garybruce

California writes:

I'm looking at some of the entries at the nypl.org on-line catalog. It does appear some things which includes LeClercq are available for public viewing at the library.

Symphony in C: http://nypl.biblioco...2_symphony_in_c

Serenade: http://nypl.biblioco...136052_serenade

Thanks for that research effort, California.I'ts wonderful seeing that at least two major ballets with her are viewable at the library - all that's necessary is a trip to NYC from Florida :-) BTW, the problem with the Balanchine DVD - which I've seen and own - is that it only offers tiny flashes of her dancing.

Of course, Le Clercq herself never saw fit to produce a DVD of her dancing while she was alive, when the Trust would have been hard put to deny her request. I suspect the public may never see more than what's out there now. It took more than 50 years for the two clips to surface, so I guess we will have to be satisfied with what we've got in our lifetime.

It's terribly sad to see all this battling over a literary investigation into LeClercq's life when the reason for her greatness is almost entirely inivisible - two video clips totaling less than 10 minutes are accessible publicly. One 8-minute clip of her dancing with Jacques D'Amboise in Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun and another 1:22 minute clip of her dancing La Valse with Nicholas Magallanes. Whatever viideo clips exist in the NYC Library at Lincoln Center continue to be denied public viewing, and my question is why? Doesn't NYC Ballet, which clearly owns copyright, wish to promote their great ballerina and enhance their prestige? It's more than frustrating to see this lack of initiative - the one thing people want to experience is ballet in the only medium that resonates. Yet ballet organizations continue to act in their worst self-interest by denying the public access to this visual record.

bart, you're spot on: she is quite amazing as an "actor" of dancing - she inhabits the character of the piece she's performing through the steps, the gestures and the overall spirit of the choreography. The only dance videos we seem to have of her are these two yet they demonstrate the extent to which she was an artist. I hear there are others in the NYC public library at Lincoln Center. Has no one thought of assembling them into a DVD?

I posted this separately but now that I've found this thread, I think others would like to know that Jacob's Pillow has a 1:22 minute video of Tanaquil dancing La Valse in August 1951 with Nicholas Magalianis. It's on the Jacob's Pillow website.

http://danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org/dance/tanaquil-leclercq-nicholas-magallanes

Christian,

You are a scholar and a gentleman and a first rate balletomane.

Gary

The Giselle danced by Baryshnikov and Makarova back in 1977 for ABT in Lincoln Center has been on video for quite some time, but I still haven't located it on DVD. Does anyone have any info as to whether it will be transferred to DVD format in the near future? It's one of the few great ballets in the recent past that has yet to be digitized. Crossing fingers for a positive response.

Dale, I'm not clear on what Farrell agreed with. That television is a great marketing tool, or that she would love it if MCB went on television?

(Personally, I'd love to see either or both their companies on TV, if it were done well, of course.)

I'm sorry I wasn't clear. Farrell thought TV, specifically the idea of having the company one is AD of on TV, was a great marketing tool. Although, she had complimentary things to say about MCB as well.

I just found Villella in Nutcracker from 1965 in a DVD, on Amazon.com. It says the release date was 2008.

You Tube also has a three minute clip of her dancing the dying swan--and it looks like it comes from La Mort du Cygne because her technique is very good and her bow at the end replicates the photo of her that appeared in Life magazine from 1937. That would make her 20 at the time.

As for her style, I haven't seen enough of her to make a statement of any kind.

In my never ending search for Giselle material, I came across this clip of the great Mme. Chauvire dancing her farewell performance, which I think is priceless given the scarce material of her available on video. I'm sure you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQFujJbuppY

Can you point me toward any other video of her dancing not contained in the DVD Yvette Chauvire: France's Prima Ballerina Assoluta? It's amazing to me that given her career the French never thought of filming her--even for instructional purposes. And despite the fact that the 1937 La Mort du Cygne print is extant--it was shown several years ago at a film festival in California--they haven't come out with it on DVD.

I searched through Ballet Talk for insight into Yvette Chauvire's dancing career given its length. I wasn't able to find much, so I wondered if anyone can recommend any studies or books about her that might give one some perspective on how she danced, her major roles, etc. I purchased the one DVD for sale on Amazon that shows clips of her dancing but mostly teaching. However, it appears there is nothing else out there that shows her in her prime. Even the 1937 La Mort du Cygne in which she starred is not available on DVD, unless I'm mistaken (hopefully).

I happened upon entirely new clips of Pavlova and Spessitzeva dancing, the latter from the 1932 Giselle production in London with Anton Dolin (not the rehearsal but the real thing), while there are clips from Fairy Doll and two other ballets with Pavlova. All seem to have been put up in the past three months. Simply type in their names in the search field.

My copy just arrived 30 minutes ago from Amazon. 1330 pages! Feels like it weights 5 pounds. Definitely not something to slip into your pocket before heading out the door for an afternoon in the park.

A quick glance reveals amazing stuff -- real surprises -- a labor of love which could not be done on this level without someone with Gottlieb's vast literary and dance experience.

...

Great stuff. Has anyone else received their copy and perhaps gotten further into it than I have?

I received my copy weeks ago and also find it a treasure trove of ballet writing, almost entirely from English and American writers. But I'm starting to find some oddities, like seeing only two reviews by Arlene Croce on Balanchine, both on relatively minor ballets (Mozartiana and Who Cares). Equally surprising were finding just ten pages on Nureyev and twenty pages on Fonteyn. But overall, this is a spectacular compendium of writing on ballet choreographers and their ballets, as well as ballet dancers over the past 100 years.

Has anyone on BT seen the new DVD?

I must be inhabiting another universe, because I found the RB's Sleeping Beauty to be second rate. The choreography was danced by the entire company so poorly, so lackadaiscally (other than Carabousse) as to make it look like another ballet when compared with the productions of the Paris Opera Ballet (2006 DVD) or the Kirov Ballet (2001 DVD), which I consider the top versions currently available. Some of the soloists in this Royal Ballet's Sleeping Beauty were downright embarrassing (eg, the Bluebird duet).

I just found this wonderful clips of AP, which maybe you guys knew about already, but which were totally unknown to me. Before I had only seen the Dying Swan one, but this ones are form the interview of Makarova to S F. Ashton, in which they discuss Pavlova. The Fairy Doll (?) fragments are beautiful, and I can't help but being amazed at her perfect footwork and liquid bourrees...

Here they are...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nIoixCVy3k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcZzarh8ve0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frzfws7DTEU...feature=related

Many thanks for these. I've never seen these before, but I remember someone on BT saying The Fairy Doll sequence was included in Margot Fonteyn's dance documentaries, made after she retired from the stage, and never released commercially after their initial telecast. Unlike her famous Dying Swan, these clips truly show what her style was like.

I just watched two duets lasting 10 minutes on You Tube from the Royal Balet's production of Eugene Onegin with Cojacaru and her Danish consort. Is that from a British telecast or is it already out in the UK as a DVD? I'm especially interested because Onegin does not appear to be commercially available on DVD anywhere. Finally, has anyone seen Onegin performed? I wonder whether it's as effective as the opera, which was just released on DVD with a stellar cast.

Re: Faux Pas' question:

"Do we really want to wait for Bolshoi or Kirov tours to see La Bayadere or Sleeping Beauty?"

A resounding YES from me; along with POB and Royal Ballet they do it a lot better than we do. McKenzie may be a 'really great guy' but lacks imagination in his week (weak??) long programming of the classics. ABT lost their uniqueness when they took the Russian route. I know what has been lost. My early ballet-going was nurtured with the 'triple bill'---ABT, Ballet Russe and NYCB all had 'triple bills'. When the Ballet Russe put on their shoe-string production of Raymonda; it was looked upon as a joke. I am an optimist and I believe there is a lot of choreographic talent out there that begs to be developed, but ABT's priorities are elswehere---another production of Corsaire or Don Q? Fortunately, Tudor, deMille and Robbins worked in a different time--by today's standards they wouldn't have a chance.

ABT went corporate after Baryshnikov left in 1990--during his ten-year tenure he had aggressively introduced new choreographers into the repertory and promoted American dancers to solo and principal positions. After his departure, the ABT Board embarked on a strategy that protected their downside financially. Unless they think their foreign headliner + Russian strategy is a failure, they will continue on the same path. However, given the recent success of their fund raising efforts, that doesn't appear to be in the cards. Perhaps several more "guest artist" debacles like this year's Diana Vishneva (who apparently canceled every appearance) and thinking will change.

I've only seen ABT twice in the past 10 years, but my experience of Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty was not overwhelming.

I'm not talking about the excellent, if not always well cast, leads. I'm talking about the combination of all dance elements in the production. (I assume this is is one of the things that garybruce meant when he used the term "art direction" at the beginning of this thread.)

The Sleeping Beauty, for example, was wonderfully danced by just about everyone on stage. But it was not danced in a a stylistically unified or consistent manner. Nor was it danced in a way that suggested either the the royal setting, the presence of powerful spirits, or the grandeur of the themes. As a package, it looked "nice." It was danced with great technical skill if not with all that much sense of time and place. It was bright. It was snappy. It was youthful. It was, even with extensive editing, rather faithful to the broad outlines of story and music.

Perhaps, on second thought, that IS what "American" style means to most people. For something like SL or SB, I prefer the aesthetic unity still visible in companies operating from and within a sense of "ecole."

Yes, that is what I was referring to--the ways in which the various dance elements cohere in a single overall vision of ballet. And perhaps the American contribution to ballet may just be our athletic approach to everything--presented with pace and energy but not much sense of tradition or even story context. Given the various schools of thought, any AD should select which would take precedence over the other styles in terms of his company's repertory, instruction and production values. But Kevin McKenzie has been AD of ABT for 18 years, which means the ABT Board of Trustees want this directionless direction or he would be history.

What about Baryshnikov, Makarova, Julio Bocca, Alessandra Ferri, Nina Ananiashvili, Malakhov, Carreno, Corella, Gomez and so many others - who spent their entire ballet career on the American soil? I think this view should be very discouraging for them all. How sad. All these dancers spoke of their love of ABT and American Audiences.

To develop ballet in America at a minimum means that America's national ballet company should have a majority of its principals and soloists Americans. ABT's foreign hiring policy has communicated to American dancers one thing: they aren't good enough for national recognition, which has done more to impede ballet's attraction to young Americans than anything else.

I'm not sure what you mean by "doesn't pretend to be a dance company," but I think ABT has always considered itself a ballet company. It has also promoted American stars at different periods -- when there are American dancers who measure up to international standard (snowballs down, please )

I think it was Arlene Croce who described ABT as a dance entertainment company, by which she probably meant that commercial interests took precedent over artistic concerns--hence, the reliance on paying top dollar for headliners and letting all else take a back seat. It was what Baryshnikov was referring to when he said that NYC Ballet was the most ethical company he had been with.

ABT does dance classical ballet, but have never settled on a house style of instruction or repertoire. And their productions vary in quality significantly as a result. Too many people aiming at different targets.

As for American versus international ballet stars--I agree that not enough Americans choose to study ballet for cultural reasons but also financial reasons: careers are short and poorly paid compared to athletic and other entertainment professions.

1-Wasn't NYCB originally created to counteract all of the above...?

and if so...

2-Did they succeed...?

1 - Yes

2 - Yes, IMHO

Balanchine provided some two dozen masterpieces (and 400 other ballets) to his company on which to base both repertory and style, whereas ABT decided to stick with classical, for which hardly anyone has been choreographing more ballets except the English (Ashton, Macmillan, etc.)

ABT could never find a great choreographer on which to build a house style, I guess, and so they embraced the past. I don't know of any American choreographers who work in the classical style; they've chosen modern or neoclassical.

I know it's a long standing issue that ABT has a problem with artistic direction if only because dancers and critics keep harping on it over the decades. From Gelsey Kirkland's memoir twenty two years ago to Alistair Macauley's seasonal review last month in the NY Times, ABT's lack of artistic vision keeps coming up. I don't know why anyone complains about a situation that has never been an issue, for ABT doesn't pretend to be a dance company; therefore, it doesn't need artistic vision or direction.

ABT has always marketed itself on the star system, not the company system, offering great international--not American--dancers to headline tonight's ballet. The ballet choreography and overall company quality both become irrelevant, probably because management thinks it too difficult to achieve financially and artistically. They must fill 4,000 seats for ten weeks every year with a limited repetory, and great international stars attract balletomanes on a long-term basis more effectively than anything else. What's key about the star system is that people will pay to see stars in anything regardless of performance quality. You can bank on it.

So we get Erik Bruhn and Carla Fracci, Mikail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova, ad infinitum. Indeed, I believe two-thids of ABT's current lineup of soloists and principal dancers are foreigners, and the company even lists their legal firm specializing in immigration issues on their website! Talk about outreach. In Russia and France, their companies are bastions of national dance culture, and they each have distinctive styles that arise out of that culture. ABT management must have realized that there isn't enough interest at home to develop enough first rate ballet dancers, so they, like the Metropolitan Opera, resort to being a "headliner" venue instead. And they get to stop worrying about artistic vision. "Variety" is the marketing term.

I was just telling a friend that in the 100 year history of movies, there are only two movies about ballet--The Red Shoes in 1948 and The Turning Point in 1977. I don't classify White Nights as a ballet film and eliminate documentary and live performance efforts from consideration. Both chose melodrama to tell their tales; both focused on women as the central figures.

The former was more powerful in its impact, as it compelled hordes of American girls to enroll in ballet schools. It also managed to combine glamor with the intricacies of a company's daily operations, not to mention perpetuating the myth that ballet is an all-consuming profession. Its use of color cinematography - those blues and reds! - trumped Turning Point's drab color palette; its use of a short ballet in its entirety to illustrate the movie's larger story also trumped the bits of classical ballet thrown at us in Turning Point, used entirely as window dressing.

Certainly the world of ballet deserves another movie. You would think Balanchine and Nureyev would each rank one movie.

hello garybruce: I purchased my copy at amazon.fr and when I received it, the back of the cover says "This is a region free NTSC DVD, designed for playback on all NTSC and modern PAL compatible system worldwide." I hope this helps to clarify.

Thanks Katalina and Cubanmiamiboy--I went ahead and purchased a copy on amazon.fr. If it won't play on my DVD player, it'll do so on my PC. I'm looking forward to it after having caught glimpses on You Tube of the matadors!

I got my copy last weekend and have watched it twice, so far.

Peggy, are you in the US?

I ask because I noticed both French websites classify the DVD as Region 2, which means it's formatted for DVD players sold in Europe. Or do you have an All-Region DVD player?

I'd like to buy the DVD but wonder how Americans can watch Region 2 on their DVD players... unless they're All-Region.