innopac

Perhaps I should clarify.... Courtesy is important and I agree with Dirac that you may or may not want to listen to a truthful response. Greetings like "Did you have a nice weekend?" where you are suppose to answer yes or "How are you?" where one is suppose to answer something like "Fine Thanks, and you?" can even be pleasant when you have that exchange a couple of times a day. But if you are in a situation where that is the main content of a large number of verbal exchanges during the day it does get wearing.

Maybe this is slightly off topic but my blood pressure goes up when I hear: the statement "I love my country" when used as a justification for any opinion and a way of closing discussion problems being described as challenges university students being described as stakeholders someone saying they are a "big picture person" when it really means they are not interested in fixing things that don't work "Hello, how are you?" when the speaker isn't really interested in the answer This thread has a therapeutic quality!

Has anyone used this video dictionary? This is a DVD and CD-ROM that I have found on the web. It features ballet steps demonstrated by the following professional dancers: Li Cunxin, Christine Dunham, Barbara Bears, Jennifer Davis Tinsley. Here is the website. It looks like it might be of interest for both dancers and non-dancers.

I am "reading" this beautiful photographic essay by KayLynn Deveney called The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings. The book was mentioned in Allison Arieff's NYT's blog on memories.

The article "Treating the costume for a squid" on page 36 of this pdf of the National Gallery of Australia's quarterly magazine artonview illustrates the extraordinary lengths conservators go to when restoring costumes. Issue 54, Winter 2008 (June-August) Also the archival site for the exhibition "From Russia with Love, Costumes for the Ballets Russes 1909–1933" (15 May – 22 August 1999) includes an education kit for downloading.

The dictionary was published in 1993 so it isn't very up to date. Youtube has a 2 part documentary, Character dance at the Bolshoi Theatre, and the Gipsy Dance from Don Quixote with Yuliana Malkhasyants.

I bought this dvd and got so excited after seeing the Anisimova version that I rushed to BT and was thrilled to read Natalia's post. I hadn't realized that Anisimova had been one of the greatest Russian character dancers as well as a choreographer. In fact Stupnikov writes, "With the exception perhaps of Irina Gensler, Anisimova was the last great character dancer on the Soviet stage. Later generations have tried to imitate her, but they have only proven very good copies, not the original." He also writes: "As a choreographer, Anisimova attained creative maturity in Gayane--her most famous work--where her mastery of character dance was united with a classicism that made for a complete and convincing artistic whole. Her best productions confirmed the significance of national dance, and showed its ability to resolve the potential conflict between "classical" and "character styles in a single ballet." "And indeed, since her day the role of character dance in the Soviet Union has become something of a problem; sadly, choreographers like Grigorovich, Belsky, or Vinogradov have not used it in the way that Russia had grown accustomed to--in the way that Petipa, for instance used it. In Grigorovich's Swan Lake, therefore, pointe shoes have replaced heeled character shoes in all of the national dances. It is certainly interesting to see the Mazurka or the Spanish dance performed on pointe; but it seems a strange tendency in late twentieth-century Russian choreography to ignore, or dismiss, character dancing." from Igor Stupnikov in The International dictionary of Ballet, page 35

Oops! Thank you Natalia.

I just watched the 4 youtube clips from a Giselle performed by Alessandra Ferri and Maximiliano Guerra (1998) and choreographed by Alicia Alonso. Even watching it on youtube I found it incredibly moving. It is, for me, a very human and natural production and very powerful dramatically. Cubanmiamiboy commented that the Alonso Giselle is "for some critics, OVER ROMANTICIZED". But with these two wonderful dancers I found it one of the most alive Giselles I have seen. If only it were available on dvd....

There is a BBC documentary on youtube (in 8 parts) following an English boy for a year at The Bolshoi and Ilya Kuznetsov is his teacher. It was so interesting to also have some of the focus on Kuznetsov. Here is an interview with Kuznetsov which touches on his belief in the importance of communicating the dramatic side of a role. Edited by innopac Please see this post for correction.

I haven't listened to this podcast but it sounds interesting and has a couple of examples of 19-Tone-Equal-Temperament music: The Juggler by Aaron Krister Johnson. "The Juggler nicely represents the main strands of my compositional personality at once: The predilection for neo-Bachian counterpoint, but with a modern twist, using asymmetrical time signatures and changing meters, and of course, a fascination for non-12 per octave tunings. The tuning here is 19-Tone-Equal-Temperament also known as 19 Equal Divisions of the Octave. This intonation has rich harmonic resources, and a wonderfully vibrant and insistent energy. The title was arrived at after the composing. The music conveys what I feel when I watch a skilled juggler at work on his/her "aerial counterpoint"!" Prelude #2 by Jeff Harrinton. "The final piece is by Jeff Harrington for 19 tone piano, called Prelude #2. It is part of a series of four preludes Jeff wrote to be played together. I've played all four previously on a podcast. Today I'm just going to play the second one, since it has a lot in common with the other pieces I played today."

Have a look in wikipedia under Microtonal music and !9 equal temperament. Does that help?

Here is a thread from Ballet Talk for Dancers with a link to the article below which highlights some of the tensions in universities today for performance based areas of studies. This is especially pertinent now when universities are ranked by indicators biased towards research and papers. How do you deal with art teachers who do not have higher degrees teaching art at a tertiary institution. How do you assess a music or dance teacher's "output" for the year if they don't write papers? And then there is also the cost of education to the university. Perhaps this is more crucial with music than with dance but I was once told that it costs 15 times more to give an education to a musician than a scientist at a university because of the amount of one on one teaching required for music students. “There is a real tension between dance — at even a department like mine, which is very well established — and an academic context,” said Lynn Garafola, a dance scholar who is a professor in Barnard College’s dance department. “Most of the people teaching technique classes have been longtime professionals. They’ve never been to a liberal arts college. There really is a deep anti-intellectualism, but in some ways it’s almost a naïve anti-intellectualism. It’s just not a part of their world.” From Mind and Body at Yale by Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times, September 23, 2007

There is a very comprehensive review on Amazon UK by Richard Bowden "The Film Flaneur" and if you search yutube with the term Cheryomushki it looks like the whole film is there but I haven't had time to watch it yet.

I just noticed on Amazon this DVD of Shostakovich's Cheryomushki (Cherry Town) (1963). Am posting this in case anyone else is also interested.

Has anyone used this database? I have heard it is very expensive for libraries to acquire. "With Dance in Video, Alexander Street Press captures dance performances from the stage and brings them directly to your computer screen through online streaming video—including 250 dance productions and documentaries by the most influential performers and companies of the twentieth century."

"... Clement Crisp recalled the "words of the Russian ballerina Tamara Karsavina, who described dancers as 'butterflies of a brief summer'." from "Turning Point" by Valerie Lawson in the Good Weekend. The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 September 2008, page 21.

Quotes from the cover article, "Turning Point" by Valerie Lawson in the Good Weekend magazine of The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 September 2008, Cover photo and pages 18-22. In July, Bussell, with her husband, became a shareholder in a newly registered company, Daltina. That seems to signal a new business venture, perhaps involving their plan to market a number of BBC-TV films of her performances at the Royal Opera House. * * * She is also planning to update her autobiography published a decade ago, and next month HarperCollins will publish six of a planned 12 books for girls under eight, in which the heroine, a little dancer called Delphie, joins a curious old ballet school run by Madam Zarakova and enters a magical world called Enchantia. HarperCollins in London came up with the concept, asked Bussell to lend her name as author, and enlisted an English ghost writer. Bussell gave advice on the ballet steps described in the books and checked the illustrations, objecting to the original depiction of Madam Zarakova "as skinny, tall, dressed all in grey with her hair straight back in a terrible bun. I said, 'I'm really sorry but I don't remember any of my teachers like that', so I described how I wanted her to be."

I have read elsewhere comments that the degradation of women is one of the confronting aspects of MacMillan's work. But it seems to me that he is true to the subjects that he chooses. If Manon, Mayerling or Judas Tree were plays or novels wouldn't the same threads of sexual desire and subjugation run through them if they were to be historically and psychologically real? Is part of the issue here that MacMillan chose subjects that people feel are not appropriate to ballet?

Wetherwax, are you are able to watch NTSC, non region 4 dvds? My suggestion is to look on youtube at the two versions available on dvd before you buy: Massenet - Manon / Penney, Dowell, Wall, Royal Ballet, Covent Garden Massenet - Manon / Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Australian Ballet, Justine Summers My favorite is the Penney and Dowell version. There is a clip on youtube that is "Part 7". I am sure that is not Dowell and Penney. But there are at least two other clips if you search Penney Dowell Manon.

New York Times article: "Concerns Beyond Just Where the Wild Things Are", by Patricia Cohen, September 9, 2008.

Oh, I thought "marking" was when the dancer used his/her hands as a reminder of the steps. Thanks, Hans.

Could someone please elaborate on what "marking" is? I have seen videos of dancers marking during rehearsals and have wondered if it is codified in any way and how dancers use it.

"Freedom means to help each other.... to help the human race." Alberto Alonso From a news clip uploaded to youtube -- "90 Year Old Ballet Dancer - Alberto Alonso".

You might find these links about Murphy's Nutcracker and Swan Lake interesting - lots of different opinions! Graeme Murphy, Grrr Graeme Murphy's Swan Lake Nutcracker: The Story of Clara