Manhattnik

Somehow I knew you were going to say that, Kevin!

Regarding Mozartiana, Darci is indeed wonderful, as has often been noted here. I'd just like to toss in a mention of how ethereal Kyra Nichols can be in the role. It's not what I'd have expected from her, but I was happy to be proven wrong. If you can't see Darci, you'll do just as well seeing Kyra.

I guess others will disagree with me, and, certainly, Volkov's book does give wonderful glimpses into Balanchine's way of thinking. Perhaps I'm oversimplifying or being overly romantic, but I don't see much of any division between Balanchine the man and Balanchine the artist. There is so much of himself in his work, I've always believed that if one wanted to psychoanalyze Balanchine, one would need to nothing other than observe his ballets. One of the things I love so much about his work is the sense it gives me that I'm seeing right into his mind, a mind filled with dreamlike visions sent to him, perhaps, by God. Or Tchaikovsky. I don't think any other choreographer, even Graham, put so much of himself (or herself) in his work. I do think everything you really need to know about Balanchine is right there in his ballets. You just have to be observant. Contrast that with Peter Martins' ballets, which, to me, seem to be an exercise in hiding his persona from the world. I learn very little about Martins' soul from his ballets, except that he keeps himself very hidden. It's like his ballets are smokescreens. But that, in itself, is very telling.

Alexandra, yes, Giselle pulled two daisies out out of a bunch of flowers next to her house, and then proceeded to pluck one of them. Regarding the Beauty, I think it's unrealistic to expect it to have been a time machine back to 1890. Or 1903. Or whenever. And who would have wanted that? Look at those pictures of what dancers looked like back then. Eww. I thought the approach the Kirov took was entirely appropriate, a truly brave and completely right-headed attempt that succeeded far more often than it failed. Was Beauty a complete success on every level? No. Was it thought-provoking, beautiful in surprising places, and did it offer new perspectives on Petipa, and times then, and times now? Absolutely. Does it need work in places? Yes it does. Can it only get better? Yes. Will the production be given a chance to stick around and get better? God, I hope so. I didn't read Anna's review. I've been allergic to dance critcs for awhile. As someone or other once said, though, the ideal is the enemy of the good. This was a very, very good production, and I'll take it? Will it become a standard? No way. People are used to more conventional Beauties these days. I doubt we'll see Lila fairies shedding their toe-shoes with abandon left and right, although they may form a Fairies' Union and insist on wand-carrying pages at all performances. Also, artistic directors don't like to look backwards. They want to look forward, and make productions where Aurora must confront the Evil Fairy within herself, or where the King is a 19th-century railroad robber baron, and Aurora gets wakened by Bill Gates or... God, I should never post before I've finished my coffee.

Regarding the daisies, Fadeyev and Zelensky didn't pluck another one. Giselle plucks two, then does the "he lovees me" bit with one of them, until there's only one petal left. Then she runs off, understandably upset. Albrecht then picks up the OTHER daisy, takes it to her, and suddenly she's happy again. Is Giselle supposed to be so dense that she can't tell the difference between a daisy with one petal, and a daisy with several? I just don't get what point was being made here. Regarding the sword, Zelensky and Fadeyev reached for it, and Samadurov didn't, at least on his second performance. I didn't specifically see what he did on his first performance, but I think he omitted it there, too. I'm thinking more about that ridiculous hat Fadeyev wore, and left onstage, in Act II. Has anyone else ever seen Albrecht with headwear in Act II? Is this another Russian tradition?

Did she list the details? I was struck that the Kirov leaves out the mime where Giselle's mother describes the graveyard, and wilis. Here she just points to the stage, as if to say, "If you keep on dancing, you will go to the orchestra pit!" It makes no sense. So there was no time for Giselle's mother to do that very important bit of mime, but there was plenty of time for the Duke to repeatedly and at great length demonstrate to his entourage exactly how one holds and blows a horn. As if nobody back then knew this? And when Hilarion does blow that horn, the returning call has been cut. Now the nobles immediately come in from the wings, as if they'd been standing just out of view all this time. So you no longer have that delicious look of panic on Albrecht's face when he hears the replying horn, 'cause there isn't any. Also, Samadurov never went for the sword that wasn't there, to drive away Hilarion. That certainly removes a lot of the motivation for Hilarion's breaking to Albrecht's hut. The Peasant Pas couple arrive immediately after Giselle, her mother, the Duke and Bathilde vanish into Giselle's house. Everyone leaves, then all of a sudden there are these happy peasants dancing for nobody in particular. In the pas d'action, the business with counting the daisy petals was often very fuzzy and ill-defined. I mean, Giselle would pluck her daisy down to the last petal, run off in tears, and Albrecht would pick up a different daisy and run with it to her. At least Samadurov had the sense to do the always entertaining plucking off of one petal, to change the result from "he loves me not" to "he loves me." The others botched this badly, I thought. And, for God's sake, how hard is it for Zelensky or Fadeyev to master the art of daisy-petal-plucking? Do they need a master class in this in St. Petersburg? And Myrtha made the mime gesture for dancing many times, but never, ever the crossed-fists one for death. Was death not considered an appropriate subject for Soviet mime, back when? A lot of the mime in Giselle was fuzzy, or just plain silly, I thought. Too much slapping of one's sides in consternation, and snapping of one's fingers when one has an idea. If this is typical of the level of mime these dancers are used to performing, no wonder some found their classical mime in Sleeping Beauty to be lacking And then there was Fadeyev's absurd hat in the second act. But I can't bring myself to that tonight....

Jeannie, I sit wherever there's an empty seat and I can hide from the ushers. I will, however, be standing up in the Dress Circle. I'm a little surprised they're giving Visneva the third movement of Symphony in C (unless I've read the casting wrong) on the same night she's also doing Tchaikovsky. I think she'd be a killer in the second movement (if she gets it, that is). Of course, I'm clearly often bemused by Kirov casting.

Great Ballerinas? Right now, all I can think about is Uliana Lopatkina and her sensational performance as Zarema in The Fountain of Bakhchisaray. I think I can say that I've now seen the ultimate harem-pant, bare-torso, bikini-topped dance, and dancer, I should ever wish to see. I'll never be able to enjoy ABT's Le Corsaire in quite the same way again. At the intermission after the second act, my favorite ballet teacher commented to me about Lopatkina's beautiful feet. I resisted the urge to reply with, "She had feet?" My friend also observed the man next to her appeared to be breathing thorugh his binoculars for all of Lopatkina's solos. Now, if only the Kirov would sell a big poster of Lopatkina as Zarema. Seriously, she's not only stunningly beautiful, but a powerful and dramatic dancer and actress. I'm glad I'll be seeing her again.

This Giselle reminded me of what I'm coming to think of as this company's split personality. I wasn't thrilled by the spare and dry first act, and I thought Zhelonkina and Samodurov were kind of awful in the Peasant Pas. Everything from them and the corps seemed hard=edged and heavy and brittle. Not at all what I'd expected from the company that gave us Baryshnikov and Makarova. I remember being a little surprised and disappointed by this quality in some of the Fairy solos in Beauty, too. For instance, I'd have to say that Benjamin Millepied and Jenny Somogyi at City Ballet danced a much finer Bluebird this season than any of the Russians. Yet, in the second act, there was all the softness and breath that was so lacking in the first. Amosova was a great Myrtha, and our two Lilacs, Part and Pavlenko were Moyna and Zulma. It was hard to tell which was who in thier Wili makeup, but Pavlenko, I think, did a magnificent job with the second solo. I've never seen such anger and fierceness in a subsidiary wili. I remember her arms like scythes in her arabesques, like she was just hoping to find a man to cut to ribbons. I'm still glowing thinking about Vishneva. She truly appeared to be a ghost, but you could see the young girl she'd been, too, and every step imbued with her feelings of pain and regret. Her amazing extensions didn't seem jarring here, as in Beauty, but a way of showing just how greatly she'd been transformed. If only Fadeyev were less of a pretty-boy. He was fine, but there wasn't all that much going on between them, and it certainly wasn't her fault. I looked at Vishneva's arms and thought of Makarova. Vishneva's are even longer, but they use them similarly: particularly the drooping-lily effect of their wrists. God, Nioradze is getting closing night? That's disappointing.

I was somewhat disappointed with her Aurora, and the first act of her Giselle was very good, but not spectacular. But, oh, her second act was stunning. Made me think of Makarova at her best. From the instant she came out with those dizzying outside turns in attitude, I knew she'd be astonishing. And she was. More later.

Considering that, counting the rehearsal, they did Beauty five times in three days, it's amazing they looked as good as they did last night. It's interesting what you said about the number of dancers. I'd love to see it on the larger stage with even more dancers. I am baffled why they went with the false proscenium, though. Did the original designs call for one? Even if so, I think it would've been better for them to leave it behind. The Met is already smaller than the Mariinksy, and the false proscenium just made it worse. I'm sure you noticed the times Zakharova and Vishneva had to dramatically throttle back on their jumps to keep from flying a) into the wings (Vishneva practically ended up in them anyway once or twice); B) into the pit; c) into the Queen. I just don't get it; why take a difficulty and deliberately make it worse?

Jeannie, thanks for your many well-considered comments about this Beauty. By the way, that "fire snuffing" thingie that Cinderella puffs the Prince with is a bellows. You use them to pump a stream of air onto a fire to keep it going, not to snuff it out. It's a reference to Cinderalla's career as a hearth-tender, and cleaner. There's a great deal to love in this production. It's amazing to me how quickly it seems to have come together, and I find the juxtaposition of the sublime and ridiculous profoundly affecting. Take the entrance of the fairies in the prologue. In one sense, it's a mess. All those colors, all that braid and noisy detail, all those wands and other carried objects, and tassels, capes and ornamentation everywhere, all those attendants and frond-carriers. You almost have to put yourself, as you said, into a 19th-century frame of mind, and then it starts to work, beautifully. These designs, seemingly way too ornate and overdone to our modern eyes, tell a lot of things about Vsevolozhsky and his milieu, but mostly it tells me that details that might not mean much today, mattered a great deal then. More, I think, than just a means of providing spectacle. I was also touched, for both performances Wednesday, to see Yana Selina, the prologue's Fee Canari qui Chante (called that, I suppose, to differentiate her from some Fee Canari qui ne Chante pas), doubling up as one of the frontmost girls in the Garland Dance. I suspect there was a lot of that sort of thing going on, but this was the only instance I caught. Speaking of which, shouldn't there be some clause in the dancers' union contract against making someone dance that variation four times in three days? It may not be cruel and unusual punishment, but I can't imagine coming away from it with one's psyche totally unscathed. Perhaps the Kirov soloists are made of sterner stuff than me. [This message has been edited by Manhattnik (edited July 01, 1999).]

Regarding the mime, I will pester my Royal-loving friend for details. I think she was commenting not so much on what was said, and when, but rather how, and with what detail. More about Nioradze. She seemed a little, well, long in the tooth for Aurora. Sometimes more mature dancers can make great Auroras (Fonteyn, of course), but Nioradze isn't a Fonteyn. Of the four Auroras, I like Assylmuratova the best, but I wasn't really bowled over by any of them. Heretical as it may be, I think I prefer Giselle or Swan Lake as a test of a ballerina. That's not to say I didn't love this production. I do hope the Kirov keeps it around for long enough for the dancers to grow into it. There were times when it looked like it was still new to them, and could use some fleshing out by the dancers. But it's a lovely skeleton, nevertheless. Having said that, I wouldn't mind it if they ditched Cinderella and Tomb Thumb. Was anyone else struck by how close some aspects of the production veered towards vintage music hall? I loved the dance for Aurora's violin and lute girls, and the four in those lovely black and gold costumes. It seemed like a "dancing girls" number for the bored husbands in the audience. And, Jeannie, of course the production matches the Harvard documents. It'd better. That's the source the stagers used, after all. But does that mean there may not have been equally valid aspects of Beauty passed down orally through the Royal production's progenitors?

I was totally exhausted by the time I got to my fourth Beauty, and I bailed on Nioradze after the second act. She has a very, well, severe face for an Aurora, and her dancing was kinda, servicable. She made me think a bit of Eleanor d'Antuono, who could dance anything, but not very interestingly. I have a friend who knows the Royal Ballet production inside and out, who tells me that the Kirov's mime is drastically reduced from what the Royal did. I wonder if perhaps some of the mime fell by the wayside over the years, and didn't get reconstructed? Oh, and Alexandra, I said the two main forces were Lilac and Catalabutte, not Carabosse. It seems to me that when Lilac isn't running the show, then Catalabutte is. Notice how the one change that happens over the 100-year sleep is that Catalabutte's hair grows back? By the way, I think Fadeyev danced better than Zelensky. The only problem I had with Fadeyev is that the Prince really shouldn't be prettier than Aurora.

Malakhov is a very great dancer, and a great stylist. He works his roles out very carefully, and you get the feeling he always knows exactly who his character is, and what he should be doing, at any moment. It's a treat to watch him, not just for his technique and lovely line, but because of the many subtle and carefully realized details with which he'll reward the observant. In some ways, he makes me think of a super-charged Ivan Nagy. (I guess I'm showing my age here...) However, having said that, I must also admit that Malakhov's technique can be somewhat lacking in the truly difficult stuff. He sometimes reaches a level where, if he goes beyond it in difficulty, the poise and grace go away, however briefly. It's jarring, and, while on most onther dancers, Malahkov's slight lapses at the top end of the technical spectrum would still be quite an accomplishment, for Malakhov, well, I always find myself wishing he'd be so perfect through the entire spectrum of his technique.

After seeing Peter Boal's magnificent Oberon last night, I really have to put him up there with any of today's greats. I'm also getting rather fond of Julio Bocca. Y'know, there were moments this season, when he would launch himself into the air for some bravura solo or other, that he looked as if he actually had some idea of how he was going to finish! Amazing. Gotta love a guy who enjoys living on the edge, especially in front of three thousand raving fans.

ATM, thanks for your lovely reminiscence. And, Alexandra, that Don Q party sounds like fun. Are videos still viewable while the Dance Collection is in temporary quarters?

I'll just add a me-too here. I have learned so much from reading what you've written about the RDB, and where it is now. It's depressing as hell, but that's certainly no your fault. I read about the situation in Denmark, and I think maybe, all things considered, Peter Martins has done a pretty good job here, after all.

I discovered ballet a few times. The first time was when I was nine, and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center opened with a great deal of fanfare. My parents dragged me to see City Ballet a lot; even their first night at SPAC, I believe. So my first ballet was Dream, with Melissa Hayden, Eddie Villella and Arthur Mitchell. I remember as a kid thinking there had to be wires or something holding Villella up, or maybe invisible jets of air shooting up from the stage... I also remember watching Farrell pose for a publicity shot at some stables near my home (there are a lot of stables in Saratoga), with some Royal Lippezaner stallions which were performing there that summer. She wore her Diamonds costume, and the horse did his damndest to eat her tutu. Well, such are the things that stick in a kid's memory.

I have enjoyed reading these Gelsey threads. I really have to go out and read her books one of these days. I remember seeing her a great deal with ABT back in the seventies and eighties, and she turned in some of the most amazing performances I've ever seen. I wrote about her La Sylphide in the "great performances" section here; I doubt I'll ever see it done better. It's a shame there's no video record of Gelsey at her peak. The Nutcraker video, with Baryshnikov, was made when she had gone through one of her bouts of losing too much weight, and she wasn't anywhere near her best. As far as her mad scene, there were times it seemed like she wasn't acting at all, sadly.

Ah, I remember Martine's Lilac Fairy. That was back in my balletomane days, when I'd actually indulge in boquet-tossing. One of my prize bits of ballet memorabilia is a photo a friend took of Martine's curtain call as Lilac, holding a boquet I'd tossed her, which she later autographed for me. I remember that performance well; no flowers for Baryshnikov or Makarova, just Martine! Another prized possession is a pair of her toe shes, autographed, but that's another story. I believe it was in describing Martine in this Messel production that Arlene Croce came up with her great line about how all the Lilac Fairy needs is a wand and some space to bourree...

To get back to the original topic of this thread, I thought Martine was one of the best, ever, in just about anything. I'm sorry to read that she didn't like dancing Myrtha; she was magnificent in the role. Tall, grand, with that beautiful soft back... And she always made Myrtha so sympathetic, you could feel her pain and regret when she saw the love between Giselle and Albrecht; something she obviously never had with whomever jilted her back when. Martine was an amazing Odette/Odile, just gorgeous in the second act, and a sexual dynamo in the Black Swan. She did get one Giselle that I saw with ABT, and it was so strange seeing her in the second act, facing down Jolinda Menendez' Myrtha. It was a promising debut for Martine, but she never had the opportunity to develop her character; after that one performance, it was back to Myrtha for her. Regarding ABT's Giselles, I saw a bunch of them last year, so here are some thumbnail comments: McKerrow/Malakhov: They're a wonderful partnership. They both obviously love to work out every minute detail of their characters together. There's a lot of subtle business going on between them in the first act, far more than any other pair I saw. I particularly loved the way they worked it so that when Albrecht kisses Bathilde's hand, Giselle is directly upstage of them, staring at the slowly developing kiss in growing horror. While no other pair actually buried this moment, only M&M made it the Big Moment it should be. McKerrow is a very intelligent and musical dancer. She looked a bit tired, sometimes, last year, but she's been looking great so far this season. And Malakhov is the best classical stylist ABT has. Ananiashvili/Graffin: Nina was wonderful. Great acting, great technique, great everything. Go see her, if you see anyone. She looks even better this season. Graffin is, well serviceable. Tuttle/Corella: The sleeper performance of the season for me. Corella was as you'd expect. Ebullient, charismatic and brilliant. The surprise for me was how much Tuttle brought up her own dancing; she was brilliant herself, I thought, not just technically, either; there were moments in the second act so poignant I was reminded of Kirkland. The rapport between her and Corella was astonishingly powerful. It was certainly the most powerful, emotionally, of any Giselle I saw, and I wish ABT would pair Tuttle and Corella more often. Kent/Carreno: Well, I still don't quite get Julie Kent. Her first act was not good; this was a very one-dimensional Giselle. Her dancing in the second act was big and clear and flawless, but I still didn't get much sense of what her Giselle was feeling. Carreno is fine, big, strong and elegant, although he tended to overdo it with the cape in the first act, and someone should tell him that when one is throwing one's self at the feat of one's lover's freshly-dead corpse, one doesn't stop to toss off a snappy soutenu first.