papeetepatrick

Definitely confirmed, by Martins himself, in his book 'Far from Denmark', 1982.

Thanks for all this information, rg, mel, and Phenby, even though I didn't first ask for it. NYPL has both the CD's you mentioned in Drigo edition and yet more scores, including the Drigo edition from 1895--both of which I just put holds on. 1) Swan lake complete /by Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilich, 1840-1893. Los Angeles, CA : JVC Classics, p1995. Call #: C-T24s Subjects • Ballets -- Sound recordings. • Orchestral music Uniform Title: Swan lake Format: [sound recording] : Responsibility: Tchaikovsky ; Petipe, Ivanov, Drigo edition, 1895. Description: 2 sound discs : digital ; 4 3/4 in. Notes: Compact discs. Ballet in 3 acts, 4 scenes. Recorded: Oct. 21-28, 1994 at the Classical Music Studio in St. Petersburg. Performers: Marinsky Theatre Orchestra, St. Petersburg ; Victor Fedotov, conductor. Additional Authors: Fedotov, Viktor. Leningradskiĭ gosudarstvennyĭ akademicheskiĭ teatr opery i baleta imeni S.M. Kirova. Orkestr Dynix #: 1295983 Music #: JVCC-6500-2 JVC Classics Holdings: Reservable Copies: 5 Number of Holds: 1 ********************* 2) The swan lake ballet.by Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilich, 1840-1893. New York, Broude [c1951] Call #: Mu 785.2 T Subjects • Ballets -- Scores Uniform Title: Swan lake Responsibility: Le lac des cygnes, grand ballet en 4 actes. Op. 20. Language: English Description: vi p., score (685p.) 28cm. Related Title: Le Lac des Cygnes. Notes: For orchestra. Synopsis in Russian and French: p.[ii]-vi. "Numeros [op. 72, no. 11, 12, 15] intercalés dans le ballet par l'auteur lui-méme, arr. pour orchestre par R. Drigo": p.636-685. Prefatory material and main text (p.3-635) apparently reproduced from the edition published by P. Jurgenson, Moscow, 1895? pl. no. 4432. Dynix #: 804887 NNBR#: 730068497 LCCN#: 52026401 Holdings: Reservable Copies: 1 Number of Holds: 0

She's finally got me where she wants me. If I can find an amusing enough theater, I plan to see this, because I'll shell out for Lily Tomlin and even thoroughly enjoy Ms. Streep's fleeting temporary identity in that case. I so adored Ms. Tomlin in 'I Heart Huckabees,' one of my all-time favourite films--she was hilarious at all times, and some genius made what I call her 'circle of cleavage' dress, a revealing circle buttoned at the top. I guess Ms. Streep should do Tammy Wynette or Imelda Marcos next.

PHENBY--would these old orchestra scores be Drigo's? They're all in Russian, with a few of the pieces' titles in French, but even the names I can't read. This is how it reads in the library catalog, although I have only 'Sleeping Beauty' at hand--but its catalog listing also says 'Language: English' and there's not an English word in sight, so I assume the 'Swan Lake' here will be the same, with no English; this has to be a mistake. Baletnoe tvorchestvo: Lebedinoe ozero. by Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilich, 1840-1893. Moskva, Gos. Muzykalʹnoe Izd-vo., 1958. Call #: Mu 785.2 T # Subjects Ballets -- Scores # Orchestral music -- Scores # Series (Polnoe sobranie sochineniĭ, t. 11A, B) Uniform Title: Swan lake Responsibility: Tom podgotovlen I. Iordan i G. Kirkorom. Language: English Description: score (2v.) facsims., port. 30cm. Related Title: Lebedinoe ozero. Contents: v.A. Acts 1-2.-v.B. Acts 3-4.

Thanks, kfw, for pointing this out. I was perhaps more interested in the ersatz suggested by the title of the review than any of the rest of the febrile writing of one of the well-known 'Paulettes' (or he was in the 80's, as were other Pauline Kael disciples.) It made me immediately remember the long slow walk of Angie Dickinson, a far less technically skilled actress, through the museum in the de Palma film 'Dressed to Kill.' I prefer that scene to anything I've ever seen Ms. Streep do. I'm immune to movie reviews anyway, after reading Joan Didion's searing critiques of Kael and Simon way back in 'the White Album,' where you find out how little movie critics know about who did what in a Hollywood film. I just read this one as a piece of writing, and Denby does go in for a very clever hard sell--tries to work the angle of how you might not be quite safe if you don't make sure to fit this one in... Well, I love the attitude, atm711, it's much better than Denby, but after 'the Manchurian Candidate' I'd had enough for awhile. Angela Lansbury had a lot more going in that part, although the reconstruction was partly at fault, I suppose. I just don't think Ms. Streep does anything but don masks superbly. You can see what she's like without make-up in 'The River Wild.'

Thoroughly enjoyable review, Helene! Thanks. However, it convinced me that I could live without it. One thing that had interested me from Maureen Dowd's write-up the other day was that it was like 'The Best of Everything', so I think I can be happy enough remembering Suzy Parker, Hope Lange and also Joan Crawford as the dyed-in-the-wool type. Ms. Streep is endlessly fascinating for many as the ultimate chameleon, but the kinds of roles she's been using the technique on may be saying something about why she seems to paradoxically evaporate after 'being the roles.' It's bizarrely circular: I remember people saying that Audrey Hepburn always 'played herself.' She usually did, in a fairly obvious way but which worked pleasingly in its big period, and ultimately ended up with performances of nothing as in 'Love Among Thieves' and 'Bloodline' and the atrocious 'They All Laughed'. In a way, Meryl Streep, with all that stylistic technique, seems to me to play herself. It never goes as deep as Katharine Hepburn or Vanessa Redgrave because it doesn't stay with you (or rather, doesn't stay with me; I remember all the virtuoso films I've seen her in, and not a one of them do I ever ponder.*) Fans will disagree, of course, and may even think she was sometimes great, sometimes less so. Nobody could convince me to spend money on her though. *I realized later that's not quite true. I do very often think of that part of 'Ironweed' when she thinks she has sung as if she'd gone ahead and realized her potential instead of slipped into the gutter. She hit the nail on the head in that scene--and with more than just skill. Some of these thoughts go along with the threads on technique in ballet, of course.

I'll look for that in the old Russian orchestra scores that are 'In Transit' to me from Lincoln Center Library, and can then maybe figure that out from some CD's if you don't find out beforehand. This would interest me to do anyway, and I can't believe they let these 1952 Soviet scores out 'interlibrary' like this. I've already had a marvelous time with the FOUR 'Sleeping Beauty' scores while watching the 1994 RB tape. That's fairly straightforward even with cuts. I'd imagine 'Swan Lake' will be about the same, but these old orchestra scores are an incredible pleasure to look down at and then look up and see what's going on (if you've already seen the film.) However, if 'Bleuette' is a piano piece, it may not be in the orchestra score, in which case I know there's a piano score available there too that I was planning to take a long look at.

I just watched 'Mayerling,' and the 2nd act tavern/semi-brothel scene is very enjoyable with Darcey Bussell. Well, this is a most peculiar piece, I'll say, but Irek Mukhademov was magnificent. I also recently watched him with the Bolshoi in 'Raymonda.' He definitely knows how to zip up a piece, and I'd like to know more about him, if he's still dancing. Bolshoi recording is from 1987, RB of 'Mayerling' from 1994. And, in fact, Lanchberry orchestrated it for part of the tavern/brothel scene. Musically, the piano pieces are all orchestrated for a fast and vapid Muzak sound. There are also some Transcendental Etudes in the 3rd Act, including one for the final scene with Mary and Rudolph--this is truly hard to take, and most of the orchestrations are musically horrible: the 'Mephisto Waltz' full of cuts, but mainly it sounds as if an old LP had been sped up to 45 but the pitches somehow staying the same; however, it works well enough as a 'Dance at the Inn,' whereas the Transcendental Etude for Viviana Durante and Irek just sounds like silent-movie music for Valentino and Vilma Banky. Mukhademov, to my mind, seems to be able to make even the silliest things work. Any other fans of his out there? Well, real earthly royalty does not always work so well en pointe as does Elisabeth McGorian as the Queen in 'Sleeping Beauty' (that is a beautiful face), for example, or Prince Siegfried, etc., not known as an actual potentate-to-be.

I've decided to watch 'Floating Weeds' again, it needs more than one. I saw that Ozu had made a 1934 version of this as well, but I've never heard anything about it. I believe the cover said it had been a silent.

SOUSA KID--you should try to get hold of '6 Balanchine Ballerinas' tape or DVD, where you can hear and see a lot of Ms. Ashley who, by then, had retired (I think, correct me if wrong, that she had--this was from 1989.) This has Mary Ellen Moylan, Maria Tallchief, Melissa Hayden, Allegra Kent, and Darci Kistler as well--who is the only one still dancing. As well as lots of clips of Balanchine. I thought this documentary was wonderful, and Ms. Ashley is thoroughly lovely in it. I'm not sure, but it might be the only one where she talks a good bit about Balanchine and the rest of the NYCB experience.

I was lucky in this regard as a Juilliard student, because the NYCB people do a lot of rehearsing in the Juilliard 3rd floor studios as well as at the State Theater. I remember seeing Ms. Ashley several times, once in the elevator, when a friend of hers said to her, after an apparent absence due to an injury (c. 1979-80-or-81), 'Hi Merrill, I hear you're dancing again.' In my first period in the early 70's there, there were Suzanne Farrell and Paul Mejia in the elevator, just prior to departure. Again in the 2nd period, there were Patricia McBride leaving what were then the front doors on 66th Street, Baryshnikov coming up to these same doors from Broadway at the end of his year with NYCB, Peter Martins with Heather Watts across the street, probably where the Chinese mission was (and maybe is.) Most remarkable was Rudolph Nureyev, who also got off at the 3rd floor, but I have no idea what he was doing there in 1981, after having stood exactly in the middle of the car in a full-length leather coat with an amused look. I may have seen Balanchine, but I never knew it if I did. . I never spoke to any of these people (except Mejia, for whom I'd played a class or two; one of my colleagues had to tell me who his dazzling companion was). My bursting-outs don't happen except with faces I've seen so often on TV that I think it's the same when I see them--like that Channel 13 girl who used to be so good at babbling out the pledge speeches, Donna Drewes. TV talking heads I'll just start talking to, because they don't seem extraordinary in the same way.

I'd like to hear more about this, which is written up in the NYT today. I am sure I would love it, but want to hear from people who have seen it and architects like defjef who will know something about Nouvel. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/arts/des...7bran.html?8dpc

Would the 'Ballet for Martha'--'Appalachian Spring'--be another? I saw that 'Fall River Legend' is called a ballet.

Alexandra, do you mean Classical Ballet Technique? I hope so, because I ordered it earlier today! List price is $39.95, but there were several used copied for under $30. Thanks all for this! I too, have just ordered it. It didn't sound possible to live without.

You've got the credentials, but I remember his praising Baryshnikov (if I've gotten it wrong about his saying he was the best, my apologies; in any case, I have no idea where to retrieve whatever it was I read, but I hadn't really expected Nureyev to praise anybody that much), and then someone bringing up Peter Martins for comparison, to which Nureyev said 'He's a good dancer, but...' I forget what he then said as means of Martins's lesser greatness, but it was clear enough. Martins himself said that Baryshnikov was more talented than he himself was in his 1983 book, followed pages later with 'and I do know I have a lot of talent.'

That's the equation--if it isn't understood as normal, it's displaced and made either too precious or scorned. The Victorian society of England was expert at fuelling the fires of illicit sex by producing surfaces of oppressive prudery and self-righteousness. This danger adds to the excitement for some, therefore, and the hostility of others. Getting an ease with sex sounds like it would be a natural thing, but various cultures, especially including the contemporary American one right now which is more intolerant than ever, have proved that it can be an almost superhuman feat. Actually, it's the displacement into coarse TV trash, etc., that is the perversion, but this is widely accepted as okay in the U.S. In ballet, I definitely remember when Baryshnikov's heterosexual ascendancy was a great relief to many, after the reign of Nureyev. That he was a great dancer, and I think sometime in the 80's Nureyev himself said that Baryshnikov was definitely the best, was part of it but not nearly all. Having babies out of wedlock became fashionable among celebrities at around that time, with all sorts of puerile interviews on Barbara Walters et alia, but this caused less consternation than Nureyev's adventuring had.

This is upsetting news for the classical arts, but I don't find it too surprising. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/26/arts/mus...artner=homepage

I think I know what you mean even if I don't feel it myself. You are much more in touch with the true grand European-romantic traditions from what I can tell from what you've written here. As an eclectic American, I pick and choose from anywhere, most likely, and in some cases I've intersected with you (certainly when it comes to Nureyev)--and all of what you wrote here is quite arresting. I think it works both ways, and that the former by itself is suspect. On the other hand some artists are of a subtlety that won't allow the latter to come sweeping through by itself: If it then does, then the former was justified and redeemed; if it doesn't, and what can best be called 'learned behaviours' result, then the former is just barren and effete, aspirations to commonplace chic. The clear distinction makes me think of 17th century Mannerist painting and the following explosion into the Baroque--or, when you start seeing 'Picasso dancers' on stage who are not generally going to become household words. You mentioned 'all classes' when discussing Pavlova. Even so, dancers that look like Picassos on stage become so famous in the ballet world that it is forgotten by those within it or connected somehow to it that they are not especially well-known elsewhere, and certainly not universally and in all classes. I mentioned Peter Martins to a 23-year-old in my building here in NY about 1993, and after he said 'Who's Peter Martins?' I began to realize that changes had taken place even by then that I had not wanted to face.

Well, you see, I think they both have good steps and large pictures, and are equally necessary to the artist. Liszt did fine worshipping the devil and working at the Vatican as an abbe. Even the pope at the time wanted a private audience, and it was most likely to evoke the concert fan-mobbed period rather than to provide vesper material. I like what Balanchine did and I like what Nureyev did--it's possible.

Once I had lunch with a dancer who quickly found out how much I admired Farrell. He promptly told me she 'has no technique.' I thought that was idiocy but hadn't the technical chops to properly refute it. Another told me Farrell was 'insipid' but this dancer only liked flamboyant types and had a tin ear. And then a musician who had not only told me about the 1980 Ballet at the Beacon where Farrell danced to Mejia's 'Romeo and Juliet' in a program also including Cynthia Gregory (that pianist's favourite; I like her too) and Patrick Dupond but had also led me to a large scholarship toward my 4th year at Juilliard tuition, said to me when I enthused about Farrell: 'Oh, I didn't like her at all. She didn't have any personality.' I just glared and stormed off in high dudgeon, because he was being a bore and I did know he didn't know what he was talking about. Consistency is not necessarily a part of technique, although it can be. I am a pianist and such things apply just as much to musical virtuosity as they do to dance technique. Nureyev could do super hard steps and he could do the easiest steps too. Just watch the old movie of 'An Evening with the Royal Ballet' and look at 'Les Sylphides' and you'll see consummate gentleness and sensitivity. Of course, he was an exhibitionist (even Stravinsky used the word for Nureyev) and an incredibly flamboyant personality. Everybody is 'an unfinished material.' I bet if you asked Farrell she'd even say she hadn't completed everything she might, and she even had the discipline to get to explore certain aspects of her potential further than almost anyone else. Now that the careers of Nureyev, McBride and Farrell as dancers are over due to death in the first case, and retirement to teaching, etc., in the 2nd and 3rd cases, I realize that Nureyev is my favourite dancer of all: He had everything as far as I'm concerned, and I couldn't care less that he wasn't always good, or that he let a lot of the glamour scene go to his head. This is not because I think any less of McBride and Farrell, but because now that they aren't dancing, I prefer the paganism of Nureyev to the more civilized religiosity of Farrell from time to time. When they're not dancing anymore, you are left with a whole body--an essence, as it were--of what they represented, and I think Rudy's well-known animalism has not exactly been duplicated by a single one of the more 'perfect' dancers. I don't know if Pat McBride is religious or not, but in the NYRBooks review of 'Holding on to the Air', Farrell said 'I dance for God.' The reviewer pointed out 'she also danced for Balanchine.' I was glad of that, and thought it was therefore terrific that she danced for God if she could come up with that sort of result. Someone said that Franz Liszt, both the most flamboyant and probably the greatest pianist ever to have lived 'loved God but worshipped the devil.' Not bad. Rudy may have just 'worshipped the devil,' I don't know. But he sure knew how to dance and he sure knew how to put on a good show--onstage and off. Perfection and perfectionism aren't the same things. Perfectionism can even get in the way of perfection, but occasionally it doesn't, as in Farrell's case. But Nureyev's perfection was just as great as hers.

Thank you, faux pas! I haven't found the 1937 'Le Cygne' yet, but in meantime NYPL has the Fonteyn/Somes. I haven't seen her that far back except in very short clips, so I requested it and can't wait to see it. When I was searching for 'Le Cygne', I found there's a piano reduction for the original Black Swan Music, so that will be enormous fun too. Last night, I watched that tape of the 6 Balanchine ballerinas, and Melissa Hayden said things right along the lines of what I'm working on--about 'seeing sound' even when you weren't dancing to the actual music. I thought she was often the most articulate on Balanchine's work itself, and feel extremely lucky I got to see her do the one-act 'Swan Lake' one year before she retired. That was the only time I saw her, and I can still see the end of it in my mind--it was exquisite.

I don't think there's any responsibility exactly. I tend to want to do as much preparation and learn as much as I can before seeing something, but I want to follow up a performance with as much study and research as I can get too. I used to just go to see Farrell or McBride or Nureyev, I didn't care what I knew or not. What I didn't know I'd find out later, and you can never know all of it anyway. Now that I've become equally interested in the Royal, Bolshoi and Kirov, I'm watching all the tapes I can get hold of and reading everything in the archives of this board I can get hold of, and checking out books on ballet notation so I can see what it looks like and using it with the 4 volumes of Sleeping Beauty scores I've got hold of when I pick them up tomorrow. I never even knew what the Rose Adagio was till a couple of weeks ago, that never bothered me; but I like knowing about all of it now. In any case, going without knowing anything is all right too, and then complaining you don't understand it is normal. People do this all the time. I don't have any reason to think anyone else at all ought to want to study the things as I do and most of the people on this board do. Tomorrow night NYCB will do another 'Klavier.' I could well be the only person on the board who's played the 'Hammerklavier' (although I hope not), but that won't necessarily make me understand what Wheeldon has choreographed, since, on the other hand, I don't know which turns are which--so the dancers and knowledgeable balletomanes are going to understand many aspects of the dance parts I wouldn't. So I may understand the Beethoven in some ways even better then Wheeldon, who probably can't play it (but I wouldn't know for sure), but I can't dance any of it. My knowing the Beethoven has probably made me decide not to go tomorrow night, but wait till next season; however, knowing it has definitely made me want to see it. If I go, I'll probably look up reviews from back in the winter here at BT and NYTimes, but tons of ignorant audiences are needed too. It all has to do with how much investment of all kinds you want to put into it. I've read the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey,' and that helps me understand 'Clytemnestra' more, but I don't know about 'Apollo', even though he appears a good deal in it. I think I understood 'Apollo' on a primitive level before I read Homer, and that I still always see it on a primitive level. I always went to see Suzanne Farrell dance to whatever music it was. That was enough for me, but I read things before or after as needed. Now that I'm more interested in the theatrical ballets, I need to study them more, because I want to enter in to the part that is more specific to the dance. But unprepared philistines at the ballet and concert hall are needed just the way tourists who can't negotiate a guidebook are needed to support the NYC tourist industry, by paying for the endless streams of busloads of themselves.

Thanks for a great laugh and for the links to the info on tv excerpts, FP! Yes, thank you, FP, I will look at these. I'm going to watch in next 2 days the old tape of 'Fonteyn and Nureyev: The Perfect Partnership' and also see what's on there. I think a lot of us first saw them on Ed Sullivan. I didn't know about the Bell Telephone Hour things till recently, although I did watch Bell Telephone Hour regularly, loved that theme played by 'Donald Voorhees and the Bell Telephone Orchestra.'

Yes! So Peter should be able to do a fabulous 'Phedre'--could be really full of tension with Darci and Nilas as his wife and son. And he could dance Theseus himself. Really, this could be much better than merely gossippy things, such as those loosely based on Balanchine and Farrell. Because these are the real people, but they would all be only shadow figures of the hyperreal people: they'd become Phedre, Hippolyte and Theseus onstage and although people might imagine something for offstage, just imagining them at work, in class ought to be exotic enough (since that's what they mostly do anyway and it's interesting). Could be good with Boulez's 'Repons' instead of period music, except that you'd have to refit the whole auditorium, as was done in Carnegie Hall, and set up the computers to respond to the orchestra in the boxes, and anyway, the music is too complicated and the orchestra would have no time to do it. There is probably some other Boulez or Xennakis that might work. However, this kind of intense claustrophobic closeness is very Racinian. It would be great and there's little time left! This could be Peter Martins's greatest opportunity to really produce something unique!

Oh, Helene, thanks so much. I didn't find an exact answer, but directions pointed to it enough; anyway, ridiculous of me for not searching back there by now--I've read a lot of those music archives and they are terrific. You know, I think I was slightly shocked that that particular music was not there. I can see now that musically that Black Swan Music is my favourite music in the whole score, go down the street singing it, etc. : I've just always counted on its being there, providing a 'champagne party' contrast to the rest. What I think I'll do is get that Bolshoi version 'the Ultimate Swan Lake' which I want to watch over and over anyway and watch the Black Swan pdd in that and this Nureyev one--this will force me to see what some of the choreographic changes were. At this point, all I noticed were the fouettes done to music I'd never heard them done to. I also think there may be some other Fonteyn/Nureyev 'Swan Lake' on that early 90's TV documentary about Nureyev, but not sure; may be excerpts on some other tapes. I loved seeing them do it though, she looks especially good. He definitely gave up his usual ease at 'being a prince' for this Caravaggiesque-trollop look with the makeup, esp. heavy lipstick, and somehow his costume makes him look shorter than I've ever seen him. On the other hand, these kinds of ornaments may actually add to his dancing (at least once, I think I usually prefer the longer look), which I have yet to tire of.