles was achieved by Plisetskaya in many of her roles as did Liepa, Ulanova, Struchkova, Levashev, Timofeyeva (in a number of roles) Mukhamedov, Ananiashvili among others. That is not to say it has always been achieved and when I compare the Bolshoi of today with that of the 1960.s, 70’s and 80’s, in my personal opinion it is not always achieved by the present roster. The secret of any art is to employ technique at such a high level that the audience experiences first and examines in reflection. It is a sad comment to see obviously knowledgeable people discuss placement of dancers of an earlier era as if in a critical way without fully putting the person(s) under review in their context and time and the demands of performing that they endured and why it was so. Placement and turnout in ballet has been with us for more than 150 years. I believe early exposure to silent movies inoculated me from making judgments about performances of an earlier era as I was moved, thrilled and transported by the dramas and comedies enacted. I belong to a generation that found Chaplin’s “Limelight” mannered, self-conscious, sentimental etc. carping that he had never moved on from his silent era I was a child at the time when I first saw the film and did not think so and I still do not think so. I have personally in the past gone to the ballet to experience a performance not a physical classroom exercise and sadly I go less often now than in the past as the absence of “vivid” performances seems to elude me. I cannot be excited alone by a dancer achieving six pirouettes en pointe unless the rest of the performance is artistically and aesthetically pleasing and that the production aspires to the highest artistic ideals. I am still in the process of learning about the artistic, cultural and social mores of the periods of ballet history that interest me. Classical Ballet is after all an art expression of the past and when you see a performance, it cannot be divorced from that past. There is in ballet like all arts, the element of the synthetic. But great art, aspires to a kind of reality in which first experience and then need to be sensitive to the process that artist aim to achieve, if we are to meet it and recognize it. The Bolshoi at its best has achieved a kind of great art and I treasure my memories and am grateful that I can again and again watch some examples of them at their best on the DVD in question.

I think you are right Bart that the limitations imposed by the very small width of camera shot area is a factor as it looks to be less than 10ft wide which would hardly give the space to get a preparatory movement for any kind of expansive movement without going out of shot. It may also be that the dance was almost made up on the spot just to complete an experimental film as this is what it surely was. There are some films where Pavlova restricted the choreography from the stage version so that some kind of record of her dance could be made and the films of the Royal Danish ballet made some years earlier also exhibits similar limitations. If this was one of their first attempts at being filmed without a professional director the expressions they used for a vast stage would in close up naturally look rather naïve. There are many commercial films made in the early days of Hollywood where the actors appear stilted and overacting. Chaplin is accused of being over sentimental at times in his acting. Tikhomirov was born in 1876 he was an outstanding young talent who at the age of 15 was sent to St. Petersburg to study with Pavel Gerdt, Platon Karsaving and Alexander Shirayev. There are photographs in his younger days that show him having a physique no different to a modern classical dancer. As Alexandra alludes, he did after all dance the roles of Desire, Frantz, Siegfried Albrecht, Solor and Conrad etc and I do not believe in abbreviated technical versions. As regards the “diapers”, modesty in the Imperial Theatres was the rule. Take the so called Nijinsky scandal as an example. Closer to our time, I first saw Maximova to whom other posts had alluded in 1963 when Arnold Haskell said she had the “wittiest feet since Pavlova”. I can never get enough of this dancer in her best roles. Bart mentions Olga Lepeshinskaya who has always appeared to me to be the worst kind of Soviet Russian dancer that found places in both the Bolshoi and the Kirov ballet companies. There are moments from the Bolshoi repertoire one would like to have seen included and more of some leading dancers who hardly geta look in. What one gets is fulsome enough but much has been seen elsewhere on video.

There is a traditional French Breton song called Le Forban ie pirate,buccaneer, corsair. I have heard a recorded version which has a swaying mode like the movement of a ship at sea.

Maya Plisetskaya made her debut in Raymonda in 1945 at the Bolshoi shortly after Semeyonova had taken the leading role in a new staging (7th April 1945) by Leonid Lavrovsky (after Petipa and Gorsky). The short film extract that I have seen of Plisetskaya is taken from the later production by Lavrovsky (17th May 1960) which was premiered by Ryabinkina. I am not sure, but I think this clip was filmed while the Bolshoi were on tour and may be the New York performance you refer to. I have never heard that the Bolshoi filmed all the productions of the era we are talking about and evidence of this would be welcome for everyone if they remain extant. I think most of the clips we see in compilations were made for cinema and TV as news items such as Londonski Konsert. In 1963(?) BBC TV(UK) broadcast School for Ballet (Klass Konsert) choreographed by Asaf Messerer but apparently no copy of this exists in their archive. The only old film of a Bolshoi ballet that is almost complete that I can think of is the (studio verson) of Lavrovsky Romeo Juliet course other complete film records of Bolshoi ballets have been made in the last 30 years.

David Lichine was the choreographer, music by Wagner(Rhine Journey from GOTTERDAMERUNG arr. by William McDermott) designed by Miguel Prieto first performed 8 March 1946 at the Palacio de la Bellas Artes, Mexico City. Cain was played by Kenneth MacKenzie Abel by Oleg Tupine. Good and Evil were danced by Carlotta Pereyra and April Olrich. The casting of April Olrich(who later danced with the Sadlers Wells Ballet) when the ballet reached New York caused a minor scandal as she danced sexily and was barely aged 14.

I remember in 1968, Kenneth MacMillan choreographed Cain and Abel to Music by Panufnik(Sinfonia Sacra/Tragic Overture) with designs by Barry Kay.

As part of the divertissement ‘Les Orientales’, commissioned by Diaghilev in 1910, Nijinsky danced a solo called ‘Kobold’ (a mischievous sprite) choreographed by Fokine to the third piece of Lyric Pieces for piano Op. 71. orchestrated by Stravinsky. I also saw a production of 'Peer Gynt' in 1963 using the suite's of Grieg, choreographed by Vladimir Orlikovsky for London Festival Ballet. In the 1940's Edouard Boravansky choreographed a ballet to Grieg's A minor piano Concert in that same decade Mpna Inglesby choreographed 'Twelfth Night' to Grieg, Arthur Mitchell choreographed 'Three Movements from the Holberg Suite'. Slavko Pervan, choreographed a version of Peer Gynt for the Croatian Ballet. If my memory serves me right I think the first danced Grieg in the USA was performed by Mikhail Mordkin. I think a bit of Googling will show that modern dance companies as well as classial ballet companies have works to the music of Grieg.

I was very happy see that this dispute was ruled in favour of Butler University. Some years ago I was astounded and most happy to find photographs of such important scenic designs on the university web-site.

I should have said, "piqued my curiosity," in the sense of making me wish I knew more about the topic. Thanks for getting me started. I must say my first reaction was also why? I then tried to research other male dancers who had been made a Chevalier. In my younger days, I remember that when you read an announcement of this award being made, it was always given to the most highly distinguished people in the world of arts and letters and then usually when they had reached some age and made an important contribution (usually internationally) in their particular field. I am not questioning the award, but simply would like to make some comparison. Who in the dance world has received this award? Perhaps in Europe this award has more significance than elsewhere. Ps. Yvette Chauvire is a Commandeur of the Legion d.Honneur.

I knew both Keith Lester slightly and Sir Anton Dolin a little better. I have never heard of any attribution to the Dolin version being anything but Dolin's and Lester's was anything but Lester's. It seems to me a fairly recent phenomenon to think otherwise. I am however willing, if there is incontroversial evidence, to be disillusioned.

I do not believe Dame Margot Fonteyn personally financed any revolution or political campaign. The film contains many half-truths, misinterpretations and inventions. There are events that are reported that nobody could possibly have information on and I think it unwise to believe much of what was said in this film by people who you would have thought knew better than to make comments that cannot be sustained by fact. Is the ballet world really peopled by such common people whose remarks though covered in supposed fact have an edgy bitchy tone that you begin to think they spent their lives living with envy? My experiences watching her on stage for almost 40 years, of talking with her and corresponding with her, is of a completely different person to that which emerges from both the film and the book that prompted it. I know from one friend who appeared in the film and knew Dame Margot extremely well, that his contribution was an edited comment lasting a minute taken out of context from a two hour interview. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "ENVY is the tax which all distinction must pay." I find it more than odd that such a woman of style, culture and generosity of spirit and extraordinary charm, who made an as significant contribution to classical ballet as a muse and leading ballerina, could have ended up being portrayed in such a way. She deserves better. Despite the inclusion of some very interesting film and moving comments made in the film, I am still left a feeling of what it might have been and the mere mention of it leaves a bitter taste. Fonteyn was not my most favourite dancer, but she did inhabit roles so that you could believe she was living them and made all her best performances an astonishing event. If you want to know about possible financing of Roberto Arias's political aspirations I suggest you visit, http://www.pophistorynow.com/scripts/April%2025,%201959.pdf and discover the probable involvement of a legendary American film star who had been a friend of Roberto Arias from childhood and involved in business with him. (Edited in anger and some despair)

I somehow missed Leigh Wichel's reviews when first posted and the recent posts drew my attention and real interest in his appreciation and observations on the performances of Ashton’s ballets in recent years. Ashton’s works were kept alive and authentic after he was forced to leave his Directorship, by the intense rehearsal discipline placed on the dancers by the super efficient guardian of Ashton's repertoire and martinet Michael Somes. When he had a reputedly ferocious argument with Kenneth MacMillan and was asked to leave, the rot set in. Though there were notably good Ashtonian dancers in Antoinette Sibley and Merle Park to carry on the tradition and other dancers also, the dominance of the MacMillan repertoire and his clan of co-workers, soon eroded the elegance, charm, wit and ultimately style(which Ninette de Valois liked to call English) that Ashton had given to the RB. Having had the good fortune to watch the RB often two or three performances a week throughout the 1960's I thought those great times where Ashton supervised and created the outstanding repertoire including a number of excellent MacMillan works, would last for ever. Although Monica Mason has pulled the company out of the doldrums into a renewed period of very good performances, the subtleties of creating a role in the Ashton manner has somewhat diminished and that dancers need to acquire greater feeling for his particular brand of musicality. If you are counting you are not listening and you are certainly not feeling the music in every movement as Ashton required. Matching movement and mood to music was Ashton's forte. He did not apply steps on top of music for virtuoso effect. In my opinion he required the dancer to miraculously express the musical shape and form in character and in a connatural manner inhabit the music from fingertip to toe. Ashton's epaulement is continuously unique in the manner in which it is related to the movement of the torso and legs. Seemingly contra movements are blended in effective harmonious ways, which seemingly grow organically from the music. and his off centre sideways movements when perfectly achieved at speed, take a performance beyond the routinely very good and capture the extraordinary choreographic expression that is particular to Ashton. How do you revive the style? That is the question that needs to be resolved. I do think that it needs to be learnt from school where as far as I know this did. does not happen. In Russia students learn combinations and the appropriate style from the theatre’s repertoire in class. In restaging or reviving ballets. the RB needs in my opinion to use as many possible former principal dancers as coaches, in the manner of other companies, who then work in conjunction with the repetiteur responsible for the particular work. Perhaps this is now happening, as I see former dancers credited as working on a particular production. Perhaps to many disparate styles are present among the dancers in the company and where what was once almost second nature, is now almost lost in terms of Ashton’s very particular style. So perhaps whilst there are excellent dancers who dance Ashton ballets very well, do they meet the style(that so called English style) that the choreographer intended? Sometimes, almost. Do NYCB today dance in the style that George Balanchine set on his original casts?

Apparently. He is listed as Director for the company's visits to Budapest and St. Petersburg later this year.