Royal Ballet 2016/17 season

[CHazell2]

One detects a resistance to using certain former stars to coach classical ballets (apart from Monica Mason who remains very involved with the RB). However, the importing of Benjamin and Durante next season is a good sign where MacMillan works are concerned.

 

Why is there so much resistance? How would they teach the rep to the ballet dancers of the future if they don't use the experience of former stars. It's how ballets have survived from generation to generation.

[MargaretN7]

I remember seeing Lucette Aldous in the film they showed on tv, and thinking how wonderful it was to have an LF in a tutu and doing proper dancing, rather than wafting about the stage in the sort of elegant dress that makes her look like mother of the bride.  Why has it become the fashion to turn this in to a non dancing role?  Do they think it balances out the antics of Carabosse? .............

The RB Lilac Fairy is a tutu dancing role. She briefly went into elegant long dress, I think it was the Makarava version of SB, but then quickly got her tutu back 

[MAB]

No, it wasn't conceived as a tutu role at all, here's a picture of the role's originator, Marie Petipa.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Petipa

[capybara]

Personally I don't think that you need a tall dancer for the Lilac Fairy. What you need is someone with stage presence and authority to command the stage and to represent physically the defeat of Carabosse's malign power, with the technique to meet the role's technical challenges. 

 

 

Yes - like Daria Klimentova and Elena Glurdjidze when ENB last mounted Sleeping Beauty. Both were the embodiment of goodness and filled the stage with it. Neither ballerina is tall.

Edited May 13, 2016 by capybara

[FLOSS]

James, I know that Monica Mason danced Aurora a couple of times.I know people who saw her do so. I don't know anyone who says that hers was a successful portrayal of the role. I am not talking about the technical  side of things but the portrayal of Aurora in the context of  the ballet as a whole. I believe that Mason has said that she knew it was not really her role but that she  felt that she had to dance it if she was going to coach it.

 

Capybara I think that your comments about the company not using the resources available to it when it comes to coaching is something of an understatement. Not involving other people in coaching may have made sense when Ashton, Somes and MacMillan were alive but they have all been dead for many years. Much of the problem is attributable to the fact that soon after Ashton's death it seems to have been agreed by the powers that be that as Ashton was dead and MacMillan was still alive the RB should concentrate its efforts on the living choreographer rather than the dead one. This meant that no one gave any great thought to the preservation of the Ashton repertory as a living vital core element of the RB's identity. The fact that some of the most significant of Ashton's ballets were left to former dancers may have suggested that they were in safe hands.MacMillan's works may appear to be more secure but, in the long run, Lady M. may not prove to be such a good custodian either. She seems to be quite keen on tinkering with the staging of the works. It will be interesting to see what happens when all the dancers involved in the creation of his works are dead and his daughter takes over responsibility for staging  her father's works. What has happened with the Fokine and Massine repertories does not auger well for the future of  MacMillan's works, The  Fokine and Massine heirs are said by some to be engaged in killing their legacy with inept stagings

 

If you are interested in seeing  the effect that  great coaching can have on a performance then I would  recommend you take a look at Ashton at work. Ashton is said to have been far more scrupulous when reviving other people's works than he was with his own.  There are clips which turn up on YouTube of Ashton  coaching Sibley and Dowell in the reconciliation pas de deux  and an unidentified Canadian dancer as the Gipsy in Pigeons. When I look at them I wonder what more he could have done in the rehearsal room with the works of other choreographers . The one thing that the clips make clear  is how much the theatrical effect of a ballet depends on nuances. Some of the changes he demands seem so small that they appear inconsequential and almost nitpicking, if not interference with what the artists are doing  simply as an exercise in power. However when you see the effects  of the changes he demanded. it is clear, to me at least, that "good enough" rarely is good enough.It is clear that  the ability to identify the changes that a dancer needs to make to his or her performance so that a ballet makes the impact that the choreographer intended is a rare gift and one that is more likely to be found, if at all, in the rehearsal room with the principal dancers than among those who have charge of rehearsing the corps..

Edited May 13, 2016 by FLOSS

[CHazell2]

 What has happened with the Fokine and Massine repertories does not auger well for the future of  MacMillan's works, The  Fokine and Massine heirs are said by some to be engaged in killing their legacy with inept stagings

 

 

 

Can you just elaborate on that - I know that Isabelle Fokine has come in for a lot of stick because people think that she changes her grandfather's ballets willy-nilly. However Miss Fokine herself has stated that her grandfather himself sometimes changed his ballets and he left notations of his ballets to her. So I am at a loss to understand why some people insist that Beriosoff's version of Petrushka, for instance, is better than Miss Fokine's own staging.

 

I am not arguing that she is the right person but I just want to know what people consider to be the most authentic versions of Fokine's ballets?  

Edited May 13, 2016 by CHazell2

[MAB]

If you'd watched Fokine works pre and post Isabelle you'd be in no doubt about the havoc she is creating.  Fokine's works were previously preserved along with performance traditions and the spirit of those works was surviving intact.  Working with sterile notebooks without an understanding of those traditions has resulted in anaemic versions that lack a beating heart and are boring to watch. 

 

Compare the Royal Ballet's Firebird with an Isabelle Fokine version where the Firebird crosses the stage in split jetes while gurning vacuously at the audience.  At least two RB Firebirds exist on DVD with Fonteyn and Benjamin in the title role.  Their Firebirds are wild untameable creatures with no hint of humanity with the RB interpretations following the instructions of the role's creator, Tamara Karsavina.  It is a ballet that lives and breathes when the Royal Ballet dances it, a dead tedious dance exercise when produced by Isabelle Fokine.

[CHazell2]

If you'd watched Fokine works pre and post Isabelle you'd be in no doubt about the havoc she is creating.  Fokine's works were previously preserved along with performance traditions and the spirit of those works was surviving intact.  Working with sterile notebooks without an understanding of those traditions has resulted in anaemic versions that lack a beating heart and are boring to watch. 

 

Compare the Royal Ballet's Firebird with an Isabelle Fokine version where the Firebird crosses the stage in split jetes while gurning vacuously at the audience.  At least two RB Firebirds exist on DVD with Fonteyn and Benjamin in the title role.  Their Firebirds are wild untameable creatures with no hint of humanity with the RB interpretations following the instructions of the role's creator, Tamara Karsavina.  It is a ballet that lives and breathes when the Royal Ballet dances it, a dead tedious dance exercise when produced by Isabelle Fokine.

 

I understand that but would you think the same of the Ratmansky reconstructions of Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake using the Stepanov notebooks? Do you think that they are anaemic and boring too?

Edited May 13, 2016 by CHazell2

[MAB]

Haven't seen them but have seen Vikharev's SB, Bayaderka and Awakening of Flora recreated from notations.  Ratmansky and Vikharev are both professionals though, former leading dancers from major companies whereas Ms Fokine appears to be an opportunistic amateur.

[CHazell2]

If you'd watched Fokine works pre and post Isabelle you'd be in no doubt about the havoc she is creating.  Fokine's works were previously preserved along with performance traditions and the spirit of those works was surviving intact.  Working with sterile notebooks without an understanding of those traditions has resulted in anaemic versions that lack a beating heart and are boring to watch. 

 

Compare the Royal Ballet's Firebird with an Isabelle Fokine version where the Firebird crosses the stage in split jetes while gurning vacuously at the audience.  At least two RB Firebirds exist on DVD with Fonteyn and Benjamin in the title role.  Their Firebirds are wild untameable creatures with no hint of humanity with the RB interpretations following the instructions of the role's creator, Tamara Karsavina.  It is a ballet that lives and breathes when the Royal Ballet dances it, a dead tedious dance exercise when produced by Isabelle Fokine

 

 

It might be a possibility that it might be the ballerinas themselves who make it a tedious exercise rather than Isabelle Fokine, she was a dancer herself and she studied the ballets for 15 years with her father, who was a restager himself.

 

Here is a link to two very interesting interviews in which Miss Fokine discusses her role and the reaction that she receives.

 

http://dancetabs.com/2014/07/the-work-of-mikhail-fokine-qa-with-isabelle-fokine/

 

http://qporit.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/isabelle-fokine-interview-and.html

Edited May 13, 2016 by CHazell2

[FLOSS]

CHazell2. There is a discussion of Fokine's ballet on this site. You may find its contents of interest. It includes a couple of posts in which I set out the elements of ENB's staging of Petrushka by Isabelle Fokine  which I found unsatisfactory. It seems to me that in order to stage a satisfactory revival of an old ballet you need to have the ability to breath life into it.That ability is a very rare one and is not a genetic inheritance. When the ballet's  choreographic style is one which is alien, if not completely at odds with current artistic and aesthetic tastes, then you need to be a theatrical genius. I don't think that Isabelle Fokine is a theatrical genius. Her revivals seem to make a strong case for the continued neglect of her grandfather's ballets as in performance they seem little better than historic curiosities.

 

I don't feel able to comment on the effectiveness of Ratmansky's  reconstructions of Swan  Lake or Sleeping Beauty as I have not seen either of them. I saw the live stream of his reconstructed Paquita which included reconstructing the mime as well as the original choreographic text and found it fascinating. It was interesting to see how much the dancers struggled with the authentic performance style. I think that the difference between the two enterprises is that Ratmansky is a choreographer and approaches his task with the experience of creating effective theatrical works of his own, and the reconstructions appear to be a labour of love. I am not sure what qualifications, experience or gifts Isabelle Fokine brings to the task. She has access to her grandfather's staging notes which does not seem to be quite enough.

Edited May 14, 2016 by FLOSS