Alexandra

Ilya, I definitely agree with you [shock!] on the over-the-top emotionalism of Giselles. My first Giselle (not one of the great ones) bounded about happily throughout act one, and then Became Mad. There's a performance history aspect of this, I think. The original Giselle, Grisi, killed herself (one opinion is that she did not have the dramatic skills to do a more internal death scene] When Fanny Elssler took over the role, she was a great actress, and basically said, "I don't need a sword." (It was also pointed out that she was a very different, more earthy, kind of dancer than Grisi, and, if she "won" Act I, definitely did not "win" Act II.) But most Giselles after that wanted to be great actresses too, and so we have the heart attack/going mad version. (In the suicide version, she's not really mad, just shocked, and the part where she feels her arms is because the blood is streaming down them. In the mad version, the same gesture is used, but instead of feeling the blood running down her arms, she feels the coldness of death and her body being claimed by the Wilis.) Marc, I know many people who would list Maximova as one of the great Giselles, and I've read her on many lists, too. She was admired, at least in New York and London, precisely because she was such a happy girl, and therefore, the tragedy seemed the more horrible. A performance history note here, too. Until quite recently, Giselle was a demicaractere role in the French and Danish traditions. (In Denmark, their Swanhilda, Margot Lander, did Giselle, but never touched La Sylphide, considered a "classique" role.) The same may have been true in Russia, as Karsavina and Nijinsky were Diaghilev's cast. Perhaps because of Spesitseva (her Western name, Ilya ), with her long, long line, this began to change.

I'm sure Giannina meant to write Patrick. But Giannina, I'm surprised. I thought you were a Makarova Person, 100 percent

I think there are many "perfect" Giselles. Well, if not many, then at least several. Gelsey Kirkland broke your heart, she was so fragile. Carla Fracci looked up to Heaven when those bells sounded at the end of the second act, somehow turned, by her good deeds, from peasant girl to Wili to nun. Makarova never moved me, but I'm in the minority; and her solos in the second act were divine. One of the best Giselles I ever saw was the then-20-year-old Rose Gad in Copenhagen. I've never seen soubresauts like hers. She floated, and made everyone else I've ever seen look like a kangaroo. Lis Jeppesen (also in Copenhagen) was divinely Romantic, halfway between Fonteyn and Fracci. I didn't see them, but Fonteyn, Maximova, Ulanova, Alonso and Markova were perfect Giselles for previous generations. And you couldn't find five more different ballerinas. Alexandra

I don't know if it's still in repertory in Russia, but there is a movie of Dudinskaya and Chabukiani in Laurencia. I saw it years ago at a ballet film festival in D.C. Nureyev staged the pas de six from Laurencia for the Royal in the 1960s. I don't know anything else about its performance history in the West. I'm afraid I don't remember much about the film; it was my first year in ballet. A story about a peasant uprising? Cruel landlords? Anyway, lots and lots of castanets and polka dot dresses and technical FIREWORKS!!!!! Chabukiani is one of the dancers I am very sorry I missed.

Estelle, I made a typo -- more like a "braino" No, the women did come first, just as you described. Before Lifar, I'm told, the men came first (and that was what I meant, that that's the way it should be, as the man always takes the first curtain call, leaving "pride of place" to the ballerina.) A friend told me that Lifar changed it so that he could appear last in the defile, which certainly sounds credible. I liked Pontois, but she was past her prime and it was a performance more of guts than beauty. She was apparently a very pure technician, not at all flashy. But all three of them were sloppy. I saw Atanasoff only in a mime role, in Petit's "Les Rendezvous" where he played Death and he was wonderful. Your description of the up-and-comers is disturbing, but it's the trend everywhere now. It's odd, though, since Bessy is still at the school, because the person who chooses them for the school is really the one who determines body type for these companies.

Estelle, I don't know the names of the students (and I have to say the ballet master, a grown up, was not good). This was a televised gala program from the 1970s, I think. There was a (very sloppy) Etudes with Pontois, Patrice Bart and Cyril Atanassoff, Konservatoriet, the defile (which gave me chills; I'd never seen it. An army of dancers! But the men shouldn't come first ) I think also there was a Paquita with Elisabeth Platel as a teenager in the first solo, if that would help date it. So twenty years ago, before the revival and refreshing of the company's technique. (Now this may have been an off-night, but even as an off-night, the company did not look in good shape.) I would second your comments on Legris, and I hope, Basilio, that you have a chance to see him and other (current) POB men. For me, they are elegance, virtuosity and purity without any "cheapness" or, as Estelle said, confusing dancing with a sports competition.

Basilio, I think you've made a very important point: learning quality comes with time. I didn't mean to bash the SAB students either. Any good school will produce students attuned to its company's own style (although I think "Konservatoriet" showed that these kids needed some remedial strength training that had nothing to do with style ) Just to make the point that often what seems, to a lay audience especially, very easy is often very hard. I saw this several times in Denmark watching rehearsals of Bournonville ballets. Heidi Ryom, who had just done a very nice Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto, was rehearsing the Sylph and after her first solo -- which doesn't look 1/10 as difficult as, say, anything in "Swan Lake" -- she was gasping (never on stage, of course, just in the rehearsal). (Controlling the gasping and facial grimaces must take a lot of practice aside from technique.) I also remember reading a story from the 1960s about people who saw Nureyev in class and were surprised that he never did more than two pirouettes and was obviously concentrating on doing them cleanly, when others in the class were doing as many pirouettes as they could (and sometimes more). I don't mean to hold Nureyev up as a consistent model of quality over quantity but I think he understood the concept. As a young dancer, I think it must be very difficult to listen to the teacher saying "aim for quality" if the boy in the class who goes for quantity gets all the applause and attention and is hailed in the press as the Next Great Whosit? How do you combat that? Or live with that? (This is not just to Basilio of course, but to anyone.)

I did an interview with a dancer this weekend that raised several questions related to several of our discussions here recently. She's a former dancer, actually, Royal Danish Ballet, now about 60 and teaching. She was discussing one of the star dancers there during the 1960s who had a reputation as a virtuoso. She said, "But he wasn't at all a clean dancer. He made everything look so hard, so people thought he was very good. He made terrible faces -- he had picked this up in London -- and whenever he did something difficult, he'd grunt and make faces and the audience would applaud because they thought it looked hard. But [another dancer] would always have the most pleasant look on his face no matter how hard the steps, and make everything look easy." This recalled seeing SAB try to do "Konservatoriet". They weren't trying to trick the audience into thinking they were doing something hard, they WERE doing something hard. Danes say "Konservatoriet" is the hardest of all the Bournonville ballets, though it is based on an 1830s-something Parisian ballet class. But it's extremely rigorous and classical and, thus, it exposes every weakness a dancer has, especially weaknesses of strength. Yet, I've seen Danish teenagers (and a video of Paris Opera teenagers) do the same ballet and make it look so easy that it would be easy to dismiss as "old-fashioned" and not virtuosic. So my question is, in this day of --especially with young male dancers -- doing as many turns as you can and to hell with the music (it was once considered extremely bad taste to continue turning after the music had stopped, as the point of dancing was to express the music), of jumping as high as you can and damn the landing, etc. etc., what is the sense of this board on the question of virtuosity versus grace? (Grace is not yet dead. We've discussed this before, when I've brought up my Bournonvillean "all effort must be concealed under cover of harmonious calm." You need this kind of grace to dance Ashton, I think, but it's not limited to Britons and Danes. Peter Boal at NYCB is this kind of dancer. Yet no one would call him a virtuoso.)

Colwill, if I ever find that program again, I'll be glad to post the Rules. If anyone here is from the Maryland Youth Ballet and still has a program handy, perhaps you could post them? Andrei, three cheers for Russia!!! All sensible rules. A very politically incorrect story. I can either say this company was from a land that we American capitalists in our benighted way feel is a wee bit repressive, or I can say it was a Chinese company that visited DC during the reign of the Gang of Four. Whatever. The preperformance announcement is always given by the visiting company's people. And this was an announcement that would strike terror into the hearts of men. Not just the words, but the tone. It was not your "We ask that patrons please refrain from..." It was "GOOD EVENING. THE TAKING OF PHOTOGRAPHS DURING THIS PERFORMANCE IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN." There were other things that were forbidden, but I was too frightened to hear them. Actually, our audience is very well-trained in this way, from years of sharp-eyed and aggressive ushers who seemed to be on a quota ticketing system One good story about a child, since children have figured so much in this thread. One night at a performance of the Chinese Acrobats of Taiwan (yes, I know it's not a ballet) there was a tiny boy, no more than four. A little Chinese, or Chinese-American, boy dressed in a sailor suit and carrying a teddy bear. I didn't notice him until I was leaving, although he was only two rows behind me, testament to his exemplary behavior. But now he was sobbing as only a very young child can -- forget Lady Capulet and Tybalt, this was Grief. The reason? Because he didn't want it to be over. I will never forget that. It must be the most wonderful compliment anyone ever paid an artist (and these acrobats were artists).

How about latecomers? This varies from theater to theater (the Kennedy Center is merciless, forcing you to stand in the back if you miss the curtain, but others around here are much more lenient). I attended several performances this past season where there was an incessant stream of latecomers, through the entire first piece. Since the theater is pitch black, they can't find their seats, so there's a lot of "Is this Row X?" "No, we're L," as well as "Maude, is that you?" or simply standing in the aisle, and thus blocking the view of everyone in the vicinity, etc. As a viewer, it annoys me. As a critic, it panics me because they just may be blocking the most crucial two or three minutes of the ballet. On printing behavior tips in the program book, one local school-and-company, in its annual Nutcracker program, prints a page, in simple language and large type, of how to behave in the theater. Ten simple rules.

I'll go with coaching. Having roles created for you helps but I think of the Bolshoi dancers who went for more than a decade without a new ballet, yet still there were new stars and interesting personalities. Sonora, I agree with you that the audience can sense when those physical and emotional 'links' from present to past are absent (and I loved the way you phrased that!) but I'm not sure that very inexperienced people could be expected to. In my experience, especially in a time when technique is so dominant and audiences are, in effect, being trained to only look at the athletic element.

Good points, Ari. Many stars can't, or won't, submit to a choreographer, one of the reasons Balanchine generally avoided stars (and caused them a lot of grief when he did work with them, thinking of Erik Bruhn's two unhappy years with the company and Peter Martins' two equally unhappy years sitting at the Ginger Man). However, you gotta give Makarova credit for sticking to her aesthetic guns. In her book (a wonderful one, if you can find it), she also chides Baryshnikov for working with Twyla Tharp, calling him a sell out.

Oh, James, thank you for that comment on Ashton. I'm so happy that someone your age A, knows about Ashton; and B, cares about him. You give me hope for the future. (We have an Ashton Archive on the main site. Go to the magazines section, then DanceView, then the Archives, and then the Ashton Archives. There are about a half-dozen articles there on his ballets.) Back to Balanchine technique, there are several videos now devoted to Balanchine technique. In the UK, the best place to get the rarer ballet vidoes is probably Dance Books, and they have a web site (but I don't know the link offhand). You can also use the Amazon.com link above to browse through their video titles to give you an idea of what is available.)

But Yvonne, she DID have very few roles created on her in the West. The ones dirac mentioned were made for her in Russia before she defected. "Other Dances," "The Blue Angel" and the one by Massine -- I think I remember one by Tetley, too -- is NOT a lot of ballets.

Good to see you again, Nadezhda, and thanks for all those links! I'm going to move this over to the Dancers forum. Maybe your original Pavlova thread was there?

Absolutely, Andrei, and hard work, etc. That's what I meant by "his or her own attitude." Donald, I also think created roles are important, but there have been great dancers who've become great without them.

What does a dancer need to grow (aside from his or her own attitude, of course)? I'd say being cast in the right parts; being coached in those parts by someone who understands the ballets and the dancer; adequate rehearsal time; regular performances. Casting, coaching, rehearsing, dancing.

Great summary, Mel! There's a very good biography of Perrot in English by Ivor Guest -- big, thick, lots of pictures. He makes you really long to see some of Perrot's ballets. They sound very much like Bournonville's, but on a bigger scale (set for much bigger companies and stages), but much of the same detail. I think he staged Giselle in St. Petersburg also? (from memory, didn't look it up)

Good questions, Estelle, and I hope some of our English posters can answer. I'm going to move this to News, Views because I think more people will see it there (and there may be general interest, even among people who won't be able to go, what the programs and the casts are).

Not to the No More Mean to Minkus Society, they're not. If Minkus got the royalties for all the music of his that's played at ballet competitions, he'd be richer than Bill Gates. THEN maybe he'd get some respect.

Thanks very much for the review, Manhattnik. It's always nice when one of our favorites lives up to our expectations Re Belotserkovsky, he only did Siegfried down here because Ethan Stiefel, originally paired with Amanda (blond on bland, IMO) was ill. The difference he made in that ballet was incredible. He made it look like a messy, normal Swan Lake with a weird Von Rothbart, but much more like a standard production. This is OT for Don Q, sorry, but I have to say I've been rather buoyed by the comments on this board from ABT regulars about the production. I was afraid that Belotserkovsky would be considered "old-fashioned" -- he looked like a Prince from 20 years ago, which, in my book, is a good thing. I've yet to hear anyone say that (but feel free to do so, of course, if you do )

Cliff asked on another thread for some book recommendations, and I thought it might be helpful to have a whole thread on this, as I suspect there are a lot of people reading this board, but not posting yet, who may have the same question. Two requests, if I may. One, two or three recommendations for the very best FIRST books someone should read. We've had a few "favorite books" threads, so please gear this one specifically to someone starting out. Second, I thought it might be interesting if people posted the first two or three ballet books they read, and something about them. First, book recommendations for beginners. Victoria recommended Robert Greskovic's "Ballet 101" I think that is an excellent beginner book, and it was written specifically for the adult beginner (although longtimers find interesting things in it as well). I'd also recommend Balanchine's Stories of the Great Ballets, written/compiled by Francis Mason. This has been reissued again; it's available in the Kennedy Center bookstore. It's invaluable for information about different productions of "the classics," but there are also small essays and descriptions about literally hundreds of other ballets and so it's a great book to have around when someone starts talking about "Cakewalk" or "Rodeo" and you don't know what they're talking about. There's also an essay in here by Balanchine that tells you how to look at ballet, and learning from a master is never a bad idea Third, I'd recommend picking up a biography of any dancer who interests you. It might not be someone you've actually seen, but at least someone you've heard about -- Baryshnikov, Nureyev, Farrell. Often reading someone's story and learning about their obsession for ballet, and then the roles they danced, and how they felt about it, etc., can open a very different window on that world, and also whet the appetite to read more. My first books: The first two books I read about ballet were Keith Money's "Margot Fonteyn, the Making of a Legend" and John Gruen's "The World of Ballet." I had gone to the D.C. Public Library and found exactly six books on ballet, none of them appealing (I don't even remember what they were, but they were about things I knew nothing about, and were old and dusty and had no photos). So I went to Brentanos, since this was in the days before Super Stores, and bought the only two books they had, as above. The Fonteyn book fascinated me (Fonteyn was the first ballerina I'd seen). She'd danced so many roles, and, except for "Swan Lake" and "Sleeping Beauty," I'd never heard of any of them. But I returned to this book again and again as I began to go to the ballet and would see a performance that didn't make sense to me, or an interpretation I found unsatisfactory and try to find a photo of Margot in the same role, and I often learned more from the photo about the ballet than I had from the live performance. The Gruen book I found a bit distasteful -- it's a gossip book, interviews with all the major stars of the day (1976) -- but harmless, especially by today's standards. Again, it was a bit like being thrown in at the deep end, because these were stars everyone else knew about talking about their roles, but I learned a lot.

Thanks for that, Mel. I think there was a tradition of mixed arts until fairly recently. We've ended up talking about mixed subscription series as a kind of spin off from the original topic, which was why ballet programming at the Kennedy Center had gone awry. The article has a lot of information about funding, and the balance between pop art and fine art, and repertory selection, etc. If you have a chance, take a look at it and let us know if it raises any questions, or ideas.

I'm just posting to bump this up, hoping to get some people outside of D.C. to read this article before it gets taken offline, and to comment on it. I think there are a lot of issues raised here that apply to ballet programming in almost every city (perhaps not New York, where there's not only a much bigger ballet audience, but more theaters suited to it).

Well, if their idea of "classical ballet" is productions like this, I hope someone is telling the audience what they're seeing Thanks for your review, Estelle, and for you patience in writing in such detail. It sounds, unfortunately, like a production staged by a young man looking for what to do when his technique starts to go who's never given "Giselle" more than a passing thought. Giselle has a father? What possible reason for that, except to be "different"? (The colors, too, may not seem important, but I think Giselle's dress is always blue, not because it's always been blue, but because the color blue was related to hero/heroine, and it was a way of setting her apart.) I think your point about time and music is a good one, too. It's the problem I have with Dance Theatre of Harlem's "Giselle" (which, in some seasons, has been, I think, very well danced). It's grape picking music, not cotton picking music, and when the stage picture clashes with the music, the incongruity interferes with the drama. Probably Mats Ek has had an influence in an unintended way. While his was a real rethinking of the ballet -- from a point of view inside the ballet, as it were, knowing it well and understanding it, and commenting on it -- the after-Ek "Giselles" just take notions and sprinkle them on top of the ballet. (I also loved your observation about Pietragalla's place on the posters.) Alexandra