dirac

I'm touched by Richardson's innocent faith in RAD by donating the collection without, apparently, any legal caveats about its preservation or ultimate disposal. This is a horrible story. I also note in the LA Times artice that the dealer says he tried to interest various libraries and they nixed it, apparently on the grounds that nobody's interested enough in this really old dance stuff to justify the investment. I think this is even worse, and shows you just how much (or how little) these institutions regard dance history. [This message has been edited by dirac (edited August 13, 1999).]

If a company like the Kirov is putting on productions with no point of view, then it seems to me that's information for the lead of the review, not the end of it, and it would also be an indicator of a company not in "transition" but "deep trouble." Since I'm not in New York, I guess I won't find out...

I think the concern with production is a perfectly legitimate and something that marks this century off from previous eras in which the performer dominated and could pretty much interpolate and/or eliminate as he wished. Recall that we have the music for "Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux" because a ballerina wanted to put in another composer's pas de deux and the only way Tchaikovsky could head her off at the pass was to compose a new one. In opera, there is the celebrated,or notorious, example of Jean de Reszke eliminating "Celeste Aida" because he felt he wasn't warmed up enough to sing it. I think it's safe to say this could not happen today.

I got a kick out of those photographs of him as Queen Victoria -- he's a dead ringer -- and as Gertrude and Alice with Helpmann. A minor point -- I don't think it was his worry about his relative lack of training that made him resent Helpmann so much as professional jealousy and, more important, Helpmann's bent toward narrative ballet and emphasis on acting was changing the company's dance focus, hence Symphonic Variations. Kavanagh does indicate that Ashton felt some insecurity vis-a-vis Balanchine, however.

I don't want to make claims for Secret Muses that it doesn't deserve, but I do think it's worth a read and has valuable information. Yes, it's gossipy and lacks structure, but that doesn't make Kavanagh Kitty Kelley. It does make for some frivolity, but Ashton had his frivolous side, although I concede it's overemphasized here. I also don't think it's necessarily bad for a biography to emphasize personal as opposed to artistic matters, as long as there's a study like Vaughan's to pick up the slack. Quentin Bell's biography of Virginia Woolf is very highly regarded, and yet it deliberately does not present itself as a critical biography, sticking instead to the events in Woolf's life and also exploring her social milieu, as Kavanagh does. (It would be pretty difficult to write a truthful account of Bloomsbury and not mention that everyone was playing musical beds.) I think that Kavanagh's perspective is most damaging in respect to matters such as the MacMillan issue mentioned above. You would get the impression from Secret Muses that Ashton's sometime antipathy to MacMillan derived merely from jealousy of a young and talented rival, and while this may have played a part, it seems clear that Ashton's chief concern was that MacMillan's expressionistic dance style was not only at opposite poles from Ashton's classicism but that the two approaches could not cohabit in any peace without one suffering at the expense of the other.

Just chiming in with the chorus of praise. Thanks very much for posting this. I think the point that a ballet master can lead the company without inundating the repertory with his own works is one that isn't emphasized enough these days. Please excuse my bringing a feminist issue in out of left field to say it would be nice to see a few more women in top management roles, as long as they're competent, of course.

I enjoyed the books by Danilova and Nijinska also. Interesting that these are all by Russian dancers within a generation or so of each other. I think what gives these books much of their strength is the varied background of each author. Karsavina, Danilova, and Nijinska were all women who had seen a lot of the world, and that experience gives their accounts flavor and color.

I think that competitions have their place as long as they're not the lone factor in a dancer's progress, and the consensus seems to be that they are not. Also, they sometimes do reward outstanding artists -- Makarova and Nadezhda Pavlova won gold medals, if memory serves. If they help young dancers gain exposure and stage experience, that's all to the good. I agree, however, that in theory artistry and competition are fundamentally opposed. I've been reading John Curry's autobiography, and one thing he makes clear is that he feels his real work began after his competitive career was over -- he had to win the medals in order to do the work he wanted to do. He was a skater and not a dancer, but much of what he says about having to please the judges in competitions is interesting and depressing to read.

Wonderful review. You tell a reader everything he/she wants to know. I do have a question about your use of "passive" to describe the Balanchine muse, and Farrell and Kistler specifically. Farrell "passive"? I can think of a lot of adjectives to describe her, but passive isn't one of them. It's true that a muse's relation to the artist is by definition passive -- the muse inspires, the artist creates -- but within that definition there's a lot of room for the right muse. In many Balanchine ballets , the woman's independence is magnified -- she's not manipulated, on the contrary the man has all he can do to hold on to her. I may be taking you too literally. Thanks again for the review!

Your remarks point up one of the saddest aspects of a dancer's career. So little can be preserved for posterity, and often what is preserved is incomplete or misleading. I've always hoped that some material from Kirkland's NYCB career would turn up somewhere, but haven't seen anything.

I too enjoyed the Taper and Buckle biographies of Balanchine, but it seemed to me that both books were unsatisfactory in some respects. Taper's chapters dealing with the last stages of Balanchine's career seemed pretty skimpy to me, and Buckle tends to bounce around from topic to topic without giving his material much shape. I read somewhere (maybe here) that Arlene Croce was working on a biography, and if that's true there's no reason why it shouldn't be definitive. I read Tallchief's autobiography with much interest. Her account of Balanchine's proposal is worth the price of the book. Has anyone mentioned Karsavina's Theatre Street? I liked that very much. There's another book called The Pointe Book, now in its second edition, that has some useful information. [This message has been edited by dirac (edited May 14, 1999).]

The Kirov video mentioned above is also available as "Mariinsky (that's how they spelled it) Theatre: Kirov Classics" by RM Arts ISBN 1-56127-086-5. It also has the Corsaire pas de deux and a couple of Vinogradov ballets.

I'm not sure that there's a satisfactory answer to that. My immediate response would be that it's the choreographer's fault, that in a solid piece of work there should be an essential quality that comes through no matter how mediocre the performance, and yet I know that's often not the case even with ballets that are indisputably great ones. I would also amend my previous posting to say that, just because certain subjects are not ideally suited to dance, that doesn't mean that dance shouldn't have a crack at them. I'm thinking specifically of what MacMillan was aiming for with Mayerling. He didn't succeed completely, but until I saw the ballet I'd have said it couldn't be done, and by and large he did it.

I have not seen the ballet Onegin, but from what I know of the poem and the opera I would say it is not ballet material. It's true that Pushkin's special use of the Russian language does not -- cannot -- come through in translation. His playful ironic wit and lyric intensity do, however. Try the Charles Johnston translation. Unfortunately, ballet is not too good with irony -- not very danceable -- and without seeing the ballet I would imagine that Onegin's ennui and contempt for society translates into dance terms as simple caddishness, and Pushkin's somewhat equivocal attitude to Tatyana's novel-induced romanticism would be missing entirely. There is a perception, I think, that you can make an evening length ballet out of any "classic" no matter how unsuitable for dance. Romeo and Juliet in its various versions tend to work because frustrated love that ends in death is a perfect dance subject. Onegin is also concerned with love and death, but the treatment is such that dance can only simplify and diminish it, and I mean no disrespect to the ballet by that -- only that ballet can't tackle everything.

In re: the Kirkland/Robbins/Clifford incident, I read both the Kirkland and Mazo accounts and it seemed to me that for once I'd have to side with Kirkland. Mazo includes the injury, but not the back-and-forth between Kirkland and Robbins that she says preceded it, and from the general tone of his book, which is tactful and evenhanded to a fault, I think that just out of political considerations he would have omitted the passage, an unpleasant one. Kirkland is a melodramatic and exaggerated writer, but unless she's a pathological liar also I don't think she made that one up.

I would like to plug Merrill Ashley's autobiography from almost 20 years ago, "Dancing for Balanchine." It's different from many ballerina autobiographies in that she discusses many nuts-and-bolts aspects of training and performing that other dancers don't go into. This may have something to do with the fact that she was not a spectacular teenage prodigy dancing Concerto Barocco at seventeen. It took some time, and I think it gives her account an unusual perspective.

I fell under the ballet spell for real when I first saw the entrance of the corps at the beginning of the "Kingdom of the Shades" scene in La Bayadere. I'd seen ballet before, but this was the first time it really made me catch my breath. (It's also a good litmus test for newcomers to ballet. If your companion says, "I don't get this" or "This is boring" or words to that effect, chances are your friend will never be a ballet person.)

I like a solid conservative Swan Lake, and I fear I must agree that the Jester is an annoyance. At the most he's acceptable as a diversion in the early court scenes, but that's that. I also object to giving Siegfried too much prominence, as in the Grigorovich version, mainly because the musical scheme doesn't allow for it. (This is also true for the Jester.) I know the danseurs get unhappy about having to take the back seat, but that's the way it goes, guys. I think the Nureyev solo is all right, though.

In response to Lillian's remark about Baryshnikov, I don't doubt that he's a handful, but it seemed obvious that Kirkland was at that time in the habit of plunging headlong into affairs much too fast and then blaming the other party for failing to do likewise. It's unfortunate that her book was so exaggerated in many respects, since much of what she spoke of -- I'm thinking of the passages on the lack of good medical advice and the prevalence of eating disorders among dancers -- deserved more attention than they were getting at that time.

Many moons ago PBS aired Kirkland and Baryshnikov in Balanchine's Theme and Variations. (I believe it was his last performance before leaving ABT for NYCB.) I hear from time to time that it will appear on video, but have not seen it. Has anyone read either of Kirkland's two books recently? any opinions regarding same?

Re: Farrell and Nureyev. They actually danced Apollo with the Pennsylvania Ballet, and discussed doing Mozartiana and Paul Mejia's Cinderella also. The Cinderella discussions went nowhere according to Farrell's autobiography, but she's too discreet and tactful to say why (one of the disappointing things about the book, incidentally).

I should think Katharyn is probably talking about the ABT special aired on public television a couple of months ago. (It is now on video also.) It has Susan Jaffe and Jose Manuel Carreno doing the Black Swan, Julie Kent and Robert Hill doing a pas de deux from Kudelka's Cruel World, Bocca and Ferri in MacMillan's Balcony Scene, and so forth. These are interspersed with mostly unenlightening interviews with the dancers. For the most part it's a very good show, although I could have done without the Nacho Duato and it would have been nice to see Herrera and Corella do something besides the Don Quixote pas de deux. Sorry for this long-winded response.

For those interested in Nijinskiana, Joan Acocella has written an interesting article on Nijinsky's career and diary in the current issue of The New York Review of Books. I would also recommend Lincoln Kirstein's book Nijinsky Dancing, not easy to find but well worth a search. I don't think there is any other dancer whose quality comes across so forcefully from photographs.

My remarks on the topic of ballet videos are somewhat more general. I think that smaller scale "chamber ballets" -- I'm thinking of Balanchine's "Davidsbundlertanze" come across on the small screen much better than the bigger, more "symphonic" ballets. I have also noticed that ballet videos seem to go through periods of availability at my local store, and then are suddenly gone. I missed purchasing the Asylmuratova Bayadere and the Mukhamedov/Durante Mayerling a few years ago and have never stopped kicking myself. They haven't shown up since.

I'm afraid this is probably a matter of piling Pelion on Ossa, but I have to put in another vote for Suzanne Farrell. She was the idol of my adolescence and brought me to my first appreciation of ballet. On a more practical level, she had visible hips and thighs, which was inspirational to me as I had no hope of eradicating mine! I should note in passing that her autobiography, and the movie Elusive Muse, are somewhat disappointing in certain respects.