Alexandra

An after thought -- for Roy, and anyone else interested in comparing ballet companies, the quickest link I know is a site of links called www.balletcompanies.com It's organized by country (and, within the U.S.) by states. It has both ballet and modern dance companies (and other kinds, too). And so you're never more than a click or two away from the home page of any company about which you are curious

Roy, I think your original perception that companies tended to hire more women than men is correct (the Danes were a male-dominated company for a variety of historical reasons; their early 19th century repertory survived, with good principal roles for men and the ballets weren't dependent on large female corps.) Then there's a winnowing out -- fair or unfair -- and by the time you get to the principal ranks, there is usually a balance. I'm not familiar enough with either Houston or Australian Ballets to be able to tell why this isn't the case now. But in general, I can think of a lot of reasons. Some of it is generational -- all of a sudden, four women who, just yesterday, it seems, were 29 are now 34 (which has become old age for ballet companies). If you had four strong ballerinas, there may not have been as much of an opportunity for young female dancers to have a crack at principal roles. Some may have withered in the corps, some may have left for a company with more chances. If all four of the 34-year-olds retire within a year or two of each other AND, go for bad luck, the most promising soloist breaks her leg, a company could suddenly have no female principals, but six men (and of course, the genders could easily be switched). So that can happen. Some companies seem to produce dancers by the generation -- a clump of very promising graduates every six years or so. Some directors also have ways of hiring that are unfathomable to outsiders. Hire every male medal winner on the market -- whoops. Now what do we do with them? Or a choreographer goes to another company and sets a ballet, and finds two or three dancers very sympathetic to his work and they follow him home. If one looks at rosters over the years, the ratio can vary -- it's too early, I think, to see this as a trend. I'm sure others can think of specific examples of different companies -- which is it? Repertory, chance, directorial whim?

Magnificentliy awful. There are these movies lying about. I have a video -- can't find it now, and I can't remember the name! -- where Fonteyn does a cameo as The Grand Ballerina who visits a local studio to give them prizes. It's wonderfully awful, the story of a poor but earnest dance student in London right after the war, who has to take about 5 buses to get to her dance classes. AND her evil rival who has enough ambition for the whole class. There's a fascinating, and witty, classthat shows the difference between Evil Rival and Good Girl Heroine. It's fascinating because a very bad dancer of that day is quite different from a very bad dancer of today. The Evil Rival has oodles of "soul" and no technique -- she primps, she preens, she has feet of jello. Since she doesn't get the leading role in the school show, what choice does she have but to lock the heroine in the basement? I forget how it ends -- happily. I think the heroine's little brother (played by Anthony Newley!) figures it out and rescues her. There were a lot of little ballet films like this in the '40s and '50s, I think -- but 1982 is late for the stinker Mme. Hermine describes. Quick! Cast Joan Collins in the international ballet repertory of that time.

I think the differences among companies and styles, even now, is quite obvious. Paris Opera is not Vaganova, and the Kirov is different from the Bolshoi. Hard to say what the Royal Ballet style is at the moment, or that of the Royal Danes, as both have become, deliberately, so "international" but when those companies had a specific style, it, too, were easily identifiable. I don't see as deeply as a teacher would see, but I can see a good bit of it, and when a guest artist, or new corps person comes in, they stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.

"Forever Amber" would make a wonderful MacMillan ballet, I agree. I can't believe you unearthed that. When I was growing up, my mother had a "secretary" -- a desk with a glass bookcase attached. It was locked, but the key was in the lock. (They trusted me. ) In it were my aunt's medical textbooks, and, among other "grown up books" which I was not allowed to read -- "Forever Amber." Probably a first edition. When I did finally read it, I had read so much that it was no longer shocking. Sigh. I always felt cheated. I wonder who could choreograph photoguy's code breaking book?

Estelle, I'm pretty sure that Isabelle Guerin is one of them. There's been some shifting around because of injuries, and I don't know the final roster, but I think I can get it for you -- both rep and roster and will post it when I have it.

I don't think it comes so much from nationality as from repertory -- although, of course, if a choreographer creates for London dancers, or New York dancers, then a bit of Londoness, or NewYorkness will characterize his works. The English tradition (Ballets Russes, DeValois, Helpmann as well as Ashton and Tudor and later MacMillan) has been very dramatic -- narrative ballets, or ballets of atmosphere; even something as abstract as "Symphonic Variations" can be seen as Good (quietly) triumphing over Evil and rejoicing in its triumph. And for that, you need to help the audience see what you want it to see, and the way you direct the audience's view is that the dancers have to show you were to look (along with blocking and timing). I think of style as accent. I know I have an American accent, but I"m not really aware of it until I hear someone with a British accent, or a French accent. And if I never heard anyone speak except my own family, I'd never know there was such a thing as accent. So often, in ballet, one finds out about "style" when one takes a class in a foreign studio, or sees a company one isn't used to performing a ballet one has seen a lot. THEN you really notice those bent/stretched elbows or wandering/fixed stares

But I'll bet you the "reserved" doesn't mean shy -- it's a quality rooted in the technique, and has a lot to do with whether that arm is s-t-r-e-t-c-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-e-d or has a slightly rounded elbow. Were you trained to look straight at the audience, no matter what (not necessarily seeing them, just looking at them) or to change your focus, look at your partner, look at your foot a moment before it moves? All of those things -- physical things -- change the way you look on stage. Often "style" is discussed as though it's cosmetic matters, or emotional ones (like "reserved" or "flashy") -- but the words, I think, refer to what the body is doing.

That's a good question -- I'm curious myself about the shoes and hope one of our teachers can respond. But there is a difference in styles among schools and companies (even though, like the Amazon rain forest, that diversity is being hacked at as we speak ) And teachers and choreographers can tell after watching a dancer for just a few minutes what their "native language" is. One of my favorite ballet stories is that of Ruthanna Boris, choreographer of "Cakewalk," who said that when she auditioned for Balanchine he said, "Ah, little Italian girl" because of the way she performed a pirouette -- and in fact, she had studied at the Metropolitan Opera's ballet school, which was Italian at the beginning of the 20th century. Some stylistic differences are whether arms en couronne are placed squarely above the head (the arms directly parallel to the ears) or placed a bit in front. Is the arm extended, stretched as far as it can go, looking as though a machine is pulling on the fingers? Or is it extended almost as far as it can go, a bit more rounded and leaving room in the imagination for more movement? Does one hop up on pointe, or roll through the foot? Dozens of things like that, all of which once meant a great deal to teachers and dancers and they fought hard to maintain a company's style and individuality.

Thanks for reviving this topic, Tessa. I think there's a lot to be said on this topic! I think every critic has a point of view, a bias, etc. One of the best ballet critics I've known is someone who, given his druthers, would spend every night of the week at Merce Cunningham, or downtown dance. But he can still see ballet very clearly and I both read and trust what he writes. So it's possible to put aside one's preferences and still retain objectivity in reviewing. Since this comment was made in a review, though, and since, IMO, the reviewer missed the point of the Trocks -- which, as many have said, celebrate ballet, I think...well, that she missed the point.

Thanks for reviving this topic, Tessa. I think there's a lot to be said on this topic! I think every critic has a point of view, a bias, etc. One of the best ballet critics I've known is someone who, given his druthers, would spend every night of the week at Merce Cunningham, or downtown dance. But he can still see ballet very clearly and I both read and trust what he writes. So it's possible to put aside one's preferences and still retain objectivity in reviewing. Since this comment was made in a review, though, and since, IMO, the reviewer missed the point of the Trocks -- which, as many have said, celebrate ballet, I think...well, that she missed the point.

Thank you for that answer, grace -- and welcome

Runqiao Du has danced with Washington Ballet for years and appeared in several Farrell programs. Choo Hon Goh is a balleriina with the National Ballet of Canada. Terence Duncan is with the New York Theatre Ballet, I believe. Several of the women -- Fournier, Gallagher, Magnicaballi and Pickard have been with her for several years. Farrell has a history of only working with people she's worked with before -- dancers she's met while staging works for other companies, or from her summer program.

They don't just last one day, ronny. The really bad ideas last a long time Any long-time ballet fan will have an experience, I think, of saying, in jest, at an intermission, to friends, something like, "Wow. That was just awful, wasn't it? I think the next thing the guy should do is something to the 1812 Overture. Maybe he could call it Cannonade." And, sure 'nuf, within two years, someone, if not necessarily the Awful Choreographer in Question, will do it. Long before the internet, there seemed to be a ballet jungle telegraph system. A few summers ago on alt.arts.ballet, someone came up with the idea for the most impossible story ballet ever -- Moby Dick. We had such fun with fish dives, pas de poissons. I thought Moby should be a ballerina and Juliet came up with wonderful costumes for her, and for her 24 sister whales. When lo. Someone posted that her daughter's ballet school had done a Moby Dick ballet just that spring. But seriously, ballets are made in studios.

Thanks for all the suggestions. We should have our own Book of the Month Club I had a lovely reading list for summer, and I never got to it. My reward to myself for finishing my own book was to read and I went out and bought: "Atonement," "Snow Falling on Cedars" (I'd missed it when it was new), "The Lovely Bones," "The Doctor's House," and two collections of short stories. And I still haven't finished Andrew Solomon's "The Noonday Demons" that a friend gave me for Christmas!

They're not household names There should be a press release in a few weeks, and I'll post it when I get it.

Welcome, photoguy It's good to have some input from Australia! I think your point about the repertory is apt. As companies do more and more contemporary dance pieces, rather than classical ballet with its corps of swans, as you noted, the old formulas have changed. When I started going to ballet iin the mid-1970s, I read an article by Lucia Chase, then director of American Ballet Theatre, in which she said she needed 24 women ini the corps (for Swan Lake) and 10 men (for Billy the Kid). Those were the outside limits in the repertory then. But, as others have noted, it depends on the company. At the same time, the Joffrey Ballet was equally divided. And the Royal Danish Ballet has always had equal, if not more, men at the soloist ranks. I also think that Kate has a good point. Very good dancers often languish in the female corps, while moderately talented men get solo parts quickly. As for why there are more principals, in some companies some of the senior men would stay on to do mime roles -- that's going now. (I'd also note that I don't think classical ballet MUST have more women than men, and be built on the 24 women one man model. It would be lovely to have new, classical ballets with different configurations.)

Thank you for raising this issue, Bobbi. Juliet, I was cheering each sentence At first, I had a momentary lapse, I'll admit. "Well, Balanchine has been dead for nearly 20 years and times change." Having washed my mouth out with soap, I remember reading that one of the reasons Balanchine had Danilova and Doubrovska on the faculty was so that all these brash American girls so immersed in pop culture could have Old World, grand ballerina role models. These were not a dime a dozen in Balanchine's day, either, but he found them. Image may not be everything, but it counts for a lot -- this kind of image, anyway. Perhaps they'll get a lot of complaining letters......

Here's the press release with the repertory, a list of dancers, and a biography of Anthony Morgan, the new choreographer whose work Farrell is presenting: THE SUZANNE FARRELL BALLET FALL 2002 Program A: October 23, 24, 27(mat) Raymonda Variations (chor: Balanchine, music: Excerpts from Raymonda by A. Glazounov) Intermission A Farewell to Music (chor: Morgan, music: Adagio movement, Clarinet Concerto in A Major K. 622 by W.A. Mozart)) Pause Variations for Orchestra (chor: Balanchine, music: Variations in Memory of Aldous Huxley by I. Stravinsky) Intermission Who Cares? (chor: Balanchine, music: by G. Gershwin, orchestration by H. Kay)**Intermediate version between concert version and full version Program B: October 25, 26 (mat & eve) Divertimento No. 15 (Chor: Balanchine, music: Divertimento No. 15 in B-flat major, K.287 by W. A. Mozart) Intermission A Farewell to Music (chor: Morgan, music: Adagio movement, Clarinet Concerto in A Major K. 622 by W. A. Mozart)) Pause Tsigane (chor: Balanchine, music: Tzigane by M. Ravel) Intermission Chaconne (chor: Balanchine, music: Ballet music from the opera Orfeo ed Euridice by C. W. Gluck)** TV Version The Suzanne Farrell Ballet Fall 2002 Company List Bill Biondolino Peter Boal Runqiao Du Terence Duncan Dmitri Fateev Jennifer Fournier Kristen Gallagher Chan Hon Goh Elisabeth Holowchuk Gavin Larsen Benjamin Lester Natalia Magnicaballi Momchil Mladenov Shannon Parsley Venti Petrov Bonnie Pickard Eric Ragan Mariaelena Ruiz Amy Seawright Lynda Sing Stephen Straub Apprentices: Marika Anderson Jessika Anspach Katelyn Prominski Meaghan Spedden ANTHONY MORGAN Anthony received his introduction to dance in Canada while completing a degree in Mechanical Engineering at Queen?s University in Kingston, Ontario. Dance soon displaced engineering and he attended summer schools in dance at York University and Toronto Dance Theatre. From 1973 to 1976 he did the certificate program at The London School of Contemporary Dance where he danced in the Lecture Demonstration Group and later with Basic Space Dance Theatre touring throughout England, Scotland and Wales. Teachers who most influenced his work included Jane Dudley, Nina Fonaroff, Robert Cohan and, at Covent Garden, Johnny O?Brien. Then came the New York years. Anthony studied extensively at the Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey Schools as well as with Viola Farber, Jennifer Muller and others for modern dance and Finis Jung, David Howard and, especially, Alfredo Corvino for ballet. His contemporary dance technique classes are based on the techniques of Martha Graham, inflected by a sense of humour and spirituality. He danced with many companies including those of Martha Graham, Pearl Lang, Bertram Ross, Rudy Perez, Susan Marshall, Linda Diamond, Larry Richardson, Philip Grosser, Kelly Hogan, Artis Barry Smith and Judith Garay. One of his first dances while a student received an award for most promising choreographer. He first showed his choreography in New York City in 1978 and directed The Anthony Morgan Dance Company there from 1985 to 1992 at which time he relocated to Vancouver. In addition to touring engagements the company gave regular New York seasons and received numerous good reviews from the New York press. Anthony also choreographed and performed for "Double Dancing" a duet repertory with partner Judith Garay which has toured theatres from Miami to Calgary to Rotterdam. His dances have been performed by groups in London, UK, Dallas, TX, Mexico City, Brussels, Tallahassee, Jacksonville and Gainesville, FL, Lynchburg, VA and Vancouver. In 1997 Anthony produced, choreographed and performed in a short film Punctuated Equilibrium which played on Canadian television and screened at more than twenty international film. He has taught at numerous schools and universities across North America in addition to teaching residencies in Mexico and Europe. Since 1983 he has been on faculty at Florida State University each Fall semester and since 1993 has been a frequent guest at Simon Fraser University and Main Dance Place in Vancouver, Canada. Now in his fifties, he continues an active life as a choreographer, dancer and rehearsal director.

See the post on the News Forum; I just got the roster.

First time I've ever used "LOL" on this board, atm I agree about the difference in the scores, but I think Doug meant that if we saw a back-to-1890 sources "Swan Lake" they might not like it -- another variant on the "the best/real production is the one I'm used to" question I grew up with two Swan Lakes -- the old Royal Ballet production and the David Blair production for ABT (which was a pared down version of that old Royal Ballet production). Much of those productions were said to be based on the Stepanov notations -- but so much had been changed. The Ashton additions , all of which I adore -- especially the now tossed out first act waltz -- the danse de coupes was De Valois's, the character dances were restaged. Yes, it was the old, traditional version

In a word, terror. Terror that some enterprising choreographer will read it and stage them. Seriously, ronny, we can have fun with twisted librettos, and do from time to time, but you can't choreograph a ballet through letters, or on the internet. You need a choreographer in a room with dancers.

"Snow White" was never one of my favorites, but I wouldn't want it re-imagined, either. MY perfect Paul Taylor Company was the original cast of "Esplanade," that era. I always wince when I see anyone else do a part that Carolyn Adams, Nicholas Gunn, or Ruth Andrien originated. Watching "Esplanade" from year to year since its first season has been instructive -- it's changed completely, in both allocation of roles (minor) and atmosphere and spirit (major). The anger is gone, the roughness is gone. It changed a bit as each dancer left, and then it became something else entirely. No dancer can be a copy of the one before, etc etc etc, and dances change, etc etc etc, but I'll take the '70s for this company. In the '70s and '80s, too, dancers stayed with Taylor for a long time -- some their whole careers. Now many are there for a year or two and the constant turnover is jarring. The last time they were down here, the company looked quite green.

I think while makeup can hide a multitude of sins, there are still dancers whose bone structure and proportions don't meet contemporary standards, whatever they are that decade. The farther away from the big companies one goes, the more no necks, jutting chins, longlong arms, shortshort legs, etc. one sees. It's always instructive, and a bit painful to me, to watch the end of school shows of local schools. A lot of the students have no intention of going for a professional career; they're taking ballet the way I took piano lessons. But a lot of them do, and there are some very good dancers who one knows will never make it because of one or more of the attributes mentioned above. Diversity of body types in this sense is one of the marks of a regional company -- right or wrong, the best and the most beautiful are the ones who get the best jobs.

Thank you for posting the news of the Japan tour for the Kirov, Naoko -- and I hope someone will be able to give you casting for the Chatelet season; I'm sorry I can't help! It sounds as though the theater managers think that the Japanese audience is more interested in the traditional story ballets. Having seen the Kirov's Jewels, I sympathize -- I'd much rather see that than what they're offering Perhaps next time....