Herman Stevens

"There was Jerry before us, embodying -- unmistakably and famously -- the suffering and tortured artist," writes Toni Bentley, and, you know, true as this may be, it's also a matter of what you wish to emphasize. One of the reasons I do not find Suzanne Farrell's Holding on to the Air (written in cooperation with Bentley) the best Balanchine memoir is this emphasis, again, on the artist as a victim of his / her creative drive. I think that's a very clichéd and ultimately exploitative way to write about creative people. BTW thanks, FF, for that glimpse of Robbins.

I've given this some thought, after perusing the discussion of Paquita vs Kitri styles too. I think there is plenty of space between aristocratic, as in tiara on the head, and the peasant girl shaking her tambourine, and that's where the Paquita Grand Pas belongs. OK, so there's the back story, i.e. Paquita can have her love because it turns out she's a noble lassie after all. But the music should be our guide too, and most of the music used in Paquita is pretty jolly, and has a distinct Spanish flavor. There's nothing like the stately polonaises and sarabandes of Sleeping Beauty. Beaumont quotes a contemporary report which praises Grisi's grace and her 'piquancy' - I think the latter may be an indication of what I miss in the Kirov version. Another thing with the two videos is, even though one can never have too much of a good thing, my feeling is the interpolated pas de trois kind of throws the Petipa structure out of whack in the Kirov. The grand pas starts with the corps girls, after the pdd there's another corps intermezzo (with the castagnets and the delightful oblique jumps, which are straight up and down in the Kirov version) and then there are six variations till the next round of the corps. To me this is a characteristic Petipa rhythm (correct me if I'm wrong) that is rather broken up by the interpolation of the long pas de trois, after which the six variations come. Ideally you would have had a corps intermezzo between the pas de trois and the six variations. I think that's the way they do it with Dutch National Ballet, which revived Paquita two years ago, under direction of its long-time dance mistress Maria Aradi who danced the title role with the Bolshoi.

In real life? Sure. Or she could kick him out straight away. But Giselle is a work of art, and what's going on in her mind is supposed to be expressed in art, so as to have that peculiar impact only art can have, IMO. In real life a dead woman doesn't rise from the grave to dance with Willies either. You know, those tears were no big deal to me, either way, better or worse. As I said I was just a little puzzled. But I would never consider it a plus, since there are many very great artists who do not cry "on the show", and their performance is not colder for that. BTW Albrecht is not a two-timing rat, but a two-timing count. Big difference.

I checked the dvd and my feeling is you may be reading to much in that bunch of yellow flowers Selyutsky hands to Terekhova. Even though it's not like were talking JFK at Dallas, let me run it by you. Therekhova is the first soloist to take her bows. People start throwing flowers; she picks up a white bunch and steps back to face the upper tiers. Selyatsky rushes on stage, takes his bow, and picks up the yellow bunch in the process, handing it to Terekhova. A nice gesture. Mezentseva enters as he's handing Th the flowers; she wasn't there when he picked them up. So it's not like he might as well have handed those flowers to M rather than Th. - that would have been a conspicuous slight. This is an interesting discussion, to which I have little to add, unfortunately. I only know GM from the Giselle dvd. She's not my Giselle type, too big and floppy. And I guess I'm comparing her to Maya Dumchenko of the same company, a generation later. Now that was a Giselle I loved. But you can't really compare video and live, IMO. Another thing, somebody a page back was impressed with GM's "real tears" in the Giselle video. Well I was puzzled by those same tears. Pardon my French but aren't we supposed to be crying, rather than she?

I think what this plan is attempting to do is personalize the receiving end of the sponsorship. Out of every 10 dollars you donate to yr favorite ballet company at least 4 bucks go to people who never set a foot on stage when you're watching - not just the AD but to the financial big wig too, the promo and administrative dept and all kinds of folks who at best like ballet just as much as you do. This makes your wallet a lot less itchy, and I assume that's why they thought of these silly dancer auctions. It's bogus, obviously. The same part of your money goes to adminstration people etc. It just sounds like it goes to the dancers straight.

I agree with you about the talent, Silvy. The dancing is perfect technically. The performing however is not so great IMO. Have ever you noticed not one dancer ever smiles throughout the whole show - not once? They all look like they're in Swan Lake 2nd Act, except the blue's turned brown. It's Paquita for xsake! The beauty is it's all fluff. It's a wedding, and they're doing party tricks, and Petipa wrote the tricks. And now I'll shut up about this.

Gruesome Badness So.... who's the choreographer, most likely?

Yes, the Kirov Classics dvd we were talking about is the one with Zelensky, Makhalina and Lezhnina. I'm glad you like it. I had another peek this afternoon. The dancing is generally excellent, again, my problem is just that massive fourth wall. A virtuoso piece like Paquita needs some of that frivolous showiness a hall with hungry people will get. I really miss that. The ABT is technically not as perfect, but it does have that audience chemistry. And, sorry, but if the Kirov is a studio recording, for all we know they may have been doing double takes so as to get that level of perfection... BTW the funny thing is you can have both the Kirov and the ABT and have very little overlap, apart from the beginning, end and the pas de deux, due to the fact the Paquita grand pdd is just a make-your-own sandwich kinda ballet. The Kirov has the pas de trois and Lezhnina's variation. The ABT on the other hand has a wonderful variation with harp - flutes music with great open turning sissonnes by Susan Jaffe, one of the most attractive American dancers in my book.

My rant I understand how these things work from a marketing POV - for many people the stars are the big attraction. They feel better betting their money on a winner. However I strongly feel if you want to support a company - and I'm afraid I'm not in the position to talk about big-time financial support - you should watch more than just the handful of star principals. Whenever I can I make sure to compliment, praise, and discuss their stuff with dancers in the demi-soloist &c positions. The ones who dance in fours and fives. These are dancers with quite individual styles too - it just takes a little more effort to spot 'em. These dancers often dance more miles a night than the soloists; they don't get the flowers, the interviews and the top pay. And yet in every company there's a bunch of these people who do beautiful work, every time again. I think that's just great. If I had the money, I'd give it to those dancers rather than to the alpha girls who just buy another silly watch.

I see. Funny the lack of audience chemistry doesn't seem to impact the Sylphides performance at all (Asylmuratova even throws in "a glance at the audience" in the pdd that is not orthodox Fokine, while the Paquita really suffers. And I really was totally willing to like it, with Yulia Makhalina etc. Or do you have completely different feelings about these two performances?

I'm curious about that complete Paquita, too. However, this week we watched the ABT and the Kirov dvd's and I have to say the Kirov is a disappointment. I'm wondering under what kind of circumstances this Kirov performance was taped - there is no applause, but that doesn't have to mean there is no audience, even if it consists of company people etc - but to me it looks like a resoundingly lacklustre show, which in a frothy piece like this is lethal. And the brown on brown set is terrible. It's like you're visiting a woodworm's home. And those dull costumes! The ABT is arguably technically not as perfect if you focus on the corps, but at least it's got pizazz in spades. Of course the Kirov Classics DVD is a must-have anyway for the spellbinding Les Sylphides with Asylmuratova et al - and lovely playing by the orchestra. (Though the ABT's Sylphides with an amazing Baryshnikov Poet is equally required.)

Has anybody read Alicia Markova's Giselle and I? A snooze?

Interesting detail about somebody reviewing the premiere and coming back later for a second opinion. I like that a lot. Is this standard practice in Stuttgard? Please tell me more.

I started going to ballet performances again (after many years) after I'd been told I was going to need heart surgery or else.

Allegra Kent's Once a Dancer is a ravishing book - the best autobiography to come out of the NYCB, in that it's a full and vivid portrait of Kent, rather than a book you'd refer to if you wanted to know about dance or Mr B. A book that's not been mentioned on this thread yet (methinks) are Fokine's Memoirs of a Ballet Master. I like to read it with a solid dose of irony, like when he's talking about Chopiniana - Chopin's music should never be tampered with - oh, btw, Glazunov added a countermelody to the pdd Waltz, but it's a beautiful countermelody B) - while making the piece he'd not thought of succes and the audience at all, and it turned out a huge success - he didn't want any virtuoso steps in the piece. :rolleyes:

Well, Vinogradov's first act is a kind of speeded up version of the regular first act, with franz's beer buddies using the variations music for their serenade to Coppelía standing on the balcony. I checked a couple of numbers yesterday, still angry and sad over the Shapchits story, and there is an awful lot of bad choreography in this version, in the sense that 75 % of the steps are going nowhere - they're just steps. It's too bad there is no other footage of Shapchits.

Thanks, Marc. So I guess you like her too; you just saw her in better stuff than the funny Coppelía. Perhaps I'm misreading, but it sounds like another horror story from a Kirov reject. Perhaps she had the same kind of problems with Vinogradov as Lezhnina had? (Larrissa's husband is one of the beer drinking boys in the Coppelía dvd.) No offense, but it's heartbreaking this vibrant dancer had to go the Flanders, and to Bonn.

Kirov Coppelía Perhaps it's just another example of my invariably bad taste but that Vinogradov Copellía is not completely without merit IMO. The Mazurka is just the plain old Mazurka, and you can trust the Kirov to get it right - compare the Mazurka in the otherwise impeccable Royal Ballet Coppelía (also on dvd) and the Kirov is really exciting and colorful. The Scottish, Spanish etc dances are rather good fun, with Swanilda and her girlfriends learning the steps 'on the spot'. The insurmountible downside of this production is of course the 3d act has been demolished. The 'Prayer' music is used for another Swanilda - Franz confrontation etc. However, to try and emphasize Swanilda's inherent bossiness and to bring out the sit-com character of the plot (all those beer steins!) is not an irredeemable sin, as long as you're not pretending to stage a masterwork for all times. I suspect it could have been a rather successful matinee show. Kids love this kind of stuff. Whatever happened to the girl who does Swanilda in the dvd, Marc? Herman

Close to 25 years down the line it doesn't seem too relevant to what degree Martins' succession was willed by Mr B. The thing is whether it works or not. Balanchine could've been mistaken, he was old & ill, and maybe he covered for mistakes by not 'anointing' anyone. However, ssn't it getting time, after 25 years, for one or two successors to Martins to be apparent?

I think that captures it perfectly. There is a type of lightweight critic who writes about the arts in such a way that he will never arouse the need and longing in his readership to get their complacent butts off the sofa and go buy that novel, go see that show or do something else that will cost time and money, and lord knows may expose them to some kind of visceral experience. It has nothing to do with being a specialist or a generalist. A writer is a specialist in writing; he should be able to convey some kind of passion with his writing. But perhaps with Teachout it's not so much about what he's writing about but about spreading the product Teachout. And about the Balanchine biography. If it's going to be a cut-and-paste tertiary work that would be a very bad thing. Together with the Croce book Teachout will saturate the market for many years, and it would take a long time before a publisher could be persuaded to do another, better Balanchine biography.

I already had my doubts about Teachout as a severe case of lightweightism, and I guess being hand-picked by the Bush people sort of clinches it for me.

I have watched Steadfast Tin Soldier, Diamonds pdd and Stravinsky Violin Cto thus far. I have to say that this whole thing of adapting choreography for the camera has a kind of dated look to me, just like Seventies lowered ceilings, or, indeed, the hairdos on some of the male dancers in these videos. However seriously. The idea seems to be that the tv registration had to be art as tv rather than the registration of a wonderful work of art. Looking back one or two [?] generations later I think that's a mistake. I'd rather miss some corps dancers out in the rear corners than have everybody strangely bunched up in front of the camera, mugging for a shot, with diagonals coming out of nowhere (spliced in obviously). I think Mr B just loved to tinker with his ballets, and these tv registrations were another opportunity for him. That being said it's of course wonderful to see Farrell and Martins in the Diamonds pdd, or the original cast of Violin Cto. The reviewer remarks on the strange fit Barysh and Von Aroldingen make in PSon, but watching litle Mazzo and Martins pdd together I could help but think she'd fit right in his giant paw - and of course that's what happens at the end of the mvt, in the celebrated panhandling gesture. As I said on another thread, the sound on these videos is horrible. I watched the start of Elégie, and had to take a break because of the execrable playing of this beautiful music. It doesn't look like one of Mr B's best anyway - great hair, though. Herman

A lesson from the past is filing things away in a dusty attic is pretty much ensuring they will decay, be stolen, burned or just basically get lost and only surface generations later in some mutilated form. Look at the texts we have from Ancient Greece and Rome. Those that survived were circulating in large numbers; they were the popular texts (in sofar there was a reading public of any size). Ergo: dissemination is the best way of preserving cultural heritage. I repeat I find it shocking and sad there is so little original Balanchine material (I mean the original casts) available. Surely large sums of money would solve the union thing? Maybe it's just more hip to stash millions into the Mariinsky after another costume warehouse goes up in flames?

Does Historical Fiction have to be about Europe in ages past? Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is a gorgeous book. Just because it's about the Big Trail doesn't make it any less respectable IMO. I'm hoping to reread it later this summer, and write a piece about it, since there's a Dutch translation coming. Balzac's Cousine Bette is a wonderful book; I wouldn't call it a historical novel, thoug. In that case Portnoy's Complaint would be one, too, since Roth wasn't living with his parents anymore when he wrote the book.

Maybe this is the place to say I'm constantly befuddled by this scarceness of NYCB material on DVD. We have tons of Kirov DVDs at home, but I have literally two (2) NYCB DVD's (on Nonesuch - with wretched sound). There's loads of very important material in the archives, and surely the NYCB is not poorer than the Kirov. So why is this? Herman