Mel Johnson

Here's a hint. I don't think ANYbody actually knows what it means. I see it used a lot as a synonym for port de bras. I don't think that's actually it. That and "amplitude" as an exact synonym for "ampleness" can drive me birds!

And SpanCox, since you're in Sweden, you stand a better chance of running into a production of the sweet, cute, happy "Whims of Cupid and the Ballet Master", which from 1786, is the oldest ballet still known to today's audiences and companies. The Royal Danish Ballet has had it since then and somebody still must remember it. Funny, the tragedies like Giselle and Swan Lake have proven staying power, but the oldest ballet of all is a comedy!

Perhaps it would be interesting, from an academic point of view, to see a restoration of the original Stalin-era Gayane, with Gayane's counter-revolutionary husband Giko, and Captain of glorious Red Army as hero. I've always wanted to find out if the final curtain actually came as the entire company danced for joy around a tractor.

Having once dipped a toe in the western waters here, didn't the Soviet Culture Ministry authorize an appearance in London by Ulanova and a partner (V. Tikhomirov?) in 1956? I seem to remember reading some old reviews of the "loved her, hated him" variety, and wondering at the curiously old-fashioned æsthetic of the work(s) performed.

By that measure shouldn't we perhaps quibble over Fille mal gardee too? For a ballet that was premiered 14 days before the fall of the Bastille it is uncommonly cheery and light-hearted. Where did all those happy peasants come from? Where is the famine, the ravages of numerous past wars, the social upheaval?

Fille was premiered in Bordeaux, not Paris.

And how about Coppelia - premiered just days before the declaration of the 1870 war, one with hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, and its young ballerina dead at 17 from cholera contracted during the siege of Paris.

The key word here is "before". Before the Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III and his whole establishment were convinced that they could win any war with anybody, anytime in maybe a couple of weeks. Sound familiar?

I admire your sensitivity but there are dark subtexts everywhere - all you have to do is look for them. Being aware of history is essential but it should not prevent us from having our spirits lifted by works of art, especially works of art that are affirmations of happiness created in defiance of the dark realities of human existence.

Very true, but in looking for "dark subtexts", we have to be careful of Presentism, where we apply what we know now to a situation that happened before the fact, or elsewhere. I have to do this all the time when lecturing on the last year of the War for American Independence: "The last major battle of the war was Yorktown, in Virginia, in 1781. Of course, at the time, nobody KNEW that it was the last Big One, but that's how it worked out!"

The revival btw does not claim to be a realistic representation of life in a collective. That is hinted throughout the ballet and any relation to reality is abandoned when the giant vegetables roll out.

Oh, I dunno, it could have something to do with the quality of the potato crop that year, and the output of the State Vodka Distillery!

Does anybody do Christensen's "Con Amore" any more?

And "Great Galloping Gottschalk" is Lynne Taylor-Corbett's, not Sappington's.

From the nose and the hairline and the legs and the long torso, looks more like Massine in the thirties. Or could be nobody in particular.

It has been public knowledge that Shives is a new assistant ballet master on the artistic staff, but the Joffrey has never been a company for announcing Last Performances. The Denise Jackson "Retirement" was a departure from the usual way of Joffrey's doing business.

One of the most ironic of Last Performances was Mark Goldweber's dancing Petrouchka in the title role. His first performance with the company, as a member of Joffrey II, was as the Crow Masquer.

It's a treat to see the "ancient" costumes for BI again. What I considered the "original" costumes when I was a student were actually the Royal Ballet's (Beaton?) ones with the white wigs and the sashes. The "merely old" ones were the Ter-Arutunian/Karinska production from the 60s, and of course, today we just have the "Concerto #2" costumes. I think something important's been lost.

And remember, Midsummer Night's Dream was traditionally a two short-joke ballet. Oberon never did a pas de deux with Titania, and Francisco Moncion was the Duke, engaged to marry Hippolyta, in the original, Gloria Govrin!

I don't recall ever seeing a "j" in Italian.

It's there occasionally, to use as a terminal "i", much as a doctor's prescription will use "xviij" as "18". It came into use about 900 CE as far as I can make out, via Spanish usage, which became more general throughout Europe.

Sort of a ballet equivalent of the New Year's version of Act II of Die Fledermaus!

Yes, please tell us what you see here, and then join us over on "The Dark Side" for the grittier matters of "Do-it-yourself"! We have quite a few late starters over there, so you won't want for company.

She that tooteth not her own horn, the same shall not be tooted! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Why was there some picketing outside the theatre ? Was it because of Lifar's war behavior ?

Yes, and not even limited to Lifar. The whole Opéra ballet, practically speaking, had remained in Paris during the occupation and was seen by many Americans, center and left-of-center, as having been complicit in Nazi activity there. A similar set of demonstrations took place outside of appearances by the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, only in 1971 it was center and right-of-center people who picketed.

I think you can rely on that; but just imagine the confusion of the people who click in between now and December 31, 2008!

Now there's an optimist, considering that "now" is before 2008.

Thanks, rg, for the additional information. Both the repositories I mentioned have runs of the Star. If this were directly connected to my day job, I could schedule a research trip there and get more detail. As it is, I'll have to sandwich it in for a time when I'm doing exhibit-connected research there anyway, and maybe find it in that way.

I'm looking for the ship in order to find passenger lists. After 50 years, these lists have a "sunrise" provision which makes them open to anyone, so we can narrow the search for who's in the picture. This kind of picture isn't the kind of thing that would run in The New York Times, but would run in The New York Daily News, New York Post,, or the old World, Telegram and the Sun, or even Herald Tribune all of which went heavy on pictures. Maybe I could find identification by looking at those old papers, but I'd have to go to the New-York Historical Society, or the New York Public Library for the microfilm. N-YHS might even have the papers in hardcopy!

In 1948, Lifar fell under a "gray area" as to whether or not he had actually been a collaborationist during the Nazi occupation. Free French paratroopers, though, referred to their jumpsuits as "sergelifars" because of their close fit, like a unitard.

I wish I could identify the ship! French Line was in bad shape after the war, and the only major transatlantic liner she had in service in 1948 was SS DeGrasse. Normandie had been fired and sunk at her berth in NYC during the war, and Ile de France was laid up for repairs during 1948. SS Washington was on her last legs and mostly relegated to Mediterranean cruises. You would think that they'd use French Line as a matter of national pride, but I can't tell from the picture whether it was a French ship or not.

A red flag was for centuries the standard standard for a contrarian force. After the 1789 Revolution in France, the Jacobins used it. After the 1848 Revolution, it was pretty much established as the flag for Socialists and Communards. With the coming of the First International of the International Workingman's Association (1864-1876), the Socialists formally recognized the red flag as their flag, and the Communists joined them. The signal for a rallying point for Revolution was the raising of a red flag. Today, in International Mercantile Signal Flags, no all-red flag except the burgee (swallow-tailed flag) for the letter "B" is recognized. If a vessel raises the "B" flag, it means, "approach with caution, I am loading or discharging dangerous cargo (usually explosives)." When the Russian Revolution happened, the Communists used their red flag as a banner for their forces, and the Tsarist supporters used the white field of the old Russian flag as theirs. Thus, the "Reds" and the "Whites". And Red Square was Red Square long before the Reds!

And Jean-Pierre Frohlich had to go through a Fritz phase before he became a Nutcracker Prince.

And a good long time before that! What Soviet sociocultural authorities did was to take all the traditional folkloric figures, put them in a bowl and stirred well. What came out was a composite that they called by a traditional Russian name. Grandfather Frost had been a rather gaunt figure. Post-Revolution he became rounder and was always dressed in red. (N.B. "Krasnoye" in Russian means both "beautiful" and "red") Totalitarian regimes often do this kind of bait-and-switch, co-opting popular figures and objects which are insufficiently (insert nationality here) and give them a makeover, until they become sufficiently (insert nationality here). Some places take objects like the "telefon" and ban that word, no Greek roots allowed, until they cobble up their own politically correct name for it.

The Soviets co-opted Christmas and made it into a (Solar) New Year's Festival. They even took Santa Claus (one of the patron saints of Russia is St. Nicholas) and renamed him Grandfather Frost. Ah, Marxist-Leninist Realism!