Amy Reusch

I think we need a new forum: "Stump Major Mel"

Is it even possible?

After watching -- with disconcertment -- my little girl be taught to do "alligator arms" and finding the imagery not at all to my liking... I got to wondering about what would be better imagery, and wondered where the position got it's start... I was thinking of flying sylphs and wilis and such and thinking that it was more like trying to keep vines and whatnot out of ones eyes while flying... [though it's not quite the position Clark Kent came up with is it?] Where did the position get started? Do we see it before pointe? I can't think of it occuring anywhere in art save in illustrations of 19th century ballerinas... Why is it called a Ceccheti third when certainly the position predates him? What is that position called in Vaganova? Surely it is in the Petipa repetoire?

How about Prodigal Son? Or am I thinking of an ABT of the past.

will be Dede Barfield's final performance

Sad to see her go... She sure could do one hell of a Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux...

In my calendar, on June 23rd, I have marked down that there is to be a Freddie Franklin tribute by ABT at 9:30pm.

It's been ages since I made that note, and now I can't find my source for the info, or anything else mentioning it at the ABT site. (Perhaps it's hidden in some corner of the site I didn't think to look?) I see they are doing Coppelia that day, and I assume that would be Mr. Franklin's staging. I noticed that the calendar had asterixs on that Saturday's Coppelia performance, but couldn't find out what they referred to.

Anyone know anything about a planned Franklin tribute?

Thanks, both of you! That helped considerably more than the typical newspaper review!

As a matter of fact, it seems impossible that one group of dancers could do justice to so many diverse styles. It would probably make more sense to invite the various companies -- Cunningham's, Graham's, Morris's, Tharp's, Taylor's and others to share the time among themselves. That would be truly exciting.

Lincoln Center (& NYC) deserves better than a repertory company... when it has the originals in town already...

I'm all in favor of repertory companies, many do fabulous jobs (Hubbard Street was not bad at Tharp, and I hear Ririe-Woodbury is no mean intepreter of other's modern dance either)...and they can provide homes for works no longer in rep at the companies that orginated them (and besides, many choreographers seem stronger at creating new work than at restaging their own work)...

But... Lincoln Center should present the best... and presumably the choreographers working on their own chosen dancers whom they've worked with for years... having developed a special muse/interpreter relationship usually not achieved in tempory "residencies"... Cunningham should present Cunningham...

Should it be limited to living choreographers? Or could "repertory companies" be used to give equal time to masterpieces whose auteurs are long gone? (Are Graham & Limon now "repertory companies"?)

I agree, why not present a modern dance season with time shared between local world class companies (or even out of towners)? City Center practically breaks these companies.

Or do we feel that the Joyce is simply a better space for presenting modern dance? Does most modern dance not play well in an opera house?

SoCalGal, I've never seen any of Neenan's choreography, but having seen him dance, I'm curious....

What do you like about his choreography?

Stand up, turn around... see if you can get a rise out of the guys in the lighting booth..

Play "where's Waldo" trying to spot familiar faces in the audience... the dance community is pretty small, usually you can find someone you know.

Saunter out into the lobby saying "wasn't so & so __________!!!" and "Who was that _____________?"

If attending one of the nationally touring russian pick-up companies in a college theater, see if can browbeat someone over by the sound booth into letting you know which of the many castings listed in the program you're actually watching dance tonight.

Watch for little girls twirling in the aisles.

Look for a better seat.

www.BalletArchive.org

Was it this one?

If the head is large, doesn't it make that head's facial expression more significant? I wonder if Balanchine felt it distracted audience focus from the other extremities? Would Makarova count as a pinhead? Would Patty McBride?

There's a rule about no rumors, isn't there? Alright then, penalize me, because I can't remember where I heard it or who it was, but I'm sure someone told me about a girl rejected for SAB because her head was "too big". Seems to me this was at least 20 years ago.

My apologies, Alexandra... I thought perhaps you were reinforcing Hall's earlier comment:

Duberman was awful. He never met Kirsten and is doing research on a book but he only seems to know anything about LK's life until he was 17. Not very illuminating on his relationship with Mr. B.

There is a biography in the works -- the biographer said, at W2W Balanchine, I'm told, that he had researched his subject up to the age of....17.

What I understood Mr. Duberman to say was that at this point, as a scholar, he could only speak about Kirstein up to the age of 17 because that was as far as he had gotten in his research.... not because he intended to stop there, but that this was all he felt qualified so far to speak about...

I thought he said something about Kirstein's autobiography being very different from reality because of Kirstein's tendency toward self invention... Was there an autobiography published? Or was he referring to the excerpted diaries?

David Hays...

Said something humorous about being given so little to do a set with... that when eventually Balanchine returned to his favorite "blue sky", that with so little ventured it felt like less lost...

and then that bit about measuring the success of any particular set by how long it lasted before Balanchine turned it back to blue sky....

What was that piece that Kirstein decided to surprise Balanchine with a set for a birthday present? Anyone remember that anecdote? Balanchine didn't discover there was to be a set until the dress rehearsal?

Violette Verdy on the unity of the NYCB institution...

Do any of you remember Verdy's words when she said something about how different NYCB was from any of the other great companies/schools because of how complete the institution was... really the first time and only time this has happened... dancers starting as children with the very basics trained to do Balanchine's technique? I wish I could hear her words again. At the time I found myself thinking "really? but what about Bournonville... what about Petipa?" But then I got to thinking that maybe she was right... after all, Bournonville and Petipa had to answer to their respective emporers... whereas Balanchine & Kirstein were like gods.... they didn't have to answer to the Czar... no one was going to exile them for a year... and they created their school & company from scratch...

By the way, the Apollo of Rasta Thomas from the Dance Theatre of Harlem was very interesting and I thought well done. This was a "premiere" of the old uncut version of Apollo, which was introduced by Jacques (who set it) and Arthur Mitchell. Thomas danced it more as a demi-character fashion before the "becoming a god" segment. You really saw the growth of child to man before Apollo's apotheosis.

I haven't seen Rasta since his Hartford Ballet days and I didn't recognize him... the lights were so dark through most of the evening that one couldn't begin to read the program... (I was wondering what Cuban this was that DTH had hired!)... he seems to have matured from his hot-shot competition virtuoso days... much more lyrical use of his arms (I kept wondering what the young Lifar looked like dancing this role and what the comparison would be). There's still some sort of breadth/opening through the shoulders I find myself wanting to see in him... some sort of tenseness there that keeps the movement from opening fully, but I think he's come a long way... I couldn't figure out the DTH dancers... they were so much stiffer than the others... I don't mean inflexible; their legs went up to their ears when necessary... but somehow less supple, as if they had been skipping their pas de chevals for a few years running..... their arms almost sort of wooden.... What is it? What's going on? I don't remember this from the old Dance In America films... It wasn't as bad as Vera Zorina, but it seemed like a throwback all the same... The choreography was still interesting... and they certainly were angular... but... was it because they were trying to do a "historically correct" version?

And I hate to say it, but I found I did miss the contrasting skin color in Agon. When I first heard it was always done by a black man and a white woman, I thought that was the silliest thing I'd ever heard... but it was as if the costuming was missing... it left me wishing it had been a white male with a black female for the pas...

For those of us unfortunately unable to attend, does anyone know if any or all of it will be filmed for posterity and future viewing?

There was someone up in the balcony shooting video... I don't know who it was or for whom they were shooting.... You would think the NYPL Dance Collection, but perhaps it was just for Symphony Space's archives... They must have been pretty dazed by the end of it... I eventually stopped trying to see who it was through the dark, but I didn't notice a change of camera operator. I'm not sure they were there through the performances.

It was packed, by the way... but I didn't encounter a line outside at 2pm, nor later when I ducked out for five minutes hunting for food... but I think at 8pm there might have been a line... periodically the ushers would come by with flashlites trying to find places to shoehorn people in.... Unfortunately there must have been a miscommunication during the Virginia Brooks segment because just as the Sugarplum variation began they let in a whole horde of people who stood in the aisles looking vainly for seating meanwhile blocking the view of everyone else who had been patiently waiting for this performance for ages.

Amy, to the best of my knowledge, all previous Wall-to-Walls have honored composers. This was the first one I attended, but I am under the impression that those are constructed very much like the Balanchine -- with discussions, film clips and live performances interspersed.

I hear that they're notoriously full of glitches... and that there were fewer technical glitches in this wall-to-wall than in many of the previous ones. All the same, regarding the tape & DVD problems... Bad technology shouldn't happen to nice people.

I think they should have given out T-shirts for those who lasted the whole 12 hours, the way they do in marathons.

I think they could have done brisk sales in these if they had them!

I couldn't get there until just before 2pm, but by the time it was over I felt like I'd been sitting through a Wayang Kulit... dazed and processing the material in front of me with a different part of my brain... Actually, I was still dazed by the next day... took advantage of being in the city the next day to take class with Christian Holder and couldn't hold a single simple combination in my head... must have still been in overload!

I loved the David Hayes reminiscences... And I was fascinated by the Kirstein biographer (perhaps because I've been wondering if there were a biography out there... this is one book I'll definitely run out and buy) What I would have lost were the actresses reading the biographies... even Allegra Kent, whose dancing and autobiography I loved, I would rather have heard interviewed than listen to her reading her book. Villella managed a good read of his book, but still... I've read those books already... and interview might have turned up something new... of course, we couldn't exactly interview Danilova or Geva.... I figure when they first came up with the wall-to-wall Balanchine concept, the "Selected Shorts" shows they've done naturally suggested this to them. It just seems weird to me to have actors portraying people who haven't been gone all that long... I need more Hollywood magic if that's going to work for me...

Speaking of Hollywood magic.... Those Vera Zorina segments... trust Hollywood to think penche was all about cleavage!

The live coaching was such a delight.

But it must be such hell for the dancers, no one could possibly thank them enough. Here they come, for instance Bouder & Askegard, doing the Liberty Belle pas from Stars & Stripes, never having danced it together before we see them on stage... and then having their flaws pointed out to the audience... and we sit there envisioning what the coach is trying to get from them, and watching whether they achieve it or not... They don't even have a mirror to work with... I'd like to see this sort of special rehearsal before any production... it's so enlightening... but I can't imagine but the dancers would revolt. The coach gives us something to look for that we might not have noticed before. Dance is difficult to describe, but the audience likes being given details to look for (confess, how many of you at some point in your life counted the fouettes in Swan Lake? Such a dull detail, in comparison)...

After watching Merrill Ashley coach the pas, it was fascinating to see the d'Amboise/McBride kinescope. This was perhaps for me the highlite of the evening, as I had never before seen d'Amboise in his prime (7 Brides doesn't really fill that requirement for me)... Wow!!!! I often make disparaging remarks about how much is lost when a dance is transposed to the screen, but when I think about how many great dancers have impressed me with their televised performance and how very very few times I've had the chance to see them live, I have to take it all back and beg for more dance on screen. It perhaps wasn't McBride's best performance, and d'Amboise graciously apologized for being something of an ____ to her back then... apparently at the time he was miffed not to be dancing with Hayden who had been too injurred to perform). I was very happy to see Bouder in Who Cares later so I could understand what all the fuss was about (mostly this coaching session made me really wanted to see her do Tarantella rather than Liberty Belle, does she?). It seemed the Liberty Belle pas had been sort of trivialized... I know, it's hard to say that about a piece like Stars & Stripes, after all... but I think the points are made better if they're done subtley... hmmm... how to describe.... it's almost (but not quite) like watching dancers who have been given something comic to do without their realizing it until the audience tells them it's funny... when they reprise the roles and are selfconsciously comic, it's never quite as effective... There's Jacques up there, never quite managing to fully point his feet and yet so incredibly elegant and dashing all the same.... the way he tossed McBride up so high... so thrilling! Has anyone danced this pas de deux as well? And those promenades where the man darts in and out dodging the belle's foot... d'Amboise managed to look military smart/dashing and the joke was still in the movement... others doing it seem to do something pelvically to make it rather crude/coarse so that the audience focus is all on whether the family jewels have been preserved.... the joke is there without having to ham it up.

And then there was that issue of the slow developpe a la seconde... it's kind of related to the flexibility issues Arthur Mitchel was talking about in Agon... this flexibility is so easy for these dancers, some of the original interpretation is missing... We have such flexible dancers these days, with such good placement... sometimes it seems like it's so easy for them that they don't know how to make it interesting to the audience? Ballet is supposed to look effortless, right? Except when it isn't.

I loved the bit about how a simple placing of the foot had drifted over time into a grand battement! We should come up with a term for this in dance... it's kind of like the way linguists describe how pronunciations drift over time... I'm not even sure we have a word for how dance is passed down... it's not truly an "oral" tradition...

I wish I wish I wish I wish they had Villella & McBride coach the Tarantella! It made me wonder. Who fits the Villella niche today? My guess the answer will be one of the Cubans. This is not a rhetorical question, I don't see enough dance these days to know the answer, and I would dearly like to see a performance where the danseur is as feisty as Villella.

First of all, I can't thank Lourdes Lopez enough for suggesting this wall-to-wall to Symphony Space... I looked at the list of previous wall-to-wall festivals and they all seem to be music (...though I'm not sure whether "off-the-wall" was music or performance art). What a fantastic smorgasbord for FREE!!! (How did all this come off, did everyone donate their time?)

Renard:

Special mention must go to the rooster (Christopher Barksdale); whether it was the costume or the way he moved his head (i.e., the choreography), the dancer really came off as a rooster!! It is a charming and engaging piece that could be paired with Steadfast on triple bill program. Kids would love it.

Christopher Barksdale was terrific, but as the fox rather than the rooster. He has such wonderful leaps, it must be a pleasure to be a Kansas City Ballet subscriber and watch him in different repetoire. Sean Duus was the marvelous rooster (didn't you love how he shook the epaulettes of that costume? Leaping off that platform was no mean feat either; I forget now how much higher I heard the original platform was, but it seems a lot to ask of any dancer). I believe Duus had retired from dancing immediately after the reconstruction of Renard premiered in Kansas City, and returned just to do this performance.

I think Renard is more of a fascinating curiosity rather than a piece for children. Some of the dialogue about the rooster and his wives is a bit off color.

Balanchine choreographing animal movements... how many of these are there? This seems more mike Prodigal Son to me... kind of expressionist?

I shot the premiere in Kansas City. Unfortunately, this meant not really seeing the live production but rather a miniature black & white through-the-viewfinder version with major technical distractions, so my comparison of the two performances may be a bit off... but... I think being produced on a smaller stage helped cameo the movement better... I missed the live music, of course, and the backdrop... but this performance was so much more brightly lit, and I was so much closer to the stage, that I think I might have liked it better... even if it meant not having the backdrop. I believe some things were altered slightly between the performances as well... I thought the Fox had a more elegant opera cape in Kansas City, and asked Mr. Barkesdale if my memory were correct... he said Mr. Bolender had thought the cape wasn't quite right and changed it.

The costumes and the music are almost reason enough alone for the production to exist. Some of the movement is very interesting. Reconstructions are curious animals... very interesting, but can we judge the original from them? It seems there must be gaps or blank spots... could any one person really remember exactly every step?

I wonder if works of art somewhat maintained 'in the oral tradition' as some of the folk tales the ballets are based on, have a kind of lifespan whose vitality is extent on fluid interpretation... ultimately they might become so dilute as to vanish (as did many fairy tales, I'm sure)... but to not allow ever any adaptations might make them leaden "museum pieces"... no? It's always so interesting to see what different coaches/directors make of the same work... some, even if they don't remember exactly the same steps, remember what made it vital and try to preserve that ("reconstructions" or "revisualizations"?) Of course, when the work is still in repetoire, it's not a "reconstruction"... but playing "fast & loose" might even get others to take a fresher look when coaching the more traditional interpretation?

Dido, I'm hoping you review BB's Swan Lake and talk a little about the character dances therein... we're losing our 'advanced adult' ballet teacher to BB while she works on the character bits... I'd like to come and bring my munchkin, but my skin crawls at the possibility that she'll prefer the Barbie version.

Chesbrough defended his pay — in excess of $300,000 annually — and the employment by SPAC of his wife. He said he is forfeiting $75,000 in pay this year to help SPAC afford its menu of shows and that his family is contributing $150,000 to a fund drive.

He revealed he is also getting a bonus in installments from what was supposed to be a $200,000 loan from SPAC that was never meant to be repaid. The loan was ruled improper by the state's attorney general's office last year and was reworked into part of his compensation package.

What job does his wife have? Director of Development. Wouldn't SPAC have benefited from a little crossfertilization by having a different Development director? It seems like Mr. & Mrs. Chesbrough would have the same roladex and social connections?

IMHO, considering how vocal the groundswell of support of the ballet staying at SPAC has been, Chesbrough by complaining about empty seats is just damning his own skills at not being able to galvanize it into attendence and financial support.

Frankly, I've never understood "bonuses" from state institutions... A $200,000 loan never meant to be repaid? Aren't bonuses supposed to be some sort of mini-share of corporate profits? Do they have a place in non-profits? (I'm asking that honestly, even if I don't think Chesbrough was ethically in line for one, perhaps the people soliciting telephone donations deserve a reward for their hard unpopular work... or a successful marketing department... any opinions?)

MJ,

I imagine if you call Symphony Space by 1pm or 2pm, they should have a good sense of how early you would need to be there to get in by 8pm...

I'd like to do the whole thing (if I can work out childcare conundrums) ... I hope Suki's wearing a mic for the master class... ditto Maria Tallchief coaching Maria Kosrowski in Firebird!! Watching Tallchief draw herself up to demonstrate what she wants makes me wish I had seen her in her prime... It's almost an exposition on stage presence alone... what makes a dancer magnetic when they can no longer draw on technical tricks (e.g. high extension)... [it always amazes me how sometimes young dancers can be boring inspite of incredible technical feats]