Simon G

Gelsey Kirkland commissioned her own second act Giselle costume which cost her $1000...

...which she ordered of the same fabric she found Carla Fracci's skirt to be made of via sneaking on the Italian's dressing room in the middle of the night and cutting a piece from the underskirt... Oh Gelsey, Gelsey...too much Gelsey..

Maybe she was high at the time?

I hadn't actually considered contemporary ballet,but I take the point about modern costumes, and will pay more attention to this aspect of costuming, as I have recently made an effort to introduce contemporary ballet into my collection.I'm grateful for the pointer. It is however in classical ballet where the real problems are. It's such a crying shame when a superb performance is marred by the distraction of a skirt which refuses to rise and fall as it should. I've just gone off to compare three of the Giselles I have (RB,POB & La Scala among others) and I just can't get past the annoying behaviour of the Royal Ballet's Act II skirts,much as I love the overall performance.Maybe the fabrics are too lightweight, could that be it? The POB do seem to fare better in the costume department. My wife, who is not a huge fan of ballet, commented on the lovely rise and fall of the skirts in the POB La Dame aux camelias. I thereafter became acutely aware of the special talent which some costumiers have and others definitely not. It took me long enough to get past my objection to skirts of any type, especially for major solos, but I can live with it if they don't unnecessarily interfere with what's going on within them. While I often despair at the lack of anything at all to look as in those tedious mass character dances,it is in the sublime moments of such jewels as Giselle Act II when this aspect of ballet is at its most critical, in my view. I appreciate that it is only my view, but I do think it rather sad that a great performance, especially when preserved on disc, is diminished by less than sublime costuming. I won't veer off into tutus, which can be similarly damaging to a performance (in my view) - maybe others might care to have a go at that?

Hunterman

In terms of how fabric moves it's simply a question of economics. The more expensive the material the better the quality of movement, the pinnacle is silk, nothing moves, breathes, falls or mirrors a dancer's body like silk - the act 2 tutu of Giselle is a specific kind of tutu from the Romantic era of ballet, those ballets, with the exception of Giselle are rarely if ever performed (with honorable mentions to La Sylphide & Les Sylphides, which I know is not Romantic era, but the costumes are) in an ideal world all those tutus would be made of silk. Except silk is horrendously expensive, doesn't travel well, is easily soiled and spoiled, is not durable, rots with moisture & sweat and needs a huge amount of upkeep, in a ballet like Giselle where there are thirty or so Romantic tutus per performance and several casts, all of whom will need tutus specifically fitted to their requirements it's simply not economically feasible - so more durable fabrics are used which can travel and last and be repaired and take a huge amount of wear and tear season in season out before being replaced.

The Paris Opera Ballet has a huge amount of subsidy compared to any other ballet company in the world and can afford better quality of materials for their costumes, it's that simple, the better the fabric the better the movement quality. Tutus, even common-or-garden ones can cost up to a few thousand pounds each, every female dancer goes through at least a pair of pointe shoes a day at £30 each, supplied by the company, at the end of the day whatever may be lost in substituting tulle & net for silk in terms of the way the fabric falls with the body it's tough, the bottom line is money.

If you're talking about the romantic tutu as Hunterman was, which is only seen in the second act of Giselle, Les Sylphides and on the Sylph in La Sylphide it's a very specific type of skirt and tutu. The majority of tutus are made of tulle, or durable fabrics which will last, can be shared amongst numerous ballerinas and dancers and are durable enough to last season after season.

Companies can't afford silk especially expensive silk which has unique properties of movement, Nureyev got what he wanted for his dancers because he was Nureyev, though in several cases such as when he worked with the National Ballet of Canada his design demands almost bankrupted the company, indeed one of the board had to remortgage his house to cover the costs. Gelsey Kirkland commissioned her own second act Giselle costume which cost her $1000 because she didn't want to wear the starched tulle that was given to ballerinas, she wanted a costume to mirror her specific line and interpretation, and that cost money.

When dancers dance they sweat, they put their costumes through a hell of a lot and long skirts bunch up and twist around working limbs, it's the nature of the beast. Martha Graham invented her own design for a supported long skirt to counter this very problem.

The thing is the examples of dance I posted aren't modern dance, but modern ballet. William Forsythe was working directly with the ballet form but he wanted a tutu which is the antithesis of the norm and Michael Clark and his company are all ballet dancers reconstructing ballet or deconstructing ballet and with it what costumes in ballet are expected to do.

Geordias' designs for Macmillan's historical ballets, Romeo & Juliet, Manon, Mayerling are all worth a look for what Geordias did with historical designs and how he retained the accuracy of historical detail for dance purposes.

Was it Nureyev who said something on the lines of 'the fall of a skirt can complete a phrase'? I'm fascinated by the behaviour of costumes in performance. Some seem to behave beautifully, while others draw attention to themselves by just 'doing their own thing', ie not being at all sympathetic to a dancer's movements. It can be quite irritating when this happens, and impossible to ignore at times. Act Two of Giselle seems to be particularly vulnerable to costume failure, in my view anyway. I'd love a stitch by stitch analysis of the world of costuming, but I'll settle for comments which might share my view that costumes are at times appallingly badly behaved, with maybe a little technical insight into how good behaviour is achieved. I've no doubt misquoted Nureyev, but I've seen enough, both good and bad, to validate the essence of what was said.

Hunterman the issue and art of costume design in dance is a massive one and often the whole purpose of design in a great deal of contemporary ballet and dance is specifically to distort or abstract the line of the body, to set up conflicts that classical ballet's costume designs specifically don't.

Here's a couple of examples. The tutus designed by Stephen Galloway for William Forsythe's "The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude:

Leigh Bowery's designs for "Hail The New Puritan" for The Michael Clark Company, a modern dance company trained in and using the ballet lexicon:

There's an awful lot more out there of interest such as Rei Kawakuba's designs for Merce Cunningham's "Scenario" for his own company where the costumes were intended to make the bodies of the dancers as lumpen, misshapen as possible.

Or look at the designs for Lyon Ballet's version of Cendrillon.

And yet more Trinidad Sevillano hits from the vaults. I just found this a snippet of her in Romeo & Juliet one of her greatest successes this time at the Teatro Colon possibly late 80s.

It's a bit overwraught and cheesy in that 80s way. You keep expecting Crockett & Tubbs to burst in and start making arrests. It wasn't just the women of ENB who were incredible at that time, while the Royal was really in the doldrums with their underwhelming male roster ENB had Koen Onzia, Matz Skoog, Patrick Armand, Alessandro Molin, Peter Schaufuss, Martin James, Schaufuss also brought Julio Bocca to the West on his first engagements before ABT or the Royal. It was quite a company.

I knew this existed and I found it. Another bit of Trinidad Sevillano memorabilia/ephemera this time a cheesey 80s pop video.

In 1988 she was in a video for T'Pau's power ballade Valentine, it's poodle perms and shoulder pads at dawn. The male dancer is Koen Onzia. You might want to turn the sound down. It was filmed in the Old Sadlers Wells and I'm fairly certain the choreography is by Denzel Bailey who was one of the first black dancers to enter a mainstream company, English National Ballet:

When the very young Lynn Seymour was emerging as a ballerina in the touring arm of Sadlers Wells she was given Swan Lake & Sleeping Beauty even though she didn't yet have the technique to pull off the fouettes or the rose adagio. She was given the roles because De Valois knew Seymour was a ballerina and whatever it took for her to build up the technique the investment in her talent was worth it. And bear in mind at this stage she was almost a total unknown and had only been in the company just under two years.

In Swan Lake the deal was that she would try as many as possible and when she couldn't go any further Donald Macleary would step in and do a series of jetes en tournant around the stage. In her first performance she only managed 8, she eventually managed the 32 at her third performance and the galvanising force to get her to complete them was that in the afternoon dress rehearsal Macleary had become so tense watching her and waiting to come in that he fainted and Seymour was afraid that he'd be so stressed in a performance proper he might faint onstage.

In Sleeping Beauty she simply didn't have the strength to hold her arms in fifth in the Rose Adagio in unsupported balances when she first came to the role, so she worked out a dramatic story where she was eyeing up each prince as he presented himself to her and she would immediately take the hand of the next prince as he presented himself.

The thing is at this stage in her career she wasn't a ballerina, though she had become MacMillan's muse and had Ashton create Two Pigeons on her too, they knew she was going places, they just had to let her get strong enough to develop the technique, that she was a ballerina no one doubted.

Cristian, I don't know the answers to those questions. But here is a NY Times review of Sevillano (at 20) dancing in the Ashton Romeo and Juliet, referred to by Alexandra and others on another thread. It gives us an idea of what members who saw her dance, including Alexandra, Simon, Mme. Hermine, and JMcN, have been talking about:

Bart,

Words can't describe how beautiful and phenomenal Sevillano was in the flesh. It's the reason why live performance is absolutely vital, visceral and important, however many bad or mediocre performances one has to sit through to get to a Sevillano, it's all worthwhile and why film is such a bad representation of a live performer of genius. And Sevillano really was a dance genius, you had to be there.

Sevillano just had to enter and stand there and you took notice, some people just have that X quality that demands you look at them no matter what else is going on around them and her dance was just crazy beautiful, she was probably the most musical ballerina I've ever seen, she was intense, brutal, every movement had a logic and purpose that wasn't contrived or forced - she was a one off. Like I said, genius is bandied around so often it's become pretty crass especially given some of the second rate talent it's proscribed to, but I truly believe Sevillano was the real deal, a true genius.

jane, i thought she had also danced ondine? but i don't recall that she was a regular member of the company.

MH, I can't find any reference to her doing Ondine, or - so far - anyone who can remember her doing it. Of course that doesn't mean it didn't happen, so I'll keep asking, but I'd be surprised if such a potentially memorable piece of casting had made so little impact!

I have a feeling that maybe Mme Hermine has mixed Sevillano up with Gelsey Kirkland who was supposed to dance the revival of Ondine for two performances at the ROH in October 1988, but pulled out at the eleventh hour due to tendonitis and was replaced by Maria Almeida.

Sevillano worked closely with Kirkland on Giselle and stated in several interviews that the two biggest influences on her and her dancing were Kirkland and Lynn Seymour.

... what's this thread about?

About my curiosity on how do my fellow Bt'rs feel about this substitution...one that is quite rare.

I'm sorry I insulted Alonso Cristian, I know she's very special to you. But that's the thing here, for whatever reason this interpolation on Sevillano's part was a one off, why she did it we'll never know, but she was a very special dancer, who had a pretty horrendous time of it and as Alexandra said never became the star everyone was sure she'd become.

I know you mean nothing underhand by the youtube comparison clips, but I have to admit I hate youtube for dance as it destroys the visceral thrill and immediacy of what ballet and live performance is about and sadly in the case of that Sevillano clip ill serves her legacy and ability. Which is why I pointed to several clips where she was more on form. Likewise those awful clips of an anorexic Kirkland at Wolftrap unable to complete even half her fouette coda or complete the little hops back in arabesque in the Don Quixote PDD make one strain to see what she was all about, but that brief clip with piano of her in Giselle let you know in a minute how great she was.

But please believe me Sevillano was something incredible when she was on, she shared the stage with some incredible virtuosos, of the three Schaufuss brought in Healy & Hogard, his baby ballerinas, Sevillano was the weakest technically but the only one who was considered a real ballerina. It is a real shame you never saw her perform a Giselle, with hops on pointe, at a live performance. She was fantastic.

Okay then, but then what's this thread about? To take out of context one moment in time from one performace of a dancer from countless performances is meaningless. Just as if I were to take that video of Alonso at 78 dancing Giselle. But I know that's not Alonso, just as I know that's not Sevillano.

To answer yes I prefer the hops to the the pique, pose pas de cheval Sevillano performed here, but I know that Sevillano performed the choreography as is on every occasion I saw her dance Giselle, so for whatever reason she subsitituted a different passage here and may very well have worked it out before hand for whatever reason, but it's not her entire career nor her entire history of Giselle but one moment which had been recorded.

But this is Giselle...and the sautés are probably one of the most bare, exposed, naked series of steps in the whole history of balletic choreography. EVERYONE is watching her...both audiences on and offstage, and somehow this feels as the climax of the ballerina's level of technique. For some reason I doubt Sevillano acted out of a moment's injury...it looks to me as if the substitution had been carefully choreographed and rehearsed in advance. This is very different from a "night off".

And back to the iconic steps and Tchai. PDD. What about if instead of the variations-(which is well known Balanchine allowed in life to be reworked many times by different dancers)-the dancing couple decides that the two killer fish dives of the coda are simply too dangerous to do and instead decide to do something else...? Would we be as satisfied...?

1. There are many who saw Sevillano complete the hops, myself included on numerous occasions. You're basing your whole damning of her on 10 seconds of amateur film shot years ago. There's ample evidence of her technical virtuosity posted & on youtube, but that doesn't fit what seems to amount to a hustings against Sevillano.

2. You can't base a thorough knowledge of any dancer from one clip on youtube. Especially not great dancers who all have their off nights, off moments or in the case of late stage Alonso off decades. But I know that there's ample attesting to how great Alonso was and don't take certain phases of her career or performances as all she's about. I mean if that were so there's ample to damn Alonso as a deluded blind old woman who got it into her head that Giselle is Baby Jane Hudson with brittle bone disease. But let's not go there.

3. If the whole purpose of this thread was to say you think Sevillano is crap. Just come out and say it, it could be a good point for discussion about a beautiful dancer who you may not happen to like, again based on 10 seconds of film. But that's an honest point of departure for discussion.

4. "The Whole History of ballet choreography" that's a rather subjective and bathetic claim and implies you know every school and piece and choreographer and their work over several hundred years, all contemporary ballet choreographers and have done an academic comparison.

5. Ballet is live performance, people have off nights, off days. Sometimes they change stuff in advance to accommodate an injury, sometimes they do it onstage, sometimes new partners do ommit fish dives and dangerous lifts if they feel unsafe or uncertain, or one is injured, no you don't see the choreography complete, but that's not what dance is about, nor is it what great artists are about.

The Medora section in the Corsaire PDD & the Queen of the Dryads section from Don Q in the Kirov productions are the same, or rather in certain productions the same enchainement is used, though in the Corsaire it's a principal role in Don Q, a first soloist/soloist role.

This just illustrates how fluid ballet actually is and how open to change, interpolations and especially in the classics the notion of a set in stone way of doing things is fallacious.

I think that's the vital thing to remember that dance and dancers are flesh, bone, muscle which tends to get injured and sometimes they have to substitute or compensate in performance.

Those hops were the same passage which ended Yulia Bolshakova's career, who was fast tracked by the Mariinsky for stardom, but whose foot injuries ended her career. In her first Giselle she was obviously in immense pain but insisted on trying that section, fell over badly several times where the smart move would have been to substitute like Sevillano did. It's not those small moments which make a performance it's an impression of the whole two hours.

Many dancers, great dancers including Sibley, Farrell, Schaufuss, Dowell, have had to radically alter sections which they once did, iconic sections in ballet as career-ending injuries forced them to reappraise their techniques and what they could or couldn't do if they were to continue dancing.

I recently read a review of Cuban National Ballet were the reviewer had been looking forward to Viengsay Valdes' feats of technique and that night she was off, very off for whatever reason illness/injury but insisted on dancing and was unable to balance or even turn very well. Dancers have off nights, they have injuries and so perhaps the more pertinent question for this thread should be whether an injured or ill dancer should be on stage at all.

Dance isn't cinema where you get a perfect recorded version each time, it's alive in the moment and utterly fallible, I've been to performances of companies two nights in a row where one night they're brilliantly on, then the next they're all over the place, the same ballet or dance piece, the same dancers - it's great if you're there on an "on" night and for the dancer being recorded for posterity it's great if they're filmed on an on night.

I don't need to see several comparison videos of Giselles' to know that Sevillano could do the hops, the implication of comparing her to several ballerinas doing the hops is to imply she was less able, a lesser dancer. Also if we want to be pedantic all those videos except for the Spessivtseva were specially filmed for later broadcast, where mulitple takes are filmed and the best version chosen. In much the same way where a Tchai PDD comparison thread of several men was recently posted and Sasha Radetsky looked the best and most polished from the several men - except his version was a segment from the film Centre Stage and had obviously been filmed over several hours and each section taken out of context to make a seemingly perfect whole.

I have to say I feel very conflicted about this thread because it's not a fair, just or accurate representation of a very great ballerina, as other clips of Sevillano will attest to she had an immense capacity to balance and turn and so taken out of context a clip where she's compensating for something does her and her technical abilities a very great disservice as the implication is that this one moment lasting no more than ten seconds is synonymous with her career and how she portrayed Giselle throughout - something anyone who saw her can attest she didn't do.

This is also what's so damaging about dance appreciation via Youtube, you're looking at a moment in any dancer's career but a career is made up of more than moments taken out of context. Just as those last films of Alonso dancing Giselle in her late 70s do the young vital and virtuosic Alonso a great disservice.

Sevillano belongs to a very great and interesting part of London Festival Ballet/English National Ballet's history under the directorship of Peter Schaufuss when he was AD from 1984-1990. At that stage the Royal was really in the doldrums, especially in the dancers and rep it fielded. Schaufuss made some stellar decisions in bringing in sublime and phenomenal foreign stars, Patrick Armand, Alessandro Molin, he also gave Julio Bocca his first foreign job. He hired the then 49 Lynn Seymour and remounted the last act of Anastasia & Onegin especially for her, he changed the name of the company from London Festival Ballet to English National Ballet and formed a school to feed the company. He hired the brilliant contemporary dancer Brenda Edwards a star with London Contemporary Dance Theatre as a soloist and created a contemporary rep.

He also created a smaller offshoot company who performed a really astounding rep especially for smaller theatres and brought in truly great works to give the public a wider taste of what dance was. In one season they performed Apollo, Aureole by Paul Taylor, Song of a Wayfarer, Etudes, Night Creature by Alvin Ailey, Onegin, Ashton's Romeo & Juliet, a new Swan Lake by Makarova, several new works by Christopher Bruce including Swan Song and they did a truly sensational evening length restaging of Lindsay Kemp & Christopher Bruce's Blood Wedding.

But what Schaufuss also did was bring in three very very young talented ballerinas and elevated them to principal status in a very baby ballerina Ballets Russes De Monte Carlo manouever. They were Katharine Healy, who could do anything, as long as it was technique, an Australian Susan Hogard who was in the Guillem/Bussell mould and Sevillano.

Healy stayed two years then went back to university, she was probably the most technically accomplished on a level of tricks and indeed she always struck me as far too sensible and intelligent a person to sacrifice her life to ballet. Susan Hogard had a big success in Apollo but she was very wooden outside of her technique and most interesting and the real ballerina was Sevillano.

Sevillano's career was a bit like a dummy run or blueprint for Tamara Rojo's (though Sevillano was far more talented) also Sevillano was apparently very emotionally fragile, something Rojo isn't and those fragilities ended up destroying her career, but then she started her professional career at 15, that can't be good for the head. Sevillano was the one who was given everything and the one who people turned up to see dance, she was quite simply phenomenal, also she had a beautiful muscular body, in clips of her you can really see where her strength was.

In the course of her career she was the prima at ENB, she guested with the Kirov, moved to Boston as principal, then in the early 90s was invited to join the Royal as principal, a move which apparently pretty much did her in. This was a period when the Royal was fielding Guillem, the patchy Bussell and Durante as their go-to girls, also the company was being badly mismanaged by Dowell and the administration, less than three years later they were homeless and bankrupt. Sevillano who was unlike any other dancer there was made to audition for all her roles and treated very poorly, though she was gorgeous and then she just suddenly disappeared and gave up dancing.

This is one thing I have to stress whether you like the hops or no hops it's totally unfair to judge Sevillano and her abilities and the impact her brief and brilliant career had on that 20 second moment when for whatever reason she felt she needed to change the steps (and many a ballerina with a foot injury changes that moment as it seems to exacerbate the injury) - it is not a valid or fair indication of what she was and what her abilities were. Far better to watch the Swan Lake rehearsal or her Kirov performances. Sevillano was a very great ballerina who sadly never gained the ironclad position or long career her talents, which while universally recognised, deserved.

Trinidad Sevillano really was one of the potential greats who never properly got anything near the recognition she deserved - she was originally a baby virtuoso taken into ENB at 15 as principal then had something of a peripatetic career, principal at Boston, then the Royal Ballet, never finding a permanent home though she did have some serious health issues not related to dancing.

I've seen her do Giselle several times and she was gorgeous (though I was very very young at the time). The thing is you can't judge a dancer from a clip on youtube, nor make a case for a career on a snippet. The hops on pointe aren't hard and Seviallno was a virtuoso, an injury can lead a dancer to make substitutions for certain steps it that step worries or niggles an injury or pressure spot, it's highly probable that the hops may have hit a "trouble spot" in her foot and so in the case of a run of performances Sevillano did something else to take the heat off. Antoinette Sibley following a huge knee injury in 1976 was never able to do fouettes again, so in Swan Lake she substituted them with a series of pose and pique turns around the stage. It's the dancer and the performance that counts as a whole, not a certain step no matter how iconic.

Here's a great clip of Sevillano & Patrick Armand circa 1990 in a rehearsal of the third act of Swan Lake, it's tops:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKzU7h6ACig

And as Diane said a great deal of what we take now for the "ususal" steps in any ballet may be nothing more than a text from a specific performance which gained mass popularity, but makes it no more the definitive than any other interpolation.

Do you think it was all dance, or part dance, part dialogue? I notice Stanley Holloway listed as the third lead. He was a comic actor (wasn't he Mr. Doolittle in "My Fair Lady?"). Maybe he played "Bottom!"

It was a straight up spoken version of the play with movement direction and a few dance interludes by the Old Vic Company, most of the choreography was supplied by Helpmann, but with a nocturne divertissement choreographed by Ashton. Holloway was Bottom. The reason why it was staged at the Met when it travelled to NYC was because the sets and production were so lavish they needed a big enough stage to accommodate it all.

Leaving aside the question of Somova for a moment, I have to say I'm reluctant to think of "box office gold" as a key criterion for great ballet dancing. I realize that was not the point of your comment, but I'm still wary of confusing the two. Nureyev was much bigger box office than Bruhn--but Bruhn was as great and as historic a dancer, at least in the judgment of many of us. Martine Van Hamel was the favorite ABT Odette-Odile of many knowledgeable ballet fans, but--as far as I am aware--not as "box office" as Makarova (also a great Odette-Odile)...Many ballet greats ARE box office gold of course, but not all of them.

Drew,

I completely agree and I'd never equate box office draw with greatness in a dancer. I'd never trammel Van Hamel, I'm just over Somova.

tho' each individual's opinion is but that, individual, it might be of interest to know that Somova has had the good opinion of Mikhail Baryshnikov and Irina Kolpakova (both of whom voiced such to me personally, in Kolpakova's case she enthusiastically prodded me to see Somova in HUMPBACKED HORSE, not that i needed any prodding) and Maya Plisetskaya, which is noted in a recent TIME OUT NEW YORK interview.

Individual opinion, yes, but golden! Just like Golden is the Mask Award for The Tsar Maiden.

Just a pity none of that has translated into Box Office Gold.

If Vadim Muntagirov has any interest in decamping to New York, his price just got a whole lot higher:

http://balletnews.co.uk/english-national-ballet-announces-promotions/

Miliosr

He is so good, he really is the schizz. If you're ever in the UK he's definitely worth the ticket price to see him. English National Ballet are in a bit of sticky predicament at the moment, last year they had their funding cut by 7%, then this year it was announced they were to receive a further 15% cut and sadly it seems that those cuts are going to impact increasingly on dancers, they know that Muntagirov is their prize draw and that he's really revitalised a lot of public interest in ENB especially after the documentary on ENB which focused a great deal on him. This promotion aside I really can't see him staying with ENB for much longer he could pretty much go wherever he wanted now.

Personally, I can't speak for "people". I consider myself just a member of the audience, nothing more, nothing less.

You love Somova, that's fine for you she's the apogee of ballet, you are in a minority especially here but that's absolutely your right, I've always upheld that.

There is a point where technical virtuosity starts to overpower other aspects of a performance and a performer, Osipova being *the* poster child of this phenomenon (Thank God Somova is not Osipova!).

To consider Somova a greater artist than Osipova is just silly, in every sense. And I daresay the Mariinsky don't agree otherwise Somova would be onstage a lot more and would actually be considered a box office draw.

“Ulanova, Plisestskaya, Kolpakova, Fonteyn, Seymour, Sibley, Grey, Osipenko, Assylmuratova” - you got me here, Simon. They might be good technicians but out of the bunch only Ulanova, Kolpakova and Assylmuratova come close to moving me the way modern dancers do and yes, the way Somova’s luminous stage persona does. The rest aforementioned artists are certainly some ones to be revered as part of rich balletic heritage, but quietly passed over while searching for an interesting ballet feature on YouTube.

You can't possibly talk about a "luminous" stage presence when you haven't actually seen a dancer onstage. And to consider Fonteyn or Seymour or Grey (of whom there is nothing on Youtube). Moreover there are whole schools of ballet and dancers who are not represented on Youtube. Suzanne Farrell, Gelsey Kirkland, Melissa Hayden, Allegra Kent, Cynthia Gregory, Bryony Brind, what about the great Cubans? The Bejart dancers, the great Danish dancers of the 50s, 60s. Or those Unknown to the masses yet greatly celebrated dancers like Trinidad Sevillano, Markova - my point is there is a world of dance out there which is worth exploring, a world of greatness and great depth - if you want to quietly pass over Fonteyn well that's your prerogative.

PS. Don’t have a clue as to why Somova has been given four and not fourteen appearances in the upcoming London season. I won't be there :-))) Although I personally know people who will fly across the pond for a chance to catch her in "La Bayadere".

They'd have a hard time because Somova isn't down for Bayadere. However the reason why Somova isn't dancing is because in Europe, in the US and increasingly in Russia, as many Russian correspondents have stated on these boards Somova is not popular, nor is she a box office draw, if she were she'd be on every night. You put dancers onstage who sell tickets, it's business and Somova is not seen as someone who can barely sell a ticket for $50 let alone $250.

Even if Somova raised her technical level and musicality, I can't imagine a resemblance between the style and movement quality of an "ideal" Somova and Bessmertnova.

Well, I can. Besides, technical virtuoso Bessmertnova was not.

I also got carried away a bit in my previous post stating that Kolpakova doesn’t do it for me. She certainly does, but not the other Kirov period dancers mentioned in the same sentence, no matter how highly revered they might be by others.

To say Bessmertnova had no technical virtuosity is nonsense.

If Somova achieves an nth of the career and place in ballet history that Bessmertnova did she'd be lucky. Very lucky and given the reduction of her role and place within the Mariinsky that's looking increasingly unlikely.

Bessmertnova had technique in abundance, the fact that she was able to pique onto pointe in arabesque without falling off, distorting her line completely, keep her turnout and not fall off pointe and actually use her feet properly, abilities that Somova doesn't have, very basic fundamental rudiments of technique that Somova hasn't mastered makes Bessmertnova the clear leader in terms of technical achievement.

You've stated before that a dancer isn't a ballerina unless she has sky high extensions and the ability of knock off triple pirouettes within a fouette coda. Again nonsense and holding this view makes me rather pretty sad at the parlous state of what certain factions of modern ballet has become.

A ballerina who is a great dancer is no less a ballerina or no less a technician if she chooses to do 32 well placed fouettes, keep her leg in line with her body in a square arabesque or developpe. Technique isn't about tricks and in the case of Somova tricks done very badly many of the greatest ballerinas in history of whom there are ample video records: Ulanova, Plisestskaya, Kolpakova, Fonteyn, Seymour, Sibley, Grey, Osipenko, Assylmuratova had sufficient technique to get them from A to B to express what they wanted through the medium of ballet and in many cases were considered virtuosos and their virtuosity still stands today if one is willing to forego the need for gymnastics and focus on what ballet technique is actually all about.

In the case of Somova it's becoming more and more that she appears to be an embarrassment to the Mariinsky management - a young prima within a world class company shouldn't be buried in the rep and schedule, in one case at a reduced price matinee, but both the Mariinsky & the Hochhausers know that not only is Somova unable to fulfill the technical demands of the rep that should be hers by right, but this is a dancer people won't be prepared to pay to see, whose reviews are indifferent to scathing and yet by dint of elevated position has to be appeased with at least some performances, for the present.

Oh, that makes me proud. Proud of being able to uphold my very own and heart-felt opinion in spite of the majority or rather a vocal minority. Alina Somova is the Principal of the greatest classical company in the world (author’s opinion) and nothing, but absolutely nothing can change this. She is not Bessmertnova. Not yet. One day!

I will give you one, Simon, – the Principal is underdog no longer.

She's A principal of a ballet company which is using her less and less and hardly allowing her to dance at all. She has no international career to speak of and you say nothing will change this? Well it takes very little effort to change it, you simply don't cast the dancer at all till they either leave or fester or in the case of Mariinsky with certain dancers you get demoted or fired.

May I ask what's this sudden obsession with Bessmertnova? Who stopped dancing over twenty years ago and who you've never seen dance? Moreover Bessmertnova was a Bolshoi ballerina not Mariinsky (then Kirov). I would have thought given your devotion to the Mariinsky the greatest classical ballet company in the world you'd have championed Dudinskaya, Shelast, Osipenko, Makarova, Kolpakova, Assylmuratova, Kurgapkina etc if you wanted to list Somova's potential greatness amongst the great of Soviet era Kirov ballerinas. Though to be honest unless she gets to dance a bit more there's not really that much chance of that happening.

As to a vocal majority championing Somova, certainly not within the Mariisnky, nor in the critics both home and abroad - hence her only dancing third cast twice in the great classics in London. This is one home girl the home team aren't pushing home or away.

To be fair though Helene is right, they dance Balanchine pretty badly througout the Mariinsky, it's not just a Somova thing.

What I am struggling to understand, Simon G. is why you and the like minded people happen to express yourself in the thread of a dancer you don't champion? Wouldn’t it be better for one’s health and enjoyment of life to express oneself in the thread of a dancer that your crowd wants to advance?? Aren't lovers more preferable than haters???

Perhaps you like to trash the beloved by many Somova just for the sake of trashing? Well, I don’t think it works. There is an unwritten rule of fair play and deep-rooted tendency with most Americans to cheer for the underdog. So you see, your “sophisticated” opinion expressed in the thread might be all for nothing.

I'm not trashing, I'm merely stating what a great many feel about the "beloved" Somova, who let's face it if she were half as beloved as you'd have us believe would be dancing a hell of a lot more and would actually have something of an international career fitting of a principal with the Mariinsky.

The majority of the posters on these boards are American and you'll be hard pressed to find a single one championing her, nor is it a question of having a "crowd" the simple fact is that Somova is not a great dancer, her promotion was mystifying and her classical technique is very very poor. Statements of fact backed up by her diminishing career and the attempts and concerted efforst by the Mariinsky directorship to bury her almost without trace within the casting.

These are discussion boards and you'll find the majority of posts on this thread are negative about Somova, in fact all except yours, I in fact did make a post applauding her improvement, but boards are there to discuss both the good and bad, if you want to just wax lyrical about how wonderful she is there are, I'm sure, boards out there which are exclusively devoted to fans and perhaps you'd be happier there.

I don't like Somova, she's not a great dancer, I don't think anyone else here likes Somova, it would also appear given her schedule her bosses don't much like the way she dances either. That's all this is about.

And since when did a principal get classed as an "underdog"?