cubanmiamiboy Posted July 16, 2018 Share Posted July 16, 2018 2 hours ago, canbelto said: I also think Olesya Novikova is a classicist. Not many ballerinas can pull this sort of thing off the way she does: Wow...what a beautiful piece and performance. Thanks for the uploading. Link to comment
Helene Posted July 16, 2018 Share Posted July 16, 2018 And if an audience member believes that a conductor is distorting the temping and/or shape of the music, they might post about it and/or not go to hear that conductor again. The biggest difference between dance and music is that for classical music, the is a score, which is a printed record that can be recovered, unlike the vast majority of ballet, which is passed down and sometimes resembles a long game of telephone. Link to comment
Laurent Posted July 16, 2018 Share Posted July 16, 2018 Novikova used to be a dancing machine, she is not, however, a paragon of academically pure dance; artistically, I find her often remarkably unappealing, like in her Sleeping Beauty in March. Link to comment
Mashinka Posted July 16, 2018 Share Posted July 16, 2018 3 hours ago, Helene said: And if an audience member believes that a conductor is distorting the temping and/or shape of the music, they might post about it and/or not go to hear that conductor again. Exactly, and I feel the same with dancers that habitually distort a familiar ballet score. I stay away. Link to comment
cubanmiamiboy Posted July 16, 2018 Share Posted July 16, 2018 14 hours ago, Mashinka said: Exactly, and I feel the same with dancers that habitually distort a familiar ballet score. I stay away. I usually hear that conductors adapt to the demands of dancers, although there are stories in which conductors have stood up against it. In an infamous one a Cuban ballerina was calling for an excruciatingly slow tempo in the white swan Adagio during rehearsal and the conductor stopped and, to the question of why he was going against her choice, he angrily screamed from the pit "because that's how Tchaikovsky composed it!!". There are segments that remain famously unchanged in ballet in certain companies. Kitri's variation with passes at the Bolshoi is one of them. I haven't seen one instance in which the tempo have slowed down by any ballerina there. It is famously fast, and I think Struchkova set the difficult bar for generations to come. @ 1:12 Link to comment
volcanohunter Posted July 17, 2018 Share Posted July 17, 2018 17 hours ago, cubanmiamiboy said: I usually hear that conductors adapt to the demands of dancers Sometimes this turns into a vicious circle. I once talked with a Swan Queen after a performance in which the lakeside scenes had been painfully slow and asked about it, because it was atypical for her. It turns out that she, too, had asked the conductor why he had been conducting so slowly. "I was following you," he answered, to which she replied, "But I was following you!" And so the music kept getting slower and slower... Link to comment
cubanmiamiboy Posted July 18, 2018 Share Posted July 18, 2018 9 hours ago, Quinten said: But I was following YOU! A conversation very familiar among (conductorless) chamber musicians. In performances that require collaboration, an excess of deference can be a real problem. There are various techniques we use to speed up or slow down to get back to the agreed-upon tempo, but in the heat of the moment those attempts can be unsuccessful. Some people have a rock-solid absolute sense of tempo (most conductors, obviously), but to many musicians it's quite relative and we have to guard against being led astray by our perceptions in the moment. I imagine it's the same for dancers. Where did I read that Spessivtzeva had to had someone on the wings clapping to keep her on tempo, given that she had a tendency to get off it quite easy...? Link to comment
CharlieH Posted July 19, 2018 Author Share Posted July 19, 2018 (edited) 20 hours ago, macnellie said: What about Sofiane Sylve? Exciting ballerina who always pushed the boundaries when at NYCB! Hence, for me, the very opposite of a prim and pure classicist. RB’s Sarah Lamb, at least in her early competitions days, was very much a classicist in the making. Over the years, she seems to have maintained her cool refinement. Her Aurora in cinemas four years ago was pure classical joy. Someone mentioned POB’s Myriam Ould-Braham on another thread. Yes! Edited July 19, 2018 by CharlieH Link to comment
ECat Posted August 6, 2019 Share Posted August 6, 2019 I am coming to this conversation quite late but I'd like to throw a nomination out for Marianela Nunez. Link to comment
sandik Posted August 6, 2019 Share Posted August 6, 2019 6 minutes ago, ECat said: I am coming to this conversation quite late but I'd like to throw a nomination out for Marianela Nunez. I've never seen her live, but her cinema appearances have been lovely. Link to comment
ECat Posted August 6, 2019 Share Posted August 6, 2019 @sandik I have not seen her live either. Just many beautiful cinema appearances and Youtube videos. Link to comment
variated Posted August 7, 2019 Share Posted August 7, 2019 Nunez is lovely but I would say that the real classicist of the current RB is Akane Takada Link to comment
Syzygy Posted August 13, 2019 Share Posted August 13, 2019 Late to the party, but for my money: Maia Makhateli. I’d argue that all of those classical ideals — cleanliness, musicality, genetics, turn-out, etc. etc. — with Maia they are just…*chef’s kiss.* (And the fact that she can do anything and is, most importantly, not a bore is a rare and enjoyable cherry on top.) Link to comment
ECat Posted August 13, 2019 Share Posted August 13, 2019 @variated I have not seen enough of Akane Takada but I imagine that she is a beautiful dancer indeed! 36 minutes ago, Syzygy said: Late to the party, but for my money: Maia Makhateli. I’d argue that all of those classical ideals — cleanliness, musicality, genetics, turn-out, etc. etc. — with Maia they are just…*chef’s kiss.* (And the fact that she can do anything and is, most importantly, not a bore is a rare and enjoyable cherry on top.) Oh I didn't even think of her and I must agree that she is indeed a great classicist! Great choice! Link to comment
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