Alexandra

I gather from the reviews the critics weren't enraptured by "Cleopatra." Have any of our British posters been going? Any reports?

Good topic, Amy. I'm moving it to News, Views (and I fixed the title; it's Bruce Marks' school). I think it's a very good idea to have a school for artistic directors -- in theory. In practice, I fear that it will attract those who are better at the management and, especially, the PR game than at the artistic end. The artists will usually choose the studio over the classroom. This kind of thing is already in practice -- San Francisco Ballet has set up a training program. It is a good idea for artistic directors to know about budgets, of course, but there have been those in the past who managed to learn about them, and other aspects of administration, before they decided they were ready to direct a company. I think Marks is right that a principal dancer suddenly finds himself artistic director, but that's not necessarily the best way to do it. I'd also quibble that Diaghilev was either the greatest director ever -- don't know who would hold that title -- or, more importantly, that he should be the model. I think one of the problem has been that, since 1929, people have been modeling themselves on Diaghlev. He did not direct an institution. He directed a small, personal company. The two are not the same and what works for Diaghilev would not work for New York City Ballet, or ABT. I think much of DeValois's genius was that she saw that. If you want it to last, you don't look to Diaghilev. You look to the Maryinsky.

I can understand being disappointed by Les Presages, Cliff. It's a very different style -- both in content and in technique -- than we're used to now. I'm glad you got to see Lilac Garden!

Paul, nearly all company directors are male (of the major American companies, at least. Women are allowed in at the barely-bigger-than-civic level.) Something a bit more controversial is the orientation and preferences of choreographers and artistic directors. I've been told in interviews by female dancers that they think the fact that most choreographers working today are gay men have something to do with this -- this is not offered as a complaint by them, but an observation: "I can understand why a gay man would want women without breasts or hips, to have boyish bodies." (And of course, there are many gay men who like womanly women -- see Mark Morris's female dancers -- and straight men who prefer boyish gamins.) Demographically, dance critics at the moment are about half and half. The ones with full-time jobs, Kisselgoff excepted, tend to be male. The freelancers and those who write for magazines tend to be women or younger men [please not the "tend to be;" of course, there are exceptions ]. On Kirkland, I agree with CD (in fact, I'd agree with his whole post, although I also think Paul W raised some interesting points). Kirkland wrote many things in that autobiography that are not considered facts -- the one most often cited is that Balanchine tried to force drugs on her in the guise of vitamins. The "I want to see bones" thing is, if it happened, not something that happened every day and, as has been pointed out every time this is raised, Balanchine had many "big" women. Neither Farrell nor von Aroldingen, two of his favorites, is, in any way, one of the chicken bone ballerinas. (I also wondered how in the world Guillem got in the Amazonian category. Good grief. I think it's the many women who do not have Guillem's bone structure and body fat ratio naturally, but try to starve themselves down to it in imitation of her, that are one of the problems today -- and I don't mean to imply that that is Guillem's fault. Cygne, I have heard with my own ears two Danish men, both well over 5 foot 9, complain about one of the Danish women who weighed maybe 125 (about 5 foot 4) and who refused to dance with her unless the direction made her lose weight because she was "too fat to be hoisted around." Last time I saw her, she'd lost the weight all right, barely had the strength to move, had whiter-than-ivory skin stretched over a skeletal face. Nothing that can be blamed on Balanchine, gay choreographers, male (or female) critics, or men in general [This message has been edited by alexandra (edited April 03, 2001).]

I think this is getting into personal preferences of the artist, perhaps, rather than the dark/fair question. I didn't mean to suggest that DeValois thought Shearer "too light in every way" for Swan Lake (partly because of hair color) was because she preferred dark hair, but that there was something buried deep in the cosmic past that matched hair color, bone structure, etc., with different personality types. I'd love to know how cultures outside of Europe deal with "types." There are, of course, heroes and villains everywhere. I saw an Okinawan folk dance troupe last year that depicted two women of "low class" by showing them with extremely awkward hand movements -- that was "bad dancing" to them, and people laughed at them. I don't know if their masks were different -- they weren't to my eye, but it's not an educated eye in this instance.

Doug, I don't have the Souritz, unfortunately (it came out at the beginning of my Personal Poverty period). Question: I've heard/read that Vaganova was the one who persuaded Lunacharsky to allow ballet's continued existence, saying that while before, this great art form had been kept from the Masses by the elites, under the Soviets, there was the opportunity to give the people ballet. Is this apocryphal, or does Vaganova deserve at least as much credit as Lunacharsky for Russian ballet's salvation?

I'm deliberately putting this on Aesthetic Issues in the hopes that we don't dawdle over the rehashes of the Guenther and Keefer cases that are contained in this article, but I wondered if anyone had read the article on Links by Lewis Segal in the L.A. Times that (once again) questions the "right" of classical ballet to demand a particular body type, or proportions (and, by implication, other physical requirements, such as turnout). He compares them to Chinese foot binding, calls them racist, and advises that they be gone in the 21st century. Here's the link: The Shape of Things to Come The premium that classical ballet places on ultra-thinness is an outdated concept and is no longer worth its considerable risks. http://www.latimes.com/news/asection/20010...t000027822.html Comments?

A friend of mine was in Chicago and saw the Joffrey Ballet's latest program, which included Massine's "Les Presages." He thought they did a beautiful job with it -- better than they had when it was new. I wondered if anyone else here had seen that program. Jack? Cliff? Liebs (if your computer is back)?

I did, as well. And the piano version of Tchaikovsky pas de deux sounded strange as well. I only went opening night, and the orchestra may have gotten better, of course.

Don Q probably has the most checkered past of any ballet. Petipa originally made it for the Bolshoi, then set another version for the Maryinsky more suited to court than popular tastes (I think this is where the vision scene went in). Then Gorsky, at the Bolshoi, fiddled with it a great deal to make it more populist. Bits from all versions have gone back and forth over the years -- I'm sure this is a simplified version. I think many of Petipa's ballets were intended to showcase Italian technique, which would have been considered the most advanced technique of its day. Like Twyla, I guess Petipa wanted "the best technique available." Interesting question about whether this had anything to do with convincing the Soviets to allow ballet to continue -- I can't answer that, although someone else may well be able to. On Baryshnikov's verison, it's very streamlined -- or butchered, depending on your point of view -- version. Scenes cut, scenes reordered, a small-scale version of a much longer ballet.

Cliff, I remember the Green Knight, but not that he was associated with nature -- it makes sense. You're righta bout purple and royalty. I think, in fact, there were times when "common people" weren't allowed to wear purple. In Renaissance England, one of the reasons that actors were seen as suspicious and anti-social was that they were free men -- didn't belong to a court nor, I believe, a guild; no one was responsible for them -- and also that sometimes they'd slip out of the theater and into the taverns in costume, and so would be impersonating the nobility, wearing their colors and fabrics. Terry, the ABT dancer was referring to coloring in the sense that you are, I think -- simply that pale faces and hair do not register well on stage. (One of the problems with Amanda McKerrow, I think. She is so pale that she fades and disappears.)

I can't think of a dictionary of mime phrases, although I've read articles about different gestures over the years. I think that Joan Lawson has written about them in some of her books about ballet history. Some are difficult to decode -- I think the sign for "beauty" is not intuitive (encircle the face with the hand), but when Makarova crossed her arms, threw her head back, and dove off the rock, I think it would be hard not to realize that she's saying "I die!!!" And Giselle's Mother's mime scene is clear, at least in its general outlines. During the high tide of Petipa in Russia, I've read that the balletomanes took classes in mime, and also that Petipa tried to make up mime gestures to express some complicated concepts. (Fokine thought this was silly, and tried to eliminate mime, making dancing itself expressive.)

The Danes have wonderful theories of what's suitable for children. Did he tell you the story of Hans Brenaa sending him down to the canteen to get him "a glass of milk from the black cow" (The Danes very strongest beer, beer you can stir with a spoon, it's so thick) when he was a very small boy?

Good question, Sonja. I'm sure they're archived at ballet.co.uk, but I don't know where. Jane Simpson, or any other ballet.co regulars, if you're reading this, do you have any ideas? The first one was the best, I thought, simply because it was the first, and so nobody thought it was April Fool's. It was that the Royal Ballet was going to do an ice show. A very, very tacky ice show. It had photos, and everything!

Yes, Auguste Vestris was Paris Opera. Bournonville's father was a pupil of Noverre, and sent his son to Paris at 15 to study; again a few years later. As for "sharpening skills for picking up combinations quickly," that wasn't the purpose of the school. It was to learn how to do the steps correctly. Children started performing at 13 or 14 -- not just children's parts but, if they were ready, corps parts in the regular repertory -- and they learned other skills there. The most advanced of the children were put in the adult class a year or two early, as well. Something to think about: the entire cast of the original "Etude" was trained through those Bournonville schools.

I can do this one!!! Yes, Bruhn was the product of that old system. However, he had extensive post-Bournonville training, not only with Vera Volkova, but, a bit earlier, in London and New York. The feeling of dancers of that era that I've talked to was that the Schools were fine, but that the teachers weren't especially imaginative. I think that's what Hans Beck had foreseen. He wanted to have a system that would work during lean times, when there weren't inspired teachers. It's better to have a great teacher to inspire you, but in his absence, rote will do. The classes weren't a structured syllabus, but they were put together with different things in mind -- and they weren't Bournonville's classes, but Beck's, done in the very late 19th century. Each enchainement has dancers' names attached to it -- either someone who did the step very well, or someone who hated it. The dancers used to know this, and it was how they kept their history. Tuesday's class was for building strength, I'm told. I don't know the others offhand. Bits of Bournonville's ballets that would have otherwise been lost were saved this way. The dancing school act of Konservatoriet, *his* saving of his teacher, Auguste Vestris's, class, and, I believe, the Flower Festival in Genzano pas de deux. They weren't danced Monday on Monday, etc., at least not in the 1940s. They would do Monday for three or four days until the teacher thought they'd made some progress, and then move on to Tuesday. On a child's birthday, he could name the class to be danced. The thing that would strike today's teachers about the system that's crazy, but that worked, was that until the 1930s, everybody, children and adults (from six to 70) were in class together. The youngest in the back rows. You copied the kid in front of you, and he or she had to turn around and help you. If you survived, you made it to the front row. This went out sometime in the 30s (I don't know when exactly) but the system was transferred to the children's classes. When Bruhn was a child, there were only two, boys and girls mixed: 6-10 and 11-15. When Volkova came in the 1950s, a third class was added. Then there were aspirant (literally, apprentice) classes for 16 and 17 year olds, and a mime class where they learned the entire Bournonville repertory, role by role. THAT is how that repertory lasted so long. This system produced a world-class male dancer every two or three years for decades, despite lack of great teaching. I'm not sure I can get them in order, but, roughly, Frank Schaufuss (Peter's father), Stanley Williams, Fredbjorn Bjornsson, Paul Gnatt, Erik Bruhn, Anker Orskov (died young), Henning Kronstam, Flemming Flindt, Niels Kehlet. All of them from Copenhagen! So they were doing something right. Glad you went to the seminar. Please post more about it, Amy.

Thanks for posting that, Steve. Denise Dabrowski is a subscriber, and one Christmas sent me her company's program book. I was struck by the photos -- I thought they looked like an interesting company. We did a photo spread on them in Ballet Alert! It's a half-student, half-professional mix, but, just from the photos, I thought the dancers looked, as you said, very well coached and serious about what they were doing. If all communities had a company like this, ballet would be in much better shape.

You remember correctly, Mme. Hermine. Also Don Q and Odette. As late as 1977, a young ABT soloist told me in an interview, quite seriously, that she thought she was getting better roles than some of the people her own age (blondes) because "it's easier if you have dark hair." felursus, the dark/fair imagery predates Hollywood by several thousand years; they're using it (in a coarse form), but they didn't invent it. As for the dark couple/fair couple in Midsummer, that's a storytelling device, I think. It's easy for the audience to realize that the two couples have been split up -- dark with fair, fair with dark -- and when they get back together everything is back in order.

To me, good miming is clear and simple and (this is the Bournonville tradition) comes from within. Bournonville mime is more conversational; he believed it was dancing -- "pantomime is the dance of the turned-in feet" -- and when it's staged and danced properly, the mime looks like dancing. To me, "bad" miming is when it's just the gestures without the feeling, when it isn't clear, when the dancer overacts and becomes cartoonlike, when you know the character has been put on like a suit.

Since there was some interest in the employ discussion, I thought I'd raise some other aspects of ballet (and European theater generally) that are becoming buried. One is the question of Dark and Fair -- that some roles are suited to blonds and others to brunettes. As recently as the 1960s, some blondes wore a black wig to dance Odette/Odile. Moira Shearer wrote that DeValois wouldn't let her do the role "because I was too light in every way." In Denmark, where dark and fair is buried deep in the culture, there's obviously a Nordic skew to the subject: Italians were dark, Danes were fair. But within the Danish repertory, too, there were divisions. Junker Ove is the Blond Youth, James, more troubled, was considered a dark role (although blonds danced it, and the two greatest Junker Ove's were dark, so it's a matter of personality as much as coloring); trolls recognize each other because they have red hair (red was evil, a hangover from the Vikings, in other cultures; Von Rothbart has a red beard; in Scotland, if the first person who crosses your threshold on the New Year is a redhead, you'll have bad luck for a year). Another thing that used to enrich ballet -- and make it easy to do storytelling -- was color symbolism. Past audiences "read" colors. Eight maidens in green come on, and that's Youth. White, of course, is innocence. (We still have the cowboy with the white hat and the black hat.) But there was also the Blue Knight. I first noticed this in Smakov's book, "The Great Russian Dancers," where he wrote that Gerdt was "Petipa's Blue Knight," and then I found the same phrase in Danish dance criticism of the 1950s. "The beautiful blue couple" -- this was the color of heroes, I think it's why Giselle still wears blue, even when the rest of the village is decked out in their autumnal finery. Does anyone else have pieces of this puzzle? (I hope this does not detour into a discussion of political correctness. Ballet was born in Europe, and these concepts grew up long before the people who used them had any idea that there were places in the world where there weren't blonds.)

I was watching a video of Nureyev the other day and, despite how much he said he hated mime when a young dancer, by the time I saw him, he had come to terms with it. I thought he mimed beautifully -- clearly, and the hands themselves were beautiful. I "learned" the basic mime gestures from him. He could put the intent into the gestures, and I always knew what he meant. Who are the great mimes you have seen? Whether in strict character roles (Coppelius) or, as I'm remembering Nureyev, in the classics?

Yes, this is Bruce Marriott's annual April Fools Joke. I always fall for it, too, especially with the offficial insignia down the side. Sorry, Drew, but I don't think it was at all nasty. Manhattnik, there's already been some PC dance criticism in Britain. One critic last year quite seriously complained about "La Fille Mal Gardee" -- mocked the retarded and rural folk, as well (memory fades) as some displeasure at the animals. [This message has been edited by alexandra (edited April 01, 2001).]

I was trying to be kind, mbjerk It wasn't a full orchestra, I think? More a mini-orchestra. It seemed to me the conductor was ignoring the dancers. The Bach sounded exactly the same for Barocco as it did for Esplanade! What did you think of Pillar? (Or the rest of the program, of course.) There are about ten Washingtonians on the board -- didn't anyone else go?

I saw this on the ballet.co forum when I was over there checking out the animal rights flap. Thought it might be of interest. http://www.danze.co.uk/dcforum/happening/1505.html As a related topic, can anyone think up a good James Bond ballet? Think of it. Sex, violence and special effects. This should be his moment, balletically speaking.

I can't bear to type a recap. See for yourselves. http://www.danze.co.uk/dcforum/news/768.html#1