Dance-Actresses

[FLOSS]

Technique is essential but you have to do something with it other than make the audience go "WOW" !.  The danger with being obsessed with technique and seeing it as an end in itself is that dance topples over into athletics to music  or as Danilova put it when writing about the development of dance in Russia after the revolution  a "display of dance". Dancing too many expressive works can easily lead to technical sloppiness. What I describe as the emote and sprawl style of dancing can easily become the order of the day which is why the RB needs to ensure that it programmes ballets with rigorous technical requirements at regular intervals to counteract the effects of weeks of performing dance dramas.

 

I think that Denby when writing about Nora Kaye said words to the effect that generally  it was older dancers whose technique was on the wane who were praised for their acting but that Kaye's expressiveness had nothing to do with declining technical powers. So what about Seymour's technique was she praised for her dramatic powers because she was technically weak.? I don't think so. Remember she was dancing at a time when there was not the obsession with technique that there is now. A dancer's performance  of Odette/ Odile did not stand or fall on whether the dancer concerned managed a full thirty two fouettes or whether the dancer undertaking the role of Aurora set a world record for the duration of her balances in the Rose Adagio. When watching films of Seymour, Fonteyn, Wall, Dowell and Jeffries you need to remember that they are dancing the choreography as set and that apparent ease of execution was the prevailing aesthetic and had been since Fokine had begun making ballets. Dancers were expected to make everything look easy and natural; movement was expected to flow.  In a ballet like Monotones 2 the dancers were never completely still. there was a continuous flow of movement rather than move, pose,  move and pose again which is how it is danced today. Try to watch Lynn Seymour dancing Five Brahms Waltzes and A Month in the Country on YouTube. In Five Waltzes she does not stop between each waltz to show us her "acting" but dances through only leaving the stage to collect the rose petals for the last dance. In Month there is continuous movement and the movement and acting are inseparable. I know that David Wall said that there were occasions on which as a performer he forgot that Seymour was dancing. I can say that I think that was true for the audience as well.

 

Now while Seymour was not the greatest technician in the world she had enough technique for the classical roles that she danced and the roles that were created on her. The roles that Ashton created for her are not as technically simple as they appear in performance. Ashton's choreography does what Danilova said dance should do, tell stories and create mood. As to the technical aspects of Ashton's style Alicia Markova said that the dancer's legs and feet are Cecchetti while the upper body is Duncan with .the added problem that the upper body is generally doing the very opposite of what Cecchetti suggests the upper body should be doing in conjunction with the steps being danced.  So the  dancer displays his/ her skill by making the body move as a unified whole with all movement looking normal, natural and easy.

 

When Two Pigeons was revived earlier this season hardly any of the dancers performing the Young Girl managed to make the character's arm movements in the first act look like anything other than wild arm flailing. It should look far more controlled and subtle and far more like wings in movement than most could manage. Takada came close to getting it right before Christmas and after Christmas Stix-Brunell got it absolutely right. They were the two dancers who had most success in making their upper body movements look as if they were connected with the movements of their lower body and achieved a degree of fluidity in their epaulement  which certainly reminded me that Ashton had made the work on a genuine ballerina..

 

Seymour danced the classics but she was best known for the works created on her.As to what others thought of her technical capacity? Both Ashton and MacMillan were happy to make works on her and while they may have show cased her skills Ashton certainly did not  create simple choreography for her. dancers taking on her roles find them difficult not because they are so very closely crafted on her but because of the technical demands of what Seymour described as "Ashton's knitting" , all the little steps that displayed her feet. When Nureyev staged the Kingdom of the Shades for the Royal Ballet the three dancers he chose to dance the soloist roles were Sibley , Seymour and Mason. He selected music that would display and contrast their remarkable gifts as dancers, Sibley's pure classicism, Mason's technical strength and grandeur and Seymour's beauty of movement.

 

My choices as far as dance actresses are concerned would be from the nineteenth century Carlotta Grisi and Virginia Zucchi and from the twentieth century  Nora Kaye, Lynn Seymour and Marcia Haydee as far as the twenty first century is concerned let's wait and see. As far as  dancer actors are concerned for the twentieth century David Wall and Stephen Jeffries.

Edited June 4, 2016 by FLOSS

[Two Pigeons]

I remember in the early 80s there was quite a lot of conversation amongst balletomanes and some critics that Seymour was not that strong a dancer. It was around the time the RB revived the one act Anastasia and one of Seymour's keenest supporters saying people who thought that way should look at the works which were created on her and how the next generation of dancers were finding it challenging to perform her roles.

[GTL]

In Nureyev's 1972 film, "I am a Dancer", he chose Lynn Seymour to dance Aurora in an Act 3 Sleeping Beauty excerpt, so he presumably considered her sufficiently up to its technical challenges to record her for posterity. I know it has its critics, but out of the many wonderful dancers around then, he chose her for it.

[FLOSS]

Two Pigeons I think that the 1980's was the time when everyone started to become obsessed with technique for different reasons. I can recall reading articles in the dancing press reporting that eminent Russian teachers were  expressing concern at the emphasis on technique in dance at the expense of everything else. While here there was obviously a problem with the Royal Ballet School. Park's appointment as director was supposed to sort everything out. The history of the RBS will be a fascinating tale but one that is unlikely to be told until all the participants are dead.

 

It was a time when the RB was looking a bit sparse as far as really good dancers were concerned, There were the dancers who had been developed by de Valois and Ashton, many of whom were fast approaching retirement. These were the dancers who MacMillan had used in his successful three act works ballets. Then there were dancers like Derek Deane and Wendy Ellis who were the new generation and for whatever reason the new generation did not seem as if it was quite up to filling the shoes of those who were about to retire.Somehow having been forced to close down the Touring Company which had served as a training ground for many dancers, for reasons of  economy it never occurred to MacMillan or anyone that something had to be done  to ensure that young dancers had an opportunity to develop their technical and theatrical skills.

 

I think that it is very easy to assume that a piece of choreography with obvious technical tricks in it is difficult while something of apparent simplicity is easy to perform well. The middle section of Concerto would seem to make no demands on the dancer. It is  based on the image of a dancer exercising at the barre and what could be simpler than that? The difficulty lies in capturing the dynamics,expansiveness and fluidity of the movement as choreographed. I don't think that anyone has ever displayed the sheer beauty of simple movement as well as MacMillan did with Seymour in this ballet. We can all recognise the sheer technical demands that performing  multiple pirouettes requires but how many of the audience would recognise the difficulty and applaud the  execution of one perfect pirouette.

 

There is a recording of Seymour and Nureyev in the grand pas de deux which was in The Magic of Dance. It must have been filmed in the late 1970's or the early 1980's because it was filmed at Covent Garden and used the sets and costumes of the 1977 de Valois production of Sleeping Beauty. I find it particularly interesting because in Aurora's solo for once you actually see in her epaulement the gifts that the Fairies bestowed on her in the Prologue.

[LinMM]

What did you think of Fonteyn in Marguerite and Armand.....as you mentioned this was the closest Ashton got to,a dramatic ballet but did not mention the quality ( or not) of Fonteyns performance of this.

Edited June 4, 2016 by LinMM

[LinMM]

I'm pretty sure I was at the premiere of Anastasia or very soon afterwards and Lyn Seymour was just stunning in the final Act. I still have not seen anyone perform this with such direct communication as her but look forward to the next season to see what happens there.

[GTL]

"the sheer beauty of simple movement"  (FLOSS, post 37 above).

That's what, in the present day, I see in Vadim Muntagirov over more strenuous technicians.  Moreover, watching Matthew Golding alongside him in the RB'S  current "In the Golden Hour", I caught glimpses of the same.  The third principal with them got more applause but I just felt he was trying too hard.

[FLOSS]

I'm afraid I think that the third principal always tries too hard, but then I think that by nature and temperament he is a demi caractere technician. Now there are some demi caractere dancers who have the best of both worlds and are able to dance the roles of both demi caractere performers and danseurs but they tend to be actors rather technicians. Stephen Jeffries may not have had the third principal's technique but he was far more interesting in performance. He was capable of performing  the Joker in Cranko's  Jeux des Cartes, MacMillan's Mercutio  and Ashton's Colas with consummate ease; Lescaut, and Rudolf  with total conviction and also make a very convincing Albrecht and make real characters out of the sundry princes who populate Petipa's late ballets without seeming to do very much. Like David Wall he was different in every role he played. For me the third principal is a bit like Wayne Sleep and always  plays himself.

 

Ballet is a theatrical art form I expect to see technique in the form that the choreographer intended it to be shown. If the dance is a Soviet display piece like the solo for the Golden Idol then show me technique but if the choreography is by someone who famously expected his choreography to be danced with ease and naturalness then show me it danced like that. I expect dancers to have enough technique to dance the roles that they are playing, For me classroom technique is for the classroom the choreographer's modification of classical technique and his style of dancing is what I expect to see in performance.

[Mary]

"the sheer beauty of simple movement"  (FLOSS, post 37 above).

That's what, in the present day, I see in Vadim Muntagirov over more strenuous technicians. 

 

Absolutely agree.

In Fille, and in Giselle...more to come....

[billboyd]

I'm pleased to say that audiences seem to very much like Principal 3.

[GTL]

Bill, I think that in a way is the problem.

To widen this beyond the third principal (who, I must stress, I like as a person, consider excellent in some rôles but does not yet seem to be developing fast enough into the mature artist many had hoped for), the devaluation of the dance actress in favour of the technician is a market-led development, which is not wholly good for the art.

[FLOSS]

Well I am all for the well rounded dancer who is not completely dependent on technique to achieve his or her effects. If the choreographer has created a role for a performer which is simply an opportunity to display technique then I can't object to a performer who does just that but I am entitled to object if a choreographer has created a character with his choreography but a dancer ignores everything except the technical challenges and reduces the character to a mere leg machine.

 

I know that the audience, particularly one composed of newcomers to the ballet, likes the "wow" factor just as it likes to see those elements of technique which it can recognise as being difficult.When men are dancing  it likes to see the limited number of steps which it associates with male dancing. But we have to understand that over emphasis on technique has the effect of debasing ballet as an art form and reduces it to athletics set to music. It seems to me that  this is what Danilova was thinking of when she wrote of  post Revolutionary Russian ballet being merely "a display pf dance". Too much emphasis on expressiveness and the emotional impact of dancing leads to sloppy technique while too much emphasis on technique and the challenges the dancer faces in performance leads to circus. Neither extreme is beneficial to the future of ballet as a serious art form.

[LinMM]

Well I'm not sure why people would not include Fonteyn in the dance actress group.

 

Although she probably didn't have that grittiness that Seymour had ....so maybe difficult to imagine her in some Macmillan roles....... she was still a fine actress and for me is still the best interpreter of Marguerite in Margurite and Armand. She was also wonderful in Giselle which requires some acting ability if the audience is to be moved that is.

 

The only dancer who has moved me to tears through technique alone is Makarova

[bridiem]

Well I am all for the well rounded dancer who is not completely dependent on technique to achieve his or her effects. If the choreographer has created a role for a performer which is simply an opportunity to display technique then I can't object to a performer who does just that but I am entitled to object if a choreographer has created a character with his choreography but a dancer ignores everything except the technical challenges and reduces the character to a mere leg machine.

 

I know that the audience, particularly one composed of newcomers to the ballet, likes the "wow" factor just as it likes to see those elements of technique which it can recognise as being difficult.When men are dancing  it likes to see the limited number of steps which it associates with male dancing. But we have to understand that over emphasis on technique has the effect of debasing ballet as an art form and reduces it to athletics set to music. It seems to me that  this is what Danilova was thinking of when she wrote of  post Revolutionary Russian ballet being merely "a display pf dance". Too much emphasis on expressiveness and the emotional impact of dancing leads to sloppy technique while too much emphasis on technique and the challenges the dancer faces in performance leads to circus. Neither extreme is beneficial to the future of ballet as a serious art form.

 

What a brilliant post, Floss. As ever. Thank you.

[MAB]

Although I'm the first person to object to those dancers whose performances descend into a display of acrobatics, I still think having a strong technique is a prerequisite in a leading dancer.  Performing thirty two fouettes for example matters because it is set in stone as part of the third act of Swan Lake.  I do not want to go back to the bad old days when they descended into an embarrassing spectacle of twelve followed by a mish mash of steps to fill in for the rest of the music and I prefer a Giselle who can complete the Act I hops on pointe too.

 

Things have improved but if I feel a dancer isn't up to the technical challenges, I won't be going back.

[tabitha]

a dancer ignores everything except the technical challenges and reduces the character to a mere leg machine.

 

over emphasis on technique has the effect of debasing ballet as an art form and reduces it to athletics set to music.

Sadly we seem to have swung too far in favour of 'leg machines', especially in Europe where a lot of the company ADs are also modern choreographers and seem less interested in creating characters for their new ballets, but more interested in extremes of movement of the body.

[Fonty]

Although I'm the first person to object to those dancers whose performances descend into a display of acrobatics, I still think having a strong technique is a prerequisite in a leading dancer.  Performing thirty two fouettes for example matters because it is set in stone as part of the third act of Swan Lake.  I do not want to go back to the bad old days when they descended into an embarrassing spectacle of twelve followed by a mish mash of steps to fill in for the rest of the music and I prefer a Giselle who can complete the Act I hops on pointe too.

 

Things have improved but if I feel a dancer isn't up to the technical challenges, I won't be going back.

 

While I agree with most of what you say, Mab, I don't think the 32 fouettes in Swan Lake are actually set in stone, are they?   I would hate to think that a dancer who might be an exceptional Odette/Odile is denied the opportunity because they don't happen to be very good at one tiny part of the dance curriculum.  It's a bit like saying anybody who can't manage a 6 o'clock extension is not technically good enough to dance a role.

 

Personally, if a particular dancer has a different party piece, I wouldn't have an issue with them doing something else.  

 

Edited to add does anyone know of dancers who do perform something else?  Was it Nadia Nerina who substituted jumps and beats, rather than fouettes?

Edited June 5, 2016 by Fonty

[Jan McNulty]

While I agree with most of what you say, Mab, I don't think the 32 fouettes in Swan Lake are actually set in stone, are they?   I would hate to think that a dancer who might be an exceptional Odette/Odile is denied the opportunity because they don't happen to be very good at one tiny part of the dance curriculum.  It's a bit like saying anybody who can't manage a 6 o'clock extension is not technically good enough to dance a role.

 

Personally, if a particular dancer has a different party piece, I wouldn't have an issue with them doing something else.  

 

Edited to add does anyone know of dancers who do perform something else?  Was it Nadia Nerina who substituted jumps and beats, rather than fouettes?

 

 

 

I saw Robert de Warren's production of Swan Lake for Northern Ballet many years ago.  The young lady dancing the role had a bad fall in the first part of the pdd.  She did not do the fouettes, she did a different variation but I assumed it was because she was hurt in the fall (but not badly enough to stop the performance).

 

More recently I have seen a young dancer come off the fouettes early and complete the music with a spectacular manege around the stage.  I thought it looked wonderful.  However I had also seen this dancer do immaculate fouettes completing the music in other performances.

 

I have to say Fonty that I absolutely agree that the ability to do 32 fouettes does not make a good Odette/Odile and I would hate to see a dancer missing a chance because of that.  I never count the fouettes so I wouldn't know how many dancers over the years have completed 32.  I personally prefer single fouettes to the more fancy doubles and triples because, unless the dancer is Momoko Hirata who can flash them out so fast you don't notice,  they are not usually in time with the music.

[Jamesrhblack]

While I agree with most of what you say, Mab, I don't think the 32 fouettes in Swan Lake are actually set in stone, are they?   I would hate to think that a dancer who might be an exceptional Odette/Odile is denied the opportunity because they don't happen to be very good at one tiny part of the dance curriculum.  It's a bit like saying anybody who can't manage a 6 o'clock extension is not technically good enough to dance a role.

 

Personally, if a particular dancer has a different party piece, I wouldn't have an issue with them doing something else.  

 

Edited to add does anyone know of dancers who do perform something else?  Was it Nadia Nerina who substituted jumps and beats, rather than fouettes?

I think Nerina did that to get back at Nureyev having disapproved of one of his interpolations in to Act Two of Giselle....

[MAB]

While I agree with most of what you say, Mab, I don't think the 32 fouettes in Swan Lake are actually set in stone, are they?   I would hate to think that a dancer who might be an exceptional Odette/Odile is denied the opportunity because they don't happen to be very good at one tiny part of the dance curriculum.  It's a bit like saying anybody who can't manage a 6 o'clock extension is not technically good enough to dance a role.

 

 

Tenors that can't sing the nine top C's in 'Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête' don't get invited to sing the leading role in La Fille du Regiment.  The fouettes are traditional and should therefore be danced.  I'll grant that some companies with niche repertoires probably don't have dancers that can meet the full demands of the classical challenges but hopefully such dancers won't be so delusional as to think they can.

[Beryl H]

In the past many girls couldn't do the 32 fouettes and substitued turns round the stage usually, these days technique has improved so much that no-one seems to have problems, it would look strange if she did.

[Odyssey]

I am glad that Floss introduced Lynn Seymour's name to this thread . When I was growing up, she was the dancer who was frequently associated with the term 'dance actress'. I never saw her dance, but  if you read  her autobiography where she recollects creating Juliet with Macmillan, this is very much an actress as well as a dancer preparing the role. Her account of the point in the drama when having secretly married Romeo and forced by her family to wed Paris, Juliet has to decide what she should do is particularly revelatory. Macmillan suggested that he didn't want Juliet " prancing around the bedroom. ....could she just sit on the bed?" Lynn describes it as an audacious idea that could have easily been a disaster. "It required the careful building of a character whose desolation stirred the audience - without words, without movement". There are further accounts of the craft of building the dramatic characters that Macmillan created on her, but this one comes to my mind whenever I see this ballet and the passage is, for me ,very much a touchstone of how convincing I find the dancer in the role of Juliet. That ability to communicate  what is going through this young girl's mind while she sits motionless on the edge of the bed and meanwhile  the music soars. Magical.

[tabitha]

Although I'm the first person to object to those dancers whose performances descend into a display of acrobatics, I still think having a strong technique is a prerequisite in a leading dancer.  Performing thirty two fouettes for example matters because it is set in stone as part of the third act of Swan Lake.  I do not want to go back to the bad old days when they descended into an embarrassing spectacle of twelve followed by a mish mash of steps to fill in for the rest of the music and I prefer a Giselle who can complete the Act I hops on pointe too.

 

Things have improved but if I feel a dancer isn't up to the technical challenges, I won't be going back.

I am staggered that you would judge a dancer's technical ability on their ability to execute 32 fouettés. They are just a party trick and give no indication of anything much.

[Fonty]

I think one of best dance actresses that I saw was Sarah Wildor, but I don't think she ever danced Swan Lake?  I remember reading once that she said that she wasn't considered to be a technician.  I never quite understood what she meant by that.  If she was a Principal, surely she should have been given the opportunity?

[alison]

Not necessarily.  Mara Galeazzi didn't get to dance it either.  The Royal has a broad enough repertoire *not* to have to shoehorn its principals into the whole of it just because they're principals - and I think it's been FLOSS complaining when we end up getting over half-a-dozen different casts because it seems to be felt that every ballerina has to give us her Aurora/O-O/Giselle/Juliet etc.

[Two Pigeons]

Sarah Wildor was one of the greatest losses to the Royal Ballet and it was all a question of unfortunate timing. She was one of the last Ashton dancers but that didn't fit with the company director's ethos at the time. I felt she was not well treated.

[Fiz]

Seconded, Two Pigeons.

[betterankles]

Although I'm the first person to object to those dancers whose performances descend into a display of acrobatics, I still think having a strong technique is a prerequisite in a leading dancer.  Performing thirty two fouettes for example matters because it is set in stone as part of the third act of Swan Lake.  I do not want to go back to the bad old days when they descended into an embarrassing spectacle of twelve followed by a mish mash of steps to fill in for the rest of the music and I prefer a Giselle who can complete the Act I hops on pointe too.

 

Things have improved but if I feel a dancer isn't up to the technical challenges, I won't be going back.

Performing 32 Fouettees is NOT set in stone for third act of Swan Lake, Plisetskaya never did them and was in her heyday one of the greatest. Not do I believe Ulanova ever did them. Fortunately, as it would be a great great pity to lose out on a great Swan Queen just because of that.. They were put in for Pierina Legnani, as a way of seducing the Prince through technical virtuosity - if another step is substituted which still serves that purpose - amen to that!

Also some of the greatest Giselles have had difficulties with the hops on pointe in the solo. The entire solo of course was an add on when it was restaged by Petipa in Russia...

[FLOSS]

The story about Nerina changing Odile's choreography in act 3 Swan Lake was a response to Nureyev. As I understand it, it was not that she disapproved of his entrechats six in Giselle but she was tired of hearing him criticise the company's technical strength. She felt that his perception of the company's technical standards had more to do with the company's performance style than anything else. The story, as she told it in the book called Ballerina,is that on an evening when Nureyev was in the audience she substituted entre chats six for the usual fouettes. She had checked beforehand and was pleased to find that they fitted the music exactly She got told off for it but she had the pleasure of seeing Nureyev slink out of the auditorium. He had brought the house down by executing twelve entrechats six in Giselle  I can only speculate on the audience's response to her thirty two. Perhaps they complained because she had not done fouettes.

 

A successful performance of Swan Lake is not, it seems to me, dependent on the execution of thirty two fouettes. Dancers who have slightly suspect knees often substitute other steps. I am still waiting to see a dancer do thirty two perfect fouettes sur place as opposed to drifting across the stage.

 

The comment made by Sarah Wildor about not being a technician as a reason for not dancing Swan Lake is rather odd as Jennifer Penney was once asked if she had ever thought of dancing LIse and is supposed to have said that she had not as it was too difficult.

Edited June 6, 2016 by FLOSS

[Jamesrhblack]

The story about Nerina changing Odile's choreography in act 3 Swan Lake was a response to Nureyev. As I understand it, it was not that she disapproved of his entrechats six in Giselle but she was tired of hearing him criticise the company's technical strength. She felt that his perception of the company's technical standards had more to do with the company's performance style than anything else. The story, as she told it in the book called Ballerina,is that on an evening when Nureyev was in the audience she substituted entre chats six for the usual fouettes. She had checked beforehand and was pleased to find that they fitted the music exactly She got told off for it but she had the pleasure of seeing Nureyev slink out of the auditorium. He had brought the house down by executing twelve entrechats six in Giselle  I can only speculate on the audience's response to her thirty two. Perhaps they complained because she had not done fouettes.

 

A successful performance of Swan Lake is not, it seems to me, dependent on the execution of thirty two fouettes. Dancers who have slightly suspect knees often substitute other steps. I am still waiting to see a dancer do thirty two perfect fouettes sur place as opposed to drifting across the stage.

 

The comment made by Sarah Wildor about not being a technician as a reason for not dancing Swan Lake is rather odd as Jennifer Penney was once asked if she had ever thought of dancing LIse and is supposed to have said that she had not as it was too difficult.

Thanks for this clarification of the Nerina story FLOSS.

 

I may be wearing retro spectacles, but I have a very clear impression, albeit I was very young at the time, of Maina Gielgud executing the foutëes sur place with LFB in 1973. We were sitting in the very back row of the London Coliseum balcony and the view was extremely clear: I can still remember my late father explaining to me after the act why that was such a particularly impressive technical achievement,,,,

[Jamesrhblack]

Although I'm the first person to object to those dancers whose performances descend into a display of acrobatics, I still think having a strong technique is a prerequisite in a leading dancer.  Performing thirty two fouettes for example matters because it is set in stone as part of the third act of Swan Lake.  I do not want to go back to the bad old days when they descended into an embarrassing spectacle of twelve followed by a mish mash of steps to fill in for the rest of the music and I prefer a Giselle who can complete the Act I hops on pointe too.

 

Things have improved but if I feel a dancer isn't up to the technical challenges, I won't be going back.

I can't remember what Seymour did as Odile but I do remember that when I saw Fonteyn she did a ménage of turns round the stage not the foutëes. Should she therefore not have been cast?

[Fonty]

Thanks Floss.  I wonder why Nerina got told off?  I would love to see a ballerina do something like that, it would make a nice change. 

 

Janet mentioned my own personal hate, which is dancers who, by throwing in doubles or whatever, do not turn in time to the music.  It really annoys me.  For one thing, it looks clumsy, and for another they have to drop out of the turns and do something else in order to finish at the same time as the music.  Often it looks as though it has been made up on the spot. 

 

Not necessarily.  Mara Galeazzi didn't get to dance it either.  The Royal has a broad enough repertoire *not* to have to shoehorn its principals into the whole of it just because they're principals - and I think it's been FLOSS complaining when we end up getting over half-a-dozen different casts because it seems to be felt that every ballerina has to give us her Aurora/O-O/Giselle/Juliet etc.

 

Alison, I wasn't suggesting that all principals should dance Swan Lake, far from it, It was just that Sarah Wildor was one of my favourites because not only was she such a good actress, but she was a lovely, lyrical dancer, as I recall. But she wasn't someone who flashed their technique at you, she was more the understated, "English" style.  Her comment seemed to be implying that the authorities didn't think this style was suitable for the ballet.  A pity, I would have thought she would have brought something different to the role, but sadly we'll never know. 

[alison]

"sadly, we'll never know".  Those are such sad words, really, when I think of all the dancers I'd have loved to see in role X, but have never been cast in it

 

By the way, did I once see Marianela Nunez substitute something else for the fouettes, or am I confusing it with something else?