Alexandra

I don't know Yvonne Daunt either, Estelle, but I just passed that email along to a historian friend who might. Lise Noblet I remember reading about in Ivor Guest's books -- yes, so many ballets we can't see! I remember once being with a friend in Copenhagen who took me to visit his great great great great grandparents in their tombs (buried in the old style, in above-ground coffins in a church). He put his hand on one of the coffins and said, "They saw Galeotti ballets!" Had there been a medium in the vicinity, I would have insisted upon an immediate debriefing!!! I don't recognize the other names in your list -- have you looked in Guest's big history of the Paris Opera?

Thanks, Maria -- we have a forum for the Royal Danish Ballet, too (I think you've posted there). Let us know what you see there, too!

But ballet is on the radar screen in that community (otherwise, it might have been military school ). I remember Bujones' story as being he had asthma as a small boy and the doctor said, "Ballet! Builds the lungs!"

atm, a supportive (if not pushy!) father has come up in several reviews of Spanish or Latin American men that I've read. They'll also mention that dancing is part of the culture -- it's cool to be a good dancer, nothing to be ashamed of. (social dance, "folk" dance) This is one of the reasons often given for the explosion of Latin male ballet dancers here these days. Some changes are good things!!!

This was on yesterday's Links. I'm copying it here for discussion.

I'm copying over Ari's post from Links for discussion: Lewis Ranieri, the chairman of the board of American Ballet Theater, has an unorthodox approach to his job, says Robin Pogrebin in the Times. How will it affect the company?

Thanks for the question, monkeedance, and for the info, Karen -- I hadn't heard of this one, so I'm doubly grateful for the news and details.

But Beaumont did write about "Apollo" in Complete Book of the Ballets (I'm writing this from memory, but I'm reasonably certain it's in the Complete Book). He said it showed a lot of promise but is the work of youth -- too much reference to "sport" (it was the age of sport, swimmers, tennis players, etc.)

I think both Diaghilev and Kirstein annointed Balanchine -- the insiders, if you will, rather than the outsiders. They looked over the field and said, "That one."

There's isn't a formal trust a la the Balanchine Trust for Ashton ballets; he assigned ballets to certain people, yes. (I don't know if there's a difference between who gets royalties and who has responsibility for staging them.) Michael Somes did have responsibility for Symphonic, and other Ashton ballets and was reportedly an excellent stager -- and certainly seemed to be one from what one saw on stage. There's quite a bit of footage of Somes coaching ABT in Symphonic, as well as the ballet in performance, on the Frederick Wiseman TV documentary "Ballet." (I'm never sure of the spelling of his name.) I don't think this is commercially available, but some will have taped it off the air, I'm sure.

Aha! You see them regularly -- you slipped We'd love it if you'd report about what you're seeing, danciegirlmaria. There are lots of people with an interest in the Royal Ballet who don't get to see it as often as we'd like.

Carbro, I agree with you. I can understand it if there's reason to believe that someone is using a group (dance or theater company, rock band) to smuggle in nerve gas, but not to say "ban all foreigners." I haven't read enough about this issue to have an opinion on whether it's still kneejerk post-9/11ism or that some groups (perhaps even arts groups) using this as an excuse to keep out competition, or it's that Desk A in Miami is acting differently from Desk B in Boston. Another expense for the arts, too, because now companies have to have good immigration lawyers.

Well, that's only one review. But I think it's understandable that Russian audiences feel proprietary about Swan Lake and have certain expectations/standards about both productions and dancers. Fans and critics here and elsewhere certainly criticize Russian companies dancing Balanchine, Ashton or Bournonville! If you read the thread on ballet.co, I gather the Moscow fans weren't very happy with the production, either. I think companies have to be careful what they bring. When the Mariinsky brings Balanchine to New York, they often get an earful!

Nothing to say about it yet. Just wanted to open a thread to encourage people to post about this book.

"Atonement" was on my last summer's reading list, and is still on the shelf. After next week, I really will be able to start reading again and hope to get to this one then. There have been several comments about "Atonement" and so I'm going to start a separate thread for it. Continue!

I think you all are right that most people think of "dead" when they think of "museum;" I've always loved museums and I've always thought of the past as part of the present, so "museum" to me means something grand. I think Kathleen made some excellent points about the differences between opera and ballet -- I was thinking of the opera repertory in the broadest sense, not trying to associate specific composers/styles with particular companies, because I agree that changed long ago. (Not quite opera, but D'Oyly Carte is one company I can think of that exists to do one particular style. A museum, and a traveling one, at that.) I meant that people don't seem to object to watching, or singing, 18th and 19th century operas. (Although opera certainly has its fair share of drastic restagings.) When I win the lottery, I'll earmark some funds for a PR campaign to make people think "fun" when they hear "museum"!

There's also an interesting thread on Ballet.co's forum about this very topic: http://www.danze.co.uk/dcforum/happening/3731.html

Hi, dancingirlmaria. Ari had an article on Links today: The Royal Ballet's performances in Moscow are reviewed by Raymond Stults in the Moscow Times.

Thanks I agree, glebb. I was stunned when I first saw that sequence. He's seldom mentioned in the Great American Dancers lists, but he's very elegant, and shows how different show dancing was in the early days of the last century (and why so many dancers could go back and forth between ballet and Broadway.)

I misquote parts of this passage by Edmund Gosse on Bournonville frequently; I'm putting it here so I can find it when I need it

Burn the Louvre, the Uffizi and the Tate! Turn the Mall in DC back into a cow pasture -- ooops, a soybean patch!! ;) We don't want museums!!!! More seriously, I think Bobbi's points about opera are excellent -- opera doesn't have to put up with the same nonsense that ballet does about repertory and I don't understand why.

The INS position has been inconsistent, from my brief brushes with it -- it changes by administration, but not always in predictable ways (I think it's often at the whim, too, of the person who gets to stamp the paperwork.) I know one dancer who took six years to get his resident alien papers, others that got them in three months. There was a famous dance case about 15 years ago with Kenneth Greve, then a teenager, in whom everyone in the dance world was interested in -- including the directors of both ABT and NYCB. He had letters from at least a dozen people explaining in great detail how unusual he was -- six foot three and coordinated, training from birth, heir to a great tradition, etc etc etc -- and he was denied a work visa. (This was in the media at the time. ) Yet there were others from overseas with more modest paper qualifications than he who got visas that summer. The situation is different now, though, with the Homeland Security department, and I'm cynical enough to believe that The Holy Monks of Tibet won't get in (because Tibet is a hotspot) while the Schlankshlekers of Siburnia (where Schlankshleker is the Siburnian word for "manic killer terrorists armed to the teeth) will Ah for the good old days. I once had to review "The Palestinian Liberation Army Children's Choir" where all the male "children" had beards and during the traditional folk dance company's wedding, the bridegroom was killed on his way to the ceremony and the bride ripped off her dress to strip down to her combat clothes, complete with boots, the best man gave her his AK-47, and she ran off to avenge the death, while the audience leapt to its feet as one, crying "Kill, kill, Israelis." It was at the Kennedy Center and the day was Yom Kippur. (for this thread, obviously, politics has to be discussed. My prohibition against politics is for gratuitous comments thrown into pacific discussions, or slogans in signature lines, that would divert debate from the serene, intellectual conclave we have tried to construct here to discuss higher topics, like who's the best Kitri, or what we think of the Balanchine Celebration )

Drew, I second your last point. I think the Kirkland I story is the only story publishers, at least, want to read, at least American publishers (I wonder if it is different in other countries)? The Fonteyn Story -- little girl wants to be a ballerina, has perfect body for ballet, no known eating disorders, works hard, lands in the right place at the right time, inspires great choreographer, has late career great partnership and generally has glorious career -- is not what they want. They want the "ballet is awful, it breaks the body and the spirit" story. (The Eddie Stierle story is another -- not saying that he was self-destructive, not at all, but the story is very much about "they said he didn't have the right body for dance...") If Emma Livry had been American, she would have inspired the muckrakers. ("Evil theater owners who install unsafe gas lamps purely for Profit and Greed destroy the Life of our little Butterfly....")

Well, Livry was only 17, and many felt that her death ended the hope of reviving the Romantic ballet (imagine if there were a 17-year-old Farrellova who had an instinctive sense for dancing Balanchine and everyone was imagining her in all those roles, and anticipating the pleasure of watching her for the next 30 years). So in a sense she's remembered because her death was so horrible (read Guest; he does a lovely blow by blow, right down to the butterfly fluttering over her casket all the way to the cemetery) but also because it was not only a thwarted life and a thwarted career, but a thwarted era, one of the great What Might Have Beens in dance history. (And, after all, if you start a thread asking for tragic deaths, it's gonna be morbid )

Daron, I'm sure you're right. There's a similar situation in Denmark It's the down side, as we would say, to state ownership/funding of the arts. The same thing could happen here -- an artistic director could stand on principle before his board (well, in theory anyway) and be fired, but he could always go someplace else because there are so many companies.