bart

Give the dancers the credit they deserve. The dancers of Miami City Ballet are the ultimate producers of the product we've come to recognize as Miami City Ballet.

Agree 100%, Justdoit.

Based on random observation and no insider information at all, I'm one who tends to credit Villella with the major responsibility for providing the vision for the company and the nuts-and-bolts of preparing the dancers to dance the way they do. That the dancers he has chosen also share his vision is a tribute both to him and to them.

I firmly believe that they will survive this transition because they are Miami City Ballet- able to adapt, roll with the punches, if you will, and still come out better off in the end.

Well put, liebling. I can't imagine what it is like for the dancers now that they are back in the studio preparing for the 2012-13 season. Another factor is the school, which will be changing leadership this season as Linda Villella steps down. (We'll wait for official news about that particular story.)

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the dancers themselves will be allowed to contribute their esprit de corps, smarts, and sheer guts to keep things healthy and on track. That is more than the "grownups" in charge of the company have seemed to have been able to do in recent months.

Here's a link to an informative interview with Elanore Franklin, one of the ballet dancers who participated in Christopher Wheeldon's big number at the closing ceremonies.

Rebecca King, a dancer with Miami City Ballet, has been turning Tendus Under a Palm Tree into a serious journalistic publication. It's a dancer's blog, but it's become much more.

Franklin joined the dozens of dancers, most of them non-professional (and therefore not paid), who rehearsed weekends under arduous conditions and had to deal with problems like torrents of rain, a stage that raked to the side, and lycra tights that caused feet to slide around inside the point shoes.

It's a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at one of the "biggest" ballet stories of all times. (Even bigger than Excelsior !!!)

http://tendusunderap...g-ceremony.html

Thank you so much, kbarber, for your exploration of a term that, as you say, most of us think we understand quite well. There are depths here I would not have predicted.

I guess I have always thought of adagio as referring to a quality of movement and not just to tempo. For me, an example from Dupont's style in adage comes from the first set of developpes, one with each of her partners. Dupont, just a millisecond before completing the rise of leg, moves her head in the same direction, looking upwards towards her foot and supported hand. For me, this increases the impression of "ease." It makes you look upward, too -- a movement of the air. Gregory does not do this, which has the effect of calling attention to the balance itself and to the floor.

It's interesting that Gregory gets a hand from the audience. Dupont, by stressing ease and weightlessness, does not.

P.S. This is not to criticize Gregory, one of my all-time favorites.

Click the Amazon link in Gina's post.It's one of the options of the Look Inside feature.

Fantastic video, Lynette. I love his serenity.

Your pick is much better than my own search through videos of (ho hum) dressage. Though I did find this old clip. I suppose the partner is not, technically, a non-human. Nevertheless it's worth it to see Nureyev's agitation in dealing with his partner -- quite different from the way the Philippe Priasso dances so harmoniously with his lovely and apparently much-adored back hoe.

When I clicked the "Surprise Me!" button, I was treated to a page with a wonderful photo of .... Anton and Gina Ness in the Snow Scene of Lew Christensen's Nutcracker. Looks like a fine book, too, and very relevant today, considering the difficult economic times for U.S. ballet companies. Thanks, Gina, for posting this.

A 2009 New Yorker review of a biography of Brown, Bad Girls Go Everywhere.

http://www.newyorker...o_books_thurman

“Bad Girls Go Everywhere” is the story of a woman who, mostly to her credit and greatly to her profit and glory, never knew how to blush, and who exhorted her readers to follow her example of self-invention in a buoyant, dishy, emphatic style that includes words like “pippy-poo.” Brown told her readers in 1962, “I think marriage is insurance for the worst years of your life. During your best years you don’t need a husband. You do need a man of course every step of the way, and they are often cheaper emotionally and a lot more fun by the dozen.”

Long before Brown was earning a seven-figure salary—when she was, in fact, earning a four-figure salary—she scrimped and saved to dress like a million dollars. One suggestion for scrimping was to charm an out-of-town stranger you had picked up at a bar into giving you cab fare, let him hail you a cab, then jump out a block later and keep the change.

From the Times Literary Supplement, an interesting piece about a visit to Vidal at home in the Hollywood Hills, in 2008.

http://www.the-tls.c...icle1099169.ece

I have put my favorite insight in bold.

Like much that emerged from Vidal’s pen, an objective insight was generated by subjective pique. While he was unarguably one of the big beasts of post-war American literature, Vidal’s fiction did not draw the serious treatment accorded to that of certain contemporaries: Saul Bellow, for example, or his bête noire Truman Capote; the comic Vonnegut, the minimalist Cheever, the silent Ellison – all seemed to merit deeper respect than the author of Myra Breckinridge, Messiah, Kalki, Duluth and a score of other novels.

Vidal rarely got angry. His characteristic outburst was a languorous sigh. “Rebirth of the novel? That seems unlikely.” Young people nowadays – this is 1976 again – “find the act of reading anything at all difficult and unrewarding”. As a preamble to his monumental effort to crush John Updike (10,000 words of TLS ordnance in 1996), he wrote: “What is the point to attacking writers in a period where they are of so little consequence? In observance of this law of a dying species, I have hardly mentioned, much less reviewed, Updike in the past . . .”. The burden of the sentence may be found in its finale: “. . . and he has observed the same continence with regard to me”.

Will be checking our excellent and relatively well-funded county library system today- Thanks for the suggestion, Birdsall.

Brown was a true Manhattan exotic in her heyday -- eccentric, driven by ambition, well-connected, hyper-reactive to trends, capable of remarkable charm and wit, always managing to stay in the public eye. Capote, Warhol, Vreeland, Mailer, each in his or her own way, belonged to the same small category.

Just about everyone knew about these people (from tv and the press) and followed their activities. A public sighting (a glimpse of one of them getting out of a cab, entering a hotel, passing your table on their way to a private room in a restaurant) made your day. You talked about it and somehow, weirdly, felt better for having experienced it.

I don't know how they did it or why we paid so much attention.. Italian was part of the air you breathed if you lived in New York City in the 60s and 70s. Few of this group are left, which is sad.

Very touching article. I hope that people read it right to the end, where the story of Cragun's papers and cartoons, and his hopes for placing them in a deposit library in San Francisco, has a bittersweet conclusion.

At the bottom, it's mentioned that Singer's interviews with both Cragun and Haydee will appear in the last two two quarterly issues of Dance International (for 2012). (DI is a Vancouver-based magazine with print and on-line editions.)

Here are a couple of threads discussing "What is classicism?," from the early days of Ballet Talk (now Ballet Alert). When I first joined the forum I found them very helpful in giving definition and form to something I knew I liked but didn't understand.

http://balletalert.i...tions-and-uses/

http://balletalert.i...tions-and-uses/

Just one example of the complexity of this concept, and why we have to be careful when using it to praise or condemn -- from a post by Marc Haegeman:

When is a ballet truly "classical art"? I always felt inclined to answer "When it's based on certain well-defined rules and thus respects tradition (academic dance) even by enriching its vocabulary, and when it has a permanent value for people, a sort of universal meaning." All that Petipa created was "classical" in the way that he used a choreographic vocabulary which is based on classical elements (academic dance, itself based on order, clear structures, harmony etc), yet not all he did gained the status of a "classic."

My local Sundance cinema has run a "classic movies" series all Summer, which allowed me to see the restored version of Cabaret. Restored and rereleased to coincide with the film's 40th anniversary, Cabaret looked fantastic on the big screen. Watching it on DVD or watching excerpts on YouTube does not come anywhere close to capturing the movie's power, particularly in the musical numbers. Liza Minnelli's star turn in "Mein Herr" rivals anything her mother committed to celluloid, and "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" and "If You Could See Her" both pack an emotional wallop even though you know the sucker punches are coming in advance.

The cast in Cabaret is still superlative, especially Minnelli and Joey Grey as the sinister Emcee. If there's a flaw to the movie, it's the notion (expressed by many others, including Christopher Isherwood) that a very large suspension of disbelief is needed to believe that performers of the caliber of Minnelli and Grey would be ekeing out a living in a seedy cabaret like the Kit Kat Club.

It's a testament to the movie's enduring power that, as the credits rolled, no one in the theater I was in clapped, said a word or got up from their seat. Everyone just sat there in stunned silence.

Minnelli is certainly fabiulous in "Mein Herr," although I wouldn't rank it with Mom's best. [ ... ] I've never seen Cabaret on a big screen and would love to. I did see it again on cable recently and it's one of those movies that gets better over time.

I haven't seen Caberet in a theater in years, either, though I've also seen it on television a few times over the years. There's a small-screen coziness about watching from your sofa, which may sentimentalize the performances more than they really were.

My favorite rendition of the score is the Natasha Richardson/ Alan Cumming Broadway version. The singing is neither slick nor beautiful but seems to fit the harsh, down-at-the-heels milieu.

Has anyone seen the video of the British stage performance, with Jane Horrocks and Alan Cumming? It dates from the 90s, I believe. (Horrock was remarkable in Little Voice and plays the very strange Bubbles in the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.) I'd love too know what her Sally Bowles was like -- nothing similar to Richardson's or Minelli's, I bet.

Wild horses would not drag me to To Rome with Love.

Me neither. Not after sitting through Midnight in Paris.

I recommend you read the article I posted about as she addresses all these questions.

Alas, the price on jstor is $22.00 (U.S.) for a PDF file.

It was most likely Alexandre Benois, at the very beginning. In "Petersburg: A Cultural History", Solomon Volkov says this about Benois' rediscovery of ballet through "Sleeping Beauty":

In those days, few people had a serious interest in ballet, In educated Petersburg circles ballet was despised, an echo of the nihilist ideas of the 1860‘s. Benois, who had loved ballet in his youth, was beginning to cool toward it when his fierce passion for "The Sleeping Beauty" turned him into a passionate balletomane once more.

So Benois the eternal proselytizer, infected all his friends with his fanatical enthusiasm for "The Sleeping Beauty," first among them Diaghilev, who moved to Petersburg a year and a half after the ballet’s premiere.

Benois in his "Reflections on the Ballet" says that he began to recognize "Sleeping Beauty" as a complete work of art, a Gesamtkunstwerk. He credits its success to Ivan Vsevolonzhsky, as the head of the production - and not so much Petipa, that nice old man.

Homans also discusses the gesamkunstwerk attribution, though not Benois. Benois would be a relatively early source for this kind of thinking. I think we can find quite a few references to the artistic unity/quality/value of Sleeping Beauty. But Paul's question relates specifically to the idea that SB "epitomizes classical ballet." This raises questions about what constitutes classical -- a concept far from identical with gesamkunstwerk. Was Benois, or others of that generation in Russia, aware that some sort of pinnacle in "classical" art had been achieved by Petipa et al. in SB? Did they use that kind of language?

Good question, indeed. I don't know the answer, but I suspect we are right to look for it at a time and place fairly distant from the original performances of the ballet.

The idea that a work of art "epitomizes" a style -- like the concept of a "Golden Age" -- is something that takes time and perhaps even geographical distance to develop. You need the chance to observe subsequent works, and to come to feel that things are in decline, before you can identify a high point in the past.

In the case of Russia, the Soviet Revolution increased the sense of distance by smashing the cultural milieu out of which Sleeping Beauty was created.

This is probably off topic, but Paul's question led me to look back at a couple or books on the shelf -- Wiley's Tchaikovsky's Ballets; Homans' Apollo's Angels, Scholl's Sleeping Beauty: a Legend in Progress -- to get an idea of reactions to the 1890 premiere. What makes Sleeping Beauty great .. and the epitome of classical? Critical responses at the premiere seem to have been mixed.

Homans:

Today we like to think of The Sleeping Beauty as an elevated artistic landmark, but at the time of its premiere in 1890 many critics and observers saw it as a sellout to low popular taste.

Observers seemed to have difficulty in seeing the forest for the trees, perhaps overwhelmed by the mass of artistic contributions to the complete work -- not only choreography and dance technique, but costumes, decor, music, story, and themes. Much of this was innovative, but it took time for this to be recognized.

Context seems to have added to the confusion -- especially the popularity of elaborate dance spectacles, ballets feeries, Itallian innovations in bravura technique, etc.

Tim Scholls:

Ironically, given that Sleeping Beauty came to be regarded as the quintessence of late nineteenth-century Russian ballet, a number of the ballet's first critics were certain that SB marked the decline of the art form .... Many of the ballet's original critics were not certain that SB was a ballet at all.

Homans has a point of view about this:

Yet The Sleeping Beauty was itself a ballet-feerie -- not a "sellout" but an astute artistic counterattack designed to beat the Italians at their own game while at the same time affirming the aristocratic heritage of the Russian ballet. It marked a sharp departure from the exotic and Romantic ballets of the past and had none of the charming village boys or ghostly, spirit-like ballerinas coveted on the St. Petersburg ballet stage. Nor was Beauty a slavish reprise of Perrault's fairy tale, .... Petipa took seriously the seventeenth-century setting ... He read about old court dances and pored over Perrault's works, carefully cutting out and saving illustrations. ... [T] ballet absorbed more than a quarter of the 1890 annual production budget for the Imperial Theaters.

A key component is Tchaikovsky's music, which

... set the tone, and its sophisticated, graceful classicism and eloquent Russian sweep presented Petipa with unprecedented choreographic challenges. Many critics found the music too operatic, and the dancers complained bitterly that it was difficult to move to. Accustomed to the predictable rhythms and simple, programmatic structure of Pugni and Minkus, Petipa pressed himself -- and his dancers -- to find newly suitable movements. Ironically, when searching for material he drew precisely on the Italian techniques he had so lamented. ...

Petipa, however, did more than just repeat the tricks he learned from these Italians. He had a concrete, technical mind-- he was interested in the mechanics of the steps and readily grasped the Italian innovations, particularly in pointe work -- but he also had a deep appreciation of the architecture and physics of ballet, and he knew or learned, how to refine and discipline their bombast and enthusiasm to give them depth and dimension they lacked hitherto.

... No acting was necessary: Beauty had very little "he said, she said,," pantomime, and the mime and dance sequences were not musically distinct or set apart, as they had been customarily. The gestures and the dances flowed together seamlessly.

As to Paul's question, probably a number of the people mentioned so far recognized SB's significance. But I suspect that Diaghelev (or someone who influenced him) had the key role. Diaghelev was the actually who of actually put a version of this work on stage for a Western European audiences. Once audiences can actually see something on stage, you have a focus around which critical opinions from many individuals will coalesce and solidify.

Welcome, Albany Girl. I love the combination of dancers -- past and present -- on your list of favorites, and look forward to hearing your voice here. Hope you'll get the time to browse through some of our older threads, a fantastic introduction to Ballet Alert.

P.S. Like you, I enjoy Ballet Review and Dance View and read them regularly. Have you had a chance to follow DanceViewTimes, DV's on-line sister publication?

http://www.danceviewtimes.com/

We've been talking about Vidal on the summer reading thread, but for some reason no one has started an Obituary thread about this fascinating writer/ character/ public figure/ social commentator/ you name it.

Ballet Alert is probably NOT the best place to enage in a debate over Vidal's politics. But here's a short, brilliant (I think) appreciation of the man and writer published this week by The Economist.

http://www.economist.com/node/21560234

Stravinsky's statement is pretty much a straight-forward summary of the plot -- although he refers to the ballet as "une piece sans intrigue," meaning (if I am not missing some other connotation) "a plotless work."

It's amusing that the Google translation translates "langes" as "diapers," a rather anachronistic expression given that the ballet takes place at the beginning of civilization. For those of us who have seen Balanchine's revision for NYCB, the reference is clearly to "swaddling cloths" and to the old practice of wrapping infants tightly in lengths of cloth,

We've had discussion here about the prologue, but I can't recall if this particular statement of Stravinsky's has been quoted. --

The ballet opens with a short prologue representing the birth of Apollo. Leto is about to give birth . She throws her arms around a tree; she kneels on the tender grass; and the child bursts into the light. Two goddesses run forward to salute Apollo., giving him a white garment with a golden belt. They offer him nectar and ambrosia and lead him towards Olympus. End of prologue.

It's odd how this description omits most of what we actually see Apollo doing in this section. How different is the disoriented, straining, uncoordinated, and powerfully energetic newborn Apollo that we actually see.

Rosa, thank you. The R&J rehearsal scenes with Ballet de Santiago are especially wonderful. And the progression of photos with Haydee, from their youth to the present. It's hard for me to think of one without the other.

Mme. Hermine, I would have loved to see the rehearsals for THAT scene. I adore their physical comedy -- the quick switches of tempo and mood ... not to mention the pratfalls ("splat !!!"). This is actually funny (unlike some performances of the play I've seen) and interesting to analyze in terms of timing and movement.

pherank, I wish I could answer your question about the names of the dancers who portrayed the deesses. But thank you for the video link to the 1960 performance. I grew up on this version and can still remember vividly my unexpected excitement the first time I saw Apollo sucking in these deep breaths of air during the unwinding. The current shortened version of the ballet is great and wonderful, but the effect on me is more like that of a piece of beautifully wrought jewelry under glass in a museum. The long version, as performed in this video, gives life, breath, and development to the story of the god. I watch it often

Some readers may not know that the video is available on dvd: Jacques d'Amboise: Portrait of a Great American Dancer. For those interested in the early days of the NYCB, this also includes a duet from Still Point (with Melissa Hayden); Afternoon of a Faun (with Tanaquil LeClercq), Filling Station (where you can get a look at Todd Bolender, Janet Read, Shaun O'Brien, and Eddie Bigelow among others, and the finale of Stars and Stripe (Melissa Hayden).

My goodness.

Exactly my reaction to this news, Mme. Hermine. Like JMcN, I recall the excitement of his partnership with Haydee and his virile, go-for-broke dancing Cranko's ballets (Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, Onegin, too), especially during Stuttgart Ballets regular visits to NYC..

http://www.hart-bras...rtballettsp.JPG

The photo below is from a German-language website (Aug. 6, 2012), announcing his death.

http://www.schwarzwa...normalized.jpeg

RIP for this marvelous man.

Yes indeed.

Thanks, innopac, for reviving this thread. The link didn't work for me, so I recopied the link directly from Flanders' own website, and it does seem to work.

http://www.judithfla..ly-open-secret/

Back in 2008, miliosr and others pointed out the lack of Ashton productions. For 2011-12, Flanders points out that there have been quite a few Ashton productions, but not the requisite style.

n this season of Mason-ic celebration, with the twentieth-century British repertory highlighted (six Ashton productions, six Macmillan), it is clear that the once-vivid British style has almost vanished. Frederick Ashton’s choreography requires brisk, bright footwork counterpoised by a plastic, swooning fluidity in the upper body. Of all the Royal’s dancers, only Marianela Nuñez can claim total mastery of the style; Cojocaru is a close second, but her tiny frame prevents her upper-body work from carrying as vividly as Nuñez’s.

Kathleen, I hope you enjoy 1876. I agree with dirac on this, but always enjoy Vidal when he lets loose the his arsenal of wit and scorn. The "Gilded" Age certainly deserves everything it gets. I love the minor characters, especially the rogues.

Moonlily, Sender's book is worth it. I found that reading it in Spanish actually helped me by forcing me to read slowly and thoughtfully. There's an excellent Spanish movie that is quite faithful to the text. Antonio Banderas played the young campesino.

Tattoos seem to be a permanent solution to what may turn out to be transitory desires. Given the increasing call for bare torsos and legs in ballet and opera, perhaps consumer demand will lead to improvements in cover-up technology that can meet even HD standards.