Alexandra

While going through some old files at the time of the Sir Cam Virus Attack (nothing like a good virus to allow one to get intimately reacquainted with one's computer), I came across an old thread from alt.arts.ballet, c. November 1998. It got some very good responses then, and may well get them again. The original post was by Geoffrey Kimbrough, to wit: You would be amazed at how difficult it is to find ballerina polish these days. Nobody keeps it in stock anymore, and special-ordering it takes simply forever. They used to have it at SAB, but they've obviously run out recently. The Russian stockpiles are long-since depleted, and nobody seems to have a corner on the market, and the street-price of ballerina polish is skyrocketing. This explains why recent performances of even the world's best companies have seemed a little, well, tarnished. What to do? To which I replied (edited slightly to update): Dear Mr. Kimbrough: We understand you are looking for ballerina polish. VVV Enterprises, Inc., Ltd. have long been fine purveyors of several products which may fill your needs. These polishes are usually quite expensive, but, now that the current state of depletion has been brought to our attention, we just may be able to supply bulk quantities and ease the shortage. Check your local Wal-Mart in early December. Among the products Triple Vee offers are the following: Epaule and Epaule-Plus. Epaule is for the shoulders, while Epaule-plus (a slightly more pricey polish) will bring the head and neck into alignment, add expressiveness, AND insure epaulement. DePerk Wipes that silly grin off the face and replaces it with a serene smile of classical repose. Harmonia Insures that pyrotechnics are harnessed and deployed in service of the choreography and the music. Best used in connection with Armonia Super Causes a tingling in the arms to remind the dancer that he or she possesses arms AND helps harmonize the upper limbs with the rest of the body. Is this what you had in mind? All of our polishes are suitable to both male and female dancers and can be tailor made to match your stylistic preferences. (An a la Russe line is in the planning stages.) We're always looking for new polishes (not to mention new markets to target). Any suggestions?

I love it when someone writes something about a ballet that makes me see it differently. Dirac posted the link to Brown's review on Links -- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003319252.../3/btmix03.html But there was one paragraph in particular that I thought interesting: Ashton's genius for characterisation and understanding of the human heart was accompanied by a protean appetite for theatricality, for showing ballet's multiple worlds. The lovers' dopey comedy runs at a different speed from the skittery fairies, and the rustics are a pantomime - all separate planets suddenly conjoined by the magnetic pull of love. A company's intuition about this ballet saves no end of explanation. This is the best capsule description of that ballet I think I've ever read. I think it captures one aspect of the ballet's structure and Ashton's craft very well. Other comments?

Bon voyage, Jeannie, and please post on your travels

I passed this query on to Robert Greskovic, who volunteered the following -- thank you, Robert! Dictionary of Russian ballet in russian says: She was born 19 dec 1897 and died 28 jan 1982. She seems to have staged CHOPINIANA at the bolshoi in 1958. Her ballet roles included those in 'humpbacked horse' 'sleeping beauty' (Violent and Lilac) "Ramzea(?) in "FilleDuPharoan" a role in Carnaval, Gamzatti in "Bayaderka" Pierrette" in "Harliquinada". A Leningrad pedagogue from 57 -62. w/ her staging of 'Chopiniana' for the Bolshoi in '58. Interesting employ -- Gamzatti and Pierrette are very different roles!

Steve! Are you reading this?? (Steve always says he likes difficult Quiz questions, leftover from the days when there was a weekly Ballet Alert! quiz, when I was young and foolish) Mashinka, thanks for posting this. This is a ballerina I've never heard of -- do any of our Russian (usually) Lurkers know anything?

Why has Jennifer Dunning reviewed Dance Galaxy, but we haven't????? Surely SOMEONE went to see the Martins/Martins new work? Comments, please!

Walter Sorrell's "Dance in Its Time" is a wonderful book, I think. More "dance and society" (through history, starting with the Middle Ages) than critical analysis. It was a shock to me when I first read it, because it talks about DANCING and not dancers.

Just got the following press release: (email, when it doesn't have viruses in it, is wonderful ) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 31 , 2001 Dance Magazine Joins the Macfadden Communications Group Oakland, CA. Dance Magazine, the leading publication in the field of dance for almost seventy-five years, has announced its acquisition by The Macfadden Communications Group, a multimedia magazine, internet and exposition company. According to Macfadden Communications Group President and CEO, Jeffrey Schaeffer, "The acquisition of Dance Magazine and her sister publications, Dance Magazine¹s College Guide and Stern¹s Directory, is a marvelous opportunity for our company to work with a very talented, knowledgeable group of journalists and administrators. Their obvious devotion to the advancement of dance is the key ingredient for taking this remarkable group of publications to an even higher level of excellence and service. It is rare, indeed, when you can acquire publications of such enormous stature and esteem. Rest assured we will make a major effort to build upon this superb platform." Robert Stern, CEO, and Roslyne Paige Stern, President of Dance Magazine, Inc. said, "We are very pleased that the legacy of Dance Magazine will continue." Dance Magazine will continue to publish out of its Oakland, California office and maintain additional offices in New York City. Editor in chief K.C. Patrick, and Publisher Barbara Paige Kaplan said, "We look forward to tapping into Macfadden¹s market and production knowledge and working with a team whose mission is to be uncompromising about quality and excellence in every aspect of what they do."

I suppose it's useless to try to explain, but I think you misunderstood my comment. I don't care whether any of the dancers you mention are the color of ebony or ivory. I could not pick out a crayon that matches Acosta's skin color. I do not know his family history. He comes from Cuba. To me, he's a Cuban. That's all I meant. I don't think it's a useful exercise to go through every dancer in America and imagine that if they were this or that their career would be different. There have been black Americans invited to Covent Garden, by the way -- Eddie J. Shellman, I'm certain of, and I believe Ronald Perry, at least. To dance "Apollo," which is not a character role. My only point, and I believe that of several others, is that every time a dancer of color does not get a role, the reason is not, ipso facto, racism. You can go through every dancer in America and say they should have had this or they should have had that, but it's all speculation -- I've yet to meet a dancer who says, "Yes, I was totally unsuited to the role of Siegfried and I prayed every night that they wouldn't give it to me." We're at the dead horse beating stage on this issue, I fear, and I'm withdrawing from it. I'd just be making the same point over and over.

We have several UK posters, and I hope a few will make the trek -- as for Italy, calling antoP!!

There are biographies of both Helpmann and DeValois. The one on Helpmann is not very good, IMO. I haven't read the DeValois, but would like to. It's by Kathrine Sorley Walker (correct spelling) who's a good writer, very thorough, and watched the Royal Ballet almost from the beginning. The idea of English language biographies of Soviet dancers -- how enticing Ulanova, Maximova, Vassiliev, Dogulshin, A. Fadeyechev -- not a very original list, but it would do for starters. This is just my personal quirk, but I'm as interested in dancer biographies for what they tell us about a company or a period as about the individual.

The ones I want, it's unlikely anyone will do: Diana Adams, Beriosova (a good, thick one that talks about her roles as well as the more enticing personal side), an updated one on Violette Verdy (there's one now, but it was written in the late 1970s). I'd also love to read about the first generation of Sadler's Wells dancers. If a book on each one won't work, what about a book where dancers like Mary Honer, Pearl Argyle, Harold Turner each get a chapter? And how about Danilova (autobiographies aren't quite the same thing).

Welcome, Ed, and thanks for post. I think these are always political exercises, or can be read that way. It's Truth if you're the Ouster, and Politics if you're Ousted -- and either may be accurate. I've heard two vastly different versions of this consistently for months. There seems to be no middle ground in this one (as with Gielgud and Babcock in Boston). One version is pretty much as the Times portrayed it -- that Spisto is offensively vulgar, is a big spender, and alienated the staff. Some he fired, but some -- long-time employees -- left because they couldn't work with him. The other version is that he was brought in specifically to clean house, not necessarily to get rid of people, but to make them work more efficiently, and they didn't like this. Somewhere in the middle of that, I suspect lies the truth. I can't comment on the facts of this -- I don't have insider info But I would say that losing 30 out of 40 employees -- and the press people were not low level -- is not normal turnover, and I was told quite awhile ago that "Sleeping Beauty" had to be canceled because they couldn't raise the money for it -- which doesn't go with the stories that Spisto was a very good fundraiser. I do think the dining out charges were politics. Usually what happens in these situations is that someone, or a faction, wants to get rid of someone for Reason A, which won't fly (and is never artistic), so they wait until the person makes a Chargeable Error and gets them. But this doesn't mean that the person shouldn't have been "gotten" in the first place. I found it puzzling in the reviews that Spisto and not McKenzie was, er, credited with "Pied Piper." [ 07-29-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

Compelling.....hmmm That link made compelling reading Thank you for posting this, dirac. I missed it. All of his truisms are true!!! I especially liked the point that, since we don't make art ourselves any more -- once upon a time, the educated person was expected to be an amateur artist, writing sonnets and sonatas -- we have become distanced from it and can't find good ways to describe art. And, as the author put it: "As we become a society of art consumers, with little real experience with the technical issues of making art, we have less and less of substance to say about it. And our cliches both reflect and deny that truth." To the larger point about using cliches -- all critics do it. When you're writing for a newspaper it's almost unavoidable. It's not possible to say anything specific and meaningful about a work of art in 180 words. If one does become very specific and "literary," then what one writes will be meaningless to 95% of the people reading you. So we all say "wonderful," "beautiful," etc. We all know what "wonderful" and "beautiful" mean, but we all have a different image -- Zakharova, Julie Kent, Wendy Whelan, Margot Fonteyn -- all wonderful and beautiful to someone. All mutually exclusive. I used to joke about writsing a book called "Use the Right Cliche, a Thesaurus for the Critically Challenged" which I thought would be a best seller among critics. When I started writing, I had to do a lot of galas -- there's an impossibility for you. Twenty couples dancing, mostly, virtuoso and lyrical pas de deux. How to describe them? What to say? Fans want to know how "their" dancer did, and who was there and did what. I once -- honest -- made a list of adjectives up in advance (I had to call in the review within a half-hour after the curtain went down). And I really truly matched "melting" with Kirkland and Dowell in the Snow pas de deux from "The Nutcracker." Luckily, I caught it. Someone else melted, someone else was charming, someone else danced cleanly -- quite different from dancing clearly -- and nearly everyone was wonderful. But describing dancers as collections of bones and muscles -- this one has a long metatarsal, this one strong thighs -- doesn't help much either. Suggestions, anyone?

Bobsey, these have been pretty tame rebukes, as BAllet Alert threads go It's always hard when people disagree about dancers or a ballet, or whatever, but it's good to read what other people think -- please feel free to say why you like Borree. I wanted to thank everyone who participated in this thread, especially rkoretzky for the wonderful daily reviews.

Welcome, Shelley -- thanks for persevering and for your post

I really don't have enough information to be troubled by it. I don't know what was said, nor the reasons, nor did I see the performance, so I can't judge what was said, nor the motivation for saying/writing it. If someone is bothered simply because two black dancers were cast in "Nutcracker," then of course it is troubling -- more than troubling. But without context I can't make a judgment.

Or it's possible that people do not think "A&A" are great dancers for reasons that have nothing to do with race Sorry to be the contrarian, but I've seen both dance and I do not put them in the top rank (and it has nothing to do with race or skin color). I have several friends who insist that Acosta is really top of the line, but in the performances I've seen, he gets the steps but nothing in between. I've seen Andersen dance several roles and remain unimpressed. She has an adequate, though not stellar, technique, and I thought her performances were very muted -- again, not a good actress. I'm not writing this to bash either dancer -- I have read, over and over, on this board and in print, that Lauren Anderson is the nicest, friendliest, etc. person in the whole entire world and she may very well be, but I'm referring only to stage performances -- but my overall point is that not ranking either or both dancers at the top of the pile doesn't equate with racism. (Not that it matters, but I've never thought of Acosta as "black." I think of him as "Cuban.")

What? Is this a candle I see before me? http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/arts/26ABT.html A board member so upset because of ARTISTIC ISSUES that he starts a campaign against the boss?

Not everyone enjoys them, I assure you I agree with Leigh. It's a matter of muscle training. Ballet isn't just something you pick up in mid-career to try something out. There's very little pure modern dance left today, but in general, I agree with you: ballet-trained dancers without specific modern dance training and modern dance sensibility should stay out!

Ah, Victoria, you know what an optimist I am So one out of 20, in a good class at a good school (regardless of race, of course) might make it in a classical company?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE STATEMENT BY AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE PRESIDENT ED FOX, ON THE RESIGNATION OF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR LOUIS SPISTO "During the past two years, American Ballet Theatre Executive Director Louis Spisto has made extraordinary contributions to the Company. Mr. Spisto's resignation resulted from a growing difference in vision from certain members of the Board of Directors. Recognizing these differences, Mr. Spisto offered his resignation, and it was accepted. At my request, Mr. Spisto has agreed to provide assistance for a period of time. I expressed, on behalf of the Board, our thanks to Lou for his significant achievements during his tenure: substantial increases in contributed income, a 24 percent increase in earned income, doubling of touring weeks and a three-fold increase in ABT's respected education programs. He leaves ABT with an expanded base of artistic programs and in a strong financial position. "ABT is a company of world-class dancers and a committed staff. We expect to continue our strong performances and believe that we will continue to grow our loyal donor and subscriber base."

Dancefan, I don't think we really disagree -- I don't mean that there isn't enough potential in the black community, by any means, but that -- for economic and social reasons, peer or parent pressure, perception they won't have a career, etc. -- there aren't enough black youngsters taking serious pre-professional training. Victoria, what is the ratio of professional dancers to "sorry, not enough turnout, not the right body," etc? One in ten? Or is that high? So you'd have to graduate a class of 1000 to get 100 dancers (if my ratio is correct). I'd also say that money isn't just an issue for middle-class black parents. I know white parents who've forbidden very promising children from going into a company at 18, insisting on college "so they'll be prepared for something, and then they can do what they want." (It's not new, either. Eddie Villella springs to mind.) I think that money, much more than the stereotypes associated in the public's mind with male dancers, is the reason there's a perennial shortage of men. When the Royal Danish Ballet had a strong male contingent they were well paid, compared to the rest of that society, and the retirement age was 50, after which they got a high pension. Most importantly, after they'd been in the company for five years they couldn't be fired. That time was enough to weed out dead wood; after that, a dancer had to be given time to recover from an injury and couldn't be cut at a director's whim. If our dancers could expect to make a high, steady income it would be seen as a serious career, not just something young women can do until they get married (from the mouth of my physician, who pulled his daughter out of ballet school when he learned that "the most she'll ever earn is $35,000; this, 15 years ago), and men of all races will be attracted to ballet as a profession.

There's definitely segregation -- as has been discussed on this board several times -- but I have to raise the issue of Desmond Richardson, a modern dancer, not being cast in "classical roles" simply because of his color. I don't think that is the case, and I think in classical ballet that the notion of proper casting is crucial to the success of productions. For me, serving the ballet, the art form, is the key, not making dancers happy. I think the notion of color-specific roles is unsettling (I'm not saying it doesn't exist). A dancer of any color should be cast in the roles for which his/her talents are suited. Suited can include technique, dramatic ability, and suitability to the role in more intangible ways; someone who is stiff as a performer isn't suited to a jazzy role, or a poetic/lyrical role, for example. In classical ballet, body type -- length of leg and neck, arch of foot, line, body proportions, etc. -- are important; they define roles. But I'd resist the notion that only a black dancer could dance the man's part in the "Agon" pas de deux (should it ever come to that) as much as that no black man should ever dance Albrecht. Ronald Perry was a very fine Albrecht, in my eyes; very dark-skinned, but with a beautiful classical body and every technical and dramatic quality necessary to make a believable Albrecht. I also think that the racial issue in American ballet isn't going to be solved at the professional level until it is solved at the school level. There aren't enough black Americans studying ballet to produce a talent pool large enough from which to choose.

Bijoux, I'm sure the situation will change; it's getting a little better with each generation. I agree with you that there is a prejudice, among both blacks and whites, about skin tone -- more for women than men. It will change, I think, through time and critical mass. As long as there are one or two black dancers in a predominantly fair-skinned corps, they will "stick out" and it will disturb the eye -- or the eyes of those who see color, which is most of us. Put in four dancers (out of 18, say) and especially if the remaining 14 are a variety of skin tones, and the eye adjusts. I've written before about the National Ballet of Cuba when I first saw it. For the first five minutes of their "Giselle," the racial mix bothered me; it wasn't something I was used to, and it didn't look like a Silesian corps (yes, I know that the POB or ABT corps may not look very Silesian to Silesians ). But this went away in 5 minutes, because the company was so good and because it was so mixed. No one could "stick out" because there was a blend of facial features and skin tones. What bound them as a classical company was the bodies and the technique/style. I think this discussion has been a good one as well, and I hope there are some young dancers who have read it (we have several people registered with names like "blackballerina," so I'm presuming we have at least some Young Dancers of Color who read these boards. Get out there and dance, and get your name up on a discussion board in ten years time!