Quiggin

I agree with Simon that certain junctures are important, crucial, in the life of an organization or company – and with another period of "treading water" much valuable experience - living history - will be lost and no longer handed down. There are some blog posts and interviews with Bruce Sansom at the San Francisco Ballet site - where he is ballet master and assistant to Helgi Tomasson - about how he teaches his classes, working on Coppelia etc. This is an interesting topic. In an interview here Sofiane Sylve and Pascal Molat talked about how brutal this can be – while at the same time saying they very much liked the opportunity of being able to dance in many different styles. Molat said you don't use the same group of muscles for different ballets often on the same program, say a Forsythe and then a Balanchine, with their different center for gravities – and that this can be very pounding on your body.

There's a wonderful clip of Eglevsky in the PBS Balanchine biography with a camera following him onstage in a pas de trois with two partners. They're like carousel horses in alternating forward leaning and backward leaning positions. Also in the Maria Tallchief video set, there's a fishbowl-like kinescope with Eglevsky of the whole of Pas de Dix – which is Balanchine's take on the some of the Raymunda variations Cristian posted above. Everyone weighs twenty pounds more than they really do and all the awkwardnesses are picked up and foregrounded by the camera, but much of the charm is still there. Nice George Platt Lynes photo of Eglevsky.

In the Tadie and Carter Proust biographies, Rene Blum, who was a schoolfriend of Proust, did negotiate the publication of Swann's Way with Proust's first publisher Grasset – although he hadn't yet read the book. But it's a rather small part in the publication history of Proust's novel, which quite complex and takes place over many years and involves three publishers, and includes Andre Gide's rejection notice. However as I remember Rene Blum does figure as the good guy who loses out to the unscrupulous Colonel (who may not have really been a colonel) de Basil in Danilova's memoir "Choura."

I think writing about the downtown dance scene which is so small would be very difficult - and quite different from reviewing say downtown theater. It would have to be practiced obliquely and diplomatically. And you have the task of educating your audience to the specialized vocabularies (subtle sometimes to the point of being bare whispers of vocabularies) of each dance company. The Village Voice used to be fat with classified advertising before Craigslist came on the scene. And "Playbor" - writing labor for free, as if "play" - that Huffington Post uses in their business model – has really changed the field.

Natalia: This was my feeling about Roca's book, which was really a well-done Times Magazine profile on Alicia Alonso. I bought a copy wanting to know about this golden age at the Cuban, ballet from the 1990's to the present, and how it came about: How were the schools structured, what were the classes, who were the teachers, what were the differences between the teaching styles within the schools. Joan Boada once talked about how important the partnering class was... One dancer in Roca's book says that things changed after Josefina Mendez's death – was she the guiding force? There was also little in "Cuban Ballet" about the pre-Alonso period – for instance about the ballet(s) of Amadeo Roldan.

The Errata series, while a very worthworth one, a labor of love, are not reprints of the originals, but photographs of the double page spreads. Some of the direct impact of the photographs in the original editions is reduced by presenting the books as art objects. There is a good chapter about the making of "Ballet" in the Phaidon monograph "Alexey Brodovitch" by Kerry William Purcell – along with the entire layout and the proof sheets of negatives not used in the book. Brodovitch was the art editor of Harper's Bazaar in the late forties and ran a workshop called the Design Lab. Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Lisette Model and Gary Winogrand attended his classes - you can readily see his influence in their work.

It would probably been best had these performances not been preserved on film which is such an analytical medium - and perhaps they shouldn't be judged on that basis. But why is "menopausal" or "post-menopausal" a criterion or point of no return for acting or performing? That sort of term - out of "Mad Men" perhaps - was perhaps the thing Tennesse Williams was questioning. Are there post-menopausal men - or post-menopausal children? Does anyone age gracefully? Do they have to? (Proust says somewhere old age is like a suit awkwardly worn inside out.) Why such hard use of the reality principle - especially in an area of human activity where it's supposed to be set aside for a while?

puppytreats: Bruce Weber's photobooks are a little like commonplace books, and they do run in series of thoughts. I don't know the Robert Bolle book (though I like one picture of him which runs against the grain and shows that his teeth aren't perfect). BW's earlier books such as "O Rio" are runs of black and white images, some monochrome color and a few low-keyed color - all on matt paper. He did a good series on Cy Twombly's studio that ran in a recent book. Weber's weakness I think is for an over-heroic, Leni Reifensthal-like take on the young male of the species. And Balanchine's Apollo is supposed to be a bit of a scamp, perhaps a combination of Apollo & playful Mercury who tricked Apollo, as much a Villella as a Peter Martins.

It looks as if Bruce Weber was not interested at all in the Finlay/Love shoot- was rushed or the Art Director was doing the set-ups and there were far too many costumes and props and prior ideas. He's a good photographer - influenced nicely by Horst and Herbert List. Great to see he's still shooting traditional b&w film (Is that Tri X printed on the edges of proof sheet?).

I liked the Long Goodbye and The Player, and from the trailer and clips of Company, I think Altman's usual strength of playing the banal against the banal doesn't work when high art is part of the mix. The onstage scene with the dancers in a pas and the string of balloons floating lengthwise in a sort of visual counterpoint disadvantages both images. The use of the letterbox or 2:1 format may have been a mistake - it takes too much in at once that Altman can't control and muddles the visual narrative. McDowell's performance seems too broad for a choreographer - more like a theater producer out of a Kaufman and Hart play.

I thought "Mermaid" became honest only at the end, stripped down, the story exhausted, with only the two characters left on stage - Pascal Molat and Sarah Van Patten, very touching there. Otherwise it was a heavy pastiche of everything you would have seen on the Lower East Side or at BAM twenty years ago – Joanne Akalaitis' "Pericles," Tadeusz Kantor's Cricot 2 theater (Kantor, whom Molat greatly resembled, played the writer part in "Dead Class"), Robert Wilson's "Einstein," the artist Boyd Webb (the upside down ship) etc – also the party from "La Dolce Vita," and in the music there were mosaics of Brecht/Weill and Nino Rota (Carlotta's theme from "8 1/2"). Allan Ulrich last year (he seems to have passed on reviewing it this year) thought the Sea Witch looked like Ming the Magnificent in Flash Gordon but it could also have been a Batman Joker iteration. Anyway because of weight of all this, "Mermaid" had no time to be its own good (25 minute) self – and none of the dancers got to dance. Steven Morse did nice bit as a wandering red-gloved shadow boxing boxer and I do wish I had been able to have see what Jaime Garcia Castilla could do with Sea Witch because he had been so good in "Chroma." Architecture got over post-modernist mannerism fifteen years ago, and great clean new works are being done – especially in Spain, the Netherlands, and Chile; why can't dance make itself new again too? Added: I agree with Balleroger about the relentless self-destruction motifs.

His brother Jonathan Lieberson, who taught philosophy and wrote for the New York Review, died in 1989. There's a mention in Ned Rorem's diary of his mother Brigitta's very touching acknowlegment of Rorem's condolence note. I met a schoolmate of his who talked about Brigitta (Vera Zorina) driving them both to school, smoking and the radio on loudly and carrying on intensely about some topic or other.

In our ongoing Kremlinology of City Ballet past– Villella's memoir, which I looked at at the library this afternoon, is an interesting counterpoint to "I Was a Dancer." Both have good sections on Apollo, but Villella's book stays closer to the craft and construction of the dances than backstage stories. He describes Balanchine dancing the part of Apollo for him. Villella discusses some interesting points of difference between d'Amboise and himself: And Garis points out that in the early days it was Farrell and Mimi Paul who were up for the same roles since they had similar body types.

Garis* says that with Farrell and Mimi Paul who alternated between 1963 and 1968, the impact of the sheer size of their bodies, allowed him to read the roles they did differently, as if they were in large type, than he had with Verdy and Schorer. d"Amboise says that when Farrell came back, Balanchine became more interested in Kyra Nichols and Darci Kistler and created few, if any, new roles for her. Croce as she is raving about Farrell in "Diamonds" after her return, and how rather than a "omnicompetent blank," she's now "dynamic, colorful, tender" and "perfects the act of balance/imbalance as a constant feature of dancing," interesting notes that "none of the ballets Balanchine created for her were top-flight." And "Don Quixote." *And agreeing with Patrick about the superiority of Denby's clarity over the fussy Garis, Garis does provide good continuity background of the company.

Robert Garis's language was a bit "high" but no more so than John Martin's and B H Haggin's, and even Arlene Croce's. Garis's book seems to occupy an important place somewhat between Denby's and Croce's accounts. He notes that premieres went to Tallchief or Le Clercq, but "experimental" works like "Opus 34" or "Ivesiana" went to Adams. Denby's characterizations of the same dancers in 1952: Regarding Ashton's "Picnic at Tintagel" and "Illuminations" (as a side note to Banchine's "pettiness") Denby says, I hope all of this is not too off-topic but gives some idea of the context of the years when D'amboise was first dancing with the complany. Helene: Yes, that was an incredible moment in the book - when Balanchine had finally had too much, and sharply saw the truth of what was happening. papeetepatrick: Farrell's company does great small scaled things, "Sonnambula" is especially good, "Union Jack" seemed not so, at least here in Berkeley at Zellerbach. Her dutiful reading of her program notes before the performances seem a bit out of character with the event. I thought D'amboise's comment about Stanley Williams might have been directed obliquely to Villella, but maybe not.

I always enjoy watching Melissa Hayden on video of the Tschaikovsky pas and "Stars and Stripes". There is a way she whips her hand and foot around on a turn for extra bit of rotation just when you think everything is over. Perhaps she was more an allegro dancer, like Merrill Ashley? Robert Garis has good words for Hayden, especially in "Liebeslieder" when she danced with Jonathan Watts. But here's how he ranked the company between 1948 and 1957 (in service of the choreography, not as stars) : Of the same period O'Hara & Berkson in "Hymns of St. Bridget" say, Like dirac, I was taken aback in the witholding of generousity towards Suzanne Farrell. Also - probably the same as what Helene is saying - he wanted the position the more he realized he was being passed over for it.

B Altman had those incredibly wide aisles and wooden floors - and there was a Saks 34th Street which was differentiated from Saks Fifth. Kleins (wasn't that Judy Holiday's choice of store in Bells Are Ringing?) sat empty for years on Union Square. I think it was originally cobbled together out of lots of smaller stores & covered with huge signs – blue neon stipe things? – that sort of held everything together. papeetepatrick: Anytime they say they're going to refreshen or restore something, or update it for our time, whether a building or a classic translation of a novel - it means they're going to destoy it but very politely. In city planning talk whenever they use the term "celebrate" as in celebrate the history, celebrate the street, watch out.

Bart: Apologies - it was Symphony in C, the slow movement, not Diamonds. I just came across an unposted postcard to someone who had been disappointed a year or so before when Darcey Bussell had been advertised in Sleeping Beauty with the Royal but replaced by Vivien Durante, who seemed lost on the big Metropolitan Opera stage. Bussell was nicely partnered by Robert Lyon at City Ballet - in the wonderful lifts barely breaking the the imaginary surface tension when her foot touched the stage floor. She had a perfect legato that made the rest of the company look like it was going too fast, at the wrong speed. She would be doing Agon again that week. Interesting to hear the comparison between Bussell and Diana Adams. You were so lucky to have seen Adams - according to the D'amboise memoir oftentimes she didn't dance when scheduled, even in works that had been choreographed for her. And thanks, rg for the program copies - and all those names of dancers I had forgotten that I had seen and always looked forward to seeing again and again.

I remember going to the event - maybe it took place in the afternoon and evening - it was fun but a hodge podge of small parts of longer pieces. I think Kyra Nichols was dancing some of Farrell's parts then. I was very impressed by Agon with Darcey Bussell - she had also done an Emeralds and/or Diamonds a week or so before. Arch Higgins whom I always liked was also in Agon but in another portion. And I think I might have seen Benjamin Millepied for the first time in a demonstration of a pas de deux with another dancer from SAB. I was looking down from the balcony with the afternoon daylight coming from behind and seeing this from an extreme angle, so that it was compressed and foreshortened but very elegant.

Before Federated took over everything and squanded names and years of good will there used to be all sorts of intricate tiers of department stores in California. People were intensely loyal to one or the other, and each had a certain look and even particular smells. In Los Angeles there were May Company, The Broadway, Bullock's and Robinson's, pricey but less ostentacious than Magnin's - at Santa Monica (or Little Santa Monica) and Wilshire. In San Francisco there were Macy's (probably loosely related to the New York one) The Emporium, City of Paris and the great I. Magnin's. Roos Brothers/ Roos-Atkins eventually became Virgin Records and The White House is where the Banana Republic main store is now. (Of course, the quick rise and fall of Flip, the current exuberant and irrepressible movement of capital and hot-rodding of whatever traditional brand names are left is of an even different magnitude.) Bullocks Wilshire, forever locked in the thirties, had a great tea room, where aunts in white gloves and neices would have little sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Bullocks Westwood had updated the tea room concept to the sixties and to a different demographic - UCLA was across the street and Westwood residents and old movie people like Bette Davis might be comfortable lunching there.

I agree that Ghosts was a more personal work (though of a very cryptic personality) than Number Nine, which was a romp through the neoclassical vocabulary. (Or alphabet, as if vowels were carrying and assisting the consonants across the stage.) One of its cheeryist and most accomplished of Winsor & Newton yellows was Isaac Hernandez - and Elizabeth Miner was wonderfully elastic and free in 7 for Eight, in a fine City Ballet like way. Regarding Chroma, it does look like something real is there but shows through more on some nights than on others. And whenever someone describes its birdlike moves, I think of Merce Cunningham's works which are often written in a choreographic bird language. I wonder how the company would look doing an early Cunningham piece straight on, rather than one of the many derivatives that they do - Hernandez (the leaps), Miner, Domitro (as the Merce figure), Sylve (the enchantress), and Scribner somewhere in there too. Peggy R: I've been semi-consciously aware of this - it throws a new light on everything.

Andre, thanks for your helpful close reading of "Chroma" - and of San Francisco neighborhoods, which do each retain their own particular idiorythmic characteristics, despite the current push for change and proposed watering down of historic preservation protections. What did you think - or anyone else think - of the two Wheeldons (if this topic can be stretched to accomodate both programs 6 & 7 which are being danced on alternate nights)?

It’s interesting to hear Andre's assessment of San Francisco’s “Chroma” compared to the British production, especially in regards to tone. Thursday’s first night was performance very much together and electrifying while that cast's second performance Tuesday seemed less so - though Jaime Garcia Castilla on Tuesday seemed especially free and brilliant. Saturday’s schedule was changed so that the afternoon cast also did the evening performance. Some members are dancing several other pieces in Programs 6 & 7 that call on different muscle groups and which demand fairly different styles. Sofiane Sylve and Pascal Molat recently pointed out, in a pre-performance talk, the difficulty of making these switches. I liked “Chroma” - it seems to begin where “Symphonic Variations” left off, in a style of the future - maybe with a bit of Merce Cunningham hardness to it - starting out with four or five dancers dancers at the left side with their backs to the audience. Other dancers dissolve and reappear over a letterbox proscenium that looks like a floating Mies van der Rohe pavilion with less divine proportions, but a similar purist austerity (I went to college for a year in Mies’ Crown Hall where I dissolved in and out of classes, so I felt right at home). McGregor’s chromas were a Max Factor makeup box of light flesh tones while Wheeldon’s Number Nine on the other program seemed to pop out of a paint box of primary colors (and movements): two yellows, a mauve, chrome red, blue-green etc., each costume set against a cyclorama of its opposite. The corps in yellow, the color of laughter?, were especially effective.

Sandy McKean There's a "deckled" quality to the whole book that a different editor might have cleaned up. One whole chapter named after an incidental person is really about the trips to Germany and Russia, and five chapters have the word death in the title. Toning down some of the colorful dialect - restoring simple words like full for plethora, many for bevy, seated for sequested - would have distracted less from the content of the stories. The Villella, Kent, Tallchief and Farrell memoirs seemed stronger and more focused around particular themes or structures. Part of the project seemed to be about making an earthy character of Balanchine and at some point you wonder just how important were the ballets. There is also some ambivalence about what d'Amboise really wanted in his career, regarding making movies for example, and whether he really wanted to be head of City Ballet after Balanchine.

I just read this quickly - a library copy - and tend to agree with some of Eileen’s assessments above. In much of the book d'Amboise presents Balanchine and Kirstein as two alternate cast King Lears trying to come to terms with the loss of their kingdoms. He's better on Balanchine than on Kirstein, who was in ways (like Charlus in Proust) could often see the truth of what was going on despite his own self destructiveness. Duberman's Kirstein biography is a good corrective to d’Amboise’s views, for an overall map and for significance of some of the episodes. About Balanchine there’s lots of interesting stuff, but what d’Amboise presents and interprets as pettiness - in order to bring Balanchine down to earth and make him more human and “less perfect” - is not pure pettiness. Yes, Balanchine is upset that "Minkus Pas de Trois" becomes a star vehicle for Eglevsky (Balanchine doesn’t even put his own name on the programs except as ballet master) but he’s right that Minkus’ music is not especially first class. And the primary reason Balanchine ignored “The Cage” may not have been so much that he was jealous of Jerome Robbins, but because the theme of the man-devouring woman was already a cliche in the fifties – it was the sort of myth that appealed to painters and writers like Wilhelm deKooning and Jackson Pollock and Norman Mailer. (Stravinsky himself did not approve of “The Cage” according to Robert Garis, citing its "plastic incompatibility" with the music.) What was particularly interesting to me was the narrative of “Apollo” that Balanchine gave d’Amboise. Of Calliope he says, “‘She has nothing new to show you. You’re a god, already you know everything.’” Polyhymnia “speaks when she should not, and Apollo admonishes her.” When d’Amboise asks Balanchine why he has cut “Apollo” so much, he catches Balanchine in an angry mood – Martins is then dancing it – and Balanchine says that if the audience wants to see only magazine poses, not the steps, he’ll give them just that. Then he says, “Like van Gogh – cut off his own ear.” There is a hint of d'Amboise always being in the very inner circle - in his being a surrogate in the relationship between Balanchine and Farrell (until she picks her own) and in his comment about Stanley Williams, Villella's teacher: "Stanley was low-key, unaggressive, and gave a simple, easy, and slow class without too much repetition and no pressure. A cult of NYCB dancers formed around him ..."