Mel Johnson

The Ivans did their thing to the coda from the pas de deux. The pas de deux had no coda in the RB production until the 50s, and sometimes not then. The reason I heard was that the 1921 Diaghilev production hadn't done it because the Auroras and Desirés were all tired out from the souped-up adagio tinkered with by Nijinska.

That's quite a shock. Gage was the eldest of the original Ford Foundation Scholarship students at SAB, in the same class with Suzanne Farrell, William Glassman, and Hilda Morales.

May she have eternal rest,

May light eternal shine upon her.

IMO, that became a significant undercurrent of Balanchine's output after Farrell's departure. Even works already set were modified to make the Old Man more dignified, more sympathetic. "Harlequinade" changed the character of the father from a Dr. Bartolo cognate to Don Quixote! Balanchine urged Shaun O'Brien to make Drosselmeyer "like Robespierre". Brrrr.

"War and Discord", I've read, but never seen, was originally supposed to show the local militia being called out and drilling, then going into a sham battle. That makes more sense to me than a lot of interpretations I've seen.

I usually call the valse a variation as well, in comparison to the pantomime that comes immediately before and after it. I did my first Coppélius when I was 21, and made him the oldest dollmaker in captivity. In fact, my makeup suggested that I had been dead for maybe the last couple of weeks. I guess that there is a lot of byplay between him and Swanilda during the valse, but it's actually a lot less strenuous than the pantomime.

It's really a dicey deal trying to figure out the genealogy of the present Coppélia. The Danes have their version, which has soldiered on to the present, the Paris Opéra has its production, which has been tinkered with over the years, and even in Britain, they knew the ballet before the Sergeyev stagings. Adeline Genée did her version in 1906.

It's hard to know what influenced whom in the various stagings, but the second act is pretty much a frame for three variations for Swanilda, and a lot of mime surrounding. There's not a lot of variety you can get from that scenario.

I think that there is a pavane in the mix, somewhere, but there's a lot of other music, too. The Moor's solo, for example, is set to the same dance quoted by Benjamin Britten in his "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" (Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell). It's a rondeau in triple meter, and is from Purcell's Abdelazer, or the Moor's Revenge.

I did! I did!

A pavane is usually a line dance in duple meter, with the music in song form, with each period repeated (AA - BB - CC, etc.) and a coda. It's usually in andante tempo. With only four dancers, it's tough to make a line dance out of that, and the music has much variety, more than just a pavane. I think that Limon chose the name just to give a historical reference point as the action happening during the Renaissance.

All I can recall for our set was a sky cyc and black legs. It did have the virtue of simplicity. You never knew why Joffrey had picked a certain dance or ballet to perform. He might have had in mind a ground-preparing for obtaining "Missa Brevis" or even "A Choreographic Offering". Either one would have been good on us. Or maybe he just liked it for itself, and as Limon's best-known work, and as a vehicle for Holder and Gary Chryst. We had already done another work, "Rooms" by Anna Sokolow, to which Limon had the rights. You never knew what the backstory was on anything, and sometimes, Joffrey would even deliberately lie about it.

Joffrey used to do "Moor's Pavane" and I found it meditative of Othello, but that it spent more time meditating than actually enlightening the drama or the characters. There seemed to be a good bit of music-filling going on. Brilliant performers make it better. Ours were splendid, especially Christian Holder as Othello.

The children's divertissement in that form didn't even make it to the cutting room floor. The reason that the male variation in the grand pas de deux is so wheezy is that the music was originally intended for an Italian entree in the proposed entertainment, but Petipa changed his mind. The music is, when I think about it, more appropriate for a children's dance, and lacks the gravitas usually associated with male dancing.

Belinskaya was twelve years old at the time of the show's opening.

Sergei Legat was, if I remember correctly, seventeen. He was a sort of Jonas Brothers all wrapped up in one. A sort of Tiger Beat pinup favorite for the 1890s Petersburg bubblegum set.

In my classes, I can't avoid talking history, ballet and otherwise. I guess that it's kind of an occupational hazard for me to comment about history in nearly everything, but many of my teachers did use history to help illustrate vocabulary. They wouldn't exactly quiz us on it, but they might reinforce it from time to time, "Remember Karsavina!"

Concerning the content of the ballet's choreography, the action fairly represents what happens in the Ionesco play, but without words, it's difficult to insert the absurdist humor that lightens the latter. (What could the teacher do, pull an alarm clock out of his pantleg?) I don't take it as an anti-feminist portrayal. Ionesco wrote the play to examine and demonstrate what the Nazis had done. Not exactly matinee fare. The uniform for the pianist (the maid in the play) might be a little ham-handed in making the point. It's no great wonder that San Francisco wanted to revise at least the sets. That show weighed a ton, and some of the places that Joffrey toured, they couldn't offer it, because it would have damaged the fly system.

If I recall the Ballard costumes correctly, the bird headpiece had a very obvious beak, just as the duck had a very obvious bill.

Mel, were you with the Joffrey at the time of the Green Table filming for Dance in America (she was in traction at the time). Do you know who I'm talking about?

(I'm thinking if you do, you might know the lift in question)

I think I know who you mean. That was a drop from an overhead lift to a longe in 4th position in "Remembrances". Both dancers got hurt on that. The man went into a state of diminishing returns after that, and he also finally had to end his stage career. And I think catches count as lifts, it's just a closer description.

The ones out of the pirouettes can be tricky, and many students find them terrifying because the floor comes up on your nose SO FAST! But as a rule, the "fish" is one of the easier catch-lifts in the choreographic ammunition box. And I certainly agree about the hold from underneath.

That looks a great deal like the first Chagall costume for Firebird.

That's generally what happens, although I've never heard anybody cite a "rule" about it, apart from the aforementioned, "If you drop her, I'll KILL you!"

And then there's the unfortunate guy whose partner, for whatever reason, turns to a gallon bowlful of oiled spaghetti right there on the stage, and in his hands. Can you say "hernia"? I thought that you could!

Right, experienced dancers coming onto a new stage are a lot like professional surveyors coming onto a new lot. They can eyeball the place and come up with a pretty fair idea of what the spacing is for which part of the show. This skill is called "coup d'oeil".

It depends on what you're doing. If the work is very presentational, like Don Q, then a lot is projected out to the audience. More intimate works, like the White Swan, there's a lot more one-to-one eye contact. In fact, using the old pas de deux à trois form of the work makes this contact more possible and plausible.

Sander's post speaks to issues of casting. Companies maintain a first cast, a second cast, and if they're lucky enough to be big enough, a third cast for the evening-long ballets, and even the one-acts. These casts rehearse together, and union time doesn't often permit first-cast man to rehearse with third-cast woman. Usually, if one of the two leads pulls up lame, they'll change the cast, rather than play "musical dancers" with the castings. Sometimes, though, on tour usually, there are circumstances which demand extraordinary measures, and a lot of scrambling for second-cast danseur to dance with first-cast ballerina. Usually, they do get a hasty stage rehearsal, but often, it's go on with the show!

Sure, there's a mystical, almost metaphysical rapport which translates to the audience; you see it all the time in couples in real life. They don't do anything overtly to say, "We're together," you just know it.

"Simpatico", right, Cristian?

That's actually an old trick, drawn from military reviews where a regiment would draw itself up into two opposed battalions and they would charge one another with fixed bayonets. They would pass one another by the soldiers facing half-right as they ran and met, passing through the scant intervals created thereby.

There's a rule in stagecraft: If you are crossing from stage left to stage right, you pass in front of an oncoming person moving in the opposite direction, unless directed otherwise.