EAW

Oh wow, you're right! I did a Google search and in The Ballerina Gallery's picture of Alexandrova by Angela Taylor, she really does have a strong resemblence to actress Sandra Bullock. Speaking of The Ballerina Gallery, based on pictures there I'd say Angelina Jolie ought to be first choice to star in the A. Volochkova Story.

I would like to understand - seriously - what value the labeling of Balanchine's work as neoclassical, modernist or constructivist adds to our experience of his art. Can someone please explain that? I can see the interesting point of placing some of the ballets within a larger cultural context of their time, but how does that help when one is in the theater? About being "American:" I think it's more the frankness and lack of affectation of Balanchine's ballets - and his dancers - rather than their subject matter that matters. I remember something Marcia Haydee once said that has stuck with me - a disdainful comment she made trying to shrug off U.S. criticism of some awful thing (by John Neumeier, maybe?) in which she had performed to acclaim in Europe. I don't have the exact words, but it was something like "This is a kind of theater and ballet culture that Americans do not know how to begin to understand." Maybe it's this proud lack of understanding, of intellectual trappings, that's intrinsically American - our ballet is about powerfully expressive dancing, not ideas about dancing.

If you ditch the "Flower Festival" costumes and restore Donizetti Variations' original tutus, I think the Bournonville connection weakens considerably. There's a lot more bold bravura than bouncy charm to the choreography when you can see more of it.

About Farrell not performing Odile in Canada -- didn't she hurt her knee dancing the Black Swan pas de deux?

Many thanks -- I had forgotten this passage in the book. I'd still love to see what the Swan Lake actually looked like.....and the Bayadere, too. I imagine experiencing Farrell dancing these performances of "the classics" would do a lot to shatter the false distinctions between "classical" and "neoclassical" one often hears and reads about.

It was the National Ballet of Canada. Thanks, dirac. I'm still curious about Farrell on this...specially her Odile...(that's why i was wondering if someone had seen it). I'll dig a bit online about it...for some review or something... I am also fascinated by what this performance may have been like - I brought it up on another thread, too. About dancers responding to the wishes of ballet masters as a reason for altering their high extensions: I've often wished I could travel back in time to see the performances Farrell gave with National Ballet of Canada after she left NYCB. What could that Swan Lake, for example, have looked like? All those careful, rigid, polite Canadian dancers surrounding this voluptuous creature with incredible freedom and reach.....Did she try and hold herself back, or did she just let go and show herself, as Balanchine once said, like a "whale in her own ocean?' I wish there was a tape somewhere.....

Talk about vitriolic .....What evidence do you have that there is "no doubt" Macaulay wants to drive audiences to or away from anything...he's writing about what he sees. And I must have read a different Anna Kisselgoff from the one you did...the one I read was constantly putting Balanchine and his dancers in a little "neoclassical" cubbyhole...and boy, was she not having Suzanne Farrell in anything but the rolse Balanchine made just for her. But why does it make you so angry for someone to call Etudes a lousy ballet?

It sounds as if some members of this board would prefer a critic who, to paraphrase Arlene Croce, hands out artificial flowers all around to someone who's not afraid to express bold and sometimes challenging views. For me, bland and timid reporting is not worth reading - I want writing that aims to evoke the vivid sensations and passions of the theater.

>>Doesn't most of this come down to liking critics who say nice things about dancers, >>ballets and companies we like, and trashing those who ignore or write mean things >>about the dancers, ballets and companies dear to us? I don't mean to be arrogant by quoting my own earlier post, but I think it's still valid - especially after this last trashing of A. Macaulay. I disqualify myself from defending him personally, since I've known him for close to 30 years. I never would have guessed, though, that anyone could hold Etudes in such tender regard and so fiercely attack someone for slighting it.

[ m sure any dancer knows who Dulcinea is and where La Mancha is if they are in the lead roles. What this was about was 'What does reading have to do with dancing?' which was quoted as if it meant something because someone who is authoritative elsewhere--as a dancer, as a Dulcinea, as a number of things--is also authoritative about reading. The statement is frankly without any meaning at all outside the immediate context, because in most cases, the more knowledge relating to any subject, the better. But in Farrell's case, where the directive, 'just dance, don't think' may have been more easily followed than by other people, it is all right, because she was fine with that way of working with Balanchine in the purest sense. The statement refers mostly to her. It is like saying that you cannot understand nor appreciate, nay, even sing 'The Marriage of Figaro' better if you know about Mozart's life and Ponte's life and something of Austrian history and/or musical history. What has reading history or biography got to do with singing? You may remember something I wrote, Cristian, about this kind of statement that is made meaningful because the one saying it is acclaimed for some unrelated domain. This is where fame can make statements that are meaningful and meaningless alike take on a lustre that is based purely on fandom. It's quite possible that she didn't read the book because Balanchine told her it was not necessary, and it may not have been. If he had told her to read it, she would have. It is not that she should have necessarily read the book, since the results were what Balanchine wanted and have become legendary, it is that usually 'the more knowledge the better'. But it's probably that there just wasn't time to read it, and I'm sure Balanchine and Petipa had either read the book or large swathes of it themselves. They knew that whatever they did with it, that this was not one of their pieces that they came up with on their own, and that however little it may resemble the novel, it came from that novel, in precisely the same way that Midsummer Night's Dream came from Shakespeare. But there are all sorts of sophistries of this sort, and they can be played ad infinitum. [/i] I think Farrell was being a bit tongue-in-cheek with this remark, and I think you may be making too much of it. The reason I brought it up was to suggest that one might not look to her book for some profound explanation or enhancement of her dancing, because that's not a connection she might make herself. Yes, in a way the more "knowledge" a dancer has the more she might bring to a role, but Farrell's point, in this comment and in other remarks in her book and elsewhere, is that this sort of "extra-curricular" work wasn't needed with Balanchine. She trusted him to convey all the meaning necessary through his choreography, and he trusted her to make that meaning blazingly clear and beautiful through her dancing. There are different approaches, of course - think of Gelsey Kirkland struggling desperately to find some dramatic, literary or emotional "motivation" for Raymonda's variation with her gauzy scarf, as described in Dancing on My Grave.

I agreed with some of the criticism of ABT set forth in the NY Times article. However, some of it was unnecessarily harsh. In fairness to ABT, not every performance over an 8 week season will be a particularly memorable or great one. No company in the world could accomplish that. Every Beethoven symphony is not considered great (some are merely good); every Picasso is not considered a masterpiece. Similarly, it is unrealistic and unfair to expect every ABT performance to be a brilliant masterpiece for the ages. As a basis for comparison, I attend many performances at the Met Opera each year. Not every night is an "A" night of operatic superstars. In fact, there are lots of "B" nights, but I frequently go to those "B" nights because the quality is very good, if not spectacular. Sure, I would love to be able to see world class dancers like Cojocaru, Lopatkina, Sarafanov, ..... during the MET's ABT season. Even if ABT can't or doesn not wish to hire them, I'm still happy for the opportunity to see the great dancers they do have- Corella, Vishneva, Herman Cornejo, Nina..... As a member of the audience (a "spectator," as Suzanne Farrell once put it), don't you go to the theater expecting or at least hoping each performance you're about to see will be great? Why go otherwise? The job of the critic is to call it as he or she sees it - not to make excuses (unless they serve a larger purpose) and not, on the other hand, simply to be witty at others' expense. The broader the critic's experience and understanding, the more we can learn from reading why a performance or a season was unsatisfactory.

I think anyone who opens Holding on to the Air expecting an exciting read, something on the order of Farrell's performing, is bound to be disappointed. As Farrell herself once said when asked whether she delved into Cervantes while preparing her role(s) in Balanchine's Don Quixote, "What does reading have to do with dancing?" The book is a modest, matter-of-fact story of her career. It probably won't end up on anyone's short list of great autobiographies, but it's interesting enough to those of us interested in her.

Doesn't most of this come down to liking critics who say nice things about dancers, ballets and companies we like, and trashing those who ignore or write mean things about the dancers, ballets and companies dear to us? The fact that Macaulay didn't go see some performances by Part means nothing -- that's why the Times has more than one critic. He can base his view of her "posiness" on the performance he did see, plus the many others he saw her give at other times. Trying to "prove" his worth, or lack of it, as a critic instead of admitting that this is almost purely an emotional response to his writing doesn't seem worth the time.

Remember that Donizetti Variations was originally a tutu ballet, also. When SAB performed it that way instead of in the current peasanty costumes a la Bournonville, it was possible to see - literally - more of the scintillating, witty legwork.

This sounds a bit like some right-wing "America, love it or leave it" argument. It is possible to love ballet enough to want to see even unsuccessful productions or second-rate performances, because the potential for being moved by the art is always there. Expressing ones view, including disappointment, is no reason not to go. Besides, the New York Times is paying Alastair Macaulay to express his views. If his opinions upset you so much, don't read them.

I think Susan Jaffe grew as an interpretive artist because she improved as a dancer. Before working with Irina Kolpakova, her dancing and her performances were glib, one-dimensional and kind of hard. It was fascinating to watch her soften and deepen her technique and the dance characters she created in the later part of her career.

I couldn't disagree more. Since Balanchine so seldom gave us "characters and a plot," as you say, when he did he had powerful reasons for doing so. I've also seen the Ashton only on video, but for me it was rather too delicate and refined --not much sense of danger or desperation at all. Balanchine's brilliant use of the Valses Nobles et Sentimentales as a prelude to the actual La Valse creates a whole world of decadent, heartless flirtation out of which the ballet's sinister happenings naturally follow. I wouldn't call La Valse one of Balanchine's greatest works, but it perfectly draws out and dramatizes the woozy, dangerous eroticism in Ravel's music.

I want to second the take on Saturday afternoon's program. The one dud was Mozartiana - not, in my opinion, because of the conductor but because of underperformed leading roles. Wendy Whelan is not convincing or beautiful in the huge ballerina part, and Daniel Ulbricht is sketchy at best in the marvelous Gigue. Tombeau was danced with great care, did sparkle, and grows more and more touching over time. Baiser, too, was moving, and I think this is the best thing Megan Fairchild has ever done. I agree that Yvonne Borree was unobjectionable as the Sleepwalker, and the ballet as a whole made its proper impact. This was not one of those programs that made me leave the theater with little more than sad wishes for the "good old days."

It has pretty much vanished. Last year the Bolshoi had to call upon the services of Carlos Acosta to fill the role of Spartacus as there were so few company members with suitable technique and panache around - unthinkable just a few years ago. For me Vladimirov, along with Mukhamedov, typified what I would describe as 'Soviet navvy style'. too crass at times to be called heroic. "Crass" is the key word here, and applies also to his spouse and frequent onstage partner Nina Sorokina. Thinking of Vladimirov barrelling through some "bravura" passage or other reminds me of a great comment by Edward Gorey: "What that boy does is absolutely amazing; I wish he'd stop."

"Line" and "Yuri Vladimirov" are antithetical. He had elevation and a certain crazy drive, but was not credible as a classical dancer.

You can find the Danse Russe in Dover's single-volume compilation of Tchaikovsky piano music, called "The Seasons and Other Works for Solo Piano" (including more bits from Swan Lake, such as "L'espiegle" - the variation added for Odile in the Black Swan Pas de Deux). The music isn't exactly for beginners, but it's not impossible, and you'll have a lot of fun working on it (as I have), especially as you're able to pick up more and more speed in the second section.

I think that the entrance a la Shades scene occurs in the second, adagio movement.

Skeaping's ABT production, first seen in New York in the summer of 1976, was choreographically modest almost to the point of threadbare. It didn't help that most of the dancers look scared or clueless, whether in mime, solo variations, group dances or just holding the stage with conviction. Positive points of the production included Martine van Hamel's wonderful Aurora (she looked almost beamed in from another planet at times) and, if I remember correctly, a fuller set of court dances in the Hunt Scene than we usually get. I hold the clear minority view that the more of that scene we get the better; the music is great (Tchaikovsky loved inventing those mock-historical dances) and this is our only picture of the rather decadent, empty world inhabited by the Prince before his quest for Aurora.

Her dancing was beautiful and projected a rare and powerful integrity....this is very sad.

Catherine, I did not call you a narrow-minded dance critic. As far as I know, you did not invent the term "neoclassical" as it has come to be used to describe ballet. I am objecting to lazy categories that do not help us better understand and enjoy our experience of ballet. To say that Kirov & Bolshoi equals classical and Balanchine equals neoclassical tells us....what? In the rest of your post you went into more descriptive detail that is, I think, far more interesting and important than these labels. I'm curious -- would you consider Balanchine's Raymonda Variations any less classical than the Kirov's Paquita divertissement? I also think it's no wonder that today's Maryinsky teachers and balletmasters think of themselves as the true classicists; the leading ballet companies of most countries (Royal Ballet, POB, for example) tend to chauvinism, especially concerning the purity of their lineage. I am truly sorry if you were offended by my words.