Alexandra

Good question. I think it can vary at different times. Once, I've read, "Theme and Variations" was ABT's signature piece -- its calling card, what they had to bring when they travelled. I don't know what ABT's signature piece would be today. I remember Croce comparing the Royal Danish Ballet's "Napoli Act III" and "Konservatoriet" to New York City Ballet's (respectively) "Serenade" and "Symphony in C." She said that although Konservatoriet may be the basis for the Bournonville technique -- it's a classroom ballet, and hence, in a way, a signature work, "Napoli" was really the signature work. She said that "Konservatoriet" was like "Symphony in C" and "Napoli" is like "Serenade" -- "more intimate and hence more revealing." Once, the Royal Ballet's signature was "Symphonic Variations." In the '60s, it was also Shades, I think. Yesterday, it had suddenly become "Manon." I wonder what it will be after two more years of the new regime? The odd Nacho Duato masterwork, I expect Other examples. A small one -- Washington Ballet was known for years by "Fives" and people are still angry that they don't get to see that now. (New directors fire not only dancers but ballets.) In moder dance, Paul Taylor has to schedule "Esplanade" and Alvin Ailey, "Revelations" every time they tour. And that leads to a definition -- it's the work you see that, once you see it, makes you know the company. It's the calling card, the work that encapsulates the company's style and personality.

All excellent reasons, Manhattnik. I see a great future ahead of you -- the Mr. Fix It of ballet I think the "cronies who need work" is the key here -- I'd like to think it was artistic vision, but when was the last time you saw that? -- and also the fact that the ability to hire and fire is an index of power. It's building a power base and networking. I give a job to this teacher, who's connected to this network. This will help me down the line.

All good questions, Hal (and thanks to Leigh for his good answers. I second the recommendation of julip's definitions.) Hal, I think, as with many things, the distinctions get more refined, the hairs split more, if you will, the more one gets into it. I don't need turnout or pointe shoes to make it ballet. (Petrouchka, turned in, is still a ballet character; character dancing is not turned out.) For me, it's the vocabulary, and sensibility, what the choreographer's native language is. Mark Morris's "Gong" the other night, which I saw the other night, is, for me, an example of a work made by a modern dance choreographer for ballet dancers. I'll call it a ballet, because they do and it's easier, and it was certainly on pointe and used turn out, but, ot me, it was a (very well-crafted) modern dance, where the dancers wore pointe shoes and performed many steps that were in a ballet dictionary. But it didn't speak the language of the danse d'ecole fluently (I don't mean that to mean it was "bad," just "something else.") I can't answer on Feld because I haven't seen Ballet Tech. He's changed over the years. His first works, his apprentice works, were ballets, but he comes from a mixed background -- Broadway, ballet, modern. I think there's a genuine Other Thing out there, as different from ballet as modern dance. It's sometimes called "contemporaory ballet" or "contemporary dance." When it's bad, I call it "ballet moderne" One British critic years ago called it "thirdstream" which I think is a good, nonjudgmental definition. It makes it Something Else instead of Not Something. Kylian, Forsythe, Duato all go in the thirdstream bag for me. There are elements of both modern dance and ballet. I remember very early in my ballet days going to see Nureyev with the Dutch National Ballet in New York and overhearing a woman talking on the phone in the lobby. "No, no. It's ballet. The girls are on pointe," she said. At the time, it seemed to me that that wasn't enough. What about Ashton's "Dante Sonata" or "The Wise Virgin"? Ballets, surely, although there were bare feet on stage. The first part of Balanchine's "Liebslieder Walzer," is in character shoes. (I think most Americans, bred on "abstract ballet" don't think about character dancing much. To me, it's a part of ballet.) There are some threads in the archives on classicism for those who are interested in going into this further. It's not something that most people think about when they're "going to the ballet." (Interesting, my modern dance friends would never say they're "going to the ballet" when they're off to Dance Place.) Nor do they think, "Hmmm. Of "Gong," "Dim Lustre" and "Symphony in C" (the triple bill ABT just did at the Kennedy Center) which is ballet? Are they all ballet?" It mattered to me because, for many people, "Gong" (to take one, harmless example) IS ballet. Contemporary ballet in the sense of "ballet now." And there are young choreographers who are trying to make neoclassical ballets -- using a ballet vocabulary and grafting on perhaps jazz, or hip hop, or ethnic, or modern movements to a ballet base -- and being told by ballet companies, "We don't want that. We want something contemporary." And I think that's a danger to ballet. I'd be perfectly happy to see thirdstream companies. I'm just worried about the encroachment into both ballet and modern dance. I keep a kosher kitchen

The Danes say "poy poy" (I don't know how it's spelled, probably poj, but "poy" is how it sounds). I've never caught them spitting

Thanks for joining in fondu 65. A nice reminder to the rest of you -- if you haven't seen Raymonda, please don't feel locked out of these discussions. Grab a video, watch it, and join in. The only one I have is the same one fondu mentioned -- the Bolshoi's, with Semyenaka and Mukhamedov. If anyone knows of others, please post. But it would be fun to take the opportunity to talk about a work a lot of us have seen -- the SAME performance, so we can't wonder if I'd just gone the next night...... If you don't own it and don't want to buy it, there are some video stores that let you rent.

Anyone else go? Auvi? Are you out there Juliet, have you been yet? Bard's B? Other Washingtonians? How about all of you on the Moms and Dads board who are parents of WSB, or other, local students? OR you students yourself? There's a wide range of views, so you can't be worried about disagreeing with anyone; we've already done that

I like that one, Ed. Thank you. The last time this came up, someone told a story about "break a leg" that I hadn't heard -- and I'm sure I'm not remembering it correctly -- but that it was related to the reverence, the extended leg? And you "broke" (not the bone) but the position? Does anyone remember that? Is the original poster of that tale still around? I thought it was on the Merde thread in the Archives, but it's not.

Very worthwhile, thank you, Doug. Now I want to see it!!!

And I'll add one more thing -- which is probably more than Hal wanted to know, but I think it's good to raise this issue once every three months or so for new people, especially since it's easily misunderstood. Ballet Alert!, the newsletter (which preceded this site) was started because I became worried that "ballet" was being subsumed into "dance" (modern dance is, too), that everything was being blended together, and I wanted to put a focus on BALLET, classical and neoclassical BALLET. I'd encountered several young writers (under 30) who would say things like "I love ballet, even though I know, of course, it's totally old-fashioned..." As an editor, I wanted to give them permission, as it were, to write about ballet, to see ballet, to love ballet, without apology. But this message board isn't pro-ballet in the sense of boosting ballet at the expense of anything else. It was originally intended to be a letters to the editor space for readers of both Ballet Alert! and DanceView. Several of our writers are regular posters and have been since the beginning. If there was one impetus for starting this discussion group it was a discussion on a newsgroup that has a much more catholic approach to dance (which I think is a good thing; this site was meant to be a supplement, not an alternative or replacement, to that). There was a thread on Matthew Bourne's "Swan Lake" and the question of whether this work is a ballet, or really modern dance, was raised. The discussion turned rather nasty, to my eyes, with those trying to explain why it wasn't a ballet being attacked by those who said this was splitting hairs and didn't matter, or that the work was a ballet because of the name and the music. I wanted to have a place -- a safe place -- for people who did understand this issue, and for whom it did matter, or who might be curious about why it was an issue at all. The site was not set up to force an opinion on those who don't share that view. What I'd also hoped is that we would be able to talk about choreography within this context. A discussion, say, on one of my notions, that Taylor and Ashton are related musically and in certain sensibilities, as are Balanchine and Cunningham (and there are great differences, of course). Or to talk about skating from a dance point of view (I loved the Curry company and thought Curry himself one of the finest choreographers of his generation). We couldn't do this at the beginning, but I think the board has established its character firmly enough, and has a strong core consistency, to do this, which is why I put up the Dance and Other Arts forums, and allowed the Olympics skating discussion. [ March 07, 2002, 12:40 PM: Message edited by: alexandra ]

What a great segue to a commercial, samba I forgot to mention that tonight (Thursday) is not quite sold out. There have been some empty seats in the very back and side orchestra, and there's standing room, and anyone familiar with standing room can make that connection I also forgot to say how hard it was, having just seen "Lilac Garden" to divorce the two Tudor ballets. It was as though Tudor People go from one party to the next. You leave the "Lilac Garden" party, gossip a bit about what a miserable life they'll have together, and then rush off to the "Dim Lustre" party. Tudor's Greek choros are party people, watching, knowing, never intervening, never sleeping. They're out there, somewhere, waltzing still. Are the two people in "Dim Lustre" Caroline and Her Lover, 20 years later? (I don't think they really are, but the thought occurs seeing the two ballets in close proximity.)

I was there last night, too (by some strange coincidence, sitting right next to Victoria! ) I was also sitting on the other side (left last night, right opening night) and "Gong" looked quite different from this angle -- neither better nor worse, just different. I appreciated the craft of "Gong" more on a second viewing. As a Swiss watch, it's brilliantly crafted. But there's no humanity in it -- odd for Morris, since his works for his own company are so human. These were little clockwork people. The company could divide itself into six groups, each one going on each night, and it wouldn't matter. The roles aren't allocated by style, body type or personality. (A tall dancer is the girl in purple one night, a very slight, fragile one the next, etc.) The pas de deux are about partnering, balance, manipulation of the female. It's as though Morris had "two pas de deux" in his contract and he fulfiled it, but if he's ever made a duet in which a man and a woman relate to each other in any way except technically and spacially, I haven't seen it. The dancers were terrific, and as a novelty, the piece is fine. "Dim Lustre" was much, much better last night, I thought. In comparison, Tuesday night's was sloppy, perhaps underrehearsed, whereas last night the action was much clearer -- and the dancing far, far better in the leading roles (Julie Kent and Maxim Belosertkovsky). They danced it as though they didn't THINK it was old-fashioned, but they also danced it very cleanly, which is nice to see in Tudor. (Often, I get the feeling the dancers think that Tudor should be acted, and forget to dance him.) I liked "Symphony in C" very much last night. They don't look like City Ballet (the upper bodies aren't as pulled up, the legs aren't as sharp, there isn't the uniform look to the corps) but that doesn't bother me. This was one of the most musical performances of the ballet I've seen in years; it was beautifully phrased, not just by the principals, but by the corps as well. You could see the musical phrase being passed from dancer to dancer, how the corps' movements complimented that of the principals. I thought Murphy was gorgeous. Her detachment works in Balanchine, for me. There's nothing detached about her dancing, and I thought her dancing went beyond technical perfection. From reports here, I'd expected Dvorovenko's second movement to be more quirky than I found it. Perhaps it's idiosyncratic in an NYCB context, but I thought she was far more attuned to this ballet than Kent had been. There was a bit more "soul," perhaps, than one usually sees -- this was a ballerina who had suffered, no doubt about it -- but she was not confused about her identity; no swanisms here. And Molinas's partnering was excellent, I thought -- he was THERE without intruding. I also liked Reyes and Cornejo very much in the third movement. They danced very well, but they also danced very well together and looked as though they were having fun. Cornejo did not look as though he were delivering his short program at a skating championship -- it's not usually necessary to write that, but after opening night, I was glad to see we were off the ice and back in a theater. The fourth movement was a disappointment -- Anna Liceia (I'm writing this without my program, so apologies to everyone for any misspelled names) wasn't quite up to the fourth movement, technically, and her dancing was heavy. People were talking about the performance as they left at the end, which is a very good sign. This is the best triple bill I've seen from ABT in years.

Thank you, Leigh. Exactly. I probably should have called the site "Spotlight on ballet!" It would have made it clearer.

Effy, Alexander, reports? I couldn't find anything in Politiken, but here's the review from Berlingske. (Caroline Cavallo and Andrew Bowman dancing Le Corsaire pas de deux must have been, well, at least a curiosity.) Energi og skæve vinkler quote: BALLET: Tim Rushton præsenterede sig til Det Kongelige Teaters balletaften endnu en gang som en overraskende koreograf på højt niveau.Læs mere

That's a lot of work, but I'm sure it will be interesting, and I can't wait for the comments. When you say "women's classical variations" is that just Raymonda's? Or Henriette and Clemence's too?

Very interesting. I wanted to check Beaumont, but I won't have time to really dig into this until ABT goes. I think having the dream BEFORE the Saracen appears -- so that it's dream fulfillment -- makes more sense than having the abduction a dream. But "Jean de Brienne" doesn't sound all that Hungarian. It would make more sense, to me, for Raymonda to be Hungarian, come to France to wed her fiance, who's French. (But, then, I don't know what "de Brienne" means. That may be a Hungarian region.) Nationality would make a difference in the final act. If Raymonda is French, she's a guest at her own wedding, dancing "a la hongroise" in honor of her new family -- which could make dramatic sense. If she's Hungarian, she's expressing her personality and nationality through her dancing. Which also makes sense. I'm always for going back to the original libretto. I think often what happens is that someone can't make sense of something, and then changes a whole scene to accommodate the problem. Three of those, and we're far from the original and nothing makes sense. What doesn't make sense is for Abderachman to be so far north.

Good point about Balanchine and Europeans, Richard. There are undoubtedly Americans who love Bejart -- and certainly all Americans don't worship Balanchine. I suppose there's no "all" in any of this. I've always been interested in Alston -- but we don't get to see much of his work here. I saw LCDT for one season, long ago. I found his work pleasant, but not particularly earthshaking. But I couldn't make a judgment without seeing more.

Good point about Balanchine and Europeans, Richard. There are undoubtedly Americans who love Bejart -- and certainly all Americans don't worship Balanchine. I suppose there's no "all" in any of this. I've always been interested in Alston -- but we don't get to see much of his work here. I saw LCDT for one season, long ago. I found his work pleasant, but not particularly earthshaking. But I couldn't make a judgment without seeing more.

Thank you for all that information, Estelle. BW, on Bejart, I think he's perhaps a bit overblown for Americans. I'm don't think that Croce was very influential, except among a small number of people, in Bejart's heyday. I also don't think the daily press reviewers particularly liked him. Too theatrical, too much funky makeup -- and, perhaps for those times, too overtly gay. The polarization was often set up, "For Balanchine, ballet is woman, for Bejart, it is man." And his men didn't match American concepts of masculinity, shall we say.

A very young, but invaluable Methusaleh, atm You've seen everybody!!!

Ronnie, Melissa, there is a video of some late 1950s performances -- "Swan Lake" (Act II), "The Firebird" and a condensed "Ondine". I believe it was called An Evening with the Royal Ballet. There are two of them; the second is from the 1960s and is "Les Sylphides," "Corsaire" (Pas de deux), "La Valse" and "Sleeping Beauty Act III". I don't know whether they are still available -- try doing a search on Amazon.

Sometimes, Silvery Subjects Have a Cloudy Lining quote: One diabolical dance followed another with numbing regularity when the Paul Taylor Dance Company presented the third and final program of its City Center season on Sunday night. The brief "White Roses Duet" stood in for Mr. Taylor's equally convincing and even more lovable streak of romantic lyricism.read review ------------------- People and Insects, Ephemeral and Combative quote: An enormous red rose dominates the backdrop Gene Moore designed for Paul Taylor's "Arden Court." The choreography is rosy, too, as the Paul Taylor Dance Company demonstrated on Thursday night at City Center.read review Did anyone go?

Oh, all right. I'll go first. (But I know who you are ) All in all, as a viewer, I was happy with the evening, a triple bill of Mark Morris's "Gong," Tudor's "Dim Lustre" and Balanchine's "Symphony in C." And the audience seemed VERY happy. I liked "Gong." I didn't like it as well as some of Morris's other dances for ballet companies. This one seemed like a modern dance with some pointe work -- but not articulated, interesting point work, just "stand on your toes" pointe work. (Five women in tutus, five women in little skirts, five men, all in sherbert colors, all making arm movements that were the East Asian equivalent of the stiff arms and waving hands that characterize blackamore dances; in other words, if Indians and Indonesians (I detected bits of both) were a vocal segment of the dance audience, this wouldn't be allowed without protest.) The women, especially the tutu women, seem to be props, with Morris exploring ballet technique from an outsider's perspective. Hmmm. You're in fourth position. I wonder what you'd look like if he picked up up and spun you around while you maintain that position. Unlike "Drink To Me Only" (another ABT Morris work) the dancers aren't characterized -- I don't think a change of cast would make much difference and I didn't recognize some of the dancers until the curtain calls. BUT the piece looked fresh, the dancers were terrific -- Gillian Murphy especially -- and the company's no-style style worked fine. (Odd, how in modern dance, the company looks too uniform, while in ballet, one notices that there are dances from here, there and everywhere. I noticed with amusement that the dance was done plain. Not a single wrist flick, mannerism, or any of the things that, for me, mar this company's classical dancing. Now, if there could be some transference here.... "Dim Lustre" (staged by David Richardson) was the evening's misfire for me. I kept thinking, there must have been more here. This was the Jaffe-Graffin cast that friends of mine liked in New York, but I wasn't moved by them. Like so many narrative ballets, this looked like a succession of scenes with no through line. Pas de deux. Now the four corps couples come on. Now a solo. Yearn. Look confused. How long will Tudor last? "Symphony in C" was danced in its own accent. I thought last night's performance was more "The Vertiginous Thrill of Swan Lake." I was never so conscious of turns in this ballet as I was last night, and that's because they're delivered like skater's deliver their jumps. Everything else is preparation for THE TURNS. De Luz's double air turns (3rd movement) were so tight and fast it seemed he wanted to do quads, but was reigning himself in. Julie Kent danced the second movement and she had arm positions I've never seen before and never want to see again, many straight from "Swan Lake." They took a walk-back-from-the-wings curtain call after the second movement, which seemed jarring in a Balanchine ballet. Paloma Herrera did the first movement. She looked good, very sleek, dancing well, but with no spirit and in another country from the music. Ashley Tuttle was the third movement ballerina and, next to De Luz, seemed floor bound, her dancing so less sharp than his that they were mismatched. Michelle Wiles led the fourth movement and, to me, was the most in sync with the ballet. She's grown up now, totally comfortable with her size, and danced beautifully -- and with real joy. She was the most relaxed of the principals, I thought. With all those quibbles, why was I happy with the evening? Because the company looked good, generally, and the dancing was up, full of energy. We often get ABT after a long lay off, and openers are often messy. For this one, they were on. And that was nice to see. Others? [ March 07, 2002, 10:40 AM: Message edited by: alexandra ]

Oh, vrsfanatic, please share! Start a new thread with "misunderstandings," or whatever you want to call it. I think the lore is just as important as the notation.

Here's the info from a recent press release (thank you, Source) 'Paris Opera Ballet School' Special New York Appearance Wed. May 22 lecture, film & demonstration by Claude bessy with her students: FRENCH INSTITUTE ALLIANCE FRANCAISE, 55 East 59th Street; for tickets call 212 355 6160 $15 adults; $10 students/members Thur. May 23 & Fri. May 24 performances, John Jay College Theater, 899 Tenth Avenue 212 556 6770 $25 adults; $15 students. program features more than 25 of the school's best performers in 'DESSIN POUR 6' (John Taras); excerpt from M POUR B (Maurice Bejart); excerpt from SEPT DANXES GRECQUES (Maurice Bejart); COPPELIA Act II (Arthur Saint-Leon) and PECHES DE JEUNESSE (Jean Guillaume Bart).

Who was there? Tonight was a triple bill -- Gong, Dim Lustre, Symphony in C.