Laurent

You remember it correctly, even thought it was found only decades later that the author was Lopukhov. Lopukhov in his memoirs contributed to the confusion regarding exactly when he did it. There are indications that Egprova was dancing the variation already in 1913, perhaps earlier. This is the famous Lilac fairy variation as we know it today. A few years earlier, Pavlova and Karsavina danced a different, shorter variation, apparently to the music from the Prologue's coda.

The accounts you quoted are later, from after 1900, when Marie Petipa was quite advanced in age. The contradiction is only apparent if one realizes that Pavlova and Karsavina, when they were doing Lilac fairy, were dancing a different variation from the variation preserved at Harvard. I found three difficulties in what Doug wrote above ("in Corsaire, they were "second" cast to Legnani and Gerdt in 1899"). First, it is clearly stated in the contemporary press reports that when in January 1899 Marius Petipa brought up reprise of Le Corsaire for the bénéfice of Legnani, he did it by altering previous choreographic text and making it significantly more challenging. If "Marie Petipa" was indeed "second cast", she most definitely would have to dance a different text from Legnani. Second, the very phrase "second cast" raised my eyebrows. In Paris throughout the 19th century most definitely no such notion as the second, third, and so on, casts, existed. This came much later. In what sense "Marie Petipa" could be “second cast”, with Legnani being the first, in not clear to me. Most importantly, however, in the official documents like the Annual Reports of the Imperial Theatres for the 1898/1899 and 1899/1900 seasons, Marie Petipa is said to have performed the following roles: 1898/1899: La Fille du pharaon (Fisherman's wife, 13 times) ; Mlada (Princess Voïslava, 1) ; La Halte de cavalerie (Maria, 3 times) ; Sleeping Beauty (Lilac fairy, 3 times) 1899/1900: Les Saisons (Bacchante, once) ; La Fille du pharaon (Fisherman's wife, 4 times) ; Les Épreuves de Damis (Isabelle, 2 times) ; La Halte de cavalerie (Maria, 3 times) ; Sleeping Beauty (Lilac fairy, 4 times) plus lots of small appearances, both in ballets and operas. Médora is not mentioned once. At the same time, for Pierina Legnani the role of Médora is reported 9 times for the 1899/1900 season and 4 times for the 1899/1900 season. During those two seasons, Le Corsaire was performed precisely 9 and, respectively, 4 times. Nobody besides Legnani could dance the principal part.

There is no need to invoke any contrived explanations, even less so, "to rehabilitate Marie Petipa as a major Mariinsky performer" in view of what the serious "students" of the history of Imperial Ballet in Petersburg have already known, and for a long time. The following quote from an article by ballet critic N.Fedorov, published in the issue N° 40 for the year 1900 of the journal Theatre and Art, speaks to us with the immediacy of facts, not imputed "assumptions": (1re means "première"; it was customary to distinguish between dancers with the same last names, by ordinals, thus "Pavlova 2me" stood for "Anna Pavlova", etc.) One need not, however, to be familiar with the sources, in order to form a clear idea about Marie Petipa, the dancer. The testimony to the limitations of Marie Petipa as a classical dancer is first of all attested by the very text of her Lilac fairy prepared for her by her own father, who was aiming at demonstrating the best the dancer could do, as was the established custom then. And this was when Marie Petipa was 33, i.e., at the height of her powers.

Is she ?! More biased and partisan newspaper ballet critic is hard to come by. Not that anybody in Paris cares about Madame Kousnetsova, but her calumnies about l'Opéra and some of its best dancers, including Myriam Ould-Braham that you seem to adore, written as a retaliation for Paris "rejecting Ratmansky's «Les Illusions perdues »", reverberated here for a while. I was at the spectacle that Kousnetsova trashed, so I know the actual meaning of her "always saying it as it is". For not initiated: Mme Kousnetsova is a number one champion of Ratmansky. Her infatuation with everything contemporary paired with her disdain for classics may have given Madame Tchernomourova (the person responsible for the repertoire policy at Bolchoï) the wrong idea about what is right. I am afraid, also Mme Tchernomourova may consider Kousnetsova a "national treasure". I can only imagine what would have happened to Bolchoï if Kousnetsova, a failed classical dancer like Brigitte Lefèvre, was named the director of the company: something comparable to what Mme Lefèvre achieved at l'Opéra.

A quick summary of views of our Russian colleagues who studied the history of "Sleeping Beauty". Some know the subject rather well (you'll have an ample opportunity to discuss this and other questions with all of them in a day or two). A quick summary of views of our Russian colleagues who studied the history of "Sleeping Beauty". Some know the subject rather well (you'll have an ample opportunity to discuss this and other questions with all of them in a day or two). A quick summary of views of our Russian colleagues who studied the history of "Sleeping Beauty". Some know the subject rather well (you'll have an ample opportunity to discuss this and other questions with all of them in a day or two). A quick summary of views of our Russian colleagues who studied the history of "Sleeping Beauty". Some know the subject rather well (you'll have an ample opportunity to discuss this and other questions with all of them in a day or two). A quick summary of views of our Russian colleagues who studied the history of "Sleeping Beauty". Some know the subject rather well (you'll have an ample opportunity to discuss this and other questions with all of them in a day or two).

In the 1890 première. This is what we owe to the Harvard Collection. For many years even this wasn't certain because, if I am correct, the Lilac Fairy variation wasn't mentioned in reports by Saint-Petersbourg ballet critics. This is all the more telling as, compared, for example, to the Parisian press, those reports of Petersbourg critics often sound as pedantic accounts of what the dancer did. There is much evidence that the Lilac Fairy variation in the Prologue was dropped some time after the première; exactly when? this is what somebody with a complete command of Saint-Petersbourg press of the last decade of the 19th century can say authoritatively. Marius Petipa's daughter was born in 1857, soon she was also likely too old to dance pointe variations. To those who are fascinated by the question of the choreographic text of the original Lilac fairy: remember that the text would be different, probably very different, if Marius Petipa were to make it on a dancer other than his "home-trained" daughter.

Raymonda takes its inspiration from a French « roman de chevalerie ». The female protagonists of such chivalric romances had noble feelings and thoughts, were pure of heart, and delicate of demeanor. I invite you to taste what kind of persons they were by spending an evening with a sample work of that genre. If you are unable to follow the medieval French or the language of Provence, locate a quality English translation. There are some, my recommendation goes with those published in the 19th century in England. It's worth it. It will provide you with a greater appreciation of the ballet next time you see it.

I can imagine that ballet classics can be poorly done (a vivid recent example, grossly inadequate in nearly every way "Sleeping Beaty" by San Francisco Ballet), but "boring", "old fashioned" ?!? Are you speaking for the typical Munich audience? What is considered to be a "crowd pleaser" in Munich today?

Not exactly. It takes place in Silesia (souwestern Poland), where, by the way, the Western Slavic word "wil/wila" has originated, as Heinrich Heine mentions in his "beau livre de l'Allemagne", and it survived in literary language up to this day. This is what Théophile Gautier, the author of the libretto of Giselle, says in his long article published a week after Giselle's première representation that took place on Carlotta Grisi's 22nd birthday. "Loys" is the name by which Albrecht makes himself known to Giselle (I wonder how many of you know this, by the way). In any case, in that part of Europe "blonde" and "blue/green-eyed" is something to be expected of a young girl. Giselle is most certainly not associated with the southern, Mediterranean, look.

Giselle was made specifically for a certain Carlotta Grisi, who became an icon of Romantic ballet and up to this day remains an unsurpassed Giselle. She was blonde and had blue eyes. There are many witnesses in French sources, I select one in English, (The New Monthly Magazine (London), 1847, p.338) This is perfectly in line with the fact that the tale about the "wilis" is Western Slavic in origin. Heinrich Heine who inspired Théophile Gautier, the author of the libretto, both were great poets, places it somewhere in Silesia. The word "wilis" is the German plural or Western slavic "wil", "wila", which means a ghostly creature, often with connotations of madness, into which maiden girls turned after their untimely deaths.

Unfortunately, in the ballet world this is a norm rather than an exception. The majority of productions are a single season affairs. sometimes they run for another season, in order to offset the costs. Big ballet personalities have big egos, and to be completely honest, when they become company directors, their own interests are often of much greater importance to them than the well being of the company they lead, of the dancers they should care about, or of the interests of Ballet, whose servants they supposedly are. If Ratmansky hasn't stirred the community of balletomanes by his facebook post, nobody would have noticed.

It was Yuri Burlaka who did. Their collaboration on "Le Corsaire" at Bolshoi 10 years ago was summed up this way by a person who observed the whole process from a close distance: This is a slightly corrected google translation (when the meaning was incomprehensible or distorted) of an excerpt from the article by T. Kusnetsova: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1052648 Overall, the article, is very complimentary towards Ratmansky in the opening part, and it closes with interesting insider information on some of the problems "of authority" that Burlaka was facing vis-à-vis the dancers of the company. This was then. During the ten years that have passed, Alexei Ratmansky gradually himself got more and more interested and serious about the whole business and methodology of reconstruction, as is attested by his recent work.

The verbiage "the sets are destroyed and the production does not exist anymore" sounds strange, especially "the production does not exist anymore". Most modern productions are one-time affairs. A reprise 4-5 years later (the première at Munich took place in 2014) would be essentially a new production, with a completely new set of dancers and, possibly, a new set of decorations, higher in quality and corresponding closer to what we know about the original decorations. While watching the reconstructions, one needs to be aware that several are by necessity financially constrained, with costumes sometimes borrowed from other productions and decorations simplified or nonexistent, and what the audience sees is not what the ballet master really intended. The same applies to the human resources. Few companies today can afford reconstructions with exactly the same number of dancers in ensemble scenes as the original productions.

You "incorrectly think" that you "incorrectly think about Burlaka as the main Stepanov expert of that production". Yuri Burlaka was by all means bearing responsibility for the reconstruction part , Alexei Ratmansky for producing new choreography. The difference between the two is easily recognizable even without knowing which one is reconstructed, which one is new. The more Ratmansky works with reconstructions, the longer he studies the canons of classical dance, the better is his grasp and feel for reconstituting the missing parts. I also hope this serves to improve his own choreographic skills which, despite all the praise heaped on him by benevolent newspaper critics, will benefit from such improvement.

I am baffled by the information that the sets "have been destroyed. Not being, however, in possession of reliable information, I am reluctant to make hasty conclusions. The internal recordings of the Fullington/Ratmansky Paquita were made, they survive, and in Munich they make them of very high quality.

Gala are not meant to be artistically rewarding. Even great artists rarely produce in a gala something that is a true measure of their art. I attend gala essentially only when it is my duty, like it will be in two weeks, with Benois de la danse.

I don't think Vaziev has much say in terms of the repertoire decisions. His hands are tied in several departments, even some of the casting decisions are not his. He is fully aware, and I don't think he is happy, that the company dances so little classic, while the company has more than enough capable dancers, who should be dancing classics, who want to dance classics, and who are denied or have very little opportunity to do that. Just look at what has been going on through this season, for example. So, what is happening at Bolshoi right now, in terms of the repertoire, is, unfortunately, and against intentions articulated by Vaziev, yet another example of wasting talent, and there are very few left now anywhere in the world, capable of doing demanding classics well. The main, if not sole reason why so many of those gala "stars" prefer performing uninspiring modern pieces is precisely this: it is so much easier, while in demanding classics some of the "stars" risk embarrassing themselves, and who is to blame them, if this is not what they are rehearsing throughout the season. Concerning Pagliero, she may not be French, but she is by far the best artist at the moment, a true ballet artist, and not just in Paris.

This was indeed Nikiya danced from the depths of her soul (the previous three Nikiyas, "in this bloc," were Zakharova, Krysanova and Smirnova), I shed a tear already in a surprisingly moving opening scene with the Brahmin, I don't recall this ever happening before. In the Kingdom of Shades Stepanova was more mellow, more otherworldly, than usual. Her Solor, Lobukhin, displayed profound expression, and produced excellent partnering (in his hands, Stepanova was weightlessly flying suspended through the air in the Kingdom of Shades). A rare gem from a certain, aptly named, "lapetitratdelopera", caught my attention https://www.instagram.com/p/BLoQFpEDI7M/

While talking about "hype", Olga Smirnova may have been the most heavily promoted and hyped dancer in living memory. It took her an enormous effort to live up to that hype as she is most definitely not a naturally born dancer. From the very beginning her other qualities were far outweighing her ability to harmoniously move her limbs. The last move by Serguei Filine before his departure was to raise her to the rank of prima ballerina, but even after his departure Smirnova retains an impressively strong support base at the Bolshoi, something that an outsider like Vaziev must absolutely reckon with. In comparison, Natalya Osipova and Ivan Vasilyev owe their global popularity and stellar status solely to their spectacular vitality and awe inspiring circus tricks they have been treating the audiences around the globe in the past. "The era of Vishneva/Lopatkina/Zakharova" existed, I think, only for Russian expatriates writing on various ballet fora. I am not sure how much either one of them will be remembered, say, in 30 years.

I am afraid, it doesn't. If it did, some ballerinas accused by one particularly obsessed guardian of technical purity of not doing them enough, could have been accused of doing too many of them.

I don't think this video is an illustration of your thesis, I don't see a correlation between the constant speed of the fouettés and the pattern of the orchestral tempi. If anything, this is an illustration of a muscular, inelegant execution of this element. There is much more to the proper execution of the fouettés besides executing 32 of them without much travel.

How many are interested? A more basic question is: "How many are competent enough? - My answer is: none. Concerning the issue of "relevance", especially in the context of "relevance" allowed to have only one, particular meaning, I can't shed a feeling that some authors producing similarly "relevant" works, do this out of calculated or instinctive opportunism.

I voted for Claude Bessy, even though this is not at all realistic (due to her age and her frail health), Jean-Guillaume Bart in the 2nd place, Manuel Legris in the 3rd. I am so sorry the last 25 years have been wasted, when the people like Bessy, or Lacotte, could have been great directors providing the sense of vision and artistic leadership. Instead, we have experienced over 20 years of vigorously burying ballet in Paris by two ladies who share one thing in common, their lack of love for ballet, Brigitte Lefèvre, the final gravestone placed on its grave by Aurélie Dupont.

No need to look for causes where there are none. The problems with Dupont leading the company have nothing to do with whoever she chose to be her partner in her retirement performance. The ones who know the company well also know that partnering aging Dupont was not something the leading male soloists were particularly vying for, François Alu's current problems are due to the fact that he committed a gaffe to say it loud. The problem number one is not even Dupont's management skills but her lack of great passion for ballet. This is what she has been mentioning herself, and not once, this is the essence of what Claude Bessy meant when she was responding to Dupont's complaining to the press about her "sufferings" at the School, this is what Parisian ballet lovers where seeing on stage for two decades: great physique, great schooling, and no true love for ballet. Lissner's blunder is that he doesn't understand (or care) that a successful leader of the ballet troupe must be somebody who loves ballet, and loves passionately. All the rest is secondary in importance.

I saw Kochetkova dozens of times. She is BY FAR best in classics. In demanding classics she was without peers at SFB in recent years, Chung being the second best, but lacking Kochetkova's refinement and attention to detail. Yuan yuan Tan is 41 and her days of dancing demanding classics are over. She may be dancing neo/quasi/pseudoclassics for many years to come, though, if she wishes, Lorena Feijóo danced at SFB for many years past her 40th birthday. The SFB repertoire allows that.