Alexandra

I'd agree with much of what Brigit wrote, but I think the point that others were trying to make is that Baryshnikov did this for one particular generation. He wasn't the first (nor was Villella). Alexandra

Nadezhda, if you'd like to post the URLs to those sites, that would be fine. There may be other people here who would be interested in seeing them (including me). Just in general, if anyone ever finds a ballet site that you think would be of general interest, please feel free to post it. Since the whole point of Ballet Alert! is to spread the news about ballet, this would be welcomed. Alexandra

ATM, I agree, but it could be worse. On another site I found a Woman of the Millennium poll. As of last night, Queen Elizabeth I was neck and neck with Oprah Winfrey.

For the millennium, Louis XIV, without whom.... For the century, Diaghilev, because even Balanchine is his child (and the idea of the artistic director who can't actually do anything but holds it all together and is proclaimed a genius dies hard) Ballet of the century. That so depends on where one lives. I think I'd say Fokine's "Les Sylphides." It still presents the image of "ballet" to many people who've never seen it, it gave permission to thousands, if not gazillions, of choreographers to do divertissements rather than story ballets, quickies rather than full-evening extravaganzas, and the first cast (Nijinski, Pavlova, Karsavina -- never can remember the third) -- can't be beat.

I think it's credible. One of our subscribers (unfortunately, one without internet access) called me after he subscribed to introduce himself, and his opening line is, "I saw Nijinsky!" He then went on to say he was about 8 and his mother took him because she thought this was something he should see so he could tell people about it some day. I'll bet DeMille remembered everything she saw at the theater; she had one of those memories.

Ah, Kchessinska. Now *there's* an unbiased observer for you! I love her memoires. They're bursting with raw ego coated with the thinnest veneer of civility. Re DeMille's not noticing Nijinsky, supposedly he often did not dance on the American tours, because of his illness, and they never announced the cast change. So let's hope she saw someone else. On Pavlova's technique, I've often wondered if she wss not, in this respect, like Fonteyn. There are the dancers who shove their techniques in your face, and there are the (much, much rarer) ones who don't have to show you everything they can do in every role. Pavlova, in the few films we have, was definitely someone who "became" the character she was dancing (even if her character was a poppy) and the technique is so much a part of her dancing that it's simply not obvious. When I started reading about ballet (mid-1970s) the two things I read most often about Pavlova set my teeth on edge even then, and they were, "Any girl in the corps de ballet today could dance rings around her" and "She had the most terrible taste. She left Diaghilev because his works were too modern. Can you imagine? She thought the finest choreography ever devised was the grand pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty." Yes. Imagine that.

I'd second dirac's recommendation of Keith Money's book about Pavlova. He writes as though he saw her; there's no sense that this is a "history" book. It's HUGE with, as dirac mentioned, lots and lots of pictures. One thing I learned from the book is a sense of what the repertory was like during Petipa's time from a dancer's point of view. He goes through Pavlova's career, solo by solo, as she was "coming up" and points out why Petipa would have given her this role at this time. How he knows this, I have no idea, but it sounds absolutely credible. I don't know of any websites with material about her, Nadezhda, but you might try doing a search in one of the search engines -- www.yahoo.com, or www.excite.com -- and see what you turn up. (I would say that if DeMille saw Pavlova at the end of her career, I'm not sure her view should be taken as gospel. Most dancers aren't quite at their best in their late 40s, and Pavlova had performed so much, it must have taken its toll. I'm sure people who only saw Nureyev in the last five years of his life have a very different impression from those who saw him as a boy.) Alexandra

I now love that book, but I have to admit that when I first read it, I didn't understand its significance. I remember thinking that it was trying to capitalize on Balanchine's name (I think it was published shortly after his death, but I may be wrong on that). I would hasten to make it clear, if it's not already, that this was a stupid thought! I'd second everything that Paul said, then add, it's a small book, but a big one. Often, you can find out more about an artist from such conversations than you can about a treatise, like "Noverre's Letters." Anybody can say what he wants to do, but in this book, Balanchine is talking about what he believes. It should be required reading for anybody who thinks that Balanchine is only Stravinsky. Alexandra

I found Lillian and rrfan's comments quite interesting (as one who believes that "it's the coaching, stupid!" should hang in every artistic director's office). One reads with increasing frequency from young dancers that there is no coaching there. They're not complaining, just telling it like it is, as they say. We have an interview coming out in Ballet Alert! with a young dancer who, in all innocence, and as a throwaway remark, says, (this is a paraphrase): "We're just told to get out there and do it." Who would have guessed? rrfan, your comment about models is a good one, I think. Dancers can learn from teachers and those who stage the ballets as well as from actively dancing stars (one reads how Danilova and Doubrovska were an influence on their students). Alexandra

Balanchine and arms: I think this is one of the many aspects of Balanchine that's been misinterpreted. It has come to be believed that Balanchine didn't care what the dancers did with their arms, which has morphed into "arms don't matter." But. There have been a passle of interviews in the past five years or so with Balanchine ballerinas about arms. He did care. He worked on arm positions in class. One of the most beautiful lines is from Maria Tallchief: Balanchine would tell her to hold her arms at a very specific angle, so she would be "looking over the balustrade, into the lake." (See the interview with Nancy Reynolds in the Ballet Alert sampler.) There may well have been certain ballets and certain ballerinas where Balanchine did not set specific arm positions -- he gave Farrell in particular a lot of latitude in many things, including musicality. But that doesn't mean that he allowed the arms to flap about, or that he didn't think that the arms were part of the body. Alexandra p.s. Just remembered another one. The wink. ; plus ) I don't know how we could fit this into our rating system, but it's there.

The little red thingies are supposed to be the emoticon for embarrassment. As in, "boy, was my face red." (For those who plan to be embarrassed in the near future, this is made by the : (for the eyes) and the o for the open mouth. Oh, dear. I didn't check this. It's in the faq. But I think that's it. I never commented on Libby's "idea" -- giving the rankings a la skating competitions with smilies and frownies and blushies. I must confess I see real commercial potential there. Maybe we can use it for "Le Corsaire" when it shows on PBS. BTW, for those who wish to show more complex emotions, there's also a big grin -- I think that's the : and the D, i.e., If we ever see a production that is the antithesis of yucky. (Not the worst word one could pick, is it, Nan? Or does it have a hidden meaning of which I'm unaware?) Alexandra [This message has been edited by alexandra (edited October 04, 1999).]

Suzanne, you might want to go to Bruce Marriott's site -- www.ballet.co.uk -- where there is a LOT of discussion about this. Bruce actually typed in the press release from the RAD (which basically says Goff is not credible; I'm being polite). He's also typed in a letter printed in the Dancing Times which -- well, attacks is probably too strong a word, but..... I hope you can read Goff's article in Dance Now (and a letter questioning the sale by Peter Barrett of the Laban Centre). It's very solid. The RAD sounds like a "I've never heard of Monica Lewinsky and besides, she's lying?" response, to me. Alexandra

What Francis said about the RAD could apply to many institutions (hospitals spring to mind) today, I'm afraid -- that they're run by people who have no direct involvement with the art, but a great deal of interest in money. (If anyone is interested in what can happen when These People take over an institution and has the patience for long articles, I refer you to the four-part "Bournonville in Hell" in the Archives (in the Attic) on the main site. It's an account of what happened in Copenhagen when the Bottom Liners took on the Royal Danish Ballet. A very condensed version of this sad tale by the way, appears in the latest edition of the Canadian publication Dance International.) Anyway, for the R.A.D., the next step is obviously to take the untalented who can come up with the fees over those with a gift for teaching but little cash; that should do wonders for the country's teaching cadre. Come to think of it, they could probably make a lot of money actually selling the children over at White Lodge, but perhaps that idea is a bit ahead of its time. Alexandra [This message has been edited by alexandra (edited August 13, 1999).]

Doesn't the "Royal" imply that the RAD has some government protection and is above the commercial fray? That's number one. Secondly, it's part of the Academy's job to insure that the collection was being used, that its own students saw the collection (I don't mean that I think 16-year-olds will curl up with Menestrier, but knowing that it's there and looking at those lithographs and especially knowing about the English books, in this instance, should be part of their education. It is in other places. I mentioned Copenhagen yesterday. I've heard from dancers that this is still done in Russia and in Paris. In Copenhagen and Russia, at least, I know that choreographers consult these materials. Not every day, but when they do a new production of a classic, or even a contemporary work. There are several British ballets that draw on country dance material. Finally, I haven't read Richardson's will, but I do know other people who've donated collections, and part of the process is to be sure that whoever you select actually wants the gift and will take care of it. Usually there are provisions for exactly how the collection is to be stored (under glass, dusted twice a year, etc.) Knowing the time and the morals and ethics of the time that Richardson made his will, I would be very surprised if there was anything but the expectation that this was a gift made in perpetuity, so I'm very much on the "it stinks" side. Libraries, any institutions, really, exist to guard the past for the future. The medieval monks and classical literature is the obvious example, but one of the reasons why libraries (and again, this is not your corner public library) have collections like this one is because they know that people have used it in the past and, some day, they'll use it in the future. I would also note that I've asked several British writers if they knew what this collection contained or if it was available to the public, and they either didn't, or said they thought it was very hard to get access to it. If you keep things locked up in an attic, you can't complain when they're not used. (Hope you don't read this as "catching XXX, Suzanne ; it's not intended that way.) Alexandra

Yes. As a nonlibrarian but lover of books, I find it appalling. Thank you, Juliet. I posted several lengthy quotes from the catalogue on www.ballet.co.uk If you're interested, go to the Update page, click on the link for Postings (if you've never been there). I wasn't sure how much interest there would be here, as it's a British collection. The short, sad story is that Philip Richardson spent literally a lifetime gathering all the books (first editions, of course) in existence on teaching, from the ballet du cour of the 16th century to the early 19th century. The material on British dancing -- country dancing as well as social dancing and classical dancing -- is definitive. Now, why would Richardson, founder of the magazine Dancing Times and one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Dancing, donate such a collection to the RAD, an institution devoted to training classical dancers? Everyone who reads this board will figure that one out very quickly, I'm sure, but the point seems to have eluded one David Watchman (a lovely Dickensian name, under the circumstances), the Chief Executive of the RAD. I have the catalogue. It's not for the likes of us. Except for a very few items, the price tags are in the four and five figures (for individual items). The RAD doesn't give a reason for dumping the collection. The money raised is to go to their scholarship fund. Alexandra

Exactly, Nanatchka. Let them all dance in their underwear! Or, better yet, wear clothes in story ballets and underwear elsewhere. Actually, it occurred to me that this is a wonderful example of a convention that we readily accept. We see the tights and think "dancer" and forget about "costume" (or maybe that's the only way to tell who the star is these days), yet are startled when confronted with a 19th century convention, such as when Lilac wears dancing shoes in a dancing act and walking shoes when she doesn't have a solo. It's all what you're used to. Alexandra

I don't think I've ever seen Giselle pluck both daisies; I have seen the two daisies -- another silly thing, actually. You have a, usually, bare naked flower bed with TWO DAISIES in it. Same in the second act, when Myrtha heads straight for the only two flowers growing out of an otherwise fallow tree limb. Re hats, headgear was part of the costume well into this century -- not just for Albrecht, but for characters generally. They thought of these as story ballets, silly things, and so the dancers dressed like the characters they portray. I don't know when the ballet Princes started "dancing in their underwear," as critics used to write when the practice was still new. I know by the time of Nureyev, hats, wigs and pants were out. Re the reaching for the sword, btw, I could make a case that a real danseur noble doesn't need to go for a sword to show that he's noble; I'd guess that is a later interpolation. Maybe it's optional at the Kirov. Although it sounds like a lot of things are optional -- which is what Kisselgoff was saying. There's no director, there's no one supervising the production. It's a train running on autopilot. Alexandra

Thanks for the specifics, Manhattnik. It sounds as though there isn't any direction, at least of this particular production. That it's a production that's been in repertory so long that nobody thinks about what s/he is doing. I especially liked your contrasting the cutting of Giselle's mother's mime speech about the Wilis with the leaving in of other extraneous mime speeches. (Makarova did something similar in ABT's "Swan Lake" that used to drive me crazy. She wouldn't do the beautiful mime passage of "my mother's tears filled this lake," etc, but kept taking an arabesque and miming "don't shoot the swans" over and over. Except, of course, they weren't swans by that time. This has become "standard" now. There are a couple of things that you mentioned that may be a result of the Kirov's having an alternate version, though. The gesture of Albrecht going for his sword, I have read, is Western tradition, not Russian/Soviet. (In Erik Bruhn's biography, he is quoted as saying he learned that gesture from Igor Youskevitch, at ABT. Whether Youskevitch was the first to perform it, I don't know.) Also, I've seen the double daisy trick before. It can work if it's done well (usually done in the Albrecht the Cad interpretation, as opposed to the Albrecht in Love one). I think the point is that he doesn't believe in peasant superstitions, plucks another daisy to show her that it's the luck of the draw. Well, at least that's the way it looked when Rudi did it. Alexandra

Paul, I think it seems obscure because most of us don't think about what production we're watching; we're there to watch the ballet, which usually means the dancing. To some (definitely me) it matters a great deal which production of the ballet I'm seeing, and how well or ill it has been staged. (When you see "Theme and Variations," you expect to see a principal couple, four demisolist couples, and a corps of twelve couples. You expect certain steps. You expect that the costumes may vary, but will not likely be tank tops and blue jeans. Same for "Giselle," except there are production details -- props, mime, gesture, etc. -- that need to be taken into account as well. To me, this was instinctive; don't know why. The first time I saw "Sleeping Beauty," (Nureyev, National Ballet of Canada) I wanted to know if I was seeing a "real" Sleeping Beauty and was very interested that the reviews pointed out that Nureyev had added several solos for the Prince, and why the Prince hadn't danced them in the first place, and what music he had used, and what had happened to the dances that had once been danced to that music. Maybe because I live in a city that has no home company (pace Washington Ballet), and so didn't "settle in" with any particular production of any particular ballet, I got used to seeing different productions of the same ballet done by different companies, and I definitely think it's the critic's job to know when something has been changed and to point it out and pass a judgment on the effect. Just as a music critic should notice if someone drops the second movement of a Mozart concerto, played on a synthesizer and played backwards, into Beethoven's Fifth, or if an actress decides to juice up Ophelia's part by adding a few lovely lines she penned herself. The state of a production is a reflection of the state of balletmastering in the company -- a situation about which I have posted incessantly, because when something is wrong with a company, or about to go wrong with it, the first cracks show in the balletmastering -- in the rehearsing, in the care of a production, in the way a production is directed. If the action isn't clear in a ballet like "Giselle," that's a problem. For what it's worth, the reports I've gotten on "Giselle" (about a dozen) are split down the middle. Half have admired the young ballerinas, and for some that is quite enough; but half have found the production soggy and boring. I would be very interested to know whether people care about the production -- or, perhaps better, how important it is to you. Do you all think that it doesn't matter? Alexandra

Sean and Barb, what full-length ballets does Pittsburgh perform, and what have you especially liked the Twins in? Pittsburgh Ballet doesn't get much coverage (as you've probably noticed) and so there may be people who don't know much about the company. Alexandra

Thanks, Jeannie, for starting the new thread, and for your comments. Sorry I misread you, Manhattnik. Do you have any details on the missing mime? From what I've been hearing, there's a lot of mime that the old Royal production did not have. (Maybe it's important to know which Royal Ballet production, or at least which decade.) I think I'd vote for a Prince with authority. Alexandra

Maybe it's because I was desperate to learn about British ballet history, but I didn't find Vaughan at all dry, and I liked that he understood the distinction between public and private. I thought he gave a good sense of the man and the artist in any sense that interested me. We obviously have a different sense of dry. Dry, for me, in a biography is Richard Buckle's biography of Nijinsky. I love Buckle's wit in other writings, and I know he was writing a serious, scholarly biography, but I think it could have used a little mustard. Alexandra

Edith, since the library has moved (temporarily) because of renovations, I don't know. New Yorkers! Please help. alexandra

Edith, the video library is open to the public, but you have to book a chunk of time (last time I was there, it was two hours) well in advance, and you have to go there knowing exactly what you want to see, or you'll spend part of that two hours looking in a catalogue to find it. Manhattnik, I don't know if it's open at present. The "party" took place in the good old days when the collection was less crowded. I understand that these days it's jammed with dancers trying to learn their roles from videos. alexandra

Interesting. The one general praise that Julie Kavanaugh's book has been received is that the writing is quite fine.