Emmy8

To be perfectly honest, I found (and joined) this site because of this topic—there aren’t many resources for the Grand Pas de Quatre! My introduction to this ballet was when the semi professional ballet company that I was in during high school performed the piece. We all learned it, and then auditioned to get to actually perform it. I loved Taglioni’s part, and usually danced her role in our rehearsals. My teacher had a vhs of a version with Alonso, and actually I think my teacher might’ve initially learned the ballet from Alonso! I’m not 100% sure the version we watched was the 1980 film of Dolin’s production because I’m not sure I remember it exactly like that. I’m wondering if Alonso staged it in Cuba (or even at the San Francisco Ballet—I never knew exactly where my teacher was a professional dancer, but a lot of her references lead me to think she was in the SFB), and if there was a video of that, even if it wasn’t widely distributed? 🤷‍♀️ My teacher also told us a lot of tales about the ballet, about a rivalry between the original dancers, and how Perrot had to be very equitable about it or have reasons like “youngest to oldest” to make them all content. She said that there were only four performances because the ladies couldn’t stand each other for any longer! There was something about a set of pearl jewelry (necklace and two bracelets, at least, maybe earrings as well) that was given to the performance to use, and it was given to “the oldest” (Taglioni) to be fair about it. The other tale was that Perrot was having an affair with Cerrito at the time, and that was why she wore the one flower in her hair, instead of the flower crown that the others wore. Whether or not any of these tales are true, I don’t know, but those are what I remember my teacher sharing when she was teaching us the ballet. I’m sad that Dolin has so limited the ability to perform the work, because it’s a gorgeous ballet, and I would really love to see it performed more often! And I love all the suggestions for current dancers to perform it—it certainly would be fun to get together a similar group of dancers from around the world! (I hope y’all will forgive me for dragging this topic up from so long ago, but I’ve been wanting to talk about it with people for a long time, and was excited to see even one comment of it somewhere in the vast internet! 😆)

Good Mortereve*, all! I’m Emmy! I’m a former ballet dancer, balletomaniac (meaning I love watching ballet and geek out about ballet history), and choreographer (not much so far, but I’m going to do more!)! I tend to ramble, so that was the TL;DR, and here’s the long version of my intro: Ballet was my first love: my grandmother made me a tutu for my third birthday, and I haven’t stopped dancing since! (Well, okay, the last 15 years or so haven’t been exactly full of dancing, myself, just some odd adult classes here and there. 😞) I’ve done most types of dance, but ballet was both my strongest and my favorite! I stuck with it all 18-ish years that I was steadily dancing. In high school, towards the end of my “career”, I was able to be a part of a semi-professional ballet company (TCB), and it was my highlight! I was never good enough (or had the right body) to be professional, so that was as far as I was going to go, and I was more than happy with it! As an Army brat, we moved every three years, so I got plenty of experience with different styles of ballet. I did the Royal Academy of Dance for five years, was at a very Russian school for a while (where I got to learn most of the top variations), and my best teacher was familiar with all styles and was particular about teaching us all of them. Her favorite was the Danish style (Bournoville’s syllabus), so we often had summers of incessant jumping and complicated footwork—it was always worth it, though! I’ve always wanted to teach and choreograph ballet, and have had some experience with it, but I’m still wanting to do more! (I brag that one of “my” former students is a professional ballet dancer with PNB, but I was only the high school assistant teacher, and really only ever gave the barre portions. 😜) I’ve gotten to choreograph for some high school musicals, and once did a piece as a part of a company-choreographer showcase for TCB—so my work was on a professional stage at least once! 😁 I’ve always been into history, I’m a huge geek about ballet (and theatre) history! Most of what I’ve learned has been from my ballet teachers or random Wiki-holes, but I’m always excited to learn more! Any recommendations for some good ballet history books would be great! (I tried to read Arnold Haskell’s Balletomania when I was too young, and though I still have my copy of it, I haven’t picked it up again yet, lol!). I still try to go to ballet performances as much as I can! In the past five-ish years, I’ve lived close enough to NYC to be able to get to some NYCB and ABT performances!! SO incredible!! And I still love seeing the local dance schools’ performances, so I try to see those fairly often, even if I don’t know anyone. I have a minor obsession with The Nutcracker, and love to see as many different versions of them as I can! I grew up watching the Peter Wright’s version for the Royal Ballet (the one filmed by the BBC in 1985), and that’s still probably my favorite. I also read A Very Young Dancer growing up, which centers around Balanchine’s NYCB version, I didn’t see the filmed (with Macaulay Culkin) or stage versions until I was much older. (I finally got to see it live, just a few years ago! So incredible to finally see it irl!) My favorite non-traditional version is Jennifer Weber’s The Hip Hop Nutcracker, tho I’m also partial to The Nutcracker On Ice (my mom is more of a figure skater 😜). Well, I think that’s about all that I want to share for now. 😜 Questions, comments, and concerns are welcome! I’m excited to be around other balletomaniacs, and chat about ballet more—I haven’t had an outlet in a while! *”Good Mortereve”: a greeting. It is the combination of “good morning” and “good afternoon” and “good evening”, as a way to express those sentiments to people in a variety of time zones. I first learned it in the NarniaWeb forums, though I don’t know the original source.