Mel Johnson

I think Sir Fred was still somewhat in the George V period, when old codgers got a bit of a respectful break from buying dinner. He was hardly in the Rockefeller class, and seems to have been delighted when the Queen Mum came to visit and told him, "Oh, don't get up on my account, now, let's have our martinis together." Kavanagh seems to be a bit of a foodie!

I agree that music has a firmer basis of notation, however there is a wide range of discussion on type of instruments to be used, ornamentation, phrasing and pitch. It just seems to me, even with classical ballet, that there is less interest in striving for historical "authenticity". Or is this a misguided view?

Most followers of the Royal Danes would be incensed at attempts to "update" his ballets choreographically. Some ballet masters are equally adamant about Giselle,

too. There have been dancers fined for wil(i)fully doing six o'clock penchés and knee earrings at the start of the Act II pas de deux.

I don't think that's really necessary. Readers should keep in mind that Julie Kavanagh always seems to have a dig in for her biography subjects. I was rather put off by her mentioning that in all the time she was interviewing him, Sir Frederick Ashton never picked up the tab at dinner, or cooked for her himself. I found that rather small of her. Fercryinoutloud, he was 80 when she started their conversations. At that age, you are either going dutch or expect others to pick up your dinner, just out of respect for the venerable.

There's a big difference in "early music" and "pre-classic dance". In the former, the notation is relatively like the modern version of it, but in dance, the notations are highly subjective, and not very comprehensive, often just showing where the feet go, and the rest of the body has to look out for itself, deriving explanations by general rules laid out in text, or the all-too-rare pictorial cut.

There is already great latitude within the choreography which already exists for differences of phrasing, nuance, and characterization. Rule #1 of production runs something like: "Do we have the resources to do this show? If not, do another show." Now if you haven't got somebody who can do an Odette, let alone Odile, do another ballet.

I'd say that Raymonda is pretty civilized, being French nobility and all....

Where it's Indian, and when it happens in Coppélia it's Scottish, and when it happens in Raymonda it's Hungarian, and when it happens in "Paquita" it's Spanish, etc., etc., etc.

Remember, there is nothing subtle about "Jewels" in terms of national identity.

Emeralds is French

Rubies is American

Diamonds is Russian

However, also recall that the music to "Diamonds" is Tchaikovsky's Symphony #3 - Polish.

Yes, it is derived from various kinds of folk dances, not all necessarily Slavic.

Sounds like Lavery's forgotten all the other vocabularies. I don't know of a single method where the head is straight front in a croisé. Furthermore, the placement is common to other schools as well. Sounds like somebody reinventing the wheel.

Once a male dancer gets his arms fully extended and locked, then it's all downhill from there. What's tough is going slowly from on the floor to just off the floor and sloooowly up to the top of the lift, then just as slowly down. Same goes for lifts where the man can rest his upper arms against his torso. Lifts there are just curls, but it's very fatiguing to do if your arms are supposed to be away from your body. Kirkland and Baryshnikov had a battle about this. She wanted him to keep farther away from her, and this way puts a lot of strain on the shoulder muscles. Catches hardly count at all. They're really pretty much timing.

And there are ways a dancer can make herself practically unliftable. I should know, I've danced with several of them. Later I found out about this little old lady who had a vaudeville act where she dared any of the strong men in the audience to pick her up and move her in any way. She never budged from the spot. She had discovered just how to adjust her center of gravity so that she wouldn't go anywhere!

I wonder if "Yedda" were an attempted transliteration of "Yedo", the ancient name for Tokyo.

That's kinda fun. "Nori" in Japanese means "seaweed". It can also mean "glue".

Sakura does indeed mean cherry blossom in Japanese, but the family name Sakurada is well-known, too. Jisuke Sakurada (1) was the author of over a hundred kabuki plays and as many gagaku (court dance dramas) His grandson was a rough contemporary of Mérante, and was still performing his grandfather's work. Sakurada's work is still performed and analyzed today.

But I also wonder if this is the root, or if it's a Hindi name like Saccountala (in the French spelling).

Still, I'm reminded of Allan Sherman's recording, My Son, the Folk Singer, and his rendering, yes that's the right word, of "Alouette":

"Al and Yedda

Always sit togedda

At da TV

Ev'ry single night...."

There's a black-and-white photograph of Shirayev (and his hoop) out there somewhere. Looks like the sepia migrated a little on the Warrack drawing. The ears are furthermore rather restrained in the finished costume.

It's really all in the organizational chart and where the head of the ballet company fits into it. The titles are really arbitrary. This is not the Maryinsky, the Paris Opera, the Royal Danish Ballet or other long-established institutions, although decades isn't unrespectable in the history of a ballet company in the US! For all it matters, the title could be Chief Barbecue Chef and Company Duck Escort. That might be a very interesting company to work for!

(I'm not looking this up, but I'm guessing Petipa's title was Ballet Master)

Yes, Leigh, that's right. Petipa's position at the Maryinsky was maitre de ballet en premiere. Ivanov was maitre de ballet en seconde.

Sorry, rg, my understanding of the "benefit" performance is pretty much as yours is. We can even find it today, in the form of a "Nutcracker for UNICEF" or some other worthy cause. Special prices, special attraction, maybe dinner in the lobby or wherever, so much on the ticket tax-deductible (that's at least a relatively new wrinkle), and a stated amount of the proceeds to the beneficiary.

When Danilova retired, she had a real knock-down, drag-out fight with Serge Denham, who wouldn't give her a retirement benefit performance.

Oftentimes, when Diaghilev was pressed as to what his exact duties with his company entailed, he just brushed it off by saying, "Oh, I just work the lights." And he apparently was good at it. One biographer wrote of how the sky cyclorama had a very noticeable buckle in it, and a few adjustments to certain dimmers by D., and the buckle had disappeared. Lighting control in that part of the century was by a large contraption called a "piano board", because it was the size and shape of a very large upright piano, with lots of levers to very large rheostats.

And I believe that the music to the Cendrillon ballet was by Baron Schell.

My definition only holds true within a company. What happens with stagers outside the company is the rights-holder's own business. In the Royal Danish Ballet, they even have a distinct title for "putters-up", for the people tasked with staging a ballet that's been out of the active repertoire for awhile.

Let's clarify some terms here, before we go farther.

A repetiteur is a rehearsal supervisor. His/her authority is to clarify counts, demand unison, when it's called for, establish what arms are correct, how high the arabesques, etc. are, and small matters like this. They work under the supervision of the ballet masters, who have much broader authority to effect changes in the place of the choreographer.

The regisseur is the production stage manager, and responsible for how the entire mise en scene appears once the curtain is up. There is no authority higher when that curtain is gone. Even the Artistic Director can't come storming backstage and demand an immediate change. Good ADs wouldn't do that anyway.

Company teachers, be they for cadres, like corps, soloists and principals are actually part of a company's affiliated school, at a rather rarified level. Individual coaches and teachers are at a curious level near the very top of both an educational and an artistic institution. These coaches and teachers "report" only to the Artistic Director.

Part and parcel of this case is that it touches on conduct in a place in which a primary attraction is the drinking of alcoholic beverages. When Prohibition was repealed, the 22nd Amendment was very careful to establish states' rights in the area of alcohol control, and in many states, nude or demi-nude performances in barrooms is illegal not by the artistic content of the dancing, but simply because it takes place in a place where alcoholic beverages are consumed. In many states, "local option" holds sway, and there may be entirely "dry" counties right next to ones where alcohol is freely available. In Orange County, New York, where I live, for instance, the strongest thing you can get at a "strip club" is a V-8. I wish that the Court's opinion had visited that provision of modern alcohol control, as its opening paragraphs seemed to suggest, but the subject is still not one that the Supreme Court would care to get into, even as late as 1991. Dissent seemed to edge toward it, then backed hurriedly away, as commenting upon nude dancing in Lincoln Center - there's a bar in the Concourse level, after all. In New York State, most of the enforcement in strip clubs comes from the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, and local police.

Just so long as it isn't being used as an exact synonym for port de bras and/or epaulement, I can live with it.

It would be necessary to know when this bit was made, because right after she did the Sullivan show, which was in '66, she was released from her contract at Radio City Music Hall because of a "fractured leg". I won't go into the rumor mill of the day as to what caused it, but I was of the opinion that it was a stress fracture, and she didn't work for about a year or so after Radio City.

Me, I still prefer the C-4.