Drew

I have a semi-related Rubinstein story: My mother wanted me to hear Rubinstein when I was around ten, not that young but not that old and not exactly a music aficionado: The only tickets available were on stage--she still got them and I attended and enjoyed the concert, but I remember being given repeated lectures beforehand, from her and one of my older siblings, about how I had to sit absolutely still and make no sounds whatsoever, not a cough, not a sniffle...essentially they gave me the impression I should not so much as breathe when Rubinstein was on stage.

I don't recommend that level of strictness when taking children to the ballet, but following the article's suggestion, I am all for shackling children who can't remotely keep still -- I don't mean children who occasionally fidget or move their head to see the dancers or even whisper one or two questions, I mean jump up and down out of their seats, crawl along the floor, get on their mom's lap, get off their mom's lap, stand up, sit down, turn around to face away from the stage and do all of the above repeatedly and non-stop. I am in fact describing almost all I can now remember of a Part/Halberg Swan Lake I attended last year: I finally whisper-pleaded politely to the mother during breaks in the dancing and the person I was with eventually spoke to her rather more forcefully. The mother said nothing, but during intermission, found an usher willing to find them different -- better! -- seats. In fairness it was a children's matinee, so I'm sure she felt we were the ogres, but I note that everywhere else around me were very well behaved children just one of whom got understandably distracted when looking over curiously at this overactive and quite young child who...uh...should not have been there. Again, all for shackling or, at any rate, taking them home at intermission.

Incidentally I was myself taken to see the Bolshoi when I was about the same age or younger than this particular child -- that is, I was around four or five years of age. An older family member could not attend and I was permitted to use the ticket but here, too, only after extended instructions on theater behavior. It makes my family sound unrealistically strict -- but I never experienced it that way, especially when the ballet was in question; I felt I was being given this extraordinary privilege and even as what most would consider a too-young-to-be-at-the-ballet child, I thought the whole experience was just thrilling. I still remember a fragment of that performance...

Actually, it's only pretty extreme cases of poor behavior that I feel comfortable complaining about, since I want ballet to be popular and I'm not always perfect myself--despite all the early lecturing...I often say that the next best thing to having no-one in front of you at a performance is having no one in back of you: you can raise yourself up as much as you like, scratch your itches, cock your head to the side, and shift when you have a cramp -- all without qualms of conscience or fear of being sniffed at!

Thanks for posting this Bart.

Kirkeby is an internationally known and admired painter and has been for many decades--though, as best I could tell, many ballet goers in New York did not seem aware of him when Martins invited him to design his Swan Lake. In fact, I had not heard of him before the Martins' Swan Lake, and no surprise there since I don't follow contemporay art much. (One person I know who does had heard of him.) So, I think that in choosing to work with Kirkeby, Martins was participating in the kind of artistic collaboration that has the potential to make ballet more exciting. Of course such collaborations don't always succeed.

I haven't seen the Romeo and Juliet which seems disliked (a lot) by everyone who posts here. I can never quite make up my mind how I feel about the sets and costumes of the Martins Swan Lake: I do think the severe ballroom of Act III exactly matches Martins' vision of the ballet; I'm not sure that vision entirely coheres with Tchaikovsky, but Martins' and Kirkeby's grim version of romantic melancholy sort of works for me. I think I like the abstracted lake scene and even find a certain poetry in it, but it can feel rather distancing especially in relation to the narrative quality of the music, and my eye has never adapted to the clashing colors of Act I, (and Martins' reduction of the class distinctions of Act I to a single group of dancers doesn't work for me at all).

Out of curiousity I went to an small exhibition of Kirkeby's paintings in a gallery in New York around the same time as the Swan Lake and they offered a vision of abstracted natural beauty like that of his Act II of Swan Lake. If I were in London (if only) then I would certainly try to go to the Tate exhibit.

I must say I would just as soon (sooner) not see NYCB attempt A Month in the Country...

FirstChairOboe: I thought Massine was getting a bit of a revival recently with a full Massine program at the Bolshoi and productions at the Joffrey and the Maryinsky. In any case, who trashes him? Usually I just read, much as you wrote, that today's dancers don't have the personality to dance his works...or perhaps others might say they lack the training and aesthetic approach that the ballets need.

I have not been lucky enough to see Gomez much in recent years, but when I saw him as Aminta in Sylvia I didn't think he was particularly suited to the role--that is, to the Ashton choreography. He did not dance badly by any means, but the quick shifts of direction didn't have the fluidity and casual ease that they need to be effective--everything was a bit overly emphatic in a way and subtleties seemed lost. I actually preferred Beloserkovsky as Aminta though I know he is nothing like the star Gomez is. (I did think Gomez did an excellent job partnering Ananiashvili last year--2008--in Act II of Swan Lake when he had not originally been scheduled to dance with her. The overhead lift in the adagio was especially beautiful.)

Many thanks for this...

For me, Erik Bruhn set the model of great male classical dancing. I didn't see him often enough in classical roles for me to call him a favorite (just twice when I was a child) -- but I believe he greatly influenced my taste, especially in male dancers.

Anthony Dowell was my "favorite"--the one who moved me most deeply, the one who I was most excited to see, the one who simply seemd the most beautiful to me--and I have wonderful memories of him in a wide range of roles. He brought great imagination and poetic details to his portrayals, notably Siegfried and Romeo, as well as a silky, elegant quality of movement and the pure beauty of line that everyone has mentioned. To invoke just two roles that he created: he seems so far (as Alexandra has noted elsewhere) irreplaceable as Beliaev in Ashton's Month in the Country; I also rememer that when I finally saw him in Tudor's Shadowplay (having seen Baryshnikov in the role) I found the ballet's riddling character became less opaque, more suggestive and wondrous. He truly seemed to inhabit its world. I also appreciated his partnering abilities and his ability to establish truly unique and extraordinary partnerships with two very different ballerinas -- Sibley and Makarova. He was also wonderful with Kirkland when I saw them in Nutcracker.

I will say that as Albrecht (which was, oddly, one role in which I didn't much care for Dowell the one time I saw him dance it), I found Nureyev incomparably greater than any other dancer I have seen.

I have admired and enjoyed many others, several of whom I considered (and consider) genuinely great dancers, but Bruhn and Dowell hold a special place in my pantheon.

My great ballerina love -- first, last and always -- has been Gelsey Kirkland ...

True for me as well...I thought of myself as an admiring fan of ballerinas before Kirkland, but--however great they were--in my heart they were Rosalind to her Juliet...

Most of the first ballet performances I saw when very young were by the National Ballet of Washington (now defunct): their leading ballerina was Marilyn Burr, then married to Ivan Nagy. And I did adore her, especially in one performance of Giselle, in which I was completely overcome by the story, living right inside of it as if it were happening before my eyes. So she should be credited as my first (live) "ballerina"...

Alla Sizova was the first ballerina I ever saw, in a film, when I was -- let's say -- very, very young. I loved her but thought that to be a ballerina you had to have golden hair as she did--which caused me some distress since I had dark hair. What a relief to see pictures of Pavlova and Fonteyn...( It turns out I lacked other attributes necessary to be a ballerina.)

I find the news of Cunningham's death rather overwhelming. I saw his company just a handful of times-- the first with my mother at Lisner auditorium in Washington D.C. -- I am guessing in the 70's. Cunningham was still dancing and the work in which he danced seemed to thematize his isolation and difference from the other dancers (he was far older of course and moved quite differently). I was fascinated by his crabbed feet and solitary air. . . and loved the whole evening's performance which felt profoundly classical to me. Not exactly classical as in classical ballet, but simply classical -- rigorous, pure. The last time I saw his company was in 2005, an Event at the Barbican Center.

Every time I saw his works danced by his dancers I felt deep, deep pleasure and a recurrence of that initial sense I had the first time I saw them of being in the presence of classical purity and rigor offered at an extraordinary pitch of intensity. Sometimes at dance performances (hate to admit this) my mind becomes scattered and I can't focus -- with Cunningham I always felt entirely drawn in by what was before me...as well as being simply awestruck by what his dancers were able to do. For various reasons, as a dance lover, I have much, much more experience of ballet than modern dance (I'm really a balleltomane) but the two great choreographers who have always been paired in my mind as the most crucial, the "greatest" I know of, are Balanchine and...Cunningham.

Safe to say there are two opposing viewpoints here: Those who feel deeply for the dancers involved and who for some time have been disenchanted with the management and artistic policy of NYCB: And those who view the massive payments of the top tier administration as deserved and feel that the dancers may in some way have brought their sackings on themselves.

As best I can judge, it's not exactly two opposing viewpoints here in the way you describe...though message board dialogue can congeal in that way. I think that at least some of those posting feel much of one way yet some of the other way, would criticize Martins for x but not for y...worry that injustice is being done to the dancers but not altogether sure to which ones, are conscious that we don't have the big picture etc. etc.

When you compare dancers nowadays one could even say they are better than Nureyev. Worldwide there are some fantastic artiste's out there., but they need to be judged in their own right. You just have to look around to note their qualities, Roberto Bolle, Manuel Legris, Herve Moreau, Jeremie Belingard, Ethan Stiefal, Jose Mar. Carr, Angel Correlli, Jonathon Cope, Frederico Bonelli, Johan Kobborg,Ivan Vasiev, Ruzimatov, the Zaklinsky's, in the past, Zolton Solymosi, Anthony Dowell, David Wall, past present and future the list is endless.There are new promising dancers appearing all the time whose talents could now surpass Ruddi.

I see this thread has been revived after a number of years. What I wrote several years ago is pretty much what I feel now, but I will add in response to the above quote that although I strongly agree that one needs to judge dancers in their own right, I think only a very small handful of dancers in the world past, present (and, in all likelihood, future) can be realistically described as "better than Nureyev" even for the sake of argument--or indeed can be described as "comparable" to Nureyev in their own way--certainly not if the criteria is genuine artistic greatness (as opposed to this or that technical feat) and one restricts oneself to comparing the "best" performances of the different artists.

Nureyev had tremendous historical importance, but his greatness as an artist, when he was at his best, was far more than a function of historical context; I have seen many of the dancers listed above and though I consider many of them fine dancers and fine artists I question whether more than two or three of them belong on a list of greatest male dancers in the past century--a list Nureyev certainly does belong on...When Nureyev collapsed to his knees facing the dawn at the end of Giselle, one felt that Albrecht had been through an extraordinarily intense, transformative, even redemptive experience. And such was the power of Nureyev's interpretation that as an audience member, one felt as if one had been through the same.

(Malakhov, I hugely admire and I consider a major artist: as I indicated in my earlier post, he is one of the male dancers I have most admired in recent decades--and indeed, though very different from Nureyev, one of the very few male dancers I have seen whose ability simply to walk across the stage or point his foot has something of Nureyev's sheer beauty and command. Unfortunately I have seen him dance very little over the course of his career and not at all in recent years.)

Bart, in my opinion, Kirkland's inconsistencies had much more to do with her health -- specifically her eating disorder -- and later in her dancing career her drug problems than who was partnering her per se.

I saw her dance with a number of partners: in addition to Dowell and Baryshnikov, Jonas Cage (in Leaves are Fading), Patrick Bissell (in Tiller in the Fields), Richard Cragun, Peter Schaufuss (both in Nutcracker), Charles Ward, Johan Renvall (Great Galloping Gottschalk) and even (unless my memory hugely betrays me) Ted Kivitt in a Corsaire pas de deux when she first danced with ABT at City Center. Some of those pairings worked better than others, but I have some great memories from all of those performances. (Clive Barnes raved about a full length ABT Raymonda with Kirkland and Nureyev that I did not see...they danced it in New York and were scheduled for D.C.; I had tickets for the latter, but D'Antuono danced in Kirkland's place.)

I do think that in those early seasons with ABT Kirkland responded with a special energy to Baryshnikov and there was a certain classical purity to their dancing together that was very appealing.

The Coppelia clip on Youtube that Vipa mentions is from a Wolftrap performance of highlights that Baryshnikov danced with Kirkland and Tcherkassy--if you buy the DVD you will see it includes a note from Kirkland regarding her weight/health at the time (it was poor); in it she urges dancers to follow Baryshnikov's example not hers when it comes to these issues...To my knowledge she only danced Swan Lake the one time--I didn't get to see it; I don't know if it ever would have been "her" role but it would have been interesting to find out.

To respond to Bart's question: During the early fall right after Baryshnikov's defection (mid 70's) I saw them dance a sensational full length Coppelia together. The chemistry between them was palpable with none of the overlay of tension that clouded some of their final performances. The whole performance had an amazing energy and her balances (on the whole not what she was known for) were extraordinarily secure in Act III and seem to go on forever yet playfully as if in a kind of flirtation with both Baryshnikov (who was smiling right at her) and the music. This was the second of two Coppelias in D.C. (as I remember) and Clive Barnes, reviewing this performance, commented on how it was one of those really special nights at the ballet. That same D.C. season I also saw them in a Shades scene from Bayadere that, alas, is something of a blur in my memory.

(Later I saw her do a Coppelia with Charles Ward that I quite enjoyed--from that performance I remember the shifts in tone as she took on each of the "character" style dances in Act II, but also a kind of impudence in her manner to Coppelius as she sunk into a very deep plie on pointe in second position. Also, Ward--who was very tall--and she did gorgeous overhead lifts in Act III from which she seemed to drift down in his arms like a feather.)

Relatively early in Kirkland's partnership with Baryshnikov I also saw Sylphide and Giselle and concur with what has been said above. But I will also mention that they danced Other Dances quite wonderfully in D.C. I am referring to when she first danced the part: her movements were so flowing one could hardly believe one's eyes. She also showed an amazing ability to shift speeds and inflect the movement in all different ways and tonalities. This performance occurred not terribly long after The Turning Point came out and a couple of teenage girls behind me were very eager to see Baryshnikov and...uh...not quiet about it before the ballet started. When the ballet was over, they could not stop talking about Kirkland--and even expressed disappointment (!) when they read the cast for Push Comes to Shove had Baryshnikov but not "her". (By the by, I very much liked Barshnikov in Other Dances--I just tell this story as an example of Kirkland's mesmerizing power on stage.)

I also saw them repeatedly in Baryshnikov's Nutcracker--another case in which video does not remotely do justice to her or them. She seemed to live the ballet with utter joy and spontaneity in performance after performance and in the role of the Nutcracker Prince he always partnered his ballerinas with great tenderness. Her Kitri (which I also saw with Baryshnikov) was similarly terrific--it was usually more fun to watch her pantomime a response to dancing when she was on the side of the stage than to watch whoever was dancing.

I don't think that for a ballet dancer the alternative need be dance actress versus pure technician. There is a kind of dancer who may not be a great "actress" in the manner of Haydee or Seymour, but whose movement has an interpretive power and grace, a richness of quality, beauty of line and shape, and/or responsiveness to music that the phrase "pure technician" does not really capture (though I think I understand what Faux Pas was getting at...). Farrell was not an "actress" but she immersed herself nonetheless within the roles she danced becoming a great interpreter of choreography and music. The way she lifted her leg could impact one viscerally in a way no "pure technician" could match. (Of course she did it most successfully in a particular repertory--what ballerina does not?)

For me, Bussell was a ballerina of this kind--not a dance actress but by no means a "pure technician." The "creamy" quality of her movement and the unstudied freshness she brought to her interpretations gave her dancing a special radiance. And in Agon, for example, she gave a unique and great interpretation that had nothing to do with being an actress OR a technician but everything to do with being a great dancer in service to great choreography.

In Prince of the Pagodas, too, she seems to have inspired Macmillan in the final pas de deux to a renewed neo-classicism--I was inspired just watching her in that pas de deux. In nineteenth-century classics, she also made an impression especially as Aurora in which her radiance and freshness was ideal. Not surprisingly she was similarly wonderful in Ashton's Cinderella, the tender sweetness of her farewell to the bumbling step sister being one of my most treasured ballet images. (Apologies for some repetition of what I have said above ...) At a performance of Bayadere I attended, she did not seem to me to be fully comfortable in the Shades scene, but brought lush lyrical sensuality and tenderness to her Act I and a more ghostly allure to Act III. I saw her in several other memorable performances (other Balanchine, Petipa-Ivanov, Ashton, and Wheeldon). In my eyes, she was definitely a ballerina.

The reviews I read of Kirkland in her debut Royal Ballet Romeo and Juliet performances were all raves--these included John Percival who, among other things, praised her run in Act III by invoking Ulanova's; in the same review he also compared her qualities to Fonteyn; in a feature article about those appearances Ninette de Valois was quoted as describing her as "a young Pavlova." So there were at least a few serious ballet observers in London who greatly admired her.

A friend of mine also saw one of those first Juliets and loved it--remarked on her riveting quality when she was just standing atop the balcony at the beginning of the balcony scene.

I saw Kirkland frequently in D.C. and occasionally in New York and once even in Boston (a lusciously free, lyrical and yet sensuous _Three Preludes_). I will try to post more about specific performances (I have done so in the past, so people may be tired of hearing me).

But I will remark here that her combination of liquid flow--one movement melting into the other--with crisp classical line and precision was quite extraordinary. Videos do her no justice though the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene on youtube seems to me to come closest to giving one some hint of her qualities. When her health (and later drug) problems weren't affecting her she was also very impressive technically and capable of dazzling with her speed and strength as well as beauty and intensity.

It seems as if Letterman didn't remember that Nureyev had once been a guest, because he said that Veronika was the first ballet dancer he'd ever had on the show.

He also interviewed Makarova--but both interviews took place when he was still on NBC and so on a different show. At least I assume that's the reason for saying "first ballet dancer...we have had..."

[Edited because I had earlier written CBS when I meant NBC)

Patricia McbBride was always a favorite of mine--I loved her with Tomasson and unfortunately missed her with Villella, though I saw a fabulous black and white film of them dancing Tarantella with unbelievable speed and brilliance. Like many others, I consider her Swanilda the best I ever had the privilege to see.

I also saw her dance with Baryshnikov a few times--including a performance of The Steadfast Tin Soldier that I thought got it just right, though the ballet itself is not a favorite of mine. Generally, for some reason--perhaps Carbro put her finger on it--Baryshnikov's performances at NYCB never made much of an impression on me. (I saw him about half a dozen times with the company.)

My one vivid memory of McBride and Baryshnikov dancing together at the State Theater is a slightly sour one. He and McBride had given a performance of Other Dances, and I don't remember the performance very well, but I do have a vivid memory of the curtain calls in which his behavior appeared rather rude--he backed up far away from McBride, far upstage, so she was standing way out in front of him (literally the depth of the entire stage was between them) and he scarcely seemed to look at her while this was going on but gestured as if to take in the audience's applause.

At first I thought perhaps this was meant as a kind of tribute to her that went awry (went awry in the sense that, whatever was intended, it looked like a bit of outrageous upstaging) but then I pretty quickly came to feel he was being ... uh... less than gracious. I have many happy and admiring memories of Baryshnikov, but this is not one of them.

At all events, when I think of McBride and partnerships, I think of Tomasson and Villella.

Letterman interviewed Natalia Makarova years ago and I found it painful. This occurred well before 1989 and he kept pushing her to talk about whether she would ever be able to go back to Russia. As I remember, the subject caused her visible distress and he would not drop it. She finally said something along the lines of 'I thought this was supposed to be a funny show' -- At the time I really blamed him and essentially became "anti" Letterman. Years later I did get over that, and I don't know what I would think if I were to see a repeat of that same interview now.

I also recall a Nureyev interview, some years before that, that took place (I think) on one of the afternoon talk shows--probably Mike Douglas--in which the interviewer said something to Nureyev along the lines of "You left [the Soviet Union] for freedom" and he replied immediately and, I thought, quite brilliantly, "for independence."

I'm sort of puzzled by the suggestion made several times in this thread that we now know that cuts to NYCB were not really financially motivated, that there is "more" behind the company's motives. (Flack says so pretty directly, but her statement doesn't puzzle me because I more or less understand her emotions.) But to take a few steps back...

In my work place, cuts have taken place due to the financial crisis. Once a decision had to be made who to let go, what to cut etc. the managers in question brought various criteria to bear--who could be spared, who couldn't be spared, who was most productive, "efficiency indices" etc.--and they made the cuts while still doing some hiring in areas that they felt could not be left to stagnate entirely.

Do I agree with all of their criteria and think they made the best decisions? Certainly not. I could give an interview in which I sound at least as angry as Rachel Flack and I still have my job! But I don't think there was anything "shady" in what they did or the reasons they gave: the financial crisis led to cuts, but the cuts were still made using criteria that, in different circumstances, would not have been brought to bear.

In other words, I don't think there is anything "shady" or dishonest about NYCB announcing the cuts were taking place for financial reasons. In the context of financial crisis -- facing the reality of having to choose who/what to cut -- management inevitably set some criteria. Publicly emphasizing the financial motive might, and I think should, be seen as a way to protect the dancers by acknowledging that they would not, under other circumstances, have been cut.

As a matter of course, cuts made in such circumstances are going to be problematic. If they weren't--well, it wouldn't take a financial crisis for them to occur. The fact that Martins met with each dancer individually is decidedly to his credit, but the truth is there is no nice way to lay people off; it's not a nice thing to do or to have to do. (One at least recalls that management at NYCB, including Martins, has taken a ten percent pay cut.)

Now perhaps I or someone else would have employed different criteria when deciding who/what to cut at NYCB, but it would hardly be better to have the company be deliberately arbitrary just so one could say "ah it really was purely financial and nothing else was involved."

(To get more speculative: depending on the timing of Flack's narrative, it's even possible that Martins really was, at one point, willing to consider her for a feature role, but then when the financial crisis hit, realized he saw her as someone he might in the coming weeks/months be cutting from the company and thus was not prepared to invest in her...I'm not saying that's how it happened. Rather, the point is we don't know. Of course, it's understandable that she experienced the scenario she describes as puzzling and dishonest.)

Now it's also true that some institutions use financial crises as an excuse to do 'dirty work'--cut things they wanted to cut anyway etc.--but usually there is a pretty clear trail of evidence. It's fair enough to debate Martins' leadership, but I don't see any reason to believe that he "wanted" to cut a bunch of dancers from his corps...

If a non-local who occasionally comes to Washington for ballet performances can weigh in...

Bright Stream and Coppelia

In both cases, with a full complement of ballerinas please.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

may be I am wrong, but I see no reasons to discuss such secondary questions as an “old negress” or the name “Isaac” of the bad guy from a provincial market place.

And it is your right not to discuss these if you don't find them important.

Evidently, the Bolshoi’s Le Corsaire produces much more serious problems because it presents a real caricature on the Muslim world. Look at all these fat mullahs, lazy eunuchs, chicken-hearted soldiers, silly Seid-Pasha himself… Meanwhile Christian bandits are romantized in the ballet. The only Muslim positive personage - Ali by name - was excluded from this production.

You are right that this reflects a tradition in Western art of a certain period -- Mozart's "Abduction from the Seraglio" and Rossini's "L'Italiana in Algieri" are operatic examples -- one that is rarely discussed in detail.

...Though if you google 'orientalism' and/or 'exoticism' and opera (or nineteenth-century music), you will turn up a fair amount of discussion. I don't know this literature or how much of it deals with the comic tradition but at least some of it does -- Herbert Lindenberger for example...(By contrast, Said's _Culture and Imperialism_ discusses Verdi.)

With a living, performing art I think there is necessarily a certain amount of give and take with the past. You don't have to -- should not and cannot -- make every work match the norms of a contemporary context, but a production is always an adaptation of sorts. These works aren't flies trapped in amber. The Bolshoi implicitly acknowledges that when they change the "negress" to an old woman when they tour to the United Kingdom and the United States or, for that matter, when they offer the ballet without Ratmansky's "Pas D'Evantails" to meet economic realities at the Kennedy Center. The artists in charge are, in effect, making decisions (as, in some cases, do audiences and critics in response) about what they do and don't find aesthetically crucial in situations answering not only to aesthetic but to practical, ethical and other considerations.

(I have to admit that for me, in any case, Corsaire is no sacred text--and the Jardin Anime, especially in the Bolshoi's splendid version, is the primary reason to see it as a full length ballet at all. A minority opinion probably and it does not mean I didn't enjoy the production in London--I did--but I don't feel strongly about the ballet as a comic masterpiece. Emotionally, it's not Cosi Fan Tutte -- or Coppelia...a different genre of course but that's probably one reason for my response to it.)

I saw a beautiful and moving performance of Liebeslieder Walzer a little over a week ago with Kistler, Whelan, Somogyi, and Taylor. I expect Kistler once danced her role with more power and freedom than she does now, but she was lovely and, for me, the ballet--which I had only seen once before many years ago--came through in a beautiful and moving ensemble performance. If I had never seen Kistler before nor known who she was I would have thought the same (as best I can judge). I had actually been watching her nervously as the performance began both because of what I had read and because of a performance of Davidsbundlertanze a few years ago that I had not cared for; within a few minutes that passed.

Like Stabat Mater, mentioned above, Liebeslieder is also an ensemble work and one in which the dancers wear gowns/long tutus--but it is also a very delicate and wonderful work of art, one of the greatest ballets in the repertory, so all the dancers get credit in my book.

Of course, this is not exactly a response to all the concerns being voiced above about the current range of her performances--concerns I understand. But, seeing so little deeply felt praise for Kistler in the present I thought I would at least register my appreciation.

Also: To the person who suggested that Nureyev at the end of his career probably had more technical chops than Kistler has now...From everything I have read and heard...not remotely. (Even at his supposed "height" I saw him once on one of the marathon tours in which he danced every night and found him dancing sloppily and looking exhausted. On other similar tours, I saw him give some of the greatest performances I ever hope to see.) A closer comparison for my taste though is Alicia Alonso whose dancing seems to have been an inspiration to her company and her audience considerably past the point when a newcomer to the ballet would have understood why she was on the stage and to have been so precisely because of her historical importance as a dancer and leader of the company. It may be American fans have less of that historical investment in their ballet stars ... and I take very seriously the views voiced above that Kistler may now be doing the choreography/the company a disservice. But as Leigh said, she is not just any principal dancer.

SandyMckean remarked in response to something I posted earlier: "It's not Boal's remark that I consider telling. I'm more concerned about the meaning of remarks such as:'I am afraid I don't think it reflects that well on Boal himself.'"

Regarding my "meaning:" as I said above when I responded to your (SandyMckean's) first comment suggesting I had been unfair to Boal, it "means" I was quite disconcerted about the remark coming from a serious ballet artist--one whom I greatly respect--not that I have an opinion about what PNB should be dancing. However, I do think Dirac's comments are on the mark--one shouldn't get carried away. . .

For the rest, I'm not as uncomfortable as several other posters with Balanchine's central influence in the United States since it seems to me to correspond to his importance in the history of U.S. dance and his greatness as a choreographer. And I don't think every ballet company in the world has a duty to every choreographer or every style.

At the same time, I do tend to hope (or had tended to hope) that the directors of what we like to think of as "major" companies have a broader ballet education than it may well turn out they do in fact have. (Far from being cynical--as I infer I was earlier accused of being--I suppose I was naively idealizing. That, of course, is not Boal's fault.)

As a practical matter, the issue is not PNB or even the Sarasota ballet. I would like to see the Royal be Ashton's standard bearer and, in that context, the efforts of smaller companies such as the Sarasota ballet could well be important. But without that context, I worry more...

Edited to add: I wrote this just as Helene was posting. I suppose I have been falling into her first category. The second may be more realistic. I'm not sure that's a good thing...but reality is always where one has to begin.

The Lankedem made me feel slightly queasy when I saw the production in London, and it is not my impression that antisemitism is entirely a dead letter in Russia where this revival/reconstruction premiered. I am also not convinced one couldn't modernize at least some points like this in nineteenth-century ballets with no profound loss -- and it certainly isn't as if we are seeing an "exact" reconstruction of the ballet in any number of respects. We aren't. As far as dance history goes, historians can still read about and document how the ballet was done originally. (That said, the whole premise of Corsaire involves a silly orientalism whose political implications don't bear much looking into...)

Very sorry to read Osipova has been ill. Wishing her a swift recovery...

SandyMckean: I don't doubt Boal's seriousness or honesty, qualities that he had as a dancer as well. I did wonder if he had other things in mind when he said he "didn't know" Ashton only because I found the statement so surprizing from such a serious ballet artist--no cynicism behind my comments or as best I can tell elsewhere in this thread.

And, though I haven't seen PNB, I have read many positive things about Boal's directorship of the company, a company which I also see repeatedly described and reviewed as "major." To me, "major" means it is a company of more than merely regional interest. (I live in a city with no such company.) In that context, I was disconcerted by his remark -- since Ashton is one of the greatest choreographers in the ballet tradition, arguably the one twentieth-century peer of Balanchine. (Of course, I don't expect Boal to have or to claim the deep familiarity with Ashton he has with Balanchine or Robbins, and I'm not particularly invested in whether or not PNB dances Ashton or should dance Ashton about which I can have no opinion.)

I tend to think that what would help the Ashton legacy most at this time would be for the Royal Ballet to invest more heavily in dancing his ballets on a regular basis and drawing on the experience of earlier Ashton interpreters who are still around (those who worked with him directly) to help rehearse and coach the ballets. (I assume they do the latter to some degree but don't really know.) Just a few years ago, I did see the Royal dance what I thought were fine performances of Symphonic Variations (with Cojocaru and Yoshida in the Fonteyn role) and A Month in the Country (with Bussell and a not very Ashtonesque but definitely very compelling Guillem in the Seymour role) and a pretty good performance of The Dream. But as noted above they seem to have been dancing Ashton less in recent seasons.

I'm headed to New York to see Sylvia for the first time next week as danced by ABT-- can't wait.

Although I think it likely that, as Helene suggested, when Boal said he "didn't know" Ashton's work, he probably meant he was not terribly familiar with it or some such, I still consider the remark absolutely shocking. It reflects very, very badly on the state of ballet "culture" generally--something IS really wrong when the director of a major ballet company feels comfortable saying he does not "know" Ashton's work -- but I am afraid I don't think it reflects that well on Boal himself.

Dancing in New York for so many years, he had many opportunities to see substantial samples of Ashton's work reasonably well danced even if one assumes that early in his career he was not focused on the wider dance education necessary to be a director. And if he had a lacuna that large in his dance education once he became a director, it's surprising he did not make a point of filling it. (Ashton choreographed for NYCB early in its history; and if one assumes, as I do NOT, that NYCB is understandably the be all and end all for Boal's dance education, that fact alone might have sparked his curiosity.)

I could understand a director concluding that Ashton's style is so "particular" that his dancers would be unable to cultivate it properly, though whether or not that is the case for PNB I have no opinion. Perhaps Boal was thinking that and didn't want to say so?? I think I would prefer to imagine that was the explanation for his remark.

I am also inclined to think that with all great ballet choreographers--from Perrot to Petipa to Balanchine--we have to assume from generation to generation that elements and details will be lost and changed (yes, the "third quarto" text) but that many of their ballets are still worth preserving and can still survive to be effective and powerful works of art. I am not ready to say we should jettison a repertory or even a work simply because it doesn't look as it did (even allowing that it DID look better). Of course, we should try to preserve what's great--and fight on its behalf--but I tend to think a mezzo-mezzo performance of Ashton's The Dream still beats most of what is out there...and who is to say that a new performance tradition in another generation might not find a way to bring it to better life again in any case?

I am aware that sometimes the performances are so lame that the ballet is effectively wrecked, but I don't think we have reached that point yet with Ashton -- or Balanchine -- and am not inclined to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

(By the by, I think it is not only the Balanchine Trust that deserves credit for the "life" of the Balanchine repertory or even the number of former Balanchine dancers directing other companies, but also the simple fact of NYCB dancing huge swathes of his repertory steadily over the years and periodically taking it on tour: I know many people have been disatisfied with some of their performances over the years, but in New York there is a lot of Balanchine and a lot of varied Balanchine on a steady basis; a very different picture from Ashton at the Royal Ballet. An old saying has it that you can't be more Catholic than the Pope--if the Royal doesn't keep Ashton alive, well, that's not much of an inspiration or guide to anyone else.)