Pamela Moberg

That is a hard one to answer with absolute truth. As for myself, it kinda grew on me. But, trying to be more exact, it must have been the music that enthralled me - I have always loved "danceable" music, no matter if it is classical, flamenco, pop, latin or whatever. Some music one (I mean myself)just cannot dance to.

We have now sat through the competition which was held in London. It was a complete bore, very badly televised in Sweden. Debora Bull presented, but she was removed after two words and a Swedish voice came on. Yes, the woman is a professional so I feel free to say what I think. She said,in a completely inane way amongst other things: Watch now, she is going to do TWO pirouettes! Holy smoke! I almost fell off my chair because of this woman. The dancers, well, nothing outstanding, hardly a classical dance between them. A pas de deux of two Polish guys won first prize. Well, in all, a great disappointment all around. Any other posters saw it on TV? Anybody at all saw it live? Please give your views!

Leave Giselle as she is and may the great Lord preserve us from any weird updatings. It is a very beautiful old ballet and Giselle is perfectly able to stand on her own wobbly legs in act I and then become an elusive spirit in act II. I have said it before and I will say it again: Mats Ek's Giselle is an outrage and a sacrilege! That is my opinion which I will defend to the very last.

No, Terry, we will not attend - too expensive, I regret to say. But, Swedish television usually broadcasts this kind of event from the brother country - I hope they will do it this year as well. I will certainly report in detail if it will be broadcasted on Swedish TV. Let's hope...

I possess an old video (much treasured) of Yekaterina Maximova and Vladimir Vasiliev in Giselle. Wonderful stuff indeed - to my mind the best I have ever seen.

Ed, as the President of the Ed Waffle Fan Club of Scandinavia, I must say how much I enjoy your learned and detailed posts. Keep the flag flying and more of this...

Mel, I believe that Royal ballerina you are referring to, but whose name you had forgotten, must be Beryl Grey. She used a sword to kill herself. I must say that suited her well, Beryl Grey was a very tall, broad shouldered ballerina and if she had died from weak heart or nervous exhaustion it would have seemed very ridiculous indeed. She was, in my opinion, a very fine dramatic Giselle, although Beriosova was always my favorite. She was also tall, but seemed more frail and she did not use the sword.

Wonderful! Every time ballet gets a recognition of some kind I rejoice. Congratulations! I'll even do this one in Swedish - "GRATTIS!" for good measure. This might be the first word in Swedish ever on the pages of BalletAlert...

Right now, I don't have the time to elaborate on Spanish dancing, but I will categorically say that flamenco is NOT the modern type of Spanish dancing. Flamenco is only danced in Andalucia, in the very south of Spain where it is danced by everybody - more or less well according to ability. Also it is performed in theaters and cabarets by flamenco groups (I had such a group when I lived there)all over the country and abroad, and it is performed by professional dancers. But the north of Spain has its own dances, such as the jota etc. I will write at length on the different kinds of Spanish dancing, classical, folk and otherwise, when I get the time. But, needless to say, Andalucia was not the inspiration for Petipa, rather the middle of Spain or thereabouts.

The Swedish dancer and choreographer Birgit Åkesson (1908-2001) has passed away. Born in the south of Sweden and daughter of a building contractor, she took up modern dance and studied in Germany with Mary Wigman, much to the consternation of her parents. She made her debut in Paris in 1934 with a solo she had choreographed herself. In Sweden, she always lived in the shadow of that other great choreographer, Birgit Cullberg. Nevertheless, Åkesson had great success in the fifties and sixties with works performed at the Stockholm Opera: "Sisyphos", "The Minotaur", "Rites", "Nausikaa" and "Icaros". For Swedish television she created a solo for Erik Bruhn "The hours of the day". I must confess that I have never seen any of her works live as I am not particularly interested in that kind of dance. But I have read her books. In later years she devoted herself to writing and researching African tribal dance, which she claimed was the origin of all dance forms. She was not fond of classical ballet, which the following quotes will show: "The rhythm gave life to the movement. And the movement gave life to the rhythm. The choreographic form is a flow - not some metric counting of beats" - "Moving is like breathing - it can never end in a full stretch - there must always be a return - there must be an even flow".

No, thankfully we have seen nothing of that promotion over here - well, living in the backwoods next door to Siberia, I fervently hope it will not come, but I am not so sure. All I can say is that the mind boggles...

Cargill! Amen! Just look at what Ek has tried to do with Giselle and Swan Lake. Was that an improvement on the original?! I will quit here because I feel an overwhelming urge to use words not suited to this honorable board! I you see what I mean...

JaneLondon, How very interesting! I want to take you up on your kind offer. To my knowledge Beaumont has not written about my dear Johansson - on the other hand it is quite possible - I have not read everything Beaumont wrote. However, I do remember him well and his wonderful book shop in Charing Cross Road - I used to be a regular there. I remember it so well, on my second day in London and walked in there and bought "Baron Encore", very cheap it was because the jacket was torn. Anyway, if you would come across some reference to Pehr Christian Johansson or Christian Petrovich Yogansson as he was called in P-burg, I would be ever so grateful! Sorry, but I just feel so tempted to express the same thing in Cockney: "Ta ever so, dear".

Super article, Alexandra! I am dying to see how that grabbed them in Copenhagen. Such an article carries enormous weight as Politiken is a very serious newspaper. You ought to get the Order of the Dannebrog!

Thanks everybody for great lists! Here comes some of mine. My ballet library is rather extensive - as for myself I am very fond of bios. But for the serious student of ballet there are two books which in my opinion are excellent, sensible, straightforward and to be warmly recommended. They are:- 1. "Ballet - from the first plie to mastery - an eight-year course". 2. "Both sides of the mirror: the science and art of ballet". Both these books are written by Anna Paskevska who once was my fellow student with Madame Cleo Nordi in London. As Ms. Paskevska points out: "There is a straight line from Vestris-Bournonville-Johansson-Legat-Nordi". It cannot be purer than that. These books should also be read cover to cover by parents of dance pupils. Then of course, we have the old "Basic principles..." by Vaganova. An oldie, but still holds good - illustrations, though are plain awful.

In my profile I said that I hardly ever get to see live ballet. As a reason I mentioned long distance - actually, that was baloney as I have been known to travel 250 kilometres to see a performance. Here is the real reason: The other day I found the following letter to the editor in my local paper (Gothenburg Post on the west coast of Sweden). Translation: "When one reads the forthcoming schedule of the Gothenburg Opera one realizes that the new director is the third one in succession who does not like classical ballet. It is strange that the Vienna Opera, Paris Opera, Munich Opera, the three operas of Berlin, not to mention Det Kongelige[Royal Danish Ballet] in Copenhagen and the Stockholm Opera persist in staging ballets which the current Gothenburg director calls "trolls in tulle". Why cannot we watch Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Romeo and Juliet, Giselle, Les Sylphides and Coppelia in the manner in which they are meant to be performed?" I could not agree more. This surely must be a sign of a desperate lack of fantasy, artistry and imagination when the the classics have to be "modernized". What next, Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, Ravel and Chopin etc. orchestrated for a dance trio playing at tea dances! Today, in music at any rate, there is a trend to play music as it was once intented to sound - on authentic old instruments. Let the same be true for ballet, retain the basic idea of the original and kindly dance it in that manner. Please spare us Giselles in asylums and Auroras as punks. And Sylphides in a fitness center with a poet taking steroids. Naturally ballet, like everything else must evolve, but then for crying out loud, compose new ballets. Leave us the classics intact - we also need fairy tales! If modern choreographers are so devoid of imagination that they must rehash old works I feel rather sorry for them. So just let our opera houses play the classical repertoire - we want to see Aida and Rigoletto - Sleeping Beauty and Coppelia - as choreographer and composer once intended them to be shown. Of course, it can be argued that this is only my problem - living where I do or for that matter that I am an old reactionary. But I would like to know if anybody else has any views on modernizing the classics.