Melody

I think, as FLOSS said, the thing is that it doesn't look difficult and so they're surprised to find that it actually is difficult. Maybe these days the dancers are so used to choreography that's danced in a way that sort of says "look at how easily I'm doing this very difficult choreography" that they're nearly as fooled as the rest of us by choreography that has to look genuinely effortless when it really isn't. Plus I wonder if Ashton just has a reputation for being a bit lightweight because his ballets don't tend to have a lot of high drama to them, and that translates somehow to expectations about the difficulty level (sort of like the way people tend to dismiss Sullivan's music as trivial, like I mentioned in a previous post). I have a feeling that, as others have also said, it also has to do with the speed at which the ballets need to be danced. There's been such a trend toward slowing down the music so the dancers have time to get their knees in their ears for every extension, and to hold their balances and whatnot, that I think both audiences and dancers seem to think this is the way everything should be done. Add that to the fact that the training these days also seems to de-emphasise speed and precision in favour of extension and balances. And then along comes a choreographer like Ashton or Bournonville, and the dancers just aren't prepared for it.

Many happy returns for yesterday, Helen! And since Helen is the middle name of the Countess of Wessex it does have a current royal connection, so you never know.

She was performing the Dying Swan into her seventies and maybe even eighties. A most remarkable ballerina for so many years, and one for whom the accolade of prima ballerina assoluta was very well deserved.

Talking about the technical difficulties of Ashton's choreography, I was watching that series on YouTube about Ballet West (the American company, not the Scottish one) as they were rehearsing Cinderella with Wendy Ellis Somes, and at one point one of the dancers said something like "this Ashton stuff is HARD" in a tone of voice that suggested some surprise. I gather they thought it'd be pretty trivial until they were faced with the reality of the speed and precision that was being demanded.

Some more British anniversaries over the next few days: Phyllis Bedells, founding member of the RAD, died in Henley-on-Thames on 2 May 1985, aged 91. Mona Inglesby was born in London on 3 May 1918. Rudolf Benesh died in London on 3 May 1975, aged 59. I know he wasn't originally British but he developed his notation method here. Frederic Franklin died in New York on 4 May 2013, aged 98. The first performance by the Vic-Wells Ballet (the future Royal Ballet) took place on 5 May 1931.

I did sign up there in the hopes of being able to do something about it, but the Edit facility doesn't let people edit other people's text like it does at Wiki.

Here's the Find A Grave entry: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?GRid=6378152&page=gr Mind you, I think someone is a tad biased because look at Kenneth MacMillan's entry: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=11143183 The greatest choreographer of all time? Talking about graves, I can imagine Balanchine spinning in his...

This is what I was referring to: "In one of the Upper School's spacious, purpose-built studios, a second-year girls' class is under way. The teacher is Anita Young, a former Royal Ballet soloist, and she is trying to get the girls, who are mostly 17 or 18, to think about expressiveness. "Listen to the music!" she keeps telling them. The girls are formidably technically assured, but they look tense, watching Young with large, nervous eyes. When they take balances they tend to gravitate backwards, as if fearful of commitment to the position. "Weight forward," Young implores. "You can always have a nose-job. You can't mend a broken back!" "They're so lovely," Young sighs after the class. "And their legs go far higher than ours ever did. All this, though…" And here she strikes an attitude, the position pliant and alive, her arms framing her face with subtle épaulement. "All this is gone." But if her pupils go for eye-catching hyperextensions and "six-o'clock arabesques" rather than nuance and refinement, it's perhaps because they know that in an audition they have to grab a director's attention fast. In a mercilessly unforgiving milieu, their instincts are fine-tuned for survival." from here: http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/mar/25/will-they-make-royal-ballet

This reminds me of a friend of mine who was a professional violinist but also did some conducting, complaining about the way people wrote off Sullivan's music as trivial because it was so light-hearted and gave the impression of being effortless to perform. She said that rather like Mozart's music, there wasn't a lot of leeway between performing it perfectly and having a disaster, unlike some of the showier composers like Rachmaninoff whose music left no doubt that it was very difficult to perform but actually stood up quite a lot better to an indifferent performer. I remember her saying that conducting (or playing the violin in) a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta would leave her in a cold sweat because of the need for such a high standard of performance. As well as the indifference toward Ashton's repertoire by at least some of the people to whom it was entrusted, I'm wondering if there's also a problem caused by the basic abandonment of the Cecchetti style of teaching in British vocational schools (and in many other countries) in favour of the Vaganova style which seems to equip students for employment in more companies around the world but doesn't seem to sit so well with the demands of Ashton's choreography. In Luke Jennings's article a while ago about teaching at the Royal Ballet School, one of the teachers pretty much said they weren't teaching the subtleties of epaulement and so on, because they were concentrating on pure technique and extension. That isn't going to help dancers do justice to Ashton. It does make me a bit crazy when I hear Ashton's work belittled and dismissed for being trivial, and hearing about what an inferior choreographer he was compared with MacMillan (just look at his blurb on the Find a Grave website, for one thing, where he's categorically described as Britain's second-best choreographer), when a good part of the problem seems to be that his whole legacy is being sabotaged (not necessarily deliberately, but still). The current trend toward look-at-me acrobatics is exactly what his work doesn't need.

Couple of anniversaries between now and the end of the month. Marie de Camargo died in Paris on 28 April 1770, aged 60. Jean-Georges Noverre was born in Paris on 29 April 1727, celebrated as International Dance Day. Tomorrow (29 April) is the first anniversary of the death of Gailene Stock. George Balanchine died in New York City on 30 April 1983, aged 79.

So sorry to hear about her setback, but very glad to hear she's doing well. I hope she continues to improve and they find what's causing these problems and can fix it.

Great post, FLOSS! Adding my admiration for your huge stash of knowledge! I was going to add Les Sylphides as a perfect ballet, but I haven't seen it live since I was a child and it's such a magical experience for a young child that imperfections would go unnoticed! I'm very much in two minds about Serenade. At one level it seems to me to be almost unbearably perfect, but something about it leaves me completely cold. This may seem strange but I don't know how else to say it - for me, Balanchine isn't so much interpreting the music as rendering it visible. I mean, I get the impression, watching the ballet, that if you could see the music that's what it would look like, and so in a way the ballet doesn't add anything.

Mikhail Fokine was born in St Petersburg on 26 April 1880. And a particularly British anniversary: Frederick Ashton's Façade premiered at the Cambridge Theatre, London, on 26 April 1931 as part of the Camargo Society programme.

I know it's the current fashion, but I don't much like this tendency for adult female dancers to be flat-chested. In the days of Margot Fonteyn ballerinas looked like young women in their tutus, they didn't look like children's stick drawings, and I don't see where it was a problem. I don't know if this is down to George Balanchine and his insistence on dancers who were, or at least looked as though they were, basically just tall children, or if it's the influence of modern dance where things tend to be more abstract and geometric, but I don't think it does a lot for the classical and romantic repertoire for all the princesses and fairies to look like a parade of pipe cleaners in frills. Especially if it's going to result in so much angst for girls as they start to mature. I remember several years ago, watching a documentary about three girls at a ballet school who were trying to get into the company - or actually to audition for several companies, I don't remember the details - and one of them had *gasp* a definable waist and a bust. The microphone was picking up some of what the directors were saying during the audition, and the narrative was along the lines of "but look at her! I mean, curves! she really should be auditioning for musical theatre..." And if I remember right, this girl was very self-conscious about her shape and had said something about trying to diet it away, which strikes me as somewhere between unhealthy and downright dangerous.

Oh gosh, now we've got the 27th to add to the other two dates? It's amazing how many of these dates seem to be uncertain given that ballet is fairly modern.

I haven't seen it recently, but for me A Month in the Country with the original cast was one of the most satisfying ballets I've ever seen. I know some people have criticised the set design for being fussy, but I thought it helped set the scene for the rather claustrophobic story, and the way Ashton condensed that play into a short ballet rather than making an evening of it was impressive.

Marie Taglioni died in Marseilles on 24 April 1884, a day after her 80th birthday (some sources say 22 April but I'm going with Britannica unless anyone has something authoritative to support the 22 April date).

Um, you got him out? Why didn't you just flatten him?

Marie Taglioni was born in Stockholm on 23 April 1804.

I think if Lise was an ingénue she wouldn't be such a source of exasperation to her poor mother that she obviously is. Seems to me that the more saucy interpretations make a bit of sense - leave the ingénue role to Alain and his brolly!

Some birthdays for 18 April: Gaetano (Gaétan) Vestris, dancing master to Louis XVI of France, was born in Florence on 18 April 1729 John Taras was born in New York City on 18 April 1919 Marcia Haydée was born in Niteroi, Brazil, on 18 April 1937 Vladimir Vasiliev was born in Moscow on 18 April 1940 And one British death anniversary: Andrée Howard died in London on 18 April 1968, aged 57

Is that a discreet way of saying they didn't train at the three schools these choreographers are complaining about, or would those schools count as musical theatre conservatoires?

Aileen, if you're talking to me, I don't have any evidence, I was just responding to the post above mine.

I'm not sure about the issue with British companies using more taxpayer-trained dancers - if the government was going to complain about that, presumably it'd start with Royal Ballet and ENB, whose upper echelons are stuffed with foreign imports even if they have a largely British corps. I wonder if these choreographers have tried to raise their concerns privately with the schools and got the brush-off, hence deciding that going public was the only real alternative. I hope this wasn't their avenue of first resort because it must be awfully demoralizing for the kids in those schools to have their training and their prospects dismissed so harshly in public. It's also a shame that it's led to Farooq Chaudhry having to resign from his Dance UK position, although presumably he must have known from the start that it would be a possibility.

Marie Anne de Cupis de Camargo was born in Brussels on 15 April 1710 Serge Lifar was born in Kiev, Russian Empire, on 15 April 1905