Mary J

If a picture is worth a thousand words, take another look at the Henning Kronstam cabriole photo in Alexandra's book - the slight turn of the shoulders is epaulement in action, and contributes to the line of the head and arms.

Dirac - Good point. He is candidly evasive!

Carbo - It is interesting that you mention the Danilova coaching scene in "Turning Point" because I have always had a question about that. Am I the only one who thinks that Leslie Browne - when she is shown dancing the Don Q variation in the peformance later in the movie - doesn't do what Madame Danilova told her? She is still moving her shoulders down rather than forward? (I apologize if this is too off the pointe but it is something that intrigues me every time I watch the film...)

Anyone who is an Alec Guinness fan should probably read his autobiographies as he was a charming writer.

Marguerite Porter danced with the Royal Ballet second company in the 1960's. I seem to recall she danced the gypsy part in The Two Pigeons. Am I even close?

Grand Hotel on VHS but not yet DVD.

Adapt-a-Role allows you to put a unique stamp on that cherished ballet role you have spent years competing for. In just minutes. Included in this one package are: glimmer of a thought: yes, you can use your brain while dancing, even if you usually put it in neutral, or leave it in your dressing room. wisp of motivation: you always knew that this role required more than the right costume. Let this wisp give the audience a sense that you are a real human being, even if it isn't true! hint of musicality: you CAN stop counting. We guarantee it. Once you begin to feel the music, you may be able to discontinue use of this part of the package altogether. Or maybe not. Request this product by character, or let us put a customized package in the mail for you - and don't worry about incompatible national style. Our homogenized, one-size -fits-all approach will do the trick. You may even be able to do guest performances without rehearsal! Call for a catalogue - 1-800-STR-TURN.

The entire Royal Danish Ballet in fairy-tale form in Hans Christian Anderson with Danny Kaye. Zizi Jeanmaire as the tempestuous diva and Erik Bruhn as a (briefly viewed) cavalier. Hans the cobbler as a pointe shoe maker. And a Little Mermaid ballet -

Brody has to be careful or he may just get a left hook!

Giannina - Any chance we could get the review scanned, or hyperlinked? I'd love to see it.

Andrien Brody getting the Oscar in the face of competition from four established Oscar winners is the stuff Hollywood legends are made of! I was so delighted, especially because he earned it with a charismatic portrayal in a noble movie. I thought it was so neat that his fellow nominees seemed so happy for him - but I suppose they are not world class actors for nothing. And Brody giving Halle Berry an eye-popping kiss was amazing. It must have been spontaneous but it looked so beautiful I almost expected the words "The End" to be superimposed on that smooch! There was something so poignant about O'Toole's appearance, especially after the clips of his youthful roles in which he was so beautiful. I thought Steve Martin was exemplary as host. He does not bring the frantic silliness that Billy Crystal uses, but his lines about the Teamsters and about thanking Steven Spielberg were classics. I haven't enjoyed the Oscars this much in years -

My pleasure, silvy! I am an Amazon addict, and shop there a lot. And, I think, if you use the banner from Amazon on this web site, good things happen for Ballet Alert!

Amazon appears to have it for $39.99 on VHS (with a warning that it might not be available) - the title is Russian Ballet, The Glorious Tradition, Vol. 3.

Alexandra, I have to concur with those who said that Fonteyn was probably an ideal Odette/Odile. Of course Odette fit her like a glove, especially the fragility and vulnerability. But her Odile was enough like Odette to make the Prince's confusion credible. She took on a slightly harder edge, and the seductiveness was manipulative rather than overtly sexual. What was most chilling was the sheer triumph when the Prince mimes the love pledge - a mixture of pride in her accomplishments and disdain for the Prince. I have seen a lot of finely danced Swan Lakes but Fonteyn was unique.

A book of photographs from that performance is available for some significant sum on Alibris.com. Just not the same as a video, though.

To everyone who replied to my posting, enormous thanks! I love BA because I always learn so much from the responses - Paul, I think the song you mentioned, "mir ist's, ..." is the high point of Elegies for me. If I am not mistaken, there is a movement by the female soloist where she bends forward at the waist, and leans her hand on her cheek and rests her elbow on the other arm, held horizontally (it is so awkward to describe a simple movement!). One of the panelists explained that that was a mother leaning out of a half open Dutch door, as though looking for her children at play. The movement only occurs two, at most three, times, and every time I found myself gasping. And you're right about the feet - I didn't miss the tapering of pointe shoes at all because their feet were so strong and lovely. And the other Mahler song cycle - didn't Eliot Feld choreograph them as "At Midnight"? I loved that ballet (many people didn't, which puzzles me) and thought Bruce Marks was fabulous in it - and he was originally modern dance trained. Ed, there was a question from the audience about how Tudor worked, and the answer was kind of ambiguous. Although he internalized the music (Sawyer - who was his accompanist and was there through virtually all of his creative years - pointed out that he was especially sensitive to tonalities and key transitions), he didn't choreograph "on" the music, so he didn't visualize anything specific before going to the studio to work with the dancers. Apparently this could lead to rehearsals where literally nothing happened because Tudor didn't come with any preconceptions. But obviously it all worked out right in the end, if Dark Elegies is any indication. (And since Lilac Garden and Pillar of Fire are IMO truly masterpieces, Tudor eventually got where he wanted to be!) Lynette, I think you are right about Dark Elegies being made for Ballet Rambert, although I don't know Tudor's life in enough detail to be sure. Tudor was trained by and danced with Marie Rambert, but joined Ballet Theater for its first season in 1940. Sawyer (who was working with Tudor beginning in 1937) told a story about Dark Elegies being performed at free noontime concerts during the Second World War (company and location not specified) and soldiers sobbing during the performance, which Tudor found incredibly touching. Placing this anecdote in London with Rambert makes sense - wish I had thought to ask for more details on that.

Last night I attended a lecture at Barnard College (my alma mater) called Antony Tudor's Dark Elegies: Bringing a Classic to Life. Panelists included Donald Mahler, a choreographer and Tudor specialist who worked with Margaret Craske and knew Tudor during Tudor's time with the MET; Carla Maxwell, artistic director of the Limon Dance Company; Roxane D'Orleans-Juste and Jonathan Reidel, dancers in the Limon Company; and Elizabeth Sawyer, a composer and Tudor accompanist at both the MET and Julliard, who knew Tudor since 1937. The panelists discussed Tudor's long association with Ballet Theatre/ABT where many of his works were created and performed, but from the mid-1970's forward, Barishnikov and others in charge of the repertory did not value (or understand)Tudor's works which were rarely or only grudgingly performed. In the late 1990's, Maxwell approached Sally Bayley Bliss, who is the Tudor trustee, and asked for the chance to have the Limon company dance Dark Elegies (choreographed to Mahler's Kindertotenlieder), and Bliss agreed. In reconstructing the performance, there were several modifications. In the original, three of the principal girls danced on pointe for emphasis at highly emotional points. (Awful pun.) The Limon dancers are not trained for pointe work, so that was eliminated. The women were reduced from eight to seven. Lighting was used in place of decor (I don't remember the decor from the ABT production so I can't comment.) Sally Wilson (formerly of ABT and considered one of the best Tudor dancers of her - or any- generation) approved of the changes, saying Tudor would have wanted it danced as naturally as possible. The Limon Company spent more time and care than many companies would in staging the ballet - rehearsing for more than a month, and continuing to work on it each time it is performed. There was a lot of discussion of what Tudor looked for in dancers. The consensus was that he would have hated the current emphasis on technical perfection. Sawyer quoted him as saying at one point :"F*** the steps, just get the quality." Mahler, too, emphasized that Tudor wanted dancers to look like real people, not dancers. He was interested in body language and genuine interaction among dancers on stage. Mahler laughingly admitted that when Tudor choreographed Echo of Trumpets, for example, he chose the worst male dancers as soldiers because he wanted them to be soldier-like not dancer-like. Mahler described some of Tudor's exercises in rehearsal, like sitting around in a circle, making eye contact and trying to communicate totally non-verbally. At one point, he instructed the male dancers in class to be young girls in love, and none of them could manage it. Craske piped up""That's the problem with you boys. You are afraid to make fools of yourselves." In Dark Elegies, a ballet about grief, Tudor encouraged the dancers to "get rid of themselves," to express grief with an inward, almost meditative quality and no histrionics. Sawyer was particularly eloquent describing Tudor's musicality. Tudor loved Mahler, and since he could read music and play the piano, he spent a long time with a piano/vocal score, learning every nuance before he began to actually work with dancers. She said that Tudor had been tremendously influenced by Massine's use of symphonic music as ballet music. Although the words of the songs he used in Elegies deal with the death of children, Tudor did not want the grief to be that specific. It was the universality that he wanted expressed. There were lighter moments discussing the relationship between Tudor and Jose Limon, who taught at Julliard at the same time. The panelists noted, for example, that each of them referred to Limon as "Jose" but to Tudor as "Tudor" or "Mr. Tudor!" Maxwell quoted Tudor as saying to Limon, "Jose [with the hard J!], you have taken everything we've told them not to do in ballet and turned it into a technique." The lecture concluded with a 1999 videotape of the Jose Limon Company performing Dark Elegies at the Joyce Theater. The tape quality was not particularly good, but the power of the performance still came through clearly. The next and final lecture in this series this year is Monday, April 7, at 7:30 in the Held Lecture Hall, Room 304, Barnard Hall, Barnard College, Broadway at 117th Street. It is free and no tickets are required. The subject is The Critic's Mind, with panelists Joan Acocella, Jack Anderson and Elizabeth Zimmer, dance critics for various NYC publications.

I have never seen La Sonnambula but, like glebb, I was so intrigued after reading Alexandra's discussion of Kronstam (and Kronstam's discussion of Kronstam!) in it. It doesn't appear to be on tape/DVD in any form, so I guess I have to try to find live performances somewhere. I have the music but without a performance memory to add to it, the music doesn't elicit much for me. (Go to Alexandra's book for a lovely little vignette of Kronstam's thanking his Sleepwalker - Anna Laerkesan, if I recall properly - after she has carried him into the wings at the end of the ballet. His manners were so elegant!)

I saw Fonteyn as Aurora in 1967 and while she was very good, I wouldn't say that, at least for me, it was one of her best roles. (Mind you, I had seen her six months earlier in Ondine, and that was so perfect that it was hard to top!). I saw Annette Page dance Aurora at the same time, though. She was not well known outside the UK because I don't recall that she toured much with the Royal, but she was both strong technically and an excellent, unforced actress. I remember in particular her balances in the Rose Adagio - breath-taking and each longer than the last - but also her air of mystery in the Vision Scene and her total radiance in the Weddng Scene. My recollection is that that was her last season - age-wise, she was on the cusp, being younger than Fonteyn but older than Jenner, Penney, Wells, Collier and a whole bunch of budding ballerinas. Deanna Bergsma was one of my favorite Lilac Fairies, mainly because so much of that choreography looks good on someone tall with nice phrasing.

I can also strongly recommend the Michael Tilson Thomas R&J recording - I forget the label - it is a live performance (with all the coughs apparently edited out), and the emotional level is breath-taking. On the other hand, I am a great fan of MTT conducting anything.

Ed - I agree completely about Prokofiev's R&J. That music has more emotional impact on me than almost anything else I listen to. And with ballet images running through my head, it is even more powerful. If I could only take five pieces of ballet music to a desert island, that would be one of them. You might want to look for an inexpensive CD by pianist Frederic Chiu which includes Prokofiev's piano versions of a portion of the R&J Suite, Cinderella and War and Peace. The R&J sections are just exquisite!

Mme. Hermine - you're right, Kali has eight (you do know your Beatles stuff!) but Ganesha has four, representing his four particular areas of expertise, including writing.

No body type requirements, but four arms must be tough when it comes to port de bras!

I went back on the Indian art site posted by Balletmomma and much to my suprise there is a painting of Ganesha, the elephant god, a story of his dancing, and a painting of him in a position that approximates sur le cou pied! Brahma says to him "Surely you are a son of Shiva! . . . You will be known by people as the Master of the Dance. All who perform this art in town and in city, in temple and in court, must first invoke your blessing." So I stand corrected!

I thought Kali was the god of red paint who wanted the sacrificial ring from Ringo in HELP! - but seriously, if you look at most dancing shiva statues, he is circled by flames because the fire that creates and purifies also destroys. (I actually know more about the elephant god, but no one ever suggested he was a dancer!)