Mel Johnson

The Act III fairies always seem to give choreographers the whibbies, so all sorts of things have happened to them. The Sapphire (5/4) variation proved so musically daunting that it didn't get used, Gold went to the Vision Scene and I don't know what happened to the entree music in that production. Diamond sort of segues into the coda, so I think it got used, but the pas de quatre fairies did a sort of curtain-raiser in the entree to the grand pas de deux to the principal couple.

Fairy of the Cellphone, Fairy of the Water Cooler, Fairy of Office Politics....

Here's an oldie from our original Ballet Alert! site about the original production, and its creative intents:

http://www.balletalert.com/ballets/Petipa/...ty/sleeping.htm

As we're dealing with a connection between a name in a program and choreographic material, I suppose that the names are only important in how well they depict their attributes. I think "Eloquence" for Canari is kind of funny.

Ballet choreographers have been doing parodies of ballet for a very long time. Cf. "Gala Performance" for one example. Eugene Loring used to class certain of his works "fusion" and not actual ballet. Even Bournonville took on ballet conventions mixed with other forms as parody. "War Dance of the Red Indians" from Far from Denmark, anyone?

And another genre Bourne works in is cabaret dance. Nothing wrong there, either. Roland Petit produced many fine cabaret works, but his primary vocabulary was classical ballet or its natural extensions.

But you have to look at who the "pros" are and be careful not to lump a Macaulay in with someone like Clive Barnes. There are people who get paid to write and then there are the "pros". Macaulay is the former, and Barnes is the latter.

...

Just look at him the next time you see him in a theatre. Body language and flushed red face tell it all.

That could be a description of Barnes' predecessor at the Times, Allen Hughes, who was a music critic who would clearly rather have been reviewing the Philharmonic (any Philharmonic) than any ballet.

But invective, whether coming from a critic, or a critic's critic, is a very weak form of discussion, and not a competent, relevant or material argument.

Just to give a little history on my recollection, the one I saw was in an exhibit of theater designs, and the costume itself was from a private collection. I suppose that a lot of color subtlety could have bleached out just from age, and the sometimes fugitive nature of dye colors. Also, I was seeing it in bright white light with UV filters, so the color fidelity was almost certainly muted. Someday, museum people have to learn to play with lighting colors to suggest the actual light plot in which costumes and setpieces were intended to be seen!

In addition to the Raymonda series, there's also a Delibes one:

Sylvia pas de deux

Pas de Deux and Divertissement

La Source.

Petipa would understand the structure of much of what Balanchine did, but the latter worked in a more musically demanding way, which would allow him to take symphonies and multi-movement works on successfully. Petipa was most often able to get music made to order.

Did you see The Turning Point? She was playing herself. She was just like that. And she would "hold court", particularly with male students, and share just those stories with all of us.

"I remember when I was little girl, Petipa, he say to me..."

"Shoura, Petipa died when you were six years old!"

"Did he? Well, maybe was Lopukhov...."

Hocker was one of Jo Mielziner's assistants and did a couple of Broadway shows. He was NBC's "house designer" for series and independent broadcasts like this one.

I seem to remember the Berman Wilis as having a silvery-grey Romantic tutu with an overskirt of darker grey that got nearly black on the wearer's lower left-hand side, thus accommodating the old description of a Wili always having one hem of her dress damp.

In the late 60s, I believe, Royal Ballet started doing the courtyard/lakeside transition directly from a segue in the music, simply cutting from the swan theme in the former to the latter, with no pause at all and doing an onstage transformation, all with flies and lights. Made for a long sit, but bearable.

In that respect, the thematically-freestanding Introduction, the score shows the influence of Wagner's "future music", which often employs that device in his operas.

the Russians felt a "happy" ending better suited the music at the end, which ended in a C major signature.

Well, it's major mode, but it's in B. That's part of the longer symphonic development of the score. The Introduction before Act I is B minor. Beast of a key!

Very shortly after the premiere of MSND, Adams left performing to take over the School of American Ballet. Now that you mention it, I do recall seeing photos of Ludlow and Verdy in the original cast, he wearing a costume meant to suggest a well-muscled cuirass, but which must have been the very devil to partner in! I never saw the ballet at City Center. In fact, I have my program (a large red affair) marked "Inaugural Performances/April 1964" from my first viewing of Midsummer right in front of me as I write.

Verdy? Act III divertissement? Now, I do recall seeing Hayden doing the String Symphony divertissement, but not Verdy. It was set on Kent, if I remember correctly. And the whole ballet only has two acts. Hey, I even remember Hayden doing Titania!

the retouching and use of opaque paint to silhouette and highlight the photo indicate the 'design' addition of what would seem to be the arm of a male dancer, possibly Sugar Plum's cavalier.

Yes, that's the "ribbon-candy" tutu from the first production. But if that's a partner's arm, then that's one TALL partner!

The 1895 version also adheres to the "unity of the three Bs" rule: bottom, bladder, and boredom. Overtax any one of these three, and your show has problems. A REALLY strong show can overcome these factors, but those are pretty few and far between.

"Pillar of Fire" - Hagar goes with the Young Man from the House Opposite and discovers too late that he is an insurance salesman, and they spend the rest of the ballet negotiating policies. He offers Hagar $100 if she can get her sisters and mom to buy policies, too!

I really believe that Lifar's reputation in America was poisoned by his remaining in Paris during the Nazi occupation. The French themselves managed a kind of ambivalence (Free French paratroopers called their jump suits "sergelifars") about him, but Americans, in our Manichean way, saw him as a full-blown collaborator, so he didn't get a lot of play here.

I think a lot of it depends on "where do we go from here." If a rapid change of direction is immediately following a grand temps d'elevation, there will have to be a shortening of the jump to make it quiet, and to allow the movement against momentum to take place. I hate to see dancers cutting their jumps all the time, though, and remember with pleasure the idea of every step having a beginning, a middle and an end. Too often, I see dancers shortchanging that last.

And why not? Pavlova toured with her company with the Nutcracker Snow pas de deux (arranged on the transformation music) and snow waltz. I'm convinced that the only reason it's not heard on its own more is that it's in the same show as two of the other most ebullient waltzes (flowers and finale) that Tchaikovsky ever wrote!

You never need to excuse yourself here for allowing the rest of us to opinionate on a topic you start!

After reading Wiley, it became clear to me that Balanchine had reordered the pas de deux in response to old criticisms that the ballerina did not have enough to do until the very end. Musically, I've never missed the male variation there, as it is a rather wheezy piece of music actually left over from a proposed divertissement in the first scene that didn't make it to production.

As to Culkin, yes, I agree that he doesn't hurt the show badly, but it's funny to see him with his contemporaries who stayed with ballet after he dropped it. He was an SAB student, and you can see the self-consciousness all over his performance. It wasn't exactly fish-out-of-water, but more like frog-underwater-too-long. I found myself feeling sorry for him, a bit.

I have to agree with the two preceding posts. I love the Ashton, too, although my exposure to it is only via screen, whether large or small. But it doesn't go into the Ravel description of "dancing on the edge of a volcano". I get the feeling that at worst, somewhere back in the kitchen, the soup has gone off. Balanchine's version, with its Valses Nobles et Sentimentales lead-up, reaches into tragedy, and the world-into-chaos that the score seems so vividly to illustrate. That having been said, they are both masterworks, with very different points of view and purposes.

Makvala, PM stands for Personal Message. The board software allows full Members to contact one another with messages which are not visible to anyone else on the board.