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...That's why I--I know I'm really in the minority on this--find it so hard to watch the Paris Opera Ballet Jewels; it's nuanced out with coy looks and extra gestures and extra elasticity (with the exception of the great solos in Emeralds). Much thanks, Quiggin! I do find it hard to write about this sort of thing without sinking into babbling obscurity! As for the POB Jewels, dearly as I love the company I have to agree with you that it's not their happiest hour. Or maybe that's the trouble with it - far too light, bright and sparkling, with very little of the necessary weight or drama. And for Hans - I'm sorry to say that the current NYCB seems to have traveled light years away from the company as it was under Balanchine's direction. In too many ways, they're no better at dancing Balanchine than the Mariinsky, RB, POB, Bolshoi, etc. - indeed, I think they're worse because they should know better.

It is Theme and Variations that was choreographed for ABT. Ballet Imperial was created in 1941 for a great American virtuoso named Marie-Jeanne (who died recently). Many people who saw her dance the part say that she was never equaled either technically or dramatically.

This is a hard one to put into words without sinking into great clouds of obscurantism, not to say pretension. Oh, well - here goes, anyway. I'll skip Lopatkina, whom I quite like (though Quiggin has already mention the fudging of the dramatic foot movements), and get right on to the big stuff. As compared to what? I would call it the Balanchine base-line - the concepts resulting from his years of creating dancers to dance his ballets, from the founding of the NYCB till his death. You saw the company in those years, and you note so accurately how dramatically they danced. But it came, I think, out of different principles, leading to different results, than the Mariinsky's. It is not that everyone must copy the old NYCB now and forever - that would be a disaster, not to mention impossible. All those companies never taught by Mr. B have to learn his language in their own way and with their own creative insight. Still, it is a language and you can only mess with the grammar, syntax and vocabulary so far before you are speaking, at best, a dialect, and at worst, gibberish. (Well, I told you this would get cloudy.) To me, it comes down to a few principles I think mattered to Balanchine: emptiness, gesture as poetry, non-explanation. As we all know, Balanchine was a profoundly religious man, and I think there is little doubt that he applied the religious notion of emptying oneself as basic to dancing his work. The Mariinsky, and other companies, tend to look at a role as either becoming someone else or imposing your own personality, putting on all the role-defining feathers, dressing up, conquering the part. Balanchine, on the contrary, wanted his dancers to avoid all those things, to become clear, empty, naked, direct conduits to the music/steps. It is the mystic's notion that the less you have the more you are - that the inwardness you spoke of happens only when the dancer gets out of his/her own way - and out of the choreography's way. He knew that it freed a dancer's true individuality and so did his dancers, who have commented on the phenomenon in books and interviews (please don't make me go look them all up). If dancers give themselves over to the choreography as the music reveals it, become naked to it, they will reveal the role and the work with a fullness that cannot happen when the dancer's ego is trying to manipulate the part. And they will reveal themselves - was there ever a greater collection of individuals than the NYCB's dancers in the 50s, 60s and 70s? No two ever danced the same role the same way. Balanchine spoke of dancers as "poets of gesture" - as artists who could feel the weight, emphasis, and drama of each moment, each movement. Watch the Mariinsky La Valse to see dancers acting strenuously rather than feeling how to dance the choreography. Pavlenko makes faces, adds pauses, strikes poses and largely fails to capture the role - and remember Pat McBride, whose gesture sprang unadorned from the choreographic texture, from the rhythm and musical color, and suggested innocence with a propulsive undercurrent of corruption that was overwhelming. The Mariinsky dancer doing the death figure behaves (and looks) like Dracula, which is unconvincing and ruins the effect - but remember Francisco Moncion, whose restrained use of gesture and rhythmic tension made him the embodiment of the lure of self-destruction. The Mariinsky over-acts. Balanchine taught his people to be, and to unfurl their dancing from the immediacy of their own presences fusing with the music and the steps. It is a hard lesson to learn, especially in a period that so values sheer acrobatic technical accomplishment, as if it were the same thing as great dancing. What the Mariinsky, and many other companies, do is explain the role, comment upon it, use pauses, tossed heads, catches of breath, swooning arms and backs, and a whole repertory of tricks to convey - apart from the choreography - what the choreography is supposed to be doing, but the audience is too naive to get without signs, pointers and blackboards, and the choreography, it is understood, could never convey if one just danced it. It comes from insecurity, I suppose, and lack of trust in the work or themselves. It is over-acting, and it is profoundly un-Balanchinian. Wrong tempos are part of this as well - Serenade or the second movement of SiC do not become more profound the more slowly you drag out the music. The dragged-out tempi just become more unneccesary 'explanation', missing the constant ebb and flow of Serenade, and the "moon going across the sky" vision of the Bizet. The Mariinsky do many wonderful things with Balanchine, but they are in the infancy stage with him - they will get there I hope, but not just yet.

Won't this also be Manuel Legris' final season with the POB? I understand that he will be retiring after the La Dame aux Camelias performances this summer.

I am sorry about posting a link without discussion - I was just distracted and in a hurry. Thanks for the responses, and I'll be more careful in the future! Yes, it's a nice performance of SiC, though with some of the usual disconnects Macaulay noted today in his review of the Mariinsky's Balanchine program at City Center. There are all those little moments when the music gets away and the dancers scramble to catch up, with resulting hiccups in the phrasing, all the slightly too long preparations and the failure to grasp that Balanchine's connections are essential tissue, not stuff to get past on the way to the big steps. And, as AM notes, too much acting, even here, especially in the second movement. Lopatkina is a wonderful, wonderful dancer but she's not Allegra Kent (well, who ever was) who let the choreography works its magic without all those peripheral notes and comments. When UL drops the 'acting' and finds her way into the choreography for its own sake, she will be one of the greatest exponents of this movement ever, but she's not quite there yet, I think. It reminds me of a comment - and my aging memory has lost the source completely - about Baryshnikov to the effect that he found that if he danced the way Balanchine wanted, he had to go against most of his own Kirov training, and ultimately, would have had to give up the technical grounds that enabled him to dance the Russian classics as he did. If anyone remembers and can identify this I would be grateful. There is much more Mariinsky Balanchine out there, but not necessarily on YouTube (the copyright watchers for Balanchine are very efficient). There was a complete Concerto Barocco on YouTube recently, but I don't know if it's still there. If you go to Yahoo's videos, however, you will find a complete Serenade as well as a complete Ballet Imperial (Tereshkina) and La Valse (Pavlenko). Each is in four segments, and the thought of trying to post twelve links makes me dizzy, but you can find them easily enough by searching. They were provided by the Mad about Mariinsky site, and have so far not excited the Balanchine Police squad - as far as I know all three ballets have been there since 2006, the year of the performances. The Serenade does not have a starry cast, but is a little less molasses in tempo than was apparently the case on stage here and I liked it a lot. La Valse is a case of serious culture clash, with everyone acting strenuously while the ballet's impact just drains away. Ballet Imperial if fine if also overacted, and full of the usual technical problems that attend that gut-buster of a ballet. For all of us who can't get to see the Mariinsky live, they are at least some indication of how the relationship with Mr. B is getting on.

Since no one else has reported this - there is now a four part, complete performance of Symphony in C by the Mariinsky on YouTube, with Vishneva, Lopatkina, Dumchenko and Noriadze. Or at least there is until the Balanchine police catch up with it,

Hmm. Since I'm not able to get to or sit in a theater anymore, I haven't seen the performances Macaulay is talking about, so I'm mute about that (By the way, hasn't the Kirov returned to its original name, or did the marketing people decide that a whole different name was too confusing for the American public?) But this great discussion does raise some important points about what a good critic does. I pretty much agree with those who feel it isn't the critic's business to affirm fan passions or support and respect major enterprises. My notion of a great critic is the person in the crowd who sometimes just has to say (or snarl) "the emperor is naked!" S/he's the sensibility that focuses without fear or favor and has no hesitation about major heresy. He's the G.B. Shaw who went way over the edge denouncing Shakespeare because he was right about the issues of theater his generation's Shakespearolotry raised. Most of us have a whole set of assumptions and preconceived notions that a good critic should challenge constantly. We need to keep re-thinking things, and freshening our eye and our responses. And frankly, most of the critics who can do this are themselves obsessed by a particular vision of the arts, usually represented by some creative figure - for Shaw it was Ibsen and Wagner. For Croce it was Balanchine. It gives them a weapon, so to speak, to deal with the mediocre and meretricious, the empty and cliche-ridden. Otherwise as audiences we get fat, lazy and self-satisfied. We can tend to wallow in unearned emotions, like soap-opera fans, which I'm guessing was part of Macaulay's dissatisfaction with the recent Kirov programs. But it seems to me Macaulay's criticism is in the right vein, and I hope he continues to roil the critical waters and keep us all exercised.

I just came across this fascinating discussion and thought I could add one small piece of information - Igor Youskevitch (since he was mentioned a few posts ago) discussed his interpetation of Albrecht at some length with Barbara Newman for his interview in her wonderful book of interviews Striking a Balance (Limelight 1992). He recalls learning the role from Serge Lifar, who (like Anton Dolin) showed Albrecht as in love with Giselle "and what happens is just an accident." Youskevitch said that after thinking about this: "I realized that of course it cannot be that way, because the action of the story indicates deceit of a certain kind. Obviously Albrecht came with a specific goal in mind. He was a nobleman, probably the landlord of everything around, and it's far-fetched that he had really honorable intentions. Eventually I settled on the idea that Albrecht was really a wolf. He fell in love with a little peasant girl, and he was just going about it as any red-blooded male would, without thinking too much of the consequences or about his fiancee. It was a kind of flirtation on the side, which in his mind would not affect his marriage in any way." He adds that when the court shows up "he's upset, he doesn't know what to do, and he just decides to tell some kind of a story and cover up, hoping Giselle will not react." Giselle's death causes an attack of "mild hysterics" and in Act II "his realization that he loved Giselle much more than he expected is supposed to come through more." He discusses many interesting details, such as having Albrecht watch Giselle's physique when she's plucking the flower because "it's not an innocent, idealistic love, but that he's really trying to make her." He also has a fascinating comment on Baryshnikov's dancing in Act II, which he felt was too contemporary and out of place, that it "leaves no room for emotional involvement. It's so technical that you cannot make it expressive." This book also includes an equally enlightening interview with Alicia Alonso on the ballet.

Yes. I bought it (I also have the Pacific Northwest production). All I can say is that I now use it as an object lesson in not quite getting Balanchine. "Clueless in the Woods" might be a better title. Bolle, among many others, fudges or ignores uncomfortable steps (like Oberon's kicks jumping backwards), Ferri keeps trying to Act, while the quartet of lovers seem to believe that acting and dancing are separate entities, and the couple in that glorious act two divertissement dance as if doing some standard showpiece, which misses the point completely; no one understands about the function of preparations and connecting steps in Balanchine, and the entire company, including the orchestra, seems hopelessly unable to build sequences to their natural dance and dramatic climaxes (which should be more or less the same thing). Russell's PN version is a good corrective, or, if you are in NYC and can convince the people at the Lincoln Center library that their Balanchine performance films are not classified and permanently secret, to remain unsullied by human eyes, either the 1967 (I think) film or one of the tapes of an actual NYCB performance. It is wonderful that Balanchine is now performed around the world, but how his ballets are danced is another, and often disturbing, question. La Scala's MND is a good example of how a ballet can get pulled all off kilter and flattened out of shape, like the painful performance of "The Man I Love" pas de deux from Who Cares that turns up on a Prague ballet gala DVD called Divine Dancers. In both cases, watching Balanchine done this way is like listening to Mozart or Tchaikovsky recordings played at the wrong speed. Or under water. It's just going to take time and experience and many watchful eyes.

Two of his movies which the obituary dd not mention, probably because they weren't considered creditable enough for such an artist, were Scorpio (which was truly bad) and The Train, a film I much admire. Both were with Burt Lancaster, an actor with whom Scofield worked very well. The tension between them in The Train gave the film much of its power, and their scenes together in Scorpio are the only reason to watch it. I saw Scofield on stage in both Man for All Seasons and King Lear, and he was an awesome presence and as great an actor as I have ever seen.

Sigh. Thanks for the information Naomi. The only stations here that regularly show dance programs are PBS channel 13 from New Jersey/New York (although 'regularly' is stretching it for ch. 13) and two very small cable stations - Ovation, and the CUNY TV station in New York (that's the City University of New York), which is probably not seen anywhere else in the country. The idea that any of them would show this series is beyond fantasy. I wish there were something we could do to convince NHK to release this on DVD. Until then, YouTube is all we have.

From December 2006 through March of 2007 Japanese TV ran a series called Super Ballet Lesson, with Manuel Legris coaching young dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet in various roles, which were then performed by older professionals. Unfortunately, the series hasn't been released on DVD, but bits and pieces of it have been showing up on YouTube, mostly the professional performances. Just recently however, someone has been posting the coaching sessions, which I found fascinating even without understanding much French (never mind the Japanese subtitles). In case any one else is as interested as I am in one of the truly great dancers sharing his experience with students, here are the links to what's there now. There may well be more to come. Bluebird solo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYqdxFQSnTQ - part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBBHXqLf7O8 - part 2 Sleeping Beauty pas de deux - male solo and coda: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSMYPuVKQ5U - part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo6f7A3rhDA - part 2 La Sylphide male solo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9gwsxMEjzU

I remember her first in the long beginning section of Figure in the Carpet, and she was then what she remained during her years with Balanchine - precise, musical, accurate, both lyrical and swift, with remarkable vitality and charm. At her best she was a joy, and the Emeralds dances express her qualities very exactly. Unfortunately she could also be fussy, exaggerated and irritatingly mannered. You never knew which Violette you were going to get. Sometimes it was absolute love and sometimes you wanted to shoot her, or at least feed her a tranquilizer. Every movement had to be mined, examined, buffed up and worked on; every movement had to have a story. She always stood out, for the best and worst reasons - I cannot imagine those years at NYCB without her.

Thanks Mel for the expressing the basic problem with such clarity. As for Mazo, I don't know the basis of his conclusion beyond the fact that he spent months backstage, front stage and off stage at NYCB, watching, and talking to, if his book is to be accepted, almost everyone, performers, teachers, musicians and administration, and possibly he just did a count based on those conversations and observations. He does seem to have immersed himself in the company (as he puts it, "In April of 1973 I went to live with the New York City Ballet.") and his portrait strikes me as both sympathetic and acute, as well as remarkably free of sentimentality or silly gossip. I did check the index to see if he mentions Christopher d'Amboise (who I believe joined the company in 1973, though I don't know which season) - he doesn't, though Chris's daddy is very much in evidence. I wish the book were still in print. I think it's still one of the best portraits of a ballet company at work that I have ever read.

Interesting - Joseph Mazo made exactly this point more than thirty years ago in Dance Is a Contact Sport, his fascinating 1974 book about the New York City Ballet's 1973 season. He also added that the majority of the men in the corps were gay.

I don't know how relevant this is, but possibly the predelictions of some ballet fans contribute to this perception about male dancers even within the dance world, never mind outside it. When you look at the pictures and discussions on more than a few fan sites (dance.net, the various skyrock and photobucket sites and the like), which are weighted so heavily to female dancers you can be forgiven for wondering if some of these fans see men at all (the ballerina, for one instance, is generally identified while her partner almost never is), and at the fact that there is a popular Ballerina Gallery site but no site of equal popularity, or maybe no site at all, celebrating male dancers, it's hard not to wonder if the prejudice does indeed exist among a major strand of ballet lovers as well. I remember some critic, whose name escapes me at the moment, remarking that as youngsters, she and her friends considered men completely dispensible and paid them no attention. Is there some psychological-social mechanism, in this country at any rate, which feminizes ballet for fans (especially young female fans) as much as for the society outside the dance world? How is it that in the theater, audiences love great male dancers and applaud them wildly, yet this fervor doesn't seem to translate itself into equality as dancers within the art or respect outside it? Have we had discussions on this amazingly thoughtful board on the origins and development of this female dominance, and the frequent semi-marginalizing of men, in ballet? I tried to start one on another thread, but it didn't catch anyone's interest. How did ballet lend itself to emphasizing what is actually a male-created female fantasy world, which is surely at least one of the reasons it is so hard for so many young men to choose to be ballet dancers without being scorned and harassed. Balanchine was clear (verbally at any rate) about his beliefs, and one could argue that for him being the controlling lord of a female realm molded to his ideals and fantasies required the surpression of strong men as rivals who could not be granted too much power. I think it is an immensely interesting, many-faceted question (or set of questions) which deserves more discussion than we have perhaps given it.

Just a few months ago, there was a thread called "Boys and Ballet, the Problem" in the Everthing Else Ballet section. It was very interesting and strongly echoed Little Tomato's observations. I might add for myself, as a ballet fan surrounded by non-ballet lovers, that I encounter this kind of bigotry as a matter of course almost, from men and women alike - the little expression of distaste followed by the kinds of comments LT gives. If the Newsweek piece helps cut into even some of that prejudice, the more power to it, however it appears to dance lovers who don't suffer from this fog of dislike.

Yes, he did that in 1977. Balanchine did a lot of tinkering in the 70s, some of it very weird (anyone remember Karen von Aroldingen's batty white-winged Firebird with that long train?). However, I have to admit the loose hair in the last movement of Serenade never bothered me, though it certainly is a contrivance to emphasize the final section's internal, somewhat symbolic quality. What his motives were besides restlessness and boredom with old productions I don't know. Maybe he just wanted everyone to look like Farrell with her lion's mane down. Whatever, I don't mind it and sometimes I even find the intimacy and vulnerability of it rather moving. Does anyone remember if there was any critical comment at the time - say, from Arlene Croce or her colleagues?

Fascinating. "Most people of my generation" ?? And this remarkable figure comes from where? Does it include only the UK, or all of Europe, or everyone everywhere? If it's true, one can only wonder at "positively loathing" this particular "business" in such exceptional numbers and for just one generation. Why exactly? Because it's messy? cliched? romantic? anti-feminist? indecorous? low-class? an insult to hair-dressers? what? Of the fast tempi, I'd suggest that too many companies slow them down for Balanchine ballets and possibly, seeing one danced at the speed Balanchine intended can be something of a shock.

I think it would be a gorgeous pas de deux anywhere, but you're right - it is intensified greatly by the context. Unlike Don Q or similar great duets, it's not a display piece in spite of the divertissement label; it's a carefully placed piece of drama, the climax of this portrait of the aspects of love, and I think its moving splendor of male-female union would be lessened without not only all that's gone before, but the quiet irony of the ballet's anticlimactic return to the primal woods and its male-female elements dispersing into separation.

No one has mentioned what I've always thought one of Balanchine's most sublime duets - from the Act 2 divertisement in Midsummer Night's Dream. The epitome of perfectly balanced, perfectly shared love and deeply felt passion, it presents the ideal of love to set against all the hopelessly imperfect loves of the other characters. He sets the primal, selfish world of the forest against the achievement of a civilized ideal, and (when well danced, which it isn't always!) one of the most powerful and moving moments in ballet.

A question I've rarely seen addressed - and I'm not sure this is the right place to pose it - concerns how technique, ballet company practice, and choreography were affected in the 19th century through the pre-WWI period by the sad fact that ballet companies, especially the large, central ones, were so often used by the well-to-do/aristocratic men of their audiences as brothels. How has the glorification of the ballerina and all the slanting of choreography towards female roles been influenced by art and aesthetics, and how much by the demand of powerful men for the display of beautiful women to be chosen as mistresses, courtesans and common prostitutes? It's not a pleasant question, but I think the basic situation of directors and choreographers having to, in some measure, play the pimp for powerful men on the make, must have influenced the development of the art itself. If dancers are better today, is it because the power this audience wielded has been largely dissipated (other, jazzier sex objects having long since replaced ballet dancers), and a Petipa replaced by a Balanchine? Yet ballet is rarely analyzed from this point of view. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

I've always thought Patricia McBride one of the most beautiful women ever to set foot on a ballet stage.

All of this is kind of fascinating since Christmas trees are about as pagan as you can get - Balanchine's 'angels' carry little fir trees, not little cribs or stars or baby Jesuses. One of the most salient features of Nutcracker in Balanchine's, and very likely the original Russian version he once danced in, is its absolute lack of Christian symbolism. Of course, you could call the trees a religious symbol, but they belong to another religion entirely, a pre-Christian one at that. I wonder if it doesn't take an atheist to mistake Nutcracker for something Christian rather than a tale the average evangelical would regard with about as much favor as the Harry Potter novels.

Odette wears a short tutu, so Grand Jete dancer was probably a Lead Swan. Was Wilde dancing that kind of role in early productions of the ballet? Even in a small company, I can't imagine Balanchine casting one of his ballerinas in a demi-solo role. Oh, but he did, whenever the spirit moved him. The jete is from a Swans' Pas de Trois in which he created a brilliant role for Wilde, one I saw her dance often. Carolyn George also danced it on occasion. I believe it was dropped, along with the third movement of Western Symphony, when Wilde retired. There was no other allegro virtuoso in the company at that time who quite matched her, not even Tallchief. As for Balanchine's Swan Lake, in the 50s and early 60s it still had a group of Swan variations which eventually disappeared.