djb

Carbro, I agree with you about Fonteyn's autobiography. And in the documentary about her, when she talks about herself, it also seems very much like her dancing to me. Suzanne Farrell is one of my favorite dancers, even though I didn't see much of her dancing live. But what I saw made a great impression on me. In 1968 I saw her with Arthur Mitchell in Metastaseis and Pithoprakta, and I'm afraid I barely have any recollection of Mitchell because I was so amazed by Farrell. Her follow-through in movement was beautiful. I think she expressed herself through her body, so I didn't find her lacking in expressiveness. She did one amazing technical feat that I'm sure must have been partially improvised because I can't imagine anyone duplicating it. She did a triple en dehors pique turn (step-up or lame duck turn) with her working leg behind the knee. Now, picture this: staying up on pointe, she finished the turn with a developpe efface devant with breathtaking suspension (gasp from the audience) and -- still without coming off pointe -- pulled the working leg around to behind her supporing foot for a soutenu turn with two revolutions (bigger gasp from the audience). The last part of it had a sort of wild, unplanned look and was very exciting! I love the excerpts of her dancing in Elusive Muse and wish they were longer. I think I'll go watch the excerpts from Meditation right now, in fact.

Edward Liang was in "Fosse: The Musical." He looked wonderful.

Someone way back when wrote that Plisetskaya did pique turns instead of fouettes. But what she typically did was a pique turn/chaine turn combination, which, although not as demanding as fouettes, is a bit more challenging and certainly more interesting than straight pique turns, especially with her very strong, fast chaine turns. As for me, I'd prefer the pas de deux without the fouettes. In fact, I'd like to take out the music for the fouettes, as well -- it's so circus-y. About the only ballet in which I find 32 fouettes tolerable is Don Q, and only if the performer does something incredible with them, such as Lorena Feijoo's (SFB) flicking open her fan on the multiple turns, or Nina Ananiashvili's amazingly fast fouettes.