Quiggin

Sorry to be such a cynic, but this comes within a centimeter of being a parody of Swan Lake. When was this relationship ever a pas de trois (which, as I understand it, was originally a dance between a satyr and two nymphs)? The swooping camera completely obliterates the dancers' craft – and dignity.

$24,000 for six weeks work is not very much in the budget of a film or life of a professional (who may still have 100,000 in student loans) and it shouldn't effect the right to address an injustice. I think Portman's term "nastiness" mischaracterizes the incident - if so it's on the other side. The problem is that ballet is an art where it's difficult to tell an untruth. What a dancer does on stage, how they get from point a to point b, is brutal honesty, and there for everyone to examine unmediated. Movies to a great extent are composed of lies - of "cheating for the camera" and of all sorts of little compensations for reality. Pasting an actress's head on a dancer's body seems fairly grotesque to me (I haven't seen the movie), and of a different order than lip syncing. The comparison to boxing and other sports falls short as they don't have the precise vocabulary that ballet - and other traditional forms of dancing - do.

Some ancillary links to Helene's and Paul's posts regarding the grandeur and history of the War Memorial Opera House. United Nations takes over (subsequent issues of Life will show the dramatic protests against the seating of Argentina): Conference Opens in San Francisco Opera House Fashions of 1953 (many of which could trump those of the deYoung/Balenciaga opening above): West Coast Beauties Launch a Full Dress Season From Lisette Model's series of photos taken at the Opera House: Lisette Model, San Francisco Opera, 1949

I always find the Pevear/Volokhonsky translations too choppy and literal (as two of the Amazon reviewers say of this one), but more unforgivably there never seems to be a tone to the voice they use. The "exuberant" Michael Glenny reads nicely in the Amazon preview and the respected Ardis Press/Burgin and O'Connor from a restored original text does too. Here's a good summary of the differences in the translators' choices (it does give Pevear/V good marks). And please post a review if you read it, miliosr. I read it years ago but think I would appreciate now it more if I picked it up again. Encyclopedia of literary translation, p 195 Interesting, dirac, about Balanchine's sympathy to Bulgakov.

Helene: A friend who used to live in France says that then everyone would buy one outfit at the very beginning of the fashion season and wear it all year and then mothball it until it came back in style or parts of it could be cleverly recombined. I once had a nicely cut and effective Agnes B jacket I got for $75 on sale that I wore and wore in New York to the ballet and such until the water from the upstairs apartment radiator overflowed into my closet and ruined it. I was always somewhat envious of students from the Fashion Institute who used pop into thift shops and come out wearing such brilliant combinations. At the Opera House here in San Francisco people dress pretty well, but with variations night to night - first Tuesdays are old money and black sequins and gold and tourquoise fabrics (with ballet goers like Charlotte Swig and George Shultz and Dede Wilsey of Sean Wilsey's memoir Oh the Glory of It All) while Wednesdays with early 7:30 curtains seem more suburban, egalitarian, and tweedier. Some SF ballet audience members at deYoung Museum Balenciaga opening, with Maria Kochetkova in Paul Smith

I was taken aback when a friend told me he now wears burmuda shorts to Avery Fisher in the summer - which I do find shocking. He thinks it's more natural and less repressive. I think if the dancers and performers have spent hours dressing up for us, the least we can do in return is dress a little better than we would for a movie, with a small amount of extra flare, a nice scarf or sweater, and show that it's a special occasion.

From looking over old New York Times reviews by John Martin, the first big revival of Coppelia in the US was by Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo on October 17, 1938, with Alexandra Danilova and Michel Panaieff. It was reconstructed from Sergeieff’s notes from Petipa & Cecchetti, with the rarely performed third act which “virtually none of us have seen.” Not all of the third act was from S’s notes; there was a “beautiful little betrothal dance by Massine especially for this revival.” The April 3, 1940 production has Danilova & Igor Youskevitch (who would dance it with Alicia Alonso at least by 1957) and the production is “shortened here and there.” March 29 is with Mia Slavenska & Youskevitch. October 19, 1941 has “cuts and additions by Massine” but Martin notes that “too many cooks have not spoiled the broth.” Ballet Theater does an abbreviated version by Simon Semenoff (Dr. Coppelius in BRdMC’s version) on October 23, 1942, with nothing of the last act but the grand pas. Martin: “It cannot be said that Mr. Semonoff’s version is a very gay or sparkling one.” Cast of April 4, 1943 includes Rosella HIghtower and Igor Eglevskky. Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo seems to be doing both a short and longer version in 1944 & 1945 with Danilova and Frederic Franklin. Some programs feature “Divertissements from Coppelia.” Martin says the three act version “looks infinitely better than the short version" (2/25/1946). During the same period two Balanchine festivals take place during the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo Feb/Mar 1945 season celebrating his 25th anniversary as a choreographer – so he may have had a hand in fine tuning the third act divertissements. And Edwin Denby in 1951 says, These are rough notes, dates and spelling may be slightly off - and should be checked against the Kirstein bio which I do not have at hand.

All the Coppelias (or nicely “the girl with the eyes of enamel”) are over and I still can’t get musical phrases of Delibes out of my head. I wish there was an annotated guide to all the figures in the last act of divertissements so I can pin them away in memory, like Swanilda’s butterfly. It was a mess of a Balanchine style book, parts of it like Emeralds in pink, with forty or so children of various heights forming boxes - or pink boxwood hedges - around the soloists, continuously framing and reframing them. They moved in and out in magical phalanxes and in Work they form wonderful spinning looms. The part in the finale where Franz is madly jumping in place over and over again and throwing his feet up behind him, zig zag fashion, reminded me of kinoscopes of Your Show of Shows, of Howard Morris doing equivalent contrapuntal jumps (Gennadi Nedvigin's were especially lighthearted). I did get to see 2 1/2 casts, and thought that Vanessa Zahorian did the best job of being the Shavian heroine that Edwin Denby thought she should be – who in the second act finds her way to a solution for the dilemma they’ve all gotten themselves into. In the first act Maria Kochetkova seemed more flexible in her timing while Vanessa Zahorian brought out the continuous assemblage of steps and sharp figures, especially the wonderful snips of offset scissor jumps on the bias across stage. And as Delibes music mocks itself, she and the small corps of brides-to-be would challenge and mock each other in a series of intricate little steps, some of which seemed to have a kinship to those in the clip from “Figure in the Carpet.” Isaac Hernandez’s last minute Franz was bright and open as his dancing, and his character was totally incapable of duplicity or deceit, so that when he steals the butterfly away from Swanilda and pins it to himself, the act seemed completely lacking in selfishness. At the last Saturday evening performance Taras Domitro took Franz to a new level of mischievousness and kept embellishing the role, even the stops and pauses had a pent up kinetic energy and time to them, a bit like Chaplin in the Mack Sennett days. I’m sorry I didn’t get to see Frances Chung and Vitor Luiz perform – or Joan Boada, whose delightful “Harlequinade” excerpt at a past gala will have serve as a stand-in in memory. Am looking forward to the comments from Bart, Cristian and Jack at the Miami board next season on their Coppelia – and am curious if Miami too will be using the PNB sets. correction: Denby for Croce

The bookbinding term is deckle edged - to make the book look as if the reader had cut open the pages of a freshly bound book her- or himself. Nice article by C. Max Magee which quotes Italo Calvino on the process: "The volume's pages are uncut: a first obstacle opposing your impatience. Armed with a good paper knife, you prepare to penetrate its secrets." webpage is www.millions.com; 5 February 2010: Deckled pages in the age ...

Sorry Cristian - I mixed up names on this tiny screen and no edit button. Thanks for the response - you should be out here to see this production and post your comments - still time to do so!

Thanks Cristian - can only find bits on provenance here and there. Be interested to know if any of Balanchine's 1945 interventions survived anywhere - or what they were.

Wonderful production of Coppelia - one of best finished I've seen SF Ballet do. A huge feast of a ballet Balanchine & Danilova serve up, old French butter & cream dish after dish third act. Beautifully scalloped czardas in first act take your breath away. Madness of Discord & War is like Mark Morris before MM, Clara Blanco's Spinner/Work finely done. Vanessa Zahorian ws fast, fluent, brilliant, wonderful throughout, Taras Domitro a great Franz & lovely dancer & authentic link to Cuban alternative version which may come from ABT or US Ballet Russes of 1940's...Does anyone know its origin? Interestingly Denby says that Balanchine worked on US Monte Carlo BR version - "cleaned it up in 1945." I think Balanchine/Danilova leaves out the lovely violin pas where Swanhilda advances in a series to Franz's arm - instead it's given to Sw as a solo. Anyway Denby says that Coppelia is to Twelfth Night as Giselle is to Hamlet and it was a great privilege to have seen this year Vanessa Zahorian & Taras Domitro so effectively do both. That said this production - despite its excess of richnesses - worth seeing with other casts. Frances Chung has been dancing very freely this year, especially in Theme & Variations - in little delightful bursts "like a bird splashing in water," and Joan Boada, brilliant in HT's Trio, is another connection to Cuban/BR? Coppelia. disclaimer- sent off tiny argumentative keybord of iPod

Actually I was prepared not to like Kirk Douglas' presentation, but when I finally saw the clip I was somewhat charmed by it. But there's really a structural problem with the whole Academy Awards in that it's really a small communtity event - like an annual service club awards meeting, the Kiwanis Club or Twenty-Ands (do they still exist?) - to acknowledge people who do special often uninteresting work in making movies. But at the same time it's presented as light entertainment to the whole country. In those terms it's always a disaster. My point of reference on the Awards was that my first job out of college was as a soundperson on a news crew at a small tv station, and we covered a large number of curious press conferences and events all over Los Angeles, including the Academy Awards. At the Awards, I was tethered to the cameraman - who was quite mad - by a sound cable. This made our own performance as we ran here and there into something of a Laurel and Hardy routine. But everyone was very nice and it was slightly banal - and I don't think it has changed in tone since then. During the performance what's difficult perhaps is that no one really has a sense of humor about what's going on, but everyone has to pretend that they do. And Mr Franco has to settle down to being a good actor and stop chasing after the tailings of a long gone avant-garde. Added: Homicide: Life on the Street was a great Baltimore tv series that may have served as the basis of The Wire - great cast including Melissa Leo. The credits looked like Robert Frank had done them.

My view is only a limited Stateside one, but once in the US the Cuban nineteenth century training might work to an advantage, since Swan Lake, Don Q, Coppelia, Giselle, Nutcracker/Cascanueses, and Sleeping Beauty (although to a lesser degree) are a large part of our repertoire. Cuban Balanchine - from the clips Cristian has posted and performances I've seen - often is better than ours. The men hold half a beat back from the women they are following and finish off their choreographic figures nicely. In Theme & Variations I've notcied that the man still holds the woman from under the elbows as he half lifts her across the stage, not from directly under the shoulders, apparently very difficult to bring off. The Cuban dancers haven't done badly in the contemporary or at least neo neo-classical pieces. Joan Boada was absolutely brilliant in Helgi Tomasson's new piece Trio last night, especially in the finishing touches of hands and feet that other dancer don't seem to consider or do so routinely. Carlos Acosta's memoir though - part of it might be his personality - does gives a grim account of adjusting to life in the US, such as trying to reach out to estranged relatives who promised to write but never did. Daniel Alarcon's story "Second Lives" in the New Yorker this summer painted a similar picture: And it's sad for the Cuban National Ballet - trying to maintain its own identity and integrity, rather than merely serving a sort of extended School Amercian Ballet for us... I think there's a quote from Josefina Mendez that a tour went well if there were no defections.

This may not be one of the original costumes, which were lighter in color and had smaller stars and some sort of tassels on the shoulders - as indicated in the photos published in Adrian Stokes' book on Russian Ballet and elsewhere (almost "no ballet is more photogenic than 'Cotillon'": Stokes). Nor does the costume seem to appear in the "Cotillon" section of Brodovich's great book "Ballet," photographed in the mid thirties. (Though it may appear later in the ballet and not have been recorded.) A small-scaled facsimile of "Ballet" has been republished by Errata Editions. It was "shot in 35mm, disregarding traditional conventions of “good” technique," according to the notes. Unfortunately Edwin Denby's introduction doesn't seem to have been included in the reprint. Errata Editions #11

Jayne Actually it always seemed to be like this in New York back to the Frank Rich days of theater criticism - no matter how many dance critics there were, the Times version prevailed over all the others, including that of the Voice. Maybe in the days of the East Village Other it was different. I did like what Macaulay said about Giselle's choreographical architecture and his review on the revival of the Cunningham Septet - it's his taste in certain types of dancers, such as classic blond males, that I find a bit too rarefied ... And don't forget the work of John Rockwell, the previous dance critic in his spot, who seemed far less knowledgable about dance.

The dancers of RAkU are great, both casts, but I couldn't find the units - the parts of choreographic speech - in the pas de deux between the monk and the widow. Plus for me the stagecraft still overwhelms the subject. Think of what Noguchi did with such simple tools in "Orpheus" - or what Mizoguchi does in his films on similar subjects. And why does the woman always have to be the victim of "erotic violence," symbolic or not? A great nineteenth century ballet on the human condition could be an Alexei Ratmansky version of Gogol's "Dead Souls" with Mark Zuckerberg as Chichikov, enigmatically going from village to village buying up and trafficing in the traces of our small pleasures - our "Likes" or "Diggs"- or our "Play-bor," as they call it at the New School. (Or as Zadie Smith characterizes our condition - "500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore.") Or a low tech staging of a "You Tube" like version of Petrushka or Pulcinella with various sized square discs sewn to Harlequin costumes to represent small and large units of digital compression (those mosaic blocks of empty background) - choreographed by Michael Clark or Mark Morris - along the lines of what Richard Foreman did at the Ontological Hysterical Theater in the eighties. * Addendum: Pascal Molat was in top form in both RAkU and Symphony in C and Sofiane Sylve did a wonderful second act S in C, full of lots of great subsidiary detail (Friday). * Added after seeing today's NYT review - as an example of a ballet done with the simplest of means - 1964 version of Cunningham Septet: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8748661616907155481#

ViolinConcerto The 2005 seminar was ultimately titled "Ballet and Sex" but Joan Acoccela provocatively said the B & the crotch had been something of a working title. It used to be available online as a podcast. Townsend Center in Berkeley has a good critical studies series with speakers like Jay Bernstein (of "Against Voluptuous Bodies") and Terry Eagleton ("Death of Criticism" podcast below). My impression was that JA's talk would lead to a longer essay. I remember it being about extreme turnout and included a clip of Kent and Mitchell in "Agon" (rather than the one with Diana Adams which seems more dangerous to me). Bart I wouldn't pay $125 but the book defintinely should be part of a public library collection on dance. Scholl reads a lot of original Russian language material and tries to link Balanchine's experiments with Acmeism and Akhmatova and Osip Mandestam's experiments (the precious stones of "Symphony in C" and "Jewels"). He deals with the structures of ballets more than themes - and compares Nijinksy's Faun to Balanchine's Apollo: I don't think Scholl ever goes far enough - he overflies all Diaghilev collaborations with Picasso and Satie in order to link Petipa with Balanchine - and doesn't acknowledge the way War World I drew a jagged schism line across history. As T J Clark points out, the comfortable middle class interior/interiority disappeared, which the avant garde - the fauves and the cubists - used to rebel against: Enter Dada and monstrous surrealism. Against that background "Apollo" may be a slightly conservative ballet, like Picasso's Ingres-like drawings. Also regarding Picasso's bilingual neoclassical / cubist-surrealism period: What's interesting to me about "the Dance" is that the Picasso-like profile of death is like Balanchine's Davidsbündlertänze periferal death figures and the glove of death in the background of "The Dance" is perhaps the glove that Kochno put in "Cotillon." Kochno was on the scene at the time the painting was done (which includes the figure of Olga Khokhlova). As Richardson notes in “Life of Picasso": 1921- That's what ballet history should really be - half critical theory, half old scandalous anecdotes. Picasso - The Dance Three Dancers Avenali Lectures: Joan Acocella Townsend Center Webcasts Added: Thanks Bart & dirac for reposting the excellent original discussion - which I had lost track of. (And for some reason I remember the Kent version of Agon being shown.)

The problem with Holmans's book may be that it is a survey text, much like “Art through the Ages,” and suffers from all the limitations of that that genre - of having to skim history like a glass bottom boat (borrowing James Woods’s metaphor). To save Balanchine (which seems to be Homans’s charge) and ballet, I think dance criticism has to be turned on its head in much the way art criticism was in the eighties with publications of the work of Robert Herbert on Impressionism as a harsh account of social changes, T J Clark's "The Painter of Modern Life" on Manet, and Picasso studies by Leo Steinberg, John Richardson, Yve-Alain Bois, Rosalind Kraus and Elizabeth Cowling. Richardson and Cowling, who consider “Parade,” “Mercure” and “Pulcinella” to be highly significant works, seem to have more to say on Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, both critical and entertainingly anecdotal, than most dance critics other than Richard Buckle. Only Arlene Croce (hopefully soon), and Alastair Macaulay (though limited by the tools of daily journalism), Tim Scholl, and Joan Acocella - in her trial-ballon seminar on “Balanchine and the Crotch” - seem to be working in some new direction. With Balanchine perhaps there should be a temporary embargo on anything about “Apollo” and “Prodigal Son” and a reevaluatioon of everything that went before and just afterwards, such as Ballets 1933 which the 102 year old composer Eliott Carter thinks are among Balanchine’s most audaciously experimental works. I would add that WPA mural of existentialism, “The Four Temperaments." Also I think it was a huge mistake of Homans not to discuss the work of the Cuban National Ballet and its expatriot dancers, who with their Cubo-African accents seem to be doing a fine job of keeping ballet alive in the Americas. Along with, of course, the Miami City Ballet.

rg: It's the same great original backdrop - maybe I should have said key lime green - but I liked the association with Marvell since he had so much to say about the color. In her pre-curtain talk Wendy Ellis Soames said that SV is about Primavera - that Ashton and Sophie Fedorvitch bicycled to the top of hill one spring day just after the war and Ashton said this, spreading out his arm towards the landscape, is the color I want. She also said Ashton had listened to a the recording of the Franck score when he was in the military services on shellac discs - the clicks perhaps helping with the counts or internal structure. Anyway, I thought it might have better helped the dancers had the music been conducted in the rhythmically dry French style that Virgil Thomson discusses in one of his essays on the differences between German and French conducting.

"Symphony in C" in San Francisco is very good but isn't whipped up into the meringue this ballet should be. And there are too many smiles, like too many explanation marks!!! And every new entrance really should be a game changer. Vito Mazzeo and Vanessa Zahorian however did a deeply moving and elegant second movement last Saturday - in the league of Julie Diana and Vadim Solomakha, whom I always remember as the standard in San Francisco - along with Gonzalo Garcia in the first movement (whose influence and great example seem to have disappeared without a trace from SFB, in a dispensable California sort of way). Of course Taras Domitro did a great third movement with thrillingly coherent turns, but his great interpretive skills somehow seemed lost in that role. * "Symphonic Variations" and its wonderful Andrew Marvell green backdrop is always a treat to see, though less good this year. The 2004 production with Elizabeth Miner, Joan Boada, Nicholas Blanc, and Julie Diana might have been the tightest and the best. Wendy Ellis Soames who was here to coach said the clue to SV was of the dancers being like "heavenly bodies", a comment that was touching but a little abstract. Perhaps saying something like your cell phone is ringing in you pocket and you can't answer it for five minutes or you have to pretend you don't care at all about the person who's sitting across from you on the bus after school, they don't matter in the least - or something like might be more helpful to get an American take on the Ashton idiom. Anyway with "Symphonic Variations" there's this unspeakable undertow and a kind of brittle articulation on top - hand movements like the tick or escapement of a watch (as in the "Emeralds" second pas de deux). Like the "pickety pickety" picket-fence movement Wendy Soames talked about. Only Sarah Van Patten - like Jean Shrimpton in a David Bailey photograph - got this and made her part seem like the most natural thing in the world. Isaac Hernandez, who is always wonderful to watch for little extra classical flourishes, couldn't seem find his place in the counts, and Maria Kochetkova and Gennadi Nedvigin danced their parts in a blithe Russian spirit. * "RAkU" is a mess of too many worthy intentions and influences in a small space - like a facebook page of favorite links. I had trouble with the mix of various orientalisms, and the violence (either a rape by four soldiers or a scene out of "Dune") and the strange combination of the heroine pouring the ashes of a dead warrior over her head and then being bathed in a spotlight of snowflakes that - no matter how hard you tried not to - you couldn't help associate with those from "Nutcracker." Good art - very good art - can be made out of the simplest of materials.

"Symphony in C" is being done this week in San Francisco. The general accents are not as sharp or witty as City Ballet's - but there was a last minute substitution of Vanessa Zahorian and Vito Mazzeo (his gracefullness is reminiscent of Conrad Ludlow's) in the second movement on Saturday night that was quite breathtaking. Parts that are sometimes blurred or left out were in place - including the wonderful little skip-steps at the turn arounds at the end of the long lifts/runs across stage.

Poetess used to be used - and woman poet, as in the best woman poet of her generation. Regarding the Academy awards, which I haven't followed in recent years, A. O. Scott wrote a piece about the neglect of world cinema by the Academy: A Golden Age of Foreign Films, Mostly Unseen And did Manueol de Oliveira ever receive an acknowledgement from the Academy? How many years has he been making films now? His latest, the charmingly dry and small scaled "The Strange Case of Angelica" (or the strange case of Isaac), has a La Sylphide-like plot [warning: trailer does give away some of the little surprises in the film]: * Nice interview with Edgar Ramirez talking about "Carlos the Jackal", French language but you get a sense of his screen presence and how different the topics of this interview are, how serious and intense, compared to his English language ones.

It was in “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” that Picasso incorporated African masks (they were “magic things” to Picasso) on the two horrific figures on the right side of the painting. “The Portrait of Gertrude Stein” came a year or so earlier, before Picasso had come across African and Oceanic materials at the Musee de l’Homme, and was strongly influenced instead by Iberian sculptures. Stein's pose is based on an Ingres portrait of a man, very heartly looking. The three other Demoiselles were also based on Iberian sources and their startling and partitioned arrangement help make the “axial rotation” that drags the poor spectator into the scene, as their fierce looks drill into him or her. Do some distant cousins of the “Demoiselles” haunt the “Four Temperaments?” Interestingly Loie Fuller’s dance version of “Salome” may have been the influence on Picasso’s “Nu a la draperie” which is very African mask-like with scratched marks all over it - John Richardson makes the case for Fuller’s influence. "Nu a la draperie" was intended to trump Matisse's shocking "Blue Nude" (which recently made a quiet visit to the San Francisco museum in a show on Matisse and sculpture). A lot of that influence of Cubism turning or canting the planes towards the spectator is similar to Nijinksy's poses in “Faun” and Massine in “Parade” and probably came to Balanchine in Russia through all the Cubist influenced theatrical stagings - by way of Tatlin and the Pevsners, and maybe the Shchukin collection. There may be other Picasso-like traits or parallels in Balanchine, such as in the artist and model relation that Picasso was obsessed by in the late twenties (in which Picasso and the model switch roles and sexes). In “Liebeslieder” the male uses the woman’s leg to inscribe great arcs on the stage floor - as if with a compass - and in "Symphony in C" the woman’s leg makes a line across stage and pierces an opening that corps members describe with their hands.

Balanchine's relation to Picasso may be in how they both borrowed from artists who were their contemporaries - Picasso taking a particular way of packing a figure into painting from Matisse's Blue Nude and his deadpan neoclassicism from Picabia (both were competing for the same post-cubist audience), while Balanchine would mischievously borrow forms from deMille, Tudor and Graham and just slightly parody them. Balanchine's sense of the 2-dimensional visual arts may not have been that sophisticated, despite Balanchine's Diaghilev story about being made to sit in front of a work of art for an hour or two while Diaghilev was having lunch. Balanchine's taste in sets, such as "Jewels," was fairly rudimentary - he would never set a ballet to a Manet painting as was done by Ninette de Valois with "Bar at the Folies Bergere" - he would cut all that away. He would more comfortably borrow from real life - as he did with the Piccadilly Circus flashing lights for "Apollo." In "I Remember Balanchine" he tells Ruthanna Boris something about how to observe all the little details in life, even pieces of glass in the gutter.