Mel Johnson

Easy one. Actually, much, if not most of what we see in the Paquita grand pas is not in the ballet Paquita. In 1896, Petipa assembled a whole lot of favorite variations for his audience's favorite ballerinas and showed them as a sort of "Your Hit Parade". Almost ANYthing can show up in a Paquita grand pas production.

Third class saves money! My great-grandfather doesn't show on their database because he was processed at Battery Park. He already had a nice nest-egg built up as a cabinetmaker and could afford second class.

OK, that would make sense. Third class on a Cunarder (the ships whose names ended in "ia" - Mauretania, Carpathia, Lusitania) was a lot nicer than even first class on some other lines like Leyland (ships ending in "an" - Virginian, Californian, Canadian). Kosloff would have had a nice voyage.

When he arrived at Ellis Island his name was recorded Alexis Kosloff and not in the Russian style which surprised me at first but then I

remembered he had been in London and toured the UK where the translation had taken place.

I'm not entirely confident that he would have been processed through Ellis Island, as that was the Reception Center for third-class passengers, "steerage". Second-class travellers went through immigration examination at the somewhat ritzier Castle William, today Castle Clinton. First-class immigrants, the rarest breed, were processed in the most formal rooms of the Old Customs House.

Given the variable skill in the Immigration Service of dealing with Slavic and German names, it's a lucky thing that he didn't end up "Smith" and his brother "Jones". That happened a lot, sometimes voluntarily, (August Schoenberg got off the boat and became August Belmont) but most often not ("What's your family name? What was it before?").

Oh, silvy! We could really use your advice on this thread! (Jayne, silvy's in Montevideo, and has a good understanding of what's going on in South America) I'll message her, and see if she can't help us.

Ray's point should be well taken by all; there's nothing "irregular" about the Tchaikovsky pieces cited above, and the general audience would have dealt with it rather even-handedly. Even Stephen Foster, in one of his "Social Orchestra" editions subsequent to the original collection of 1854 included a 5/4 waltz. Petipa, in his choreographic script for Sleeping Beauty seems to ask for a 5/4 variation in the "Jewels and Precious Metals" pas de quatre. The dancers seem to have been severely challenged by it.

Think back to the original run of Bernstein's Candide: Audiences felt uncomfortable with the composer's unusual (for then) shifting-meter melodies - "Oh Happy Pair" is two bars of 2/4, followed by one in 3/4 before breaking into a coda of all 3/4. Today at Pops concerts it's a frequent practice for the conductor to come on, give the downbeat, walk away from the podium, and just let the orchestra play the overture as a kind of big parlor trick.

A thought about "Le Papillon" - Offenbach's music, in its time, was considered rather eccentric. Interpolating a 5/4 march might not have seemed like such a shock to audiences faced with Offenbach's already "crazy" score.

Oh, certainly, 5/4 is no stranger to concert music, and even the very traditionalist Holst used it in his "Planets" suite, but very little has reached "coin of the realm" familiarity with the mass audience as has "Take Five". I believe I saw/heard Twyla Tharp use it in her "street dance" period on or near Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. On the other hand, it could simply have been ambient sound present at the site that day. A lot of Twyla's work depends not on a "beat" but rather to a "pulse" sometimes generated by the music, and sometime generated within the dance itself.

You know, I've never seen a picture of Bulgakov in mufti. I wonder if he carried his head rather forward, thus creating the "gargoyle" look, with the demon-type costume as backstory referring to Rotbart, and perhaps other grotesques. Legat's caricatures are very perceptive in all sorts of ways!

Sapphire in Act III. It's made even more complicated by the figures in the melody line being written mostly in triplets, against a syncopated ground.

Caricatures often capture the essence of a person's character beyond simply their occupations. I don't know much about relations between Bulgakov and Legat, but I wonder if the latter found the former to be a rather creepy guy, hence the "gargoyle" look.

The nineteenth-century dancer was rather more familiar with 5/4 time than we are; all we've got, practically, is Dave Brubeck's "Take Five", but they had a lot of 5/4 "waltzes", which genre had been popular since about 1848, "the year of revolutions", when it was developed as a sort of dance of nonconformity. Another Tchaikovsky work featuring the time signature is the "waltz" movement of his Symphony #6.

There are several classifications of properties. The most frequently found is the hand prop, although some may require two or more hands. Another kind is a set prop, as a certain kind of chair. There are makeup props like prostheses, and there are costume props, like swords and the like. Jurisdiction for all these is hashed out by the stage manager and/or the production supervisor long before anything gets to the stage. Animals may require a sui generis management issue.

Don't forget the donkey in "Pagliacci". The Met always seemed to use the dancers as wranglers for that show. He kind of makes the grade as a prop, albeit self-propelled.

You're not going to find any fight from me on this topic. I hate it too!

I rather enjoyed the critic who opined that the champions of the other contenders, whether Oxford, Bacon, Jonson, Marlowe, Raleigh, Beaumont and Fletcher, Beaumont without Fletcher, Fletcher without Beaumont, or even Elizabeth I herself, had done such a thorough job of destroying everyone else's arguments that the only author left on the field of Shakespeare authorship was, in fact, Shakespeare himself.

For heaven's sake, I've seen this happening IN MY LIFETIME. And she's borne out by the history of the whole ballet, too. Adele Dumilatre was just as big a deal in Paris as Grisi was, and the role was considered, and in some circles still is, a heavyweight requiring a totally dominating dancer.

Nope, the frulato marking is on the entrée of Clara/Marie and the Nutcracker Prince in the shell-boat on the river of attar-of-roses, the second number in Act II.

Then there is the EXTREMELY SOPHISTICATED use of props...which aren't there, as in "Parade". And if the choreographer has been paying close attention to the meanings of the words, the shepherdesses in Nutcracker shouldn't be playing panpipes. "Mirliton" means "kazoo". Ever wonder about the oddly buzzing bass line in the second period of the dance?

And of course, the "toilet paper" in the Shades scene of Bayadere....

But Ashton seems to be the propmeister of record. The ribbon in Fille, as well as other hand props in that show, and all the self-propelled vehicles in "Enigma Variations". Didn't he do at least one ballet including a working automobile?

"Biches" is still around, it's recoverable. "Jeux", however, is her brother's choreography. I believe that Millicent Hodson was trying to recover it some years ago, but there were only three dancers, and one was Nijinsky himself, so that may be lost. Did Bronia do her own version of "Jeux" ever? I recall looking at the arcs drawn in Nijinsky's diary, and noticed their similarities to the floor patterns in "Sacre". I wonder if this were a crypto-notation for some of Vatsa's choreographic ideas?

You're right - it's a masterpiece, which Ashton caught in his choreography. They found Elgar's daughter and had her see the ballet, and she said, "They were all JUST LIKE THAT! However did you find out?" Ashton answered gently, "It's all in the music, you see...."

My own favorite wannasee is Nijinska's "Le Train Bleu".

In the 18th century, when men's legs were exposed and women's weren't, a style came out which demanded a "well-turned leg", so much so that New York haberdashers advertised "pithen calves", made of the same stuff that the pith helmets are made of. Sort of falsies for the lower leg. Alexander Hamilton admired his own shapely stems so much he had a tendency to wear scarlet stockings, or ones made of black silk and metallic gold thread interwoven, so that he twinkled when he danced, or even just walked.

This discussion serves to confirm what I suspected for years, that Rebekah Harkness was emulating Chase, but almost in reverse. She started as producer/general director and ended up dancing leading roles with her company, but by that time, they were touring Greece and Turkey, far from the prying eyes of New York critics. Chase had started on leading roles with Mordkin, then took on character roles, ending with occasional Very Special Occasions, when she would strut her stuff while administering the company. She was a shrewd judge of how to use her perhaps unique skills set to do the best for her business.

Merle Park.

There's even a protocol among musicians for what to do if the CONDUCTOR keels over dead on the podium. The concertmaster takes over.