Funny Face

Was watching the tribute to Balanchine on "Sunday Morning" and must say I found it quite anemic. The piece was already wrapping up when I thought, "okay, when does the story start?" Seriously, it wasn't much more than a title of a piece. A lot more time was given in the same program to the American pasttime of Hollywood celebrity watching. But then they perpetuate the very thing they seem to mock by giving more air time to that piece than to the story about the man they proclaim to be the greatest choreographer of the 20th century. Same old, same old. A few general statements about someone with very little substance to support them, which leaves the average Joe thinking he's actually learned something. It's like the Cliff's Notes of journalism. I'ld like to see a network (as opposed to PBS or cable) station have the guts to give us a little more about ballet than shown this morning. Trust us, we can take it.

This is a good topic for me to add to the list of why my teacher needs to give another lecture dem. I recall that during that lecture, he talked about how he and other Joffrey dancers who were "in" the horse first thought of it as sort of a 'step down' (esp. if you were the rear of the horse) and came to realize it was an honor to be the horse. Also, he was amazed at how much applause the horse always got, even though it didn't seem to the dancers to be especially difficult, but when I saw the company do "Parade" just this past spring, it was like that again, with the horse clearly being an audience favorite.

Yes, that is exactly the character whose hairstyle was slightly altered by the dancer. Are you familiar with another work never performed that has a tennis theme?

Mel, I spoke again to the former dancer I mentioned and he told me that while there were indeed works from the Diaghilev era being performed in the earlier years, those were not the "lost works," but rather ones that had been handed down. He said that seven years went into the study alone in reconstructing "Sacre" before the dancers were then brought into the process. Also, he wasn't even referring to changes in choreography, but smaller things, like the girl in "Parade" doing a variation on the hairdo, and ending up having her career jeopardized for that action.

Gosh, this movie just came up today -- I was talking to my ballet teacher about it. He was with Joffrey at the time of the reconstruction of the Diaghilev era pieces, and was semi-lamenting that he left the company just a bit too soon -- but emphasized that he didn't regret teaching us instead of being in the movie. He still talks a great deal about how incredibly authentic the company was and how it had zero tolerance for any shenanigans or a dancer's imposing of her/his own little nuances in movement or costume or hair/makeup, etc. -- that it was instant grounds for being fired.

Very interesting, citibob. It sounds like they definitely have champagne taste and beer money at this time. It seems overly ambitious at this point, particularly with a couple of resident companies in place. I'm surprised they aren't trying it on a smaller level, like a chamber ballet theater. Also, I don't believe they were very clear in their reasons for rejecting fundraising, and instead going straight for tickets at $25 a shot. It's nice to have ideals and to think big -- problem is, you can never get off the ground if you want them all to come to fruition from the beginning.

Don't give up. Keep applying for every grant you can think of. Throw fundraisers, complete with dinner, silent auction, live auction, and performance, even if this means having to serve the meals and wash the dishes yourselves afterwards (I know -- I've been there!). Have a gigantic flea market, and begin it late at night, calling it "Midnight Madness" or something like that, just in time for the approaching Halloween season. Hold it in an area where people like to party at night. Many a fella whose disposition has been enhanced by a glass or two of wine will be entranced by your ballerinas. Everything sells at these things, including autographed items from the dancers. Approach every elementary, middle and high school in the area, requesting to do lecture demonstrations. Set up a booth in your local mall, and have company members man a table with brochures and newsletters about the company, press releases, etc., as well as photographs, t-shirts, and other items for sale. Be in costume while you do this. Hound the lifestyle and arts and leisure editors of your newspapers for publicity. There must be at least one writer who would love to make your their cause celebre. Ditto for the tv stations. Put posters throughout Main Street, and get your Chamber of Commerce into the act. Get involved in bringing ballet to the inner city and to underprivileged children in the area. Ask the major office buildings in the area if they ever have noon hour tributes to the arts. Start this if they don't -- and get the other artists in the community involved in some kind of main lobby event. People love to have something exciting to do during their lunch hours. Good luck from a dancer whose company has done every single one of these things and then some, and whose company is currently celebrating its 25th anniversary season.

Would you consider an additional 'era' called "Joffrey and the Reconstruction," Mel?

Um, hows about "Rhonda Zhamm" or "Sue Toonew" or "Pierre Ohwet" or, well, you get the picture ...

Thank you, Alexandra. Just a bit of history on Picasso's role in ballet. Those who have seen "Parade" no doubt recognize Picasso's cubistic style in the sets and costumes, but might be surprised to learn that not all of Picasso's work is so recogniizable. While some (perhaps unenlightened) critics would denigrate those works which feature angularity and chaos and beastliness, opining that Picasso was simply unable to paint any other way, the fact is that Picasso could and did paint in a style which is considered tradtionally beautiful, but found cubism, among others, a natural extension of his evolution as an artist, something he could not personally accomplish within, say, the more acceptable mode of Renaissance realism. Picasso was born in 1881 in Malaga, Spain, making him a contemporary of Diaghilev and Stravinsky, although his collaboration with Ballets Russes came about through rather unusual circumstances. Picasso was the son of a respected artist and teacher, and he himself showed signs of being quite prodigious at a tender age. He continued to study in Spain for a time before taking up residence in Paris. During Picasso's formative years as an artist, a group of artists banded together in Paris, termed by public critics as "The Fauves" (wild beasts), who experimented with abandoning the traditional style in favor of defining space in a flat two-dimensional way. While Picasso was not a "Fauve" himself, we can certainly see the influences of such Fauves as Matisse (the leader of that group). At the same time, Picasso was also influenced by Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas. World War I separated Picasso from his girlfriend, Eva Marcelle Humbert, who died in 1915. Whle grieving, Picasso immersed himself in a work called "Harlequin," and in 1917, he became involved with Diaghilev's dance company, working on costume and set design for 'Parade," during which time he not only met his future bride, Olga Kokhloven, who danced in the ballet, but received inspiration for his next work, "Three Dancers." From there, he went on to design for other Diaghilev productions.

Hi, could I jump in with some notes about the pre-1930 period? Specifically, how some of that collaboration of various arts came together even earlier? On February 4, 1909, in St. Petersburg, Diaghlev was a member of the audience at the premiere performance of Stravinsky's "Fireworks." This large orchestral work was a predecessor to the famous "Firebird" ballet and has been infrequently performed since its debut due to being overshadowed by the composer's latter more renowned works. But "Fireworks" is a landmark piece for a number of reasons. While both Stravinsky and Diaghilev had initially been expected to pursue careers in law or music, Diaghilev had opted out of both, while Stravinsky vacillated between the two, with some of his uncertainty stemming, at least in part, by having reportedly been rebuffed by fellow protege of Rimsky Korsakov, Alexander Glazunov (considered the last important composer of the Russian National School). While Glazunov was considered to be Rimsky Korsakov's favorite pupil, Stravinsky simultaneously regarded Rimsky Korsakov as a father figure, from whom he was able to elicit sufficient approval so as to be granted private lessons in composition. During the summer of 1908, Stravinsky composed the aforementioned "Fireworks," to celebrate the upcoming wedding of his mentor's daughter. Upon completing the work, Stravinsky mailed it to Rimsky Korsakov, only to receive word several days later of his teacher's death. While the untimely death of Rimsky Korsakov denied Stravinsky the opportunity to receive the approval he so craved from his mentor, it was fortuitous for him that Diaghilev (the talent scout of the day) was there to show his appreciation by requesting Stravinsky, 10 years his junior, to arrange some works of Grieg and Chopin for his ballet company. From the beginnings of that collaboration would eventually spring the likes of "The Firebird," "Petrouchka," and "Rite of Spring." I'll close this post at this point, but if anyone's interested, I've got some interesting information about how Picasso got into the mix.

Today, in ballet, our teacher told us her teenaged daughter (also a very talented dancer) is doing a science project that studies the concept of "hang time." She concluded that someone like Michael Jordan is not in the air any longer than other players but that his timing in reaching the highest point of his jump - the point where his arms outstretch -- as well as his focus, give the illusion of longer time in the air. She surmised this could well be true of Nijinsky or Baryshnikov. Focus, she said, can create illusion, so that if you truly look out past your outstretched fingertips and keep that focus longer than anyone else, the audience's eyes will follow yours. This is related somewhat to another tip I was given years ago -- that if you start to lose your releve on stage, just lower your heels, but keep everything else in place, lifted, so that the audience isn't even aware of the change. Of course, I also think that the more matter you have to boost into the air, the more power it's going to take to get it up there and maintain that elevation. So if you're going to put on weight, make sure it's muscle -- tee hee. :yes:

Dancepig, thanks for the encouagement, but i'm not quite as old as dirt -- not yet, anyway. Just for the record, even a learning glutton like myself has her limits as to what she can/will absorb. I did walk out of a geology class yesterday morning after 35 minutes. If I had to sit there two more minutes and listen to all that tuberculin coughing from the students in that dark, dank lecture hall, while the teacher droned on about oceanic ridges and linospheres, crusts and mantles, and barriers pushing against each other, blah, blah, blah, I would have lost the will to dance and live. Three minutes later, I was sitting outside under a tree with a nice latte, thinking about how hopelessly dull some sciences are, or at least are presented. There are web sites that have a plethora of photos of Keneth Laws giving his lecture dems and the students all seem to be very engrossed and happy, the way students SHOULD look. I have always loved physics and have long been interested in the correlation between it and dance. Something as simple as the placement of the head allowing a leg to rise higher in extension. Yes, once, just to test how much the weight of the head could so affect this, I got my fiance and his little boy to take turns with me weighing our heads on the bathroom scale. You know, the family that weighs togther, stays together. There are all kinds of little ways we, as dancers, can see each day how an adjustment here or there facilitates or negates our movements. The pulling up of the arches enabling the inner thighs to pull up and turn out, or the slight tilt in brise helping the body to travel more and beat more easily. The feeilng of reaching out with each limb in arabesque making the movement far more stable and lending a feeling of placement. The equal turnout of both legs providing that extra dynamic in turns. Isn't it funny too, that in (maybe not quite the same) way that Einstein found time was relative, a boring teacher can make a class seem eternal.

Lucky you, I would love to see him give a lecture/dem. I've visited his site as well as many others this past summer and printed out about 2 inches worth of material on the subject. I'd love to create an independent study on this for one of my last 5 classes I'm doing, but my dean has been chanting things like, "We already have courses in place that fulfill your science requirement," etc., etc. Those students at Dickinson are very lucky.

Carbro, I always loved van Hamel's arms. I've mused over this thread for some time and my answer hasn't deviated since I first thought about it. My dancer would have to have a lean, chiseled, beautifully scuplted back, and world class arms instead of so, so, so many throwaway arms I see. Interpretation: beautifully held, soft, with no extraneous movement or gesture. If they had these assets, I could almost assume all of the other qualities were there as well -- that they were focusing on all the right things.

I think our silly school system has got everyone confused about summer's boundaries, what with starting kids back these days earlier in August, when, in fact, summer doesn't come to a close until the last week of September. I just saw a therapist on a talk show the other day who said that this is the worst year in history for people seeing summer come to an end -- that people like never before felt they did not really have a summer and are dreading the end of it, feeling like they still need a vacation. She talked about the many reasons for this-- the vestiges of 9/11, with people still afraid to fly, people being conservative about spending because of the economy, fear of SARS, etc. She also said that a "getaway" is a state of mind. And I'm going to cling to that notion. With that in mind, my summer reading continues, with Fanny Flagg's "Standing in the Rainbow." What a great throw back to earlier, sweeter times in America. If you liked "Welcome to the World, Baby Girl" (which my mom sent me a few years ago), you'll love this. I've still got Jan Karon's latest that I'm waiting to sink my teeth into after this. Sometimes when I walk into one of those huge chain bookstores, I just think, "how do all of these people choose what they're going to read" and "how do all of these authors sell?" I mean, the choices seem almost infinite these days. We could spend our entire days and nights reading and only scratch the surface. I've also get a few by Anne Rivers Siddons I'm waiting to read -- I've only read "Downtown." Anyone familiar with her work? The other book I've been reading a good deal of lately is "Home Comforts -- The Art and Science of Keeping House," by Cheryl Mendelson. You would be AMAZED at what you can learn from this. This is the Bible of how to maintain a house. An indispensable and highly interesting reference book.

Actually, I have been researching physics and dance over the past several weeks, and am intrigued by this. I was thinking about physics and pirouettes today in class when the teacher, a wonderful full out demonstrator, showed how the tendency to lose some of the turnout of the supporting leg in the transition from the preparation to the turn sacrifices revolutions. Then he showed what happens when you maintain the same turnout from preparation to turn -- a dynamic occurs which sends the body around almost effortlessly. It was a beautiful thing to watch. Sure, you can turn on a flat foot or turned in, etc., etc., but then, as one teacher once said in a class I took, "it's just a spin." The beauty of the pirouette is the maintenance of the turnout, as well as the quick passe (as opposed to the passe which lumbers its way into position while you're already in releve and trying to turn).

The rests, yes. Wasn't it Martha Graham who said the most important count was "and?"

Gesundheit!

Oh -- here's a poser for y'all. I guest taught a dance history class one day, giving a presentation about music and history in the link between the classical and romantic periods. Well, we all know about the location of ballet's beginnings. But -- I said to the class, "where did a girl have to go if she wanted to date a musician?" Interesting, isn't it, that the music was coming largely from Germans and Austrians. Any thought about why this was the case, whereas ballet and theater were sprouting elsewhere?

Hey, hey, hey, class! Let's keep it dignified. Say -- didn't Beethoven have a disco hit? Oooops -- see, now you've got me started. In all seriousness, I did take one particular course where the students were so surprised to hear the non-disco version of that symphony. They never knew it was a classical piece. Scary. I like the idea of Beethoven being a time period all his own. He broke so much ground, not only in terms of his music, but in the image of what a musician should be. Beethoven was the fella to make being a musician a real job, instead of being funded by, and at the mercy of, the royal class. This was a tremendous change in the status of musicians. Prior to that time, even the greatest musicians/composers had to be very careful about not stepping on royal toes. They got around speaking up for themselves and their people in a variety of ways. With Haydn, it was with diplomacy and humor. With Mozart, it took the form of wit and sarcasm in his operas.

My ballet instructor showed it to our class in the last two years -- she got it from our dance department library. If you come up short at the local library, try a nearby college with a dance department.

There really is so much to be fascinated by in the transition from the Classical to Romantic periods in history. For instance, Beethoven was such a fan, initially of Napoleon. Napoleon started out as the consummate revolutionary. He not only battled for the people, but once the revolution took hold, he gave the people a place to take it -- he gave some 'concrete' to the ideals that other revolutionaries had, in terms of how government and education, etc., should be set up. Prior to him, the folks didn't know what to do with their newfound freedom and anarchy would have taken hold. But -- Napoleon's power caught up with him. He began to emulate the very things he had once detested. He considered himself higher than the pope. If you go back and look at art -- portraits of Napoleon throughout his life, you will see a dashing, fearless looking soldier on horseback in the early years. Later on, he looks downright silly, dressing like the early Greeks. Beethoven got fed up with all of this, and after he had initially written and dedicated a symphony to Napoleon, he -- upon hearing that the latter had declared himself emperor -- tore off the dedication sheet and replaced it with the ambiguous "in memory of a great leader."

And then, sometimes the music takes on such an intricate rhythm (interpret "Non-Western") that counting seems almost impossible, and you go back to "feeling," as with waltzes or polonaises, etc. Such a case for me was music from Uzbekistan. The initial part was fine for almost everyone, but the music and dance break into a kind of 'whirling dervish' -- the only thing you can do is take a tape of it and listen, listen, listen, and listen again until it works its way into your physical and mental anatomy. Another thing that often happens is that someone has to be the designee to play off of -- to cue from. This is where dancers have to be keenly aware of each other. But again, listening over and over and over again is often the only means to an end, especially for our "Western" ears.

Beethoven is the link between the classical and romantic periods. As to what is being taught today, the texts differ from the tests. What I mean is that there is a good deal of material taught in the music literature texts -- information about what was going on in history at the time to so inspire and influence the artists of the day. However, it has been my personal experience that the actual testing of such matters has been sophomoric at best. In one such course, the vast majority of the students flunked the first of four exams, and were allowed to bring home their tests and use their texts to correct their mistakes and thereby bring up their scores. I actually had a professor tell me from then on that if I wrote more than 5 sentences in an essay answer, I would be penalized (so as to make the playing field more even for the rest of the class). I might seem like I'm digressing somewhat, but my point is that it's a dirty shame more people are not interested in the whole picture of art. I can eat history for breakfast. What kind of family life did Mahler have? Why did Wagner think singing was actually the least important aspect of opera? How did Picasso link up with Stravinsky? How did Haydn get the nickname "Papa?" These are the things students should want to know -- not just be able to regurgitate the driest, most basic facts about these composers.