Mel Johnson

I still think that Baryshnikov got the best retribution at least in the Art of the Bon Mot:

"Kiss and tell is one thing, f*** and publish, that's another!"

Going back into the 1920s, Lydia Ivanova received the BIG denunciation - they found her body floating in the Gulf of Finland with a bullet hole in the head. It's unclear whether it was a politically-motivated murder (she was about to leave Russia on a tour of Germany) or the result of a romantic triangle.

Whatever plans her colleagues (Balanchine, Danilova, Geva, et al.) at Evenings of the Young Ballet had had before, her murder argued strongly in favor of defection. They did.

Makarova bailed on them in London, I think, and Baryshnikov in Canada. I remember thinking at the time, "Oh cripes, now they'll never come back!" I do agree that this situation worked out well from the Bolshoi's point of view.

Of course, we also know of the unfortunate situation with Konstantin Sergeyev and his wife Natalia Dudinskaya after Rudolf Nureyev suddenly defected to the West in 1961--both were heavily criticized and also the Kirov troupe was not allowed to tour in the West until 1986, some 25 years later!

I don't know about that. I've got programs here from their 1964 season at the Old Met.

While I've never seen Dennis' version of it, it sounds like another example of variations being a lot like used cars - it really does help to know who had it before you.

Well, it's major mode, but it's in B. Beast of a key!

And the last note is a big open, unharmonized whole note with a fermata. It DOES sound like it should be a triumphant scene, but you are correct in that the Soviets presupposed the nonexistence of God, so no Resurrection would do for that sort of ending.

Wasn't that La Sylphide the one where Mary Fitzgerald's father, the concertmaster, had to take over as conductor because the regular one keeled over on the podium with a heart attack? (You'd think I'd remember that better, but it was the performance just before I arrived in Miami. People were still talking!)

I do know that Eglevsky coached Villella and McBride in "Spectre de la Rose", but can't say about Giselle.

The 1941 reference is to the Konstantin Sergeyev revision of the ballet, and as far as I can tell, Shirayev did set some character work in some of the Petipa ballets, much as Pavel Gerdt set his own variations. There is nothing in the "cembalom" variation that says anything but Petipa to me.

Balanchine often resists pigeonholing in a particular artistic movement, but even trying to do so provides a context for his work that can lead to understanding for some in his audience. If not for you, that's fine, too.

Choreographically, I would have to separate the Balanchine ballet from the Balanchine dancer. Technically, they're all right, and some are very high-functioning, but NYCB has really been a hotbed for affectation and personal idiosyncracy for decades, more so than other companies. The choreography is clean. The dancers often are not.

The works for which Balanchine is most famous, "Agon", "The Four Temperaments", "Concerto Barocco", and the rest of the "leotard ballets" are really Neo-Classicism, which both subsumes and transcends national identity. Had Balanchine's year in Denmark turned into a longer commitment, his Neo-Classicism might have ended up looking very different, but then, as with all propositional history (what if...) he would have been dealing with many other forces of his environment (What would a Balanchine in Europe during World War II have done?) which did not act on him in America. As to the "national styles" within Balanchine's oeuvre, there are oddments as "Donizetti Variations" (Bournonvillesque), rescensions of older works like Nutcracker, his Act II Swan Lake, and "Harlequinade", which were his takes on the Petipa/Ivanov mode, and experimental strangenesses like "Electronics" and "PAMTGG" which, to me, beat Gene Roddenberry to "Space...the final frontier" by years and light years, respectively.

When Miami repeated their Giselle a few years later, this time with Ted Kivitt as the Albrecht, he caught the flowers in the air, too. I wonder if it were a Verdy touch that she preferred. I asked Anton Dolin about it, and he said that Spessivtzeva had him do that sometimes, but not all the time.

The term "cabinet" was used to distinguish the photograph as being capable of being displayed freestanding, and not needing the support of the small thermoplastic frames or large heavy albums that contained the carte-de-visite size art. As the names suggest, the cdv was often used as a calling-card, and the cabinet was often displayed in a curio case.

Nadar is a funny photographer. He got his start as a caricaturist, and from there went into photography. Sometimes, his caricaturist credential pops into his photos. Here Gautier looks like the "studied Bohemian" he cultivated. Nadar did a self-portrait apparently suspended in a gondola basket of a balloon, complete with top hat and umbrella.

But I think that Giulia is probably a good identification for the card. Desderi invented the cdv technology in 1854, and Giulia died in 1869, placing her right in the golden age of the carte-de-visite photo. We often use the technology to identify 19th-century photographs with the cdv being eclipsed by the larger "cabinet card" about 1874.

Both the San Francisco Opera and Ballet were founded under the same shield in 1932-33. The Ballet School was supposed to train dancers from the very start to provide divertissements in the operas, but from its first season, it gave freestanding ballet performances. Its first director was Adolph Bolm, who attracted some of the best American talent to dance, along with fellow Russian expats, like Romanoff.

Is that Dmitri Romanoff? I was looking for the telltale resemblance in Reiman to Imogene Coca, which was so obvious in the 60s, when I first met her. Romanoff would be about contemporary as a dancer with her. I guess what had me buffaloed was the closeness of the dancers to the back wall, to minimize shadows. His toes must be squished against the baseboard, thus creating a less-than-topnotch picture while kneeling. Likewise, their hands seem rather spidery, with the flyaway thumbs that neither of them had while I was a student.

The Grisis were a real showbiz family. There was cousin Giulia, too, an historically significant soprano. Carlotta could apparently sing, too. I've run into at least one account of her doing a blackout between the acts of a ballet where she sang "Regnava nel Silenzio" from Lucia. The reviewer said that it didn't go over well, but chivalrously blamed the song.

Right, I wonder if these people aren't better known for other than dancing and that these costumes aren't cobbled together from separate shows.

There is also topical satire, as in Ashton's entree "Noche Espagnole" in "Façade" which has not survived because the object of its humor, a "shameless" solo by Anton Dolin to Ravel's "Bolero", has not survived.

We obviously have vastly differing definitions of parody, but I will agree that Bourne is a modern dance choreographer, and that a significant part of his output is the parody of classical ballet.

I can't think of any Sun King appearances in ballets of the post-Romantic era either, although it would be a good idea. The closest I can come is an opportunity not taken in Esmeralda for a cameo by Louis XIII.

Character dance is a really mixed bag, and can have more than one or two subtexts under the primary material of the choreography. When it's not presenting an idealized national dance, character often is used to produce parody or satire. One of the things that I've always had a feeling was going on in the national dances in Far from Denmark is "Look at these silly people at a party trying to be nationalities they're not." It's as much a commentary on the whole idea of theater as anything else. To go back even farther in Danish repertoire, Galeotti's The Whims of Cupid and the Ballet Master provides politically-incorrect vaudeville stock characters to humorous effect.

I think that Diaghilev misread his audience, and feared that "Lilac" was too Russian, or at least French, a reference. The good English Rowan may have been a nice choice, and not as bad a choice as his choice for "Sleeping Princess" over "Sleeping Beauty" as an overall title. There, he actually went over into misogyny, or at least unchivalry.

The King isn't Florestan XIV for nothing!

And don't forget that the original idea was to have two devils who appeared out of a snuffbox, intended for the minor mode music after the present-day Harlequin/Columbine waltz. Cooler heads prevailed; no terbacky for little kids' parties!