dirac

This is a question that bears lengthy consideration not yet given by me, but one cosmetic difference pops into my head out of left field -- pointe shoes. Weren't the shoes much softer then, with less blocking? and wouldn't that make the choreography look somewhat different?

Experts on the Romantic era would know much more about this than I, but I'd think that there must have been a lot of mime that's been cut over the years to make room for more dancing.

From a non-expert's perspective, I admired Sale/Pelletier's lifts but liked the Russians' speed, placement, and presentation better overall. One thing I find a little distracting when watching the pairs: the sometimes extreme height discrepancy between the tall men and the much smaller women. I understand that's probably how it has to be because of all those lifts and throws, but sometimes it looks a little odd to me -- reminding me of Arlene Croce's description of Gelsey Kirkland partnered by Patrick Bissell : "she bobs like a paper doll at the end of his arm." One thing I do like about Sale and Pelletier is that their heights seem to be more in proportion.

I was watching the pairs competiton with other nonexperts, and the reaction to Sale and Pelletier's unromantic conclusion was interesting, and an illustration of how arcane the rules of skating judging can appear to observers. When their technical scores were announced, cries of "WHAT! They FELL!" and "The fix is in," were heard. I endeavored to explain, but nobody was buying.

From the BBC, a piece on Princess Margaret in her role as patron of the arts, especially ballet:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid...000/1100791.stm

Ted Heath also a ballet fan: scroll down to the bottom of this item for his quote on his and the late Princess' affection for the dance:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/berkshire/talk/local_tributes.shtml

[ February 11, 2002: Message edited by: dirac ]

I'm coming late to this thread and so the opera and Shakespeare examples I would have proffered have been taken, so, leaving aside other examples from the more recent past, here's one from the movies: Katharine Hepburn did a remarkable turn as a boy -- she spends almost the entire film in pants -- in an eccentric item called "Sylvia Scarlett," made, I think in 1936, with George Cukor directing, which also has Cary Grant in an unaccustomed role, playing a character very close to his own Cockney roots.

From what I've read, if Soloviev had defected, he wouldn't have been Soloviev, so it may be something of a moot point. He just doesn't seem to have been the defecting type.

Harry Pearson reports for the Daily Mail on the new No Crotch regulations, and other matters of skating scandal and comment:

http://www.mg.co.za/mg/za/archive/2002feb/...iceskating.html

It's good to be reminded of things like that. One hears and reads so much these days about Nureyev's technical inferiority that you might easily get the idea that he was personality and harem pants and nothing else.

Also, to compare and contrast doesn't necessarily mean downgrading one artist in favor of the other, although in practice we all have opinions in this respect and often do so. Something N & B had in common was a status as cultural bellwethers as well as dancers; they had a media position that I don't think would be possible for any dancer today to achieve. The Cold War had a lot to do with this, of course, but if you look at pictures of Nureyev in the early sixties -- he and the Beatles appear to have adopted approximately the same hairstyle at about the same time -- he was clearly part of that pop culture moment. You could also argue that the Nureyev precedent made the Baryshnikov phenomenon possible. (Although Rudi never put his name on a perfume, God bless him.)

I suppose Baryshnikov's forays into the modern dance repertory and movies have been considerably more successful, but things might have been different, in the movies anyway. I used to think it was too bad "The Turning Point" couldn't have been made in 1964.

An apposite title can also help the audience to focus on the choreographer's intention, assuming he has one, without necessarily straitjacketing the ballet into one concept. "Ballet Imperial," for example, guides the audience to what Balanchine is getting at, without overexplicitness; Piano Concerto No. 2 is a cumbersome blank, IMO. (And he did tell Merrill Ashley that the ballerina was "royalty.")

In my more suspicious moments I think naming the ballet after the music can be a cop-out for some, inoculating the choreographer against charges of "Well, he called the ballet Such-and-such, but nothing we see on stage expresses Such-and-such....."

Well, I wouldn't take him to "Edward II."

Associated Press report on the state of "the Russian figure skating machine" by Mara D. Bellaby:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2002Jan24.html

I remember reading somewhere that Makarova did do it. I have nothing interesting to add here, but I do have a query -- I understand Nureyev once had a try. Did anyone see him?

Fosse on TV: some notes

I caught Acts One and Two of the television version of "Fosse" or "Ben Vereen: An Appreciation" as it might more accurately have been called, and it was thought provoking in several ways. While I understand the desire to bring back some of Fosse's best stuff and show it to a generation that wasn't around for the originals, I wonder if yanking television, movie, and stage numbers from their proper contexts and restaging them in this format is really a Good Thing. The film versions of "The Pajama Game" or "Damn Yankees" are dated, but you're better off with them that with the excerpts I saw here. I'm not a big fan of Liza Minnelli's, but presenting Liza numbers without Liza is a mistake. The dancers work hard -- I've never seen so much hair tossing, high kicking, and huge baretoothed grins in my life -- but it ain't the same. Thing is, you don't need all that high powered virtuosity for something like "Steam Heat"; the film producer Hal Wallis picked out Carol Haney's understudy, one Shirley MacLaine, in this number, and I doubt if he was looking at her technique. (I assume Act One had the pre-Chicago Verdon numbers; I can't judge without seeing them, but I feel reasonably certain that the same principle applies.) And why put on "Who's Sorry Now?" or "Mein Herr" when Fosse's far superior settings are a trip to the video store away?

Gwen Verdon was not especially tall; had a large head; and legs that were long but not ostentatiously so. I doubt if she would have made the cut here. Everyone had super long legs and an itty bitty torso.

The choreography. Again, this format is unfair to Fosse while trying to do him justice; I thought if I saw one more derby hat or hunched pair of shoulders I was going to scream. (Of course, part of the problem is that so much of what was new in Fosse became part of the general Broadway style; in the film version of "Kiss Me Kate" for example, it's a real lift, and a harbinger of things to come, when Fosse and Carol Haney slink into camera range for their segment of "From This Moment On" -- it's a refreshing switch from the rest of the choreography, which is in the standard oom-pa-pa manner of the era.)

I was disappointed in the "Sing, Sing, Sing" number that closed the show, for other reasons; it wasn't so much the recurrent mannerisms as the quality of dance invention that seemed sometimes lacking ("Let's see --here I have one of the legendary Benny Goodman solos to work with -- I know! I'll have the girls straddle the guys while the fellows grope their crotches!")

Interesting to note the lack of footwork; the dancers move, for the most part, as if they were wearing the cement shoes with which Dutch Schultz outfitted Bo Weinberg; the body turns inward on itself.

The commentary. It appears that Ann Reinking has assumed the mantle of The Widow Fosse and Keeper of the Flame. It must be pleasant to be able to recollect Bob in tranquillity, as it were, as a Hardworking Genius without having to worry that he's off somewhere making google eyes at Jessica Lange. I have had a similar feeling watching other ladies -- Lillian Hellman, Katharine Hepburn, Yoko Ono, and the late Ms. Verdon come to mind -- who seem to take posthumous possession of a man who appears to have been an unruly and elusive handful in life.

All in all, I'd say it's a good thing that Fosse proved to be such a talented movie director; it's very rare for a stage director to take to the camera as if to the manner born, and it is fortunate that we have a portion of his work filmed by himself, and so well. ( I for one don't have high hopes for the forthcoming movie of "Chicago"; from what I've seen and heard, this is one of those works whose effect is inseparable from its original staging. If Fosse were around to do it himself I might feel differently.)

I saw it in a used bookstore some years ago and rejected it as overpriced. I've been kicking myself ever since.

Much depends on your library's resources. Since DVD is a (relatively) new thing, if your library is decently funded it should have a number of performing arts videos, including ballet, although they might not be in the greatest shape. (My own local library still has the original Great Performances videos of the Dance in America series, for example, so that I can see the intros to the dances written by Arlene Croce that the Balanchine Library chose to cut.) I still don't have a DVD player myself.

As for video stores, if you're living in a good-sized city you should have fairly easy access to a decent selection. If you're out in the suburban boonies, it's going to be much harder. Blockbuster is ruthless about its shelf space; a couple of stores in my area that began well, with a number of ballet videos available, got rid of them in short order to make room for video games and Scream VIII, etc. (And I missed the closeout sale, worse luck.) If there is an independently owned video place near you -- let me just plug mine here for the locals, it's Kohne's, in Fremont -- that still has a few titles, although they had to cut back severely because the soulless bloodsucking chains -- well, don't get me started. Hope this helps.

There are people who notate for a living (see the Benesh Institute website, www.benesh.org). Ideally, however, you don't want to do a staging based only on notation, or even notation and video together! It's fine if you have them, but there's no substitute for a ballet master/mistress who really understands and knows the ballet from the inside out. There are others more expert than I who can contribute more on this topic, I'm sure.

Alas, the right choreographer, Kenneth MacMillan, is no longer with us. Given the weight standards for today's dancers, I do not think a woman dancer of the requisite pulchritude could be found to assume the role of Monica, and in this case it is crucial to casting the role. We'd need a robust lady one could imagine flashing her thong at a fellow. Elssler would be right for it. (Also Lynn Seymour, by which I don't mean to imply that Seymour was as chubby as the dancers of Elssler's day, only that she had the sauce and daring for the part. And she could also do Monica's more vulnerable moments splendidly. What she and MacMillan could have done with the scenes where poor Monica is shut away in the hotel room with a bunch of threatening government agents and no lawyer!)

A similar problem appears when casting our former Fearless Leader. After all, there is that important moment when he sucks in his tummy for Monica's benefit and she assures him that she likes a pot on a guy.

I'm not sure if hurt feelings would be justified for parents who saddled their daughter with the moniker Tula Ellice Finklea.

It should be noted that Cyd didn't go out of her way to hurt her parents' feelings, however. Her girlhood nickname was "Sid" and Sid happened to marry a Mr. Charisse....

I didn't see it, but my understanding is that it's one of Balanchine's few genuine turkeys, done in the early seventies during his post-Farrell doldrums. I believe he choreographed it to the commercial's music.

For those who are interested, a contemporary view: Edmund Wilson discusses the score of "Petrushka" and Stravinsky for The New Republic:

http://www.tnr.com/classic/wilson040125.html

The three part movie is "Story of Three Loves" -- Ashton did something for her, for the same music he used for "Rhapsody."

James, prepare to be weirded out by "Peeping Tom." Moira does a spirited little unclassical dance, and then she gets offed, very early on in the movie. I can't remember if he hits her on the head, or if she's the one who gets throttled with the tripod.....

I purchased "Tales of Hoffmann" from moviesunlimited.com. Couldn't find it on Amazon at the time.

And maybe a reconstruction of something he did for the "Balanchine Girls" of Charles Cochran's revue for #3. And "Balustrade."

I do not know if this recording is still available, but I have a two CD set of Stravinsky's chamber music, including Duo, recorded by Olli Mustonen and Isabelle van Keulen. I recommend it highly.

I'm going to be totally cynical and say that ice dancing is a sport because it adds to the skating coverage and thus gets high ratings and ratchets up the number of women viewers for winter sports. Well, it beats the luge.

If Plushenko doesn't watch out, his absences will begin to be greeted with the same reception meted out to those of the Williams sisters....

I think singles and pairs definitely qualify as sports, but ice dancing....I dunno. There's no question that it takes a high degree of skill and the competitors are held to high technical standards, but is that in itself enough to qualify it as a sports event? And the judging is, as Colleen noted, weirdly subjective even by the subjective necessities of skating judging in general.

Aesthetically, I find ice dancing follows its landlubbing forerunner, ballroom dancing, a little too literally for much genuine inventiveness to show itself. However, I'll watch it anyway.