Alexandra

Hi CSloan! How about telling us about your first opera!! (Hit the Add Reply button. It's at the bottom of the little window where you type. If you want to see what you've posted before you post, click Preview Post. THEN close out that window, and click Add Reply.)

Another review, from the Sacramento Bee (dirac also posted this on links): S.F. Ballet's 'Jewels' a rare, shining gem quote: Judging by the reaction of Tuesday's crowd at the Opera House, "Jewels" is eminently worth seeing complete. But seeing how much there is of it, it's understandable how even a company as big as San Francisco's might hesitate. It's not an overlong evening, but it takes a lot of good dancers. There is an ensemble of 24 onstage in the last ballet, "Diamonds," before four more come out to swell the ranks. Beyond the sheer fun and jazzy pleasure of seeing "Rubies" again, the most interesting aspect of this full-length evening is seeing how Balanchine can make such a unified work out of three such differently styled ballets.

This just in from ABT: SUSAN JAFFE TO RETIRE AS PRINCIPAL DANCER Final Performance with American Ballet Theatre Set for June 24, 2002 Susan Jaffe, a Principal Dancer with American Ballet Theatre, will retire from dancing after a 22-year career with the Company. She will dance her final performance in the title role of Giselle on Monday evening, June 24, 2002 at the Metropolitan Opera House. Born in Washington, D.C., Jaffe began her dance training at the Maryland School of Ballet. She also studied at the School of American Ballet and at the American Ballet Theatre School. She performed leading roles with the Maryland Youth Ballet before joining American Ballet Theatre II, ABT's junior troupe, in 1978. Jaffe joined ABT in 1980 and made her debut at the Kennedy Center dancing the Pas d'Esclave from Le Corsaire opposite Alexander Godunov. She was promoted to Soloist in 1981 and to Principal Dancer in 1983. With American Ballet Theatre, Jaffe has danced a vast repertoire of classical and contemporary leading roles including Gamzatti and Nikiya in La Bayadère, the Lady with Him in Dim Lustre, Kitri in Don Quixote, The Accused in Fall River Legend, Giselle and Myrta in Giselle, the title role in Manon, Hanna Glawari in The Merry Widow, Tatiana in Onegin, the pas de deux Other Dances, Odette-Odile in Swan Lake, the second movement of Symphony in C, the Sylph in La Sylphide and leading roles in Ballet Imperial, Études, Paquita, Push Comes to Shove, Symphonie Concertante and Theme and Variations. In addition, she created leading roles in Twyla Tharp's Brahms/Haydn Variations and Known by Heart, Clark Tippet's Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1, Mark Morris' Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes and Gong, and Ulysses Dove's Serious Pleasures. Jaffe has appeared as a guest artist with companies around the world including the Kirov Ballet, The Royal Ballet, La Scala Ballet and Stuttgart Ballet.

From today's Politiken. Since it's within the copyright word limit, I'm posting the entire article. The gist is that there's a choreographer's workshop today (Friday, March 15) and Sunday. Dancers Karina Elver, Kenneth Greve, Martin Joyce, Thomas Lund og Louise Midjord will present their works. Effy, I hope you'll go and report Martin Joyce is a new name to me. quote: Den Kgl. Ballet har igennem flere år haft den glimrende tradition, at man lod kompagniets medlemmer prøve deres koreografiske talent i danseworkshops. Fredag kl. 17 og søndag kl. 13.30 og 17 kan publikum se resultatet af disse anstrengelser på Nationalscenen. Arrangementet afvikles i Sal G med indgang fra Heibergsgade 7, og danserne i Den Kgl. Ballet danser her nye værker af deres kolleger Karina Elver, Kenneth Greve, Martin Joyce, Thomas Lund og Louise Midjord.

Three takes on SFB's Jewels: Octavia Roca in the Chronicle Octavia Roca in the Chronicle quote: Ballet's 'Jewels' needs polish Berman, Maffre and Garcia exquisite, but corps looks shakyRachel Howard in the Examiner: Ballet that sparkles quote: We've come to see, during the last 50 years of his work's worldwide domination, what dancing Balanchine can give to a ballet company. Less often glimpsed is what a company's breakthrough performance can give back to Balanchine's legacy. But the power of that exchange almost blinded us Tuesday night, when San Francisco Ballet gave its company premiere of George Balanchine's sparkling 1967 masterpiece "Jewels." It is an act of utmost tribute, a landmark company achievement and a cathartic experience for anyone fortunate enough to catch one of its five remaining performances.And from the Mercury News: Balanchine's dazzling `Jewels' finally joins S.F. Ballet repertory quote: The 1967 work often is credited with being the first major evening-length ballet without a plot. Its three sections -- ``Emeralds,'' ``Rubies'' and ``Diamonds'' -- are danced to scores by Fauré, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky, performed on Tuesday by the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra conducted by Neal Stulberg. Karinska's superb costumes in shades of emerald green, ruby red and bright white, encrusted with large sparkling gems, created the visual theme that links the ballets. If not for the distinct and memorable mood of each section and the fabulous dancing, it might be easy to lose patience with the ballet's emphasis on showiness and surface beauty. But ``Emeralds'' is beautifully languid and romantic, while ``Rubies'' (which often is performed separately; the San Francisco Ballet first danced it in 1987) stirs things up with its sass. ``Diamonds'' is grand in the tradition of ``Swan Lake.''

I agree with you about Cavallo, yet she is the one dancer whom all the past directors -- Andersen I, Schaufuss, Eliason, Gielgud, Christensen and now Andersen II -- put in leading rolls. (To be fair, Schaufuss also used Rose Gad quite a bit.)

Effy, thanks for that. Here are some Danish news links about this, and other matters, from today's papers. The Royal Danish Ballet's 2002-2003 season: Ny børneballet, to helaftensballetter og moderne balletprogram i Den Kgl. Ballets ny sæson Yes, Andersen does say, right up front, that he's going to make the company one of the five best in the world. quote: »Vi skal være blandt de bedste fem kompagnier. Vi skal uddelegere ansvar og genskabe respekt og loyalitet, stolthed og kærlighed. Vi skal kommunikere bedre, vi skal være mere synlige – og gøre Bournonville mere synlig. Men der er også grænser for, hvad vi kan nå på én gang.«Reading on, there are some names of the foreign dancers who are leaving -- eight, five of them men. And a reference to Lloyd Riggins, who will be the ballet master in three years. That's the first I've read that promise in awhile. It was announced early on, then seemed to disappear. More ballet news from Denmark from today's Berlingske Tidende Balletskole åbner i Odense A new ballet school opens in Odense. If I'm reading this correctly, the school is intended to be a feeder school to the Royal Danisih Ballet. And an article about the plans for the new theater they're building. (This one is beyond me. My theater Danish is much better than my business Danish.) Gamle Scene truet af lukning In Jyllands Posten: Ballet med visioner That's "Ballet with Vision." (And I especially liked Andersen's comment at the end of how "we will have the greatest loyalty to our colleagues.") There will be a new staging of "Napoli" by modern dance choreographer Tim Rushton (who danced with the company for awhile before turning modern, and actually liked Bournonville). It will be for his own company, not the Royal Danish. The Politiken article also focuses on "the coming balletmaster's vision" but explains this only as "We will be one of the five greatest ballet companies in the world." [ March 15, 2002, 05:54 PM: Message edited by: alexandra ]

Thank you for that, Effy. Dispiriting as it may be It is hard when a ballet master is what we call a "lame duck" -- everyone knows he's finishing his term and so he has little real power. I'd also certainly wonder why Silja Schandorff and Thomas Lund aren't used more!

I deleted a post on this thread and notified the poster of the deletion and the reason for it. [ March 13, 2002, 11:17 AM: Message edited by: alexandra ]

I deleted a post on this thread and notified the poster of the deletion and the reason for it. [ March 13, 2002, 11:17 AM: Message edited by: alexandra ]

Clement Crisp reports from St. Petersburg: East and west, Fokine is best quote: Winter still has its grip on St Petersburg. There is ice on the Neva, the canals are frozen, and brilliant sun alternates with driving snow and frozen pavements. The gold spire of the Admiralty building catches the wintry light, and so it does in Alexandre Benois' design for the fair in Petrushka, one of the works in the second Mariinsky Ballet Festival which began last weekend. Ten evenings, foreign stars - several from the Paris Opera - and programming which shows how the Kirov troupe is bridging the two worlds implicit in its own miraculous history and in the need for fresh creative ideas, especially from the west.

Hi, Ilya -- haven't read you in a while. I'm very glad you've joined us -- thanks for posting that. I haven't found any reviews in Chicago yet. I'll post them when I do. If you see the company in Chicago, I hope you'll post about that, too. The Chicago preview made it sound as though the company had a big following there -- and more general than the Russian audience.

I will never understand why the same people who secretly (and some not so secretly) scorn ballet are so eager to appropriate its name. Be sure to go, Farrell Fan, and report. Feld has made some very interesting work in the past.

I know some of you were there for this Please report!!

BW, I think that it's the aesthetics as applied to painting that are generally also used in ballet (at least, the terms) and I'm not sure they're always applied correctly -- but I'm at the edges of my field here, so I may well be incorrect. I'm always struck by reading articles about postmodernism in painting and architecture how different that sensibility is from postmodernism in dance -- which was very minimialist, without a hint of whimsy I don't know if dance can every be formalist in the most pure sense, since it involves human bodies. It's not just paint, or steel. Balanchine said, "It's a man and a woman, how much story do you want?" and I think that's another way of saying, "It's not devoid of content. It can't be." There are also ballets with overt content where form is important (Ashton's story ballets, "The Dream" and "A Month in the Country," to take two) where, to me, MacMillan's "Romeo and Juliet" is more expressionist -- not that Ashton's works are not expressive, but that MacMillan's form isn't as pure -- there's enough to make the ballet "go," but it doesn't seeem to be a primary concern. I'm sure that Bejart (especially, from what I've seen) and Eifman have some sort of structure -- they'd have to; they're going from Point A to Point B -- but you don't come out of the theater thinking first about purity of construction and line.

Piece about Belarbi and Hurlevent in Telerama: http://spectacles.telerama.fr/edito.asp?ar...02085548&srub=1

I think choreographing a Broadway show is a good thing -- it will broaden his experience, not only in working with different types of dancers, but working with "show people" -- see how lighting, blocking, etc. works in a different setting. This is one area where I think we're speculating without knowledge. We don't know if Wheeldon wants to work outside NYCB, and if so, what reasons. One could make the argument that NYCB is being very generous to let him. Seasons are planned far in advance -- this spring was probably planned before Wheeldon's appointment. I'm taking a wait and see on this one.

Seeking a New Identity, Berlin Shakes Up Its Art Legacy quote: When Berlin was united in 1990, many Germans were equally united in not wanting this city to become too powerful. Their fears were understandable but have proved unfounded. Berlin is again the German capital, but of a federal republic inoculated against centralism. It has undergone extensive reconstruction, yet it remains poor, with no industry and an insolvent city government. Its problem now is, How can it demonstrate that it really is the new Berlin? The answer may lie in old Berlin's one useful legacy. Because culture was a propaganda weapon, both West and East Berlin created huge cultural infrastructures, bequeathing no fewer than 3 opera houses, 8 orchestras, 17 theaters and 17 museums. Maintaining the performing arts became an immense burden to the united city, but the visual arts offered hope: the city's collections were fused, curatorial staffs joined forces, and a reorganization of galleries began.

Ouch. Errol Flynn had stage presence!!! Mary, I didn't use the Lincoln Bedroom example for the money, but to symbolize crossing an invisible line. I don't begrudge any ballet company making money. It's the Corsaire effect that worries me. (I also don't mean to imply that everyone in the audience, at every ballet, should be sitting there thinking, "What will this mean for the future?" The ending is one of the most unresolved I've ever seen in a 19th century restaging. It makes no sense. As for the post-premiere tightening, I wonder if Holmes was consulted. She does have respect for Petipa and the Russian tradition.

BW, I think to really go into this one would need to read some material about aesthetics, which may be a bit more than most people would want to do. Two quotes from David Michael Levin's "Balanchine's Formalism," one of the few articles I know that conisders dance seriously within the aesthetic tradition. Using Agon, Monumentum pro Gesualdo, Violin Concerto and Symphony in Three Movements, Levan writes: quote: These are ballets which preserve the classical choreographic syntax of movemetns and attitudes, yet defy a venerable tradition of staging and costumes. Their austere production, so exquisitely reduced and uncomplicated, allows us to perceive the most elementary, immanent expressiveness of the classical ballet forms; and somehow, in this very elusive process of illulmination, th phenomenal presence of the forms is richly altered. Formalism.And later: quote: Balanchine himself has not failed to distinguish between theatrical expressiveness (the semantics of sentiment and allusion) and "classically pure" formal expressiveness (modes of corporeal presence which are latent in, or immanent to, the "classical" syntax of human mobility.) Such formal expressiveness, however, requires not only that he suppress the theatricality of stage and costume, but also that he purge the classical dance syntax of its theatrical allusiveness. In fine, it requires that he reduce the mimetic "content" of traditional ballet movements to the expressive presence of an entirely abstract syntax. Structure and content, then, become identical to the degree that each submits to the process of abstraction.So, in its most pure form, formalism is about form and nothing else. No mimetic content, no theatrical content, just form. (IMO, I think that's trying to squeeze Balanchine in a box where he doesn't quite fit; he's abstract, but not devoid of content.) I think Leigh and I are using both terms informally, to represent the two poles between which ballet has long swung -- technique and expression, form and expression. [ March 12, 2002, 11:29 AM: Message edited by: alexandra ]

To me, formalism means not just that the piece has a solid form or structure (Petrouchka and Rodeo are both very solidly constructed) but that form is the MOST important element in the work. At its most pure, expressionism is: To hell with form. I must express myself, my misery, my joy, my pain. To a formalist, this may seem like one big mess, but expressionism has its own rules and I don't think that "expressionism" is a synonym for "bad." Much ballet is in the middle. "Liebeslieder Walzer" isn't dry academic formalism (not that "Concerto Barocco" is dry or academic). What about Ashton's "The Dream" and "Month in the Country?" Extremely solid structure, but formalism isn't their raison d'etre. I think ABT has been different in each decade. At the beginning, they were almost an American Ballets Russes, with an emphasis on demicaractere ballets (the 1940s and 1950s). They've never been as consciously eclectic as the Joffrey, but they've kept a foot in a lot of different camps. The pure expressionist today seems to be Eifman. The main point of his works is....to tell the story, get his point across. (I'm writing having only seen snippets on video.) I think what separates the audience reaction IS formalism v. expressionism. To a formalist, it looks like a mess and they'll pick at the details. To an expressionist, they'll look at the overall picture and get caught up in what Eifman is doing.

Mary, I think it matters a great deal what one has been seeing. When "Corsaire" was new, too, it seemed the dawn of a new era -- all these exciting young dancers. One could forgive them the odd leap or turnturnturnturnturnturn there. Also, compared to "Snow Maiden" -- and what is out there -- I can imagine it would look like a masterpiece. With the Ananiashvili cast, it at least looked like the Readers Digest version of a Petipa ballet. Also, watching ABT in New York, and considering "Corsaire" as a part of its whole repertory is quite different than watching it in isolation. There's nothing wrong with an entertaining ballet, and people do enjoy watching "Corsaire." If it were just the repertory's dessert, that would be one thing. But I fear it's a trend. What worries me about "Corsaire" is what it's bred, and will probably breed. I think of it as the Lincoln Bedroom of ballet (A Washington reference. Every president offered access in exchange for donations -- the $25,000 breakfast here, the $100,000 dinner there. But charging X amount to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom crossed a line -- or did a triple saut de basque over the line -- for members of both parties.) McKenzie's "Swan Lake" seemed to be in the mold of "Corsaire." I fear more. Your point about Bayadere becoming more rich is an interesting one - the same thing could happen wtih this one. A bit of pruning here and a bit of addiing there would make a difference. Ananiashvili and Bocca took about 30 seconds at three points in the ballet to make the plot clear, and it made a huge difference.

dirac, I agree with you on the advisability, or not, of bracketing Ashton-Tudor as Balahchine's inferiors. I'm not a monotheist. I especially object to such bracketing by someone who wasn't actively writing, at least, in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. I wonder on what it's based. (The same thing happened in modern dance, too. Once it was Graham-Humphrey. You probably liked one more than the other, and were more sympathetic to one or the other very different approaches, but they were both top of the line choreographers. Humphrey died first. Who's seen anything of Humphrey except a few old films?) [ March 11, 2002, 07:26 PM: Message edited by: alexandra ]

I agree with dismissing a very young choreographer after a first work. I also think that framing the issue as "after Balanchine" keeps putting new choreographers in the Balanchine Box. While I'm all for having standards -- that there's a certain level that one must meet, or strive to meet -- I don't think it's useful to keep one standard of comparison. (It's why I try to bring up Ashton, or Fokine, or Lavrovsky, etc. every time we have a discussion about choreographers.) There will be no future choreographers if, on the one hand, they're judged as "No good, too close to Balanchine, just an imitator" OR "No good, not anything like Balanchine." Also, IMO, one of the most dangerous things that has happened in the past 25 years is the dismissal of good, minor works. I remember Joan Acocella writing in a review of a biography of Agnes de Mille that (paraphrase) de Mille was a fourth rate choreographer, and that's nothing to sneeze at. She's right. It's not. Yet we have only Great Choreographers or Throw The Bums Out choreographers. I think this is a function of the current repertory being divided between The Classics and New Work. All of the perfectly okay small ballets of yesteryear have been vacuumed out to make way for more faux classics ("Merry Widow" ) or modern dance and ballet moderne works. No wonder there are so few new choreographers, and those there are (in this country) are choreographing in Balanchine's shadow. Thanks for replying Calliope. Getting mad is fine p.s. Ashton made a lot of animal dances, as did Massine. I'm not particularly wild about them, but they're there, if that's your standard.

Thanks, Ken. It had been put up on Links and I put up a thread on Aesthetic Issues: choreographing in Balanchine's shadow It had no takers. It is an interesting article. It didn't spark any ideas, comments, reactions?????? [ March 11, 2002, 05:10 PM: Message edited by: alexandra ]