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do wilis have wings?


citrus

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all bets are off!!!

i've utterly misrepresented money and the captioning of the anna pavlova & nikolai legat photo. it's not in money. i must have hallucinated that. as to where i MIGHT have seen a suggestion of its being from GISELLE, i can now not imagine.

i think RSE is most likely correct w/ suggesting a photo-session pose in whatever costumes came along w/ the dancers in question. pavlova's would SEEM to be the chopiniana tutu tho' i don't see a clear indicationof the garlanded flowers that distinguish the bakst confection.

re: legat, no, this is not the same tunic worn by andreanov in what i take to be the maharaja from 'talisman.' andreanov's tunic is longer, has a side-purse/pocket and a distinct star-like badge on the left breast - the talisman of the title, i presume - the indications of fur on legat's tunic make me suspect that it was perhaps a tunic for jean de brienne from the grand pas of 'raymonda,' but that's only a guess.

IF i ever unearth the 'location' of this photo as being from GISELLE i won't believe it but i will be able to hang the 'odd' caption on the real author and not on keith money, who is innocent here. it's not in smakov either, unless i missed it.

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whereabouts determined if not mystery soloved:

the photo shown in 'era of russian ballet' w/ anna pavlova & nikolai legat is also in john and roberta lazzarini's 'pavlova' p. 97, where it says what i thought i'd remembered: 'as giselle, in act 2, w/ legat as albrecht.'

i'm not saying this is correct just that it's stated so here.

the photo is identified as 1909, berlin. where it appears pavlova danced 'giselle' w/ legat.

my new hunch is that he's holding her by the wings perhaps to help her steady her balance for the film frame time necessary to 'take' the picture.

the caption discusses this bakst costume's similarity to the one bakst also designed for 'chopiniana.'

i've never known a russian albrecht to wear such a tunic as legat's but who knows what might been done on tour. etc.

the lazzarinis tended to have sound if not impeccable research. they preceded money w/ his research so he had the benefit of theirs to start from and in some case to amend, adjust, correct. i'm prepared to accept the book's ident. of the date and place: berlin, '09, if not the ballet's title.

still i'm happy to note that i didn't hallucinate the whole thing from start to finish.

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Not to worry, RG, I have been having such moments with increasing frequency ever since I turned 50 last year. Heather sweet-naturedly calls them my "senior moments"--as when I recently told Mel that I thought ailuros was the Greek word for mongoose, and found out today that the OED cheerfully glosses ailuros as cat. Though it must be Hellenistic Gk, because I can't find an entry for ailuros in my (abbreviated) Liddell and Scott, which was co-authored by Alice in Wonderland's papa (I think--another senior moment threatens!). Thanks for disconnecting the tunic from The Talisman. I looked at Nijinsky's Talisman costume as well, and it's nothing like. I'm not sure I would go with Jean de Brienne, though, because of the wig. It's closer to (but still not wholly congruent with) the Russian idea of Renaissance hair (ie Siegfried or Albrecht), whereas my photo of Fokine as J de B shows him in a "page-boy" of 1460ish vintage. I also think the tunic is a tad too ornate for a medieval setting. The name of those appendages has been eluding me all day--I want to call them tassets, but that's a kind of plate armour skirt (the original of the tonnelet?)--and seem to belong to a later era. I haven't any idea which, though--which is why I wanted to go the Indian subcontinent.

I had never paid attention to Roslavleva's nearby photo of Clustine's Stars before, but, thanks to your Anton Simon info, I studied it with great interest for the first time--very appropriately, because it's a picture of Mars and his satellites, and today is being (jocularly) celebrated as Mars Day in SA. I haven't seen the planet yet because of all the cloud, but my mom caught up with it yesterday in the predawn sky over PE, as globular and pickable as a Seville orange!

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This will be a totally useless post -- but I did want to thank citrus for finding this thread and raising it to the top again by asking that question, and to Mel, RSE and rg for all your digging and prodding -- this has been so much fun to read, and it's a great addition for the Archives. Thank you all!!!

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re: talisman iconography - nijinsky danced the role of 'vayou, god of the wind' (or in legat's version: hurricane) and his satin-draped and pearl-decorated costume, much to fokine's chagrin, was quite close to the benois design he wore as the favorite slave in 'pavillon d'armide.' samuil andreanov danced a different role, that of noureddin, maharajah of lahore (i have no idea at the moment if legat renamed this leading male character), and which i BELIEVE is shown in the postcard i have of him - even tho' this same photograph is identified in some texts as showing andreanov as siegfried in 'swanlake,' which i don't buy.

your observations, RSE, about the hair styling is a good one, and to be sure the hair style sported by legat in this pavlova pic is v. close to that he wears in pictures from the same year as siegfried. still i don't see anywhere in legat's catalogue of roles any ref. to the marahajah of lahore. in fact legat restaged 'talisman' in the period when he was acting as imperial ballet balletmaster, but i don't see that he danced in it. so i think we can rule out the tunic's being from 'talisman.'

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I think Giselle and all the Wilis SHOULD have wings for the sole reason that the traditional ballet blanc tutu designed by... uh.... that guy.... had wings. It clearly states everywhere that they are the same design and I believe in the original productions, the wilis had wings.

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