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The Wilis give Albrecht and Hilarion the willies!

As Doris said, this discussion has been a treat. I haven't seen nearly enough Nutcrackers to complain, but to be dyspeptic for a moment just for fun ...

In general I loved the Royal Ballet's production as shown recently on PBS, and I’ll make it a point to catch Cojocura the next time she’s in D.C. But two things -- the wigs on the snowflakes make them look like my grandmother. And isn't Clara a little underdressed at the palace? Sure she's dreaming the whole thing, but she doesn’t just watch the performers, she dances with them. That nightgown jars.

And what's that "step" where the Sugar Fairy makes as if to plunge into arabesque but stops on a dime with both arms forward? It struck me as odd and wrong for the music.

Mel and Mme. Hermine bring up what I've always found an important point. We can debate what's high art and we can debate the accuracy of the categories, but sophisticated works of art are often appreciated in an unsophisticated manner.

How was it?

Thaks for the answer. My reaction to dance on video seems to depend very much on my mood. The same footage will bore me one day and thrill me the next. But the one bit of Farrell footage that never ceases to dazzle is the Don Q excerpt.

On the Casting From Hell thread people have been talking about Dance and Dancers. I've never seen it, but I've been curious about Dance Perspectives since I found a couple of old copies in a New Orleans French Quarter bookstore five years ago. One features essays by five dancers on "the male image" and the other has three essays in dance perspectives.

Would anyone care to comment on this journal? I don't recognize any of the contributors in the perspectives issue, but I notice that John Martin was "consulting editor" and Denby was on the advisory board.

Alexandra, when you say "cold" do you mean that as a pejorative, or are you referring to the so-called Apollonian, vs. Dionysian, dancers? That's a terribly crude set of characterizations, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

And if you're really on a budget, or just want to spend all your money on NYC cultural offerings, you might try the 63rd Y, just a block from the theater. A year ago it was only $75, and if you're very lucky and get a high southeast corner room, you'll have a spectacular view of Central Park and the skylines. If you're unlucky you'll get the airshaft.

Well, that's a darn good answer! When is David Remnick going to read it?

By quality work I mean newsworthy -- new choreography of note, outstanding dancers or revivals, etc.

I’d love to see dance coverage in every issue. But as Mel noted, in Croce’s day she had plenty to write about. If Acocella is assigned to write for the general public, is there enough quality work being done in New York or even in Washington for her to write more frequently?

You could also see her as Terpsichore in Apollo in the Balanchine Celebration (part one, I think). She's also briefly shown rehearsing Tzigane in Elusive Muse, Anne Belle's film about Suzanne Farrell.

Originally posted by Manhattnik

So why is grace and beauty not admired for its own sake more?

Good question, but I still hold to my distinction -- athletic and balletic grace and beauty are quite different, and if you idealize the former, you might not like the latter.

For NBA fans --- didn't the Celtics bring in a dancer to teach ... I don't remember what it was. I heard about it in the late 80's.

Citibob, thank for your reply. If we’re talking about my own taste (I wasn’t), I imagine we can agree that macho and effeminate aren’t the only categories (and I love your idea of consciously being the art). A man isn’t necessarily one or the other. And I’m aware that all gays don’t present alike, thanks. And I’d have to be one very dense ballet fan to presume that every male dancer who cares about line (who doesn’t?) is gay. I simply mean that most men do appreciate beautiful male movement (although they wouldn’t put it that way). But they appreciate another style of it, and it’s a style in conflict with ballet’s. And many do see ballet’s as effeminate. I suppose only education in the form of early exposure could make that reaction rare.

But to return to the question of the sexuality, we keep saying that all male dancers aren’t gay. But of course many are, so that as I tried to say before, given the sexual element of so much ballet, sexual identity does show. Or, given again the differing ideals of beauty, it appears to show (i.e., others make that leap you speak of). The sensuality of the art form heightens the sexual element. Nureyev is a very sexual creature onstage, isn’t/wasn’t he? That very upfront “animal magnetism” attracts women and gay men, but bores or turns off many straight men, who have another ideal of beauty. To my way of thinking, that isn’t good or bad, it just is. Why should they like him? They have other tastes. Better seats for me!

Paul, I love your credo. And I put Agon and Symphony in C up there with Swan Lake.

Alexandra, your aunt reminds me of a bit in one of Garrison Keillor's News from Lake Woebegone monologues, in which a woman cooking the Thanksgiving meal for her extended family decides she isn't going to let the timing of the game interfere with the timing of the meal next year. So she videotapes the game, cutting out a lot of commercials, and the following year she gets the tape going before they all arrive. They guys are all surprised the game’s on so early, but they fall for the trick, and they’re very impressed when she correctly predicts the plays!

I suspect a lot of guys are just plain bored by dancing, bored by the music, and bored by the pretty sets and costumes. We probably don’t see these guys at the art exhibition or the symphony concert either. And yes, some are made nervous by the apparent homosexuality of some of the male dancers, but others are just turned off by it, and not just the intolerant ones. I think of Balanchine’s asking rhetorically “how much story you want?” -- the word “ erotic” seems way too strong, but isn’t the sexual element an almost everpresent, if often faint, undercurrent in ballet dancing? I mean, this is probably all too obvious, but doesn’t movement highlight sexxuality, especially intentionally expressive movement? Dunking a basketball is a macho form of grace, and attending to one’s line is not. That’s how I see it, at least.

As for the urge to mock, some of that must be cultural insecurity, no? I think Barry really is poking fun at himself as well as ballet. About for the women's costumes being as revealing as the men's … women often wear revealing or tight fitting clothing in public, of course. We don't see men in tights on the street.

Paul and dirac, could you give some examples of how you think the cultural atmosphere is more conservative now? And Alexandra, I thought Woody Allen was credited with making the “sensitive guy” fashionable in the 70’s. I thought 9/11 brought back the traditional types. But I just know what I read in the Times.

Where is that portrait, Mel? In a private residence, I guess?

I'd like a two-seater time machine, please, in which to zip back to City Center in the late 40's, 50's, and early 60's. If the batteries hold out, I'll take it to 1928 Paris for the premiere of Apollo too.

I suppose neither of these books had Balanchine’s Mallomar recipe, the one where, according to Tanniquil LeClerq, he simply stuck Mallomar cookies in the broiler, then hid the evidence from dinner guests! Perhaps the Kennedy Center ought to try this. Mallomar de Balanchine? That ought to sell – at least until everyone’s tried it or figured out that yes, Mallomar refers to the cookies!

Thanks to everyone who typed up recipes or noted the books and their availability. And thanks to everyone else for not snapping up the Gold and Fizdale books before I could get one!

If only that recording wasn't mono. Thanks to all for the fascinating reports.

Thanks, Ari and Alexandra. My scanner died a smelly death awhile back. Yes, the program has a shot of Kent as Sugar Plum Fairy underneath 3 smaller photos of other dancers, and opposite "Ballet's Present Eden."

Well, my wife's been decorating the house for the Christmas season and I thought I'd do my part. So I got out an old NYCB Nutcracker program I bought at a used bookstore and put it on the coffee table.

I wonder if anyone can identify the year this program was sold. The cover features a black and white shot of two kids in a spotlight looking up, probably at the tree, except that on the program they face a drawing of a Nutcracker set in a red rectangle.

Included are several essays -- the uncredited "The History of a Nutcracker," "The Chronology of the Nutcracker" by Herbert Weinstock, W.H. Auden's "Ballet's Present Eden," and Edwin Denby's "More Than Sweet Fantasy: the content of Balanchine's Nutcracker." Tallchief and Eglevsky are given the largest photos, and the program is "edited" (I find this amusing) by Lincoln Kirstein.

Anyhow, what I was really wondering is what ballet-related seasonal decorating people might do. Does anyone have any really splendid ballerina ornaments?

Has this been lost? Or is the Grigoriev version thought to have preserved the essence of it? Does the Royal Ballet still dance it? Anyone else?

Balanchine must have seen it many times. Is his own Firebird, either the original or the modified version, thought to reflect in any degree his memories of Fokine's work?

Thanks.

We saw the final two performances Sunday, and I can report that if Balanchine ballets are, as has been claimed, dancer-proof, Dances at a Gathering is little-old-lady-snoring-a-couple-of-seats-over-proof. I guess she was really just breathing very heavily in her sleep, but it was terribly distracting for awhile there, with only that solo piano for competition. But this was my wife’s first time seeing this ballet (and I’d been excited for her), and she was beaming in the end anyhow. The dancers in the central roles, Julie Diana, Yuan Yuan Tan, Gonzalo Garcia and Peter Brandenhoff stood out for us, Diana above all. We enjoyed Yuri Possohov in the evening, but thought Brandenhoff was very fine as well.

The first time I’d seen this – probably winter 1991 – at NYCB I’d been transported. The second time – ’95? ’98? – it dragged. I’ve since learned that ’91 is no one’s idea of a great year for NYCB, and I’m not perceptive enough to know if my reaction the second time was due to overly high expectations or poor casting or performance, or what. Anyhow, this time I thought there was a world there, and I didn't last time.

During the sideways lift where she scissors her legs, Yuan Yuan Tan did not reproduce the very fast and then slowly closing, taffy pull effect that someone in Repertory in Review credits Patricia McBride with. But I remember first seeing her in a pas de deux in about ’98, and while she was sweet back then, she was commanding, or something approaching it, on Sunday.

Lorena Feeijo and all the soloists were charming and confident in Ballo Della Regina. Feeijo didn’t dazzle, and while I didn’t expect her to, the ballet made less of an impression than I remembered it doing. I love the grand coda here. But I prefer the ballerina in white rather than pink, and even though we were in row O, which is just about perfect for me, I kept wishing she wouldn’t move so far downstage. Also, watching the video version again, I notice that Ricky Weiss has an ease in his solos that Zachary Hench didn’t achieve, exciting as he was.

As for the Morris work, we’d once turned off The Hard Nut on television, and few of photos of his stuff have interested me. I remember one writer’s commenting on how his work makes no distiction between men and women, and I not surprised at the opinion that this flattened and neutered the ballets (I paraphrase, probably crudely). But we were very pleasantly surprised at Sandpaper Ballet, and stayed to watch it the second time even though we’d talked, when I bought the tickets, of leaving after Dances in the evening in order to get home to Charlottesville at a reasonable hour.

Watching this ballet, we couldn’t quite catch the tone at first – was it simply silly and lighthearted, or did it want to be taken seriously in parts? I guess we were taking *it* too seriously, because it won us over quickly. The costumes were reminiscent of Cunningham’s Beach Birds (a piece I like a lot, and I suppose Cunningham very often doesn’t distinguish between men and women either, but that doesn’t bother me) as did some of the movement, like the low port de bras used when a line of dancers filed across the back of the stage. And I loved the greens of the costumes, although the fingers of the gloves extended past the fingertips a little, so that the hands didn’t look quite human. But with the entire 25-member ensemble in front of the rich, saturated, and changing color of the backdrops, the overall picture was gorgeous. Color can always get to me. And then they danced, after all, and they’re beautiful dancers.

During the floor pas de deux, Diana wore a grave, reflective expression in the afternoon, whereas LeBlanc (?) grinned in the evening. I think the moment called for gravity, or at least langour.

I’d never heard of Leroy Anderson. My wife remembered his stuff from paying in high school band. We never listen to that sort of thing at home, but it was a treat to hear it from a live orchestra, and it was pleasant contrast to Verdi and Chopin. We decided that someone in the orchestra must have been using a real typewriter, perhaps amplified, in “The Typewriter.”

And did I notice a bit of unisex casting here? I could swear that the dancer who deliberately fell while moving left to right in front of the ensemble late in the ballet was a man in the afternoon and afternoon in the evening. And as further evidence that a) I’m losing my mind – my wife’s opinion – or B) Morris really lets the company have fun with this one, did the woman with an upraised arm in the front row at the end of the first song stand stage right in the afternoon and stage left in the evening?

The dancer who ran off to get the conductor during the bows then took up a position in the back of the ensemble, continuing one of the running jokes in the piece. I was waiting for the conductor to do the same!

In the evening from the first balcony, Vanessa Zahorian seemed less sharp and on the music in Ballo, but I was expecting that in a second cast, and I was rooting for her.

Finally, we were very impressed with the overall level of the company’s technique. Which is to say that we never felt like we were watching a “regional,” 2nd tier company. We never wondered, except in Ballo, where it’s part of the fun, if a dancer was going to get through a step.

And little old ladies who can’t stay awake are easy to forgive. Mothers who come with babies (1995, Suzannne Farrell Stages Balanchine) are not.

Originally posted by atm711

I am reading the book and enjoying it very much---but, for me, it is a slow read---because I read EVERY footnote and whenever Alexandra zeroes in on a particular ballet---I search out my videotapes to refresh my memory!

That's how I read the book (substituting Web sites and photos in books for the videos I don't have). It's a rich story and Alexandra does a wonderful job with it.