Alexandra

Hooray! Welcome back, Colwill! I've really missed you and I'm sure others have as well. Thank you for that review, and thanks especially since it's of a company we don't often read about on this board. More please

Thank you for these -- I see Eifman is controversial in Paris, as well It was fun to read two contrasting views, especially since both are such strong opinions. Katharine, I'll be disappointed if you don't see and report on this one! Did anyone else go? Anyone going back for a second look?

I think it's the dancer. And I think that one of the reasons we're in a relativist age is because there are no giants. Without giants, everybody really is pretty much like everybody else. Giants tend to sort that out. I also think that the Really Really Great Ballerinas have only appeared a half-dozen times in a century. It's a very rare gift. It has to appear at the right place and the right time and be nurtured and have a support system -- a choreographer to make ballets for it, a management that knows how to handle talent.

This is becoming fascinating GWTW, I think you nailed it. "American" has come to mean "least common denominator" or "very populist," depending on one's point of view -- here we just call it "modernization." (To see how far we've come/fallen, try to get ahold of a McGuffey's Reader from 100 years ago, and see what 12 year olds then were expected to comprehend.) I'd vote with Mel on Forsythe. I've never seen anything Balanchinian there. I don't think of the work as "abstract" as much as "sterile." Alonso King, I'm told, thinks of himself as a Balanchinian, too. Perhaps in his sense of modernism, but that's it. But I do agree with Leigh that the Joffrey model is now the pre-eminent one -- I've written this before, as well. I first noticed it when I started doing the print version of Ballet Alert! I do a preview issue, and look at the repertories across the country. When I started it, in 1996, I thought that regional companies were imitation-NYCBs. That's the conventional wisdom, stemming partly from the Ford Foundation grants that went to NYCB-related companies, and partly, I think, from the East Coast assumption that everything is derived from Balanchine But neither Balanchine's aesthetic nor his ballets are that much in evidence now. 20 or 30 years ago, Balanchine ballets were the classics of small companies. They'd dance "Serenade" and "Concerto Barocco" for the same reasons that ABT once danced "Swan Lake Act II" and "Les Sylphides." It kept the company's technique rigorous, it identified it as a classical ballet company. (Lucia Chase wrote about the importance of this when Ballet Theatre first went to Europe. If we'd only brought our Americana ballets, she wrote, we would not have been considered a classical company.) Now, Balanchine is not the core. Almost every company has one Balanchine work a season, but few have one work on each program, which was the old model. What's the Joffrey Model? What's a Joffreyesque company? 1. An eclectic repertory, which means partly classical ballet, partly pop ballet, and partly modern dance or crossover (which Joffrey pioneered). Unfortunately, the part of the Joffrey repertory that was the most revererd (by critics if not audiences, anyway), those revivals, the shelter and care he gave to choreographers like Massine and Ashton, is not part of the equation now. 2. A generally even division among men and women, rather than the mini-Royal Ballet one would have seen in the 1970s, with more women than men, enough women to make a corps for "Swan Lake II." 3. An emphasis on trendy works (Joffrey started trends; Joffreyesque companies follow them) pitched to young audiences. 4. Populist, in the sense that it's not a repertory aimed at connoisseurs. 5. A mix of body types -- NOT the tall, thin, aloof pinhead/bunhead ballerina at all. Joffreyesque companies allow a wider range of body types and are not after one particular body type to set a company image. 6. Budget-conscious ballet. Small-scale works, taped music (which was why companies first turned to pop music, I'd suggest.) And that, to me, is the globalization/Americanization of ballet.

What a lovely site! Thank you, Estelle. It's wonderful, the little pockets of things that are on the Net!

(This is the post Grace referred to "from another thread" which has been now moved to this one : ) ) I'd just like to put in a quick word, not just for this thread but for cross-cultural discussions generally. We'll never be able to have a discussion if people keep "taking offense" every time someone attempts to make a generalization about a country or culture. Ithink we should take comments in the spirit in which they were made. If they were intenced to be an insult, "You Martians are greedy stupid pigs!" then please take offense -- if you get the chance to do so before I delete the comments. But if someone is innocently trying to explain what he or she means and uses a cultural example I'd suggest we take it for what it is. This has come up in discussions about Russians, the French, the Irish, the English, Austrailians, and New Yorkers in the past year or so. Truce, please Golden rule of the internet: No matter what you write will be misread by somebody. And no matter how offensive you think something is, there's a very good chance the person writing it didn't mean it that way. What is Americanization? I think there's a consensus even on the American media that there's an Americanization of culture -- our pop music and films, blue jeans and McDonalds have spread around the world, and our economic system of efficiency and eocnomies of scale are what are usually referred to in the general press when discussing "internationalization." And in the general American media -- newspapers and TV -- I think "Americanization," "globalization" and "internationalization" are used interchangeably. Now, this may be a very Americentric view of things....... Now, back to ballet

I think, as is often the case, we're operating under different definitions of "political criticism." If I'm reading correctly, Ari is concerned about someone who has a very strong opinion expressed in passionate, or less than objective, articles AND who has a personal history with the object of that criticism that could make one wonder if the reaction was more personal than professional. There are others who feel that anyone with a clear and strongly expressed opinion and who expresses these opinions from a specific position -- i.e., abstract ballets are the highest expression of the art form and three-act ballets are inherently bad; or Director X is not doing a good job in general -- is political. Nan and I are operating under a different definition, which is that someone expressing a strong opinion who's open about that opinion -- I hate abstract ballet, I've been railing against it for years, I think the only hope for the future is a return to the Tudor aesthetc, to take a hypothetical example -- and whom everyone knows worked closely with Tudor, can't be accused of being political because s/he's open about the affiliation and point of view. I think any of these defintions is perfectly defensible, personally, and would be interested in reading other comments. The political criticism I can't stand is what I consider the sneaky kind, the kind that happens in real politics, where I want to "get" my opponent and so will bring up the fact that his wife was arrested for shoplifting when she was 16, or that he belonged to a segregated golf club in the 1950s -- even though since 1958 he's been on the front line of the civil rights movement, or whatever. I think one should fight fair and fight openly, and not use criticism to even personal scores.

Katharine, Katharine, are you all right? Seriously, that was fun -- and nice -- to read.

Thanks for the information, Kevin. We seem to have two threads on this topic; this is the older and shorter of the two, so I'm closing it and ask that any future comments be made on the newer thread: http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...=&threadid=9197 I'd also suggest that when the Festival starts, we open a new thread for reports from the Festival. I know Jeannie will be reporting in, and I hope others will as well. Thanks!

I agree completely with your analysis -- and I think this is a good example of the situation where a critic and company are stuck with each other. I think the critic was fair, though. It's not a blast. He points out the positive, and makes it clear that he doesn't care much for what they're doing generally, and why. I always feel uncomfortable reading about audience reaction -- he's saying, in essence, that this is pretty basic stuff and the audience is lapping it up. I don't know how he would avoid it, though, giving his point of view. Other reactions?

Those are two interesting cases. "Mr. Collier" also wrote a book about Sibley and Dowell, and had to write about Sibley in many roles that Lesley Collier also danced -- and wasn't shy about writing that Sibley was unforgettable, untouchable, unique, etc. in role after role -- so it is possible to bifurcate. To play Devil's Advocate on the Gottlieb-NYCB Board case, what if the acrimonious parting was because Gottlieb generally disagreed with Martins' policies? Does he then have to remain silent for life? If that were the case, I would see it as a very different situation from one in which someone had been fired and is bitter and wants to "get" the person who fired him. Not playing Devil's Advocate, I'd add that in a perfect world, critics shouldn't marry people they will have to review -- or whose peers or rivals they will have to review -- and anyone who writes should remember that there has to be at least the appearance of lack of conflicts of interest. It's better not to leave yourself open to a charge of, "well, she just wrote that because I fired her/dumped her/got the job he wanted".

To those of you who are neither editors nor company directors, please feel free to playl "What if?" with this. IF YOU WERE A COMPANY DIRECTOR and you got negative reviews after every program in a year (because no one has ever complained that a writer "didn't understand me" after getting "Is the world's greatest choreographer at work in River City?" reviews) how would you handle it? IF YOU WERE THE EDITOR OF A NEWSPAPER and got a complaint from Local Maestro saying, "Your critic seems to confuse me with a punching bag. Tell him to lay off" how would you handle it? IF YOU WERE A CRITIC who was told by your editor that a dance company had complained about the coverage, what would you say? Pick one, or, for extra credit, tackle all three

I'm all for having as many views as possible. I've always believed this in theory, but since writing a biography, I am a Pluralist Evangelist During the 1960s, there would be five and six reviews in each city -- and not just London and New York, but Chicago, San Francisco. Seattle, Detroit, Houston, Rochester, Boston would have two or three reviews. With that much to choose from, you can weed out the people who don't really know very much (one of my favorites was the fellow who wrote that the La Ventana pas de trois was nice, but it certainly wasn't very taxing, not realizing that the Danish dancers strove to completely mask effort) but those with axes to grind. If you read Claudia Cassidy in Chicago, you'd think there were no other Danish dancers besides Kronstam, which, while it was nice to have those quotes, did not give an accurate picture. I don't think that the company should be able to tell a paper who to send, or who to fire, either, but I think the responsibility is on the paper to say no. I think the paper should be fair. There have been instances where a reviewer has a personal stake in something, and if that's pointed out and it's true, then an editor can take appropriate action. (There was a case I haerd about from an editor (NOT at the Post!) about 15 years ago of someone volunteering to write a feature on her boyfriend's company, without stating that, of course. Bad enough, although benign. But between the assignment and the writing the relationship ended unhappily and the result was an article that ...well, they didn't print it, because the editor could sense that there was a rather nasty undertone and suspected that the article was unfair.) I think editors generally try to be fair, especially newspaper editors. I know there have been times when I've been asked to review a company, and I've said, "Couldn't X do it, because I've reviewed them the last two times, and I've been quite harsh." And the editor is always very grateful to hear that. They generally try not to send the same person three times in a row; one of the reason to have "stringers" is so that companies don't get the same writer year after year. As an editor, if a company called me and said, "I understand you've sent Critic Y to review us. Do you know that he used to be a dancer with me when I directed Company X and I fired him and our relationship has not been pleasant?" I would certainly talk to the critic and if I felt at all uneasy about the situation -- realizing that there are some people who could handle this situation fairly and that time can heal wounds -- I'd change the assignment. (And I would expect the critic to say, "I'd love to review it. I respect Y, but you should know that he fired me and we didn't speak for years.") Conversely, I don't want to publish articles written by a friend of the dancer or choreographer, and when DanceView was Washington DanceView this came up several times. Someone would write offering to do a feature and I'd check around and find that the relationship was too close (in one case, the choreographer's husband!). Once, I didn't learn until after the Extremely Favorable Review was published that the writer was reviewing his/her own mother! All this to say that a company is welcome to express its concerns about fairness, but the editor has the right to say, "I'm sorry you feel that way, but I don't agree with you that George Bernard Shaw is a hack writer who knows nothing about music, and I'm going to keep him on staff." But that's the editor's point of view.

I agree with Mel. A friend of mine was remembering the good old days the last time the Royal visited, and said, "Do you remember how your heart would pound, waiting for the curtain to go up, and how you couldn't sleep for weeks before the company came, and even though you knew it would be perfect, it was so exciting because you were never quite sure what would happen and it was always better than what you remembered?" That's the time of legends. I think we're in a drought all round, and when it starts raining again, there will be great choreography and great ballerinas (and ballerinos).

Thanks for posting that, Mme. Hermine. Aside from the fact that Romanticism follows classicism in the development of Western art and was a reaction to it, I'd agree with what Martin writes, although I'd choose different words so that one doesn't come away with the feeling that classicism is sterile and romanticism is the way to go One has to realize that he had a decided stake in this argument.

I think Jane was disagreeing with you, Katharine, only in the sense that Seymour is quite respected and probably wouldn't be laughed off the stage today. While I don't think we're living in a time of legends, I really don't think there will never be another Taglioni or Pavlova or Fonteyn. They're rare; they've always been rare, and they tend to be at the crest of a major artistic movement. When we get the real Next New Thing, there will be a ballerina atop it, of that I'm sure. One of the things I learned from studying the Danes -- and I'm sure you could learn the same things from studying Paris Opera Ballet or the Maryinsky -- is that it is not a long downhill slide; there are peaks and valleys. Margrethe Schanne danced The Sylph from 1945 to 1965. No one else danced the Sylph. She owned the role. Her biography is called "The Last Sylphide." There was reason to write this. There were some lovely ballerinas after her -- Kirsten Simone, Anna Laerkesen -- but they weren't Schanne. They didn't have her presence, and they didn't dance in her style. They were Russianized Sylphs. And in 1965, just when Schanne retired, Lis Jeppesen was a small child at the school, and in 1979 she made her debut as the Sylph, and suddenly there was a Sylphide.

It is a loaded question, but, if I could gingerly use real life examples. When Balanchine began working in New York, the NYTimes critic, John Martin, who was a staunch advocate of modern dance, looked at Balanchine as a relic of Europe's past at the beginning. He saw all of Balanchine's ballets as one ballet -- a divertissement. Only the costumes, music and steps changed. That is one way of looking at them, certainly, and Martin was not a dolt. But there is another way of looking at them and finding infinite varieties in that "one ballet." Eventually, Martin did. But what if he hadn't? Could Balanchine have survived if he had never been reviewed? If every review had been "Balanchine gave us that ballet of his again"? If every NYCB review had been four inches long and buried in the back? On the other hand, suppose the AD in the small, one company, one paper town is Mr. Mediocre. He's not the Devil, but he's not a god, either. Or worse, suppose the company had been in very good shape -- a San Francisco Ballet, or Miami or PNB, for example -- and the new director throws out everything they've got in repertory and does all of his own ballets and the local critic, with all due respect, thinks they're absolute garbage. He can make a good case for this, to make it more complicated. He can show, by video evidence, that Ballet A is a reworking of Tudor's X; Ballet B is a Nacho Duato piece done backwards. Ballet C is Balanchine's Y danced three beats off the music and off-pointe, so you don't notice this at first glance, and Ballets D through R -- he's yet young -- are on the "See Spot run, see Spot jump, Jump Spot, Jump!" level. Etc. So Mr. Critic is going to stick to his guns. He'll keep an open mind. He's waiting for Mr. AD to do something good, but he ain't buying what they're selling. The board, a collection of wonderful people who love ballet even though only half of them have ever seen it, think the new AD is a wonderful young man, or woman, and believes that the critic is Mr. Meany. He's also not good for business. I realize that no situation is this black and white. But there are stories of this or that company director placing a gentle call to an editor and saying, you really have to speak to so and so. A more blatant example from my own experience was one local DC modern dancer who was convinced that none of the critics understood her. This was when there were five people writing for the Post, and every time she would call and ask that whoever it was who had reviewed her last not be sent, because s/he "doesn't understand my work" -- in the sense of "cannot comprehend my work." All five reviewed her -- the four stringers not knowing of the complaints -- and all five said pretty much the same thing. Is the variable in the equation here power? The AD in the one company/paper town may have power. Maybe the chairman of the board is the wife of the publisher of the paper. The poor little modern dancer has no power, and it's possible that all five critics did misunderstand her. (I write that for the sake of argument I wrote an -- unpublished! -- limerick about this one once: "I've danced at the White House, I've danced at the zoo; I married a writer, what more could I do?.... I know in my heart that I'm greater than Martha but it's been three whole years and there's STILL no MacArthur....I'll dance on the rooftops, I'll dance in the rain. I'm ***** and I want my fame!") I think the answer is that it's the luck of the draw, and we'd like to believe that it all works out in the end, but there are these little bumps along the highway of perfection.

There's a story circulating in critical circles of a critic (not a dance critic) who was recently detailed to another task at his/her paper because the local company (not a dance company) expressed dissatisfaction with his/her reviews. I've read the critic and never found anything out of line or ignorant in those reviews, nor thought them particular harsh, but I don't know the other side. But it's an interesting question. How much say should a company have? (By "company," this could be the board, the artistic director, the head of a theater, etc.) Some case studies. Case A. A very respected choreographer, generally recognized as a major choreographer and genius, has been working in a city for 15 years now, and there's a new critic at the local paper who thinks everything he does is twaddle and 50 years behind the times and wants the ballet company he directs to join the Judson Church movement. The powers that be at that company take the editor out to lunch, and the critic is replaced by someone more sympathetic to the Very Respected Choroegrapher. A good thing? Case B. A treasured modern dance company is taken over by someone who is not a dancer and stages the dances in a way that dancers and other experts feel is absolutely ungodly. The critic at the local paper writes about this at every opportunity, calling it a major crisis. The powers that be take the editor out to lunch and the critic is replaced by someone more sympathetic to the New Director Who Is Not a Dancer. Not a good thing. Case C. There is one ballet company and one newspaper in a midsized city. The critic genuinely detests everything the artistic director does. He is a critic of some standing, he's had a good and fair record on previous directors, he has no ax to grind -- this isn't personal. He doesn't even want the new AD out. He just writes what he thinks and sees, and every single program gets a negative review. After five years of this, the powers that be..... Good or bad?

I think the globalisation of repertory is a different issue from the globalization of body type, and I agree wiith Jane that the current wave is of story ballets and duatodance, or after-Kylian works (faux classics and not-ballet, as I usually put it). I think the case could be made that the dominant choreographer in the sense of having th emost influence is MacMillan. He's won the MacMillan/Cranko battle in the sense that it is his version of Romeo and Juliet that predominates. One could argue that the story ballet traces from the gradual popularity of "Manon" (although I found a piece by John Martin written in 1956 that says Ashton's "Romeo and Juliet" is a fine example of 19th century princples of classical ballet reworked in a 20th century form, and that "50 years from now, when the story ballet" is again dominant, we can trace its rise to "Romeo.") But there is also the MacMillanization of the classics -- at ABT, for example, Siegfried now has a court Bad Girl to entice him. Bathilde's characterization in their "Giselle" owes more to "Manon" than Giselle. I didn't mean to doubt Bussell's talent, just to point out that, with those high extensions, she's in the Guillem mode. I think it's a question of directors picking people and also encouraging certain things. If the dominant ballerina was a superb turner, or known for her modest demeanor, the same dancers who are stars today would be dancing differently, I think. (Except the Very Great Stars, who'd do their own thing no matter what.)

Hans, what did you dislike about it? If it seemed "frightening" to you, I'd be interested in learning why.

After her two most recent experiences, Gielgud may have realized that her talents do not lie in running companies but in working with dancers. She could be there to maintain the repertory, teach class -- and advise -- and let Welch choreograph. I am not one of the legion of Gielgud fans, I'm afraid. From her repertory ideas in Copenhagen, she seems firmly rooted in the 1980s. But I do trust her eye for dancers. At least there, she used the classical dancers who'd been benched during the Schaufuss-Eliason years.

I think that's a good point. Theaters were structured differently -- and the people who ran them were quite different than those who run them today. In Copenhagen, the Theatre Chiefs during the 19th century were the city's Lincoln Kirstein -- very educated, cultured, well-travelled men (at the end of the century, the Theatre Chief was an actress, but she only got the job because she was the wife of the last, great Theatre Chief). Today they're political appointees. The current Theatre Chief in Copenhagen's last job was the highest civil service employee at the Ministry of Defense! (bullets, ballets, hey, what's one letter....) I've been re-reading Ivor Guest's "Ballet of the Second Empire" and the director of the Paris Opera would regularly go round to the studios to find new talent -- and had a good eye. I don't think it would work in today's climate. We are not educating people to make artistic judgments. We do not value those who have a cultivated taste. There are many who are outraged at the notion that there is such a thing.

I think Ashton is in great danger of being extinct. Diane, I love your habitat analogy. To follow up on it, making Ashton a "heritage work" is the equivalent of putting a wild thing in a zoo. You save a few "representative" ballets. For Ashton, this is down to the comedies or the "pure dance" works. And "Marguerite and Armand" which, from everything I read, Does Not Look Like Itself. The Ashton works that I've seen have become MacMillanized -- i.e., adding the overt sexuality that Ashton was, it seems to be now thought, too shy to put in -- and the subtlety and attention to classical style -- epaulement in particular -- is gone. When I saw "Symphonic Variations" here, the dancers had trouble with it technically -- they didn't have the stamina. And the ending, where good quietly triumphs, gently riding the crest of the music as the ballerina takes over the ballet, the stage and the world, was just an ending, with the dancers like the back of the pack in a marathon, happy to have crossed the finish line. The Royal Danish Ballet would love to revive Bournonivlle now, I think. But the stagings are coarse, and so far from what they were at their most recent peak, only 15 years ago, that people at the last mini-festival were beginning to say, "So sad. They really are past their time." It's often said that Balanchine is dancer proof (meaning that since they're "just steps" if you dance the steps, you'll see the ballet) but I've seen several versions of Balanchine ballets recently -- not danced by NYCB -- where they look do not look like themselves either. The girders show -- one is conscious of the repeats, for example; I've seen two Allegro Brillantes that looked interminable -- or the atmosphere is completely gone -- two Serenades where the dancers were going one, two, three, extend your arms, that's nice, now run off, what the hell did we just do. Tudor has become a Once a Year Event, Thank God That's Over With. And then there's Fokine and Massine. So that's a different kind of extinction -- specific classical ballets that have become extinct. And it's a part of ballet becoming extinct, too, because without a repertory, what do we have?

I agree to some extent, but I have a few observations. In the 1950s, by video evidence, the dominant Western style was the English -- Fonteyn was the ideal. In the 1970s, when I began watching ballet, there were two ideals: Makarova and Farrell. The ballerina silhouette began to change. I think for classical companies, it changed from Fonteyn's proportions to Makarova's. And at City Ballet, Farrell became the ideal, although not in companies that did the 19th century classics. While you didn't see Farrell imitators at ABT or the Royal, you did see the ideal of the ballerina change to what Grace describes. I would do this as an experiment when I taught "dance appreciation." I'd ask the class -- which believe me, knew absolutely nothing about dance -- to describe a ballerina. They had no idea. So I'd say, "Tall or short? Long legs or short legs? Very thin or merely slender? Small head or large head? Long neck or short neck? etc." They'd unanimously come up with tall, long legged, thin, small headed long necked woman. As anyone familiar with NYCB will be quick to point out, this did not describe all of Balanchine's female dancers (including Farrell, who had hips!) by any means. But it was the idea people had of his dancers. The next ballerina ideal was Sylvie Guillem. That's when the high-kicking, ballerina as gymnast started. And companies came up with their own versions of Guillem -- meaning they select dancers who meet the current technical or physical ideal. Bussell at the Royal, Zakharova at the Kirov. Put men into the equation and it gets more complicated. The Russian male ideal moved from the heroic to the lyrical after they began to tour in the West and were pronounced stout. Both City Ballet and ABT always had tall and short. At present, the men at both companies are, on the whole, quite short. (And many seem still to be dancing "after-Baryshnikov.") In England, Dowell was the ideal, and that's gotten lost somehow. So I'm not sure that Balanchinization means globalization. I think it's more complicated than that. I think there's a gentle ebb and flow of influences. Forsythe is a big influence now -- on dancers, if not on the general public here (although I realize he's a much greater force in Europe). Right now, I'd argue there isn't a World's Best Company that everyone is imitating.

Sorry, but this is getting more into speculation than we'd like, so I'm going to close the thread.