CygneDanois

I can't believe Isabelle Guérin has to retire! The only consolation for me will be if she guests in the USA, and that would be a loss for France, so I am very conflicted. Estelle, can you tell me the age of Elisabeth Maurin? I have a tape of her dancing "Casse-Noisette," and she looks very young (but also very good) on it. Also, I have only seen Kader Belarbi on tape dancing "Giselle" pas de deux and the pas de deux from "Don Quichotte." He isn't really impressive on either of these, and I'm wondering if he was just having an off night. Is he really very good in person? ------------------ CygneDanois

Peter Boal tends to be well-placed, I think. Darci Kistler probably has the best placement of the Balanchine ladies (with the obvious exclusion of her arms). Amanda McKerrow's placement is usually perfect, but then, she was trained exceptionally well. Among the Russians, Altynai Asylmuratova can't be beat, and neither can Larissa Lezhnina. Most dancers from Paris Opéra are impeccably placed, although Sylvie Guillem's placement (especially in developpé à la seconde and première arabesque) tends to be somewhat off-center. HTH ------------------ CygneDanois

I guess it wasn't as vague as I thought. Yes, Fonteyn is a wonderful example of good placement. If you've never seen her on video, Michael1, Susan Jaffe has good placement as well. ------------------ CygneDanois

Ms. Leigh would do better with this, but I'll try to give a vague idea. Gail Grant's Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet defines placement thus: "A dancer is said to be well-placed when he or she has learned to hold body, head, arms and legs in their proper alignment to each other, has acquired the turn-out of the legs, a well-poised head, level hips and a straight spine in all steps and poses." Sometimes dancers "cheat" with their placement a little for aesthetic reasons. This is acceptable for a professional dancer, whose technique is established, and whose body is no longer developing. It is, however, inexcusable in a student (except for medical reasons) whose body is still developing and who needs to build a stable technical foundation. If this does not happen, the student will acquire more and more "bad habits" that will only impede his or her progress. Bad habits usually take years of hard work to correct, so they are to be guarded against at practically any cost. If, though, a professional dancer has established strong technique, slightly shifting the position of one's body in a given position or doing a step a slightly different way because it happens to work better for them that way are generally not a problem because the dancer knows to keep the changes small enough only to afford a better line or a more effective jump, turn, etc., and therefore are not detrimental to the strength of his or her technique. I realize this is very general and somewhat confusing, but I hope you can sort it out and understand my meaning. Do please ask about anything that seems hopelessly unclear. ------------------ CygneDanois

That is exactly correct re: Bouder. Oddly enough, she wasn't really very well-liked at SAB, even though she was in the highest class and was (is) clearly excellent. She's gotten a bit slimmer, and I think her newly-revealed line shows off her strong technique well. ------------------ CygneDanois

Diana L, 95% of those kids were trained somewhere else before they went to SAB for "finishing." It has become quite a rarity to see a dancer who actually began his/her training with SAB become a dancer with NYCB. Granted, SAB does a good job of polishing them for NYCB, and yes, there are some dancers who go to SAB with not-so-good technique and come out looking beautiful, or at least much better than they did, but if you ask the C1, C2, and D classes how long they've been at SAB, most of them will say, "About two [or three or four] years." So while SAB is a wonderful finishing school for those who wish to dance Balanchine, it is not necessarily the best place to begin one's training, and many times, much of the credit due is for the dancer's previous teacher (i.e., Marcia Dale Weary). ------------------ CygneDanois

All right, Drew. I do apologize for that comment. I'm sure it doesn't look that way to many. But it certainly feels that way. Balanchine dancers tend to remind me of robots or gymnasts because they have such clear technique, but at the same time are so cold, and not just on the stage. And for the record, I'm not a "her." As for the French technique being simply a "base," I disagree. The French dance in a very distinctive manner, technically. I think that the fact that they can absorb other techniques well is a result of the fact that they are trained in at least one other technique during their schooling. And see Françoise's review of the Paris Opéra Ballet to find out just how well certain dancers absorb Balanchine technique. Those Balanchine arms and hands are hard to do if you've been trained properly! ------------------ CygneDanois

Guérin may not have known she was acquiring a style at the time of her training, but she was. Dancers at the School of American Ballet acquire the Balanchine style, and students at the Vaganova Academy acquire the Kirov style. It's simply a matter of how one is taught to dance. Likewise, the different companies of Paris Opéra Ballet, New York City Ballet, and the Kirov all have slightly different ways of executing the same steps and different styles of acting and temperament. Paris Opéra is more subdued than the Kirov, and NYCB is even more subdued than Paris Opéra, with regard to facial expression. I think that this is a result of nationality. Obviously, the country one is born in influences the way one acts, moves, etc. American dancers have a tendency to look mass-produced because just about everything in America is mass-produced. French dancers have a tendency to look "a bit offish," as the British say, and the Russians are just plain flamboyant (which comes in handy when dancing on a stage as large as that of the Maryinsky or the Bolshoi). Now that I've finished repeating the article (not on purpose), I think it was an informative article for those who don't know ballet as well as others. I don't think Levene was disparaging the fact that there are different styles, only saying to the non-ballet-regular that they exist and that, when used properly, they are good, because nobody wants to see the same style everywhere, but when they are mixed together (think ABT), the results are not always harmonious. Isn't there, in the "Links" section of this site, one that deals with different styles of ballet? I seem to recall one. I'll have to go look. ------------------ CygneDanois