Quotable Quotes

[pherank]

I like flaws and feel more comfortable around people who have them. I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.
--Augusten Burroughs
(found on Vanessa Zahorian's Facebook site)

[bart]

.... and yet who ever knows any Balanchine ballet?

Context: Alastair Macaulay review, NYTimes, 9/26/13: "Amid a fall dance season richly packed with significant events cross the New York dance map, a single program at New York City Ballet stands out like a summit. All four of its items are by George Balnchine, and all are well known -- and yet who ever knows any Balanchine ballet?

[pherank]

"I can see in the Soviet style an extension of the way I was trained, but I think what happened here in ballet in our century is much more interesting than what happened there…Somehow, in Russia, ballet has become the exhibition of dancing. Soviet dancers no longer want to show the story or the mood so much as they want to show their technique -- this one can turn three times in the air, lifting both his legs, and that one can do something else. But it‘s no longer expression; it‘s exhibitionism."

-- Alexandera Danilova, 1988

[diane]

"...ballet has become the exhibition of dancing. Soviet dancers no longer want to show the story or the mood so much as they want to show their technique -- this one can turn three times in the air, lifting both his legs, and that one can do something else. But it‘s no longer expression; it‘s exhibitionism."

Nice one! This appears to me to be the case for many in the west, now, too.

-d-

[DanielBenton]

Erick Hawkins once said (to paraphrase him): "If all you're doing is self- expressing, then you might as well just get off the stage".

[sandik]

What a pleasure to think about Hawkins!

[pherank]

From Mindy Aloff's Dance Anecdotes, another one about Danilova:

(On the passing of Balanchine)
Karin von Aroldingen was perhaps his greatest comfort: she attended him devotedly and even at his lowest moments he always recognized her step in the corridor before she entered his room. Barbara Horgan speaks particularly of Maria and Choura. Maria was more outwardly upset than anyone, “near hysteria” each time she left his room and always in tears when she telephoned from Chicago. But Danilova was the most affecting of all. She came only once to the hospital, and when she left his room she said, “I won't come here again - I have said goodbye to him.” Watching her walk slowly away, Barbara Horgan felt a great sorrow for Choura, realizing that she was losing her oldest and dearest friend.
- Moira Shearer

[For those that don't know: when Danilova passed away in 1997, she was buried at Oakland Cemetery, Sag Harbor NY near the grave of George Balanchine]

During an interview with a group of American dance critics who traveled to the Soviet Union in 1983, the late Russian dance historian Vera Krasovskaya recalled the first night of the New York City Ballet’s first appearance in St. Petersburg, in 1962:

"Balanchine opened in Serenade. And I thought how sorry I was that I had to stay for more ballets. I just wanted to walk along the Neva and think about all the beautiful things I’d seen."
-Aloff

[the Neva being the St. Petersburg area's iconic river]

[bart]

From Judith Flanders' review of the Royal Ballet's (Carlos Acosta's) new production of Don Quixote, in the Times:Literary Supplement.

Dance doesn't need moving scenery; dance is moving scenery.

[sandik]

Oh, that's nice and tight!

[pherank]

"Each art is only powerful in its own domain, and once it seeks to embody the principles of other art it is doomed to failure. The Eclecticism of the later phases of the Ballet is its greatest danger."

--Tamara Karsavina

[pherank]

"In my dreams," she said not long before her death, "I am not crippled. In my dreams, I dance."
—Louise Brooks

["Brooks began her entertainment career as a dancer, joining the Denishawn modern dance company in Los Angeles (whose members included founders Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn, as well as a young Martha Graham"]

[diane]

That is very dear, pherank.

I am sure there are many people who feel very similarly; even if they are not crippled. (just being old and unable to do all those things we used to take for granted will sometimes cause us to have tantalizing glimpses in our dreams of what has past)

-d-

[leonid17]

Rudolf Nureyev, Interview in the Paris daily, Libération, January 6th 1989, with Michel Cressole

"I would like one out of the five years at the Opera School to be devoted to Bournonville. His long sentences, his complex, unusual steps, must be entirely familiar to those who would become a choreographer."

Original text: "Je voudrais aussi qu'une année sur cinq à l'Ecole soit consacrée à Bournonville. Ses longues phrases, ses pas compliqués, inhabituels, doivent être connus en totalité pour être chorégraphe".

In a much different context.

Much to the horror of Rudi fans (who had exited through the back door and was returning to enter the stage door after a performance of the “Shades scene” in Mr Nureyev's edition, I approached him as he strutted up the middle of the street and asked him why he had changed the variation for Merle Park.

He ignored me. I asked him a second time. He ignored me. I asked him a third time. He stopped and with hand on hip he said.

“ Eeets therr my dear just except it.”

Thereafter if he saw me he would with a wicked smile mockingly wag his finger at me.

Much later when he was with the Paris Opera, he walked up to the Royal Opera House “Crush Bar” level wrapped in a kind of shawl saw me and gave a warm smile.

It was the last time I saw him.

[diane]

Lovely anecdote, thank you!

-d-

[perichoresis]

All dances are too long.

- Doris Humphrey 

 

I demand of the dance that it reveal the divine in man.

- Doris Humphrey 

 

[sandik]

On 10/24/2019 at 9:43 PM, perichoresis said:

All dances are too long.

- Doris Humphrey

I have a list on my hard drive of sayings and phrases I love -- this is #1.

[perichoresis]

Thank you. Recently found this:

" O Earth,  weigh lightly upon me, I trod so lightly upon thee" Greek Epitaph

" My dancers fall that they might rise"

Martha Graham.

 

 

 

 

[pherank]

Edward Villella quoting Balanchine: "The floor upon which we dance is the music."