Alexandra

I've always wanted to start a Bring Back Benno club -- and NOT to have him dance the pas de trois in ACT I, either, but the Act II pas de trois, as Mel describes. All Benno does to "assist" in the partnering is one catch, which no one, of whatever age, could do, since one cannot throw and catch the ballerina at the same time. I've always thought this is another of those things we in the West got wrong. We assumed the man and the woman had to have the same amount of dancing, when the man didn't we looked for the answer -- aha! the guy was old! -- instead of, "Hmm. It says here the danseur noble dances the slow and stately measures, not the quick ones." Benno was a danseur noble, second rank, I believe, and it would be nice to have him back again. Siegfried needs someone to talk to.

Thank you for that, John-Michael. I may be wrong, but I think Vaganova only did the Diana and Acteon, and that the ensemble -- pas de deux and a back up group -- is much older. The Diana and Acteon has a 20th century look about it, to me, while the pas de deux and ensemble look late 19th.

And Fracci as Karsavina. And, sigh, Leslie Browne as Romola. (Did Romola really deserve that?)

I think it's because they're often judged by symphonic music standards, rather than theatrical music standards. By that, I mean that symphonic music has to stand on its own, while music meant to accompany theater or dance can be "serviceable" -- not be the main course. I also think it matters how the music is conducted -- both conductor and orchestra. I've heard "Giselle" and "Coppelia" played by Danish conductors where both scores sound far more rich and, well, serious than they usually do, and I've think Russian conductors get more out of not only Minkus, but Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, than non-Russian ones. (Yes, it's a generalization, but I've never heard the Tchaikovsky ballets, nor Romeo and Juliet, nor Raymonda conducted the way Bolshoi and Kirov conductors can do it.) Tempi, coloration, dynamics -- the whole 9 yards.

Thank you for that, Ina -- and welcome. I note that this is your first post! Your Engliish is splendid, and I hope we'll be reading more from you in the future! I've been surprised there haven't been more comments on Malakhov. I think it's because he simply doesn't dance here enough. He's always in ABT's spring season at the Met, but doesn't go on the company's tours, and he doesn't seem to get as much attention as the wunderkinds. I agree that he is a fine artist. I wish I could see more of him.

The Diana and Acteon pas de deux, which often pops up on galas and highlights programs, is credited to Vaganova. There's an extended excerpt -- I'd always assumed it was by Petipa and not Perrot, but I don't know that -- danced by the Kirov. It's a pas de deux (with tambourine!) and a small corps. It was one of Asylmuratova's specialties and it is on video. I THINK it's on "The Kirov Ballet in London" but I wait to stand corrected -- this is from memory. There's also a performance by Komleva (not as wondrous, in my eyes) on another Kirov video, one of the many collections of excerpts from Kirov Ballets -- I'm sure someone reading this will remember which one.

Before we all get swelled heads, I don't think every dancer in New York, much less the world, is reading us, or we'd have a lot more people on line than 50 at a time I hope we are all aware that these posts are NOT private conversations -- put a post it note up on your screen, if you need to. "What I write is being read, right now, by people I don't know." Or whatever it takes. BUT HOWEVER, MOREOVER AND NEVERTHELESS, I hope people will not freeze at this thought. I think it is possible to write about Dancer Y, even if you've been told that Dancer Y checks this board every hour, along with her entire extended family, three of whom live in your building. One can say, "I was disappointed in Dancer Y," or "I wondered why Dancer Y had been cast, as she doesn't seem to have the technique for the role," or something north of "Good grief, why on earth is Dancer Y even on stage, with that crooked nose, those bow legs and sway back? My dog dances better." Somewhere in between silence and insults lies Net Heaven I think most of us hit that happy median most of the time, and if we do, then being confronted by someone who reads us won't be a problem. To the dancers who read this board, I hope you'll remember that if someone doesn't like one of your performances, it doesn't mean they don't like YOU.

Katja, I think you can count on any dancer of Malakhov's calibre dancing as long as he is able Baryshnikov did dance while he was director of ABT, and, as I'm sure you know, Nureyev never stopped I think he was considerably older than 34 when he took on Paris Opera, but he'd been staging ballets from the time he was in his mid-twenties.

Well, ballet has traditionally been a decade or two behind the other art forms as far as trends go. When do you think the "contempt for technique" will filter down to balletland?

Well, ballet has traditionally been a decade or two behind the other art forms as far as trends go. When do you think the "contempt for technique" will filter down to balletland?

Welcome, John-Michael. I see you're a Noverre man (He tried very hard to make ballet be seen as the "equal" to opera by developing the dramatic side.) I'm glad to hear you stood up to those who think ballet is devoid of intellectual interest. I hope you weren't too bruised in those battles

We've tried to say this from time to time. Thanks for this, ranonymous. I'll make it a sticky

So Friday, they had the night off? Or did no one go?

It's not a term I'm familiar with, but I doubt it's poor editing -- the sentence "reads," to me, not as though something's dropped. Perhaps Kisselgoff meant that the heel isn't pulled up, but Zakharova is leaning back a bit? Ray, I agree with you that it is a good review. I always admire Kisselgoff writing about the Russian companies, and I always have absolute faith in what she says about the productions.

This is more "technque versus art", but that's a close cousin. I was speaking with a friend last night who is an illustrator, and she described her training this way: "I had what is called 'an easy hand' -- but that has nothing to do with art." I thought it interesting that the art world broke this down so easily. We've had discussions before about a dancer's "facility" (inborn talent), which would be the equivalent of "an easy hand" -- he's a natural jumper, a born turner -- and that doesn't have anything to do with whether the person will develop into an artist or not.

This is more "technque versus art", but that's a close cousin. I was speaking with a friend last night who is an illustrator, and she described her training this way: "I had what is called 'an easy hand' -- but that has nothing to do with art." I thought it interesting that the art world broke this down so easily. We've had discussions before about a dancer's "facility" (inborn talent), which would be the equivalent of "an easy hand" -- he's a natural jumper, a born turner -- and that doesn't have anything to do with whether the person will develop into an artist or not.

Thank you for posting that, Jacqueline. I hope you'll inspire others in the Orange County area to post -- Giannina, Steve, Next? Did any of you go??? (Ballet Nut, are you close enough to get to this?)

I think that partnerships are another aspect of ballet that's different in different eras. Danilova once reportedly said of one of her usual partners, "Darling, it's the war. There's nobody else." When Fonteyn and Nureyev became The Partnership, suddenly there were lots of permanent partnerships, marketed as such. No's question about partners getting along well on or off stage is interesting -- there was one married couple at NYCB (McBride and Bonnefoux; this was written about at the time, so it's not telling tales out of school) who just didn't seem to match on stage -- they seem to make each other nervous, one critic wrote. When I was watching rehearsals a lot backstage in Copenhagen, there was one very young couple who were also a couple off-stage and found that dancing together made their private relationship difficult, and so asked that they not be cast together during the season. Sometimes one can make an educated guess about why two dancers are cast together so much -- he's not a good partners and she's the only one light enough, or strong enough, to stand him; he's the only one who will dance with her, because she's hard to manage; he's the only one who CAN dance with her because of height. To me, it seems as though we're now in an era of partner shuffling. Unless one or the other dancer has enough seniority or power to demand a permanent partner -- or no permanent partner; I think dancers would differ on preference -- they'll be paired with several different people during a season.

I suppose that someone with a true popular touch (who can also be an artist, quite rare) knows instinctively what will work and so doesn't need to preview -- your Truffaut example. But I do think that some "avant garde" artists who see people heading for the exits could stop and think what they might find lacking. Sometimes it's lack of knowledge, information, or even taste, on the audience's part. But sometimes the artist is just being too indulgent.

Thanks for this, rkoretzky! I hope you inspire Ballet Alertniks within range to charter a bus and head on out!!

Thank you for posting this, dirac. I like that second quote, too. When I was younger, I would have been appalled at the very idea. Care what the audience thinks? Pfui! Who are they to tell the artist what to do? The artist's role is to make great art, and if no one gets it -- well, no one ever gets great art in the first generation. Do they? And yet I always preferred Truffaut to Godard, finding the latter pretentious. Obviously a disconnect going on there. Now I'm with Mendes. There's a difference between, say, Dickens writing "A Tale of Two Cities" only to find his focus group wanted Sydney Carton to whip out a six shooter and blast them all to smithereens (oh, pfui on anachronisms, too) and then comply, and listen to what the viewers say and accommodate them while retaining a smidgen of his vision. I think that the biggest lesson I learned writing book proposals to publishers, and then writing a book, was that one has to get over putting down everything one wants to say, and think, instead, of what the reader needs to know. I think that works in any art form.

I think if one goes in with a postmodern mindset and expects to see what one is used to seeing, one will be disappointed. I talked to a modern dancer friend during an intermission of the Bayadere (Bolshoi) here in DC last month -- and yes, it is different, BW; shorter, for one thing, and the dances were put on pointe and the fourth act excised. She was laughing at it -- not too nastily -- and kept saying, "Now I understand those ballet audiences. They just want spectacle. This is pure Cecil B. DeMille." Well, she's right -- but where did Cecil B. DeMille come from? This is what he grew up seeing! Those grand old Hollywood spectaculars -- DeMille and Griffith -- came out of this age. (All mime, too )

Thanks for the bump, Leigh. I was thinking the same thing. First, I was surprised by how many people who liked mime, according to this poll and these comments. But then, along comes La Bayadere and the opinions seem quite different. Is this just a disconnect between theory and reality? A different polling population?

Not to discourage others who agree with Mr. Gottlieb, but since Kate was so brave as to disagree -- and I'm sure there are others who are quite happy with the current generation of NYCB dancers -- please feel free to weigh in

Not to discourage others who agree with Mr. Gottlieb, but since Kate was so brave as to disagree -- and I'm sure there are others who are quite happy with the current generation of NYCB dancers -- please feel free to weigh in