Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.In 1966 Balanchine muse Tanaquil Le Clercq published a cookery book called, simply, the Ballet Cook Book. The recipes were contributed by important figures from the ballet world: Frederick Ashton, Suzanne Farrell, Jerome Robbins and the master himself, George Balanchine. Over at Bodies Never Lie they thought it would be fun to recreate some of these dishes, and now on their second instalment they’ve whipped up dishes by another Balanchine muse, Diana Adams.
The recipes Adams chose to share — obviously rooted in her Tennessee upbringing — aren’t what you would expect from a ballerina. Most are high in calories and heavy in sugar, and remarkably few of the entries feature fruits or vegetables. Those of us at the table found it difficult to believe that the svelte Adams ate these dishes often. Her dishes all also looked very similar: Only after serving the meal — which consisted of hush puppies, shrimp bisque, chicken in buttermilk spoonbread, yam pudding, and pecan pie — did we notice that all of the food’s coloring fell somewhere between yellow and brown.
Current New York City Ballet dancer and food enthusiast, Antonio Carmena, was on hand again in the kitchen, and the small team produced Adams’ autumnal dishes.
The meal was ultimately satisfying, but I wasn’t alone in feeling five pounds heavier when I left Susan’s home to trek toward the subway. Tread carefully with this rich menu. Limit your portions, and have a salad for lunch. Or, when going back for second helpings, imagine you’re a leading ballerina ask yourself what Balanchine would have to say.
Go to the Bodies Never Lie blog to see the photos and videos of the evening, but to taste you’ll have to get cooking yourself.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Alessio Carbone is a Premier Danseur at the Paris Opera. He comes from a family of dancers. His father, Giuseppe Carbone, was the director of the company at Milan’s La Scala and his mother, Iride Sauri, was a prima ballerina at the La Fenice theatre in Venice. His sister dances at La Scala and his younger brother is a successful flamenco dancer. He is married to Paris Opera étoile Dorothée Gilbert.
Dance is everywhere in his life, but the Italian magazine Amica had a way for him to experience a new dance emotion, yet something his mother, sister and wife have done for years: wear a tutu.
Except for a brief experience in stilettos and fishnets — dancing in Béjart’s Mandarin Merveilleux — this was to be a first. It was his wife who told him to go for it and not worry about seeming ridiculous, after Carbone was initially perplexed by the project. She was right, the pictures are strong and beautiful.
Among the replies to the 12 questions he was asked about ‘being a woman’ were:
What did you feel wearing a tutu?
I thought of my mother, who stopped dancing when I was 16, and her gentleness. In profile I noticed that we look alike.
Whose body would you like to have?
Gisele Bündchen’s, who knows that she’s beautiful, but knows how to be herself.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.After Roberto Bolle’s Romeo and Juliet with the American Ballet Theatre in New York, Italy’s gossip magazine Chisent their editor Alsonso Signorini to interview him, and photographer Fabrizio Cestari to snap the dancer in various iconic Big Apple locations.
You are among the few Italians who have made it in America. Was it difficult?
It happened naturally. It began in 2007 when I came here with Alessandra Ferri for her ‘addio’ to the stage… I didn’t look for it. Then Bruce Weber contacted me for his book after seeing me in the theatre. And it was the same for the Annie Leibovitz cover of Vogue. It all happened by chance.”
Have you paid for this success?
I have had to give up the nearness of my family with whom I’m very close. At Casale Monferato,where I was born, I had a wonderful infancy. That all changed suddenly… I didn’t want to go to Milan, away from the nest… I lived in a small room in the tiny apartment of an old lady who didn’t like me. I was a solitary child… I quickly grew into a man, which was important for me not only as a person, but for what I do. My life is constructed by discipline. I am disciplined in everything I do. Sometimes I miss distractions, holidays, time with friends. But I can’t allow it. We artists are different from the rest: our training, our art, requires total dedication.
I don’t pretend that this sometimes causes problems for those close to me. My friends and my family have to be understanding and fully behind me. I must always be comletely concentrated on myself and what I do. Those who are near me must adapt to my rhythms. It can’t be otherwise.
I realise that, but I couldn’t live differently. At least while I’m still dancing.I don’t do it for my ego or for narcisism. It’s a fact of life. I’ve learnt to live happily with myself. At times, in the middle of a crowd, I escape. I like to be alone. It is the key to my life.
Have you ever been tempted by the cinema?
I confess I would love to be an actor, I’d be interested in a good role, even a cameo. Darren Aronofsky asked me to be in Black Swan with Natalie Portman, but I had theatre obligations and so it wasn’t possible. I was sorry. But never say never…
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Another day, another cover. After the Chi magazine article a couple of days ago follows a 7-page spread in the equally popular men’s magazine Sportweek, the weekly insert of the sports daily La Gazzetta della Sport. Alessia Cruciani goes for a different tack with her questions, her terminology all coming from the world of football. It works well.
Athletes are famous for taking great care over their look. Would you go on stage with a crest like Beckham?
Once I shaved my hair very short, but I couldn’t do more than that for professionalism. Some dancers have tattoos.
That they then cover on stage?
That they then don’t cover on stage, though they should. A colleague has thirteen!
Have you ever been booed?
It’s never happened. So far.
Have you ever missed a ‘penalty’?
More than once… In Helsinki during Swan Lake I had to jump, turning in the air. I lost my point of reference, put my foot down badly and landed flat on my face!
Are there hard-core fans in the theatre?
Certainly football fans are very passionate, for them it’s a belief, a religion. In the theatre there isn’t the defiant challenge that you get in football, we’re not one against the other. Though, right from the beginning, when I dance at La Scala there’s always been a kind of stadium atmosphere for my shows.
In Italy, and abroad, touring with Bolle & Friends to open-air theatres has created an enthusiasm very different to that which you normally see for ballet. My ‘ultras’ — the Bollerini who have been following me for over 10 years — have even taken banners into La Scala, and wave small lights. I like it, it makes the theatre more lively. Anyway, the audiences are changing, they’re younger.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.After various questions about how dancers are paid much less than footballers, how sponsors can’t put their logos on ballet costumes and sets, and an extraordinary story of a Japanese fan who walked out of her job so that she could wait outside the theatre each day to see Bolle, the interviewer asks him if he has seen football, and if footballers come to the ballet.
I’ve been only once, to see Milan–Juventus at San Siro. Beckham was playing, and a few days later he came with Victoria to see me dance at La Scala. He liked it a lot. I think he enjoyed the ballet more than I enjoyed football. The ballet was Apollo, so very athletic. Shevchenko came to see me in London.
Roberto Bolle will be taking his Bolle & Friends to the Verona Arena on July 23. The €160 tickets for the best seats are sold out, and only some €40 unnumbered places (to sit on the marble steps) are left. So maybe San Siro is the next stop?
To dance in a stadium would be nice, certainly! I’m thinking about it. It’s an ambitious project, but I’d like to do it. It needs someone who believes in it to support the event.
The football sponsors?
He doesn’t answer the question, just smiles and sighs.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Sylive Guillem will be in Venice tomorrow to receive from the Biennale the Leone d’oro (Golden Lion) for “having redesigned the form of the dancer, defying the laws of physics”.
I could have ended up like a cork bobbing along on the water at the whim of the currents. Instead I preferred to take the helm and steer my life into the open sea and its storms.
When Nureyev nominated me étoile at the Paris Opera when I was 19 it would have been, for many dancers, the maximum aspiration, but not for me. It was only the beginning of a dream that I’m still living through.
I will continue to dance as long as it gives me satisfaction, then I’ll move on to something else. I’ll devote myself to environmental groups or open a dogs’ home. Who knows!
Her sobriquet ‘Mademoiselle Non’, which the British press quickly gave her on learning of her infamous temperament, was inspired by ‘Monsieur Non’ himself:
Nureyev was intransigent and I learnt a lot from him. Too much security and comfort is the death of art, it’s better to stay constantly on the precipice. The most fertile periods of creativity are in times of crisis. To be at its best, dance must have a high level of necessity, of severity.
Today I see theatres in the hands of bureaucrats, like in the film Brazil: La Scala, for example. I said publicly the last time I was in Milan for Manon in 2011, that I would return, but on certain conditions… I’ve heard nothing further from them. Fortunately, Italy is an incredible country, it seems that everything is going badly then, miraculously, things seem to turn around. I love it also for this.
After reading that, La Scala’s Artistic Director Stéphane Lissner is surely drawing up a contract right now! Guillem doesn’t worry; after having largely left the classical repertory her modern choreographic ventures have largely been largely overseen by Sadler’s Wells Theatre in her old home, London (she is now based in Switzerland).
I leave the organisation to Sadler’s Wells in London. But I don’t think about marketing, and I don’t dance to be recognised in the street: dance alone must be enough.
While opening a dogs’ home may never happen, she is already involved in various causes.
I’ve given my backing to Sea Shepherd, a marine wildlife conservation organization, to fight against whale hunting. Non-profit organisations today fill the role that politics has turned its back on. Even if it is a Utopia from Don Quixote I like to devote my time to them, with the same commitment that I have for my dance.
Photo: Sylvie Guillem as Manon at Teatro alla Scala in 2011, by Graham Spicer
Bintley’s new creation places dance and sports alongside in what is presumably a compare and contrast exercise. Just the sort of thing to reflect the spirit of the Cultural Olympiad one would have thought.
Faster is inspired by the Olympic motto, Faster, Higher, Stronger. My ballet originally had the full motto as its title, but the IOC said we couldn’t use it. We applied for the Inspire Mark, which they begrudgingly gave us. But they also said that we had to change the title,
said a peeved Bintley.
I was pretty peed off quite honestly. It was absurd. The rules surrounding it seem to be quite nonsensical. They are handled with an across the board clumsiness. You’re lumped in alongside gift shops and people who want to trade off the movement, who set out to make economic gains from everything they make. Yet this is a serious work of art, inspired by the Olympic ideals.
Of his ballet Bintley says,
I’m interested in the psychological aspect of sport, the focus and discipline. That continued repetition of small details resulting in the perfect throw or run or jump on the day. Like a performance.
I’m avoiding being too literal. Each character will move in ways inspired by a number of sports, rather than specifically basing each one on a particular event. So the movements of fencers and tennis players get combined in one instance, and elsewhere divers and jumpers get mixed up into shapes in the air.
Everybody gets these short, fast, high-impact moments, that build towards a whole, like a team. Like sport, the new work will be explosive, obviously fast, and certainly virtuosic!
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.What have Alina Cojocaru, Natalia Osipova and Viengsay Valdés got in common? Well yes, they are all ballet dancers. And yes, they have all danced Giselle. But think more deeply… They’ve all got dark hair? Now you’re just being silly. I’ll have to tell you. They all have shoes made with solar power! But I expect you’d already guessed that.
America’s Cardinal Shoe Corp, manufacturers of Gaynor Minden pointe shoes, have installed 1,092 solar panels on the roof of their factory in Massachusetts. They are capable of generating 273,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which means that the company’s electricity bills will be halved.
Owner Richard Bass says he has “the largest solar-powered ballet shoe factory on the planet”, and it is quite probably the only solar-powered ballet shoe factory in existence. Talking to the Eagle Tribune, Bass said that the installation will pay for itself in four years.
Bass, with his father and brother, founded Cardinal Shoe in 1962 in the town of Lawrence, so this year marks their 50th anniversary. The company started out making women’s shoes, and at its peak in the 1980s it was turning out more than a million pairs a year. But as the boom years passed, Bass realised it was time to move into a more specialised market, and, under the name of Gaynor Minden, they started producing ballet footwear. The shoes are now shipped to 93 countries and clients include the Bolshoi Ballet, the Royal Ballet and the Mariinsky Ballet.
The client list is impressive: Anastasia Matvienko, Olesia Novikova, Alina Somova, Yekaterina Kondaurova, and Evgenia Obsraztsova from the Mariinsky; Natalia Osipova and Yekaterina Shipulina at the Bolshoi; Alina Cojucaru and Zenaida Yanowsky at the Royal Ballet; Viengsay Valdés from the Cuba Ballet; and American Ballet Theatre’s Veronika Part. Oh yes, and the Trocks!
Alina Cojocaru, a long time user of their shoes, can now say that not only are her shoes pink, but they are also green.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.When the ballet world is facing the loss of two major stars (at least from the classical repertory) — Ethan Stiefel, 39, and Angel Corella, 36 — one star is making a comeback: Carla Fracci, 75.
After a two year absence, Italy’s ballet diva will return to the stage for 1912 — Vaslav Nijinsky, Isadora Duncan, the Faun, and other dances to open the Riccione sulle punte (Riccione en point) dance festival. The festival runs from July 17 to July 22. Riccione is one of the most popular holiday destinations on Italy’s east coast, and with overflowing Rimini close by, it is an ideal location for a festival, which made its début just last year.
This year the event becomes international with the inclusion of the exciting Czech twins Jiří and Otto Bubeníček, the Compañhia Urbana De Dança from Brasil, and Benjamin Pech and others from the Paris Opera Ballet. The French contingent joins Italian première danseuseEleonora Abbagnato in Eleonora Abbagnato e ses amis. The dancer has recently been following her footballer husband Federico Balzaretti as Italy’s team kicked its way to the Kiev Euro 2012 final, declaring “I’m more WAG than anyone”. Who knows if her husband won’t return the favour and be in Riccione to cheer her on!… continue reading
Florenz Ziegfeld created his Follies in 1907, and the successful format continued on Broadway until 1931. The Ziegfeld Follies were extraordinarily elaborate revues inspired by the Folies Bergères in Paris. While being a high-class Vaudeville variety show, mixing comics, singers and speciality dancers, it was the Ziegfeld girls that made them a hit. That whiff of sex disguised as art presented by beautiful and often very talented young women.
There were two techniques to camouflage the near-nudity: tableau vivants which presented the semi-clad girls in non-moving artistic poses justified by the cultural references to great painters; and ballet, where to have women in extremely short tutus doing chaines around the stage was already the norm. The dance directors (choreographers were only for serious ballet!) brought a touch of class to revues that were sometimes sexy, but never vulgar.
Here are some of the photos of the ‘ballet’ stars of the Follies, including the stunning Louise Brooks who went on to cinema stardom, and Cyd Charisse as she appeared in the 1945 Hollywood movie Ziegfeld Follies.
Italians are great dancers, but they don’t get much opportunity to demonstrate that in their homeland.
The history of ballet is adorned with Italian talent: Giuseppina Bozzacchi was the first Swanhilda in Coppélia; three dazzling stars, Carlotta Grisi, Fanny Cerrito, and Marie Taglioni (also the first Sylphide) were celebrated by Perrot in his Pas de Quattre; Pierina Legnani was named Prima Ballerina Assoluta by Petipa at the Mariinsky and was the first ballerina to perform 32 fouettés; Petipa created La Esmeralda pas de six for Virginia Zucchi, and so on.
Although they didn’t come as thick and fast in the 20th century, Italia’s living legend Carla Fracci certainly made her mark internationally, as did Elisabetta Terrabust and Liliana Cosi, and London’s Royal Ballet is surely grateful for the presence of Alessandra Ferri, Viviana Durante and Mara Galeazzi.
Enrico Cecchetti, more famous now for his method, was a great virtuoso dancer, and became a principal at the Mariinsky in 1887. Paolo Bortoluzzi was a principal with the American Ballet Theatre until 1981, and Roberto Bolle is currently a principal with the company. Massimo Murru and Giuseppe Picone are on the international circuit, and Federico Bonelli is yet another Italian to join the ranks of the Royal Ballet. In the Paris Opera Ballet we find Alessio Carbone and Eleonora Abbagnato, and young whippersnapper Vito Mazzeo has recently become a principal at San Francisco Ballet.
So all’s well then. Well no. Ballet seems to be slowly dying in Italy.
Italian balletomanes enviously flick through the programmes of The Royal Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, and the Mariinsky and Bolshoi Ballets with their high-octane star dancers, or gaze longingly at the mouth-watering guest rosters in New York. Not that the guests don’t arrive in Italy: Svetlana Zakharova has just danced in Rome and is a regular at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, who have also signed up Natalia Osipova for three ballets next season. Paris Opera’s Dorothèe Gilbert, and Stuttgart Ballet’s Marijn Rademaker will guest in Rome for Romeo and Juliet after the summer, and Stuttgart’s Friedemann Vogel and the Mariinsky’s Olesia Novikova will return to La Scala for La Raymonda. The key issue isn’t who is dancing, but how many opportunities there are to dance. Performance numbers are miserly, and quantity is clearly linked to quality in the classical repertory: the Bayadère can’t hope to have 32 perfect shadows if the corps dances it only six times in a season.
Here’s an idea of numbers. Rome Opera Ballet gave 45 performances during the 2011–2012 season, and that includes the open air summer performances; La Scala has 48 performances in Milan this season, plus 6 in Moscow and 14 in Brazil. The Royal Ballet gave 26 performances in December 2011 alone, and the American Ballet Theatre gives 56 performances during its annual 2-month residency at the Metropolitan Opera House.
Italy’s chequered history (it is a country younger than the United States) has lead to it being divided into many small ‘kingdoms’ with many mid-sized cities — Verona, Venice, Palermo etc — but only Rome and Milan have more than 1 million inhabitants. Rome’s 2½ million is dwarfed by New York and London’s 8 million. Less people, less performances right? Well look at Cuba! Ok, it’s a complicated equation, yet it is possible to get these companies dancing more.
When Carla Fracci was director of the Rome troupe they performed 67 times in Rome during the 2008 season, and there was also a small touring schedule. I don’t have the figures to say whether these performances were packed or not, but the dancers were certainly dancing. In that season the repertory ballets, Raymonda and Le Corsaire were given 9 performances each; this season Coppélia and Giselle had only 5, though it’s true that the up-coming Romeo and Juliet will be presented 15 times.
Now things can only get worse as city councils start tightening their belts and government grants are cut. Various dance festivals and minor companies have already fallen by the wayside, and corps numbers in Florence, Verona and Naples reduced. That leaves only the Rome and Milan companies capable of presenting a repertoire ballet. It would need a flick of President Giorgio Napolitano’s magic fairy wand to resolve the situation in an Italy fighting desperately for its economic life, but maybe only Lilac Fairies have those.
So the dance drain will continue as dancers who want to spend their short career actually on-stage escape abroad. And the poor Italian ballet fan will be left dreaming of the oft-told tales from far-off shores of ballet calendars as long as the Bayadère’s scarf, full of dancing stars who glitter like Aurora’s crown.
Photos: top from left, Alessandra Ferri; Carla Fracci; Carlotta Grisi, Fanny Cerrito, and Marie Taglioni with Lucille Grahn in the Pas de quattre; Viviana Durante.
bottom from left, Enrico Cecchetti coaching Anna Pavlova; Paolo Bortoluzzi, Roberto Bolle, Vito Mazzeo.
She joined the company in 1918 at the age of 14, and in this picture with her younger self is the remarkable Doris at 105.
She died a year after this photo was taken, in 2010.
In 1998 she returned Broadway’s New Amsterdam Theatre where she had first appeared in 1918, 80 years earlier. This time it was to participate in a benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and she continued to participate in this annual event to the end of her life.
Her last time on the New Amsterdam Theatre stage was just two weeks before her death. The next evening the lights of Broadway were dimmed in her honour.
Below are some more of the dancing girls from the Ziegfeld Follies.
BallerinaJoyce Cuoco was famous for her astounding technique. Her long balances, multiple pirouettes and changes of spot can be seen in this new YouTube video clip. While she’s maybe not the most elegant ballerina the world has ever seen, what she does is certainly extraordinary.
Cuoco was born in 1953, and at the age of 13 appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show as a ‘baby ballerina’. She was always something of a phenomenon for her improbable technical feats which even led her to headlining at Radio City Music Hall in New York, but she was also a serious artist and later became a soloist with the Stuttgart Ballet.
This clip is from a 1988 gala performance of The Flames of Paris pas de deux.
Milan’s Teatro alla Scala will kick off the season on September 6 with Robert Carsen’s acclaimed production of Don Giovanni which opened La Scala’s season last year. The Italian presence continues with Pier Luigi Pizzi’s new production for the Bolshoi of Bellini’s La Somnambula with American soprano Laura Claycomb. The six new opera productions also include Borodin’s Prince Igor, to be staged by legendary theatre director Yuri Lyubimov (class of 1917!)
The big event in the ballet calender is a mini-festival around Easter 2012 to mark the centenary of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. This will bring together four versions of the ballet by the Finnish National Ballet, the Béjart Ballet Lausanne, the Pina Bausch Dance Theatre, and the Bolshoi Ballet itself.
Bolshoi Ballet Artistic Director Sergei Filin in a press conference said,
In addition, the companies will present some pieces from their current repertoire… We will prepare our own new version of “The Rite” which will be choreographed by Wayne McGregor.”
The Bolshoi Ballet will also embark on a three-week tour of Australia and New Zealand in toward the end of the season, followed by its traditional Covent Garden residency July and August 2012. Filin noted,
Our full-length classical ballets continue to arouse great interest. Foreign theaters either do not have them at all or have abridged versions. Full-length, lavishly designed, pompous classical productions with a huge corps-de-ballet are always the most wanted. Only Covent Garden asked to bring new one-act ballets for the London public to see what our interests are like and what young dancers we have, as well as our current opportunities and prospects for the future.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Tonight Verona’s famous Arena is sold out. All 15,000 seats will be full to watch Roberto Bolle and his ‘friends’ dance in the open air. It is a magical place.
Italy’s Il Sole 24 Ore (the equivalent of the Financial Times, and the same colour) spoke to him. Unfortunately half of these interviews are always taken up with the same questions, but as we know that dancers don’t eat a five-course meal before a show, and need to do regular physical exercise, let’s skip on.
Are the emotions always there?
They were there when I did the end of term shows, and they’re still there today. Now there’s less fear and more understanding: I’ve been on many stages, so now I have the confidence that you can only have after years of experience. But the emotion is always present: if I lost that the public would know and it wouldn’t make sense to continue dancing.
In 2008 there was the first “Roberto Bolle and Friends” often in places where dance is seldom seen, and you’ve been followed by an audience of thousands… Now the Arena of Verona.
I am particularly excited to dance in the Arena. This year I have at my side some very special guests, like Alina Cjocaru and Johan Kobborg, both Principals at the Royal Ballet in London; then an Etoile from the Mariinsky Ballet, Alina Somova; Alexander Jones, who is a Principal at the Stuttgart Ballet; Dinu Tamazlacaru with Maria Kochetkova are here for the Tchaikovsky pas de deux, then there will be solos, and also modern and contemporary choreographers, so that even dance newbies can drawn toward this art form and experience its different genres and possibilities from the outset.
In this period, in addition to the Gala, there is also a summer tour “Roberto Bolle: Twentieth Century Triptych” with choreography by Balanchine, Kylián and Petit.
This year I want to make a break with the past: I want to provoke more than usual, I want to bring joy to the audience, but also give a strong contrast of emotions. For better or for worse, I want to continue telling passionate stories of love, conflict, misunderstandings and justice, in dance form.
Jeux (Games) is the last work for orchestra written by Claude Debussy. It was composed for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes with Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography. Jeux was was not a success when premiered in 1913, but this was nothing compared to the reception Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring received just two weeks later!
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Brigitte Lefèvre, Director of Ballet at the Paris Opera since 1995, will turn 68 later this year. The Paris Opera Ballet obliges ballerinas to leave at 42 with their pension; like it or not, ètoile or corps member, you’re out. Lefèvre carries on, even though she is past the retirement age for French national institutions.
Maybe concerned that she would stay at the helm like Alicia Alonso in Cuba, 132 of her 154 dancers signed a letter to the Ministry of Culture underlining their anxiety over the future of the company. Although Lefèvre has, officially, only two more seasons before she steps down, the dancers consider this too long. Maybe it has to do with her programming which has become increasingly modern, yet this used to the the classical company par excellence.
Don Quixote and La Sylphide are the only pre-20th century ballets during the next season. Kylián, Béjart, Petit, Forsythe, Carlson, Neumeier, Robbins, Brown and Cunningham make up most of the rest, though a Balanchine triple bill will also let the dancers show off their classical style. The lack of traditional programming in this once so very traditional company has been noticed. After seeing the Paris Opera Ballet’s performances in New York, Lynn Garafola wrote in Dance Magazine,
Lefèvre has stocked the POB repertoire with works by a host of contemporary European choreographers. True, the company still dances Balanchine, Robbins, and the “classics.” But if Giselle and Suite en Blanc are any indication, the company’s heart lies elsewhere. That doesn’t bode well for POB as a classical enterprise.
Though, horses for courses, Margaret Fuhrer in the Huffington Post says,
I had the opportunity to interview a few of POB’s dancers for Pointe magazine, and they all seem intelligent, sophisticated, and fulfilled. They may be thoroughly classical animals, but thanks to POB’s diverse repertoire, they know what’s happening in the larger dance world, and they’re better off for it. Onstage, wild, hungry American ballet dancers have the edge on POB’s crystalline étoiles. But when it comes to programming, U.S. companies have a thing or two to learn from the French.
Brigitte Lefèvre is nodding furiously in agreement.
So the 132 who aren’t nodding? Italian première danseuse with the company, Eleonora Abbagnato talked to Italy’s newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. After a summer of taking Abbagnato e ses amis around Europe, she says she will be afraid to return to the company, even though Trisha Brown will be waiting for her, as will William Forsythe to put her in the Sylvie Guillem role in In the Middle Somewhat Elevated. She says that vendettas and feuds make the atmosphere unbreathable in Paris. Abbagnato has spoken in the past about the wall she has come up against under Lefèvre’s reign which blocks her out of that small echelon of ballerinas called ètoile, even though she continually dances étoile roles. There are, of course, other dancers who equally consider that they are being unjustly shunned.
Of the three names for successors that Lefèvre has put forward — all dancers — Abbagnato favours Nicholas Le Riche. If she’s backed the right horse she might be an étoile after all.
My God, I cracked. I just wanted to do the show really well, so that I’d be happy to finish. But I just bawled. It was pathetic.
Bussell then set off with her husband and children to Australia. But she wasn’t ready to leave dance and London.
I got depressed. I didn’t appreciate how low I got. My husband did. He said, ‘You know, Darcey, you’re better when you’re busy.’ I thought it was weakness to show you couldn’t cope.
How very British. She sums up her stiff upper lip attitude:
You still have to get on with the show. I had friends who wouldn’t smile for a whole day, but I had been brought up not to make other people feel bad just because you do.
It was dance that got Darcey smiling as she started classes again in Australia.
As soon as I was moving, I was happy. It didn’t have to be about perfection. There are so many styles to enjoy.
Now the family have moved back to London and she is slowly returning in the public eye. She has become president of the Royal Academy of Dance, the first ever face of the new anti-ageing Sanctuary Spa skincare range, and is on the judging panel on Strictly Come Dancing.
Next up she’ll be in front of the biggest audience of her career. Billions of people. Playing a phoenix, she will rise during the Olympic closing ceremony, doing what she was born to do… dance.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.This promises to be the most fun critics round-up yet. Rarely have reviews been so unanimously foul. Being that there was so little to save, the critics left their stars in the drawer, and polished their metaphors with seeming glee.
No amount of special pleading, of aesthetic jiggery-pokery, can excuse Schaufuss’s weird libretto as it plays its fatuous game by way of crass mickey-mousing and dismal romping to Tchaikovsky’s ardours.
is Clement Crisp’s response in The Financial Times to Peter Schaufuss’ proposal to link three Tchaikovsky ballets together as dreams within dreams: A Nightmare (Swan Lake), A Sensual Awakening (Sleeping Beauty) and A Happy Dream (Nutcracker).
Inept, illogical, incomprehensible and idiotic, it will either leave you flummoxed or have you laughing out loud.
Neil Norman for The Express had doubt’s about Schaufuss’ abilities.
His choreographic expertise fails to measure up to his vaulting ambition.
His opinion was echoed by The Stage’s Sarah Frater.
…he lacks the maturity and choreographic ingenuity to give new form to these immense art works.
An example of the choreography was shared by Graham Watts for LondonDance.com:
The white swan pas de deux was danced – for the most part – horizontally on the floor as if this was a synchronised swimming duet being practiced on dry land.
Even the set and costumes left a lot to be desired. Here’s what Mark Manahan in The Telegraph has to say:
The “set” – a huge, semi-reflective panel that lines the back of a stage – muddles the action and even looks in need of a good polish. The lighting is coarse, and, while the swans’ Lycra costumes are pure mid-Eightes ice-dance, the two jesters’ somehow fuse Donnie Darko’s satanic rabbit and Pulp Fiction’s put-upon gimp.
A view shared by Watts,
The fifteen androgynous swans looked like bald, plucked chickens retaining just a breastplate of feathers; the female members of the court in Act 1 seemed like downmarket showgirls in the nude revue bar of a backwoods market town, their costumes somehow managing to be both salacious and drab at the same time.
Ouch! But there must had been at least one redeeming feature. Judith Mackrell for The Guardian said that there was.
Its only redeeming feature is Alban Lendorf’s Siegfried (who almost single-handedly wins this production a second star). Despite being bundled into a boiled-wool bomber jacket that makes him look both girly and bulky, Lendorf dances heroically, the spring and finesse of his Danish-trained jump combined with juicily expressive body work.
Thank goodness. Though this was not true of “the two temperature-lowering danseuses who play Odette and Odile” according to Crisp.
Even the recorded music was awful. Dougill said they were
…recordings of appalling sound quality — the strings sounding like a sawmill.
The bit where the Black Swan indulges the prince in some oral sex is a highlight, though.
A Sensual Awakening (Sleeping Beauty) and A Happy Dream (Nutcracker)
The critics fell away dramatically after the ‘nightmare’. Dougill braved the Sleeping Beauty.
Prevailing impressions of The Sleeping Beauty are a clutter of overcomplexities and hectic pace, the dancing not always successfully crammed into the music.
Laura Thompson in The Telegraph gives us an idea of Schaufuss’ approach.
Sleeping Beauty has been given a madly inappropriate sexual edge: the opening scene enacts for us the actual moment of Aurora’s conception, then sees her drop to the ground, newborn, as her mother performs a deep plié in second position.
Watts, yearning of a family tree in the programme notes, points out some logical complexities:
The prince in both ballets is also played by the same dancer (Alban Lendorf) – wearing differently coloured versions of the same cropped jacket – and yet both princes retain their traditional name (Siegfried in Swan Lake and Florimund in Sleeping Beauty) suggesting that they alone retain separate identities. Yet, if the Queen is the same character in both ballets then the prince is her son in one and wooing her daughter in the other. That would be weird, even for a Schaufuss ballet.
Weird indeed.
As these ballets also marked the London return of a great dancer, Thompson is bemused by his involvement:
Standing inexplicably onstage in the role of the King, is the former Royal Ballet principal Irek Mukhamedov: a great artist in the midst of a shambles.
Craine is in agreement.
If I could award half a star it would go to Irek Mukhamedov who has tremendous presence as Rothbart, though I’m not sure what he is meant to be doing in this pointless exercise.
So to sum up, like the enticing pull-quotes on West End ads, the critics reaction to the Schaufuss trilogy is :
* “Hell gaped.” — The Financial Times
* “One of the worst Tchaikovsky stagings I’ve ever seen.” — The Times
“Unspeakable” — The Express
* “Frightful.” — The Telegraph
“I grappled with responses of irritation and disbelief.” — The Sunday Times
“Clunky choreography, patchy narrative, dull energy and so-so performances.” — Evening Standard
** “One of the most ill-conceived productions I’ve seen.” — The Guardian
In 1966 Balanchine muse Tanaquil Le Clercq published a cookery book called, simply, the Ballet Cook Book. The recipes were contributed by important figures from the ballet world: Frederick Ashton, Suzanne Farrell, Jerome Robbins and the master himself, George Balanchine. Over at Bodies Never Lie they thought it would be fun to recreate some of these dishes, and now on their second instalment they’ve whipped up dishes by another Balanchine muse, Diana Adams.
