Simon G

Cristian I really think you'd like Mearns in the flesh, she's quite unmodern in her physicality, recalling a great deal of those 50s ballet bomb shells who float your boat in fact. She's got lush curves and a very womanly presence and plasticity. She's by no means a technical Wunderkind like Valdes, Nunez, Rojo, Osipova etc as seen in that clip 32 fouettes are just that 32 (ish) singles, but she's a real dancer, a real ballerina, she has the technique she needs to accomplish the ballerina roles and that something extra, the indefinable quality that made Ulanova stand out above Dudinskaya, Fonteyn above Grey, Seymour above Park etc She's a ballerina. It's that special quality that has to be seen in real life, like I said when she came on in what was a really turgid evening suddenly you were in a performance, she just made the evening, took such command of the stage. She's delish, the real deal. One of my best ballet memories of the past few years, in fact. Simon G The Great British Ballet Alert Poster of This (or any other) Era

When I saw NYCB here in London at the Coliseum last year, Mearns was the absolute standout ballerina of the evening in the second movement of Symphony in C. To be fair to the company they really didn't seem to be having a great time of it, the theatre was 25% sold, the lighting designer or technician at the Coliseum seemed to really have some kind of grudge against the company as I don't think I have ever seen a company lit so unflatteringly, flatly or badly. I think that was part of the problem they looked tired, under rehearsed and ill prepared for the season and that was reflected in the care given to the stagecraft. But when Mearns came on it was like WOW, she was just dancing on a different plane from the rest of the company that evening (Bouder wasn't on that night, but I saw her later in Tarentella) Mearns was spiritual, lush, romantic just gorgeous a real ballerina in what had been a very lacklustre evening. On a related issue: May I just take this opportunity to hail myself as The Great British Ballet Alert Poster of This (or any other) Era.

Hi abatt, Nunez is a technical monster, a real standout dancer and slowly becoming the RB's go-to girl, she's always worth the price of admission. At the start she was often cast as the soubrette, or secondary non dramatic principal. She's without doubt one of the top technicians in the world. She came to prominence at the same time as Cojocaru, and fell under her shadow after Cojocaru's starmaking rise to fame after the two Giselles in 2001. Cojocaru got the meaty roles, Nunez got the show off demi caractere roles which was a pity as Nunez is a very credible, striking dramatic dancer too, she's been coming into her own of late and getting those big meaty principal parts, she definitely worth seeing. Pennefather is pretty dreggy. A political promotion to Principal to counter the non-British principals at the RB complaints. Very bland, technically patchy, but tall and good looking but so what? He's paired with Nunez a lot he's the Hardy to her Laurel, the Marge to her Homer, the Scully to her Mulder, the Kate Jackson to her Farrah Fawcett, the Tonto to her Lone Ranger and the Richie to her Fonzie. But Nunez is worth the price of admission alone.

What irks me about these live to cinema broadcasts is that they're not cheap by any means, the last one was about £20 per ticket ($32 for our American chums), that's to sit in a cinema. If you're in London you can get a standing room or cheap seat for that price and see it live. For a family that's a really expensive trip to the cinema. I understand the costs necessary to make this feasible, especially as the one I went to at The Gate wasn't exactly packed to the rafters, but I do feel the price should be more in keeping with a standard cinema ticket.

Fonteyn in Ondine, the shadow dance. I found it on a Japanese channel it takes a while to load and you have to sit through an advert for Japanese Kentucky Fried Chicken. Konichiwa! http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTU2NTM1OTYw.html Final pdd. Again takes a while to load and there's a Japanese KFC advert. http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTU2NTM3NDI4.html

I for one will be interested to see how Black Swan compares to what is quite possibly the greatest dance film of all time, and one which I'm shocked and dismayed never makes those Top 100 films of all time lists, the incomaparable, sublime, genius work of art that is Flashdance. What a feelin'.

Sorry Drew, I get confused sometimes. You know what, the Events I've liked least have been the ones sitting in a traditional theatre and the promenade ones or ones in strange venues have been my favourites, not to say that the dancing or content have been markedly better or worse, just the element of surprise and my personal relationship to Cunningham. Truthfully, the photos posted of the venue and set up where Cristian had such a bad time made me really jealous that I hadn't been there. Also, I can relate to not liking Cunningham, the first time I saw the company I was about 10 and really didn't get it, I was too young, for sure, the next time I was about 16 and in a theatre with a really bad sound system sitting in front of a loudspeaker which had been especially set up to play Rainforest at ear bleeding volume, and when I say I was sitting in front, I mean it, literally in front - I was in agony. Then the third time it was an Event in a park and that was it for me, I just fell in love with it there and then completely, but it certainly took time. Sadly, though too, the company is dependent on the current dancers and my ardour really has cooled for this present company as I can honestly say I think it's the weakest company I've ever seen. For me only Julie Cunningham, in the company since 2004 is right up there for me, and one of the dancers I have to say is one of the worst dancers I've ever seen in any company anywhere it irritates me whenever they come on stage. But hey, that's the way it rolls, I just wish that the final company had been one I loved.

For some reason I couldn't add the Septet Clip to my last post, so here you go: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8748661616907155481# The three female dancers are from left to right: Barbara Lloyd, Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber. The piece was created in 1953 this was filmed in 1964.

Cristian, That does sound like a real chore and also like the staff were well out of order. I have to say that reading all of this that sometimes the Cunningham aesthetic can be a little too uncompromising for its own good, but also looking at all of this I think finances are increasingly coming in to play. At the Barbican in October (when they were presenting a full scale evening length work, with lights, theatre props, full musicians etc) they'd set up a pimp stall in the lobby were a Cunningham Foundation person was taking donations, selling very overpriced posters and other merch. I heard the guy talking about the difficulties they're having raising the $8million projected that they need for the legacy tour and wrapping up the company, he said they have about two thirds. He also said that while Cunningham was alive getting money was never a problem, now people don't want to invest in a temple where Elvis has left the building and for a company that's about to end. The thing is to present a full scale evening in theatre is very veyr expensive, the events, requiring modest stage facilities, no fancy or complex light sets and musicians brought in for the occasion are relatively cheap to produce. (I googled Sonic Combine and listened to their music - it's pretty cheesy hippy i have to say, no wonder you were underwhelmed, some people just can't accept that 1969 is over.) I don't know if you know but all Cunningham dance is created and rehearsed in silence and always has been the music is commissioned to last a certain length of time and it's not until first performance sometimes that the company hear what they're dancing to. ON Events they often draft people in at the last moment to freestyle and draft an artist in to create a decor. It really can be pot luck, it sounds like you got the pottiest pot luck going. Only once to his Sextet in the 50s did Cunningham choreograph and dance to a score, Satie. However I also imagine it must be a royal pain in the posterior for the theatre staff on these evenings, having to be constantly vigilant that the audience don't get in the way of the dancers, co-ordinating audience in and around the stage and the lack of attention to audience members who have difficulty standing or mobility issues is awful. They should have had a contingency plan in place. Another problem with Events is that they take several sections from various pieces of the repertory and put them together in patterns to make an entire evening or programme, this can have a mixed effect depending on the order the dances are arranged, and in the case where there are several platforms who's doing what where. The big aesthetic ethos with Cunningham was "chance" how a certain set of circumstances can effect or affect the performance experience - sometimes this creates marvels, though sometimes too it can really be a bit of a dud. At The Tate it was sublime, the magnificent Turbine Hall, beautiful sound and accompaniment, all under a huge art installation Olar Elliafsson's "Weather Project". It would seem that this set of circumstances wasn't so fortuitous (also if I'm brutally honest the company in 2003 was just smoking hot - as I said, I'm not overly enamoured of the current and last set of dancers, which is a real crying shame.) And yes, there are times I agree with Drew that it can seem too long, Nearly Ninety would have been perfect at seventy minutes. But in orther works such as Groud Level Overlay, Biped, Split Sides, Rainforest he got it bang on. And I also love the very long pieces like Roaratorio though I appreciate some find themselves thirty minutes in to a non stop ninety minute evening praying for a quick and merciful death. But to any Cunningham novice I also say avoid the evening length works, or be sure to sit near the aisel just in case. The thing is like Bart said Cunningham absolutely can't be judged as ballet if you're really going to start seeing it for what it is; especially as the technique can seem on the surface so balletic. There have been times when the women in the company (look up youtube vids of the late 80s to early 90s - Points In Space) were so balletic in technique, training and physicality and the men in contrast were very robust, ungainly even I love the company from that time and it has my all-time favourite Cunningham female dancer Victoria Finlayson. Cristian if you are willing to give him one more shot the company is coming to Berkley in California next March (the closet I could find to Florida) and they'll be performing Pondway which is absolutely lush. Go to that and if you still hate it I swear I will send you reimbursement for your travel and theatre tickets. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-327904579030507615#

Cristian, You know that I don't think that about Alonso, and wouldn't, like Cunningham her life's work, body of achievements, longevity, phenomenal artistry and indeed the near miraculous way she overcame her blindess demand respect. And yes they exist along with the negatives, of which there are many, but in approaching Alonso on any critical level you cannot deny her massive contribution to the world of ballet and dance. But the nerve I hit with you, is the nerve you hit - and why I would argue with both you and Patrick and would continue to do so, that whatever one's personal view of Cunningham and his work, the personal is absolutely right for the individual, but in the face of his achievements and contribution to write it off as "senseless dance" and not the "real deal" without a caveat, is absolutely wrong. You went and saw an Event. I love, love, love the Cunningham Events, but they are not perhaps the best introduction to Cunningham for the novice viewer. Patrick asked about my statement about Cunningham's catholic contribution to theatre and performance and the Events are one such where chance and fate required a change of plans in in doing so Cunningham opened up a whole new experience in theatrical presentation. In Vienna in 1964 the company was hired to present their work at the Museum of the 20th Century: on arriving there they saw there was no theatre, no performance space which could double or serve as a proscenium arch space or even end on theatre, so they took the radical step of turning the whole space into the performance space, of having the audience intermingle with the action and instead of performing the pieces in their entirety taking sections from several works and having those sections performed in different spaces. Over the subsequent 46 years the Events each numbered, have become a tradition in the Cunningham cannon, and are very different from his presentations of his complete pieces in traditional sit-down theatres. Patrick questioned Cunningham's influence on the wider realm of theatre and the Event is one of Cunningham's most radical innovations, impacting on how theatre and dance theatre can be and is performed. When you go to an Event, you're not going to a traditional dance event, some of my favourite Cunningham experiences ever have been the Events, especially his 2003 Event in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London. I'm sorry Cristian that you had such a bad experience and expected to sit, but Events are what you pay for. Indeed the worst ones I've seen were at the Barbican Theatre in 2005 when Dance Umbrella wanting to bring Cunningham over for the Summer were very lazy in programming a series of Events in a prosc arch theatre - the effect was diminshed. An Event is like a moving art gallery, and I would say to a novice that going to a more traditional Cunningham evening of work is maybe a better bet. Abatt mentioned Biped which with it's lush digital imagery projected on a scrim and very conventional Gavan Bryers score is a nice introduction to Cunningham. The thing is though you saw one aspect of Cunningham and judge the whole by it, and that aspect you didn't like. Fine. But then there's a body of work stretching back sixty years and a body of art, design, music it's too huge a cannon of work to judge on one viewing. One of my favourites is Roaratorio, with its epic Cage soundtrack, which is evocative, heartbreaking, incredibly beautiful, Cunningham's late work with danceforms computer software, and the epic late works such as Fluid Canvas, CRWDSPCR, Biped, Split Sides etc I love his pure dance works from the 80s such as Fabrications, Native Green, Trackers and those wonderful classic works from the fifties and sixties such as Crises, Rainforest, Scramble - Cunningham and the thought of that work just fills me with such excitement and happiness, when you look at that phenomenal body of work, the evolution of the work over almost seven decades and the poverty he worked under for the majority of his dance and creative life - it's awe inspiring. I think the reason why I have such a problem with your summation is not because it's how you felt, I fully appreciate and accept that, but it's a bit like hearing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and then writing off the entire works of Mozart based on that one fleeting example. And I'm not saying I don't have problems with some of Cunningham's work - the last works from the final years Views On Stage, Nearly Ninety have not been entirely happy experiences for me, and especially Xover, which i have to say I hated. It appeared to me as if a very talented choreographer with no ideas of his own had ripped off and plagerised a Cunningham work, except it was a Cunningham work. Nearly Ninety I had to see twice in order to appreciate the choreography, some of the best from Cunningham I've ever seen - the problem with Nearly Ninety was the design and awful Cheesy Sonic Youth music. I've never seen a Cunningham work where the stage and costume's did their best to destroy the work and the music sounded like a dodgy Pink Floyd knock off concept album from the seventies. It's a pity because like I said the choreography was some of the richest I've seen in years. You said it's a tragedy when any dance company closes and I agree, but this isn't just any company it's the Cunningham Company and when it closes something vital is going to be lost from the cultural landscape of humanity and I don't think it's loss will be truly felt till it's gone. Through his life Cunningham saw the greats diminish to nothing, the Graham Company, once the most powerful in the world, is now a risible shadow, you wouldn't know what Graham was what she stood for, Limon, Humphreys etc and I guess he didn't want his company to turn into that - a pale echo which once performed in Opera houses going through the motions in school gymnasiums. I also think that's why he kept creating new works year in year out, he knew the only way the company kept its place was if the "living God" came up with the goods and at the end of every performance was wheeled out to be worshipped. It's also sad that it's disappearing as the present company which I had problems with as dancers on the last viewing at Barbican last October looked finally to be a cohesive company and danced better than I've ever seen them. Julie Cunningham is still in a league of her own and reminds me of that great company of dancers from the late 90s and early 00s, when every dancer had a big personality. But what they've lost in individual flair, they've gained in homogeny of technique and slickness. I have to say the men do look like a a technically competent unit. If the Event was not to your liking and indeed with an Event you are taking pot luck as to music, performance space etc then I suggest you try an evening of Cunningham works in a traditional sit down theatre. Check out the link as to the full final schedule. Biped is a good bet as is Split Sides and both have very lovely music. I would also suggest reading up on Cunningham and his use of chance procedures to fully understand what it's all about. The best books are: Chance & Circumstance: 20 years with Cage and Cunningham - Carolyn Brown Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years. Chronicle and Commentary by David Vaughn. Or go to the website www.merce.org and maybe get a DVD of Split Sides, or A Lifetime in Dance or the Cunningham technique videos to fully appreciate what it's all about. But whatever you do, please do give Cunningham and the ferociously difficult technique another chance. It's the last chance to do so, it truly is worth giving it a second go, this is the last chance.

Abatt, Here we go it's the complete schedule for the company until its closure: http://www.merce.org/legacy-tour/documents/LegacyTourScheduleOct2010-1.pdf You're in luck, Biped will be on at BAM next December. It'll also be in Chicago, Tucson and Moscow it you'd like to double it up with a trip to the Bolshoi.

It's interesting that you should post a clip of Fonteyn & Nureyev as both were ardent fans and supporters of Cunningham, his work and company. Nureyev, Balanchine, Baryshnikov, Kirstein all ardent admirers of Cunningham to the extent that they brought his work into the repertories of NYCB, ABT, Paris Opera. You show me a clip of Coast Zone and ask me to see your point of view that Cunningham is senseless, banal, facile - well sorry to disappoint, I see Coast Zone and I feel passion, admiration, choreographic genius because let me tell you, as much as you like to rubbish Cunningham on one viewing the technique, the choreography isn't easy, it's brutally difficult to execute. The choreographic patters and ethos is rigourous, the product of a genius - the theories and practice of chance procedure one of the defining artistic movements of the 20th & 21 st centuries. The triumverate of Cunningham, Cage & Rauschenberg's theory on design, art, music, choreography, theatre impact on every aspect of modern theatre and art to this day. And this is the problem I have with the attitude of dismissing out of hand that you take, you don't understand, you have no desire to understand or explore further, and that's fine, it's your pregroagtive absolutely - but by the same token to dismiss entirely something that so clearly isn't worthless is just crass. Because this is the thing. The life and achievements of Cunningham demand respect, they're irrefutable. And if someone doesn't like it, or hates it, fine - but it's not fine to conclude that because one doesn't like it there must be nothing there. I don't care if people walked out, I've been watching Cunningham for years people have always walked out, they've been walking out on Cunningham for 57 years, does that make them right? No, it makes the work not for them, fair enough but when the walkers dismiss it as worthless, then all I can say is they're wrong. Just as I would be wrong to dismiss the clip of Alonso as a deluded elderly blind woman in a tutu kidding herself that she's a fifteen year old virgin's ghost. I regularly make myself sit through stuff I hate, Wayne Mcgregor, I hate his stuff, but I've seen every show he's done in the UK, both for the RB & his own company and while I can't like it, I likewise can't dismiss it entirely. I've made the attempt to appreciate his work his choreographic style. Likewise with the Osipova & Valdes, I don't deny they are fabulous technicians, top flight dancers, but the Don Q Pdd depresses me because it's indicative so much of the modern approach to the classics a kind of technical revisionism where every aspect is reinvented with a hitherto unparalled technical brillo, because that's what the punters may pay for. Like I said where else is there to go now except to put the ballerina in a centrifuge and have her fouette at Mach 1? I don't think we can talk about Cunningham because you show me the Coast Zone and I see something that just thrills me to bits, but you see a crushing bore, likewise while I haven't always loved or even liked Cunningham's music collaborations (and make no mistake there have been some beautiful ones, and some ear bleeders) I always accepted this is what I signed up for, made an attempt to familiarise myself with the composer before or after, especially if I had problems with the music. And Cristian that's absolutely right for you, and you're right for you. But it doesn't make it right or a fair or measured response to Cunningham and his work. Which is why I got so irritated, Alonso in Giselle is the "real deal" for Giselle, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company is the "real deal" for modern dance, and both in their own ways are the real deal for dance as a whole. There's enough room within the shrinking, underfunded world of dance for both to co-exist without detracting from one another.

Cristian, I think though that this is the major problem with the state of dance, and why Homanns work carries great weight in that dance can't be a static entity and claim to be universally pertinent, that great dancers alone can't carry the art forward and why choreography is the most vital component of dance, it's the voice of dance. You say you don't discount 20th century dance, well a great deal of choreography, Cunningham's especially is a 21st century happening. Retreating back to the 19th century second act of Giselle because of what we perceive to be "senseless things" is a poor response. I respect that for you that is the apogee, but likewise for me it's the death of dance. I love Giselle, don't get me wrong, but if it were to stop there then I couldn't make any kind of argument for dance to continue. A while back you posted two video clips of Valdes and Osipova in the fouette coda of Don Q pas de deux and proclaimed that this is the glorious future of dance. I didn't respond then I wish I had, but for me those two clips if anything were a death knell for dance as an art form. In both clips the fouettes were technical feats of speed, virtuosity, the Osipova one in particular was nothing but her showing off how fast she could do the fouettes, indeed she did the whole thing again as an encore and probably was still faster than had she stuck to the original tempo. What kind of future is there from those two examples? The only way forward is to stick the ballerina in a centrifuge. If you read Gelsey Kirkland's account of how she tried to bring a dramatic purpose to the hackneyed virtuoso feat of Kitri's fouettes from the mid 70s you can see even then she realised that as an art form ballet is dead if the virtuosity is all there is. For me nothing is more synonymous with ballet's disintegration as an art form than the Don Q pas de deux, a lightweight ballet even in its entirety stripped of story and acts and served up as a gala fayre pas de deux for a high paying audience who couldn't give a toss about ballet as art, but want an evening of cunning stunts to justify the inlated ticket prices. There could be no Cunningham without Graham and there could never have been Graham without Denishawn & ballet - and if there is any purpose to dance it's to be open to the new experience while keeping an open mind. That's why I find this post depressing, because Cunningham is phenemomenally vital and the last year of this utterly miraculous company performing these works and this technique is a tragedy because there will be nothing to fill that void. Cunningham demands enough respect for what it is to be taken and assessed on that level as being the "real deal" in itself. Cunningham was aware and open to every dance form especially ballet, indeed he was a contemporary of Alonso when she was in New York as a star and he a struggling soloist. There will always be opportunities to see Giselle indeed as long as there are galas and ballerinas the second act along with the Don Q pas de deux will continue to be performed, and each time it's taken out of context it destroys what it's actually about a little bit more - and that's probably why the Don Q PDD is so popular it can be cut out from the problematic concept of art and served up as virtuosity without any fibre of story or art and still remain intact. But very soon it won't be possible to see Cunningham's works, tragically they'll be dead, because no one will take the time, effort, or financial burden of performing them as they should be, and when they're gone for good the world will be poorer for it. And ballerinas will continue to emote and spin in selected PDD out of context, and the dance world will be poorer and sadly no one will care or in time even remember Cunningham; but it doesn't lessen the imporatance and brilliance of who he was and what his works stood for.

Cristian, That's a really cheap shot. I expect better of you. One could equally argue that the "real deal" isn't stuck in a permanently moonlit glade sometime in the mid 19th century, and if dance stopped being "real" then perhaps it has no place in the modern world and Jennifer Homanns is right. You saw a Cunningham Event, I love the Events, but equally I know Cunningham for first time viewers can be very difficult. Why not explain what you saw in full, your problems with what you saw, and instigate a discussion about dance and the wider scope of dance. I love ballet, yet equally I love modern, Cunningham especially, but I know how alienating the work and aesthetic can be - I have no problem accepting that if there's a discussion involved and exchange of ideas, but to dismiss a body of work and revolutionary form as rich and expansive as Cunningham's on the back of one viewing and to pour scorn by comparing to Alonso in Giselle yet again is to not understand or be willing to understand that dance isn't a fixed, generic form that there isn't only one true vision and the idea that anything else is lightweight is regressive.

That makes little or no sense to me, if they're 'inextricably linked', then they're not 'complete without it' (unless they don't have one or don't need one, or another one 'will do' or 'we heard it with the score and now we can just see it by itself'). Of course they're not. Sorry, my bad I meant intrinsically not inextricably.

May I just say that I do understand the slight indignation towards Homan's, Gottlieb etc and the rather doom laden pronouncement that ballet is dead - and I agree also that purple prose can get in the way of appreciating the message pragmatically, but I do also believe that there is a great deal of truth in the concerns of the authors. If not dead then perhaps stagnant is a better descriptive term. If I can recommend a better read on this subject then Barbara Newman's two books Striking A Balance & Grace Under Pressure address the issue from several viewpoints of great dancers, directors and teachers. The first book written in 1982, as the ballet boom was beginning to wind down and the second in 2003 when the issues and concerns about the legacy of ballet had become harsh realities, the ballet boom over, the great choreographers dead and the glamour of ballet all but disappeared from the media and greater public consciousness.

Hi Innopac, Sorry I wasn't ignoring you or your question, I've just been a bit busy. That's a tough question, no I definitely don't think that a reviewer is the litmus test as to whether a piece of choreography is good or not. Indeed a lot of dross is loved by critics, certain critics, a great many great great works such as several of Petipa's classics, Ashton's etc were panned or received lukewarm reviews on their maiden voyages, but over time their true worth was recognised. And then there are works such as most of Wayne Macgregors, and Onegin, especially Onegin for me, I hate hate hate that ballet (though strangely I've seen it several times because I get a cheap thrill from getting p.o'd, maybe?) which are universally loved or acclaimed except by a few critics and audiences, but which I find utterly meritricious and awful. That's the personal aspect of whether a work is great or not, I suppose. I once had a bit of a thread going here with Christian, who rightly championed Les Sylphides as a great work and was dismayed that in terms of audience enjoyment something like Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room was preferred by audiences - and that I can get, a great deal of great choreography is or can be quite alienating or cool, and Tharp's high octane workouts can seem on the surface more visceral, engaging and choreograghically dynamic. Does that make it better choreography? No. But it does make it a more easily appreciable form of dance. I mean, is Jack Vettriano a better artist than Robert Rauschenberg? No, of course not, but given the number of walls Vettriano's tacky prints hang on as opposed to the relative obscurity of Rauschenberg, or Johns, or Twombly etc you'd think that Vettriano is a greater artist. I think one major consideration as to whether a work is great choreography or not is the life it has outside of the music. And this i really do disagree with Patrick over, great ballet is of course inextricably linked to the music, all the masterpieces of course have scores but they are intrinsically, intellectually and emotionally complete without music - their purpose is not to be a physical representation of a score and nothing else.

Patrick, I'm not sure I entirely agree in regards to your first point. For me the very worst dance experience is when there is a gorgeous piece of music and sub standard wafting, straining for emotion and limpid mournful arabesques etc playing off the drama and glamour of the music. Likewise another strain of bad choreography is the tortured non descript gurning to solo violins also favoured by a great deal of bad choreography. Also I don't think you can ever call dance "abstract" in the literal sense as there is nothing less abstract than a human body, as soon as a body is on stage dancing you have a story, put two on stage you have a drama - there may be no definite plot, or literal story but a story is implied by a human being and the drama a spectator brings to it. I also think a major issue is that there is an awful lot of bad choreography, including an awful lot of mediocre offerings choreographed by mediocre choreographers which finds its way onto the stage and often using beautiful music. It muddies the waters about what exactly good choreography is. I think that Ashton's Birthday Offering is an interesting example of choreography - if you take as a given that Ashton was a genius (and if anyone disagrees I challenge them to a duel) BO a contemporary ballet piece was choreographed as a piece d'occasion for the RB's 25th anniversay, to not brilliant music. Two strikes against it being the masterpiece it is. But this wasn't the point, Ashton's intellectual thought was to showcase the strengths of five brilliant ballerinas as a tribute to the RB's achievements and legacy, on top of that he modelled each ballerina's role to a school of world ballet, all which influenced the style of the RB. The music was never a consideration besides serving the choreography, the dance and the dancers. Though Ashton did use masterpieces in Symphonic Variations, Scenes de Ballet, Monotones II etc these ballets are masterpieces but not because of the music used. The ballet had an intellectual, dramatic and choreographic purpose and weight, a showcase for technique and style which was totally independent of the music accompanying it. Ashton was never a slave to the music. Likewise, for me the very very best example of how Petipa's genius isn't a slave to music, no matter how glorious is in the grand PDD of Nutcracker, probably the most beautiful pdd music written by the genius of Tchaikovsky, but the PDD is never a slave to Tchaikovsky, rather it finds its own story and exists symbiotically with the music. I love the fact that in the swelling crescendos Petipa has almost no dance, just the ballerina lauching herself at the prince who catches her in a deep fish dive and they stay there - it takes guts to do almost nothing and not feel that you have to create reams of choreographic material to try and match the music. In finding a counterbalance and juxtaposition Petipa creates something of equal weight and worth. That's the thing that really really bugs me about Bourne's classical reworkings, he keeps on getting his butt kicked by Tchaikovsky, in his Nutcracker set in a Victorian orphanage, he is totally at a loss in the grand PDD he assembles a full cast onstage, where the Sugar plum fairy and cavalier normally take the stage but in overpopulating the stage with an overabundance of frenticism in place of dance steps he's pulped into bloody submission by Tchaikovsky's music and genius. Though some music is just bad for choreography precisely because it is so good. I've never seen a Rite which was able to match Stravinsky on a ballet stage, though in the modern realm Pina Bausch's works for me, and Javier De Frutos's version to the two piano score. I remember a choreography teacher telling me at London Contemporary Dance School never choreograph to Mozart, very few ever have Mark Morris did as did Lar Lubovitch - neither really transcended the music for me. Likewise a lot of choreography to Bach rarely matches the music or finds something new or worthy to say - one of the great great big stinkers that Ross Stretton brought in at the RB was a piece by Australian choreographer Stephen Baynes called Beyond Bach; it was atrocious, wafty, sentimental, cheesy and naff. Though no one can argue that Balanchine wasn't up to the challenge. And that's the thing, there are very very few genius choreographers of the 20th century, Ashton, Balanchine, Tudor are the top dogs for me, then people like Robbins, De Mille, sometimes Cranko, Lavrosky based on what I've seen, which hasn't been much, Forstyhe is pretty good to great etc etc. You can judge the greats on their great works, though they have their share of stinkers too, and then there's the rest whether anything new we see will be around for another ten years let alone fifty, sixty, who knows.

Hi Innopac, This is actually the major big no no in regards to dance and choreography, be it abstract or story based. If this is so then dance is nothing more than an adjunct to music, filler, a pleasent sight to accompany a score - why not just listen to the music? It's also the cornerstone of the very worst kind of choreography the step per beat, the monkey see monkey do school of choreography - where a step occurs on every beat, when the music tempo increases so does the freneticism of the steps, when it slows the dance slows, there's no interaction between dance and music except a literal interpretation. It's true that ballet is far more linked to score and music than modern, indeed Merce Cunningham's legacy is the freeing of dance from music entirely, or rather freeing it from dependency. But then the question of what is good choreography is very different - more rooted in the genius of an individual choreographer than anything else, and each great choreographer's relationship to music is unique to the artist, as distinct as their language or use of the classical lexicon. It's a toughie, but the first step to appreciating dance is to see it on its own apart from the score.

Yes, you do not mess with Mr B's Foundation. Have you seen Pulp Fiction? Do you remember Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta's characters? They're like that, only with ballet.

Just wanted to bump these to the main page so as many people get a chance to see them as possible, before the inevitable intervention.

Found this Kirkland & Baryshnikov. Hope you all enjoy it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y42qcJqVHlU

Paul, The accents of the five children followed and the narrator are all Welsh. The programme was made for BBC Wales, which is a BBC channel specifically for Wales and the Welsh, the programme was shown on terrestrial TV in Wales only, in England it was shown on BBC3, a cable channel and online. The accents weren't that broad for my English ears, when you get someone with a really broad deep Welsh accent it can be a struggle. The narrator Siriol Jenkins is a Welsh actress and as such hers was a mix of Welsh and RP. As a word of warning don't EVER call a Welshman or woman English, you'll get a right earbashing. Both Wales & Scotland have their own parliaments the Welsh & Scottish assemblies, respectively, and though they are under overall administration from Parliament from Westminster there are very strong factions campaigning for the right of Wales and Scotland to be able to govern themselves apart from Westminster. Elmhurst is in Birmingham, as stated above, it's also the feeder school for Birmingham Royal Ballet, though BRB also recruits from the Royal Ballet School - and of course they also recruit externally. Elmhurst's ties to BRB became increasingly strong after Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet moved to Birmingham in 1990 and became the Birmingham Royal. Desmond Kelly, Samira Saidi, Dominic Antonucci, Marion Tait who were seen in the documentary were all once principals with Sadlers Wells/Birmingham Royal. Elmhurst is one of the three top ballet schools in the UK, along with Royal Ballet School and English National Ballet School, though Central School is pretty good too. The schools the three were going to after leaving Elmhurst, Hammond, Legat and Millennium are middling range schools, with more of a focus on a wider range of dance (in my opinion Millennium is pretty cheesy). I was surprised that Rebecca had chosen to leave Elmhurst for Legat if she truly wanted to be a ballet dancer, Elmhurst is streets ahead of Legat in that respect and would have given her the opportunity to recuperate, and of course there are Elmhurst's ties with top ballet companies.

I can't access the video as I'm in the UK. Is there a link via Youtube or some other medium please?

Here we go, it's at the end of this 1963 film of Act 3. Fonteyn & David Blair: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPvxnRqqBzs To be totally honest, while I think Fonteyn is brilliant in SB, I have to say I have some reservations about taking Maccaulay's highly personalised reading of this passage as the sine qua non for understanding and appreciating this moment in the ballet. I find his interpretation, like many old school critics', a bit precious and self indulgent. One feels almost inadequate if one doesn't see or read these moments in exactly the way we're supposed to according to critics & dancers who were there. SB is Fonteyn's signature classical role and she's gorgeous in it, I don't argue that, it's the interpreatation of the full ballet being revealed in that precise moment that I have a bit of an issue with.