Alexandra

There is a candor about it, and it's related to their having fun, I think. It's what struck me most about the Victor Jepsen film (he's the guy who snuck a camera in for ten years at the Met and filmed Sleeping Beauty.) They danced as though they weren't being filmed -- totally candid, like watching brilliant children who are supremely confident because they don't know any better, and yet totally innocent of competition. Obviously neither the dancers nor the company "censored" the photos, or that pas de trois shot would never have made the cut, and these don't have the frozen-in-time perfection that we're used to, but God, they MOVE.

Hi, Pas! I'm glad you discovered ballet, and us. It is astounding what ballet can convey without words. We don't have very many posts about the Carolina Ballet (not many Carolinians here!) and I hope you will tell us about performances you see.

lil_dancer, this isn't a book for young people

Thank you, Terry. When the day comes that it's "wrong" to be a classical dancer at a company like POB, then we're really in trouble!

The fairies beg Carabosse to lift the curse: Gerd Larsen, Robert Helpmann, Margaret Dale, Joan Sheldon

Thank you, Ari. I've heard about this, but not seen it. I haven't been able to make it through the last two biographies of Nureyev (too many parties, too little tiime) and was rather afraid to go near this one. I hope someone will read it and report. (But if any life in ballet does NOT need novelization, couldn't one make the case that it's Nureyev's?)

The Florestan pas de trois: Anne Negus, Henry Danton, Gerd Larsen. [Lolly, is it you who had Danton as a teacher? I think someone here studied with him.]

The Grand pas de deux: Fonteyn [note her hideous foot and lack of flexibility ] and Helpmann.

The Hunt Scene.

Carabosse [Robert Helpmann, who you'll also see as The Prince in the next posts] and The Court: the curse.

Prologue: Gillilan Lynne.

Carbro and I were discussing "Sadler's Wells Ballet at Covent Garden: A Book of Photographs by Merlyn Severn" on another thread -- about how the photographs in this book show a different image of the [company that would become] the Royal Ballet. No neat, small, prim dancing -- it flows, I think you can see in these photos; it MOVES. And there's an emphasis on drama. (We were discussing it in the context of whether Sleeping Beauty was an abstract ballet or not. Not in this version!) This book is long out of print. It is available through Alibris -- there were several copies yesterday, anyway, and cheap! You might also do a search for Merlyn Severn in Google. I'll leave these up for a few days for educational purposes NOT to say that this is the way dancers should dance today, but just to show you how they did in those stodgy 1940s. Prologue: Gerd Larsen

These are GREAT, everybody -- I hope we get more.

bike shorts. WELL. If we're going to get into the things that really matter, like costume! I could live without seeing a pair of bare feet shoved into pointe shoes again. I really could. And footless tights, line breakers that they are, could turn up on someone's Out list without causing a pang.

Referring to a classical ballet as "just classroom steps."

Here's the link to the Isabelle Guerin web page on The Dance pages of Estelle Souche (THE place to consult for all things French in ballet ) http://www.cmi.univ-mrs.fr/~esouche/dance/Guerin.html

I don't know anyone who argues that ballet should be what it was at the time of its founding; of course it evolves -- naturally, as time changes (as opposed to turned upside down on its ear and kicked, etc.). I agree with Leigh's point on ballet moving away from the vernacular -- it's the central problem of 20th century art (not to sound too much like Tom Wolfe). Serious literature is written by university professors for other university professors. Experimental dance is done in lofts to an audience of other choreographers. Audiences listen to pop music because serious music is unintelligible to those who are not serious students of music. (None of these are original points, all are made constantly in articles about art.) But aren't classical/pop ballet and classical/contemporary ballet-dance two different subjects? All contemporary dance is not pop. All pop ballet is not contemporary dance. Is the only way for ballet to evolve to turn into pop dance? Ashton and Balanchine both used pop elements and made ballets out of them (Several Ashton variations are based on social dance: the pas de quatre in Swan Lake -- the cha-cha and the charleston; the Mexican hat dance solo in Devil's Holiday, for example; Balanchine, of course, used jazz elements. But they made BALLETS with these elements.) What seems to be happening -- despite the Diamond Project, which has as its stated objective creating new works using the classical vocabulary -- that new works start and stop with the pop material, that the emphasis is on "new movement," the modern dance idea of making up your own movement vocabulary, rather than the ballet one of using the existing vocabulary -- yes, of course, in different ways, by each artist and in each generation, but using it.

Here's Mlle. Osta's web page: http://gruolt.free.fr/danseurs/cmo.htm

So good to see you again, Francoise According to the director and the artistic staff, it is a classical troupe, Francoise. We published an interview with Patrice Bart last season in DanceView, and he said that the company's position was that ballet required excellence, that only a large company with a school and sufficient resources (i.e., POB) should be dancing classical ballets, and that doing so was the company's mission; contemporary dance, which does not require the same level of training nor a large number of dancers, was left to the smaller companies. The public wants novelty, so doing Mats Ek and the rest is fine, but that is not what gives the POB its reputation; the big classical ballets do that. If the company is going to remain a classical company -- which is its mission, its place in France's artistic scheme -- it has to dance the classics and dance them on the highest level or it loses its international reputation. And to do that, it needs classical dancers. That is what Leigh meant. The idea that someone "only" can dance classical ballet, and that this is somehow a limitation, seems very odd indeed. That's their job. That's what they're supposed to be good at.

Leigh wrote that repertory needed to be varied and: "If this means a few unorthodox choices, I think there is value as long as the core strengths of a company and the dancers are not neglected." For me, that's the key. But it still presupposes that the only thing in the firmament is either "Giselle" or contemporary dance -- a reality in some companies, yes, but is it necessary? I don't think so. Sorry always to brinig up the BAT guys (Balanchine-Ashton-Tudor) but when they were in their heyday, the dancers were "fed" by them and most of them were happy (even carrying wheat! Reading Sono Osato's book was an eye-opener for me. She was totally fulfilled working on one of the Lovers in Experience with Tudor in Pillar, a role that today probably goes to first-year corps dancers with sultry eyes.) Why are choreographers not using the language of ballet to create new works? Why has "new" come to be equated with "modern dance" or "contemporary dance"?

Thanks for posting that link, Mme. Hermine. It's good to search the catalog BEFORE you go, so that you don't have to waste time when you get there, but can hand them a list of what you want to see. I haven't been to the library since it reopened, but when I did go there several years ago, you had to sign up for a time -- I believe it was two hours? -- and that time included fetching the films. So go prepared!

It's called "Sadler's Wells Ballet at Covent Garden: A Book of Photographs by Merlyn Severn" I don't know anything about that photographer -- Jane? Alymer? Anyone else? It's a fascinating book, a record of the first Covent Garden season. In addition to "Beauty," there's a lot of attention given to Helpmann's "Adam Zero," which looks like what we'd call today a "theater piece" and a few shots of Ashton's "Symphonic Variations." And they make that ballet look quite different from the stills we're used to seeing, all harmony and calm. He found the jumps and shot them -- it looks like a protoype for "Dances at a Gathering" (!) That's why I questioned in the post above whether or not the view of Sleeping Beauty reflected the production or the photographer's bent. It seems as though Severn's primary interest is drama rather than dance -- action! excitement! Other ballets are "The Miracle in the Gorbals" and "The Rake's Progress." A note on the dancing -- it looks so free. (As does the dancing on the few films of "Sleeping Beauty" I've seen of that time. None of this prim and small-scaled, neat dancing that I remember from the '70s (when I first saw the company.) There is a GORGEOUS photo of Fonteyn (then 27) in the grand pas doing her extraordinary back bend -- as effortless and beautiful as a sapling; nothing distorted or extreme about it, and I've never seen one so deep. When I saw Fonteyn she was 55 and still had the deepest backbend of anyone I've seen since, but it's half what she was at half that age.

A poster on another thread expressed a view not often found here, but one held by many people, and this is that ballet is a living art and must not stand still [few would disagree with that] and so should dance works by..... fill in from a list that would include modern or crossover choreographers (Morris, Cunningham, Taylor, Tharp, Tetley, Forsythe) as well as younger artists in those genres. It's sometimes said that ballet companies should acquire good works no matter what they are, and sometimes that ballet has been replaced by modern and contemporary dance and that companies should keep dancing Petipa, Balanchine, Ashton, Tudor, etc., but look for new repertory from the modern dance and contemporary field. And some would throw out anything not staged by a living choreographer. What do you think? Where should ballet companies look for repertory? If you think there should be a mix, what should it be?

I take your point on abstract, carbro. It's always been a difficult term. I used it because it's the one most often used in articles, I think, and so would be most familiar. I wouldn't call Sleeping Beauty abstract; it's a narrative ballet. Abstract usually means without a concrete story, I think. Serenade, Agon, Leaves are Fading, Dances at a Gathering (which Robbins insisted had no plot) falls into the abstract category. And so would Les Sylphides. There's plotless, but people object to that because of the "less." "It's not less anything! It's pure dance." So there's "pure dance." Each term has its advocates, and each can make a good case for it. There are probably a few others that I can't think of. (A note about "Sleeping Beauty." I have a picture book of the 1946 Sadler's Wells production. You would think "Sleeping Beauty" was an intimate, highly-charged drama from those photos. This could reflect the photographer's sensibilities as much as the production, but the way it's shot, it could be a Ballets Russes demicaractere ballet. Today, many companies dance it as though it's "Jewels" with those annoying mime bits. I guess it's changed character each generation.)

Yes. It's a documentary called "Ballet" by Frederick Wiseman. You can buy it, but it's $400! It can also be rented: http://www.zipporah.com/28.html