Philip

This is what I used to, and still do, call a "De Gustibus" thread. Not everybody's beige ballet will be beige to everybody else. My nominee for Balanchine Beige is, believe it or not, "Divertimento #15". That it is workmanlike, I don't dispute. That it looks like fun to dance, I don't doubt, but to me it just looks like what it is, a ballet set to dinner music.

LOL! When I performed this ballet and we did it in blues and greens! So much for Karinska's determination of standardization, LOL!

-Philip

Lighting: I don't know. I have a ballet to Pablo Naruda poems (music by Lieberson) which is very darkly lit. Does it "look" like other ballets. Well, the lighting is similar to a ballet like "Dark Elegies", but is it the same? Heck no. Lighting is part of an overall effect. We deal with day and night, weather and all affects upon lighting in our everyday lives. Most have very similar levels and effects. I think designers reflact this onstage as well.

Wheeldon: I haven't seen these particular Wheeldon Ballets. I will say I find his work to be similar to each other. Some choreographers switch hit is styles and feel so much so that you can barely sense the difference between them...the risk is that the choreographer doesn't have a foundation -a signature- where you can say, now that's a fill-in-the-blank ballet. Others navigate easily between genre and personal style. Juri Kylian, Dennis Nahat and Jerry Robbins come to mind. Others, like Wheeldon, explore the boundaries of their own styles. They risk repetitiveness. I like Wheeldon's work, but I'm not delighted by it for this reason.

As far as more and more ballets having the same general look recalls a joke about the very conservative Royal Ballet's inability to take risks: Q: "how are we going to produce the look of the ballet?" A: "Hmmm? Beige. I think we'll costume and decorate it in Beige. When in doubt, always beige!"

Philip.

"The Devil on Two Sticks" by Corralli of Giselle fame. Fanny Essler premiered it in the middle of the "I am the best...no I am....no I am"...etc. between Essler and Taglioni.

This ballet was just one of "Devil in Disguise" ballets of the early 19th century. (the deveil on "One Stick", "Two Sticks", "a stick in the mud", "a stick up ..." that were about as good as a load of the proto-Christian/anti-Christ monikers they laid on public figures in the day. (Essler was considered to be a pagan compared to Taglioni as "Christian") The 1830s were likely not very good to the ballet repertoire!

Philip.

How interesting. I found both Cynthia Gregory and Eric Bruhn to be -very- warm dancers. Indeed, I don't think that "warmth" necessarily needs to be defined as someone who wears a smile on their face, or emotes overtly in context of communication. If this were so, most Balanchine dancers could easily be considered to be cold.

I agree with nysusan. I personally find "cold" to be rather negative, in that it could define a dancer who does not communicate choreographic syntax, (emotional or otherwise), within the context of what the choreography demands from their hearts - as if withholding "who they are" from the audience.

When Fernando Bujones was young (may he rest peacefully) I found him cold. But, when Cynthia Gregory began to be partnered by him, he seemed to mature, come out of his shell a bit and give a little more to the audience.

Gregory? I found her warm and sweet. Bruhn? - an epitome of the Chekhov style of acting from beneath expressivity.

Each of us has his/her interpretation of what we perceive as trained observers of dance and dancers.

- Philip (my first real post on this site!)