Hans

I've never seen a picture of Nureyev with overdeveloped thighs. Was this rather late in his career?

Last I heard he was teaching at Stuttgart Ballet's school. He was one of my teachers at the Vail International Dance Festival in summer 1999.

That is good to hear! I will search for some reviews. How unfortunate that she is not cast more often.

This topic may be a little premature given that classes will probably not start for most of us for another two weeks, but having recently come from an extremely productive, positive faculty meeting I am very excited about the new ballet school year. I still have some conferring to do with the other teachers, but I think that we are generally on the same page and poised to have our students excel. We have all agreed on the syllabus (it helps that most of us were trained at the same school) and we are to keep in close contact as some of us teach the same classes on different days to make sure everyone is progressing at the same rate. We have even agreed on such details as how the students should enter the classroom! It is a wonderful feeling to be part of such a group, and now that the foundations are in place, I am considering what (besides the steps) to teach and how to do it. Things I would like them to learn include: how to spell ballet terms, basic music theory, knowledge of important people in ballet throughout history, and plots/characters of great ballets. I know I will have help from the other teachers in all of this. But more than that, I am going to try to get my students excited about ballet. That may sound redundant--if they didn't like learning ballet, why would they be there? I believe they enjoy it, but the levels I teach are still fairly basic and the exercises can become monotonous. I don't have the opportunity to pepper the combinations with bits of variations, and my students only perform once, at the end of the year. In addition, they take several different types of dance and are usually involved in several other extracurricular activities as well, so making this ancient art form relevant and alive for them--even as they patiently execute my combinations--is a challenge. It should help that my classes will be slightly larger this year. Small classes are wonderful for refining technique, but for the same reason they can also make it difficult to let go and "just dance," so even when, in an attempt to free my students from the confines of their endless battements tendus for a moment, I would have them chassé or otherwise move across the floor, they still maintained a rigidness, as if they were afraid of what I would criticize, and I was not able to bridge the gulf between "corrector" (as they saw me) and a benevolent person there merely to help them dance better (as I wished to come across). With a larger group, I am hoping it will be easier to form a rapport while still challenging them to work very hard. Their technique must be devoid of bad habits at this early stage, but it must also be alive, and perfect technique is of course useless without the enjoyment of dance and the desire to learn about all the elements that go into it--history, music, costumes, fantastic drama, and above all grace, elegance, harmony, and beauty. Try teaching all that to the average thirteen year old who grew up in the suburbs and knows nothing of life outside middle school. And yet, if they weren't already predisposed to the appreciation of grace and beauty, wouldn't they just take jazz? Something about this must speak to them already, and it is my job to draw that out and elaborate. Maybe once a month (I only see them once a week, although they have ballet with other teachers more often than that) I will end class fifteen minutes early to engage their minds in some way, either with a video, music, or a short lesson about an important figure in dance. *** I came up with an idea to teach ballet terminology. At our first class, I'll give each student a folder, the kind that holds three-hole-punched notebook paper, and a list of basic ballet steps and their definitions. I will ask them to write down one combination we did in class that day in the car on the way home using the list as a guide. If they encounter a word they don't know how to spell that isn't on the list, they should sound it out as best they can, circle it, and at the end of the next class we will learn each word's spelling and its definition and add it to the list. By the end of the year, they should have a lot of terms, and by limiting it to one exercise, I shouldn't be taking up too much of their homework time/energy. The folders can also be used to hold information from the once-a-month lessons. Now all I need is a dry-erase board, some markers, and to be told that this is way too ambitious and unrealistic!

I'm curious as to what has become of her. The few available videos are very beautiful, and previous reports of her dancing praise her very well, but I have not seen her name on cast lists when the Kirov tours. Does she perform more in St. Petersburg? Is she still with the Kirov? What happened to her?

As far as each step having a backstory and/or point of view, I would say it depends. Some choreographers intend this, others do not, and others have their own meaning but intend for the audience members to figure it out for themselves, and if they see a different meaning, that is fine. There are probably many gradations of all that, too. Some stagers and dancers make up their own backstories, usually to explain a step or gesture they don't understand, and sometimes it works (although I think it usually doesn't). The trouble with ballet is that it isn't like a book, painting, or even a symphony because its "text" (the steps) changes every time it is re-staged, and perhaps even with each performance, so people come away seeing very different things and there isn't always a way to reconcile that to a set-in-stone original and analyze who gathered what meaning from which movements. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that you're right, "meaning" in dance very often is subjective, whatever the choreographer intends, and unlike other more static art forms, there isn't always a way to find out what s/he intends the dance to mean, if anything, and if the dancer or stager comes up with his/her own "meaning" for the dance, the choreographer's intentions are distorted and the audience has to draw its own conclusions anyway. EDIT: Upon re-reading this, I feel I made it sound as if some choreographers purposely create totally pointless dances, which is not what I meant. The difference between playing around with movement and creating a cohesive work of art is, IMO, usually pretty obvious at first glance, and even if the choreographer is not conscious of a specific meaning, even one s/he keeps totally to him/herself, there is nevertheless still something there driving the dance to its inevitable conclusion.

Margot Fonteyn.

I thought it was pretty straightforward--at night, Odette and the other swans are women; it's only during the day that they are swans. Siegfried goes hunting in the evening (the daylight fades and lanterns are brought out during the Danse des Coupes) so when he happens upon the lake, he sees Odette being transformed. At the end of the night, Odette and her maidens turn back into swans and Siegfried goes home. Presumably the ball takes place in the afternoon, which is why we see Odette in swan form beating her wings at the window during the grand pas de deux and flying away at the end of the act, and by the time Siegfried reaches her at the lake, night has fallen again, so she is human.

So what does it mean when you're 25 and think that about your own generation? Like ngitanjali, I am very thankful for my like-minded friends!

According to Gail Grant, line is, "the outline presented by a dancer while executing steps and poses. A dancer is said to have a good or bad sense of line according to the arrangement of head, body, legs and arms in a pose or movement. A good line is absolutely indispensable to the classical dancer." I don't think line really has anything to do with musicality, except in the sense that to be a ballet dancer, one must have both--a beautiful line moving harmoniously with the music, expressing whatever the characterization requires. Somewhere around here Alexandra wrote a definition of various types of emploi in relation to dancers' proportion and the shapes they make. I'll try to find it.

Or maybe, "have you had more education than a fifth grader and how much of it do you remember?"

Excellent news indeed!

Exactly, Helene. Figurante's mention of the dancer under the bed strikes me as another reason to get rid of it. If it were me, I would think, "I worked my behind off for ten years to become a paragon of classical elegance and grace and they make me crawl under a bed?!"

As an enormous Vaganova/Kirov fan, I think it makes perfect sense.

I like the fact that Asylmuratova is charge of the Vaganova Academy now. And I definitely agree re: injuries and pregnancy, although the extreme thinness of female dancers remains a major problem. Pointe shoes are certainly better than they were in the days of Maria Taglioni! I am glad about some technical changes, such as greater focus on correct turnout, but I think people like Fracci, Asylmuratova, Platel, and Lezhnina ought to be studied by students as dancers who knew/know how to use their extensions in service of the ballet--lower in Romantic ballets, higher in more contemporary works such as Romeo & Juliet. So, I would say that, like Alexandra Danilova, I think it is right to allow those who naturally have high extensions to use them, when appropriate. Definitely agree with canbelto re: the historic reconstructions. They're not perfect, but they are a gigantic grand jeté in the right direction, and I hope they will help to inspire new choreographers.

Not to be contrary, but may I ask how you know? Is it notated?

Canbelto, thank you. Diamonds puts me right to sleep. I know a lot of dancers love it, but I find Remanso a total snooze, along with several pieces by Kylian and Duato (can't remember the names).

I've always seen the one with the relevés finished by brushing the working leg from arabesque to attitude devant.

I've never seen it end that way before--have always seen it finishing in 5th position en pointe. Do you mean the allegro one with all the relevés in arabesque at the end or the one that starts with cabrioles? As for the bed, I really think a choreographer of Balanchine's caliber could have come up with something more creative than a beruffled rolling hospital bed for all that divine music, which is supposed to accompany spectacular effects involving the transformation of the scene to the snow forest. Maybe he spent the production's budget on the tree?

I really hate the bed in Balanchine's Nutcracker. And the angels. And the sliced-and-diced grand pas de deux. As for other ballets, I could do without that ridiculous Soviet-style "nightie" pas de deux in Le Corsaire.

On the DVD of Nureyev's Bell Telephone Hour performances, Svetlana Beriosova does some very wide grands changements at just the moment you mention, Mel. I definitely had not seen that before! Bart, watching that video I notice what you mean about A. Carreno's foot--it is actually pronated (the opposite of sickled) which is no less a flaw than sickling. I am quite afraid for her ankles!

I have a hard time imagining ballerinas in the late 19th century performing the arabesques voyagés en arrière sur la pointe given what pointe shoes were like back then, but if they could do 32 fouettés, maybe the shoes (or their feet?) were strong enough to permit it.

Yes, they do.

Admittedly, it can't be easy to make a battle between giant vermin and mechanical toys look exciting...

I think it is an interesting idea, and I am hoping that the film will be entertaining, but I hold almost no hopes for historical accuracy or realism.