canbelto

I was watching the Tsar's Box of Yuri Soloviev and one very touching moment was when they showed what must have been a pamplet of the Kirov roster around 1959/1960. They pointed out the young promising dancers in that pamphlet -- first there was Irina Kolpakova, then Yuri Soloviev, then Rudolf Nureyev, and Natalia Makarova. Around that time Alla Sizova was also just becoming a star, famous dancers like Alla Shelest and Alla Osipenko were still dancing, and I can just imagine that every performance at the MT must have been a great performance, with that kind of roster. I think the late 1950s/early 1960s must have been a peak in the time of the Mariinsky. As were maybe the early 1900s, when Mathilde Kscessinska, Mikhail Fokine, Tamara Karsavina, Anna Pavlova, and Vaslav Nijinsky graced the stage. So ... do you think a company has peaks and valleys? Meaning an era of extreme excellence followed by perhaps dry spells? For instance I know many dance critics look at the era of "Nureyev's children" as the best era of the POB history, and there are complaints that the era is over and the company is losing the greatness "Nureyev's children" and the perfect classicism that he so relentlessly drilled into his "children." At the same time, the Bolshoi seems to be reaching a peak with the new Ratmansky regime (I remember Maya Plisetskaya saying something to that effect), after the reign of Grigorivich ended. Complaints that the NYCB is in a valley show up in so many critics' reviews nowadays. If so, an interesting question might be: what eras have been the peaks (and valleys) of a company? And can the greatness of a company be judged by its ability to remain on a peak with very brief valley stints?

The Royal Ballet video with Act 3 of Sleeping Beauty. Fonteyn and Blair are inexplicably having a very bad day. Something's just OFF with Fonteyn. Not one of her better video documents. And then a burst of sunlight comes in the form of Antoinette Sibley's Florine. Steals the show.

Yes the 32 shades lined up in six columns, dancing really as one body, is amazing. Their developpes, perfectly in unison and legs all at the same level, is breathtaking, as is the final moments of the ballet, when the Shades form a circle surrounding Nikya and Solor. Beautiful! I highly recommend "Dancer's Dream: La Bayadere" which is a documentary about the production of La Bayadere. There's a scene of the corps being relentlessly drilled. One coach yells, "We can stay here all day until you get it right!" The hard work pays off! One interesting factoid I learned from the documentary was that Nureyev toyed with the idea of making a fourth act for the ballet, a la Makarova, but ultimately decided to go with the "gentler" ending of Nikya and Solor being reunited in his dream.

The first time I saw the POB Bayadere video I was impressed by the scenery and costumes, but I wasn't blown away by the dancing. Until the Shades scene. Seeing 32 shades descend the ramp, one by one, in perfect unison, without ever missing a beat, made me realize this was a great ballet company.

Another definition of greatness I'd say is the ability to make an audience forget about mistakes/weaknesses. I use as an example Alicia Alonso's Giselle. By the time she filmed it she was almost completely blind, and the weaknesses show. The shakiness of her developpes, her unimpressive (from a technical standpoint) Spessivtseva solo, and the nagging feeling that we are only seeing a ghost of her former Giselle (reputed to be among the best in the world). Yet it remains one of my very favorite videos, simply because despite all the weaknesses there's so many moments of breathtaking beauty.

No mention of Jerome Robbins?

I think the foremost quality a great ballerina/dansuer needs to have is a reason to watch them. My dad calls it "star quality" but I kind of agree it's indefinable. I use as an example Suzanne Farrell receiving an honorary diploma from Harvard. It happened to be the same year my sister was graduating. It was June in Boston, but somehow 50 degrees and pouring rain. If you've ever been to Harvard yard, you'll know how cramped it is, and sure enough we were stuck with garbage bags over our heads and we could barely see anyone except on the big screens. My mom didn't know anything about ballet, and the introductions to all the people receving honorary degrees were predictably boring. They all had the black flat hats and baggy black gowns. But during the ceremony my mom poked at me and said, "Who is that woman sitting in the middle? She looks very special." I explained to her that she was a famous ballerina, and my mom said afterwards, "I was staring at her the whole time. She just looked like a star." To me, a great ballerina or danseur is someone who can elicit that kind of reaction from not just one person (like my mom) but entire audiences.

I suppose just in time for the Festival, several artists have been promoted. Leonid Sarafanov has been promoted to principal, and Obraztsova, Novikova, Somova, and Vladimir Shklyarov have been promited to second soloist. http://www.mariinsky.ru/en/ballet/soloist http://www.mariinsky.ru/en/ballet/soloist/dancers

In general though: 1. I'd like more complete ballets to be released. Yes snippets are great, in many cases snippets are priceless (Maya Plisetskaya's Don Quixote Act 1, for example), but often behind the snippets there is a complete video, and I'd like to see the complete video. 2. A wider variety of dancers to be filmed. Svetlana Zakharova leaps to mind as a ballerina who is being filmed for DVD release a lot in the past few years, while many of the other stars of her generation are not being recorded for posterity. I think I mentioned this in another thread that I love Galina Ulanova, but wish there was more film of Alla Shelest. Natalia Bessmertnova IMO was another overly-filmed ballerina. Ekaterina Maximova was criminally underfilmed. 3. More complete Balanchine. I know there are so many issues tied up with the Balanchine Trustees and it seems as if even complete Live From Lincoln Center telecasts of Balanchine ballets are a thing of the past. 4. Better transfers of older footage. The Romeo and Juliet from the Royal Ballet is an example. Would it have killed Kultur to try to make a better transfer of the 1966 film, which is grainy and at times fuzzy?

Yes yes yes! In addition to the Gayane, there's fascinating footage of Dudinskaya in Raymonda, Ulanova in Sylphides, Kolpakova in Cinderella and Nutcracker, Asylmuratova in Esmeralda ... Plenty of goodies from the vaults of the Kirov.

I'm surprised there hasn't been any mention of "Imperial Dancer," by Coryne Hall. It's a biography of the one and only Mathilde Kschessinska and I got it yesterday and haven't been able to put it down. What a life! And for those who have complained about the "too much information" biographies of Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, I'd like to use this biography of Kschessinska as a perfect example of how a biography can be candid without becoming unnecessarily graphic. Kschessinska certainly had an, um, interesting love life, but the tone of the biography is never sensationalistic. Mathilde was not above bragging about her conquests, but, like many seductresses, she had a certain mysterious discretion. She certainly kissed but she did not always tell. And Hall kind of preserves this sense of mystery about Kschessinska. Along the way, we're treated to tales of intrigue at the Mariinsky, and Mathilde's incredible resilience throughout her long life. It's also, at a little under 300 pages, just the right length. Highly recommended.

Well it seems to be a mystery of Russian schooling. Because look at Anna Pavlova. Archetypical Russian back. Anyway I went home and dug up the autobiography by Natalia Makarova and she said Shelest was a difficult, confusing teacher. But the lack of video documentation is so sad. As much as I like Galina Ulanova, it would have been nice to see ample video documentation of her peers.

It's very very different musically. The pas de trois is back, the mime for Odette is restored, Act II has a very brief solo for Siegfried but otherwise follows the "traditional" choreography. In Act III the "traditional" Black Swan pdd music is restored, coda and everything. The finale is different too. Siegfried doesn't drown --he and Odette simply have a painful parting. She returns to the lake, he falls dead, and Rothbart ascends to the heavens, triumphant.

I think baroque operas are a whole different ballgame from, say, Der Rosenkavalier. In baroque operas, the composers specifically wrote the roles for a type of singer (castrati) that doesn't exist today. The only record we have of a castrato was Moreschi, and the record is very poor and we know that, say, Farinelli did not sound like that. What did castrati sound like? There really is no way of knowing other than doing something which isn't socially acceptable anymore. In this case, we have the notes, we have some idea of the vocal style of the era, and that's it. Countertenors are an acceptable (albeit controversial) substitute for something that can't be replicated. Other opera lovers prefer a contralto. I think you can make a similar case for the casting of many ballets. We have no idea how the first Aurora, Mathilde Kschessinska, would have danced the Rose Adagio. But just looking at pictures, I can guess that she'd never make it into a ballet academy today. Dancers have the steps, they have (or should have) tradition that has been passed down through the generations, but they also have a whole new set of demands and aesthetics. Plus, ballet is a growing art form. Kschessinska got pregnant, and enter the lithe, ethereal Pavlova. Ballet changed forever. I saw an interview with Ninette di Valois where she was quite firm in her opinion that Raymonda should be danced by short, petite ballerinas. Today, audiences applaud Lopatkina and Zakharova's Raymondas. Unacceptable? Maybe, but, as Mr. B said, "Just do the steps, dear." On the other hand, Strauss specifically wrote Der Rosenkavalier for a soprano, and his vision was to replicate a 17-year old lad who hasn't "grown up" yet. There's a bit of artificiality that I think was intentional -- the wisdom of the Marschallin ultimately triumphs over the blissful but immature Oktavian and Sophie. If he wanted to write the role for a tenor, he would have (in fact, there's a tenor in Der Rosenkavalier). If a tenor (who could sing the notes -- Juan Diego Florez could essay the part, I bet) sang Oktavian, I'd liken it to Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake.

This is kind of off-topic, but the casting of the 'trouser roles' like Oktavian and Cherubino was never *meant* to be realistic. Mozart and Strauss wanted females to sing these roles. Casting a countertenor would be wrong on so many levels. If there's a parallel to Oktavian and Cherubino it would be the sisters in Ashton's Cinderella. I liken horrific miscasting in ballet to say, Natalie Dessay trying to sing Brunnhilde. Notes are notes, and Dessay could sing the notes, but would anyone want to hear it? Not only would it sound very, very wrong, Dessay's vocal deficiencies as a Wagnerian singer would be exposed. We would call her a terrible singer. She's obviously a remarkable singer, but just not a Brunnhilde.

I'm not saying she has to drip evil, but there has to be a sense of her implacable and formidable personality. Wiles seemed like a tall blond girl who could do all the steps, but quite honestly, I thought she could have made a better Giselle than Myrtha. The big Myrtha moments went for naught. The best Myrtha I've seen (on video) is Tatiana Terekhova. Then again for every huge miscasting gaffe I think there is a success of a dancer that on paper is cast against type. One example is Gillian Murphy in Coppelia. One would think that she wouldn't excel in this kind of girlish soubrette role but I was wrong. Her formidable technique and spunk made up for her lack of "cuteness." Later that week I saw Xiomara Reyes who was a more typical cutesy Coppelia and while she was delightfully sweet I can't say I enjoyed Murphy's performance less.

Reading books about Russian ballet, it's clear that Alla Shelest was an important ballerina in her time. From the pictures, she also was stunningly beautiful. Yet I've yet to come across a video of her dancing. Does anyone know if she was ever filmed in anything? I'd love to see her dance.

Re: Myrtha, this past summer I saw Michele Wiles dance Myrtha. I suppose she was cast because she was tall, but she seemed wrong for the part. Not nearly sinister/regal enough. She could do all the steps, but if she wasn't tall, I wonder if she would have been cast in the part at all.

Also, needless to say, I find the policy of not releasing LFLC telecasts one of monumental frustration. For us balletomanes, there was Coppelia with McBride (will there ever be a better Coppelia?), Giselle with Makarova/Baryshnikov, Swan Lake with Makarova/Nagy, Sleeping Beauty with Gregory and Bujones, Apollo/Orpheus, Who Cares/Mozartiana/Vienna Waltzes, Midsummer's Night Dream, Theme&Variations/Firebird ... In the case of many of the above listed ballets, I can't imagine if more perfect casts will ever be assembled. Particularly the Apollo, Swan Lake, Giselle, WhoCares/Mozartina/Vienna Waltzes, and Coppelia.

If we're talking about ballet companies whose main dancers come from their own "school" I'd say the NYCB, Kirov, Bolshoi, POB, Royal Danish Ballet are the best ballet companies. Of the companies where dancers are drawn from all over the world, I'd say the Royal Ballet is the best. Within those ranks, I agree with Natalia. There's not even a question: Theatre Street has produced the greatest dancers/choreographers. It's useless to even name all the ballet greats that have come from Theatre Street, but these lists are fun: Choreographers: Marius Petipa (well he was French but ...), Mikhail Fokine, Leonid Lavrovsky, Yuri Grigorivich, and of course one shy young boy from Georgia ... Dancers: Mathilde Kscessinska, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Kasarvina, Nikolai and Sergei Legat, Vaslav Nijinsky, Olga Spessivtseva, Alexandra Danilova, Galina Ulanova, Konstantin Sergeyev, Marina Semynova, Natalia Dudinskaya, Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova, Irina Kolpakova, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Alla Sizova, Yuri Soloviev, Tatiana Terekhova, Altynai Asylmuratova, Diana Vishneva, Zhanna Ayupova, Svetlana Zakharova, Uliana Lopatkina, Daria Pavlenko, Andrian Fadeev, Evgenia Obraztsova, Igor Zelensky, Igor Kolb ... Whether you like all these dancers is another question, but year after year, wonders emerge from Theatre Street, like butterflies.

There's a whole bunch of Russian telecasts too that are sitting in vaults. A few examples: Giselle with Lunkina and Tsiskaridze, the Bright Stream, the Bolt, as well as some older telecasts. Lucky them.

Lots and lots of wishes, but among the top of my list are the recent Royal Ballet telecasts: Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Sylvia, Cinderella. All were telecast within the past few years, all beautifully filmed and cast.

Great news for Veronika! I think a principal promotion is inevitable. It probably will be announced before the Met season, I'd guess.

The ending of Pan's Labyrinth reminded me a lot of Giselle actually. It was devastating but at the same time uplifting.

I just saw Pan's Labyrinth last night and I thought it was one of the most intensely beautiful films I had ever seen. The whole theatre was crying. I can't count how many times I had to look away from the screen yet I was rivetted from start to finish.