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Ratmansky’s Bayadere in Berlin (4 Nov. 2018 premiere)


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5 hours ago, Mashinka said:

An ineffectual  last act viewed through a scrim is no substitute for the feast of opulence that the Russians give us, including Vikharev's version.

Well...if to the "last act" you refer to the wedding of Gamzatti, then the Russians might had given us opulence pre Bolshevik era, because the Soviets gave us no act whatsoever. And Vikharev's was buried so early into Oblivion that it can't really count. What the Russians now have is a truncated production, no more..no less. Ratmansky could had corrected the misses and faults of  Ponomarev's Makarova's and Vikharev's. I hope he did.

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3 hours ago, Amy said:

 As explained, Gamzatti dances Dulcinea's variation  . Whether or not it's the variation that Olga Preobrazhenskaya danced in 1900, we can't be sure. Again, this variation is not notated, so Ratmansky stuck to the traditional choreography danced in the west with the Italian fouettes.

Wow. Thanks for the report. I am still confused with Dulcinea's/Gamzatti variation. In DQ Dulcinea does not do Italian fouettes. She does sautes on pointe, sissonnes and a round of chainee turns at the end of her variation. Queen of Dryads does Italian fouettes though....

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15 hours ago, Mashinka said:

Having just watched her version for the RB, I consider it a dismal thing with so many of the usual elements missing.  Where is the drum dance?  where's Manu and her pot.  No parrots, no elephant.  A betrothal party so sparsely populated you wonder if the relatives of the tiger that Solor killed earlier have gone on the rampage.   Above all we're eight Bayaderes short going down the ramp,  

I'm not sure why this would have to be the case. For a while the National Ballet of Ukraine performed Makarova's version (although no longer) and did it with 32 shades, and while I'm unsure about the entire betrothal scene, I'm fairly certain that the drum dance was included. It's beyond me why ABT's manpower limitations ca. 1980 should be extended to companies that don't share them.

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On 11/7/2018 at 4:44 PM, cubanmiamiboy said:

I firmly believe that, when doing a ballet recon, the choreographer should look at the evolution of the work and not jump into too radical changes that might put the production in jeopardy, to the point of being taken out of the repertoire, 

For me, that sounds like a great approach to producing the classics, but I had thought the term reconstruction was meant to be reserved for productions that were rigorous in their attempts at historical accuracy and therefore bound to be pretty radical (allowing that the most rigorous of historical reconstructions runs up against some limitations including missing materials in the notations, changing bodies, different kinds of pointe shoes etc.) Rigorous at least as regards choreography/music and general style of the physical production, sets/costumes etc. I know some commentators argue that without re-creation of original sets/costumes the word reconstruction is misapplied.

I guess this is just a semantic point. I'm myself quite happy to have the evolution of works taken into account in productions of 19th-century ballets  (actually, in many cases, I may prefer it) but I'm not sure at what point the word reconstruction becomes too inexact to be useful. 

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Amy, Thank you for your detailed account of Ratmansky's La Bayadere. From what you have written it would appear that Ratmansky has staged a work which is recognisably  a mid-nineteenth century ballet in the balance which it strikes between narrative and dance content. Whether we shall all like a version of the work which is a genuine attempt to stage a pre-Revolutionary version of the ballet is another matter which will depend on our own personal tastes and preferences and in particular whether we regard the ballets of the nineteenth century as technically demanding works of narrative and mood or merely as opportunities for technical display.

I can't help thinking that whether or not  a genuine attempt to reconstruct a nineteenth century ballet retains its place in a company's repertory has far more to do with how much professional capital has been invested in the version which a company danced before the reconstruction was staged than anything else. It would seem  that a reconstruction  has a much better chance of surviving as a repertory piece where a company makes no claim to having a continuous performance tradition of the work than where it does. The Bolshoi's reconstructed Le Corsaire and Coppelia did not displace much loved versions of the ballet and have retained a hold in the company's repertory whereas the Mariinsky's Sleeping Beauty and La Bayadere reconstructions were replacing stagings for which continuity and an unbroken  performing tradition were claimed, and the reconstructions have not survived . Part of the problem is that the audience may have to get used to a text which has no place for familiar characters or traditional mid twentieth century display pieces another is the dance vocabulary used in the earlier versions.The familiar mid-century much modified "traditional " versions tend to emphasise steps of elevation whereas earlier versions often emphasise petite batterie. If you then add period appropriate performance style to the mix there is a great deal for an audience to get used to seeing. Now I think that an audience, even one that is emotionally,attached to a particular version of a text, has a far greater capacity to adapt to the sort of culture shock which changes in performance style and text represent than a company's coaches who have a professional stake in the purported authenticity of what they are handing on to the next generation.

Ratmansky is one of a number of pioneers in the world of  textual authenticity and early ballet performance practice and we are currently where the advocates of the early music movement were fifty or sixty years ago. Should any of us be surprised that the movement seems to be of more interest to some companies than others? It is far easier to gain acceptance of the new approach when a company has no emotional attachment to a text because it has no recent tradition of performing the work which is to be restored than it is for a company which makes claims to be the custodian of a ballet's "true" and "authentic" text. If a company claims that it has lovingly preserved a text in an unbroken performance tradition, passing the text down from coach to dancer, generation after generation then a restored text is a threat not only  to the company's claims to custodianship but to the professional standing, credibility and authority of its coaches as their professional reputation is dependent on their professional attachment and investment in the text danced locally as "true" and "authentic".

I know that there is currently a debate about whether or not a reconstruction which does not use the original designs can be a true reconstruction. Here I think we have to be pragmatic. Three act ballets are expensive to stage whatever their theatrical history. These Imperial works are particularly expensive because of the resources which a staging in the original style would demand. Arguing that any attempt to restore an authentic performing text for La Bayadere, Swan Lake, or Sleeping Beauty performed in period appropriate style has to be accompanied by authentic imperial style sets and costumes puts the whole enterprise beyond the reach of all but the most well financially endowed companies such as the Mariinsky. Bolshoi and POB none of which are likely to embark on such a programme in the foreseeable future.

It seems to me that trying to stage an authentic text is far more important than dressing the dancers in authentic style, if only because, it is doable and professionals and audiences alike need to see what these works look like when danced at the right speed with Petipa's musicality. Seeing them performed  in a more authentic style is what is needed to persuade the dance powers that be that authenticity is the only route to take in performance. As things are at present we will have to wait until hell freezes over before we see an authentic text performed in period in appropriate style in a Mariinsky staging of these ballets. It certainly has the resources to stage the works in Imperial style but, apart from staging the third act of its reconstructed Sleeping Beauty for its Petipa Gala it seems most disinclined to stage the major works itself in anything approaching authentic style and equally disinclined to co-operate with those who wish to do so. I believe that it even went back on its promise to make the original Minkus score of La Bayaderer available to Ratmansky for his Berlin staging.  

 I could easily accept a La Bayadere in which the score of the ballet is played at a speed both composer and choreographer expected; Petipa's musicality is restored and the entrance of the Shades is quicker and more dynamically interesting and there is no Golden Idol. But then I have just seen McRae's Solor and  I know that I really can do without bravura technical display for its own sake. It's astonishing but his performance as Solor was more like a circus act than an account of the role or the character. So for me as far as an authentic Bayadere is concerned it cannot come too soon. Ratmansky is one of a number of pioneers in the world of nineteenth century ballet text and performance style and we are currently where the advocates of the early music movement were in the 1950's and 1960's. That movement achieved its  ends with committed performances by pioneer musicians who transformed taste as far as eighteenth century musical performance style is concerned. It will be performances of authentic texts in appropriate style, almost certainly without authentic sets and costumes, that will do the same for Petipa's ballets.

 

Edited by Ashton Fan
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… restoring his musicality … Petipa's musicality is restored …

"Petipa's musicality" meant as a historical reality or as a balletomane's fantasy? Are you aware that "musicality" was not considered by his near-contemporaries like Lopukhov, whose direct descendant was Balanchine, to be one of the strong sides of Marius Petipa's choreography?

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If "he choreographed on the melody" (whatever this is supposed to mean) is a proof of "Petipa's choreography was very musical", then every choreographer must be similarly considered "very musical". Notated sheets in the Harvard collection can hardly provide a proof of it due to the nature of the notation. I am not even alluding to the fact that the actual sheets are often partially notated.

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Above all we're eight Bayaderes short going down the ramp

We are short of 24, if one wants to be factually correct, because, ideally, there should be 48 of "ombres"; this wasn't Makarova's choice, however, this was dictated by the necessity. Royal Ballet is a surprisingly small company, it doesn't have even 32 competent corps de ballet danseuses.

Edited by Laurent
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Laurent, 

When Nureyev staged "The Kingdom of the Shades" for the Royal Ballet in 1963 the company danced it with thirty two Shades and, as far as I am aware, continued to do so until 1985 when they last performed it. Now while it is true that during MacMillan's directorship the Covent Garden company was reduced in size because the Board wanted to make economies, and as always it was the the ballet company which was expected to take the cuts, the cuts did not affect the company's ability to perform Nureyev's staging with a full complement of Shades. It was only when the company acquired Makarova's staging of the full length ballet in 1989 that it began dancing the Shades section of the ballet with a mere twenty four dancers in the corps. I had always assumed that the reduced number of Shades was directly attributable  to the fact that Dowell had  acquired Makarova's 1980 staging for ABT which had only had twenty four Shades and that it had nothing to do with the state of the RB at that time. I had always understood that the forty eight Shade version of the ballet was not one that had survived in the Russian performing tradition and that it was something of a one off.

As far as the Stepanov  notations in the Sergeyev collection are concerned the fact that they do not include a full text of every ballet which was recorded is hardly a revelation. I have not seen the material which has been produced to accompany Ratmansky's Berlin production so I don't know what he has to say about just how complete or incomplete the notated text of the ballet is and the other source material which he has used in staging this production such as contemporary accounts of the ballet in performance and in particular accounts of the 1900 production and its stage history. He has been very scrupulous with other reconstructions in giving details about the state of the text which he has used, where there are gaps and what material he has used to fill them and when he has only had a floor plan to work with. I don't understand why you appear to believe that the fact the notation may be incomplete and in parts may be little more than an aide memoire is so significant as far as Ratmansky's reconstructions are concerned. I don't think that anyone has ever suggested that what he has staged is exactly as Petipa first staged it, merely that it is an attempt to get closer to the original text and see what it might have looked like in performance. Do you think that the whole reconstruction movement is pointless  or do you think that a later, mid twentieth century version of La Bayadere represents the best of Petipa? I am curious to know why you seem to be so vehemently against the attempt to recover a text which Petipa might recognise? Even restoring a choreographic text to its original position in a ballet can have a marked effect on the work as a piece of theatre. No one except the company's own management is going to deprive the POB of its Nureyev stagings of the Petipa classics.

Edited by Ashton Fan
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For Nureyev's production in 1963 the Royal Ballet used girls from the school to make up the numbers and could presumably do so again if Makarova so wished. When the company first did her production and people asked why there were only 24 Shades I seem to remember we were given some vague excuse about there not being enough room on the stage for 32.

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1 hour ago, Jane Simpson said:

For Nureyev's production in 1963 the Royal Ballet used girls from the school to make up the numbers and could presumably do so again if Makarova so wished. When the company first did her production and people asked why there were only 24 Shades I seem to remember we were given some vague excuse about there not being enough room on the stage for 32.

Indeed they did, not just in Bayadere, there was more interest in filling the stage back then and a student I used to know popped up in all sorts of little roles.  Not enough room?  Russian visitors don't have a problem.

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... could presumably do so again if Makarova so wished.

Not all of her casting wishes were met by the Royal Ballet management. She had to work with what she had at her disposal.

 

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I don't understand why you appear to believe that the fact the notation may be incomplete and in parts may be little more than an aide memoire is so significant as far as Ratmansky's reconstructions are concerned.

I hope this is not addressed at me, as I never said (or believed) anything like that. I didn't say anything at all about the recent Berlin "Bayadère". Above I responded to the unfounded claim that the Stepanov notation "proved that Marius Petipa's choreography was very musical". It could not prove it do to its intrinsic limitations, apart from the fact that many numbers are, simply, partly notated or had not been notated at all. Moreover, notation of some numbers is ambiguous.

Edited by Laurent
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I love this production, which I attended three times in mid-September, led by Ovsianik/Timaziclaru/Correa (once - 10 Sept) or Salenko/Simkin/Godunova (twice - 12 & 14 Sept).  I'm just popping into this thread to mention a major disappointment - maybe the only real disappointment - that none of our Ballet Alert posters nor the professional reviewers pointed out: 

Compared to Sergei Vikharev's staging for the Mariinsky in 2002, the Berlin-Ratmansky edition cuts the Act IV Pas d'Action coda in half. (Five minutes or so of music played in the St-P coda are excised, including Gamzatti's 28 fouettes, which Tarasova and Osmolkina performed in 2002/03.) On the other hand, Berlin-Ratmansky properly reinstates the "other male soloist" (here, the character Toloragva, dancing Nikolai Legat's steps) into the pas...properly a Pas de Huit (Nikiya's ghost, Gamzatti, Solor, Toloragva and 4 bayadere bridesmaids) and not a Pas de Sept, as in Vikharev.

This was immediately followed by the start of the marriage ceremony (the Great Brahmin joining Solor's and Gamzatti's hands), then the Destruction of the Temple, achieved in about 30 seconds via projections on a scrim. I was prepared for this because almost everyone who reported on the Nov 2018 premiere cited the disappointment of the quick and cheap temple destruction. They were right.  It's almost as if the Berlin troupe decided to make most of the big cuts to Act IV (sc 7), so that the ballet could be achieved in 170 minutes, with one 30-minute intermission. Concerns about costs, including overtime pay for unions? (The Russian opera houses, unlike the rest of the world, don't seem to have this problem; the late Mr. Vikharev dealt with many issues in staging his ballets but not the problem of staging within Union Time.)

On the whole, Berlin-Ratmansky seems to be far more faithful to the Harvard notes than was the St. Petersburg-Vikharev edition, as Vikharev most likely caved into Mariinsky coaches' (and sr dancers?) pressures to retain most of the beloved Soviet-era steps. In Berlin-Ratmansky, the steps for most dances - including the simplified Fire Ritual Dance for 8 priestesses, now in soft slippers - and all of the mime, seem more 19-C-appropriate. The procession that opens the 3rd scene moves only across the stage, all traveling from one wing to the one across the stage (as the elephant always does)...and everybody appears in the parade, even Manu and the two little girls!

 

Not-so-funny "staging bloopers" from one of the recent Berlin performances (the opener on Tuesday, 10 September):

1. Sc 3 - During Nikia's "Danse de Panier" with the basket of flowers, the "snake" literally jumped out of the basket very early, during Nikia's backward-traveling arabesques. Imagine how that messed-up the mime that followed. Of course, as real pros, the Berlin dancers did not blink...but I'm sure that the audience wondered why Nikia clutched her throat (as there was no snake in the basket by then), the Fakir Magdaveya stomped on the rubber snake that had been on the floor for 4 minutes before then, and the Great Bahmin handed Nikia a vial of antidote!

2. Sc 5 ("Shades") - During Nikia's solo with the scarf - and in this version it is indeed danced "solo" with only with a floating scarf, one end sereptitiously connected to a wire, held by someone in the wings - when Nikia performed her releve-turns and lets go of the scarf...the scarf just stayed there, hovering above the stage. It did not go up and off into the wings, as it was to have done. In fact, to make matters worse, it remained in full view above the stage, bouncing up and down, as the prop people backstage continued to tug at it. Poor Xenia Ovsianik/Nikia heard laughter from the audience...as the rest of her solo had to compete with a bouncing, hovering scarf!

 

Happily, these errors did not occur in subsequent performances. :)

 

p.s. Eyes on Evelina Godunova (Gamzatti on 12 and 14th Sept.), who impressed me the most among many wonderful Berlin soloists, during this run. She possesses a crystal clear technique, great musicality and convincing mime, without being campy.

 

 

Edited by Roberta
typo
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Thanks for your post. I very much wish I could see this production or at least that a DVD would be made of it so as to get a taste of it.

And oh dear...to the bobbing scarf. (I have to say the snake jumping out of the bouquet early did make me laugh a little--reading about it anyway. I'm sure it was, as you describe, a test of the dancers' professionalism.)

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I'm guessing that, if it is made available to the public, it will likely be through a livestream. I asked the lady at the Staatsoper's shop if there were any plans to do a livestream of Bayadere and she told me, "So far, no plans." Most of the German opera houses seem to livestream more operas than ballets.  :(

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I can't find a source anywhere, but I swear in one interview I read of Ratmansky's, he strongly implied that he was against releasing filmed versions of these reconstructions and they should be saved for people to savour in person.  Which, given the fact that I can hardly afford to travel very often to see these works, is very frustrating (further more, he actually posted a link to the YouTube of the streaming film of his production of Paquita for the Bavarian State Ballet when they apparently destroyed the sets--which implies on some level he must understand the importance of having an available professionally filmed version of these works). 

It is too bad.  For whatever faults one might find in the choreography reconstruction or performances, I cherish the BluRay of the Vikharev Raymonda--it's honestly one of my most watched ballet discs (and I have a hard time with the major changes made to other productions of Raymonda now that I've been spoiled with one that follows the original scenario, even if performances from the Mariinsky and the Bolshoi have stronger overall dancing).  Similarly, I was thrilled that we finally got a commercial release of the Vikharev/Bolshoi Coppelia, faults and all (I know obviously there are less than legal ways to see their past semi reconstructions like Esmeralda, which seems to be long gone from the repertory, and Le Corsaire, thanks to the live cinema streams and people saving them, but I would love to have official releases.  Perhaps with Le Corsaire being screened in cinemas again in November, they will follow through with a DVD release like they did with Coppelia).

And similarly, now that the Vikharev Sleeping Beauty seems to have a semi permanent (we'll see, I guess...) home at the Mariinsky again, I can only hope that they think to make an official video release of that, as well.  If Ratmansky really is against releasing DVDs of his reconstructions, I doubt the Mariinsky feels the same about their Vikharev reconstruction (we did get an edited Act III of it streaming earlier this year--and of course the full Act III was released years back on a New Year's Eve Gala disc). 

No matter what one thinks about the pros and cons of these reconstructions, I think for a myriad reasons that it's genuinely important to have good commercial releases of them to document them (I am sure that the theatres, at least, have filmed copies of them, but...)  And it will make me feel less guilty for watching shaky phone camera footage :P

Roberta, thanks for your report!  You said: " On the whole, Berlin-Ratmansky seems to be far more faithful to the Harvard notes than was the St. Petersburg-Vikharev edition, as Vikharev most likely caved into Mariinsky coaches' (and sr dancers?) pressures to retain most of the beloved Soviet-era steps. "

I thought Vikharev even owned up to this--that, even much more so than with Sleeping Beauty for whatever reason, there was far more resistance to changing the established Soviet choreography in his Bayadere. 

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On 11/7/2018 at 1:44 PM, cubanmiamiboy said:

The other important issue is to actually bring the original libretto back..the proper story with the real ending. Fake endings do jeopardize classic works-(perfect example with Andersen's The Little Mermaid, where her original suicide is becoming lost in popular folk culture after Disney's changes.)

I have to comment on this.  I am OK with changes for different mediums, etc.  As much as I love Anderson's Little Mermaid, it's so different from the Disney version anyway--an unhappy ending in Disney's version would make zero sense (maybe they could have her commit suicide to a reprise of "Under the Sea" 😉 ).  And, speaking of ballets, have you seen La Esmeralda?  Do you know how Notre Dame de Paris ends?  😉 (Of course it's true that Victor Hugo himself had already written the libretto of an opera based on his work which was a hit, though now forgotten, which similarly had a happy ending.)

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49 minutes ago, EricMontreal said:

I can't find a source anywhere, but I swear in one interview I read of Ratmansky's, he strongly implied that he was against releasing filmed versions of these reconstructions and they should be saved for people to savour in person.  Which, given the fact that I can hardly afford to travel very often to see these works, is very frustrating (further more, he actually posted a link to the YouTube of the streaming film of his production of Paquita for the Bavarian State Ballet when they apparently destroyed the sets--which implies on some level he must understand the importance of having an available professionally filmed version of these works). 
 

This reminds me of comments made by Jerome Robbins, viz., that nothing could replace the experience of seeing dance in the theater, so he resisted televising or recording his ballets after a few early attempts (e.g., the televised show in 1980 of excerpts from DAAG). Sure, it would be great if we could all get to the theater whenever we wanted, anywhere in the world, and they were performing things we wanted to see. But that's just not reality for almost all of us on the planet.

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https://www.nypl.org/about/divisions/theatre-film-and-tape-archive/access

1 hour ago, California said:

This reminds me of comments made by Jerome Robbins, viz., that nothing could replace the experience of seeing dance in the theater, so he resisted televising or recording his ballets after a few early attempts (e.g., the televised show in 1980 of excerpts from DAAG). Sure, it would be great if we could all get to the theater whenever we wanted, anywhere in the world, and they were performing things we wanted to see. But that's just not reality for almost all of us on the planet.

My background is in musical theatre, and in New York there's been a system where shows get filmed (for the most part) and are viewable for educational and research reasons at TOFT, NYPL's Theatre Film and Tape Archive.  It goes back to some amazing works--when I was writing about the original Hal Prince/Michael Bennett production of the Stephen Sondheim/George Furth musical Company, from 1970, I was able to go and view a video of the original staging (albeit shot on tour in Washington) and have some sense of what I was writing about. 

These archives, BTW, are easy to view for anyone interested--there is a lot of Blanchine video there, for example.  You need a valid NYPL library card, but one is easy to get, even for international students like myself. 

However, some directors back when it was being established did not approve of it.  Bob Fosse refused to have any of his shows filmed for the archives, although they ended up including audience recorded bootlegs of his final musical, the flop Big Deal, as well as his revival of his original staging of Sweet Charity, and Jerome Robbins, as you mention, was against filming his work, including his Broadway retrospective, Jerome Robbins' Broadway--which also exists in the archives in "bootleg" prints.

All of this causes me to shake my head.  I have no right to tell a creator that they shouldn't have their work preserved, except...  I think that they should have their work preserved.  I suppose there's the worry about plagiarism, but I think that is already going on, in an unfortunate way, in the dance world.  I think the greater worry is that either original works or such great recreations simply get lost, without a recording. 

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On 11/8/2018 at 12:42 PM, Mashinka said:

Having just watched her version for the RB, I consider it a dismal thing with so many of the usual elements missing.  Where is the drum dance?  where's Manu and her pot.  No parrots, no elephant.  A betrothal party so sparsely populated you wonder if the relatives of the tiger that Solor killed earlier have gone on the rampage.   Above all we're eight Bayaderes short going down the ramp,  An ineffectual  last act viewed through a scrim is no substitute for the feast of opulence that the Russians give us, including Vikharev's version.

When the National Ballet of Ukraine performed Makarova's version, it included 32 shades and the drum dance, perhaps others. So evidently she wasn't completely opposed to the idea, if the company requested these elements and had a sufficiently large corps. I don't know how it's done at the Stanislavsky.

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19 hours ago, EricMontreal said:

I have to comment on this.  I am OK with changes for different mediums, etc.  As much as I love Anderson's Little Mermaid, it's so different from the Disney version anyway--an unhappy ending in Disney's version would make zero sense (maybe they could have her commit suicide to a reprise of "Under the Sea" 😉 ).  And, speaking of ballets, have you seen La Esmeralda?  Do you know how Notre Dame de Paris ends?  😉 (Of course it's true that Victor Hugo himself had already written the libretto of an opera based on his work which was a hit, though now forgotten, which similarly had a happy ending.)

Yes...I know the original "La Esmeralda" libretto. Re: "The Little Mermaid", it could be that I grew up not only reading the original fairy tales, but also watching a beautiful Russian cartoon from 1960 that is faithful to Anderson. Disney's version came up in my adulthood, and because it sort of erased the original-(ask around to millennials)- I felt it like a bombastic fake. Same with Swan Lake double suicide. Whole generations of ballet goers, principally in Russia, do not know it. Russian Bayaderes case is different.. more like an omission than a change. 

 

Edited by cubanmiamiboy
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It's a shame that the cuts/shortenings in Berlin-Ratmansky (compared to StP-Vikharev) take place at the very end because "the last thing seen is the first thing remembered." Other than those slight disappointments at the end, I give Berlin-Ratmansky five stars!

 

The deep cuts to the Pas d'Action's Coda (not just Gamzatti's fouettees but many other segment/steps, such as enchainements danced by trios made up of bridesmaids and the "Nikolai Legat cavalier" plus a final "run on pointe" up to the footlights by Gamzatti) are all  outlined by Vikharev's associate, Pavel Gershenzon, in the Fall 2002 issue of Ballet Review...four pages detailing every number and segment-of-a-number recovered by Vikharev in 2001/2002 through various sources (not just the Stepanov notes but scribbles in the margins of scores, contemporary reviews, dancer recollections)...but Vikharev and his team weren't able to execute all of those findings. (EricMontreal - yes, I remember an interview in which Vikharev lamented not being able to stage all of his Bayadere findings.) 

In case anyone was wondering, I carried a hard-copy of that Ballet Review article to the Berlin Staatsopen Unter den Linden...true balletomane! Oh, I will miss Ballet Review for those sorts of analytic articles about the great reconstructions. I'm so hoping that at least one more Ballet Review may include an article by Ratmansky about his Berlin Bayadere, just as he wrote a great one on Harlequinade, published in the current issue. :beg:

Edited by Roberta
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