R S Edgecombe

I disagree with Mel here, Citrus. I haven't gone to the picture you found on the internet, but I am quite sure it must be the lithograph by Brandard in which Giselle appears to be coming out of a temps leve with her bras a la lyre. Her wings (peacock feathers superimposed on gauze) are a way of signalling the ballet's connection to La Sylphide, whose identical wings were, of course, essential to her identity. There are two independent confirmations of Carolotta's wings--Challamel's picture of Giselle apparently wired, with "j'ecoute" arms, and her legs mid cabriole, and another anonymous one of Giselle and Albrecht and two wilis (Moyna and Zulma perhaps?). Giselle is en face, so no wings in sight, but the wilis have them, though theirs are rounded whereas Giselle's in the other lithographs have gothic points. In the original scenario, Giselle's wilihood was confirmed by a coronet of flowers with a star in the centre. In Petipa's redaction (which might take the detail over from Gautier and St Georges), she receives the gift of flight from Myrthe when she does the pirouette saute en attitude. Wings were probably eliminated in the 20th Century because they interfered with the line, but they were certainly there at the Paris premiere, and might well have been there in St Petersburg as well. Perhaps RG would be kind enough to look through his collection and let us know if he finds anything. I don't seem to have any Imperial Giselles in my books, and my pictures of Karsavina with Nijinsky in the ballet don't give a view of her back. I don't have a copy of Beaumont's study of Giselle, but that would be a very good place to get clarity on this matter.

This is going to be a very nebulous, all-over-the-place post, prompted in part by my having taken out a vocal score of Lecocq's Fille de Madame Angot on Friday for sight-reading practice, and also by my having discovered last night, in an out-of-sight post on Ballet Talk, that Ashton's Sylvia will be mounted by the RB next year. (The thought of that thrills me beyond words, and I am hoping against hope that it will find its way on to commercial video and then into my VCR.) It seems that this reconstruction will be based in part on an in-house film on the ballet, and my first question relates to that fact. Is the entire SWB/RB rep on film of this kind, or is Sylvia an exception to the rule? And if it is, is there any chance of its ever being released to the public? For example, after having been exposed only to Bourmeister, I would dearly love to see the 95 Lac with Odette's mimic narrative and Ivanov's choreography to the Valse bluette etc etc. And if there is indeed an entire film record of that rep, would there ever be any chance of reviving Mam'zelle Angot? The music so far (I'm at the end of Act I) is very pretty--I am assuming the ballet score is based upon the operetta, and not a salmagundi a la Gaiete parisienne--and Derain's decor would surely stand the test of time. I am also curious to know how Massine relayed a plot that, in the operetta at least, seems quite as complicated as any from the Romantic rep. If mothers-in-law pose a challenge to mimic representation, how on earth does one render a caricaturist? Could you please tell me if Massine's stock still stands high? I ask because he is one of many dark holes in my education. I have never seen anything after my childhood encounters with The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann respectively, both of which struck me then as being unmusical. However, I should point out that I had very Petipan ideas about musicality as a child, and might well moderate my views now. Do any companies still dance Massine? I would be very interested in viewer assessments of his talent/genius. One final question, if Mel would be kind enough to field it: the summary of the plot at the start of the Boosey score talks about "the historical Madame Angot." Who was she? I have read Carlyle on the Fr Rev, but don't remember anybody by that name--which is not to say, of course, that she isn't there all the same.

Glebb, I also thought the film was excellent, and am especially haunted by the composition of the screen when a fortune-teller tells Isadora to fear death by water or something of that sort, and she turns to face the camera, close-up on the right of the screen. VR has such a graphic expression of anguish at that point, which marks the transition to the drowning of her children. I haven't read the autobiography, but I would imagine that Lohengrin serves a dual purpose of concealing the identity of a living personage (my mother had a Singer sewing machine in my childhood, by the way and I vividly remember the clusters of gold foliage on a glossy black background) and also to encode the idea of a knight in shining armour, since in Wagner's opera, Lohengrin appears from nowhere to save Elsa--no doubt an allusion to the fact that Singer's fortune enabled ID to open her school in Paris.

You are right, of course, about the suppositiousness of any comparison between Perrot and Petipa, or Bournonville and Taglioni, though I like to think that the best of both are somehow ingested and lodged within the surviving texts. In the case of the Cunningham/Ashton scenario, it might be appropriate to factor in the possessiveness (if that's the right word) that A felt toward music that he believed he could choreograph well to. I base this on the fact that Lambert actually offered Les Patineurs to Dame Ninette, and she might already have begun choreographing when A overheard it and said, more or less: "It's much more MY kind of music than HER kind." And so the change was made. Ashton only infrequently worked with commissioned scores, and, it seems, was never at his best with them. He chiefly had eyes for the music of others--Sylvia, Two Pigeons, Fille etc etc.

First of all, re Valkyrien: I am reading a Brenaa biography as a holiday treat, and have just made a rather startling discovery. Before 1929, nobody in the RDB could turn more than two pirouettes because Bournonville was either ignorant of, or didn't permit, spotting. (The Scho/nberg text isn't clear on this.) That being the case, I think it's probable that B's Valkyries danced in their helmets after all. It has also occurred to me that Bournonville jumps require a certain verticality to the carriage of the torso--his dancers don't seem to lean as much as Russian ones into the trajectory--so the helmets would have stayed put for those too. Thanks for those cautions about photographs, Alexandra, and I certainly apply to those of the Imperial rep that I have seen. But somehow these Danish photographs struck me as being very scrupulous, and not cobbled up ad hoc as, for example, in the case of Marie Petipa when she swings merrily in a Romantic tutu outside the inn of La Halte de la cavalerie. Still, that's only an impression. Doug, I shall obviously have to defer to your HUGELY, HUGELY superior knowledge of the dos and don'ts of 19C style, but it might be worth remembering that Anthony Tudor thought that there could never have been a pirouette saute a la seconde in the Vivandiere pas de six, and both A Hutchinson-Guest and Pierre Lacotte concluded there was. I simply have to take on trust what is given me by the annotators of video material, and I realize that that is often very flawed. It's possible that you have missed the long discussion about the Paquita variants (in General Discussion under Ballet Videos) where some of the points you raise have been thrashed out. I would give anything to see the Danilova version of the Pavillon var because, as I said in that thread, I have begun to look on its Petipa cribbings (Miettes, Candite) with a baleful eye. Now, it seems, they aren't Fokine's at all. SCREECH! As I said on another occasion, sorting out ballet history is like doing a white jigsaw puzzle! I would not, however, rule out multiple virtuosic repetitions as being unPetipan on the strength of the 95 Lac III coda, and of the Gold Fairy insert (how many raccourcis in that? I don't think I've ever counted) in SB II. In the grands fouettes en t, moreover, the rhythm of open grand battement and closed attitude is a very Petipan--that systole/diastole ictus, or its reverse, which you can see in virtually every variation, eg Miettes hops en pointe in attitude devant (systole) and then (at least in her RB version) throws her leg through into an allongee (diastole), or in the Bolshoi text, does a grand pas de chat (quasi diastole). I'm afraid won't budge on my conviction that Gorsky (either cribbing Petipa, or on his own, or on his own + Vaganova) choreographed the Q of D var. There was a degree of hostility between G and P, who probably resented his Moscow version of DQ (after all the birthplace of the ballet) in 1900, and definitely fumed at its transposition to St P two years later. Simon only becomes active in ballet after taking up the superintendance (if there's such a thing) of the Imperial Theatre in 97. His three ballets, Stars, Living Flowers and Gudule's Daughter (though Grove gives the title as Esmeralda) are Moscow offerings, and he had there a function identical to Drigo's in St P. If P had wanted a QD gusset for the Enchanted Garden Scene, he would have turned to Drigo. If Gorsky did (and he clearly must have, since Simon is the composer), he would have turned to Simon.

I take your point, Alexandra, but I wonder if one shouldn't distinguish between Petipa's remakes of apparently humdrum ballets like Corsaire--which was probably a remake in toto, with extensive musical insertion--and the much more tactful kind of redaction we find in Giselle, to which the comparatively limited musical tinkering (two inserts only, and not very substantial cuts) bears witness. Perrot was an acknowledged international master when Petipa tackled Giselle for the first time, and his (Perrot's) version (I think, though I would need to check facts) probably had the sort of authoritativeness that Ivanov's Lac II enjoys today. Even Graeme Murphy, apparently, has had to include bits of the latter in his new version of the ballet. I sense that the Petipa Giselle (which has a rather different look from the lithographic and engraved record of the Coralli/Perrot--not that that's very reliable one) was a kind of homage to the Romantic ballet but made with Petipan resources, just as--apparently--Ashton did homage to Cunningham in the language of points and turn-out. (I have seen neither ballet, but that's what I have gathered from you and Paul.)

What a delightful day it's been--warm and halcyon after our recent antarctic weather. It's the start of Spring break, and, after my morning class, we walked the dogs in a fine old nineteenth-century park where all the oaks have begun to leaf, and then, to crown it all, I was dropped at the Music College Library to spend a very pleasurable hour in browsing and snuffling about. I can report on three things as a result, but, since I can't face making separate entries for them, I am going to present a composite post. First of all, with regard to Valkyrien, I can confirm that Svava and indeed all her cohorts did wear secured satin slippers (and therefore went on pointe), and that her dress in 1861 was not conventionally balletic (hem about mid-calf, and not very full) but that by 1895 it had turned into a Degas tutu (hem about two inches below the knee). None of the helmets is visibly secured, a fact which permits three inferences--1) they didn't turn or jump (unlikely) 2) they took them off before dancing (undramatic) 3) they tucked the fastenings up for photographic purposes on the assumption that they would spoil the effect. I am sure the eclipse of Valkyrien had everything to do with the ascendancy of Wagner, whose Walkueren are properly hoydenish and LOUD. Valkyries who turn neatly and beat precisely are rather hard to swallow, at least in my opinion. The photographic record of Valkyrien throws an interesting sidelight on the discussion I have been having with Mel about balletic conceptions of the Greek. In 1861 Juliet Price simply donned her Sylfiden costume (more or less) for Act III, but by 1905, the danseuses at least (but perhaps not Svava) wore dresses trimmed in Greek key. They danced on pointe, and are furthermore photographed in conventional fourths. Elna Lauesgaard, who looks astonishingly like Adeline Genee, is in fourth croise devant, and has her hands in low fourth--by which there might hang a tale, for I have suddenly remembered that this position is called "attitude grecque" in some school or other (Cecchetti?). Even if there aren't any obvious correlations with friezes and figure vases, could this be the balletic shorthand for Greece? If so, it isn't borne out by a photo that I have managed to dig up of Pavlova in The Awakening of Flora. There she has clasped her hands behind her neck like an Esther Williams bathing belle. And, finally, I am able to supply some details about the composer of the Queen of the Dryads variation. Anton Simon, who was born in Paris in 1850 and died in St P in 1916. His career, most especially his appt as superintendant of the Moscow Imperial Theatre in 1897, makes it clear that the choreographer of this variation is not Petipa, but Gorsky, even though he lifted the grands fouettes en tournant from the Petipa variation that figures as No 1 in the Vinogradov redaction of the Paquita Grand Pas. And while we are on the subject of borrowings, I'd like to point out that a thrilling effect in the D major mazurka of Les Sylphides--the arabesques releves en tournant--was lifted from the Vazyem variation in Paquita (1881). One is tempted to ask, both of Gorsky and Fokine, who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?

And he needs a straight blade to reduplicate the line of the crucial mountain pass above Leonidas (the spear on the left has the same function). Anything off the straight (while no doubt suiting both Leonidas and David himself VERY well!) would have looked a little squiff. I hope that's intelligible. It might be a South Africanism! Thanks again for all this info.

ATM, thank you so much for taking the time and trouble to relay this interesting capsule manifesto. Like all manifestos, it covers the practice of the proponent rather than the art in general, but even that limitation is illuminating. Balanchine doesn't want to concede that ballet, while it remains in its own universe of plastic signifiers, still has an intermittent and therefore uncodifiable relationship with reality. For its system, no matter how remote and stylized, began in ordinary human movement, and must therefore overlap with it all the time. A jump CAN convey exultation, and jump with a beat exultation and excitement, and a jump with several beats exultation, excitement and urgency, even if those CANS aren't necessarily activated in the abstract propositions known as the jete, the cabriole and the brise respectively. Balanchine is writing from ballet's inside; here is the Romantic poet Leigh Hunt looking in at it from the outside. Yet, even though his stance is hostile and diametrically opposed to B's, their ideas converge. The pronoun "he" in the extract relates to the phrase "French dancer": he balances himself, he hangs his arms like encumbrances, he moves them about merely to make the best of an encumbrance, he plants his face stiffly, he fixes his body like a statue, he sways about it on his centre like a pivot, he stops, he quivers his foot about the other ancle with the most ridiculous non-meaning, he stops again. I wonder, though, whether, had he lived to see Ivanov's Lac Act II, LH would have have described Odette's petits battements as "ridiculous non-meaning." There the controlling narrative context activates as so many semiotic CANs, all or some of the following: the palpitation of a bird's breast, the anxiety subtending fulfilment (Romeo hearing the lark), the tremulousness of feeling that has just been awakened. Balanchine's practice may have conceded that, but his principles, at least in this particular manifesto, don't.

Thanks for this detailed and useful account, Mel. I have vainly riffled through my books in search of a putto with a crossbow, and might have been crossing lines between the Rex Whistler illustrations in my collection of Andersen fairy tales--the same Rex Whistler who did the sets and costumes for The Rake's Progress (an EXCELLENT little ballet, and very well designed), and who redid costumes and set for Le Spectre de la rose at SWB. His illustration for "The Naughty Boy" gives Cupid a recurved shortbow and that for "Little Ida's Flowers" shows her two brothers with crossbows. I think they blurred together in my memory, but I'll keep looking. I did chance on a very fine recurved longbow in Pollaiuolo's Rape or Dejanira while searching for the putti. Strange how new knowledge sharpens one's observation to things that didn't seem especially noteworthy before! I haven't been able to turn up any Greek images main a l'epaule, and indeed it's very hard to decide what the characteristic Gk posture should be (in summary balletic terms, that is). Clearly profilic, but that would apply to Egyptian imagery as well. In my search for images of Nijinsky's Faune, I noticed that he is fond of posing, even for classical roles, in an unballetic Maenad posture with the hand turned out above the forehead, as though he were shading his eyes from the sun. This free movement (opposed to the regulated curves of the danse d'ecole) is almost certainly courtesy of Fokine and therefore of Isadora, and I would guess that a free Bacchante surge was the definitive Greek posture post Petipa. Stills of The Awakening of Flora, if any exist, might throw some light on what Petipa's own ideas were. I suspect, though, that there was very little Hellenism, if any, in that ballet. This morning I found a picture of the Faune nymphs in the Buckle biography of Nijinsky, which I didn't consult when I was looking for Spectre pictures because it's housed in my office ready for my annual Wilbur seminars. In this particular photo, the hands don't touch the shoulders, but are recurved and clenched above them--a favourite Nijinsky motif that he applied repeatedly to the ports de bras in Jeux. I think Nijinska also uses it Les Noces, but I can't lay my hands on any photos offhand, and I've never seen the ballet.

Many thanks, as ever, for this comprehensive and precise answer. Falchion ties up nicely with the original myth, which I thought Cellini had altogether ignored, since the etymology is based on the Latin word for sickle. That would also account for cross-over to billhook, which in Shakespeare has a long shaft and can be used to prune trees. I looked up David's Leonidas at Thermopylae to see what weapon he is carrying, but his blade is entirely straight. Interestingly enough, though, I noticed that the figure behind him is carrying what might be a recurved longbow. I don't know how long a longbow has to be, but the scale of this one suggests it's about five feet. Can that recurvature occur in the long as well as the shortbow, or is David's weaponry not wholly accurate? Or perhaps I am getting confused because African bows tend not to be recurved--or at least those I have seen in museums aren't (I think!).

Alexandra, I would say that Petipa's Giselle was probably one such example, and, who knows, his Sylfida as well. Bournonville's Sylfiden would qualify if it had the Schneitzhoeffer score, but of course it doesn't.

Many, many thanks, Doug, for the mini-tutorial on bows. I have an idea that I might have seen putti (those strange Cupid wannabes) with cross-bows (perhaps a joke about their unmanageability), but I would need to check my facts. While we're on the subject of armaments, could you please tell us what kind of weapon Cellini's Perseus has in his hand? RG calls it half machete, half scimitar--and add to that a very attractive cut-out profile at the tip, which presumably gives it a piercing as well as a slashing capacity. I am SO grateful for the Sylphides info, and will no longer cringe at the thought of spherical music when I see the Prelude dancer pause and look soulful. That's an entirely appropriate response to Freddy C. The Satie pear, incidentally, was made into a little touring ballet here in 76. European readers will be familiar with the participants because Harold King, the choreographer, went on to found the London Ballet, and the ballerina, Marina Nicolaou (the soubrette-crossover type much favoured by me--with a fine jete and metatarsal arches to die for) went on to dance in Belgium with great success (I'm told). Marc H probably saw her there. The ballet was a totally forgettable trifle called Under a Pear Tree, and it featured a butterfly net. I can't recall now if Marina was catching butterflies (rather less brutally than Franz in Ivanov's Coppelia!) or being caught as one. Where Florine is concerned, I think one needs to distinguish between turquoiserie (if there's such a word, or if not, la vogue turque) and chinoiserie. I think the St Petersburg signifier for China is the index finger held vertically and pointing palm outward (whereas Violente's indices point palm inward)--and I base this on stills from the traditional Benois-designed Festival Casse that was staged, I think, by Beriosova's father. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Anyhow, they show a huge teapot and danseuses en attitude devant on either side, fingers pointing heavenward. However, I do think there IS a little vestigial "meaning" in the otherwise abstract Florine dance. Paul has written eloquently in another thread about Sibley's avian Florine, but I'm not sure that that was Petipa's intention, and Messel must be blamed for clouding the picture. In my ideal SB (hey! I can dream, can't I?), she would wear a white classical tutu with a little blue braid--not a feather in sight--a little couronne and, please note, a PAPIER MACHE bluebird on her wrist. Her var is a gavotte manque (befitting a princess), and you can prove this by playing four semiquavers on the first two beats of every bar from bar 3 ff. Voila! an echt gavotte. The avian dimension emerges from the skirls that are really there, and which match the skid of the fouettes to perfection; and also from the chirping acciaccature. That's where the bluebird on the wrist comes in, because her eyeline will meet it at almost every juncture of the dance, right up to that mysterious codetta, where she bourrees de cote with gestures half acknowledging, half-warding off the bird that is flying after her on her wrist. There is no other way I can explain this insufficiently abstract moment in the design. It bears comparison with the warding-off gestures that accompany the bourees of Miettes, who, one could say without undue fancifulness, is trying to clear the stage of the abundance she has called into being.

Paul, thanks so much for this very informative post. If K did entrechats huit then presumably there must have been a need for them on the Imperial stage, though in ballets that seem to have fallen by the wayside. Nobody has come forward with suggestions of entrechat-centred vars in the classical rep, so perhaps there aren't any. Bournonville might be the place to look, but B was never one for "monocultural" multiples, was he? It's more an Italianate thing. The beating cadenza for James before the stretto of the Act II ballabile is an absolute rainbow of different kinds. Did you get the K info from Theatre Street? I must reread it. Her English is nothing short of superb, though she has a weakness for some charming archaisms like "tarry." My close friend Heather was an English teacher before she went back to varsity to qualify as a landscape architect, and, in her former avatar, she set a portion of TS as a comprehension test in a Grade 9 exam--the bit about Nijinsky tarrying in the air. Some of the answers the children supplied were bizarre to say the least. I wish I could remember them. By the way, all balletomanes should read Richard Wilbur's remarkable poem entitled "Grace." I teach it to my Honours students every year, and they always think that Nijinsky's "out of the window leap" is a reference to suicide. It all falls into place when I tell them about Le Spectre de la rose! I know GG well, for she is the H in my MSND. I like her a lot, especially the fullness of her legs and the confident way she fouettes out the mist to Die Schoene Melusine, or is it Ruy Blas? [Note to RSE: It's time you watched MSND again!] I had never heard of her before I got my tape, and assumed that B had marginalized her for not being a Farrell--but that is a canard, as you, Ari and others have pointed out. Please try to find out from GG how many consecutive entrechats dix she could do, and to what music. It will make a very pleasant balletic daydream. When I was a little boy, I often tried to count 32 fouettes to the Black Swan coda, long before I had seen them in anything but still photographs. Since I always started at bar 1 (not realizing that Siegfried was in the picture), I would get hopelessly lost! In the same way, I tried to fit the whole of the Nutcracker story into the Nutcracker Suite, not realizing that there was a complete ballet. It made a pocket ballet, so to speak!

I will go through my sculpture bks and see what I can turn up in friezes, though nothing comes to mind off hand. I've only seen a part of the Nijinsky Faune in Herbert Ross's film, but the nymphs hardly figured, as I recall. Still, there are bound to be stills in the Kochno bk that a recent correspondence with RG has resolved me to consult again if I can. I think Vaganova might have applied this port de bras to Diana because the elbow to shoulder line looks like half a bow of the Cupid kind (you would know the right terminology--is it possibly a crossbow?), while the other hand, lifted up in half a couronne is like the bow that suitors have to bend in the Odyssey--the crescent, not the 1920s lipstick shape. Be interesting to see if Ashton gave Sylvia something similar. That's a ballet I'd dearly love to see. As a little boy I thought the Ironside sets were quite magical (because they appealed to my literalistic ideas about stage realism), and I used to pore over the Baron photos of Sylvia for hours on end!

Strange that you should mention Nureyev's cruelty to his GP because I witnessed something very similar in 81 when I returned to England for my viva voce. London in June was a desolate dustbowl, but the Boston Ballet had come to town, with Nureyev as Siegfried. In the Act III pas de deux he was meant to support his Odile (one Mouis sp? as I recall) in a penchee and then move round to take her free hand in an allongee from the back, as her desperately fluttering fingers made clear. Instead, he stepped back into an exaggerated fifth and watched her fall off point with a sadistic smirk on his face. Some sort of revenge, one assumes. Talk about a danseur IGnoble!

PPS Back in the fatal shop, but feeling very virtuous after writing four pages of Hood--though eked out, I must confess, by generous quoting! To take a break I fast forwarded to the Abdulrahman scene in Raymonda because I suddenly seemed to remember that his slaves walked with fingers tipped to shoulders. Not quite, although they are very hunched, and carrying gifts quite close to the chest. I have a book on Ottoman art, but it's no use searching there for images of human conduct because the Islamic ban on representation means nothing but abstract patterns or foliate designs. Petipa must have been relying on written reports, as I presume he (or some Gorskian producer after him) relied on written reports for the touch-forehead-and-chest salutations in Bayadere. I have also remembered two further shoulder-brushings in the classical rep that don't have an oriental demi-caractere content--Diana's in the Diana and Acteon divertissement, and also Aurora's in her Act 1 variation.

PS I was definitely wrong about Spectre. I have riffled through my books, and the arms seem always to be draped over the head, either in a collapsed couronne (bras en saule?) or with the hand almost, but not quite, touching the opposing shoulder. I was clearly crossing lines with the golden slave.

Mel, could you please elaborate a little? Did Petipa have particular Gk friezes or Turkish customs in mind? I ask because I'm about 60% certain that Fokine asks the spectre de la rose to place both hands en epaulette and kneel (or am I dreaming?), and Florine definitely brushes alternate hands en epaulette during the echappes of her variation. In purely classical terms, these provides a note of piquant imbalance in relation to the symmetrical V of her legs. The same could be said of the "j'ecoute" posture of the Prelude dancer in Les Sylphides, though somebody (I hope not Fokine!) rather cornily said that she is hearing the music of the spheres.

Did something happen to Parkinson that affected her dancing? Some terrible chronic injury? I ask because she dances the Silver Fairy Polka very well in An Evening with the Royal Ballet, but her fairy godmother in my tape of the Ashton Cinderella is nothing short of dreadful--stinted and dumpy. An off night, or the effect of age, or something else? One would never say it were the same dancer.

How lucky you are, Mel. When you say colour-mad, do you mean gaudy? That's a pity, because I have always imagined vivid butterflies flitting through a sombre nocturne--something like Peter Farmer's design for Night Shadow, which I never saw, but which is reproduced on the box of the London Festival Ballet Gala. Andre Levasseur's costumes have invariably thrilled me, though the prima ballerina in Birthday Offering is a bit too bedizened, perhaps. Thanks for correcting the title of the ballet. Could you or Estelle please explain (to someone whose self-taught French is in a sorry state) why the preposition is necessary there whereas Paris is often referred to as la cite lumiere?

Vannia, I went straight to my butterfly encyclopaedia to find Vanessa io, but unfortunately it isn't there--only V dejeani from Java, and V itea and gonerilla (doesn't sound very nice, but it looks beautiful, like the Red Admiral you get in Britain). These are both from New Zealand. Do you know the ballet Piege lumiere by John Taras? It's about convicts (in South America, I think, but I'm not sure) and butterflies? I have always found the plot very interesting, though I don't know the music, and have never seen any parts of the ballet. It is associated with Rosella Hightower, one of those Nerina type dancers who attract me very much. Good luck once again with your variation. Be sure to let us know how it went!

Here I am, lured back to BT when I should be working on Thomas Hood. I am reminded of the French-speaking wife of a colleague whom, many years ago, I met on the steps of a suburban sweet (candy). She had her little boy with her, and said, "Here we are again at the fatal shop," by which I suspect she meant fatal in the "femme fatale" sense. Well, BT is certainly a fatal shop for me! You are spot on, RG with regard to the "fan" variation which I did see in That's Dancing, but which I had forgotten about. I seem to remember a cobalt blue backcloth and Toumanova very sleek in red and black and brilliantined hair. It went all too fast, and I couldn't very well ask the projectionist to rewind! Arnold Haskell used to call TT the black pearl of the Ballets russes, and she certainly lived up to the name in that footage. I have seen two interesting posts by John-Michael concerning Giselle's vampiricity and stage shots of the imperial ballet, but nothing in the music threads. Perhaps I can track those down in the archives. I don't know the DV article (those initials are OK because they sound like deo volente--I didn't dare do the same for Viviana Durante!), but will try to track it down. And since you seem to insist, I will change my transliteration to Obukov, but from henceforth no Hs in my Russian spellings, unless to render the second letter of Tchaikovsky's name. There's just no consistency--some spellings like Oboukov reflecting Fr pr, others, like Tschaikowski, reflecting German. I am just going strike out crudely on my own!

Sylvie, RG is much too modest for his own good. He knows more about untangling nets than Vulcan himself, or whoever it was that threw one round Venus and Mars! No, I haven't found the composer of the Kirov Paquita prima ballerina var--though it's almost certainly 1920--1935, which means somebody like Gliere (though it's too bad for Gliere, I think) or A Krein. I hope RG will continue to search his kits and other magic sources and see if he can find it. I hadn't realized that Simon wrote the music for Gudule's Daughter, Gorsky's so- called mimodrama that marked the ne plus ultra of Fokinism in the Soviet school. It was then, in all probability, that Lopokov made the pronouncement that Hans uses in his signature. If Gorsky had been allowed to continue, the whole danse d'ecole would have come crashing to the ground. I rather stupidly thought that he had stuck with Pugni for his mimodrama, since he had stuck with Minkus for his pyjama suit Bayadere. RG, so far as I know, Obokov (forgive my transliteration, but I have decided to take Lopokova as my template, and be as crude and simple as I can when it comes to Russian names) was the first to stage the DQ pas de deux in the west, and since nobody seems to know where Kitri's var, often called "the fan," with a famous concluding diagonale of pas de cheval sur les pointes, I assumed he had choreographed it. But Mel sayd he has seen the Kirov do this as an alternative to the waltz with the turned forward assembles that Kitri executes in my Kirov tape--so I am beginning to wonder if it isn't perhaps a Gorsky offering. Does your tape of variations in practice clothes confirm this, and what accreditation does it give for the music? And, finally--I'm not sure if I should post this here or start a new thread, but Hans's remarks about entrechats have set me thinking. Are there any loci classici in the C19 rep in which multiple entrechats are required of a danseuse? I can't think of any, whereas for male dancers l'oiseau bleu and Albrecht's Totentanz at once spring to mind. And why is it inconceivable that a female dancer should do entrechats huit? I started ballet at the age of 22 when my hips had developed an incorrigible anti-fifthiness, so I beat my feeble entrechats quatre from the knees rather than the thighs. But why shouldn't a danseuse with a perfect fifth and good elevation not be able to beat even an entrechat dix? Is it a question of stamina? And if Balanchine asked his ballerinas to do doubles sauts de basque, did he ever make equally exacting demands when it came to female batterie? As far as C20 rep goes, I have a mental image of a pas de trois from Andre Prokovsky's Vespri (two men, one woman) in which all three beat entrechats huit in canon to the valse brillante from La primavera. But, having miscounted Makhalina's beats, I am beginning to wonder if they weren't sixes after all. I would be very interested if readers could cite the examples of demanding female batterie that they've encountered in the rep--esp. in the C19 rep, because I keep drawing a blank there.

Paul, I am so sorry. In my excitement over all the information that RG supplied, I discourteously forgot to acknowledge your interesting post on R&L. In fact it's an opera I know well, for most earnest Tchaikovskians (and I aspire to be one) make an effort to study Glinka after the master's famous pronouncement: "Kamarinskaya is the acorn from which the oak of Russian music sprang." To which Constant Lambert snootily and most inaccurately retorted, "The acorn from which larger and more gilded acorns sprang"!!! I have A Life for the Tsar on vinyl (observe that I don't use the Soviet title--not to make a political statement, but to be historically exact!), the Bolshoi R&L and the Trio pathetique on CD, and the Jota A, Valse-F and K on audiotape. I also started collecting the Bis complete edition of the piano music, but it proved to be so trashy that I stopped after vol 3. Strange that I can watch a ballerina turn fouettes for hours on end, but get very bored if pianists splash me with substanceless roulades for longer than a few minutes.