Pas de Quatre

[ToThePointe]

Andros on Ballet, Fanny Cerritto

Does any one know if the picture at this link is of the pose at the end on the first group dance part two (before the first solo)?

In the video I have (Nina Ananiashvili and International Stars, Vol. 3) the pose given is slightly different.

I would like to teach it to my students as true to the original as possible.

Edited March 28, 2004 by ToThePointe

[rg]

here's what i trust to be a link to a look at the famous chalon litho of a PAS DE QUATRE grouping.

i have no clear answer myself to your question regarding the one on andros's site. my guess is that a good deal of poetic license might have applied to all these prints. (the one w/ andros is likely one from a broadside publication and might have been produced in something of a hurry. the chalon might have been prepared w/ more time and care, so it could be marketed, etc.)

in anycase it would seem that dolin's version of the dance - the only one more or less around in the 20th century - used the chalon linked here.

don't know if this is helpful or only more confusing.

http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materi.../Prints/128.jpg

[Mel Johnson]

I believe that the one on Andros' site is a relief cut from the Illustrated London Daily News a couple of issues after the fact. It was probably made on the scene as a sketch by "our special artist", finished at the office, then cut into a block of hardwood (usually box) by a newspaper engraver. The block was then used for the newspaper and following its service there, could be rented or sold to another printer for re-use.

The Chalon lithograph is a far different process. A drawing is made onto a block of lithographer's stone (limestone) with an oily crayon called a lithographer's pencil. The block is then inked, scraped clean, and the ink is retained by the areas covered by the pencil marks. Then the work is printed. Afterward, it can be enhanced with colors, shading and/or highlights. Because the materials used in the two media are so different in hardness, the image's sharpness loses much less definition on re-use.

Lithographer's stones older than "Pas de Quatre" can still be found with their original drawings intact, and new lithographs can still be struck from some of them!

The Dolin/Lester staging of the work used both groupings, the woodcut version at the end of the first allegro, before the first (Grahn) variation. Nobody knows what the original actually looked like in any detail. The last person to know for sure died in 1909.

[Mel Johnson]

An update, a good friend sent me the ILDN cut, and it's different from the Andros version, and is a good example of a line printing process called stereotypy used in 19th century newspapers. I have a feeling that the one used on his page is a "second-generation" relief cut made from perhaps the London paper but by a cutter who had not even been there!

[ToThePointe]

Thank you both for your replies. I love the lithograph of the opening pose.

I am a stickler for details and want to be as close as possible with the chorography.