Amy Reusch

Thanks! I'll keep my eyes open for Ivor Guest...

I can't but imagine being director of the opera under Louis XVI must have involved acquaintances later deemed dangerous during the Terror... Someone should mine this for Hollywood!

I was wondering... what happened to the ballet during the French revolution? Did it disband? Did it re-band? Who saved it?

And, if Britain didn't have a royal ballet from the 18th century & 19th century... why not? Was it the religious issues? Did the 18th century royal family not have the same wealth to draw on as the Tsar & Louis? Was the lack of a unified German state the reason no large ballet company formed in Germany? What happened in Spain? How did countries without a historical government-subsidized performing arts company finally come to have one. Why do some countries have them and others not?

I understand some of the drawbacks of such companies, the artistic limits that come with government subsidy... but don't they tend to have schools attached that produce strong dancers (regardless of what limits those dancer might encounter later)? I guess SAB is the US's closest equivalent to a royal academy?

What is the socio-political soup necessary for a country to have an official ballet academy? (Or, does not having one allow more creativity to enter the field?)

The School of Classical Ballet was funded soley by Mr. Baryshnikov. After his resignation the school remained opened only until December and then was closed. My memory is failing me, however I do remember my late husband, one of the faculty members, saying that there had not been any fundraising, therefore the school was dependent upon Mr. Baryshnikov.

Was this that small group that was maintained after the earlier school had been closed? I know ABT had a school before Baryshnikov took over. I also remember a college classmate who went on to study with ABT during Baryshnikov's tenure as AD after the old school had closed. I never quite found out what these classes were, but it seemed to be a small number of students who were invited to study with the company... perhaps filling in when larger casts were needed? What was the School of Classical Ballet?

It was a little surprising how poorly Charlie Rose had been prepared for the interview... what on earth happened? Baryshnikov was remarkably eloquent despite the slightly inane queries... I wonder what was cut out of the interview...

Thank you drb!

It was interesting to hear Baryshnikov talk about ABT being limited by not having a school, when it was he who closed down the school ABT had. I wonder what the thinking was... we need a school but better nothing than this? Or, if you're not going to put more money behind the school, we might as well abandon it? Was there ever much said about the closing that could be repeated here? Would one say he's come full circle... starting at school and finishing by starting a school?

It might be interesting, though probably a diplomatic suicide mission... to not only mention the strengths of the various schools are but where the weaknesses tend to show up in the non-model dancers... Sometimes one sees the styles more clearly in the mediocre specimens than in the stars.

Anyone ready to go down in flames?

"Mad Rush" which Kirk Peterson choreographed for the ABT Studio company.

Just a footnote... Kirk Peterson originally choreographed "Mad Rush" for the Pennsylvania Ballet in the early 1990s.

Do the powers-that-be at the Times think that natives have just seen too much NY dance to have a clear point of view any more? First Rockwell... now a Londoner? Is there anything to that notion?

Just received word... Assume obituaries will follow:

Subject: Ann Barzel passed away at 1:00 p.m. today

Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:20:38 -0600

Thank you Ann for all the dance you saved for others to see... rest in peace.

La Fille Mal Gardee because it's such a wonderful one to bring children to...

I wish they would all do a sort of Repertory in Review format for souvenir books. They could add in the new rep each year. Someone should bring this up at a Dance/USA conference... that their audiences wish they'd do this! Isn't printing cheap enough yet to accomodate this sort of thing? How about a deck of repertory in review cards? It would make adding new rep not so difficult; it would be a collectible trading item; and it would help audience education (and an educated audience is probably a more supportive audience!).

I suspect there's also a lot of archival material that goes missing in the confusion when administrations change... there is so much turnover in the dance world... not that necessarily the outgoing administration has absconded with the material, but the guard on the archives may be lax at these times. Also, it's really hard to find time to go back over old material... there are usually so many emergencies and deadlines that are being dealt with, that if stuff isn't well labeled and archived as it appears, chances are it won't ever be... unless there's a big "anniversary" at which point someone tries to make sense of the company's history. How many outside the major international companies have an archivist or librarian on regular duty? Does ABT? I don't see one on staff. Does that mean the marketing dept holds all the info? Or is it under Artistic? Or do different departments hold different sorts of things? NYCB has Serapio Walton working under the Production Staff (which is where I believe a dance archivist belongs). I believe it's hard to find funding for such a salary line... although I wish someone out there would realize the value of underwriting such staff.

Congratulations on the acquisition, Richard, I see the inventory at Amazon has dropped!

I've always wanted but despaired of owning this book, since it always seems to go for a few hundred dollars. So when rg posted this, I quickly bid only to find my bids instantaneously outbid... I fairly quickly gave up, figuring I'd try once more the actual day of the sale. In the meantime, I went to see what it was selling for these days by checking it out through the Amazon link above. To my delight, there was a copy for sale at $29.95 which I quickly bought! The dust cover, if not in mint condition, was in excellent condition.

If you too have despaired of owning this essential Balanchine book, do check out the used listings at Amazon. As I write this, there is another one for sale for $28.

Comments: Clean EX-LIBRARY hardcover with the typical library stickers and stamps. The previous owner's bookplate is glued to the inside of the front board. The pages are white and clean and have no creases or tears. The jacket looks very good beneath a plastic cover that is taped to the boards (but could be removed easily). The binding is straight and strong. I doubt the book was checked out often (if at all).

Rather than post a link directly here, I recommend going through the Amazon search in Ballet Talk's banner as it will return some small amount to Ballet Talk.

I wonder if they might have been something Ann Barzel shot... have you checked with the Newberry Library?

I don't know if this is an appropriate place to put this, but I thought it would be interesting to some readers of this forum.

There is a weekly cable television show out of Boston all about dance, and all of their shows are apparently available from their website, should you have missed them.

To the Pointe: http://www.to-the-pointe.org/shows.html

Some of them might be of historical interest.... for instance, the show I'm listening to as I type this is all about dancing with Nureyev... his revision of Don Quixote, etc.:

Oct 10, 2006 - "Dancing Don Quixote with Nureyev" : Shirley Frawley interviews Laura Young and Arthur Leeth: http://www.to-the-pointe.org/20061005.wmv

I wish the State Theater would commission statues of Balanchine and Kirstein

for the Promenade. That would be so appropriate.

Or maybe, at least, they could borrow & display the Noguchi bust of Kirstein the Wadsworth Atheneum has in Hartford.

Going for the demolition derby angle of attraction?

I think there is this problem that contemporary productions have to deal with... some attempts at solution are awful, but that doesn't mean the original problem didn't exist... our frame for looking at these century old pieces is very different than their original intended audiences... and the dancers we're setting it on, "the instruments" if you will, are very different than those used in the original production. Current audiences are used to seeing a wider range of movement in the dancers. Sometimes things that were knock-you-down virtuostic when they were first done are just insignificant now... and that affects the way the dynamics of the choreography are weighted. Sometimes dancers seem to try to solve this by just doing the movement to the widest extent of their abilities... but wrapping one's foot around one's neck warps the visual line that the steps surrounding that moment lead into. Also dancers today seem more trained to realize ideal spheres in their motion than communicate their emotions on stage, and perhaps many of the earlier works had more "theater" in their ballet which is missing from today's stages. A lot comes down through the ages relatively in tact and still working at full effect, like the shades entrance in Bayadere, or the corps groupings contrast to Odette in the white acts. It's a trick... how does one restore the life of the antiquities and fill in the missing sections in the cracks while remaining true to the essence of the piece? When we note that a production has failed, we should also note the scale of the problem the producers were trying to solve.

Okay, I think I should just admit I'm having severe metaphor problems this week.

Thanks Helene, that helped. And now, I need some further info... could you name some current (successful) choreographers who are not considered neoclassical? Would that be Eifmann? (By "successful", I'm only looking for a name I might have heard of). (You see, to me, I have trouble throwing some of those choreographers into the same group... perhaps because I don't have someone current to contrast them with).

Wow! I can understand why she misses them!!

Oh darn. I just erased a very long post just as I was finishing it. I don't have the steel to re-write it. But, Helene, with the exception of Miami City Ballet, I have trouble with classifying those companies as neoclassical powerhouses based on their repertoire. Unlike NYCB, when they stage full length ballets, they tend not to do Balanchine's versions (with the exception that a couple of them do present his Nutcracker). The Kirov lists many Balanchine pieces in their repertoire and ABT performs Balanchine this spring every month that they perform. Could you qualify your definition of "neoclassical powerhouse" for me?

Well... there are principal dancers who perform with small companies in order to work with living choreographers... I don't know how very often they resign to do so, the money situation tending to be more secure in the larger institutions...

I guess I'd be hard put to list 5 regional companies that are neoclassical powerhouses... the regionals tend to mix their repertory.

But, could we list 5 choreographer driven companies that have had dancer-initiated guestings from major classical companies? I think that might be much easier. It is hard to know who approached who though...

It always seems to me when a dance company shows signs of being Board driven, that its engine has begun to stall, and one might want to put one's seatback in the upright position before the nosedive. Sometimes the pilot can regain control, but there's an awful lot of crash & burn in the dance world.

What are the lower tier companies like and how do they differ from the top tier? Are the smaller companies like the "minor leagues" in baseball where the best talent moves up to the big leagues, but these minor leagues are still professional baseball?

There's one difference with baseball (at least, I think there is... )... often dancers voluntarily leave the "big leagues" for the "minor leagues" in the interest of doing principal parts or different repertory... I don't know if baseball players move to the minor leagues by choice.

I'm not sure all companies have the same amount of "upward mobility". ABT used to be sort of famous for importing foreign stars rather than promoting domestic ones. NYCB seemed to lean in the opposite direction. (Though this may have changed in the last decade).

Also, the repertory makes a big difference... a dancer may decide they'd like to try cricket for a while instead of baseball... or even stickball! It's not like all companies perform the same repertory (even if some works do seem ubiquitous). It used to be that if you wanted to dance the 19th century classics, you had to leave NYCB... whereas if you wanted to dance works that were destined to become 20th century classics, you might want to join NYCB.

It seems more a question for Ballet Talk for Dancers, doesn't it? Maybe on the Cross Talk forum?

Ballet Talk for Dancers

There is trouble, too, in moving the repertory on to the college scene... Have you ever seen college reconstructions that have an extremely careful "studied" look to them? The movement is so "studied" that it has no life? Nothing seems like death so much as considering a work a museum piece. The dancers look like "this doesn't feel right to me, but I know I'm supposed to move in this fashion for it to be right".

I think it's wonderful for college students to study the work and perform it. I'm just not sure what the formula is to get inspired performances out of them. Inspirational coaching isn't always available. I wish the students could see it performed live by professionals before attempting to learn it themselves.

It makes one wonder how works like Giselle & Swan Lake, & company have survived all these years. I suppose they bear very very little resemblence to the original productions...and yet they are still pretty alive and viable in their current forms (usually). Why?

Does there need to be almost a legend built up around a work for it to continue to inspire new dancers?

The Duncan dancers have all felt pretty "inspired", but I'm not sure how much of the Duncan repertoire survives... but there we're not talking so much of "choreographic" stage patterns of the corps but rather star vehicles... no? (I use a very crude meaning of "choreographic" here... basically floor plans). I guess being inspired and being inspiring aren't always the same thing, though some Duncan interpreters have made a good go of it.

I, of all people, would love to say good documentation of the choreography & coaching is all that is needed, but dance doesn't live on video on a shelf, it needs an audience. I wish there were more subsidized repertory companies in the US.

Perhaps we need a festival tour of reconstructed dances... competition to choose which ones make the tour and sponsorship by an organization of the college dance departments in the country. Couldn't they come together to mount an annual competition, and then host a tour through several of the member colleges' theaters of the winners of that competition?

(Why can't we have an ideal reality?)