canbelto

For the La Bayadere, there are lots of interviews of Guerin, Platel, and Hilaire (the three principals originally in the revival). There's footage of rehearsals, although Nureyev had obviously passed on by the time the documentary was made. Some historical information on La Bayadere, and a nice sequence that showed the Shades scene in rehearsal and then cut to performance. Guerin is exceptionally well-spoken and reflective, and even though there's a brief clip of Nureyev coming onstage at the opening night of La Bayadere shortly before his death, the documentary is mostly about his legacy of dancers, and how they are still influenced by him. The rehearsals are interesting to watch, and as usual the coaches painstakingly explore every step.

A nice documentary.

Joseph, I agree Paquita is excellent. I also really like the POB's La Bayadere, and the Dancer's Dream documentary that was also released is wonderful too. Isabel Guerin is such a charmer, and so well-spoken.

What I hated the most about the POB R&J was the coldness of it all. Despite the gore, sex, and violence, there was none of the impetuosity and tenderness that can make R&J so moving. Plus, R&J has been exceptionally lucky on video: there's the Fonteyn/Nureyev (still my standard), Ferri/Eagling, Ferri/Corella, and the old Bolshoi film with Ulanova. Legris/Loudieres were by far the least moving and well-cast star-crossed lovers.

I'd STRONGLY advise against getting Nureyev's R&J. I found it one of his poorest productions. Here's the review I wrote for Amazon:

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Rudolf Nureyev contributed so much to ballet that it seems ungrateful to criticize his ballet stagings (mostly at the Paris Opera Ballet). Indeed, his La Bayadere staging remains one of the best. But this Romeo and Juliet is simply misguided in so many respects.

For one, Nureyev's staging is way too long, with too many intermittent scenes. The video runs to 150 minutes. MacMillan understood how to juxtapose crowd scenes, character-setting dances, and pas de deux. He overall keeps the ballet moving at an astonishingly fast clip, even though the ballet is very long (about 2 hours). Nureyev's Act 3 has SEVEN scene changes.

Nureyev also does not seem to trust the story itself, and adds a lot of heavyhanded imagery and symbolism. A skeleton is prominently displayed on the scrim before one act, then there is a bit with a grim reaper. Juliet has a dream with the "ghosts" of Tybalt and Mercutio. Because GET IT??? THEYRE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!! Towards the end Romeo has a "pas de deux" with Paris, which is also something nowhere in the MacMillan version. All this symbolism and fatalism not only comes across as heavyhanded, but it also changes the very nature of Shakespeare's play, which despite the "star-crossed lovers" bit is really about the senselessness and miscues and poor timing that cause such pain and tragedy.

I am no prude, but I thought Nureyev was WAY too eager to emphasize the violent aspects of the story. Things do not get very unconventional until Tybalt's death. In this staging it does not seem like an impulsive act of rage on Romeo's part. Instead, there is a very prolonged fight scene, replete with choke holds and dropped swords, and the final death seems like cold-blooded murder. From then on things get more violent. Even the Bedroom Scene between Romeo and Juliet has little intimacy, and a lot of rolling around and grinding. But there's a totally pointless scene on the road to Mantua where the messenger is brutally murdered. It's very graphic and gratuitous. Granted, Renaissance Italy was a very violent time, but all the graphic violence IMO not only pushed the limits of classical ballet but made Romeo and Juliet seem much more unappealing as people, and also are confusions and distractions to the storyline.

As for the dancing, the etoiles of the POB are Manuel Legris and Monique Loudieres. They have absolutely perfect technique, with not a bent leg or misplaced foot in the entire ballet. Their precision is jaw-dropping. But in the end, I feel as if they are unable to convey the youth and romance of these teenaged lovers. They are too mature, too serious, more SEXUAL than SEXY (there's a difference). The POB corps is as usual probably the most uniform and well-trained in the world.

But Romeo and Juliet IMO requires more than accurate footwork and well-placed arabesques. This production by Nureyev simply failed to understand the timeless appeal of the story.

Merle Park is WAY miscast as the girlish Clara. But besides the idea of having Drosselmeyer and the Prince danced by one dancer (in this case, Nureyev ) the Nutcracker is pretty close to the Vainonen version. There are some menacing bats in Act 2 that the Prince fights away. Otherwise, it's just Vainonen-influenced.

I have to disagree with Mr. Ebert (although I love his writing, as usual). I never see Boris as a remote, sexless, ruthless villain in the movie. His tears while announcing the final "Red Shoes" are real. I think the whole movie is simply a parable of many dancers' dilemma: total, monastic devotion to art or a more mundane life. Julian is no prize in The Red Shoes -- he thoughtlessly gives Vicky the ultimatum. The difference is how the men view Vicky: Boris sees her as the ultimate expression of his ballet company, Julian just sees her as a beautiful girl he loves. The moral of course being that she's both -- that any attempt to deny one side of life for the other is futile.

I think the story is based on the Diaghilev/Nijinsky romance, while was changed to "Vicky" for obvious reasons. But in that real-life drama, Diaghilev was not a villain either (you could argue Nijinsky's wife was the villain).

Oh yes I forgot the total snoozefest that was Raymonda. Some things are better left alone ...

Some very disappointing videos: Baryshnikov in Wolf Trap was one. A very short video, and he is very miscast in Spectre a la Rose. No dreaminess, no poetry, his boyish stocky frame jumps through the window with all the feline grace of Tonya Harding. Excellent dancer, totally wrong role.

Another real disappointment was the POB Romeo and Juliet video.

But the very worst was the horror that was Grigorivich's Nutcracker, with a way too old Vasiliev and Maximova, snowflakes that wore gray Mrs. Bates wigs, a "fight" scene that basically consisted of soldiers and mice marching in opposite directions onstage, and divertissments that had all the joy of a root canal. Bar none the worst performance of a ballet I have ever seen from a world-class ballet company.

As for performances, a very sloppy Suite #3 at the State Theater with Angel Corella having a very off-night. Everyone had an off-night really.

A La Sonnambula where the petite Yvonne Borree almost toppled over with the Poet's body.

Seeing Svetlana Zakharova in "La Bayadere," Irina Dvorovenko in "Swan Lake" and Gillian Murphy in "Coppelia." Very different ballerinas, all wonderful in their own way.

Lincoln Center's Ashton Celebration, where I got to see "Two Pigeons," and also Syvlie Guillem, Darcey Bussell, Leanne Benjamin, and Alina Cojocaru all at once!

Getting some WONDERFUL videos, including:

- the PNB's Midsummer's Night Dream

- the Balanchine ballet releases

- Balanchine's Nutcracker film

- Romeo and Juliet, with both Fonteyn/Nureyev and Ferri/Corella

- Swan Lake, with Natalia Makarova and Anthony Dowell

- La Bayadere, with Altynai Asylmuratova, Irek Mukhamedov, and Darcey Bussell

- Mayerling - Durante, Mukhamedov, Bussell

- Little Humpbacked Horse - Plisetskaya and Vasiliev

Making some balletomane friends who share my obsession

Can anyone who's seen the production say whether this Nutcracker is based more on Vainonen or Balanchine? I like both ideas very much, and it seems every Nutcracker is more inspired by Vainonen's vision or Balanchine's.

Any chance this Nutcracker will be videotaped??? That would be WONDERFUL!!! And thanks Sharon for the wonderful review!

Rita Hayworth was always very proud of the films she made with Astaire. Hermes Pan was a great friend of Hayworth. Rita once said that those films were the only ones she made where she could watch and not laugh at herself.

Hayworth also said "Men went to bed with Gilda and woke up with me." Her off-screen personality was shy and even awkward, and nothing like the sexy siren of Gilda or Salome. She had a very sad life, but nevertheless was much-loved by those who knew her.

Well I know the POB dancers were very upset when Nureyev wanted to stage his version of Swan Lake, and finally some dancers only agreed to Nureyev's version of the old version was also kept in the repertory. I dont know if they solely perform Nureyev's version now.

But despite Kirstein saying that a ballet company is the "least democratic" of institutions, I think it's fair that dancers who give everything to a company have a say in the artistic direction of the company. Not that they should have the final say, but they should have a say. And if so many Kirov dancers openly dislike the new/old Bayadere or Sleeping Beauty, maybe the management ought not to dismiss the complaints as reactionary or lazy. You don't have to toss the baby out with the bathwater. Changes can be made, you can incorporate the new/old into the traditional version, and vice versa. Having, um, sat through a few uninspired performances of certain ballets at a certain well-known company in NY, I'd say there's nothing as punishing for the audiences (and one presumes, the dancers), than ballerinas who dance unhappily. Ballet at its best is when the dancers' sheer joy of performing spreads like waves to the audience.

I think Balanchine compresses the story as much as Ashton -- he completely leaves out Bottom and his troupe's "performance" at the wedding and all the Athens stuff in the first act. What Balanchine DOES do IMO (not to beat a dead horse) is really understand the spirit of Shakespeare. It's sort of like the Plato idea of "essence" -- when I watch Ashton, I have to mentally click off the part of me that read and reread and attended several productions of the play. I have to say, Ok, this is a ballet, and I have to accept that, and enjoy it for what it is. With Balanchine I feel his ballet was so closely within the spirit of the play that when I read MND or attend a play at the local theater, I imagine in my head the vision of Bottom scratching his "bottom" while making love to Titania, or the mime of Puck and the four lovers.

It's just that when I read reviews of The Dream I inevitably read things like Ashton's "English sensibility" and "understanding of Shakespeare" and perhaps it annoys me more than it should that Ashton deviates from the play by romanticizing one of the play's most clever but heartless jokes. Of course other people might feel differently, and that the reconciliation pdd is also supported in the text.

But I guess I'm lucky that we have both ballets in the repertoire

Sorry FF It's hard to keep NY dance critics straight ...

But maybe I'm being devil's advocate here, but sometimes I think dancers criticizing management can even have a long-term positive effect. Take Suzanne Farrell. I'm sure both Balanchine and Farrell were very upset when she left in 1970, but she's said since that leaving was necessary. The five years allowed Balanchine too cool off, and when she returned they had a relationship that was perhaps heathier. He also created ballets for her that maybe he couldnt have created had she become Mrs. Balanchine #6, or had stayed with the company and unhappily danced while being ostracized.

In other words, the horror against airing dirty laundry and stuff is sort of inbred, but sometimes changes need to be made, and someone needs to speak out. I also think many times it humanizes ballet dancers. For one thing, when my mom (a definite balletomane) saw Elusive Muse, Suzanne Farrell became her heroine and she loves looking at videotapes of her even though she as a rule doesnt like ballet I doubt she would have been that taken had she not listened to Farrell's story and when Farrell burst into tears my mom sniffled too ...

Besides sometimes the grievances can start an avalanche and bring things that are whispered about into the open.

As for the new/old Sleeping Beauty, many Mariinsky dancers have gone on record saying they dont like it.

Farrell left NYCB in 1969, after her husband, Paul Mejia, was shut out of his former roles and she, though still dancing, was ostracized by Balanchine. She had a glorious second coming in 1974 until her retirement in 1989. Afterwards, she continued her association with NYCB and SAB until she was fired in 1993 by Peter Martins. 

I don't think many NYCB dancers would risk speaking out against the Ballet Master in Chief.

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I know, but in both cases she left very publicly with definite grievances (the first time being her and her husbands' ostracization, the second time she was fired after the Acocella article).

I dont know whether they *should* but I know that they *do*. Examples:

- much of the Kirov criticizing Oleg Vinodograv during the 1990s for his reportedly avaricious, unfair ways, and also for promulgating the career of his mistress Yulia Makhalina ahead of other dancers. I've read critical comments in print from a lot of the Kirov dancers from that era.

- the petition against Frederick Ashton for his favorable treatment of Michael Somes

Then there are the angry dancers quitting, such as Tallchief (the "alphabet" comment), or Farrell leaving NYCB.

Personally, I think dancers have a right to speak out if they feel unfairly treated. Whether they're simply bitching or have genuine grievances is another matter but in a business as competitive as ballet I think it's every dancer for himself.

But there's a reconciliation in Balanchine's ballet, but the reconciliation is closer to Shakespeare: having been snookered by Oberon, Titania makes peace in the fairy kingdom. Balanchine makes the reconciliation a formal thing (her train and his train meet). But there's no telling when the next quarrel will pop up. Thus the essential joke (that the lovers want desperately to marry, but the only married couple in the piece arent particularly happy) is preserved.

It just seems as if The Dream is overall too optimistic and tender compared to Shakespeare. Balanchine just seems to understand the melding of silliness and romance much better. Not trying to start a MND vs. The Dream war, but I just noticed how closely Balanchine studied the psychology of the play, for someone not known for his "story" ballets. Ashton seems more determined to preserve the conventions of Romantic Ballet, but at the expense of Shakespeare.

Maybe it's a kind of imprinting effect, MND being one of the first ballets I saw in the theater, and one of my all-time favorites still. I just cant love The Dream as much after that.

Oh, and canbelto, re Asylmuratova: many ballerinas who exuded sweetness and warmth in their performances have been, shall we say, tough cookies offstage..... Fonteyn, Kirkland, etc.  In another field, Rudolf Bing said that one of his star singers had "dimples of iron"!

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Yeah that was Renata Tebaldi. I've never heard horror stories about Asylmuratova the way i have heard about, uh, Fonteyn, or Guillem, or Yulia Makhalina, but I guess you never know

My point though is, I think any ballerina (in this case, Dudlinskaya) who demands exclusive rights to not a novelty or virtuoso role but GISELLE has got to have a very strong, even unyielding personality.

Also, I dont think "willful" and "manipulative" go hand in hand. Willful implies to me someone who's stubborn, strong, perhaps brusque. But manipulative implies a whole different kind of personality. Someone can be both wishy-washy and manipulative at the same time (think of, say, Polonius in Hamlet). I think many ballerinas might fall in the "willful" category but it takes a "special" ballerina to also be "manipulative." For instance I watched the Alicia Alonso documentary. For a woman who was nearly blind to still dance one of THE most impressive Black Swan pdd I have EVER seen must have taken a will of iron. But I'm not sure that necessarily means she's manipulative.

I've been watching my dual videos of Ashton's The Dream and Balanchine's Midsummer's Night Dream, and something about Ashton's version is really starting to bother me. Ironically, it's one of the most beautifully choreographed parts of the ballet -- the reconciliation pdd between Titania and Oberon. Balanchine uses the same music for the pdd between Titania and Bottom. The issue is, I think by choreographing this beautiful pdd between the Fairy Royals, Ashton is being ... well, unfaithful to Shakespeare. Balanchine cleverly never has Titania and Oberon dance together, I think, to show the adversarial relationship of the married fairies. To choreograph such a number showing connubial bliss IMO takes away one of Shakespeare's most clever jokes: that everyone in the play wants to get married, but the actual married couple (Titania and Oberon) quarrel constantly. Ashton was British, it's not as if he didnt know the play, but in this respect I think Balanchine had a much keener understanding of the Bard's gender politics.

Now I realize that The Dream is not Shakespeare, but I think on every level Balanchine's ballet is truer to the play. Not only structurally (splitting the action between the woods and the wedding in Athens) but psychologically. Balanchine understood the cheeky silliness of it all.

Sorry to have offended the many fans of The Dream, but has anyone ever felt bothered by Ashton's choice here?

After seeing the sublime pdd in the PNB's Midsummer Night's Dream I must add Louise Nadeau to the list of most beautiful ballerinas Talk about beauty to the fingertips.

Any possibility that Veronika Part will rejoin her Mariinsky colleagues in Washington? She's still listed as a soloist in the Kirov roster although she's been dancing for the ABT the past two years ...

I dont know LeClercq at all, but I think it's kind of dreamy to think of ballerinas as these perfect, devoted people. They're human, and likely to have flaws just like anyone else. I mean, any biography of Balanchine will likely include not only his undeniable attributes but also his possessiveness of his ballerinas and his complicated personal life. I think it's fair ground, and I think a mother's opinion is as "unbiased" as any source is likely to be. Plus, I always cringe at the talk of "unbiased sources." No one is "unbiased." I'm not unbiased -- ask me my opinion of GWB for instance, and I can't even give an unbiased answer.

That's what I was thinking Thalictum ... from the videos I've seen of Dudlinskaya she does not seem like a natural Giselle at all. She's a muscular, bravura dancer, and very "down to earth" in her stage persona. Good forRaymonda, Kitri ...

Did Irina Kolpokova ever get a chance to dance Giselle under the reign of Dudlinskaya? And Alla Sizova? Now those are Kirov dancers I can see as Giselle.

This might be violating the "no gossip" rule so y'all can PM me with private answers but ...

I idolize Altynai Asylmuratova's dancing so much that I almost want to know what she was "like" in real life. Anyone know if she was considered "wllful and manipulative" offstage? I'd love to think that the sweetness and warmth she exuded onstage was her offstage too.

ETA: I think it's one thing for an artist to have exclusive rights to roles that are a real specialty trademark, or specifically fashioned for said artist. For example, Fonteyn and Nureyev in Marguerite and Armand, or Farrell in Tzigane. But Giselle? That's a prima ballerina role that many ballerinas dream of dancing, and it wasnt tailored for Dudlinskaya, and I have doubts as to whether Dudlinskaya was the ONLY ballerina at the Kirov who could have handled Giselle. Somehow, i think the fact that she was married to Sergeyev and also her patriotism had more to do with it

I agree. For the Swan Lake, the ABT's most incredible Odette/Odile, Irina Dvorovenko, is unfortunately on maternity leave. But Diana Vishneva, Veronika Part, and Gillian Murphy are all dancing it!

For Giselle, I agree about Ferri/Bocca. Can't go wrong with Giselle. It's short, and absolutely beautiful. You'll love it. You'll love the Wilis, you'll love Myrtha, you'll love the Mad Scene, and most of all you'll love the most heartrending pas de deux in all of classical ballet (IMO).

Have fun!

I think they could be used to describe the grand dame of the Kirov, Natalia Dudlinskaya. She had *exclusive rights* to Giselle. Not that she wasnt a great dancer, but she must have wielded incredible power.