Alexandra

Yes, liebs, Toni Lander is Myrtha on that video (Bruce Marks is Hilarion). I also like this production because it retains the circles in Act II, which, to me, make it more like a ritual. (On most days, Carla Fracci is my favorite Giselle and I agree, she films very, very well.)

Good question! I hope you'll post your list. I'm sure I have more than I can remember off the top of my head -- two ABT (Makarova-Baryshnikov and the older Fracci-Bruhn), one of Seymour-Nureyev (forget the production unfortunately), the Kirov with Mezentseva and Zaklinsky, the Bolshoi with Ulanova and N. Fadeyechev (?). I have a fondness for the old Bolshoi production -- and I can't resist adding, if anyone has this one, I found Ulanova's dancing in the second act, the musical phrasing of it, very interesting. It wasn't what I was used to seeing and so, of course, the first time I saw it I thought it "unmusical." Then I started concentrating more on the dancing than the music and found her musicality--and was fascinated by it. I like parts of the old ABT production, too, but I'm sure that's just because it's the one I "grew up" with. There's a very interesting video about Giselle -- Anton Dolin coaching Helgi Tomasson and Patricia McBride in the roles. And another one that is, as far as I know, available at the moment only in Europe, the Danish film about the Royal Danish Ballet's production -- more the behind-the-scenes, although there is footage from the stage -- Anne Wivel's "Of Dreams and Discipline."

Which did you particularly like, or dislike, and why? (I'd like to focus more on productions than dancers, at least for now. We've discussed favorite Giselles and Albrechts so often in the past.)

I may have been reading too much into it -- or just read Estelle's post too quickly. I saw the "stripped away" and jumped to the conclusion that Giselle was doing something naughty. ;) Sorry! [ 04-24-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

The original Giselle seems to be much more interesting -- wants to play, not work; rejects a suitable suitor because he's not cute enough; cheats at petal plucking. Having Giselle pull off that extra petal that wasn't supposed to be there anyway, really, rings very true, and serves as a build up for the mad scene. Her whole character is that she can't deal with reality -- or doesn't want to. There's an interesting parallel with La Sylphide. In the Gautier version of the libretto, it's James who captures the butterfly and the Sylph who makes him free it -- very consistent with the notion that it is the Sylph who is the creature of nature, and James the interloper. Bournonville changed this (well, nobody's perfect ) so that it's the Sylph who captures the butterfly and James -- the thinking being -- bids her release it. I wonder when Giselle's character changed? Did subsequent ballerinas -- wanting to be a real "heroine" -- sentimentalize Giselle, turning from a Rhine Valley Girl into a tubercular pale and saintly lass with a weak brain as well as heart (a very late Victorian notion)? Or did later Albrechts steal the flower scene? (There is a line in the Beaumont version that says something like, Albrecht arranges the flower so that things come out right, so this may have been a slip between libretto and stage, as well.)

felursus, I don't know whether Bruhn or Nureyev did them first -- I thought Nureyev, but they may both have gotten them from someone else (What did Youskevitch do? Bruhn said that he was very influenced by Youskevitch.) Like Drew, I love the Nerina story. I thought it was a true; I think it made it into at least one of the Nureyev biographies. Of course, this was at a time when people CARED when they changed what was considered a standard text

Donald, good to read you Sometimes the version done changes with the stager -- people stage what they know -- but there's also been a concerted effort by the Balanchine Trust to standardize versions of the ballets. I don't know what happened in this case. I just remember that when I first saw SFB dance "Symphony in C" a few years ago, they did what I remembered as an older version -- there were details in it (some port de bras, some actual steps) that I hadn't realized I'd been missing in recent years until I saw them again. My comments in the post above were more comparing the way the company was dancing than the versions. But October was six months ago, there may have been injuries here, etc. Thanks for these reports -- more please SFB has one of the longest, richest seasons in ballet and some terrific dancers, and I'm sure many of us would like to read about them often.

I didn't, so I'm even more grateful to your posting about it. Ballet Nut? Dirac? We have a few new San Franciscans who've joined recently as well. The company danced "Symphony in C" in D.C. as part of the Balanchine celebration and it was the one big disappointment -- not just for me, but for quite a few people who'd seen the company dance this piece very beautifully a few years earlier. Also, "Symphony in 3 Movements" was one of the big hits of that Celebration. Several people I know from New York thought these were the most exciting performances of that ballet since it was new. I don't know whether we just have a different perspective, or the sands have shifted since the fall -- interesting to read.

I was thinking of wit as well, but, like so many things, wit is in the eye of the beholder and the body of the performer. Over-emphasized wit can become humor -- or, if one is expecting a dry performance, any emotional tinge can seem too much. Wish this had been televised so we could all see it

Sybil Shearer once wrote in Ballet Review that Balanchine was stuck for life in the model culture of the 1920s What's interesting about Doubrovska is that she was thought of as an unusual body type, I think. The Ballet Russe (especially Massine) used the unusual -- a modern dancer here, a Spanish dancer there. She wasn't the norm. One of the greatest French ballerinas was Guimard (forget her first name, sorry) who was extremely skinny -- and mocked for it; very nasty cartoons. Also, now we're getting a different look -- Audrey Hepburn never lifted weights (or at least, if she did you can't tell) but after Wonder Woman, I think, the ideal female body is changing again, from Twiggy to Ms. Muscle.

Heather, I'm not sure anybody started it. Movie stars and fashion models used to be much more curvey long ago, before the 1960s. That seems to have been a time of change in body types as in everything else. You had movie stars like Audrey Hepburn -- very slim and elegant -- models like Twiggy -- very thin, trendy, and with a boyish build -- and TV stars like Goldie Hawn (sp?), also very very thin. The fashions at this time looked better on very thin bodies, too. Choreographers in the 1950s -- Balanchine, but Ashton, too, and others -- were very interested in line, in a long, elegant look, and this goes along with trends in visual arts too -- painting became all about shape and color (the "bones") rather than telling a story. I think it's these two things coming together. Other theories?

Thanks for such a clear description. It's hard to tell (and be fair) not having seen the performance, but it sounds as though it's a problem of interpretation. The dancers may well be doing exactly what they were told, or layering on emotions, or (this has happened, even with Balanchine Trust stagings) have learned from a less-than-ideal videotape. "Violin Concerto" seems to have deteriorated rapidly. When it was new, it was considered an "instant classic." By the 1990s, I talked with several people who hadn't seen it with its original cast didn't see much in it. I don't know if that helps. To me, structurally, it was definitely a masterpiece, and it suited those dancers perfectly. (Yours is an excellent question, by the way. One of the hardest things to do is to see what isn't there, and often one just has a sense that something isn't right, or that what one is seeing doesn't match what one has read or been told. So thank you for raising this.) Anyone else have ideas on either what julip has described (do the dancers sound on or off target?) and/or where Violin Concerto is placed?

I've been thinking about this, and I don't remember thinking of Violin Concerto as being humorous, so I don't know what to say. (I don't mean to question your perception, at all, since I didn't see this production.) I saw this fairly frequently when it was fairly new, and to me it's one of those ballets where casting really mattered. The two couples were big man/small woman contrasted with big woman/short man. My sharpest memories are of the tenderness of the Martins/Mazzo couple, especially the ending, when Martins covered Mazzo's face with his hand and bent her backwards while (I believe) kneeling. The contrast of the strength and tenderness was very moving. The easy answer to "where did it come from" is "out of the music," but I can't give you examples. Arlene Croce wrote about this a lot; there should be some articles in her collections, if you can get to them. And I always turn to "Repertory in Review" (Nancy Reynolds) but I understand that's very hard to find now. Can you tell us some of the parts you found emotional and humorous?

Welcome, Roma (are you named for the city or the Balanchine ballet of that name? ) I hope you'll go to the performance and tell us about it.

Perhaps it's because mime became so out of fashion. The first world-class Giselle I saw was Makarova, and her second act was an abstract ballet, to me -- very emotional, but very little mime. That's why Alonso's obvious beckoning was so startling -- what I had thought was port de bras was now a gesture. Not to say one is right and one is wrong, just that there are differences. One of the most moving "Giselles" I ever saw was Nina Ananiashvili and Alexei Fadeyechev's (Bolshoi) here at Wolf Trap -- an outdoor performing arts park, so you're seeing a "Giselle" in the woods, which helps the atmosphere tremendously. Their second act was a concerto, just emotions, no specific acitons. Love, death, sorrow, forgiveness, redemption, all of those things were suggested, but what you got was a very generalized picture of two people meant for each other and everything went wrong. And it worked.

Sounds plausible to me We have some cemeteries that are between a forest (or at least, clump of trees) and the churchyard, so maybe it's betwixt and between.

Miami City Ballet has been a regular (and very welcome) visitor to DC for a few years now, not only at the Kennedy Center but at George Mason University, where Villella gives master classes. The company will be in D.C. at the end of May with the Patineurs program as well as "Jewels." Can't wait

When I started going to the ballet, a caddish Albrecht and a good-hearted Hilarion were both enough of a novelty to warrant mention. Now, both are usual, the latter nearly standard. In the Beaumont libretto, Hilarion is the villain. He's not an evil man, but an intelligent rather arrogant one (and coarse as well, but he's used to being Top Dog in that village). He acts in revenge because Giselle scorned him. I've seen interpretations where Hilarion thinks that if I only tell her the truth, then she'll love me. Not in the original. He wants to publicly humiliate her, it seems. He finds the sword and mantle and picks his moment to reveal them -- when everybody is there to watch, 36 seconds after Giselle is crowned Queen of the Harvest. What interpretations have you seen? Do you like him as a hero or a villain?

Exactly! Not only is he a good dancer, but he is the only person she's met who loves to dance as much as she does. I wish people who stage ballets would go back and read the original libretto; they'd get some lovely ideas I think usually stagers start with the one they're used to and fiddle with it to make it make sense OR look at lots of other productions for ideas and put them all together (that is, that's what the ones who think do ) The original libretto -- at least, as rendered by Beaumont -- makes so much sense and is so darned DANCEY. Either he left out a lot, or much has been added. I didn't find a reference to a weak heart. Giselle likes to dance, i.e., play, instead of working, and her mother tells her to stop dancing, that she's dancing too much and will come to a bad end. "Just one more dance, mother. Just one more," she says. Many of the edges of Romantic ballet were buffed off and sentimentalized later in the century, and Giselle seems to have changed from a spirited, shallow young girl into St. Giselle somewhere along the line. It's not in the Beaumont I have now, but I remember reading somewhere that when Hilarion asks her, basically, "So what's he got that I haven't got?" (hinting, inexhaustible supply of rabbits, a good job, a better hut) she says, "He is beautiful and you are not." If Albrecht has his epiphany in watching the terrible results of his flirtation, Giselle herself was redeemed, saved from Wilidom -- a whole tribe of girls who didn't listen to their mothers -- because she is struck by Albrecht's sincere sorrow and repentance. There's a bit of humanity (Christianity, in this world) left in her and that's what saves both of them.

I don't know if this is the one you saw or not, Jane, but Peter Schaufuss's production has real blood. Part of the mad scene has some mime which could be interpreted as Giselle seeing the blood run down her arms, OR that she is getting cold and the life is ebbing out of her. I'd never read of the half-suicide, half-nonsuicide before -- thanks for that, Jane. I think often changes are made by dancers who are merely seeking to make sense out of a particular role, make the scenario work for them. [ 04-22-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

This is not as silly a question as it may seem. This is very specifically mentioned in the libretto (the Beaumont version of it, at any rate) and is one of several things that has gotten buried in several later productions of the ballet.

Cyril W. Beaumont's "Complete Book of the Ballets" also has a libretto (although he never lists his sources) which states, as does the Gautier Marc mentions, that she kills herself with the sword -- Albrecht tries to get it from her, but it's too late. I don't know whether this is the way it worked in Paris (although I would imagine it is) but in Copenhagen, the libretto was something that you had to submit to the Theater's censor before a ballet went into production. The stage action often differed. I have a very clear memory of reading that the suicide death was deemed necessary for Grisi because she wasn't a strong enough actress to carry off a mad scene and a les concrete death, but when Fanny Elssler got the role she, in effect, said, "La Elssler does not need a sword to die!" and, voila!, we have the mad scene we all know and love today. This would match the inconsistencies in the libretti -- the original, nonsuicide one submitted to the Theater and the slightly later one that matched the stage action. I have found nothing in the few sources I have at home that say anything about Giselle's grave and why it's in the forest -- perhaps this has been merely an assumption (that suicides can't be buried in the churchyard). If she had died unshriven, she'd also be kept out of the churchyard. The Beaumont libretto talks about a beautiful marble tomb (now, where Giselle's mother have come up with the money for that?) Perhaps this was not an issue in 1841, but the audience accepted a forest tomb, as they accepted Albrecht's house?

The last I heard from that company was nearly a year ago, when I received several press releases announcing auditions. Anyone have more recent news?

Andrei, often productions change for very good reasons. I wonder if the Christian symbolism was downplayed in Russia after the 1920s?

If they raised all that money mostly through ticket sales, what does that tell us about the repertory