Mel Johnson

Probably in the same locale as any other show that has seen continual revivals for a century, like HMS Pinafore or The Pirates of Penzance. In that latter, Linda Ronstadt cut in the Scena "The hours creep on apace" from the former. George Irving insisted on interpolating the patter trio "Now my eyes are fully open" from Ruddigore. Somebody I know wanted to do a production of the show as violated that way, and asked me if I knew what "that fast song" was and where they could get a copy of the score. I knew, and I knew who had a score, and I said I didn't know...

And let's not forget that the closest thing we can come to an "original intent" Bayadere is the 1901 revival that got notated. One of the reasons that it was revived then was to restore bits and pieces that had got trashed since the 1877 premiere. There was a reason that people were so impressed with Tchaikovsky's insistance on a unitary score for his ballets. Other ballets had been almost a matter of having the music in a loose-leaf binder and adding and dropping numbers with all the gleeful abandon of a diner at a zakuski table. We may NEVER know what the original work looked or sounded like with any degree of certainty.

Problem is that Prokovsky isn't the only Anna Karenina out there. There's a much more famous one with music by Rodion Schedrin, choreography by his wife, Maya Plisetskaya. Prokovsky used an arrangement of Tchaikovsky pieces by Guy Woolfenden.

Easy, it's the "Danse Russe" from - Act III of the 1877 Swan Lake. It was originally a dance for the Odile character.

It's set at one million kronor, about US$170,000 these days.

Think what you could make out of Moby-Dick, especially the "Catalogue of the Whales" divertissement! Only trouble, nobody would want to dance it. Oop, too late, somebody's done it!

The problem with many libretti in ballet is that the story needs to be "common coin" of the culture to which it is presented. Unless you have a choreographer of unusual talent for drama, most stories won't support a treatment as ballet.

Forster is good, but too many mothers-in-law. I recall watching a production of Ramayana in Thailand. The local audience knew what was supposed to be going on. I didn't. It was a very uneasy ten hours. And leaving to go to the bathroom was considered an insult to the King.

That's been done, actually. A couple of times. Plisetskaya choreographed one(1971).

We've tried to do this a couple of times in board history, and every time it comes up, no matter what the libretto, somebody's already done it.

Whatever the role in the foyer de danse photo, you have to admire the pragmatic qualities of the costume. The dark side panels emphasize verticality, and will be less likely to show a partner's handprints, especially if he's one of those who likes to partner with rosin on his hands!

Happens all the time. Ashton's Cinderella was set on Fonteyn, but she was unable to do the opening because of injury. It made Moira Shearer's career!

That's another thing about the great classics. If you have a ballet about magic, don't try to explain the trick. You will either be unable to do it and leave the audience puzzled, or worse, like a spoilsport, even if you can explain why. Don't try to make everything sensible. Almost all great drama is based on the protagonists' inability to act in their own best interest.

{I}f a ballet comes from before Freud was a common reference, no Freud when you stage it!

Mel, would you apply this rule to productions of theater classics (the ancient Greeks, Shakespeare, etc.) and operas (Medee or Don Giovanni, for example), as well?

If you change a text, you risk violating the artistic integrity of a work. For drama, I wouldn't want to see the production of Oedipus Rex that cut in a few riffs from Eugene O'Neill, say. I wouldn't care for an opera that took a break from the composer's music to interpolate something from outside. If it's for satire, maybe then, OK, as in a production of Barber of Seville I once saw that had Rosina's music lesson begin with "Fascinatin' Rhythm" until Bartolo "objected". Then back to more traditional airs. Because the blocking and choreographic content of a ballet are the text, I don't care for changes which fiddle around with that. Whether it's to give a male dancer "more to do" or a ballerina to do whatever, when you change text, you run into danger. I get to grouse here again about the most revolutionary thing a ballet company could do today is to mount an Old, Unimproved four-act Swan Lake. Audiences today don't get some of the choreographic horseplay that goes on in many productions today because they've never seen the "plain-vanilla" version.

Musically, that section is marked "apotheosis". In some productions, which I don't believe are still around, Conrad and Medora are seen united in the garden from the "jardin animé" sequence, except set up now in the upstage and somewhat higher than the main stage level, making use of the stage convention, "In the middle, somewhat elevated".

Remember that this is a ballet about a woman under enchantment. In the classical rules for enchantment, normal natural law and rules are defied. (see Fraser, The Golden Bough) And further, if a ballet comes from before Freud was a common reference, no Freud when you stage it!

The ballet that asks the perennial question, "Can the Prince next door find true happiness with part-time poultry?"

The Reisinger version does not come down to us in any meaningful way today, and neither does an intermediary version before Petipa by Joseph Hansen. It was presented at Prague. Hansen also staged an Act II for the Bolshoi in 1888.

Maybe it was the way she talked! All her life she retained the "Toity-toid and Toid" of her Brooklyn roots. Wun tuff chick!

He never gives me the impression that he's about to make a fortune in North Sea oil futures. And then there's luck. If it were raining soup, he'd have a fork!

Remember that she's incompletely transformed into a woman in Act II. She still has swanny characteristics. And also remember that contracting to do the same indivisible thing for two different parties is a real contract-breaker, even in real life.

Try this:

http://www.balletalert.com/ballets/Petipa/...e/storytell.htm

I only saw her perform on film. I think she may have been one of those whose art did not completely record. Either that or she was kind of buried by Hugh Laing's made-for-silent-movies histrionics. It's not unusual for an actor or actress to be nothing like his or her roles. Consider Leslie Neilsen. For years, he was cast as a Hitchcockian antagonist. It wasn't until Airplane that Hollywood began using him as the banana he is in real life.

Nora Kaye, actually.

I'm faced with having to interpret this sort of belief system all the time, as I work in a museum which deals with George Washington. People try to explain him in a couple of sentences when it comes to matters spiritual, and they might be right, or they might be wrong. Washington, like Balanchine and Kirstein, did not write or speak of his own spiritual and religious beliefs at any length at all. Indeed, among Washington's surviving papers, the word "Christ" is not once mentioned, except with reference to Charles Christ, one of his neighbors, and that only once. Watch what they do, and find the occasional references you can salvage, and then try to extrapolate a description of the beliefs involved. Chances are that they won't easily match any modern denominational notion.

Among the horsy, a "hand" (handsbreadth) is standardized at 4 inches. I'm giving an approximate measurement here, as I'm 5'7".

Oh, she certainly did! We have to remember that Gregory was quite tall en pointe, but it didn't matter as much, because she could do a lot of the pas de deux herself, without much need for a partner. She was sort of the Anti-Markova!

Nonetheless, a terrific metaphor, and deserving of appreciation, no matter the source.

Fernando was about 5'10". I never measured him, but he was a good hand taller than I.