Article by Lewis Segal

[Meliss]

I don't have this article by Lewis Segal on Godunov in the original - it's a translation from Russian:

Lewis Segal, ballet critic: "The first time I saw him was when he made a mistake in the pas de deux in Don Quixote. And he insisted that the orchestra return to the same place and danced without mistakes.  He did it brilliantly, and the audience just roared. The audience fell madly in love with him".

I saw this performance by Godunov on video, and I saw the mistake - he jumped up, landing after a leap. But how he stopped the orchestra and danced it again was not in the video. Was it just not filmed? Has anyone ever heard of this? It was Godunov's debut with ABT in Chicago in February 1980.

[volcanohunter]

Sometimes a performance is edited if it isn't being broadcast live.

There was a notorious incident during a live telecast of Luisa Miller from the Metropolitan Opera when a heckler shouted "Brava Maria Callas!" just as Renata Scotto was about to sing her first aria. When the performance was issued on DVD many decades later, somehow the heckler had been edited out.

There was an even more notorious incident when Roberto Alagna was booed at La Scala on live television after his opening aria in Aida. Alagna walked off stage, at which point his understudy came out of the wings in street clothes to continue the opera. When the DVD was released, it was a complete performance with Alagna, filmed as a backup at a closed performance a few days prior.

Sometimes live performances are edited for time, as when Tiler Peck performed the "Fascinatin' Rhythm" solo from Who Cares? when Patricia McBride received the Kennedy Center Honor. There the edit was concealed by a reaction shot from fellow honorees Al Green and Sting. Understandably, everyone was agog by Peck's performance. 

And sometimes there's nothing that can be done to fix a live telecast, as that time when Kevin McKenzie came out on stage for the final scene of Romeo and Juliet still wearing his gray sweatpants. It seemed to give the startled look of Natalia Makarova's Juliet when she saw Romeo lying dead a double meaning. I remember that when McKenzie removed the sweatpants for their bow it actually struck me as silly, as though that could somehow erase his mistake.

 

Edited September 11 by volcanohunter
video link

[Meliss]

 

17 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

Sometimes a performance is edited if it isn't being broadcast live.

Thank you. I just wanted to clarify - does it really happen that someone stops the orchestra and redoes what they have done? After all, they usually dance again when the audience calls for an encore...

[volcanohunter]

No, it is extremely rare for a dancer to stop the music and start again. It happens even more rarely that they perform an encore. Personally, I've never seen it happen, though I have seen opera singers do it a few times. Dancing something again would be too exhausting. A dancer needs more than a few seconds to recover. 

Antoinette Sibley told a story about the premiere of Frederick Ashton's Thaïs pas de deux, which was greeted by rapturous ovations. It's a gorgeous piece, and Sibley and Anthony Dowell were a partnership of incomparable beauty and compatability. Then Ashton asked the audience whether they would like to see it again. "We could have killed him," she said.

 

[California]

1 hour ago, volcanohunter said:

No, it is extremely rare for a dancer to stop the music and start again. It happens even more rarely that they perform an encore. Personally, I've never seen it happen, though I have seen opera singers do it a few times. Dancing something again would be too exhausting. A dancer needs more than a few seconds to recover. 

Antoinette Sibley told a story about the premiere of Frederick Ashton's Thaïs pas de deux, which was greeted by rapturous ovations. It's a gorgeous piece, and Sibley and Anthony Dowell were a partnership of incomparable beauty and compatability. Then Ashton asked the audience whether they would like to see it again. "We could have killed him," she said.

Reportedly, Cynthia Gregory and Nureyev did an encore of the black swan in 1979.  This was reported here on Ballet Alert in 2008 by ToePrints

 

• Senior Member

I am new to Ballet Talk and just read this forum about Cynthia Gregory. I realize it is a few years old, but I just wanted to share my memory of Cynthia.

I saw her dance Swan Lake in 1979 (April 27) with Rudolf Nureyev at the Met in NY. It was the most phenomenal performance I have ever seen! Rudi was 41 and Cynthia was in her mid-thirties, I guess. They did an encore of Act III - the audience cheered and whistled so much that they just had to do the encore. The encore was actually better than the original pas de deux! The applause was so thunderous, I expected the building to implode. After acknowledging the applause (the crowd expected a second encore), Rudi just wiped his brow and mimed "no more." The two of them were just thrilled, and it showed. Cynthia was a sensational Odile, so alluring and dramatic.

Edited September 11 by California

[Meliss]

16 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

No, it is extremely rare for a dancer to stop the music and start again. It happens even more rarely that they perform an encore. Personally, I've never seen it happen

Yes, of course, this should happen very rarely, but Lewis Segal couldn't have made it up! So it really happened.

[Helene]

There is no doubt that it happened. 

The only performance tapes that are documentaries are those filmed/taped by companies for their libraries (unedited) and pirates with a full stage view, if you can trust the pirate who made them, and only if technical difficulties or running out of film/batteries, etc. don't interrupt filming.  Commercial film/video, inserts into news stories, etc. are edited for many reasons, including time, especially when physical media was an issue, continuity, etc. Interruptions would almost certainly be edited out.

[volcanohunter]

Usually when dancers make a mistake, slip, trip or fall, they simply get up and soldier on, unless they've been badly injured and simply can't do it. Most of the time they will try to push through to the end of a performance even in the event of a fairly serious injury. I've seen all these things.

But as for encores, it would never occur to me to demand one from dancers, for the reasons Sibley mentioned: "We could hardly walk, let alone breathe...We had to go right back and do the whole bloody thing all over again." At most I think the audience can demand that a dancer come back on stage to take another bow.

During a grand pas de deux it's my policy to applaud the adage for as long as possible, even if I didn't enjoy it, to give the male dancer a few extra seconds to recover before his solo variation. It's not my place to make unreasonable demands of dancers from the audience. 

[Meliss]

21 hours ago, Helene said:

There is no doubt that it happened. 

And how, in your opinion, does this characterize Godunov? Ambitious, confident? Something else?

[Meliss]

7 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

Usually when dancers make a mistake, slip, trip or fall, they simply get up and soldier on,

Yes, that's how they behave. And Godunov - for some reason not in this way)).

[Helene]

Not knowing why he acted that way, I have no opinion.  My only thought is the fact that this is highly unusual behavior in live performance.  

[volcanohunter]

There are theatrical concepts such as the "fourth wall" and "suspension of disbelief" (which Leonard Bernstein preferred to call "pretending belief"). Ballet plays fast and loose with the first, by inserting bows after set pieces. At their root, these are practical, to allow dancers a moment of recovery after intense anaerobic activity. However ballet goes all in where pretending belief is concerned.

There is a sense that deliberately violating these practices would diminish the illusions and atmosphere of the theatrical experience. The sort of thing that may be normal in the rehearsal studio is not transferred to performance. I remember being instinctively aghast when during a performance of Balanchine's Symphony in C one of the most beautiful dancers I have ever seen exhaled conspicuously prior to a very difficult pirouette sequence in the third movement. Had he done it in the studio, I wouldn't have blinked an eye. But to allow the audience to see this moment of intense concentration and obvious preparation violated ballet's rules about never exposing exertion to the audience. I saw something worse in the second section of Balanchine's "Diamonds," when the principal woman stood on pointe balancing in an à la seconde position, and after she reached her full extension, she tilted her pelvis sideways and cranked up her leg even more. Female dancers, unfortunately, do this kind of thing in class all the time, but they shouldn't give the audience this additional crotch view while standing center stage in a tiara and white tutu. (Neither of these incidents happened at New York City Ballet, so the exigencies of dancing Balanchine were not native to the dancers.)

I think that dancers almost never, ever stop a performance and start again because it transfers the imperfect world of rehearsal, which literally implies repetition, into the illusory world of the stage. It's why their instinct is to "save" the situation as quickly and unobtrusively as possible in order to keep the theatrical illusion intact.

[Fraildove]

And speaking as a former dancer, now teacher, and parent of a young up and coming male dancer, I would be so angry if this behavior ever occurred in a performance I was in, in an audience I was ever in, or if my students or my son ever had the arrogance to do this. Diva behavior has no place in ballet on the stage. Nor off,  although it it’s more forgivable (only slightly) in studio or rehearsals…

[Meliss]

On 9/13/2024 at 5:39 PM, Helene said:

Not knowing why he acted that way, I have no opinion.  My only thought is the fact that this is highly unusual behavior in live performance.  

Thank you.

[Meliss]

19 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

I think that dancers almost never, ever stop a performance and start again because it transfers the imperfect world of rehearsal, which literally implies repetition, into the illusory world of the stage. It's why their instinct is to "save" the situation as quickly and unobtrusively as possible in order to keep the theatrical illusion intact.

But the audience, as Barnes writes, liked it! Why would that be?)

[Meliss]

16 hours ago, Fraildove said:

And speaking as a former dancer, now teacher, and parent of a young up and coming male dancer, I would be so angry if this behavior ever occurred in a performance I was in, in an audience I was ever in, or if my students or my son ever had the arrogance to do this. Diva behavior has no place in ballet on the stage. Nor off,  although it it’s more forgivable (only slightly) in studio or rehearsals…

It's cool, but not for every dancer. Not everyone can do something that usually outrages the audience, so that they are delighted)).

[volcanohunter]

Sometimes audiences fall for cheap tricks.

[Fraildove]

Volcanohunter, exactly. 

[Helene]

Sometimes audiences can be delighted simply because something is unexpected and feels spontaneous, and they feel like they are witnessing something unrehearsed and human.  Occasionally an opera singer will encore an aria -- usually a tenor -- during a performance.  The first time in a run, it can be a shock.  When it's expected for the rest of the performances, or in other productions, then it becomes a bad habit, in my opinion.  I know I'm always ambivalent at the end of concert program, because  I wish there was some way of conveying "I'm standing because I really appreciated your concert and want you to be able to get offstage" vs. "More, more, more, more."

There is a much-told story (interviews and in writing) about how during NYCB's first tour to the Soviet Union in 1961, the audience was clamoring for a repeat of one of Edward Villella's solos.  He said he wasn't sure what to do, but he did it.  (He couldn't have done it without the conductor.)  Balanchine never seemed to forgive him enitrely, although his direct animosity towards Villella did dissipate.

Richard Wagner did have a point.

[Drew]

Sometimes unexpected strange moments land memorably--and make for an exciting if unusual evening. Especially in a live art form that is performed by big personalities. This was the era of Nureyev (cough) and Cynthia Gregory smoking a cigarette during Grand Pas Classique (she was protesting the way she was cast)! Of course, demanding to start over a variation in Agon  would be appalling --grounds for firing as far as I'm concerned--but I can't get quite as outraged about Don Q pas de deux especially danced outside the full length ballet. I don't approve of what Godunov did, would dislike a star dancer who made that sort of thing a habit, but I bet if I had been in the theater that one night I would have enjoyed the ride and applauded wildly.

 

Edited September 14 by Drew

[volcanohunter]

During the Metropolitan Opera's centennial gala, Kiri Te Kanawa momentarily got lost in her aria, one that she had sung many, many times. She faked it for a few seconds until, presumably, the prompter put her back on track. But she didn't stop for an instant and certainly didn't ask for a redo. That was genuinely spontaneous, human and charming, demonstrating that even a superstar soprano of such luminously precise singing could make a mistake. She showed real trooper spirit to keep going, no matter what. I also don't think that she ever tried to suppress the recording with her little flub, even though it was televised and issued on video, then DVD for posterity.

Sans mistake:

 

Edited September 15 by volcanohunter
video links

[Helene]

I'm sure it's happened, but I don't remember reading about a singer who stopped a performance for a do-over because they thought they could sing it better 😀.

I've seen a singer start again for a do-over, albeit twice in 50+ years, but both times as a stand-alone soloist, once with orchestra, and once in a recital with piano.

 

[volcanohunter]

My strangest experience in that regard happened during a performance of Rigoletto. It was the quartet in the last act, and suddenly the tenor stood as though frozen center stage. A thin voice came out of the prompter's box singing "Bella figlia dell'amore..." and after a few seconds the tenor came to and picked up the melody. I was, frankly, astonished that even a tenor could have forgotten that tune, but the performance didn't stop for a second.

[Helene]

I think all performers have moments where they completely forget where they are, whether the words, the music, or the steps.  Also, when a performer isn't familiar with the staging, or a prop is missing or in the wrong place, or a backstage light is out, or has a new colleague, a second of distraction can look like they've forgotten the music, when it's what baseball players at least used to call "vapor lock."  It might last a second, and no one else might know, or it may be long enough for the audience to see it.

Even though I understand this practically, this still astonishes me:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CqwSLlRIVmg/

And that's not even trying to learn a ballet during dinner break and having your partner talk you through the piece.

[lmspear]

7 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

During the Metropolitan Opera's centennial gala, Kiri Te Kanawa momentarily got lost in her aria, one that she had sung many, many times. She faked it for a few seconds until, presumably, the prompter put her back on track. But she didn't stop for an instant and certainly didn't ask for a redo. That was genuinely spontaneous, human and charming, demonstrating that even a superstar soprano of such luminously precise singing could make a mistake. She showed real trooper spirit to keep going, no matter what.

Tangent:  Encore by Proxy

This reminded me of a solo concert by Barbara Cook that I saw approximately 20 years ago.  Well into her 70's, she told many anecdotes about her relationships with the songs associated with her career. Cook cited Te Kanawa as an inspiration, imagining Te Kanawa's voice coming out of her mouth when she felt unsure of her voice at any given performance.  She expressed no regrets at giving up Glitter and Be Gay from Candide to younger singers, but still enjoyed singing Ice Cream from She Loves Me, which she then performed beautifully. Cook giggled, proclaimed herself pleased, sang the song's climax again, and thanked Dame Kiri. It was charming.  https://youtu.be/eB2kjY22U28?si=rmgORUENVOy7kfdc