Amy Reusch

Let's see... there was the elderly deaf couple arguing about their marriage, apparently oblivious to the production on the stage... there was the guy in the front row who stood up and started taking flash photos, and then picked a fight with the usher who tried to get him to stop... and then there was that guy snoring so loudly through Jean Erdman's performance, whom someone informed me naught could be done about as he was her husband, Joseph Campbell. But recently? beyond the usual kid stuff at Nutcracker (which I tolerate because Nut always seems like a mission to bring ballet to young children)... only me, furious that I had bought a dance ticket at a theater where one couldn't see the dancers below the knee because of the sitelines.... I kept trying to sit high enough in my chair to see a little better (angering the people behind me).

Jack,

Here's the info on the Bolender/Evans/Phlegmatic video:

TODD BOLENDER coaching "Phlegmatic" variation from The Four Temperaments

Music: Paul Hindemith

Dancers: Albert Evans (New York City Ballet), with Christopher Barksdale (Kansas City Ballet)

Interviewer: Robert Greskovic

Taped: September 15, 1997, New York City; 113 minutes

A link to the Balanchine Foundation's page: Foundation Video Archives

A listing of archival libraries with Balanchine Foundation videos where it mentions

Chicago, IL: Visual & Performing Arts Division, Chicago Public Library

www.chipublib.org/008subject/001artmusic/dance.html

Alas, I hunted for the tape in card catalog, and although there were several of the Foundation's tapes there, including several of Maria Tallchief's coaching, the Bolender one did not crop up. However, if you requested they get it, perhaps they would. If I remember correctly, the Foundation was trying to make the tapes available to non-circulating libraries at cost, so it wouldn't be such a huge financial request on your part.

Just a footnote... Albert Evan's was coached in Phlegmatic by the late Todd Bolender who originated the part... whether he was using that coaching in the performance you saw, I wouldn't know.... I remember Bolender saying something about how different in style the part is now performed.

But you might be interested -- having just seen him live -- to check out the video. I would imagine it's available somewhere in Chicagoland, though you will no doubt have to watch it on site.

Yes, I suppose if a young choreographer in residence feels passionately about a particular musical composition making him want to create, he shouldn't be discouraged... but still, it's hard when we're talking about an existing recognized masterpiece in the company's rep. I wish (in that fantastic world where budgets are unlimited) that the company would mount the two in tandem... go one night to see Butler, the next night to see Neenan's vision of the same piece.

Is it still called the Dance Collection? I seem to think they've changed the name to the Dance Division (which I find rather confusing, as if it's a university conservatory). Must go look. Here it is:

The Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library is the largest and most comprehensive archive in the world devoted to the documentation of dance

The link http://www.nypl.org/research/lpa/dan/danabout.html

Of course, there's also this: Dance Collection

With all respect to Matt Neenan, (whose choreography I have not yet had the pleasure of seeing), I'm sorry to see PA Ballet letting the Butler Carmina out of their repertoire. They've had such a long relationship with the piece and do it so well. I suppose they have to do it every two years or so or lose the rights? Perhaps they think the audience is tired of it? Still they have such aesthetic ownership of it, and understanding that comes from years of presenting it.

There are, of course, several archival recordings... You might be able to watch some version at a performing arts library...

Isn't Butler's the only version that was choreographed during Orff's lifetime with his approval? The dynamic range used to make my sound assistant go insane... from stage whispers to bombast in split seconds...

I just passed the sad news on this evening to a former Harkness dancer who remembered working with him on Souvenirs. (She was a wall flower, apparently... sounded like fun.) I wish someone would put together a memorial tribute DVD of his work. Does Souvenirs exist on video? I'd love to see it again.

And a guestbook has been created as a tribute to Mr. Bolender here:

KansasCity.com guestbook for Todd Bolender

This Guest Book has been created as a tribute to Todd Bolender.

We encourage you to share your memories or express your condolences.

I believe the intention was to make them available at low cost to libraries with non-circulating collections. Every unversity dance department ought to have them in their collection!

Actually, I think that depends a lot on the dancer in question... there are some people who remember choreography decades later as if they had learned it "yesterday", it's just in their bodies like muscle memory... when they hear the music, they practically feel their muscles twitch... and then there are others where it's a more fluid memory and subject to more interpretation. I tend to think there is a kind of phenomenon like "photographic memory" for dancers who are quick studies for learning movement... the kind who can watch a whole ballet once and then a few hours later show you whole sections of the choreography. I think they are rather rare, but they do exist. And for some elderly people, what they did when they were 18, they can remember very clearly compared to what they did yesterday. Of course, having that kind of memory doesn't always mean you're a good coach, as that's a special kind of communication needed to inspire the appropriate interpretation of the steps. From what I am given to understand by dancers he has coached, Frederic Franklin seems to have both the memory and the communication skills.

I was just perusing the Wikipedia entries for Vaganova & Cecchetti (which were very nice for quick access info) and clicked on the Massine link. It has some info, but no list of his choreographies. I thought I'd mention it here in case someone here decides to take on improving the entry. I confess that I don't quite understand the Wikepedia editing model, but I gather that the general populace is allowed to add on to the entries.

Wikipedia's Massine entry

Where is she now?

I just find a lot of the way it was shot & cut very disturbing. I find the framing of the close-ups odd (I really don't like cropping dancers off at the knees... if you're going to go in close, you might as well go for it), I don't know if it's the wide format aspect ratio, or what... and they almost always stay in too long.

I don't mind the medium shots, many of which are very nicely done.

It's interesting that they didn't go for a lot of side angle shots (which so many directors do to a fault)... Was it less distracting that way? I find many of the cuts still distracting with your eye having to re-adjust and hunt for continuity of vision. I appreciate that they may have wanted to do it all with cuts rather than dissolves because of the style of the choreography (we are talking cut jewels, aren't we?) but there are too many times where a choreographic shape needs to hang in your eye while you begin to take in the next moment. I know in the past I've complained about jumping the viewer around the house, and that this was apparently shot to keep the viewer in one seat... but I wouldn't go so far as to say one should never use a side angle (from the house, not the wings, that is) if one has the resources to have several cameras as I imagine this production did. It seems this was shot with fewer cameras than the typical PBS ballet shoots have used; but I see from the credits that they had 10 cameramen....

I didn't have the oportunity to watch this on a high def screen, and I have a question for those who did... Did you find the wide shots too wide or was the resolution was so fine that you didn't feel you were too far away?

Apollinaire Scherr is often a fun read in Newsday... and I've been reading Robert Johnson of the Newark Star Ledger since his comment about ABT's hamster cage.... Their reviews tend to make me blink. (perhaps I'm reading too late at night).

It's a shame. The paper was once so great.

Come to think of it, both may be appropriate! but I was thinking of the former modified.

Now if I'd just get my act together and get back to work on Doris Humphrey's Grieg Concerto as I am supposed to, perhaps I'd remember such things! (where's the emoticon for pounding one's head with a hammer?). Thank you Bart! I'm still laughing about the Song of Norway at Jones Beach. (Now that one doesn't exist in the NYPL archives does it?)

Peer Gynt has been done... I'm not sure by which companies/choreographers... but I googled for you and there's at least this about Ben Stevenson's version for Houston Ballet in 1985:

DANCE: HOUSTON BALLET PRESENTS 'PEER GYNT'

THERE are some highly touching moments in ''Peer Gynt,'' the two-act ballet by Ben Stevenson which the Houston Ballet presented for the first time in New York at the City Center Friday night.

Edvard Grieg's incidental music for Henrik Ibsen's play, supplemented by other Grieg compositions, provides - unsurprisingly - just the right emotional impetus for such scenes.

I have this memory of a British children's magazine showing photos of a Peer Gynt ballet in the 1970s? done by I imagine a British company... but I'm not sure. I'm sure a little research would turn it up.

If I recall correctly, her studio was on the top floor of 1845 Broadway (W side of street between 60-61st). The building is still there, but by the time I was studying with Gabriella Darvash ca 1985 (on the third floor - one below) that studio was an annex of Steps and Robert Blankshine taught there.

I remember it being in that building as well...

But I understand it is a rather strange Moor's Pavane and doesn't mention who set it? (Or does it in the video itself?) The complaint I heard at a Humphrey Symposium last weekend was that one of the male dancers does a very exaggerated sharply defined "turn in" and "turn out" in a way that is not in keeping with the other dancers who have performed the role and which renders his character oddly "wimpy". Any word on who set it?

The variation I'm concerned with uses the same music... and I understand it is known as the the Fan variation.... the only difference perhaps being in the tempo of the middle section... it's much slower for the echappes than the passes.

I suspect the answer is in this forum somewhere, but I couldn't dig one out with the "search" option.

Why are there two different versions of the Kitri variation? And is the one with the echappes & pas de chevals losing popularity?

Whenever people start talking about "the Russian Back", I always think about Darcey Bussell's dancing and wonder why.

Or they could revive Tudor's R&J. I've heard it was very nice and would be curious to see it. I believe it uses the Tchaikovsky score and is fairly short (could it be one act?)... I don't know that would fit the bill for NYCB.