Simon G

Certainly not, but such confession comes as little surprise. Your fussy tastes can be quite trying, you know. Yeah, well, that's the way I roll bay-buh. What can I say, I'm a child of divorce.

Though Nureyeve did stage his version of The Nutcracker on the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden during the 70s, there's a film of it with Merle Park as Clara/SugarPlum Fairy. Though it was abandoned for Peter Wright's more traditional version (and better version too). Incidentally is anyone else left completely cold by Merle Park?

Carbro, In the Royal Ballet companies' version of The Nutcracker, (both Covent Garden & Birmingham), this passage of music is used after the Nutcracker Prince has fought off the rats & Clara thinks he's dead. She cries over his body and comes back to life and they dance to this music. In the Nureyev version Clara & The Sugar Plum are danced by the same ballerina, in the UK versions they're danced by two different ballerinas.

I fully understand the working and function of the POB and its artistic remit. However, one thing I don't believe in at all is this notion that a ballet training gives a dancer a full training. An excellent ballet training is sufficient to make a ballet dancer, if that dancer also happens to have the potential to be a great artist, then it can lead to the development of a great dancer in the medium of classical ballet. The biggest myth for me is that a ballet dancer receives a training that allows them to dance anything - and that once entering a ballet company they are equipped to dance any modern medium that comes their way. It's also an error to believe that the POB was a great company before Nureyev came along, it wasn't, he put it on the map, not least because of the way he invigorated their classical rep and by the panopoly of world class classicists he developed. My problem with the way POB danced Jewels is precisely that the entire three parts were pretty much the same, it's not true that you can dance Balanchine and dance it well by ignoring what Balanchine's style is about, ditto Ashton. I wonder if the reason for Lefevre's love of Neuemier is because his style is so undetermined and well... wafty. What's wrong with ballet directors deciding that fulfilling a contemporary remit means commissioning new works by classical choreographers in the classical style? POB dancers are wonderful technicians (well, not as wonderful as they used to be) but they are classicists, the use of the back which is integral to contemporary techniques is the antithesis of what the rep they're supposedly trained to dance is actually all about.

I have to agree with Miliosr, what do you mean exactly? "spirit & rhythm" is rather vague, given that you've stated you believe that ballet dancers bring more to contemporary choreography than the "average" dancers of top contemporary companies such as Cunningham, Bausch, De Keersmaker who are all appearing at the Theatre de Ville. My feeling of the Paris Opera rep is a lot of generic modern work, which will be danced in a generic modern way by ballet dancers, my feeling also is that why are Paris Opera and Lefevre so unconfident in classical ballet, their raison d'etre, after all, that she continually programmes these Frankenstein monster dance seasons. I've seen Paris Opera perform contemporary work and I have to say, all I'm seeing are ballet dancers doing modern generically to badly. A ballet dancer isn't a modern dancer, a top modern dancer isn't "average" but rather an artist with their own set of criteria, techniques and abilities which are quite different but equally valid and artistically worthy as a ballet dancer who more often than not approximates modern technique with no feeling for what the particular school and technique is actually about. And having seen the bland generic reading POB gave Jewels, I would have to say that POB has enough on its plate getting to grips with the vast range and palatte of ballet technique. Looking at the POB schedule I think "meh", especially with another egregious commission from Wayne Macgregor, who I find to be as interesting as lard flavoured porridge. But looking at the schedule of Theatre de ville and the range and excitement of the companies they're producing would actually inspire me take a trip to Paris.

G, Do you know what, I think I came down too heavy as being critical of Zakharova and hope I haven't put you off her. Regardless of whatever she does or doesn't do you love her and her dancing and that's the most important thing, she does it for you and that won't change and shouldn't change. There are tons of ballerinas who one's supposed to like who are held up as being the pinnacle of dance and who leave me cold. I don't know if you've come across Tamara Rojo? She's the balletomanes ballerina of choice, feted to high heaven, universally acclaimed and I've never seen her once when she's done it for me, hasn't left me indifferent and cold and wondering what all the fuss is about. I think that knowledge especially specialised knowledge gets in the way of love and enjoyment, which is what it's all about, should be all about, without that it's just academic steps and posturing. Me personally I defintely think Zakharova is an intriguing dancer, there's a reserve and coldness which is somehow very engaging for me, she's got a very self absorbed persona onstage, and she is a technical virtuoso with or without the extensions. I like that coldness in artists which something burns underneath.

Ahh, I know what you mean now regarding feet. The thing is when a ballerina goes up on pointe she's effectively balancing on her toes on the block inside her toe shoe. This takes years of strength training for the ankles, feet etc as the pressure it puts on her feet is enormous. You may read alot about being "pulled up" this just means that leg and torso muscles are bracing themselves in order to help balance the strain. The problem comes with aesthetic appreciation. The best feet are those with relatively poor arches or not overly arched feet, as this allows a perpendicular line from tip of toe right up the leg, to the torso, meaning that it's easier for the ballerina to take the strain of going up on pointe. BUT as with hyperextension, a very high arch is aesthetically beautiful and pleasing on the eye. When a very arched foot is in a toe shoe on pointe it creates a beautiful banana shaped curve - the erotic charge of a beautiful foot in a toe shoe has been enshrined by many choreographers creating for specific dancers known for the beautiful shape of their feet. Notable famous ballerinas for their feet have been Sylvie Guillem, Anna Pavlova, Lynn Seymour, Darcey Bussell & Zakharova. Again as with hyper flexibility, beautiful feet are a big factor in considering whether potential dancers gain entry to schools and companies. The physical downfall is that very arched feet throw the weight of the body forward when a ballerina in on pointe, so the dancer has to compensate by drawing herself back and fighting against her body's natural habit of throwing her weight forward over the arch of the foot. This is also at odds with the technique of Classical ballet which is very much to do with perpendiuclar lines and body placement. How a ballerina copes with her feet and weight placement can have a massive impact in how she interprets a role. Zakharova often seems as if she's presenting her feet first holding the main torso back.

That's the thing about In the Middle, isn't it, that absolutely pure straight classical spine Guillem maintains throughout. Most notably the attitude when all of a sudden she's Margot Fonteyn in a perfect 90 degree angle attitude with the leg enclosing her partner's body and the high arabesque moment when her hip is down and it's about how far the arabesque can go while still being classically correct with a straight high back, non lifted hip - in the other two it's a whacked up past 180 degree penchee with a back that's completely horizontal. Everything that made In the Middle, so erotic, sexy, tense is gone.

G, This might be interesting for you to illustrate what we've been going on about. Videos of Sylvie Guillem and Svetlana Zakharova in the pas de deux from William Forsythe's In the Middle Somewhat Elevated (you have to get through a bit of interview for the Guillem vid: Sylvie Guillem Svetlana Zakharova In the Middle... was created for Guillem by William Forsythe in 1987. It was created as a guantlet almost to classical ballet, it's an intensely classical ballet, but reimagined for a new generation of dancers, of which Guillem was the chief exponent. Hyper flexible, fast, technically superb. In the Guillem version she is despite the extremity absolutely classically placed, the distortion is in tempo, classical form, speed - but Guillem is academically correct, she never distorts or throws herself around, she uses turnout impeccably. Now the ballet, as seen in the Zakharova version is about flinging yourself into pretzel shapes and extreme contortions, the dance is miniscule because the gymnastic element takes all the energy.

I wasn't slating Guillem. I love Guillem, all I said was the aesthetic of Guillem has become the modern template of ballerinas in the major companies all over the world. Guillem's unique physiognomy indeed allowed her to appear undistorted with sky high extensions - attributes that Zakharova, Somova et al didn't possess, their extensions distort every aspect of the body, and indeed compared to them Guillem now appears almost demure, and why there will probably never be another Guillem as her body really was a one off. I don't argue that Guillem is a unique and real artist, though her intelligence and approach to the classics have made her contorversial, the abnegation of a grown up, savvy intellect within the great ballerina roles was never her thing; she was never simpering, innocent, child like, naive. Probably her most controversial contribution though has been the way ballet and ballet technique has distorted itself in order to replicate the Guillem aesthetic, every single one of those shots of Zakharova being a case in point. No way would you have found a ballerina in the Bolshoi or Kirov being allowed to get away with that pre Guillem and every single company now has at least one or two ballerinas who are in the Zakharova/Somova mould. But also it's sadly what audiences have come to expect of ballerinas a great deal of the time - Guillem became a sensation with a far wider audience sadly because people flocked to see her get her legs up, and Artistic Directors ever aware of the permanent red of the balance books realised that in replicating a sensation they could increase profits. What I do find interesting about the videos Christian posts of the Cuban virtuosos is how 1950s/60s the physiques of the ballerinas often are. Viengsay Valdes, she of the superhuman technique has a body very much like those 1950s Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo ballerinas, no flashy extensions, turn out not pushed to 180 etc, the trade off between extreme flexibility and strength has firmly landed on the side of strength.

G, Zakharova is an incredibly divisive ballerina, as you've guessed, she's in a long line of ballerinas of that ilk which all cropped up in the wake of Sylvie Guillem who is without doubt the most controversial ballerina of the past 25 years and who has pretty much set the template for what is expected of ballerinas in companies all over the world, now. There's Alina Somova at the Kirov, Darcey Bussell was seen as being the British Guillem, Alicia Amaitrain at Stuttgart, the up and coming Melissa Hamilton at the Royal, indeed nowadays a ballerina isn't seen as being a ballerina unless she can scratch her ear with her foot. The image is of etiolated, ultra thin, hugely flexible, which is what over extension is about. In the photos Cuban supplied you can see various shots of Zakharova in a developpe a la second, basically lifting the leg up in a vertical split. It used to be that a developpe shouldn't raise the hip of the leg that was going up into the air, or contort the trunk of the body. Even extremely flexible ballerinas in classical companies would tone down the height they could lift a leg to in order to be correct in the placement of their body. The great American choreographer Balanchine was an early forerunner in the dancers he developed and the way he reworked classical ballet into neo classical ballet - he liked extremity, he liked the contortion of legs raised despite what it did to the rest of the body (I know I'm giving a very potted version here, folks). But in the latter half of the 20th century things started changing in the gymnastic approach to classical ballet, mainly in the West and in the shape of ballerinas. The Paris Opera Ballet specifically produced a line of etiolated, hyper flexible virtuoso ballerinas such as Elisabeth Platel, and then came Sylvie Guillem who had a unique physiognomy and whose extensions were just jaw dropping in their height - she became a superstar ballerina, which was important as the ballet boom of the 60s and early 70s was long over and there was no Nureyev's, Fonteyns, Farrells who could fill opera houses on star status. Guillem set off a kind of space race amongst schools who all wanted to produce ballerinas of unnatural flexibility - Zakharova, a star ballerina, is one of the most flexible in the world today. This is a hugely controversial issue amongst balletomanes and scholars, because in order to pull off the stunts, the whole technique of ballet has had to change, ballet which is primarily, or was primarily about the placement of the body in an harmonious order has become about contorsion, as seen in those photos of Zakarova.

I think the problem is a great deal of the time cultural. The Russians seem to omit the au couronne frequently, or always (I'm sure someone can correct me if I'm wrong) even sterling technicians like Vishneva do so. Also that video of Kirkland really has to be seen as a curiosity not indicative of her technique, she was extremely weak and sick at Wolftrap when that was filmed, gripped by anorexia. Her lack of strength is palpable. For a much better snippet of what she was about the minute of Giselle on Youtube is pretty sensational, not least for how she comes out of the arabesque penchee while still on point. Kolpakova was another of those Russians who really should have given up the great classical roles a great deal earlier than she did, she kept dancing another decade after that film was taken, but then again in Communist Russia there really wasn't the repertory to choose from to age gracefully in. The au couronne balances are a funny one, often seen as being the benchmark of a ballerina, but like fouettes have little to do with artistry and can be pulled off by a technically able student while tormenting brilliant ballerinas with their failure to pull them out of the bag. Fonteyn, who was by no means a technical genius like Valdes has the best balances in the world in Rose Adagio, yet balance and turning which often goes hand in hand didn't with her. Her fouettes were famously capricious. Actually if you want a pleasent surprise look out for the videos of Somova on Youtube taken this past year, she's really really toned down her extremities and done a great deal of work, she's almost a completely changed dancer. I mean, I'll never think she's a ballerina, but she has improved radically.

Christian, You're going to hate me for saying this, but... I don't think Valdes is much of a ballerina. She is a phenomenal powerhouse, her core strength is probably the best in the world, her ability to turn is superhuman, as are her balances, but Obraztsova just knocks her out of the ballpark in terms of dance quality, musicality, and dance. I agree that Valdes is just totally enthralling to watch her pull of her cunning stunts, it's the moments between those stunts, when dance should happen that are lacking for me.

Hey everyone, I wanted to post this. I'm sure you all heard about the massacre two weeks ago in Afghanistan of 10 aid workers & doctors by the Taliban. The sole British casualty was Dr Karen Woo, who had devoted her life and career to helping the poorest of the poor in Afghanistan receive a modicum of proper medical care, especially the pregnant women and new borns. Afghanistan has some of the highest infant and new mother mortality rates in the world. However, Karen was once a dancer. She trained at London Contemporary Dance School and was amongst the last intake of dancers into London Contemporary Dance Theatre before its closure in 1994, she then danced with the Richard Alston Dance Company, of which she was a founder member. After a brief career she decided to retrain as a doctor and had a hugely successful career, before abandoning lucrative work in the UK to work in Afghanistan. I knew Karen when we were very young, she was a truly beautiful person, absolutely kind, devoted and genuine. http://www.theplace.org.uk/6305/news/dr-karen-woo.html

Vasiliev is 5"6" he stated his height in a recent interview. In which he also joked about his beautiful long classical lines.

Bart, I agree that the cheering was somewhat stagemanaged, but that aside who's to say that the audience didn't love it? I think this is the problem, watching this excerpt as a connoisseur of ballet, rather than a complete novice, or someone with only a passing awareness. It was a letdown to you, and to anyone who judges it by the rigours of the Bolshoi, Kirov, POB etc but as an excerpt of ballet it was very lovely. Danced well, with no risks that could lead to injury - it was not a failure on any level. SYTYCD isn't ballet, it's showdancing, hip hop etc Wong was a ballet boy who also happened to be the panel's golden boy, however if you want to see just how vile the panel can be to classical ballet dancers see how they treated Danny Tidwell, who was on the show a few seasons back and who came runner up. Tidwell a far more beautiful and innovative dancer than the eager-to-please Wong, was absolutely roasted by those morons week after week. His cool demeanour and belief in letting the movement tell the story rather than overladen emoting was lambasted by Lythgoe and the panel. It wasn't pleasent, not least because Tidwell is a phenomenal dancer. If you want ballet, don't go to SYTYCD. The other major problem is that audiences don't need to watch ballet to think it weak, uninteresting, old-fashioned, alien and quaint. They think that already. And the critical faculties needed to judge stellar, from good, from mediocre performances aren't there, because people don't care about ballet at all. It wouldn't matter whether the three minutes was three minutes of Balanchine, Petipa, Ashton, Forsythe, Fokine, Neuemeir, De Mille, Tudor etc - people aren't engaged enough or feel ballet is relevant enough to care one way or the other. And in truth the best choreography is often the most alienating to novice viewers. What this was was two young, good looking, charming dancers did a technically sound, charming three minutes of dance to an audience who were prompted at certain points, in front of over 9 million viewers at home. It was excellent PR for ballet.

I have to say I think judging them and the appearance in terms of a full blown Don Q is unfair and misses the point. This excerpt was watched by around 9.3 million people, an audience comprised primarily of popular culture viewers, as such more people have been exposed to Don Q, albeit truncated, fleeting and out of context, and ergo ballet, than I daresay Don Q has ever been watched in its entire performance history at ABT. I also think it unfair to say they were weak or mediocre. It was a tiny excerpt, danced in less than perfect conditions, on that killer floor (hard, plexiglass, slippery) danced out of context of the full ballet or even the full pas de deux. Both Matthews and Kajiya weren't weak or mediocre, they were clean, charming, technically assured and most importantly excellent ambassadors for both ballet and ABT - and reached a huge audience on prime time television with ballet. An art form more or less completely unrepresented on mainstream television. In cases like this it's vitally important not to focus on what we think Don Q should be, but what the context of this performance actually was, and be grateful that the producers decided to go laterally with ballet,rather than some breakdance or streetdance act - there's no shortage of acts wanting this kind of exposure. Also, given the nature of the performance space and conditions, I'm not surprised that they chose an excerpt with no pyrotechnics, one bad landing or even good landing on that kind of surface and you're looking at a potentially career ending injury. I've no doubt that the surfaces had something to do with Wong's horrendous injury, it was coming out of a split jump landing on that floor that snapped his achilles tendon. Sure it wasn't great Don Q, or even great ballet, the characters weren't there and why should they be, the audience weren't watching Basil and Kitri, they were watching a ballet tidbit - and who knows perhaps it'll pique someone's interest to explore the art further. In cases like this you take what you can get out of the experience, not judge it for what you know ballet is, as a lover of the art form, but judge it as a lover of the art form finally seeing that art being exposed to a massive audience. Will it have a major impact on ticket sales? I doubt it, but I don't doubt that this has done more for ballet's PR and profile than a decade worth of ABT's marketing budget could hope to achieve on their ever dwindling resources - this ballet tidbit is a cause for rejoicing in what it could potentially mean and achieve. Yes, it was dumbed down Don Q, but it wasn't dumb ballet.

For me Alonso wins it by a nose.

Hey pop pickers, I found a very interesting film of Suzanne Farrell and Afshin Mofid from 1984 in Robbins Afternoon of a Faun with NYCB, that I though you might all enjoy. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1037730427355313168# I was very interested to find this dancer Afshin Mofid, an Iranian who's pretty much completely unknown to me, but I'm sure many of the longtime NYCB goers will have heard of him or seen him dance. For those novices like me, I discovered this recent interview with him he now is a chiropractor in Boise Idaho, after giving up dance very early one. http://www.iranian.com/main/2008/lost-legend Hope you like it.

Sorry, you're quite right. I saw Osipova in Don Quixote and she is really sensational on a technical level, but when I see her dancing she kind of reminds me of that song from Half A Sixpence - "Hold it flashbang wallop what a picture." Does anyone else know what I mean?

When I read tosh like that I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Is a pregnant dimensionality very different from a barren one?

Christian, I have to say I think those clips of Chauvire did her few favours, the second especially. I have no doubt that at her height she must have been great in a certain model, that romantic ballerina as typified by the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo aesthetic, but it is one I struggle with sometimes anyway. I have seen films of her one in La Peri comes to mind which is a piece of "contemporary" ballet from the 50s, it's that awful clunky Massine/Lifar type of melodrama (think Heart of Fire at the beginning of The Red Shoes.) The first clip she was about 45, the second 55. In the second she is so far past her prime, and it is in fairness her final performance, so one can forgive the fact that everything has pretty much gone, but it does beggar the question why exit with Giselle? What I really find twee and nauseating is this ballerina as sacred goddess mentality, an infantalised woman who is an eternal virgin - the reference to her as Diva, Garbo etc And that teeth grindingly over anguished performance style. I just don't get it. When you compare her to Fonteyn who'se career took a massive boost at around about that same age 42/43 the one thing that suddenly hits you is just how contemporary, modern and rooted in innovation Fonteyn actually was. She was quite a hip chick, there was nothing sacred about her, she was flesh and blood and there was no doubt she liked a roll in the hay or several. And that makes her for me, an eternal image of a ballerina. She doesn't run away from the real world, she uses it to bring flesh and blood to her women onstage. And I really believe that's essential if you're going to put on a pair of pointe shoes when you're past 40 and be convincing as a 15 year old virgin peasent Rhine maiden. And also to be fair, Fonteyn in that last seven years or so of her extended performaning career was really pushing it, if you see her Forest of the Amazon it was pretty hokey, though there are brief flashes, that Sylphides she did with Nagy, the Sleeping Beauty Film, but again, what characterises her is that she never played a ballerina onstage. When you think that in 1972 there'd been a decade of Nureyev, Fonteyn, Seymour, Ashton, Macmillan, the height of NYCB, Farrell, the emerging Kirkland, Jerome Robbins, the magnificent bravura of the Bolshoi & Kirov, Baryshnikov was soon to defect, Makarova, the cross pollination of ballet and modern - a true silver age of dance and there's Chauvire trying and badly so to conjure up some pre WWII image of what an 19th century Romantic Ballerina should look and behave like - well, if it's how she wanted to go out, fair play to her, but, it says very little about ballet as an art and much about where Chauvire stopped developing. For her, ballet is when she danced Giselle at the height of her powers, in a certain Romantic style, and with those powers so badly deteriorated I find it harsh, shrill and insincere.

The third one looks like Jimmy Hoffa from the knees down. I do remember reading once about calf muscles that they actually are exceptionally hard to build up, and while they can be significantly strengthened through exercise they're one of the the few muscle groups where increased strength doesn't correspond to increased muscular size. From an aesthetic point of view for the male dancer whose lower torso are ruthlessly exposed I suppose they're somewhat harder to exaggerate with the tastefully placed positioning of a pair of rolled socks, that old chestnut(s).

And thank God such pressure is deserved. I love women. I love their shape and everything about them. If pressure maintains that goregous way they look, hurray for it. The most beautiful thing in the universe, as far as I am concerned, is woman. Sandy you must stop watching Mad Men so much, you hunter gatherer, you.

They were flushed with success.