Mel Johnson

I'm on your side, richard. The Blair was a one-off of the then-current RB version, and as such, was closer to the Petipa/Ivanov than even today's RB version. It compared admirably with Beaumont's letterpress descriptions of the choreographic content.

It had written in Cyrillic at the top under the title, "Lopukhovi".

I'm curious about the orthography. I wonder which case it's supposed to be.

Nom. Lopukhov

Acc. Lopukhova

Gen. Lopukhova

Dat. Lopukhovu

Instr. Lopukhovym

Prep. Lopukhove

I'm always curious when I try to read Cyrillic cursive. All I can say is that it looked like a cursive и to me. I don't know who wrote it, or exactly when except before 1934.

I studied with Schollar.

The variation she taught in pointe class was the familiar one identified with Markova. Years later, I was shown by Sir Anton Dolin loose sheets of score paper with what looked like the Stepanov Notation on it, and from what I could dope out from it, it was the same variation. It had written in Cyrillic at the top under the title, "Lopukhovi".

That's the one that starts with the pas marchés battus, and is the version that Markova danced. The choreography there may be Lopukhov's.

Same action, different traditions.

In the west, shoes would just be a convenient missile. Indeed "sabotage" is an old tradition in places where they wear wooden shoes - and they do smart some! I am not 100% sure on the tradition in place in Iraq, but it strikes me as remarkably similar to the tradition in Thailand, where the head, being closer to Heaven, is very nearly sacred, while the feet are unspeakably gross, almost obscene, because they are the farthest thing down. Worse than that are shoes, which go under the feet, and so are even filthier than the feet themselves. A good Thai obscene gesture is to show the soles of your shoes at someone. You can start a riot! Remember the crowds hammering on the fallen statue of Saddam with their shoes? Same idea.

A CNN reporter was asked about why the fellow threw shoes, and he dodged and weaved around the social implications, preferring to interpret it as "just because they were there", and the security frisk before was so intense. A banana cream pie with whipped cream would never have gotten in!

Here's a link to a search on posts and threads that touch on race. If you can find anything we've left out, feel free to add.

http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...939&hl=race

That's the Fedorova production. BR used to play all sorts of places that didn't have a sufficient fly space or machinery to do any sort of fancy effects, or even some basic ones. Sometimes, they would have everything deadhung, and on a three-bill, the stagehands were all up on ladders striking one set of curtains and hanging another. Incidentally, in that production, the party scene kept shrinking and shrinking until it was only five minutes long! The show really started with the snow scene, with the transformation music used for my objected-to pas de deux. I wish I knew how they cut it, and what they left in.

And long before the Wright version, in 1934, the Ivanov was staged by Nicholas Sergeyev from his Stepanov notations for the Vic-Wells Ballet.

...which Markova danced and tought it to Alonso...

Well, the pas de deux, anyway. The Fedorova had some different mime at the beginning of Act II, but that's not a big deal for the Sugar Plum Fairy. The waltz finale was somewhat different, too.

I believe that there's one more flip-flop in the Clara/Marie saga on its way to becoming a libretto. Alexandre Dumas pere wrote a translation of the Hoffman story, and that telling was what Petipa used to draw his libretto. Somewhere in there, the names change, too. Marianne is a name of an Act I partygoer who may be Clara/Marie's older sister. Sometimes, her business is acted by the maid, or productions interpolate a "favorite auntie" among the adults. Whoever she is, she's close to the principal little girl.

The 1892 Petersburg version of the story makes Drosselmeyer and the Nutcracker doppelgangers. Balanchine adds a "Drosselmeyer's nephew" and thus a dreimalsganger! But by adding him, and an additional pantomime set to the violin entr'acte from Sleeping Beauty, Balanchine added both more logic and more magic to an ambiguous storyline. It seems to have worked out all right.

And long before the Wright version, in 1934, the Ivanov was staged by Nicholas Sergeyev from his Stepanov notations for the Vic-Wells Ballet. This version was a springboard for other productions, including the London Festival Ballet's, and to a lesser extent, the National Ballet of Canada's. Bits of it showed up in the Les Grands Ballets Canadiens' production.

THE first of the Dance in America PBS series was by the Joffrey. It was taped in December 1975, and shown in 76. There may have been an earlier one on Balanchine, but it wasn't part of the DIA series, maybe Live from Lincoln Center, though.

Remember, Nutcracker premiered as a second bill on an evening which started with Iolanta! An attempt at some kind of balance, but must have made for a very long evening at the Maryinsky!

And Ballet Talk for Dancers doesn't have anyone with the user name Gunild yet, so that would make registration there easier.

That's why I won't get specific!

Indeed, there are roles where the somewhat vulgar is almost de riguer, like Act I Kitri. I must confess ignorance of the roles in Pharoah's Daughter, as it hasn't had a long time to circulate yet. My problem is that the students see somebody kick the back of her head in a bravura demi-caractere role, then try to interpolate it into Giselle. It doesn't work. My favorite discussion over characterization has been:

"Can you do a developpé à la seconde above 120°?"

"Sure!!!"

"Good for you. Now don't you dare. This is "Les Sylphides"."

Yes, for her to pursue a career on a European model is fine for her, but as a teacher I must reiterate my many misgivings about young dancers (particularly those not yet employed) basing a curriculum to the goal of competition! Since competitions in the US have become such a high-frequency occurence, I have noted more than a few, and I hope that they aren't the tip of some iceberg, "competition dancers" who are only suited to solo work. They do not fit into ensembles, they do not become team players in a company, and seem to go from one to another like Broadway Gypsies because they never have had to be a part of an "us". They are all highly proficient dancers, but they do not seem to establish a company "home" when their talents can mature in a group setting, enriching both them and it. Young professionals who are already in a company do receive on-the-job training in how to be a company member. The Continental model has not yet successfully adapted to the realities of the American market, or if it has, it has sought to address it at a very low level. Again, there are exceptions, and again, I'm not going to be specific.

I believe that there's an old saying that "if" is the biggest word in the English language.

Yes, modern technology can be applied to ballet shoes, but the market is comparatively small and select. Developments in this area will probably be very slow, and in the rollout, rather expensive at retail to the customer. As to donations, I wouldn't hold my breath while the financial markets are where they are.

As far as Miss Jensen, bully for her, say I, but for the vast majority of students, intensive solo competition is not a good route to achieving technical perfection, or as near to it as we may expect our students to come. The competition tradition as practiced in Europe and Asia is not the same in the US. Free speech is a wonderful thing, but under its aegis, all sorts of inferior competitions have sprung up, and lots and lots of kids and their parents drop exorbitant sums of money in order to compete for prizes of little value, often a potmetal trophy with yellow lacquer on it to make it look as if it were gilded. No, in America, the majority of competitions are vulgar craters for the mixing of all sorts of unwholesome mischief. And no, I will not be specific.

I don't know what happens in the UK with regard to competitions, but in the US, you can spend the entire school year, and sometimes well into the summer, going from this competition to that competition, all across the country. When you're dealing with Varna or Lausanne, that's one thing. When you're dealing with Bumpass, Virginia, (and yes, there is such a place) that's another. Competitors who enter Varna and Lausanne are usually already gainfully employed with a ballet company, or perhaps as apprentices, which count as employed, but not gainful. The benefits of the first-rank competitions are real and valuable, the other ranks, less so.

Let me tell you, as a teacher, what happens when students come back from a student solo competition: Some other competitor will have a stock trick that looks astonishing, got a lot of applause, and all the kids want to imitate it. What they've seen is usually in Bad Taste (yes, so bad it deserves capitalization), took up all of this other whiz kid's time to perfect, and is Academically Incorrect in any system of classical ballet in the world. When the kids from that competition get back to the home studio, they've been trying to reproduce this slam-bang razzmatazz for at least 48 hours before a teacher can get a moderating hand on them. Then starts about six months of rehabilitation as you try to train what they've seen somebody else get praised for out of them, and it doesn't always work. Ballet has a sort of entropy built into it; absolute rubbish drives out ordinary rubbish. There is a contagion at work, too. As soon as it's stamped out of one student, somebody else will have started trying to learn how to do it.

Most of this tricksterism and gymnastic excess results not only in defiled tastes, but very often in damage and injury to the student. I'm with Artur Rubinstein, who said "Competitions are for horses."

I think I might just hate to see what that would look like. Can you imagine trying to convince that entrenched corporate structure that the Swoosh is NOT a feature that would appeal to dancers?

Who knows for sure WHY SAB forms any sort of policy about anything? As a general sort of rule, I would imagine that they don't want their students frittering away valuable time preparing competition material. Varna would be a highly prestigious venue, but the woods are full of lesser lights in the competition field, and a student could potentially waste a great deal of time and effort (which would better be used for classes) on work which would not serve a useful purpose in their education. Rather than try to keep the aspirations lofty, and still cut out the Miss Euphrosyne Whipsnade Memorial Theatrical Dancing Grand Prix and Boiler Works, best to discourage them all. At least, I think that might be what's on their minds.

That's a little different, though, although not really much. Cleaning and security people are specialized sorts of servants of the building management. The tenants may move in and out, but the building staff have terms of employment which do not depend on any one tenant's presence. The staff are sort of like (but not exactly) real estate, like the serfs, as opposed to slaves, who may be bought and sold as personal estate. Butlers, footmen, etc., are the responsibility of the tenants, each to their own households. Doormen, porters, etc. are usually the responsibility of the building management.

It goes back before the schools.

I believe that it has to do with the changes in the hardening substances used in the boxes of the shoes. Until the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian shoemakers continued to use a very old horsehide glue formula. After, they began adding a casein-based vinyl, not unlike Elmer's Glue, into the mix. They last longer, and the boxes are more elastic than simple horse glue, but they do make a noisier box, especially considering the bell-like form!

Polyvinyl acetate additives to shoe glue started in the 60s in the west. Very few makers are still using a "true glue" mixture any more.

IMO, 'twas ever thus.

I have not noticed any appreciable difference in the sound of pointe shoes in the last few decades, and expect it as part of the ambience of a live performance.

This formation exists in Modern German, and some other languages. It's called "Historical Present". Maybe we're seeing some linguistic crossover.

Damon Runyon used to use that sometimes, but it's had a New Birth of Redundancy as businesses and governments, ever vigilant for the litigatable moment, have informed employees that if they give opinions, they must be couched in self-disclaimers which are capable of conveying that the matter is opinion, and not empirical fact. "Speaking now only for myself, and not the museum...."