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Chopiniana and/or Les Sylphides


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Today in the Links forum an article by Leonard Eureka in the "Fort Worth Weekly" discusses Ballet Arlington and Les Sylphides In it Mr. Eureka writes:

...The original concept in 1907 had a piano on stage with a costumed pianist portraying Chopin in the last throes of the tuberculosis that eventually killed him, hallucinating about spooks and spirits dancing around him as he played. The ballet was actually called Chopiniana, but, by 1909, Chopin and his piano had disappeared, the choreography had been expanded, and the ballet had emerged as Les Sylphides we know today...  

Is it true that Chopiniana is no longer performed?:confused: It doesn't seem possible since we have that wonderful photo by Marc Haegeman of The Kirov Ballet in Chopiniana gracing Ballet Alert!'s main web page.

Thanks in advance for the clarification on this one! :)

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I'm not sure whether it was Diaghilev or Fokine himself, but the suite "Chopiniana" as selected and arranged for orchestra by Glazunov was already a hot seller in piano sheet music, and it contains things not in "Les Sylphides". The "Military Polonaise" is just one of them, but there was the Tarantella, set in Naples, with Vesuvius brooding over everything, and about the only things that were the same as in the modern production were the Prelude and the Valse pas de deux. Did you ever notice how many "listening" gestures are in these two pieces?

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"O listen! for the vale profound

Is overflowing with the sound"

is from Wordswroth;

'the horns of elfland gently calling" is Keats, I think --

That hand-to-ear gesture is almost as important to Romantic port de bras as the arabesque a deux bras..... Balanchine

uses it at the high point of Scotch Symphony: or rather, he has the Sylph whisper something in the ear of young 'James,' but she puts HER hand next to his ear as she does so.... (Isn't that right -- I havent seen it for a decade, it was Kyra Nichols and Lindsay Fisher, though, and I feel like I can still see it, it was a moment "out of time")

the idea of a voice (or call) from another world was very important to the Romantics-- Beethoven's Fidelio has an electrifying off-stage bugle-call, that comes in hte dungeon-scene and basically means the cavalry is on hte way, and hte reign of terror is over..... it's a very faint sound, but itcompletely interrupts the scene (where the evil military governor is planning to kill our here our hero, and is threatening him, when the hero's wife (who's gotten a job in hte prison, disguised as a man) pulls a gun on hte villain, and just at that moment the bugle call comes....

ANd in James Joyce's great story "The Dead," at the end of hte party Gabriel, holding his wife's coat, looks back up hte staircase and sees his wife Greta at the top, listening to the tenor singing "the lass of Augrim" in the drawing room, and he feels an intense pain of jealousy -- she looks like a painting, which he would call "Distant Music" It's SO poignant.....

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The hand-to-ear gesture also occurs in some versions of the Rose Adagio, the ones with the lute girls. Most companies unfortunately now use the Royal Ballet version done for Fonteyn, to show off her unsupported balances. And a "whispering" moment is also, delicately, present between Nikiya and Solor in the Shades scene in Bayadere.

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