Amy Reusch

hmm... cream puffs, little clouds, angels... hmmm... I'd be grateful if something came up on this one... having something interesting to think about during Nut prep season would be a kindness...

Villella was taped coaching Rubies & Tarantella ... I believe it's still in the pipeline... http://balanchine.org/balanchine/index.html I believe you mean the Trust rather than the Foundation. It gets confusing, but it's the Trust that oversees the rights to ballets while the Foundation.. hmm... their mission statement from the website now looks pretty broad... I thought they were a non-profit to support the quality of the Balanchine legacy, but they don't license the ballets, even if they work to keep the quality up, they don't have a say in who gets and who doesn't get the ballets... I believe... Here's the Trust's website: http://www.balanchine.com/ Balanchine.org = Foundation Balanchine.com = Trust

Now that's a tour I'd like to see "Dictators of the Dance"! (oops... sorry, it's not Labor Day yet here in the States, so I imagine it's still Silly Season). I love the mind in the feet... it's what I think of Nina Ananiashvili's dancing...

If you find out, please post here... I'd love to see her dance live...

Wow! Some awesome photos there... ( look at this one of Cynthia Gregory: http://www.willoughbyphotos.com/gallery2/m...HR_+53.jpg.html )

Add another one who is delighted to Yumelia is dancing for the Joffrey! Bravo Joffrey, Brava Yumelia!

If her repertoire included Aurora, wouldn't that qualify her as a ballerina? (Honest question).

Another Thank You... the photos were fascinating and unlike others I had seen of St. Denis, and I would never have come across them not being in the habit of researching St. Denis. One of the reasons I adore Ballettalk is being exposed to work like yours.

I'm very sorry to hear this... he was kind of a father figure for ballet in Chicago.. continuing Ruth Page's legacy running the huge Chicago Tribune Nutcracker. A great loss for Chicago.

I think that would depend on the focus. Dance doesn't have to be in a leotard to be a valid piece of art, and yes there is technique involved in fabric manipulation. One of the oddest surprises for me was to hear that when St. Denis toured the Far East with her dancers was that she was very successful there. I thought that with the real thing available, the public would have shied away from a Western take on it... but have been informed that at the time very few of the general population actually got to see the temple dancers and indian classical dancers, and they were delighted to be entertained by St. Denis. Have to run before finishing this thought...

I think St. Denis taught Humphrey a great deal about the manipulation of fabric as an element of the dance... and there are several Humphrey works that show this influence: Air for the G String, Grieg Concerto (which I regularly mix up with With My Red Fires), Valse Caprice?, Quasi Waltz, and of course Soaring... You see no Denishawn influence? Noy orientalism but fabric manipulation. Remember, St. Denis was originally a skirt dancer. Also, I suspect St. Denis taught them a great deal about how to bear themselves elegantly... I think this was what the Hollywood starlets were sent to her to learn... carriage.

I think the director is always leading the audience. When they're good, you don't realize you're being lead... it's usually when they make mistakes that you notice someone is choosing camera shots. Usually the problem is simple ignorance, it's not frequently possible for the director & operators to have a strong knowlege of shooting dance, or if they do a lot of archival dance work to have much practice (with trial & error) of catching a particular piece in a particular theater with several cameras. Budgets do exist after all. There's a degree of improvisation often in the camerawork, and sometimes it's on... and sometimes it's off... just as with all improvisation situations... Also, it's quite possible for a director to notice something and then try too hard to "set it off" for the viewer, just as it is possible for a dancer to do the same thing with a piece of choreography by "over dancing" it. Another thing is, what looks good on one medium (say a small black & white viewfinder) might not register the same way on a large color screen... I think HD must be tremendously freeing for videographers... both in the possible closeness of the wide shot, and in the level of detail that is retained. (With that detail is often a great deal of nuance.)

I believe that St. Denis sported snowy white hair when she was older... perhaps you are misreading "white" as "blonde"? The costume moves beautifully, it seems she was always very careful with the way her costumes moved... (I'm not really on a costume kick, though it's beginning to sound like it...)

Okay... I guess what I'm trying to say is my understanding was that Horst started out our mothers of modern dance on a path of analyzing choreography as if it were simple music theory; started them down the pathway of considering the underlying structure of choreography. That Cunningham, etc. totally rejected tying steps to music doesn't mean he totally rejected structure. I believe he actually had to involve a lot of structure to support his chance operations. To say that because someone took the theory several steps further or even in a different direction is not to say that artist was on a totally different non-intersecting path... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Horst

The internet still makes my jaw drop... thanks for the lovely link. Reminds me of how St. Denis tried to leave her costumes to UCLA (I think I have this story right, but my memory is always suspect... I heard it from Karoun Tootikian, but again my memory is like that old party game "telephone")... she left her costumes to the dance department at UCLA, but years later Karoun came in and discovered them thrown all over the floor of the girl's locker room and felt they were not being respected (as is possibly imaginable, UCLA having gone past St. Denis in the direction of world dance) ... and perhaps pulled the archive? Not sure where it now resides, but surely the fibers must be beginning to fail? Silk is strong, but... ? If moderators have to delete this as not official press release info, please leave in my question: Where are the St. Denis costumes now?

I wish someone knowledgeable here would talk more about the influence St. Denis' school, and in particular, Louis Horst's influence. I do see traces of St. Denis in Graham & Humphrey, though I believe they took elements of her decorative style and used it almost as costuming on a movement vocabulary imbued with deeper meaning and motivation. Interestingly enough the next generation revolted against that deeper meaning but went on to explore choreographic structure further... so, if St. Denis and her music visualization exercises with her music director Louis Horst teaching dance composition could be seen as a catalyst, you could trace this approach to dance down through to today's choreographers... even contemporary ballet choreographers.... not that they use her choreographic style by any means (and I do think she was best at creating vehicles for her personal performance mystique than at creating choreographic works that survived her retirement), but by employing Horst she started the first serious study of dance composition in this country... the vestiges of which are probably still taught in university dance departments around the world.

4mrdncr, we must all obey our muse, but I disagree about the diagonal shots... I find they distort the choreography (unless the choreographer tends not to think proscenium, which is indeed sometimes the case) and use them only when I want to use a wide shot but it's too wide... or would like to show the relationship between two dancers splitting the stage. They're nice for shooting counterpoint. (I must however offer the disclaimer that having retired before the advent of HDTV I don't know what works best on the wide aspect ratio.) I usually prefer a single central camera using mobile framing to direct attention to the disorientation of side angle cameras point-of-view jumping the audience to different seats in the theater. BUT, if we're talking shooting dance designed for filming rather than for the stage, then yes... please... diagonal shots, with close-up in foreground and full view in background. My biggest complaint about most dance filming is that the directors rarely to look at the choreography, but only at the dancers. If one looks at the choreography, sometimes a close-up is called for, sometimes a wide shot, sometimes a medium close-up, etc... shooting blind to the choreographic intent gets boring to watch after a certain number of minutes...

For me, the Septet imagery was evocative of Matisse's Dance @ MoMA.... I remember as a young bunhead seeing a photo of Septet in Dance Magazine and thinking perhaps modern dance had something to it after all... (young idiot!)... how we pry the brain out of it's habits...

' I'm now struggling to imagine movement outside time and space... seriously, and with all due respect (because I'm pretty sure Cunningham can imagine movement outside time and space)... I must be overlooking something obvious?

Your are correct to say that David Lichine's version of The Prodigal Son " did not do so well" as the Balanchine version, but that does not mean that it was not a successful work. It was well received by critics on three continents. I would absolutely concede that he did not have the talent of Balanchine, but then, he didn't have that group of highly influential good old Harvard boys behind him as Balanchine did to cushion his journey. You are absolutely right... I spoke without having seen the piece and based my judgement on the survival of Balanchine's. I stand corrected.

Myrtha in Prodigal Son with one of Madge's scarves? ... and, ahem.. it's nowhere near warm enough to be August yet.

Yes, when it happens, I always wonder what has been said to entice the move... not to mention that it must be hard to get back into the corps mindset... It would make more sense to move to a different company of the same level, wouldn't it? Perhaps ballet is such a small world that it is difficult to move to another company? Perhaps it is easier to go to another country?

It's not the first time this has happened, that a principal elsewhere joins ABT's corps. I think the hope is that they will rise up through ABT and get to perform beyond their old regional area. Also, I don't know if this plays into it much, but principals don't get to dance as much....

I don't know if this is noted elsewhere, but there's a nice slideshow of the Australian Ballet's tribute (Les Sylphides, Petrushka & a new Firebird) http://www.australianballet.com.au/main.taf?p=4,1,1,1,12

I'm willing to say that Fokine had more influence on the first half of the 20th century, but surely Balanchine had more influence on the 2nd half. Would we have had Forsythe without Balanchine? Now whether his influence will be significant in the 21st century, I'm not sure ballet is still moving in the same direction. Who are Ashton's descendents? Wheeldon? Moving Pictures? Perhaps tellingly, the other Prodigal Son with the exact same costumes and exact same music and perhaps the same dancers (?) did not do as well.... ?