Alexandra

Re Nureyev in Dream, I remember reading about it in Dance and Dancers (a magazine I adored and trusted like the Bible). I believe it was John Percival (it may have been Peter Williams, but I think it was Percival) who began the review with something like, "It's often more interesting to see a great dancer go against the grain than a lesser dancer" [can't remember the phrase; in something well-suited? something with that meaning.) And I remember thinking, "That bad, eh?" Later, when I met some of the English critics, I asked about it, and got shudders, or "Oh, ghastly," or something like that. No details. But I can guess. Dowell was such a specific dancer -- the long legs, the legato flow to his movements, the other worldly quality, the sense of authority without forcing his personality -- and the role of Oberon exemplified them, used every one of them, that anybody else in the role will be "going against the grain." Nureyev, shorter legs, emphatic style of dancing, Sense of AUTHORITY! (nothing subtle about it) was almost the opposite of what was called for. Perhaps when he was younger, more slender and more fey he could have done it (like Spectre; as Manhattnik noted above, when he danced it in New York, he was so muscled that it seemed grotesque). I'm sure today it wouldn't cause a moment's hesitancy. Everybody dances everything. But 20 or 30 years ago, roles in ballets, especially new ballets, were closely held, very identified with their creator. And speaking of roles closely identified with their creators, Sylvie Guillem as Marguerite in Marguerite and Armand. I don't care if she was a big hit. She had nothing of the vulnerability, or latent goodness, that Fonteyn had, her body and arabesque are the wrong shape for the role, and her technique has different gifts.

I'll start with some real life examples. One I never saw, but is in the history books: Fonteyn as The Miller's Wife iin "Le Tricorne" Two I never saw but heard a lot about: Nureyev as Oberon in Ashton's "The Dream" Farrell in "Stars and Stripes" (Liberty Bell) One I saw and wish I hadn't: Baryshnikov as Siegfried What dancers, great or small, have you seen in the wrong role?

If we're going to get rid of rope, I insist on getting rid of the chairs, too. No more dances with chairs. This is more a modern dance problem than a ballet one, but things have a way of spreading. There is nothing that can be done with a chair on stage that has not already been done. Several times.

I was struck by that comment, too. I don't remember Baryshnikov as being exceptionally musical -- not unmusical, certainly, but not one of those who sent me out of the theater singing the steps. Quick answer, with the clock ticking, I'd say my top three were Nureyev, Farrell and Fonteyn. I'll toss out some Danes, and leave the rest of the world for others Arne Villumsen and Lis Jeppesen. Rose Gad. Of the current young dancers, Tina Hojlund.

Not over the edge at all, Ballet Nut! I'm a bit worried on the "what do you fear" part of your question, though. It would be awfully easy for this to quickly degenerate into something cruel -- please bear that in mind when making your nominations.

If you've ever searched for "ballet" books on Amazon, you have noticed that for every adult book, you will get a dozen Angelina Ballerina books. Now, books for kids are very important, but sometimes one would like to find the books that are NOT for kids. I wrote Amazon and asked if they could do a non-children's filter (only fair, since you can search for 8 year olds, 12 years olds, etc.) I got this response: Although there are no general ways to screen out juvenile books, you can do so using a "Power Search." To conduct a Power Search, click on the "Search" link in the top (green) crossbar of any Bookstore page. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page. I conducted the following Power Search to obtain the results you're looking for: subject: ballet and not juvenile For more information about Power Searching, please see: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/468558/ -------------------- Tip 2, that I posted on another thread. You can sort results in a search for "ballet" (or anything else) by date of publication. This is a fun way to find out what books have not yet been published and their expected publication date. I'm going to make this a sticky. If people find other search tips, please post them. And please remember that if you are going to buy books through Amazon to click on the link that's conveniently located at the top of every page of this site. We get a 5% commission if you buy from Amazon, and half that if you buy from Amazon affiliates. You have to enter the site through our banner at the beginning of each shopping session for us to get credit for it. Thank you Alexandra

I've split off info and discussion on casting to a new thread.

Congratulations, Victoria -- you've just choreographed an enchainement on line. (en line?) Watch for it in a ballet near you.

And here it is: NEW YORK CITY BALLET PRINCIPAL CASTING FOR THE WEEK OF JANUARY 7-12, 2003 TUESDAY EVENING, JANUARY 7, 7:30 PM [Quinn, Fiorato] SYMPHONIC DANCES: Borree, Hübbe [F] IN G MAJOR: Nichols, Neal [Grant] [Q] WESTERN SYMPHONY: 1st Movement: *Somogyi, Martins, 2nd Movement: *Ansanelli, Evans, 4th Movement: Kowroski, Woetzel [Q] WEDNESDAY EVENING, JANUARY 8, 8 PM [Quinn, Moredock] SYMPHONY IN THREE MOVEMENTS: Whelan, Tinsley, A. Stafford, Soto, Gold, Houston [Q] VESPRO: Kowroski, Ansanelli, Fowler, Marcovici, Millepied [Moretti, Rickards, Regni] FANCY FREE: Woetzel, Gold, Houston, McBrearty, van Kipnis, Krohn, Robertson [M] THURSDAY EVENING, JANUARY 9, 8 PM [Fiorato, Kaplow] RAYMONDA VARIATIONS: Ringer, Neal, *Keenan, Edge, Hanson, Riggins, A. Stafford [K] MORPHOSES: Whelan, Ansanelli, Soto, Woetzel [FLUX Quartet] SYMPHONIC DANCES: Borree, Hübbe [F] FRIDAY EVENING, JANUARY 10, 8 PM [Quinn] IN G MAJOR: Nichols, Neal [Grant] MORPHOSES: Whelan, Ansanelli, Soto, Woetzel [FLUX Quartet] THE INFERNAL MACHINE: Taylor, *Ramasar pause SYMPHONY IN THREE MOVEMENTS: *Somogyi, Tinsley, A. Stafford, Evans, Gold, Higgins SATURDAY MATINEE, JANUARY 11, 2 PM [Quinn, Fiorato] SERENADE: Kistler, Taylor, Kowroski, Askegard, Fayette [Q] LE TOMBEAU DE COUPERIN [F] pause PAVANE: Nichols [F] WESTERN SYMPHONY: 1st Movement: Somogyi, Martins, 2nd Movement: Ansanelli, Evans, 4th Movement: *Sylve+, Hübbe [Q] SATURDAY EVENING, JANUARY 11, 8 PM [Fiorato, Kaplow] RAYMONDA VARIATIONS: Ringer, Neal, Keenan, Edge, Hanson, Riggins, A. Stafford [K] VESPRO: Kowroski, Ansanelli, Fowler, Marcovici, Millepied [Moretti, Rickards, Regni] SYMPHONIC DANCES: Borree, *Tewsley [F] SUNDAY MATINEE, JANUARY 12, 3 PM [Kaplow, Moredock] SERENADE: Kistler, Taylor, Kowroski, Askegard, Fayette [K] MORPHOSES: Whelan, Ansanelli, Soto, Woetzel [FLUX Quartet] FANCY FREE: Millepied, Ulbricht, Higgins, Edge, *Rutherford, Krohn, Robertson [M] * First Time in Role + Guest Artist PROGRAM AND CASTING SUBJECT TO CHANGE (12/31/02) To request press tickets please call Beth Klusacek at (212) 870-5690

Especially a tour jete danced by a lame duck

This is such a good topic, that I"m going to break it off to a thread called The Ones That Got Away. I'll post the URL in a minute! So if you almost had a chance to see your favorite dancer dance a role but didn't, fly over here and tell us about it: http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...70116#post70116

Dale, you're getting at something else that's changed, in an age where everybody has to do everything, and that is that dancers had specialties. The Danes who were over 40 used a phrase I loved "my steps," "those were his steps". It must have been a thrill to wait for that, to wait to see someone do something so perfectly -- the deep backbend, the hops on pointe, Youskevitch's air turns -- that was identified with their bodies and personalities.

Aha! Diaghilev invented marketing! (Except that really was a world-class company, and purple though the prose is, I don't think it is inaccurate!)

It IS just another business, unfortunately. I think I'd add: X is a WORLD CLASS company. I've had to check a couple of company web sites in the past couple of days and I'm astounded at how many "world class" companies there are. Some of them have 20 dancers, are in small cities, dance four times a year. What possible meaning do they think the phrase has? The Dutch National Ballet describes itself this way: "World class in every sense it ranks alongside the other major international dance companies." To be sure it is absolutely clear what they mean by "other major international companies," they expand upon this inside: "Het Nationale Ballet ranks alongside other prestigious international companies such as The Royal Ballet, Le Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris, American Ballet Theatre, the Kirov Ballet and the Bolshoi Ballet." Really. By this standard, DanceView is an internationally renowned publication -- 10% of our subscribers live in Europe and all of them renown it

There's a very nifty search feature on Amazon that I discovered by accident the other night. Go to books and type in "ballet" and then choose to search by publication date, newest to oldest. This will turn up ..... books that haven't been published yet and their expected dates of publication! A great way to get a start on your next year's Christmas list. I do know from experience that Amazon is good about dealing with as-yet-unpublished books. Mine was released in October. They put it up in August, and I've heard from several people who ordered it then. They sent the books out two days after they left the publisher's warehouse, and people got them a good two weeks before they were in stores.

I think so. It wasn't a sudden decision, but a gradual one, and it's in the piece in the sections discussing her work with the Kennedy Center.

Thank you, Brendan, for bringing me the first good news of the New Year on a horrible rainy wet soggy bleak day!

What will happen in Ballet in 2003? What do you THINK will happen? What do you WISH would happen?

When a favorite dancer is out, it's natural to question why, but we have a policy against speculating about the reasons or posting gossip. When a question like this comes up, we'll contact the company and ask if there's an illness or injury, and post their response. That might take a day or two because of the holidays!

Yes, not at all self-conscious. (Jepsen also filmed that Gaite) I kept wondering why, what the difference was not only with today's live performances, but from the 1956 Royal Ballet film, which is very decorous. And it's that they didn't realize they were being filmed, so they just danced.

I think that if a magazine like the New Yorker carries regular coverage of any art form, it will develop a readership for that art form. I also think that the dance scene should be COVERED, for good or ill. Otherwise, there will be no record. (I now feel passionately about this after writing a biography. I often had six reviews of a single performance. Reading them, I could tell which were the people who knew very little about ballet, which were the ones who hated anything that didn't look like Martha Graham, or have sex and drugs as its subject matter, and which could look at a Balanchine ballet, say, and see what was there. Anyone trying to write about the current epoch 50 years from now will be out of luck!) I think also people forget, especially those who have been writing for awhile, that the people just discovering dance RIGHT NOW didn't live through the past 30 years, either on stage or in print, and have no way of knowing the things that the writer presupposes they know. I remember when Croce stopped writing about the Stuttgart -- which played New York regularly back then -- I wondered why. So she hated Cranko. She thought the company wasn't very good. Then say so. You have to say it every season because every season there's someone new reading you. (Of course, then you fall into the Honest Abe Tobias trap. Write about what you believe, year in and year out, and people will call you jaded and negative.) The newsworthy angle is a troubling one. A newspaper only wants what's new -- new work, new debut, new trend. This takes away any overview, any sense of perspective. Maybe the great performance of the season is Miss X's third "Chaconne". One of the greatest set of performances I ever saw were the last ones Nureyev did before he went off to film "Valentino." (The balcony was hung with signs that said, "Hurry Back, Sheikh!") He got his second wind at the beginning of the second series of turns in "Four Schumann Pieces" at the Saturday matinee, and you could see it. All of a sudden, the energy he'd been measuring had increased tenfold, and he poured it out in four pefformances that were as close to perfection as anyone I've ever seen has come. No one reviewed it. They were sick of Rudiballet then -- it was the period when he basically rented the Met and had been dancing for months, night after night. I think a magazine should cover what's happened that season, but not be news-driven. (It takes a lot of dedication for the writer to do that; you have to go, if not every night, then at least 4 or 5 times a week. Not many people can do that; one is certainly not paid to do that.)

I wrote the review for Dance Magazine. I don't remember what issue it was in, though, but if you go to your library, Dance Magazine has an index, and you will be able to find it. DanceView, the magazine which I publish, did not carry a review. You should be able to find reviews in the Washington Post and Washington Times. I don't remember if any other publications carried reviews. Alexandra

I just finished the piece and was, like Michael, most interested in the parts on coaching. Acocella seemed surprised that it wasn't all about steps, and I wanted to jump and yell, 'NO! IT'S NOT ABOUT THE STEPS! IT'S NEVER BEEN ABOUT THE STEPS!!!!" The dancers can figure out how to do the steps. It's all the other things that make the difference. I was glad to have a recap of the history. I wonder if the current New Yorker could support more depth? When Croce was writing, half of the American ballet world, if not more, hung on her every word. They wanted to know every little detail. That's not the case now. I thought she was deliberately writing for a general readership -- an intelligent readership, but not a dance one. (A personal note: I hesitate to write this, but feel I should, as the "I know X is a friend of yours" has come up occasionally about Acocella or other critics. Although I like and respect Joan Acocella, we're friendly colleagues, not friends; we speak maybe twice a year. I could say the same thing about several other New York writers. And even if we were bosom buddies, anyone is perfectly welcome to post quibbles or negative comments as well as positive ones, about her work or that of any other critic, including this one!) When you do a Profile piece like this, your guy is supposed to be the Only Guy in the World, but I do worry that we're getting to another polarized place -- Everything Peter Martins and his staff does is Bad; Everything Suzanne Farrell does is Good -- and this leaves out several other people who are doing good work. I join in the voices that say, more dance pieces in the New Yorker, and more than just about Baryshnikov, Morris, Farrell. I hope there will be reviews, good or bad, of what's happening in dance in New York, 'cause, like, it's The New Yorker!

Thanks, liebs! Didn't anyone else here go to modern dance performances last year??

Welcome back, Guy! We haven't read you in ages! Where are you dancing? (And sorry not to acknowledge all of these reviews, which I've read with great interest.)