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VOLUNTARIES - is there a DVD of the complete ballet?


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Why care to see it - Voluntaries is "by no means universally admired and often considered unmusical and manipulative", as we can read in Alastair Macaulay's review today :angry:   It's a beautiful, deep, earnest ballet (and indeed very musical!), I've seen it often at Stuttgart. I've never heard about a recording, sorry!

By the way: what's a "manipulative" ballet??

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Why care to see it - Voluntaries is "by no means universally admired and often considered unmusical and manipulative", as we can read in Alastair Macaulay's review today :angry:   It's a beautiful, deep, earnest ballet (and indeed very musical!), I've seen it often at Stuttgart. I've never heard about a recording, sorry!

By the way: what's a "manipulative" ballet??

 

OMG what is that man on?????? "by no means universally admired" clearly means, "I, AM, do not like it".

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Well, seriously, is anything universally admired? I thought Voluntaries was wonderful - saw it several times at ROH in the 1970s in a triple bill with Month in the Country and something else I've forgotten. I don't normally particularly like abstract ballets with minimal costume and scenery but I was always ready to make an exception for that one.

 

I've done a bit of searching and come up with a link (which apparently I can't post because this forum won't let me paste stuff I've copied) to a VHS in the Worldcat database (just google on Tetley Voluntaries VHS). There's a recording by the Pacific Northwest Ballet in 1991; the information is as follows: Videotaped in performance at Seattle Center Opera House, Seattle, Washington, March 23, 1991. Choreography: Glen Tetley, assisted by Scott Douglas. Music, Francis Poulenc (Concerto for organ, strings, and timpani); Scenery/costumes: Rouben Ter-Arutunian; Lighting: Randall G. Chiarelli. Performed by Pacific Northwest Ballet: Patricia Barker and Thordal Christensen, with Colleen Neary, Stirling Kekoa, and Benkjamin Houk, and others. OCLC number (whatever the heck that is): 80124214. 31 min, NTSC.

 

Might be worth contacting Pacific Northwest Ballet to see if they have a spare copy or know where one might be found. It's possible (at least it was possible a few years ago) to convert from NTSC to PAL and to put stuff from a videocassette onto DVD. The quality won't be great but it'll probably be better than YouTube.

Edited by Melody
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No, I think that's a more general Tetley programme that shows excerpts from several ballets. Let me find it and post it longhand. I remember finding the one you posted if I included "Glen" in the search - I found the other one with just Tetley Voluntaries VHS. Sometimes I really wonder about Google.

 

Here it is: http://worldcat.org/title/voluntaries-videorecording/oclc/80124214

 

BTW, is there a reason I can't paste stuff? Do you have to have a certain number of posts or something?

Edited by Melody
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Great researching, Melody, thank you ... I'll certainly pursue this via PNB!

 

In the meantime I have contacted the Stuttgart Ballet, just in case, and they confirmed that they do not have any recording of Voluntaries.

 

It's funny, I have got so used (even though I am NOT a young and adept computer-user), to being able to find anything I want  - usually via You Tube - that I'm unreasonably miffed when I can't. It's hard to remember what it was like not so long ago when you had to write letters to get information, and even VHS was not really obtainable for the ordinary (pace Darcey) "punter"!

 

We really are spoiled .....

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