mbjerk

Sponsoring dancers and performances is as old as dance itself (Tsars, dukes, ballerina's jewels coming from adoring fans at court, casting pressures from royal whims...). This is nothing new.

This started as a way to raise general operating funds when dance started going out of vogue - late 1980's - and AIDS, etc. became the place to give. Adopt a Dancer campaigns to buy pointe shoes for a specific dancer allowed donors to see their contributions onstage as well as build personal relationships with the company.

Finally, please bear with artistic directors to a point. They have a tremendous obstacle in raising the monies to present what you all love onstage. Raising even fifty thousand dollars is not easy and takes so much time away from a director's love - working in the studio with dancers. Also, when you see companies paying tens of millions to place their logo on stadiums or in movies, the temptation is great.

Or, as Major Mel is too polite to say, Cranko did it more effectively. His Jeux de Cartes was about human idiosyncracies as portrayed by the characters of the cards; rank and suit.

Somewhere there must be a video, as no company performs it anymore......

With apologies to Chicagoans and Saturday Night Live

da bears

da bulls

da ballet!!!!

gws = "goes without saying"

To my knowledge, Dowell and Sibley did absolutely nothing but be brilliant - the opposite of others.

Dancing Kylian, I learned so much about weight, using mine and using my partners'. He is also one of the most articulate gentlemen that I have met. The movement came from within and the dramatic atmosphere came completely from the movement - I was swept along as a dancer and only needed to dance to my best ability. I did not need to add anything except my full physicality. I was overwhelmed by him in many ways.

Dancing his ballets, I felt as I felt dancing Ashton or Balanchine - to parapharase Major Mel in another thread - it was just right. I cannot hear music that I danced to without completely remembering the movement, my emotions dancing ballets by these men, and my partner's reaction to me. Truly special memories.

So many that I have -

Not so known and one that always draws a tear is when Death takes the Old Woman in his arms in Green Table.

I also love the ending of the second pas in Kylian's Return to a Strange Land when the woman is held on the man and he removes his arms leaving her suspended.

In the classics, there are too many for me to name, but my favorite to dance was always jumping off the cliff at the end of Swan. A fitting conclusion to a long, fulfilling evening of dance, acting and partnering.

Or perhaps Sylvie was looking for something different than the past. I do agree that genuiness is important, and I believe (in the minority) that Sylvie is genuine in her way.......

Dirac - I think you are onto something with Margot's willingness to experiment - how many of today's principals have that outlook in their performances; each one to find a difference from the last, with abandon and no worries on the technical side? My memory is when the technique got scary for these artists, the character/personality came out more versus today where the technique seems to become the personality.

[Note: This began as a comment on the Quotable Quotes thread, a quote from Sylvie Guillem about posing for Vogue in a rather outrageous manner. I thought it turned into an interesting discussion, and so moved it here.]

I wish more dancers had the fun inside to make scenes. This is missing from the art these days - larger than life stars. One reason in my opinion for the decline in popularity. Not many personalities to interest the mainstream, non-dance audience.

Margot and Rudy arrested -

Natasha throwing her fan and the violinist suing -

Gelsey - gws -

Dowell and Sibley - for the refined taste -

I miss those - perhaps it is my jaded memory, but the theater had personalities and stars then.

I think one should be honest and comparative within the company. For example, this ballet is yet another dreary work (that goes nowhere...) filled with unfocused energy executed by wonderful dancers. Or, yet another watered down version of a classic without the excellence required from the principal roles. Or, unfortunately the brilliant choreography of director y was not danced to its potential by the company's long standing principals.

I do agree that an end of the year or beginning of the season opinion piece is the correct place to propose changes in direction, repertoire, dancers, etc. Some critics then use the performance reviews to bolster the original proposal - bias. This is fair as long as the performances warrant such reviews.....

Finally, a critic must support the art and its success, but remain true to the art form and its standards.

I would be curious to hear opinions from those in cities with first rate ballet companies. Do those cities (Miami, San Francisco, Seattle, Houston, Boston) have outside ballet troupes tour there to the same extent as before these companies rose in the nineties? I bet not.

Chicago now has Joffrey, and perhaps some of the drop off is due to a support the home team mentality, at least until Joffrey sponsors out of towners to help build an audience.

Of course there is always our government's decision to drop the dance touring program support and other arts related cuts..........

I await the next performance of "The Green Table". Or better, the next choreographer's equally compelling antiwar or antiviolence statement.

Dance for me, as religion for some, allows us to reach beyond the day-to-day. It lets me join a community bonded by beauty, thought and spirit while exploring both sides of the human equation.

I was always coached that a prince gave orders as second nature and a poet thought before he spoke.

Peter, to my eyes, always had a regal bearing without showing his inner thoughts. Others opened themselves up and allowed the audience to at least sense a thought process.

For me, the classics offered opportunities to use a poetic prince approach. Albrecht could be the cad who just wanted his due as the prince, or he could be a lad who fell in love with the wrong girl. The former is a prince and the latter is the prince poet.

My favorite was a 4th act Swan. This was a version with the jump off the cliff. Siefried seemed to bounce back up over the waves a few times. I guess the mattress was not too firm or his love was not sincere.

Andrei: Is this a tradition at the Kirov? I remember N. Makarova in one of her first Swan's in the West doing this with the fouettes (in Chicago). She fell after about eight, went downstage to the conductor and asked him to begin again. She then eeked out the thirty-two to thunderous applause (much more than if she had done them outright). Not a bad stage trick.

At age 10, I had a crush and followed her to ballet class. There I found the true meaning of challenge and accomplishment. She quit a few months later and I......

Of course in the old days, the corps was seen as the learning ground. As Alexandra said of Fille -"it looked like they grew up knowing the ballet" (I paraphrase). One learned the style and discipline of the ballet in the corps and if worthy then danced the soloist and principal parts later according to talent/ability. This stopped at ABT with Misha, who brought immediate stardom to younger members.

Unfortunately here in the US we do not have a large gene pool from which to select our ballet students, more like first come first serve. And we are a very individualistic, me first society. These combine to create a feeling that the corps is a waste of time or a no woman's land.

This closely follows the globalization arguements of the economy. The French fear losing a language and cuisine, the English the Pound and so forth.

It is a shame for me that this cross pollination is occuring in companies such as Royal and the Kirov. But, for the dancers (especially principals) the artistic and performance opportunities are incredible. Also for choreographers (who would not want to do a ballet for Guillem?). This benefits dance and audiences, but does decrease the stylistic variety for balletomanes.

Do not forget that perhaps Balanchine enjoyed a "messy" corps of individuals versus a "clean" corps of dancers. I remember seeing ABT and NYCB do Theme and Variations in the same day (isn't NY wonderful!). ABT was wonderful as a "classical" corps de ballet - musical, technical and together. NYCB was musical and technically proficient, but not one body position exactly matched the next. The energy was fantastic though. When I spoke with friends from both companies at Maggie's the next day, it seemed each corps correctly danced per its artistic instruction from above.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Unitards carry the Balanchine black and pink ballets one step further. For me, they are usually terribly constructed, hanging in the crotch etc., and very unflattering.

They are now very dated in my opinion. Of course given the recent comeback of the sixties thourgh the eighties in fashion....

Unitards may also drive unhealthy behaviors, anorexia, more so than other costume types. I am happy to see less of them and more costuming that flatters the ballet and the dancer.

If you learned the variation off the video, that is also a copyright violation. Ashton choreographed this ballet and it is not in the public domain.

Great sets and costumes with clean dancing and limited acting (save Merc). BUT if I wanted a cliff notes version without any dramatic spacing, I would watch MTV. What a waste of good dancers. I saw the Cubans, nice dancers but no character development nor enough difference between Mercrutio (well danced by jason hartley) and Romeo. Imagine a Romeo who goes around still kissing everyone in sight after the balcony scene....

I could go on about the drama missed (shy Juliet finding she is no longer prepubescent, Romeo and Juliet actually still involved with each other upon awakening in the bedroom, the whole poison bit...). Overall the choreography did not set up a situation, draw the audience into it, and leave time for the dancers to explore it.

The only costume I questioned was the Friar's. It looked more like a biblical woman's outfit.

My earlier comments on the orchestra for the Bach were only reinforced by its rendering of the Prokofiev.

All career fields create obsessive behavior. Business has the eighty hour per week, stress-ridden, cardiac risk persons. Sports has the steroid crazed, software development has the glazed eyes and caffiene.

People who want to be the best in a competitive enviroment sometimes cross the edge. Often without understanding what the edge is.

At Fortune 100 companies it is expected to work a minimum of sixty hours and more without regard to health, family or others. Why just pick on dance?

Originally posted by ~A.C~:

What was wrong with the orchestra? I didn't notice anything.

My ears found the orchestra off pitch, especially in Pillar.

Freddie Franklin was wonderful. Whether as a prince or a wisened old character, his ability to convey words through gestures taught me tremendously.

It was a chamber string orchestra, not the Kennedy Center players, but a suburban outfit. Tchaikovsky Pas used the piano to replace the winds, horns and tympany - sounded really thin as it was a part of the Swan Lake score at one point.....

Concerto Barocco - I know it too well and see every crack and crevice. Best not to comment.

T pas was fun to see again. The dancers, Jimenez and Nelson, were pleasant and young. I missed the dancers' enjoyment of each other versus playing the audience. This pas for me is a romantic pas with technique thrown away to impress your partner.

Pillar was well rehearsed -very cleanly danced. Amanda Mckerrow and John Garnder added immensely to the company's professionalism. I wished the sister in pink was a bit more teasing and conceited. And had the brothel men had danced with lust versus steps, it would have been more powerful. I like the ballet - watching it is hard for me, but when all is over I have been moved tremendously at a subconscious level.

Here too the orchestra almost ruined the ballet. The second half relies tremendously on the score to set the mood, very cinematic in quality. When the sweet, etheral music sounds like a cat in heat, that quality gets lost.

Esplanade was great - here the company got to do what it does best, move with unbridled energy in steps that do not ask for rigor of classical or neo-classical technique. And the orchestra played the Bach pieces better the second time through! The company was musical, related to each other, and literally threw themselves into the dance.

ALexandra failed to mention the orchestra which, did its best to advocate the use of taped music..........

[This message has been edited by mbjerk (edited April 01, 2001).]