Mel Johnson

The Fistoulari is indeed very good. It's the version I learned the score from. There's a bit of heaviness in the orchestration, especially in Giselle's Act I variation, but on the whole, it's great.

You're going to have fun with the Zuraitis. Outside of the interpolations, it uses the oldest version of the score I've ever heard recorded, with the Fugue of the Wilis, an additional man-trapping by the same, and the extended, probably original, ending, which will make much more dramatic good sense when you hear it.

However, I note that miliosr's post contains an important and responsible conditional: IF. We don't know who got the ax, but it could just as easily could be corps dancers who have not advanced as the directorate might wish as it could be those most lately hired, or a mix of the two categories. Seniority counts for relatively little in a ballet company, and sometimes can work against a dancer.

AGMA boilerplate establishes a base salary for all levels of artists in a company like NYCB. There are some roles which are compensated for hazard (like Mother Ginger on her stilts, Puck by flying) and some few which are negotiated at contract meetings with individual dancers. These are called "premiums" in ballet contracts. They are in addition to, not in lieu of, regular salary.

Cranko did a pretty good SEASONS for Stuttgart, if I remember aright.

There is another meaning, too, for "repetiteur" which has little to do with people.

It is the sheet music used in rehearsal for the ballet, whether in piano arrangement, or the first violin part.

Karinska's costumes are yellow.

But beige has more to it than costume/decor. It's just a blandness that makes the viewing of a ballet untroubling, but at the same time, unmemorable. I can remember a ballet by John Taras, "La Guirlande de Campra" that was a beige ballet, except it was all dressed up to go somewhere; it apparently did and didn't come back.

No.

"Go work in Europe" seems an oddly reactionary bit of advice coming from any Joffrey company.

Now a Roman soldier's belt was a cinculum, and I know I've seen the vertical strips that hung from it called "labels" or "flèches", when they're pointed, and plate armor where the thigh protectors that hung below the torso armor were called "tassets", but nothing that directly says "feather" to me.

Kilts are not exclusively Scottish.

There are a great many cultures around the world where a skirt/kilt is part of male attire, and some are pleated and some not. Indeed the Scottish "Great Plaid" simply started as a very long piece of wool gathered by a belt. The pleats came later, as did most of the family tartans. Some of the early portraits of clan chieftains show them wearing three or more different patterns!

But the proposed remedy has at least the advantage of uniqueness. Who can picture a public official given a public-interest entourage of "pushers" (after the fashion of old-time sweatshops), all going "Hurry up! Hurry up!" "Ah, ah, ah, naughty, naughty!" or "Is this trip to the bathroom really necessary? I'm timing you!"?

Such a kilt, skirt, lower hem might be heraldrically described as "embattled to base".

The evolution of the Apollo costume seems to follow a slow reaction from the one worn by André Eglevsky, which included a gold lamé chiton thingy, and a gilt laurel wreath on his head. I can't even recall if he wore tights, or just trunks and bare legs.

That sounds like "Nosey". He considered Napoleon a vulgarian.

But when you stop to think about it, would such a program have to be all-American? The US Marine Band ("The President's Own") does not restrict its playlist only to American composers. Isolationism is so over with! Yes, start with American dancers, but Ashton's Monotones II would go nicely in the East Room. The US is part of the world, and an international repertoire would certainly be appropriate. It's a cliché that "dance is the international language."

Incidentally, NYCB DID perform "Stars and Stripes" at the Inauguration of 1965 at one of the inaugural balls. New Vice-President Hubert Humphrey said, "Wonderful! And I don't usually cotton to that kind of dancing!"

There were "precautionary drawers" (camelons d'exigence) which were worn by the women to keep people from looking up their skirts. They were rather like knee-length bloomers.

No, I was dancing in Rhode Island in 1969, but occasionally taking class at the school then, and also attending university fulltime. Remember, it was the time of THE DRAFT!

Rodeo might make a good choice. Another cowboy ballet, "Billy the Kid" was done by ABT at the White House in 1962.

Eric, you need to take a look at this. I wrote it over 10 years ago.

http://www.balletalert.com/ballets/19th%20...y/Nuts/Nuts.htm

Look at a bee-skep, then look at the Crown Imperial of Russia. See?

It was the product of one of the "Lady Intellectuals" of the Ludovican court. I can't off the top of my head recall if it were Mme. d'Aulnoy or not, but it would be typical of her output.

OK, let's go back, back, all the way...well, not all the way, but way back anyway.

Male dress evolved, for a number of reasons that need not concern us here, into a form where the torso was covered by a tunic and the legs were covered by leggings. This development has a lot to do with the nature of work, and the rise of the middle, horse-owning, class. By medieval times, the hauberk-and-chausse set was practically required for anybody who was anybody. During the Crusades, there were quite a number of people who outfitted themselves with equitation tack, whether they were going to the war or not! The leggings proved difficult of fit around the pelvic girdle, and it was easier to make them legs-only, the ends of which were drawn up and over a belt at the waist. The genitals could then be covered with trunks, or "slops", and later, the codpiece, about which much humor exists.

Gradually, the leggings grew less functional and more decorative, as did the trunks, which became breeches. The form of the breeches-and-stockings set varied, the former being rather blousy in the seventeenth century, but more fitted in the eighteenth. The stockings could be rather ornate, too. Of all people, George Washington orders a pair of plaid hose, probably for hunting. His Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, was rather vain about the fine form of his calves and would frequently wear red silk stockings to make sure that people looked at them!

I think we've about come down to the point where you can make out the breeches-and-hose familiar from the Bournonville ballets. Hosiery seems to have dominated over entire tights, as the latter are extremely hard to fit properly, requiring a gusset in the perineal area. Also, tights were generally expensive as they had to be made of either silk or very fine worsted wool, both of which fabrics are difficult to maintain. So, the economical solution was to use some sort of variant on the breeches-and-hose. It isn't until the advent of the mechanized knitting machine that tights become more feasible to use as costume. Where this trend really takes off in ballet comes, as does so much, with the designs of Bakst and Benois for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. In "Les Sylphides", the Poet figure wears a black long gilet, but no trunks, just the tails of his waistcoat covering the hips. The Rose in "Spectre de la Rose" wears an entire "shape suit" (unitard) of silk. One surviving example from the Ballets Russes days I've seen shows many many repairs of runs in the delicate fabric.

Audience taste has to be accounted for here, as the Victorians were actually known to sew pantaloons for their piano's "limbs" and were averse to putting the books of male and female authors next to one another on the bookshelf, unless the author and authoress were married. Your great-grandmother might have cautioned your grandmother, "Dear, that dress is too revealing, you can discern your FORM!" So, the pubic area had to be de-emphasized at all costs. In the west, the nineteen-twenties took care of most of this squeamishness, but while the rest of the world roared in the twenties, Russia was recovering from Revolution and Civil War. When they settled back down, a sort of puritanical reactionism exerted itself, and ideas of decency remained stuck pretty much where they were in 1915!

Lest we task the Russians for too much backward-looking thinking, fast forward to the 1960s, when the 3rd Infantry, "The Old Guard", the US Army's ceremonial organization, was first outfitted in their now-signature eighteenth-century uniforms, a senior General, showing the new spectacle off to his wife was told by her, "I think it's obscene! Their FORMS are showing!" Their waistcoats were lengthened to obviate the Lady's objection!

Gradually, gradually, the whole-tights look prevailed over the trunks, which became rather quaint, in their own way. The expansion of mass production and the development of synthetic fabrics make tights the only way to go today.

That had to cut a lot of corners, and if I've missed anything, ask me about it.

For Balanchine, Robbins, Tudor, and a number of others, yes. But Petipa is somewhat past caring.

I've only heard the "Bluebird pas de deux" as orchestrated by Stravinsky, as a matter of fact, I danced to it, but I think it was done at a different time from the Diaghilev production. It uses a chamber orchestra, with piano. Even though it preserves all the Tchaikovsky harmonies, notes and rhythms, there are some Stravinskian combinations of instruments which are witty and piquant.

The "Danse Arabe" was incorporated into the last act of the Diaghilev production as "Scheherazade and the Shah", and the Chinese Dance was also included as "The Porcelain Princesses". One of my teachers was Thomas Armour, who studied with Nijinska, and he said that the pas de deux was cut that way by her.

Apparently, very little changes in audiences over the years. Robert Benchley complained of similar behavior in his Vanity Fair and New Yorker articles, and those were in the teens and '20s. In Chinese archæology, a mummy from about 200 BCE showed up of a wealthy woman who had apparently been immobilized by a spinal injury, and spent her final years simply enjoying "the good life", being entertained during all her waking hours. They were able to get a little better idea of what her activity was like from the remains of her last food which were found in her stomach. There were melon seeds. She had been scarfing sweet goodies while she watched the show.