Alexandra

Thanks for the Swedish, Pamela. In Danish, I think it's tilykke

It's a pleasure to be able to post this press release, not only because Leigh Witchel has won such a prestigious award, but because this year, a Guggenheim went to a BALLET choreographer. -------------------------------- Dance as Ever, Inc. 36 West 44th Street, 707 New York, NY 10036 Email: dae@panix.com http://members.aol.com/dnceasever For Immediate Release Date: April 13, 2001 Leigh Witchel recipient of 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship New York, New York: Dance as Ever is honored to announce that Dance as Ever's founder and choreographer, Leigh Witchel has been named a 2001 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. The Fellowship in choreography is to support Mr. Witchel's work over the next year. Previous recipients of this award have included Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor. Mr. Witchel is the first choreographer concentrating in classical ballet to receive this honor in more than a decade. Mr. Witchel began choreographing in 1987 and has made over 50 ballets to date. He is a 1998 recipient along with Dance as Ever, Inc. of the Choo-San Goh Award for Choreography and was a 2001 nominee for a CalArts Alpert Award in the Arts. Dance as Ever, founded in 1993 by Mr. Witchel has produced seven concerts in New York City working with dancers from the finest ballet companies in the country, including Charles Askegard and Peter Boal. For more information on the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation: http://www.gf.org [ 04-13-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

I agree that these are troubled waters, and I that we shouldn't speculate about any private matters, or injuries (and I don't mean to imply that there are any in this case). The comments that follow are meant generally, as something to think of when a dancer you've admired suddenly turns into a different person -- or seems to. There is a downside of training dancers more for competition than for a career. I don't mean to raise that as an issue again -- there are people who are for, and people who are against, and both have points. Winning a medal didn't hurt Baryshnikov -- but he wasn't trained specifically to win medals. But. It's possible to take a dancer, find one or two solos that suit him or her, and drill them until they can give a technically solid performance. Some say that you can do this with any professional level dancer if you lock them in a room and keep them turning long enough If this is done at the expense of general training, it may be difficult for the dancer to fit into repertory later. If the dancer is limited in range -- whether because of technical or artistic limitations -- it means that if you put them in roles outside that range, they falter and one wonders, how could that person be a gold medalist? There can also be coaching problems. Some coaches and dancers simply work better together because they're a good fit, some coaches are good at one thing, some at another, etc. If the coach can't figure out how to reach a dancer -- what exactly it is that a dancer needs -- the coaching won't help much. A final thing to consider is that sometimes dancers can become so self-conscious and try to work on so many things at once that everything falls apart. I don't know if that is the problem here, but I'd like to see Herrera have a season where she does roles in which she has enough confidence to relax. One of the most enjoyable things I saw her do was the Tharp "Americans We" a few seasons ago. That's the first thing since Don Q that I've seen her do where she looked happy and relaxed. (I don't mean to suggest that this list is exhaustive and others may be able to add to it, but these are things I've either noticed or have had pointed out to me.) I think, as Jeannie said, things also can just sort themselves out. Erik Bruhn said that he went through a period after working with Volkova where he was conscious -- too conscious -- of technique and lost his natural facility for a time.

I didn't go last night, so I was very glad to read these. The Jewels variation in Beauty has been a mess each night. They look as though they've all learned the roles from different videos in different rooms. Sneds, I agree with you on the decor. They're not only cherubs; they're anorexic cherubs holding up that parachute silk, in a sour apricot mausoleum.

Thanks, leibling. You've seen them recently enough, and in much the same repertory, so I'm glad you posted. What I've long found frustrating about ABT is that you know they're wonderful dancers. (Not that all dancers aren't wonderful....) And I've seen so many careers that, in my eyes, went to waste -- even people who were very successful, like Gregory and Bujones. They didn't have the same career they could have had in a company that was more engaged in developing dancers. Every company has a culture, and I think (this is just a theory, and very much an IMHO ) that perhaps ABT was living from hand to mouth for so long, and got by on scraps and sympathy, that it's become what they do: Put on a show. For such a long time it was so absolutely amazing that the curtain went up, they got lauded for just that. But I heard several people saying, after opening night, that San Francisco Ballet looked better, that it danced Sleeping Beauty better, and that should be a bit of a shock to ABT management.

I agree that this current crop of dancers, anyway, is trained on "music made visible." I hope there can be a transference of "feelings made visible" to other works in ABT rep -- that's not the preserve of modern dance; ballet used to be expressive too I think Stiefel could add more depth to the role -- he did last night, over the opening, and I think that's to be expected. The first night, the dancer is trying to get through it and shading gets added later. I kept wanting him to be more angry, though. (Patrick Corbin was trained at Washington School of Ballet; he was the Nutcracker Prince in WB's "Nutcracker" for several years, starting at age 14. I'd bet a quarter that Lisa Viola will do the Big Bad Wolf dance if the Taylor company does Black Tuesday.) I think the ballet needs more emotional, more experienced, performers to really make its points. Sometimes when modern dancers set works on ballet companies they'll go for the younger dancers because they're not as set in their ways as someone who's 30, but I think it's the youth and inexperience of the dancers that made the ballet seem so shallow opening night. I posted more a more formal review on the main site; link on Links.

Leigh, I'm sure that was the method here (and Taylor isn't the only one who uses it, as I'm sure you know), but I don't know who the "transmitter" was/were. Taylor was here and was at rehearsals (I think he was also at rehearsals in New York). This isn't an unusual way of working. There are other instances of people "working out" choreography on other dancers and then transferring it onto the Intended, whether because of scheduling problems (working out star parts on corps dancers who'll work for free, or off-hours) or other reasons. But they know who the dancers in the final cast will be and make the dance accordingly. It's cleaned, and individualized, later) There was some discussion about Taylor's work for ballet companies at the time of "Airs," which was intended for ABT, and a lot more around the time of "Company B": It's not quite a modern dance, Houston looked better in it than the Taylor Company did, etc., how is it different? Is it just the steps, or the dancers' demeanor and approach, or is the structure more episodic, etc. [ 04-12-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

Just a few notes. I thought Gillian Murphy's "Theme" was beautifully danced--someone will probably come up with a dancer I've forgotten, but I thought it the strongest since Kirkland's, and I don't say that lightly. She was crisp and strong and light, and the pas de deux was lovely. I do agree, though, that she was a bit too detached, too external. I thought she wasn't a good match for Carreno, who seemed off-form to me last night. Bujones is in my eye in this ballet, because I've never seen anyone as powerful (except for a tape of Youskevitch, but that kind of dancing happens now only in Heaven.) I liked Wiles very much in Theme as well, but I'd agree with Victoria that the soloists aren't supposed to stand out. (They're not even soloists, since they don't have solos; they have more to do, but they're supposed to dance as a group). As supporting players, if someone is more noticeable than the others, there's something wrong with the whole. (Part of the reason Wiles is so visible, too, is that she's a good head taller than the rest of the women in the cast.) I thought Wiles' Diamond Fairy was very fine. She's matured a lot in the last year. She seems totally at ease with herself -- her size, her place on stage -- and she danced beautifully, I thought. "Sleeping Beauty" and "Theme," generally seemed slack and sloppy again, and "Beauty" looks very, very unloved. I didn't get any sparks last night from anyone, except Wiles. I did like Dvorovenko and Belosertkovsky (oops, forgot to check the spelling) very much in the adagio. I'd forgotten how much I disliked MacMillan's production of "Sleeping Beauty." It's cynical -- and the sets match it. Sour apricot. Anorexic cherubs. Parachute silk hanging limply from the ceiling. NO COURT. None. The King and Queen wander on -- well, the Queen rather flounced on, but I think she needed to do something to make it look like what was happening had something to do with theater, so it's forgivable. The fairy divertissement is awkward and ungrateful to the dancers -- CyngeD, I like Gomes generally, but that variation was done on a small, speedy man and I don't think he had much chance in it. The Taylor looked much better last night -- proves the importance of out of town tryouts Whether or not one likes it, "Black Tuesday" isn't modern dance and the social dances that form the base of much of the material predate Fosse by several generations. Taylor uses the dances of the 30s as the source, or starting point, for the choreography (rather like Ashton did in the pas de quatre in "Swan Lake;" they're not just social dances, but you can see the Charleston, or the Turkey Trot, and see him rework them.) I think ballet has been denuded of so many of its parts in the past 30 or 40 years that we have gotten used to thinking of "ballet" as just the classical portions, but it also includes classical, demicaractere and character dances. If this isn't ballet, then neither is anything by Fokine or Massine. I think a lot of people might see "Scheherezade" or "Parade" now and think "This isn't ballet," but that would be throwing out several centuries of tradition. Like Morris, Taylor knows the difference between ballet and modern dance, and their pieces for ballet companies are quite different from those for their own companies. This doesn't make them ballet choreographers, and both are on record that they don't want to be called that, but they do make ballets when working with ballet companies. I agree with Juliet about the costumes, the sets, the lighting. Last night, there were some changes in the lighting, especially at the beginning and end, that added needed emphasis. As much as I liked Gomes on opening night, Picone was much stronger, I thought (Gomes was a big bad kid, but Picone was a pimp.) Having Picone in that role gave more meaning to Stiefel's solo at the end and balanced the whole ballet, I thought. On opening night, Stiefel came out of nowhere. The dancers were very good, but there weren't any stars (except for Stiefel). Also, Butler (in the big bad wolf number) seemed so much more confident that she pulled the piece together. I thought it too long opening night, but last night it seemed just right, and it also seemed tighter, punchier -- which made the Stiefel solo more powerful. If there were a stronger personality in the Boulevards of Dreams sequence, I think that would make a big difference. I'd been thinking of "Black Tuesday" in the context of Taylor's work (I've been watching him since 1976, when "Esplanade" was new, and admire his work greatly) but I'd forgotten to think about it in the context of the ABT rep. ABT has had terrible luck in new pieces for nearly 50 years. All the directors have tried. They've tried ballet choreographers, modern dance choreographers, they've come up with very few hits and fewer great works. If this isn't quite "Fancy Free," it's at least on the level of "Leaves are Fading," not Tudor's greatest work, either, but head and shoulders above the rest. (Which doesn't, of course, mean that anyone has to like it ) [ 04-12-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

I did not dislike the Taylor either, and last night it looked better than on at the premiere; it's beginning to jell. I'll put up a review on the main site later today.

Is this Christine Knoblach, formerly National Ballet (I didn't see her, but remember reading the name) and then ABT? Changed her name because Tudor said it meant garlic? She left ABT years ago; haven't heard anything of her since.

Terry, Reyes danced the Diamond Fairy Tuesday night and she didn't leave much impression, on me at least, I'm sorry to say. But I honestly think that wasn't her fault. That whole divertissement looked, to me, as though it had not received much rehearsal. Some of the other soloists looked very carefully coached, but the Jewel people seemed to be floundering a bit. I'll watch for her later in the run. She's scheduled to do Moyna in "Giselle" Saturday matinee. One new person (new to me, anyway) who did make an impression was Stella Abrera as the Lilac Fairy, even though she literally has nothing to do but walk and kneel. I've been looking for Maria Bystrova, too, but she seems pretty deeply buried in the corps. That's what happens when a company comes only for a week and brings two programs -- they can't show off everybody

I don't think anyone said flamenco was modern, Pamela, but that it was, as you said, a folk form that came into theaters in relatively recent times. I think andrei's point about Petipa being angry that people found his dances "inauthentic" is interesting -- I'm sure he would be. He was known as an excellent Spanish dancer. This is probably because different people have an idea of what is "authentic," depending not only on what they've seen, but there they had traveled or lived. [ 04-11-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

BalletNut's missing Christine made me think of another dancing Christine I've been wondering about: Dance Theatre of Harlem's Christine Johnson. I thought she was an excellent dancer, a real classical ballerina, and she's disappeared, at least from DTH. Does anyone know where she is now?

It's always fascinating how different various people's perceptions are -- if we had 60 people, there would probably be 60 different takes on dancers, especially. I was sitting about four rows from Lisa and, to me, Gomes did everything except toss bouquets at the audience I thought his performance was very generous. ABT opening performances here have been shaky for the past several years; they usually settle in later in the week. I always like to think it's lack of rehearsal -- I thought that might have been a problem with "Theme" last night. But one thing that I've been hearing from some people for the past several seasons that didn't really hit me until last night is that, especially in "Theme," ABT is beginning to look more like a Joffrey-style company than ABT used to look -- and I don't mean this as a slur on Joffrey at all. That has always been an eclectic company. A very uniform look wouldn't suit it at all, nor its repertory. But Joffrey isn't trying to dance "the classics." ABT always aimed for a uniform corps -- not clones, but at least close cousins There were always character dancers, and these dancers were well-used in the modern dance or crossover rep. San Francisco has a collection of various heights and girths, but very similar body proportions and Tomasson is giving them a uniform style. I haven't seen as mismatched a corps in the opening "Theme" from ABT before, especially the men.

I don't know, BalletNut, but I'm checking. If I can't find out this afternoon, I'll ask tonight -- ABT is in town.

I wrote a review for the reviews section of the main site; mine would be a wavering thumb, not a thumbs down. Here's the link: http://www.balletalert.com/reviews/r01/ABTTues.html [ 04-11-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

Amy, I don't think that Petipa (or Bournonville's) Spanish dancing is supposed to look like flamenco. I can't speak to Don Q, but I just read something about Bournonville's Spanish dancing that's worth repeating. A critic was defending his Spanish-flavored choreography (La Ventana) against comments she'd heard that it wasn't "authentic flamenco," and said, "at the time Bournonville choreographed this, flamenco hadn't yet emerged from the caves." So perhaps the "ballet Spanish" refers to an earlier form, or more classical Spanish dancing (I believe flamenco is the popular strain?) I'd never thought of Elssler inventing the backbend (or bringing it in to classical performances). I don't mean to say that I think someone else did, just had never thought of its history.

Katharyn, thanks for joining in. I think your "alienation rationalization" is, unfortunately, exactly what drives some of this. I have a real life example, from a modern dance concert, not a ballet one (and a very good one, I thought; a tanzteater piece that wasn't pretentious at all). In the progrma book, our composer, is described: "X is a contemporary composer in the sense that he is living in our times. In the imagination of those who listen to his music, the music is without reference but with roots, without etiquette but with characteristics.. . . .He composes in collaboration with musicians from classical, contemporary, traditional, and ethnic backgrounds, and with them invents and develops new musical techniques to create an imaginary world for the spectator, a sonorous, tri-dimensional sculpture."

The Spring issue of DanceView is at the printers now and I should be mailing it out over the weekend. This is a commercial For those of you who've found us in the last six months or so, this message board was originally intended to be a sort of online letters to the editor for my two publications, DanceView (a quarterly journal founded in 1979) and Ballet Alert! (a bimonthly newsletter founded in 1996). I think the magazines are interesting in themselves, but subscribing to them does help support the site Many of our writers also take the time to post here, for which I am endlessly grateful. Mary Cargill (who reviews NYCB city season in this issue) has been writing for us since 1992 and is on the board of the Dance Critics Association. Mary also writes a New York report in every issue. Leigh Witchel, who is a choreographer as well as a writer, and has an interesting collection of writings on his web site (the link is in his signature line). His contribution this issue is the third in a series of reports on the Balanchine Archive project sessions, where dancers teach and discuss solos or other segments of Balanchine ballets so they can be filmed for posterity. This article is about a solo from a very old (and very lost) ballet, "Reminiscence." Jane Simpson has been our London correspondent for the past three years, and has done commentary and interviews as well (and we hope will do more interviews in the future ) Marc Haegeman, who has also written reviews and interviews for us for the past three years, reviewed the Paris Opera Ballet's "Paquita" and the Kirov Ballet's recent tour to Amsterdam. Some of our regular writers aren't Net People and so don't post here. Rita Felciano, our San Francisco correspondent since 1992, also reviews Pacific Northwest Ballet's "Sleeping Beauty" in this issue. George Jackson, whose interests and specialties range from Romantic Ballet (especially Viennese), German modern dance, Balanchine and Judson Church, has a piece about opera ballets he's seen in several European cities this past year, as well as a report on White Oak's "Past Forward" -- he's one of the few people who's written about it who actually saw Judson regularly in its heyday. Carol Pardo, who often reviews ballet in New York and Paris for us, writes on the Mark Morris season. It's a black and white publication. There's a "round up" report from New York, London and San Francisco in every issue, and Paris as often as we can get it There are no ads, just copy and photos. You can read lots of past articles on the main web site to get a feel for the kinds of things we do. And you can subscribe or renew on line

This is just from memory, but I think David Bintley did a "Swan of Tuonela" ten, fifteen years ago?? Can any of our British posters provide details?

That's an interesting example -- perhaps it didn't occur to them that "foreigners" would be unfamiliar with these images, that obviously struck such deep chords in the original audience. I think I'd be frustrated, too, and wish I'd been given some explanation, but I'd be more bothered if, say, an American dance or ballet company did a ballet using the same material with lots of program notes explaining everything -- of course, it would matter how it were phrased and, again, intent. If it were a Hungarian-American eager to share his heritage, that would be one thing. If it were someone caught by the beauty of the stag and wanted to use that motif visually, that, too, would be fine by me. If, however, someone were going after the Ethnic Group of the Month grant and did a ballet that LOOKED like a story ballet but that no one except a Ph.D. in Hungarian history would have a snowball's chance of decoding, and had program notes along the lines of: "A bush burns in the darkness. Tears. Stars. The moon. History is all. All is history. The stag leaps..." (I'm barely making this up) I'd be tempted to bring out the P word.

Like "beauty," "pretentiousness" is in the eye of the beholder, but I'd be curious how people are defining this. It's something one reads fairly often -- almost always about a ballet or choreographer, almost never about a dancer. I thought I'd raise this, because it's a cousin of Leigh's topic -- how much explanation do you want? Often the charge of pretentiousness is leveled at work that presumes a level of education or familiarity that most of us don't have. Where is the line? For me, it's in intent and naturalness. If someone is genuinely well-educated, and his frame of reference since youth has included the Greek gods, say, or nuclear physics, I don't think it's pretentious to use them in a work, although I think the artist would be wise to explain something in the program notes. But if I sense that an artist is trying to impress me, and is using words he looked up in the dictionary but never really uses, or Greek (or other) Gods that live only in an encyclopoedia for him/her, then I start thinking "pretentious." The word is sometimes used, though (especially by Americans about Europeans) to mean anything with content -- at least, that's how I read it. What do you all think?

I think Jeannie and Drew have both made excellent points -- is it possible for the choreographer to know what percentage of his audience "gets it"? Should he care? In the Taylor example (yes, I know it's not a ballet ), as Drew said, probably a good chunk of Taylor's audience would know the name Edwin Denby and may have even read his work. I had just happened to have read a translation, by a friend, of an article Denby had written about his experiences in Germany (nothing nasty/Nazi ), about gymnastics and German poetry. (My memory is vague. People who really know a lot about Denby may feel free to correct.) "Roses" came here about three months later, so it was fresh in my mind. To attack the question from the choreographer's angle and make it more general, if one were composing a dance in memory of a friend, one might use music beloved by the friend, or even that the friend had said, "Gosh, I'd wish you'd choreographed to that." Putting that information into a program note could put too much emphasis on it, and perhaps the only thing that would be remembered about the ballet was "dedicated to Joe's friend Ed, who just loved the Pizzicata Polka and died in a car crash." Dare I suggest that perhaps the well-informed critic can solve the choreographer's problem, albeit after the audience has seen the piece, by suggesting some meanings That way it's not done with sledgehammer force in the program, but the pretexts for the ballet will make their way into lore. Of course, the critic could have a tin eye and be making the whole thing up, but that's another story.....

Jeannie, I can't give you a cite, but I know I've read in several places that "Les Biches" was considered, at the time, to have been a not-very-veiled, if one was in those circles, ballet about homosexuality, hence "La Garconne." (As was her brother's "Jeux.") You could show a girl pretending to be a boy, but not the reverse, in those days. Sorry, this is off Leigh's topic.

This is a very good question, I think. It's probably impossible to do a dance or ballet worth anything that doesn't contain some references that might be mysterious to a good number of people in the audience. Someone who understands German or Italian will see (and hear) a work to German or Italian choral music that someone ignorant of those languages cannot -- (but was the choreographer reacting to words or sounds?) I'd like to think that a good production of works like "Serenade" or "Esplanade," where there is meaning, and references, though not a literal story, make it easy for the audience to sense what the choreographer is trying to say. But I remember, from the beginning of "Esplanade," the "woman in pants" caused a great deal of furor -- odd, since in the 1970s, nearly all American women wore pants. (One of the theories--not blessed by Taylor--was that she was an unhappy lesbian.) I like Leigh's solution, though it still may not contain enough "clues." I remember another Taylor dance, "Roses," that was subtitled, simply, "For Edwin Denby." Denby had just died. If you knew anything about his background -- his youth in Germany (hence the music), his early career as a poet and a gymnast (hence the gymnastic references in the choreography) -- the work would mean more to you. But writing all that out in a program note ("Note the use of the backward handstand at the most exultant part of the music....") could ruin it. Re the questions of "what does Les Noces mean?" (a perfectly valid question) my very favorite audience comment of all time was when Roland Petit's company brought "Proust" here, and the woman behind me "whispered," loud enough to be heard by half the orchestra, "what's Proust French for?" There was a lot of material about Proust in the program book, but she either didn't know it was there (many people don't realize that there is something in the program book besides the cast list and ads) or didn't have time to read it. Arlene Croce addressed this in an essay about choreography reprinted in "After Images," criticizing MacMillan's "Song of the Earth" for presuming knowledge -- of language (German) and culture (Chinese) -- that it is unlikely his audience had, saying that we were having these "public baths" in the classics without knowing what we were bathing in. One of the reasons that art moved to abstraction, perhaps, is that if you just have three red squares on a black background -- or four dancers dancing pleasing patterns -- nobody has to wonder about what it "means." I, of course, want to know everything -- not necessarily when I'm watching the dance, but certainly afterwards. But I realize that normal people aren't so obsessive So Leigh's question is a good one -- how much information do you want?