Alexandra

There's no artistic director here who's been the subject of more discussion than Mr. Martins. I'd like to get the sense of the board on his direction. Often posts are from a few deeply committed or partisan voices, but anonymous polls can give a better sense of what the general perception is. This poll will be up for two weeks. (But you can only vote once.) Only registered members can vote in polls.

There's no artistic director here who's been the subject of more discussion than Mr. Martins. I'd like to get the sense of the board on his direction. Often posts are from a few deeply committed or partisan voices, but anonymous polls can give a better sense of what the general perception is. This poll will be up for two weeks. (But you can only vote once.) Only registered members can vote in polls.

Paul, please keep discovering old posts and reviving them. That's one of the best assessments of Fonteyn that I've ever read.

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Thank you for posting that, Jocelyn. I've enjoyed her Louise Nadeau's dancing very much as well. (I haven't seen "Cinderella," but I've seen her in several roles when the company has appeared in D.C. Does this ballet have a lot of roles for dancers? Did you get to see other dancers in soloist roles that you liked?

Here's a simple poll. This season, are you a subscriber to a ballet series? If you'd like, you can also post to tell us which ones.

Thank you, Giannina. Giannina was one of the reasons I did this site. She subscribed to DanceView (THANK YOU Giannina ) and wrote me a letter once, mentioning the internet, and how she was reluctant to post because there were so many arguments. Not that WE ever have arguments here, of course. Giannina isn't a newcomer to ballet, by any means, but said she was a bit timid to post. She'd email me what she was seeing and it looked very postable to me, so I'd say, "Why don't you post that?" and finally "goldarn it, post that!!!!!" And so she did. And lived to tell the tale "Newcomers Corner" isn't the best name for this forum, unless we take a very generous view of "newcomer." All of us are newcomers in at least one, if not more, aspects of ballet. (Suggestions for a better title are welcome.) The idea is to have a place where it's absolutely okay to say: What's the difference between a battement and a changement? Why don't men dance on pointe? Or do they? When did the tutu become popular? Et cetera. Also -- what we really hope will happen -- is that those of you who write me saying, "I really enjoy the site, but I don't know enough to post about what I'm seeing" will feel encouraged to do so -- whether on this forum, or elsewhere. I promise you that Giannina is the most gentle and encouraging of hostesses

Thanks, Hillary. Do you know the story of Bournonville's Napoli? The first act is something like that -- with different names. It's set in Naples and opens in the market. The hero (Gennaro) is...a fisherman! (The heroine (Teresina) is unemployed, but looking for a husband.) There are two "Hilarions" (Peppo, who sells lemonade, and Giacomo, who sells macaroni). At the end of the act, Teresina and Gennaro, now engaged, go for a row in his boat and are so in love they don't notice the storm coming up, and she drowns. You must have seen it in a dream (She's restored to life through the power of faith and they have a great wedding!) Thanks for posting your version

Thanks, Hillary. Do you know the story of Bournonville's Napoli? The first act is something like that -- with different names. It's set in Naples and opens in the market. The hero (Gennaro) is...a fisherman! (The heroine (Teresina) is unemployed, but looking for a husband.) There are two "Hilarions" (Peppo, who sells lemonade, and Giacomo, who sells macaroni). At the end of the act, Teresina and Gennaro, now engaged, go for a row in his boat and are so in love they don't notice the storm coming up, and she drowns. You must have seen it in a dream (She's restored to life through the power of faith and they have a great wedding!) Thanks for posting your version

I hope Jane Simpson or Helena, or both, will see this and answer re Ashton. I have vague memories that some of his earlier ballets -- or the THEMES in those ballets -- were reworked later on, for a bigger stage and bigger company. Some were modified slightly for a bigger stage -- "Facade," I think -- I'm winging it here. Many were discarded when they moved to Covent Garden because they would have looked too small on the larger stage. He didn't want to rework them. (He didn't like to rework. I think for him ballet was painting, in one sense. You worked on it until it was to your liking -- with that particular cast -- and then it was done. You didn't decide that Mona would have been pretty in pink a week later.)

I've posted the link to an interview with Wildor (now guesting with Scottish Ballet) on the Royal Ballet forum: Sarah Wildor [ March 23, 2002, 09:04 AM: Message edited by: alexandra ]

I missed this interview with Sarah Wildor -- Thlanks to ballet.co for this. Adopting the Essex girl quote: "I have about 17 performances in Scotland," she says gleefully. "I’d never have had that many in London. That’s obviously one of the reasons I left." After more than a decade at the Royal Opera House, she had won the hearts and minds of audiences and critics. She is "the most dramatic, touching, musically sensitive and comically gifted ballerina produced by the Royal Ballet for decades," according to critic Ismene Brown, who has castigated the company for losing Wildor, one of their best talents. Their loss is Scottish Ballet’s gain. "I adored my time at Covent Garden," she admits, "but it’s not the whole world. I have a huge sense of liberation."

An article from today's NYTimes on Mstislav Rostropovich: Rostropovich Survivor and Humanist, Celebrating con Brio quote: WAVES of laughter rolled out from the Barbican Hall, but it wasn't a stand-up comic working the room. It was Mstislav Rostropovich taking the London Symphony Orchestra through a rehearsal of Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet." He was blowing kisses at the brass for hitting an entrance precisely, rising from his chair at heady string lines as if levitated and bringing his whirling baton sharply back to rest with a scowl and a full-bodied shrug at the slightest sound of imperfection. He pranced about the podium, miming the ballet steps reflected in the score — swan's wings, tutu, tiara, toe shoes and all — and told the players a funny story about the time he dressed in drag and crashed a tribute concert for Isaac Stern.

From today's NY Times: Oh no! Young people today are: quote: Neil Howe and William Strauss's book "Millennials Rising" — a survey of the post-Gen X generation — suggests that the young people born in the early 1980's and afterward are, as a group, less rebellious than their predecessors, more practical-minded, less individualistic and more inclined to value "team over self, duties over rights, honor over feeling, action over words."Debate? Dissent? Discussion? Oh, Don't Go There! I found this article very interesting. It deals with debate, or the lack of it, and probes behind such contemporary catchwords as "whatever." How will this affect us (those of us who like discussion groups)? How will this affect ballet?

Paul, there's an online searchable database of materials at the Dance Collection. Click it before you go to New York: http://catnyp.nypl.org/search~b1o1c1i1p1r1a1 It lists books, photos, videos, anything they have. Searchable by author, title, etc.

According to Repertory in Review, Theme entered the rep 5 February 1960 with Violette Verdy and Edward Villella. No other ballerina danced the role; Jonathan Watts did the male role. Suite No. 3 is ten years later (3 Dec 1970). The fourth movement was Gelsey Kirkland and Villella. Other ballerinas (until 1976 when Rep in Review was published) were Ashley, McBride, and Mazzo. ATM saw Alonso, I think. She's our Eyewitness for lots of things from the '40s and '50s. I don't think there's much she didn't see -- maybe she'll see this and chime in.

Aha. I wondered where Eifman was. I'd lost track of him after Chicago Thanks, Paul.

Thanks for these. I'm glad you're starting to come up with some "what's goods." This one was slow getting started Kathleen, I agree that "if anything marks the creative zeitgeist of our day, it has to be the earnest retrieval, reproduction, and even veneration of the "authentic" style and performance practice of previous eras." There's some debate about this among critics. One school of thought is that it's because there's little new of value being done. Another is because there's a genuine concern that we're losing our heritage (the same thing is going on with historical preservation of buidings. They started tearing down whole cities and people became concerned.) Another is because, for a lot of reasons, a concern with the past is a concern of our age. Another is that after periods of revolution the brakes come on and we look through the rubble to find a few things to build on for the future. I think the point about the necessity of commissioning new work IS good, even if the work itself is not exactly making a case for itself. The dancers have to do something. They can't just dance old ballets. One of the things I learned from studying the Danes is how much good came out of less-than-top-drawer ballets, whether created or acquired. They helped dancers develop. They made them look at the core repertory differently. I think the "there's a lot of it" is, like most things, a double-edge sword. Part of me is grateful for it -- especially the videos -- and part of me thinks that the talent is spread too thin among too many companies. But this thread is about the good things

Thanks, Poppiedancer. Yes, I know the story, but that doesn't always make it to the stage Thanks for the link, too.

Katharine, I haven't really been involved in the injuries issue, although I'll be glad to join in I've been more on the dancer development issue -- which this article also addressed. There are a lot of issues here: proper preparation of the dancers for the repertory, building a repertory, giving classes that suit the repertory, knowing what works to put on a program, the amount of time needed to recover, etc. (The point about singers resting has often been made but can always be made again.) I think Estelle's point about the short career is a good one, too. I think of dancers as soldiers. They're told to go over the top, they go. They'll do this day after day until they die. (And a good general doesn't send the same unit over the top when he has two or three others that could be used as well. If he doesn't like them, he doesn't fire them, or not use them, he works with them.) Couple this attitude with the fact that they're very young, very eager to try new things and know their career could end tomorrow and they'll have no place in the company after age 30 -- that's a combustible situation. As for the so-called Stretton bashing, I think I'm becoming weary of anyone who raises a question about the Royal Ballet's directorship is STRETTON BASHING!!! STRETTON BASHING!!!! (I know this isn't what you meant, dirac) -- that's more spin, to me. And we internalize spin, that's why they spin it. Every day a new story comes out about Enron. The news reports it, commentators comment on it. Is this Enron bashing? Directors -- anyone -- should be given a chance. They should also be judged on their actions. It's a fine line. I don't believe that someone should be damned on the basis of a single program or policy -- especially if a program could have been interesting, but went awry, or a ballet was gotten for a particular dancer and the dancer were injured; that happens, and when people jump on a director in such instances, that often IS Maestro Bashing. But there are also things to watch, if one watches institutions. You either point them out as they go along, or, in five years, you sit back and wonder what happen and think how odd it was that it happened right under your nose. It's also useful to point out these things. If there's validity to them, and if a director is on a "learning curve," then the director may learn. I don't think the problems are because Stretton is a foreigner, but because he worked at companies that weren't venerable institutions geared to long-range thinking and preserving the ballets, and dancers. Fire everybody, bring in all new works, works just fine in some places, and in other places, people will say, "Hang on. What do you think you're doing?" If the British press doesn't question it, then this season will be a template.

Here's a link to a press release I put up in News that might interest Boston Ballet fans. Alexandra Koltun and Alex Lapshin are dancing in a new (contemporary) "Esmeralda" with the Festival Ballet Providence. http://www.balletalert.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ult...ic;f=5;t=000729

I am sorry I missed "Gone with the Wind." dirac, I didn't mean that I preferred "ladies" or was predicting its return. Substitute "broads" or whatever I meant that the term was so far behind the times that it wouldn't change until the change itself was far behind the times.

To answer your parenthetical, dirac, I think "ladies" will be referred to as "women" about three years after the fashion changes and "women" lobby to be called "ladies." Sorry, I'm in a cynical mood today

All of these comments have been very interesting -- and informative. I wanted to reply to dmdance's last question -- is it cyclical? We can't know yet, of course, but if one looks back at history, it does seem to be cyclical -- or a pendulum, depending on one's theory. Mine is (not original to me, of course) that when something goes as far as it can in one direction, it has to go back because there's nowhere else for it to go. I think every burst of creative energy -- the early court ballets, the grand mythological ballets, the Romantic Era, Petipa's post-Romantic (or late Romantic, depending how you see it) work, the Diaghilev Ballet Russe, and on and on begin very strongly, establish a strong, original voice which becomes a formula. When the formula is exhausted, attention turns to sonmething else. Dance has stood still before -- the Judson Church movement in modern dance, all about found movement, minimalism -- I can remember when it was news that Lucinda Child added a third step to her vocabulary (!!!) -- all of that came after the Graham-style grand epics had gone through most of Greek literature and mythology and a good chunk of American history. Is it that people want something new? (I think not. Balanchine's formula lasted a long time, as did Bournonville's and Petipa's. I think people will be entertained by a formula as long as its inventor keeps inventing and entertaining.) Or is it that a new inventor comes along with something so astounding that all attention is diverted there (gets my vote)? As far as technique goes, the hyperextended line, the high kicks, the gazillion turns -- unless they just go for it and put roller bearings in the pointe shoe, which has also been done, though not on a regular basis, and not in "Swan Lake" -- I think this will be stopped when a beautiful young dancer whose classical purity is so breathtaking, her dancing set off in a work that deserves it, will make us all catch our breaths again and everything else will seem tawdry. I cling to the stories that when Taglioni (just such a dancer) came onto the scene, everyone new to the Theatre -- the young people that the new movement brought in -- were ecstatic and celebrated her as the symbol of her age, while their grandfather's said, "Ah! She's just like Bigatoni" -- a dancer long out of fashion. I think, too, it will help when we have choreographers who are actually interested in the classical vocabulary. I really do think that's beginning.

Here's a bit from Debra Craine's review in the Times. Did anyone go? Ravishing return that floats on latent passion quote: CHANGES are afoot at the Royal Ballet. We’ve already seen, with the most recent mixed bill, how the Australian Ross Stretton plans to give the company a new look, making it more contemporary, less classical. In a year or two it may be a very different company from the one you see at Covent Garden today. But let’s hope one thing doesn’t change — the Royal Ballet’s ability to deliver an iconic 19th-century ballet with the shining credibility it gave Giselle last night. Thanks to its superb leading players — Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg — and a striking corps de ballet, this was a performance you couldn’t beat. [ March 22, 2002, 09:57 AM: Message edited by: alexandra ]