Alexandra

A few years ago, two friends of mine went to the Dance Collection's video library on a slow day and had a "Don Q" competition, just for fun. They watched all the tapes they could find of the Don Q pas de deux. They said Slavenska won, hands down. Best technique, best aura, most sex appeal, best everything. Always wanted to see her.

The first thread is taking a long time to load, so I'm starting a new one. Welcome, Alymer. It's especially nice to have someone else who's sensitive to style differences! I can't add anything to your post except to second it. It's partly that gossip sells but it's also partly, I think, that in our information age, when it's possible to gather every piece of information, it's difficult to know what to use. Some people, of course, don't find that a problem and tell, or write, everything they know. And some people are afraid they'll be found not to have been thorough enough. Kavanagh may well have been in the latter group. She may have wanted to be conscientious. I also think that the book might be short on the artistic side because David Vaughan's critical biography is so complete it would be hard to better it. None of this makes me either like or admire the book any better, but it does make me understand it. I asked around about the allegations that Ashton orchestrated an anti-MacMillan feeling in New York and couldn't find any substantiation of it among the New Yorkers I talked to who were there at the time. For one thing, Ashton didn't socialize with the NY critics, I'm told. For another, as some of the people I talked to said, "What anti-MacMillan faction?" (There were several New York critics who backed MacMillan for a long time as the best young classical choreographer, while, at the same time, being worried about why the Royal Ballet was beginning to look a bit different.) Alexandra

Thanks, but I doubt I'll have to worry about that! There was an editorial in the other big Copenhagen paper, Berlingske Tidende, so strong and bitter that it almost spat blood a few months ago, actually demanding the resignation of the Board chairman, Niels Jorgen Kaiser (whose term has nearly expired, but who apparently insisted on having a hand in choosing yet another ballet director) and the Theater Chief, Michael Christiansen, whose last job (this is not a joke) was Permanent Undersecretary at the Ministry of Defense. Both men are far too powerful and too well-connected to be affected by anything written in a newspaper. My only intention, to be honest, was so at least there would be a public statement that people were aware of what they had done. Alexandra

Yup. (that's "yes" in slang, Estelle!) [ March 06, 2002, 01:17 AM: Message edited by: alexandra ]

I'm posting a (l-o-n-g) Op-Ed piece I wrote that was published in the Danish newspaper, Politiken, last week (before the announcement of the new director's appointment), because several people who have seen it have said it should appear somewhere in English. So here is "somewhere"! I hope to receive later today an English translation by Politiken of a commentary by their dance critic, Alexander Meinertz, on the same subject and will post that, too. Wanted: A Balletmaster at Kongens Nytorv By Alexandra Tomalonis (Politiken, June 2, 1999) When one looks at the troubles of the Danish Royal Ballet these past seven years, one can lay the blame squarely at two feet: it’s all Hans Beck’s fault. When Beck became the Royal Theatre’s balletmaster at the end of the last century, had he proclaimed himself a choreographer and purged the repertory of the Bournonville ballets, the Royal Danish Ballet today would probably be just another mediocre national ballet company and no one would much care who directed it. But Beck had a broader vision. In one of the most selfless and heroic acts in the history of dance, Beck realized that he was not a choreographer of Bournonville’s stature and that filling the repertory with inferior works would lower the company’s technical and artistic standards. And so he became a conservator. In doing so, he gave his company a great gift, and a great burden: a legacy unequaled in ballet, and one that was as fragile and as crucial to its identity and its fortunes as Cinderella’s glass slipper. Beck restored and revived the Bournonville ballets, prepared classes that would keep the dancers in shape to dance them, and so insured not only that those ballets would survive, but that the Royal Theatre would remain a house for classical dancing. He threw down a gauntlet that few have dared challenge: unless you can choreograph something equal or better, don’t try. Someday, he reasoned, there would be another Bournonville, and when that day came, he wanted to be sure that the company would be ready. Beck’s work as the company’s director is often underappreciated, even ignored, because he was not primarily a choreographer, but “merely” a balletmaster, and the demand for a resident choreographer in Kongens Nytorv since his time (he resigned in 1915) has been shrill and incessant. There have been two in this century: Harald Lander and Flemming Flindt. Neither produced an enduring body of work, though each was immensely popular in his day. Lander ruled the company, and the repertory, with an iron fist. He threw out nearly half the ballets Beck had cherished; ironically, compared to today’s tastes, it was mostly the weighty historical and mythological works that were deemed too ponderous for modern times and disappeared during the 1930s. But the ballets that he spared (nine Bournonville ballets and Beck’s staging of Coppelia) remained the core repertory in the same way Petipa’s did in Russia; the other ballets were nearly all Lander’s own creations. Flemming Flindt’s works were more theater pieces than ballets, and he introduced modern dance to the company, but these works coexisted with both the Bournonville repertory and other classical and neoclassical ballets, and Flindt had first-rate balletmasters on the staff to rehearse them. Beginning with Niels Bjørn Larsen, artistic directors who followed Lander built an interesting repertory of ballets that fit the company’s talents perfectly, such as Carmen, La Sonnambula, Miss Julie, Lilac Garden, Romeo and Juliet, and Onegin. In the past few years, however, it seems the Danish ballet has lost its way. The company doesn’t look like itself any more, visitors to Copenhagen report. Productions of great works have been seriously under par, and many of the new works have neither fit the company’s personality nor measured up to its past. Most alarming to foreigners, the Bournonville repertory seems in danger of being pushed off to the side, consigned to a separate compartment, to be dragged out on special occasions, perhaps, but no longer a living repertory. That is why the ballet world is watching Kongens Nytorv so closely this spring, as the Royal Theatre struggles to find a new director, its fourth in five years. We watch in fascination and terror, much as art lovers would eye a wrecking ball driven by an earnest apprentice lurch across St. Peter’s Square with the Sistine Chapel dead in its sights. Surely the driver knows to be careful. Surely he knows the damage he can do. Surely he’ll make that left turn just in time…but, of course, the administrators of the Royal Theater are no mere apprentices when it comes to choosing ballet directors. The Danish ballet has a curious standing internationally. By virtue of the Bournonville ballets and its history (with Paris Opera and the Maryinsky/Kirov, it’s one of only three 18th century ballet companies with a continuous tradition), the company is ranked at the very top, one of the six or seven greatest in the world. This is an astounding achievement for a company from so small a country. It is often said that when the company is doing what it does best, it is unsurpassed. The company has had a particular genius for taking minor works that are lifeless when danced elsewhere and making them great through performance. Yet there have been those both in and outside the Royal Theatre who have wanted to change the company, apparently thinking that glitter dust is what it will take for the Royal Danish Ballet to attain international standard, as though not realizing that it already has. Unfortunately, often when it tries to make these changes, it goes about it the wrong way, discarding the traditions and the ballets for which it is honored and acquiring more of those to which it is unsuited. Of course, what the international ballet world thinks would be irrelevant if that opinion did not seem to matter so terribly much to the company, but, to put it bluntly, the Royal Danish Ballet will lose its international standing if it persists in emulating what is standard fare in Cleveland. Many of the aspects of “international standard” to which the company and the Theater’s administration are aspiring are really sub-standards. Most ballet companies elsewhere are supermarkets compared to the Danish ballet’s exquisite boutique. They use assembly line methods to produce and stage ballets and, in many cases, seem to be dominated by the marketing department more than any artistic sensibility. Foreign ways are seductive. For the past fifty years, there has been a very vocal segment of the Danish intelligentsia pressing for revisions of the Bournonville repertory along the lines of what has been done to other 19th century ballets elsewhere, suggesting that the ballets should be periodically revived as Shakespeare’s plays and Verdi’s operas have been revived, by transporting them different places and times and adding Freudian undertones to the plots. But ballets are neither plays nor operas, and while novelty has its undeniable charms, changing a ballet -- moving Napoli to Hamburg or adding the odd rape scene to Folk Tale -- would be like painting tears on the Mona Lisa because one is tired of her smile, or cutting those four annoying notes at the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth: not a decorative, surface addition, but an alteration of their essential nature. Ballets are not merely plays with steps in them, but complicated mixtures of steps and gesture, music and drama, architecture and poetry, and tampering with one element without balancing the others is ill-advised. (It’s the choreography of the Bournonville ballets that is so admired outside of Denmark, not just the stories nor the charm of their telling.) Although recent problems at Kongens Nytorv had been artistic rather than administrative in origin, administrators from outside the theater world were brought in to fix them -- which makes about as much sense as hiring plumbers to run the Ministry of Agriculture because of a drought. The New Team seemed to want to make a big splash, and so it hired a star, who brought with him the requisite revised stagings and international ways. But all artists are not cut out to work within the structure of an established institution, and that experiment ended rather quickly. After an interim period, during which careers flagged and ballets deteriorated, the Theatre brought in a director known for having stabilized a company in distress. This may have been ideal for a company that does not have traditions dating from the 18th century, but the Royal Theater is not a place that most outsiders could possibly understand in less than a lifetime, and so the “Help Wanted” sign has gone up again. Incredibly, to outsiders, the same people who’ve blundered so badly twice will have the chance to blunder yet again. This time, those who have lived with ballet at International Standard on a daily basis for some time now hope they will stop looking for a quick fix and select someone who can do the artistic work of the company and can lead it out of its present crisis: a balletmaster, and a Danish balletmaster, at that. The craft of the balletmaster is a complicated one. Imagine an orchestra conductor who must teach each player his part note by note, coach him in phrasing and coloration, then not conduct the concert with the players seated, but arrange their movements to be pleasing to the eye. That is partly what a balletmaster must do in staging ballets. Only a balletmaster leader can reverse the bad, new trends. In companies elsewhere, dancers learn the steps from videos and get little or no coaching in style, or nuance, or characterization. In the Danish tradition, in the tradition of the Danish craftsman, ballets were set by hand. The balletmaster walked into the studio and put up the ballet, not from notation or videos (which began to be used elsewhere only out of necessity, in the absence of artists) but from his memory and experience. He taught the roles to each dancer, and he taught them whole: steps and style, musicality and drama, technique and atmosphere. Casting – the placing of the right dancer in the right role – has been the hallmark of the greatest Danish balletmasters, from Bournonville to Hans Beck, Harald Lander, Hans Brenaa and Henning Kronstam. Incisive casting isn’t choosing the quickest learner or fastest turner, but the person most suited to the role by temperament as well as technique. Danish balletmasters have been especially adept at creating dancers, and Danish dancers, for 50 years, have stood shoulder to shoulder with the very best dancers the world has to offer. The same cannot be said of dancers from, say, Berlin, or Australia. While the drama and opera company directors may be primarily administrators (much like university deans), the balletmaster’s job is primarily that of an artist, and the major problem faced by the Royal Theatre for much of this decade has been the lack of balletmasters of the first rank. As recently as 1985, there were three: Hans Brenaa, Henning Kronstam, and Kirsten Ralov. By the fall of 1993, there were none. Brenaa died in 1988, Kirsten Ralov was eased out a few years later, and Kronstam was maneuvered out of the Theatre in the spring of 1993. Kronstam was the last great Danish balletmaster, and had been the central man in the studios at Kongens Nytorv for nearly thirty years. He has had no successor, and the diminution in the quality of what was seen on stage was evident from the time that he left. When he was there, however, few seemed to realize the value of what he did; it was as though the ballets somehow staged themselves. Recent stagings of Bournonville’s ballets should have put that notion to rest for all time. They have been messy, or watery, or frenetic or, if a ballet is particularly unlucky, a little of each. Some are little more than cartoons. Casting has seemed bizarre: in La Sylphide, for example, young Jameses dance Gurn and old Gurns, James. The “if you can do the steps you get the role” attitude that has spread through the ballet world like Dutch elm disease through the trees at Kongens Nytorv has also reached the Royal Theater. At the Danish Royal Theatre, until the mid-1980s, the man in charge of the company was the balletmaster; or, to put it conversely, the balletmaster was the man in charge. He chose and cast the repertory, taught morning class (the necessary daily practice analogous to that of soccer players and pianists), and oversaw those productions that he did not actually stage himself. Administrative work was delegated, just as it would be in any organization: an assistant did the scheduling, secretaries handled correspondence. While artists may dislike administrative work (something often said about Kronstam, who hated going to meetings or making speeches, and was constitutionally incapable of complimenting naked emperors on their ties), disliking something and being incapable of doing it are very different things. It is a balletmaster who is needed now, someone who can begin the hard work of repairing nearly a decade of damage, and who will, one trusts, bring back to the company those artists still living who can help in the restoration and who can provide young dancers with badly needed models. If there is any hope of continuity, he should be someone who worked with Hans Brenaa and Henning Kronstam and Kirsten Ralov and who learned some of their secrets. What has taken nearly 200 years to build and refine can be destroyed in a fraction of that time. There is a sense of urgency this spring. In another three or four years, nearly every dancer who has worked in any substantive way with a great balletmaster will be gone, and restoration will be all but impossible. The company needs an artist-leader now -- not a clerk, nor a p.r. man, nor a personnel manager, nor a big "name" who will use the company as a colony, nor an absentee landlord dispensing wisdom from afar, but someone who will put the company first, someone who can walk into those studios, clap his hands, and say, "Let's begin working." This time, the Theater cannot say, "But there just wasn't anyone, so what could we do?" The list of candidates has been published, and on it is at least one man, perhaps two, who have every qualification to do what is needed. There is a great fear that the Theater administrators, in their grand and proven wisdom, will not see him. The wrecking ball is geared up, poised for one terrible final blow. Is there no one in Denmark who will stop it?

No apologies necessary, Leigh. My hesitancy about the crossposting was simply because of the bandwidth consumption problem. We have a lot of long, long, long posts and, in web language, that's bandwidth. It's not a problem now; we're not near the limit. If it does become one in the future, I'll let you all know Can't wait for your review of the "Snow Maiden"! Alexandra

Lugo, I also like "Striking a Balance" very much. I kept thinking about it during our Swan Lake period, because one of the things I remember about that book was the British ballerinas talking about "Swan Lake" and how difficult it was. I read it wwhen I first discovered ballet, and before I had seen "Swan Lake," so it was odd, indeed! (Barbara Newman also wrote a biography of Antoinette Sibley, but good luck finding it.) Ruby, it is old, from the mid-'70s, but she did an update a few years ago, with a few new interviews, that was available in paperback. Have you tried the search engine at Barnes and Noble? The books I have listed on the site is rather minimal. The search engine is helpful for research (you don't have to buy anything to use it!), because if you, say, searched for the Taper biography, it will give you other "suggested" searches, like biographies, dance; or Balanchine; or biographies, ballet, etc. Alexandra p.s. They also have a rare books section now, which I found fascinating for browsing. We have a link to that, too.

Please continue posting here. Newcomers, or anyone who has not already answered this question, please tell us how you discovered ballet, either as a dancer or as a watcher (or both, of course!). If you haven't checked the original thread in a few weeks, there are some new posts on it from Savoye, Lauren and Mary which I think are quite interesting, so please go there and read, but come here to post. Thanks, Alexandra

Thanks, Savoye and Lauren, for reviving this thread. I enjoyed reading your stories! Please reply to Mary's question, or add your own "How I discovered ballet stories" on a new thrad. This one is getting too long, so it will be closed.

In theory, I agree with you completely -- that it's dangerous to think you can make a ballet out of any classic, and that there are many subtleties in literature that don't translate. I thought this about Onegin, too, until I saw a performance by the Royal Danish Ballet (six years ago, before they fell apart). The dancers and the direction of it made it seem like a different ballet. I found your comment about irony especially interesting. Irony is a Danish specialty, and perhaps that was the key to it. Onegin (Arne Villumsen) wasn't a cad -- the production had an absolute sense of place and cast -- and Tatania (Heidi Ryom) was bookish and awkward. In the dream scene, they did something I've never seen, and that absolutely made the ballet. You knew it was a dream. It was that simple. It wasn't just First Pas De Deux. Villumsen began it cold and distant, and, as the pas de deux progressed, became increasingly warm and ardent -- he became her dream. The performance made me wonder all the more, is it the dance or the dancers. Can a ballet be mediocre choreographically and great in performance? (The reverse is certainly true.) In this one instance, the answer was yes. Which leads to the next question. If a ballet can seem great in performance, yet mediocre in most performances, who's "fault" is it? Alexandra

Thanks for the video info, Jeannie. I had that one once and somehow managed to lose it! Or at least, it's buried at the bottom of a pile. I had an interesting experience once, when teaching a "dance appreciation course." I showed them Pavlova, Plisetskaya, and Kirkland. Of course, I wanted them to like Pavlova best -- or at least, not to laugh. And I thought they'd like Kirkland best, because she was the most contemporary and was so young. But the one they ADORED was Plisetskaya. Even the baseball boys wanted to see it again. alexandra

I share your comment about lack of good videos of Kirkland. There is the Baryshnikov at Wolf Trap, though. Isn't that in commercial release? Or was that only if you taped it? There is a "Theme and Variations" from Live from Lincoln Center, but not in commercial release. Kirkland's was the the second Sylph that I saw (the first was Gregory, at her tallest and most clunky) and she's still my favorite ABT sylph. But then I went to Denmark and saw Lis Jeppesen. alexandra

Mary, Van Hamel DID do the Lilac Fairy, and she was wonderful. (In the short-lived Messel production.) But I liked her Aurora better, I think. When she hit her mid-'30s, I got the sense that she stopped competing and started enjoying dancing. Some of her performances with Patrick Bissell -- her Kitri and her Aurora -- were very mellow (I mean that in a good way. Not that she grew lazy.) When I finally met her to do a brief interview, I was amazed at how small she is. She was one who was always getting criticized for being overweight, or at least looking too large on stage (never bothered me). alexandra

I can't answer on Guerin; hope someone else can. The only ones I've ever seen are ones a friend taped for me off French TV. But Makhalina is on a video of the Kirov's "Swan Lake," I think, the Vinogradov production. I will refrain from commenting on that production, since you only asked about the dancer! I liked Makhalina very, very much when I first saw her about ten years ago -- Giselle, Lilac Fairy, and Medora in Corsaire. She was all young and fresh and dewy and adorable; wobbly turns, but I didn't care. I liked her less later on. I saw a Tchaikovsky pas de deux that was positively lewd. I offer that comment only to say that if she's hiding on one of those wonderful More Great Nights at the Kirov videos, I hope you see it. alexandra

I've always liked Nichols' dancing, but never understood why so many consider her one of the Great Ones. For me, there has to be more than a pure technique. Some of the things Lillian mentioned have bothered me, too, although I've certainly never dreaded seeing her. I agree with Leigh that she's lyrical and musical, and there are certain moments of performances that thrilled me, but they are small ones. But there's ultimately a lack of polish that separates her from ballerinas like Platel or Guerin or Asylmuratova who, to me, are the great classical ballerinas of the day. Alexandra

We've beaten -- or praised -- poor "Manon" a lot lately, and it seems that there are those who feel that it's one of the great masterpieces of ballet, and those who would still argue that it was second-rate, at best, were it granted the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm curious to know what you all think of Cranko's "Onegin?" It was wildly popular in America when the Stuttgart first brought it in the '60s (and wildly popular in Stuttgart). There was the usual divide among critics here, with Clive Barnes saying it was a masterpiece and that Cranko was a great choreographer, and Arlene Croce practically throwing up in Ballet Review, in one of the most passionate, partly vicious, partly funny assessments of a ballet and a company ever written (in which she coined the phrase "pop ballet" of "Onegin," predicting, direly, that it would be the direction ballet would head.) I missed "Onegin" in its bloom of youth, not seeing it until the late 1970s, and I've always found it very dependent on its cast. I've seen wretched "Onegins," that make Croce's review seem kind, and I've seen very fine ones. I take her point that it's a simplistic retelling of both the poem and the opera, but find the other complaint of anti-Oneginers -- that its structure is too simple, there are no small classical roles (one of the elements that makes a ballet choreographically complex) -- accurate, but not insurmountable. It suited the very young company (many were upset that Cranko had created a work that made his very young company look like a very grand and comparatively established one, i.e., the Royal at that time); we don't know what Cranko would have accomplished had he been able to develop that company had he not died so young. How do we divide over "Onegin" now? A grand, new idea of ballet, or the end of civilization as we know it? Or something in between? alexandra [This message has been edited by alexandra (edited April 23, 1999).]

Please continue to post on Paquita's Dance Books thread -- what books about ballet you particularly enjoy -- here. (Ballet books, of course!) The first thread is v-e-r-y long. Thanks, alexandra

Thanks very much for the update, Mary. I want to see the videos! Actually, I want to own the videos. One small thing. The German film may be the last LeClerq performance filmed, but she danced during the whole Copenhagen season -- whether it was 1 week or 2, I can't say without looking it up. If I remember it correctly, she became ill on the last night. She thought she was coming down with the flu, danced, and then just collapsed in her dressing room. I'm pretty sure it was the last night, because the Danish dancers remembered that they had just gotten back from their first American tour, and many of them attended this performance, because they wanted to see the company. No one could tell anything was wrong. Then they heard the next day that she was very ill, and polio was suspected. So as not to digress from the exhibition, I think it would be fun if everyone who sees it posts here what things they particularly liked, or were new to them. Alexandra

Welcome Nanatchka! I use the questions approach, too, not necessarily a check list, but before I write, I have to be able to answer the question WHY was the performance -- transcendental, terrible, mediocre, almost there but not quite, etc. Until I can answer that/those questions, I can't write. A small correction. I'm not sure Victoria would like to be accused of being a dance critic. The comment to fight off airplane chatter was mine, and I always say "ballet" because I've found that that's the word a lot of people can't deal with (I understand "opera," with a particularly bright smile, will accomplish the same thing). When I've said "dance critic," they think I mean I write about ballroom dancing -- I have no idea why -- and it doesn't seem to deter them a bit. alexandra

Great thread, Paquita -- and great quotes. I'll leave this one for dancers to answer. Alexandra

To Barb -- I think anyone who gets a review that they feel is really unfair has every right to complain (problem is, of course, defining unfair. Some artists apparently feel that anything short of a total rave is unfair. In my experience, especially with choreographers, many artists genuinely feel that if you understood them, you'd recognize their greatness. Ergo, if you don't recognize their greatness, it's becauase you don't understand them). The situation I was thinking of was one where a director would call an editor and basically say he/she didn't like the review, more postive coverage was needed, please don't send that person again, and I'm sure you'll be able to find someone more suited. If I were the editor, I'd listen; if I thought there were any justification for the complaint, I'd talk to the critic -- I'm presuming I'd only send a critic whose judgment and ethics I respected. But I wouldn't give in to bullying. I agree; I'd hang up. Not sure they're nuts, just used to getting their way. Leigh, DC is actually a very small dance town with a strange situation as far as critics go. The Post considers itself a national paper, and therefore gives very little regional coverage -- regional, in the sense of Local Boy Makes Good. In a smaller city, a kid going off to a competition or a company making its first overseas tour is Big News. At the Post, it's no big deal (even when they had an arts editor who actually liked dance). The smaller companies here put enormous pressure on critics to cover them, letting them know that a grant application is in the works, etc. and obviously expect boosterism. What kills my humanitarian instincts is the use to which such reviews are put. What is a well-intentioned, "Not bad for a first show" review becomes WASHINGTON POST HAILS DANCER X AS THE MOST PROMISING YOUNG CHOREOGRAPHER IN THE WORLD. My rule is tell the truth, be kind, let the audience have some idea of whether they'd like the performance, and keep an eye out for the really truly most promising young choreographer (or dancer) in the world. Alexandra

Without knowing any of the facts of the matter, I'd say it's Gelsey blaming everyone else. But there was this passage in Joe Mazo's book ("Dance is a Contact Sport") -- think I remember this right -- where Robbins had John Clifford slide her along with her leg extended and things did not go well. So maybe that's confirmation of a sorts. (Couldn't find the passage again; Kirkland, Gelsey, leg slide, did not make it into the index) alexandra

Ouch, Barb! That's appalling -- and I believe it happened. Unfortunately, newspapers can dub anyone a "critic." In the Large Metropolitan Area where I reside, a Major Metropolitan Daily, which shall remain nameless, started using writers whose experience was in writing rock music reviews. Not all of them, shall we say, worked out. An editor reportedly suggested getting "one of those guys that does plays for us." Dance gets no respect -- especially, in this case, the local modern dance companies. They think ballet needs some sort of expertise because the steps have French names, but dance in general -- anybody can review it. So think what it must be like in smaller cities. I hope in the case that you cited, the company involved raised Hell. There have also been cases when a critic leaves a performance early and trusts that Boris Boriosov and our old friend Betsy Bloomer really did star in Finale. (I've done this; I've seen Finale 9 times. The big news that night was the premiere. There's a deadline. If I make it back to the paper by 10:00, I can get the copy in by 10:45 and it will actually get in the edition that everybody sees.) But what you can't do is write that "Boriosov and Bloomer, the two most boring dancers on the face of the planet, gave us, once again, their slack, insipid, and altogether stupifying "Finale."" Because what happens if Boris stubbed his toe, and two other dancers substituted? And danced magnificently? Someone may notice. (Actually, this happened in a West Coast city, big paper, a few years ago. The company complained; the critic was fired. And should have been.) Now I've got an ethics question for all of you. What do you think of a ballet company -- an established, though not Huge and Great ballet company -- whose director complains to editors when they don't get a good review and suggests that this critic not be used, or that critic should be used? Fair play? Or over the line. Should the editor hang up the phone, or listen? Alexandra

Oh, dear. I was thinking particularly of what she said about Aurora, how she (Bussell/Aurora) in the third act was trying to tell the story of how "Aurora gets her man" but she had to bother with those silly steps that got in the way of the story. "Sleeping Beauty" isn't a love story, it's about dynasty. (My absolutely favorite Sleeping B quote is from Danilova: "Princess must be little bit snitty." Aurora hasn't "gotten her man." She's dancing at a formal court wedding with her predestined consort. I meant that kind of thing. Several reviewers have pointed this out; I mentioned it because I couldn't let a new generation of Auroras look at the ballet that way without a caution. Alexandra p.s. Juliet throwing up isn't a very classical attitude, either, although that is a matter of opinion, rather of fact. In my opinion, "classical" ballet isn't supposed to be realistic. There's an artifice, a distance, an objectivity. If MacMillan wanted them to worry about whether they'd vomit the sleeping potient, it's his ballet and he can do it. But Aurora doesn't get her man.

Hi, pdance. I'm really glad to hear from you. I was afraid that Gelsey's book had really turned you off of all things ballet! Both you and Sezza have, I think, a very mature attitude towards the dancer and her book. I think that somewhere else, you (pdance) had asked about Darcey Bussell's book? I've found it for you. It's called "Life in Dance," by Darcey Bussell. The publisher is CenturyTa London publisher, but I'm sure it will be available over here. If not, and it's not in your library, you could ask someone to try David Leonard's site, dance books, at www.dancebooks.co.uk . I think she's had a simpler life (but don't take everything she says about her roles as Gospel). Alexandra P.S. If anyone else wants to answer this post, or talk more about Gelsey Kirkland, could you PLEASE START A NEW THREAD? THANKS.