Helene

Based on all of the CPYB dancers that I've seen dance professionally, I'd say the opposite is true, and that this was the exception to the rule.

I couldn't resist: I postponed Mrs. Karenina for another night and watched Divine Dancers instead. There were some performers that I'd already had interest in seeing, but thought it unlikely anytime soon, like Semionova and (Daniil) Simkin; others, like Herment, Kutcheruk, Mikhalev, Hoffmann, and Kaftira, who I didn't know but was glad to have seen; and Jude and Dmitri Simkin, whom I didn't realize were still dancing. There were two things I think marred this DVD: the pseudo-documentary approach and the camera work. I say "pseudo" because it neither simply created an introduction to the pieces nor integrated the documentary and dancing. Or if it attempted the latter, it failed: having one dancer say how much he or she liked working with her partner between variations was disruptive and superfluous. There were three issues with the filming: intermittent fussiness -- at one point, the camera panned to Maria Alexandrova's feet while she was doing a very impressive set of fouettes -- close-ups on works that made them look overwrought for far too much of the time, and camera placement that made the dancers look thick. This was a live performance, and the performers couldn't ignore the audience, but there are techniques, like in the filming of POB's Jewels, that capture live performance expressions that are more palatable to the camera. The camera took the dancers head on and added sacks to them. For example Filin, who almost disappeared when he turned sideways in a short backstage clip, looked very wide in La Fille du Pharaon, and the close-ups on his remarkable musculature did not compensate completely. The rep itself made a standard approach to filming difficult. The dancers who suffered most from the cameras were Hoffmann, her partner Kaftira, and Jude. Hoffmann and Kaftira performed a Krzysztof Pastor piece called "Wie lange noch?" to a song by Kurt Weill. At least in close-up, not only did Hoffmann in particular look overwrought in the choreography, neither her dancing nor the choreography matched the quite sweet vocal delivery of the unattributed soprano. (According to the Kurt Weill Foundation website, in 1944 the song was "[r]ecorded by Lenya for the Office of War Information, intended for broadcast in Germany behind enemy lines." I can't find the lyrics for it on the English-language internet, but I can say that the soprano sang nothing like Lenya.) In "The Man I Love" pas de deux from Who Cares? which the Dutch National Ballet performed last season, there was a lot of facial expression that seemed over-the-top for Balanchine, at least in close up. Stylistically, the second half looked unrecognizable to me as Balanchine. I would have cast Hoffman in "My One and Only" instead; she's a very strong dancer. There is too much temptation to act in "The Man I Love." Jude's makeup and expressions looked very different from the rest of the cast in The Moor's Pavane. To me the women, Roublot and Franciosi, looked dull, and Herment looked far more naturalistic, although it's hard to know how Jude and Herment registered to the audience. I am happy to have The Moor's Pavane on tape, though, whatever the flaws of filming. The one piece that did film well was "Mémoire" by Julien Lestel, which emphasized arms for the majority of it's 6+ minute duration -- a mini-miracle of understatement, and to Rachmaninoff no less -- and was danced by Delphine Baey. I find Manon dull, and I wish that if Semionova and Zelensky were cast in MacMillan, it had been better MacMillan. Kutcheruk has overexaggerated extensions, which is wrong stylistically for Sleeping Beauty, but remained remarkably on balance most of the time, and I kind of like her upper body. Her partner, Mikhalev is a throwback to the Bolshoi men from decades ago. (He has very reliable thighs.) There was nothing memorable about Stephen Thoss' "My Way" for Daniil and Dmitri Simkin or Ben van Cawenbergh's Broadway-like choreography to Jacques Brel for Dmitri Simkin and Marek Tuma ("Amsterdam") and character piece for Daniil Simkin ("Les Bourgeois") of the type familiar from videos on his website, regardless of the quality of the dancing. Alexandrova and Filin are beautiful dancers, but I don't think the video is worth it just to see them. In the thread Are certain ballet steps an endangered species?, both carbro and kfw asked whether certain types of steps are disappearing because they don't look as good on today's taller dancers. Watching Alexandrova and Filin in La Fille du Pharaon, I thought of those posts, and how their legs looked too long for the quick steps, unlike Dupont and Ganio who, in another Lacotte reconstruction, La Sylphide, danced with the correct geometry for quick precise footwork and direction changes. Of all of the selections from Raymonda they could have chosen, the one they danced is most dependent on perfume, and by going cold into it in a gala setting, they had no chance to establish the right mood. As drb pointed out, this intimate piece was inexplicably the last piece on the DVD when it's clear they were in costume for La Fille du Pharaon a minute later during the curtain calls and had danced Raymonda earlier. If there was a strength to this DVD, it was that there were men dancing. I'm not sure how old Igor Zelensky is now, but there should be a law against anyone who was that good looking as a young man getting better and better looking with age. (It's simply unfair.) Watching Dmitri and Daniil Simkin dancing together, my eye was drawn to the father. Although he was prettier twenty years ago, I find Jude's face fascinating now. I don't know how old or young Mikhalev is, but he looks like he comes from the Soviet era, regardless of actual age. On the whole, I don't think this DVD is worth it. It might be better to wait until excerpts show up randomly on Classical Arts Showcase.

Pacific Northwest Ballet didn't do these until Peter Boal introduced them this year. Seattle audiences are quite obedient -- we generally stop dead in the middle of an ovation if the house lights go up -- and it took an entire year before the audience "got" that there would be a front-of-the-curtain call.

In this post on the Race, Culture, and Ballet thread, 2dds gave specific recommendations for ballet to become more inclusive: This is the inspiration for this thread.

Since tone is impossible to note over the Internet, and there is no "sarcasm" smilie, comments are interpreted as they read.

2dds, The way to start the subject is to click the "New Topic" button at the top of the corresponding forum and state the spin-off issue and/or question, and then to post a link to the new thread on this one. We do often when the conversation forks and there's a reason to continue discussion in another direction. Many posters are shy about doing this, and bart and carbro are most active in stepping in, but it's always an option.

Thank you for the review, chiapuris! It sounds like the men stole the show, including the conductor.

Up until through at least the mid-70's there were three different ballets a night, intermingled with the Giselles and Swan Lakes, but the company performed at New York State Theater in the 70's at least through 1974.

I've read that Miner changed her interpretation since the premiere two years ago when I saw her. She was anything but vulnerable in Act II then, and even revelled in her cleverness. It was in Act III that she blossomed into a loving woman and, in a Romantic gesture, pretended that the doltish Aminta was an equal. (She definitely "stepped on the rug" first.)

[ADMIN HARDHAT ON] First, no one on the Moderating team has: 1. Annointed anyone as an expert 2. Given anyone dispensation to act as a Moderator, which includes determining what is appropriate for this thread. It appears that I need to address some procedural issues: Anything that addresses the original questions of the thread taking into consideration the courtesy and other Ballet Talk rules and policies is game for discussion, including logical extensions of those questions: The things that have been written on this thread that are inappropriate have been called out by several on the Moderating team: 1. General personal or political philosophy beyond the topic of racism or government funding and how it applies or doesn't to the question 2. Finger-pointing 3. Demands that specific posters respond to specific points If, for example, there was a different thread called, "What can we do to make ballet more inclusive," then on-topic responses range from suggestions to the opinion that nothing can be done. However, that is not the specific topic of this thread. [ADMIN HARDHAT OFF]

And it just came in the mail, and I was so happy to get the package Maybe I'll continue reading Anna Karenina instead.

I don't know if there's an accessible volume that has this. I don't remember if she mentions in her memoir, I, Plisetskaya. It may take one of us some time to see if it is, since the book is neither exactly linear nor indexed. (Just wanted you to know that it might take a little time.)

Fugate entered NYCB during a couple of years of bumper crops, with the long-legged, long-necked Nichols, Lopez, Calegari, Alexopolous among them. (Possibly Saland, too, but she was unusual for the company as well.)There have been times of plenty when dancers who would have be snapped up a few years earlier or a few years later were passed over because of the depth of competition. There are long spans where half the Principal roster is likely to be filled for decades, and shorter ones where it seems every dancer will reach retirement age during that time, and there will be a shift. Any of the tens of top US Senior Ladies figure skaters who knew realistically that there were two places on the 2006 Olympic team, after Kwan and Cohen, can appreciate this very well.

What is the basis for assuming that in that company in the Netherlands in the standing repertoire, that Wilkinson should have been a Principal instead of a soloist? Was this widely noted among dance critics or historians? When early in her career Maria Calegari, after an early rise, was ignored by Balanchine, there were any number of her friends who told her that he was being unfair to her. (Luckily, as she described to the audience at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 80's, Joseph Duell told her that he was right.) Any number of posters here will explain exactly why Veronika Part should be a Principal Dancer at ABT and how Monique Meunier was dissed both at NYCB and ABT. There have been a number of soloists from Europe who joined NYCB and not only stayed in the soloist ranks, but were underutilized. Some of them matched the company style and fit into the repertoire, some of them didn't. ETA: I accidentally deleted this before posting: This is not to say that race was not the issue behind this decision, but that usually comes out years after the fact, when colleagues and critics come out and say that a given dancer or athlete or professional was so much better than his or her colleagues.Andrea Long and Aesha Ash are very fine dancers. Are they finer than the women who were soloists at NYCB at the time? Were they better than the corps members who moved up to the front rows? For every dancer that accepts a long-term career in the corps, there are several who can tell you why someone had it out for them or didn't recognize their talent or why they're better than . Ash is hardly the first dancer to be told, your career ends at this stage in this company. And she is hardly the first to find a great rep in another company, like Carla Korbes, who danced a dream season at PNB this year.By sheer numbers, it is easier to become a player in the NBA than to become a Principal Dancer in the 5-10 companies that are considered the top US companies. It is easier to be a member of Manchester United than a Principal Dancer at the Royal Ballet, if for no other reason than greater turnover in the former. If Ash and Long had the talent of Suzanne Farrell or Ashley Bouder, which they do not, in my opinion, would Peter Martins have continued to ignore them? I can't answer that, but if SAB had a number of black dancers in the school, odds are, I think there would be a greater distribution of black dancers in the ranks over time, and since SAB is a training ground for dancers from many other companies in the US, over more and more companies.

I have to go back to kfw's earlier question on several threads, which is whether ballet, or I would add, any classical art, should change to be recognizable. It is one thing to train and cast color-blind and to expand the acceptable body types across races, and which I've already seen among white dancers in a number of companies, which is why it seems a bit absurd to me to claim that the same body type in a dancer of another race is somehow unacceptable. It is quite another to change ballet and ballet training to be more culturally acceptable. I've never heard a demand that if a white person were to train to become a Kabuki performer, that the classical canon of Kabuki would be expected to be made more recognizable to white people, or that the strict, classical training be changed to accomodate anyone who wanted to express his or her own ethnicity or individuality during that training. Is there a demand that traditional African dance be made more recognizable to a white audience?This is very different than training an audience to see art forms that can be intimidating and not immediately accessible, and in providing technology aids, like seat/supertitles or the simultaneous translation headphones that were available for Kabuki performances in NYC in the pre-titles era. It is different than the compact versions of the Peking Opera (as it was advertised in the late 70's and early 80's) works that the company brought in its first US tours, or than the hour-long versions of The Nutcracker that are appropriate for the attention spans of small children. When Dance Theatre of Harlem presented it's Creole Giselle, the difference between the classicism in that production and ABT's was nil. That the venue could change from Germany to Louisiana without missing a beat showed the timelessness and universality of the story. The assumption was that the audience would accept classicism on its own terms, in a more immediate context. At the pre-professional level, there is a very rigid code of behavior and dress. The teacher rules, with varying degrees of benevolence. Classes are quiet. The style is formal, pulled-up, and elegant. Hair is kept up and away from the face. Very simple clothing, with the entire class in the same colors, is required so that the line is not obscured. A reverence ends class. (I would have lasted about 15 minutes.) Whether this is at all appealing to the kids who have to sacrifice for an art form that is alien to most people is questionable. But for those who are willing and have talent, I think it's critical that they are not blocked by notions of a racially homogeneous stage picture or the inability to cast based on ability in a role, because it is "unbelievable" that a non-white would be a romantic hero or heroine, which is even more absurd in the neo-classical/abstract works. There are already huge concessions made by ballet companies to produce marginally classical works to be "relevant" and recognizable to its core audience. With the dumbing-down of the repetoire, I can see how it could be insulting that concessions are made to a primarily white audience that are not made to any other audience. I would rather see an audience educated than catered to. If the form of movement is irrelevant or uninteresting, then not everyone will like everything, but at least the choice is informed.

I have the Spring 2006 issue of Ballet Review. On the cover is a wonderful photo of Thomas Lund of the Royal Danish Ballet full flight in Napoli. Contents are: 1. Reviews from Berlin, Boston, Philadelphia, Hamburg, Seattle, Chicago, Chemnitz 2. "The Ashton Centennial at Covent Garden" (Leigh Witchel) 3. "Graham's Mentor" (Jane Sherman) on Ted Shawn 4. "A Conversation with Aurélie Dupont" (Daniel Gesmer) 5. "Ballets Russes, the Movie" (Leland Windreich) 6. "Montpelier at 25" (Sandra Genter) 7. "Unforgettable" (Max Lindsay Whitcomb) -- an short essay on a photo of Darci Kistler and Sebastién Marcovici in Balanchine's Movements for Orchestra 8. "An Unsettled Marriage: The Merger of SAB and Jullliard" (Joseph W. Polisi) 9. "London Reporter" (Clement Crisp) 10. "Music on Disc" (George Dorris) 11. "Check It Out" 100 pages.

While Seattle is primarily a white place, at least half of the people in my workplace were born in China/Taiwan/Hong Kong or India Subcontinent. Particularly among my co-workers from India subcontinent, there is a wide range of color, if not race, which I've been told creates its own social hierarchy, much as Spike Lee, among others, has described among American blacks. One of my biggest frustrations about watching ballet is how little what I see onstage is representative of my greater community, with the exception of the Dance Chance kids in the Pacific Northwest Ballet program. There have been two terrific black male dancers who've graduated from the PNB school in the last two years, and neither has joined the company, which I think is a loss to us (and a gain to the communities where they now dance.) There are three Asian principal dancers in the Company who are Asian-born (Japan, China, Mongolia); I'm not sure if American-born Noelani Pantastico is of Asian descent. I have a different aesthetic than many: I don't like to watch a row of white, bone-thin dancers, particularly women. I prefer a more diverse range of body types and race. While my favorite dancers have both, I would always be willing to sacrifice line (within reason) for someone who can move and who has musicality and dance intelligence. (At the year-end school performances, there are always one or two extremely depressing cases where puberty monster has made a professional career impossible for young women who have these qualities. And it always seems to be the women.) To me, the beauty lies not in a bunch of perfectly matched bodies, but how a group of diverse ones learns to move as one stylistically. It makes dramatic sense to me that a group of very different woman became Swans or Willis, because being jilted is universal across race, class, age, and century. The power to me is that this diverse group has been beaten down into becoming the same thing. Ironically, when I see a corps with a fairly rigid set of body types and heights, like in POB and the Bolshoi, my tendency is to look at all of the faces and movement to try to differentiate them.

This is particularly true for ballets where counting is critical, like in Agon and Rubies, particularly for dancers who admit to hate to count and prefer a more immediate response to the music.

The question posed at the beginning of the thread from 2005 was how Kylian would be classified, after the originator saw performance of his work through a ballet company.

Welcome to Ballet Talk, aude! We don't allow sales between Ballet Talk members on the board, and, unfortunately, the usual suspects for English-language books besides amazon.com (Abe Books, Powell Books, and Alibris) don't have the book, nor is there a listing on eBay for the US or amazon.fr, or FNAC, the usual suspects for French-language books. Perhaps one of our member in France could suggest other ways to find the book.

I got two ship notices today from amazon.com: Divine Dancers Royal Danish Ballet Napoli Both were pre-orders, and I was happy to hear that amazon.com had received its stock and had started to ship.

Today I went to an art exhibition at Experience Music Project, which was founded by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, as a museum dedicated to American popular music, and which is housed in what in my opinion is a sadly disappointing Frank Gehry building. The exhibition was called "DoubleTake: From Money Monet to Lichtenstein" [was that a Freudian slip or what?] and consists of a series of paintings from Allen's private art collection, which were grouped in two's, three's, or four's, based on one or more specific similarities, although the pieces were from different periods, movements, and sometimes media. When entering the exhibit, my friends and I first were given little devices which looked like a cell phones on lanyards, with instructions to dial "100" and hit the green right arrow, and to listen to the introduction and instructions for use as if it were a cell phone. Next we were taken to a small screening room full of Gehry-designed benches, where we saw an eye-opening short film. In the background of the set were a number of paintings from the collection on the "back" wall, with singles and duos faced the camera/audience to comment on the painting on the invisible wall. There were the usual reactions: a pretentious young yuppie explaining to the woman he was with that anyone with half a brain would understand the painting, while she made a face to show she had no idea what he was talking about; a middle-aged woman dressed in orange and brown who commented that the colors in the painting didn't go together, while her husband rolled his eyes and responded "you should know," two teenagers looking like they were about to make the "whatever" sign, etc. All of the people started talking until David Hyde Pierce called on them to be quiet and played off of his snobby Niles character. The curator of the show, Paul Tucker, joined him, and asked his opinions. After giving an airy intellectual speech, and using the first pair of paintings in the exhibit -- Renoir's "The Reader" and Lichtenstein's "The Kiss" -- as an example, Tucker stopped him by saying, "That is what you know. Tell me what you think." At that point, Tucker lead Hyde Pierce into a discussion of several factors to look for in examining a painting, including color, composition, and content. Hyde Pierce was still able to express intellectually-based observations, but they became his, and clearly not the only way to look at the pieces. By the end of the four-five minute discussion, a groundwork had been laid for an audience that had, perhaps, wandered into the exhibit from one on popular music and might not have been familiar with art. The narration on the audio device continued along the same vein. For example, in a pairing of Degas' "Woman Seated in Front of a Piano" and Eric Fischl's 2004 "Krefeld Project: Bedroom #6," in dicussing placement, the curator described how the subject(s) were similarly placed off-center and the way an element in the picture -- a piano in the first, a headboard in the second -- cut off the subject's at the neck. The message that "it is within each observer's ability to comprehend" by using a basic framework, complemented by the use of a comparative method, and supplemented with the audio device in which the obvious enthusiasm of the narrator reading the curator's text, in which a color might be described in the vernacular and called "fantastic," was effective, if the families huddled in discussion and debate were any indication. The text never talked down to the listener, but assumed that a number of people attending the show were popular music fans who did not know about art and, if adults, might be afraid of it (or looking stupid in front of their children.) The groupings were" * Renoir "The Reader" (1877)/Lichtenstein "The Kiss" (1962) * Degas "Woman Seated in Front of a Piano" (1882-5)/Fischl "Krefeld Project: Bedroom #6" (2004) * Cezanne "Mt. Saint Victoire" (1888-9)/Bayer "Metamorphosis" (1936)/Goldin "Stromboli at Dwan, Italy" (1996) * Gauguin "Autumn at Pont-Aven" (1888)/Struth "Paradise 14 Yakushima, Japan" (1999) * Gauguin "Maternity (II)" (1899)/Yanobe "Atom Suit Project: Desert" (1998) * Brueghel, the Younger "The Five Senses: Sight" (ca. 1625)/Seurat "The Models" (1888)/Picasso "Four Brothers" (1921) * Canaletto "The Grand Canal, Venice, Looking South-East from Saint Eustace to the New Rialto Buildings" (ca. 1738)/Turner "Depositing of John Bellini's Three Pictures in the Church of the Redeemer, Venice" (1841)/Manet "View in Venice -- The Grand Canal" (1874)/Monet "The Grand Canal, Venice" (1908) v* an Gogh "Orchard with Peach Trees in Blossom" (1888)/Ernst "Landscape with Lake and Chimeras" (ca. 1940) * Signac "Concarneau. Morning Calm. Opus 219 (Larghetto)" (1891)/Rothko "Yellow over Purple" (1956) * Monet "Rouen Cathedral. Facade. (Afternoon Effect)" (1894)/Johns "Numbers (1963-78) * Monet "The Mula Palace" (1908)/Richter "Candle" (1982) * Monet "Water Lilies" (1919)/de Kooning "Untitled XII" (1975) I think it would be great if a number of educational performances could be created for ballet. (NYCB used to have one lecture/demo/performance matinee a year during the Winter Season.) One in which the stylistic and compositional similaries of the dance and the music from different periods could be explored and explained, to give people a framework of how to view ballet.

I'm so happy that Smolen impressed, especially since she just joined SFB. I am going to try to arrange a trip when I can see her, Helimets, and Pipit-Suksun, three dancers I haven't yet seen. No one is allowed to steal away Helimets until I can arrange that

Your view was not dismissed. Rather, since, this topic has been discussed many times on the board, you were told what the prevailing community response has been and why. I haven't seen any argument that many contemporary choregraphers don't have a strong classical ballet background nor that classical and neo-classical ballet was not their starting point. Many of us agree that these choreographers took paths away from their classical/neo-classical backgrounds, and some of us even agree that these paths are innovative and that the pieces are wonderful. Forsythe in particular has been performed by most of the major companies in the US as well as by POB, Bolshoi, and Mariinsky, and reviews have been reported here. We also have posted when we think the paths have veered from neo-classical ballet into different territory. I don't know Uwe Scholz' work. I don't think his choregraphy is well-known in America, unlike Kylian's.

Thank you very much for the description, Dr. Coppelius!