Alexandra

Leigh's monster thread raised this question in my mind. Is one of the reasons there are no stage monsters the fact that many people can't believe in them? That we're too literal? I'm also thinking of some of the posts here from people who found Edward II and various Eifman works screamingly funny (while obviously many people take these works very seriously). (I do NOT mean to dredge up that as an argument, and I don't mean to suggest that either the laughers or the believers are right or wrong, just that there's a difference in viewpoints.) When I read Leigh's question, the first images I had were of a black modern dance company that did a story ballet here about 15 years ago -- it was a small company that's changed names and personalities several times, and I don't remember the name of the work. But it had a monster. He was evil, totally without redeeming social value. The protagonists were children (grown dancers pretending to be children, and very well, I might add). The audience, which was 99% African American, loved it -- booed the villain, reacted with fear, although it was a theatrical fear, if that makes sense -- I don't think any of them went home to nightmares, but they were appreciative of what was going on stage. When the children triumphed at the end, they cheered. I've never felt so much an outsider a dance concert; I could not enter into this world. To me, what was on stage was very amateur. But by the end of it, I realized that the people sitting around me knew that. They didn't believe the villain was really going to eat the children, of course. But they could pretend they did. I was quite jealous! I would love to do what they did -- to recreate its own innocence. Is it possible, in a post-post-modern world, to reclaim innocence? Would Eifman, or other choreographers who might seem outrageous (to those who find them outrageous) seem less so if we entered their world? We draw distinctions with words, of course. "Camp" has a good connotation now -- it means that the artist who's put something on stage that's outre' knows what he's doing, and so we can laugh at the joke. This is cool. Isadora coming back and dancing her Marxist dreams would probably be uncool -- unless it's done by the Trockadero's Isadora, and then it's camp. In some ballets where we need a villain, like "Sleeping Beauty" we avoid the issue, just "seeing" the dancing. The mime characters could be doing the mime from a completely different ballet and most of us wouldn't know or care. What will it take to make us see drama? Is suspension of disbelief possible?

I've never seen a scary Von Rothbart, alas, but I wanted to comment on Jeannie's comment -- I would imagine (never having seen them ) that Eifman might be one of the few people working today who COULD make a monster. I also imagine, having seen few of them, that Massine had the same powers.

I think the person gets to fill out a form with a line that says "occupation." Simone had the rank of "først solodanser" (lit. first solo dancer) so "prima ballerina" is within her rights to say, I think, even if it does look a bit odd in a Danish phone book. (What's this Italian doing here?) It's nice, though, for someone who loves ballet to be able to look up a lot of names and find "ballet dancer" or "Royal ballet dancer" next to their names.

Aha, you've given us another clue Although critics hate to be pigeonholed as much as dancers do, it seems we have Parish (a neoclassicist) and Roca (an expressionist), and that may explain the divide. Like the comments here, it seems that people are seeing the same thing, but differing on whether what they're seeing is good, bad or appropriate. [ February 03, 2002: Message edited by: alexandra ]

Helena, I remember reading that, too. And it may well be correct; some people don't like a name change to be known. I have to call some people in Denmark this weekend to check a few facts, and I'll ask that one as well. On Danish phone books, I've looked up almost every dancer there. There are so many people with similar names (there are 13 pages of H.C. Andersens!) that, as I'm sure you noticed, they also print the person's occupation so you can tell Lis Jeppesen, solodanserinde, from Lis Jeppesen, damens frisoer (women's haircutter, and the Danish is probably misspelled). Kirsten Simone is listed as "prima ballerina" and Niels Bjorn Larsen simply as "balletmaster". Everyone is listed, even if the phone number is unlisted. There will be a "secret number" where the phone number should be!

I've often thought that ballet became less interesting after the advent of modern dance, because modern dance syphoned off character dancers, those who would make monsters (either as dancers or choreographers). Now that ballet is invading modern dance and modern dancers are becoming more interested in technique, perhaps the monsters will wander back

That's a good question, Leigh. I wonder if it's possible to do really good monsters these days? Looking at old engravings of court and 18th century ballets, there were lots of monsters -- I don't know how scary they were, but the groteschhi (sp?) specialized in acting roles, demons and villains. They used monsters as the antemasque, to show, through contrast, how wonderful were the gods and heroes. When that concept went.....I wonder if the Wilis were even scary in their day? I think during Romantic Ballet, everything became pretty-pretty, what Bournonville criticized as sentimentality. Some of his monsters, like Golfo in Napoli, have become weaker through the years. I once saw a film of Frank Schaufuss's Golfo that was truly monstrous -- he picked Gennaro up and threw him on the floor. (I mentioned this to several older dancers, who sniffed and said, "you should have seen Poul Vessel.") I'm afraid Bournonville's monsters have become weak over the years, except for..... .....Sorella Englund's Madge. And, through photos only, Gerda Karstens' before her. A Danish dancer once gave me an imitation of Karstens' performance that literally made me jump back from its force. There are some performances on film by some very great Russian character dancers in the '40s and '50s that made me long to see them, but, alas, I missed them by accident of birth.

WHO was the first Pat McBride??? (blush) I think I missed her! Re Erik Bruhn, I've never researched this, but I thought Belton Evers were his middle names. The Gruen biography says "Erik Belton Evers Bruhn". If he changed it, he did it as a child, because every reference I've seen to him in Danish books is under the name Bruhn. I've had discussions with Danish dancers of that era about other dancers who changed their names, and he has never been offered as an example. I believe (again, I write from memory without checking ) that Evers was his father's name while Bruhn was his mother's; one may draw one's own conclusions from that. So there may have been a name change, not for stage reasons, when he was a child. All these are fascinating, though. I wonder if there's a list of all the English and American dancers who had to change their names to Russian ones during the Ballets Russes era?

I have only seen Lacarra in a few roles, but I find her an interesting dancer. As the Novice in Robbins' "The Cage", I thought she was phenomenal, giving a real star performance. She seemed so suited to that, both temperamentally and physically, that I wondered if she could do anything else. I liked her in Bugaku (though not quite as much as Tan) and, although I didn't like her very much in Symphony in C (second movement) I didn't think she was bad, but for me, too flexible; there was no tension in her dancing, it was like watching a master do yoga. Having seen her in that, I wouldn't think of her as an Aurora, although I was very sorry to miss her Giselle. It's interesting to hear the views from San Francisco. It does make a difference if you see a dancer in every role -- I will say I think it's healthy for a company to have leading dancers that provoke strong reactions. Fans fought over Camargo and La Salle -- perhaps Lacarra and Tan are re-enacting the San Francisco version of that ancient conflict ATM, by "Ballet" do you mean "Ballet Review?"

Melissa, we have had this topic before, which may be why no one has answered yet. It provoked some rather strong responses. I think they were such different dancers it's hard to compare -- different bodies, different temperaments, different roles, different times. Technically, Baryshnikov did things no other dancer of his day in the West could do (and the fact that dancers today can doesn't detract from that achievement). Nureyev, for me, had more depth as an artist. Baryshnikov was generally not regarded as Partner of the Year -- but then, his repertory was not primarily made up of partnering roles, so that didn't matter. My sense of our past discussions is that people who saw Nureyev in his prime would vote "Nureyev" and people who came to ballet during the Baryshnikov era would vote "Baryshnikov". Another reason why it's hard to compare them, is it's difficult to compare a 26-year-old with a 36-year old.

I remember Delia Peters (who's now a lawyer, I think) as being a very witty dancer -- drily witty -- and a very clean dancer, but not a beauty.

I share your suspicions, dirac -- it's one of the less appealing elements of postmodernism. "I'm going to show you 400 slides of little yellow flowers two of which may actually be good -- of course, each of you will choose a different two, and so I, as the artist, would never dream of picking my own favorites." (This was the approach of a former photographer boyfriend of mine. Pick two, pick three, but pick something, I'd say.) In one of those ballet novels from the 1970s, the author combined what were, in the popular imagination, the worst characteristics of Tudor and Balanchine into its principal choreographer. The wittiest part of the book was that he named the ballets "Koechle listing 549" (Sorry -- I'm sure that's misspelled, blowing the joke, but it's the man who catalogued Mozart's music, giving that "K. number" to each composition.)

Yesterday afternoon, ESPN had a college gymnastics competition, which I half-watched while editing. I learned a great deal from it, because the competitors were true amateurs -- middle-range in skills, as well as bodies. I often learn more from seeing things done wrong than from watching champions, because true champions usually make it look so easy. These athletes (all women during the hour I was watching) were, of course, skilled and had been practicing for hours since childhood, but they weren't going to make the Olympic team, or even, probably, a national team. I remember the first time I watched Olympic skating (Torvill and Dean's Bolero year) ESPN showed all the competitors, and it was just as interesting, to me, seeing the third-ranked couple from a Very Small Country as seeing the stars. It's also very humbling to realize that people who are so very, very good are still markedly below champion level -- a good thing to remember when watching dancers, I think.

Often in rehearsals communication is almost completely nonverbal. If she could still show, either with her body or her hands, there would have been no problem

I think, also, it has to do with the change in aesthetic from expressionism to postmodernism. The ballets with titles mostly date from the pre-War era (Night Shadow, in addition to Ballet Imperial). And besides, he was right that nothing was Imperial any more. "Imperial" didn't suit the dancing style of the 1970s.

The Joffrey Ballet and Dance Theatre of Harlem have both done it in recent years. ABT (and NYCB?) have Robbins' version in repertory, in theory. I thought the Joffrey did an excellent job with Les Noces, one of the best things I ever saw them do. There's a video of Paris Opera Ballet doing Les Noces (Platel-Belarbi) that I think is excellent, as well. Thank you, Brendan, for that report -- you're lucky to have it on TV. Ann, I've only seen the Paris version on video, but I agree -- it does film well. It's wonderful to have a record. Since this site is devoted to classical ballet and read by young ballet students, I have to put a word in for tutu ballets. A tutu is only a costume, to me. Many ballets in which the dancers wear tutus are justly considered great. Very few choreographers use them in new works -- perhaps because they're so expensive! But I don't think Divertimento No. 15, or Scenes de ballet, or Gala Performance, to take the first mid-20th century works I can think of that use tutus, are cliched works. Les Noces uses the same structural rules and comes from the same source as Bayadere and Sleeping Beauty, and I don't think Nijinska couldn't have made Les Noces if she hadn't come from that tradition. I definitely agree that Les Noces is an important ballet, a stunning ballet. I've always wanted to see more of Nijinska. I don't like "Les Biches" as much (also once in the Dance Theatre Harlem repertory), but I'd like to see more of her.

When I first became interested in ballet, Plisetskaya was the one people held up as being the super technician -- you'll see her turns on the video. She looks like a skater. She may well not have been perfectly placed, as a Vaganova student would be. (And dancers are always hard on themselves, especially great ones.) I also think she was one who wanted to be able to forget the technique so she could tear up the stage. Even on film, you can sense she was an animal on stage. I showed some of the Don Q footage to a class of dancers once -- they'd never heard of her. They were astounded. They kept saying she danced like a man. (I don't think Maya P would have taken that as a compliment.)

Thanks very much for posting that, rg. I think Balanchine is one of the very few choreographers who's never superficial -- there's always something behind works which may, today, look "kitschy."

Thanks, Brendan. You're welcome to review the telecast I don't think we heard too much about it last spring. I'd welcome a discussion of "Les Noces" generally, with reference to any performance.

I noticed that the Royal Ballet is performing Les Noces at present. Has anyone seen it?

Bravo, KB (and welcome; congratulations on a bravura debut post )! I hope you'll click on the link above and email them just that (linked to the ballet slam, of course).

There's a video called Plisetskaya Dances that has a lot of her Kitri on it -- I think that was her great role, that and "Swan Lake." She and Ulanova were the great Bolshoi ballerinas (Ulanova was Kirov trained, but transferred to the Kirov). There's a wonderful video called "Stars of the Russian Ballet" with BOTH Ulanova and Plisetskaya, and I'm still jealous of people who got to see them night after night. From video evidence and stories of friends, Plisetskaya had an extraordinary technique and was very dramatic. One of the "monstre sacres."

In the Bournonville case, it's a bit more concrete, because there are things that are written down or have a consistent performance tradition. If I went into individual nuance, I'd have a waste dump of lost phrases There are a lot of instances where one may remember a phrase that was specific to a certain performance, or generation, but one can miss it nonetheless. There's a former dancer-now-writer in Washington (Jane Murray) who can look at any Serenade and tell you: 1959 version, staged by X, the year that Sally S replaced Mary J as the third girl from the left and that's why this step-phrase-moment is different. (No, I'm not jealous.) That's the kind of knowledge only a backstager would have. Often I don't realize I miss something until I see another company, or dancer, do the older version. When San Francisco Ballet first brought Symphony in C to DC about a decae ago, I noticed several tiny segments -- more than a step, less than a phrase -- that I'd forgotten I missed. Manhattnik, what are your missing phrases? [ January 25, 2002: Message edited by: alexandra ]

Holding hands at the ballet -- what a sweet story, Farrell Fan. If tea dances can make a comeback, surely so can this!

At last count, there were approximately 254, give or take a few dozen, moments from Bournonville ballets that had been sent to Devil's Island -- or the more civil Island of Lost Phrases, the Republic of ILP, Mime and Style Counties. The conditions there are very squalid and overcrowded at the moment...but then, I've written about that Great thread, Manhattnik. When I get my head of of Lost Bournonvilleland, I'll start working on great Ashton, Balanchine and Petipa moments I once saw! Maybe we could do a Ballet Alert!'s version of The Ten Most Wanted?