Quiggin

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?