Alexandra

Very quickly, because I'm exhausted: Tonight was the first night of Jewels. Here's the casting (I hope!): Emeralds: Zhanna Ayupova, Veronika Part, Viktor Baronov Rubies: Irina Golub, Andrian Fadeyev, Maya Dumchenko Diamonds: Svetlana Zakharova, Danila Korsuntsev I liked much of the dancing in "Emeralds," especially Ayupova and Part. I've always liked Ayupova, and her maturity counted for a lot here. Not to mention her beautiful, beautiful arms. I will say, though, that I thought the ballet seemed segmented, a collection of parts -- I couldn't help remember the Miami City Ballet's "Emeralds" from last season. The Kirov has more dance power, but MCB had the sense of the work as a whole, I thought. When the curtain rose on "Rubies" and you saw those grins and rather placid torsos -- well, it was a different "Rubies." I thought this was well-danced, but in slightly the wrong key. What made the evening for me was Zakharova in "Diamonds," although the company as a whole was grand here. This one is home for them -- and the orchestra sounded like an orchestra. (Zakharova gave her first rose to the conductor, the second to her partner.) I thought Zakharova had a triumph here, bringing many of the same qualities to the role that Farrell brought -- the risk taking, the stretch, the luxuriating in movement. But it was another controversial night. Several people I talked to did not like "Emeralds" or "Rubies" one bit, and a few found Zakharova's performance quite cold. I was very excited to hear people at intermissions aruging over performances. Society note: Condoleeza Rice (who started college as a music major) and a few of her friends/colleagues were in the audience tonight. Nice to know, going into the theater, that no major foreign policy moves are planned for the next few hours. ) p.s. I forgot to say that the truncated "Emeralds" caused much comment -- I heard "What happened to the Sarabande?" several times. Apparently the company chose an earlier version of "Emeralds," excluding the later revision. I didn't hear anyone who approved [ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: alexandra ]

I'm sure the rivalry was there, Victoria, I just don't think it was on stage, in the choreography. I think it would have been quite the opposite. They wouldn't have deigned to show rivalry. They'd just "beat" the stuffings out of the rival.

Thanks for posting, Giannina -- think how brave you are compared to your first weeks on Ballet Alert!! You should be proud I was struck by your comment about how little Odette/Odile has to dance -- with a great ballerina, I don't think one notices that. Same with Siegfried, who has next to nothing to "dance." There's something about the great ones, some magic, that makes you think of them even when they're not onstage.

Jeannie, I think you have touched on something very important. I agree not only that the Kirov has aristocratic bearing, but that guest stars -- any dancer not brought up in the house -- will stick out like a sore thumb. (I did miss that, in the touring production, of necessity we'll get hastily trained resident supers and children.) This leaves the Kirov and Paris Opera as the only two companies who still maintain a closed house. Long may THAT continue. (I know that the Kirov imports people trained in Perm, as POB has taken in dancers from the Conservatoire, but they're close enough to the native training system that there's no stylstic jarring.)

I forgot to add two small, but very important (to me) things: One, I have never seen the reverence performed so beautifully. I've never noticed it in Sleeping Beauty before (this may well be me) but it was there last night over and over and I never grew tired of it. Two, epaulement, especially in the fairies, and especially in the jewels pas de quatre. Well, hell, three. The character divertissements were very well done and I was delighted to finally see the Cinderella and Hop o My Thumb divertissements.

Dirac, I love your summary. I think you've nailed it. (I write in the Olympic spirit.) I'm very glad to such a long article, treating ballet so seriously in a major magazine. That said....I kept my temper until the paragraph about Vestris, fils, WHICH IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE!!!!! Vestris was a paradigm of elegance and the notion that he gleefully pushed aside the danseur noble tradition to trash it with his own new, nifty little inventions -- well, if one reads Bournonville's "unpublished writings" (a neat trick; try the published ones, especially the new, English translation by Knud Arne Jurgensen that Dance Books released a few years ago) and his account of Vestris and Vestris's classes one gets a different view. I also question the notion that ballet is a radical art form. That's not my reading of history. It's an evolutionary one, stealing from everywhere, melding the purloined steps, whether from Russian folk dance or tap, into its vocabulary. The great reformers (Lully, Noverre, Bournonville, Fokine) have been conservators. The two most important classical choreographers of the 20th century (Balanchine and Ashton) didn't so much break rules as show us how they could be expanded. (I think it's we, the nongreat, who need the rules; they see beyond them. Wannabes look up the rules and smash them, one by one, thinking that's the way to greatness.)

Very interesting topic. I think even the greatest dancers with the greatest range have signature roles -- they just have more of them. To me, a signature role is one that defines the dancer. If you had an out of town guest and you wanted to take them to see a dancer you loved, or an important dancer, you'd hope that THAT was the role you could take them to see. So, for me, Nureyev -- although he was an extraordinary Albrecht, Siegfried, Armand, and a couple of dozen other things -- the signature roles were the Sleeping Beauty pas de deux and the Corsaire pas de deux -- and that's what he generally danced at galas. If I could have three, I'd add Albrecht and Siegfried and Armand, but you got the essence of Nureyev in those two classical pas de deux, I think. Ashley, "Ballo" and "Square Dance." To show an example of range, I asked dozens of dancers who saw Henning Kronstam perform what his signature roles were and got: James in La Sylphide; the Toreador in Carmen; Cyrano; the teacher in The Lesson; Jean in Miss Julie; Franz Pander in Bagage (a mime ballet); Romeo in Ashton's Romeo and Juliet; Apollo; and the Poet in Balanchine's Sonnambula. The acting roles weren't late ones; he would have been performing all these roles at the same time, in his early to mid-30s. You needed to see him in all of them to understand the range. Another aspect of signature roles. Farrell. I only know the post-1974 Farrell; I think she may have been different prior to that. "Chaconne," "Diamonds," "Davidsbundlertanz," "Vienna Waltzes." That leaves out the "black and white" side, but I didn't see her perform those roles very often. Von Aroldingen -- a dancer whose career was made up of signature roles and who would probably have been stuck as Queen and Giselle's Mother in any other company. The Girl Who Comes Late in Serenade, Vienna Waltzes, Episodes, the Siren, Davidsbundlertanz. Baryshnikov -- Push Comes to Shove, Sinatra Suite, Don Q and Don Q pas de deux. Almost everyone else in the world would add Albrecht. Asylmuratova -- I only saw the On Tour Asylmuratova, which was a different creature, I'm sure, than the At Home Asylmuratova, but I've never seen a dancer defined by two comparatively minor roles -- she transformed them into major ones: Esmeralda pas de deux and her solo in Paquita. I only saw Late Late Fonteyn, and she was pretty much down to Marguerite. Of course, history will say she's The great Western Aurora, and Ashton said that Chloe was the role he missed her the most in.

A few notes. I adored Veronika Part (Lilac Fairy). I loved her creaminess and the graciousness of her dancing. I agree with much of what Jeannie wrote and was also very disappointed with the rather reserved audience. But I was very happy to see several dancers there, as well as some of our modern dance choreographers! This was an event!!! If there were any government people there, though, I missed them. A colleague who'd seen the production in New York said that the dancing and miming was generally more in period style and that the lighting was better, or at least brighter, here than it had been in New York. I loved seeing the detail in the fairies variations -- although the stage is smaller than the dancers are used to, it's an intimate house, and I think we're very lucky to see the production here. My only disappointment was in the leads. For me, Vishneva isn't ideally cast as Aurora; she's more a Princess Florine. She reminds me of Makarova --in the sense that she's in the Makarova, rather than Kolpakova/Lezhnina, "line" or employ--although I don't think she's nearly as strong technically, nor as musical. I found Vishneva very contemporary, and thus a bit out of style with the production -- I'm looking forward to seeing her in "Rubies," which, by rights, should have been Makarova's role! But I've seen stronger Auroras, in this company and others. I didn't see a "build" from act to act, and so I didn't think she crowned the ballet. That said, Vishneva's third act pas de deux was quite good, I thought. I'm getting the sense more and more, from companies all over the world, that solos and pas de deux are coached and coached and rehearsed (in those companies that still rehearse, of course) -- but in separate little rooms, miles from where the other rehearsals take place, and so the variations seem separate from the ballet, as though the dancers are bussed in as guest stars for the occasion, rather than emerging, triumphant, from a ballet's very fabric. I heard several conflicting comments about Vishneva during the intermission -- which is a good sign, I think. (Remembering our own little discussion of La Lacarra here, if a ballerina can draw strong opinions, something interesting is going on.) My favorite was from, first, a man obviously smitten, "I *love* Vishneva, don't you just love her???" Man 2, not smitten, replied: "Love her? I don't even like her!" I found Kolb underpowered in every way. Like Jeannie, I missed his entrance. I missed him in the pas de deux, too I kept waiting for the real Prince to come on. The Countess was rather underplayed as well. The ballet itself is so strong, it hardly mattered. The King was glorious, a great mime -- watch his hands. The other mimes were fine, too, from Catalabutte down to the Herald. I was mildly disasppointed in Carabosse. (It's hard to get over Monica Mason in this role; I want, if not evil, at least the sense of a dangerous presence.) But it was interesting to see Carabosse danced so clearly -- it's a mime, not a dancing role, but there is a particular stance and walk of Carabosse and that was done beautifully, I thought. I also like the way the Prince modestly stands off to the side during the Awakening scene. It makes the ballet about dynasty, not puppy love. Everyone in this ballet has a role to play in the grand, cosmic scheme of things; it's not personal, but far beyond that. I thought the corps did a fine job. It's refreshing to see Act II danced in tutus (green, floppy, bouncy ones) and not nymph-nighties, and the dancing was appropriately crisp. (I kept thinkiing it was the salad course between the white meat and the red.) I loved the small footwork in the character and court dances. The production is a reminder of how much has been airbrushed out of classicism over the past 100 years. Put it back! This was the perfect start to our new ten-year relationship, a wonderful introduction to the company. "Sleeping Beauty" is not only one of the greatest ballets in history but is, arguably, the most influential ballet. It is the well from which 20th classicism sprung, and to which it must return periodically to be refreshed. The Diaghilev production was the first great revival, the old Royal Ballet production, that dominated the Western world for the next 20 years, the second. I think this is the third great revival and I hope it will have the same influence as its two predecessors.

Unfortunately, I missed those original performances, Glebb. I was over in Copenhagen at the time, watching Napoli rehearsals What always bothers me about "Pas de Quatre" are the ballerina jokes. I don't believe they were there at the time -- those women wouldn't have given each other little sidelong evil eyes, nor been reluctant to leave the stage. I'd love to see a performance of this staged straight!

I won't go into detail -- aside from the fact that it's late, I'm reviewing the cast changes. I'll just say I was very glad to see the production and fell in love with Petipa all over again. I loved the sets and costumes, and I loved the mime (oodles and oodles of mime) as well as the processions. I'm happy to see every single thing that's been cut over the years. We've posted this link before, but for those who are interested in how this production differs from other Kirov productions, there's a superb article by Doug Fullington on Marc Haegeman's site (check the site for info and photos of Kirov dancers, too ): http://users.skynet.be/ballet-lovers/Beauty1.html I hope some of you will get to go -- it is sold out now. Please post if you do.

Thank you, dirac! In my first Olympics (1984) he pretty much demolished one female skater ending with "even her skates are dirty." The man has an eye for the finer points.

Is it NYCB custom to only get to dance one thing at your farewell gala? Whatever happened to the notion that the audience wants the chance to say goodbye to you in your best roles?

In sport, I'd actually go for athletic prowess trumping presentation. But I was curious as to what the rules and traditions were. There was a sportswriter for the Post who had a wonderful way of covering skating events. Artistry never entered her reviews -- and she groused about dance critics taking over skating coverage She'd just go through the routine triple by triple, lutz by whatsit. You never knew if they were wearing a cowboy suit, or skated to Rachmaninoff. I also wondered if a triple was a triple, or if those clean edges Dick Button always talks about (I guess I'm the only one who misses him) matter for anything.

Although I generally fall on the "artistry" rather than "technique" side of the spectrum for ballet dancers, I'm confused about the proper role of artistry in skating. I attended many of the World's Professional championships (because they were in DC and I sometimes reviewed them) and I always fell for the artists (this was okay, since I was there to write about Torvill and Dean as dance, or something like that). The skating fans around me never fell for them. I'd learn later, watching the TV coverage, that the skater I'd admired had done all doubles and not triples -- and that makes sense to me. But in a sport, if someone falls, or does doubles instead of planned triples -- or triples instead of planned quads -- doesn't that count more than artistry? Is it completely subjective, or is there something in the rules about how much weight "artistry" is given? (I'm always amazed/amused to hear skating commentators say things like, "Well, finally. She's doing a rock and roll number instead of just that same classical stuff over and over again -- good to see some artistry." Like "content" (number of triples) the words have different meanings

Yes, of course -- gas light, the dim blue gaze. I don't know whether the lights were dimmed -- surely, they must have been. Perhaps the ushers doubled as gas dimmers. There's a film called "Young Catherine" (about Catherine the Great of Russia before she was The Great) that has a wonderful five-minute ballet in it. The theater is lit by hundreds of candles. They blaze -- it's diamond light. The audience is all dressed in icy pastels -- I'm sure this is the designer's idea, but it certainly worked, showing the 18th century ballet in all its optimism during the age of enlightenment (light). The 19th century, a time of revolt, revolution and death, needed gas light for its ghosts. I do think they talked all through the performances, though. There was an essay in a book published at the 1992 Bournonville Festival all about rats in the theater. Patrons carried umbrellas and those seated in the orchestra had to fend off the rats during the performance. Ah, the good old days

I love thinking about what ballets once looked like There's a book which I bought but haven't had the chance to read, by Marion Smith, about Giselle in its time. I'll be able to answer this question better after I've read it, sometime next summer Ashton tried to restage "Giselle" with its original ending, Katharine, working with Karsavina. (He also choreographed a new solo for Sibley in the peasant pas de deux.) It didn't go over -- it was thought too old-fashioned. I know the Danish critics, especialy Aschengreen, are always harping on this. They want the old ending. So Peter Schaufuss gave it to them -- I don't think much else in that production was old, nor very solid (Giselle dripped real blood from the sword) but it did have the original ending. Much of what we have today is really by Petipa -- including the grand pas classique for Myrthe and her chums that starts the second act. What it would have looked like before....more round, less linear, circles rather than diagonals. Myrthe used to dance with Albrecht, really dancing him to death, I've read. I agree with Katharine on epaulement. What started my love affair with Danish dancing was watching two weeks of Giselle rehearsals there (Kronstam's production) including several rehearsals with Mette-Ida Kirk as Myrthe. Now, she'd been dancing the role for several months, but they were still refining it -- think of that! And two, 30-minute rehearsals concerned nothing but epaulement. I'd never seen a Myrthe with epaulement before -- she flies. It's gorgeous. Bournonville hated Giselle, for what it's worth. Nasty people say it's because he was jealous of Perrot. Danes say, as though they'd heard it at the company water cooler, "He didn't like it that the hero lied." He also felt it sentimental; it took me a long time to understand what he meant by that. (That a ballet about a peasant girl who dies from a broken heart is sentimental. His great Romantic ballet, Valdemar, has the heroine give up everything to save her country.) I think "Folk Tale" was Bournonville's answer to "Giselle" and can imagine him sitting in the theater, watching, thinking, "But the hero (with whom, of course, he would identify) is lying. What could possibly make a nobleman lie like that? How could he turn his back on his betrothed? I know! What if she's really a troll...." I must say I can't get angry at Petipa for changing it, even if I would like to see the roundness and softness of the original. Had he not done so, we would not know the ballet.

1927. It sure was a year. A friend emailed me last night with a list of birthdays for 2002. I'm sure everyone will find a favorite: Maurice Béjart (1 Jan.), Yuri Grigorovitch (2), John Cranko (15 Aug.), Pavel Smog (Prague, 22 Oct.), John Percival (16 March), Clive Barnes (13 May)

Ann, I found two fan pages on Kirkland with some photos: About two-thirds down the page are two shots of Kirkland in "Leaves" http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/Strasse/4252/kirkland.html Here's another fan page: http://homepages.msn.com/StageSt/kimberlove/Gelsey.html I think Cojocaru and Kirkland are similar in that they're both prodigies (very good very young), both light, and both extremely musical. Even though I saw Kirkland at her thinnest and sickest, I don't remember her as frail. I'll always think of her in Croce's phrase, as "porcelain coated steel." I had several friends who thought of her as in the Fonteyn line. "They both had the quality of pure, clear water," as one friend explained. She changed her style when she moved to ABT, but that purity and clarity remained. I loved her in "Leaves." I was interested in reading comments on ballet.co that the four pas de deux weren't very differentiated. In the original production they were almost *too* differentiated. Aside from Kirkland and Nagy, the dancers were corps or soloists, relatively inexperienced dancers, and when the music turned "sad," so did they; likewise, angry. But the duets seemed very different.

Watching the video of "Cinderella" (Sibley-Dowell) over the weekend reminded me of this thread. The fairy variations, especially (and many of Ashton's variations for women) are....I'm not sure I buy into "vulgar" but definitely post-Petipa. When danced off-the-music or not in an Ashtonian way -- either smoothed over, or danced jerkily -- they can seem awkward or even -- here's an elegant word -- whacko. When they're danced the way they were intended, I think they're glorious. It's interesting that Ashton still looks quirky. Unlike the Balanchinean hip thrusts that have become of the American ballet vocabulary, Ashton hasn't been standard English classical style for some time now. I think it's because his successors weren't interested in the same things -- weren't interested in classicism, in developing the vocabulary for its own sake, but in expressionism.

I finally got my Ballet Review today and read the article that started this thread. It's a long, long review of the San Francisco Ballet, with a bit of Mark Morris snuck in at the end. I didn't find the remarks about Lacarra troubling or off-balance. I read the comment that "It is as if she herself confuses Odette and Odile and can't tell the difference" not a review of a performance that he didn't see, but a comment on what he called her "unrelenting seductiveness" in roles like Odette and Aurora. He was quite clear not to say "ballets like Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty" and if one sees a dancer perform the white swan pas de deux (which I'm assuming that he's seen at SFB galas), one has seen her Odette. I haven't read much of Paul Parish's writing, but I do know he's a long-time San Franciscan who's been watching SFB for years. There's more than a column of praise for Lacarra (not that that really matters; I don't think one has to scrape around for a few good points when writing about a dancer one feels doesn't meet the mark). But I didn't read Parish's remarks on Lacarra as an attack at all, but within the larger context of his first paragraph: "At this point San Francisco Ballet is ast its gretest strength ever, ands yet it's farther from having a company stile than I can remember. The repertory is extremely eclectic, and the big personalities of several years ago have gone."...." I enjoyed the article very much. I found some of Parish's descriptions of dancing dazzling, including this one of Lacarra: "In The Cage, in Symphony in Three Movements, she is flat-out magnificent. Although she's unmusical, she can count, and in Symphony in Three her double manege of pique turns as the corps zigzags all around her--perfect pique turns, two big circles of the stage, amid all that hubbub--is a tremendous feat of sang-froid, like flying a spaceship through an asteroid belt. Her cool-hot seductive manner is perfect for such roles, and her astonishisng flexibility extends the effect of her one-in-a-million proportions to levels of fascination I've never experienced before." I'll spend a day or two trying to figure out what he means that she has "a back so flexible she can do an arabesque that looks like a bobbypin," but I'm glad to read someone who thinks that way. The article discusses several other of SFB's ballerinas: Berman (and he makes the best case for this dancer, whom I've never found interesting, that I've ever read), Feijoo and LeBlanc, especially. He makes you realize, I think, that spending a whole season watching SFB might be very interesting, and a whole lot of fun. The question he raises about company style is a good one, for me. I think the complaint about Lacarra is less about her as a dancer (he's writes about some performances that he thinks are stunning, others he feels are in the wrong key) but that the company as a whole is an odd amalgamation of styles, interesting dancers brought in from all over, but no specific company accent. [ February 11, 2002: Message edited by: alexandra ]

Thank you for posting about this, Mashinka and Helena. I did know that Princess Margaret was a patron -- not just nominally, but actively -- of the Royal Ballet. She certainly deserves a salute on a ballet board for that patronage.

Lacarra, Pierre to leave Ballet "Lucia Lacarra and Cyril Pierre, San Francisco Ballet's golden couple, will be leaving the company at the end of this season. They have signed a contract to join the Bavarian State Opera Ballet in Munich, Germany. "They also have bought a home in Marseilles, which is close to Pierre's family in Nancy, France, and to Lacarra's family in Spain's Basque country. "Marseilles is where we grew up artistically," said Lacarra, "and it is also where we fell in love. It is home and, frankly, we have been homesick." http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...11/DD200708.DTL

Thanks for that -- and apologies, Sylvia and Lolly. There is, indeed, a "Memories" thread that Sylvia started. I've been distracted for the last three weeks and haven't been able to read every post, as I usually do, and I missed these. Unfortunately, with this software, we can't merge threads, but here's a link for those who'd like to read the earlier reviews: http://www.balletalert.com/ubb/ultimatebb....c&f=13&t=000664

Those are good points. I think, too, that Kennicutt has something when he makes the comparison to European opera houses that have resident orchestras. I haven't had the privilege of listening to music in Moscow or Leningrad. But even in little Denmark, whose national orchestra is not quite of international standing, the music there that accompanies ballets -- when they've had enough rehearsal -- is excellent, much better than I'm used to. Their "Giselle" and "Coppelia," especially, sound like serious music. I don't know another way to say it. It raises the level of the ballet -- the music is no longer something some feel they have to put up with (especially in the case of "Giselle") but something worthy of attention in its own right. Conductors, too, can make a difference. The music for a "Raymonda" danced here by the Bolshoi about 15 years ago was astounding when conducted by the Bolshoi's conductor. I'm beginning to think that part of this is because the ballet audience DOES put up with it. I think Kennicutt hit on something -- it's the WalMart defense (and not a coincidence that we're in a WalMart era of ballet). "I don't want to pay $10 more for a ticket to get better music." Also, because the audience for the arts has become more segmented -- dance people only seeing dance, etc. -- rather than the goodolddays audience where "cultured people" (banned phrase) attended theater, ballet, concerts, opera and therefore had a more universal standard for things like music, design and acting. We put up with more. Michael Kaiser is quoted in an article about arts funding in the Post that's on Links from a day or two ago -- I hope I'm remembering this right! -- that young people say they can't afford the price of a ballet ticket, yet think nothing of paying $250 for a ticket to Madonna. THAT sure put things into perspective for me. (Swan Lake, starring Madonna, coming soon to a theater near you.)

Well, I hope the dance-literate public in London will stand up and make its presence known. Bring scores to performances if you must -- wave them defiantly -- dress in tutus, do something! Think of this as the canary in the coal mine. [ February 10, 2002: Message edited by: alexandra ]