kfw

In the latest New York Observer , Charles Michener writes: “A few years ago, I asked Sir Peter Jonas, the longtime head of the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, to characterize the difference between the American and European approaches to producing opera. "American companies like the Met tend to view opera as entertainment," he said. "In Europe, we see it as serious business, an art form that has the capacity to provoke."

I’m wondering if there is any degree of similar divide in the ballet world. In America on the one hand, we do see the serious revivals and restagings of the sort that San Francisco Ballet has provided recently with Giselle and Sylvia, and Christopher Wheeldon gets commissions right and left and even does a new Swan Lake. There is an audience for this work here, and Ballet Talk helps to foster and sustain it.

On the other hand, of course, smaller, regional companies have been turning more and more to pop music and pop subjects. Houston Ballet has staged Dracula (whether or not that’s material for a good ballet, it’s a fair guess it was chosen for its ability to interest a pop culture audience), the Joffrey has mixed pop with serious revivals right from the start, and even ABT has lately danced to George Harrison, and felt the need to sex up one of its bread and butter classics with a cartoonish von Rothbart variant.

I’m much less familiar with the situation in Europe, but many who know the ballets of Bejart and Neumeier and more recently Eiffman (whom I believe has a substantial fan base there) find their work arch and pretentious, and there are other names which escape me right now in the same category. Forsythe may be in a category by himself, but perhaps when he falls off the horse falls on the same side.

Would it be too much of an oversimplification, or would it be simply inaccurate, to say there is a critical (ah, but critics where?) consensus that at its worst stateside ballet is dumbed down while at its worst Continental work is too highfalutin’ for its own good and equally lightweight?

And if there is anything to this, are commercial pressures alone to blame, or is there still a lot of truth in the old saw that America still lacks European cultural sophistication? Are artists and critics anywhere coalescing around new narratives or intellectual or cultural resources for renewal that the ballet world could draw on as well? And in regards to audiences, if Time Magazine should put Wheeldon on its cover and declare him not a potentially great choreographer but the Real Thing in 2005, would artists and intellectuals flock back to the theater, or would it take another Nureyev?

In the "Highlights, Lowpoints, Disappointments" thread, Michael writes:

Carbro I disagree about Janie Taylor being anyhow bland in Square Dance. She has quietly become a finished classical dancer, one of the most fascinating and beautiful to watch of her generation. So Blond but such a Sylph. The wildness is under control - It's become merely the extraordinary color which characterizes her dancing. Her suddenly maturing, after last Spring's absence, was more unpredictable

Prior to seeing her in Divertimento #15 in DC. this year, I’d only seen Taylor in the Lew Christensen Pas de deux City Ballet danced in 1999. I remember being thrilled by the wild quality Michael cites, as well struck by her poise at such a young age. Thinking of her in Divertimento now, I find myself wondering what accounts for the maturation Michael mentions; specifically, did being cast in this ballet, which is known for its decorousness and its exquisite perfume, help develop that classical quality?

I know that Balanchine would sometimes cast corps dancers in principal’s roles in order to mature them, and if I’m not mistaken Martins has continued the tradition. So I'm curious: who remembers particular dancers being dramatically shaped and matured by a role? Have certain certain ballets historically been used to mature dancers by bringing out this or that quality? Are there historically significant examples of dancers blossoming after being cast in a challenging role, or of already celebrated dancers developing new facets through new roles?

kfw, when you've seen it, would you like to let us know how you like it? 

Gladly, Jack. I'm happy I bought it.

These are all television performances dating from '54 through '66, and the charming formal introductions to the ballets can be a hoot: "tonight The Telephone Hour celebrates 21 years of music, but only two years of ballet -- no one ever danced for us on radio"; Tallchief and Eglevsky, introduced separately before Pas de dix, each move into the frame for smiling closeups; Florence Henderson introduces Allegro Brilliante standing beside some sort of marbelized pillar wearing a white caftan with a fur collar, and a gold necklace of many strands that extends halfway down her torso.

I think of Tallchief chiefly as a bravura dancer by reputation, but I'm knocked out by her lyricism here, especially in the Pas de deux from The Flower Festival of Genzano with Nureyev, where she shows off the fleetness of her Balanchine training, but also displays lovely ballon and a sweet feminine air. Funny, she makes Nureyev look taller here than he is. I've always been something of a heretic on the subject of Nureyev -- I see what the fuss is all about but I'm bored anyhow -- but I could watch this technically thrilling and, at least to my mind, atypically unaffected performance all day long.

A couple of times in Allegro Brilliante Tallchief pirouettes forward so far that all we see are her head and torso, but she bowls me over with radiant and expansive and serenely secure dancing, and I fell in love with all four of of the female corps members, whoever they are.

Especially in the black and white selections here -- Pas de Dix, the Pas de deux from Les Sylphides, and scenes from Act II of Swan Lake -- the camera focus is too tight and often cuts off pointes and hands and even heads. At one quick moment during Pas de dix the soloists dance out of the frame except for a couple of hands arms gracing the left and right edges of the screen. Perhaps the cameraman was a Cunningham afficianado -- one view is as good as another! But seriously, the camerawork throughout these selections is at least unobstrusive and calm, with none of the jumpcutting that mars The Kirov Dances Nijinksy disc.

For someone who never saw Tallchief dance, it's a treat to see her in so many moods, and to have all this Balanchine choreography on disc as well. I hope others will comment.

Maria has very little to do in this suite of dances, so it's not fair to judge the dancer by her performance in this.  She's always going to look bland.

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I have to put in a word for Arthurs here. I found her a beautiful bland in this case, with an "average" prettiness in her NYCB headshot that was way above average onstage. She wasn't as interesting as Ringer in Thou Swell, but then she's only in the corps.

This link might help.

A few late thoughts here on the Saturday performances and the Sunday matinee:

Fairchild’s Theme and Variations debut was touching and often lovely if not grand, but you could see her concentrate, then relax and just dance, then concentrate some more. In Divertimento that evening her confidence never wavered, and she took that role to a gracious level she couldn’t sustain in the afternoon.

The Four Temperaments is one of my favorite ballets, but in the 3-4 times I’ve seen NYCB dance this in the past decade they’ve never brought to it the same tension and attack that Miami City Ballet (and the NYCB cast on film) does. As a result, the ballet looks ever so slightly smoothed over. With the shapes a little less taut, the unusual looks less so, and the atmosphere isn’t quite as strong.

Divertimento #15 is another favorite and it glowed from start to finish Saturday night. Taylor, whom I loved, has an intensity, almost a frown, that doesn’t sit right with music, but she danced so beautifully, they all did, and by the Andante everyone had toned down the grins that marred the opening movements. There is a gravity, a composed reserve beneath the joy in Mozart’s score, and it’s very odd that such musical dancers would miss it and try to sell the movement with what, in that context, almost amounted to mugging. All I can figure is that they lapsed into habit.

Jennifer Ringer was irresistible all weekend, and while maybe she wasn’t dancing the most technically demanding roles, her dancing wasn’t only lyrical, but strong and sharp when it needed to be. In January, on a small stage with a local Virginia troupe, she danced a beautiful but somewhat careful Sugar Plum Fairy. Here by comparison she looked carefree. To see her swoon in Old Fashioned or cut the rug with her husband in Thou Swell -- or sing! -- was ballet bliss.

Speaking of Thou Swell, as I read all the complaints I nod my head and still I think, so what? A live band having a go at classics from a more courteous cultural era; fabulous robes and gowns; a swell set and beautiful people . . what’s not to like? I’m not even interested in ballroom dancing, but with the sexy Ringer and the radiant Kistler and the sophisticated young beauty Arthurs, I was sorry to see this end. There’s a line in “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” that goes “The most beautiful star in the world, 'tisn't Garbo/ T'sn't Dietrich, but a sweet trick/ Who can make me believe it's a beautiful world,” and that sums up how this ballet hit me. The elderly woman on my left who sighed with satisfaction during all three ballets daubed her eyes and sniffled a little during this one. Only one small complaint, and not to be unkind, but if Nilas Martins wants to look like a dapper and elegant cafegoer, he needs a diet and a haircut.

What Stars and Stripes needed was more power and personality. In the Fourth Campaign at least Ansenelli had plenty of the latter, but her jumps were weak. Or is it just that she’s relatively short? Still, she instantly lit up one of her solos with a quick changing array of facial expressions.

Glass Pieces was by exhilarating and mysterious and always moving, the effect lifting slightly only during the finale, as the choreography became busier and – the effect accentuated by the lack of uniformity in the practice clothes -- began to lose its earlier clarity. These last few minutes probably looked better from upstairs.

Polyphonia intrigues me in memory. Watching it in the theater, I felt like a philistine, the extensions of Balanchine’s language leaving me cold as Agon never does, even Whelan’s pretzel logic not moving me as she did with Neal the next afternoon.

A sincere thank you to Ballet Alert’s experienced posters, much more perceptive than I, for tamping down expectations, so that the truly magnificent felt truly extraordinary.

Natalia, they gave us Serenade and Barocco last year. The latter was, well, not fully itself.

I remember some of the posters thought the company looked a little sluggish at last year Kennedy Center's performances. But this is after The Nutcracker and 8 weeks of repetory in NY.

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But orchestra tickets are $78 and $82. I hope they get their pep back by the time I get to D.C. this weekend.

The winter issue of DanceView is out. For those who don't know, DanceView is the print cousin of the online magazine the danceview times. Both are published by Ballet Alert founder Alexandra Tomalonis.

The contents: Appreciations of Alicia Markova and Maude Lloyd; interviews with former Royal Danish Ballet dancer Arne Villumsen and former New York City Ballet dancer Susan Pilarre; a review of Merce Cunningham at the Joyce; reviews of the recent New York seasons of Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, Limon Dance Company, and Jane Comfort; reviews of the London seasons of Ace Dance Company, Rambert Dance Company, and the Royal Ballet; reviews of the Bay Area seasons of San Francisco Ballet, Chitresh Dance Company, Circo Zero and Dance Brigade, Hip Hop Fest, and Joanna Haigood.

Subscriptions to DanceView are available on the danceview times website.

Truly rabid ballet fans will show up on the chance that wife Maria Calegari has accompanied him to our fair city.

I'd walk a mile for that. And I wouldn't even bite her!

One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons shows a couple of people on one of the pedestrian bridges looking out over the park, and if I'm remembering this correctly, the caption is "Hail to Thee, Frederick Law Olmstead!"

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Well that made me think, thank you. Olmsted and Christo both transformed the space, but I wonder if we can't roughly measure the relative value of their transformations by comparing how long Olmsted's work has continued to delight with how long even the most enraptured Christo fans would want the Gates to remain.

Well--the artistic side of the venture escaped me  

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I've only seen photos, and I'm open to persuasion, but for now I have to agree. The project sounds like great fun for the Christos and their helpers, and no doubt it's a kick for many New Yorkers as well. But if that's art, as in fine art, then what's a Cezanne? If I wrap Peter Boal and Maria Kowroski in orange and get them to dance the pas de deux for Apollo and Terpsichore, can I call myself a choreographer? The Gates are only "beautiful" because the park is beautiful.

Ari posted the link to this article and nycdog5734 commented on it earlier.

I have a few random thoughts and questions I hope others will post their own. Bentley is always engaging, although for my taste her language and thought get a little flowery at times, and some of what she writes doesn’t, IMHO, stand up to scrutiny: “A beautiful ballet doesn't speak of or refer to loss directly as can poetry, painting, or music; it is an act of loss itself, laid bare, . . “ Yes, the art’s emphemerality is poignant, but dancing is not _about_ loss.

About this line of dancewear sporting Balanchine’s name along with, if I understand correctly, the name of the ballet it’s modeled after, plus the composer and the première date -- all this under the guise of educating young dancers. Sounds pretty gauche, and Bentley sniffs at the idea that dancers have any need to learn from this sort of history, but I would think it can’t help spark some interest in the ballets. I wonder is this has been discussed on Ballet Talk for Dancers.

I’m flabbergasted to read that after Balanchine’s death his estate owed taxes on his ballets. It’s for this reason, Bentley says, that “the marketing of Balanchine, inevitably, begun.” Are we to understand that the Balanchine Foundation licenses this dancewear? They must; don’t they have the right to his name?

Most interesting and affecting is when Bentley’s weighs in how NYCB dances Balanchine today: “Balanchine once told a dancer, "Reach for it like you're reaching for a Cadillac." They just don't reach for those Cadillacs at New York City Ballet anymore. It's SUV City Ballet now.” A not uncommon sentiment uncommonly well expressed. “The spirit of the enterprise has changed,” she writes. But how ironic it is to be told that the romance is gone by a writer who elsewhere fixates, well, anally, on anal sex (Balanchine, in contrast, slept in a separate bed for Tallchief, we might guess in order to focus his erotic energies on his work) and here refers to having given birth as having “reproduced.”

But she’s right, isn’t she? In many ways this could hardly be a more unromantic time we’re living in, and Martins’s view of love, or so I keep reading, is cold and analytical and thus unlike Balanchine’s, and if that’s so it’s one more reason the spirit of the ballets is being altered and lost.

One more thought: we briefly discussed B.H. Haggin a couple of days ago. There’s a guy who wrote professionally about both music and ballet. I don’t know if others have done the same. (Oh, John Rockwell). Reviewing Terry Teachout’s “All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine,” Bentley remarks on “his astonishing late arrival to the shores of one of the greatest artists not only of his own time but of the very city in which he lives.” It’s astonishing because Teachout is a music critic (and a drama critic), who writes a monthly column for Commentary and frequently discusses CDs, performances and favorite artists on his blog About Last Night. How is that a New York music critic doesn’t know his Balanchine long before he begins writing professionally? But he’s not alone. Teachout recently wrote that he’d taken a fellow music writer to see City Ballet, another Balanchine novice. (The guy loved it).

It’s been noted here before that lovers of one art form often have little knowledge of and interest in other, cousin, forms, but we all know how central music was to Balanchine’s work and how much he did with it. I would not have believed that a professional music critic, in New York City of all places, could be so ignorant. What explains this? More of the same specialization we see in lay art lovers, aggravated by the fact that the city offers abundant musical and dramatic choices every day and night?

These leads me to wonder and fret about the other side of the footlights. Notwithstanding the tremendous dedication of their teachers – are the dancers being given similar resources? I think of Verdy – it’s part of her legend that her sophisticated dancing reflected her cultural and artistic sophistication. But come to think of it I can’t think of too many other dancers of who we know had similar riches to draw on. Kent? LeClerq? Bentley cites Balanchine’s “crash course in European culture” courtesy of Diaghilev, but the choreogrpaher was known for frequenting Times Square movie houses, not the city’s art museums. Still, his musical knowledge and understanding were superb, and Kirstein befriended at least a few of the dancers and, we might suppose, taught them too. Today, Teachout and company can not know what they’re missing. Mel, are there many teachers out there with your seemingly encylopedic cultural knowledge? Do today’s Balanchine dancers have the time/get the opportunities for a cultural education outside their field? Do they have a chance at romance?

Haggin wrote a wonderful book, now out of print, entitled Discovering Balanchine (New York Horizon Press, 1981) with full page black and white photos illustrating portions of Concerto Barroco, Apollo, Liebeslieder Walzer and other ballets. I can't even find his Music and Ballet: 1973-1983 listed on Amazon, but it includes reviews and short essays on Verdy and Martins.

Thanks, folks. I'm going to order it tonight.

Can anyone recommend or recommend against this DVD? I'm particularly interested in how well Allegro Brilliante is represented since I've never seen it. Can one tell from this disc that Tallchief was a special dancer, or is everything danced on a tiny stage and constricted?

You said it, Ari: Part's Odette was a fully integrated performance, and very moving I thought. But I liked her Odile as well: exuberant and flirtatious with an occasional hint of an evil gleam, especially when she looked at Rothbart. I was disappointed with the pas de trois.

I didn't know it was out yet, thanks.  I'll have to pick it up on Saturday.

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Any idea where I could pick it up in Manhattan? I've never seen it at a newsstand in my neighborhood

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The magazine store across the street from Lincoln Center carries it.

You yourself started a thread about this article when it came out (And I was glad you did, I went and bought the hard copy as it was not online).  There are excerpts in the original thread:

http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...topic=17804&hl=

Ballet Review has been very good about Part    It's too bad the magazine does not have an online archive.

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Thanks, Dale, but that was actually another article which is unfortunately not yet in the online archives. But I'm puzzled about Ballet Review. I began subscribing in '93 and I believe I have every issue but one since, yet I just now checked their tables of contents for Part, the Kirov, and ABT, and found all of one sentence (her '99 Terpsichore was pert. Yes, it was, flirtatious. Someone, I think it might have been you, compared that Apollo to The Judgement of Paris!).

Because I find the best dance writing not only educational but transporting, I like to prepare for viewing performances by reading up, and rereading up, on the ballets and the dancers. So in anticipation of ABT’s Swan Lake with Veronika Part this weekend I’m posting this link to a piece by New Criterion critic Laura Jacobs with very brief but pricelessly intriguing remarks about Part. They’re in the final two paragraphs.

we've already seen a fairly steady stream of works to popular music, but the era of "popular" has ranged from early 20th (ragtime) to current.  I don't imagine this will diminish -- what I find interesting is watching how choreographers deal with this material as it shifts from contemporary to historical.  When Scott Joplin's work became better known in the 1970s (thanks, in part, to the film The Sting) it was used for several ballets.  Some treated it as an example of its era, and the choreography tried to reflect that period.  Other dancemakers used it just as "danceable music," without reference to its original time.  The more contemporary the score, the harder it is for the choreographer to take that first path, to create a work that exemplifies a particular time, not our own.

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Speculating wildly in a different direction here, I wonder if and how the popularity of "pop" music and dance and its very different aesthetic/s might influence the dancing and staging of the classic works. Yes, classical technique deteriorates if it's not used. But what I'm wondering is if, for example, a pop aesthetic (an absurdly broadbrush term, I know) produced the travesty bits in ABT's Polovtsian Dances.

Me thinks Mr. Rockwell has put his foot in his mouth on this one.

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Not a pretty sight.

Among other things---Rockwell is no gentleman.   

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I agree. It's not sexist to lament that the current roster isn't full of beautiful girls, but it's rude to do so in public.

Otherwise, Rockwell makes a point or two, but elsewhere sounds confused. If Balanchine style might flatten personality, how did Balanchine "wind up cultivating all kinds of star dancers anyhow," several generations' worth? And his question about the causes of current complaints about the company seems so broadly phrased as to encompass a number of questions at once. Some longtime fans obviously do mind an inattention to choreographic detail. Many newer dancegoers obviously can't see what they're missing. Greater personalities would no doubt please both, but not mitigate the concerns of the former. As I read it, the way he's asked the question, without distinguishing and without proffering an opinion, implies that in his eyes beauty and personality could make up for diluted choreography.

Well, Ari and paolo, I'm here to tell you that ignorance is bliss. ABT's production is only the second Giselle I've ever seen in person, and I loved both the sets and the acting.

But thanks for the review, Ari, I'd been looking forward to it.

Seattle audiences tend to stand for just about everything and everyone, but so did the NYC audience to what I thought was the rather mediocre Movin' Out.  (But I did think the singer, the "second" cast man, deserved a huge round of applause.)

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I think it was the NY Times that ran a piece recently about today's ramped up audience reactions on Broadway, with standing ovations being de rigeur, sometimes precipitated by people . . . I forget if they're specifically paid to cheer or are just associated with the productions. Funny that things should be so quiet at the State Theater. I've noticed that too on my infrequent trips to NYC. For me it can spoil the afterglow just a bit, to have people rushing out their seats during curtain calls, as if what they've witnessed was only mundane.