dirac

The New Republic has been very good about giving space to dance; an Aloff article on the debate over Balanchine's legacy once made the cover. I assume we have Leon Wieseltier,the literary editor, to thank for this.

I forgot to add to my previous post that I believe the use of "privilege" as a verb, while infelicitous, is an acceptable secondary meaning of the word. When I was in college, around the time of the Second Punic War, I often heard and read sentences such as "So-and-so privileges text over the spoken word," and so forth.

In Homans' defense, she's providing ballet history to an audience of educated readers who don't necessarily have much of a background or interest in ballet. So it may be inevitable that some of it will seem a little boilerplate, or canned. She does show in this article, as in some other TNR pieces of hers that I've read, a tendency not uncommon among writers to rhetorical overkill and boldly stated assertions that don't always hold up so well when you think about them for long. I haven't seen ABT recently except on television, so I can't comment intelligently on her remarks about the company. That said, I'm a little puzzled by the central thesis of her article, which, if I understand it correctly, is that ballet is not in trouble because of a lack of fine dancers or genius choreographers, but rather of a loss of its once radical spirit, which today is not to be found in the current crop of dully correct ballerinas but in the macho assertiveness of its danseurs, boldly shoving their henlike female counterparts aside to display their multiple pirouettes. We are not to whine about this, but advance boldly into the new era. Depressing, if true, and I don't think it is.

Fair enough. Plainly, Ms. Sale's bad example is rubbing off on me. [ February 13, 2002: Message edited by: dirac ]

Cheers for Timothy Goebel. He has a very long way to go with his upper body work, but he gets an A+ for effort, and as Scott Hamilton noted, his jumps were effortless; with everyone else you bite your nails as they go for the quad, but on a good night, like this one, Goebel just tosses it off. I'm sorry for Todd Eldredge, but not sorry that in future we will be spared the quadrennial display of Todd crashing and burning at the Olympics. Re: the pairs controversy. I'm increasingly out of sympathy with S&P. First, you'd think it never occurred to them that skating scores are occasionally inconsistent and subjective, with political overtones. I guess it's only a problem when you're on the receiving end. Pelletier behaved well during the medal presentation, but Jamie began weepy and whiny and continues so. During the interview with Bezic last night, Sale explained that they didn't want to "rain on [the winners'] parade." The two of them then went on to assert, in effect, that the medal is really theirs and B&S have a gold they don't deserve. They also seem to be willing to say this kind of thing to anyone with a microphone. I think the parade can expect a few more showers. Parenthetically, Jamie keeps saying they skated "perfect" and "fabulous." Perhaps one of her handlers should explain to Jamie about adverbs.

You are NOT the only one who misses Dick Button. How fondly I remember his disdainful dismissal of Surya Bonaly: "Her legs dangle like sausages!"

My understanding is that there's a lot of internal debate within the skating, uh, community about this as well. There are other posters who'd know more about that than I would. I don't think there's a hard and fast rule where artistry always trumps athleticism, or vice versa, (or even what constitutes artistry, I sometimes think). In last night's Loopout at the OK Corral between the Canadians and the Russians, for example, presentation does seem to have trumped tidy technique. As far as I know, the judges do not mark you down if you plan a triple and then change your mind; however, if you do only five out of seven planned triples and do two doubles instead, and a competitor does all seven equally well, you're in trouble. (Personally, I prefer doubles to triples and quads because it's easier for a non-expert to see the different shapes the body takes in the air and note the different landings. However, triples and quads well jumped are exciting to see, and they are harder, after all.) For myself, I dunno. I value grace and a well integrated program, but I also respect energy, daring, and athletic prowess for its own sake.

It does seem like an odd thing to say. Also, how odd to be "covering" on the night of one's gala. Very Lucine Amara.

I have seen competitions and been slightly bewildered by the outcome, but there was no bewilderment here. Yes, this is how skaters "win ugly." It was close, and a judgment call, and for once I think the judges made the right one. It seemed to me that what Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze were doing was clearly on a different level from what Sale and Pelletier were doing, although granted they were not flawless and their errors more obvious (I also thought Sale two-footed that landing.) Bezic, to her credit, pointed out the superior difficulty of the Russians' program not once but twice. But Olympic programs, even winning ones, are not always that distinguished -- the pressure is probably just too intense. I also think the jingoistic "At-last-the-Russians- will-be-toppled" pre-publicity a little too much, building up expectations much too high. I'm sorry for Ina and Zimmerman, but on the other hand it's hard to get hopped up over the difference between fourth and fifth, although I quite understand that it doesn't seem so to them.

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.