Kathleen O'Connell

Act I not important? Not worth sitting through? The whole magic of the lake scene is set up in contrast to the world of Act I (that's one reason I don't like added "prologues" that set up Rothbart's transformation of Odette before Act I). The idea that a production is a "full length" Swan Lake without Act I--even a truncated Act I which would be more understandable--seems peculiar to me. Like Helene, I would call this version "abridged." But that's not exactly a compliment. (Getting rid of that many character dances strikes me as unfortunate too...I forbear asking about Act IV.)

Yes, there should definitely be something to set up the lakeside scenes! I'm just not convinced that one needs every bar of music or every step of dancing traditionally presented in Act I to do so. One does need more than the presentation of the crossbow, however. What do we need? First, some exposition. I think the critical takeaway is this: it's the Prince's birthday, which is not simply an excuse for a party, but rather the moment at which he is expected to embrace full manhood. In his hierarchical society -- at the top of which sits his mother, the embodiment of its authority -- that means taking a wife, which the Prince has absolutely no interest in doing.

But just as important, there needs to be a marked difference in theatrical texture between court and lakeside. They have to look and feel like two different worlds. I think cramming Act I full of dancing! dancing! and yet more dancing! -- especially dancing on pointe -- actually defeats that. If it were up to me, especially if I were doing an abbreviated version, I might reserve the pointe work for Odette, Odile, and the Swans just to make it clear that these women are absolutely, categorically unlike any others the Prince has met or ever will meet. But that's me. (Reserving tutus for the Swans is at least a step in the right direction.) So, I think a short, expository Act I would be just fine.

I think there is a lot of information given to the audience even in the Sergeyev Mariinsky version even without much mime. It sets up the story. We see a carefree prince partying away when he should be studying and the Queen is not overly happy when she arrives and sees "playing" in progress and a tutor asleep. She also presents him with his crossbow and that sets up the next scene. It is also telling that everyone begins to dance again the minute the Queen leaves. That says, "We're still going to do what we want even though we got into mild trouble!" To me his carefree life is in complete contrast to how he falls for Odette in the next scene. Also, as a side note, the Jester is trying to win over one of the prince's friends and chases her and is excited to get a kiss from her near the end (which is why I actually like the Jester in the Mariinsky version.....there is a story all its own).....

Honestly, I took away none of this from last Friday's performance at BAM. The Mariinsky production is flat out the most gorgeous one I've seen, but I don't think storytelling is one of its strengths, especially for an audience that's not steeped in this ballet and its traditions.

The Mariinsky version at BAM ran three hours and ten minutes.

Understand that I say this as someone who 1) doesn't much like Swan Lake in the first place and 2) resents the amount of oxygen it continues to suck out of ballet's room. If the version you're watching has abandoned all pretense of storytelling, as both the Mariinsky's Sergeyev version and NYCB's Martins version pretty much have, for example, the first act is practically meaningless as theater. Lots of pretty music, lots of pretty dancing, but if it's not telling us something about Prince Siegfried, his world, and the limitations of both -- i.e., setting up the meaning of the lakeside scenes -- it serves no dramatic purpose. If I were an AD and had to stage a two-hour version for whatever reason (and kbarber has pointed out a not-implausible one), the first thing I'd go after with my pruning shears would be Act I.

I'm not saying Hill made the right choices in terms of what he elected to cut and / or rearrange or that his version wasn't the disaster you describe, but as someone who has seen quite a few dispensable versions of Act I, I'm not so shocked. (And wasn't the original variously cut, expanded, re-arranged, to accommodate various demands during its creators' lifetimes?)

What I am perturbed about is the idea that one must cater to the alleged deficiencies of the audience's attention span. I understand accommodating the realities of modern life -- there are any number of reasons why three plus hours at the theater might be tough for someone with a family or a job to pull off -- but it does the audience a disservice to assume that they are incapable of sitting in rapt attention for a few hours.

I suppose the question is why do Swan Lake at all if you can't do the whole thing? Well, it puts butts in seats like no other ballet not called The Nutcracker and it makes your company look legitimate. And Hill may genuinely believe he's given his audience the whole story, not just the highlights reel.

But two jesters is absolutely the last straw!

Here is Violette Verdy and Damian Woetzel coaching Tiler Peck and Daniel Ulbricht.

http://youtu.be/-fFK6-LsQEU?t=1h11m21s

Thank you! I forgot about this! I'll put a copy of the link in my opening post later this morning.

This just hit my inbox. Given recent discussions we've had on this board regarding dancers of color, I thought it might be of interest. The panel includes three African-American ballerinas -- Dolores Brown, Karen Brown, and Andrea Long -- as well as dance historian Zita Allen and Iquail Shaheed, AD of Iquail Dance.

It's free, but seating is limited so you'll have to rsvp in advance. I've pasted the text of the email announcement below. The official announcement is here.

Join Dance/NYC, in partnership with Dance Iquail and Harlem Arts Alliance, for a free Town Hall titled Black Swan: Solidarity Beyond Colored Pointe Shoes, which will examine the importance of resilience as seen in the stresses on black artists, communities and institutions. In this Town Hall, a panel of women of color in the ballet world, as well as Iquail Shaheed (Artistic Director of Dance Iquail), will consider how dance as an art form is placed to help organizations and individuals adapt and recover from the shock and stress of racial segregation, diminished resources, and social disenfranchisement.

When: Monday, February 2, 2015
6:30pm-8:00pm (reception to follow)

Where: Riverside Theatre 91 Claremont Avenue New York, NY

How: Free. Click here to reserve tickets + for more information

Who: Moderator Baraka Sele (formerly of NJPAC), and Panelists Zita Allen (dance historian), Delores Brown (former ballet dancer/teacher), Karen "KB" Brown (former Artistic Director of Oakland Ballet), Andrea Long-Naidu (former NYCB and DTH dancer), and Iquail Shaheed (Dance Iquail)

So, here’s one of the significant differences that I noted between the Verdy / Hayden / McBride versions and the majority of the more recent ones: how much of the music the ballerina fills up with her traveling arabesques.

The music for the variation has the following basic form

Intro
A1
A2
A1
A2 with transitional material
B1
B2
B1
B2 with transitional material
A1
A2 & coda

Verdy, Hayden, and McBride all start their traveling arabesque sequence when the B2 transitional material begins and continue to travel backwards across the stage all the way through the reprise of A1 (the opening theme), hit a pose in relevé just as the phrase ends, and begin the closing turning sequence just at the beginning of the A2 reprise. (Hayden omits the relevé.)

Scheller, Copeland, Herrera, Bussell, and Núñez all attempt this, with varying degrees of success. “Success” equals doing it the way Verdy does it: i.e., transitioning out of the traveling arabesque sequence into relevé at exactly the moment the A1 reprise ends and launching into the turns when A2 begins. Some of these ballerinas stop traveling a moment or two too soon; some of them travel a moment or two too long—and the éclat of transitioning from one thing into another in time with the music is muffled.

All of the other ballerinas (Dvorovenko, Dupont, Gilbert, Pujol, Froustey, Platel, Cojocaru, Obraztsova, Somova, and Zakharova) wrap up their traveling arabesques around the time the A1 reprise begins and then dash across the stage to be in position to start their turns when A2 begins. I’m not a huge fan of traveling arabesques, but I like the “two hops and a dash” version even less because it wastes the musically important reprise of A1 opening theme on what is essentially transitional and preparatory material. I don’t know if this version is Trust-sanctioned, but I’m not a fan. Frankly, I’d rather see ballerinas try to nail the Verdy version, even if they aren’t 100% successful, but your mileage may vary.

Just an update: I gave the Hayden clip a closer look and noticed that the soundtrack is wildly out of sync with the image. The music appears to be something like 8 counts behind the dancing. Keep that in mind when you watch!

Thanks for putting all together and leading the discussions. I have watched and learned so much that the music of Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux would keep on sounding in my head, when I went jogging.

I have found another two YouTube clips of Tchai pdd: Mathilde Froustey and Laëtitia Pujol.

There are worse things to have in your "mind's ear" when your're jogging!

Thanks for finding the Froustey clip. I've added it to my original post as an addendum to the POB section. The Pujol clip was already on my list, but I'd taken it from a page that was mostly in Russian, so I replaced my link with yours so more folks could review the comments and whatnot if they had a mind to.

Some ticket buying advice: CALL THE BOX OFFICE if you want to pick out your seats. I tried ordering online and kept getting put into seat D118 for the ring I chose, which didn't seem like it would be one of the best seats available in that price range this far in advance. So, I called the box office and the very helpful and patient agent put me in seat A105 -- same date, same ring, same price as the seat in Row D.

FYI, here's a seating chart to refer to if you call: http://www.davidhkochtheater.com/Downloads/DHKT-FullChart.pdf

Per the agent, although the Joyce Foundation is renting the theater for the Royal Ballet run, it's not using the house ticketing system and that's why you can't select your seats online as you can for NYCB etc.

I thought I’d re-purpose the Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux compilation that I posted in the Misty Copeland thread for an opening entry in a new compare / contrast thread.

If you aren’t familiar with the ballet, or even if you are, it might be helpful to visit the ballet's page on the NYCB website to read the program notes and watch Tiler Peck’s lovely little introductory video.

I think I’ve gotten my YouTube cue point issue sorted out. The samples below should all start where the variation under question begins. If they don’t, it usually begins around the 5:00 - 6:00 minute mark on tapes of the complete ballet.

I’ve arranged things thusly:

1) Ballerinas who danced the role for Balanchine. These are our touchstones.

Violette Verdy, the role’s orginator

Bonus feature! Here's a clip of Verdy coaching Tiler Peck in the variation. (Thanks to cantdance for the link)

(Note: This clip has been extracted from a video of a 2010 New York City Center Studio 5 event hosted by Damien Woetzel in which he and Violette Verdy coached Joaquin De Luz, Tiler Peck, and Daniel Ulbricht in Donizetti Variations and Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux. They also coached Jared Angle and Jenifer Ringer in Liebeslieder Walzer. Here's where the whole Tschai Pas coaching session begins. Unfortunately, the video ends before they've wrapped up coaching the coda.)

Melissa Hayden (The out-of-sync music track appears to have been fixed.)

Patricia McBride

The Verdy and Hayden videos aren't of very good quality, but I think we can still see enough of what they do to make watching them worthwhile.

2) The only current NYCB dancer I can find a complete sample for: Ana Sophia Scheller. Note, however, that this is not an NYCB performance.

Update! I found a complete version with Ashley Bouder. And more Bouder.

Another: Footage of Teresa Reichlen in rehearsal.

Not a current NYCB ballerina, but post Verdy, Hayden, and McBride: Darci Kistler.

3) ABT ballerinas: Misty Copeland, Irina Dvorovenko, & Paloma Herrera

4) POB ballerinas: Aurélie Dupont, Dorothée Gilbert, & Laetitia Pujol

plus, Mathilde Froustey (Thanks for finding the clip, yudi!)

plus, Élisabeth Platel (Thank you, Mme. Hermine)

5) Royal Ballet ballerinas: Darcey Bussell, Alina Cojocaru, and Marianela Núñez

Bonus footage! Bussel rehearsing the variation. First she marks it, then she dances it full out.

6) Bolshoi and / or Mariinsky ballerinas: Evgenia Obraztsova, Alina Somova, and Svetlana Zakharova

If anyone finds any other examples, please share!

Caveats! It’s simply unfair to judge any ballerina or her interpretation of a particular role based on the evidence of one video. It could have been a bad night. The conductor could have been inept. The video could have been speeded up or slowed down. The music could be out of sync with the image. Etc., etc., and etc. So, while I think we can use the videos to make some observations about how the role was danced while Balanchine was alive and how it is danced on the world’s stages today, I don’t think it’s possible (or even very interesting) to use them as evidence that a particular dancer is either lousy in general, lousy at Balanchine, or, alternatively, has hands-down-definitively won ballet.

If I get a chance, I’ll post my own thoughts further down in the thread.

OK, here's a video of Violette Verdy, who originated the female role in Tschai pas, dancing the variation. The image, which looks like a kinescope, is blurred but you can nonetheless tell what she's doing. It's very interesting to compare her version with McBride's to see what they did differently, even though they were both Balanchine dancers. If the cue point I tried to set up isn't working, go to about 2:15. (Go to 2:00 to hear Verdy recount what Balanchine told her about her "eloquent feet.")

Oh, let's go to the tape!

Note: YouTube's cue points aren't working for me. For videos showing the whole pas, skip ahead to about 4:45 - 5:00 to get to the variation.

I've edited my post to put Violette Verdy, who originated the role, at the top of the list.

Here's Verdy

Here's McBride

Here's Dvorovenko

Here's Copeland

There are things that I like and don't like about all three versions. I will say this: traveling arabesques flatter no one, IMO. If I never saw them (or hops on pointe) again my life would not have been materially altered for the worse.

ETA:

Here's Bussell

and ...

Here's Herrera (lousy video quality, alas ...)

Here's Cojocaru

Here's Zakharova

and, unless I'm mistaken, Scheller

Lordy! Every Ballerina on the planet seems to have done this one!

Here's Obraztsova

Here's Nuñez (another iffy video ...)

Here's Pujol

Here's Dupont

Here's Gilbert POB hattrick!

That was my quote and I did not mean to imply Sarah had somehow raised an objection to the choreography. I meant (and should have) to say simply that Sarah's partner did not touch her breast. I was simply trying to be descriptive and my poor choice of words made it sound much more than that.

I'd hoped that when I used the word "implication" it would be understood that I meant just that: that the quote implied something rather than stating it explicitly. I was careful to make that distinction.

Thank you, California! Duly bookmarked ...

kfw

Here’s a quote from the post that appears to have kicked off this whole discussion. (It is still in the original thread; it didn’t get moved to this one.) In the quote as I read it, Copeland is unfavorably compared to Lane because she did the steps in a way that members of the audience found offensive. The implication seems to me to be that Copeland shouldn’t have let Whiteside touch her breasts and shouldn’t have twerked because other people, not Copeland, were offended by the gestures. (As we all know, it is easy to misread online comments, so a heartfelt apology to the original poster if I’m doing so now.)

As for Sarah's dancing, did anyone see both her and Misty dance Liam Scarlett's new work? There was a world of difference between them. Misty was vulgar; her partner jiggled her breasts and she twerked. Sarah didn't let her partner touch her breasts (he just made the motion) and a slight hip bump substituted for twerking. Several people I know were so offended by Misty's performance, they immediately walked out. Sarah made the role into a humorous affair. The NYT reviewed both performances and noted the difference.

No, I don't know why a dancer would refuse to do something they find unobjectionable just because someone else finds it is. Who brought that up?

At least one commenter in this thread indicated that Copeland made a bad choice, presumably either by appearing in the work or by not following Lane and Forster's example and toning it down.

kfw - My comments reflect my response to a number of comments made earlier in this thread, and not to any one poster in particular. Copeland was the primary target of many of them, but please note that I included Whiteside, Lane, and Forester in my post as well.

I’ve been thinking out loud about “With a Chance of Rain” for a couple of days worth of posts now, and haven’t been as articulate as I’d like to be. Here are a few points in summary that I hope will better crystallize what’s going on in my head:

* Somehow, "breasts are fondled" doesn't quite capture the gesture

Just out of curiosity, did you see "With a Chance of Rain"? If not, you might have gotten the impression from this thread and others that the pas in question was nothing but 10 minutes of Whiteside pawing at Copeland's boobs while she shook her ass, and that is definitely not the case. We're talking about something like maybe 15 seconds of choreography buried in a rather more complicated duet, which was itself part of a much longer work.

"With a Chance of Rain" is simply not the kind of moral hill one must choose to die on to defend one's honor.

[ETA: I'm not suggesting that time alone is the determining factor when it comes to the artistic merit of boob-pawing and ass shaking. An awful lot of pawing happens in Prodigal Son and we all seem to deal with it just fine.]

I misspoke! The boob-pawing and ass-shaking wasn't "buried": it was an isolated, italicized gesture that seemed to be part of a (deliberately?) lame joke that also involved homophobia. "Buried" suggests that the movement was somehow part of the dance's fabric, and it wasn't. If it was vulgar, I think we were intended to see it as such.

Selma is an excellent and topical example of people facing consequences for doing what they think is right and refusing to do what they think is wrong.

Yes, the movement does sound vulgar to me. I make no apologies for that.

Just out of curiosity, did you see "With a Chance of Rain"? If not, you might have gotten the impression from this thread and others that the pas in question was nothing but 10 minutes of Whiteside pawing at Copeland's boobs while she shook her ass, and that is definitely not the case. We're talking about something like maybe 15 seconds of choreography buried in a rather more complicated duet, which was itself part of a much longer work.

"With a Chance of Rain" is simply not the kind of moral hill one must choose to die on to defend one's honor.

[ETA: I'm not suggesting that time alone is the determining factor when it comes to the artistic merit of boob-pawing and ass shaking. An awful lot of pawing happens in Prodigal Son and we all seem to deal with it just fine.]

As for Archeron, I saw it twice and didn’t like it, but don’t remember any part of it being suggestive.

That's because of Mark Stanley's lighting, or, rather, darking. It all got lost in the shadows. I liked it, but would like it even better if we could actually see it.

Funérailles, his recent duet for NYCB, was a cheerfully vulgar as the cover of a Harlequin bodice-ripper, and the grappling duets in Acheron are hardly models of elegant restraint. Yes, the boob shaking and pelvis pumping in "With a Chance of Rain" looked repulsive; I'm pretty sure it was meant to. I harbor no suspicions that Scarlett wants to add twerking to ballet's vocabulary.

I guess I disagree. I found Funerailles to be a little over the top emotionally but it was hardly vulgar. It was an intense dance drama in the same vein as Manon or Mayerling, IMO. Looking over the comments from NYCB's fall season I see that Drew also found that it " looked like an outake from some unknown Macmillan ballet". That sound about right to me.

Neither did I find anything sexually suggestive or vulgar about Acheron. Creating a new dance, depending on the choreographer, can be a collaborative idea. If it was Scarlett's idea to twerk, he certainly didn't feel strong enough about it to make Sarah twerk. And both casts continued to perform the piece differently, since I saw the last show where Misty danced the piece (and twerked). Certainly, the ultimate responsibity for the work lies with Scarlett but working with 2 such different casts hopefully made him a smarter choreographer.

Just to be clear: I got no beef with vulgarity or sexual suggestiveness in ballet. If the pas de deux in Agon isn't sexually suggestive, then I guess I don't know what the term means. [ETA: I found Acheron to sexually suggestive in the ways that both Balanchine and MacMillan can be; as far as I'm concerned, it's a feature, not a bug.] If I've got any complaint about Scarlett's pas de deux, it's that he robs his ballerinas of one of their primary means of expression: their feet. My only objection to the boob-jiggling and (alleged) twerking in "With a Chance of Rain" is that Scarlett didn't have complete control over their effect as theatrical gestures. They were obviously there to tell us something about a relationship, but were presented to us before we had sufficient context to make sense of them.

Re MacMillan: Vulgarity is in the eye of the beholder. Jennifer Homans can only utter the words "ballet" and "MacMillan" in the same sentence through clenched teeth. Her palpable disgust with his sexual frankness would be amusing if she weren't also impugning his character with every bomb she hurls at his style.* The chapter in Apollo's Angels covering British ballet in the 20th century is essentially a morality play in which the shining, classical, Apollonian father Ashton is assassinated by his dark, nihilistic, Dionysiac son, MacMillan. I can't take Homans seriously as a critic (or a historian) precisely because she plays with morally loaded dice, but others do admire her work.

*It's OT, but here a sample from Apollo's Angels: "MacMillan knew only one way forward: down into the depths of his own damaged personality and dark obsessions." (p. 443) If anything, she's even crueler to MacMillan's muse, Lynn Seymour: "Her autobiography shows a woman plagued by crippling depressions and wild mood swings, and indeed the ongoing drama of her own inner life was a primary source and subject of her art. ... Where Fonteyn demonstrated the discipline and the resilience of classical form, Seymour showed its disintegration into frank expressions of sexual desire and despair." Homan's vocabulary in this chapter is so loaded it's almost unreadable.

By the way, I am a big fan of Misty's, I just think she made a bad choice here.

OMG!!! Two dancers defied the critics and did the steps the way the choreographer wanted them done! They just don't make artistic integrity like they used to.

If Copeland made a bad choice, so did Whiteside -- not to mention Gomes, who set up the punchline.

Integrity is being true to one’s own values even when a boss’s values conflict, isn’t it? If Lane and Forster were allowed to dance it differently, Copeland and Whiteside could have as well.Scarlett's about their age too, or even younger, which would make it easier to assert themselves.

Alternatively, Lane and Forster might have elected not to dance in the work at all rather than change it. Do we know that Scarlett authorized the changes?

Since Lane/Forster did the work more than once Scarlett must have known what they were doing. Being unwilling to dance in a piece is not much of a threat at ABT. I'm sure there were understudies who would have loved to get on stage.

I think I didn't express myself clearly. I'm not for a moment suggesting that Lane or Forster threatened to walk off the stage if the steps weren't changed to their liking. I was responding to kfw's implication that it was appropriate for them to change the steps to "be true to their values," and that this was a form of artistic integrity. I offered an alternative to changing the steps: opting not to perform the work at all.

In any event, I think it's neither fair nor particularly useful to make judgements about a dancer's character or to attempt to divine their moral compass based on the steps they have been given to do.

By the way, I find the idea that Copeland somehow strong-armed Scarlett into a vulgarity he would have otherwise eschewed far-fetched. Funérailles, his recent duet for NYCB, was a cheerfully vulgar as the cover of a Harlequin bodice-ripper, and the grappling duets in Acheron are hardly models of elegant restraint. Yes, the boob shaking and pelvis pumping in "With a Chance of Rain" looked repulsive; I'm pretty sure it was meant to. I harbor no suspicions that Scarlett wants to add twerking to ballet's vocabulary.

Integrity is being true to one’s own values even when a boss’s values conflict, isn’t it? If Lane and Forster were allowed to dance it differently, Copeland and Whiteside could have as well.Scarlett's about their age too, or even younger, which would make it easier to assert themselves.

Alternatively, Lane and Forster might have elected not to dance in the work at all rather than change it. Do we know that Scarlett authorized the changes?

By the way, I am a big fan of Misty's, I just think she made a bad choice here.

OMG!!! Two dancers defied the critics and did the steps the way the choreographer wanted them done! They just don't make artistic integrity like they used to.

If Copeland made a bad choice, so did Whiteside -- not to mention Gomes, who set up the punchline.

In the end the responsibility is entirely Scarlett's. And he doesn't know how to tell a joke: the skit came too early in the work to have the context that might have made it intelligible.

Every March the online magazine The Morning News hosts The Tournament of Books (ToB), a gentle spoof on both literary awards and March Madness (complete with a playoff bracket!) that nonetheless delivers nearly a month of lively analysis and discussion of sixteen of the previous years’ notable books. The short list typically includes the usual Booker / National Book Award / Pulitzer suspects as well as less hyped indie titles, a token genre novel or two, and occasionally, something completely out of left field – e.g. Anne Carson’s Nox or Chris Ware’s Building Stories.