Tag: classical ballet

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White Tutu Moments

After my YouTube ballet class the other day, I got sucked in to watching a video of one of my favorite white tutu moments – the “Dance of the Cygnets” from Swan Lake. It is just so wonderful.

The choreography by Lev Ivanov, circa 1895, features four ballerinas performing a relatively academic, yet precise series of steps. Oh yes, and each is holding the hand of the girl next to her and the girl next to that girl. Dancing in tight quarters like that means that they really need to be together on the movement. If one girl goes up when another is going down, it could be a disaster.

Every time I see this piece, I get the biggest smile.  I don’t know why it makes me so happy, there is something about the combination of all those pas de chats and the tuba that sparks so much joy in my heart. Marie Kondo could never get me to declutter this dance.

I love the repetition and the way that they use their heads – talk about rubbing your head and patting your tummy!  And then they have to do it all linked up together like that.  There is not a lot of room to maneuver there.

Thinking about this made me ask myself what my other favorite white tutu ballet moments are.  If I’m not willing to say this is my ultimate favorite, what are the others?

Of course, “The Kingdom of the Shades” from La Bayadere is a great white tutu moment. No one even bothers to produce La Bayadere anymore, everyone just wants to see that one scene. Those arabesques just keep going and soon the stage is full of white tutus.

And then a different sort of white tutu moment came to mind, the pantomime in Act II of Giselle.  I just love romantic ballet pantomime. It is so corny. It makes me smile every time.  Myrtha, The Queen of the Wilies is so fierce. I guess she is supposed to be the villain, but she is a boss.  I just love when she tells Albrecht,

“You.” (points authoritatively)
“Will Dance.” (hands make a rolling motion over the head)
“To the Death.” (arms crossed at the wrists in front of the body, hands in fists)

It’s no cygnets but it does make me smile so big.

I can’t find a clip of just that part of Act II, so here is a clip of Myrtha’s variation instead.

I hope you enjoyed a little white tutu ballet interlude on your Wednesday.

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Spring

Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Spring

Last weekend, I headed up to San Francisco for the third ballet weekend of the season with mom and sister.  We were all looking forward to seeing San Francisco Ballet perform Midsummer Night’s Dream, a George Balanchine choregraphed fairytale ballet that none of us had seen before.

I’ll admit that I was feeling a bit ambivalent about being around such a large crowd of people given the current public health crisis, but there are certain things worth risking exposure to infectious disease and Balanchine ballets are one of them.

Unfortunately, the mayor of San Francisco doesn’t seem to share my commitment to the art of dance. As I waited at the airport for my flight to board, I scrolled “the gram” and saw notice that the ballet had been closed, there would be no performances until March 30 (later posts indicated a date of March 20 – we’ll see). At least it wasn’t just the ballet, but all city-owned performance venues.

On the one hand, it was a little bit of a relief. But mostly it was disappointing.  Especially after my sister forwarded the review of the opening night performance that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle.

What the review made clear is that SF Ballet excels at these light-hearted, fairytale ballets, bringing to my mind the excellent performance of Cinderella earlier this season or of Don Quixote last season.

As I had already done preliminary research in preparation for my own review, I thought that I would go ahead and tell you about the ballet and we can all hope that they will re-stage this production for the 2021 season.

Midsummer Nights Dream by George Balanchine

Since I wasn’t familiar with the ballet, I dug out my copy of Balanchine’s Complete Stories of the Great Ballets and looked it up (you know that he would never leave one of his own works out).

Created in 1962, Midsummer Night’s Dream was George Balanchine’s first original full-length ballet.

Balanchine had performed in productions of the play as a child in Russia and previously been asked to do some dances for various productions of the play, so he was familiar with the music that Mendelssohn had written for it. He credits the music more than the story for inspiring him to create this work. But because there wasn’t a complete ballet’s worth of music, Balanchine created a franken-score, using other Mendelssohn pieces.

The overture to Midsummer Night’s Dream by Felix Mendelssohn

The ballet is organized into two-acts, and six-scenes. The first act contains all of the plot of the ballet – the fairy shenanigans, mortals getting caught up in fairy shenanigans, adventures and misadventures. The second act, in the fashion of the romantic ballets contains the wedding scene, the divertissement, and a happily-ever-after ending.

The supernatural elements of any fairytale ballet allow for all sorts of wonderful creatures and characters. Combining such a narrative with Balanchine’s athletic and expressive choreography is a recipe for a delightfully whimsical dance ballet.

Midsummer Night’s Dream hadn’t been performed by SF Ballet in 35 years. I hope that it wasn’t a one-night stand.

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Stories of the Great Ballets

I just finished perusing this book titled, Balanchine’s Complete Stories of the Great Ballets .  I won’t claim to have read it since I *may* have skipped the first 734 pages. Those pages contained an exhaustive catalogue of “great ballets” according to George Balanchine (from skimming the table of contents, it appears that some of those listed are greater than others). 

It is certainly a “great” reference tool and I will plan on keeping it handy for the next time that I’m going to see a pre-1977 ballet (this was the fifth edition).  I just can’t imagine that anyone would need/want to read that whole list.

The remaining 150 pages seemed interesting so I dug in. 

First was a chapter titled “How to Enjoy Ballet” where Mr. Balanchine explains his thoughts on how someone who is new to ballet should approach seeing a ballet performance for the first time.  What was interesting to me is how much importance he ascribed to familiarizing oneself with the music before one attends a performance.  He didn’t feel that it was necessary to have any technical knowledge of dance, just an appreciation for the skill of the dancers.

The other key piece of Mr. Balanchine’s advice for the novice balletgoer really made me smile. It was basically, “if you go to the ballet and you think you don’t like it, just keep going and eventually you will like it!”  I suppose that you could call that the “eat your vegetables” approach to ballet appreciation.  

The next chapter was “A Brief History of the Ballet,” followed by “Chronology of Significant Events in the History of Ballet.”  This was a detailed timeline beginning with Lorenzo de Medici (ballet was imported to France by Catherine de Medici as a part of courtly spectacles). I felt that I had a good grip on the timeline, dissemination, and evolution of ballet, but this had some interesting details in it that raised some questions – I have a few things to look into and will report back!

Next is a brief autobiography by Mr. Balanchine, “How I Became a Dancer and Choreographer.” 

Then, “Ballet for Your Children,” “Careers in Ballet,” and a glossary which contains some very good illustrations of positions and steps.  It was surprising to me how adamant Mr. Balanchine was that children shouldn’t begin studying ballet until they are eight years old.  It just goes to show how long I’ve been away from that world that his talk about dancers’ development was a bit shocking in its frankness.  It certainly isn’t the way that those things are talked about these days.

I love classic books, and this is certainly a great addition to my dance book collection.  If you have questions about a “great ballet,” please let me know and I can tell you what Mr. Balanchine has to say about it!

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Don Quixote

San Francisco Ballet, Program 1: Don Quixote

It’s Ballet Season 2019!  Time to dust off something cute to wear and wing up to San Francisco for a fun night out with mom and sister.  This is our 14th year of having season tickets to the San Francisco Ballet, which seems substantial until you learn that Robbie and Gail who sit in front of us have had their season tickets for over 40 years!  Apparently, it’s the kind of tradition with staying power.

San Francisco Ballet opened their 2019 season with Don Quixote, the rom-com of the classical ballet cannon.  It is silly and corny, and it knows that it’s camp.  At the same time, the Spanish flavor lends a bit of flair to the performances.  It’s like Diana Vreeland would say, “a little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika.”

Don Quixote premiered in 1869 with music by Ludwig Minkus and choreography by Marius Petipa.  Modern productions retain the Minkus score; however, the choreography is derived from Alexander Gorsky’s 1900 update of Petipa’s original.  The San Francisco Ballet version, staged by Helgi Tomasson and Yuri Possokhov, premiered in 2003.

The libretto is based on two chapters from Cervantes.  The story begins with Don Quixote dreaming of his beloved Dulcenea and resolving to go on a quest to find her.  From there the story transitions to a town where the inn-keeper’s daughter, Kitri, is rendezvousing with her beloved Basilo, the town barber.  Conflict arises because Kitri’s father wants to betroth her to a rich nobleman.  Soon Don Quixote and Sancho Panza arrive in town to exacerbate the shenanigans.  After much hijinks, including a gypsy camp, tilting at windmills, and hallucinatory driads, Kitri and Basilo are allowed to wed and there is much rejoicing.  Let’s just say that the plot of a romantic ballet is only there to give the illusion of a structure for a bunch of dancing.

The performance that we saw featured Sasha de Sola as Kitri and Aaron Robison as Basilo.  Sasha has been with San Francisco Ballet since 2007 and was promoted to principal dancer in 2017.  I don’t think that we had seen her in the lead of an evening-length story ballet before and I was very pleased with her performance.  She is a stunning, petite blonde with big blue eyes and a radiant smile.  Sasha studied at the Kirov Academy, formerly the Russian Imperial Academy, and her Russian training is evident in her precise technique.  Her Kitri was athletic and joyful.  She wasn’t as sassy as some Kitris, but she didn’t need to be, it wouldn’t have suited her.

There is a ballet term, “ballon” which refers to the illusion that a leaping dancer floats through the air momentarily.  In general, I don’t find San Francisco Ballet dancers possess much ballon; they tend to telegraph the effort of take-off and you hear every ounce of them land. 

The role of Basilo is known for its many virtuosic leaps which Mikhail Baryshnikov immortalized with his ability to appear to actually fly. Aaron also executed these leaps in a powerful-yet-effortless manner and landed every one of them silently.  He managed to be elegantly graceful and cool at the same time, even during the more comic scenes. Aaron first performed with San Francisco Ballet during the 2016 season and returned in 2018.  I hope that he is here to stay.

Now, I can’t neglect to tell you about the real star of the show, Oreo the pony.  Oreo played the part of Sancho Panza’s donkey, Dapple.  The horse who played Don Quixote’s Rocinante was an elegant white gelding.  But Oreo is this adorable, dark-brown, fuzzy pony with a huge, unruly blonde forelock, mane, and tail.  Yes, there is a horse and a donkey in this ballet, why wouldn’t there be?  How would the Don and Sancho make their dramatic entrance without them?

Ballet Season 2019 is off to an auspicious start.  More to come!