A head or a leg company?

[kfw]

In today's NY Times review For Odette and Odile, Workouts by the Young and the New, Jennifer Dunning writes

City Ballet was once a "leg company." Now the arms prevail, at least for the women,

I'm interested in the opinions of NYCB watchers, old and new. Do you agree? Without rehashing the old debate about the current state of NYCB technique and artistry, if you do agree, when did the change occur and what accounts for it? If Dunning is saying that the company's port de bras, more often faulted that praised during Balanchine's days, now draw the eye more often than its attack, is this related to Martins' apparent preference for more careful dancing as opposed to Balanchine's partiality towards dancers who danced with abandon?

[canbelto]

Funny, I think the NYCB nowadays is even more extreme in being a "leg company." I often find the port-te-bras of the NYCB painful too watch.

[carbro]

Funny, I take an opposite view to canbelto. I find the legs and feet, formerly so neat and precise, so strong and springy, have become a bit blurry, with dancers far too often failing to point to the ends of their toes. This was rare in Balanchine's company. But the flyaway arms of the '70s through mid-'80s now have shape.

I tend to be an upper-body watcher, but NYCB's feet and legs have dropped to a level where I would gladly sacrifice a bit of the improved upper bodies to see cleaner lower bodies. But need it be an either/or situation? I don't think so.

[drb]

The Times comment was, perhaps, in the context of a flurry of Swans. Maybe the legs situation has to do with the temporary absence of Legs Kowroski? Or, perhaps, the sense of arms taking over could relate to the professed influence of Makarova on many of the dancers' interpretations. One saw, perhaps an intent toward arms as Ashley Bouder went from Friday to Sunday. Once her legs had established dominion over the dancing, she was free to find expression: the greatest changes being in the arms and face.

Meanwhile, Legs/Russian Back Reichlen, is growing HER wings. Sometimes completeness can be read as lack of that which previously dominated. There is so much completeness already in the PDQ trio (Fairchild, Scheller, Peck)! Whatever it may be called, I like the LOOK of many of NYCB's new stars.

How would one place Wendy Whelan in this legs vs arms context? I missed her O/O this year, so didn't see her changes; whatever, Mr. Wheeldon makes it work in a major way.

[oberon]

In general I think arms have improved, although hands can still be a problem.

But there are - and always have been - leggy girls and port de bras girls and a few who have both. It sometimes seems that legs are not as long as they were in the 70s or is it just my imagination?...seems to be a "shorter company", with the obvious exceptions.

[kfw]

Thank you, everyone, for your responses. drb, I love your "Legs Kowroski," and not just because it's fitting. What we need around here is a good thread on mobster ballerinas.

[Mel Johnson]

Whatever else may be said, NYCB is definitely not an arms company. They can't make an M-16 worth a damn.

[ViolinConcerto]

It's hard to tell if the Company is still a feet & legs consortium, as it was under Mr. B., because hardly any of the new choreography has complex footwork.

As to whether it's an arms company, the audiences in St. Petersburg certainly didn't think so, as I mentioned in my report on "Bringing Balanchine Home."

[canbelto]

What I don't like about the NYCB arms nowadays, especially in the corps, is that they don't differentiate between ballets. It's always that super-stretched-to-the-fingertips port-te-bras, with rather sharp elbows. Compare the NYCB to the Kirov, POB, or even ABT, and I think you can see the monotony of the NYCB "arms."

[Michael]

Can't compare to the Balanchine years, pre 1980s, because that's before my time but --

Compared to ABT and to the Russian Companies we see here, the arms and upper body is still a distinctive style -- arms and pulled up chest are not emphasized. (Sofiane Sylve, with her lovely, more traditional and very pulled up European placement is a huge contrast to the other girls).

At NYCB across the company the upper body placement is very casual; it remains in type the "athletic-tennis player-girl next door at the swimming pool -- unaffected style" which Balanchine is said to have been looking for.

The fleet footedness he sought is also still markedly present, in contrast with other companies.

Likewise, the feet -- the distinctive roll up on to point through the foot, and roll down off of point through the foot the same -- is very marked compared to ABT and to the Russian companies. You know the NYCB girls by their feet. Very strong, and also the way they present the foot: it's visually the focus much more than at other companies.

As to legs -- the company is plenty leggy and, with the exception of a couple of the principal dancers, the girls maintain themselves in noticably thinner shape than the competition. If you were dropped down from Mars without a roadmap, you'd know these girls as NYCB dancers with a glance. Again, the type: if you saw Ashley Bouder or Janie Taylor in street clothes much less in a tutu, and knew nothing else about them, you'd know them for City Ballet.

I agree with whoever said that Dunning's remark about the arms had to do with Swan Lake -- I haven't seen Sara Mearns yet, but everyone else has uniformly overdone the flapping and twitching arms thing for Odette.

Since people mentioned Peck, Fairchild and Scheller -- the striking thing is that they are such pure demi-caracter dancers. Their presence and the purity of their demi style is the biggest difference in this company than anything I've seen in recent memory. They represent a purer and more traditional European "type" than we've seen here. A lot of Danish dancing is said to employ clear demi-character, and the Russians do too in all those Petipa variations (and Volkova was a link between the two traditions) and I wondered, watching Peck/Schller/Fairchild fouetting in perfect unison the other night, whether that -- the fact that we were seeing ensemble demi-character dancing of this type at this level of precision, wasn't the biggest difference I've seen here in recent years.

[oberon]

The main reason I recognize NYCB girls, even from the school, is NYCB face. It seems to me that it's become more pronounced in recent years, a sort of aloof and slightly bored look, always focussed at some imaginary point. I suppose it discourages people from talking to them when they're walking down the street. Eventually they outgrow it, and some of the more senior women are quite friendly and animated.

Are those fouettes that the girls do in unison in the SWAN LAKE pas de quatre? They don't seem to spin continuously as Odile does.

[drb]

Sticking with Swan Lake arms, Michael's remark that the ballerinas have "uniformly overdone the flapping and twitching arms thing for Odette" is surely on the mark, for that is the way they were taught. Quoting Maria Kowroski from the Nutcracker Playbill, speaking of her Swan Lake experience at the Mariinsky, "I was trained to do arms a certain way---small flutters. They would say, 'No, no, long arms, long arms, you are not a duck, you are a swan.'" Had she been ready, I'm sure we would have seen something quite different. And she surely has the arms to 'do it Russian.' If you've got a copy of that Playbill, enjoy the two photos of her Odette!

From remarks by other O/O's in that article, Mr. Martins allows them significant freedom in their interpretations. Surely the case in Ms. Bouder's Odette, where her performance I flaps turned into performance II drama. The transfomed flutters became icons of imprisonment, used to great dramatic effect in Act 4 to signify her ultimately lost fight for freedom, as so powerfully described by NYSusan in the Swan Lake thread.

So there is hope.

[Hans]

They are indeed fouettés, but not continuous ones--there are other turns in between.

[Michael]

The great thing about Bouder's Act II, DRB, is that she used the flaps as musical accents. Quite incredible it was and only she of everyone I've ever seen would have had the instinct to use them that way. Coached to flap, she found the places in the melody -- the viola and the woodwinds in the adagios, and at times even the trills or crochets in the orchestrations -- that the arms could be employed musically, along with that intuitive gift she has for finding the still place, the place to stop in the middle of the phrase which makes all the music make sense.

The more extreme arm flapping in PM's Swan Lake actually started with Somogyi's first performance three or so years ago.

[nysusan]

Late 60's early 70's NYCB's ragged arms and upper body placement pretty much chased me out of the State Theatre. It annoyed me so that I couldn't stand to watch them more than a couple times a season, and eventually not at all. Foolish kid that I was! So one of the first things I noticed when I came back in '03 was how much more uniform their arms had become. They will never be an arms company in comparison to real arms companies, but the change over the years is unmistakable.

As to that bored look that Oberon mentions - I also consider it a hallmark of the company, but, again - not new. I remember in the 80's the first time I saw that Robert Plamer video "Addicted to Love" those women in the background screamed NYCB corps to me- tall, beautiful, glamourus & bored,bored,bored!

Also re: Swan Lake, since all of NYCB's O/Os have used those constantly flapping arms I assumed that is how they were taught to do it and that Peter wants it that way. In general I don't like it, but Bouder 2 made it work beautifully because , as drb said, she made the movement into an icon of imprisonment and used it to great effect as part of her interpretation.

[bart]

A propos: As described in Alexandra's biography of Henning Kronstam:

Kronstam was coaching Nikolaji Hubbe on one of his returns to Denmark from New York. Hubbe expresses Kronstam's concerns about his [Hubbe's] port de bras since leaving to work for NYCB:

"When I came home for Romeo and Juliet, he said, ''Your arms, Nikolaj, your arms! You know, the lower department is really working well now since you went to America, but your top. My God.' Then he laughed."

This would have been the late 80s or very early 90s.

[canbelto]

I guess whether you like the arms of the NYCB is a matter of personal taste. For instance when I saw Diana Vishneva dance Rubies the first thing I noticed was how different her arms looked from Miranda Weese, who I had also seen dancing Rubies. Vishneva's arms were so soft they seemed almost to be made of jelly, while Weese had the typical NYCB port-te-bras (a very straight extension, with very stretched hand, all the way to the fingertips). Then I popped in my tape of Patricia McBride dancing Rubies, and to my surprise her arms were more like Vishneva's than Weese's.

I wonder if part of this transformation may be actually due to Balanchine, rather than Martins. Balanchine in his later years stamped out much of the 'classical' in his ballet company -- he reworked ballets like T&V, Ballet Imperial and Apollo and even Square Dance to become more neo-classical.

[Hans]

I think some of it may have to do with SAB, which used to have primarily Russian and French teachers who taught classical ballet. Now the teachers are primarily Americans, former NYCB dancers who teach the Balanchine style. Habits are learned very early in ballet, and if you're taught classical port de bras from the beginning, it won't ever completely go away. However, if a dancer only knows Balanchine port de bras, his/her arms will look quite different.

[Amy Reusch]

said to employ clear demi-character

I'm afraid I don't have a clear understanding of "demi-character". Can you point me to a definition?

[Michael]

The danse d'ecole classified dancers according to types. Demis are quick, virtuoso and smaller. It's not just divertissement entrees, however, the dramatic range is different: they are not princesses, they are more soubrettish in type but not only that. Think Petipa's Don Q: the street dancers, the flower girls, sometimes Kitri herself -- though she's not cast demi by the Kirov or the Bolshoi, they use Kitri as a contrast to the more demi variation dancers. Don Q is nonetheless said to be "the great demi caracter ballet." The typology was discussed at length on this board some years back, I'm sure you can find it in the archives. It's where the classical roles come from and a basic grasp of it is quite useful.