Alexandra

It would be a wonderful experiment to turn in that Thompson review to a handful of the arts editors at the major newspapers and see what they'd do with it I don't think it would be published today -- even though there surely are people capable of writing on that level -- because it wouldn't pass the mass market test. I think Paul has hit on the nub of the problem, that arts coverage was once written with the expectation that it would be read by the people who were interested in it. I write from the perspective of a daily critic, who's lived through the paper price hike that Paul mentioned and has seen space given to dance tank. We very rarely cover cast changes any more, and the idea is, well, only 2000 people saw it -- of course, much much less than that for experimental dance -- so we just can't give as much space to it as, say, "Fear Factor," which is watched by millions. The notion that Everyone must be interested in every piece that is written is noxious, I think. The critic has always functioned, at least partly, in the way the medieval troubadour functioned. S/he has access to the arts of the day in a way that ordinary people -- even ordinary princes -- didn't, and one of the roles is to say "You've never heard of this person, but what he's doing is very interesting, let me tell you about it." Or, conversely, "I know you all think this new play/ballet/opera/symphony is the finest thing going, but it's about ten levels below and 20 years behind what they're doing in Ruritania this season." The space/audience problem doesn't answer all the complaints about daily critics -- one can be ignorant, unjust, or corrupt no matter what the space -- but it's part of it. Another part -- and it's a big one -- is that the Pundit Class, the supposed elite/intelligentsia that runs newspapers today could care a fig about the arts. If it ain't Britney, they don't want to know. This is a huge change in our culture, and if I were running educational outreach programs I'd spend some time educating the future editors of America. Another problem today is that there are so few papers, and many of the papers don't cover arts criticism -- because, like, you know, who cares? I the hell don't, as an editor might say. Criticism of several decades ago was more robust -- decidedly different opinions, clearly expressed, so you could evaluate the point of view. I wouldn't object to a critic saying, "Oh, finally. None of those silly Swan Lakes, but some really good cutting edge stuff" if there were someone else saying, "Why is a ballet company doing soccer this season?" I think the bottom line is that we all judge a critic by whether we agree with what s/he says or not, and how it's said is, for most people, less of a concern. (And thank you, Paul, for your comment about my magazines. One of the pleasures of publishing them is precisely that -- we can write for people who are interested and knowledgeable about dance.)

It would be a wonderful experiment to turn in that Thompson review to a handful of the arts editors at the major newspapers and see what they'd do with it I don't think it would be published today -- even though there surely are people capable of writing on that level -- because it wouldn't pass the mass market test. I think Paul has hit on the nub of the problem, that arts coverage was once written with the expectation that it would be read by the people who were interested in it. I write from the perspective of a daily critic, who's lived through the paper price hike that Paul mentioned and has seen space given to dance tank. We very rarely cover cast changes any more, and the idea is, well, only 2000 people saw it -- of course, much much less than that for experimental dance -- so we just can't give as much space to it as, say, "Fear Factor," which is watched by millions. The notion that Everyone must be interested in every piece that is written is noxious, I think. The critic has always functioned, at least partly, in the way the medieval troubadour functioned. S/he has access to the arts of the day in a way that ordinary people -- even ordinary princes -- didn't, and one of the roles is to say "You've never heard of this person, but what he's doing is very interesting, let me tell you about it." Or, conversely, "I know you all think this new play/ballet/opera/symphony is the finest thing going, but it's about ten levels below and 20 years behind what they're doing in Ruritania this season." The space/audience problem doesn't answer all the complaints about daily critics -- one can be ignorant, unjust, or corrupt no matter what the space -- but it's part of it. Another part -- and it's a big one -- is that the Pundit Class, the supposed elite/intelligentsia that runs newspapers today could care a fig about the arts. If it ain't Britney, they don't want to know. This is a huge change in our culture, and if I were running educational outreach programs I'd spend some time educating the future editors of America. Another problem today is that there are so few papers, and many of the papers don't cover arts criticism -- because, like, you know, who cares? I the hell don't, as an editor might say. Criticism of several decades ago was more robust -- decidedly different opinions, clearly expressed, so you could evaluate the point of view. I wouldn't object to a critic saying, "Oh, finally. None of those silly Swan Lakes, but some really good cutting edge stuff" if there were someone else saying, "Why is a ballet company doing soccer this season?" I think the bottom line is that we all judge a critic by whether we agree with what s/he says or not, and how it's said is, for most people, less of a concern. (And thank you, Paul, for your comment about my magazines. One of the pleasures of publishing them is precisely that -- we can write for people who are interested and knowledgeable about dance.)

Roy, the only company I can speak of is the Royal Danish Ballet, and there at least some of the producers (the ballet masters on staff who staged, directed and coached ballets) did have notebooks. The old Bournonville ballets were written down, in stick figures for movements, and the mime written in French. Then there would be subsequent notes about changes -- why they were made (an adaptation for a specific dancer, etc.) Some of the contemporary ballets -- the story ballets of John Neumeier, for example, also had notebooks. I saw the stager making notes in them -- Neumeier sent a stager from Hamburg to work with the dancers, and she made several changes; these would be written down. I didn't see them, so I don't know what they looked like. I'm sure no company would ever let these books out of their hands. You're right about contemporary repertory -- there may be dozens of Swan Lakes, but it's very hard to find any new work. It's such a small market, I think they'd say. Even "Swan Lake" won't sell more than a few hundred copies, so the Best of Graeme Murphy doesn't have a chance. There is some new dance on television, but not much -- especially not much here. There's more in Europe. The internet holds the promise here, I think. There's a bit of it going on now -- the Kennedy Center Millennium stage broadcasts daily at 6 p.m. A few months ago, you could have seen reconstructions of a dance by Isadora Duncan, Antony Tudor's "The Planets," and Jose Limon's "Choreographic Offering." I'm sure within five years there will be regular broadcasts of dance on the internet -- some of it self-produced. Until then, repetitive viewing is the only way -- it's frustrating, but nice, too, because ballet is NOT a mass market art form.

An afterthought -- some ballet scores have been published, scores of a few 19th century ballets. Also, a Danish teacher and stager named Kirsten Ralov prepared a four-volume book of the Bournonville Schools (the classes set down at the end of the 19th century that preserved the Bournonville technique). One volume was in Benesh, one was in Labanotation, one was the piano score, and one was in words.

Some, but not all, dances are notated now. Choreographers have devised shorthand to write down their ballets since ballet began, but there are two major contemporary systems -- Labanotation and Benesh notation. I believe these are called "notation scores," but notators may have a more precise term for them. I don't think they are generally available, and they'd be difficult to read. They're less precise than a musical score, in the sense that they provide the basic step and, as much as is possible, the dynamics of the dance -- terms such as "bound movement" and "free movement" are incorporated into the notation. I'm not an expert on notation by any means, and I hope someone who knows more will see this and jump in. Doug Fullington reads Stepanov notation (the language in which Petipa's ballets are notated) and will be able to write much more precisely about notation generally. When a company wants to stage a ballet there are a variety of ways to do it. One is have the choreographer and/or his assistant come and teach it, role by role and step by step. One (unfortunately, IMO) is to get out the video. There may be a house tape of a performance, kept for archival purposes. (The problem is that it's a record of a single performance and may be inaccurate, also that the camera doesn't capture the entire stage unless it's at the back of the house, and from that angle can't pick up detail, especially in a narrative ballet.) Of they send a notator who stages the ballet from the score. "Girls in green, three pirouettes." Sometimes the choreographer, or a stager, then comes in and prepares it for the stage, sometimes they don't, and I'd maintain I can usually tell the difference in performance. Works staged only from notation tend to look very flat and, at worse, rather lifeless. Notators would disagree, of course I can sympathize with your question, Roy. I remember standing through Sleeping Beauty 7 nights in a row my first season of ballet to try to learn it -- only in the sense of what comes next, the general structure; the individual parts came later. Today, I'd rent as many videos of Sleeping Beauty as possible.

Thank you very much for your detailed review, Roy. I have an idea of what the ballet was about, far more from that preview piece! I remember when I first starting agonizing over whether it was ballet or modern dance -- contemporary was still a minor part of the repertory in the mid-1970s. I'd agree with Leigh's definitions -- when people say "classical vocabulary" it's another way of saying "uses the danse d'ecole," or "academic classicism" -- there are hundreds of combinations of basic steps that have come down to us over the centuries. ABT has a basic video dictionary with some of the most basic steps that's helpful. We also have an Archive here (check the bottom of the board, left side) of past debates and definitions of classicism. It doesn't matter to one's enjoyment of a piece -- you like or you don't, it's good or it's not -- but it does matter in the same way that the difference between a shallot and an onion matters to a cook, if you're a cook. I remember the American critic (and modern dancer/choreographer) Deborah Jowitt wrote, quite angrily, in the mid-1970s that she was beginning to see work which was so blended that she couldn't easily say whether it was classical or modern dance. From a modern dance point of view, technique was your identity; the early moderns worked out whole systems for movement. Within that frame of mind, Jowitt wrote about the new breed of modern dancers who were (shock!) taking ballet classes something like this: "They can do anything and are committed to nothing." I'd echo your question "why do we need to call it Swan Lake?" (and I'd echo Leigh's answer. Also, it's a good score, and the score is now free. Aside from the crass commercial aspect of naming a ballet "Swan Lake" expecting to capitalize on the brand name, there's also the aspect of, "I am brilliant and a deep thinker because I have brilliantly and deeply rethought tha boring, stupid old so-called classic." (We also have a section on the main site about the original "'Swan Lake," by Mel Johnson, and an archive about "Swan Lake" productions, if you're interested. Here's Mel's "Swan Lake" pages. http://www.balletalert.com/ballets/Petipa/...ke/swanlake.htm

I'm quite convinced it's the latter, Estelle. In the Time Out NY interview, Tobias said that the editor had approached her several weeks before the firing and said there were financial problems and that she was considering whether to cut the column back severely (hard to do, since Tobias only wrote about 12 times a year to begin with) or cut it completely. It's a moot point now -- obviously, Tobias is being "punished" for not dying quietly like a good soldier -- but for those who doubt this, check the NY Magazine thread and trace the responses from Miller. The "But we need a new voice and we'll be hiring someone soon" was the fourth response. That said, unless they hire Bambi Ijustsawmyfirstdanceperformancelastnight anditwassolikewaykewl, it's very good news that New York Mag will continue to provide dance criticism.

Thank you -- I tried clicking the links in Internet Explorer and got an "enter your network password" screen (!!!) and my computer froze In Netscape I can get it as a downloadable Word document. Odd.

Jorgen I checked the Danish pages as well as the English ones before. The link you posted goes to the main page (I think they've set the links of interior pages to all link too the main page). Clicking on the Onegin link gives a list of performances in the right side column, and the conductor, but not the casting, only that Kobborg and Cojocaru will do guest appearances on the 17th and 18th. I was curious about the other casts.

Oops -- I think we should split this off into another topic, as it's far from the Kirov. For more on other heritage issues, please go to http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...=&threadid=7036

Thanks for the review, Jorgen, and for posting the link -- I couldn't find a review in Politiken. They haven't been doing much with dance recently, but I'm surprised they didn't cover this. (If you happen to see other reviews and could post a link, we'd be grateful ) I checked the RDB's web site -- they used to put up casting, but I couldn't find cast lists. Do you know who else was dancing the leads in Onegin?

There isn't one in "Kermesse in Bruges" either I think the theory is not that people were so obsessed with weddings, but that weddings provided a natural opportunity for dancing.

Quick! Name an extant 19th century ballet that is NOT about a wedding or a betrothal? In addition to those mentioned, "La Sylphide" (but the groom runs off, of course, the utlimate wedding jitters ballet). "Napoli" and "Folk Tale" both have weddings.

Thanks very much for posting this, Bijoux. It's good to hear that the season opener -- and Nissenen's first program -- was a success. Did others go? If so, please ring in!

Coppelia is a very good ballet for small companies, I think. You need a principal couple and a good mime (for Dr. C) and the rest is pretty adaptable to suit the talents of the company. There's also not a standard Coppelia; there are lots of different versions. I think it's very good to see LIVE performances. Videos are nice, but there's nothing like being in a theater.

Thanks for all these. Odd that the "flying veil" (which also disappeared from Giselle, Act II) worked in the 19th century and yet makes contemporary audiences giggle. (I'm presuming that's why it has disappeared.) I was interested to read all these responses, and realized I'd been (unintentionally) rude. I mentioned New Yorkers because the new/old production had so recently been in New York, but we have Kirov watchers from everywhere -- do any others have a piece of this puzzle?

I have to say I sympathize, having written reviews of galas, where you have to say SOMETHING about 25 dancers in 400 words. One adjective has to do it -- who gets "charming?" which new excerpt is "interesting" and which "fascinating?" I found once, to my horror, as I was about to phone in a piece -- this was before email -- that I had given the "melting" adjective to Kirkland and Dowell in The Nutcracker. Which would have been almost ok, except it was the snow pas de deux from Nutcracker. It is am impressive list. One of the reasons we print the press releases in Ballet Alert's preview issue is so that people can see how ballet is presented in different places. One regional company, which shall remain nameless, billed "Chaconne" and "Slaughter on 10th Avenue" as "Murder and Mayhem." I never could figure out which was which. Eurydice is, in fact, dead......

Thanks, piccolo. We have a thread on the Diablo Ballet crisis in the American Ballet Companies forums.

Hello, Katharine! Think what Zakharova could do with the coaching Feijoo has!

Thanks to Samba for this sad news. Long-time Miami-based dance critic Laurie Horn has died, after a 15-year struggle with breast cancer. There should be an obituary in the Miami Herald tomorrow. Funeral services will be in Mimai's Mt. Nebo cemetery at noon today Ms. Horn had requested that donations in her name be made for a dance scholarship at the New World School of the Arts in Miami.

Welcome back, Jane! Thank you for that info.

Although the Royal Ballet first performed Sleeping Beauty when the company was still small -- pre-War -- they had a Maryinsky regisseur to help stage it, and they knew what they were aiming for. I think a small-scale Sleeping Beauty would be interesting only as a teaching tool. It's not only that grandeur is part of its point, but yes, it does need a big company because it needs dozens and dozens of first-rate dancers. I've seen midsized companies do it, and I've always found them disappointing. Some even cut down the number of fairies! If companies want to do them for home consumption, or teaching tools, fine -- but please don't tour them. For the past 15 years or so, Sleeping B seems to have become, for some artistic directors, the sign of, "We are big time. We have made it." Like many things, it doesn't matter what level of production it is, just so they can say "We're doing Sleeping Beauty!" Well, just don't

This book is (too) long out of print, but turns up sometimes on Alibris, and other shops. I do a search for it occasionally, just to be sure it's still there, and found one tonight on the Amazon page for $75.50! This is CHEAP. I've seen them for up to $169. There are two other copies, $100 and $146. If you're interested, click here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-h...9551997-5096945

NO ONE SAW BAYADERE IN NEW YORK? (Screaming deliberately, not to be rude, but hoping that New York Kirov fans will hear us.) I can't comment except to say I'm stunned how much is NOT notated. I would presume that this either means the ballet was never out of repertory and thus well known, or one dancer or repetiteur knew the ballet so well it did not need to be notated.

I loved "House of Games." I missed this one -- saw the previews and was intrigued, but was on a deadline and, since this involved concentration, I couldn't have it on and watch it out of the corner of my eye. Sniff. They'll repeat it -- it might be worth checking your local TV station OR PBS. They often have dates and repeat dates. We have three PBS channels in the DC area, and one of the nice things about that is that one of them is always repeating what the other did. Dirac, I loved your comments on Gielgud seeming to get heartier as he grew older -- but it's true! And since we're happily off-topic, I read his autobiography -- or most of it -- sitting in the Lincoln Center area Barnes and Noble the last time I was in New York. The theater lore parts at the beginning -- drunken, aging actresses still belting out Juliet, the mix professionalism and nonprofessionalism, and all those how the show went on stories, are wonderful.