Simon G

This is the ultimate crux of the matter, a great company is great because of what it is, the people who defined it: Without Ashton, the Royal Ballet would never have existed; ditto New York City Ballet with Balanchine, ditto Royal Danish Ballet with Bournonville, ditto Bolshoi, Mariinksy, Paris Opera with Petipa. Take out those ballets and works, water them down, neuter them and in less than a generation those compaines become faded parodies of what they once were. The attrition of POB after Nureyev built it into a phenomenal classical company happened remarkably quickly as successive AD's took out the classics and made the companies rep a bizarre hotch potch of contemporary and euro-trendy dance styles. NYCB, suffers under Martins' insistence on programming endless new works by himself and the company becomes ill versed in Balanchine's language. There's nothing to be ashamed of in holding on to the style and school which made a company great. And I'm not saying that the RB should be UK-centric. Under De Valois, Ashton and Lambert there was a huge influx of foreign nationals who came to the school and entered the company because the training and schooling were second to none, the company was the absolute pinnacle of classical style, filtered through a uniquely British temperament. The stars created by the school and company reads like a who's who of ballet in the latter half of the 20th century. When I say Latin American for Nunez I don't mean some kind of West Side Story spitfire, I mean her approach to music, tempo, technique and style is unmistakably forged in the Latin American virtuoso schools, she's a lovely dancer sure but when she leads the company all that one can see is the huge gulf between herself and her RBS contemporaries who more often than not are relegated to corps, crowds and demi caractere. The same for McRae, who I just can't stand as a dancer, it's flashy technique and pugnacious teeth-n-tits stage presence. A quick look at the RB rep for the next six months is pretty depressing, Sleeping Beauty, that awful after-Messel bowlderized version now in the rep, a Christmas Nutcracker, a Fille and then a predominance of MacMillan to bring in the crowds. The Royal is now so much like ABT it's scary.

No Canbelto, it's not harsh at all. Indeed Martins went through years of having Balanchine practically torture him until he felt that finally he WAS a Balanchine dancer, so I'm afraid your comparison just doesn't hold water. The current trend of the RB seems to be "come as you are", as long as you can turn like a top, extend like elastic homogeny and style doesn't count. Yes, canbelto, you're right on one count, Ashton and Fonteyn were vital for the founding of the British style, just as De Valois with her Russian based and Checcetti based influences, just as Balanchine, who you did indeed mention earlier would have been nothing without his basis in Vaganova Mariinsky style, ditto Petipa, ditto Bounonville and this saddens me that you so blithely dismiss the very cornerstone of balletic schooling, training and company uniqueness - without that incredible alchemy of a bedrock of ballet schooling, visionary choreographer and directorship ballet wouldn't evolve. It's what makes a great company great - and which the Royal seems to happy to toss away and no longer invest in. I agree that it can be thrilling to watch the latest virtuoso bash their way through a company's rep with total disregard for what that company means, and their choreographic style but it's a dead end for ballet. Indeed I argued as well that if White Lodge isn't training dancers to be complete and able to dance a rep, what's wrong with foreign nationals using the Prix de Lausanne to gain entry to the Royal. It's just a crying shame that the school doesn't seem to armour its students with the full armoury they need and the company at Covent Garden isn't prepared to develop those dancers. Nathalie Harrison is a worrying addition to the company if that's where Mason intends the modern British ballerina to be heading - she's a British Alina Somova. And no, Canbelto, however many times one may repeat it, Nunez is NOT a british dancer in technique, temperament or style not will she ever be, her use of time and musicality sets her apart from any of her British contemporaries, it's thoroughly Latin American and that's before we even get to her technique - yes, she's a thrilling dancer, that I don't disagree with.

I'm not apportioning blame to one AD, Bussel hardly danced under Mason at all, or at least the tail end of her career. What's endemic however is the injury burn out rate. And indeed the disparate techniques the dancers dance which whether we like to admit or not is injurious to dancers' bodies- that's one thing Guillem was hugely censorious of regarding the RB, and her refusal to dance modern/classical in the same season because of the way it ravaged her body. Moreover, you can't call Nunez an RB dancer, she's NOT. And this is the problem a great deal of RB flag waving has the appropriation of foreign styles, techniques and training as Royal Ballet style once the dancer has been there a long time. Nunez is a South American virtuoso, from her training to technique and continuing way she approaches the classics and her rep. This isn't a necessarily a bad thing, it's great for her - but only highlights the disparity between what was once a classical company with its own flavour, style, school and technique and what it is now - an artistic and technical mish mash. Nunez, Cojocaru, Polunin, McRae, Rojo, Soares, Lamb, Yanowsky, Samodurov, Bonnelli etc are NOT RB dancers and never will be and indeed when one puts the "home grown" principals next to them, or rather those few elevated to principal status for what seems political reasons Cuthbertson, Pennefather and Watson, what is most apparant is how lacking they are in all areas of their technique and training and how far the Royal has fallen in terms of a technique, school and style. However, on reflection I do think it was unfair of me to bring up Cojocaru, perhaps. I feel that Cojocaru's deeper problems stem from the fact that she may not have a body for ballet. She's essentially a lyrical ballerina, with a very fragile musculature and frame, but she was pushed as a virtuoso and had developed a hyper flexible technique, especially her back - there were times when it seemed she couldn't do a straight out classical arabesque even when one was called for, everything was 180 degree penchee with a vertical spine attached. I don't think hers was a body that was destined to last the distance, even when she started at the Royal she had those horrific bunions which necessitated extra wide blocks and those stresses have seemingly continued throughout her whole body.

Mel, I think in the case of the Royal it's a little more involved than that. The Royal like the other great companies POB, Mariinksy, Bolshoi, RDB, NYCB has been linked intrinsically to its school throughout its history until the last decade. True the other companies have allowed in outside trained dancers from time to time (though I am aware that RDB has upped its outsider recruitment policy) but the stars of the Royal have been traditionally a product of its school, ditto its once world-class corps. The Royal is increasingly like ABT, indeed with its overwhelming majority of Principals and First soloists trained, schooled and working in other companies the real question is the erosion of what was the Royal's style. A style BRB sees as its duty to maintain. I think though it's more a question of "fairness" - the school has most definitely been for many years NOT producing finished products, though that doesn't mean that with careful nurturing they didn't have the potential to be "stars" Jamie Bond, Robert Parker, Monica Zamora, Iain Mackay, Thomas Caley, Jenna Roberts - all dancers who at BRB found the means to achieve the technical and artistic abilities they didn't have or which were embryonic to achieve principal status. The problem is that the Covent Garden company is a big business, expenisve business and unfortunately that business is one which is undervalued within society - ballet. The Covent Garden company needs its stars to be fully formed on entering and sadly it doesn't have the time to nurture its talent. That notwithstanding the Covent Garden company is a draw for any young dancer, well paid, full time contracts, great health benefits and support and ostensibly a great rep and it will always be a major attraction for foreign dancers. It costs upwards of £20,000 a year to be a student at the Royal ballet school, students from poor countries of course can't afford this means of training and fast tracking into the country, hell students in the UK can't either - it's why despite the protestations that dance is egalitarian and the cheesy Billy Elliot myth, dance remains resolutely middle class, they're the only ones who can afford to train their kids. Of course given that the training in the former Soviet countries and South America, especially, is so much better at producing the virtuosos modern ballet demands, it's far better for a young dancer to train at home and then use the Lausanne scholarship to come to prominence and attention with the Royal Ballet. It's not Cojocaru, Nunez, Polunin or McRae's fault that they were more talented than their British compatriots and used the only means at their disposal to gain entrance to the company. If the school was producing talent of that calibre the various prizes would be irrelevant, the company wouldn't need to shop around. The other argument against the Royal's recruitment policy is when an RBS trained dancer gains fame within another company and comes back to the Royal or more often stays with their company and everyone laments "the one that got away" etc but the real issue is that that dancer hadn't achieved their potential at the school and needed the nurturing of a company which valued talent as an embryonic commidity and helped the dancer to reach their potential. The Royal's burn out rate and injury rate amongst its fast-tracked stars is high, too high. Dancers are given back breaking workloads which cause them to self-destruct before they have the stamina to cope. Cojocaru especially I really can't see lasting another five let alone ten years given the horrendous extent of the injuries she's had to cope with. She was thrust into the spotlight far too soon, or rather she was given a seasoned ballerina's workload far too soon - Mcrae, Putrov, Bussell - all plagued by injuries from the outset. Again and again it comes down to the Covent Garden's bizarre policy of all or nothing, because it's not just artistry that needs nurturing it's a body's strength and stamina that equally needs slow progressive training to withstand a career as a principal.

JM, That's it exactly and why I got so riled with the original tone of this posting. BRB dancers (sorry it's been a while since I saw NBT) are top flight dancers in a top flight company. Comparison to Covent Garden RB is invidious and pointless and indeed it's Covent Garden that comes out lacking. As you say with BRB you get homogeny of style, a company which looks like a company and a committment to performance from a group of dancers who all look like they actually want to be there. The London-centric bias is just ridiculous, when NYCB came to London last year there was so much bitching about how poor they were in comparison to the Royal, but I think that was severly misplaced complacency and parochial pride. With NYCB what you got was a company trained in a style, together in a style with a corps from Corps to principals trained in a school which still was the lifeblood to a company. When was the last time anyone could say that about the Covent Garden company? I think actually another problem with the Royal at Covent Garden is the price of seats, with the majority of seats now being in the £80+ range for ballet and £150 range for opera the majority of Covent Garden's clientele are sadly block booking corporates and what they're fed is a diet of "international" stars, and poorly thought out programmes the majority of which are the Covent Garden's badly designed three act classics and stodgy Macmillan three acters. A quick look at the rep for the past x years and you'd never think that the Royal has one of the most varied, richest and exciting reps in the world. The range breadth and beauty of the BRB dancers is brilliant - it's just such a pity that they're seen so often as "sloppy seconds", for all out dancing and company style they put Covent Garden to shame.

Probably Sarah Crompton read this and tried to explain it on today's Telegraph "Tamara Rojo is a dancer with a unique ability to make the liquid art of movement look like sculpted air. Her arms seem to ripple in response to the music, her legs and highly-arched feet carve the space around them, her body falls perfectly into each changing pose. But all her physical beauty and skill is as nothing to the air of dramatic intelligence that accompanies her every time she walks onto a stage." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre...ROH-review.html To me she is one of the very few dancers of these days I'd call an "artist". At the same time I understand Carbro perplexity, because I think that videos often don’t convey enough Tamara's qualities (another, even more evident, case is to me Masha Alexandrova, whose HUGE stage presence and charisma are in great part lost in filmed performances). Anna, I have to say I'm with Carbro on this one and I have seen her live several times. What's interesting is that those very qualities which Crompton waxes lyrical over and which makes up her persona or USP as a ballerina, I find overly mannered, precious and insincere, as Bart said one man's meat... The thing is I find very much that her stage persona is so self-absorbed, so much playing the part of a grand classical ballerina that very little else comes out, almost as if she's so caught up in the experience of having an experience and wants you the audience member to know that "you're part of this experience, dammit!" The thing is she is a phenomenal technician and I also feel that so often she's aware that this was her initial calling card it's almost as if she's deliberately going overboard on the artist/ballerina persona in order to downplay her very real dancing gifts. Interestingly the one time I really thought "wow" about her was on a video, the one of her guesting at the Mariinsky with Kolb in Swan Lake as part of the White Nights Festival. In act three she just went absolutely to town as Odile, almost as if she was thinking "sod being a ballerina, I'm going to show them how it's done." Not in any of her live performances have I seen her dance with so much abandonment and fearlessness, if she were to dance like that all the time then maybe I would "get" her. That somewhat precious persona is also why I find Alessandra Ferri alienating as a ballerina, I just don't buy into the experience I'm supposed to be having of watching a "great interpretive" artist. She always reminds me of Joan Sutherland's remonstration against the GPE.

Bart, The big thing about the Royal Ballet in London is a) the opera house, it's a real calling card for prestige the fact that the ballet and opera are enshrined there gives those respective companies this untouchable gloss. Which is a pity perhaps should those companies focus not so much on where the stage is, but what they put on it the Covent Garden RB might be in a better state. b) the prestige of the company from the 40s to early 70s basically the company that De Valois, Ashton and Lambert created and artistically controlled and led. The Covent Garden address can't be underestimated it's why the ROH garners the vast majority of arts funding, it's why those huge world stars flock to perform there and also why the RB at Covent Garden seems so reticent to actively develop new dancers and their technique and talents - to justify the huge prices for seats they want fully formed virtuosos. The time, effort and nurturing needed to create homegrown stars seems too much for the administration. Another problem is that the Covent Garden Royal is a well paid job, with full benefits, fixed contracts and employment rights - a major draw for any dancer. It's why dancers from other schools and countries flock to London, the Royal offers as much security as a dancer can hope for. The problem a lot of dancers who find themselves relegated to "spear carrier" face is that they're artistically and professionally unfulfilled, but are terrified to leave that security. There's been so much written about how the British school doesn't produce dancers of high calibre, but I think that's wrong, the problem is that the company doesn't produce mature dancers from the basic raw talent those dancers finish their training with. Bintley at BRB seems committed to this. Northern Ballet Theatre used to be a classical ballet company however, it's now more of a ballet dance theatre company for many reasons, some may be changing audience tastes, another is that they just can't compete with the Royal, specifically Birmingham Royal and English National who are committed classical companies, have much more history and tour extensively as well as much greater budgets to stage the classics with a full company of dancers. Northern dances rarely in London and then in very short seasons. Birmingham Royal does dance in London once a year and the Covent Garden Royal tours rarely if ever in the UK but does tour abroad. A real bone of contention for non London based ballet lovers as their taxes are used to fund the Royal and its touring. The short answer to top dancers receiving exposure is no, dancers at the BRB, ENB, NBt and Scottish Ballet rarely if ever receive the wider recognition the Royal dancers do, or rather the London based media recognition. But very very few of the dancers brought to wider prominence at the Royal actually are British, trained at the Royal Ballet School, are full products of the school or company. The Covent Garden company loves sensation because that creates media interest and of course ticket sales - even when creating that sensation does harm to dancers, it would sadly seem. Bussell, being a case where rapid elevation really stopped her creatively, Cojocaru, the 2001 Romanian sensation, has had huge injury problems because she was given a workload too heavy for her young technique and body. Tony Hall keeps droning on about "new Nureyev's" - two years ago Steven McRae was the new Nureyev, this year Sergei Polunin was annointed with that title - Hall loves his spin, but doesn't seem to realise how banal such a pronouncement is. Nureyev was a product of time, place, political situation and of course Fonteyn.

I have to say this thread or rather the bias of it slightly irks me. For starters as Carbro so rightly pointed out, one can't assume anything based on the fact that a talented dancer chose not to or was not offered a contract with the Royal, we don't know the reasons nor the desires of the dancer for their career choices or their chosen company. However, my biggest bone of contention is this continuing mindset of classing Birmingham as a second class company and the Covent Garden as the pinnacle of balletic achievement. For starters it's plugging in to this notion that the Covent Garden company is a world-class classical company, it's not, nor has it been for quite some time. Rather it's a world-class selection of principals from other schools and companies with a backdrop of RBS trained dancers as corps or if they're lucky demi caractere soloists. Covent Garden RB has had a long history of under utilising and relegating talent to the sidelines and sadly letting a great deal of fruit whither on the vine and many dancers quite rightly see the Birmingham company as a much better bet to be used within a wide range of classical, commissioned and modern works and have a real chance of dancing constantly and be promoted. Bintley at Birmingham is brilliant at promoting and developing home-grown talent and giving that talent ample opportunities to progress and develop. Indeed all the male classical principals save two are RBS english trained and several started their careers at the Covent Garden company languised in the bottom ranks for a couple of years, before joining BRB and advancing. Jamie Bond, the most recent male promotion to principal being a case in point, ditto Natasha Oughtred. There's no point being in a "world class" company if all you're doing for a decade is pretty much of nothing except filling in crowd scenes. Bussell was earmarked for Covent Garden from the start when every company in the world was in this bizarre ballet space race to make their own Sylvie Guillem in the late eighties, it's a bad example and indeed had she continued at Sadlers Wells and been able to develop her talents at her own pace perhaps she would have been the dancer she had the potential to be, rather than the Royals media-friendly figurehead. Pipit-Suskun was I believe offered a Royal contract but for her own reasons chose to go straight in to soloist at SFB and indeed given the Royal's track record of under-using its young talent, can anyone blame a dancer for choosing to actually dance rather than an uncertain future languishing in the corps of a once-great company trading on past glamour and prestige. It's also incredibly insulting to Birmingham Royal Ballet, its dancers, and personnel to view it as a stepping-stone junior company. It's not, it's the real deal in its own right, a classical major company presenting the full length classics, modern British and American classics and with a wide and varied policy of commissioning new works presented on main stage. The kind of company any young dancer would dream of joining. Given also that David Bintley sees his dancers as more than mere adjuncts to imported stars and actively cherishes the developing of young and emerging talent - BRB deserves to be seen and considered for what it is, a dream job for any dancer and not second best.

Richka, There was a big deal made about this in the British press only recently. The UK has become super vigilant in the "War on Terror" including all applications by foreign nationals to work and live in the UK. (That is when we're not releasing Libyan mass murdering terrorists after only 7 years in prison on "compassionate (BP oil) grounds") Part of this increased "xenophobia" is a clamp down on foreign nationals taking British jobs, the criteria for this means that now any non Brit must have paper proof of exceptional qualifications in order to take a job that could go to an equally qualified Brit. However, since ballet dancers qualifications are totally non academic the Royal Opera House and Tony Hall spearheaded a campaign for exceptional circumstances in the case of artists such as dancers, opera singers etc which was passed as it's been several hundred years (slight hyperbole here) since a British dancer of any real note or worth has risen through the ranks of a British ballet company to achieve star or international star status.

I've been dipping into some of the literature on Beard -- and rechecking some stuff about Tudor -- and have not found such a suggestion. Considering the implications, I'd appreciate any documentation you have for this statement. I'm not sure I understand what the implications are? I didn't say he wanted to have sex with him but was attracted to his youtful and sexual allure, hence the casting in ballets where he had little or nothing to do except "be" an object of desire and Tudor's excommunication of Beard from Ballet Theatre after the machinations of Kaye to win Beard for Ashton. Sexual attraction needn't be a salacious or seedy thing, it's merely a fact of human nature.

My goodness! Or, as a teenager might put it nowadays: "OMG!" I don't believe that the article -- "The Loves of His Life," May 19, 1997 -- has been reprinted in any of Croce's collections. Bart, I think "teenage" is the operative word. Ashton was obviously in thrall and also liked euphemism in his love letters. The one I liked reprinted in the Kavanagh was when Ashton wrote about Beard "showering him with stars".

Richka, Beard was born in 1926 making him 83 when he died. However, you're inaccurate on several counts. Beard was offered a place in the Sadlers Wells Touring Company, (now Birmingham Royal Ballet) which he declined he wanted a position in the Sadlers Wells Ballet (now Royal Ballet) based at Covent Garden. Although Ashton kept promising to get him a spot in the main company De Valois wasn't ameneable to this. It was actually far far easier for Americans to work in the UK and vice versa back then and it's far harder now for foreign artists to achieve work permit status, let alone full residency status in the UK. Indeed with the current political climate and the UK's increasingly stringent policies regarding foreign nationals taking up qualified positions within the UK, the Government recently amended their criteria allowing highly trained ballet dancers to not have to submit to the university qualification criteria. Also back then the company was composed of New Zealanders, Australians, South Africans, Russians, Rhodesians, Lithuanians, Canadians etc (to name a few nationalities off the top of my head) the only difference real difference was that the majority had been trained at the Sadlers Wells Ballet school (now Royal Ballet school) as opposed to coming to the company fully formed in other schools and companies as is now the case because the school can't seem to produce viable stars. Also Dick Beard was never a principal with American Ballet Theatre, (then simply called Ballet Theatre) he was a corps de ballet dancer, who was elevated to certain roles because Anthony Tudor was sexually attracted to him, ditto Ashton when he saw him in 1946 in Pillar of Fire. If anything the consensus was that his physical beauty detracted from his becoming the dancer he had the potential to be.

Hi BalletFan, If you're talking about these productions you have to bear in mind that choreographically they're the same. It's only the designs which are different. I have to say the production design Dowell commissioned from Maria Bjornsson is for me the worst production design I have ever seen. I don't mean this to insult you or your taste, at all but I can go so far as to say I hate it, it's atrocious, it masks, destroys and obliterates the most vital aspect of Sleeping Beauty, which is of course the dancing. On television it's not so obvious but in the audience live it was impossible to focus on the ballet every inch of the stage was busy and drew attention away from the centre where the dancing takes place. The tutus are a problem for me too, over elaborate, over designed, with too many accessories breaking up lines, the purpose of a tutu is to give clarity to the ballerina's lines, everything about this production seemed hell bent on destroying the ballet. Which is a pity as regardless of interpretation the Sleeping Beauty as produced by the Royal is one of the purest and most beautiful anywhere. One of Mason's good calls was to ditch that horrible overly cute Makarova production for a redesign, the only problem was for me that she created a production after Messel, why not just hold your hands up, say you were wrong and go back to the Messel? I've always had problems with Durante, I find her cold, uninvolved, self-absorbed and technically solid, but not technically exciting or daring. The irony for me about her is that for such a slight dancer she's stodgy. If that makes sense? Cojocaru and Nunez are a much better singing cast. Solymosi was a strange one, his break up with the Royal being famous, he was fired after calling Apollo s*** during a rehearsal, though I'm sure that was the straw that broke the camel's back. He nonetheless had something about him that I agree the anodyne Bonelli doesn't. And as to Carabosse, again it's a matter of taste Dowell's high camp, like Baby Jane off her face on cocaine and crystal meth, or Rosato's more studied picture of malevolence.

I think the Giselle Act II might very well be taken by Baron. He did a whole series of Shearer as Giselle and this is his kind of posed plastique style.

Hmmm, Leonid, I'm not quite sure of your point? True St Denis had fans, no one disputes that, but let's face it ethnic dance in all its myriad forms endures within the cultures in which it was created and has done for thousands of years. Not so St Denis' rather parochial takes on these art and dance forms. St Denis? Who actually remembers her, her work, what exactly is her legacy? Pretty photos, silly dressing up, an approximation her own version of these traditional dance forms, because she was first and foremost a magpie, a charlatan, a Vaudevillian whose misplaced delusions of grandeur were balanced by her brilliance as a performer. History tends to keep that which is important to it, especially in dance despite it would often sadly seem the concerted interests of those in artisitc directorships to destroy it. History has forgotten St Denis as nothing more than a curiosity, a forerunner of much greater more important artists and a remnant of a gentler, more naive, sepia tinted postcard era of nostalgia, sentiment and bathos. But again Leonid, thank you for all those lovely quotes, and for the effort it must have taken to exhume them, I'm sure Miss Ruth wherever she may be is delighted.

I've no doubt they were authentic, she liked dressing up. However, traditional theatre forms native to Japan are in no way as hammy and campy as these photos suggest St Denis's rather self-indulgent extravaganzas must have been. But lovely photos none the less.

I think that would depend on the focus. Dance doesn't have to be in a leotard to be a valid piece of art, and yes there is technique involved in fabric manipulation. One of the oddest surprises for me was to hear that when St. Denis toured the Far East with her dancers was that she was very successful there. I thought that with the real thing available, the public would have shied away from a Western take on it... but have been informed that at the time very few of the general population actually got to see the temple dancers and indian classical dancers, and they were delighted to be entertained by St. Denis. Have to run before finishing this thought... Hi Amy, Can I just amend the "cheap" aspect, I don't think it's cheap to be sentimetal about one's teacher, and I'm not at all denigrating St Denis and her work, which was of its time. I have no doubt as I've said before that St Denis must have been an entrhalling and compelling dancer and it's interesting that she had a huge, huge inferiority complex when it came to Duncan. Graham too had an incredible influence on fabric, costume and the way it was used for dramatic effect within her dance theatre.

He worked with her, by her, for her. Creating, editing, composing, advising - and the music was made for the dance and sometimes vice versa. With the case of Herodiade Hindemith composed it first after discussing the dramaturgy with Graham, who then composed the dance for the music. But that wasn't what I was saying or talking about at all in terms of dance being a seperate art and wholly itself independent of music.

Carriage, deportment and swishing fabric don't make a dancer or dance technique, nor do they make a lasting body of work. Are we talking about dance or cheap sentiment here?

Liling, Sorry, I did indeed express that cackhandedly, what I meant that Horst believed that music and dance were inextricably linked. Though the fact is that dance is absolutely independent of music, both as an art form and performance discipline, there is no need for dance to co exist with music. Two of my teachers in London were Jane Dudley & Nina Fonaroff, both Horst's protege's and Dudley's Graham and composition classes in particular followed many of Horst's formats - i don't need to read a book, I got a course in it from someone who learned and performed at the horse's mouth, as is were and Belinda Quirey taught us for Baroque and historic dance forms. And yes, even though Graham was his absolute ideal and that against which all others fell short, there is the possibility that others were greater than Graham, something he refused to entertain. For me, just as St Denis was far outdistanced by Graham, she was outdistanced by Cunningham, certainly a choreographer the antithesis of Horst's ideal and ideals of choregraphy. I meant no disprespect to Horst or his memory and fully recognise the huge impact he had on the progression of modern dance, but I do stand by my statement that it is kind of overstating and romantic to believe that Horst is still alive and well within the current dance landscape.

The crux of Lady Kay's question was whether St Denis had a legitimate technique based around ethnic dance forms which influenced the following generations of modern dance innovators. However, this specifically could only be in relation to Graham & Humphrey/Weidman who were the only true dance innovators to have studied with Denishawn. Humphrey's aesthetic & body of work is so unrelated to ethnicity specifically eastern ethnicity that one could argue that if anything the only way St Denis influenced Humphrey was to run as far away as possible from St Denis and everything she stood for. Graham however is a very different story, as a strong undercurrent of and influence of eastern philosophy and aesthetics does run throughout her work HOWEVER unlike St Denis Graham made a huge, personal and lifelong effort to not just study these religions, cultures and aesthetics as a surface glamour, but to to try and fully understand the genesis and meaning of these cultures to which she was drawn. Graham's first solo concert was a series of studies in movement in 1926 which she freely admitted borrowed heavily from Denishawn and what she learnt there because she had no point of comparison to anything else. Indeed one piece entitled Study in Lacquer had Graham enshrined in folds of silk kimonos, a full geisha wig on her head, immitating a porcelain Japanese figurine then came the final rift with Denishawn when she was forbidden to teach or perform in the style without paying rights she couldn't afford. It was at this point that you could say Martha Graham began as an artist. Graham's breakthrough came three years later with the concert in which she performed the solo Dance - in this concert their became apparent the contraction, the release, and the personal aesthetic which was to inform her art and technique. Graham's interests in ethnic cultures were concentrated on Native American dances, for rain, fertility, war, but she wasn't copying, she studied the cultures attended ceremonies amongst tribes. The way the foot stamps the earth, flexes demanding favours of the gods - this was what Graham was about. Her studies in the eastern philosphies especially Kundalini weren't about pretty concert pieces, she wasn't interested in these cultures because she could be pretty onstage - she was interested in the deep spiritual side of performance and dance as held by primitive cultures. Because her first legitimate masterpiece Primative Mysteries in 1931 whilst dealing in wholly Catholic material was the Virgin's grief as if reimagined by a Native American religious order. Graham's art and technique was brutal, visceral and wholly unconcerned with surface - the antithesis of Ruth St Denis for whom spirituality was synonymous with prettiness, beatitude and whimsy. Martha Graham famously said of her admiration of the Native American's brutality "they worship a God who died in torture" - for Graham worship, torture and veneration were the qualities which interested her within ethnic dance and philosophy. Her solo of 1944 Herodiade her dance at 50 as a farewell to youth, in which a woman confronts her mortality in a mirror was inspired intellectually by Burmese film footage of village priestesses' ritual of kissing the crown of a cobra's head in order to ensure the birth of male children to the village - and although the dance had no re-enaction of the ritual, the power of that primative culture underpinned Herodiade. Amy, you may be interested in what Lincoln Kirstein said about Horst in eulogy "He believed in art without compromise... the real value of Louis Horst was that he gave a morality to choreography." And martha Graham wrote in the New York Times " His sympathy and understanding but primarily his faith gave me a landscape to move in. Without it, I should certainly have been lost." One can't underestimate Horst's influence in the creation of Martha Graham, but there's a flipside to Kirstein's evalutation, though Horst was without compromise, he rarely compromised on his own beliefs of what choreography and dance should be and morals are utterly personal to the individual. With Graham he had his life's work and that sadly obliterated his valuing a modern dance landscape which was ephemeral and shifting radically throughout his life. Cunningham, Taylor, Limon, all were second class artists, talents, God knows what he thought of the Judson Church Group, there's the famous story of his review of Paul Taylor's solo concert in which he stood still for ten minutes doing nothing, Horst responded with a blank 3 inches of column space with his name at the bottom. For Horst the beat and the movement were synonymous. But that was his morality and he stuck to it, passionately. Horst also loathed Shawn, he revered St Denis as a great dancer, but not her dance as being great, and he found her Vaudevillian dances distasteful - he had no belief in Denishawn as a significant or enduring legacy of art. This is quite an interesting quote by Agnes De Mille about St Denis's technique of dance and creating dances: And there's another one in which she sums up St Denis's legacy which is harsh, but very tragic and moving and probably quite true: Denishawn as a venture was overextended from the start, they couldn't afford the school, or the huge rounds of double tours one led by Shawn the other by St Denis. The whole enterprise was the hubris of Shawn and St Denis can hardly be blamed for succumbing to the attentions of a much younger man - this was a woman who had lived 20 or more years under the mantle of assumed Sainthood. Humphrey, Weidman, Graham all left her Horst only stuck around because he was having an affair with Graham and new she was the real deal, as soon as she left he did. And Shawn needed to live free of the middle aged woman he was married to, to pursue his life as a homosexual. Certainly his all male dance group was a short lived venture in the annals of modern dance history. Though he did continue to support her financially throughout her life.

Mme. Hermine I'm not attacking anyone, nor am I attacking you. And I think that's a bit rich to accuse me of attack when I've been accused of being of the gutter, unlearned, bringing down the tone and quality of this board. Why on earth is frank, open discussion and debate considered attack? I have no agenda, and I'm actually getting a bit irritated at having nefarious, prurient ulterior motives put upon me, when believe me Mme. Hermine, truly there are none there. However, if you would like to clarify exactly what my agenda is, I'd be delighted to know, as I am currently mystified as to what it might be.

Patrick, Yes, absolutely, Graham venerated St Denis as a dancer, she knew she was a great artist and much of her chagrin at Denishawn was being pawned off on Ted Shawn; and she did throughout her life continue to hold St Denis up as a figure of veneration as an artist, but not her art, nor her technique, nor her approach to art. I think that's what I'm trying but obviously failing to communicate, the great dichotomy of St Denis was that she was a great artist, which was what saved her dance theatre from being completely superficial. If one can single out any one great thing Graham did, it was in the creation of a technique that can train, create and make a fully rounded dancer. Graham's legacy was of the creation of a whole new legitimate, classical even, art form. Rooted in a school and by school I mean a technique which has travelled the world, is taught througout the world and remade the world. St Denis's legacy is evaporated, there's nothing of it except sepia tinted poses in postcards - and the inspiration she put in her two great students to found an art form with real meat, technique and durable purpose.

Actually Leonid, That's not Lady Kay's original question at all. Her question was "why isn't St Denis's Oriental technique/style not reflected in the American modern dance. By which she means Graham, Holm, Humphrey and then further generations. The thing you seem to fail to grasp is that St Denis was NOT Oriental dance, it was her idea of what orientalia should be. Those postcards while charming only confirm in my eye what a charlatan she was in terms of legitimately appropriating and assimilating Asian and Eastern dance styles - she was no more than playing dress up. My assault on St Denis was not at her position as a great dancer everyone attests to this, what they also say however, is that her artistry was completely superficial. You cannot assess St Denis as an originator of technique, she had none beyond that which she needed for her pretty dances; nor can you claim that her influence on her two great students Graham and Humphrey was a direct case of inspiration. They succeeded by reacting against everything St Denis and Denishawn stood for. Louis Horst was not employed by Denishawn to the full of his capabilities, he was their accompanist, then when they sacked their conductor he stepped in - it wasn't until leaving Denishawn his studies in Germany and his artistic marriage to Graham that he came into his own as a teacher of music composition and the composition of beats and meter in dance forms. However, Horst had a deep aversion to modern music, especially Stravinsky, and he held the belief that dance and music were inextricably linked - he was highly censorious of the moderns who sprang up in the 50s of modernism in general. To claim rather breezily and whistfully that his influence is seen througout the current dance world is stretching it a bit - because one thing that modern dance had to do to grow up is get beyond the belief that a step of dance equals a beat of music. If Lady Kay wants to study St Denis that's great, but to send her off on a wild goose chase down the pathways of Oriental dance and philosophy claiming that St Denis was a great innovator in these forms is a total waste of time. Which is also what my unlearned first post was trying to do, to introduce St Denis for what she was, an artist yes, a curiosity, an artistic charlatan and a product of a specific time and place in the history of dance and public performance, who was ultimately outdistanced by her "pupils".

I'm sorry everyone, I think it's the pugilist in me, I get so caught up in the thrill of the banter I forget myself. Dirac, I don't mind being called vulgar at all I think I may very well be pathologically so, and patrick and Leigh are right, sometimes i forget myself. I promise I'll try super hard to keep things on a cleaner even keel remembering not every poster here shares my loucher sensibilities. I think the thing is as well, none of my friends, absolutely none now are involved in dance or have much or any interest in it, so when I talk about it with them and try to engage their interest I do have a tendency to either sex things up or use humour to engage. The problem dance faces is the indifference of the greater population who see it so often as absolutely rarified, elitist and anachronistic - I always try to filter it through my personal sensibilities as I find this helps when I'm trying to communicate my love of the art form to total novices. Rg, may I just say I wasn't meaning to one up you regarding the genesis of St Denis' name. The Egyptian Cigarette story was the one I liked best, though I do admit it sounds rather hokey, the kind of thing St Denis would have made up, but you know what I think it's far more probable that the Belasco story is closer to the truth but I also wouldn't be surprised if it was more due to her resisting his advances than an outright compliment.