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Amy Reusch

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Posts posted by Amy Reusch

  1. Forgive me for noting the trivial, but the film look felt much like Wiseman's flm on the Paris Opera "La Danse". I actually enjoyed all the behind the scenes views, perhaps more than I would have enjoyed the view from out in the house, and this surprises me.

    I'm also surprised that they didn't wallow more in the intrigue. There wasn't much mention if Dmitrichenko's history as head of the dancers union...(I forget i that was his exact role, was he head of a union or must some sort of spokeperson for the dancers?). I don't mind that they did not wallow so much in the details, but I am surprised.

    It was nice that they picked good footage of both Filin & Tskiskaridze. I was a little confused by the footage of an adolescent performing Dying Swan? What was that from?

  2. I think Spectre shows us nothing but what an extroardinairy artist Nijinsky must have been. I honestly believe, never having seen him, that no one owns this piece as Nijinsky did. This is the role his leaps most famously floated in... It is as synonymous with Nijinsky as Dying Swan was with Pavlova. Baryshnikov, Nureyev, Dupond, or Soloviev all performed Spectre, but all are more famous for other roles.

    We all long to catch a glimpse of Nijinsky's legend in each new dancer to take on the role... but whatever romantic spirit posessed Nijinsky's soft interpretation, it must not be easily summoned. Sure, there is androgeny there, but there seems to be more than mere androgeny, Nijinsky looks as much the Spectre of Art Nouveau as La Rose, and it is in his very gaze, wide eyed or downcast. It was not just the prodigous leap, but some subtlety in the port de bras, something not trained from modern classroom port de bras, perhaps, a soft quality not trained into port de bras since the very early 1900s? Fokine made use of Nijinsky's leaps, but perhaps something unique to his spirit as well. Nijinsky seems to have done "posessed" well given the roles Fokine made on him.

    There is this interesting photo of Lifar dancing it for Nijinsky. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/cb/1e/f4/cb1ef43aaa3c52a736ac008c913d4048.jpg

    I wonder if ABT's conductor will hold off on the last note.

  3. I felt that whoever came to the theater in Texas to see "There is a Time" would have "gotten it" rather than felt they were seeing sn academic exercise. I cannot compare it to ARB's interpretation, not having seen that, but I felt the Southern Methodist students had bought into the piece. It is a beautiful piece.

    Thinking about ballet dancers and their general difficulties finding their "deep center", one would think ballet dancers trained by Tudor might manage it a little better... Not that Tudor's work requires the different center weight use that Limon does, but I believe his movement somehow comes from deep within in a different way than other ballet choreographers do, different even than the contemporary ballet choreographers do. MacGregor seems to use a different center, but it is not a very 20th century center. Pehaps there has been a change in ABT's interpretation of "Pavane" now that Tudor's direct influence is so distant? trains the dancer as much as technique class does).

    I found the recorded piano jarring in Concerto Grosso. It would seem possible to have a live pianist, but perhaps there are AFM legalities involved (?) and it did keep all the performances on equal ground to make rhem all use recorded music.

  4. Same here, I remember her dancing as a child with MOMENTA! in Oak Park. It is wonderful to see an artist mature!

    Meanwhile, I attended Program F today and was happy to see the Limon repertory being tended to in different regions of North America. This was one of the Next Generation performances and it was interesting to see the students in various stages of development. The focus out of the youngest dancers, from Canada was quite extraordinary. [Canadian Contemporary Dance Theater in exverpts from "The Winged", coached by Kristen Foote".

    It's always interesting to see which dancers really find a voice in the repertory vs. who is just executing the choreography the best they understand how. Some of those with presence in solos had trouble blending that presence with their partners, while others matched up beautifully. Unfortunately, it is i possible to know which student was which, so complimenting the successful ones is impossible, but there is some interesting talent cropping up at NCSA, University of Arizona & Southern Methodist.

  5. It isn't clear if the lectures are open to the public.... Anyone have any info on this?

    (Someday I will learn to read more carefully. The first paragraph of the news article clearly states all events are free & open to the public. I guess when I read the later paragraph about the performance tickets, I mistook it to mean the lectures were closed events)

  6. I remembered one more thing... When the dancers demonstrated the mime to the music... I felt they rushed and were left with more music than they knew how to fill... Just like stillness on stage, which always seems so much longer to the performer than it does to the sudience, mime gestures have to be done slowly enough that they have time to register on the audience and express the music... Measure per word...it's like resonance were it spoken...there is a tempo set by the music and if the mime rushes past that, it loses some of it's enchantment.

  7. I would have liked to have seen it in its Waldorf nd Statler stage... When it was just two old men and their two servants...usually the servant is portrayed as much smarter than his master but apparently this was not the case with Pierrot...whose sleeves must have rendered him further useless... How he evolved to moonstruck romantic must have been an entertaining skit..l

  8. I suppose a school talent show is like a variety show? But really that depends on how involved the MC is if you are talking about the host role?

    Fullington talked about the Harlequin reference in Nutcracker. He might have spoken about the Harlequin in La Sonambula as well... but perhaps it would be getting out of hand. This was a well organized presentation.

    Here is the late Johan Renvall as Harlequin in La Sonambula: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mEwx7VUqkuI

  9. oh... and one other thing... the Drigo music probably made me think of it... and, I think the Balanchine had these arms that maybe referenced this (though I suppose more than one variation made use of them)... at 1:27 if it doesn't cue properly (https://youtu.be/CK2Cf-4va6g?t=1m27s) and the fluttering fingers made me think of of Danilova coaching Cindy Drummer in the Pavilion d'Armide variation which seems to begin with little flicks of the wrist...

  10. Didn't think my notes belonged added in on the thread about all of the Guggenheim 2015 Works and Process lectures... but thought I'd share what little I remembered from this lovely evening. I was there on Sunday, perhaps some others could add in and/or correct... ​please do correct, i've probably got half of it down wrong.

    From the announcement

    Balanchine’s Harlequinade: Commedia dell’arte Explored Sun and Mon, Sept 20 and 21, 7 pm
    New York City Ballet dancers perform excerpts from George Balanchine’s Harlequinade, a masterful two-act ballet in the commedia dell’arte style, prior to the New York City Ballet’s full presentation in October. Following the performance, Pacific Northwest Ballet Education Programs Manager and dance scholar Doug Fullington will moderate a discussion exploring Balanchine’s Harlequinade, which was choreographed in the spirit of Marius Petipa, in whose Les Millions d’Harlequinade he danced as a student.

    It was recorded on video, so at least it exists in the archive somewhere. Even if they couldn't allow the Balanchine performances available over the internet, it would be wonderful to get the lecture and the Petipa performances.

    Cameron Grant played for the demonstrations, which was a great pleasure for the audience.

    PNB corps de ballet dancers Angelica Generosa and Kyle Davis did a very nice job bringing the Petipa to life. (there was much commentary afterwards murmured about among the audience at the reception that PNB must have riches to have such dancers only in the corps)

    There is something about these bones of lost performances of an earlier era... the imagination comes into play... one almost sees a vision of what might have been and perhaps reality could never have congealed in such a way... but this is maybe the attraction of legends... how might Nijinsky have floated... how lightly would the original Harlequin have managed those steps?

    The lecture was kindly underwritten by Stuart Coleman and Meryl Rosofsky.

    On the screen was a photo of Alexander Shiryaev as Harlequin, although it was György Kyaksht in the original (whether there is a photo anywhere of Kyaksht... ?) One looks at the choreography and imagines how it might have suited Kyaksht... he must have been buoyant ;) with an easy ballon for these steps to look capering... I have been hunting youtube all evening for a version of assemblé to a deep demi plié or grand plié... I feel I have seen this step done so, and wonder if it were for Harlequin or something else... but youtube can be like the ocean and it's tides... sometimes like flotsam amazing clips come to view, but when you go back months later to find them, ... well... good luck. And so, for all I know, the assembly to deep deep plié was for some entirely different number/era.

    Doug Fullington gave an interesting brief history of Commedia della' Arte... how it started with stock characters of two old men and their two male servants... improvised outdoors... and that Harlequin inherited his trickster character from a devil character in medieval theater... Gradually more characters were added, included female characters, (played by women!)... it died out in Italy but was preserved in France where more characters (including some of those we think of as standard characters where added... I think he was saying Pierrot)

    Eventually the words gave way and it became a pantomime or dance form... (one can see how this might have suited traveling players... one wouldn't have to make the jokes work in all languages?). Pierrot went from the stupid servant (how did those long sleeves work for a servant?), to a romantic character always mooning about, in the service of love...

    The Harlequin & Columbine in the Ivanov/Petipa Nutcracker were originally a he-devil & she-devil in the libretto but by the time of the premiere they had been replaced with the commedia characters... however the ominous tone in the music remained (it seems it was originally done to the music usually used for mechanical soldier doll)... [hey, is Satinella a she-devil?]

    Fullington mentioned that Commedia della'Arte was unscripted and improvised... had it been scripted it would have been Commedia Erudita... [if I quite heard that right]

    Petipa (or the libretto?) has a fairy give Harlequin a slapstick magic wand with which he will be able to get what he wants (Columbine... who evolved from a soubrette to an "idealized woman" character... while Pierette was created and filled the soubrette niche)... later on this fairy is disguised as a notary public and marries Harlequin & Columbine. (I promptly missed the next few sentences as I tried to imagine a fairy disguised as a notary public)...

    The older Harlequin variation had tours a la seconde in the old style where the supporting foot sort of stays flat on the floor in plié and "hops" (without any elevation... I think of these as "chugs" except they are turning not traveling).. instead of sailing around in relevé

    The Stepanov notation often just notated the feet, nothing [or little] above the waist... i'm guessing it was intended as a memory cue, not as something to give a stager, who had never seen it, the choreography. The music speeds up in the tours a la seconde... in the Balanchine version, so do the tours speed up... it is so clear in the music, that even if it were not notated, one felt it should happen in the Petipa... (even before having seen the Balanchine... ) (or was this because it was played by someone familiar with the Balanchine version? Is it written in the score? My memory of what it sounded like doesn't serve to let me say if it were the interpretation or the score ).

    However, the Columbine variation was notated by a student, Alexandra (and Fullington said the full name, mentioning that she signed the notation), who noted everything including the arms (? and epaulement? I'm not sure now exactly).... (I became distracted wondering if she did so because she wanted to remember exactly how it went herself... I was not clear if she were a student of the ballet or a student of notation... a ballet student might easily want to learn a variation just to try it themself!).

    Angelica gave us the Columbine variation... very beautiful... one sees the dance through it's ghost... sparkling flittering fingers, the torso epaulement is not the contemporary alignment and the dancers mentioned not having the muscle memory for the coordination for it to feel natural.. saying something like somehow it works, but it is not the familiar coordination... I think the charm is tricky... the more subtle the charm, the more difficult to reproduce...like an accent from an unfamiliar era... one looks at the early films and though recognizable steps are discernable, the way the old dancers carried themselves is very different, different inclinations of the head, shoulders... a principal of that era would have known just how to evince charm in slight a lilt of the torso. The final position of the variation, perhaps fourth with the chest a little forward and the arms up ? (memory not quite serving), but I remember thinking at the moment that I bet it displayed the original tutu beautifully... those tutus were almost like a prop, I think.. with some steps entirely designed to make it flounce or tip the skirt at an angle to show it off....

    Balanchine's variation to the same music is exquisite... so fairy like... made me think of that pas de deux in Midsummers with it's light touch...the variation was light and bourrée-ing... with lots of epaulement... and indeed the Midsummer's pas de deux was mentioned in the lecture and I believe Fullington said they were not made so very far apart in time. Tiler Peck did a lovely job of it. She seems to be good at confections. Perhaps too she is the right type for these Italian Ballerina virtuoso roles in 19th Century Russian Classical Ballet parts.... I would like to see her in more of them to see if the theory holds out.... I loved the way Balanchine had the speed of the bourrées change... a little bourrée turn that begins to turn faster... Also that partnered turn where Harlequin gets her turning and then steps away... a little as if he has just spun a top... Also enjoyed where she begins her fouetté independently and then Harlequin joins her to partner them further until he can capture her waist and hold her posed.

    I'm guessing that in the pas de deux where they are both looking out & about, it is because it is a clandestine pairing? Her father does not want her to go to Harlequin who has no money. By the way, why is it called the Millions of Harlequin? Is it the colors of his costume, or the fortune he does not have?

    Watching the Balanchine, I kept seeing Villella in the steps... it takes a particular personality to bring the right glint of the eye into the movement... I wonder what contemporary principal has the right spark to bring the part out... it needs a devilish grin, a light step... equal parts ballon and élancé perhaps...

    And that... I am afraid... is all I remember.

    However, one can find the Baryshnikov/McBride performance of Balanchine's Harlequinade at the White House in the Era of President Carter. It has the chorus of little child Harlequins & Columbines with slapsticks that Fullington also mentioned. (There! See? I remember one more thing!).

    .

  11. Some of the steps in the ABT version are different from the steps in the NYCB version of T&V. Are other companies outside of NYCB doing "dumbed down" versions, or does the Balanchine Trust permit these differences based on differing versions of the steps that Balanchine permitted?.
    Wasn't T&V made on ABT? Is it possible that they are doing the original choreography and Balanchine himself made adjustments when he set it on NYCB?
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