cargill

Well, I see one promising development--no jester! There is also a Russian dance, which is nice, because I love that music. No mazurka, which is too bad, but after seening the Kirov's version, no one can match it, and half-done mazurkas are very dull. There are a couple of oddities, though--the ball room scene now lists can-can dancers and gentleman patrons, and ballerinas and waiters. Can it have turned into Merry Widow?

I think one of the problems with the story of Raymonda--and in a way Corsaire, too, though it certainly has plenty of plot--is that it lacks some sort of otherworldy dimension. In a way it isn't abstract enough. These are basically real people (except the White Lady, and she always seems somewhat of an odd ball), and real people don't move like Petipa dancers. Whereas in Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Bayadere, et al., there is a mixture of real and otherworldly. There isn't really a moral dimension to Raymonda, either, which makes the ending of Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake so powerful. There is real good and evil, Siegfried has to make a choice (at least he thinks so, but really he is in control of outside forces, but there is real evil there, at least in the original). That is not to say that Raymonda isn't worth doing, I loved it and have been dreaming in lovely pastel shades for the past few days, but it is not a great, coherent work of art, like Sleeping Beauty. But then very few things are.

I don't know if you know this already, but there is going to be a Balanchine conference in St. Petersburg the weekend of June 5th. It is being arranged by the Balanchine Foundation here, and several Russian and American speakers will be there--I don't know anything about tickets (since I am not going!), but from what I hear, it should be very interesting. There will be films, too.

I don't think it is a case of right and wrong, I think it is more a case of individual taste. I love seeing a perfect 90 degree arabesque, and find the flinging leg up to as high as I can get it undisciplined. The super flexible back that some of the Russians have, too, I find somewhat distracting, more suited to gymnastics. But I know I am probably in the minority.

Anita Finkle's magazine had a long article on the early history of Dances at a Gathering, which is the best description I know of who danced what. If you like, I can photocopy the article and send it to you.

Well, I happen to love Minkus and Pugni!

I have noticed the same thing too--several years ago I wrote that he danced Oberon like he thought he looked silly in the costume. I think he is so much better in ordinary guy parts.

I'm still trying to grasp Delibes as a minor, academic composer! This reviewer, I expect, will spend a great deal of time in Hell listening to the collected works of Pugni.

I'd travel to Denmark to see Bournonville, that's for sure! Especially Folk Tale and Lifeguards.

I think that maybe what looks like overacting on Stiefel's part might be partly because he was dancing for an audience in an auditorium, not really for TV. Certainly when I have seen him dance it live, he was very very good. And Bottom wasn't Craig Salstein--he was one of the rustics. The Bottom was Julio Bragado-Young. I would love to see Salstein do it, though. It does seem odd that ABT, knowing the work was going to be broadcast, didn't schedule it again, since they must have realized people would be interested in seeing it live.

Actually, I don't think Gomes had been hired by ABT when he went to the POB. I interviewed him a year ago, and he told me that ABT had asked him to join the corps, but that he (his parents, actually) thought it was best to take the POB offer, and that when he finished his year in Paris, he called ABT up and asked if they were still interested. Not that it is very important, since the wonderful thing is that he is with them now!

I thought all in all they did a pretty good job of it. It would have been nice to have had a brief summary of the plot at the beginning, I think, and maybe something brief about Ashton--there were 5 or 10 minutes they could have filled with something besides corporate announcements! The least successful part to me was the corps work--it was either way too far away, or very up close. It was hard to see those gorgeous patterns, and the camera work seemed just a bit jerky, hurling in for closeups in the middle of a musical phrase. But the closeups of the principals I thought worked very well--Ferri is some actress! It was great to see Bottom's dream close up too. What a perfect work it is, and I thought ABT did a very good job with it--if only they were doing it live!

The only problem with the Makarova/Dowell version is that Makarova doesn't do the lake scene mime, which I think is so important for Swan Lake, because it tells Siegfried clearly that he has to swear to love only Odette. If he doesn't know that, then he can hardly be blamed for falling for Odile!

The Cubans did the Gades version when they were here in New York a few months ago, and I thought it was one of the most thrilling and moving pieces I have seen--right up there in mood with Nijinska's Les Noces. If you ever get a chance to see them dance it, I would grab it! It was so perfectly translated into movement, without any of the "words into dance" feeling that some dances from litererary sources have.

If you can find it, I think Cyril Beaumont's A Ballet Called Swan Lake is a very good introduction. It has a very interesting chapter on the swan mythology as well as information about the ballet itself--though it was written long before Freud intervened!

In terms of trying to decide if a dull performance is the dance or the dancers, I think I tend to blame the dance if it is a new piece, I guess because in general it was made for those dancers. But in terms of an older work, I tend to keep in mind what people have written about it. I must say, when I first started seeing City Ballet, I really really didn't get Balanchine, much of it seemed dull and repititous or just plain silly (like the goons in Prodigal Son), but because so many people who knew so much thought it was great, I did try to keep an open mind, and of course, I finally saw the light! It isn't just Balanchine, I knew that Lilac Garden was supposed to be a great ballet, but I first saw it at the Met, with a less than spectacular cast, and thought it was dull dull dull. But I figured that it really couldn't be the ballet, or so many people wouldn't have gone into such extacies about it, and since then, I have seen some wonderful performances.

There was a very interesting article a few years ago about the myth of the British critics disliking/misunderstanding Balanchine when NYCB first visited. I think it was in Ballet Review, but I don't remember off hand. The gist of it was that it was more in Kirstein's mind than in actual fact, and quoted extensively from British critics praising the works in the 1950's. Audience reaction, I think, was somewhat more restrained, but certainly when I lived in England in the early 70's, a constant refrain in the criticism was that the Royal Ballet should be doing more Balanchine, and his works were extensively reviewed--the Stravinsky Festival, for example.

As for Liebeslieder, it is very dependant on casting, and if that isn't perfect, it can seem way way too long, sort of like Dances at a Gathering. (I have always felt that Goldberg was unbelievably tedious, but then maybe I haven't seen the right cast!) I was spoiled by Liebeslieder because I saw it in the mid-80's and, like the old Royal Ballet's version of Dances at a Gathering, it was perfect, and nothing else will ever match it--so much for an open mind! But I can see why people can think it is too long, but that doesn't mean that they don't get it, it just means that there are some dances that are extremely dancer dependant. I suspect the Enigma Variations is another one--if someone saw it without a close to perfect cast, it would probably look silly.

Did you get a chance to see Sandra Brown in Fancy Free? She was the girl with the red pocket book, and she was wonderful, one of my favorites. (Paloma Herrera was no slouch in that role, either.) She was so wonderfull nonchalant and appealing, and very funny.

I just got some information from NYCB, with the guest stars, and Lorna Feijo will be dancing Square Dance! I have talked with people who saw the tape of her dancing it in Cuba (Merril Ashley set it), and they said she was staggering. I have seen her a couple ot times--with the Cubans and with Cincinnati--and I think she is really special. So that is what I am most looking forward to. Of course Liebeslieder, but it depends on the casting so much.

No, that's not what I meant--I just thought that the Atlantic article was interesting in light of Lebrecht's comments.

If anyone is really interested in the New York Times, there is a very, I think, revealing article in the new (May) Atlantic byHowell Raines, the former executive editor of the NYT who was fired over the Jayson Blair mess. I must say, he Raines sounds like a truly awful person to work for--he goes on and on about how much he loves the NYTimes, but I have never seen the word "Whine" used so many times when talking about employees! The creepiest bit was him bragging about the "sheer visual beauty of our front pages" for the 9/11 coverage--he made it seem like the most important aspect of 9/11 was that the NYTimes won a lot of Pulitzers.

About the staff at the NYTimes, he writes that "like the French, New Englanders, Southerns, Idaho survivalists, or Mormon polygamists they [the reporters] take a perverse pride in their idiosyncrasies and tend to make iconic characters of those who embody the tribal pathology in its purest form." A somewhat sweeping generalization, I would say, not backed up by many facts. And later he writes "Like many newcomers, I was at first taken aback by the awkwardness, timidity, insecurity, and social envy of many Times people."

He does talk about arts coverage, which to me was the most interesting. "I posited a NYT audience with a Renaissance-like breadth of interests. Serious journalism did not have to be restricted to traditional somber subject. A reader who hungered for every last detail about the New York Philharmonic would be willing to cross the genre divide to read a story about the role of the downtown nightclub CBGC in the evolution of popular music." Of course, I don't remember any articles going into every last detail about the New York Philharmonic! Nor does he mention that his son plays (or played) in a rock band.

About popular culture, he writes "It does mean that the serial ups and downs of a Britney Spears are a sociological and economic phenomenon that is, as a reflection of contemporary American culture, worthy of serious reporting." It also means, I suspect, that big pictures of Britney Spears might sell more copies of anything, making her an even more important cultural phenomenon.

Later, he writes "Nothing was more pressing than culture. When I asked Arthur Gelb for an assessement of what the section needed, he was scathing. Coverage of high culture was invariably late...Sunday Arts & Leisure, our showcase section, had been turned over to a mid-level editor who had been licensed to ignore suggestions from anyone. He was a former rock critic who had undergone a highbrow conversion that left him interested only in the most arcane corners of classical music. The rest of the section was catch as catch can. The timing of its lead profiles made embarrassingly clear week after week that the Times was acquiescing to the schedule demands of actors, directors, and producers with new movies, stage play, or TV shows to plug."

His solution? Hire "Jodi Kantor, a young media editor from Slate, and put her in charge of Arts $ Leisure...Leisure readers definitely knew there was a new sheriff in town when Jodi beat New York's hip publications to the punch with a lead story on the rock group White Stripes."

"Culture offered another illustration of the interconnectedness of quality [sic!] journalism and financial success. The advertising department was overjoyed."

Anyway, I thought it was quite enlightening. Raines is gone, but of course the people he hired are still there.

It's not James, but I remember at a Guild discussion years ago, featuring the up and coming NYCB men, Edwards said the role he wanted to dance was Albrecht. But I agree about him doing James!

Does anyone know what will happen to Symphony in C now? He owned it, as I understand, and it was one of the few not managed by the Balanchine Trust.

Jeffrey Edwards, of course--what a Melancholic he was! And Ethan Stiefel, too, must be on anyone's list of those that got away. There is a difference between getting away and just disappearing, I think. Eva Natanya got away, but Aubrey Morgan and Kristen Sloan just seemed to disappear--how I missed them this Sleeping Beauty season! Real classical dancers! I also loved Elena Diner, such beautiful arms. What a sad thread!

Van Kipnis was the one that first came to my mind too. She is so lovely and pure. Ditto Korbes and Rutherford. I think any of them would have made lovely Lilac Fairies, for a start. I have always loved watching Elizabeth Walker dance, too, every since she was a student in Serenade.