Amy Reusch

Somewhere (where?) I read that Tchaikovsky, broken hearted by rejection of his affections by a young man, had wandered around the city in the winter, not appropriately dressed for the weather, caught pneumonia and died... I want to say I read this in Balanchine's Tchaikovsky but I loaned that book out to a much admired non-native-english speaking accompanist and it somehow never returned... Does anyone have a copy and could check? Or does this version ring a bell with any of you?

Perhaps I've gotten the cholera/pneumonia mixed up... one doesn't catch cholera from wandering around with out a hat... but perhaps he wouldn't have been in such a weakened state to have been suseptible to cholera? I suppose a fraternity of dentists & doctors could have supplied the bad water... ?

When I saw this thread pop up, I thought "Oh, what's that? and then Oh! I started this? What??"... no memory whatsoever these days... but... I've been thinking about Carbo's response again...

As for composers' credits in general, well, that's always the first information I want from any review of a ballet I know nothing about. If it's someone I'm familiar with, and if the choreographer has any ear at all, it will tell me more about the work than the next thousand words.

I'd would have to differ... before I want to know the composer, I want to know the choreographer... it makes a big difference to me if it's Balanchine or Bejart... then I want to know the ocmposer amd the dancers.

How about stats on how many times a performer has done such & such part... or how many times per year a particular ballet is performed... Or how many performances a year a principal dances vs. how many times a corps dancer dances... Or it might be fun to do stats on ballets rather than on dancers... how many arabesques penche does the first dancer in the Shades scene do?

Of course, rg... it just seemed as if we were veering off to the outskirts, with us all seeing non-existant ribbons & elastics... (I'm still having trouble not seeing an elastic attached at the heel on the supporting leg, and do realize how inane that is)

Have we reached the silly season yet?

Dancers need to sleep, dancers need to be in class... but they also need art unless a life in the corps is all of anyone's ambition for them... and there isn't much room in the budget for dancers that have no future beyond the corps, is there, really? Isn't the corps full of dancers the artistic director hopes will one day evolve into principals? They won't all live up to that hope, of course, but if they never had the potential would they have even been hired for the corps? I'm not sure if dancers should be watching peer's dance performances so much as they need to know their art from the inside rather than the outside... but a dancer without exposure to other forms of art would be a souless automaton, don't you think? Even if "other forms art" if only hip hop, & movies.. etc. I think I've seen enough "clueless" dancers blindly doing the steps to not think exposure to art should be optional. "Don't think, just do" doesn't mean "don't perceive" "don't sense"... one doesn't have to be intellectually rigorous and verbal to absorb the influence of art and have it inform one's own expression. Dancers need art just like the rest of us do.

Hrrmmph.

It really looks to me as if Youskevitch is wearing tights over his slippers... could be a conceit for the photographer? And it does look as if there's elastic under the tights of Roudenko's supporting ankle. Is that a small hole in her tights near the ankle on the other foot? Or is it a speck on the photo? Very odd... looks like it's airbrushed, but then the shoe on the supporting foot is loose around her arch. Maybe Youskevitch is just in tights, they look much thicker than what we get nowadays.

Interesting lighting experiment in that Youskevitch Alonso Black Swan pas de deux! Not sure it worked... I imagine they were trying to make up for TV's flatness... Youskevitch make those supported cabriole's look like so much fun!

The Magic Swan? ... okay, this time I did scan the net before asking... Curiosity strikes: Who choreographed this ballet? And did the story line involve making a princess laugh?

And I thought 5'6" was tall for a dancer of her time...

Was Nanette Charisse her sister or her sister-in-law? (I imagine in-law, but sometimes others in a family take on a stage name)

... okay... went & dug on the net (like I should have done first... sometimes I forget most answers already exist in cyberspace)... it's Nenette not Nanette... she was a sister-in-law.

Vive la difference!

I was wondering what was going through the other dancers' minds just at the moment

This isn't related to Glazunov... but in the interests of keeping info on Les Sylphides & Chopiniana together in one place, I'm adding my question here...

Is the second kneeling girl from the left making a mistake in this photo of the Kirov performing Chopiniana, or is this an interesting little fillip in the choreography? (And have you heard of a name for this interesting linking pose?)

http://blog.nj.com/entertainment_impact_ar..._chopiniana.jpg

It has always made me think of troikas when I heard it too!! (Makes me wonder if it was used in some movie soundtrack that planted the idea in my head)

Thanks for the clip, Paul. She reminds me of other Cuban balerinas, but I can't put my finger on why... what the cuban ballerina style is... something about how they register the line in the poses? It's so hard to describe a style without implying things not intended and unintentionally slighting other styles... and yet I think there is a recogizeable Cuban ballerina style... or is it a physique?

What exactly is it?

I think it's interesting that at a time when dancers were still Russifying (is that a word?) their names, she Americanized hers...

Kaye was born Nora Koreff in Brooklyn, New York to emigrant parents from Tsarist Russia, but later Americanized her surname

Did the Reisinger ever leave Russia before the Ivanov/Petipa version made waves in the West?

Two reviews of Boston Ballet in Dark Elegies

Karen Campbell in the Boston Globe:

http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/arti..._boston_ballet/

Yet Tudor's expressive vocabulary never seems like mime. It is deftly, seamlessly integrated into phrases that cast the dancers in isolated anguish or bring them together in communal mourning. Heather Myers can't resist cradling a ghost child, and Larissa Ponomarenko tries to bear her grief with ramrod straight posture, flat palms pressed to her sides. Jared Redick interrupts angry kicks and jagged leaps with moments of stillness, arms open wide as if asking why. Toward the end, community comes together in a ritual-like folk dance, hands connecting, heel-toe kicks skewing side-to-side. And by the final tableau, there is a palpable sense of acceptance, the backdrop's blue and pink sky suggesting the light of a new dawn.

Jeffrey Gantz in The Phoenix (with photo)

http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid61675.aspx

Set to texts by 19th-century German poet Friedrich Rückert, they make circles (like Tudor in the fourth song) of grief and denial and submission

I thought he was entirely self-trained... but for the life of me I can't remember where I got that info... (perhaps there's an interview somewhere?)

What an interesting idea to have a modern dance company take Tudor into it's repertory... which of Tudor's ballets could suffer having the pointe shoes removed?

And some of us were named "Amy" as a result...

I can't decide whether to head this thread

"Too Much of a Good Thing"

or

"No Swans were Injured in the Making of This Ballet"

The company looks fabulous... so many good dancers in the corps... almost too many. They're so good, that the choreographer seems to have given them choreography more suited to the Prince. How wonderful to see the men of the corps look like a dozen principals, and all together too, such a strong statement... How could I possibly complain? But, somehow, this made the rest of the ballet less for me.

The staging is listed as "after Petipa/Ivanov", but I think perhaps it should have read "after Nureyev". I really have trouble with that solo at the end of the first act. Why does everyone suddenly desert Siegried? Where's the Secret Service for petes sake?

A year ago or so, I had the opportunity to ask some Boston Ballet corps dancers what their favorite ballet to dance was. I was so surprised when they responded "Swan Lake". I thought, sure, it's a lovely ballet, but is it really that much fun for a dancer in the corps? I mean, didn't Jerome Bel make fun of how dull it is to be in the corps in his ballet "Veronique Doisneau" for the Paris Opera? Now that I've seen what Boston does, I understand how a corps dancer could love it.

No one really goes to the ballet for the story... and who could complain if lots of expository pantomime and procession were replaced with lovely choreography for the corps... and it is lovely... and well danced but... but...

Tchaikovsky has so much to say dramatically, I hate to see it blurred over... and the ballet doesn't quite come together for me if the story isn't there... drop it down to the 2nd Act and toss in the Black Swan pas de deux somewhere, if you're going to go vague on the dramatic details.

I spent a little time on the drive up, familiarizing my 9-year-old with some of the underlying tensions in the drama... how important a responsibility it was for the Prince to marry and produce an heir to the throne, what dangers existed for a country where the prince didn't... how important fidelity was in the days of no divorce... how it was important to find a spouse who would be faithful... how it's easy to fall in love, and then six months later to fall in love again with somebody else.. why all this would be important. I asked her if she wanted to know the full story ahead of time, or wait and see how it worked out. She wanted the story in advance (and with her ability to watch the same movie over and over without any loss of enjoyment, I believed her). So I explained about the evil sorcerer and the handmaidens and the lake of the mother's tears and how Odette could only escape if a man swore true love, but that if he failed her she would be trapped as a swan forever. I explained about Odile, and I explained about the suicides. My daughter's response: "So, if Odette kills herself because of a broken heart betrayed by Siegfried, will she become a Wili?" Hmmm...... good point, this was also Germany, after all....

But back to Boston...

Yes, I love the Maypole that some stagings do, and no it's not necessary to do it... but it is nice to know that there are peasants and there is a court with all the pressures it puts on the prince. I wouldn't have believed that I'd miss all that processing about, but I did. The queen and her couple of old biddy ladies-in-waiting didn't quite make the same impression. And we can't all get Frederic Franklin, but this tutor moved like a 24 year old, surely he was too young to have been Siegfried's tutor? ... and there was no Benno. There are no artificial swans. The cross-bow prop is so light and fragile looking, it's hardly clear what it is... must be nice to dance with, but for all we could tell, it might easily have been some sort of musical instrument. Siegfried never takes aim at the swans (and neither does anyone else because he's hunting alone... if that's what he's doing... never mind the "court" sometimes referred to in the music, he has no huntsmen to confer with. When the swans come racing in and hit that famous defensive pose, and then a few more, and then a few more, etc.. .it's not in reaction to anything Seigfried or his [non-existent] huntsmen have done... and no one seems to make any oaths at any point in the ballet... Perhaps Rothbart refers to God once, but no one else does. So, no oaths were broken... And good God, no one commits suicide!! Apparently Von Rothbart feinting kickboxing over the grieving swan queen is considered less offensive.

Come to think of it, Rothbart begins the 2nd Act... dancing around in the mist... (several people in the audience around me were muttering to one another "Is that the Prince?" After all, they both wore black). I think I may have seen this before in other stagings, but he didn't resemble the prince in those...

There was a dramaturge for this production: Sorella Englund. Perhaps the Royal Danish do a different version of Swan Lake? As a Finn, does it color her view of this Russian ballet?

OK... here's the quote from the synopsis: "She wishes to die, but Siegfried rushes to her side, explaining passionately how he, too, succcumbed to Von Rothbart's wickedness." I didn't quite catch that pantomime, but there was a very long time where they just embraced and the corps danced, maybe it transpired then?

But the dancing was Beautiful. Carlos Molina was a wonderful partner to Erica Cornejo... he lifted her and held her above his head as if she truly were eiderdown... as if he could have held her there for another 20 minutes had he felt like it. And Cornejo sported some lucsious balances, that brought a different eloquence to the role than I've seen in other interpretations. She nailed the fouettes in grand competition style, changing her spot 8 times in the first half. Not quite Makarova's idea that they are supposed to be hypnotically luring Seigfried in; but magnificent all the same. They were there in the original because Legnani could do them, after all, right?... though I do appreciate the interpretive idea.

Still... that Pas de Cinq seemed to add a lot of time to the third act... I was beginning to feel like I was watching Sleeping Beauty.... and then the music almost seemed rushed for the national dances, as if the director had thought he needed to make up time. I'm not convinced this score wasn't meddled with... Seigfried's solo at the end of the first act, that's usually the opening of the 2nd act, isn't it? Or is it interstitial music to cover the scene change? And it wasn't clear that the national dances had anything to do with the princesses... I would have like to have seen the princesses' dance flirt more individually with the Prince... I'm sure I haven't seen enough Swan Lake stagings to make any definitive comments, and have trouble seeing something different to what I'm used too, but, I still miss certain things all the same.

I missed many of the Ivanov grouping of the corps in 2nd Act... they are so beautifully structured to set off Odette & Siegfried... these white acts presented here seemed almost more Petipa than Ivanov... lots of lines, lots and lots and lots and lots of swans... reminiscent of The Shades more than the 2nd Act stagings I'm familiar with. It's wonderful that Boston Ballet can put so many good dancers on stage as swans, but there were too many... they started to interfere with the corps groupings and patterns... they looked like they were having difficulty all fitting in... and those big circling runs were hampered by the large number, no one actually stepped on anyone else but the corps couldn't quite build up the speed to make that moment effective. The 9-year-old: "Why did she have so many hand-maidens... it didn't make sense" (Come to think of it, judging by the number of handmaidens vs. the size of Seigfried's mother's court, this princess was definitely marrying down). But there were some beautiful moments afforded by the new choreography... the swans almost made a lake with waves themselves... it was beautiful, just not the same sort of thing.

I wanted to applaud John Conklin, the costumer designer, after the first act Pas de Trois... the way those skirts fluted as they flared in the travelling turns was a choreography in itself!

Mr. Nichols lighting was beautiful as always, picking up colors in the costumes... adding mystique to the sets... though sometimes my old eyes can't quite take that outlining of the dancers' legs with side-light...

Strangely enough, the program's title page puts the premiere down as 1985... but I'm assuming with the Imperial Ballet attribution, that this was a typo rather than a reference to this version of the ballet.

Another addition to this thread:

Alistaire Macauley in the NY Times: Under Analysis: The Psychology of Tudor's Ballets (2nd page has a nice photo of Tudor in a 1942 performance of Pillar of Fire)

Too few of Tudor's ballets are left for his work ever again to equal the stature of that of his contemporaries Balanchine, Martha Graham and Frederick Ashton. But we can still recognize that he was a major artist and a major influence. Even Balanchine ("Emeralds") and Ashton ("Enigma Variations") owe debts to "Jardin aux Lilas"; the choreography of Jerome Robbins and Kenneth MacMillan owes Tudor many more; and so, often, does Paul Taylor's. After this centenary is over, however, how much Tudor will any of us see again? Catch what you can before the year is out.

Speaking of which, this week Boston Ballet presents Dark Elegies alongside Balanchine's Concerto Barocco & Tharp's In The Upper Room

Oddly enough, I think the immediacy of broadcast television served ballet better than videos do... there's something about the "catch it now before it's gone" that keeps them watching in a way that "when I have time to sit back and watch the video" doesn't....

For the price of a live performance $92 in Australia I can buy 3 DVDs. Even more worrying is the fact that DVDs are usually made of crack companies with great stars. There is a great deal of money spent on design the stages are capacious, effects really good. As well, we get superb close ups of the dancers which can be impossible unless you have THE very beat seats in a live performance. Does anyone think that DVDs will have a lasting impact on attendance?

I think that like CDs, they will only encourage even more attendence... do people not go to live rock concerts because they happen to have a studio recording of the music?