Alexandra

I think suspension of belief requires sensible underpinnings. It also helps if the dancers can convince you that THEY know how Albrecht got that cottage. It never bothered me with Nureyev and Dowell. That's where they lived. End of discussion. I once read (perhaps in her autobiography) that Fonteyn knew everything about Giselle -- the furniture inside her house, what she ate, etc. -- but nothing about Odette. She felt that Odette (we'll get to her in a few weeks) was an abstraction of Woman, where Giselle was a person. I think that kind of thinking by the dancers makes a huge difference. Back to Albrecht's hut, the original set for the second act of "Giselle" was quite different, much more elaborate, than what we're used to. Trap doors, moonlit ponds, fronds everywhere. Not to forget the gaslight and its blue ghostly glow. Perhaps there were more houses in the village -- or at least indications of houses -- so that you're not looking at an early version of urban renewal.

There are lots of flowers in "Giselle." It's one of the motifs. And there are differences from production to production. Among them: 1. In act one, does Giselle pluck one or two flowers in productions you've seen? What's the difference? 2. What is the significance of the lillies in the second act? 3. What is Myrtha's relationship to the local flora? (The lillies in ABT's production are now so large and so plastic that you hear them hit the ground, and they would have killed any fairy folk hiding under the leaves. They're lethal missiles. )

Now THAT'S an interesting point, Cygne Danois. One of the Danish stories is that there was a ballet -- it may have been "Giselle" -- that was not allowed because the Crown Prince kept a mistress and everybody knew it, but it wasn't allowed to be shown on stage. I think they couldn't have shown that Giselle was not a virgin, but I think it may have been left to your imagination.

No! [good could come out of that; YES! to your thoughts ) Add to this the pressure from critics, and perhaps others -- administration, audience -- to do something new. "We don't want that same old production." Updating productions is problematical. One of the best/worst examples is the Royal Ballet's "Sleeping Beauty." The Oliver Messel production lasted 20 years; it was beloved. By the 1960s, however, the designs seemed a bit fussy, and there was a sense that the production needed to be refreshed. There have been three? Four? productions since, and none have been as generally satisfactory as the Messel. But the Messel wouldn't have survived 55 years. On Drew's point about "Birth of a Nation," I finally saw that, on video, a few years ago. I was raised as a Confederate, taken to "Gone with the Wind" the way another child would be taken to a Passion Play, and my aunt had been in the audience the first year of "Birth of a Nation," where Confederate soldiers shot up the screen during that KKK sequence. I also admire Griffith as a filmmaker. I'm glad I saw it, I don't want it to be burned (and I know Drew wasn't suggesting that), but I found it so stereotypical and so dated in every way -- camera, acting, script -- that I had to work very hard to try to realize why it had been considered great. To me, that's an argument for keeping something that becomes considered repugnant. Otherwise, it could grow in legend -- the great lost work of art, etc. I think one has to trust history. On the Chinese dance, anything can bear more research, but I wonder if an inauthentic dance could have survived the Cultural Revolution, when the Chinese examined their art very thoroughly and purged anything impure? I think Drew's point that something that could be authentic could become a stereotype is a good one, and it raises another sticky question. If the Outsider appropriates something and turns it into a cliche, does this force the Insider to change it? I don't think 19th century choreographers used folk dance and folk traditions of other countries to mock those countries. It was partly a result of their great curiosity about how other people lived -- and they weren't always superior. Bournonville's letters home to his wife about what he was seeing in Naples are full of admiration; he was entranced by those people. His point of view is of a Dane -- he'll say "us" and "them" -- but there's no condescension. I think 19th century choreographers would use, say, a Mexican hat dance to "represent" Mexicans because they had to have something that was instantly recognizable to their audiences. Eventually, the only Mexican you'd see in a ballet (I'm making this up; I don't know of any Mexican hat dances in a 19th cenury ballet) would do a hat dance. I wouldn't consider this offensive, because I give great weight to intent, but others care much more about results.

I've read it too, but so long ago and so often I can't cite a source. I do think it was in all rural communities -- not that that would have much to do with the libretto of "Giselle," as these were middle-class fantasy peasants. (In Denmark there's a saying, "The first child can take any time, the second one takes nine months.") I read a short story once -- popular fiction in a book on Victorian pornography -- that reminded me of Albrecht. (Albrecht, Le Cad would have exercised droit de seigneur, I think.) A young scion of the upper classes, down from Oxford for the holidays, was walking through the countryside, saw a girl he liked, and had her. When it was over, she cried. He was stunned. "It never occurred to me they had feelings," he wrote, "they" meaning country folk, not females. Changed his life. (I vote for Giselle being a virgin. Even peasant girls are virgins at some point.)

I hope nothing I said was taken as being in favor of racial-casting -- I agree totally, Dance Fan. Once upon a time, ABT put two black dancers in Chocolate in Baryshnikov's "The Nutcracker." I never knew whether it was by accident or design, but I thought it unfortunate, let's say. (That production also had a Blackamoor doll which I do not believe was in the original Nutcracker, and I don't see any reason to introduce a stereotype that may have once been used innocently into a contemporary production.) We're in an age where everything is being examined (a good thing, on balance, I think) and therefore people are perhaps more aware, and more sensitive, to certain issues and it's difficult to know what will offend someone and what will not. I was talking to some people today who had been at the weekend performances of "Giselle" here, who told me they'd overheard comments at intermission about the Christian symbolism in "Giselle," that it was offensive. (I don't know whether these were offended Christians or offended non-Christians.) This is perhaps a good example. I would argue that the Christian symbolism is so integral to the ballet that it could not be excised. (Likewise, the Blackamoor in Petrouchka, and all the ethnic characters in "Whims of Cupid.") One of Drew's points that I forgot to mention was about that Blackamoor. I don't know how one would deal with that -- would program notes be adequate? Or preview and review pieces in the press? Is it necessary to have a disclaimer, as sometimes appears on Mafia films? (And on PBS specials during the Bicentennial, I remember seeing: NOTE: there are no black or female representatives at the Continental Congress because in those times....) I wonder if one of the results of the "it offends me" problem -- and I do not mean to disparage those feelings in any way -- is that we will go back to a literate elite who have the knowledge to appreciate such works in context and The Rest of Us, those who don't. Back to Dance Fan's question: could we perhaps reach a time when it WOULD be appropriate to cast a Chinese dancer in the Chinese dance in Nutcracker not because he was Chinese, but because he had a technical requirement for the role? (I just remember that Joffrey used to cast Christian Holder as the Blackamoor when it did Petrouchka; the 1970s way of getting around blackface.)

It's a good question. It's my understanding (and someone please correct me if this is wrong) that there are two issues: one, royalties and the other permission to perform. I would imagine that, if Ms. LeClercq had held permission-granting authority, that would revert to the Balanchine Trust. BUT it's also my feeling that she didn't; she just got the royalties. Balanchine's will is supposed to be in the newest version of the Taper biography, which I don't have. Does anyone here have that, and, if so, can you add information?

I can't resist a comment on the Chinese dance in Nutcracker, which almost invariably includes people pointing their fingers to the sky and bobbing their heads back and forth. A hideous stereotype perpetrated by Imperialist dogs, or something taken from traditional Chinese dance??? The Central Ballet of China toured this country a few years ago with a Chinese folk story ballet and one of the divertissements included.....a couple who pointed their fingers to the sky and bobbed their heads back and forth. A friend of mine dashed backstage afterwards to ask where this dance came from? Traditional Chinese folk dance, was the answer. Did you like it? Which is only to say that sometimes contemporary meddling in political matters to "set things right" aren't done from a knowledge base. This has been a good discussion (which I hope will continue) and there have been a lot of interesting points raised. There is the problem of the Eye of the Beholder. As long as we, the audience, think of ourselves as a collection of Targeted Groups, it's going to be easy to find insults. If feminist politics were applied to theater, you could get rid of nearly the entire repertory. I wonder if we can get past looking as Shylock merely as a Jew? Reading that play as a teenager, I really only thought of him as -- not even a mean man, but one with a closed heart, which was opened by his daughter's love. The Shylocks I've seen have been so different, it's the actors who've made that character live. I would hope that "The Whims of Cupid" would stay around long enough so that we look at those dancers in blackface gnawing on the arms of those who are not with the same eyes that see the Quaker Dance (sexually repressed hayseeds, the one really intentionally nasty caricature, I think) or the Norwegian Jumping Dance (oh, those cute brainless Norwegians). The latter two no longer "register" on the insult scale. Perhaps in another 100 years, neither will the former? It will all just be a dance from 1787. Doris Day is growing on me as I get older (I'd take it off pointe, too, although I could argue the other side of that coin and say that preconscious changes have become fabric of the cloth and thus should be allowed to stay.) I wanted to pull out one thing that Drew said, "Of course, like most fans I'm more accepting of the changes that HAVE occured than the ones that will occur." I think that's an important point. (Several other people mentioned, too, in effect, just which "Swan Lake" are we changing.) Some changes we don't even know are changes, some changes we do, and recognize as anachronistic -- the Soviet tendency to mock anything royal, for example. My objections to changes are more to the gratuitous "I'm the artistic director and I can do anything I want" kinds of changes, and to those that, IMO, are done without realizing what they're changing (the excision of Benno from Swan Lake being an example). of things that have changed by themselves. In the 18th century, Harlequin was THE big star and his biggest jokes were tripping a) cripples and B) blind men. At some point, these jokes were no longer considered funny by some great mystical consensus and dropped. If one of these had become a repertory staple, would changing the blind man to a bad man be okay? (I would argue yes, because the point is getting a laugh.) I think Leigh's point about it being possible to keep the blackamoor's dance in Night Shadow as part of decadence is a good one also. That, to me, is a change without changing.

And if so, how? This question has come up before in discussion of new productions, and it's usually been centered on productions that add dramatic elements (usually para-Freudian) or change the libretto. In the Giselle discussions, aanother aspect of this, namely, should ballets and/or ballet conventions be adjusted to be more in sync with contemporary sociology or politics. (This wasn't the example, but it's a clear one: Can "Petrouchka" still have its Blackamor, or must that be changed today? The Danes' "Far From Denmark" and "The Whims of Cupid," both with blackface characters whose blackness is essential to the plot, have produced vehement reactions among those who think these ballets should no longer be performed. There have been articles written by feminist academics for the past 20 years on how the entire Balanchine repertory is sexist and we cannot tolerate the strong man/weak female paradigm any longer, that all the 19th century classics, with their paternalistic view of women, are no longer relevant to our times. What do you think about this? (I'm going to stay out of this one this time. I've spoken on it so much that my views are known--I think changes in the name of politics is the dance equivalent of bookburning--but I think it's a question that should be aired.) I hope the people on both sides of this issue will speak out.

There's an article by John Mueller (who was the source of ballet films before the days of video, a political science professor with an interest in the ballet) in Ballet Review long ago with this title. As I remember it (and it was one of the very first ballet articles I read, so I may have blurred the details) he postulated that the reason for Giselle's extreme reaction to Albrecht's betrayal was that she was pregnant (presumably by him.) Now, personally, I don't buy this. I think he felt that the mad scene needed more explanation than "Oh, you cad, I'll now go mad." I don't think it does. Some productions make it clear that Giselle is sexually innocent -- in one that I thought was particularly well thought-out, the attraction for Albrecht is because he's gentlemanly, i.e., blows kisses and doesn't touch her, unlike Hilarion, a more physically demonstrative, rougher fellow. She is supposed to be very young, but I'm not sure what ballet Silesian peasants were doing in those days. It was probably OK to mess around, with the expectation that if a little accident happened, the fellow would marry you or everyone would stone him to death. How long have Giselle and Albrecht known each other? What is the nature of their relationship? Do we need to know?

To hire new dancers and announce a rep -- what will the new artistic director do the first season? It would be a difficult position. And, if s/he decides that an entirely *new* look for the company -- more contemporary, more classical, taller, shorter, etc. -- then there will be more turnover. It's not, IMO, the way to build an institution, but it sure will keep grabbing those headlines. The one unanswered question for me that matter is, why was Holmes let go? I'm not trying to make a case for or against Holmes as a director; I don't know enough to do so. But if the stated goal of the company's management (which, of course, doesn't include its artistic management) is to have more story ballets for its audience and international prestige for whatever reasons it thinks that is necessary, what was Holmes doing wrong? And why have they vacuumed her ballets out of the rep? There's something going on there.

NYCB, Terry. It's in the article (the link to it is in the first post in this thread; the second page of the story has the budgets and number of dancers for several American companies).

Yes, that would be the "happy ending" every tragedy needs (In some contemporary productions, the second act has become a "dream" of Albrecht's, something that made me quite impatient until I figured out, I think, that this was an attempt to provide the sense of resolution and peace that was in the original production.) What Doug quoted from the libretto would indicate that Bathilde is a good person, as forgiving as Giselle. Has she changed, as has Hilarion, in productions you've seen?

Drew, I've seen a lot of the same drawings, but I don't think central European iconography can be equated with all of ballet (especially, since the Dark and Fair discussion started on a different thread as a discussion of Danish ballet) and I don't think the same minds are at work. I would think it highly unlikely that either Hilarion or Von Rothbart were intended to be seen as "villainous Jews." Rothbart was a Baron (not very many of those about) and Hilarion, as a gamekeeper, was highly placed in the village social order. My only point is that I think works of art should be read in the contexts of their time and place, and I'm impatient (as has been evident before ) with layering 20th century [sic] politics or psychology onto earlier works. There's a whole school of feminist theory that would wish "Giselle" off the stage as being a hideous manifestation of sexism (I don't quite understand why, but I'll believe them. I'll still go and see "Giselle."). I don't think it's fair to say that, in this instance, a northern European tradition of dark/fair -- deliberately using it, not an accidental casting -- as a part of storytelling has to be discontinued because of something going on at another time, in another part of Europe. Denmark has its sins, but anti-semiticism is not one of them and I really know of no examples of it in Danish theater art; rather to the contrary. Sorry. This is far from Myrtha's hierarchical ranking, a manifestation of patriarchal societal norms

Yes, thank you, Jane for posting that. The Royal seems to have several young, extremely promising women at the moment -- lucky you I agree with both Jane and Drew -- it's a shame superlatives are tossed around so carelessly. It raises expectations and must put a horrendous pressure on the young recipient (after the glow wears off). It often means that, next year, we'll be reading "whatever happened to," when a very able and promising young dancer should be developing slowly. (I have to say, Jane, that I had a jolt at reading that Kobborg was "too old" for her. I'm sure you're right, but I keep thinking of him as the teenager who was so charming in "Kermesse" in 1992. I think, too, that he, unfortunately, looks a bit older than he is on stage.)

Few would have cared, probably, in the 1840s, but we do. Who is Bathilde? Wronged nice girl, a cold-hearted woman who drove Albrecht into the arms of another, or just a plot device? What happens to her afterwards? (I agree strongly with what Mary posted on another thread, that Bathilde, Flouncer Bitch, as she's now done in ABT's production, is the kind of modernization I could do without. Neumierization or MacMillanization, depending on your point of view, but it's adding drama where none is needed, and it ruins the mad scene.)

Re Myrtha's "ranking," I'd go with the school of thought that says she was a noble in life, and therefore gets to be a noble in death. Perhaps Moyna and Zulma were slightly lesser nobles. I have to put a word in on the Dark/Fair dichotomy, because, at least in ballet, it really doesn't have a thing to do with anti-semitisim. I've looked at hundreds of lithographs from the Romantic era and have never seen a drawing that matches the anti-semitic drawings (cartoons? from popular theater?) that Drew referred to. In the Danish tradition, at any rate, the "dark" came from Italy or Spain and had a more supple way of moving. He or she also represented a livelier lifestyle, one might say, not only more overtly flirtatious, but simply more energetic, hot-tempered, etc. In 19th century Denmark, it was the blond who was melancholic; the dark was merry. As far as "Giselle" goes, I've read the same things as Mme. Hermine -- Hilarion has a red beard. Red beards were the mark of a villain; Von Rothbart (literally, Red Beard) in "Swan Lake." On Leigh's "staging," the "not quite right for us" version would probably work dramatically. That's what's so great about Giselle -- it's so flexible a story. In essence, it's one more retelling of the extremely popular cautionary tale: everyone knows that Sue is meant for Tommy, except Sue, who chafes at the idea that she has to marry that nice, dull boy next door. Enter the Tall Dark Handsome Stranger. She flirts. If she's lucky, she realizes, just in time (perhaps because Tommy caught typhoid) that He is Not The One and returns to her Intended. Albrecht and Bathilde....but perhaps Bathilde deserves her own thread. And she's about to get one [ 04-18-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

I agree. If you have a good reason to fire people, you should be able to defend the action. It's one of the many things that makes this situation so bizarre. Was anyone else surprised that Boston Ballet has the fourth biggest budget of American ballet companies?

I have to say in defense of Lewis Segal, whom I know, he does not, by any means, hate ballet. I don't agree with his article, but it's not driven by hatred.

I wonder if anyone in Russia did them before Lifar? There were huge changes in all the ballets there, too, in the 1930s. One of my best Nureyev memories is of his entrechats in the National Ballet of Canada's production (I think it was Bruhn's). As he continued, his chest and shoulders sagged, yet the legs seemed to beat even faster, conveying quite clearly that his body was enchanted. (I definitely agree about the tendency of some to turn this into a trick and forget about Myrtha.)

Or nothing at all. Around the 1960s (if anyone knows of it earlier, please post) Albrechts began to insert a solo. Nureyev performed 36 entrechat sixes; Baryshnikov crossed the stage twice, on the diagonal, with a series of brises. Which do you like? Or should Albrecht just be (mysteriously) off in the wings. (The question of, if Albrecht can fly off with Giselle into the wings, why doesn't he just get the heck out of there, could perhaps be a different topic.)

Yes, CD. The Nice Old Couple had stepped out -- forget why. It was worked out in the action -- they go offstage, not back into the house.

I don't have Beaumont's book on "Giselle" any more -- I loaned it to a forgetful friend -- but I think that's where I first learned about the "beckoning" gesture. It's not really contradictory. Giselle is a Wili. She is Myrtha's servant. Myrtha's objective is to kill Albrecht. Giselle tries to save him BUT she is under Myrtha's spell. She takes him to the cross -- as several people have pointed out on another thread. This is why the grave has to be in the forest, where the Wilis live, and why Hilarion comes, in a scene now generally cut, to make a cross to put on her grave. Because she died unshriven -- did not receive the last rites, suicide or not -- she could not be buried in the churchyard. I think all of this would have been understood in an instant by the good Catholics of Paris. Giselle gets Albrecht to the cross, which will block Myrtha's power. Myrtha, then, has to get Albrecht away from the cross and orders Giselle to dance. Giselle's dance is supposed to be so seductive (classically speaking) that it lures Albrecht away from the cross, so that Myrtha can get him. It's all very well worked out. Sometimes the dancers aren't told these things, though, and don't tell the story; they just dance it. The first time I saw the "beckoning" was in Alonso's performance in DC, when she was 60. Other ballerinas used a vestigial gesture, at best. The role of Giselle can be extremely complex -- she loves to dance, her "natural feminine instinct" (pagan) is to be seductive, yet her Christianity gives her charity and she wants to forgive Albrecht, because she loves him and he has shown repentance. Very few ballerinas can show that conflict. Fracci did it beautifully. The parts where Giselle dances with Albrecht, I was told too early in my balletgoing to source it, was indeed that she "spelled" him -- gave him a break (not Albrecht the dancer, who, of course, has to work just as hard to partner her, but Albrecht the Albrecht, whose perpetuum mobile is broken by Giselle's own dancing.

Ah, but old habits die hard, and they do everything he tells them. There is a small mime scene in that production that makes it clear that they try to caution him and are completely deferent to him. Also, the village may know that the Nice Old Couple used to work up at the castle, but they don't see Albrecht with him. He goes in to change his clothes when no one is around, and when the hunting party announces its arrival, they tell him, "No, don't come into the house it's dangerous. Go into the woods." So they know what he's doing, rather like the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. The "just ditch the stuff in the woods" solution is simpler, though. Then you have to deal with, how does Hilarion know exactly which rock he hid the sword under, but since all of that happens in the wings and we don't see it, they got away with it.

felursus, when Ashton was director of the Royal Ballet he staged a version (with Karsavina's advice) that restored the original ending. According to David Vaughan's book, it was not successful. I also think that Mary Skeaping's production (which also restored the Wili's fugue) had Bathilde come back at the end. Even though I saw the latter (though not the former) I can't remember it--I counted the other night, and I've seen 24 productions live, several more on video, and then read about a lot of others, and they do tend to blur after awhile. If I'm remembering correctly (and I may not be) I thought that one of the many things I liked about Nureyev's Albrecht was that he didn't reach for the sword to respond to Hilarion's knife -- but, as you said, showed who he was by his nobility of manner.