dirac

"Interesting" is the word. I felt sorry for the singers, especially poor Deborah Voigt flat on her butt, not a very dignified posture for Brunnhilde. Imagine Flagstad and Melchior trying to negotiate it....

It's been a long time since I read the book but I don't remember that, Mashinka. I've always thought of Anna as around 30 or so because her son is eight years old, but since women married very young it's possible she could have been around Knightley's age, now that I think about it. Mid-thirties is a bit high IMO, although I think Vivien Leigh was about 35 when she played it - in that telling Vronsky was a somewhat younger man. Karenin is definitely about twenty years older, so Law's too young, he can't be more than forty at the outside. I agree that Vronsky is about Anna's age.

Fontaine was too pretty for Jane - almost any female star would be - but she'd played mousy girls previously so I don't think she was too unexpected in the role at the time. Welles was a reasonable, even obvious, choice for Rochester, even if one has reservations about the end result. If you take a look at the BBC item, abatt, it looks as if the project began that way but ended up rather different, which could be good or bad. As the article notes, the risk is that you alienate audience members who've come for the ruffles and the views. I never saw the Sophie Marceau version - has anyone?

Thanks, Mashinka. I understand their heads are bloody but unbowed. It's going to be a pleasant winter. One of the supporting players in the Queen's Bond video, Monty the corgi, has died at age 13.

Thanks for the heads up, Natalia, and reviving the thread. Caught the documentary tonight.

I was thinking how miscast the leads were. It's too bad, because there was plenty of room for improvement over the old Fontaine-Welles version.

I thought Wasikowska miscast in Jane Eyre but then I haven't been wildly impressed with her in general. Both she and Knightley are a bit young for Anna but Wasikowska especially – she can't be more than 25 at the outside, I should think. McCamus is an interesting choice for the part, he could do it.

Thank you for posting this, PeggyR. I have never wittingly heard the McGuire Sisters' music, so it's good to learn about them. Probably I have heard "Sugartime" without realizing it. Those variety shows are also no more.....

We have been favored with a new film version of Anna Karenina, as Keira Knightley prepares to go toe-to-toe with Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh. I fear this will be another example of Joe Wright converting a literary work of high complexity into a vehicle for his leading lady, but you never know. Screenplay by Stoppard. Jude Law is playing Karenin. Hmmmmm....... Related.

Now in 3D. Note name of landing site.

I think you're right, kbarber. Not that familiar with the company myself.

Kain and Augustyn have both written good autobiographies, Rosa. How did you like Bing's book, cubanmiamiboy?

Thanks for the heads up, CM. What a nice summper program.

Thanks for telling us about the article, Pamela. No, the transmissions aren't live but they are certainly a lot better than nothing. The name change sounds significant. What kinds of "dance" does Ms. Binder intend to present?

Well, Gelsey Kirkland is articulate to a fault , but then she’s not in any way typical. Farrell’s book breaks down roughly into two sections which strike me as very different from each other. The first part of the book has a distinct narrative arc that concludes with her return to the company in the seventies and then a less personal and notably sketchier section follows with discussions about (some) of the ballets she danced when she returned and vignettes from her private life. There was a lot she seems to have not wanted to talk about, even when the book was at its most personal in the early sections, and I suspect the awkward structure grew out of that. One respects her feelings, of course, but it’s hard to read the book without awareness of the canyonlike spaces between the lines of her story, for instance when her personal relationship with Balanchine, described with such detail in Part 1, more or less vanishes in Part 2 without any examination or explanation. Another factor is her seeming wish to defend Balanchine against his detractors – she only mentions Kirkland once, but I think she did want to present a sort of "Not Dancing on My Grave" story to rebut Kirkland’s. This is reasonable and admirable, but it does result in a certain amount of whitewashing and minimizing of conflict. The comments on the ballets in the second part of the book, particularly Davidsbundlertanze and Mozartiana, are acute and illuminating, as pherank notes. But I thought Farrell' s personal story was valuable, as well. It's too bad the personal and artistic concerns couldn't have been better balanced in the book as a whole. Judging by d'Amboise's less-than-gushing treatment of Farrell in his book, the friendship may have been more one-sided than Farrell realized....

Really, dirac . . . Pistols at dawn? Name your seconds, sir.

No kidding. Thanks for posting, Rosa. I hope you get some responses!

Post from Quiggin plucked from another forum: "She will not dance"? I should think so indeed. As dubious as this project sounds the idea of Garbo as Phedre is an enticing one. Imagine the erotic charge she would bring to "Ce n'est plus une ardeur dans mes veines cachée: C'est Vénus tout entière à sa proie attachée" ! I see Robert Taylor as a passable Hippolytus - at least he'd look the part.....

I thought we got off to a reasonable beginning, bart. Perhaps you'd like to nominate your movie star supreme? This is a wide open subject, so a certain amount of wandering is expected. Ideally topics strong enough for a long independent thread will be introduced there, but we have some flexibility. (The main reason I closed the old one was that it had extended to nineteen pages and had grown unwieldy, difficult to read and search through.)

Balanchine fashioned his own choreography around a dancer's strengths and weakeness and so perhaps in Apollo and Prodigal Son Serge Lifar was at his best - and most beautiful. My impression was that Balanchine didn't enjoy composing for Lifar - it was Diaghilev's casting and not his and even though it was very early days Balanchine didn't like that, although obviously it didn't affect his creativity or his ability to make Lifar look good. I think it was William Weslow in "I Remember Balanchine" who recalled the master saying of Lifar (from memory): "He was like woman. And so I liked him because he was like woman. He was very pretty, very girly, beautiful legs and feet and poses. I used to pose him. Like I do with girls. I used to pose him." That's praise after a fashion, I suppose, but if I were Lifar I wouldn't use it as a blurb for my bio. Nureyev told Gore Vidal there was a Lifar Room at the Paris Opera Ballet that he tried to avoid entering. "Bad ghost."

Them's fighting words, mister. By me that title goes to La Crawford's colleague and rival at MGM, Miss Garbo. That's a smashing frock by Adrian. We'll never see his like again, either.

Thanks, Stage Right. This forum is generally reserved for ballet people and although Charlip did have some ballet connections he must be regarded as a modern dance figure. There's an existing thread on his death in the Modern and Other Dance forum, here. You might like to re-post your obit there, perhaps, it's a good read, if that's not too much trouble. (I could have merged and edited, but I thought an explanation of the rationale for posting the discussion elsewhere might be helpful to all.) Closing this thread.

So sorry to post here that Remy Charlip is dead at age 83. RIP. A friend of the board forwarded this appreciation by Paul Parish in The Bay Area Reporter. NYT obit. Rita Felciano's appreciation is posted in the Links for August 21.

Encouraging boys - any boys - to dance is a positive thing. My point was that I find the line Kelly felt impelled to take was/is a depressing one – essentially trying to define dance as a macho athletic activity and thus removing the "taint" of effeminacy (and femininity). Unfortunately, surprisingly little has changed. I can't think offhand of any other ballet dancers or choreographers inspired by Kelly, but -- off topic -- Balanchine's regard for Fred Astaire is well known. (Astaire also received fan letters from the likes of Fonteyn and Baryshnikov. He didn't much care for ballet, as it happens.)

Oh, absolutely. But I was thinking more of his efforts to promote dance as an art form and to expand the possibilities of dance, particularly ballet, in cinema. (Alas, his most radical experiment in that direction, "Invitation to the Dance," did not work. And I can't really say I'm a big fan of those set-piece dream ballets. But they were influential at the time and even today they may be the first look that some people get to ballet in any form.)