Hans

I have heard of only one ballet school in the US that explicitly teaches ballet history. It's quite unfortunate.

Oh, fish dives are easy. The only problem I've heard about is the final one in the Sleeping Beauty Act III pas de deux, where female dancers have broken ribs because of having to fall into that 'arched' position after being lifted up high. Otherwise, they are a piece of cake. The only thing that annoys me is when the man holds the woman's leg from underneath when it isn't necessary. It's easier but uglier.

Hauling the woman around? In my pdd classes, the lady was always the center of attention, and heaven help you if you got in her way or made her look bad!

I went to the website, but the article does not appear to be available online. I will have to get the print edition.

You know, I don't remember how Day had Clara get a shoe to distract the mouse king--maybe one of her dolls surreptitiously handed her one--but she didn't remove her pointe shoe. I'll have to ask around.

For me, that clip illustrates exactly why it is not advisable to have adults pretending to be children: they look like adults whose minds have failed to mature. Mary Day's version had, I think, the best of both worlds--girls and boys of varying ages, very well rehearsed, with Clara danced on pointe by a girl young enough to look like a child but with clean, strong technique so that she could execute steps such as double pirouettes, have attractive extensions, &c. While the other girls were not on pointe, they still had plenty of ballet steps to do, for example during the march, and as they were all well trained at WSB, the effect was lovely. I mostly like the way the dancers in the above clip mime, though.

That's what I always found--that it depended on the partner rather than the school or company. And Leigh is entirely correct about allowing the man to do his job. Communication is extremely important, which is why pas de deux classes and rehearsals can often get rather chatty--it's necessary to say, "Do you need to be more forward here?" or "Is it easier if I hold your hand like this?" &c.

Kolpakova was a marvelous dancer and is an excellent coach, but if the Mariinsky and Vaganova Academy can't, between them, find someone who understands what classical line is supposed to look like, that is a sorry state of affairs indeed.

Leonid, I was commenting on Nureyev's choreography, not the performances. I found the dancing to be excellent but the choreography quite poor. I have to say, I do not think ballet necessarily equals pointe work. Pointe is an addition to ballet technique, not a necessary component, unless a work is specifically choreographed to be danced on pointe. Thus, pointe technique must be taught, but it is not necessary for a work to be choreographed for pointe to be considered ballet.

I don't know if this is the case in Russian companies, but in the west, corps members often retire earlier than soloists and principal dancers.

That would explain it. I notice he doesn't seem to have choreographed anything else for the Royal Ballet.

I just watched a DVD of Nureyev's horrible Nutcracker for the Royal Ballet from 1968. It is very similar to his production for the Paris Opéra Ballet, which makes me wonder who decided it was a good idea for him to choreograph after 1968!

1. The Mariinsky, to see Alla Sizova's entire career and Terekhova's Aurora and Odette/Odile. 2. Paris Opéra Ballet for Sleeping Beauty (and maybe back to before the Revolution for some Pre-Romantic Classical ballet) 3. Royal Danish Ballet for all things Bournonville with appropriate casting. Also, I agree with Carbro's wishes to return to un-embroidered classics and lower extensions in tutu ballets.

Bart, from what I recall of NYCB's Nutcracker performances from 1998 and 1999, the music was not as fast as the video.

As far as I know, the bats started with the Vainonen production.

I have been considering a similar issue for some time. Bel canto singers, for example, can gradually retire from Amina, Elvira, and Lucia and start singing Lucrezia and Elisabetta, who are mature, powerful women. Where does a ballerina in her 30's or 40's go? She has to keep dancing the same 'young' roles.

Mary Day's production for the Washington Ballet is the best all around, in my opinion.

I remember back when Washington Ballet still performed Mary Day's Nutcracker, during the last performance at the end of Act I, the stage crew would dump all the remaining snow on us, and we'd have a 'snow' ball fight.

I just watched it yesterday--all of the acts are shortened.

Thank you for this review! It's so pleasant to hear that the performance was such a success. I'm also glad to hear they brought along Maya Dumchenko, but I, too, am puzzled as to why she was in the Act 3 Pas de Trois, as that is usually danced by Vaganova Academy students. (I understand why it was performed by adults here, but why not corps members or soloists?)

I was under the impression that the Royal Ballet School still offered classes in acting and mime, but perhaps not. Or it could have been that the dancers were just marking or that they had just learned the mime. Dowell and Sibley have had a lot of years to practice that scene, so naturally they will do it better than someone who is still learning the gestures. I imagine (and hope) that a lot of work went into that scene beyond the tiny clip that's on YouTube. Unfortunately, it is not considered necessary these days to teach dancers how to act, and so they can't.

I can't understand people who want to cut the mime from Swan Lake--it tells the story. A bunch of relevés in attitude derrière most certainly do not.

That does indeed sound like a possibility, and it would certainly be an enormous improvement over ABT's current 'Swan Lake'. I do have a question, though--according to your criteria, then, a 'modern reference version' of Swan Lake could have absolutely nothing in common with the Petipa/Ivanov as long as it has been performed regularly and remained unchanged for a long time?

Does anyone happen to know which production is performed on the 1968 video with Yevteyeva as Odette? I just received this DVD today, but it contains precious little information. Yevteyeva is marvelous, though. I think we may have to come to terms with the idea that no Swan Lake today is really all that similar to the original 1895 production. Perhaps the general choreographic outline is still there as well as some of the steps, but unless someone takes the notations and reconstructs the ballet à la Sleeping Beauty, what we see today is not a reproduction of Petipa's and Ivanov's work. Even the Royal Ballet's production differs in major ways from what is known about the Petipa/Ivanov version, although it is probably the one that adheres most closely to it. Edit: I found the answer to my question...in plain sight on the back of the DVD case . It says 'Screen Adaptation: Konstantin Sergeyev', so now I know who to blame.

There is also the Wright version performed by the Royal Ballet, presumably standard in England.