R S Edgecombe

Hans: If Florestan is the King in A's Wedding, then he must have the gift of bilocation--the ability to occupy two different spaces simultaneously that the Roman church attributes to some of its saints--because he is sitting on the throne while the pas de trois gets underway. Nijinska's Florestan, if he isn't a Perrault character, must be an ad hoc brother of Desire (accent aigue), which is the name under which the prince figures in the piano score--though I've also have heard Florimund at some time or other. Perhaps Diaghilev is to blame for the change, since he renamed all the fairies in a v conventional manner. (Who would want to exchange the choreographically significant Miettes qui tombent for Woodland Glades???) By the way, not all the components of Beauty are courtesy of Perrault. Both Florine/Blue Bird, and the white cat derive from stories by Madame de Aulnoy. (Grace: Gwendolen will, one day, I hope, make her debut as la chatte blanche, for she is white from top to paw tip, if you except her black yamulke and tail. She has magnificent elevation--leaping from the side of the bath clear across the passage and into the sitting room when she plays with her foster sister Cecily, but landing rather heavily because of an Antonia del'Erian embonpoint in her figure. Still, I think she looks magnificent in flight--like a great swan, though eyes less fondly paternal than mine might be reminded of a jumbo jet!] Hans: You won't find the G major marche because, to my knowledge, it has never been recorded. If you want to get an idea of its deportment, listen to the Grahn variation of Pas de Quatre. [incidental query: is her name pronounced Grah-hahn in Danish? Somebody once told me it was.] The harp you are thinking of is probably the B flat major (dominant) preparation for the pas de cheval galop (E flat) that provides Kitri with her variation in the Ouboukov recension of the pas de deux--though Mel says the Kirov offers it too on occasion. The mysterious (apparently untraced) music for this variation might postdate Beauty because, if you listen carefully to the section in F, when she begins her echappes a la seconde, you will hear an oscillating pedal beneath a stabbing melody. This is almost identical in effect and structure with the galop in G (not F, as Roland Wiley seems to imply] that accompanies Aurora's entree in Act I, and which yields, after the pedal slips down to E (the dominant preparation), to that wonderful perigourdine in A major. I still get goosebumps when I hear it, and I must have heard it thousands of times! The worst of it is that when you hear it in the theatre, the audience drowns it out with welcome clapping for the ballerina. It used to make me FUME! PS Please forgive all the typos in my previous post. I sent it from my office via Netscape (at home I have Explorer), and it was like writing through a post box slit. I had no idea where my sentences were going.

To loop back to Hans's post for the moment, the galop variation for Kitri (with the pas de cheval) didn't figure in the Moscow version of the ballet, which Minkus published in piano score. The waltz does, however. When I refer to the hopping variation, I mean the third of the three in the pas de quatre that turned eventually into the pas de deux. Th components are entrada (marche in C, valse in Ab), adagio in Eb, G major waltz, C major waltz--curremt male variation--G major marche with a hopping configuration in the melody (and, without doubt, sautes sur les pointes in the choreography), coda (C major galop). The Beauty Act III pas de trois, by the time it reaches the RB Aurora's Wedding, must be an almost indivorcible amalgam by the three participants. Nijinska chose clearly to dispense with the jewel motif, and rechoreographed the gold waltz without the endless racourcis, and Ashton retouched the whole here and there. Who was Florestan, by the way? I don't recall him in this Perrault story. Does he figure in another? Finally, could all who saw McBride's variation try to rack their brains and see if they could come up with a collective verbal paraphrase of what she did. I find I can remember very striking choreography after one viewing--though bits of it rather than a coherent whole.

Grace, I think the seduction was probably less graphic than that synopsis implies! I know because I have egg on my face in this regard. The last movement of Ashton's Les Rendezvous, which is based on the ballet in Auber's L'Enfant prodigue (1850), is labelled "orgie" in the piano score the librarian at Covent Garden kindly photocopied for me. Without checking my French dictionary, I treated it as an orgy in an article that I subsequently wrote on ballet music. Imagine my embarrassment when, a few months later, I was sight-reading Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots, and found the Act I brindisi is actually labelled "orgie" in the score, and there isn't a woman on stage at that point! I am sure the readers of my article must have thought I have a very dirty mind!

Leigh, thank you VERY much for this information. I was using the wrong syntax in the search. Instead of going to help buttons first, I always try to wing it, and, for example, end up posting ballet history questions in the ballet moms forum! I shall follow the hotlinks you provide at the first opportunity. Grace, I am sure you are in for a treat. Michelle Potter has kindly sent me cuttings about the ballet from the SMH and another Oz paper--I can't check which now, for my matronly cat Gwendolen is sleeping on my lap, and I don't want to disturb her--and has also told me that she will be publishing an account in the next Brolga. All I know so far is that the story is modelled on the Charles/Diana/Camilla triangle, and that Camilla is Rothbart--or should that be Rothbartha?! When you get to see it, I hope you will treat us to a detailed post. Thanks so much. With all good wishes Rodney

Have any Ballet Talkers seen the Graeme Murphy Swan Lake that premiered in Melbourne a few months ago? If so, I should be very grateful if you could describe how his new narrative has been grafted to the Tchaikovsky score--item by item, if that isn't too tall an order!--and also if you could record your reactions to it. I am a HUGE admirer of his Nutcracker, and wonder if he has managed something as fine with Lac.

Mel, does that mean that the pas de trois one sees in Aurora's Wedding, the last segment of An Evening with the Royal Ballet is by Nijinska? I had always thought Ashton was responsible, though clearly the (silve)r polka and (diamond) galop are largely recensions of the Petipa originals. And now I MUST tear myself away from this enchanting Aladdin's cave of a website. Goodness knows what my ISP and phone bills are going to be at the end of the month!!!

How strange! While I was writing my post, Leigh gave us information about the McBride variation (how I should LOVE to see that), and Doug was answering Hans. Please forgive me, I wasn't being redundant!

How wonderful to have all this expertise and knowledge at one's disposal. Alexandra, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. Hans, I understood Doug to say that Gold and Sapphire danced the entrada to the grand pas de deux, in addition to, and by implication long after, their entrada to the gems and metals pas de quatre. But I might be confused. It's becoming clear, though, that Petipa's pas de deux weren't as monolithic and formulaic as they became in C20 practice. There were loose ends and transients. I know, for example, that the pas de deux in DQ was a pas de quatre in the Moscow version, and the Kirov still has coryphees dancing the extended entrada that Ouboukov's Western version trims to a get-on-stage flourish. Did the conversion of the Blue Bird/Florine pas de quatre get boiled down to a pas de deux before the premiere, or was the first movement still cluttered up with Cinderella and Fortune? PS Notably absent from the Kirov DQ pas de deux (pas de quatre manque) is the hopping solo--a la Grahn in THE Pas de quatre--in G major. And does anybody know where Ouboukov got the E flat variation music--the one with the diagonal of pas de cheval? Was it filched from another Minkus score? It's a handwritten MS supplement--labelled only as "Kitri's Variation: The Fan"--in the Dance Books reprint. The trouble is, according to Kirov, Kitri's variation is properly the G major waltz, the one during which she does those fascinating turned-forward assembles. PPS I was fascinated to learn from Mel that the poissons only made a splash in the Diaghilev revival. Obviously things were souped up quite a bit then, for that's when Nijinska installed the twist into Violente's port de bras. Preobrajenska's comment: Bizarre! Tres bizarre!--or, as Jody Foster says in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Weird, very weird! And Dame Ninette was convinced that there were fouettes of the 32ish kind (quelle scandale!) in the vision scene.

Glebb, when Brenaa staged La Sylphide in Cape Town, he apparently asked the designer to instal an elevator for the descent. However, my RDB tape takes the mountain goat option. I imagine that that would be the more authentic, though we obviously need Alexandra's input on the matter. I think it might be a matter of aesthetic judgement, viz., should technological advances be enlisted to improve a known artistic intention? If moonlight is better evoked by electricity, who would want to go back to a gaslit convent scene for Robert le diable? And if violins sound more tender and rich played with a vibrato, who would want to abandon it? Well, the authentic instruments crowd for one! If I want new recordings of rare Mozart operas--eg Mitridate--I have to grin and bear those dead, stringy strings--or go hungry. I think a gliding sylph is better than a clambering one. But then again, one remains very conscious of the scored line in the canvas after the descent has been made!

Thanks very much, Mel and RG, for this information, which depresses me no end. The question must then be asked, apropos of the Act II variation, and in a spelling I borrow from Patrick White, WHYYYYYYY?

Doug, I have some queries related to this topic of accuracy and transmission. I am extremely puzzled by the Russian practice of substituting the Gold waltz for Aurora's Act II variation. SURELY Tchaikovsky didn't sanction this? In an article in Dancing Times, Alastair Macaulay seemed to suggest it was already in place at the premiere. I can't square this with the dominant preparation (F) for the B flat melody, which, moreover, has a gentleness and tentativeness appropriate to a vision--qualities far removed from the confident, iterative, flashy waltz of gold. Does no Petipa text for the original variation survive? I love the Ashton version, but would be equally interested to know how MP set it. The substitution makes ABSOLUTELY no sense to me. Also, do any Sergeyev notes exist for the entrada to the Act III pas de deux? David Poole never staged it in his Cape Town, RB--derived production, and in many old recordings there is also a jarring transition from the A major and D major flourishes that prepare for the G of the vanished entrada to the C major of the pas de deux. Did Sergeyev indicate to the conductor how to get round this, and also the F-to-E flat solecism in the Vision scene?

John-Michael, if paper records are any good to you, you will find a full-stage photograph of an 1899 Bolshoi Beauty (Act II by the looks of it, with the nymph corps divided up into three differently costumed sections--a la the enchanted garden scene the Kirov DQ--and a good deal of garlandage) in F Reyna's Concise History of Ballet. And, in N Roslavleva's Era of the Russian Ballet, there's a dubious stage picture (it could have been shot in a studio) of the 1896 St Petersburg La Halte de cavalerie (I saw a production of this ballet on the BBC in the late 70s), as well as a full stage picture of the Moscow production of Gorsky's Salammbo in 1910.

Thanks so much, Hans. That comma makes all the difference--and the realization that the heel is definitely in the hand. I'm surprised that stretches are formalized to music in the Danish class. In SA--or at least in those I have watched or participated in--they tend to be done informally, in the interstices of the barre, or in the break before centre work.

I suppose the prototype of all the whisked fabrics that impact on ballerinas' movements is the tartan shawl that enables silfiden to exit through the arm chair.

Hans, I still do a ricketty class some days of the week, clutching on to my friend's clothes horse in her back garden while I wait for her to leash up the dogs --this before our daily walks with those utterly beguiling animals. So it seems I'm doing the right thing, though class has always been an autopilot enterprise for me. Speaking of which, I was going to make a separate post, but might as well put it in here. I bought a book of ballet class music yesterday at a second-hand shop--a very nice one assembled by Agda Skjerne, and published by Hansen of Copenhagen. It includes two waltzes for Talon a [accent grave] main jambe tendue, and I haven't the faintest idea what that means. I know the signification of each French word, but I can't combine them into a coherent statement. In some forms of African dance the executant pats his heel with his hand, but I can't imagine that that is what is meant here. Any Bournonville fundis able to help? RG, I have seen only one Degas account of the nun ballet--the unutterably lovely one in the Victoria and Albert. I used to dream over it for minutes on end at every visit. I asked Knud the identical question about tutus and habits. Another, more disturbing question has occurred to me since writing to him. I have seen a photograph of statuette that shows Taglioni in "opera sandals" rather than pointe shoes. Odd, if you bear in mind the fact that the ballet inspired Adolphe Nourrit, who was singing Robert, to sketch the scenario for La Sylphide.

Mashinka, in her extremely useful book, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), Marian Smith argues that vestiges of Gautier's original ballroom plan (i.e. a divertissement of national dances) can be found in the valse of the wilis. There is an obvious touch of the fandango in the passage that accompanies the pirouettes renversees (could somebody please tell me if they're done by Moyna or Zulma?--I always forget), and a (less convincing) touch of orientalism in the F minor oboe melody with acciaccature the follows immediately after it

I wasn't aware that there was a wagon involved. I don't think there is in the RB version. I just remember Lesley Collier looking very tense while Dowell tugged her along on a piece of filmy fabric. However, Nadia Nerina mentions being whizzed across the Bolshoi stage on a trolley in Giselle. They must have discontinued this effect, for it doesn't feature in my tape of a performance with Bessmertnova.

So the Perrot-prompted, politically pawky and podgy Pugni was also prolific? Indeed I didn't know that he had spawned a balletic mujik (I have the candy canes on tape, but prefer to think of the trepak as a Russian dance!) Just for the record, then, that famous photo of the fee dragee about to have the rug pulled from under her feet (a perilous moment re-introduced into Peter Wright's RB staging) is not A d'E but second-cast?

Hans, thanks for the reassurance. I had pictures of a brain littered with cellular corpses, rather like the Civil War reconstructions that Mel Johnson has mentioned here. How does one strengthen synapses? I know old people are meant to do cross word puzzles, but they have never attracted me. Perhaps I should give myself daily quizzes. I remember how, after I hit the windscreen in a traffic accident during 1976, I sat on the pavement and asked myself who choreographed, designed, wrote the music for The Firebird, and when it was first staged. When I found I could answer all the questions, I felt reassured that I hadn't damaged my brain. My friends thought this hilarious, and entirely typical of me!

I am sure you're right--the context would have been too exposed, and the melody too well-known for plagiarism. So it must be an air parlant that does homage to the wonder of the world. I greatly enjoyed your alliterative flourish. I shall go one better, and, on the evidence of a lithograph I have from an Ivor Guest article, shall call him the politically pawky and podgy Pugni!

PS. Glebb, I have just remembered the third, and I think the last temptation--for rituals always favour triads. It's la tentation par le vin. So I think I can now confidently tell you that the ballet comprises: 1) An invocation and processional, a kind of stop-and-start marche funebre 2) La tentations par le vin 3) et par le jeu 4) et par l'amour and finally 5) Bacchanale. If you get to hear the music, listen closely to the cadence, for I seem to remember that Adam borrowed it, or created something very similar, for the cadence to the Waltz of the Wilis. There it's an interrupted cadence (Dflat to G flat, or the flattened mediant) followed by the "legitimate" cadence of B flat to E flat. If the bacchanale ends in A major, and I think it does, there should be an interrupted cadence on C. But I am simply guessing at this point. Forgive my slow response. I turned fifty last year, and my once excellent memory is letting me down as my brain cells die off in droves!

Glebb, if you have a good video store in your area, you might be able to get hold of the 1953 film Melba, directed by Lewis Milestone. It features a reconstruction of the Robert le diable ballet at one point, but in a wildly inappropriate de Basilish style. No less inappropriate was the Andre Prokovsky staging of the ballet in the most recent revival of the opera at the Palais Garnier. I have an audiotape of that performance, and was curious to know why the audience booed the ballet. Knud Arne Ju:rgensen enlightened me in a letter: AP had reconceived it as a Lesbian orgy! This might well have appealed to the ballerina Pauline Montessu (who attended such events in Paris during the 1830s), but it would have shocked the decorous Taglioni to the core! The ballet, as Scribe, Filippo Taglioni and Meyerbeer devised it, comprises a series of temptations (tentations) which I should be able to reel off to you. However, I have forgotten the sequence, and don't have the score at hand to jog my memory. One is definitely gambling (tentation par le jeu)--that's the melody I like best, a sort of languorous tyrolienne or Laendler if I'm not mistaken--and another is la tentation par l'amour. Unless I am much mistaken, it gave Taglioni her big moment.

Mel, I have been pondering your identification of the Strauss Sr waltz in Pas de quatre, and wonder if it doesn't represent a kind of jocular compliment to Taglioni. My German dictionary gives two words for suspension bridge--Kettenbruecke and Haengebruecke. Do you happen to know which of the two features in the waltz's title? If Haenge, don't you think it might just be possible that Pugni was presenting Taglioni's foot as a miracle of engineering--her metatarsal arch the bridge upon which her suspension depends? She was popularly credited in the nineteenth-century imagination with the "invention" of the pointe, even though we now know this not to be the case. Obviously the pun won't work if the melody was tagged as the Kettenbrueckewalzer!

Fokine's original title for the ballet was Umirayushtshi Lebedy, so the dying was present ab origine in the choreography, but certainly not in Saint-Saens' serene and magisterial music--making the ballet a much earlier example of choreographic counterpoint than Le Jeune Homme et la mort, which was rehearsed to swing music and staged to Bach. Fokine clearly had in mind the legend that swans sing most sweetly at the point of death, which is why in Ovid's Heroides, Dido, sitting on her funeral pyre, compares herself to a swan on the banks of the Meander, and why Coleridge composed his famous epigram "Swans sing before they die--'twere no bad thing / Did certain persons die before they sing." However, Pavlova seems to have layered an additional meaning on to the ballet if the following rather dubious anecdote can be accepted. In 1980 (I think) I attended an exhibition of ballet costumes at the Victoria and Albert Museum. There was nothing of actual historical interest, apart from a ragged blue Messel number that Merle Park (as a member of the corps) had worn in the original Homage to the Queen. Most of the exhibits were fresh reconstructions from the Ballet for All repertoire--eg Elssler's Cachuca costume (pink rather than peach, to my immense disapproval) once worn by Margaret Barbieri--and a brand new Mort du cygne tutu, with a green paste jewel on the bodice. Two old woman (in their eighties and therefore likely to have seen Pavlova in her prime) were clucking over this "error,"claiming that Pavlova had always worn a red jewel there to signify a breast wound. If that is true, in her mind at least, she was dancing an unjust, premature death--not, as Fokine seems to have intended, a death in the manner of Gertrude's "thou know'st 'tis common, all that lives must die".

An interesting question, Alexandra. I am not sure that Fokine would necessarily have objected to the fakir dance in Bayadere, Cargill, for it represents an effort at couleur locale, like another dramatically irrelevant dance, the dance of the nursemaids in Petrushka. The source of his rebellion, in my opinion, is much more deep-seated. Even though Gorsky tried to Fokinize La Bayadere, his efforts were foredoomed by the score, a "number" ballet analogous to the "number operas" that Wagner displaced with Sprechgesang. Fokine (at his most typical--which isn't Les Sylphides) is Ballet's Wagner, choosing the "Sprechgesang" of plastique above the coloratura of the high-density, tessellated Petipa variation. He dilutes their choreographic content to make the phrases looser, more lyrical, more continuous--and, because less physically taxing, more prolongable. To realize these effects, he typically chooses tone poems or "unnumbered" ballet music. And, as a result, he loosens the grip of the dance upon its music, as Wagner had loosened the grip of the voice upon the melody that had hitherto been its home. Rimsky or R Strauss would never have saluted Fokine, as Auber saluted Petipa, as "[un homme] qui fait ecouter [sa] musique avec les yeux." As the children of Fokine, we have even developed a complex about choreographic "micky-mousing" and avoid it at all costs. So much so, that when I see a variation by Kenneth Macmillan, I often find that the only point of congruence between choreography and music is their shared duration. Many dances, I feel sure, are now conceived in isolation from the music to which they are eventually attached. I find an hourglass pattern in the focus of nineteenth-century ballet. Bournonville and Perrot stress legs and feet at the expense of the upper body; in Petipa the ideal balance and crossover occurs--richly embroidered ports de bras, nuanced eyelines and epaulement AND delicate footwork--while in Fokine attention shifts to the torso and the arms at the expense of the feet--or at least the sort of feet that can execute Petipan petits pas. His contempt for the classical tutu makes this clear, for he raged at Goncharova for discarding the Firebird's trouser suit a la Golovine.