Alexandra

When I was in college, our film teacher had to write a petition to the State Department to show us "Triumph of the Will." It was banned from schools because it might corrupt us. I think "Olympia" is worth a word because it's a good example of beauty (or bad art, or censorable art) is in the eye of the beholder. I saw that for the first time a year ago, and had read for years about how repugnant it was because of Reifenstahl's obsession with Aryan youth. Putting aside whether it's really a crime to photograph blonds, I was struck, as a woman, watching the ending sequence of the divers, where beautiful body after beautiful body plunges into the water, that she was looking at males as sex objects -- not in a lascivious way, but in the way men have always depicted women. Had a male filmmaker shot the same sequence with a bunch of blonde Esther Williams, I doubt that it would have struck the (male) censors in the same way. I agree with Leigh's point that the money goes to the museum not the artist -- I think most people don't really understand that. I also agree that we have every right to put pressure on museums to be careful what they show. I'd like to have the same amount of pressure put on them to have strong artistic standards -- no, Jane, I don't think that "making you think" is a necessary and sufficient condition of art -- as to appease which special interest group is on their case this week. I think the problem with Giuliani is his attacks are so personal. He hears about something he doesn't like and then wants to ban it, or withhold funding. That presents an odd definition of art, too -- "The Mayor don't like it."

Discussing the article is fine. I wanted to send up a flare, because the last time we discussed arts funding, about two weeks ago, the discussion quickly diverged into a discussion of politics and religion generally, and that's not what this board is for.

I'm a strict constructionist as far as the First Amendment goes. I don't think anecdotes -- what I like, what I don't like, what shocks me, etc. -- are relevant to the discussion. We don't get into detailed political, and certainly not religious, arguments on this board. Further discussions should reference the articles that mussel posted.

What! They've amended the constitution already? Seriously, in addition to the constitutional prohibitions on censorship of freedom of speech and expression, there are very good and practical reasons to avoid it. There's the "who guards the guardians" question. Do we trust politicians to appoint censors? There's the censorship-guarantees-sales question. Censorship controversies give the artwork at their center more press than they could ever get otherwise--which may well encourage people to think, "What could I put with Christ in a bottle to get people really mad?" Finally, as tastes and standards are so variant, supporting censorship -- in arts, politics or religion -- is suicidal, to me. Today, they're after a naked girl Christ. Tomorrow, some idiot thinks that classical ballet is an outmoded, effete entertainment fit for only the depraved. It's too slippery a slope. The individual has the ultimate power. Go to what you like or support, stay away from the rest. And always keep an open eye and an open mind, because yesterday's target of censors is very often tomorrow's great artwork.

Well, there were some awkward moves that probably wouldn't have been choreographed in a Nudie piece. The star of the evening turned out to be an adventurous cockroach, who took center stage and never left it, skittering this way and that. Since there was a lot of floor work (i.e., stretches and somersaults on the floor), this was not an incidental element to the work -- very Cunningham, in a way. The cockroach remained intact for the bows, but it got dicey every now and then. The authorities didn't interfere. The audience understood why it was done, and sympathized.

Yes. I'd forgotten to mention Dauberval. Thanks, Jane. So many of these old ballets passed through the hands of several choreographers -- Paquita was not originally a Petipa ballet == amd often it was the mime and stage business that was kept and the dances that were changed. I hate leaving the impression that Ashton stole an older version and just added the chickens.

This is the kind of thing that would MAKE some artists do something "censorable" just to prove the point! (In D.C., during the Mapplethorpe flap, an earnest young modern dance company decided to perform naked. One mother, accompanied by her two elementary school daughters, walked out, shielding their fascinated eyes. Unfortunately, the dancers hadn't rehearsed the piece naked. . . .)

Yes, thank you, NO7, for taking so much time and care and giving us the details. What was your sense of the audience reaction?

Thanks very much for posting this, Andrei. Do I understand you correctly that you've heard from other people in Russia a much more favorable view?

During the 1950s, that might have been a possibility. The company was still building. It also was a touring company without a home and spent virtually all of its time on the road. Read Charles Payne's book. It explains this point in some detail.

Seems to me we've had this discusison before -- about a year-and-a-half-ago. I hope this time it won't be so acrimonious. "Regional" is currently used in this way in ballet. Theater, opera, orchestra may well be different. Every country has a cultural center. New York is ours. That's part of the reason. The other is the way ballet in America developed, and the self-styled "regional ballet movement." As things stand now, the two national or international companies are in New York -- ABT and NYCB. Not all New York companies are considered national companies -- Feld Ballet or Ballet Tech, Dance Theatre of Harlem, or the Joffrey when it was based in New York. So being based in New York is not synonymous with "national." It is, however, undoubtedly a large part of the reason why Lucia Chase fought with every dollar she had to keep ABT in New York -- to retain that rating. This is a matter of common parlance, the way words are used by people who write about dance. Frequently, with several companies -- San Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, sometimes also Houston and Miami -- I've read "the company has developed so strongly that it can no longer be called regional," which means that it is currently considered "regional." When the definitions change, sentences like that will no longer be written. There's a lot that goes into such a ranking: caliber of dancers, of repertory. Some would say budget; I would not. I'd hate it to develop so that anything over X million dollars is "international," etc. The bottom line is. is the company of interest to audiences and critics outside its local area? Not just for one trip, but for repeat visits. It has to have a varied, unique repertory. There has to be a reason to see it.

Re the "incredible similarities," Ashton never pretended that the mime in Fille was his. One of the points of doing the ballet was to keep what Karsavina remembered, and the fact that she worked with him was completley open. He also worked with Karsavina on "Giselle," but that production, which included the original ending (Bathilde comes into the forest to fetch and forgive), was so harshly panned by the British critics as being old-fashioned that it was quickly dropped. He had choreographed an original peasant pas, which I would love to have seen. ABT did an "after Petipa" version of "Fille" which the Washington Ballet mounted a few years ago. I'm sure it was much more compact than the original.

Lillian, there's a lot about Arova and Bruhn's engagement in John Gruen's biography ("Erik Bruhn, Danseur Noble.")

Terry, I think it's a very appropriate, and interesting, topic for discussion. A lot of it is accident, ill luck and lack of money. Charles Payne's book "American Ballet Theatre" goes through the blow by blow of the early years. They've always been itinerant, and the few times opportunities for a permanent home did not materialize. I don't think it was ever the company's choice -- homeless is better -- except, perhaps, when they were offered the chance to be the resident company at the Kennedy Center in 1970 and (I think) decided they didn't want to be outside New York. I agree, this has had a big influence on the way the company has developed. I'm sure others have more details (or different opinions).

Thanks for posting that, Marc. I just say I didn't find his remarks thought-provoking, but very ordinary. I've read that take on Nutcracker so many times, and they all think they're so original and so modern. Do a Hoffmanesque Nutcracker. Do a Death and Sex Nutcracker. Have Anne Frank as Clara, if you want, or have Timothy McVeigh be Drosselmeyer. But write your own libretto and write your own score.

Thank you very much for posting that, Steve. I always wondered where the "Dame" came from -- never knew it was from Norway. (How a Bulgarian got knighted in Norway. . . .) The obituary doesn't mention that she was a frequent partner of Erik Bruhn's. She was one of the important ballerinas in the 1960s, as she joined some of the Ruth Page tours that took ballet to smaller cities -- a relentless schedule, traveling 300 miles a day, dancing at night in a school auditorium, etc. And she was a mainstay at ABT in the early 1960s. ATM, did you see her dance? I've never seen her, even on film. She was very admired in her day, slightly before the time of super stars, and probably a bit overshadowed by Markova and Alonso at ABT (I think )

All great ideas. We should hire out to Mattel as consultants. Since one of the points of Barbie is that you have to have a different doll for every outfit, rather than one doll with lots of outfits, perhaps Ballerina Barbie will be specially made? The Boobless Barbie, and those hips would have to be lopped off, too. I was given a Barbie, who ended up thrown in a dresser drawer (I hated dolls generally, and really hated this tiny little thing with deformed feet and ghastly hair and, truth to tell, a really snitty little face). I remember really being grossed out, in the language of the time, by her feet. They were cut to fit the high high heel shoes, and the soles of her feet looked like three steps of a staircase. I love the ratty rehearsal clothes idea, though. There was another doll in vogue when I was a child called Poor Pitiful Pearl. Her hair looked like the After photo for lice treatment, she snivelled, and her clothes were in tatters.

Jeannie, thanks very much for such a thorough review!

leibling, I think you should contact their marketing department. They don't know what a gold mine they're sitting on. Barbie Ballet Gold would include, in addition to Nutcracker (the entry-level doll): Swan Lake, Juliet, Agon (with big hair). Now, could there be an Isadora Barbie? Nah. But we could sell lots and lots of costumes. I love the idea of having to buy each Wili separately. A family with three little girls could do it if they each got one for birthdays and Christmas.

Thanks, Francis. I look forward to Dean's post. And if Helice and Jerry are lurking, please descend instantly A friend of mine saw it and was pleasantly surprised by the amount of mime and how well -- and carefully -- it was done. It was so nice to hear of a production that didn't have Aurora running off with the Tutor, or being a symbol of nuclear waste, that I was eager to hear more.

I've been hearing good things about this production. Did any of our Seattlans go? Tell us!

Drew, I think you toed the line perfectly. There are political aspects -- Peter, probably no more and no less at a ballet company that in any other organization -- and it is very difficult to discuss them without getting into specifics, which means gossip. So Drew's post is a model I think it's impossible to come up with a definitive answer to the question, though, because there may well be great artists who, for political reasons, didn't rise to the top -- but, as they didn't rise to the top, we don't know about them. There are the stories of children being rejected by a school -- Pavlova springs to mind -- who go on to do great things, and I think Leigh is dead on when he says that one dancer might not be a good fit with one company, but may have interesting careers with another. There are stories of dancers being set adrift when a new director comes in, supposedly because they were too loyal to the former director -- that's politics, but it's also good management. It's impossible to govern if you have little puddles of sedition here and there. To mod-squad's direct question, the age old casting couch question, there have been examples of this, but some directors have good taste and choose only the finest for their dalliances, and in the cases where they don't, I don't think the "ballerina" has lasted long. It's like the scene in "Citizen Kane." Everybody could tell the girl couldn't sing. It's hard to keep something like that a secret.

CD, "prima ballerina" and "prima ballerina assoluta" are two different things

Back to the question of principal versus soloist, I've found in watching companies that often a promising -- or perhaps aggressively promising -- corps dancer is promoted and then stops developing. Whether this is that the promotion came too early, or the company loses interest, or the director doesn't develop the dancer -- often dancers are supposed to grow up all on their own these days -- I can't say. Sometimes, too, a dancer is absolutely wonderful in their first two or three solo roles. We all get excited -- she'd be perfect in this role, or that one. And then she gets them, and, well, she's not. I agree with Leigh that sometimes it's circumstantial. I saw this happen in Denmark over the last five years, with several dancers who I (and previous administrations, let's say) thought extremely talented -- real ballerinas, principals -- who were benched by a new director in favor of people who were, IMO, far less talented, and less idiosyncratic. To my eye, they were technically adequate and artistically mediocre in every role; you could plop them down anywhere and the show would go on. While the ones who were absolutely transcendent in several roles, but not suited to others, were simply benched. One director liked classical dancers with long lines, the next liked short, thick-thighed jumpers. So they get all the roles, the Long Lines waste away. Then another director comes in who likes Long Lines, and so it goes. I agree with those who said that authority, and the ability to carry a performance -- the ballerina should come out on that stage and the audience should know that they are In The Presence. No guessing, is it the girl in blue or the one in pink -- whoops, I guess it's the one with the crown. CygneDanois, "prima ballerina" and "primo ballerino" (and "premiere danseuse" and "premier danseur") did mean, literally, first female dancer, or first male dancer. In the 18th century, and through at least the first part of the 19th, in Paris you had a number. You were either the premier danseur noble, or second danseur noble, or premier danseur de demicaractere, etc. It wasin your contract. Today, prima ballerina can mean the 16-year-old who just won a Miss Congeniality award and will dance the leasding Candy Cane in a small company's Nutcracker. But I do think, among fans, "prima ballerina" still has the connotation of general.

This is a very interesting question; I'll let others begin the responses. BUT I did want to scoot in and beg everyone to be very careful when discussing dancers' bodies. We can get carried away sometimes; remember that dancers read this board. It's one thing to say "Dancer X didn't have an elegant line or a strong stage presence," but "Dancer Z's bulky leg muscles, pug nose, pronounced overbite and scrawny shoulders kept her in the corps for life," for example, is perhaps not the kindest way to describe someone who is, in addition to being a dancer, also a human being. (I'm sure the first example would not please Dancer X, but I could defend it to Dancer X, her mother, and her personal assistant/hit man.) Thank you! Please discuss! And Terry, check the Archives as well as earlier threads on this and the Dancers -- and probably News, Views and Issues -- Forums for similar topics in the past, as well. [This message has been edited by alexandra (edited February 06, 2001).]