Mashinka

I saw Tereshkina dance Grand pas Classique in Germany a couple of days ago, again with Korsakov, and considered her quite superb. In the past week I've also seen her dance Swan Lake and Ballet Imperial. What I admire about this girl is her total fearlessness, she tackles the big roles with the assurance of a seasoned professional and I tend to forget just how young she is. In recent years I've felt some disquiet about the promotion of rather unremarkable young girls at the expense of older, more experienced dancers. Tereshkina is an exception though and I urge anyone who hasn't yet caught up with this wonderful girl to try and see her, as she is quite something.

Just programmes? I'm also lumbered with books (around 200), magazines, videos, DVD's, photos, posters, scrapbooks and dance memorabilia including shoes, plates, lacquer boxes etc., etc. Somehow they just seem to accumulate......

Ludmila Semenyaka deserves a mention, and she wasn't brunette.

Interesting that you describe the dancers as "very young" as I would imagine Galina Shlyapina is now very much a senior dancer, in fact I wasn't aware she was still dancing: I thought she was teaching in Spain. I saw her dance in Vienna and at the Sintra festival in Portugal in the 90's and was very impressed by her. At the time she was dancing with the Imperial Russian Ballet and had previously danced with Moscow Classical Ballet and San Francisco Ballet. Unless of course this is another of those irritating Russian instances of dancers not changing their name when it is shared with someone more illustrious - something that isn't allowed in the UK.

Semenyaka was one of the first dancers to take advantage of the changes brought about by the policies of glasnost and perestroika and started making guest appearances abroad at around the same time as others such as Ananiashvili and A. Liepa. To be honest I don’t actually know whether she was pro or anti Grigorovitch but she certainly danced with the Bolshoi during the London season of 1989. If she was anti, she must have been quiet about it. Now retired, she is still with the Bolshoi as a teacher and currently coaches Svetlana Zakharova. Not sure what you mean by that as Mukhamedov was still dancing with the Royal Ballet earlier this year. I imagine that you have read some of the articles in the media about I.M. in which he complained constantly that the RB didn’t give him enough work. Personally I never considered him to be much of an asset to the company as he was stylistically too far removed from the other dancers to look anything other than an exotic guest. In a recent documentary about I.M. there was a very telling comment by the former RB principal Bruce Sansom where he demonstrated that one of the simplest of steps seemed to be beyond Mukhamedov. Another problem was his weight, which made him unsuitable for a number of roles; in fact at one point the Balanchine Foundation had to step in to prevent him dancing Apollo. That the Royal Ballet decided to scale down his performances came as a relief to many.

It’s worth remembering that in Russia Grigorovitch still commands a great deal of respect and his ballets are held in far higher regard than elsewhere. The Novosti article is misleading as it suggests a different time scale of events rather as if Grigorovitch decamped to Krasnador after the dismissals in the late 80’s, but in fact he hung on to the directorship of the Bolshoi until about 1994 or 95. Also those dancers had been in the company for a great deal longer than twenty years, in Plisetskaya’s case it must have been close to forty. A kind a civil war raged at the Bolshoi after the firing of the senior principals with both the dancers and the Moscow ballet public drawing up battle ranks on very partisan lines and even though the events of those days are now brushed under the carpet, many of the incidents of the time made unbelievable reading. For example, Mukhamedov’s assault on a female demonstrator and the onstage sacking of Gediminas Taranda: both well documented. This astonishing state of affairs dragged on for years with demonstrations against Grigorovitch becoming a regular feature of the Moscow ballet scene. During the 1993 season in London attacks on him even made their way into the British press with the most extraordinary (anonymous) accusations by his dancers claiming that he was guilty of sexual impropriety with his dancers. In one article I have kept he is accused of having seduced the entire company, male and female – an astonishing feat for a sexagenarian who resembled a small elderly hedgehog! For an outsider it was almost impossible to decide if Grigorovitch was actually a victim or a villain as the argument of both his supporters and his detractors sounded valid when sticking to purely dance matters. On the one hand he had guided the company for decades during a period when meddling by politicians in artistic matters was rife, but on the other hand he seemed a spent force artistically and hadn’t created any new works for years. There were both pros and cons and in the end I suppose the cons outweighed the pros and he was thrown out. Grigorovitch is still highly active and staged his Ivan the Terrible in Paris at the end of last year. I saw his Krasnodar company in the UK and they were very good, not the Bolshoi of course, but not bad for a provincial troupe. Their leading dancer at the time was the excellent Kniazkova, how they’ll get on with the now infamous Volochkova, I don’t know but having seen her dance just a few months ago I have to say that ‘perfection’ isn’t how I would describe her.

Indeed Nina Ananiashvili is not gone; she still performs to great acclaim worldwide. Perhaps you are only prepared to acknowledge the most youthful of dancers, but that doesn't alter the fact that some of the most moving performances ever given in the art of ballet have been from dancers in the autumn of their careers. Dance is not a sport nor is it a competition and its practitioners are people deserving of the highest respect. To strip ballet down to just an exercise in technique will ultimately destroy it.

For Nikia to like Zakharova is fine: but I'm sorry it was felt necessary to denigrate Maria Alexandrova. I won't argue with the fact that joining the Bolshoi seems to have been beneficial for Zakharova as some of her sharp edges appear to have softened a little this time around. But to say she has a better technique is frankly erroneous and as to Alexandrova’s form not being beautiful, I beg to differ, as there are very many of us out there that have no appreciation of the emaciated form Nikia obviously prefers. Where Zakharova does score points is that she is the far more experience dancer and consequently looks a little more assured on stage than Alexandrova. I also saw both dancers in the role of Aspicia and my preference was for the warmer interpretation of Alexandrova, a preference shared by those I spoke to after the performance.

Yes, a major hassle and what’s more it gets far more difficult as the years go by rather than easier. The cost of visas is an outrage and on my last trip I was actually made to pay a surcharge (of the equivalent of $30) for having an Irish passport! Another recent problem in Moscow has been the demolishing of the old Soviet era hotels by developers making it near impossible to find accommodation at a reasonable price in the centre of the city. In fact there is an article in today’s Moscow Times announcing the demolition of yet another tourist hotel. Well worth reading as it sums up the attitude of the Russian authorities to visitors to their city. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/08/11/040.html I stayed at this hotel on my last visit to Moscow. It is located at the back of Red Square and is within walking distance of the Bolshoi theatre. Yes the service at the reception desk was very slow and rather poor, but there was nothing wrong with the actual rooms and as for the statement: "It is a murky hotel -- dirty windows, dirty books, dirty clientele," said one Western hotel consultant". What a disgraceful thing to say! I would like to make it quite clear as someone who can be ranked as part of this hotel's clientele - I am not dirty! If I want to see a Russian company in the future I’ll go to see them on tour. After a number of visits dating back to 1974 I’m now in the mood to call it a day, I doubt if I’ll be going back in a hurry.

Now that the Bolshoi Ballet has set a precedent by having three versions of Romeo & Juliet in the rep, surely the Royal Ballet could follow suit and add Ashton's R & J to the very tired MacMillan production that really ought to be replaced.

Agnes Oaks and Thomas Edur of English National Ballet.

Do you mean the latest version? Don't forget they currently have three Romeo and Juliet's at their disposal.

I was wondering whether the picture of Mordkin with a bow might be as Tahor in Daughter of the pharaoh.

My answer would be possibly. I find the final act a bit short, probably due to Ashton's decision not to include the Prince's worldwide tour in search of the slipper's owner. I imagine he simply didn't care for the music, which isn't vintage Prokofiev and which suggests an element of comedy that wouldn't have fitted Ashton's concept of the ballet as (apart from the ugly sisters) Cinderella inhabits a rather sad, elegiac world with just her unhappy father for company. The Prince also can’t be a very happy chap as he’s clearly an orphan with no king or queen around to oversee their son’s choice of bride; even his jester is melancholy. I imagine the omitted last act music would have destroyed that mood.

Ashton was clearly influenced by the British pantomime tradition when he created this work. Cinderella has always been perhaps the most popular of pantomimes and I imagine he was unable to envisage the story without the pantomime dames. Whether or not the sisters upset the balance of the work really depends on the calibre of the dancers in the roles of Cinderella and her prince. Yes, they can be overwhelmed if an inferior cast is performing but with dancers of the stature of Fonteyn (the first and best of the Cinderella’s I saw) it just doesn't happen. That Ashton and Helpmann were never bettered in their roles was more to do with their personal rapport than any lack of ability in their successors, though over the years I did get the feeling that Helpmann became too overbearing in his role and finished up displaying no subtlety at all.

MacMillan's "Gloria" with music by Poulenc.

I thought the whole point of those that feel unconfortable about this casting is that Ganio hasn't in fact danced this role at all. He is an unknown quantity as James and I imagine his being chosen to star on this recording is as baffling as his promotion to etoile in the first place.

There was a mass exodus of ballet fans to Birmingham for the Ashton double bill, partly because we've been starved of Ashton at Covent Garden in recent years and partly to catch sight of the very rare Dante Sonata. I was seeing Dante Sonata for the first time as I missed it when it was first revived by BRB a couple of years back and so I did a spot of research before I saw it. It seems the ballet made a big impression on both critics and audiences at the time. The critics were impressed that Ashton was tackling a work on a more serious theme after the light-hearted ballets he created in the '30's and because it depicts the struggle between good and evil, audiences in those war years strongly identified with what was happening on stage. It notched up hundreds of performances and then inexplicably disappeared. The big shock is that it's danced barefoot and that the girls all have their hair loose (usually a pet hate of mine at the ballet). The Children of Darkness are dramatic and assertive, with the men very scantily clad, rather like the Martha Graham males. The Children of light look more balletic, with the girls in Grecian style white costumes and the men in more traditional ballet wear. The dancing is freer and more expressionistic than I would imagine from Ashton, emotions are raw and grief and despair are graphically portrayed. Fonteyn was the original leading Child of light and how I would have loved to have seen her! Helpmann led the children of darkness and looks from a contemporary picture I’ve found, more melodramatic and heavily made up than dancers in the role today. The ballet was well danced and well applauded by the audience and I find it hard to reconcile Ms Brown’s views with the performances I saw.

Margot Fonteyn.

Does anyone read Mary Renault's novels? Her books are mostly "ancient" historical, or set in mythical times. Her most famous titles are The King Must Die, based on the Theseus legends and The Fire from Heaven, which is about Alexander the Great. My personal favourites though are The Last of the Wine, set in Athens during the Spartan/Athenian Wars and The Mask of Apollo, which is about actors in the early theatre. Both books have as characters the real celebrities of the time such as Socrates and Alcibiades. Her books are extremely well researched and well written and above all are highly evocative of the place and time they depict. I've also noticed that they are very popular holiday reads for tourists in Greece.

I have to say I see no similarities between these two dancers at all.

The mention of Mitsuko reminded me that it was Diaghilev's favourite perfume and in his book "In the Wake of Diaghilev", Richard Buckle recalls how he sprayed the perfume around the rooms of Forbes House where he held his famous Diaghilev exhibition in the 1950's. BTW, at the risk of sounding uncouth, I rather like the perfume Opium.

I first saw Mezentseva dance at her "official" debut in Bayaderka in Leningrad in 1974; the other official debutante on that occasion was Tatiana Terekhova. Sadly I wasn't able to follow the careers of either dancer and it was over a decade later before I saw either of them again. At the time Mezentsova danced with the Kirov she was one among a number of exceptional contemporaries. There were far more outstanding dancers of her generation than there are today. Over the weekend I have watched both the Giselle and the Dying Swan videos referred to here and I have to say I found her impressive in both. Her acting was astonishing with real tears quite visibly glistening on her cheeks during the mad scene of Giselle. Her "skinnyness" is surely dictated by her body type, as she is astonishingly long-limbed, her arms in particular are unusually long giving her a very idiosyncratic line. Indeed, her physical type is uncannily similar to that of present day divinity, Yuliana Lopatkina. A word here about party membership in Russia: It did not guarantee a successful career as many party members languished in the corps de ballet while non-party members could still make it to the top. And before someone comes back about Kolpakova and Vasiliev's party membership, yes, they were party members - but they would have made it to the top anyway. Mezentsova was almost certainly not a party member and was indeed suspected of having dissident sympathies. She was not a party sycophant nor was she a "mediocrity".

I'm afraid I agree. My reason for not liking this dancer is his poor musical phrasing. I can overlook certain failings in technique, but an unmusical dancer is one I avoid.