"Glory of the Bolshoi" DVD

[bart]

We have a "Glory of the Kirov" thread (here: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...howtopic=23154).

What about that DVD's companion, "Glory of the Bolshoi"?

Paul's topic got me to look again (and more closely) at both DVDs, each of which is organized as a kind of historical retrospective, arranged in chronological order.

As to the Bolshoi, first of all you have to get over the shock of seeing the rare 1913 "Moment Musical" (to Schubert), in which the male lead is an exact replica of a smirking and simpering Zero Mostel in a rather baggy diaper and greased-down page boy wig. Or, Olga Lepeshinskaya, described as "Stalin's favorite ballerina," dancing an cheesy-arty ballroom number on what appears to be a vast Hollywood soundstage. (Where's Vera Zorina?)

And it's not always easy to watch Ulanova and Semenova dancing the roles of young girls well into middle age. (Compare the young Semenova in a 1934 film appearance as a nightclub dancer with her matronly incarnation of Odile in 1946).

But the plusses really thrilled me -- especially a long section devoted to Spartacus, in which the action involved cross-cutting between the original cast (Ekaterina Maximova, Vladimir Vasiliev, Maris Liepa) and the 1984 cast (Irek Mukhamedov, Natalia Bessmertova, Mikhail Gabovich). Absolutely fascinating. You learn a great deal about differences in style and stage-craft. Not to put down the second cast, but I left this video in awe of the earlier Vasiliev and Maximova, whom I hadn't seen much before.

And there's lovely footage of Vasiliev and Maximova in Nutcracker pas de tros when they were 13. Then, the 18-year-old Maximova in '58 as the Sugar Plum Fairy. And then both of them in a series of solos perfromed in the 1960s: from Le Corsaire, Laurencia, and Don Quixote. It was the unbelievable speed, joie de vivre, and spot-on accuracy that impressed me the most. I'm in love.

Then Vasiliev does a bit from Llittle Humpbacked Horse with Plisetskya. AND Maya Plisentskaya AND Gallina Ulanova in a 1953 Fountain of Bahkchiserai -- almost a textbook example of their distinct styles and stage personalities.

Super, super stuff. :huepfen024: (For me, at least.)

I was wondering what others have thought about this compilation?

[Helene]

(Now a selection in the BT Amazon Mini-Store [link under logo]).

[Paul Parish]

Maximova was childlike and FABULOUS into her 50s -- I saw her with Moscow Classical Ballet here in SF in around 1990 (also first sighting of Vladimir Malakhov), dancing in a white unitard in (can it have been) a Romeo and Juliet pas de deux by Bejart, and she looked 14 -- those amazing feet, and such alacrity, and ardor. I took my ballet teacher, who'd danced for NYCB in the 50s, and she said Balanchine would have loved her.

[atm711]

It is worth the price of admission just for the performance of Ekaterina Geltser and Tikhomirov in the 'Moment Musicale' :rolleyes:

[atm711]

As to the Bolshoi, first of all you have to get over the shock of seeing the rare 1913 "Moment Musical" (to Schubert), in which the male lead is an exact replica of a smirking and simpering Zero Mostel in a rather baggy diaper and greased-down page boy wig.

Bart, my reaction was the s ame as yours---although I thought he was more like Oliver Hardy. But I think we owe Mr. Tikhomirov an apology; he had a lot more going for him that one would suspect from that clip. I am currently reading a biography of Elisabeth Anderson-Ivantsova, a Bolshoi ballerina circa 1916. She was a respected ballet teacher in NYC and was a stickler for the Bolshoi style, which she learned as a student of Tikhomirov. ...."he trained the constellation of male dancers adorning the Moscow ballet at the beginning of the 20th century--Mordkin, Novikov, Volinin, Fyedor and Alexei Kozlov, Zhukov,...."(Lawrence Sullivan).

If there are any former students of Mme. A out there it can be purchased at www.Xlibris.com. In the last issue of Ballet Review, Marian Horosko wrote an article about it.

[bart]

I thought he was more like Oliver Hardy.

Eureka! That's precisely the look!

Thanks also, atm711, for your additional information. We all have a few very unflattering photos -- and possibly even videos -- of ourselves floating around. I'd hate to think that that photo (circa 1972) of me with a huge, dark red, Gene Shalett mustache, and holding a gigantic martini in each hand -- would be my only visual legacy after my death.

[Alexandra]

What I noticed about Tikhomirov was the sincerity of his performance and the way he reacted with his partner. The number is the kind of thing that audiences of the day -- for whom "sentimental" was not a cause for amusement. Both Tikhomirov and Geltzer were great dancers. There are many photos of them in which they look more like dancers audiences today would admire (costumes make a difference), but Tikhomirov was a great technician -- you can read about him, and see other photos, in Smakov's book of the "Great Russian Dancers."

[bart]

What I noticed about Tikhomirov was the sincerity of his performance and the way he reacted with his partner. The number is the kind of thing that audiences of the day -- for whom "sentimental" was not a cause for amusement. Both Tikhomirov and Geltzer were great dancers.

I think this is a discussion worth pursuing. Certainly it is one that opera fans engage in when they deal with very, very old recordings of "great" singers whose style and technique are sometimes quite unfamiliar to us.

The same holds true with changing acting styles. Just think of Cyrano heckling and even terrorizing the pompous theatrical srar Montfleury: "If that Muse [Thalia] ... who knows you not at all, could claim acquaintance with you -- oh, believe (seeing how urn-like, fat and slow you are) that she would make you taste her buskin's sole.")

It is unfair, put perhaps natural and inevitable, that we might respond with embarrassed laughter (if not with Cyrano's scorn) to performances of artists who -- a hundred or more years ago -- could move people to tears, exaltation or hysteria.

The oddity of this 1913 performances on the Bolshoi video does not, I think, come from their overt sentimentality, a version of which can be seen quite often on ballet stages today. Nevertheless there is a strangeness and foreignness to the performances that is a great barrier to appreciating, let alone understanding, what these artists could achieve. Some of this is explainable to a degree. The extremely limited vocabulary of gesture and steps may be due to the small stage. The bizarre use of eyes and facial expressions might be do to a nervousness about the camera ("Where do I look?!!"). But I can't believe those things explain it all.

Here's a surprise: at the same time this film was made, Diaghelev was beginning his work in France -- something with a distinctly "modern" look at the time. 10 years after that -- as the clips in the new movie "Ballets Russes" makes clear -- dancers were moving lightly, freely, and yet in a distinctly classical manner.

No contemporary audience would laugh at that dancing -- nor, I suspect, would it laughed at Diaghelev's dancers. Is the Bolshoi video a throw-back to a 19th century style which was itself old-fashioned by 1913?

We call the 19th century Maryinsky and Bolshoi traditions "great." We call the leading dancers in that tradition "great." We have a historical record of the music, the decor, the costumes, the stories. But we really have almost no direct record of what it is the dancers did.

[leonid17]

We have a "Glory of the Kirov" thread (here: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...howtopic=23154).

What about that DVD's companion, "Glory of the Bolshoi"?

The extremely limited vocabulary of gesture and steps may be due to the small stage. The bizarre use of eyes and facial expressions might be do to a nervousness about the camera ("Where do I look?!!"). But I can't believe those things explain it all.

I was wondering what others have thought about this compilation?

I think you are right Bart that the limitations imposed by the very small width of camera shot area is a factor as it looks to be less than 10ft wide which would hardly give the space to get a preparatory movement for any kind of expansive movement without going out of shot. It may also be that the dance was almost made up on the spot just to complete an experimental film as this is what it surely was.

There are some films where Pavlova restricted the choreography from the stage version so that some kind of record of her dance could be made and the films of the Royal Danish ballet made some years earlier also exhibits similar limitations. If this was one of their first attempts at being filmed without a professional director the expressions they used for a vast stage would in close up naturally look rather naïve.

There are many commercial films made in the early days of Hollywood where the actors appear stilted and overacting. Chaplin is accused of being over sentimental at times in his acting. Tikhomirov was born in 1876 he was an outstanding young talent who at the age of 15 was sent to St. Petersburg to study with Pavel Gerdt, Platon Karsaving and Alexander Shirayev. There are photographs in his younger days that show him having a physique no different to a modern classical dancer. As Alexandra alludes, he did after all dance the roles of Desire, Frantz, Siegfried Albrecht, Solor and Conrad etc and I do not believe in abbreviated technical versions.

As regards the “diapers”, modesty in the Imperial Theatres was the rule. Take the so called Nijinsky scandal as an example.

Closer to our time, I first saw Maximova to whom other posts had alluded in 1963 when Arnold Haskell said she had the “wittiest feet since Pavlova”. I can never get enough of this dancer in her best roles.

Bart mentions Olga Lepeshinskaya who has always appeared to me to be the worst kind of Soviet Russian dancer that found places in both the Bolshoi and the Kirov ballet companies.

There are moments from the Bolshoi repertoire one would like to have seen included and more of some leading dancers who hardly geta look in. What one gets is fulsome enough but much has been seen elsewhere on video.

[carbro]

I can't help but think that our responses to stage performances are greatly influenced by our exposure to tv and film. Broadcasts of Playhouse 90 dramas, for example -- the theatrical-style serious dramas that were simply broadcast live in tv's early days -- look stagey, self-conscious and unnatural to us today, when we don't take well to exaggerated facial expressions and stilted diction. TV is too intimate a medium for that kind of acting. And once the actors and directors realized the need to take it down a few notches, movies followed suit. And the loop feeds back to what we see on the dramatic stage, and the musical (including ballet and opera) stage.

The dramas beneath the older forms were made for performers who would telegraph -- not naturally, but vividly -- to the back of the opera house. Even in the opera house, we don't tolerate this style any more.

We'll never be able to see those ancient clips through the eyes that saw them in their own time, but I really wish I could.

[Alexandra]

I think this is one of the few filmed examples of theatrical expression during the time when declamatory style was still dominant -- before movies made acting more subtle. This is even a bit bigger than the 'FIE! YE VILLAIN!!" [maiden faints] acting of silent films. (And bart's points about being limited to a very small space is a good one. They're projecting to the back of the house, except the camera is probably 2 feet away.)

The most "old-fashioned" thing, to me, is when Geltzer gets a look of "delicious girlishness" (as a critic of the day might have written) in her eyes and begins to play with the roses. Watch his delight in her.

The few films I've seen of the same time period are quite different. There's a Dying Swan -- and I'm blanking at the name; I'll try to fill it in later -- of a BOLSHOI ballerina who's quite "classical" compared to Pavlova (another ballerina who is very far from our time). And the Danish films from 1906-1909 are much smaller in scale. I will say that at first I would only show this one to older students (seniors), and expect they would titter, but when I prepared them, they didn't, and, at the end of the year, I dared show it to 9th graders and they were interested. Didn't want to look like that, or dance like that, but they could see the artistry. And this doesn't mean that the general reaction of "Yuck, what is that!" is wrong or silly, of course.

One of the ways I taught myself to watch old films is to think, "Why did they put it on the tape? Example of Stupid Dancing of Yesteryear? Or an example of something that was considered great. If it's the latter, why was it considered great?" (I will say I'll bet Tikomirov was one heck of a partner!)

Re the Ballets Russes film, I thought some of them were "modern" looking (especially Markova) while others were quite different from today -- less attention to placement and line. Talking to dancers about that film, the general comment was, "Wow, now I know how they could turn so fast and do so many -- they didn't care about placement." I learned from that -- it's something Robert Greskovic has written, that we're in an academic age now, an age of the teachers. When it's an age of choreographers, dancers don't have t be so "correct." It's more about moving, or expression, or whatever the choreographer is after.

[carbro]

One of the ways I taught myself to watch old films is to think, "Why did they put it on the tape? Example of Stupid Dancing of Yesteryear? Or an example of something that was considered great. If it's the latter, why was it considered great?" (I will say I'll bet Tikomirov was one heck of a partner!)

Re the Ballet Russe film, I thought some of them were "modern" looking (especially Markova) while others were quite different from today -- less attention to placement and line. Talking to dancers about that film, the general comment was, "Wow, now I know how they could turn so fast and do so many -- they didn't care about placement."

Actually, it was the complete lack of classical placement that makes Plisetskaya's Act I DonQ so thrilling! And yet, just a few nights ago, I caught her Sleeping Beauty Act III pdd, with variation. And she was as beautifully classical as the Kitri was not. No question in either case of her greatness. (Is either of these clips on Glory of B?)

We'll never be able to see those ancient clips through the eyes that saw them in their own time, but I really wish I could.

Not in the sense that I cannot appreciate it from my 21st century vantage point, but that it looks alien. It is like listening to someone who speaks fluent English with a strong accent. It adds color to their speech but may distract a bit from their message.

What most vividly came through in the Ballets Russes film was something universally recognizable -- utter charm.

[bart]

Thanks for your response to my questions, Alexandra. It takes time and experience to achieve that kind of perspective. Many of us have had the chance to do this with silent movies (thank goodness). I wish similar resources were available to "open up" the world ballet a hundred years ago.

Re the Ballet Russe film, I thought some of them were "modern" looking (especially Markova) while others were quite different from today -- less attention to placement and line. Talking to dancers about that film, the general comment was, "Wow, now I know how they could turn so fast and do so many -- they didn't care about placement." I learned from that -- it's something Robert Greskovic has written, that we're in an academic age now, an age of the teachers. When it's an age of choreographers, dancers don't have t be so "correct." It's more about moving, or expression, or whatever the choreographer is after.

Off topic: thanks for your comment about "Ballets Russes". I was thinking of a slightly different meaning for "modern," but I get your point. Coincidentally, I am watching the DVD for the first time this afternoon, and I guess I used "modern" in my earlier post partly in the light of the free, expressive, and (apparently) spontaneous dancing style one sees in those great clips from the 30s and 40s. I noticed some of those technical problems with Danilova and Franklin. (Maybe this one of the unanticipated consequences of having started ballet classes last year.) However, if there is indeed a dichotomy between a ballet "of teachers" and a ballet "of choreographers," as you suggest, I'm definitely on the side of the choreographers.

[Alexandra]

Carbro and I were posting at the same time -- I agree, Carbro. We can't see with the eyes of the original audience. I think the best thing we can do is to know the rules. At first glance, one might think that a ballerina turning on demi-pointe is technically deficient. If you know that this particular production, or choreographer, or style is set for a pirouette on demi-pointe, then one can at least not deduct technical points

Bart, I think you're on to something with your description of "free, expressive and (apparently) spontaneous" style. Dancers today are so CAREFUL. There's a beauty in that too, of course, but something is lost. I showed a clip from the "Jewels" film this summer at a lecture, and the dancer-host's comment was, "It really is academic, isn't it?" That's the style of the company and style of the day. One theory about the loss of spontaneity, in addition to the attention paid to correctness, is that after the rise of modern dance, ballet became less spontaneous, so as to make the contrast greater, or perhaps even that the freer, less "correct," more spontaneous dancers were attracted (or guided) to modern dance. (Of course since modern/contemporary dance is often very technical now, that's gone too.) It's all very complicated!!

As for our old-timie Bolshoi dancers, the look of them, the costumes -- all of it would elicit amusement at first glance, I think. I just figure, they have a reason for puttin' it on there

Re Plisetskaya: there's a DVD that is called, I think, "Plisetskaya Dances" (that's what the video was called; the DVD separates the dance clips from the interview clips). There is a lot of her Kitri on that, and her Walpurgisnacht. THAT leads to another viewing exercise. Compare the Plisetskaya one with the Maximova one, also on film. Both ballerinas are glorious, in their different ways, but the men, who get to be satyrs, lucky fellows, are really into it in the Plisetskaya tape. They "buy" the ballet. It's alive to them. A decade or so later, they dance with great respect, but the atmosphere is gone.

[bart]

Compare the Plisetskaya one with the Maximova one, also on film. Both ballerinas are glorious, in their different ways, but the men, who get to be satyrs, lucky fellows, are really into it in the Plisetskaya tape. They "buy" the ballet. It's alive to them. A decade or so later, they dance with great respect, but the atmosphere is gone.

Makes me think of one of the comments in the "Ballets Russes" film. Nini Theilade (who sounds like someone you'd really like to get to know. "Utter charm," as carbro says. And a lot of intelligence.) laments the formalism of the young ballet students she meets today. She wants to say to them: "Be warm -- TELL me something!"

[leonid17]

Compare the Plisetskaya one with the Maximova one, also on film. Both ballerinas are glorious, in their different ways, but the men, who get to be satyrs, lucky fellows, are really into it in the Plisetskaya tape. They "buy" the ballet. It's alive to them. A decade or so later, they dance with great respect, but the atmosphere is gone.

Makes me think of one of the comments in the "Ballets Russes" film. Nini Theilade (who sounds like someone you'd really like to get to know. "Utter charm," as carbro says. And a lot of intelligence.) laments the formalism of the young ballet students she meets today. She wants to say to them: "Be warm -- TELL me something!"

The role of a classical ballet dancer may be seen as to express the ability to combine and integrate within a theatrical performance that is artistic, aesthetic and dramatic, a technique that is academic in intent but may be tempered by a less than natural physical placement.

When you think of Tikhomirov and Geltser under the direction of Alexander Gorsky at the Bolshoi, were encouraged to achieve a physical and dramatic expression that integrated classical ballet technique. It was if not to put it too crudely, either a revolutionary change in approach compared to the Maryinsky or a ‘pandering to’ the lack of aesthetic/artistic values to meet the Moscow audience expectation of that day which some thought. Fortunately the process survived and the Bolshoi had for many years an identity which was quite different from any other ballet company

Alexandra quite rightly drew attention to the “… sincerity in Tikhomirov’s performance” and I would like to recall conversations I had with English dancers whose careers with Pavlova overlapped those earlier dancers era.

I asked the obvious question about this legendary dancer’s technique. They told me in class she worked extremely hard and for the younger members of her company who had not seen her at her technical peak told me but not ruefully, that Pavlova was particular about placement in the class but looked for

and screamed at rehearsals, “hear the music, feel the music, be beautiful, become the dance”. An older member of her company told me explicitly that Pavlova’s technique was extremely strong when she was with her company but when Pavlova danced every rule could be forgotten when she sought to achieve a physically beautiful line.” Expressivity was demanded of us by Pavlova and never fall off point. On stage Pavlova lived every role as if her very life depended upon it.”

Their Maryinsky counterparts however were taught to strive for a clean academic execution in an aesthetic context and employ dramatic means once the role was technically achieved. All of this was before the ‘selective breeding’ programme that Vaganova would aspire to (and sometimes taken up in extremes today by others) and began to achieve at the end of her life with, slim, longer legged female dancers strongly placed with higher extensions and bigger jumps.

The clear delineation between the Bolshoi approach and the Maryinsky then and now remains apparent. Whatever you may consider to be the aesthetics of dance'

The Bolshoi later produced dancers like Vasiliev and Maximova of whom Erica Cornejo in an interview with Hanna Rubin in Dance Magazine last year said, “They were stars beyond technique”…”they were expressive- a light came from their bodies.” In saying this I think the historical raison d’etre of the Bolshoi approach to performing roles was achieved by Plisetskaya in many of her roles as did Liepa, Ulanova, Struchkova, Levashev, Timofeyeva (in a number of roles) Mukhamedov, Ananiashvili among others.

That is not to say it has always been achieved and when I compare the Bolshoi of today with that of the 1960.s, 70’s and 80’s, in my personal opinion it is not always achieved by the present roster.

The secret of any art is to employ technique at such a high level that the audience experiences first and examines in reflection. It is a sad comment to see obviously knowledgeable people discuss placement of dancers of an earlier era as if in a critical way without fully putting the person(s) under review in their context and time and the demands of performing that they endured and why it was so. Placement and turnout in ballet has been with us for more than 150 years.

I believe early exposure to silent movies inoculated me from making judgments about performances of an earlier era as I was moved, thrilled and transported by the dramas and comedies enacted. I belong to a generation that found Chaplin’s “Limelight” mannered, self-conscious, sentimental etc. carping that he had never moved on from his silent era I was a child at the time when I first saw the film and did not think so and I still do not think so.

I have personally in the past gone to the ballet to experience a performance not a physical classroom exercise and sadly I go less often now than in the past as the absence of “vivid” performances seems to elude me. I cannot be excited alone by a dancer achieving six pirouettes en pointe unless the rest of the performance is artistically and aesthetically pleasing and that the production aspires to the highest artistic ideals.

I am still in the process of learning about the artistic, cultural and social mores of the periods of ballet history that interest me. Classical Ballet is after all an art expression of the past and when you see a performance, it cannot be divorced from that past.

There is in ballet like all arts, the element of the synthetic.

But great art, aspires to a kind of reality in which first experience and then need to be sensitive to the process that artist aim to achieve, if we are to meet it and recognize it. The Bolshoi at its best has achieved a kind of great art and I treasure my memories and am grateful that I can again and again watch some examples of them at their best on the DVD in question.

[bart]

There is so much in what you posted, leonid. Thank you. One of the points that struck me most:

The secret of any art is to employ technique at such a high level that the audience experiences first and examines in reflection.

This is at the heart of so much of what is discussed on Ballet Talk.

[Myrtha]

I can't help but think that our responses to stage performances are greatly influenced by our exposure to tv and film. Broadcasts of Playhouse 90 dramas, for example -- the theatrical-style serious dramas that were simply broadcast live in tv's early days -- look stagey, self-conscious and unnatural to us today, when we don't take well to exaggerated facial expressions and stilted diction. TV is too intimate a medium for that kind of acting. And once the actors and directors realized the need to take it down a few notches, movies followed suit. And the loop feeds back to what we see on the dramatic stage, and the musical (including ballet and opera) stage.

I don't think the actors from that era look "self-conscious" or "unnatural". Recently I've been having this debate regarding a certain TV show from the 70's which was recently remade in a more "realistic" form. I despise the remake and got to wondering why I had such a reaction. I think it has a large part due to the older actors in the 70's version having that training and background in the "classic stage technique" and being able to convincingly pull off stuff that today's actors are embarrassed to do. (It also doesn't hurt that my particular favourite actor in the 70's version just attacks the silliness of certain lines with such glee that it's obvious he's having a good time.)

I don't mind the "stagey" look either because it allowed some of the actors with stage training to display exquisite enunciation and vocal range which I don't get to hear in today's stuff due to overdubbing and remixing.

The dramas beneath the older forms were made for performers who would telegraph -- not naturally, but vividly -- to the back of the opera house. Even in the opera house, we don't tolerate this style any more.

We'll never be able to see those ancient clips through the eyes that saw them in their own time, but I really wish I could.

I also think the actors and dancers from this era were not so self-conscious about being "exaggerated" or "technically incorrect" because once the performance was over there was no record except the memories of the audience.

[bart]

Thanks, Myrtha, for your comments. I especially agree with the following:

I also think the actors and dancers from this era were not so self-conscious about being "exaggerated" or "technically incorrect" because once the performance was over there was no record except the memories of the audience.

The omnipresence of film and video in our performance culture must have had a huge effect on performances, even those performances never intended for filming.

Why is it, though, that so many dancers today project exagerrated movement (sometimes wildly so) -- combined with relatively little or no individuality and emotional affect? When you think of it, it's a rather odd combination.

[richard53dog]

Why is it, though, that so many dancers today project exagerrated movement (sometimes wildly so) -- combined with relatively little or no individuality and emotional affect? When you think of it, it's a rather odd combination.

I see not only dancers but performers in other media doing this. I think it's because they have been coached/taught to be "dramatic" but it's externalized only. I don't think they have bought into the feelings internally. (They may not understand how to). There's none of themselves used as part of the expression.

So you have something that looks overdone because it has no core and the "outside" part is pushed to overcompensate.

It's a difficult situation, you need very good coaches to teach a performer to perform in an expressive way

that will project and also have the validity of the performers own self but not cross the line into empty caricature .

[drb]

... Olga Lepeshinskaya, described as "Stalin's favorite ballerina," dancing an cheesy-arty ballroom number on what appears to be a vast Hollywood soundstage. (Where's Vera Zorina?)...

She may have been Stalin's favorite, she was after all married to General Leonid F. Raikhman, head of the NKVD (said to be responsible for the murder of thousands of Polish officers interned during the invasion of Poland). But he was later "convicted" as a member of the "Doctor's Plot." His life was spared and he was released in 1953.

Lepeshinskaya was famed early on for her 64 turns during the "32." (So she surely could have been a Principal at ABT.)

Last Friday night she was honored with a special Bolshoi performance of Don Q, with three Kitris (Stepanenko, Alexandrova, Zakharova)! And she was seated in the Tsar's Box.

[rg]

i had always heard that marina semyonova was thought to have been stalin's favorite ballerina.

maybe he had several favorites.

(my source here was a now deceased colleague who was friendly with marina kondrateva, who was a protegee of semyonova's, tho' i don't know that he heard this from m.k. herself. still, my awareness is only third hand, if there are any published claims for one or the other or both or more, i don't know of them.)

[bart]

I see not only dancers but performers in other media doing this. I think it's because they have been coached/taught to be "dramatic" but it's externalized only. I don't think they have bought into the feelings internally. (They may not understand how to). There's none of themselves used as part of the expression.

So you have something that looks overdone because it has no core and the "outside" part is pushed to overcompensate.

This is an interesting point. To test it, I tried this experiment: go to the bathroom mirror -- tell yourself something like ("look like you're in love," "look llike you're in emotional pain") -- then try to find a face that matches the words. Work from the concept and not any inner emotional connection. Pretty ghastly results (for me anyhow): forced, cliched, generic, and totally unconvincing.

[Helene]

Veering off topic for a second, I once saw a fluff piece on soap opera actors, I think on one of the local NYC news stations. There's a particular look of concern that soap opera actors get when they are told important, and usually disturbing news. Once actress said that the motivating thought to get that look is, "Did I leave the oven on?" The producers then showed a series of these scenes, with the motivating voiceover as in (examples only):

Man in love with woman: "But I saw your husband at the so-and-so restaurant tonight."

Woman (voiceover)" "Did I leave the oven on?"

Doctor to relatives of woman in hospital bed: "She doesn't seem to remember anything before the accident."

Woman in hospital bed (voiceover): "Did I leave the oven on?"

[bart]

Even more off-topic: I suspect that line is a bit out-of-date. I know people in Manhattan who have never actually turned the oven ON, after years of being in residence.

How about: Did I forget to recharge my cell-phone?"