Drew

Very happy to read about Hojlund dancing Teresina in Natalia's (and Eva Klistrup's) writings about the festival. I only saw a bit of Hojlund when soloists from the RDB appeared in Atlanta, but my reaction to her in Bournonville was very similar to Natalia's--and I also enjoyed her dancing in a contemporary work. I would love to see her again in a big Bournonville role like Teresina!

Dirac -- in making the late James/early James contrast I was thinking mostly of his syntax and how much more elaborated (hypotactic) it gets in the later prose. I have been trying dutifully to come up with ballet examples or analogies but I actually don't feel too comfortable with any -- partly lack of familiarity with some of the choreographers that have been named, but partly a vague sense that even for the choreographers with whom I am familiar the analogies only seem to work in a relatively vague way...not all exageration or high self-consciousness seems to me to "fit" the mannerist niche. At a certain point, too, mannerism may top itself and become something else (or else fall flat): Something like Balanchine's Variations for a Door and a Sigh, in which the ballerina seems like an almost comically exagerated version of a Balanchine amazon goddess perhaps is a kind of mannerist reflection on one his own ballerina "types"--wasn't it created on Von Aroldingen, a dancer he loved, but who was not by any means a "pretty" dancer? But with Balanchine one always feels he is breaking through to give you his own counter modernism rather than a mannerist commentary "on" an earlier style, even when he is commenting on or 'countering' himself...(I would say the same thing about his collaboration with Farrell who, in many ways, looks like someone Parmigianino would have loved to paint...)

For mannerism I would be inclined to put the emphasis on what the national gallery website calls "self-conscious artifice" -- and to note that the great mannerist painters were often deliberately unnatural and often awkward and unpretty as well. Their madonnas might have impossibly long narrow features, their baby Jesuses ultra hardened musculature or bizarre facial expressions, and their colors were often deliberately sour and clashing. It's as if they were screaming "we are not Raphael." (Well, that's one amateur's account of it anyway--and I quite love the handful of mannerist paintings I have seen.) A lot of abstract ballet--particularly of the classical/neo-classical variety--doesn't seem at all mannerist to me, while I can easily see how a story ballet might be mannerist... I think that colloquially the term mannerism sometimes gets applied when some "signature" quality of an artist (choreographer or otherwise) starts to seem like a "tick"... even if a deliberate one. However, in such cases, critics often use the word "mannered" rather than the historical term mannerist (as Amy did in her question): both words may get used as if they were a variant of decadent. For those who have read Henry James, I suppose the contrast between late and early James might give one an idea of one way of thinking about the contrast between mannerism and realism. (That's a slightly tendentious statement, though not as tendentious as equating Eifman and Forsythe.)

Way off topic, but ... I had the worst egotistical cab driver experience of my life in Amsterdam (and this after years of indulging in cabs in New York). It was so unpleasant that it took me quite a while to shake it off and enjoy the city -- where the majority of people I met were, in fact, very pleasant. Slightly less off topic -- Herman: did you ever suspect that corps members were reluctant to go on the record in interviews because they felt more vulnerable to career repercussions than higher ranked dancers? Even if they were not going to say something negative perhaps praising ballet master A might offend ballet master B etc.?

I just came across this thread today and at the risk of wandering off topic had to add that I first thought Alexandra mentioned The Faerie Queen because it is episodic and even dilatory in the way a lot of narrative television is -- new "Books" of the poem introduce new characters and new plotlines in a way that superficially, at least, hardly seems tightly unified in the way Madame Bovary does and most certainly leads to delayed gratification. After reading further into the thread I found she was making an entirely different point! I also find that a lot of narrative television, even at its most "realist," is highly allegorical--as is The Fairie Queen. That is, characters are quite schematic, and in my opinion are often most effective that way, and whatever a show seems to be about on the surface, it often turns out to be about something else. An easy example would be the way most soap operas turn out to be about incest. However, this is a far cry from finding the thesis as outlined in the article very compelling. Pop culture is doing something to us, but to find out what exactly probably calls for a more controlled point of departure than a vaguely asserted correlation with rising IQs . I assume some psychologists are out there at this very minute trying to come up with controlled experiments to answer (or ask) the same and similar questions more precisely. (Not that I exactly intend to endorse the authority of that method either...) I also very much agree with what GWTW says about the oddness of equating reading solely with "explicit learning" -- and also find strangely little said (or even speculated) about the physiological effects of technologies which seem to me must be a big part of the picture of what happens (good or bad) when one engages with television/internet/video games etc. )

In discussing dancers as partners I am primarily referring to the image they create on stage. I mentioned Dowell as a "partner" king because he had several great partnerships -- that is, pairings in which the sum of the two dancers together was greater than the individual parts (however wonderful) and the artistic result authentically and uniquely impressive in a variety of roles. Dowell achieved this with at least two and, in my opinion, three different major ballerinas: Sibley, Makarova, and Kirkland. (I assume some would argue he didn't dance often enough with Kirkland to have achieved a real partnership.) Sibley/Dowell and Makarova/Dowell are pretty generally acknowledged "partnerships" -- that doesn't mean there may not be dissenters out there, but it's not a quirky judgment on my part. I saw Dowell with Sibley in Sleeping Beauty, Romeo and Juliet, Manon, and a late Ashton work created for them when she came out of her somewhat early retirement. At times they seemed like a multifaceted single being -- "one" unity divided into two sexes. At others their dramatic interaction was deeply moving. Did she enjoy dancing more with Somes? Perhaps so -- I admit I would be surprised to read that she thought she and Somes achieved more artistically as a "partnership" than she and Dowell did. Especially since she and Dowell, as a partnership, created a number of major works by both Ashton and Macmillan. I also found Dowell stunning in a different way with Makarova -- I remember their performances together as more erotically charged and, perhaps, to that degree more charismatic than his performances with Sibley. (He was also older and had become a more extroverted presence on stage.) I have no idea what Makarova says about him, though at least when she began dancing with him she gave an interview expressing great enthusiasm about the partnership. Kirkland who gave performances of great warmth and aplomb with Dowell -- I saw them repeatedly in Baryshnikov's Nutrcracker -- always, as far as I know, spoke and wrote glowingly about him. But without question I am prioritizing what I saw on stage, and while I don't think that has no connection with what the dancers themselves experience I don't doubt the connection is highly mediated. (Fracci supposedly disliked dancing with Nagy...whom everyone raves about as a partner.) In general, an occasional glaring partnering error doesn't necessarily cause me to think a dancer is a bad partner, thought the Sibley/Dowell story Gina mentions did suprise me -- but when I see a dancer who always makes errors or never matches well with anyone, then I think "bad" partner.

In both categories ("partner" king and "plain" king): Anthony Dowell. And, if it weren't for the fact that the vulgarity of the idea makes it self defeating -- I would offer up a classica/neo-classical "purity" kings evening made up of Bruhn, Dowell, Martins, and Boal -- though I might be willing to trade Martins for Tommason or both of them for the classical-with-an-elastic-edge Malakhov. (The other three are non-negotiable.)

Sorry to follow my own post -- I posted at the same time as Leigh and wanted to respond to his comment. The reason I reported the complaint about Acosta was because it specifically cited his "face" not his dancing as the problem. A broader criticism of dancers not fiting in the English style is, as you say, a different matter.

Herman Stevens mentioned the role personal preference plays in people's choices -- I would just supplement that observation by noting that preferences develop in particular contexts. Someone who finds they have to fight twice as hard to get half the recognition in any field -- say, the natural sciences -- may well "prefer" to opt out of it. Someone who doesn't get exposed to this or that art form (or sports activity) may well never develop a preference for it. The Ballet community alone can't begin carry the burden for the general neglect of the arts in American society at large, anymore than it call solve the problem of racism, but it might be able to do a little to make itself more inclusive without in any way giving up the classical ideal. And, the point, of course, is not to find people to "blame" but to ask, as Leigh did, if there aren't positive things that might be done to bring more talented dancers to the classical ballet scene...and, at the very least, to make sure that those who DO prefer it are not being unnecessarily discouraged.

I find Sylphide's remarks very much to the point. Obviously many factors are involved in the 'whiteness' of classical ballet, and ballet companies and schools are not going to be able, on their own, to have much of an impact on larger historical, cultural and economic patterns. But there isn't a doubt in my mind that dancers of color who do succeed in entering the classical ballet world do so in the face of enormous prejudice conscious and unconscious, personal and systemic. Since this is a difficult (painful) subject for most people, myself included, to address head on...I'll go further and admit that as a teenager I used to wonder "but can one really picture a black dancer as [insert name of this or that classical role]?" -- Stupid (or worse) as it sounds, I didn't really register the Dance Theater of Harlem as a counter example because I had only seen them dance Balanchine and other contemporary choreography and perhaps, unconsciously, because I knew it wasn't an integrated company. Fortunately, exposure to Christopher Boatright dancing Romeo with the Stuttgart Ballet and later to the thoroughly integrated National Ballet of Cuba dancing all the Classics (Swan Lake, Giselle, Coppelia) gave me an entirely different view of the matter--and I came to realize that what I had thought was a matter of "artistic" taste was really based in assumptions, habits, and prejudices that I had never looked at adequately. Of course, I speak only for myself -- but I think it wouldn't be a bad thing if the ballet world could broach these issues with a little less defensiveness. One more example (it involves indirect reporting, but I hope moderators will let it stand): someone recently reported to me a dance commentator saying in private conversation that they didn't like Carlos Acosta in "prince" roles because he didn't have the right "face" for it...so I responded (sincerely) that I think Malakhov doesn't have a princely face--Malakhov has a kind of elfin, boyish face, with a not terribly 'noble' even slightly upturned nose. That is, Malakhov, too, is hardly Erik Bruhn. But of course what makes Malakhov very "princely" on stage has nothing to do with his face, but with his lines, his feet, his carriage--for that matter, with how he holds his head. In fact, Malakhov is one of my favorite princes! And it doesn't occur to anyone to comment on Malakhov having the wrong face or even consider his face a serious issue to raise. Well, I would say that likewise, whether Acosta is a great Prince or not has nothing to do with his face -- which many may find quite Princely -- but with how he inhabits the prince roles as a dancer, how he, as an artist MAKES you see him. I myself have only seen him dance Conrad in Corsaire and Basil in Quixote -- but based on those performances I certainly would like to see him as Siegfried or the Prince in Beauty. One of Sylphide's points is that many dancers, at levels less exalted than Acosta's and especially young women, will be discouraged before they can ever even arrive at modest career success, and -- to put this in terms of my own examples -- this is precisely because too many teachers and artistic directors can't imagine even the most talented of them as having the right "face," or looking like the "princess," and not, in my judgment, for any good reason. I should add that although my examples are personal (and include myself) I do agree with Leigh that it is, on the whole, more useful to broach this issue as a systemic problem rather than as a series of personal ones. I don't have answers to Leigh's final questions beyond the old chestnuts -- arts education in public schools etc. I suppose top ballet schools might set up special programs to do a little "extra" talent searching and recruitment among underrepresented groups. (Perhaps a board member of a top company with a school could be recruited to take a special interest in funding this...)

The dancer I always wondered about--in terms of a career that did not seem to be favored by the company's leadership--was Veronika Ivanova. I've posted about her before (and received helpful responses about her later career from Natalia), but one brief appearance made such an impression on me I can't help posting again. The appearance was in an excerpt from Giselle that was part of an otherwise less than top drawer "highlights" evening in Chicago in the early nineties. She and Lunev held the largely NOT "dance educated" audience under a spell while exemplifying the kind of purity for which "Kirov" had, at that time, long been a synonym. They were not playing to the crowd! I don't remember if she was/is tall or short, but I guess she can't have been too tall if she was dancing with Lunev and certainly she was not a "glamor" type of any kind. Years later, I saw the Kirov in a Swan Lake at the Met, and was delighted by her dancing in the pas de trois, but a little melancholy that she was not dancing any 'big' roles in New York that time. I definitely thought she was more than soloist material...though I didn't see enough of her to speculate on what her repertory 'might have been' on tours that, admitedly, had rather limited repertory.

Ari -- thanks from me as well...

Ari -- you may know more about this than I -- did the Kirov reconstruction look to you like the Royal's old version (i.e. pre Ashton/Macmillan/Dowell)? I do think the Kirov reconstruction at least claimed to seek a level of literal archeological faithfulness that the traditional Royal production never, to my knowledge, did. The Lilac Fairy solo is an obvious difference and the Royal also had, over the years, various little additions by Ashton, including an awakening pas de deux (that I assume this production will not include) that signaled that the Royal thought of Beaty as "theirs." I rather assume, and even hope, that that is the approach they are taking -- "their" Beauty. Even the choice of Wheeldon for a new garland dance fits this picture. What I would really love to see would be a return to a more "Ceccheti" style of dancing -- which the Kirov version does not remotely aspire to...but that may be a farfetched idea on my part. (The only Royal production I saw before Dowell's was the one Ashton did in 1970. And I don't have the kind of memory that would have enabled me to make a serious comparison between that production and the Kirov's new-old version which I saw when they first performed it at the Met in New York. I am not without bias, since without question the Sleeping Beaty performances I have seen that most answer to my "inward" eye's image of the ballet were performances of the Konstantin Sergeyev (i.e. Soviet) version danced by the Kirov during a tour of the U.S. in, I guess, the eighties. But at the risk of exposing myself as a Sleeping Beauty dilettante I suspect that had more to do with the purity and quality of the classical dancing than the details of the production--about which I don't have expert knowledge or recall.)

I interpreted "Sergeyev/Messel" to mean that they (the powers that be at the Royal) really want to go back to their own, Royal Ballet, roots and, for that reason, I would suppose that they will not be looking to the Kirov's 'historical' beauty. Perhaps it is an unavoidable reference point, but I wouldn't be surprized if there were a lot of people who would prefer that it not be. For so many years, the Royal thought of Sleeping Beauty as a signature work -- a foreign body that had become, as it were, naturalized. I assume Mason's goal is to recapture that naturalized classical heritage. I think this in particular because, although the very ambivalent reviews of Makarova's production suggest much that didn't work, they did not suggest a wholesale disaster or anything that might not have been improved with some reworking -- and the Sleeping Beauty is not cheap to produce. So why go back to Sergeyev/Messel if the aim (realistic or not) is not to return to their own models and keep references to alternative variations out of the picture? (If that isn't the aim, then why not tinker with Makarova's for a season or two more before giving up on it completely?)

I like the idea of no "untoward" comments, especially since one can hardly review a performance that has not occured. But I do not think discussing casting per se -- even making skeptical remarks about casting -- is always untoward. This is a board with many fans of Veronika Part that has nonetheless had civil discussions about whether or not she is appropriately cast in Piano Concerto no. 2. That is a performance that has yet to occur. To return to Apollo, Yvonne Borree is an at times quite lovely dancer (in my opinion) whose casting has long baffled many of us ... This is also a board in which issues of "emploi" have long been a theme--which is to say issues that necessarily blend into discussions about appropriate and inappropriate casting. (I assume the board administrator's will decide what the "rules" should be...and when something is untoward...)

Hmm...Cohen did stay on her feet at this year's world's. She did not skate perfectly, and I doubt the judges would have given her a gold over Slutskaya's free skate for anything less--which is fair enough.

I wanted to chime in just to express my hope that she can fully recover. When I saw her--I remember her as Dewdrop and in Divertimento No. 15 in particular-- I thought, she was thrilling, a genuine ballerina in the making. However, I am a big believer, too, in people taking all the time they need to fully recover from an injury...Gordeyev spoke about this in an interview some years ago, explaining how he had come back from a serious injury. He was convinced that people didn't return successfully after serious injuries because they didn't allow themselves enough time to recover fully, and had been determined not to make that mistake. Unfortunately I also believe that luck plays a big part in these matters--certainly, I wish the best luck in the world to Jenny Somogyi.

I haven't had much luck with the interactive seat chart. When I click, nothing happens. I will have access to a different computer later today, and try it then.

Thanks again for all these replies -- I am printing out the entire thread. (I feel sheepish about the fact that I did attend a couple of performances at the opera house during my last visit to the U.K. three years ago. But somehow I did not manage to get a very good feel for what the layout was or what the seats were like--other than the very peculiar ones I was sitting in. The one fan I spoke to at that time loved sitting in the front row of the orchestra and claimed no problem seeing feet at all--but that just seemed very unlikely...)

Sylvia -- thanks for giving me such a detailed and helpful response.

Paul -- I've noticed, too, that the noise made by dancers in pointe shoes is one of the things that non-ballet going friends comment on the most when they they go with me to the ballet. They register it as something that can't be right, and, in a way, their seemingly naive surprise is not off the mark. I've learned to write off noisy pointe shoes, especially in dancers or performances I otherwise admire, but in most ballets it's an interuption of the aimed for effect, and the non-ballet-goer's bemusement is understandable.

I have a few questions about seats at the Royal Opera House. I gather from other threads that sightlines in the orchestra are not very good, so that one really has to be seated towards the center. But I wanted to know about the dancers' feet. At many theaters one can't see feet properly sitting up close--they are cut off by the angle of the stage--is this a problem at the opera house? If it is, at what row does it stop being a problem? Also, at what row do orchestra seats start to be properly "banked" so that a shorter person can usually see over the heads of the people in front of him/her? (Marc Haegeman once said the banking is overall poor--but I thought I would throw this question in anyway). I may get to London for work this June. If I do it will be one of my very few opportunities to see serious ballet this year, and I'm prepared to spend money on fabulous seats. So, I would also be interested in people's opinions on what are the "money no object" best seats in the house. I will add that I am someone who tends to enjoy being closer to the dancers, even when it means not getting the perfect effect of patterns. (I know seats at the opera house have been discussed before, and I did do a search on this topic, but wanted to see if I could get some more information than I found with the search.) Thanks for any responses...

My favorite is the "Ayn Rand School for Tots," but my laughter remains rather unearned since I only know Rand's ideas third hand.

The article on Alonso made Rockwell's comments about physical beauty at NYCB seem positively gallant. However, I, too, was glad to see two big articles on ballet in the Sunday Times...

There was a dancer with Cunningham's company that I saw (ca.) the early nineties--Frederic Gaffner--who had a terrific jump. I am pretty sure he had classical ballet training and, indeed, though I thought he was wonderful with the Cunningham company, I remember first noticing him because I thought he looked like a ballet dancer.