cubanmiamiboy

It can't be worse than mine, dear..! .and I still get to scream a lot around here, so... Welcome, welcome..!

I have a vague memory of being in awe of a ballerina crossing the back of the stage with a veil on as if she was on wheels-(must have been Myrtha).

"Apollo's Angels" by Jennifer Homans...read that too.

Spitting out right up front what you DON'T like..! He,he... Am I having competition for the "Most Opinionated" title...? So welcome aboard, dear..!

....and looking forward to it. Carlos Acosta is in it, and he plays a ballet dancer, it seems from the promo. http://dayoftheflowers.com/

Balachova danced the Gorsky/Hertel version as back as 1922 in Paris, partenered by Smolzoff, in a special gala held to bennefit the victims of famine in Russia. In 1985 Claude Bessy also staged the Gorsky/Hertel version after D. Romanoff for the ecole de danse. The leads were danced by Laetitia Pujol and Jeremie Belingard.

My pleasure, Natasha!

Sobeshchanskaya's tutu from '77 look somehow similar as the Russian recreations being made nowadays -(SB, Raymonda, etc..). They are sort of knee lenght, and they move a lot when the ballerina is jumping but without being completely free as in Romantic skirt-(thus I believe there are wires and other stuff underneath). There seems to be a strong return now to the shape/lenght of what I call "Pavlova's tutu", but they certainly hide much of the upper legs, particularly during arabesques and attitude poses-(sometimes when the ballerina goes for a deep penchee, the skirt can be seen almost falling over her head). For my SL, give me a short, high crispy tutu that stays hard no matter what the movement is.

To each his/her own. No, I don't under estimate Ashton's Fille, but the overall message I'm trying to pass is that there has been continuous, beautiful "Fille" staged and danced all around before, during and after Ashton's. In France since 1789; in Russia since 1800; by Petipa from 1885 on; out to the West from Pavlova in 1912-(London) and staged by Sergueev-(Riga, 1922); back to Paris in 1922-(Balachova)- and in America in 1937-(Mordkin)-and right in NYC-(Nijinska, 1940)-from where it made it to Cuba-(Alonso,1952)- and where it has stayed as another cherished mid-century BT importation until today. All of it from 1885 on rooted in Petipa/Hertel...all of them before Ashton's. There is a whole generation of audiences that probably think all this previous venerable 200 years old past and somehow broken/scattered present is non existent, when in reality it has survived. Yes, I do find Ashton's staging interesting, but being certainly biased against whatever modern attempts against continuity and faith to original Petipa, what I saw and heard didn't convinced me. If anything...I find a tragedy that Russia wasn't able to keep such gem-(just as the Nutcracker)...one that was theirs by all rights

How complicated is all this numerology....

But wait, Bart...let's make a pause here and be fair. I NEVER said that Ashton's staging "can't be good". I said that it didn't find it in the same technical level as Nijinska's and somehow too character-oriented for my taste , but still enjoyable.. About the "good" or "bad" notions, the world has been debating about them for thousands of years now with no definitive agreement so far, and I know I would never dream of knowing anything about the definitive answers.

But that has been exactly my point ever since I wrote my OP, JMcN...I KNOW "Fillle..", I grew up watching "Fille..", I was lucky enough to have seen the very last performances of Maria Elena Llorente, one of the youngest old school/pre Castro ballerinas dancing the role coached by Alonso herself when the choreography was still fresh in her memory as she had danced it with John Kriza in Nijinska's version in NYC coached by the first American Lissette, Lucia Chase, and the help of Mme.Alexandra Fedorova, who knew the ballet from her Imperial times, and I LOVED it every single time I saw it..! I totally agree with you...it is a SUPERB ballet..! Ha...just give me a chance to...!

To explain my point in a little wider form. I remember bart's words stating that for him ballet is essentially what Balanchine did with it. I remember this very well because I realize that for each of us the art form conveys different messages and shapes, and different meanings too. In my case I always remember being in total agreement with a statement I read a while ago-(I think it was either by Danilova or Nureyev or even perhaps in "Apollo's Angels")- in which there's a description of the art form comparing it to the shape of a wedding cake. The way Petipa made his ballets, perfectly incorporating layers of character dancing, pantomimes, beautiful props and costumes, all in ascending order and all gravitating toward the pinnacle...the wedding couple figurines, fully displayed in all its glory...the Grand PDD. Hence, I always expect this shape in the ballets...everything making way, gravitating and announcing the greatest moment...the Grand PDD. That's why I got so confused when I saw versions of ballets in which such venerable structure was being dismembered-(Balanchine's Nutcracker for example), where poor Prince Coqueluche not only carries the previous loose of his name and title, but even is deprived of his variation, or even when I see versions of Swan Lake in which the Love duet is presented in different order to the one I'm used to from the Cuban/Mary Skeaping staging-(Adagio, an added variation for Siegfried to the Tempo di Valse music, Odette's Variation and the coda with Odette's series of passe/entrechats). In the case of Ashton's Fille, that was one of the main reasons it left me longing for Nijinska's: the fact that I'm used to the formal, Petipa/Drigo classical PDD that makes it go along and side by side to every single classical ballet we know. Can we imagine being presented with Giselle sans Petipa/Minkus adittions...one of them the famous Act II PDD...? I don't think so. Well...the same happened to me with this other Fille. After a lifelong viewing of a product that comes in straight line from Petipa and Petipa-style, I'm faced with a completely new, more modern product that doesn't fit in my "wedding cake" notion. And that's the reason I could never come to terms with "Dances at a Gathering" ... And that could also be the problem...the fact that I essentially see "Fille Mal Gardee"-(Petipa/NijinskaHertel) as a French product with a Russian gloss...

Petipa, Gorsky and Nijinska being guilty as charged for it..! I enjoy lightness for sure, and cute pantomime and maypoles-(many SL productions has them), but at one point of the soiree give me amazing, hard, solid ballet technique to go along with it-(just as with Giselle), so that dancers, both male and female, can be challenged in both, artistically and technically , ways for many more years to come. (Hi Mr. Petipa! )

Definitely Helene, which is why I know those others are completely different animals. Just mentioning them to note my strong impossibility to expand my ballet vision of some sorts...

OT A painful, horrible, slowly death happening in front of our very eyes... How I wish I could see more of that...All those years hearing Mme. reminiscing on the impressive, wonderful bulk of his works, and me thinking I was up for such fascinating world once I was able to land in US... It hasn't happened... But back to MCB...

Just as with Duato's Beauty, Nureyev' Cinderella, Morris' Hard Nut, Bourne's SL or Ek's Giselle..? No...I'm not comparing Ashton's respectful recreation with all those, but damn if i can digest any of that...

Forgive me if this is sound like a silly or inappropriate question, but I would be curious to know if Lifar's choreography critique could still be biased by his rumored political life events, or in other words...Is America ready to be a 100 % artistically impartial on his ballets...? Do we think Lefebre may have considered this point while doing the selection...?

Oh, YOU BET, Miss Mashinka!

Ok...so I found the playbill and it states, just as Natasha wrote, the following dancers: Lise: Mathilde Froustey Colas: Pierre Arthur Raveau Widow Simone: Stéphane Phavorin Alain: François Alu I don't think I got to see the best of what was left behind from the NYC tour. I strongly believe all connoisseurs were rather cramping the theater for the performances of new etoile-(and highly regarded)- Myriam Ould-Braham as Lissette and Josua Hoffalt as Colin. Nevertheless, as I said, I enjoyed the soiree greatly. Not everyday one gets to look up a theater's ceiling and see Chagall all over you, and that, my friend, was enough for me..! It look as if both Froustey and Raveau are still a work in process in these roles. One of the things I noticed was that Ahton's choreo. is no short of lifts of all sorts, and Raveau had some problems with them. At one particularly sad moment he, instead of just give up quickly and do something else, tried for a second time, unsuccessfully, to achieve the lift, and so the moment was very awkward. There were problems also with his tours en l'air...not always achieving clean, still landings. What I find is that because of the over use of character dancing/scenes, the few classical parts become even more exposed. Even the ribbon sequences, as lovely as they are, many times are focused more in the sophisticated paterns of the ribbons rather than the classical steps. In favor of Miss Froustey, I must say she did great during the terrifying supported promenade in arabesque-(or is it attitude derriere..?)-holding the circling ribbons. Natasha, no...Mama Simone does not have a clog dance in Alonso's Nijinska's staging, and Alain uses a butterfly net instead of Ashton's umbrella. Also, I noticed Nijinska's Alain is slow, but not as retarded as Ashton's, nor his physical appearance gets to be as altered-(makeup etc...)-as in Ashton's. As I said...it looks to me as if in Ashton's it is Mama Simone, her ambitions, her personality portray, even her dancing sequences, the main course of the buffett. Actually she was the one getting the most applause during curtain calls. And to make a point of comparison, that was one of the things I always find a little too hard to digest in his Cinderella...the equally highly caricatured steps sisters in travesty, versus Zakharov' ballerinas on pointe, which I enjoy more-(well, with the divine Struchkova on it, it is hard not to anyway... ). About the music, given that I go ALL THE WAY for the "musique dansante" concept in ballet-(hello, Kshesinskaya..! ), I definitely think Hertel's score has way more potential here. Let's just take a look at Lissette's variation from it-(I believe this is a Drigo's inerpolation)..

, rg. So I guess changes already ocurred from the Vic-Wells Sergueev original staging for Markova to the time this other staging took place.