Amy

Yes, thank you Geoff - proof reader is much more accurate since that's exactly the work I did on the book. All the work that editors are charged with when writing a new book, I did none of it; I certainly never came up with the idea. Unfortunately, it's too late to change this error, so I must apologise for all this confusion.

Well I am sorry that it came to this and that you were not satisfied with this book, Mr Whitlock. Perhaps you were given the wrong impression of the book's intentions, but it cannot be called "misguided" and "potentially misleading".

The intention of this book was always to be a combination of fact and fiction, in which the author himself "speaks to" Petipa, the Legat Brothers and Pavlova. It is true that parts of the conversations were created by Mr Koppers, but it is by no means a work of fantasy. I assure you that Mr Koppers is very serious with his historical research and knowledge and you may agree or disagree with the concept of this book, but it is certainly not a novel or a novella. It tells us the stories of these four icons, but in a very different way than one would probably expect, however, please take note that this book is not a quadruple biography, nor was it meant to be.

In relation to the Vikharev and Sergeyev productions of Sleeping Beauty, the Prologue in Vikharev's reconstruction certainly differs from Sergeyev's (a fact that Mr Koppers is well aware of), however, Vikharev retained nearly all of the Soviet revivals of the fairies' variations. The only one he didn't retain was that of the Lilac Fairy. In the other acts, nearly all the Soviet choreographic passages from Sergeyev's revival were retained. If you wish to see Sleeping Beauty with all the notated choreography, I recommend Ratmansky's reconstruction.

My word to everyone is that this book is a very different type of historical book; you may like or not, but my advice would be to read it with an open mind. For some of you, it may not bring something new, but for others it will and it can direct to resources that you are probably not familiar with. History can come to us in many ways, some that we are not perhaps used to or how we would expect. The purpose of this book is celebrating Petipa and really speaking about him since, as written on the back cover, everyone speaks his name, but not many really understand him and why not have something different on the year of his bicentenary? This is a different way of "getting to know" these four legendary figures and you can enjoy it or not. And why not celebrate Petipa in as many ways as we can?

I hope that no one here will be put off by one bad review, or put off by the fact that I was an editor on this book. I have had the pleasure of reading it and it is a worthy read; I certainly learned some new facts from it. Even those of us who have degrees in dance studies learn something new as time goes by.

I would also like to apologise for my poor response and if anyone else here feels they were not given enough information about the book, so if anyone has any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. For those of you who are interested in the book, I hope you enjoy it and it succeeds in giving you a new insight into Petipa, the Legat Brothers and Pavlova.

Thank you.

Geoff W, I would like to thank you for your review; I'm sorry that the book wasn't to your liking, but there are some things I would like to clear up.

First of all, it's quite clear that you didn't read the book well because for one thing, regarding your comment on what Mr Koppers says about the Vikharev choreographic reconstruction of Sleeping Beauty, it's common knowledge that Vikharev did retain many of the Soviet passages, possibly due to pressure from all the fuss that stirred up against the reconstruction by Dudinskaya. Mr Koppers states that while Vikharev's Sleeping Beauty resembles Sergeyev's stepwise, it mainly differs in stage direction.

As for your comment on what is written about Vaganova, it's common knowledge that Petipa didn't like her as a dancer - in two of his diary entries, he writes that she was "awful in Raymonda" and "dreadful in The Pearl". As for Diaghilev being called "fatso", the Legats were dancers and they undoubtedly would have, amongst one another, used words worse than that.

Second of all, so what if I didn't mention I was an editor? The only editing I did was help Mr Koppers with his spelling and grammar because he wanted to make sure his English was perfect. I never contributed any material to the manuscript.

Geoff W, it's quite clear that you are a Mariinsky/Vaganova fan and this all seems to be some sort of hate action against Mr Koppers. In fact, it seems to be something of a personal grudge. I wouldn't be thinking it was anything personal had you just written your review on Amazon and left it at that, but the fact that you felt the need to post it on this forum and warn people not to buy the book indicates that there's something more to this than someone who was genuinely disappointed with this book. Whatever your reasons were for taking your criticism of the book this far, deal with it elsewhere and frankly, if you were confused about what kind of book it is, you could've asked questions on the Petipa Society website before you purchased it. If you had, I would've been very happy to answer them for you.

So anyone who has questions regarding Mr Koppers' book, you only need to ask and I can assure you all that this book is not something to be wary of. It was always intended be to a new type of historical book with a combination of fact and fiction.

Hello everyone, allow me to clear up a few things here regarding this book.

This book is certainly NOT an opportunity to "cash in on Petipa's bicentenary." That's what the Mariinsky and Bolshoi Theatres have done with their fake homages to Petipa that they held this year.

Peter Koppers is one of the most reliable people in the ballet world when it comes to Petipa and ballet history; he is a former dancer with the Dutch National Ballet, is now a teacher and is a very knowledge and excellent historian. I, myself, have learned a lot from him and he is a friend and contact of the likes of Alexei Ratmansky, Doug Fullington and Marian Smith.

This book, Three Conversations is a very reliable and valuable source for historical knowledge. It's a combination of fact and fiction because it presents Mr Koppers "having conversations" with Petipa, the Legat Brothers and Pavlova and he made up the conversations by using real quotations with the four people. It's a new and interesting insight into these great four figures of classical ballet; it's a new way to telling the stories of their lives, their careers and their legacies. He lists his sources in the notes on each page.

I worked on this book, myself, as an editor and Mr Koppers published it via amazon self-publishing on the advice of Marian Smith, who also read it before it was published.

I highly recommend this book because it really shines a new light on Petipa, the Legat brothers, Pavlova and the art form of ballet because there are some very great quotes of wisdom on what ballet is really all about.

Thank you.

On 30/04/2017 at 20:32, Lexy said:

While I understand that historical methods have changed since the advent of the Internet, it's still true that anyone hoping to be viewed as a responsible historian must give specific citations (including edition, page number or accepted internet citation) so as to enable others to view the source material and come to their own conclusions.  It's also important to keep in mind the difference between demonstrable historical facts and opinion based on those facts. What other people said about somebody at the time can provide interesting "color" (especially for one writing historical fiction) but should not be cited as historical fact unless such opinions are corroborated by other reliable sources, which should also be cited in a form that can be checked by others. Among those of us who are not scholars, all sorts of assertions can be thrown around but nobody can insist their interpretation is the correct one unless they take the further step of demonstrating the historical basis for their assertion. I see nothing wrong with tossing around essentially unsubstantiated "facts" about ballet -- we do it all the time -- so long as we are clear there are no irrefutable facts, no "correct" interpretations, until such has been proved by rigorous historical methods.

 

 

10 hours ago, DrewCo said:

 

I've enjoyed some of the information about Petipa's early life on Amy's "Petipa Society" site (while understanding not every 'i' may be dotted just yet) and I also appreciate her good-natured response to the criticism she is receiving in this discussion, but Lexy's point seems exactly right to me. I think it would add immeasurably to the usefulness and value of the site for it to have proper citation of sources for its claims--not just general signalling to this or that source material. (Proper citation is not a long, tendentious article followed by saying 'this is based on books x, y, and z.' That's fine for us chatting here, but for a site with more historically serious ambitious...not so much.)  

 

I think it would be great to have a more scholarly (while still accessible) Petipa site -- and that would mean less partisan presentation as well. "Just the facts" is impossible of course, but a more careful parsing of different sources and perspectives would be a good start. And it would still be plenty colorful. I don't know if that's what the creator of this website wants or if she prefers something more personal and, to be blunt, less substantive. I do think if it's the latter than it should be clearer what it is -- Petipa "fan fiction" (to allude to something Ivy Lin said above). But if the goal is as ambitious as it sounds, then I think the citing of sources, but also the presentation, summary, and weighing of what those sources have to say needs to be somewhat revamped. At least that's my thought.

 

Thank you both very much for your feedback. The site definitely needs a scholarly side, but right now, I'm still working out how to do that. The website is still at stage 1 and if I succeed in taking it further, it will probably need to be redesigned by a professional web designer; I am certainly not one of those lol. Also, yes it would be excellent to use citations in each page, but the problem is I don't know how to include those in Word Press; I don't even know if you can include them in Word Press, so for now, all written sources of information are listed in the bibliography. If there's anyone here who knows how to use Word Press better than me, any help with that would be much appreciated lol! Thanks.

11 hours ago, Ivy Lin said:

 

I've read a number of books on that era. I read Tamara Karsavina's Theatre Street, where she has some very kind things to say about Mathilde K., and also a lot of fond memories of socializing with Mathilde. Also have read Margot Fonteyn's memoirs which again contain some fond memories of Mathilde. I've read Ballet's Magic Kingdom, a collection of reviews by Akim Volynsky which describes Mathilde's dancing in very awed terms -- while acknowledging that she had an imperfect looking body and "flat feet" he described her par terre technique as the best there was.

10 hours ago, assoluta said:

I agree completely and I am particularly disturbed by the fact that those, at best, personal opinions are fed to an unprepared visitor of a site that purports to be factually accurate.

Like I said, I do appreciate feedback and I thank you both for yours. I have made changes to the change, but there are things I will keep - for example, it's common knowledge that Petipa thoroughly despised Kschessinska and that she refused to share "her roles" with other dancers, like Preobrazhenskaya. If you would like confirmation of this, I advise you to read Petipa's diaries and Lynn Garafola's book Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance because in this book, she has a whole chapter in which she analyses Petipa's diaries. In Roland John Wiley's book The Life and Ballets of Lev Ivanov, there's a sentence in which Wiley writes that Kschessinska was reputed to have been jealous of Pierina Legnani; there's even a theory that Legnani's reason for leaving Russia in 1901 was because she had given up on her escalating, one-sided rivalry with Kschessinska.

Something else I'll say is that one should always take caution with memoirs because even memoirs can be biased or unreliable and can clash with what is said in other sources; even in their memoirs, people do fabricate or leave out information. For example, Kschessinska's claim that she was the one to notice Pavlova's potential is not backed up by other sources, including two Pavlova biographies.

18 minutes ago, Ivy Lin said:

 

I've read a number of books on that era. I read Tamara Karsavina's Theatre Street, where she has some very kind things to say about Mathilde K., and also a lot of fond memories of socializing with Mathilde. Also have read Margot Fonteyn's memoirs which again contain some fond memories of Mathilde. I've read Ballet's Magic Kingdom, a collection of reviews by Akim Volynsky which describes Mathilde's dancing in very awed terms -- while acknowledging that she had an imperfect looking body and "flat feet" he described her par terre technique as the best there was. 

 

I've also read biographies about Mathilde and her own memoirs. Mathilde K. was pregnant when Anna Pavlova was picked for La Bayadere. This delicate condition is the reason her memoirs gloss over the incident. And I don't see anything in her memoirs to warrant such a harsh and subjective opinion of her. She seems like a woman who was justifiably proud of her career and like most superstars has a healthy ego. She was also a survivor. During the Russian Revolution she packed her bags and left Russia with her son and husband Andre forever. She went from living in a mansion set up by the czar to a much reduced lifestyle in Paris. But people like Margot Fonteyn admired her courage, her strong will, and the fact that she never complained about her poverty. She obviously was of a very strong constitution and lived till she was 99, and whenever asked said "My life was beautiful." IDK, she sounds like the type of person I would have admired. 

Her survival of the revolution and her dancing talent are certainly to be admired; there were people who liked her, Tamara Karsavina being one of them, but there were also people who disliked her. It seems that opinions of her as a person were very divided; Sir Anton Dolin didn't seem to think she was a nice person because he asked Karsavina in an interview "Don't you think she [Olga Preobrazhenskaya] was a kinder person than Kschessinska?" to which Karsavina replied "Oh Kschessinska was very kind to me." Petipa certainly makes his dislike for her very clear in his diaries.

Yes Kschessinska was pregnant when Pavlova debuted as Nikiya, but that wasn't the main reason why Petipa chose Pavlova for the role, plus, if memory serves me correctly, he made the decision before Kschessinska even announced that she was pregnant. Pavlova was Petipa's favourite ballerinas and by then, he was already casting her in leading roles, including roles Kschessinska had created; Keith Money writes in his Pavlova biography that Pavlova gave Petipa everything he had wanted for the role of Nikiya.

On 27/04/2017 at 14:14, Ivy Lin said:

The website also contains color commentary like this:

 

Where are the sources for this information? It reads like Twilight fanfic.

Hello Ivy, if you wish to find backup for this information, I advise you to read Petipa's diaries and Kschessinska's memoirs Dancing in Petersburg. Obviously, she doesn't say any of the negative things I have said on this page, but her memoirs really give an insight into how full of herself she was as a person, though there are times when you do feel sorry for her. There are a couple of times where she actually lies about certain things - for example, she claims that she was the one to notice Anna Pavlova's potential and that she had to repeatedly beg Petipa to let Pavlova dance Nikiya because Petipa repeatedly refused to let the young dancer dance the role. That, however, is a lie because it was Petipa who noticed Pavlova's potential and it was Kschessinska who didn't want her dancing Nikiya - in reality, Kschessinska returned from holiday and was not happy to find that "her role" was being given to a younger dancer.

Also, if you ever manage to read Olga Preobrazhenskaya's biography, as one of my team has, it's not difficult to notice who was the better person.

3 minutes ago, CHazell2 said:

Hi Amy

 

That sounds wonderful. Just out of curiosity, will you upload any more clips or aren't you allowed to?

Hello!

Yes I am hoping to post more clips, but I don't have any more at the minute. I'm hoping to get some more and as soon as I do, I will upload more. Thank you.

Hello there everyone.

I am the owner of this Petipa website and I'd like to thank the person who started this discussion; I'm glad to see that people are really tuning into the site.

The website still needs a lot of work done to it; yes, it is very much a fan site right now, but one of my aims is to take it further and hopefully, it can become a good reference site in the near future. I have had feedback from the likes of Lynn Garafola and Tim Scholl and Doug Fullington and Alexei Ratmansky have both seen it too; they've all given good feedback and a positive reaction and what the site is missing is a scholarly side. Hopefully, if I get a good team together, it will become more scholarly.

I welcome any feedback and I'm glad to hear that people are enjoying the site; thank you.