Alexandra

Brendan, re Valerie Lawson's review, I don't think the Australian tour is an excuse at all. (First off, why was there an Australian tour, which has aparently exhausted and injured the dancers? It sounds like a victory lap for Stretton, and a bit early, too. It is very unusual for a company to tour during the first year of a new directorship.) Dancers rehearse works on tour. They could have rehearsed before they went on the tour. A gala as important as this one should have been planned for well in advance. During the 25th annivesary Jubilee year the company was touring as well, and that gala was not odd bits grabbed out of the refrigerator at the last minute.

Well, I think it's his great-granddaughter. I can only read two-thirds of this Probably of interest to Danes, and Pamela and Katharine and me only, but here's the link: http://www.berlingske.dk/artikel:aid=201588

Thanks for the update, sneds. It will be interesting to see what the roster looks like a few months from now (i.e., if they pick up or promote some new soloists).

Thanks for taking the time to do that, Calliope. I think refuting further generalities from two decades ago is pretty futile. (Even in high school a teacher, especially in sociology, can say look at the date of your source!) On the dancers attending college, to take just one point, there are now several universities offering majors in ballet -- not the case until recently. And colleges around major dance companies (Fordham in New York is one of the best examples) offer accommodations to dancers. Companies are also more aware of retraining responsibilities now than in the past. One could write a really zippy attack on ballet -- no overtime! no health insurance!! no job security!!! -- based on memoires from the Ballets Russes dancers of the 1930s and 1940s. In my skim, what I saw were a lot of suppositions and examples of "conventional wisdom" (the scales in the dance class, for example) that keep being perpetuated in the media, as well, apparently, in high schools.

I found a news item at www.writersmarket.com (which does a summary of news in the publishing world) that says: Performing Arts ceases publication Next month's August issue will be the last. Their source is Media Watch, but a check of that link did not reveal anything about Performing Arts magazine. If anyone has more information, please post.

I was fascinated by the quote Ari posted on Links about James Canfield, who's announced that he's stepping down as director of Oregon Ballet Theatre after 14 controversial years, as the press reports always say. Six East Coast Companies!!!!! Any ideas? If anyone went to this he or she has not yet posted on Recent Performances (ahem!). But on the off chance that someone has gone, were any East Coast company celebs spotted in the audience? For those familiar with Mr. Canfield's work, any suggestions for future employment?

Katharine, seriously, how can we go back to the time of Vestris, even if we wanted to? Great artists never go back -- Beethoven didn't "go back" to Bach. Often great artists examine the ideals, and even the forms, of past great movements in art, yes, but in dance that's nigh well impossible since we do not know what those ballets looked like. We can read, we can imagine, but we will never know.

Thanks for posting that, Steve.

The skating analogy is a good one. I've been calling ABT's performances "an evening of championship skating" for years now. It's annoying in "Le Corsaire," but quite chilling in "Symphony in C." A historical note, KB. Nureyev did not start serious training at 17, but much earlier. He went to a good, solid regional school before coming to the Vaganova Academy. One of his classmates (Alexander Minz) in an interview after he (Minz) defected said that he thought Nureyev truly believed he did not have proper schooling before 17, but that that wasn't how he was viewed by other students. What he got in Leningrad was polishing; he didn't start from scratch. I don't know why he crammed as many steps as possible into everything he choreographed -- perhaps it's a metaphor for his life. But I always wondered if he'd read all those critics who said "Agon has more steps in it than all of Sleeping Beauty!" as though Balanchine had set out to achieve just that, and quantity of steps made something great. Back to the gala, the subject of this thread, the points that several of the British critics made, that a gala shouldn't be a slapdash sampler of what's gone on this past season, but, especially for a Royal Jubilee, should reflect the company's history is a good one, I think. At the 25th anniversary Jubilee, we got "Homage to the Queen". "Monotones" was another little gala number. The company's repertory was often enhanced by gala fare. (Ismene Brown had a good line, as she so often does: "A plate of this year's leftovers performed by any dancer still uninjured at the end of the season is not what I would consider up to the mark.") On the other hand, perhaps we're lucky not to have gotten Stanton Welch's "Son of Homage to the Queen".

I heartily agree that dancers should be taught music -- they still are, at some schools. (A young choreographer in Washington, trained in Bulgaria, studied violin as a child. When he got to high school, at the ballet school, he had to switch to piano "because the girls took all the violins." He doesn't choreograph to pop music.) Studying music not only gives them a sense of structure -- which, gosh, just might be useful in choreography! -- but teaches them the classical repertory so that when they come to make a ballet they'll have something to choose from. One of the saddest -- and bravest -- things I've ever seen on this subject was a PBS show on Christopher Dean (the skater, and a fine choreographer, IMO, who did some very sophisticated skates to pop music) in a sound studio, with CDs of classical music from floor to ceiling, devouring them, playing one after the other. He looked quite tired, as though he'd been doing this, without much sleep, for weeks. "I have to catch up," he said. He'd been brought up without music. At the time, he wanted to do choreography seriously, and realized that to express what he needed to express, he needed more depth in the music he chose. This is not to say, again, that it's not popular to create a great work to mediocre music, or a serious work to popular music. But such works COMMENT on the music. As for "Billboards," the argument that Ballet Dad makes is often made. Program ANYTHING, just to get 'em in, and that will make a lot of money and then we can do other, great works. But it doesn't work that way. I was surprised to read -- we posted about it several months ago -- that in arts management (not just dance, but theater too) there is now something called "the Billboards model" and it's a "don't go there" model. Programming a ballet to rock music and touting it as such, announcing you're doing it to bring in the young A) drives away some of the older audience membes who, whoops!, are the ones who actually have a habit of theater going and are willing and able to fork over high prices for tickets. And B) if it doe attract people who've never seen a ballet before, and what you show them isn't a ballet, well, it follows logically that if they like it, that's what they'll want to see in the future. They either won't come back, or they'll want to see only that. The long-term consequences of "Billboards" were rather dire. The company lost dancers who were sick of performing in it, and, although it did bring in a lot of cash, the question of, wouldn't something else have done the same thing?, will always be an open one. And shortly after the Billboards era, the company was in very bad straits financially. It didn't last -- and the company is still fighting to come back, both artistically and financially.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the article, but rg's comment about an A being an average grade reminds me of a story from my college days that's too good to waste. Lenice, a young woman with all Bs and As (this was way before grade inflation), dared to take Dudley Sherwood's third year classical Greek class. She was the only student. She was a legend; she was only a junior, but had taken a Greek seminar the preceding summer at Georgetown, with their seniors, and gotten a B-plus. Mr. Sherwood gave her a C. She was a bit stunned, since her test papers had reflected no detected errors and went to Mr. Sherwood, expecting to be told it was an error. "But Lenice," he said. "You were the only student in the class. Ergo, you must get a C, as a C means average." Back to Leigh's article, which I've only skimmed, I think it's horrendous that something like that would be accepted . much less given an A, but the only ballet story that the American "intelligentsia" (and I lose the term loosely to refer to many in academia, where modern dance, oldstyle, still dominates) wants to hear is that ballet is bad, it kills people, it's too selective, it won't let in short little fat people with bow legs and is, as Mr. Sherwood would say, ergo bad.

dirac, only "Vienna Waltzes" That's pretty short for a whole evening. What else would you have? And who'd be in it?

The gala reviews are coming in. Check Thursday's thread on Links (and, for those who haven't discovered this forum yet, this is a good place to check every day for news and reviews from around the world). http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...48736#post48736

Not that I was there, of course, but reading Clement Crisp's review made me feel that I was Here's a taste (and the link): Not a dish to set before a Queen

Good question about Dance Theatre of Harlem, FF. I haven't seen the company in New York in ages, but from their yearly appearances in DC, they're going through a decidedly bad patch. I know several people who used to love the company and simply won't go to it any longer. Bad new repertory, poorly done Balanchine (which they used to do beautifully), and the technical standard of the company has slipped also. The company has been struggling financially, but there are other companies in the same straits that do better. I honestly don't know where to place them. Ten years ago, I would have put them in the Top Ten. Now, I would not. A second tier company down on its luck, maybe.

As one of the armchair quarterbacks (sorry if that doesn't translate; it's an American football term, referring to the fan who spends the week complaining that the coach did this, that or the other thing wrong but doesn't have to go out on the field himself) I'm in agreement with many of the points KB and Brendan raised. I don't think we'll learn anything more about Mr. Stretton after another season. He has a clear pattern. In my opinion, what has happened is what could be predicted to happen when someone from outside the tradition is brought in to run a company like the Royal, with a special heritage and tradition. I think one of the many things wrong with ballet today is that it's being run on a corporate model -- corporations bring in a new boy to shake things up. What a good idea! Let's do that too! But it doesn't work that way. I admired Lynette's piece on ballet.co very much and I think her analogy of a ballet company to a garden is quite apt. I also agree, though, that the problems didn't start with Stretton, but began in the mid-'70s. Of course, there were complaints before that, there always will be, just as there will always be people who enjoy what they're seeing and don't feel that problems outweigh what they like. But the company started moving away from its heritage in the mid-'70s, moving away from having good, solid classical productions as a base, and whatever MacMillan's merits as a choreographer may be, his talents for being the ballet master of a large company -- and a repertory beyond his own work -- were wanting. I think the company took a good sharp turn down the wrong road with Morrice -- who was outside the company but at least had watched it . There were reports in the '90s that Dowell was under the thumb of the directorship and wasn't able to bring in the repertory he wanted. One can argue that a company director needs to be strong enough to stand up to a board, but I'd wager that the board wouldn't have a director who did stand up to them. If Dowell's last season was the season he'd wanted to have all along, but could not, then it's even more of a shame. I sympathize with those who missed the Glory Days and think that everything now is, on balance, fine. It's horrid to be told constantly that things aren't the way they used to be. More to the point, I think, things aren't the way they could be. The prices are a problem. I began hearing complaints about this in the 1990s, when "Swan Lake" and "Romeo and Juliet" began to take over the repertory and over and over and over and over. Vicious Cycle then sets in. We need more money; what sells? Who has enough money to pay what we want them to pay? And then the audience becomes businessmen, who want to entertain their clients with a good evening out and certainly aren't going to plunk down -- what is it now? 100 pounds? or more? -- for An Evening of Who Knows What? They want a name brand. And so the company gives them the name brand, and so it goes. There are other solutions to this, but once set on Swan Lake highway, it's hard to get off. One final word. Of course new work is needed, but bringing in modern dance choreographers to work with ballet dancers isn't the way to do it. New BALLETS are what is needed. Ballet is a specific language. If English playwrights stopped producing stageable plays, theater companies wouldn't panic and start importing German playwrights and put on those plays in German. They'd try to figure out what was wrong and train English playwrights.

I didn't, of course, but I hope someone else did and will report. This is Canfield's last appearance in New York as director of this troupe, I suppose. I'm very curious about the audience, too -- was the house full, what was the reaction, etc?

Tessa, your top ten is my top ten, although I think I'd organize a bit differently. I also think there are tiers. ABT and NYCB are both a bit problematic at the moment, but as institutions, they're at the top. The next group would be: San Francisco Ballet Pacific Northwest Ballet Miami City Ballet Houston Ballet Boston Ballet I think what Tessa posted -- that the last two are wildcards because of changes in leadership -- is an important point. It's what separates those five from ABT and NYCB, for me, both of which have survived changes in leadership (I know that point is debatable for some NYCB fans, but the company is still dancing and its repertory is structurally, if not always qualitatively, within its traditions.) SFB is in good shape now -- although it's lost a lot of dancers. And its repertory is turning more and more to contemporary dance and away from ballet. PNB also has an uneven repertory -- and what will it be like under new direction? Miami has the sternest backbone -- it's as Balanchine company, goldarn it, and that's what it is -- but has financial woes. Boston isn't quite a wildcard, because Nissinen's first new season has been announced, and it looks like it's going to be SFB East. Whether Boston will go for having their Russian-tinged repertory replaced with lots of New Now Dance and European faux classics (the Van Dantzig "Romeo and Juliet") is still an open question. Houston is wide open. Whatever one thinks of Stevenson's ballets, they're popular at home, and if someone comes in who wants to replace them with My Very Own Ballets, that could turn out to be a problem. Ballet West has been left out of these discussions -- it's a quiet company now; it doesn't tour as much as the other biggies. But its budget is in the same range, it has good dancers, and its repertory is similar to Boston''s. I think the Joffrey should be in the Top Ten too -- as much for its history as its reality, although I think the company is on its way up rather than down. It takes a long time to recover from something like Billboards The next group for me would be Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Colorado Ballets. Companies with big ballet repertories that are popular at home, but don't get out much, and don't have a consistently top level of dancers. Then you have Oregon Ballet Theatre (also a wildcad, as its raison d'etre is packing it in), Washington Ballet (on the way up in terms of budget, but Webre is not, in my estimation, a good choreographer), San Jose-Silicon Valley (if the money holds, they'll be a player), Ballet Arizona (all they need is money; but Ib Andersen has turned that company around in two years, and IS a good choreographer), Milwaukee Ballet (had a recent personality change, going from a Saturday Night Out repertory to a contemporary ballet rep) and Carolina Ballet, which is being built very solidly, although I remain to be convinced about Weiss as a choreographer. Apologies if I've forgotten one. I can't judge Oakland and Tulsa; I've neither seen nor read enough about them. There are also some small groups, like Ballet Florida and Ballet Austin, but I don't think they're into the major leagues yet.

I'm really just bumping this up to the top. I don't have it yet, but have leafed through it in my locak bookstore and the photographs are fantastic. Has anyone else seen/read it?

Nope. We can charge through the nose -- this is a gala for Rich Widget Lovers But, dear Mme. Hermine, you've fallen into The Trap. Now that you've asked a question, you are obligated, under Rule 555(v) to answer the question and post your Gala.

Among the letters to his wife that appear, newly translated, in the current edition of Dance Chronicle (see the Books, Magazines and Critics forum) are a few of August Bournonville's assessments of what he saw in Paris. (These letters were written during his exile from Copenhagen, right before he did Napoli.) Here are a few samples. It should be remembered that Bournonville did not view Romanticism as the high water mark of ballet, but as a sentimental, money-hungry period in which art became trickery "I shall now give you a little picture of the state in which the Ballet finds itself here in Paris.".......Perrot...wants like the devil to compose, and, with this end in view, has completely given up training. The fact of the matter is, he has taste and facility and now, when they do not even ask balletmasters themselves to invent their subjects, but, instead, force them to stage the ideas of [professional] librettists--indeed, will not even read their scenarios--you can imagine that this position, while not honorable, is at least powerful. Add to this that these librettists (may Heaven turn its back on them, and the world forget their scenarios) have a dominant say in the casting of roles, and the choice of the music composer; consequently, all the balletmaster is actually repsonsible for is the general scenic arrangement.".... "In this way, Coralli and Mazilier have managed to slog along unimaginatively. With great financial effort, a number of rather successful ballets have been produced.....Everyone is bemoaning the decline of dance; operas steal the ballets' thunder, receipts drop off, managers become delirious at the mere mention of ballets. ... Many of the finest danseuses do not appear for a fortnight at a time, yet mediocrities must be used." "The ballets, which actually have very thin plots, have now been made three hours long and by making every dance into a character dance, they have become so monotonous that one cannot tell them apart. Some nice and surprising touches have been adapted by everyone, so that they are differentiated only by their degree of exaggeration. Corps de ballet is beneath contempt. And as for ensemble, interaction, groupings, etc etc -- there simply aren't any. It's all a muddle, and the male dancers are what we, in Copenhagen, would call ditch-diggers."

The Summer 2002 DanceView is out (all subscribers' copies will be mailed by this Friday). It contains: Remembering Alexandra Danilova (a conversation with Danilova's manager and long-time friend, Lewis Ufland) by Mary Cargill Balm in Brooklyn, an essay on Mark Morris's new "V" by Nancy Dalva Interview with Paris Opera Ballet etoile Agnes Letestu by Marc Haegeman San Francisco Season The San Francisco Ballet's Spring Season reviewed by Alison Garcia Trey and Peter and Wendy and Ballet Trey McIntyre's new Peter Pan reviewed by Robert Greskovic Paris Opera Ballet's Spring Season Two Views by Marc Haegeman (on Don Quixote) and by Carol Pardo (on Don Q and the spring's mixed repertory) Jane Simpson's London Report, covering Hubbard Street, Nederlands Dance Theater, Alvin Ailey, Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Royal Ballet (including Christopher Wheeldon's new "Tryst") Mary Cargill's New York Report, covering Les Ballets Grandivas, BAllet Builders, SAB Workshop, POB School, ABT Studio Company, and the National Ballet of Spain Rita Felciano's San Francisco Report, covering Compagnie Maguy Marin, Lyon Opera Ballet, Malambo, Alonzo King's Lines Ballet, Scott Wells & Dancers, Joe Goode Performance Group, and Savage Jazz Dance Company

The Silver Anniversary issue of Dance Chronicle ("Studies on Dance and the Related Arts") is out. A big fat one, with a silver cover. It contains: "Darling Helene: August Bournonville's Letters from France and Italy, 1841, Part One" -- translated by Patricia McAndrew, with an introduction and notes by Knud Arne Jurgensen "Cyril W. Beaumont: Bookseller, Publisher, and Wriiter on Dance, Part One" by Kathrine Sorley Walker Where they Danced: Patrons, Institutions, Spaces Introduction -- Sally Banes Dollars for Dance: Lincoln Kirstein, City Center, and The Rockefeller Foundation (Lynn Garafola) Institutional Forces and the Shaping of Dance in the American University (Janice Ross) State Patronage in India: Appropriations of the "regional" and the "national" (Purnima Shah) Choreographing Community: Dancing in the Kitchen (Sally Banes) Book Reviews: Toward a More Balanced View of Dance History (Susan Latkin Funkenstein Thoughts on Biographies and Biographers (Frank W. D. Ries)

The new issue of David Leonard's Dance Now, a quarterly from London is out. It includes: "Afternoon of a Legend" (Marcia B. Siegel on Nijinsky, the choreographer) "Chosen" (Dancing Nijinsky, by Deborah Bull) "Wild at Heart" (Sarah Wildor talks with Allen Robinson) Vision Scenes (Dance on British television screens by Brendan McCarthy) Lessons in America (Stepping off the stage with Bruce Sansom) Universe of Joy (Ashton at the Bolshoi, by David Vaughan) Flag-Waving (Excelsior in Paris and Raymonda in Munich, reviewed by John Percival) Facades (William Walton at the ballet by Allen Robertson) Westward, Ho (another of Kathrine Sorley Walker's wonderful long pieces on the history of smaller British companies, this one of Western Theatre Ballet) Street Gang (Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (by Donald Hutera) A wrap up of dance at The Place, by a variety of writers, including Judith Mackrell, Jane Sipson, Jenny Gilbert and Debra Craine And book reviews of Isadora and Mime Matters (a video)

The Spring Ballet Review is out. There are a lot of articles that are appropriate accompaniment to the Kirov season. Larry Kaplan on Jewels ("Precious Jewels") Joel Lobenthal on "The Kirov Men" Don Daniels on "The Kirov's Jewels and Diana Vishneva" Mariana Horosko on "Alexander Pushkin" (Baryshnikov and Nureyev's teacher) Mary Cargill's "A Conversation with Peter Boal" (an excellent interview, I think, and I'd say that even if I didn't know Mary and with lots and lots of gorgeous photos) David Vaughan's "The Royal Ballet: End of an Era?" some recollections - and more gorgeous photos of the late modern dancer Jane Dudley Joseph Houseal on "La Source" Nancy G. Moore on "Sacre" The front of the book has reports from Washington by George Jackson; Chicago by Sybil Shearer; New York by Rachel Straus; and San Francisco by Paul Parish. George Dorris has a "Music on Disc" piece at the back of the book.