EAW

Speaking not as a participant in the discussion, but as one of the administrators of the board, a reminder that one of the stated purposes of Ballet Talk is for the discussion of these distinctions. Kindly don't inhibit or belittle that here. So are you saying that these distinctions are to be accepted as fact and not questioned?

A very good point. Let me further refine my growing theory then :-). NYCB is a neoclassical company, and they excel at Balanchine, they are *his* company. Royal Danish is Bournonville's company, which i consider to be a branch of the classical repertoire, kind of a subset. It's not Petipa...but it's also not Balanchine. I think any company with its own tradition (ie Kirov/Petipa/Ivanov; NYCB/Balanchine; RDB/Danish choreographers) should and usually as a rule is the best executor of their "own" repertoire..__ At the risk of repeating my earlier post, I'll say it again - there is no such thing as "neoclassical" dancing. What is the point of putting the experience of ballet into various sealed little compartments? As Arlene Croce once wittily and succinctly asked, "Is this a neoclassical dagger that I see before me?" Of course, companies that have been molded by individual choreographers and balletmasters will be closer "inside" the works of that artist but can we please abandon these artificial and unhelpful categories?

But my point was that in the art of classical ballet, the classical repertoire is the foundation of classical ballet companies. If a company cannot dance the basics (ie the classics), doesn't that say something about their quality overall? (to me it does). Whether a given classical company can branch into neoclassical or even modern dance successfully is another question in my opinion -- ie it doesn't work going in both directions "Neoclassical" is a meaningless term coined by narrow-minded dance critics. Ballet Imperial is a classical ballet. The way a company performs this ballet gives a clear picture of their standard of classical dancing. Classical technique is the foundation of classical ballet companies - not the half-remembered, tradition-bound and often untheatrical works we've come to call "the classics" - as enjoyable as they might be sometimes.

All in all, it was a magnificent season for the Kirov. As a side note, I saw Anna Kisselgoff in the ladies' room after the second intermission on Sunday afternoon. I told her I really missed her reviews in the New York Times, and that everyone I knew missed them as well. She said "Thank you". I really had to restrain myself from saying "Please!!! Go back to the New York Times as the Chief Dance Critic and send Alistair MacAuley back to the UK. Of course I didn't say this. I wondered how she would have responded if I had. Sorry, but not everyone misses Ms. Kisselgoff. I wish her well, and I know this belongs on a different thread, but Alastair Macaulay has a keener eye, ear and pen than she did. Ballet Imperial was not choreograped for ABT (which first danced the work in 1988) but for American Ballet Caravan in 1941.

And in Diamonds she will not have to do any!!!!!! Suzanne Farrell had awful beats too.... Life goes on. But that's what I meant by "a bit messy." Awful beats? I can't let that go unchallenged. I'll single out just three roles - Chaconne, Mozartiana and Walpurgisnacht Ballet (think of those cabrioles battus!) in which Farrell's beats were strong, clear and beautiful - oh, yes, and Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, also. At the end of the first movement, which can be beat heaven or hell (depending on the ballerina), Farrell dropped to one knee in a pose of deserved triumph. I do enjoy Lopatkina, but at that same moment in Ballet Imperial she had to muster a convincing look of triumph to cover up the struggling, unsuccessful beats that preceded it.

But yes, Hans, I really do enjoy opera's ability to juxtapose modern sensibility and rigorous, traditional/authentic practice. Often the results are quite poignant, as in the recent Met production of Peter Sellar's Lohengrin. I believe the Met's Lohengrin is the work of Robert Wilson, not Peter Sellars.

I consider it my duty to counter the previous post. Sure, the Kirov production is pretty dowdy and Kolpakova's hat in the last act is funny (so is some of Olga Iskanderova's overexcited dancing), but......the tone of the ballet is mostly enthralling and matches Glazunov's score wonderfully. In Act One, the sequence of the "Romanesca" pas de quatre for Raymonda's friends in heeled shoes followed by her dreamy solo with the scarf....fantastic. And Kolpakova? What I see in her performance is the epitome of Petipa classicism -- she never hurries, tenses or worries, just serenely and beautifully offers the choreography with supreme confidence and clarity. I haven't seen much dancing that surpasses her "Vision Scene" adagio for floating ease and grandeur. And to think she was 47 at the time....amazing. She doesn't try to be mysterious and Hungarian in that last variation; she doesn't have to. She's the same beacon of beauty she has been all along. I urge anyone interested in the Maryinsky, in Raymonda and in classical dancing to see this DVD.

I just got mine and will watch it, I hope, tonight. If I'm remembering correctly from the VHS tape I saw a long time ago, one of the "friends" is Olga Iskanderova - I'll let you know what I think/see later.

Who: Natalia Makarova What: Swan Lake When: 1971 Falling in love again: Who: Suzanne Farrell What: Concerto Barocco When: 1975

I saw one of Scheller's Sugar Plums earlier. Agreed - there is a lot to admire and enjoy. However, I wish she did NOT do all her unsupported pirouettes with arms en couronne, impressive as they are. By doing that, she spoils the surprise and power of the moment when she raises her arms in the supported pirouettes that end in big backbends, as the music soars and crashes. Yeah, we've seen her do that already, what's the big deal? I doubt Balanchine would have let a dancer choose to undercut the effectiveness of his choregraphy in this way.

Excellent points, Mel. The structure and order of certain scores are "sacrosanct," but Balanchine has proven that "Nutcracker" isn't one of them. His insertion of the violin Entr'acte from "Sleeping Beauty" and rearrangement of the grand pas de deux are neither musically nor dramatically jarring - just the opposite. And forgive me if somebody already said this in an earlier post (I haven't read them all) but Arlene Croce once put it best - "The Nutcracker is a child's Christmas or it is nothing." Those who wish it were something else or want to make it something else should pick another score to exercise their imaginations.

With all due respect to Mel, Balanchine doesn't follow his suggestion but follows Tchaikovsky. The reason Drosselmeyer doesn't return after Act One in the NYCB Nutcracker is that there is no musical (and hence, no dramatic) reason for him. He is only as quirky/sinister/amusing/important as he needs to be. One can invent and stage all sorts of variations on this character, but most of them don't have much to do with Nutcracker's true intentions.

I've seen dozens of Giselles and many wonderful ballerinas during the past 35 years or so. I can and do distinguish between a role or ballet and its performance. I also have nothing at all against extended mime - just the other day I saw the young Nephew/Prince in Balanchine's "Nutcracker" perform his long mime "story" at the beginning of Act Two with wonderful conviction and amazing musical awareness. I maintain that even the best Giselles, while they can hold us in thrall with their individual charm and abilities, are not believable as bashful peasant girls who die (from what?) after losing their marbles. Those of you who are moved by the ballet, please continue to enjoy it -- I'm just saying that as drama (as opposed to some nice, familiar dance passages) "Giselle" went dead for me some time ago.

While there may still be the potential for genuine emotional expression and impact in Giselle, in performance the ballet is most often a rigid ritual. As Edwin Denby memorably wrote (I'll paraphrase somewhat): when dancers have to pretend to be something they're not, a ballet inevitably degenerates into a charade. In the second act, at least the dancers can, if they are great, move us through their dancing. Am I alone in finding Giselle's coy miming, for example, and that never-convincing mad scene in Act One things to be endured rather than enjoyed?

Here's another vote for Baiser, with that beautiful score I'd also love to see the nightmarish Opus 34 and experience what the fuss was all about.

Yes, it was Bruhn. Arlene Croce also wrote about that moment, explaining why Balanchine subsequently made the choreography tamer and safer.

I"ve just stumbled into this thread and haven't followed it from the beginning. Before I do that, I wanted to bring up one "strapping" dancer I remember fondly from his guest appearances at ABT a bit later than the early 70's, but not much later - Peter Breuer. He mostly partnered Martine van Hamel, and what a charming "lug" he was - not much in the way of precision and refinement, but lots of power, brio and a winning "regular-guy" appeal. I haven't thought of him in ages......thanks for reminding me!

Leigh, I still don't think we're talking about the same thing. Of course people today won't dance - or speak, or write - as they did generations ago. But it's unfortunately possible - and evident - that things can not only change, due to all the cultural forces you mention, but worsen. I bring up "Raymonda Variations" because this ballet is nothing but classical dancing, as exposed and, in a sense, as timeless as can be. Recent casts haven't just performed it "differently," because they grew up listening to different music and eating different foods; they execute the steps more weakly and coarsely and with less assurance than previous dancers did. Balanchine famously said that "art is technique" - a remark that has often been misinterpreted and used against him. But when technique deteriorates in front of our eyes, it's painfully clear that no amount of extra-theatrical anything can truly compensate.

Leigh, that is a really fascinating post. However, isn't it possible that you're making things more complicated than they need to be? Anyone clearly and objectively watching NYCB over the past few decades has seen a general decline in technique and musicality, which are impossible to seperate. Balanchine himself said many times in different ways that unless he remained "on top of" the dancers, standards and execution would slacken. The fine-grained musical flow and bold, varied attack that one sees in 1965 were still pretty much intact during the final run of Don Quixote in 1978. Marnee Morris was a wonderfully idiosyncratic dancer, whose gifts and individuality Balanchine integrated into his choreography for her; when Kyra Nichols performed her role, some of the oddball charm was gone, but Nichols still made a powerfully expressive impact, just as she did in the Rigaudon Flamenco, made for a very different dancer. Similarly, the strong, confident and knowing dancing of Nichol Hlinka in the Pas de Deux Mauresque, I think, brought out even more of the duet's latent "S & M" eroticism than did Suki Schorer, the role's creator. It was during the next decade and beyond that things began to slip faster and deeper. I don't want to get into a whole Martins-bashing thing here. My point is that I doubt that what happened to NYCB's dancing duirng that time had much to do with outside cultural influences. Take, for example, a ballet such as "Raymonda Variations." Watching that used to be like walking through some fantastic garden - each of those beautiful, brilliant solos a different flower given full color and perfume by casts that seemed to understand as well as dance the choreography. Lately, except for one or two exceptions, most of the dancers can barely get through the steps, and when they do, the execution rarely rises above adequacy into illumination. Is this because of anything happening outside the theater?

Not to discount the greatness and wonder of Farrell's speedy and off-balance dancing in the Act 3 solo, but what about that adagio? For me, even having watched her dance this live, it was thrilling to experience the "birth" of this magnificent performance - that same daring abandon one sees in the solo, but poured into long, slow, luscious phrases. I think the moment when she first comes bourree-ing out must be one of the most celestial visions ever in a theater.

Perhaps the main reason (besides Balanchine's various tinkerings) why even those of us who saw the ballet can't recall or place the Act I diverts more clearly is that they're pretty much irrelevant. Those dances, entertaining as they could be, didn't do much for "Don Quixote." The Act II dances in the duke's court, on the other hand, brilliantly dramatize Balanchine's view of a cruel, heartless world - from the sinister Sarabande to the narcissistic Ritournel.

I take back those words about Nadia Potts - you're right, she did have a lovely, lyrical quality that was different from many of her ironing-board colleagues. I know that Farrell was injured during Swan Lake, but I didn't think that was her only performance. And I'm quite sure this happened after she left NYCB, when few companies would take her in and risk angering Balanchine.

It is so interesting that you brought up Susan Jaffe, because I was also thinking about her in this context. I believe that when she first came "on the scene" as a supposed young prodigy at ABT, her dancing was nearly as facile and mechanical as Guillem's. She was also praised by many for her extensions and long "line," but to me there was no line at all, simply long limbs stuck into space. Line is hard to define - I think there are other threads about this - but a dancer either has it or she doesn't, and a viewers (or spectators, as Farrell calls them - I love that term) either see and feel it or they don't. The amazing and wonderful thing about Jaffe was that, through working with the incomparable Irina Kolpakova, she was able to change, soften and improve her dancing. In the later stage of her career, she actually did develop line and an ability to dance rather than cruise glibly through her roles. I haven't seen that change in Guillem. 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.....

A photograph is one thing; as Farrell once said, "You have to watch the way I move." I see unbroken, centered, harmonious line in Zakharova's movement - not so in Guillem's. Things would be boring if we all experienced dancers the same way. Guillem seems to me like someone who wandered in from another planet suddenly able to perform ballet steps; there is a superficial, flashy sort of accomplishment, but something absolutely vital at the core is missing.

Well, as I wrote earlier, our eyes and tastes differ...greatly. I don't dislike Guillem because of her high extensions, but because (to me, though obviously not to Agnes Letestu and others) those extensions are neither beautiful in themselves nor do they relate harmoniously to the rest of her movement. She remains, for me, a gymnast - no line and no music in her dancing. It's all physical. But she has given much pleasure to a lot of people, so those who enjoy her, please continue to do so.