Mel Johnson

She had that from the start.

Remember how Midsummer Night's Dream begins? At about 11, Gelsey was the first little bug that breaks out of the opening tableau doing pas de bourrées courrus and finishes with a pas de chat jeté. That was when I first noticed her. The jeté was that good, and that high even when she was a kid.

It was actually John Cranko who did Brandenburgs 2 and 4 for the Royal Ballet in 1966. It didn't survive for long but the suggestion in John Percival's biography of Cranko is that it proved impossible to find substitutes for the first cast when they were unavailable.

Many thanks for that. I must have conflated it with MacMillan's "Song of the Earth", which came in that same year, I believe.

One movement from the sixth concerto figures in Jerome Robbins' "Brandenburg" for NYCB. I can recall that Sir Kenneth MacMillan did a "Concertos ##2 & 4" for Royal Ballet, but it didn't last long.

His makeup and costume are a more idealized (Ziegfeld, natch!) version of Wind from the sorts worn by Aubrey Hitchins in the same role for Pavlova.

"Marking with the hands" definitely falls under the general head of marking. And marking isn't limited to dance. The first time I worked in an opera, I was surprised to hear the singers refer to "marking" their lines. Jimmy Cagney was famous for his very-low-intensity marking in rehearsals, then when rolling, he would come out at full intensity, sometimes scaring his fellow actors.

George Washington, who loved to dance, sometimes marked in confined ballrooms (he was 6'2", weighed 209 lbs. and had very long arms) by walking the figures of the dance, then marking the more complicated footwork of the steps by tracing it with his hands, just as today's dancers do in rehearsal. When the dancing got rough, Big George marked with his hands!)

A favorite of mine was "Awakening", a Robert Weiss pas de deux for Kirkland and Baryshnikov, later danced with success by a number of Pennsylvania Ballet dancers. It made the male dancer look consistently good, but was very hard on the ballerina unless she could look like her torso was made of spring steel!

Is this The Bluebird from the movie of the same name?

MacDonald was always a detail man. It's what made me respect him early on. The writing that they found was in Augustine, stating that "Anything in creation put to its proper use is already consecrated. Therefore, ritual surrounding a consecration is an acknowledgement, but not an essential step in its use to sacred employment." One of the proper uses of water, even frozen, is as holy water in baptism or exorcism. Thus, any water will do if you are pressed for time, as in the delivery room baptism of an at-risk preemie.

Rose LaTulippe has been done, rather a while ago, early 60s, for (I think) Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. I believe that the choreographer was Brian MacDonald.

PS. Doublechecked - It was for Royal Winnipeg. If I recall correctly, they got into a theological bind over whether snow could be used as holy water. They had to go all the way back to St. Augustine of Hippo, but they found out that it could.

Now that I see that credit (plunk them mystic chords of memory, Froggy!), I guess that the Doukoudovsky-led Swan that was filmed might well have been the de Basil Ballets Russes. The Odette was Nina Stroganova (Mrs. D.) They also did an in-house filming of "Graduation Ball". Even though there was a war on, somebody thought it was important to use film for this preservation purpose. One thing I do remember about the film I saw was that at the end of the "Dances of the Swans" just before the coda, the corps took one of the clunkiest-looking tableaux I can ever recall. Somebody had to work really hard to make something look that bad!

Is this a frame from the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo film of Act II Swan Lake that featured Vladimir Doukoudovsky and (I can't remember the ballerina)? If so, that was made something like ca. 1950.

If I were running the music desk, or even the features desk, I'd want a writer with not much of a familiarity with opera to see more accessible shows. Three out of four of them are not beginner material.

When Balanchine revived this work for NYCB, Todd Bolender was the Joker, and Janet Reed, the Queen of Hearts. Sharaff reworked the costumes, particularly in regard to proportion. Bolender was dressed much more like a traditional jester; Dollar must have been dangerous to be next to if he had to do any fast turns.

Haven't seen the pic before, but it sure looks like the costume for the Queen of Hearts in Balanchine's "Card Game", 1937, for the American Ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House.

Noplace that I know. Ballet Theatre used to do it, and from there, it was staged by Ferdinand Nault for the old Robert Joffrey Ballet, but after that, I can't think of anybody who does it that way.

It's not currently done, but certainly recoverable. It wasn't great Balanchine, but pleasant, attractive and well-made. Sort of in the same lot with "Pas de Deux and Divertissements", Classical Revival (as opposed to Neo-Classicism) as entertainment.

Whoever this is looks like he's hanging off the back of the prompter's box. Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote about playing a backstage organ in operas in the early 1860s, and one day the "metronome-telegraph" (a stick waved by a wire running to a pedal, powered by the conductor's foot) broke. Sullivan sent a stagehand to the pit to tell the conductor what had happened, and that he was playing blind. It came off all right because the conductor had had exactly the same thing happen to him once. He just followed Sullivan's organ cues. A bit o/t, but another example of "remote conducting".

Men's hats went out of style during the Kennedy administration. The phenomenon is often laid at his doorstep, even though he wore a silk top hat to his inauguration. JFK was the first president since Hoover to have had a full head of hair.

if i had a puzzler of a Giselle-related photo i'd post it.

as i've noted, this item is a oddity, but, whatever it is (or isn't) in terms of notable ballet theater, it remains somewhat remarkable to think that in 1938, Hollywood would send out a ballet-related item like this as a potential entertainment story to 'your city' - i don't imagine that such a 'promotion' would be sent out nowadays concerning ballet, and one of its choreographers, from Hollywood.

I think that it's part of Warner Brothers' mantra of the 1930s, "Motion Pictures are your best entertainment!" What was seen as good was accessibility. Somebody YOU know could be "in the movies". Movies were almost universally available to the public, if even in improvised venues. Movies represent "community interests", although a foot race was more a local Los Angeles enthusiasm which was waning by 1939, but still there, it having been started by the 1932 Olympics.

Could the Balanchine connection be Saratoga Springs itself, before there was a SPAC?

Ah, she may be blind, but she ain't dead! Remember, Alonso is a Force of Nature, and I really don't believe that she has to see very much at all to head the Cuban School. I do think that her ways have the potential to outlast her mortal life, but we can't be sure until we see what happens.

Not necessarily communist, but "defect" has come to apply there. I think it applies to anybody escaping a totalitarian system with a practical "no-exit" policy.

And then there was Kaleria Fedicheva, who married American Martin Freedman and for two years, despite her People's Artist of the Soviet Union title, was not cast in anything. In 1975, she was allowed to emigrate to join her husband.

I wish that my postwar memories were as organized as his, but then again, my war was Vietnam, which was a mess anyway.

The "main gauche" was used for the "off" hand, whichever it was. Lefty fencers would use it in the right hand. Being a left-handed swordsman has its advantages and its drawbacks when fighting a right-hander. The main gauche is a fairly formidable dagger with a significant cup-guard for a knucklebow. Usually, it's matched to your primary sidearm, like matching jewelry. I've only seen a couple of examples out of about a hundred that have been dedicated to right- or left-hand use. Usually they were hilted to be used in either hand.