Quiggin

I picked up the Jewels DVD last night here at Tower just after a foray into Trader Joe's, my second impulse buy of the last week. (The other was a last minute ticket to Ray Davies at the Warfield. If I'm just getting into back rock music, I guess I'll start at the beginning of time with the Kinks, the pre-Socratics of heavy metal.)

On my first viewing of Emeralds--and I look forward to many more, I was taken aback by two things. One is the tempos seemed slowish and overly regular. It was only in the beautiful Sicilienne that I found some variation in tempo, where movements--and time--hesitate, almost falling back before moving forward. I felt some contrasts in the succession of Balanchinian figures were missing as a result of the pacing.

The second thing is the couples looked at each other too much. Should they be aware of each other at all? or run through each other, cross paths but never meet? All Balanchine in some way is about sleepwalkers perhaps, even in allegro movements there is complicitous sleepwalking.

Has anyone else had any qualms about the tempos or the smiles in Emeralds (signaling awareness of the audience in an in-the-box ballet) and eye contact?

(So far my favorite is Rubies despite the understated pelvic thrusts.)

The opening night program in New York looks similar to the Gala at the top of the year here in San Francisco. It had some very thrilling dancing. My favorites were Tina LeBlanc and Joan Boada in Harlequinade, perhaps only because the clarity of Balanchine's choregraphy made it easy for me--a complete nondance person--to appreciate the dancers' virtues: LeBlanc's fine articulation and Boada's musciality. I liked Gonzalo Garcia a lot in Sylvia--he made every little business, every throwaway move, interesting--but Yuan Yuan Tan seemed coolish and dull. Elizabeth Miner would be a better Sylvia I think (I didn't see that cast). Muriel Maffre was the perfect Diana.

With the exception of Miami Ballet, I doubt that Balanchine is done better in the provinces than New York City, though the idea of the provinces outdoing the city has a certain reverse snobbery appeal to it.

I go to a lot of San Francisco ballet performances--the War Memorial Opera House is just down the street from me--and once a year to the New York City Ballet, and the Brahms-Schoenberg, Symphony in C, Episodes performances at Lincoln Center just knock me out in the way few of SFB’s Balanchines do.

SFB ballet has a lot of great performers and its audiences seem to be more keen on them than on the choreography. Gonzalo Garcia did an inspired Apollo two years ago, as Leigh points out, and he can make any bit of stage business interesting, as in Mark Morris's Sylvia on Tuesday. This is also true of Juan Boada and Tina Le Blanc (in Harlequinade), Katita Waldo (with her wonderful janus figures in the Elemental Brubeck on Thursday), Elizabeth Miner (in Ashton), and Muriel Maffre (an Athena scaled Diana on Tuesday).

For me what SFB leaves out is something of Balanchine’s wit and astringency. Everything is well finished, as Paul points out, but I would prefer dancing that is more rough edged, where there is stronger counterpoint, and where no phrase is ended without another already well started up. SF’s Balanchine is a little soft and unincisive. (Their Ashton, on the other hand, was quite fine, especially Symphonic Variations).

Part of this may simply the difference of habitat, in the factor of New York’s rich and zig-zaggy street life, where to leave your apartment is to enter a big game in which you have to immediately play some strong part in it. In San Francisco everyone is bit too much in their own world, a bit too polite, a little too incurious.

Actually Apollo has black hair on most Greek vases. As far as Mr. B's Apollos, Lifar had dark hair and so did d'Amboise, but in between Christensen was blond. (Blond may have been a Kirstein-Platt Lynes preference.)

Yes, Charles Laughton for Diaghilev in the 50's, maybe also Peter Ustinov. James Mason would have been an inspired choice. Claude Rains or Adolph Menjou in the 1930s.

Mr. B is more difficult because he was such a cipher. Jeremy Irons above sounds good to me.

A directorial choice for the film could be Raoul Ruiz--who did Time Regained of Proust--or Manuel de Olviera, who probably saw the original Ballet Russes. Both choices would defy easy--or any!--interpretations of Mr. B.'s life and relationships.

Leigh, I think Kyra Nichols did Mozartiana better around 1995 than later on, though quite lovely at both times. It's just that earlier I was just overwhelmed by her account of all the articulations and shapes Balanchine had secreted into the choreography. She may have had an off night when I saw her in 2003(?). I saw her do two Liebeslieders in 2004 and one night she held back a bit, but the other night she was full on. She has certainly had a long and full career.

Luders did La Valse, in additon to Davidsbundetanze, late, and he did phlegmatic to the end brilliantly (though sometimes his landings had a two stage quality about them).

Darci Kistler, another autumnal dancer, did a nice Liebeslieder recently, though sometimes she is a bit coy and her tempos have been, from time to time, a bit bizarre.

Joan Boada and TinaLeBlanc were pretty brilliante in Handel Chaconne, which they are doing again Sunday afternoon. They've done the one of the best realized Balanchine works this year so far, Harlequinade, at the Gala. He dances in perfect measures, she articulates steps so well that it looks as though she is adding beats rather that leaving steps out, as is often the complaint about restaged Balanchine.

Yes I think Jane Russell would qualify as an iconic actress. (All three could be in icons, if icons could be thought of as sytlistically the pictorial equivalent of film noir.)

Gilda is a great studio picture and Lady from Shanghai is a great auteur movie. Lady from Shanghai does the whole von Sternberg thing (Morocco, Lady from Shanghai, Shanghai Gesture, Devil is a Woman) a step better. It looks back to Sternberg and forward to the Kar Wai Wong/Chrisopher Doyle films (2046, In the Mood for Love)

Also Lady from Shanghai is the great San Francisco film, far moreso than Vertigo!

Yes, but Gilda is pretty good film noir, as good as any Bogart-Bacall, and the visual fireworks of Lady from Shaghai is pretty amazing. (It's good enough a film that Fritz Lang was in the audience at the Los Feliz theater, sitting upfront right, very quietly in the sparse audience, the night I saw it years ago.)

Ed, "2046" is a must see, pretty much up there with "In the Mood for Love." It has some references to "Days of Being Wild" as well. All three are filmed by the eccentric Australian cameraman Christopher Doyle, who fully collaborates in the look and feel and smell of Wong Kar Wai's films. Doyle says somewhere that they're both jazz fans and they want their movies to be the visual equivalent of jazz solos.

Yes, the comments on Brokeback are thought provoking.

For me the movie was a two character play and the scenery and such was pleasant but not that important--I don't go for the closed space/ ease in the open space idea that much. The ocean liner in the canoe, so to speak, are the scenes with the wives and families of the main characters, which are more Larry McMurty-like than Annie Proulxish. They're very good and in tone something like those of the Last Picture Show. In the original story however--at least as I remember it from ten years ago--the family lives of Ennis and Jack were just sort of a background pencil sketch, only lightly filled in. (And Ennis' wife discovers the false fishing story much more slowly and much later on, which makes more sense.)

So in the movie version you sort of have two stories going on, and people identify with one or the other. Two of my colleagues at work today said they thought the wives were very well acted and I thought: but that's not the story, they're shifting the center of gravity. And it seems as though for many people the secondary parts have eclipsed the original ones. (And even Annie Proulx herself seems to have been eclipsed. Notice how she was not given any screen time during the presentation of the writing award at last night's AA ceremonies. Even after her presence was pointed out, the cameramen didn't know what to do, who or what to show--you felt a bit of panic there.)

And I must add that Heath Ledger's character could have come from any of San Joaquin Valley dust bowl-created towns anywhere in California from Fresno to Bakersfield--the area where I grew up. I would have run into him at Penney's or the hardware store on Saturday. It was an amazing characterization and yes did get stronger and stronger, there was an incredible arc at the end of sad, very quiet and slow self realization. And the scene with Alma Jr was very moving.

For balance--especially on Symphony in C--here are some snippets from some of Apollinaire Scher’s other Newsday reviews. She seems to be a sort of American Quentin Crisp. What I like about her is that she writes about the actual architecture of Balanchine’s ballets--an inexhaustible subject--and his composers--more than just who danced well last night.

Symphony in C:

‘For "Ballet Imperial," Balanchine chooses Tchaikovsky at his most impetuous; for Symphony in C, a Bizet symphony so giddy in its exultation of Mozart that it borders on parody. Rarely does Balanchine make the obvious choice - Mozart himself...’

‘”Symphony in C," created for the august Paris Opera Ballet to a triumphal Bizet score, is a loving yet jesting celebration of ballet roots and excesses, featuring not one but four queen-ballerinas, each with her own ranked retinue.

‘City Ballet performs these works with particular pleasure, perhaps because the ballets affirm all those years the dancers spend in class perfecting their tendus. Sofiane Sylve, often merely a gorgeous manual of classical correctness, luxuriated in the grandeur of the "Symphony in C" adagio. Yvonne Borree, normally withdrawn in her chest, opened up for the rainbow arcs of "Concerto Barocco," with Albert Evans' large hand wrapped tenderly around her tiny ribs.’

Divertimento #15

‘The curtain rises on five ballerinas in daisy-yellow tutus, nodding to one another like decorous ladies on a string. Instead of Mozart's advertised theme, the choreographer uses the exciting opening salvo as an organizing motif: two declarative strokes of the violin followed by a wafting ribbon of melody. The dance variations are about hammering down the corners of Mozart's rhythmic box and then prying it open. All of the soloists Friday night did the work proud, but especially the alternately percussive and mellifluous Megan Fairchild.

‘In his classical virtues, Balanchine has often been compared to Mozart. "Divertimento No. 15," however, understands these virtues as Bach might. For the adagio, one ballerina becomes a fulcrum, another moves like an ellipsis, a third in a circle. All five together map out the central theme of classicism: translucency and balance. Like Bach, Balanchine unfolds his theme across all of his variations...’

Thanks, Sharon for the tip on Joan Boada--On the basis of last night's performances, I couldn't think of the SF Nutcraker without him. His phrasing and sense of measure was pitch perfect. Kristin Long was very articulate in her dancing--I kept looking at her feet the way you look at someone's lips when they are saying something fascinating, hanging on to every word.

I found the choreography clotted and difficult to figure out when there were more than 9 or so people on stage, though when the Snowflakes were in Y shape/conical form, that was very nice. I enjoyed watching Nutnaree Pipit-Suksun & Chidozie Nzerem in what snippets he had in Arabian, and most everyone else in act 2. And I can sort of imagine the Christensen Brothers in slightly corny Russian, pretty brilliant last night with Pascal Molat, and James Sofranko and Garrett Anderson.

I agree with Paul that this is sort of a new warhorse for the company to dance finely to, but the setting of in Edwardian San Francisco--yet with Queen Anne style houses--seems a bit pointless. The stock characters such as a nanny and carriage (despite SF's notorious inclines), a solo policemen, two fawning nuns, and Eliza Doolittle were a bit too sugary. And too much furniture and moving backdrops and outlines of vaults and domes hanging like clothing on a line. But yes well worth revisiting for the night to night nicely varying performances.

But is it a biography, and would a biography from Arlene Croce be that interesting? And sometimes biographies take decades longer than projected as more and more material presents itself. Maybe she is structuring it ballet by ballet, or genre of ballet by ballet? (The working title at somepoint--reported in another thread--was Ballet and Balanchine.) Croce has always comfortably written with the upper crusty tone of a New Yorker writer, and now she has to recast all her thinking on Balanchine into a different form. So it's a rather formidable task.

Opera generally seems to have attracted a younger and smart audience--much more so than ballet has--in the last 10 years. In the fifties and sixties all the literary and artworldly crowd made regular pilgramages to see Balanchine, and to Cunningham later on, but I doubt in any of the ArtForum crowd know much about Mr. B, despite his Russian constructivist background.

Part of the opera thing is that there is so much serious opera criticism being published these days--76,600 hits on Amazon, as oposed to 605 for "dance criticism" and 52 for "ballet criticism." We all turn again and again to Denby and Garis and the wonderful but idiosyncratic Arlene Croce, and not much else. It's too bad that Susan Sontag, who was a NYCB fan, didn't write about ballet, or Roland Barthes (who writes so well on the sensuality of Cy Twombly--he might have commented on Balanchine scribbling or writing with the ballerina's foot, such as that which occurs in the arc-enscribing sequence in Liebeslieder).

Opera is the voice, and people identify their being with singing more than with dancing (singing--not dancing--in the shower). It's difficult in criticism finding a natural point of identity for audiences within ballet as the voice is in opera. Though Joan Acocella did get close to something interesting in her Balanchine-and-the-crouch lecture at UC Berkeley earlier this year.

My list would include:

Alexei Brodovich for his classic book Ballet which has great swirly corps-rushing like-water-across-the-stage pictures of 1940's Ballet Theater productions (It includes some nice Cotillion and Balustrade photos)

Walker Evans for his anti-romantic pictures for a Fortune article, including a stark picture of Davilova doing making and a picture of a flower being pinned to a dress of a ballerina, as if to the bark of a tree

Cartier-Bresson's pictures of Russian ballet in his Russia book

Also I believe Inge Morath took some nice ballet phots.

Definitely having the limitation of 36 photographs to a roll of film made better photographers of everyone.

For improvised 1930's comedies add

She Married Her Boss with Claudette Colbert and Melvyn Douglas with the person/people who live in the department store window

Also: Bizarre Bizarre by Marcel Carne with Louis Jouvet and the great scene of the empty milk bottles piling up to show the progression of the affair between the kitchen maid and the milkman

Sullivan's Travel's about the director of "Hey Hey in the Hayloft" and "Ants in Your Pants of 1942" wanting to do socially significant films and hitting the road as a homeless man to see what real life is like.

Along with Dirac, definitely Buster Keaton, and the Reluctant Debutante was an absolute favorite for me as a kid. It made up for the sluggish movie version of My Fair Lady.

Here's a lovable rant from Propect that intersects with this topic from a little different angle. You only have to compare the arts coverage in the NYT Sunday Times to that of ten or fifteen years ago to arrive at a US version of this complaint.

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/article_...ils.php?id=7086

[in the old days...] Every single debutant at the Wigmore Hall was reviewed, every new play at the Bush or the Theatre Upstairs or the ICA. London is still the music capital of the world; in those days, the arts pages, led by the FT, treated it as such. Lord Drogheda was chairman not only of the FT, but also of the Royal Opera House. When looking for the paper's first music critic in the early 1950s, he found Andrew Porter, a critic of an authority and brilliance to rival George Bernard Shaw and Ernest Newman. There is no one else quite like Porter, who today writes mainly in the Times Literary Supplement. Great critics are rare birds; rare birds, though, need a welcoming aviary, and the zookeepers are not on the lookout for such special—and specialist—breeds of plumage any more...

But the truth is that newspapers increasingly devote largely uncritical coverage to the latest product of the publicity machine, be it an inexperienced actress, a media loudmouth or a Glasgow pop group. Previews and interviews now take precedence over critical responsibility. But the idea that they do so in order to meet a public demand is, I believe, false. Anyone under the age of 30 who wants to read about pop music, new film and reality television knows where to go. That place is not the broadsheets, but magazines and the internet. So the liberal, professional intelligentsia who read the broadsheets are confronted with coverage they don't want and comment on "high culture" by people who often know less about it than they do.

Yes, with a refresh rate of 1 image per second, very painterly--like Manet or Gerhardt Richter.

The last act variations came over very nicely, and so very familiar since I know them as Pas de Dix of Balanchine from the Eglevsky-Maria Tallchief video. Does anyone know if any parts of Balanchine's version have made their way back into the Bolshoi version, or is it that

Balanchine is fairly faithful to the original?

All of Helene's criticisms are valid, and yet I was strangely moved by the production, especially at the end where the Lilac Fairy blessed the court--though they dramatically didn't deserve it. That part was a little Shakespearan for me, like the reconciliation at the end of one of the romances, in Pericles or in Winter's Tale. Lopatkina was as interesting to me throughout, as Vishneva--in her calm bubble of Vishnevaness--was slightly alienating. L. in the interlude with Prince seemed to be able to dart across stage as quickly as a Firebird or NYCB ballerina. I enjoyed watching Zelensky present himself, reeling in and letting out small gestures--hands, wrists, movements of chin. And his dancing was quite fine. (I don't remember him being overweight at NYCB, just a bit scowly). Other things I enjoyed: the strange, staccato, stiff legged dance of one of the middle fairies, perhaps Sapphire; the corps in their lateral pas de quartres and/or sixes, or as a background in a line of 12 on one knee--perhaps when the Prince and Princess are doing backwards traveling arabesques? (The corps' yellow wigs made the men look like women and the women look like men, just at first.) Yes, you could hear everyone touch the floor, like the sound of dominos spilling onto a table, and the orchestra was a little loud--though what a orchestra to sound too loud! If it lacked anything, it missed a little of the perfect focus and dynamic shadings of Agrest and Gergiev, who were in Berkeley the last time around. At times the dancing was merely a elegant froth riding on waves of perfect sound.

But it was Anton Korsakov as Bluebird who was the standout, and belated discovery, for me. His movements are a perfect balance of strong large thrusty gesture and Kirov refinement. There was a good intensity and some degree of risk taking to his dancing. Some his effect is from the pinking shears profile of the backs of his legs: the sharp zig zag of heel to calf to thigh which made his beats doubly effective (Lindsay Fisher at NYCB shared something of this characteristic). Anyhow, the evening was a delight, and the generous number of intermissions most welcome for all the coffee I had drunk before, and the glass of wine later on.

I saw Peter Boal, Albert Evans and Teresa Reichlen this spring in the Four Temperaments. They were just great, but their phrasing of movement seemed different than in the 1980s videos that Alexandra refers to. In Spring 2005 4Ts, the transitions through the forearms, wrists, and hands and ankles seemed more delicate, though still involving. What was missing was the conviction and angst of the corps. The friend I was with said they weren’t “menacing” enough.

For me what Balanchine is all about—and Fokine and Ashton aren’t—is an intense musical conversation between soloists and corps, foreground figures and background ones. It’s all about strong counterpoint and Constructivist angularity and bits of phrases being initiated by one group and finished off or vetoed by the other. This seems to happen less and less.

Yes, Lorena Feijoo and Sergio Terrado really made the Sanguinic variation come alive--great presences, very angular, astringent, with lots of Accocelean pelvic thrust. LF didn't skimp on the great sliding hand gestures during her lateral lifts, which make it look as if she were grandly controlling everything, or at least the rate at which everthing happens. (These hand movements were almost completely absent last week's performance).

Gonzalo Garcia's solo in Square Dance was quite absorbing and wonderful. He and Vanessa Zahorian seemed to be having some differences about the tempo of the third or so section, but she was also quite good, though less the highly articulated whirlwind that Tina LeBlanc was the week before. I had never, before this performance, really realized that each of the three lifts in the somewhere slow movement (I'm never sure of the lay of the land in Square Dance) are each a head higher than the last.

"Reflections" looked startlingly like Symphony in C, sort of nibbled away here and there by post-modernist complications and quotations, such as a fall here (from Seranade?) and awkward movement there, and the mirrors seeming to fall out of Vienna Waltzes; on the whole not displeasing, somehow satisfying.

"Grosse Fuge" always gives me uncontrollable giggles in the part where the men are dragged about by their swim suit waist bands by the women. Poor Beethoven at the Beach!

I enjoyed tonight's (Friday's) Giselle and agree with Andre Yew on many of his points. I liked Tina LeBlanc more in the second act than the first. She was a bit too coy in the first and when she jumped and beat--or whisked--her feet, they ran across each other too quickly. Garcia's strengths seem to be the natural and at once unnatural unexpected extra extension he has in his cabrioles (or jete battus--unsure of my vocabulary), something of the same effect of the extra punch that Melissa Hayden has, at least in videos. GG always holds his arms firmly but gracefully across which gives a nice contrast to the movements of his feet and make them appear as if suspended from above, and when his hands are higher it's as if there held by strings at his wrists. Other members of the company seem to have too much of a bending, willowy carriage of their arms, which is not as architecturally interesting to me. I did like the dancing of the members of the pas de cinq--Vanessa Zahorian, Francis Chung, and Sarah Van Patten, and I liked Elizabeth Miner a lot as a Solo Wili. She seemed to dance just a touch behind the beat, which made the finishes of her moves have a satisfying fullness to them.

On another note, it's always a thrill to be arriving at the old War Memorial Opera House at the last minute in the crush to pick up tickets and to overhear people in line exchanging, or to participate in, heated thoughts on ballet. Last week the woman behind me was from Denmark, here to see what Helgi was up to, and this evening the woman in her place--with her two San Francisco neices--was from New York and a NYCB regular, and talking with her was like speaking a foreign language you haven't spoken for years and yet remembering all the words and constructions. Our ballet Latin included: who in New York had just been mysteriously promoted and who had significantly been not, who was tall and who was short, what the real reason O. was retiring was, and that P. had really gone too far this time; who did Rubies well and that Emeralds been a real disappointment this season. (SF is far too polite for this kind of talk and nothing ever really gets beyond the first stages here.) And in the auditorium the woman next to me had seen Nureyev as Albrecht in the first Giselle she saw years ago in Italy and he had signed her program, and the young dancers in front of me giggled and nudged each other and gossiped with their fingers as the performances went on, and afterwards showed great signs of having been overwhelmed and at the same time amused by what they had seen. It's always great fun.

Regarding the orange of the Gates, here is Hal Foster in the latest issue of the London Review of Books:

Yet the hue was off, at least to my eyes: the light orange was too close to both the bleached green of the grass and the smoky grey of the trees to make for a vivid contrast. Sometimes the banners did catch the light or the breeze to flow like veils or shimmer like kites, but often the nylon hung rather dull and limp like big tarps or giant laundry. Red would have been better, or black or white, but all these colours have political associations, and everything about The Gates was dictated by an assiduous avoidance of any such significance. It’s easy to understand why: Christo and Jeanne-Claude first petitioned to do the piece in 1979 but acquired the permit only in 2003 (their lawyers might be considered co-authors as well). Perhaps as a result, the colour, the materials, the very design are bland, stripped of any edge. It was quite a feat to set up so many gates in America today and not prompt any reference to security checks and immigration outrages. But no colour is entirely without association. ‘It’s the orange of police cones,’ my wife said as we entered the park; ‘it looks like a Princeton reunion run amok.’ Princeton’s ‘school colour’ is taken from William of Orange, and if this work were placed in Belfast, a civil war would break out; even in this city in another time The Gates might have turned into ‘The Gangs of New York’.

Foster also gives some backgound on Christo's borrowings from avant garde ideas of the 1920's.

London Review of Books

As a footnote let me add that when I used to work in Central Park, we used to dread events like this because of the stress on the park, at least in summer. When Pocahontas was premiered, Disney requested that the branches of old trees be cut at a straight line to facilitate projection of "the show." The arborists, bless their hearts, refused.

My favorites impulsively include:

Balanchine:

Cotillion (from Balanchine biography clip and descriptions in various biographies)

Symphony in C (or Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet)

Agon (with Darcey Bussell)

Concertino (from Eglevsky clip)

La Valse

Fokine:

Sylphides (based on recent Kirov performance and Maria Tallchief/Royes Fernandez clip)

Ashton

Symphonic Variations (last year's SFBallet version with Julie Diana)

Non Ballet

Daniel Nagarn log dance

Gene Kelly newspaper dance

Fred Astaire turning room dance

Margo Jenkins early vaguely remembered piece