Quiggin

I thought the juxtaposing of named males, Nureyev & Baryshnikov, with an unamed "harem of Balanchine ballerinas" fairly offensive. Also Balanchine hardly came of age "prefilm." He knew Eisenstein and had seen his works and there is an interesting 1930's interview in which he talks up choreography for the screen, against the interviewers "better thoughts" about it. A friend--with a longer memory and stronger opinions than I--said that Mr. Rockwell knew absolutely nothing about classical music, and yet he was the Times classical music reviewer, and he knows absolutely nothing about dance and yet now he's become the Times' dance critic.

If I remember the event correctly (1993?), I believe it had some unconfortable religious undertones. There were some boos mixed with polite applause.

The Times has two former political writers now writing on food--WA Apple and Frank Bruni, and a former music critic writing on art--Michael Kimmelman, passing over the fairly savvy Roberta Smith. They have made similar lateral crossover assignments over the years. They seem to like someone familiar from within, with unthreatening taste and unstartling observations. Also in general the Times has a strange love-hate relation to intellectuals and artists. They have a longing for art but get fainthearted when it goes too far. They prefer the safe secondary version to real thing. Their recent obituaries on the real things, Francoise Sagan and Jacques Derrida, were provincial and shameful...

Best: SF Ballet's Apollo (all casts did interesting things; Gonzalo Garcia seemed to be visually thinking his role out loud, slightly sullenly,--like a Beckett actor or like Anna Magnani in a Cocteau monologue, or Leonardo di Caprio in the Aviator) Symphonic Variations (silly and brittle and lyrical and very clear and intelligent) Square Dance (modestly and self effacingly--in the SFB style--well done) NYCB's Brahms Schoenberg (sort of a more radical Symphony in C but in pink) & Liebeslieder SF PALM's lecture series with Joceyln Vollmar (who danced the Sanguinic T. in 1948), Sally Bailey, Nancy Johnson; Kyra Nichols and Sally Streets; & SF Ballet's series with Merrill Ashley and Allegra Kent and Helgi Tomasson: Lots of interesting little details and insights on how Balanchine's dances were constructed; the wistful observation by KN how young NYCB dancers don't watch intently from the wings and soak up every move and gesture by older dancers on stage as her generation used to; how she quietly stripped down and rebuilt the Suzanne Farrell roles she inherited. The PBS American Masters Balanchine with rare glimpses of Card Game, Figure in the Carpet, the fast clipped Cotillion (with an Emeralds-like Pas de Trois). Least Good: SF Ballet's production of Grosse Fugue (Beethoven at the Beach) and their Nutcracker (the height of blandness)

I saw the San Francisco Ballet long version earlier this spring and, while I enjoyed seeing this version once in a while, I prefer the shorter, starburst ending, which always moves me terribly. There is a bit of clumsiness to going up the stairs, and the birth scene is a bit old fashioned for my taste, not so High Modernist. That said, I did, however, like seeing the "wheelbarrelling" at the beginning. And as much as I like Stravinsky, a little less sometimes strengthens the whole. Incidentally, the SF readings of Apollo, especially with Gonzalo Garcia, while not brilliant, were very, very good (better than the 1990s, post-Ib Andersen NYCB ones, but maybe there are more persuasive opinions on this).

The Brahms-Schoenberg piece on Saturday was first rate Balanchine--a sort of lopsided Symphony in C, in pink, less cool and crystalline and, sadly, with no great recapitulation. Instead there was substitute gypsy dance last movement, Rondo alla Zingarese, which was a terrible disappointment after all the witty choreographic asides that had preceded it. I liked the first movement best, with its strange ending where most of the men stepped out of the scene, to let the last string of figures enfold on their own. In another section one of the women leaps into her cavalier's arms and he carries her off backwards and elsewhere the corps jack-knives open into asymmetrical arrangements. It's one of those seemingly traditional and innoculous ballets that Balanchine is subverting at every juncture. I enjoyed the second movement of Thursday's Symphony in C with Maria Kowroski and Charles Askegard very much, but it has been years since I've seen a performance where the great abacus lines of corps upon corps and soloists upon soloists has totaled up to the great effect it should. Liebeslieder was great, and seemed to be even better on Saturday than Thursday, or else by then I was less jet-lagged. Kyra Nichols seemed to completely luxuriate in her role by then, not rush the ends of her figures, snap them off, as it seemed Thursday, and Wendy Whelan, when carried across stage, continued the "bloom" of her gestures, by varying them ever so slightly, inventing time, so that they filled out all of her being aloft. When she spoke at the San Francisco Performing Arts Library with Sheryl Flatow earlier this spring, Kyra Nichols said that Liebeslieder, unlike other Balanchine works, was not one in which you looked to the audience for support, but in which you danced in as if you were in a box, in another world. You could say that Liebeslieder, which we all have been so lucky to see one more time this year, is something like one of those quiet and strange little boxes that Joseph Cornell made for Allegra Kent.

Robert L. Herbert's book "Impressionism: Art, Leisure & Society" has a nice chapter on dance in which the mother/daughter/benefactor relation figures. Herbert uses the paintings of Degas, Manet, Morisot, and Cassatt to document a world in great change, where classes are mingling that have previously given each other wide berth...And doesn't Balzac Cousin Bette's cousin have a husband who is keeping a ballerina? Here is a bit of Balzac poached off the internet from "Unconscious Comedians" which touches on some of this: "That rat, who is just leaving a rehearsal at the Opera-house, is going home to eat a miserable dinner, and will return about three o'clock to dress, if she dances in the ballet this evening--as she will, to-day being Monday. This rat is already an old rat for she is thirteen years of age. Two years from now that creature may be worth sixty thousand francs; she will be all or nothing, a great danseuse or a marcheuse, a celebrated person or a vulgar courtesan. She has worked hard since she was eight years old. Such as you see her, she is worn out with fatigue; she exhausted her body this morning in the dancing- class, she is just leaving a rehearsal where the evolutions are as complicated as a Chinese puzzle; and she'll go through them again to- night. The rat is one of the primary elements of the Opera; she is to the leading danseuse what a junior clerk is to a notary. The rat is-- hope."

hockeyfan, Dance Books is outside of London-- I'm not certain how far. Their website is www.dancebooks.co.uk. They're Balanchine-friendly I'm told.

Yes, Leigh, it was Death in Venice, and I thought Jeffrey Edwards was too pretty and pliant for Tadzio. It'd be interesting to see a D in V that casts a little against type, with rougher edges. (Ib Andersen in the ballet or Jean-Pierre Leaud in the movie, with Godard directing!) Do you at all remember the out-of-character-for-Balanchine work that they revived during the 1995 Celebration for Maria Calegari and JE? I always liked seeing Roma Sosenko and Tracy Bennett (on tape). Their movements were good humored--they sort of laughed with their bodies.

I enjoyed watching Jeffrey Edwards and Maria Calegari week after week in the early 90's. Great musicality and subtle variation of movement towards the end of their choreographical figures, a sort of rubato I guess. The last thing I saw them in was a strangely overwrought Balanchine version of The Cage about the time of the Balanchine Celebration. JE went on to star in an silly expressionist production of Billy Budd at the Met. They both look great in the PBS B-Celebration Union Jack tape. I never cared for Kozlova--I thought she looked bored, but her last performances in Swan Lake and Symphony in C (or Diamonds) about the same time were wonderful.

I was in Berkeley, too, on Friday night at Zellerbach and agree with a lot of what dirac and Helene have said, that April Ball was a pleasure to watch and Alexander Ritter was graceful and musical, and that the Serenade-like costumes were a bad choice for Tempo di Valse. The recorded music was also a bad choice. It was loud, badly balanced and came from high over the stage, rather than from below, from beneath the dancers' feet as it naturally should. It would have been better, perhaps, had the speakers been positioned in horizonal banks in the orchestra pit. An alternative for a company of Suzanne Farrell Ballet's means would be to use reductions for live piano and/or strings, at least on tours. The Divertimento #15 could be effectively played by a string trio, and both Stravinsky and Balanchine tossed off all sorts of piano reductions, often quite brilliant ones, that might be used. (Some of these are described in the recent Charles Joseph book that I'm just starting to read.) As it was, the recorded music alienated me from the ballets, especially Divertimento, which was simply shouted out from a big black box. It seemed to hold the dancers prisoners to relentless and inelastic tempos. This only added to the difficulty of this very difficult ballet, which everyone struggled against, struggled bravely to fit all the steps into. Serenade worked beautifully for me, and I thought of how many of the mysterious and ambiguous Balanchinian relationships are already in place in this early ballet: Strange pas de deuxs that smear into pas de trois; elevated ballerina sculptures; inside-out hook-ups of outstretched arms. I'm looking forward to seeing this ballet again this winter at the War Memorial Opera House.

Yes, Socalgal, I saw the other program and recommend it. It's really important to see this stuff while it's around. You live on stale bread and lentils for the following week, but your heart is full. Alexandra, you make a good point about Korsuntsev not being wild enough for Apollo. Zelensky was a little unpredictable the times I saw him at NYCB, but he could do it well--better than Nilas Martins and quite differently than Peter Boal. Perhaps the Kirov did not do the afterword to Emeralds because it would have been just too much. The additional, post-ending ending seems to reverse all the prior emotional gains, and already in its short form Emeralds doesn't seem to be much of a crowd pleaser. You can often feel audiences embracing Rubies not only for itself, but also as a way of forgetting Emeralds.

[A point of view from a Balanchine fan.] Danila Korsuntsev is quite exceptional, He is long limbed and slightly languorous, like Darcy Bussell or Maria Calegari, a tiny bit behind the beat, in his own time. Yet he is capable of surprising articulations, such as a quick set of sharp and almost invisible beats, and his solo turns around the stage are natural and don’t have don't have an athletic heaviness to them. He was partnered in Diamonds on Friday night with Daria Pavlenko and they were quite wonderful, with seamless transitions between lifts and walks and little runs. She tended not to hold certain Balanchinian figures for their full effect, such as the strange mid-air squats (she had held some of the Fokinean figures longer on Tuesday night). Sometimes it seems as if the Kirov dancers don’t know what what riches they’ve come across in Balanchine and rush right through them. They don’t know where the punctuation marks belong, Balanchine’s commas and semi-colons. Also the thrusts and shoves. And their liquid arm movements shift the center of gravity towards the wrists rather than down to the legs. That said, the evening was a delight. The first part of Diamonds was good, the corps seemed to have lost their way in the second, and the last third was magnficient. The Korsuntsev & Pavlenko pas de Deux in many ways surpassed the excellent one I saw earlier this year by Julie Diana and Vadim Solomakha at the SF Ballet. With the summary statements by the Kirov corps eveything fell together wonderfully. There was none of aftertaste of empty brilliance that this ballet sometimes leaves. The Kirov orchestra under Mikhail Agrest was so consistently good that I often found myself listening more than looking. Underneath the overall richness and oneness there is a slight sourness to the string playing that sets eveything off. And the piano playing of Sveshnikova Liudmila--in Shostakovich glasses?-- for the Stravinsky piece was like the quick sound of loose stones on the sea shore being turned and snapping together by the incoming tide, very rollicking, almost dangerously so. Emeralds didn’t quite come off. In certain ways I think it is the most difficult. The Miami did it at Zellerbach four years ago--more coherently and eloquently--and I remember people saying oh, that’s not ballet, it’s just walking through. I don’t think that’s true, but I have no idea of the technical difficulties of dance.The performer who seemed have the best understanding of Emeralds was Sofia Gumerova, who did the second ballerina solo, the strange mediative slighty neurotic stitchy dance, with a very nice calmy rubato to her movements. Rubies was well executed but the Kirov seemed to be having too much fun with it. For me it lacked sarcasm and bite. But don’t let me leave the feeling that this wasn’t a very special evening. Questions: 1.Did anyone else online see this performance and what did they think? 2.How would Kortsunsev be as Apollo?

Thanks, Drew and Alexandra for the comments and for filling in a lot for me. I do look at Fokine as a parallel development to Balanchine, both standing as interpreters of Petipa, and as different perhaps as Vuillard and Matisse or Juan Gris and Picasso (to Cezanne's Petipa?). I liked Alexandra's characterization of the sleeping Fokine school and its subtle interior conversations. Hopefully Friday, when I see Kirov's Jewels, I'll be able to differentiate the NYCB and Kirov styles and triangulate more of Petipa.

I'll have to agree with Clement Crisp's assessment of the Fokine ballets (in the Financial Times, posted on this board), especially of Scheherazde: "ridiculous staging in the highest style." I saw the Kirov on Tuesday night at Zellerbach. This was my first experience with Fokine, and quite a different lens than I'm used to viewing classical ballet through. Many of the forms & conventions Balanchine uses were in place, but here they were so modest and shy and prim--although beautifully danced (especially the pas de deux with Daria Pavlenko and Danila Korsuntev in the Prelude of Chopiana with wonderful lifts and her great stage presence). Gone was all the Mr. B's counterpoint, the rearticulation and development by the corps of gestures initiated by the leads or the secondaries; gone were the sharp edges--but this may be the difference in the Kirov style, which is willowier than New York City Ballet. Gone was the sexuality and the wit. But it was sweet and charming and high caloried in its own way. Tatiana Amosova was a wonderful in Firebird--a hummingbird in her quick darts and short-wheelbased recoils and her hoverings. On Tuesday she filled in for Diana Vishneva and Saturday evening should be doing Rubies, which is something to very much look forward to. The moonlighting Kirov orchestra was full and rich and played in stretches as if it were one big cello. There were no heart rendering individual solos such as you hear on old Russian Lps, and the Stravinsky could have been more angular. But was balanced and all over very satisfying (delicately meaty). And at times you didn't know whether to listen or to look. Does anyone else have any impressions of the performances? And can anyone help me out with an approach to Fokine's work?