Miss Manners on Standing Ovations

[Ostrich]

In fact, recently while I was enthousiastically "standing up" at a performance (together with about 1/3 of the remaining audience) I was asked by an irate lady behind me (neither old nor disabled) to sit down so that she could see the curtain calls. She seemed unaware that her request was anything but perfectly just and reasonable.

Don't keep us in suspense, Ostrich. Did you enlighten the lady?

I politely informed her that she could stand up if she enjoyed the performance enough to want to see the curtain calls.

Is it appropriate to applaud before a variation is completed or before a bow is given? This seems to occur quite often by members of the audience. If I am not mistaken, Balanchine did not want the audience to applaud until a final bow was indicated by the artist. Just because there is a pause in a performer's movement on stage does not always mean the piece is completed.

Clapping before a variation/dance is finished can denote one of 2 things: that the audience is so excited that they can't wait to applaud, or that they are so bored that they think "surely this must be over now, it's gone on for long enough". I don't think it is rude either way. To be on the safe side, I do hesitate long enough before clapping myself, just to be sure I don't interrupt (or show myself up as ignorant). Then again, I think the attitude to this will vary according to the cultural context. At Pavaroti's catastrophic "Farewell to Africa" performance, held in an open sport stadium in Cape Town(it began to rain halfway through) the audience started to clap and sing along. Apparently he was very annoyed and asked them to stop. How were the poor sports fans to know that?

[aurora]

So called, guilty pleasures?

That's the problem. I don't feel guilty about them, but figured out that I was supposed to...

Can we make a different/new topic for these so called "guilty pleasures"?

It is really fun (I think!) to hear about peoples interests besides the ballet. I'd start the topic myself, but I think it would be neat if we could move these starting posts over there as well...(does a mod need to do this?)

I'm sure my vulgar interests trump everyone elses

[kfw]

Can we make a different/new topic for these so called "guilty pleasures"?

It is really fun (I think!) to hear about peoples interests besides the ballet. I'd start the topic myself, but I think it would be neat if we could move these starting posts over there as well...(does a mod need to do this?)

I'm sure my vulgar interests trump everyone elses

I've opened a new thread, Guilty Pleasures, in the Aesthetic Issues forum.

[nin one]

I must admit that I have no problem at all sitting and clapping if I feel the perfomance was merely good and not "Bravo" and ovation worthy. Why would I want to stand for a perfomance that I didn't feel worthy regardless if others did? I liken this to tipping someone extra for special courtesies versus an average tip for an average service.

But, I do have friends who go with the flow no matter the mediocre performance. I just think it is a disservice to the ones most deserving.

[oyoyoyoyoy]

Maybe it has been mostly on Broadway that I have experienced the "de rigeur" standing ovation, but I don't go to Broadway that often and I am sure it has occured at ABT when it wasn't really warranted (IMO). I would expect that it does not happen unnecessarily at the opera.

In regards to clapping during a variation - I say YES, if you are so inclined and it seems appropriate. It's true that sometimes uneducated audiences will clap for every mundane lift that occurs and that is terribly annoying. (I find this true when the audience is robust with people who have experienced the "dance competition" scene, and yet, as I say, at least they are here watching a classical performance and enjoying it.) But when you are performing, it is a big let down when you do a bravura step that should ellicit applause and none is forthcoming. I think that it is in the American culture to clap when one is excited.

[bart]

From Julie Kavanagh's biography of Nureyev. Nureyev is reminiscing about the audience ovation (5,800 spectators) after his -- and Paolo Bortoluzzi's -- first performance of Bejart's Songs of the Wayfarer.

public carried on and carried on and carried on. It was ridiculous, exaggerated ... I thought the reason for that was acoustics. It was a dome and the more they screamed and yelled and clapped the more they get worked up, and excited. They heard themselves ... they became the performers. We were the public ... two of us were the witnesses and they were the performers. .... A quite increidble experience.

This was 1971. The culture of audience narcissism ("we are the real story here") was already on its way.

At least the artists were spared the arm-waving during the performance that one sees at pop concerts. Upraised arms, waving from side to side in a wierd kind of 5th en haut -- has that particular phenomenon reached ballet performances yet?