"Belated Premiere" documentary

[Amy Reusch]

The Dance On Camera festival always has something interesting to see. Lately, getting there has been more difficult for me. I still made it down for one screening:

"Belated Premiere" by Victor Bocharov.

Here's the review by the NY Times' Anna Kisselgoff: Pioneering Russian Films Show Ballet Master's Wit

Here are some of my impressions.

Though perhaps not titallating to the average dance student; those fascinated by the dance of Imperial Russia would like to catch some of this.

I can't decide if Shirayev is an inspiration or an example of Obsessive Compulsive Dissorder.

With my vague memory, I can't recall whether it was in the film or in the commentary that it was pointed out that Petipa was a proponent of character dance.

Kisselgoff:

As Mr. Bocharov said in a telephone interview from St. Petersburg, Shiryaev's exceptional memory for retaining choreography made him useful in restaging and rehearsing ballets. Marius Petipa, the Maryinsky's celebrated choreographer, snapped him up as an assistant. Lev Ivanov, who choreographed "The Nutcracker," used his choreography. Although Ivanov was credited with the hoop dance in the original 1892 "Nutcracker," belatedly, Shiryaev has been acknowledged as its choreographer as well as its first performer.

Balanchine, who danced the solo later, inserted a version based on Shiryaev's choreography into his American "Nutcracker" in 1954.

Certainly, he had the outline of the original in mind. As Mr. Bocharov demonstrates in the documentary, the dance recorded by Shiryaev has the same twists of the legs in the jumps, the same legs extended forward in the air and the same jumps through a hoop as in the Balanchine version.

Alexander Shirayev (1867-1941)

Seeing this review before the screening, I was very eager to see this bit. The case wasn't made as clearly as I would have liked. Perhaps rg can explain. Was it these strips that were the basis for Shiryaev being credited as choreographer rather than Ivanov or other evidence? I guess I was looking for an exact quote in the Balanchine candy canes dance, to the extent of a sequence of steps rather than simply similar vocabulary. I wasn't as excited by the animation as I thought I would be.

Although I've worked in video, I didn't come to it via film school and almost no knowledge of film. It was my impression, though, that early film frame rates would preclude the recording of fast footwork of the sort so many current character dance companies seem to pride themselves on. I can't imagine early film being at all successful at catching flamenco, for instance. I thought perhaps Shirayev went into the incredibly laborious effort of the strips because of film's inability to capture all the footwork, but was informed by Bocharov's interpreter that animation long preceded actual film in history, and also in Shirayev's case.

Although he wanted to film the choreography at the Maryinski (and was denied), Shirayev filmed most of his live dance sequences on stages outdoors in natural light. The reason for this is, I would assume, because of the much higher quality image he would get in sunlight as opposed to the stage lighting of the time. (Were they even using electric stage lights yet?). The stages were also quite small, and almost always with objects defining the wings. As an archival videographer, I have a strong opinion of why... I don't think it was because the dances were by nature intended for caberet size stage space (like flamenco might be) but rather because bigger reads better, and a wider stage means smaller dancers. There were no pans... I don't remember when filmmakers started using these... but it was typical fo the time. The camera was set up, the objects in the wings defined the space for the dancers, the lighting came from the powerful sun, and there was no camera movement. There were, however, in some of Shirayev's films, lots of special effects. He enjoyed exploring these and several were quite clever. I can't imagine what results he might have gotten in the theater if he attempted to shoot an actual performance (dim, blurry, with small dancers?)

According to Bocharov, Shirayev was denied the right to film because the medium was considered too bohemian for the aristocratic confection that was ballet. I kind of wondered if this were the "official" reason given, but that there might have been other reasons as well. Apparently photography was not too bohemian. Was it about control of quality? It seems it must have been too early for the dancers to be afraid it? (Anyone want to explain again to me why there is almost no footage of Isadora Duncan?) Eventually, he was given the right to shoot, but unfortunately the World Wars interfered.

Shirayev made very intricate and beautiful stop-motion puppetry films. He really got the movement down to the point where several times I had to remind myself that I was watching puppets. I think his films would be of great interest to the puppetry world. I hope at some point a DVD is made available to BIMP (the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry).

Interestingly, he made his exquisite puppets have the same physique of dancers of the day... they moved like the dancers of the day. So? Why is that a surprise? Well, it sort of seems as if while one was making a dance puppet, one might go for the ideal physique... these don't look like Spessitsiva (sp?) or Pavlova or anything remotely proto-Balanchinian... they look like what I imagine Kschessinska or Karsavina moving like. It made me think of that old ballet technique correction advocating that "the upstairs should not know what the downstairs is doing". I always took that to mean that whatever effort is being exerted by the feet and legs, no struggling should be manifesting itself in the arms and upper torso.. however now I wonder if the art form didn't look very different. Nowadays there is a definite center that the extremities extend out from... the opposition of the stretch from that center is displayed as one of the beauties of the technique. It seemed as if back then, that extension was not part of the aesthetic at all... or if it were, it must have been from a different "center", maybe even seperate "centers" for the upper body than the feet? it's almost hard to conceive of ballet line without that extension... but here it was not. The puppets had, it seemed, short legs and long backs.

His animation took an immense amount of work. His family said the parquet floor was worn through along the path that lay between his little puppet theater and the camera. I can't figure out what paid for all this. I can't believe film was cheap in those days. I understand he worked a great deal teaching and staging... which left him the hours and hours available to spend on animation? And he never distributed his films, they were only shown in his apartment to family, friends and students... because to have such a thing as movie camera in those impoverished soviet days would be a suspicious matter, I believe I was meant to understand.

Someone at the screening was trying to talk about a sequence from La Fille Mal Gardee... I thought he was trying to say that a bit of choreography from the film actually came La Fille, and was not so attributed, but he was cut off because he didn't get around to phrasing a question... and what relationship La Fille had to the film was not made clear (to me at any rate).

The film is not yet available. It didn't seem that there was yet a copy at the NYPL Dance Collection, though I'm not clear on that as there seems to be many other entrants to the festival that weren't screened available for viewing at the DAnce Division; apparently "200 entries not shown at other Festival venues".

It was wonderful to see top dancers of that time, even though they be character dancers... to see what the dynamics were.

I'd be curious to see a discussion of choreographers & puppetry... it seems Petipa had that chessboard, didn't Ashton have an elaborate puppettheater as a child or am I mixing him up with some other great British choreographer... Merce Cunningham explored life-forms (that seems a cousin of puppetry), Twyla Tharp often uses video in the choreographic process. Has anyone wrote about this?

I suppose Shirayev was the first dancer turned filmmaker? I would love to read his thinking about the problems of catching dance on film. I'm not clear that any of that is archived anywhere... just the result.... though Kisselgoff mentions his unpublished memoirs.

Shirayev (Kisselgoff spells it "Shiryaev", the DOC program lists it as "Shirayev" I have no idea who is right or if it's just one of those cyrillic translation issues)

Shirayev opted to take his 20 year retirement rather than comply when asked to stage (re-stage? re-choreograph?) some Petipa work while Petipa was still officially employed but was not being asked to do anything. In the portrait photos it looks as if some fire was burning inside him... not that he was glowering, but rather that he looked like an intense individual. (I want a dna sample... where did he get all that energy?)

There will be one last showing, at 7pm on Tuesday, Jan 18th at the Brooklyn Public Library, Grand Army Plaza.

[Mel Johnson]

Another interesting sidelight about Shirayev is that he was the grandson of composer Cesare Pugni.

[rg]

others with real russian language expertise can likely say this better but for now here goes a little spelling/transliteration breakdown of Aleksandr Victorovich Shiryaev's name, naming the cryillic letters of his surname:

SH - EE - REH - YAH - YEH - VEH

i'd go w/ the TIMES version; lynn garafola's PETIPA'S DIARIES goes w/

SHIRIAEV - which may be Library of Congress form, or maybe not.

[Helene]

We received an email with the following info:

[F]irst of all, the documentary BELATED PREMIERE will be screened at the BFI Southbank on 10 and 28 September. Second, if there are any listmembers who would like a DVD, they can write to me at birgit.beumers@gmail.com. I am co-ordinator of the screenings and represent the archive's owner and filmmaker Viktor Bocharov.

And finally, more information can be found at avs.kinokultura.com

best wishes

Dr Birgit Beumers

School of Modern Languages

University of Bristol

17 Woodland Road

Bristol BS8 1TE

United Kingdom

Tel +44 117 928 7596

Editor, Kinokultura

Editor, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema

Here is Dr. Beumers biography on the University of Bristol website:

http://www.bris.ac.uk/russian/staff/beumers/beumers.html