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Carla Fracci


silvy

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Wonder what Carla Fracci is doing nowadays? The last I knew was that she was at the ballet of the Opera di Roma, but somehow I have lost track of her.

I never saw her live, but I admired her greatly from the tapes I have seen of her.

silvy

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I only saw Fracci dance once: GISELLE with Nureyev and the Scala Ballet at the Met...what year? Early 80s maybe. I had heard all these stories about how she was the ONLY Giselle, and the reincarnation of Taglioni, and the embodiment of Romantic Ballet etc etc etc and I was thinking, "Yeah, sure..." Well, everything I had heard was true. In fact, such high-flying praise was short of the mark. It was simply and literally breath-taking. She moved me to the depths of my soul. And, along with Rudi, she garnered the biggest & longest ballet ovation I have ever experienced. People were in a state of dementia; I and several others nearby screamed ourselves hoarse. But it all seemed an inadequate tribute to a magnificent dancer.

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I loved Fracci's Giselle. She lost out to Makarova in the Star Wars of 1970s New York, and it's a shame, because she represented a different line and it was lovely to have both of them. Like Fonteyn, she had been coached by Volkova (when Volkova was in Milan briefly, around 1950).

The last thing I saw her do was, of all things, Lizzie Borden in "Fall River Legend." It was the most Italian thing I'd ever seen her do -- as though she were a fooster child, totally out of place in that cold New England village. The great scene was when she went out to chop wood and realized the potential of the axe. "She tooka my mother's chair," you could hear her think. "She tooka my mother's shawl. She tooka my father's heart. SHE'S NOT A-GONNA TAKA MY MAN!" And then she walked back into the house, demure, in a troubled way, as would any Romantic ballerina who found herself marooned on a foreign shore.

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For those of us who never had the pleasure of seeing her, the big budget film of Giselle (with the extraordinary Erik Bruhn and Bruce Marks as Hilarion) is a real treat. Though it's often far too manic with cinemagraphic tricks, many of these shots work, lending the film a true sense of "living dead" horror not usually felt on stage. Video-wise I would rank her Giselle third behind Makarova and Ferri.

Oberon: though I'm 3/4 Irish, your post has made me 100% "green"!

Alexandra: Didn't Nora Kaye's ethnicity supposedly gave her Lizzie Borden the same passion? I think Alonso danced this role , too. Just thinking: when the lid blows off the New England Yankee repression, it's good to have some fiery blood boiling over.

Watermill

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I saw her in Giselle when I was quite young and only remember the impression the performance made on me, and not really the performance. But I did see her dance an excerpt from Act II with Nureyev at a gala some years later, and in those few minutes she was the most eerily ghostly--most arisen-from-the-grave--Giselle I have ever seen.

I was also enchanted by her Sylph, which I saw several times. Alexandra has written about Fracci not being an effective Bournonville Sylph (and the Bournonville version is the one she danced), and I believe it, but I was enchanted nonetheless and if I saw the performance tomorrow I probably still would be; she really seemed to channel, not Taglioni exactly, but a ballet fan's fantasy of Taglioni as she appears in nineteenth-century lithographs.

Less predictably perhaps, I also enjoyed Fracci's Swanilda and remember her Act II as possibly the best I have ever seen at shifting "character" styles between the Spanish and Scottish dances Swanilda-as-Coppelia performs...

Croce wrote a pretty devastating article about her saying that she had no ballet technique and at least implying that without any technique it was pointless to talk about her artistry--she wasn't dancing the ballets. (Of course I'm summarizing from memory, but it was very harsh.) I think that as I (and Fracci) got older I did start to see some of what Croce was describing--steps that weren't really filled out etc. but I never found her performances less than gripping--genuinely artistically gripping, not diva turns. And, indeed, I found her expressiveness to derive from her dancing--it was not just a dramatic ability on top of sketchy ballet steps. She had an ability to shape and shade movements and...anyway...my memories are dim, but I loved her dancing.

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I'd also love to know what Fracci is doing now. I never saw her live - in fact, I saw only film exerpts of her Giselle with Erik Bruhn. Short as those exerpts were, I fell permanently in love with her and, as far as I can judge from that film, I would place her second (as Giselle) behind Galina Ulanova (whose Giselle I also saw on film).

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I loved Fracci's Giselle.  She lost out to Makarova in the Star Wars of 1970s New York, and it's a shame,  because she represented a different line and it was lovely to have both of them.

Me too Alexandra! Fracci and Makarova's Giselles were equally great but very different. Makarova was a defector, (we all remember the media circus that used to generate), so she had the PR edge at that time. IMO I think Fracci trumped Makarova in the Mad Scene and Act II. In Act II, for me, Carla's entrechats were lightning fast, and her reading of the Act - just awesome and unforgettable.

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I quote Drew:

Croce wrote a pretty devastating article about her saying that she had no ballet technique and at least implying that without any technique it was pointless to talk about her artistry--she wasn't dancing the ballets.

I am very much suprised about this statement - I wonder to what points in technique was Croce referring... or maybe she was comparing with someone else, or with people dancing other styles (like Balanchine style).

This leads me to think about one conversation I had recently - what is technique? Is is about doing difficult, pyrotechnical things, or doing everything absolutely correct, and being in command of the HOWs to do things?

I just thought this could be interesting.

Silvy

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I remember a Fracci Giselle with Ivan Nagy, it must have been in the 70's. I don't think I have an eye for technique as such - as I'm reminded, watching videos with a young dancer - but I respond to technique's effects - or the lack of effects of its absence, as my sharp-eyed friend points out. Anyway, Fracci's effects were pretty special - amazing! - "lighter than air", and all that.

As to the Croce remark, it needs to be located and accurately quoted, I think, to get the most out of it.

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I agree that to try to analyze what Croce had in mind one would need the whole text in front of one--but I would underline that I was not referring to a remark but an entire essay or a very large portion of one, and unless my memory has betrayed me completely, she did not put forward some minor scruples about Fracci as a dancer but gave an extended and, at times, harsh critique. (NB I do not view Croce as the final word--on Fracci or anything else--though, of course, she is a very interesting and influential dance critic.)

The question of what counts as ballet technique does seem to allow of a surprising latitude of interpretation given that a dancer's technique seems as if it ought to be one of the more "objective" characteristics one can assess. To give an example: for me, the precision of Fracci's imagery was an accomplishment that required what I would consider technical strengths and specifically balletic ones (how she shaped and held her poses etc.)...though I could hardly parcel that imagery out from qualities I would be willing to concede were more dramatic and mimetic.

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Oberon: I think your question would take us way off topic. (How many major dance critics were ever professional dancers or studied ballet or any other kind of dance to any great extent?) However, I don't think that too many people would question whether Croce was knowledgeable about ballet...that's different from agreeing with all of her judgments.

Since I don't have the text available--my Croce books are in boxes and I don't know if this particular New Yorker piece was included in them in any case--I only brought it up, because I occasionally saw what she might have been talking about, was nonetheless very surprised by her tone, and was curious if someone else would either remember the piece or have a similar perspective.

My love for Fracci as I remember her is very strong. She was one of the first major ballerinas I saw who had an impact on me...

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Drew, I remember the Croce comments as well -- they were very harsh, and surprised me when I read them. (Along the lines of "some consider her a dancer...") The implication was that she was all skirt fluffing and smiles, without any underpinning of technique (and thanks for bringing us back on topic).

I'd echo your remembrances of Fracci; I think we saw the same performances! (I loved her Sylph when I saw it on stage. It's very Taglioni -- which isn't Bournonville, but it was still lovely. Many dancers want to do their Taglioni impressions, down to the flower crown and the little braclet, in this ballet.)

As for her technique, I saw her do Aurora in New York at a gala night. She was supposed to dance "La Sylphide" with Nureyev, but he was injured and decided he wasn't up to James, but could do 3rd act of Sleeping Beauty. Having read Croce and Croce-esque comments about Fracci's lack of technique, I was surprised at how well Fracci danced. I think, especially in the age of stars, people expected dancers to dance everything the same way. If you had a brilliant technique, you had to show it, even in La Sylphide or Giselle. Steps are us, 24/7, as they'd say today. But she wasn't that type of ballerina.

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The article must be in "Going to the Dance," because it isn't in the other two initial collections. Jack, Croce writes in 1971 (in "Out of the Storeroom" reprinted in"Afterimages") that "Ivan Nagy understood his part less well than Carla Fracci, who could become a great Juliet."

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I would have wagered on Ballet Review, too, Dale; thank you for that. It was more the kind of free-flowing, almost angry piece that Croce wrote in those pages (and knowingly for a small audience of devoted balletomanes with a certain slant on things) rather than for the larger readership in the New Yorker.

On the other side of the aisle, the late William Como (long-time publisher of Dance Magazine) adored Fracci and either wrote, or commissioned, several features on her.

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