Dancers' ballets

[Mel Johnson]

Here's one! There are actor's plays, which actors love, but the audiences can't fathom, or maybe even stand, but what about ballets? What about those that dancers love to dance, but the audiences tend to be left cold? Or even hostile? Now, Sacre is arguable, because the dancers left records of not enjoying it very much, but the audience sure reacted! But Forsythe's "Square Deal" is definitely a keeper in this category - the dancers had a blast during the improv sections. But the audience made it The Ballet You Love to Hate! Granted, this may be a catalogue of short-lived works, but it could include things that didn't speak to anybody at first, but were left in repertoire until the latent merits emerged! What occurs to anyone?

[kfw]

In Repertory in Review Goldner writes that while dancers, especially those dancing the solos, have always loved Divertimento No.15, according to Denby it took ten years to become popular and the dancers themselves "fought to retain it." Hard to imagine, isn't it? That was my new favorite ballet the first time I saw it.

[glebb]

Last years new Julia Adam, 'Crossing', for Joffrey was a hit with the dancers. Not only the dancers in the cast, but most of the dancers in the company, if not all.

You can always tell a dancers ballet, when people that might have a free hour watch a rehearsal to which they are not called instead of getting out of the building.

I'm not sure if it was the ballet itself or just where it was placed on the program, but it was not a big hit with the audience, yet it was a ballet that the company loved.

[Mel Johnson]

"D15" is definitely a keeper in this category. I recall being left tepid by it, back at City Center, but it grew on me, especially when it hit the "new house" and was in scale to its dimensions! Having not seen "Crossing" I can't comment much, but you've mentioned some good criteria for being able to tell a "dancers' ballet". Fortunately, most of the time, if the dancers love it, audiences tend to, too, but I'm looking for the exceptions. Good choices, both, so far.

[Paul Parish]

30 years ago when I was a student in England and going to t he Royal Ballet a lot, the word I got from people who knew dancers -- one of my fellow Rhodes Scholars knew Monica Mason and took me backstage to meet her -- was that everybody in hte company, all hte dancers were crazy about Dances at a Gathering and were in hte wings or out front in droves for every performance.... I certainly came under its spell at that time, when it was danced by -- oh Lord, what a cast -- Mason ,Sibley, DOwell, Seymour, Lesley Collier, David Wall, Nureyev.... I only saw it a couple of times, but I was entranced by it, and it was easy to believe that dancers loved it....

[Leigh Witchel]

A dancer's perspective of a ballet is of course unique, and I think based on kinetic impulse. Dancers like a ballet because they like the way it feels.

On the opposite end of the scale I think there are great ballets that many dancers loathe until they get to watch them from out front. The first one that comes to mind is Nijinska's Les Noces.

[Mel Johnson]

Paul, your anecdote of "Dances at a Gathering" put me in mind of years ago when I was in the lobby of the State Theater buying tickets, and Starr Danias (later Joffrey) and Linda Merrill (later Merrill Ashley...oh, you know the rest;) ) appeared at the head of the theater left steps in kimonos, having just come out from a rehearsal (they were apprentices at the time), and both signalled me, "c'mon in!" "We want to hear what you have to say about this new ballet - just watch!" I got into the auditorium quietly, and sat rapt, watching the first Valse Brilliante for the ensemble, which appears partway into the ballet. I was truly taken away to other places, other days by what I saw until the final assembly and gaze across the sky and dispersal, then told Starr and Linda after that I thought what I had seen was either too long, or not long enough! When I finally saw the finished product, a few nights after opening night, it was just right!

[Paul Parish]

I don't know how to thank you, Mel -- and we need to thank Alexandra for creating a site where we can share impressions like these..... how I wish I'd been there, but I have to say, reading your post, I DID feel like I was there.... some ballets have their own worlds, DAnces at a Gathering has its own air, it's SO tenuous, part of hte pleasure is in that incredible feeling you have that you DON'T KNOW HOW THEY"RE MAKING YOU FEEL THIS, but you know you're breathing differently and you know you've been taken somewhere....

[rg]

buried in your anecdote, mel, is the fact that starr d. was an apprentice w/ NYCB. i didn't know this.

also i hadn't realized that the company had apprenctices in those days.

do you recall what roles these two dancers were rehearsing at the time. it would have been spring, not winter, so not Nutcracker.

maybe everyone else knew this, but i wasn't aware of starr d's ever having a connection to nycb. etc.

[Ari]

Also, I remember a radio interview with Merrill Ashley in which she said she never apprenticed, but was taken right into the company.

[Mel Johnson]

Maybe she was taken straight into the company, but she was dancing in early C in those days, and everybody in that class was understood to be apprenticed, whether compensated, or not. Also, NYCB has had apprentices going back into the City Center days. I imagine the program was vastly different then from what it is now. Starr was an SAB product from 'way back. I think I first saw her dance as a Candy Cane back at City Center, now that I go plumbing my memory for details.

(PS. I was so stunned at being invited into a Robbins rehearsal by anybody, I didn't ask what they were working on there. I suspect it was some larger work, where they would get "faded in" through the corps. I know they did this with apprentices in Nutcracker, and they could easily have been working in Don Quixote or even A Midsummer Night's Dream.)