Cliff

http://www.danceviewtimes.com/2006/Spring/09/lascala.html

Svetlana Zakharova had been invited to La Scala in previous seasons for Swan Lake and Giselle, which gained her quite an Italian following. Returning for La Bayadère the Bolshoi star brought, beside her formidable technique, the experience and fully-fledged understanding from having danced Nikiya in no less than seven different productions, including Makarova’s which she performed with American Ballet Theater and Hamburg Ballet.

After dancing in seven different productions of La Bayadere, how does she avoid confusion? Especially when a part was cut. Has Zakharova or any other dancer inadvertently performed parts from a different production?

The stage sets were a distraction. In Emeralds the dancer's costumes blended into the background. And in Rubies the giant ruby overwhelmed the stage. It looked poised to fall and smash some hapless dancer. Only Diamonds had non-intrusive stage decorations.

Emeralds had the best music. Rubies the liveliest dancing. Diamonds an odd mixture of old and new. I liked it.

Just an alert for those in the Chicago area. WTTW is showing Jewels this sunday, 12/31, at 3pm. As far as I know, this is the first showing by WTTW.

2007 ABT on the road

1/9 - 1/14 Washington DC Othello and mixed repertory

2/6 - 2/11 Paris France Repertory TBD

2/14 - 2/18 London England Repertory TBD

3/8 - 3/11 Miami Florida Swan Lake

3/13 Minneapolis MN. Repertory TBD

3/15 - 3/18 Detroit Michigan Swan Lake

3/21 - 3/25 Chicago Ill. Romeo and Juliet

712 - 7/15 Los Angeles CA. Othello and mixed repertory

7/17 - 7/22 Costa Mesa, CA. Sleeping Beauty and mixed repertory

A five week period in Chicago will feature the Joffrey in Cinderella, NYCB with two Balanchine programs, and the Kirov Swan Lake. It is something like 30 years since NYCB last visited Chicago. I don't know when the Kirov last visited, if ever.

Many dancers retire due to injuries. Did Nichols, Ashley, McBride, and Hayden suffer less injuries than normal?

A question not specifically about the the mini-store. To save on shipping, I accumulate items in the shopping cart until $25 is reached and then place the order. Does BT still get the credit for saved items if Amazon.com is always entered through BT?

I think the BT for dancers board is a better place for this thread. How many promising students chose to forgo a professional career due to stage fright?

Firestone dances, 1962-1963 / produced by Video Artists International in association with New England Conservatory of Music, as part of Voice of Firestone classic performances ; production coordinator, Allan Altman. Fort Lee, N.J. : Video Artists International, c1995, 1962-1963.

including:

Pas de deux [Tchaikovsky pas de deux] (ca. 3 min.) / telecast on December 16, 1962 ; choreography, George Balanchine ; music, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky ; danced by Melissa Hayden and Jacques d'Amboise.

Coincidentally(?) the Tchaikovsky pas de deux with Melissa Hayden and Jacques d'Amboise is being shown this week on the cable program Classic Arts Showcase. Melissa does 24 fouettes, not the usual 32. Is that part of the choreography?

I've written (here and elsewhere) that, although we often say that this artist breaks the rules, I don't think artists think that way. For them, there are no rules -- that's one way of saying it -- or there are rules, but they have a much wider interpretation and understanding of them.

Maybe it is more precise to say that the artist expands the rules. To contemporaries it appears that the artist isn't following the rules. In retropect that artist is seen as following an artistic progression. The Impressionists were attacked for departing from strict realism. Subsequent -isms continued the divergence from realism.

Before ascribing racism as the cause for minimal black involvement with ballet, perhaps one should consider other explanations. Such as:

My second husband was black, and before we married I'd had a good thirty plus years of ballet going, and at the start of our relationship I tried to instill my love of ballet into him and I remember his first visit with myself, under duress, to the Royal Opera House. And his verdict - it's all white. There was nothing there which he felt spoke to him, to his ethnicity to his experience either on stage or off.

If many young black potential dancers get discouraged by the lack of role models, then there will continue to be a lack of black dancers. And so on into the next generation.

There is a plethora of talented dancers eager to burst out of the corps (and an eager BT audience that can't wait to see them do so), but with a turnover of perhaps one principal dancer per year, there are so few opportunities to advance that it's inevitable talented people will languish. And here on BT, people have been discussing the fact that their favorite principals don't get to dance often enough, either!

Perhaps ABT could create a touring company. There would be additional opportunities for dancers to dance, and more people outside of NYC could see them perform.

In English, there is never a reference to "the Carabosse fairy." The Lilac fairy is descriptive in that it describes a fairy who wears a lilac colored costume. It is just like calling a tall fairy, "the tall fairy." A proper name seems to missing even in French. An analogy is Hamlet, Prince of Denmark and Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis to (for example) Marie, Fairy of Lilacs.

Except she doesn't have a name.

A complementary question is, what is Carabosse the fairy of?

The wicked fairy has a name, Carabosse. Yet the good fairy just has a description, lilac. Is this an oversight, or is there a deeper meaning behind the lack of a proper name?

There is a DVD set, The Video Dictionary of Classical Ballet, which shows countless steps. A caveat for the non-dancer. This DVD and the Classical Ballet Technique book are geared towards dancers. Each basic step has dozens of variations, plus style differences. Its like learning all 999 commands in Microsoft Word. I've retained more from a tiny book Basic Ballet: the steps defined.

Have new choreographers introduced comedy into the Diamond Project? Or is it too risky? Then there is continual tinkering of story ballets, yet adding a little humor seems to be verboten. I think there is opportunity here. Certainly a Monty Pythons Spamalot ballet would draw a lot of newcomers.

Reviews and discussions of two recent ballets, Kudella's Cinderella and Cranko’s Jeu de Cartes, mentioned something quite rare: comedy. Romantic comedies are a staple in film, but dance remains deadly serious. Why is this?

Do all the major choreographers just happen to lack a sense of humor? Even when a Jester appears in some versions of Swan Lake there isn't any humor. Maybe the long years of training stamps out humor in dancers. The aristocratic traditions of ballet could preclude comedy. Except that with the radical changes of modern dance in the 20th century one would expect some loosening up. A non-verbal art makes humor more difficult, but pantomine and slapstick are still available. Do women, the majority of the audience, dislike non-verbal comedy?

Hemingway classified sports as those activities with a risk of serious injury or death. By this non-standard measure, ballet is closer to being a sport that many other games. A more common definition of sport would require a competition with a winner and a loser. And here ballet is not a sport. Although a poor performance could make the audience feel like a loser.

According to Hemingway, ballet is a game.

There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.

"Off the center" sounds like the dancer is unbalanced and prone to falls. Perhaps the dancing takes place away from the center of the stage. Or maybe one side of the body is favored. What does "off the center" mean in this context? Are there examples of Forsythe on video?

In the thread Vishneva To Bolshoi, Principal Guest, Vishneva is quoted as saying:

* On dancing Forsythe: "It is very hard on the body, to switch from Petipa, to Forsythe, then back to Petipa....causing tremendous stress and depression for the body."

My understanding is that choreographers select from the set of ballet steps in order to create a piece. So, how would switching from between Petipa and Forsythe cause tremendous stress?

The Chicago Tribune summarizes a survey of readers and potential readers of poetry.

Survey says: Folks at home enjoy a poem

The report estimates that 14 percent of American adults read or listen to poetry.

Poetry users tend to have never married and to be younger than 55. The 18-to-24 age group is particularly keen. Poetry users are not loners. With the exception of watching TV, they tend to participate in leisure activities more than do non-users. That includes sports -- tennis and Tennyson, anyone?

And poetry users are more likely to keep up with family and friends. Poetry haters, a phone call to your mother is too much to ask?

The full report is at Poetry in America: Overview

From the Sun Times link,

Company kicks off Chicago's dance explosion

NYCB'S LINEUP

Programs planned for the Harris Theater. Single tickets, $65-$112, go on sale April 11. (312) 334-7777.

"A Portrait of Balanchine," 7:30 p.m. Oct. 17 and 20: All Balanchine, including "Serenade" (set to Tchaikovsky); "Concerto Barocco" (to Bach); "Duo Concertante" (to Stravinsky); "Symphony in C" (to Bizet).

"Masterworks," 7:30 p.m. Oct. 18 and 19: Balanchine's "Divertimento No. 15" (to Mozart) and "The Four Temperaments" (to Hindemith), and Jerome Robbins' "In the Night" (to Chopin).

"Gala," 7 p.m. Oct. 21: Ulysses Dove's "Red Angels" (to a Richard Einhorn score); Christopher Wheeldon's "After the Rain" (to Arvo Part); Peter Martins' "Fearful Symmetries" (to John Adams).

I'm thrilled that NYCB will be in Chicago!

I prefer the old Amazon.com link. The new one is garish.

Ballet has multiple images in popular culture.

It signals a refined elite with classical music with tiaras, tutus, tights, and toe shoes. In contrast, ballet also indicates a childly innocence for young girls. Something common and trivial. Ballet is a respectful modifier for descriptions of operations involving intricate coordination, such as space travel and military operations. Nobody every mocked a paratrooper landing by calling it a ballet. I'd like to see a Swan Lake review claim that the 101st Airborne couldn't have done it better.