Helene

Welcome to Ballet Talk, Tessdixon!

Many thanks for your review, and we hope to hear about future performances you attend.

I've always thought of "Ballet Alert" as "BAL let a LERT" and "Ballet Talk" as "BAL let talk."

[Admin note: I edited the title to reflect the correct spelling for easier recognition.]

I guess what I'm asking: is this a NYC regionalism (is it American BALlet Theater or American BalLET Theater?) or an NYCB affectation, or something else entirely?

I've always heard the "Ballet" in American Ballet Theater pronounced another way: both syllables are stressed equally, with the voice rising a bit on the first syllable of "Theater."

Now that I live on the other side of the country, and my time in NYC is limited, it's the rep that determines what program I'll attend. All Balanchine Programs are like manna from heaven to me. On short visits, I'd rather not skip individual ballets (leave early, arrive late), but I would if a program was my only chance to see Liebeslieder Walzer, and the rest left me cold.

There's a very nice presentation on the NBoC website, which explains the making of An Italian Straw Hat.

http://www.national.ballet.ca/Performances...allet-index.php

Walpurgisnacht Ballet -- long hair flying in resemblance to the fires of hell! How could it possibly be danced in buns ???

And the "hair" choreography, where the the women do port de bras all the way forward and back, just wouldn't be the same with buns

Yes, supposedly Balanchine changed it so he could see Maria Calegari's lovely red hair down. 

And what a sight it was in the pose in the last movement where the three women stand nestled with partly arched backs, featuring the cascading blond hair of Kistler, red hair of Calegari, and brown hair of Nichols, especially before she cut her hair.

And then there was the all-dark hair version with Saland, Hlinka, and Alexopoulos.

It seems shocking NOW that the dancers wanted to avoid his instruction, THEN.

To the people who took his class, especially the Monday class he taught for a while on the "day off," often without piano accompanist, it was shocking THEN that the other dancers didn't take his class.

Different dancers had their reasons, but almost all publicly acknowledged ones seem to boil down to:

a. He didn't give a proper warm-up, but went straight into strenuous tendus immediately after plie at the barre. Balanchine was often quoted as saying that dancers expected an easy barre, usually close to a quote that said that dancers were like racehorses that needed to be prodded out of their laziness.

b. They weren't balanced -- he might give all hops on pointe while he was choreographing a ballet with hops on pointe, and then focus on something completely different in the next phase. In Balanchine's Ballerinas, Melissa Hayden said that when Farrell had bad knees, Balanchine stopped giving jumps in class, and she asked how a dancer could remain in shape to dance his ballets without jumps in class.

c. They were too physically strenous for dancers who were overloaded with rehearsal and performance and/or for dancers in later parts of their careers. Villella talks about this in Prodigal Son.

Class was readily acknowledged as Balanchine's laboratory. While this met his purpose, and he was the one in charge, while few dispute that as a rule, class was important for a dancer's career, it isn't universally acknowledged to this day that his approach to class was the best for the dancers' bodies or physical development. Melissa Hayden said in the PBS Balanchine biography, a dancer learns how to dance Balanchine by dancing his ballets.

[Oops -- posting simultaneously with Dale]

National Ballet of Cuba, at least, performs the 19th century classics with an integrated corps.  It's not as integrated as it was when I first saw the company in the late 1970s, but it's a lot more integrated than any American company I know.  (It's not the ballets that are the problem.)

Cuba has long been a mixed race society, and the ranks of National Ballet of Cuba show this well. The Company, exquisitely trained by Alicia Alonso, has been losing dancers to companies worldwide over the last half dozen years. Among them are the Feijoo sisters (Lorna in Boston and Lorena at SFB), Carlos Acosta, and Karel Cruz, a gorgeous, tall, elegant dancer in the PNB corps. Three of the 14 principal dancers in Miami City Ballet are from Cuba. (Three more are from Latin and South America.) While this is sad for Alonso, it is a privilege for the audiences who have "stolen" them. It's hard to imagine that the NBdC can hire everyone from the school, even with the "defections." And the opportunity that companies in the US and Europe can offer is immense, particularly when a dancer can support not only him/herself, but also help to support his/her family and the school that trained him/her. (Even if the value of the US dollar has diminshed.)

Dance Theatre of Harlem has a roster of 45, and has had a number of difficult times over the past few decades. It's hard to believe that at any of several points, at least some DTH dancers wouldn't have left for the opportunity to dance in other companies that are more stable -- and in places less expensive in which to survive than NYC -- and given the small number of places in the Company available to each graduating class, that there aren't well-trained black dancers (particularly women) who, while their first choice is DTH, wouldn't want to dance with other classical companies.

All companies with schools want to train their own dancers, but looking at the rosters of Companies across the US, most have hired European and Asian dancers as well as American dancers who've performed with other companies. They comprise dancers from every level of the hierarchy, including, most significantly, the corps. It's not entirely a matter of "not invented here" (or "until we can grow our own.")

On Seattle's classical radio stadio, KING-FM there is a show hosted by Marta Zekan, aka Miss Marta, called "Classic Kid FM." The show is broadcast on Saturday mornings at 8-9am Pacific Time and is described on the website as follows:

Listen as Miss Marta helps listeners create dances to all kinds of music, from Renaissance to ballet, or lets great music inspire kids to create art. Each week's show might bring classic children's recordings, or music inspired by the weather, animals, fairy tales, adventure and more. On the last Saturday of each month, tune in for one of the award winning Classical Kids recordings, such as "Beethoven Lives Upstairs."

KING-FM programs are broadcast over the Internet through Windows Media player. The "Listen" buttons are located at the following link:

http://www.king.org/listen/index.aspx

I don't even pretend to be in charge of a child to be seen enjoying this program

I was able to go through them all by clicking the next volume, and then clicking each individual year in the decade. I'm using Internet Explorer on a very fast connection.

Ballet Talk is a site to discuss ballet performances, news, and aesthetic issues. This question is appropriate for our sister board, Ballet Talk for Dancers:

http://www.dancers.invisionzone.com

You'll need to register there as well in order to post your question. Right now, the username "figrsk8r" is available.

On the site, you'll find a lot of information about dance training and forums for parents (Ballet Moms and Dads/Parents of Boys). While many of the parents have children who are primarily dancers, you may find some of the threads enlightening.

(I'm closing this thread.)

There are some really great pictures on this site, particularly the ones from the 50's and 60's, but be warned: they are quite small, the largest being about 2" x 2.5". There doesn't seem to be a way to make them bigger, unless I've missed the sweet spot.

Many thanks for the heads up!

I posted about those three dancers because they danced at a gala that I now have on video. Guerin, Ayupova, and Zelensky were all obviously of a different training school than the NYCB, but they didnt look TOTALLY out of place. Today, I think they would. I mean, can anyone honestly picture someone like Zhanna Ayupova dancing alongisde Wendy Whelan and Maria Kowrowski in Apollo?

The casting for that gala Apollo paired Guerin and Ayupova with Patricia Barker of Pacific Northwest Ballet. If Guerin and Ayupova didn't look out of place in Apollo, perhaps it was because they were cast together and not with any women from NYCB in that performance.

I, personally, think they did look out of place, while Barker, who was trained by Francia Russell, a former NYCB soloist who was entrusted by Balanchine to stage his ballets worldwide since she was in her 20's, was the performer who looked like she belonged on Balanchine's stage.

doug,

Many thanks for the update! I remember seeing flyers when the program first started and fundraising efforts specifically for the program. As a donor (albeit small), I thought there would be follow-up mailings, and when I didn't get them or see flyers, I thought the program had ended.

It's also really great to hear that some of the students are in the Professional Division. That bodes well for the Company's future and for the future of the kids who go through the program, regardless of whether they become professional dancers.

Pacific Northwest Ballet has a community outreach program called "Discover Dance," which does in-school residencies, teacher workshops, and performances. The faculty includes several former PNB dancers. They also have a program called 'Bravo Ballet" which has performances at McCaw Hall, visits to class-rooms before performances to prepare the kids' expectations, and field trips to the studios, where kids take a class.

While "Discover Dance" is cross-disciplinary, there used to be a program called "Dance Chance" that provided ballet training for underserved communities. I don't know how long it lasted or if any of the students have continued to dance.

When I was in San Francisco at the end of last season, in a pre-performance talk, Evelyn Cisneros talked about how since soon after retirement she has been working in community outreach and education. The SFB program looks similar to the PNB program.

Education programs start with the next generation target audience, and seem to be the last defense against the slashes that have been made in arts education in public schools. At the same time, a happy trend at PNB lately has been the recognition of the talents of several male dancers of color. The men seem to have it easier, though, which is unfortunate. The diversity among PNB women seems to be more in body type, where being muscular or relatively short is less of an obstacle than in many companies.

While I can appreciate an occasional "meal" of a corps in which every swan seems to have identical height, shape, and physique, that ideal leaves out most of the dancers that I prize. I prefer a more diverse stage picture.

Many thanks, rolande, for sharing your experience and your thoughts. Best of luck in your work with the Boston Ballet outreach program!

Blanc and Legate were also excellent, although I was puzzled by the fact that both were wearing their hair in ponytails, as I don't recall either of them as having particularly long hair.

There was a question about the ponytails during the post-performance Q&A after today's PNB performance of Lambarena. Principal Jonathan Porretta joked about "fake hair," and Ballet Master Otto Neubert said that the ponytails were meant to represent Bach, and that only a subset of the men wore them, including the soloists in the parts where Bach's music was introduced into the score.

Female pas de trois, I thought. 

According to the Choreography by Balanchine catalogue, "Clap Yo' Hands" is listed with "von Aroldingen, McBride, Morris, d'Amboise" for the premiere of Who Cares? (Ballet #368). The revision note says "REVISIONS: 1976, New York City Ballet: CLAP YO' HANDS eliminated." The only time I saw it, the cast was Lopez, Ashley, McBride, and Lavery. I don't remember it well enough to know whether the man's entrance came after Irving had the tape stopped.

That's great background info about the change.

This afternoon was the last performance of this program. I saw it again from the back of the Second Tier, and I was able to compare performances of The Moor's Pavane and The Piano Dance to the ones I saw last week (same cast from Orchestra) and last night (different cast from similar location in the Hall.)

Quick Time was beautifully danced again this afternoon, followed by The Moor's Pavane. My initial thought yesterday was that the piece lost something by being seen from the top of the house, but while I missed seeing the facial expressions, if anything, the cast -- Jodie Thomas (Moor's Wife), Jeffrey Stanton (Moor), Chalnessa Eames (His Friend's Wife) and Christophe Maraval (His Friend) -- looked even more balanced, the characterizations more distinct, and the drama more episodic than they did from the Orchestra. Eames' Friend's Wife was a plausible friend to The Moor's Wife, while in last night's cast, Ariana Lallone' His Friend's Wife looked like she was about to devour Louise Nadeau's Moor's Wife. Stanton's Moor was slowly poisoned, his confidence shattered, but his pride intact, while Batkhurel Bold's Moor played more volatile and angry. Maraval's performance of His Friend had nuance and range that projected as well to the back of the House as it did to the back of the Orchestra.

Because his personas ranged from quicksilver to imposing, portraying a character who was not afraid to appear "weak" in contrast to Stanton's Moor's wall of pride, if it furthered his manipulations, Maraval didn't dominate the performance. This took me by surprise, because he was a dominanting presence in last night's performance of The Piano Dance. In today's performance of The Piano Dance, the cast was the second cast for the ballet, and, like the casting for The Moor's Pavane, I thought it was more well-balanced. The dancers (Rausch/Herd, Foster/Pacitti, Thomas/Moore, and Eames/Spell) again performed as if the ballet was nourishment, and they looked like stars in it.

One note I forgot last night: the lighting for The Piano Dance, which looked so great from the Orchestra, was a bit shadowy from the top of the House in the first few pieces. It was a bit disconcerting to see the downstage left woman's face go from shadow to light as she was lifted a bit upstage and then back to shadow again on the next lift, and then back to light. There seem to be some "wells" of darkness around the stage. (This doesn't include the opening tableaux, which elicited applause from the audience all three times.)

Lamberena had a largely different cast, with Lallone and Maraval dancing the leads, and Noelani Pantastico/Jonathan Porretta and Lesley Rausch/Jordan Pacitti in the secondary leads. In each lead trio (men/women), there were two dancers that could have been movement siblings, with the third a close cousin. Lallone and Rausch had a long-limbed, angular quality, and Pantastico performed this role with crispness that looked right in place, although she isn't the same body type. (With Imler and Vinson, she looked like the "formal" cousin, and in other casts, the men looked unrelated.) Maraval and Pacitti share the same groundedness; when they plie, you can feel the movement to its roots. Maraval is taller, but they are both muscular dancers who move the molecules around them. Porretta can change between qualities of lightness and gravity, and he and Pantastico sparked off of each other in the second pas de deux, after he opened the movement with an explosive solo. Maraval is one of the few whose presence is as imposing and compelling as Lallone's when she is in full throttle, and as a result, their pas de deux was a joy to watch. Pacitti's performance of his solo was as wonderful as it was last night.

Because of the balance of casting in each ballet, I think today's program was as close to perfect as a mixed bill of disparate styles can be. It's not that there weren't other dancers who were equal in these roles, but the alchemy of each combination made the whole more than a sum of its parts.

If the track list on the Arion site that Anthony linked to above is correct, this isn't a complete recording.  The list mentions only two of the demisolo duets, 'S Wonderful and Lady Be Good.  There are three others, including (off the top of my head, can't remember the other two), Sweet and Low Down.

The site listing is incomplete. According to several other sites selling the same record,

Track 13 is "S'Wonderful" (couple 1) and "That Certain Feeling" (couples 2 and 3)

Track 14 is "Do, Do, Do" (couple 4) and "Lady Be Good" (couple 5).

Two sites in the UK, including amazon in the UK, list Track 15 as "The man I love - Matthias Person"

"Sweet Down and Low" was nowhere to be found on any track listing. I couldn't remember which one it was, until I looked it up and listened to an excerpt of Gershwin playing it!

Earlier, I confused "Liza" with "Clap Yo' Hands" -- "Liza" is the male solo that is almost always performed, while "Clap Yo' Hands" was a pas de quatre for the male and three female leads that was dropped in the mid-70's. (I saw it once, either in November '86 or '87 in a special performance.)

I'm waiting for the next introduction to quote Mark Morris, who, according to a Seattle Times article cited in today's Links, said,

I am really happy that Peter [boal] is taking over the Ballet [Pacific Northwest Ballet, whose longtime artistic directors Kent Stowell and Francia Russell will retire at the end of the current season]. Peter is the exact right person. Make sure you get that in: 'the exact right person!'

ballet24/7,

We'd love to hear more of your "student's opinion" -- there nothing "just" about that

If you have time, would you describe a bit more about what you liked about Warren's and Wiles dancing?

Tonight's participants were Kent Stowell, Louise Nadeau, and Paul Gibson, former SFB and PNB Principal and now Assistant Ballet Master at PNB and choreographer of The Piano Dance, in which Nadeau created a leading role. The general topic was Choreography from both the view of the choreographer and the dancer.

Kent Stowell (KS) asked Louise Nadeau (LN) to talk about what it was like to work with Paul Gibson (PG) and choreographers in general. LN responded by saying that it was great to have someone with whom she danced for so long (10 years) choreograph for her. She said PG knew all of her strengths and weaknesses from that experience, and choreographed to her strengths, while leaving out her weaknesses.

LN spoke a bit about her approach, and how it sometimes takes her a while before she's able to get or do what the choreographer wants, which she sometimes needs to work out in the studio. She said that PG knows this about her, and that she's comfortable asking for something to be done on the other leg or side, or saying, after trying it out on her own, that something isn't right. She said she preferred a collaborative effort, which isn't always the case with new/unknown choreographers, some of whom come in with their ideas already set.

LN described how when new choreographers come to cast, the entire company "auditions" in an open rehearsal, performing movement by the choreographer. She made the analogy that this approach was good for good test-takers. She called this process "The Great Equalizer," because most of the time, the first-time choreographers come in cold, and all of the dancers are on equal footing. She mentioned she still gets nervous during this process.

KS said that he and Francia Russell (FR) try to convince first-time choreographers not to make snap decisions, but to take their time, as sometimes, "a choreographer will fall in love with a dancer and realize the next week that they've made a mistake." He and FR will also try to tell the choreographers about the strengths and weaknesses of particular dancers, although he also said that he encourages choreographers to look at dancers afresh. He noted that his and FR's policy was to try to work with a choreographer two-three times ("unless the first time was a complete bust") because a longer-term relationship was more productive. The first time, he said, was like a blind date.

He described how he and FR get together at the beginning of the season to plot out general casting, based on which dancers need what, who needs a push, who's done the role in the past, which roles are now too hard for a dancer, the number of roles a dancer had in a program, etc. This affects the dancers that are available for a choreographer.

Someone asked PG if dancers come to him to ask for roles. He and KS said "no," and that the dancers go to KS and FR to ask for roles. Casting for new choreography is at the discretion of the choreographer, subject to logistical limitations. PG mentioned and LN confirmed that Gibson's ballets have been very physically strenuous and require counting. It must be a testament to their friendship that Nadeau dances in them so frequently, as she said she prefers to listen to the music instead of counting, and that PG always chooses music that requires counting, which she called "brain busters"!

LN remarked that The Piano Ballet was less strenuous than other PG pieces, because the "vignettes" were shorter. PG mentioned an eight-minute pas de deux that he once choreographed for LN and Christophe Maraval.

After LN spoke about counting, someone said when LN danced, it looked like she was in a different plane in her own world and asked if that was an illusion, if she were counting. LN said that she was in that zone 90-95% of the time, and when she wasn't she felt cheated. Even if the audience didn't know, she did. PG mentioned that at first the counting is important, but as the piece becomes more familiar, often the music moves more to the forefront. KS said that there were some parts, like Juliet, where it was easy for the dancer to get in the "zone." PG described it as being in control and aware, yet, at the same time, blocked out.

PG was asked if being involved with choreography made him wish he hadn't retired. He said that when he heard the Lambarena music, he thought "oh, no" because he had loved the role so much. But he said he liked getting out of bed and being able to walk. He noted he had worked with every major [living] choreographer, he had done what he wanted to do, and felt he wasn't going to miss anything when KS and FR offered him the Assistant Ballet Master position, for which openings are few and far between. (The role was created for him, after he had spoken to them about his future). KS said that if they hadn't offered him the ABM position, PG would be a free-lance choreographer now.

PG was asked how he became a choreographer. He said that while he was at San Francisco Ballet, a former teacher asked him to choreograph a piece for the school workshop. Then an orchestra strike led to a Choreography Workshop. He described how he choreographed to music he heard and wanted to dance to, and how he hears music differently, hearing undertones and counter rhythms. When he hears music, he sees dancing to it, and starts moving his hands and feet.

PG talked about the choreographic process. When he gets ideas, he sometimes writes them down in a little book, using descriptive words -- ex: "praying mantis" for the insect imagery he was to use in what he called the "Eyes Wide Shut" pas de deux in The Piano Dance -- and stick figures. After describing how the inspiration came from watching The Discovery Channel, he said that you never know where an idea will come from. He brings his ideas into the studio, and then tweaks them after working it out on the dancers. When asked by an audience member if his intent was to showcase the dancers, PG replied "Absolutely."

LN said that dancers get energy from the audience, which provides great motivation and that dancer can hear cell phones and laughs, and even feel the audience hold their breath in complete silence (like in The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.) She said that it great to hear the audience "get" the comedy, but it can break concentration if it's unexpected.

KS added that McCaw Hall is a much more intimate space, and that the dancers feel more connected to the audience, and the audience to the dancers because of physical proximity. He said it has changed the audience's perception and appreciation of the performances.

Someone asked if that feeling of getting lost on stage carried over when offstage. LN shook her head, and KS spoke eloquently. He said that when dancers get addicted ballet is when they are about 14. At that time, their bodies are changing, their parents are telling them they are too young for everything and asking them to do chores, and the world around them is chaos. But for that 1.5 hours in class, they have control over their life and have great power.

KS continued to say that what happens in the studio is also creating order out of chaos and having control: he and FR tell the dancers what to do, and the dancers [control their bodies to] do it. He said that them moment he leaves the studio -- CHAOS: there's a finance meeting. Most of the rest of the time, people live in chaos -- navigating traffic, dealing with difficulties and the unknown -- but in the studio they experience control.