R S Edgecombe

Well, I have seen more spectacular enchainements in my life, but I certainly think the Marie P version gets off to a good start. I piqued at bar 3 after the anacrusis--I hope that's right--and I didn't know what to do with my arms, so I used the Odette's unfurling bras during the pas de chat, since the LF's wisdom should embrace the world. I like the fact that so much of this sentence is en face--it gives the variation the right security and frontality (instead of those hair-raisingly unpredictable doubles-pirouttes-cum-sissonnes in the alternative). And in the course of this afternoon's little exercise in dance archaeology (thanks entirely to Doug--I can't thank him enough!), I made a discovery that I should have made long ago--viz., that the LF's variation is an amplifed IV-V-I C major cadence, just as the Nutcracker adage is an amplified G major scale. That means that she quite literally has the last word, and in the "cleanest" of all the keys in das wohltemperierte Klavier. I've also been thinking of the gold waltz transposition, and it seems to me more and more likely that Petipa wouldn't have made the change without duress--Tchaikovsky was just too celebrated in 1889 to be messed with in this way--and that the duress must have originated with Brianza. I can think of two possible scenarios, one benign and one malign. In the first, Brianza is walking down a corridor, and hears the gold waltz being played on a dancing master's kit in one of the studios. Because the waltz has affinities with Tchaikovsky's Italianate efforts in the genre--those in the Children's Album and the Fifth Symphony, for example--CB stops short, and, in a rush of nostalgia for her homeland, says, "Che bella melodia. Io la voglio!" And Petipa grudgingly obliges. Or--and here I am thinking of that horrible occasion when Pavlova physically attacked Karsavina, in ostensible outrage at her loose bodice, but in actual jealousy of her pirouettes--there is a run-through of the ballet quite close to the premiere, and Anna Johansson receives huge acclaim from the company for her gold fairy waltz. CB, casting a baleful eye on a possible rival for the glory of Act III, says, "Che bella danza. Io la voglio!" And again Petipa grudgingly obliges, stripping AJ of her solo, and giving the brilliant, applause-catching variation to his ballerina. I have absolutely no idea what sort of personality CB had. If she was a monstre sacre like Nureyev and Mathilde K, then I'd go with the second option. If she was kind and self-effacing like Bruhn and Tamara K, I'd go with the first.

Back to The Talisman pas de deux. After a long delay, I eventually got round to consulting Beaumont this morning. Am I to infer that the surviving pas de deux comes from the prologue, where Niriti encounters the god of the wind for the first time? If so, I find the format a little puzzling. Some details fit the context, but others suggest rather a celebratory divertissement-type pas de deux for Niriti and Noureddin. Surely Petipa reserves that intrada, adagio, var 1, var 2, coda formula for moments of static resolution, and tends not to use them in pas d'action. Desire, for example, does nothing but porteur in Act II of Beauty. I wonder, therefore, if the Talisman text that the now Kirov presents is a composite of bits and pieces from different parts of the ballet.

I heartily second that salute to Doug and to Grace, Alexandra. Huge bouquets of roses for both of them from all the grateful readers at this site. I am going to try out Doug's MP enchainement to the music later on and see what I think of it. It's a bit abstract for me to grasp in a vacuum. And while we're on Beauty, something came up when, inspired by Doug and Mel, I was reading Wiley a few days ago. He prints Vzevolozhsky's libretto for the ballet in an appendix. V states that in the Act II pas d'action Aurora is accompanied by her friends. In all productions I have seen, the corps has comprised nymphs or dryads, presumably conjured up by the Lilac Fairy. However, in the light of the libretto, it would probably make sense to parallel their costumes with those of Act I, after sneaking in a few extra dancers since the choreography demands more than octet in the corps. In the Cape Town Beauty, Aurora wore a blue version of her pink Rose Adagio costume for the vision scene (I can't remember if the RB Aurora did the same), but the corps danced in shredded ultramarine Romantic tutus that identified them as immortals rather than sleeping companions.

Hans, I agree with you that Petipa's gold variation is far from negligible, though I find all those raccourcis a touch unrelenting. In my ideal production it would be transposed back where it belongs in Act III, alongside a new Sapphire variation "stylized to the epoch"--to quote Mikhail's telling phrase. Because gold has a confident hardness, its Odilish, irremissive run of balances would fit the subject well. I don't agree with Roland Wiley when he says that this choreography is appropriate to a vision. De gustibus non est disputandum, for, unlike you, I find those cross-torso crescent port de bras in the Ashton variation utterly magical-- inverted, prolonged versions of the "beauty" formula in classical mime. And I love the stretto that piles them up toward the end. Only Ashton--or Balanchine--could have conceived of something so rhyhmically pregnant and yet contained.

Hans, is the opening step perhaps a grand echappe, then? Whatever it is, I remember thinking it was poorly integrated, for the dancer never repeated it (unless perhaps at the very end), and it seemed impertinent and excrescent. If the choreographer had second thoughts after 79, I wouldn't be surprised. Alexandra, Ashton choreographed to the original B flat variation that Petipa cut before the ballet came to stage--to my great chagrin. It's terrible to have choose between "native" choreography to a corrupt score, and "alien" choreography to a correct score! I don't know how to resolve that textually. Lac class of 77 or Lac class of 95??? I have often heard the phrase danseur noble (without realizing it originated with Noverre), but never danseuse noble. I clearly must do some homework on employ, and I am glad the material is so close to hand! I have consulted TS since speaking to you last (am now perched on the very tip of my chair with a numb derriere, while my cats sprawl in indolent luxury behind me), and found that MP's mazurka ballet isn't identified. I also looked again at the swing photo, and blow me down, John Michael, if the backdrop isn't identical to that of La Halte de Cavalerie (Roslavleva leaves out the second article--I hope she's right to). That seems to suggest that it was indeed a stage shot, because the inn has a working window (it's closed in the MP photo). And it's also unlikely that a studio would be supplied with a working swing, though who knows if those frivolous Romanovs didn't want to photographed a la Fragonard from time to time!

Alexandra, thank you so much for this information. The idea of a danseuse noble is new to me. Would it also extend to the duchesses, queens and countesses in Giselle, Lac, Raymonda etc., or does it imply that there is at least a modicum of pointe dancing somewhere in the role? Yesterday I went through my copy of Theatre Street in pursuit of RG's Lac/emerald connection (which intrigues me no end), and came across two pictures of Marie Petipa I had forgotten about. She was indeed a beauty, and had absolutely SUMPTUOUS legs. They are enticingly on show beneath a skirt of rucked-up muslin while MP appears to swing in front a painted backcloth--appears only, for I am sure some invisible stage hands sweatingly kept the swing immobile so as not to blur the picture. She also appears elsewhere in TS in a mazurka costume. (Perhaps that ballet is identified, but if it is, I've forgotten, and Gwendolen once again prevents any consultation of TS for the moment.) Is the additional Ashton variation for SB by any chance the Sapphire Fairy's. I saw it danced on the one occasion I was blessed to witness the RB Beauty--the matinee that marked Rosalind Whitton's (sp?) debut as Aurora. All I can remember about the variation is that it began with a pas de ciseaux. I thought at the time it might have been Macmillan's.

Mikhail, I too would love to see the wili fugue. I have a shrewd idea that Mary Skeaping used it in one of her productions ("overcomplete" one critic called them!), but I'm not sure. I am also very sorry that Lacotte left out the Bach fugue that Schneitzhoeffer included in the witches' scene in La Sylphide. Fugal writing poses a huge challenge to the choreographer.

PS RG, I am writing this on campus, so the lineation will be odd (I compose in my email programme here because the Netscape software for posting messages is so peculiar). I have an indexed version of Theatre Street, but unfortunately in a defective Dance Books reissue that is missing Chapter 18. If the emerald/Lac connection is made there, that's why it's unfamiliar to me. Anyhow, it should narrow the scope of your search because all the other Lac references in TS come up blank on gemstones.

PS RG, I am writing this on campus, so the lineation will be odd (I compose in my email programme here because the Netscape software for posting messages is so peculiar). I have an indexed version of Theatre Street, but unfortunately in a defective Dance Books reissue that is missing Chapter 18. If the emerald/Lac connection is made there, that's why it's unfamiliar to me. Anyhow, it should narrow the scope of your search because all the other Lac references in TS come up blank on gemstones.

RG, my source is Mary Clarke's entry for the ballet in The Encyclopaedia of Dance and Ballet--but I realize now I might have made an unwarranted inference. She gives the Russian title (which I read as meaning the original) as having the participial adjective. Choreographically, though, death was there from the start. I think it possible that at the charity event things might have been a little vague, and that the compiler of the programme simply knew that Fokine was using the swan music from CoA and said as much in the paperwork.

Mikhail, what a brilliant phrase you have coined to characterize the sorts of things Lacotte does--"stylization to the epoch." So much better than reconstruction in tweezering inverted commas!

Grace, thank you SO much for going to such trouble. I tried to copy your text so that I could paste it into a file, but the cursor wouldn't take. So I shall make manual notes once I have disconnected the computer. How I wish I had your mastery of Benesh. I suppose I could teach myself, but I made a hash of self-instruction harmony and had to get professional help with that, and my autodidact French and Xhosa are very ragged and error-prone. The THREE variations spring from the fact that when Mel consulted Sergeyev's notes at Harvard, he found two texts (which I presumed were Petipa's daughter-flattering, simple original and Lopokov's more advanced surrogate), neither of which conformed with the LF variation then in circulation on the stage. But perhaps I have got the wrong end of the stick. Guess who's sitting on my lap and grooming her ample belly--and putting considerable strain on my lower back at the same time!? With all good wishes (and thanks again) Rodney

Mel, The initials of this Nadaud are J. B., but I haven't a clue what his names might have been. I suppose Jean, Jacques or Jules are the most likely. In 1840, he devocalized Auber's Le Lac des fees into a ballet score that was choreographed by Antonion Guerra for Cerrito. And--this is for Glebb!--he had also done the same thing to Robert le diable the year before. I think Guerra choreographed that as well, but I'm not sure. I don't think that Pugni adapted the Nadaud elements in the pas de six--they are the valse intrada and an unspecified allegro--but rather took them on in a gesture of co-composition a la Minkus and Delibes in La Source. Hans, I have only seen Sizova in a film of Beauty, and thought her radiant and possessed of an excellent jump--but there was something about her line that troubled me. I can't remember what it was--only that I had tea with my brother in the Company Gardens after the screening, and mentioning it to him. His response was that I was a veritable little Procrustes, always wanting to chop and change the bodies that were given me instead of accepting them gratefully!

RG and Jane, thank you very much for tracing the DT article for me. It was definitely the second one that I read, and that would account for my thinking the Kirov reconstructor was a Russian, for I would have definitely remembered Lacotte's name. I knew it from his La Sylphide reconstruction for his wife (which had been screened on SATV in 76), not to mention his involvement in Nureyev's defection, and his subsequent "reconstruction" of Marco Spada for the same--it came in the wake of the delightful Bonynge recording. I saw a picture in the DT of Nureyev dancing it in Rome (I think). Paul, I agree whole-heartedly with you about Pankova's vivandiere (if indeed she IS the markitenka!). Such wonderful stage-skimming ballon--just like the lithograph of Lucille Grahn in Eoline. Did you know that some of the music for that pas de six is by Nadaud? It's very seldom acknowledged in the credits, but Ivor Guest has assured me that this is the case.

Many thanks for the info about Ashton, Ari. I didn't know that. It seems that the RB texts are full of such gussets and patches--eg the peasant's solo in Act I of Swan Lake, which was choreographed by Dame Ninette. And thank you for your woodshed aphorism, Mel. I am a product of the corporal punishment era, and was once caned at school when my entire Grade 9 class was sentenced to a collective punishment. This because we laughed with pointed crudity at all the jokes in a feeble Afrikaans story that our teacher made us read, whereas we wanted to revise for the next day's maths examination. Inspired by Doug's recent posting about the Act III pas de quatre, and by Mel's interesting and suggestive account of the ballet (see hotlink above), I have been reading Wiley on SB. W makes the point that, even while the ballet appears to celebrate the myth of regal divine right etc, the allegory might also contain some unflattering implications (eg the supplantation of moral fairies by materialistic ones in Act III). I haven't been able to find out anything about Vsevolozhsky's politics, but I wonder if one could add the name of Florestan to the encrypted but critical aspects of the allegory (if they're there). After all, it is the name of Beethoven's hero in Fidelio--imprisoned, like so many under the rule of autocrats, even enlightened ones, without due process. In his preface to Little Dorrit, Lionel Trilling observes that "the trumpet call of the Leonore overture sounds through the century, the signal for the opening of the gates, for a general deliverance." Coupling the name Florestan with the numerical rank of XIV might, therefore almost read as a gesture of subversion. By the way, Estelle, Wiley seems to think that V, not Petipa, was prob responsible for the naming of the ballet's characters.

PPS Oh my goodness! Another erratum. They aren't developpes in the Queen of the Dryads, of course, but grands battements. Imagine trying to balance the former--though apparently Trefilova once did in Odette's variation in Act II. The conductor (one Hartmann, as I recall) was so fascinated by the score that he took it at a snail's pace so as to absorb all its beauties. And Trefilova developped untremulously, sur le pointe, in slow motion. Marvellous beyond words!

PS Many thanks for the Beauty hotlink, Mel. I think the summary of the ballet's themes (yours?) is a masterly piece of writing--so crisp and full of good ideas. Two queries, what is the origin of the phrase "trip to a woodshed"? I've never heard it before. And who is the ballerina in Romantic tutu? Is this from the vision scene? This Aurora looks as if she might have strayed in from Pas de Quatre or Les Sylphides!

Curiouser and curioser. There are THREE variant variations for the LF? The one danced by the Bolshoi is the one, more or less, that David Poole staged in Cape Town--but it differs substantially from the RB one, which I have seen only once. There, I recall, there were developpes a la seconde fouetting into attitude derriere (as in the DQ Queen of the Dryads solo, which Nureyev transposed--for reasons never explained to me--into his deporteured Le Corsaire pas de deux in An Evening with the RB). The Bolshoi/Cape Town text has a vertiginous sentence of sissonnes and pirouettes doubles that must be quite hard to spot, and which therefore tends to veer drunkenly off the vertical--though I must say Speranskaya manages very well on my Bolshoi tape. What is puzzling here is why DP, who was nominally restaging the RB text, should have gone behind the Iron Curtain for his LF variation. He is no longer with us to ask. I'm afraid I don't know the Pigeon sisters. My cats are named after the women in The Importance of Being Earnest. Thanks for the kitty icons, Grace, which, I take it, are greetings from your own. I haven't told you that Cecily (who is a third of Gwendolen's size, even though they get exactly the same rations--a quite different metabolism) is a wonderful Bournonville dancer. When she plays with her catnip mouse, she does a soubresaut first to the left, then to the centre, then to the right of her iconic prey, all four feet clamped in perfect firsts (if indeed a soubresaut can be launched from first!). It's as though she were dancing the Time Warp from Rocky Horror, and it's a delight to heart and eye.

Mel, many thanks for that information. Do you happen to know why Lopokov chose to rewrite the Petipa variation? Was the original insufficiently taxing? Grace, I am writing a book (my eleventh!), but, like all its predecessors, it's on Eng lit. However, I have published musicological articles with a strong ballet content however (in Dance Chronicle and Nineteenth-Century Music and Brolga). And in the days when the SA magazine Arabesque was still extant (it was edited by the man who subsequently became the PR officer for Dawn Weller's ballet co--PACT--in Jo'burg), I wrote articles and reviews for that. Gwendolen and Cecily, who are very skittish as a result of the cold front passing over Cape Town, and tearing in and out of the study like Valkyries on Benzedrine, breathlessly send you their love!

Does modern scholarship support Natalia Roslavleva's contention that Marie Petipa wore heeled shoes in Act II of Beauty. And if so, when did bourees displace her stridings about? I have read somewhere that the variation the L Fairy now executes in the Prologue pas de six is by Lopokov. If this is true, how did this come about? Does it have anything to do with a suppression of the original variation because MP had a limited technique? Petipa, it seems, never felt compelled to give variations to ALL who had participated in his intradas, as witness the 3-variation pas de quatre in the Moscow DQ, and his devariationed version of the Gemstone pas de quatre that Doug has set out for us in the Desire/Florimund thread.

I think it probable that "Prince Charming," which the SWB had inherited along with the new fairy names from the Diaghilev revival, was scrapped as being too reminiscent of the British pantomime tradition, and therefore according ill with the grand new Covent Garden venue of 46. However that hypothesis wobbles in relation to the fact that the ballet's title was at the same time changed back from Princess to Beauty. Mel has given us D's jocular explanation for the change, viz. that there were no beauties to dance Aurora (quite untrue, in fact, for Trefilova and Spessivtseva were both exquisite, and Lopokova very pretty). His real motive was to avoid any confusion in the public mind of Petipa's ballet with the British pantomime. I think in matters like this de Valois would have conferred with Constant Lambert, and it's likely that Florimund/Beauty changes represent a joint effort after some discussion of the pros and cons. I have suggested in the discontinued thread that Desire would have sounded like Desiree in spoken interviews, and flattered public prejudice (rampant at the time) against "effeminate" male dancers.

Estelle, in answer to your query about the nomenclature of the Beauty's prince, I looked up Roslavleva's Era of the Russian Ballet, which I haven't reread in years (in fact I dusted it down a few days ago because John-Michael was asking for full-stage photographs of the Imperial Ballet). R confirms that Desire was the name of choice in 1890, and Demidov's Russian Ballet: Past and Present, which was published in 1976, makes it clear that it remained current during the Soviet era (he lists Desire as one of M Liepa's roles). Brinson and Crisp's Ballet for All uses Florimund in its synopsis of the plot, a sure sign that it originates with the RB, and probably with Dame Ninette herself, for who else would have authorized such a change when even an alteration to the length of Albrecht's tunic had to receive her imprimatur? In their opening blurb for the ballet, however, B & C list Gerdt as having danced "the Prince" in 1890. Back to the gold waltz (as if we'd ever left it!): In the course of reading R on SB I came across the following (long-forgotten) sentence, and it made me sit up sharply: The remarkable suite of Precious Stones was danced as brilliantly as the sparkle of their facets by Anna Johansson--Diamond Fairy, Klavdia Kulichevskaya--Gold Fairy, Yelizaveta Kruger--Silver Fairy, Maria Tistrova--Sapphire Fairy. (118) No talk of excisions there, and the word "suite," along with the painstaking enumeration of each soloist, suggests on the face of it that the pas de quatre was staged in its entirety. If R is quoting a contemporary review, it would be interesting to read the whole, and see if more light is thrown on this mysterious topic.

Since Diaghilev didn't alter Desire to Florimund, I wonder if the change originated in a PR strategy by western companies eager to dissociate their male dancers from suggestions of effeminacy. Desiree was a very popular girls' name in SA during the fifties and sixties--and presumably in Oz and the UK as well--and a radio interview, say, with a danseur who said he was the Desire of the current Beauty, might have evoked unwelcome sniggers.

Grace, I like your idea of Gwendolen as pelican very much--except that she has a pouch on her belly, and not on her chin. There's a wonderful description in Patrick White of pelicans with heaving wickerwork wings. Your etymology of Florimund is spot-on, and fits the ballet perfectly. I wasn't objecting to it but rather wondering where it comes from. I definitely prefer Petipa's fairy names to Diaghilev's, however, because they supply important iconic and choreographic clues. Thinking about the Florestan pas de trois last night, I was suddenly struck by the idea that if Nijinka restored the gold waltz to Act III, she would have had to exscind it from Act II. That would have left a bleeding wound that, I feel sure, the musical Diaghilev would have wanted to stanch. So isn't it just possible that it wasn't Ashton, but rather Nijinska, who was the first to choreograph the Bb variation? Perhaps the fouettes Dame Ninette remembered could have figured here--and she must surely have meant the ronds de jambe kind and not the tap-on-the-shoulder ones that are still retained, and which have functioned as a metaphor of unattainability ever since Silfiden. I can count 17 fouettes to the D minor section of the variation, which at one point has little skirls that could match a whipping leg. And this morning I looked at my RB tape of A's Wedding again, and feel sure that it's Ashton's edition of the polka, not Nijinska's, that we see there. I say that because N, who loved rotary hands and arms, would never have cut those distinctive Petipa port de bras (one could perhaps call them mains tournantes a la mouffle) that he also uses in the female variation in The Talisman, and which the RB replaces with speeded up bras de benediction from Miettes qui tombent. Also, those hands brought sharply down to bras bas but with the palms out-turned (during the entrechats toward the end) are pure Ashton. I recall a comparable effect in Sinfonietta, where the male demi-caractere dancer does sissonnes with similar gestures.

Whoops! Erratum for a bad mistake. I have just checked the score. The echappe section in Kitri's variation is, of course, in B flat. It has an oscillating F Major pedal, and that's what I was thinking of.