R S Edgecombe

Well, there goes that little theory! Many thanks for the correction, Ari. I was somehow under the impression that it had been conceived in all its Romanov flamboyance and Berman wigs for the Garden, and that B had stripped it down to its austere current title and practice type clothes when it went to America.

I suppose the same might be said for Auber's religious music, which I have never heard, even though there is volumes of it. Hoever, he had the most civilized way of praying that I have ever encountered. Every morning he would compose a little andante, or adagietto, or something of that sort. No "smite my enemies" stuff in that!

Mel, did you you see that superb film, Le Roi danse? I was in ecstasy throughout, but poor Heather HATED it. It seemed to suggest that that Lully died impenitent, but perhaps I'm misremembering. Lully used to wear a rather shocking talisman (of sorts) around his neck (and NO, I'm not going to reveal here what it was). Surprisingly enough, the film didn't include this detail.

Perhaps one ought not to post speculatively, but I am pretty sure I read in one of the Nureyev biographies that EB's cancer might have been hurried on by an HIV infection.

Strangely enough, I recently had an email from Michelle Potter in which she said something similar about Berthe in G 1. Makes a girl think! (M Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) Roma, alas, I don't know the B ballets you mention--have some excerpts from Rubies, but not enough to make structural judgements. However, I wonder if, in the case of T No 2, which began life as Ballet Imperial with SWB, the transference of focus had something to do with B's antipathy (too strong?) toward Fonteyn, and preference for the mobility (l'arcana parola ognor!--as Manrico says in Trovatore) of Shearer.

One of the saddest ends for a ballerina would have to be amputation, and Adele Granzow who, if fate hadn't intervened, would have been the first Swanilda, died after losing one (or both) her legs--in Berlin, if I'm not mistaken.

Alexandra, I know exactly what you mean, and have the same difficulty in establishing generic borders between dancers. My eye isn't subtle enough to distinguish 6 genres in the SB pas de 6, but I can certainly see something akin to the operatic idea of Fach, esp in the ways the fairies are cast in the subsequent acts. I have found that Canari will often double up as Chaperon rouge because both ask for rapid runs on pointe, and Miettes as Florine because of the sautes, and, as you have pointed out elsewhere, the LF will tend to be given the tallest and most gracious dancer (often something of a runner-up, who will never get to dance either Odette or Aurora). In my experience, these "danseuses nobles" don't turn as rapidly and confidently as their arque equivalents, so a good case could probably be made for reintroducing the Marie Petipa variation. A soaring pas de chat is something to be cherished, after all. Apparently Violetta Elvin's was legendary. Anyhow, I wonder if NN got her breaks in the RB because of Dame Ninette's passion for demi-caractere ballet--her own idiom, and that of Massine, whom she invited to choreograph on at least three occasions for the SWB/RB. I know this because in late 70s/early 80s, the BBC got hold of three Petipa ballets (Paquita, La Halte de [la?] cavalerie and Les Millions des harlequins) and had Dame Ninette and David Vaughan comment in the interval. Dame N LOVED La Halte, and commented sadly on the eclipse of the d-caractere ballet. I think she felt a special attraction to mobility (somewhere she uses the adjective of Elaine Fifield), and probably favoured dancers who had it, even if they lacked in other departments. On my old vinyl Cinderella highlights sleeve, there is a photo of Fonteyn, Blair, Nerina and Ashbridge alongside each other. (That should be WAS--I have just gone to look for it, and it's not there. I must have given it away when I bought the complete ballet.) Anyhow, as I remember, Fonteyn, even in spite of her fullish legs that some people (not I!) don't care for, projects a sort of columnar presence. By comparison, Nerina has a physique more evocative of a top, wide at the thighs but narrowing down to the pointes. I can see how Jane might not have liked that in Odette, but for me it holds huge promise for Odile. As Mell has pointed out, she had a "facile allegro." Grace, your career sounds very impressive indeed. How wonderful, like Doug, to have all the great ballets of the world at your fingertips. Lucette Aldous is a name to conjure with (one of those soubrette crossovers again). Doesn't one glimpse her Odile in The Turning Point? I loved her Kitri in the Nureyev film, even to the point of forgetting the HIDEOUS Lanchbery orchestration of her Act V solo. Are you teaching now, or notating for one of the Oz companies? Or both?

RG, I have now had time to do a quick riffle through my books, and the painting that comes closest to the Fokine Perseus (if I have properly construed your description) is not a St Michael, but a St George--Raphael's marvellous version in the Louvre--a contraposto epaule, if you will excuse that barbarous Gallo-Italicism. There are also analogues in the Hellenistic "Gaul Slaying Himself and Supporting His Dead Wife (part of the series dedicated at Pergamum by Attalus I) and also in the uppermost angel in Signorelli's fresco of the damned in Orvieto. The latter has the cloud-treading element, as well as a low arabesque, but the sens is a plain de cote.

I am very intrigued, Grace. The more of your posts that I read, the clearer it becomes that you once danced with the RB. What a feat and what a privilege! My close friend Heather (she whose dogs, Sylvie and Bruno, are the canine counterparts of Gwen and Sissy) shares your view of Collier. Go figure! I was always wild about a dancer in the Cape Town co, RB trained, who had strong feet and soft arms and a Collieresque physique. Her name was Lynn Walton, and she had Florine and the Flower Festival pd in her rep. (I wonder what happened to her.) But Heather much preferred Linda Smit--very jarrete, but very good, make no mistake--and hers was the majority opinion here. LS could hold the balances in the Rose A for hours, but with a gentle pendular motion that spoiled the effect for me. I relish total stability, but very seldom get it. I am interested to learn that a RB SB is on video, and shall make enquiries with David Leonard. Thanks for your most generous offer. The kitties send warm regards, G on my lap, and C on the mousepad. She gently bites my knuckles every time I click!

Thanks very much for this information, RG. Ms Durante (I daren't initialize her name!) belongs to a generation of RB dancers unknown to me. I am very sorry I never got to see Lesley Collier as Aurora, for she would probably have been my ideal. I like the fullness and compacture of her figure, which, in my opinion, is best suited to Petipa's line--just as Suzanne Farrell's or Tanaquil le Clerc's is best suited to Balanchine's. It's good to know that the NN's Swanilda is on film, because that means it might eventually appear on tape and so enter my VCR in the fullness of time. Would you like to venture a reason why NN got to dance Odette and Giselle, while dancers like Mary Honer didn't? I am not altogether sure when a soubrette is thought suitable for cross-over. Is it simply a question of a technique so brilliant that it compensates for the inevitable stubbiness in the line? Or is there something else that I'm missing? I suppose some people, glancing at photos of Lesley Collier, might think her a soubrette--though of course she isn't when you see her dance.

RG, this image sounds quite thrilling. Definitely not the one in Chapter 13 of TS. I shall see if I can find something approximating the pose in the repertoire of Hellenic sculptures, or possibly among Renaissance St Michaels. The implement sounds identical to the one that Cellini gives Perseus in his statue--but I also can't give it a name. I bet Mel Johnson could, though! In the original myth, Hermes gave Perseus an adamantine sickle to decapitate the gorgon. What ballet could this be? A charity pas seul a la Mort du Cygne, or perhaps even a tableau vivant of a neo-classical painting we've forgotten about? I can't think of any ballets in the Imperial repertoire that could have accommodated a Perseus, but then again I know only a fraction of them.

Thanks so much, Alexandra. I should be very grateful if you could try and establish whether the Valkyries danced with their helmets on, or if B found a way to remove them (as Sylvia takes off her quiver and relaxes with her nymphs in Merante's ballet). If there is evidence that they WERE left on, and there was no visible way of securing them to the dancers' chins, then we could probably infer that their dancing was rather sedate and didn't rise to steps of elevation. Good luck with the deadline. Stomach-knotting time, as I know all too well! I have a rather silly habit of killing myself to beat deadlines by as many days as I can, just so that can't haunt me!

RG, I am so sorry: I didn't mean to put you in a spot. I was thinking of the beautiful Kschessinskaya photo you published in another thread. Anyhow, I have gone back to the picture of Fokine at the start of Chapter 13 in my Dance Books edition of Theatre Street, and have just seen that it is captioned "Fokine as Apollo in The Awakening of Flora." This is definitely incorrect, for he has the winged helmet (very Valkyrienesque!) and the caduceus of Mercury. He is sitting on a rock in a flowery landscape that has obviously been touched up, or possibly even painted wholesale on to the photograph. If that's your "Perseus" then your caption is also incorrect, because Perseus never, to my knowledge, laid hands on the caduceus. Fokine's round-shouldered slump is very unusual in a ballet dancer, and the fact that he is trailing the caduceus on the ground more outrageous still! This is Mercury's badge of office, and one would as readily expect Elizabeth II to use her sceptre as a walking stick! Alexandra, are you able to guess exactly where the classical dancing might have occurred in Valkyrien? In the Mediterranean act? Do you think that the valkyries did anything on pointe?

I have spent the weekend getting to know my discs of the Hartmann/Bournonville Valkyrien, and I would be very grateful if Alexandra could give us some background about the ballet. The music is rather distinguished, but not particularly dansante, and I am curious to know if any choreography was notated, and what sort of movement it comprised. The Valkyries dance according to the libretto, but I have no idea if they wore tarlatan and pirouetted, or did something approximating character movement. The booklet contains a head shot of a woman in strapless helmet, so presumablly they didn't attempt anything too strenuous, or there would have been a great clatter on the stage. Does the photographic record show them in pointe shoes or in opera sandals? Something in me rebels against a marriage of danse d'ecole and Nordic mythology, though I don't know why it should. Ballet began its life in mythological libretti, after all, and I am sure I shouldn't mind a bit if Petipa's Flora did brises to a Drigo polka, her tutu duly trimmed in Greek key. Apropos of which, I must tell you that I recently went back to my copy of Theatre Street after RG's interesting post about Karsavina, and in it I found an HILARIOUS (and forgotten) photo of Fokine as Mercury in The Awakening of Flora--the very picture of despondency. Lydia Sokolova said she could barely summon up the energy to get on pointe for Little Red Riding Hood (which she HATED), and the Fokine picture breathes the same spirit of despair. If RG would be kind enough to post it here, we could all have a good giggle.

In addition to the Roman mourning custom that Alexandra mentions--Ovid mocks it in his lament for Corinna's parrot when the grieving birds tear out their feathers--one should also recall the behaviour of the Greek Maenads. Their wild and tangled hair signified mental derangement, and influenced operatic conventions even before the Romantic operas that Mel rightly connects with Giselle. (It's worth recalling that Adam and Donizetti shared lodgings in Paris.) Donizetti's master, Giovanni Mayr, wrote an opera entitled Medea in Corinto in 1813, and contemporary prints show Pasta with Giselle-like hair, dragging her children offstage to murder them. Earlier in the opera she had worn it in a chignon and further secured it with a tiara. Alexandra, do you know if there is any pictorial record of Noverre's Medea and Jason? I'm not sure if the libretto included the infanticidal episode, but, if it did, it would be interesting to see if Medea's hair was loosened for the occasion.

I find this absolutely fascinating, Jane. I have also sensed, without seeing her in action (or at least not attentively enough to be certain), that NN came within a whisker of being a demi-caractere danseuse. I also have the same sense about Lopokova. Did you ever see NN's Swanilda? Indeed did she ever dance it? And could you report on her aplombes in the Rose Adagio. If she could blow her nose en promenade, I image she would have been rock-steady. Also, do you know if there is any truth in a story I once heard about Sibley's Rose Adagio, viz., that she struck such a steady attitude with the first prince in the first (static) balances that the remaining three didn't offer her their hands, but simply bowed before her while remained stabbed into the stage like an elegant shooting stick! Or do you think that might be the balletic equivalent of an urban myth?

I have never seen Nerina (apart, perhaps, from a grainy monochrome excerpt from Fille on TV, and I'm not even sure of that), but I would like mention that when the RB toured the Soviet Union, Krushchev said that NN "danced like us." I'm not exactly sure what that means, but I would guess it had something to do with elastic or flexible phrasing. In her autobiography, Alice Nikitina accuses Ninette de Valois of dancing in a "dry, academic manner" (or words to that effect), and implies that this is something of a "vice anglais." Driness suggests a certain detachment of the steps from each other, or perhaps a too literal wedding of the movement to the beat. In any event, there seems to have been something about NN's style, over and above the precision and placement that Pamela remembers in the Nordi studio, that distinguished her from the other RB dancers. One thing is certain: I have pored over photographs of NN, and the spatial relation of her body to the stage leaves no doubt that she had extremely fine elevation.

Mel, I am unable to access private messages because of my antiquated browser. However I did somehow get hold of Leigh Witchell's suggestion in all the tangle of superimposed script, and then sent an email about the dancer in question to Glebb, who hadn't read this thread. The information he supplied tallied so exactly with the details of the novel--right up to the Vivaldi ballet--that I have no doubt at all in my mind now who Jimmy was.

Amy, it isn't an intrusion at all, and all questions posted here, mine most especially, are necessarily prompted by ignorance. C19 is indeed nineteenth-century or nineteenth century. The abbreviation is quite common among Eng Lit people, but that's only a tiny fragment of the world pop. When I first joined the internet, I was mystified by all the acronyms that were being tossed around--lol and imo and btw--and that was a much more universal code!

Many thanks for this information, Doug. I have never seen the new Kirov Beauty, and Marc Haegemann has told me it isn't likely to be released on video. (I was very excited when I heard about it, and wrote him a letter of enquiry after he had published an article on the Russian ballet in Brolga.) Do the Kirov pages en traversi tap out tendues in circles like their counterparts at the Bolshoi, and, if so, do you have any idea where the RB alternative (where the first four friends link up like the cygnets or like the nymphs in the vision scene) comes from? Is there anything in Sergeyev's notes to suggest that changes had been made post Petipa in Russia, or are we to assume that somebody at SWB--say Dame Ninette or Sir Fred--devised the new text?

Jane, how lucky you are to have seen that film. In the Boshoi version, the princes support the friends in attitude turns in the coda. RG, I grew up reading the works of Arnold Haskell, who argued that ballet in Russia was spared the decadence that overtook it in France because it continued to honour the male dancer (he always cited the en traversi Franz in Saint-Leon's Coppelia as a regrettable development). I can, however, think of at least one occasion on which Petipa choreographed en traversi, and that's the Enchanted Garden sequence in DQ. A boy could never have danced the choreography for Cupid. Which leads me to modulate enharmonically to another kind of androgyny altogether. I have long been intrigued by the following passage from Edmund White's Farewell Symphony. Other characters in the novel (which may or may not be a roman a clef) are recognizably based on real figures, eg Felice Picano, but I am so ignorant of the American dance scene that I wouldn't be able to pick up the clues about Jimmy, even if they were blaring at me. Here are extracts from pp 72 and 75 of the Vintage edition: Jimmy was the best. He could leap the highest and turn the most times without "traveling," that is, drifting unwittingly downstage or to one side or the other. He was faster and cleaner than the other men. He could turn as easitly to the left as to the right. He could turn and leap, turn and leap, following a perfect giant circle of grands jetes inscribed within the square of the stge. He could leap up an beat his legs together faster than a barber's shears. His ports de bras were elegant, but not mannered, at once noble and unfussily American. He was too short to partner ballerinas convincingly, but he could do things no other man would attempt, such as kick the back of his head as he went flying offstage in an absurd rock adaptation of Vivaldi that had been especially concocted to show him off, a role so rapid and demanding that backstage assistants would clamp an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth before pushing back in front of the audience. * * * Jimmy dreamed of changing his sex, not because he rejected his . . . well, boyhood, but because he thought that if he were a woman he'd be the strongest ballerina in the world with the most startling elevation and he'd never have to totter and struggle to lift another big girl off the ground. End of quotes. The oxygen mask brouhaha is obviously a variant of the backstage antics during Nijinsky's Spectre de la rose, but I wonder if there are nuggets of fact buried in all that. Does anybody know?

RG, I know that it was a C19 operatic convention to cast sopranos as pages--the so-called musico roles that Marietta Alboni excelled in, and which Verdi tried to exclude from his operas, though Oscar in Un ballo proved to be an exception. I was under the impression, however, that Petipa wrote for both the boys and girls of Theatre Street, as witness the mazurka in Paquita. I am not really sold on the pages with violins, for their choreography is much less interesting than that for the women who supplant them in the RB text. Whoever wrote the stopgaps was very gifted, in my opinion. Perhaps they are based on bits of Petipa from other vanished ballets. Thanks for the hotlink, Alexandra. I shall follow it up with interest. What I find fascinating about the Messel costumes (as they appear in the RB A's Wedding) is that they violate every canon of colour combination I have ever been drilled in, and yet manage to appear harmonious. By the way, in that film, the moorish pages who hold the trees for Chaperon rouge seem to be boys, but I shall check again when next I watch it.

Could somebody please tell me who choreographed a good portion of the dance executed by Aurora's friends after the Rose Adagio? In the Bolshoi version it is partly executed, with wholly different steps, by schoolboys carrying violins. This looks authentic, and tallies with the title in the score, but it isn't how the RB staged it. Did Lopokov step in at one time or other to write a gusset for the friends, or were the adjustments made in Britain (where, in the thirties, there would obviously have been a shortage of male pupils able to dance the ballet at night)?

Mel, I meant to ask you, but it slipped my mind: Do you know how the Queen of the Dryad fouettes rather than the Odile ones came to be called "Italian"? I would have thought that Legnani's mastery of the 32 would have made the latter more likely candidates. It's a pity that ballet didn't follow figure skating in naming steps after their inventors--salkows et al. Attitudes derrieres would be Giambolognas and sautes sur la pointe Vazems, etc. etc.

Thanks, Mel, for confirming that this sort of tessellation is not unknown in Russia. I am rather reminded of a practice in the UK, where, as you know, the Roundheads smashed just about every stained glass window outside York, Canterbury and King's College, Cambridge. People have dug about in the earth outside some old churches, and found fragments of genuine medieval glass (often in quite ravishing colours). They have then assembled these into abstract patterns and put them back into the windows. That, it seems, can also be done with fragments of ballets culled first from the memory of this dancer, and then from the memory of the next.