doug
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Posts posted by doug
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You're correct that the first Shade variation should travel on the relevé arabesques, although in the notated version we used for the choreography the relevés are broken up by a bourrée upstage. Likewise, few steps are notated as being performed en face, and epaulement is something we worked on at length. The drum dance (Bayadère's Hindu dance or Danse Infernale) is performed as notated for the 1900 revival and as captured on film by Alexander Shiryaev with the exception of a few arm positions and movements for the ensemble as they pose in the diagonal on stage right when the principals make their entrance. I can assure you that my work on the choreography had nothing to do with any so-called "woke ideology." Steps were simplified only for the youngest dancers of the affiliated Jacobs Academy and based on the limitations of their age and training. Working with the students and faculty of IU Ballet Theater was a delightful and rewarding experience. I hope you might read my essay on our approach to the choreography that is included in the playbill, available at the IU streaming site, or on my website at https://www.dougfullington.com/star-on-the-rise.
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Hi all,
The music scores in the Sergeyev Collection that date from his time in Riga contain metronome markings for much of the Shades scene, and I followed those pretty closely. And yes, we weren’t able to rig the scarf successfully to fly up into the air halfway through the variation. In the Shades entrance, the dancers perform a cou-de-pied back after the cambre and before stepping forward. It ends up looking like a pas de cheval.
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Other performance will also be streamed (Saturday, March 30 @ 2:00 and 7:30 PM EDT), and I believe the streams (once edited) will be available for viewing on the same site for several weeks after the performances.
For those interested, I've made a page on my website with information about Star on the Rise: https://www.dougfullington.com/star-on-the-rise
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The IU livestreams are free at https://iumusiclive.music.indiana.edu/#/. The livestream recording will live on the site for a period of time after the performances. I’ve created a page for the IU Bayadère (the ballet is titled Star on the Rise) at https://www.dougfullington.com/star-on-the-rise.
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A note on the Stepanov notations: They are unambiguous insofar as the material documented. There is only one way to read the system. Ambiguities lie where material is omitted (often upper body) and sometimes in how the steps fit the music (partiularly in adagio). But a glissade is a glissade, a jeté is a jeté, a ballonné is a ballonné, and so forth.
Burlaka set the Bolshoi Corsaire choreography and didn't follow the notated steps. I don't know why, but this is his usual MO. Ratmansky didn't read the notation at that point and was unaware of that. For my work at Bavarian State Ballet, I was a consultant and not a stager. I showed the notated choreography but some of it was subsequently altered, embellished, and revised. For other numbers, I was asked to work with scores that didn't fit the notated choreography. There were multiple goals for the production and revival of choreography was only one among several. That's the frustration of being a consultant and not having the final say.
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I don't think the use of blackface in the current Mariinsky production of The Pharaoh's Daughter can be linked to Alexei Ratmansky, who has not been involved with the production since early 2022.
I also don't think it is appropriate to suggest that this production is in any way a collaboration between Ratmansky and the current stagers even if the result bears the stamp of both parties.
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The "Peasant" pas de deux was performed as a pas de deux at the Paris premiere of Giselle in 1841 by Nathalie Fitzjames and Auguste Mabille according to the published libretto and press notices. The dance was also performed as a pas de deux in the St. Petersburg premiere in 1842. Versions of the pas de deux were notated by Henri Justamant and (in part) by Arthur Saint-Leon in the nineteenth century and by Nikolai Sergeyev (documenting Petipa's production) in the early twentieth century.
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I say this on no authority, but my guess is that most of the ballet is Ratmansky's staging (which was based on source material as much as possible) and that Candeloro came in to finish it up or get it on stage.
I'll add that I'm shocked that someone from the West chose to do this and that the Mariinsky allowed it (allowed it not because of the war but because Candeloro is not Russian).
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Aurora in Petipa's production was 20 years old. In Diaghilev's 1921 production, Aurora's age was changed to 16. I prefer 20 years old and believe it's a more palatable and relatable age for our time.
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A note that Hilarion is the captain of the gamekeepers (hunters) and therefore a prominent citizen in the community who works for the Prince of Courlande. The first group of humans featured in Act Two are hunters and the second group (those confronted by the Wilis) are villagers.
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12 hours ago, cargill said:
Thanks, so interesting and wonderful pictures. Čajkovskij’ was a transliteration I had never seen, though, and it did puzzle me at first!
The journal uses a particular transliteration system that results in these unusual spellings.
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I've published an essay on Pavel Gerdt and the prince variations in the 1890 Sleeping Beauty, 1892 Nutcracker, and 1895 Swan Lake in the latest volume of the online Italian journal Danza e Ricerca. The link will take you to a webpage where you can access an English-language PDF of the essay.
Abstract: By the time Tchaikovsky's trio of ballets — Sleeping Beauty (1890), The Nutcracker (1892), and Swan Lake (1895 redaction) — came to be performed in St. Petersburg, first dancer Pavel Gerdt had given up performing danced solos. Gerdt was nevertheless cast as the male lead in these ballets, and his solos were assigned to other dancers, including female soloists, senior girl students of the Theatre School, and a young man who represented a generation that would define a new era of male dancing in ballet. Source material, including choreographic notations made in the Stepanov system, allows for detailed descriptions of these dances. The result of this approach to compensating for Gerdt’s advancing age and physical limitations was a bifurcated collection of premier danseur roles in some of the most enduring works of the era.
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Yes, the entire variation is notated. An erasure seems to make one of the middle combinations somewhat unclear because only three bars of steps are notated for a four-bar phrase, but the steps that ARE notated for the combination are clear. Only movements for legs and feet, direction of the hips, and ground plan are documented. No final pose is notated. This is pretty standard for most notated dances that have been preserved.
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@volcanohunter, I've been asked this a couple of times in the past two days. The first part of the variation (up until the pas de bourrée couru and temps de fleche) is based on the Stepanov notation (circa 1903, documenting the performance of Lubov Egorova as Henriette), as is the last part (beginning with the piques de cote). The type of turns at the end aren't specified other than four turns on pointe followed by turns (probably chaines) on demi-pointe. No final pose is given.
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I'll be involved with PNB's revival of Giselle in February. Although we aren't able to present the symposium we had planned in 2020, Marian Smith and I will join Peter Boal for a public interview before dress rehearsal. Marian and I have written a book (titled Five Ballets from Paris and St. Petersburg) that includes two chapters on Giselle and will be published by Oxford University Press next year. We also are completing a critical edition of the score of Giselle, which will be published by Barenreiter in 2023 in both print and digital versions.
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Here's the Joyce link about the engagement and programming:
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Yes, this is the same book. I think the Anthem Press page has simply not been updated since the book went into production. The same info has been sent to other online retailers.
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The entire book is by Wiley. From what I know, the book is also far longer than 250 pages.
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Anne Searcy has written a new book about the Soviet and American tours during the Cold War and the various perceptions in both countries: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ballet-in-the-cold-war-9780190945107?cc=us&lang=en&
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I'm so sorry I didn't know she lived in Washington state, so near to where I live as well as lots of former Balanchine dancers.
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There will be pre-show talks before each performance, including tonight. But no post-show tonight or after Sunday, February 9 evening.
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The only difference was new designs in 2014. No direct mention of Berthe’s status within the community. Giselle wants to dance and wants her friends to put off work to dance with her. Then Giselle goes into the house with Berthe, and we aren’t given a reason why she doesn’t go and work with the others. (The reason, of course, is that she needs to be around in order to meet Bathilde so the plot can continue.)
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The PNB production includes two Act II entrances for groups: Hilarion is the captain of the hunters who are in the woods at the beginning of the act. The Justamant notation suggests this scene has both comedy and pathos. The hunters are a bit like Keystone Cops. Later in the act, after Giselle is initiated, peasants are returning home from a nearby village. They are nearly trapped by the Wilis, who at first appear seductive and then menacing. I believe this scene is the turning point in which we witness the duality of the Wilis (spirits of women communing with nature and spirits of women who kill men). An old man who is with the villagers (he was originally portrayed by a famous comedic actor in Paris) warns them to escape. This latter scene may have been omitted as early as 1848 per Ivor Guest. PNB has included both of the scenes both times the production has been performed (2011 and 2014).
I don't think there is any mention of Giselle having a heart condition or being weak in any of the performance source material I've worked with. Her mother worries she will exhaust herself, but there seems to be no compromised health. This change (and the overall weakness and timidity of Giselle) seems to have come around in the 1930s/40s. Still looking into this. The 19th-century Giselle appears to have been strong and possibly somewhat arrogant. She was definitely passionate and reacted very passionately to the realization of Albert's betrayal, so much so that she died.
Live Stream of La Bayadere
in Press Releases and Season Announcements
Posted
Here is my account of our approach to this reimagined Bayadère:
Reimagining La Bayadère as Star on the Rise
by Doug Fullington
I’ve always thought Marius Petipa’s choreography for the character dances in his 1877 La Bayadère would look at home on the music hall stage. So when Phil Chan suggested that we collaborate on a reimagining of this revered but problematic ballet warhorse, originally set in a fantasy India, I hoped we’d settle on an early-twentieth century setting. After discussing a variety of scenarios, we landed on a backstage drama—a show within a show—one of the favored narrative structures of American musical theatre. Phil immediately identified the congruence between Bayadère’s love triangle of Nikia, Solor, and Gamzatti and that of Singin’ in the Rain’s Kathy Seldon, Don Lockwood, and Lina Lamont. This led us to our reimagined plot, a comedy (!) featuring an up-and-coming ingenue, her fiancé, and the reigning star of the Silver Screen. Nikki (Phil’s new name for Bayadère’s Nikia) would be our star on the rise.
The Gershwins’ 1930 musical Girl Crazy, which made stars out of Ethel Merman and Ginger Rogers, has long been a favorite of mine with its dude ranch setting and terrific musical numbers. I was thrilled, then, that Phil was as game as I was to set most of the ballet’s dances as part of a cowboy-themed film being shot throughout our show. In short order, Bayadère’s opening ritual dance became a Campfire Waltz, the “Djampe” scarf number became a Cactus Dance—its performers wielding riding crops—and Petipa’s lavish Badrinata festival was transformed into a Rodeo Parade. Bayadère’s iconic Kingdom of the Shades scene called for special attention and a contrasting approach. We’ve made it the “dream ballet” of our show—an art deco fantasy inspired by the over-the-top creations of Busby Berkeley.
We knew the score by Ludwig Minkus would need to be adapted to deliver the sound world of a vintage musical. This particular combination of symphony orchestra and jazz band is epitomized in the work of Robert Russell Bennett, the orchestrator of choice for most of the era’s tunesmiths. From the beginning, I had the wonderful vintage musical specialist Larry Moore in mind and hoped I could convince him to take on the project and give the score a Robert Russell Bennett treatment. Larry had worked on a reconstruction of Girl Crazy in the ‘90s, and I knew he’d be perfect for Star on the Rise. To my delight, he was more enthusiastic than I could have hoped, and we spent a happy nine months in 2023 working together as he adapted the score from period sources and sent me scans of his handwritten manuscripts, which I dutifully computer-set to create a full score, parts, and piano reduction. Larry worked from two Imperial-era rehearsal scores, one for two violins and another for piano. We breathed sigh of relief as we found that Minkus’s waltzes, polkas, and galops transformed easily into tangos, beguines, and Charlestons. The new orchestration for the Dreamland scene (Larry’s apt new title for the Kingdom of the Shades) was inspired by Bennett’s glamorous settings for the Astaire-Rogers hit film Swing Time.
I’ve approached Petipa’s choreography for Bayadère based on the various ways the steps have come down to us. Nearly all of the ballet’s ensembles dances and a few solos were documented using the Stepanov choreographic notation system in connection with Petipa’s revival of Bayadère in 1900. Nikolai Sergeyev, a dancer in the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet who later became rehearsal director and an important ballet stager in the West, was the notator. His work is now housed at Harvard University. (The ballet’s mime script, also copied by Sergeyev, and Petipa’s own preparatory notes are held in Moscow archives.) In setting the dances, I’ve followed the notation closely, although we’ve allowed ourselves some latitude in the upper body (and occasionally in the legs and feet) to help place the choreography within our new narrative context.
Some numbers that aren’t notated have been handed down by oral transmission, from dancer to dancer. For these, we’ve consulted the earliest films we were able to locate—usually mid-twentieth century black-and-white excerpts from Bayadère. Here, we’ve allowed ourselves additional freedoms in the staging, particularly where the “traditional” choreography seems not to represent ballet step vocabulary or structure that was common around the turn of the twentieth century. In the case of the adagio from the pas d’action in the final scene, we’ve created new choreography drawing on many inspirations. Likewise, the dances for the fakirs in the opening scene—undocumented and by early accounts demeaning and exoticized representations of Hindu religious thought to possess miraculous powers—have been replaced by choreography for our band of cowboys. For these passages, we looked to other cowboy-themed dances in the American repertory for inspiration, especially those by Agnes DeMille (Oklahoma, Rodeo) and George Balanchine (Western Symphony). (The cowboy roles are a composite of Bayadère’s fakirs, the young boy students in Petipa’s Badrinata festival scene—this choreography is shared with our young Buckaroos—and the ensemble in Bayadère’s "Hindu" dance.)
We’ve reassigned several dances as well: Pamela Zatti, our Gamzatti character, performs Nikia’s vina (guitar) number in the opening scene, its music reimagined as a tango; Nikki performs the "Manu" dance in the Rodeo Parade scene, a moonshine jug replacing the milk pitcher of the original; and Pam and Sol (our Solor) dance the leads in the frenzied “Hindu" dance, here rechristened as Bronco Busters, another nod to Girl Crazy. The "Lotus" dance in the ballet’s finale scene was choreographed by Petipa for 24 student girls and provided us with a particular challenge because our resources didn’t allow for this cast size. Our solution has been to set the dance for six young students joined by six Rancher men from the IU Ballet Department, and we have adapted the choreography accordingly. We’ve also included a non-Petipa dance that has become part of Bayadère’s performance tradition—the 1948 interpolation for a character originally called the “little god,” better known today as the Bronze (or Golden) Idol. Finally, with Larry’s encouragement, we’ve replaced the ballet’s apotheosis, depicting Nikia and Solor flying through the mist over the Himalayas, with an upbeat Charleston finale that befits the uplifting ending of our new story. Structured in the manner of a Petipa coda, the number features the entire ensemble dancing to the strains of a jazzy, reimagined melody from the Kingdom of the Shades.
The entire IU Ballet Department, especially its wonderful students, approached this project with generosity, openness, and enthusiasm. I sincerely thank them all.
February 2024
I share more details in this video interview.
For those interested in reading about Petipa's Bayadère in detail, you may consult my dissertation here or order Five Ballets From Paris and St. Petersburg, available soon from Oxford University Press. Further information about Star on the Rise can be found here. New York Times preview available here.