cslater

I agree that filmed ballet can be pallid, but, as others have posted, or those outside of NYC, it's the only way to see many works of Balanchine and others. One film with some well-filmed dance is Center Stage (2000), directed by Nicholas Hytner. The story is sort of hum-drum, but there are some wonderful sequences of ballet class, and also a brief moment from Stars And Stripes. The climactic ballet is, I think, by Christopher Wheeldon--I may be wrong on this, but it's very well filmed, with very little in the way of "reaction shots" or jump cuts. I've watched Center Stage several times--it's sort of a guilty pleasure. I do want to emphasize, per a previous post, to watch the School of American Ballet on streaming. It won't stream forever. The dancers are all young, and some not fully developed as artists, but they are brilliant and they bring a special ardor to Serenade. There are also some wonderful rehearsal sequences. http://video.pbs.org/video/2365385279/

Thanks for the info about Symphony in C. This appears to be a recent upload coming from a Hungarian source. He has uploaded two different performances of the Bizet, one the recent Paris Opera Ballet, and the other NYCB from the Berlin filmings of some decades ago. Interestingly enough, he has also uploaded Dances At A Gathering (Robbins), Swan Lake Act 2 (Balanchine), Pas De Dix, Agon, and Persephone (all Balanchine), Who Cares, Concerto Barocco, and quite a few others. They are recent uploads, from the last few months. There is certainly a chance that the Trust may have these removed.

I don't know why there aren't more Balanchine or NYCB videos available. I do observe that the Trust removes unauthorized videos as they find them. I have this wayward dream that NYCB might follow the lead of the Metropolitan Opera and Berlin Philharmonic and create a for-pay streaming service by subscription. What ballet lover could resist this attraction? Or, at least, that they will release performances that they must have in their archive. Aside from the performances I mentioned in a previous post, there is video available at cooperating educational institutions, but I have not had the chance to look into this.

It remains a puzzle why the Balanchine Trust will not release NYCB videos that must exist and will generally not allow other releases of Balanchine videos. The earlier-mentioned Balanchine In Montreal series is treasurable. They are released by VAI and consist of 5 DVD's, containing late 1950's and early 1960's recordings of many works that are not otherwise available; including Serenade, Apollo, Bugaku, Ivesiana, Orpheus, and others, with many of the classic dancers of that period, including Moncion, Leclerq, Tallchief, Adams, and others. NYCB has released a paltry 2 DVD's, digitized from 4 earlier VHS's in the Dance In America series, which blesses us with fine performances of Four Temperaments, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Emeralds, and a number of others, featuring dancers like Farrell, Martins, and Ashley. There was an earlier set of VHS's from PBS, which have not been digitized, so far as I know. Some recordings may be seen on Youtube, stemming from a series filmed in Berlin, including Serenade and others. The filming is pretty poor, featuring jumps every 3 or 4 seconds and "artistic" camera angles. There are also some streaming videos from the Suzanne Farrell Ballet Company, with excerpts from Agon, Serenade and many others. Not long ago, Paris Opera Ballet was offering a stream of Symphony In C in a wondrous performance, but this has been deleted for the U.S. market, unfortunately. One of the better streams available is a program a few weeks ago on PBS of the School of American Ballet, dancing a complete Serenade and a substantial part of Western Symphony, superbly. There is an educational film called Music Dances, which has sections of Balanchine-Stravinsky works, including Apollo, Agon, and Movements. This is not for sale, except to educational institutions. And there was a VHS of Davidsbundlertanze, which was never issued on DVD. There is a DVD of Nutcracker, with spoken text that can't be turned off; but the more recent Nutcracker, seen in theaters and on PBS, was never issued. And there are two complete recordings of Midsummer Nights Dream and of Jewels. Given that the Foundation has authorized some releases, it remains astonishing that so many key works cannot be viewed, except in brief excerpts or in briefly available non-authorized streams. These include Who Cares, Symphony in C, Vienna Waltzes, Liebeslieder Waltzes, Mozartiana, Suite #3 (Tchaikovsky) Monumentum/Movements, Episodes, and a whole host of others. And as wonderful as MSD and Jewels are, rather than have two recordings of each, would it not have been possible for the ballet companies to feature works not otherwise available, rather than repeat what already is. A similar situation exists with regard to Jerome Robbins, whereby there are no recordings of Dances At A Gathering, Goldberg Variations, Astaire Variations, and many others. Strangely enough, a recently issue "Homage a Robbins" from Paris contained In G Major (Ravel), a couple of shorter works, and then an additional work not by Robbins at all.