Hans

I don't know how frappés were performed at the Imperial Ballet School when Balanchine was there, but Vaganova frappés do not use a flexed foot, and in fact, Balanchine style frappés don't, either. Not sure about Legat. If I recall correctly, Suki Schorer wrote that Balanchine did not use the flexed foot at all in class, and that he used it onstage for contrast, to show how much more beautiful the pointed foot is. Not an exhaustive explanation by any means, but hopefully it sheds a little light.

I would not say that a dancer's unsuitability for a role constitutes incompetence, as dancers can almost always do the steps just fine. But dancers have different "personalities" or "perfumes" and someone who is very stately is just not going to look right dancing Canari qui Chant in Sleeping Beauty. Dancers are not usually taught to act, which I think is worth noting, but I think it goes beyond that, and I don't think the comparison to movie actors is apt, as films use all sorts of tricks to create various illusions, and actors and directors can change the "choreography" at their leisure to suit the image they want to project, whereas dancers (except stars) are bound to particular steps. Another thing worth noting is that movie actors often do roles no one has ever seen before, whereas dancers often perform roles that have hundreds of years of tradition behind them--not that a new way of doing the part or a new look is always unwelcome, but certain aspects of various characters have come to be accepted as generally necessary. There is also a historical division (about which Alexandra has told us in the past, although I don't know on which thread) of employ (emploi in French) that dictates the "type" required for various parts, but it is not used as strictly now as it used to be.

Actually, Dirac, she's his step-mother! After all, as Balanchine is alleged to have said, "There are no mothers-in-law in ballet." Nothing about step-mothers, I believe. As Cinderella found out .... Well...technically, he said, "It is very difficult to express, say, 'mother-in-law' using classical mime." Hopefully there won't be any autobiographical Martins Family ballets any time soon....

There was Whelan and Soto for a while as well, but I can't really think of any other partnerships...Boal and Borrée maybe, or Ringer and Fayette? Haven't seen enough to know.

The Widow Simone gets a clog dance in Ashton's "La Fille Mal Gardée," but I don't know if that is quite what you're looking for.

That's correct.

I haven't read much history (except the usual public school textbooks) so I don't have much to compare to, but I love Weir. I've read her Eleanor of Aquitaine; Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Murder of Lord Darnley; and The Princes in the Tower. As far as I can tell, she seems to do an excellent job of substantiating her conclusions and presenting them in a very readable way, but I would like to read other well thought-of authors to compare. Bart, I agree about Fraser's Marie Antoinette. Surely she deserves some sympathy, but I finished the book wondering whether she had been canonized yet. I really enjoyed Andrea Stuart's The Rose of Martinique about Josephine Bonaparte, but I was not reading it with any sort of prior knowledge or objectivity in mind. However, it was very entertaining.

I haven't kept up with this thread, but I am currently reading Queen Isabella by Alison Weir.

Yup, I have Backstage at the Kirov and love it, but I wish I could have seen her do the whole ballet. I also have the Sleeping Beauty and Corsaire tapes with Asylmuratova (she is still the best Medora I've ever seen).

Is there a full-length Swan Lake with Asylmuratova?

I would venture to guess that "students" probably means dancers from Level D and Advanced Men--ie, very advanced and technically secure eighteen year olds, so I wouldn't worry about stairs and lifts in that case.

An article about ballet class pianists that some may find of interest: Click here. (The article gets a few nit-picky things wrong about ballet technique--there are five positions of the feet, not six; the number of arm positions varies depending upon the method, and there are actually nine directions of the body--everyone seems to forget about poor écarté derrière )

Well, almost any type of turning step either done on a diagonal or traveling forward would work as long as it works rhythmically with the music. It would just have to be engineered so that the ballerina either does a pas de bourrée en tournant or lands in fourth position in time to start the fouettés. One could even alternate pas de bourré en tournant with fouetté and then change to only fouettés after a while, or do pirouettes from 5th finishing with a developpé to the front or side as in Coppélia and Satanella. In that case the dancer would stop four counts early to have time to pas de bourré suivi and plié in fourth in preparation for continuous fouettés. Those are pretty conventional, but I'm sure others could come up with something more interesting!

I have seen dancers with chin and shoulder-length hair during the "hair down" sections, so I would guess that it's real.

I think a lot of it depends on the individual dancer (and sometimes his/her teacher) than the training method. As far as styles go, one might be able to point out a few general tendencies toward a particular weakness here and there, but there will always be exceptions to that.

I never saw her Giselle, but I know she danced it as well as Aurora--does anyone have an opinion of Sizova in those roles?

I was considering the problem of dancers not being able to do 32 fouettés on the Metro today, and I think it could be solved by substituting a different step (easier turns or jumps or whatever suits the dancer and music) for the first sixteen counts of the fouetté music. Then (as the music gets more dramatic at that point) the dancer could start doing fouettés, so the excitement builds along with the music instead of abruptly stopping as the ballerina decides halfway through her fouettés that she can't get through all of them after all and changes to whatever she can think of in half a second.

I think the dancers who are specifically suited to one type of role are more the exception than the rule in the ballet world. They are, of course, more obvious, but unless one is a star, then in order to be employable a dancer must be versatile.

The impression I got from the linked post was that Kistler's Balanchine training prevented her from assimilating the Romantic style. I didn't mean to suggest that some dancers are not more suited to some ballets or roles than others, but one cannot easily pigeonhole most dancers as being strictly one "type" or the other.

There are, of course, Classical and Romantic ballets, but I do not think dancers can be divided up that way. We've had a lot of discussions about various terms in the past and haven't come up with anything too definitive, although Alexandra has made the point that pre-Romantic ballets are actually Classical, and Petipa is therefore Neo-classical. Balanchine's ballets seem to defy easy classification as some seem Neo-Romantic and others are more in the post-Petipa vein. I see The Four Temperaments, Agon, and Apollo as being some of his most important works, as he takes classical structure and traditional classroom vocabulary and adapts them to form something new, but that short list certainly does not define his entire vast repertoire. Maybe Balanchine is the balletic equivalent of Beethoven--not fitting into one period or another neatly but bridging two?

The oldest ballet in existence is called (I believe) "The Whims of Cupid and the Ballet Master" and as far as I know it is (very) occasionally performed by the Royal Danish Ballet. However, I have no idea how much of the choreography is original. There are some well-notated Petipa and Ivanov ballets (but they aren't generally performed as notated) and a good bit of Bournonville is still around (though it may not be much longer).

Is there much of a distinction between the two types anymore (or was there really ever)? I cannot really think of anyone who could be strictly classified as one or the other, as Romantic ballets require very precise and strong technique, often asking the dancers to do more difficult things than Classical (in this case pretty much meaning Petipa) ballets (although those aren't exactly easy). As far as port de bras, dancers must be able to change their arms and heads to suit the choreography, whether it's Bournonville, Petipa, or Balanchine.

Excellent question, drb. ABT can have as many schools as it wants, but none is going to be successful unless it produces ABT-caliber dancers. While I don't see a need for every country to have a "national" style, I do think each company needs to have its own style, and that has nothing to do with physical homogeneity. Style is about particular ways various steps are done, precise angles of the head and arms, and various "default" positions and movements for certain steps. It is also about the quality of movement used during various steps and about how the dancers relate to each other.

I'm unclear as to why the Royal Danish Ballet would ever not be included in a list of the best companies in the world. About ABT, I mostly agree with Carbro. The lack of a consistent style at ABT is my main problem, but hopefully that will change.

Students sometimes say: "I don't have feet like Alessandra Ferri. Can I still be a professional?" "My legs don't go as high as Sylvie Guillem's. Will any companies hire me?" The answer, dear students, is no. But not for the reasons you think. The reason you won't be a professional is because you are too concerned how you look in photographs and not concerned enough about how you look in motion. Use your feet exquisitely, and no one will notice how they're shaped. Unfold your leg gracefully, and no one will pull out a protractor and count degrees. Make the audience laugh, weep, and sigh, and you will be loved and remembered for years instead of being relegated to a dusty textbook. Remember that Ferri is famous for her feet, but she is more famous for how she makes people feel, and Guillem does indeed have high extensions, but it's how she uses them that makes her great. Above all, if your teacher does not tell you how to do this, find one who does!