Quiggin

I saw several Serenades and didn’t think that any of them quite gelled. Very beautiful, but I wanted it to be more rough-edged and each section needed more variation in texture and tempos to set it off from the other ones. And now and then very startling, like a loom that suddenly reverses the arrangement of strings and something shuttles through ... Also the orchestra to play less silkily, with more contrasts between instruments, the strings to cackle and strain a bit, the voices more idiosyncratic and separate. Maria Kochetkova was cool and business-like and Frances Chung, as accomplished a technician as she is, didn't make her part look much different from the one she did in Lambarena. Mathilde Froustey tried to sell the Russian Girl part to the audience, smiling and trying to catch their eyes with hers which really went against the tone of the piece. And the beautiful play within a play, the arrival of the blind poet – sort of a variation on Orpheus – didn’t seem to stand out as a special thing as it did a couple of years ago. Sofiane Sylve and Carlo Di Lanno, however, were wonderful together, subtle and low-keyed. * Will this be the last year of RAkU? Yes, Yuan Yuan Tan put in an incredibly intense, almost painfully so, performance first night – but the part is not an ennobling one at all; the rape, blankly against a wall, completely gratuitous. And the orientalizing makeup that poor Carlos Quenedit had to wear made him look like just stepped out of the Mikado – or A Majority of One in Cedric Hardwicke's role.

Thanks for that clarification, Kathleen. I think Disney was able roll the dates both ways on the rights to Pinocchio and of course Ub Iwerks who pretty much created Mickey Mouse is lost somewhere in all that. Before 1989 when everyone began respecting internation copyrights you may have been able to get away with a little clip of Shostakovitch. But the music to Symphony in C arouses so many specific expections when you hear even just a few bars – of dancers doing sewing machine-like steps and men blowing onto stage as if shot out of a canon... What about Fountains of Rome (!) or some other less saturated piece. My other minor quibble was with the title (which I at first associated with the classic 442 Oldsmobile muscle car) ... Didn't Balanchine do about 400 of those? Why not start another set – your own – of opus numbers?

I saw last Tuesday's with Zahorian/Domitro/Molat/Stahl ... great cast all over. Mime was especially good, Molat's on target, great presence on stage, Domitro's so clear and clean and bright, really a standard. Katita Waldo's acting was very fine grained; she looked just as a Dutch period painting of Berthe would. And Clara Blanco's dancing in the first act was perfection – so light and articulate!

DanielBenton: It is difficult to make cuts in film and music at the same time – the eye needs little buffers and gaps make sense of the leap to the next shot. In newsfilms in the old days the image and soundtrack were locked in 15 frames apart so when you made a direct cut, the new talking head would be finishing up speaking the former talking head's lines. However, using one soundtrack for a bunch of clips – SFB uses Serenade music with images of Don Quixote and Four Ts in this year's preview – seems to have become a convention. I would think that there are recordings of Shostakovich's Concerto No. 2 in the public domain especially from before 1989 when copyrights were not strictly enforced between Russia and the US. It sounds like an esthetic choice – though I haven't seen the film yet, only the trailer in which the choreography looks like a distillation of New York City style – Eau de NYCB? ... Shouldn't Rode,O be Rode/O in the deconstructivist style? Also strange is the Wisemen is the winner of the Cinema Verite crown when there were so many other (more) interesting inventors and practitioners of the form. One of the hallmarks of early Cinema Verite was the use of natural sounds that acted as harsh counterpoint to the images – like the windshield wiper sounds do in Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne ("The sound of a windshield-wiper against a page of Diderot is all it took ..." :Bazin.) ... Originally with Cinema Verite (now called Verite on a kind of first name basis) you made a new truth from raw materials. Now truth seems to come as a luxury model.

Hey pherank, I saw Mathilde Froustey in Giselle last year, not the first one where she ripped through a skirt with the sword, but the second time out which a friend who saw both said was even better. It was very, very good, warmer and more nuanced than Kochetkova's I thought. Froustey seemed to take her time nicely with everything – not rush anything forward. Do check out Allan Ulrich's review in the Chronicle of a week ago, he saw the same cast you'll see ... Let us know what you think.

Gottlieb also stirs up some live coals when he says: Which Danilova in her bio says was the case with her group of young dancers in the twenties. And this about In the Night originally looking like outtakes from Dances (and crediting Ben Huys for the excellent staging).

I don't remember if black but definitely formal and part of the whole pristine effect. Yes, it would have been lovely if they had gone directly into the program directly after that and had the speech somewhere else (maybe in the lobby beforehand). Some of it was about a capital fund.

I’ll just add to PeggyR’s report that I enjoyed the contrast between the opening and closing sections – the Déflé that culminates in a brilliant and neurotically symmetrical bas relief of the whole company – and the informal gathering of dancers at the end, some in costume and some in street clothes, cheerily toasting Helgi Tomasson on his 30th anniversary as director of the company. I liked the Ratmansky piece Souvenir d’un Lieu Cher best, but it seemed subdued as a second act opener and hard to make out in the dim lighting. It was about two couples (who could be phases of one’s couple’s relationship), and, as in many of Ratmansky’s pieces, the characters alternate between being actors and between being commentators – or complementers – on other characters’ actions. Suddenly they’ll be a moment were everyone does the same thing at once, maybe a downward lunge in sync and everything will start up anew. Very interesting little right angle movements of hands and feet (it’s as if Ratmansky is still using a sort of serifed choreographic typeface when everyone else has gone over to sans serif). I’d love to see Souvenir again and it’s definitely worthy of a place somewhere in the company’s presentations this season or next. Froustey, Van Patten, Di Lanno, and Ingham were all wonderful to watch. Interesting afterwards to see black-tie and sequined audience members flood across Van Ness Avenue in the dark, moving towards the City Hall party and crossing over the median through a secret gateway I had never seen opened before.

Wednesday's cast list and an update on Tuesday's Dark Angel. Tuesday, January 27, 2015, 8pm – Opening Night SERENADE – Balanchine / Tchaikovsky Waltz Couple: Maria Kochetkova, Joseph Walsh* Russian Girl: Mathilde Froustey Angel: Frances Chung Dark Angel: Vitor Luiz RAkU – Possokhov / Eshima Yuan Yuan Tan, Carlos Quenedit* Pascal Molat LAMBARENA – Caniparoli / Bach, Lorena Feijoo Kimberly Braylock*, Ellen Rose Hummel* Joseph Walsh,* Daniel Deivison-Oliveira*, Wei Wang* Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - 7:30pm SERENADE – Balanchine / Tchaikovsky Waltz Couple: Sofiane Sylve, Carlo Di Lanno* Russian Girl: Vanessa Zahorian Angel: Kristina Lind Dark Angel: Tiit Helimets RAkU – Possokhov / Eshima Yuan Yuan Tan, Carlos Quenedit Pascal Molat LAMBARENA – Caniparoli / Bach, Frances Chung Grace Shibley*, Dores Andre* Steven Morse*, Pascal Molat, Hansuke Yamamoto*

I look forward to the Ratmansky "Souvenir" which was done for the Dutch National Ballet in 2012 – a set of variations for two couples. Also seeing Carlo di Lanno who just joined the company from La Scala. But it's hard to get a feeling for the overall effect – with two Wheeldons, three Tomassons, a new Poskohov and a new Caniparoli, a Forsythe and Corsaire – and how the pieces will get along with each other. Galas are like old pressed-flower scrapbooks, fat and lumpy with gross and delicate specimens following each other, and the page edges never matching. Rehearsal of Concerto Grosso here at 10:05: https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=AwrTcdPJOb9UqsgAGD4lnIlQ;_ylu=X3oDMTB0MzkwOG5yBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2dxMQR2dGlkA1lIUzAwNF8x?p=sf+ballet+video+world+ballet+day&tnr=21&vid=9FEA30DFC3A84A1F309B9FEA30DFC3A84A1F309B&l=944&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DUN.607994935194945257%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DtST3-ivV_Ro&sigr=11bu2v6e0&tt=b&tit=SF+Ballet+World+Ballet+Day+2014+Highlights&sigt=11afgltp8&back=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2Fyhs%2Fsearch%3Fp%3Dsf%2Bballet%2Bvideo%2Bworld%2Bballet%2Bday%26ei%3DUTF-8%26hsimp%3Dyhs-001%26hspart%3Dmozilla&sigb=13cg5ks3t&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001

I too enjoy Arlene Croce's work, but, like Pauline Kael, she seemed to have championed a certain kind of full blooded American vitality. Her negative pole was always “narcissism” and “self-absorption”. (Kael disliked "Blow Up" for Croce-like reasons.) There is something of this in her review of The Four Temperaments, where she seems to favor the angry goddess Choleric who “enters in a burst of fanfares and flourishes” and Sanguinic, whose vistas are wide open, and who “rides at the top of the world” over narrow vista-ed Melancholic whose " personal weather is always ceiling zero" and Phlegmatic who is indolent, "given to detached contemplation and to pretentious vices." She likes Mark Morris despite the sort of Michelangelo David androgynous handsomeness that he shares with other dancers of the time - "it's a look I can do without". Morris is about more than just "dime store narcissism." And Bill T. Jones in 1982 is “marching the New Narcissism into the fever swamps.” In Afternoon of the Faun, she likes the moment the woman turns away from the mirror and yields to the boy’s hands – and becomes real. Staunch politics aside, her asides reminded me of the strict American reading of Freud that was prevalent for a time (a dark time).

I been only able to watch the first parts of the posted City Ballet "C" and Paris "Palais" videos, but Palais de Cristal seems so light and open, like a presentation at court, whereas Symphony in C is more like a white scene – lakeside Swan Lake, at least the second movement. Palais seemed laid out in floral patterns, whereas Symphony C is more architectural. There are Maltese cross movements of two couples in Palais that I didn't notice so much in Symphony C. And on the long flight across the stage, the woman's foot penetrates the surface of a circle made of the arms of another couple – ritualized and highly erotic – which doesn't seem to happen in the earlier version. Also the end of the second movement in the later version has a series of tableaus forming and reforming behind the principal couple. You don't know which one will be the final one or if they'll manage to slip in another (as in the long version of Emeralds). It's as if Palais de Cristal is a remake of a classic French ballet that Balanchine remembers from somewhere, and Symphony in C is a remake of Palais. Also Symphony in C begins to reflect Balanchine's high modernist esthetic of the 1950s. I've enjoyed them equally well.

In San Francisco it will be shown on KQED Life (Channel 54.3; XFINITY 189) - Curtain Up: The School of American Ballet Workshop Performances (#3907H) Duration: 1:26:46 KQED Life: Mon, Dec 15, 2014 -- 8:00pm KQED Life: Tue, Dec 16, 2014 -- 2:00am

I liked this ending answer from Roslyn Sulcas's interview with Janzen:

"Every so often I get an anxious feeling and would like to produce that bombed-out effect of modern painting. Maybe my form is too closed. I feel a certain desire for exploding a picture the way some artists do. Can you explode a painting realistically? I dont know." http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/arts/jane-freilicher-an-outsider-in-era-of-abstract-expressionism-dies-at-90.html?ref=arts&_r=0 She was married to former dancer Joseph Hazan. http://thevillager.com/2012/11/21/joseph-hazan-96-artist-whose-building-abutted-radicals-blast/

Again it's in usage where it matters and Merriam Webster Online's sole citation of usage of demure is this – You'll see wholesomeness and perfection and role model in Instagram and Facebook comments: "Maria Kochetkova! ... Such a role model for me!" (via Anaheim Ballet) and "Love u so much!!! a perfect ballerina!!!". Also in one 14 year old dancer's q&a Kochetkova and Copeland cited as role models. I am very pessimistic about progress made in this country since Raison in the Sun – and how difficult it is for young African American men to get jobs in San Francisco and to have any visibllty in the burgeoning tech business here. I'll leave it at that and agree that it's another discussion.

I'll just enter on the demure front. Neutral on first glance, but in usage not: Webster's 2d: Oxford English Dictionary: Anyway is a strange discussion to be having in 2014. Sounds almost contemporary with Raisin in the Sun where the father talks about how African-Americans have to work twice as hard at a job to be perceived as non threatening. Added: Regarding nudity, Maria Kochetkova and Mathilde Froustey routinely post photographs of themselves on Instagram and in magazines in states of nakedness much more extreme than Misty Copeland's. And they are considered completely wholesome role models. The boys in the link posted somewhere above are just this side of what used to be called soft porn ...

Thanks too. It's been curated by John Richardson, Picasso's biographer, who also did a show of the wonderfully crazy late paintings, Mosqueteros, at the same gallery, Gagosian. Somewhat changed the way the late work was regarded. Towards the end of the Olga years Picasso mixed surrealism and late cubism in an important scherzo-like painting called The Dance / Three Dancers. It's something of a farewell to the Diaghilev years, and Olga is supposed to be one of the three dancers. I always wondered if the brown and white costume at the right was based on the one in Afternoon Faun in the twenties production - http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/picasso-the-three-dancers-t00729

Actually Ratmansky in his NYPL interview says that he doesn't use Bach, Beethoven or Mozart for his scores because he couldn't compete with that. "Ballet is just dancing," he says. "Music says very important things about the universe. We should not compete with that." Balanchine too didn't try to compete either, for instance using Mozart's divertimenti and his Gluck variations ("Mozartiana"), rather than the big symphonies and concerti – and never Beethoven. Regarding ballet as an art in itself – having the respect of other artists, I think that came with Balanchine's and Robbin's work in the 50's – when painters, poets, writers (Denby, Elaine deKooning, Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, Bill Bryson, Susan Sontag later, etc) came to see the work at City Center and considered it as a complete thing in itself. Though perhaps you could say the same for Nijinksy's ballets earlier, in the teens. And before that Loie Fuller about whom Yeats and Mallarme and Valery wrote intensively. Not sure if that helps ...

At San Francisco Ballet the Trilogy (co-produced with ABT) is being brought back for a second year – "due to critical and audience acclaim." It wasn't originally scheduled when the 2015 season was announced, only Concerto #1, so everything was reshuffled to make way for it. Here's a reheasal clip (with 10 lovely seconds of Simone Messmer at :52). https://www.sfballet.org/tickets/production/overview/program-5-2014

This has been posted before in daily links by dirac but I thought I'd add it here too. Laura Jacobs in the London Review of Books makes a strong case supporting Kendall's thesis in Balanchine & the Lost Muse. She says that "Kendall’s portrait of Balanchine’s first twenty years will now be the standard reference for this period"– "free of [Taper's] mythical guidance (‘soft focus’ might be a better way to put it) and revised." Most of the review is behind a pay wall but worth getting an issue (or a subscription) or looking at in the library. Some of the section on Serenade: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n19/laura-jacobs/the-girl-who-waltzes

Was interested in different styles and how they cross-fertilize. Some similarities between Agon and Cunningham (whether ballets or not) – and Cunningham and Ratmansky. Septet (Cunningham/Satie,1953) looks like a version of Apollo. Crises was livestreamed last week from NYU. Variations V is available online from Cunningham trust.

I don't know if this is a desert island list or what. Most of the ballets involve use of the whole stage, the corps as well as leads, and describe space in a unsual way. 1.Basis Bournonville ballets: Sylphide Napoli? Giselle Tschaikovsky ballets La Bayadere 2. Afternoon of a Faun - Nijinksy/Debussy 3.[Picasso sets, costumes and curtain for Parade; Satie music] 4. Triadisches Ballett - Oskar Schlemmer 5. Prodigal Son - Balanchine/Prokofiev - remnants of 20s Soviet style choreography 6. The Bolt - Ratmansky/Shostakovich - somethng of 1930s Soviet style 7. Serenade - Balanchine/Tchaikovsky 8. Green Table - Joos/Cohen 9. Facade - Ashton/Walton Paris Opera Ballet: 10. Suite in Blanc - Lifar/Lalo 11. Le Palais de Cristal Symphony in C (both) - Balanchine/Bizet 12. The Four Temperaments - Balanchine/Hindemith - Phlegmatic or Melancholic variation 13. Symphony in 3 Movements - Balanchine/ Stravinsky 14. Cinderella - Ashton/Prokofiev 15/16. Liebeslieder & Donizetti Variations (same year) - Balanchine, Balanchine’s Bournonville 17. Square Dance (long) - Balanchine/Corelli 18. Crises (1960) & Variations V (1966) - Cunningham/Rauchenberg/Nancarrow/Cage 19. Stravinsky Violin Concerto - Balanchine 20. Shostakovich Trilogy - Ratmansky Could add Onegin duel scene only, also needs a Soviet 50's ballet like Spartacus, but not Spartacus. Balanchines could be reduced. Cunninghams are more important than they look on this scroll.

There's a good 15 sec clip of Wendy Whelan in Pictures of an Exhibition in the new AOL Ratmansky episode. It begins at 4:18 - http://on.aol.ca/show/517887470.471-city-ballet/518489124

Thanks Anne for your report. It would be terrible for ballet if the traditional RDP version were lost However I do agree with Sandik that the white room set looks very intriguing. Big clean stage settings - like those of Symphonic Variations or McGregor/Pawson's Chroma - are often thrilling to see after all the fuss of 19th stage sets ( esp in opera). More plastic, easier for the director to shift focus - as in film. Liked your description of James's head on his mother's shoulder in the white room scene.