Alexandra

I hope, then, that this dance was cut because it's not only in poor taste -- which any presenter has the right to do, and yes, my idea of poor taste is likely to be different from someone else's -- but because it's banal. The number of dance and theater pieces of limited to no artistic value that have gotten attention because someone in them is nude, or the piece pokes fun at an institution, is dispiriting.

Thank you for that review, Jane. I like your "triple bill" analogy especially (and look forward to reading your review and the interview.)

Or just starving them to death by inattention

The latter, I think. Grigorovich's approach to ballet (all dance, just a few major characters, big effects) is what happened after dramballet. Dramballet is 1930s and '40s.

I never thought of dramballet as a negative term. It is said that the dancing is "minimal" and I think that depends on how you define "dancing." There's a lot of character dancing; there's gesture rather than formal classical mime. We just did dramballet in one of my classes this week -- and I showed them the brief versions of The Fountain of Bakhchisarai and Flames of Paris. The vast majority of the students loved them, and, rather sadly (and unprompted by me!) said the ballets couldn't be performed today, because "we don't dance like that anymore." (They were also fascinated by how small tthe dancers were - and how powerful.)

Here's a link to an interview with Wiseman about the film. Jeffrey Brown, one of he reporters on PBS's NewsHour, has an Art Beat section on their website; that's the source (and a good site to check. He has an interest in dance.) http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2009/...f-la-danse.html

Well, Catherine, get busy!

Catherine, I read those memoires this summer and loved them. They've been around for ages (I think the original publication date was 1969, but that's ffrom memory and my book is at school), but I had never run across them until the reissue. You really get a sense of Petipa as a young man, a bit of a braggard, and good storyteller. Lillian Moore's notes make necessary corrections and amendations. It's nice, but not a full biography.

Re Petipa, I think what you've referenced is a translation of about 2 years of his diary, when he was an old, old man.

Good question,, Catherine! I think the most basic book that's missing, in English, is a biography of Petipa. It astounds me that therre isn't one. (One could imagine at least six books on Petipa, but I'll be happy with a biography.)

Thanks for the explanation, L.V. As has been pointed out, if you need to contact the moderators, you can do it by clicking on the Contact Us link at the top of the board. I'm sorry, but what you're trying to do is beyond the scope and purpose of the board, so I'm afraid we can't help. I'm going to close this thread.

Thank you, cyngeblanc! I take it there were disappointments and surprises I'll look forward to reading yhou on this. Congratulations too all!

L.V., if you've written something, please post it -- that's the purpose of the forum. We're really not intended to be a mailing list for contacting people privately. (

Quiggin, this production may very well have its own integrity.

Quiggin, there are huge stretches intact -- the whole first act. All of those crowd scenes are choreographed, on the music. (Kronstam led the rehearsals for the 1992 production Acts 1 and 3, according to dancers in that production. He tightened the first act, restored some details, made it musical -- it was quite fine. Bjorn choreographed new dances in Act II, replacing the suite by Kirsten Ralov. It was very.....watery.) Don't know what you mean by "existentialists 30 years ago." I meant the grand jete en avance was what gave the idea and the image to Kierkegaard of "the leap of faith."

OT: Quiggin, unfortunately, I don't think many philosophers take ballet seriously. But yes, the "leap of faith" was really a grand jete en avance!! There's another section that says, "The knights of infinity are ballet dancers" and describes how the dancer will move from position to position, and then suddenly he will leap; that was the source of his metaphor. Kierkegaard went to the theater a lot, and mentioned Bournonville several times in his writing. He said that one leap of Bournonville's (as a dancer, as Mephistopheles in his "Faust") made him understand the demonic, namely, it is the sudden. That's a paraphrase from memory, and from his diaries. I never could find any reference to "La Sylphide," which is very odd, as it would seem so relevant to Kierkegaard's own life. I don't know if the Agnes and the Merman story influenced Bournonville, nor the dates of the other writings, and don't have time to check it tonight. "Napoli" is 1842, and was written in 1841. He was directly inspired by his trip to Naples and the blue Grotto, but that doesn't mean that other stories may have been worked in. On the second act choreography, I've read and was told tthat Bournonville's act was not badly chhoreographed, just a lot of dancing for the audience of that time, especially the men, who weren't as enamored by a stage full of women as were their French contemporaries. The act got chopped, down to the mime, a pas de deux and the transformation scenes by Lander; afterwards, others have tried to choreograph something "after Bournonville." I can't comment on the present production, of course, as I haven't seen it. I hope someone else will.

Thank you, Leonid. The company does have a problem, in that the city (and, consequently, the ballet audience) is relatively small, and the works have been performed so frequently that they do not draw full houses, and many fans who would say "don't touch these works" don't go very often. In the past, they've solved this by double-billing a popular, or new, work with one of the shorter ballets; "Napoli" and "Folk Tale," though, have to stand alone and there has been enormous pressure by at least one of their leading critics to update "Napoli" for 50 years. That's hard to resist. This idea of updating "Napoli" is not new. A dancer (no one involved in this production) spoke excitedly to me in the early '90s of how great Gennaro's leaping entrance was, and, in the same breath, how much greater it would be if he rode in on a motorbike.

I haven't seen the production and cannot comment on it. For 20 years, the Bournonville repertory has been in the hands of people who turned the ballets into cartoons, and I'm glad that era is over. I don't have a problem with updating, in general. Some works can stand a change in setting, and finding new things of interest in a work is part of theater tradition. I do believe that a fresh look at a production must retain the main philosophy and aesthetics of the work (or call the ballet something else), and these comments are on the libretto of this "Napoli," as portrayed in the reviews. Say an actor is staging "Hamlet." He's always found Hamlet a tiresome character -- elitist snob! what does he think he is, a prince or something? All those long speeches about existence and the nature of man. Like, get a life! Kill the king already and get it on with Ophelia. We need more sex in it to bring in the young people. When we're done, let's take that hideously offensive Christian holiday, Christmas, out of "A Christmas Carol" and the French Revolution out of "A Tale of Two Cities." The world would be a far, far better place. I wrote something about "Napoli" a few years ago that I'll quote here. Emotion, reason and faith were the three stages of existence in Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling" (Kierkegaard and Bournonville were contemporaries): The Aesthetic, The Ethical, and The Religious. The Grotto scene is the point of the ballet. It has seemed to me that many Danish writers -- and dancers -- have little real respect for Bournonville, or at least, some of his ballets. They trivialize him and see him as, at best, a charming, sentimental fellow who made a few good roles, but mostly as a moralistic prig who's their "luggage" and worth keeping only for that. (Luggage in the sense of a burden and also their calling card because, as one dancer once told me, "without him we'd be just another mediocre ballet company.") Some also seem to have trouble distinguishing between themselves and their beliefs, Bournonville and his beliefs, and the beliefs of the characters in the ballets. All of the people in "La Sylphide" would have believed in sylphs. Doesn't matter whether the dancer does, or the audience does. We know THEY do. And all of the people in "Napoli" are Catholics. That was part of the point, of the local color of the piece. Which brings me to a final point, that some do not seem to understand that there are two strands in Romantic ballet: the supernatural and the "local color." There can be elements of both in a ballet, but each had its own character. There is one school of thought that's been put forth incessantly in Denmark for the past 50 years that "Napoli" is a wimpy -- oops, deeply flawed -- ballet because there's no sex -- oops, romantic danger -- in it. (The same problem plagues "A Folk Tale." Oh, what a tragedy to be saddled with such an insipid choreographer all these years.) The idea that Bournonville could convey in one three-minute scene what Kierkegaard took a book to do does not seem to have crossed their minds. The idea that Bournonville, in 1842, is dealing with a central existential quesiton -- Who are we? What can make us stray from our nature? What can make us return?-- has been missed as well. Teresina did not fall in love with Golfo. Golfo was a monster. I've seen film of him back in the late 1950s, and there's nothing appealing about him at all (and I was told that the Golfos 30 years before that were even more monstrous). He's there as a counterpoiint to faith. Not Bournonville's faith, but Napoli's.

It's a beautiful site, and I'm very grateful for the list of upcoming performances -- what a cllever idea! I did wince at the Antony Tudor is the original Billy Elliot line, though.

Do you think anyone broke it to him that at night, they're not swans?

Good grief! That says absolutely nothing about the production. Do they have no one in the state who can write about ballet? I really have never read anything liike this one -- it's worse than the "Giselle" from last year. No newspaper would put up with a baseball report that spend the whole time talking about evil in the world and suffering in Africa -- and nothing about hits, runs and errors.

I think it's worth purchasing. I use it in my classes -- the perfection is still there. Some of the students are shocked to find out how old she is, some say they could tell but were still amazed at how much she could do. She's the exemplar oof Kirov style in that role and, as such, worth watching, I think.

Thanks to both of you (both for reading us and posting asbout the issue so thoughtfully).

We've just put up the full version of Michael Popkin's interview with Christopher Wheeldon that ran in the Spring issue of DanceView. (It was too long for print.) It's in four parts at danceviewtimes. Here's a link to the first part. http://www.danceviewtimes.com/2009/10/conv...-wheeldon1.html

Thank you for letting us know, cyngeblanc. I am so sorry to hear this. I enjoyed his posts a great deal, and just thought a few days ago that he had not been around in about a year. If any of his friends and family do find this, I hope they will accept our most sincere condolences.