papeetepatrick

Okay, I'll bow out, as they say. Nothing further to add.

Yes, I don't, thank you. I used the example of 'calling to his mother', which I thought snide.

That is precisely what I was often seeing in Serenade in 2004, but not ballet-literate enough to articulate it. There was a somewhat matronly feel to it, but I still enjoyed her lilt, she always has that.

In that case, the use of 'wretched' may not have mattered, since it's impossible to say that it's a misrepresentation, being a matter of opinion or fact, but not provable as the latter. You find the structuring of the review of describing of it, then followed by this word, to be shocking, I find the word itself to be a real trashing--a slap in the face. Nothing so crude was used in the La Rocco article, even though it was highly critical.

Sorry, but this is personal: "On Monday he seemed shut off, performing on some private trip that was not intended for us (though he did call on his mother in the audience)." 'in the dancing or the presentation' covers anything anyone would say. The 'presentation' even includes Darci's hair and also how he doesn't like the way Savion looks 'above the ankles', or to be perfectly accurate with the quote: "It’s that from the ankle up he’s an ungainly bore, without physical grace or line or intensity. I don’t remember that Chuck Green — who in the 1980s was the greatest tap dancer I ever saw live — was a thing of beauty above the ankle in any way"

On the contrary. Here's the Savion Glover review again: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/arts/dance/23glover.html?scp=2&sq=savion%20glover&st=cse That gets personal a lot of times. Sometimes there seems to be an unwritten law that one cannot really answer back one's critics. But one can. I can't believe Savion was so cool about it, but it's possible (likely IMO) the audience didn't respond because they didn't know who Macaulay was. And even the ones who did--I rather doubt they were worried about hurting Alistair Macaulay's feelings with what was the mildest of jabs, however searing the truth may be...It's true Darci isn't in so relaxed and jivey a milieu to want to make a quip, although she might. I recall Nureyev saying something about 'that new one at New York City Ballet, Darci Kistler...has the devil in her'. And I bet she did too, which may well be a higher compliment for a brilliant young dancer than the rather commonplace and prosaic 'full-blown rose'.

Yeah, I thought that was an unnecessarily harsh word myself, because even 'no longer capable of executing most of the difficult steps' is quite sufficient, and is what he meant. Although I'd rather be called 'wretched' than 'a dweeb'. He's probably still reeling from that.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/06/20/arts/dance/20100621-sleeping-ss.html?ref=dance Not sure if this had been linked or not, the final photo of Hallberg is quite sensational. On the same page are some photos of ABT's Ashton, but I haven't looked yet.

Thanks, bart, for once I don't have to add a thing, as you've summed up exactly how I thought the quite excellent article read. But the 'sweetness of manner' was especially welcome, and I remember in 2004, in a bunch of perfs. of 'Serenade', how that was always there even if all the earlier agility wasn't. It's very natural, you'd hardly believe she was also capable of entirely suppressing it! (as you have to do with the Siren). I really liked his synopsis of her fireworks-like first two years, I didn't get to see her then, and I liked what he said about her 'full-blown rose' even at that early stage, and talked about specific perfs.

I like the new look a lot, thanks again!

I love Savion for calling him a dweeb, follows nicely from the rest. Totally cool. Loved him on Babs's Millenial Concert as Doctor Time or whatever that was.

In 'Queen Cristina', there are marvelous scenes with John Gilbert, when he finds he's not giving into homoerotic drives after all. It's a delight, especially when you remember that their aborted wedding had come some 3-6 (or so) years before. Garbo the actress + Garbo the icon is why she is so peerless, but the reason why she didn't get 'better material' is primarily just because she didn't want to keep working, and there's no reason to imagine she didn't like the 'goddess status' either, no matter what she said. She wasn't the most agreeable person in the world and she was definitely aware of who she was and determined to remain even more so. She was a highly trained actress (like Bette Davis) and that's very different from most of the big Hollywood names (although I think the uniqueness of the long period of Hollywood glory has an especial charm for having many 'naturals' that didn't take lots of classes, they are perhaps more 'pure Hollywood', although many of these are mediocre.) So it's according to what film you're watching. The more obvious icon is in 'Romance', 'Camille', 'Conquest', 'Mata Hari', and 'Grand Hotel', even when these IMO contain great acting. Some films, like 'Susan Lennox, Her Rise and Fall' and the English 'Anna Christie' show her more unvarnished, and it was the latter in which I first recognized the subtlety of her acting: that one is early enough that a lot of the silent film techniques are still evident, and quite exquisite with gesture--there's some relation to ballet in some of the silent acting, esp. Garbo's and Lillian Gish's. There's that early scene in the bar with her old father and Marie Dressler, who are squalid and adorable and well into their cups, but she really is not happy with the scene, and out bursts 'I cahnt stahnd eet!' Here you get both Anna and Garbo, because Anna is pretty plain, but a real-life Anna might not have expressed such total disdain. This was a very influential delivery for me, and when I was in my temp-work period, I would sometimes call upon the memory of it and would have the strength to say, more or less, as in the country song 'You Can Take This Job and Shove It'. And although she plays an over-the-top ballerina in 'Grand Hotel', there's very delicate acting in the hotel room with Gilbert (I have a friend who's more of a fan than even I am, used to follow her around till he scared her, that thinks she goes too far in that one, but I think Russian ballerinas are de trop by their nature.) It's simply that she didn't have more ambition as an actress, since she'd have had carte blanche with that, in theater just as she would have had with the screen (even though she and Dietrich and K. Hepburn and Crawford had all once been 'box office poison'). In that way, she did choose the icon herself. In an old Rolling Stone inteview, I recall K. Hepburn saying 'what a tragic shame she stopped making pictures'. But it was not her life, it was not really her business, and she wouldn't have been interested in hearing she had somehow not 'lived up to her potential'. Typical of her natural bossiness, although it's because she did stay in the business that she was able to realize great things as an older actress, like 'Long Day's Journey' and 'Lion in Winter', among others. On the other hand, the idea of K. Hepburn as Camille or Anna Karenina just doesn't play, but it's not 'tragic' that she couldn't. Nobody can do everything, both of these made huge artistic contributions. Garbo was very solipsistic and expected to be catered to at all times, and was (there are always types that like to do that sort of thing for divas, I find it unimaginable). Liked to have friends in high places, was occasionally kind and generous, but knew her status and didn't disagree with it. Yes, those were popular. I saw her once in 1979 after going to the Met. Another friend claimed she chased him, but I don't believe a word of it. That old gay porno filmmaker Peter De Rome even put real footage of her on one of her perambulations in his film 'Adam and Yves'. It was so absurd. You couldn't quite make her out, and i thought they were talking about Martha Graham at first. Quiggin, yes, the Dietrich/Sternberg package is special, and those films are exotic things, I love 'Blonde Venus', even though it's so campy with the voodoo song and the ending as a Paris nightclub star. I think David Thomson complained everything after Sternberg, but there was still a lot of good stuff, I like her in 'Destry Rides Again', 'Morocco', and much later in 'Witness for the Prosecution' and her bit in 'Touch of Evil'. Makarova Fan, I think 'Woman of Affairs' is on vhs, that must be how I saw it. You could probably find it on eBay.

Yes, indeed. When I read your note, sandi, I felt perfectly derelict in my insufficient gratitude!

Yes, we'll have to agree to disagree on these too. I don't think most of it was junk, I love 'grand hotel', 'Camille', 'Anna Karenina', 'Susan Lennox, Her Rise and Fall', 'Conquest', and the 'Anna Christie' I've seen. 'Ninotchka' is well-done if contrived, but is my least favourite--agree about Ina Claire though. 'Romance', with Garbo as opera star Anna Cavallini I thoroughly love, enjoy it's pretty kitschy and predictable. I love 'Queen Christina' too. How much I like these films because it's Garbo I don't know. 'Grand Hotel' is that wonderful formula if you have good stars, I like 'Ship of Fools' too. 'Two-Faced Woman' is usually thought to be trash, but I didn't think it was all that bad, just that the part was too Americanish, and Kate Hepburn would have been better for it. I'm a big Dietrich fan too, but her junk is more obviously awful, as in 'Kismet', which is unbelievable given her stature, 'Garden of Allah' with Boyer which I was expecting to enjoy and thought dreadful, 'The Scarlet Empress', which is sort of putrescent, but I like lots of her things. She's more of an artist when she sings, then she becomes magic, whether 'Blue Angel' or 'Morocco' (click: 'Black Market'), and sometimes is a good actress, but usually campy. Those last two, in particular, aren't junk, but Garbo is always expert at her Thespianism, although I'm not crazy about 'The Painted Veil' and 'As You Desire Me'. I think she's amazing in 'Grand Hotel', though, that's another kind of 'forest creature sensation', when she's facing Barrymore, the stalker. People just look for different things in works, and they find them. But even if I thought all these things were junk, and I don't, there's no stronger screen presence, and there could be no grand-style 'Camille' or 'Anna Karenina' without her (I mean these productions, which I don't find weak, not that nobody else could do the characters, though no one has onscreen so effectively), so they were made for her, making it hard to divorce what's 'the film' and what's 'the Garbo film'.

Cool, miliosr. I haven't seen the Temptress, but she does get more 'goddess-y' in that same year in 'Flesh and the Devil', and definitely by 'Wild Orchids' and 'Woman of Affairs'. She's probably still in that same presence that she had in 'joyless street' (I've heard Marlene has a bit part in that, but I've never watched it again I knew about it). I just noticed at IMDb that I hadn't seen any of those earliest things before Joyless Street, and several after Temptress I haven't seen. Of the silents, I like 'The Kiss' the most, I think it a very subtle film, and I have seen all the talkies, most several times. What other titles are in your set, so that we can get ready to talk about these (some I've seen more recently than others.) Edited to add: I take that back, I have never seen the second Anna Christie, in German I believe. I always thought it was a silent, so that's the one talkie I haven't seen. I wonder how they compare, I think she's marvelous in the first one.

An Oscar that few would have predicted, and that I would think was unwarranted, if I thought Oscars were based purely on talent, which we know they are to some degree only. I loathe 'Kitty Foyle', but then I've never particularly liked her in anything except the Fred movies, and I tend to like him with Cyd and Eleanor a great deal more. I can see that 'Stage Door' is a good film, but I don't care for it, and Katharine Hepburn is extremely irritating in it, as she also is in 'Stage Door Canteen'. Sidwich, I guess you could call Sirk's film a 'great movie' (I still doubt I'd go quite that far), and what's interesting about it is the way the assessment of it has grown over the years, I think Sirk began to be really appreciated here in the mid-80s by film scholars, and was shown a lot at revival houses, etc., although it may have been earlier. There was an atmosphere about the film that is still very effective in evoking the meaning of the title's 'imitation' emphasis, and those opening credits with the rhinestones slowly falling to Earl Grant's mellow singing of the Sammy Fain song are always a bit hypnotic. John Gavin was just right for the look of this film, he wasn't supposed to be 'interesting' especially. Claudette Colbert was very good in the early version, although I don't think it's her best work by a long shot. 'Bluebeard's Eighth Wife' with Cooper is very enjoyable, and 'Palm Beach Story' is truly delicious, not to mention the obvious.

That is very cool, wouldn't have thought about it in this 'life history' kind of way, finally there is no possible evolution in that hyper-technical realm in and of itself. And what Jayne said about the new scoring system is very reveletory indeed, because if this 'counting' even stops in nearly pure-technical activity, a more artistic endeavour is bound to relax and get back to where it belongs. I guess we have to wait a while longer, but maybe since Osipova can apparently do everything magical and the multiple pirouettes too, we might have a problem. Of course, she might also just be some incredible biological sport, and the tipping point could only be reached by a few dancers who found that ease with the hyper-extensions, while not letting them stick out so (and hers seem natural.)

New and more advanced technique is inevitable in every endeavour, whether artistic or not. I used to think there was a greater sensitivity in times past, but it all seems a lot more relative now--some things are better and new arts are evolving. The 'new scoring' awarding positives is a good sign, though, I wouldn't have thought they'd do that in sports. I have a more general perception of technique than I used to, if the performance comes across, I tend to think the technique must have had to have been there, and it always has: Of course, there can always be travelling in fouettes, and not-lengthy-enough balances in the Rose Adagio, but there aren't that many 'specialty moments' that still stick out that much, are there? If I thought that were the problem, I'd be probably thinking only of how to do it myself. Like Ray, I know I have none, but if I started thinking in terms of others and large populations, I would surely say that 'it's too late' and agree that everything will go robotic.

Yes, the second one is pretty good, but there was something a little too genteel about the ending and unlikely circumstances that made more sense in the first one when I finally watched it (about 2 years ago, I'd never heard of it, someone told me.) By then, I thought it was the professionalism of Kerr and Grant (he was esp. good in this, I thought, better than usual, I thought) that carried it. I especially like the New York locations in 'Love Affair', though. This may have come up somewhere in a discussion of 'Imitation of Life', in the ways that that was 'updated' by Sirk into a film that is much more iconic than the original, although several of the people I was discussing it with thought the original with Claudette Colbert, which is more faithful (I believe, I've never read it) to the Fanny Hurst original, was better because of its 'realism', various other reasons were given. I don't think either version constitutes a great movie, but the Sirk is cinematically much more interesting and I can see why it has overshadowed the early 30s one. Speaking of Grant, I recently read that 'The Howards of Virginia' was Cary Grant's worst movie, but I thought he, at least, was more effective in this macho sort of role than I would have expected. I watched it because I had recently become familiar with Martha Scott and wrote about her on the 'Stage to Screen' thread. Never had even heard of her till a year ago, and she did have a major stage career, although only a short movie career. I also saw 'Hi Diddle Diddle', and in all these 3 early films we see her in a wedding dress--don't know if that was a coincidence, but although very lovely, it was her 'Our Town' appearance that was the only thing that would be really important film-wise. I liked 'Hi Diddle Diddle', although I know little about screwball comedy, and some of it was plain silly, but has one of those amazing cast combos: Scott, Dennis O'Keefe, Pola Negri, Adolph Menjou, Billie Burke, and June Havoc (who is perfect as this madcap naughty girl lounge singer.) I imagine it was a flop, but that may be just because I never heard of it. As a film, I didn't care much for 'Howards of Virginia', it was all right as a curio.

Yes, yes, I don't know, but can't we include silents, after all, we had to discuss Pandora's Box on the Diane Baker Thread, so surely we can stretch it a little and talk about Theda Bara and Bobby Harron as well as 'All About Eve', which is definitely after 'Casablanca', even if Elizabeth Taylor may have made some non-Golden-Age product.

I like Irene Dunne too, although she was not especially glamorous (although, I agree, beautiful.) Wonderful in the first 'Showboat' with Alan Jones and with Charles Boyer in 'Love Affair' (much better than the Kerr/Grant remake, because the material seemed very dated by 'An Affair to Remember' in the late 50s). Personal life was very proper, as I recall, I think she was very religious and civic-minded.

I think everybody knows more about Shearer than I do. I think I've seen her only in 'The Women' and doing the weird balcony scene with John Gilbert in 'Hollywood Revue of 1929'. Just saw she later did an R + J movie with Leslie Howard. Is 'Marie Antoinette' a must-see? I confess I am not sure I can get interested in Norma Shearer, unless somebody really plugs something. I also just saw she was with Gable in 'Strange Interlude'. Excellent new thread title, dirac. Who knew Diane Baker movies could be expanded into a Universal? I hope miliosr likes it. I did think there was a lot of cinematic beauty in 'Pandora's Box', but I wouldn't watch it again. That early Pabst/Garbo 'Joyless Street' is also interesting but maybe not great, mainly because it's the one thing I remember seeing Garbo in before she takes on a 'goddess persona'.

Yes, and those in the private specialized institutions will have access to Vishneva very frequently: They don't need to be introduced to ballet, they already are, and they go to see her in performances in D.C. I like the combination of Michelle Obama's interest in this school, and also introducing an important ballerina even if they're more associated with classical and jazz musicians. Frankly, I find it very imaginative and exotic, and I think it's a marvelous combination all around, much like Edward Villella's old visits to the Bronx--and that was WAY rougher and less interested in anything classical till they found out he was pretty much streety like they were. These particular kids may have no other opportunity to see Vishneva, and I'm sure they'll be fascinated, because they're already attuned to the Arts in general. It's actually good for ballet to be introduced to intelligent and gifted students who may know, however, little about it. If the 'mise en scene' comes off as slightly staged, I really can see that that's hardly a problem, and that kind of kid will probably even be wise to it himself. It sounds very elegant to me. and Michelle knows what she's doing. I see it as though she might have left ballet out altogether in favour of something else, and she didn't. This goes along with the other thread's question someone put 'Can ballet be for anyone?' Maybe, and also not for everyone, but these are the candidates for whom it may really be something. It's Michelle's call, and with the Obamas showing interest in ABT, it's quite a bit further in promoting ballet than George Bush's photo-ops in front of his Xmas tribute of 'The Nutcracker' at the White House. Or so it would appear. Classical ballet will be one of the main topics, but it would be inappropriate for it to be THE main topic. If the Russian First Lady is also there, this is not supposed to be a purely artistic event, even galas aren't quite 'pure'. You have to go to regular season perfs. for that, and you get plenty of that. If Michelle Obama wants to go to Suzanne Farrell's students (and she might), then she'll do so, and she might take Vishneva with her; I'm sure Suzanne would love it and all her students as well. Vishneva would, I'm sure, always be welcome there and at Vaganova if she wanted to go, etc., even if on her own (she might or might not)

I agree totally. I can't see why Vishneva's having heard or not of the Ellington School is relevant. In this case, she was invited by people more powerful than she, albeit not artistically. It's not as if she's supposed to be in a position (or that she would even want to be in one) in which she could choose which 'more exclusive school'--if I'm reading the subtext correctly--she'd prefer to make an appearance in. In point of fact, it's an obvious honour what she's been invited to do. Celebrities in all areas know that 'photo-op' is a fact of life--most want it, and I'm sure Vishneva doesn't object to that part.

Oh dear, that makes it all the more strange-seeming I never had read up on Brooks's life. 'Delicious stray' is good, very much the waif.