Herman Stevens

It's an interesting talk, particularly in the exposition part. Thanks for posting the link. Towards the end when things are supposed to come together my feeling is they fall apart, mostly because suddenly the talk turns out to be about two things - not just the liberation of the crotch, but also ("wouldn't it be nice?") whether Balanchine was a nice guy contrary to what some of the eighties feminists said. I think we're sufficiently far removed in time to stop caring about the latter point. Is a Mozart opera better or worse for WAM being a nice person? I don't think so. Resting even the tiniest bit of an argument on what "a friend of a friend of Balanchine's" said about what happened in the Balanchine bedroom is ridiculous. Presenting it as a semi-joke and nonetheless running with it is not a great way to go. It's also a strange throwback to eighties feminism, when non-penetrative forms of sex were considered to be more OK than the real McCoy. But it doesn't matter; one thing we may safely assume about Balanchine's sex life, and that is he didn't have sex with friends of his friends, so what do they know? I thought the idea that Agon is in some way referring to caring for LeClerq didn't add up to much, particularly because J.A. says herself that Balanchine's eroticism always includes feelings of caring and tenderness and anxiety anyway. She also enumerates, eloquently, the many losses Balanchine suffered before he even got the New York City, which somehow informed his art.* Ultimately the argument is Balanchine revered and liberated the ballerina, and in his art this is obviously very true. Adducing material from his real life, both private and as a ballet-master doesn't really help, since it is equally true that in that realm he tried as hard as he could to restrict his ballerinas' lives to Balanchine dancing - no babies, not even boyfriends if he could help it. Though of course even these matters are just anecdotal. Allegra Kent could come back every time she'd done and had another baby. All in all I loved the talk for its frankness in plumb stating watching ballet is an erotic experience, and rejecting the modernist "abstract" attitude. We live in a world where we're 100% surrounded by the most brutal sexual imagery, and ballet would be a completely chaste art? And what's so good about that anyway? It's interesting to note, in Q & A time, that people are still so excercised about bad Balanchine and his thin tall ballerinas. As Acocella notes, thin started with Pavlova and the Diaghilev ballerinas. And it's so US-centric. When I lived in America in the nineties (not in NYC) I was often surprised how pleasantly chubby dancers looked, compared to the rail-thin girls in Paris, Russia and the rest of Europe. So what are people talking about? * Am I the only one who, on first seeing the Agon pdd, was vividly reminded of the childhood sex exploration games, "now I was the doctor and I'm going to have to look under your clothes"?

Thank you, Helene, it's most kind of you to take the trouble of writing this itinerary.

I would love to have a link to this particular website. The only one I found did not indicate sold / unsold seats. thanks Herman

Sorry, I don't understand. How are these two statements to be reconciled? (BTW no big deal but it's staple, rather than stable.)

Statements like these are clearly meant to indicate that Asylmuratova and Vasiev aren't delivering the goodies as Gergiev defines goodies. He's weakening their position so that at some point they'll just have to say goodbye to their technical standards and accept his. In this strategy of attritition it actually comes in handy that the company will be homeless for two years now. This period won't do them any good, and Gergiev could use this against them, in a "I gave you a chance, didn't I?" way. About Gergiev status as a conductor: he's been chief conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic for 15 or more years now, and it has just been announced he's quitting in 2008. Of course this is quite a long period of tenure, but the joke is, he's hardly ever around. And the only good concerts I have heard were the ones in which he took along the Kirov orchestra (or I should say a Kirov orchestra) and performed some music from the regular repertoire. His ventures in Germanic repertoire have generally been unlistenable to me. But people love him. Even his cancelling and late entry shenanigans all add to the hype. By now people are just so excited to see him climb on the podium (usually 20 minutes late) they don't even care what the concert sounds like. I posted about his deciding not to conduct the Firebird etc at the recent International Diaghilev Festival, of which he was supposed to be the presiding figure, but at the last mo he decided he'd rather go to the Davos Economic Conference, and hobnob with Bono. The Firebird the Kirov performed was one of the worst shows in the festival. Everybody who had any sense of ballet was bummed out. So I would say it's over already. The Kirov is no longer a hors concours company. It's been saved financially, and it's been wrecked artistically. It's a very common business model. The reported reason why he's quitting from the Rotterdam post is he wants to spend more time with his family.

There will be a 06 White Nights; I just heard the Dutch National Ballet (whose Fokine Petruhska was by general consent a greater succes than the miserable Kirov Noces and so-so Firebird at the recent Diaghilev Festival) has been invited. Frankly, after years of bad experiences they would have to pay me big time to get even near the Kirov Ballet. It's just not worth it.

But Solor - all these wonderful things (the correct Vision scene music, the harp solo preluding the Rose Adagio etc etc) are in the Gergiev / Mariinsky on Philips and the Pletnev / Russia National ORch on DG, too. It's really not that exceptional.

I cannot help but notice these ballets are discussed only in terms of the main gal or guy, as if the larger ensemble is irrelevant. I just saw the Kirov on stage in, among other things, l'Oiseau (with Nioradze) and frankly the corps was no great shakes - just a second rate company. I'm wondering whether this obsession with the principals isn't actually contributing to the gradual, irrevocable sinking of the company. I haven't seen the dvd; I might get it for the Spectre. But I have to say after the last couple of shows I have seen between 2000 and now, I just can't see any justification for the hoopla over the Kirov Ballet.

I want to add that part of the Festival is / was a rather large exhibition in the Groninger Museum with visual artifacts from Les Ballets Russes. This exhibition runs till some time in March. There are tons of sketches and paintings by all the artists associated with Diaghilev, icluding the famous portraits by Picasso, but lots of sketches by Larionav, Gontcharova and Benois. There is a catalogue entitled Working for Diaghilev. And there are a lot of costumes, brilliant beautiful costumes. In many cases I couldn't help but wonder what these designers were thinking. Many costumes are so brilliantly detailed you'd only take in the details from up close. The one that touched me most was the gorgeous dress for Chiarina in the vanished Fokine ballet Carnaval: a white bodice and a beautiful Prussian blue skirt with lots of layers, from which little white tassels hang, which of course were meant to start flying if Chiarina turned. Unfortunately Columbine's beautiful white dress white the cherry print was not part of the exhibition. Carnaval has always intrigued me a lot. With its commedia d'ell arte figures it would predate Stravinsky's neo-classicism at least a decade. (There's also a Benois painting with a commedia scene.) And the thought that this music is orchestrated by the same people who orchestrated Les Sylphides gives me the feeling some choreographer should have another go at this piece.

I was hoping you asked Rockwell's permission the first time you copied and posted an emial message of his. Otherwise it wasn't a 100% nice thing to do, particularly when some people are trying to catch him at every little slip. I suggest we drop persecution mode.

About the full Belle au Bois Dormant as on dvd: if I were Aurora's dad, and I would have seen the way the young prince is going on and on all by himself when Lilac is about to introduce him to Aurora, I would have told her to stick around for another hundred years till a really nice boy drops by. I understand Nuryev wanted to add some material for the male soloist, but my goodness that solo is just plain self-indulgent. It's a disaster dramatically, stylistically it's laughable and basically the guy is just making a fool of himself with this interminable fidgeting about. Otherwise it's a beautiful production, though some of the cuts are rather suprising.

I thought the Schafer interview was terrible. I know there's supposed to be a degree of chumminess in these talks but this was bordering on the unprofessional. It was like overhearng two guys in a bar, not entirely sober. Schafer obviously has had Rockwell on the show many times; this kind of journalistic familiarity tends to breed a kind of contempt for the non-ininitiated, and Rockwell's references to the strangely absent ballet freaks were much less courteous than in his Times piece. Schafer should have protected him (and you) against this, also in the interest of the listeners, but he doesn't. He rather eggs Rockwell on. I don't know why Rockwell opted for the miscegenation etc metaphor. It was a bad idea, with which he most likely would not have gotten away at les Times. But it was clearly premeditated, this 'I've got some big news, Hitler was wrong' [not an actual quote] was clearly intended to top the fun that already had been had with the disco segment. (I suspect btw the reason why Leigh wasn't on the show is there were no less than three guests in the disco segment, which is kind of hard to follow for a blind listener, Schafer was getting guest names wrong, too; that's why the producer decided to make the ballet segment a little quieter, and not have Leigh over. The media are ruthless; the only thing that counts is listeners staying tuned in.) You know, the thing is, Rockwell's point can be made, ballet is not a pure art. Balanchine wasn't just putting Petipa steps together in a new different order. He also imported moves from the 'lower' arts, a faster rhythm and some kind of showbizz glamor in his ensembles, as in the Symphony in C or Violin Cto finales. Those are half Broadway. Indeed, remember the way the Mariinsky people fought Virginia Zucchi as impure and vulgar, and then it turned out she was its biggest blessing. Look at what Nijinsky did. I could go on and on. I'll just name Hans van Manen as another great 'impure' ballet choreographer. I think some people are a little too eager to say ballet is going down the toilet, and now the ballet reviews are going the same way, too. No matter where you plug in in ballet history people have been saying "this is the end of good ballet". Of course the point to be made is Van Manen may use non-balletic moves, but he always uses exquisitely trained ballet dancers - only the best in the company. However Schafer didn't challenge Rockwell to name a great example of the mongrelized ballet / dance / crossover that will last longer than one run; Rockwell doesn't seem to want to challenge himself to name some names of what he's really talking about; he's got his "I'm just a beat critic, I just report what's happening" excuse ready, and his rather loaded opening piece now is characterized as just a "clearing of the throat." If Rockwell's saying there is a lot going on in lofts, but actually he's only going to watch and not write about it because it's actually not worth writing about, then I would say there's apparently not that much happening in those lofts. I mean Peter Jennings (is he still on?) doesn't open the news saying the breaking news is millions of people are sitting down to dinner as he speaks. We know that. However, to go back to where this pretty much started. After clearing his metaphorical throat Rockwell's first two reviews were perfectly regular reviews of ballet shows, and I haven't seen a sudden keeling over in the Times towards obscure crossover loft experiments. So I think it looks like he's just doing his job, covering what the major ballet companies are dancing. I'm sure many will disagree with the way he looks at the shows and dancers, but that's what critics are for. If you agree a 100% there's no need anymore to go to the theatre, you can just read the paper instead.

I nearly forgot one of my favorite shows of the Festival. Le Spectre de la Rose, by the Royal Ballet's Roberta Marquez and Ivan Putrov (supported by the Kirov Orchestra) was gorgeous. It's only ten minutes but it was perfectly lovely, and the dancers went all out, Putrov's hands moulding beautiful phrases in the air. Maybe he hasn't got the majestic animal power of Nijinsky (we're all familiar with the photo), but he was goshawfully supple and his jumps were a delight, as was Marquez's sweet face when she opend her eyes and saw her dream had come true. So my three favorites of the Festival were The Spectre, the Parade and the Faun. Maybe Glebb will tell us his favorites.

I saw that Firebird, too, Glebb. It was better than the awful Les Noces on the same program, but it was definitely below par IMO. I also doubt it was 100% original Fokine. Some time ago btw I opened a topic for the Diaghilev Festival here: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...t=0#entry149492

Well. Let's just say the Diaghilev Festival achieved the main aim a festival has: the sum was bigger than its parts, and some parts were pretty good. Considering the relative youth of the people who organized this week I think it was a spectacular success. I talked to many people, dancers and choreographers in their sixties and seventies (and younger too, obviously) and they were deeply impressed. About the shows I have seen. Joffrey: so so Apollo. Maia Wilkins is a very winning performer. But she was Calliope, rather than Terpsichore, and I didn't think Terpsichore had a whole lot of shaking going on. Calvin Kitten was the shyest Apollo I ever saw, and sorry I don't think shyness is part of being Apollo. L' Apres Midi was beautiful, spellbinding. Willy Shives was the Faun. This piece can be potentially embarrassing, but there was not a snicker in the audience. (BTW this was in the beautiful City Theatre, which seats maybe a 1000 people.) I'm not a Sacre fan, never been. The piece is just overwhelmed by the myth methinks. Seeing dancers in the first act move their lips in counting the beat didn't really help. However the sacrificial dance was very effective and affecting. As the Chosen One (Deanne Brown) danced herself to pieces I found myself throwing my scepsis over this piece out the window, overcome with terror and pity, just the way one should. And, as Glebb says somewhere else, the ovation was astounding. Six curtain calls at the least. Kirov Awful Les Noces. Just plain awful. Bad ensemble, lacklustre soloists. Just no good. About this the critics agreed, most of the dancers in the audeience I talked to agreed, and god knows what the rest of the audience was thinking. I should add that on the the second night (or was it the third) Gergiev just upped and left. He decided it was more worth his while to sup with the grandees (and Bono) at the Davos Economoc Conference. There was some booing when this was announced, but not enough. The Firebird was not too great either. Irma Noriadze was a great Firebird, but the rest just coasted along. The current production is a strange mix of "historical" fairytale costumes for the good guys, and sort of modern goth costumes for the bad guys. Me no like. But again the ensemble wasn't too great. There was a lot of bad discipline barely masked. La Valse obviously didn't belong in the Diaghilev Festival, having been first produced in 1951. However, it was the only good item in the Kirov program. I don't know what this tells you, but it tells me something is badly wrong with this company. Daria Pavlenko was a beautiful, thrilling Girl in White. As she died her arms just turned to milk. Admittedly the rest was, again, hiding behind the great soloist, but in this case the soloist was really really outstanding. Ballet de Bordeaux presented a program of latter day Diaghilev shows: Massine's Parade, and Le Tricorne; Lifar's Icare; and Balanchine's Fils Prodigue. I loved Parade. Set to Satie music with a lovely Picasso set, and wonderful ironic circus acts it was a revelation. I loved every second of it. Especially the American Girl, Natalia Scherbakova, was fascinating to watch. Well, maybe the funny horse act lasted a minute too long (which is especially strange since there is no music for this part - adding to its hilarious impact - so you can make it as long or short as you want). I believe the Joffrey does this ballet too, and I'd love to see it. The Tricorne was, of course, quite effective; it's all energy. The Miller, Eric Frederic, was a great dancer, and maybe the Miller's Wife, Stephanie Roublot, lacked just that little bit of Latin fire, but the original Tamara Karsavina wasn't Latin either, and Roublot does have beautiful long limbs. Picasso's costumes are of course astounding. So these two pieces were a real party. And then came Icare. Icare is awful. I cannot help but think it is just a narcissistic Lifar vehicle. Choreographically and conceptually it must have been the most stupid thing I ever saw. Ever. However the soloist, Ygor Yebra, has a great bod and since he wore nothing but tiny little briefs the audience went crazy. It was the worst piece I saw, and it got the biggest applause (proportionally) in the entire festival. Just goes to show ya. Prodigal Son was OK. It was kind of telling the final applause didn't top the Icare hysteria. I cannot talk about the Dutch National Ballet's Petrushka as performed in the festival. I saw it five or six times in the run leading up to the Festival, which is why I skipped the performance in Groningen. Suffice to say I loved it when I saw it with the cast that danced at the festival.

Oh, absolutely. There's great pressure on classical ballet companies to do more accessible work - from part of the audience, from many critics, and from the powers that be. Companies directors need to be really strong to resist that pressure, because once you go that way there's no going back.

Two observations. 1 Ballet dancers desperately want two things. They want to dance Odette Odile. But they also desperately want to dance new stuff. They don't just want to become a museum piece. However the new stuff has to be the real deal. Just listen to dancers after the premiere - no matter whether the audience was ecstatic or not, dancers want to be challenged by the steps and if they aren't they don't care for the piece. 2 There are dancers who do best in classical. There are dancers who have bodies made for contemporary pieces. And there are dancers who do well in contemporary stuff, and take that kind of expressiveness and creativity to the classic roles and do astoundin perfomances. It's been my experience that dancers who've been through a creative process with Hans van Manen bring so much more to a Petipa or Balanchine ballet - because they've lost the museum feel. It's if they feel closer to the original dancers of those pieces, who after all were much freeer in their expression, too.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there's a clear difference between Balanchine technique and Vaganova (or any other classic) technique, in that classic technique is based on showing the positions as seperate units, whereas Balanchine wanted his dancers to stop thinking in positions and picture their steps in lines of continuous movements. Those are two clearly different styles. Look at the Kirov dancing Apollo and you'll see the difference in a minute.

I'm posting this link to the international Diaghilev Festival incase you're interested. http://www.diaghilevfestival.nl/english/programma.html Of course it's in a weird outpost in The Netherlands, so most likely nobody here's going but me (thu through sat). Perhaps I'll post some form of report. I'm particularly curious about the Massine ballets Parade and Tricorne, and Lifar's Icare which you don't get to see usually.

Yikes! A very telling closing line in Rockwell's latest review

I think this is all very harsh. If anything I would say the Cinderella review is too earnest. It's like he wants you to know he really did his homework / this is not the first time he went to a ballet show. I would hope the prose lightens up a little as he gets used to writing on this topic. Look, many people are not going to like any critic (except perhaps a couple dead ones). A lot of people hated Gisselkoff; she's gone, so it's time to hate the next one. I agreed with the concern over his opening statement, linked at the start of this topic, which seemed to leave an opening for vastly reducing the number of ballet reviews in favor of loft cross over stuff. But this is his first and it's about ballet. And his second one is about Balanchine. So give the guy a break. And now of course some people disagree with his view on the show. Well, personally I would be more worried if I did agree with a review in the paper. Why go to a show in that case? The only thing that I don't quite get is Rockwell seem to think the skyscrapers and the lesbians didn't help the magic; but at the end he hastily adds that the final pdd would not have been as romantic if the traditional fairies etc had been around. So which is it? I think the quality of the dancing and the soloists are the primary thing, and a good fairy is better than a bad lesbian - if I'm allowed a tasteless pun.

The all-time winner in this respect has to be Plisetskaya Swan Lake video, where we get close-ups of rapt audience members during the climax of the pdd - and not even very good-looking audience members. I don't think the cantaloupe theory applies here (or M.P. would have been a very spotty dancer). The soviet camera definitely wants us to see that ballet is a wonderful thing, as you can tell by the looks of the audience.

I have asked myself the same question, too. It's the weirdest thing. Imagine there was no modern biography of Mozart or Picasso...

But you may want to xerox the index at the public library (if and when they get a copy) to make the book a little more accessible.

Really? I review American / British fiction for part of my living and I usually work with advance review copies, which are pback copies made from the final proofs. If reviewers were to wait for the 'official' copies they would be too late. And I happen to know my own books (fiction) are invariably reviewed from the loose sheet proofs, which I encounter occassionally, too (it makes for rather comfortable reading - you don't have to hold the entire book, but just a page it the time). I am afraid reviewers as a rule don't feel too honorbound to check proofs against the finished book, and they're usually right, because substantial changes do not occur at this stage. I could imagine there are fact-checking desk editors at make-or-break media like the NY Times etc who do check the quotes in the reviews against the official copies. The downside of the copies you purchased, Helene, is there are no indexes at the back, and no photo pages (my copy of the Fonteyn is a advance copy, too), and the paper used may be not as good as the finished product.