Quiggin

A mostly biography-less biography that focuses on the art. Many of the old stories told about Balanchine that were necessary for the promotion of City Ballet in the 1960s perhaps should be retired. The "Picasso-mistress" approach – which art historians are always having to fight against – also dropped. The teleology of having everything point to Balanchine having to make it to America (saved by Kirstein), found a school, a ballet company, rescue ballet (Homans) while at the same time founding a genuine American form (while wearing cowboy ties and watching Wonder Woman) that none of the Americans could, etc. Balanchine criticism also seems to neglect the currents of history around it in order to make a neat Balanchine point. (For instance linking Agon and Apollo so closely when Apollo is a product of the conservative, anti-experimentalism "Return to Order" movement in France where Stravinsky was purging his music of Russian influences, while with Agon he was renouncing that Neoclassicism. This alone makes the two ballets different projects rather than thirds of a trilogy.) I agree with miliosr's take on Croce. I would further say that Croce is personality-oriented and sees ballet first through the figures of the performers (esp Farrell and Villella and Baryshnikov) and only then as ballet. She is very astute and can be wonderfully aphoristic ("hell is the space other dancers occupy") but not systematic. She also slips in many assumptions about dance without questioning their basis that you find yourself having to accept. But she is a very pleasureable read and does have many important insights about City Ballet.

Thanks, dirac. I used to have that song on an Philips Lp. Jules and Jim was one of four early Traffaut movies that played for years in Los Angeles – often triple-billed with 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player or Soft Skin. All had very abrupt (but inevitable) endings. La Notte also made the rounds, shown with L'Avventura and L'Eclisse. (Those were the days of very intense film going.) Interesting that towards the end of her life Moreau even managed to appear in a Manoel de Oliveira film. Marguerite Duras (Moreau was in Duras' Moderato Cantabile) says of her in an interview:

I always find that video – and film but differently – leaves out the poetry of the performance and adds another poetry, one of interesting but distracting visual artifacts. The choice of a slightly telephoto or slightly wide lens (like that of an iPhone or, more extemely, that of Google Street View) gives the dancer a smaller or larger amount of space to move through. If the camera is on a crane, the point of view shifts quickly from that of an audience member in the balcony to that which someone in the orchestra would see. The video editor's cuts break the natural "breathing" and concentration of a dancer's phrasing. Looking at all the previous recorded versions, at best you end up with a kind of synthetic "best available practices" version, a ballet without an inner voice – and one with all the accumulated errors. Better perhaps to learn the choreography blindly from someone who has danced it well before. (I remember Kyra Nichols here in San Francisco talking about how she had to "strip away" all the accumulated details and ornamentation from the roles she inherited from Suzanne Farrell and start over again. Videos compound that problem of getting down to the purity of the role.)

Zelda Fitzgerald was also a pretty good novelist and diaryist – good enough that Scott Fitzgerald borrowed sections of her journals for "Tender is the Night." Not sure if "Save Me the Waltz" is in print or not. San Francisco Library has one tattered copy. From Google Books:

I don't see that much dance here in SF – as opposed to painting – to really comment. Contra-zombie formalism, I've liked Trey McIntyre's Presentce at the Gala this year, Jessica Lang's Schubert Wanderer excerpt at Jacob's Pillow Interactive, and the unpopular here California Dreamin that Paul Taylor did for the last SFB New Works. Also very much so Ratmansky's Scarlatti. They all do develop ideas. Ratmansky, as Carrie Gaiser Casey points out in her SFB podcast, lets minor characters repeat the motifs of major characters as a composer might repeat and develop something in another key. This constantly enrichens the ballet rather than zombie-flattens. (Millepied – at least in video – seems to have flattened Beethoven in his Appassionata ballet, following the music so closely, dance word for music word, that neither the dance nor the music could breathe.) [You can move this somewhere else if others want to comment on the state of: musicality? structure? (good) formality?

Sort of an inert formality. All over. Maybe arrower than Wayne McGregor. ... ??? I guess more generally off the shelf minimalism built around a single idea. (I think I'm contracting here.)

Jerry Saltz – Panero's subject – is a pretty unique case. Very messy writer but seems to interested in getting through bull- of the art world, for example the trend of "zombie formalism" (which may have an equivalent in dance): Anyway he seems to be a more effective muckraker than Panero. http://www.vulture.com/2014/06/why-new-abstract-paintings-look-the-same.html Meanwhile at the Times, following the recent dismissal of the Public Editor, many copy editor jobs are to be eliminated: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/business/media/new-york-times-staff-members-protest-cuts.html?_r=0 The Times' defense ("Baquet Answers Readers' Questions") https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/reader-center/dean-baquet-newsroom-changes.html?mcubz=0:

My impression was that Ulrich brought the question up more than once and kept it before the public. I didn't remember him before that advocating so strongly for a work of art – outside of his opera and classical reviews for the Financial Times. To me it seemed a great example of what good arts journalism can do. Also it seemed that was so unusual a work for SF Ballet that they didn't quite know what to do with it - how to promote it, etc. Ulrich:

The Bejart Company also did a revival of "Parade," in the 1960s. Unfortunately only the original manager's costume survived and was last seen in a Diaghilev exhibition Richard Buckle put together in 1955. The costumes for the Joffrey revival were said to be reasonable facsimilies but not to have the impact of Picasso's originals. I wonder if the costumes and sets Robert Rauschenberg did in the 1970s for Cunningham and other companies had some of the dazzling effect of those in "Parade" in 1917 (when e e cummings and Marcel Proust were in the audience)? Regarding the continuity of SF Ballet's programs, they are still perhaps a mix of NYCB and ABT heritage, and in a triple bill you might say the Tomassons take the place of the Christensens, the Possokhovs stand in for the Smuins and there's kind of a Tudor freelance third place. The relation to the audience to the company remains the same, sometimes conservative, sometimes up for something brilliantly new or well revived – like Symphony in Three Movements or the Shostakovich Triology (which thanks to Allan Ulrich's enthusiastic reviews was given a second year's showing).

It depends on what the artist does with the "found" pieces. Beethoven constructs a brilliant set of answers – in different keys and tempos – to a waltz in the "Diabelli Variations" and maybe not so brilliant with "God Save the Queen". John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Johnny Griffin take bits of pop songs and make intricate msucial ribbons out of them. Picasso "steals" and "destructs" but completely combusts his sources. Pastiche in general doesn't seem to age well – the conceptual cracks begin to show. The "Appropriation" art of the 8o's (Sherrie Levine signing Walker Evans photos) – originally called "Scavenger Art" – looks pretty flat these days. In poetry T. S. Eliot seems to have become eclipsed by the wholly original Wallace Stevens. And in the end Schoenberg is more rewarding to listen to than Stravinsky. Joni Mitchell's comment on Dylan – a little like Mary McCarthy's on Lillian Hellman – is interesting in that she is a colleague of Bob Dylan's and knows the field from inside. She says, “His name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception.” Jonah Lehrer making up Dylan quotes, which might not be original in the first place, makes an rather amusing circle.

Latest in the Bob Dylan Nobel Prize saga – about his SparkNotes like acceptance speech. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/arts/music/bob-dylan-nobel-lecture-sparknotes.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Farts&action=click&contentCollection=arts&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

I saw Bugaku only once 20 years ago and it was one of the few Balanchine ballets I didn't like – Variations on a Porte et une Soupir was the other. It was too stylized – like the strangest Ikebana floral composition – and I have to admit I'm a bit prudish. (I didn't like the Cage but neither did Stravinsky, so.) Maybe I'd feel differently today. I do think if you put certain images on stage or on screen – even if the cavalry does come in and everyone is happy in the end, the images stay deep in the unconscious and somewhere give people permission to act badly. Macaulay asks, “Must works of art only depict people behaving correctly?” Not necessarily, but there's good taste, in the sense of a kind of moral good taste. But RaKU wasn't a Japanese story – like one by Ozu or Kawabata or even Mizoguchi – it was a Japanese news item choreographed by a Russian-American with a score borrowing from various ethnic and contemporary sources. Anyway I only brought it up because it was one I could immediately remember.

Interestingly, in today's FT, Apollinaire Scherr makes this observation about "Decalogue": And this topic kinda ties in with our discussion some months ago about the potential violence in the purse snatching scene "Fancy Free." ... The unpleasant thing I've noticed most in contemporary ballets is how women are treated like furniture to be moved about – especially in Christopher Wheeldon's work, though in his case perhaps not out of misogyny as out of a lack of imagination, or maybe just recycling what's around. Balanchine sometimes uses women as devices like pencils with which describe arcs around the stage – in "LIebeslieder" and "Violin Concerto", but the woman always seems to be the one in control, and the one whose imagination the ballet is really about. RAkU has a rape scene in it involving a monk backed up by some sort of soldiers and the audience here in San Francisco seems to love it. In the 70s I think it would have been booed. We've regressed.

Thanks for the reports, Jack – it's a pleasure reading about these ballets and performances and reconstructing them in your mind's eye.

San Francisco Ballet has so many dancers coming from such different backgrounds that it was almost as if the Cuban and Spanish trained dancers and teachers gave it a bit of a center for a while. Taras Domitro it seemed came in to replace Gonzalo Garcia, the high spirited company favorite, who had left suddenly for New York City Ballet. Now the company feels like a bit of a patchwork again. What I liked about Domitro is his depth of concentration and his ability to lose himself in a character (though they weren't necessarily deep characters). His Melancholic in The Four Temperaments was perhaps the best interpretation I've seen anywhere. He was also terrific in Scotch Symphony, Symphony in C, in the Swimmer, in the duel scene of Onegin and as Benjamin in Cinderella – the first act where his mime (and sleights of hands) made him look like one of Mack Sennett's regulars. Here's a roll call of Cuban dancers of the class of 2004. Viengsay Valdez, Romel Frometa, Yoel Carreno are in Part 2, Carlos Quenedit is in Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ImPpPZi7vo And a class with Loipa Araujo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN01x8UxosU

My parenthetic comment was, and still is, that the community of Cuban dancers at San Francisco Ballet would be greatly diminished. With Boada, Feijoo and Quenedit gone, this makes three of four. Their presence, and the influence of Jorge Esquivel and Lola di Avila as teachers, added something special to the company.

Nice suite of photos of Lisa F-P at Pace Macgill, also some of Penn's small trades. All good, but liked milkman especially. http://www.pacemacgill.com/selected_works.php?item=164

I was thinking of the 70s and Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Rauchenberg, Paxton, Tricia Brown and what made that atmosphere unique. Another difference is that in ballet women are always partnered by men, and presented to the audience by men, while downtown the hierachies are often scrambled, there are all sorts of different combinations and odd numbers and asymmetries (though Ratmansky is doing some of this). But yes institutions and how they are structured – and when they're set up and the time and ethos they represent.

I think this is true of the Times in general – personalities rather than issues. It's why we end up with the leaders we do. Macaulay in his 10 or so part series of tweets seems to be arguing as a lawyer in court, point by point, but completely not comprehending the overarching subject. Luke Jennings appears to give up midway. Another reason why there are many more women choreographers downtown might be that a good portion of the downtown men were gay and were not afraid to share power. And the institutions there, the KItchen, PS 122, DTW, were established much later, in the 1950s and 1960s, not the 19th century. And as pointed out above, there were no money men.

I didn’t watch the series, but enjoyed the discussion. Never thought of Joan Crawford as a big star when I was growing up – Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren or Gloria Swanson from the old days yes. Crawford to me was a B movie actress, of very limited range – and the poster of her in Sudden Fear really disturbed me as a child (Robert Frank took a classic photograph of a box office covered in it and other Crawford images). Bette Davis was different to us then I guess because she was in better movies (All About Eve) and better television (Ford Television Theater, Alfred Hitchcock Presents) and lived in Westwood not far from UCLA where I always imagined her having tea in the afternoon at Bulloch’s Westwood. So it’s curious to see them retroactively paired in Hollywood history. When I was a rooftop gardener in Manhattan, my fellow gardeners and I used to draw water for our watering buckets from the ornate bronze sink Crawford had installed in the board room of the otherwise austerely appointed SOM-designed Pepsico building on Park Ave – and giggle as we subversively did so. A friend who knew the family told me that when Richard Avedon diplomatically approached Crawford about the photo he had taken of her and her late husband (the one who was head of Pepsi Cola) and asked her what he should do with it, she told him bluntly, "why don't you just airbrush the b-----d out." Seemed totally in character but still a bit shocking. Yes, the men in Hollywood did ok as they aged if they were associated with a director who would take care of them, like John Ford or Howard Hawks or Robert Aldrich (or if they became president, like Ronald Reagan, who was taken care by Holmes Tuttle, the Los Angeles car dealer.) Some of the B and lesser stars like Bob Cummings and John Forsyth moved seamlessly over to television. Ida Lupino perhaps had the most interesting career of all – doing some good movies (two classics by Raoul Walsh), television (Four Star Theater and Mr Adams and Eve), and then directing. Sudden Fear (midway down) -

Millepied is also a celebrity with a famous partner, so the bar is different there, but you're right about Wheeldon and Liang (and Scarlett). Ratmansky usually puts on a good show, at least in San Francisco. Part of the problem is that most of the Artistic Directors of companies are men*, except for Miami. And the companies tend to follow each other in programming (as we discussed in the Atlanta thread) and power sharing. There's also the ready narrative of the young male dancer of the company coming up through the ranks and creating brilliant new works to help ballet survive. The narrative has to be switched to something like women are now doing the most interesting work. It happened in the art world where 30 to 50% of the artists in group shows are women (though men still get better prices). In the 50's Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell and Grace Hartigan had independent means and grew up with some privilege (MItchell was the daughter of a Chicago doctor and a poet) which helped them navigate the art world. Also I think they were no-nonsense types among a bunch of self-romanticing men. 1970s downtown scene was better – Lucinda Childs, Tricia Brown, Elizabeth Streb, Viola Farber were setting dances – was it that everyone was so poor and living in semi communal situations? * and former danseur nobles

I hope he mends soon. I missed his quiet and sure presence in the second season of Seven Sonatas - and his partnership with Sarah Van Patten. They were especially effective together in Shostakovich Trilogy as the bewildered couple, and in Symphony in Three Movements in the pas with those wonderful totem pole hand gestures.

Even Peck's answer is nerdish and the image uninviting. I think a good way to nurture talent would be in ballet classes after learning a sequence of steps to ask each student to show how she would solve the problem the choreographer has presented - to improvise a solution or a variation. To do that regularly so the student has a feeling of authorship and inventing things. Kind of how you might do in a middle or high school poetry class.

According to the box office person, the announcement of cancellation was made at noon today. After Program 7 was presented this evening (Trio, Ghost in the Machine, and Within the Golden Hour) there was a video called Celebrating Lorena Feijoo (not terribly exciting as those things go) but things warmed up as Lorena took the stage and dancers of the company filed out individually and presented her each with a single red rose – including the Cuban group: Joan Boada, Taras Domitro and Carlos Quenedit. Pascal Molat was also there as well as Vitor Luiz and Feijoo's sister I believe (though it was difficult to see over the standing crowd; maybe someone else can correct and fill in). Most touching seemed to be Yuan Yuan Tan's rose and big hug. All in all a lovely commemoration of a very fruitful 17 year career with the company. [Here's the press release opening sentence cited in the blog above: "'It is with great disappointment that San Francisco Ballet announces Principal Dancer Lorena Feijoo will not perform at her previously announced special farewell performance as part of Program 7 tonight..."]

Thanks for the heads up. According to the Bomb magazine interview link, Lisa Fonssagrives apparently had a whole carreer before Irving Penn and Vogue - with her first husband Fernand Fonssagrives who was a dancer and later a photographer. They both studied with Mary Wigman in Berlin, then taught dance, later came to the US on the basis of his photos of her, where she worked at Harper's Bazaar with Carmel Snow for eight years (according to another interview in Acne Paper #13). She eventually worked – collaborated – with 35 photographers. Photograph here by Frances McLaughlin Gill (who I didn't realize til now is the twin sister of Kathryn Abbe). http://www.daedalusproductions.org/twin-lenses/