Perfect ballets?

[LinMM]

My dithering has been on whether to include Les Sylphides or not for the same reasons others give that it is so rarely performed these days.

However as I used to sit on the stairs at night as a child because my mum was playing this "beautiful" music downstairs which she then told me was ballet music from "Les Sylphides" it does have a firm place in my heart and was lucky to see Markova perform a small part of this in a 1961 RAD gala when I was 12 (I think!)

 

So my "perfect" ballets ....which I will say are just those I wish were in rep every year...are Les Sylphides, Dances at a Gathering, Month in the Country, Fille(of course!) Giselle Las Hermanas and Requiem.

There used to be a ballet to Beethovens "Hammerklavier" sonata possibly by Hans van Manen?.....I do wish this could be revived too.

Of course there are loads of ballets besides these that I love as well but these are very special to me for different reasons which I could go into but might make the post a bit long!!

[Fonty]

 

As the ballet is something of a rarity I will mention two recordings of it that are well worth watching. The first is the ICA DVD of a BBC recording with Markova, Beriosova, Elvin and John Field who make it look so simple that you wonder how anyone can get it wrong.The second is a recording of The Royal Ballet with Fonteyn and Nureyev. Then there is Markova La Legende which has a whole section given over to her coaching members of the POB which is fascinating.

 

 

Thanks so much for that.  I found the record of Markova, Beriosova etc on Youtube, and had a lovely time watching it.  The bourre was so smoothly done by all the dancers that they looked as though they were on wheels.

 

I have to say that the last time I saw Les Sylphides live I found it rather tedious, but this was delightful. 

[Fonty]

Should have been bourree, I think!  How did I come to leave that pesky e off the end. 

[alison]

There used to be a ballet to Beethovens "Hammerklavier" sonata possibly by Hans van Manen?.....I do wish this could be revived too.

 

I thought Dutch National Ballet or someone brought it over a few years ago?

[FLOSS]

Alison and Melody

Balanchine quotations. "See the music hear the dance";"Dancing is music made visible"

I know that Balanchine's way with music is perhaps best described as cavalier. Finding that a single piece of Ravel was not long enough for his purposes he just spliced another piece by the same composer onto it. I can't imagine him getting that past the Opera House Board.

 

I find it amusing that the man who did so much in the twentieth century to expand the range of movement available to classical ballet remained at heart, at least when it came to music, an old unreformed nineteenth century ballet master.In the Emeralds section of Jewels he splices together pieces from two orchestral suites by Faure and then in 1976 decided to add another piece hence the "false ending".But that does not stop me admiring this ballet which evokes the purity and nobility of the nineteenth century French school and the France of medieval romance and the land of Lyoness. In fact it is this ballet, which often barely registers and is so difficult to perform well that I like most of the three. As far as the music for Serenade is concerned strangely I do not feel that the musical text for the ballet is "wrong" when it is performed with Balanchine's choreography.I would almost certainly  do so if I heard it in the rearranged order in the concert hall.

 

I am not an uncritical  admirer of Balanchine. I do not think that everything that he made is a masterpiece worthy of preservation. I sometimes think that,unlike Ashton some of whose works are in danger of being lost through laziness and neglect, Balanchine suffers from an over reverential attitude to his works which seeks to preserve the choreographic equivalent of nail parings. I could quite happily live without Tzigane and Bugaku for example. I tend to prefer works that feel like immediate responses to music such as Symphony in C and Concert Barocco rather than pieces which feel as of the life has been analysed out of them. I know that I prefer Ashton following  the melody over the bar lines to Balanchine's persistent acknowledgement of them

 

 A choreographer does not have to treat the score for Romeo and Juliet in the way that MacMillan did. Ashton made his Romeo and Juliet before the Lavrovsky version was known in the West. It is very different from the post Lavrovsky versions of Cranko  and MacMillan .I think that  it is the Lavrovsky ballet rather than the score itself which is prescriptive.Where Cranko, MacMillan et al  clothe the structure that Lavrovsky has shown them Ashton uses the music in a way that looks and feels very different and it is not just Ashton pas de deux compared with MacMillan style pas de deux which make the difference.. It all feels more specific Tybalt is not simply a heavy who suffers a melodramatic death. He is the" prince of cats".The market place is not merely somewhere for massed dances for the corps to take place.The nurse is accompanied by Peter a character who is normally cut from the acted text.  It is Romeo and Juliet as a personal tragedy rather than epic dance drama. Eagling wanted ENB to revive it . A real missed opportunity.

 

Les Sylphides was staged for LFB by Markova in 1976 and performed most recently in 2009. I know that I saw Nureyev and Evdokimova in it several times early on and it was so very different from the way in which the Royal Ballet companies both at Covent Garden and the touring company performed it. They dance it dutifully whereas LFB had a real feel for the Romantic style and the mood the that ballet should evoke.In fact I would say that LFB/ENB's productions of both Giselle(Mary Skeaping) and Les Sylphides (Markova) were much better than either Royal Ballet company in text,overall standard of performance and understanding of the style.I think that Les Sylphides was last performed by ENB in 2009.

 

Fonty. Glad you enjoyed it.Did it include the introduction by Karsavina?

[LinMM]

Well this "Hammerklavier" piece was definitely danced by the Royal at some stage......early 80's??

 

Perhaps it was only on offer to the RB for a short while? Or was it part of some gala? Can't remember now other than it was a really nice piece.

[LinMM]

 

Not the Royal but a little extract from this lovely piece.

[LinMM]

Apparently the Royal performed it around 1976....so even further back than I remember.....the first cast for this back then was Makarova Wall, Mason, Eagling, Penney and Silver(Mark)

 

Would there be something preventing a revival of this for the Royal or does it now belong exclusively to the Dutch National?

[Jane S]

The RB only did a tiny number of performances of it, one of them  a royal gala - blink and you missed it. I did.

[LinMM]

Have just thought of Macmillans Concerto of course......couldn't possibly leave this one out would love to see it every season so must go on to above list!!

[alison]

In the Emeralds section of Jewels he splices together pieces from two orchestral suites by Faure and then in 1976 decided to add another piece hence the "false ending".But that does not stop me admiring this ballet which evokes the purity and nobility of the nineteenth century French school and the France of medieval romance and the land of Lyoness. In fact it is this ballet, which often barely registers and is so difficult to perform well that I like most of the three. 

 

[snip]

 

A choreographer does not have to treat the score for Romeo and Juliet in the way that MacMillan did. Ashton made his Romeo and Juliet before the Lavrovsky version was known in the West. It is very different from the post Lavrovsky versions of Cranko  and MacMillan .I think that  it is the Lavrovsky ballet rather than the score itself which is prescriptive.Where Cranko, MacMillan et al  clothe the structure that Lavrovsky has shown them Ashton uses the music in a way that looks and feels very different and it is not just Ashton pas de deux compared with MacMillan style pas de deux which make the difference.. It all feels more specific Tybalt is not simply a heavy who suffers a melodramatic death. He is the" prince of cats".The market place is not merely somewhere for massed dances for the corps to take place.The nurse is accompanied by Peter a character who is normally cut from the acted text.  It is Romeo and Juliet as a personal tragedy rather than epic dance drama. 

 

I agree with you about Emeralds - when it's cast well.  

 

With regard to R&J, I wasn't saying that it was the Lavrovsky staging which defined everything which came after.  Prokofiev's score is so specific in its titles (and perhaps in its writing too) that it's difficult to diverge successfully from what it prescribes, unless you happen to have a cloth ear, I think.  Ashton had the advantage of not actually having a proper copy of the score to work from, which probably allowed him more latitude than later choreographers, especially those tied by the requirements of Prokofiev's estate.  Yet even given that, he deviates very little from the actual running order - he couldn't, I don't think, without disregarding the music.  I do love the intimacy of his production (although not *quite* as intimate as the size of company we saw doing it in London a few years ago, please), but am less keen on the way he constructs it much more in the manner of a classical ballet, with principals and a corps. 

[MAB]

Les Sylphides is indeed beautiful, but the entire Fokine repertoire is now under threat thanks to the inferior versions being peddled by Isabel Fokine.  For example the Petrushka we saw at ENB most recently was one of Ms Fokine's efforts and was nowhere near as good as the Beriosoff version the company used to dance.  The only Fokine I unreservedly admire at the present is the Royal Ballet's glorious Firebird, passed down from source I believe. I have a DVD of Markova in Sylphides too, I also have a version with Nadia Nerina in the pas de deux and mazurka which is dear to me because she danced that the first time I saw Sylphides..What creatures of the air those dancers used to be.

 

Balanchine's Tzigane?  Clearly you never saw Suzanne Farrell dance it, in her hands it was a masterpiece.  Which brings me to performance and begs the question can a ballet be 'perfect' when danced by imperfect dancers?  For me the answer is no.  I can acknowledge a works greatness but need to see it performed in a way that does justice to the choreographer's intentions.  Dances at a Gathering is a good example, sublime when first performed by the RB but a negligible sequence of steps when revived decades later. 

 

I agree with other peoples choices, such as Emeralds and Les Noces etc. also the last act of Bayadere, preferably Nureyev's version where the dancers sank to the floor in a circle at the end, I worship Ashton so much just about everything he did was perfect in my eyes and it breaks my heart that his Romeo and Juliet isn't performed in this country.

[alison]

I don't see that a ballet becomes imperfect just because it's danced imperfectly. After all, how many times have you ever seen perfection in a performance?

[Sunrise]

Perfection is so hard to pin down - who's perfection are we talking about, what standard are we trying to compare against? Would it be what the choreographer considered perfect at the time the ballet was created and premiered? Would that make the second, third and all subsequent casts imperfect? Does it make a difference whether the choreographer is still alive and is still the final arbiter on what the ballet is supposed to look like? If Ashton were here today and said that the last run of Symphonic Variations was danced exactly the way he wanted it to be danced, should we still have misgivings about it?

Edited April 28, 2015 by Sunrise

[Sunrise]

I think I agree that perfect ballets are not dancer dependent - I can see a less than perfect cast like in Fille, and come away still thinking that the ballet itself is still perfect. I suppose it's harder to make that case in something more stripped down like SV and any miscasting is more glaringly obvious, but I would still say the same.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Sunrise

[Fonty]

Well, I think I disagree slightly.  I think my idea of a perfect ballet does depend on the dancers.  I think anyone who goes regularly must think that, surely?  If someone has only ever seen Fille once, and for whatever reason it is not a particularly good performance, then it will colour their judgement, I would have thought.

 

Emeralds is a good case.  It is dancer dependent, surely? Otherwise, it can seem a bit dull and uninteresting.

[Sunrise]

Shouldn't we make a distinction though between a perfect ballet and a perfect performance? 

[Sunrise]

I can see your point though. Maybe some ballets are dancer-dependent and some are dancer-proof :-)  I think MacMillan's R&J might in some ways be dancer-proof. The ballet demands stamina but not a specific technique. Good dance-actors with some chemistry could put together a passable performance. Maybe if you are in the back of the amphi you don't even need that. For someone seeing it for the first time, the choreography, music and sets might be enough to make it feel perfect for them.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Sunrise

[Sunrise]

And if you were going by that logic, wouldn't that eliminate dancer-dependent ballets from our list of perfect ballets? ;-)

Edited April 28, 2015 by Sunrise

[Duck]

I agree with the differentiation between a ballet and a particular performance when it comes to describing it as "perfect".

 

The emotions that dancers were able to convey, the chemistry between the leads, the precision of the dancing as well as other factors have all influenced how much I enjoyed a particular performance of a ballet compared to another of that same ballet. In fact, I can't think of a ballet that I have seen that would not be influenced by such factors. Where a specific performance was comparatively lacking some of these attributes, I have seen it as a reflection on the performance rather than on the ballet.

 

If I look at ballets that I didn't like as much, I don't think that this was based on the cast of the performance I saw, and instead much more based on the choreography or storytelling.

[alison]

Shouldn't we make a distinction though between a perfect ballet and a perfect performance? 

 

Exactly - hence my title.  And anyway, as one RB principal said years ago in my hearing, if he'd danced a perfect performance he might as well retire, because there would be nothing left to aim at.

[MAB]

I used 'imperfect' as a euphemism.

[Fonty]

I can see your point though. Maybe some ballets are dancer-dependent and some are dancer-proof :-)  I think MacMillan's R&J might in some ways be dancer-proof. The ballet demands stamina but not a specific technique. Good dance-actors with some chemistry could put together a passable performance. Maybe if you are in the back of the amphi you don't even need that. For someone seeing it for the first time, the choreography, music and sets might be enough to make it feel perfect for them.

 

Yes, I think that is an excellent way of putting it!

[Sunrise]

Thanks :-)  I was just thinking that although I rank Fille as a perfect ballet, I couldn't describe Fille in that same way. I think that MacMillan's R&J choreography is so obviously emotive and the steps say it all for you. Fille is a lot more subtle, and while I think any dancer could dance the steps, the intention might be less clear if they aren't done well. Or maybe the intentions are less obvious, period. As I said in the Fille thread, my partner still managed to find lots of "filler" in Fille. Too much dancing with ribbons apparently! So unappreciative!

[FLOSS]

I am not suggesting that either of these are perfect ballets but Adagio Hammerklavier and Four Schumann Pieces are both Van Mannen  works that it would be nice to see again but I do wonder whether they would make the same impact now. I recall that Grosse Fuge  seemed something of a quaint period piece last time I saw it. The dancers were, no doubt, far stronger technically than the first cast that I saw but they seemed to lack the presence and weight of performance that the earlier casts had.

 

Even a perfect ballet needs to be cast with sensitivity to the nature of the work,its mood and style and then coached with comparable care.If you see ballets perfectly performed revival after revival as you tend to with works protected by the Balanchine Trust, and was the case with the Ashton repertory when he was alive and while Michael Somes was its custodian, you can easily come to believe that the works concerned are virtually dancer proof.The quality of performance of Balanchine's works is guaranteed by the Trust's involvement in casting decisions and their provision of coaches. Ashton's works are not subject to the same quality control and protection.

 

Dowell and Mason  both had a firm grasp on who was suited to the Ashton repertory with a sort of internalized company emploi because of their long experience with the company and the dancers they had seen in particular works. I am not sure that Kevin O'Hare has quite the same grasp or such a good eye for the right dancer to cast in a particular role. Last year's revival of the Dream with Matthew Golding as Oberon combined with the initial decision to cast him in Symphonic Variations suggest that he does not. It is possible that O'Hare's experience as a dancer exposed him to a greater amount of compromise casting than would have been the case had he been at the larger Covent Garden company and that it is this that has made him less able to identify the right dancers for certain ballets. But it could simply be that he is more interested in the new works that the company is in the process of creating and that as long as the Principals appear in the requisite number of performances and they are happy with the roles that they are dancing he is not that concerned about nuances of casting and a dancer's suitability for particular roles. If this is the case then we can expect to see works that are not protected by outsiders cast in a more pragmatic way than previously, resulting in performances of far more variable quality than we have been used to. The casting of Myrthe next year may give a bit more of an insight about the management's views on this issue .

 

 

I do not think that it can be true to say that only a ballet that is dancer proof is capable of being described as a perfect ballet. That is like saying that only plays that work regardless of the actors cast in them are great plays.Just as you need a very wide range of actors in a company that is due to perform Macbeth,Hamlet,Twelfth Night and All's Well That Ends Well a ballet company needs a wide range of dancer types in order to perform a repertory as wide as that of the Royal Ballet.

 

It is up to those responsible for casting to select the right dancers for a particular ballet.The success or failure of the individual performance is at the end of the day the result of appropriate casting and coaching. Performance experience in a role should not be overlooked.I understand the need to give dancers an opportunity to develop but it makes no sense to me to treat works such as Symphonic Variations or Scenes de Ballet as training opportunities. One of the reasons why they were so well performed in the past was that they were meticulously cast and coached and there was always a significant level of casting continuity from one revival to the next.Now each revival seems to involve little or no continuity which reduces the likelihood of fine performances. The problem is that you only notice how important the corps is in Scenes de Ballet when they are not up to the mark.I have recently seen less than satisfactory performances of Scenes de Ballet but those performances do not make it a poor ballet.

 

At least one poster has said that Sleeping Beauty is not a perfect ballet because of the way in which the story telling stops for dancing interludes but that is to misunderstand its nature.Contemporary critics complained that it was not a ballet but merely a ferie. It certainly was a very different type of work from a ballet like Le Corsaire where there are clear sections of pas d'action as well as lots of opportunity for dance.The jardin animee in Corsaire displays the size of the corps and its technical expertise but that is one scene in a work that is generally concerned with telling the story of Conrad and Medora .In its reconstructed from the jardin animee can seem a bit like an exercise directed solely at seeing how many dancers you can get onto a stage and still keep them moving but it is the only scene created merely for the purposes of display.

 

The Sleeping Beauty was created entirely as a display piece to show off the technical skills of their latest Italian guest Brianzi and the balletic wealth of the Mariinsky company as a whole.Every single pas from the Fairy variations to the character dances in the final act are there to show off the skills of the dancers and the choreographer.It is best to see the entire ballet as a setting for the display of fine jewels rather than a story ballet.But a setting for jewels however finely crafted is not going to look beautiful if it displays ill chosen gems and paste.Companies seem far more democratic than they once were and while this can be wonderfully liberating for an individual who might otherwise be trapped in a very limited range of roles it can lead to a blurring of vision as to the need to cast according to type in such apparently insignificant roles as those of the fairy variations. But if they are cast as training opportunities without any thought about the need to provide contrast between each soloist then they can seem very dull and it can become very difficult to understand what Ashton was talking about when he described watching them as taking private lessons with Petipa. Perhaps in a world in which Aurora is not cast with that much care, and is danced as if the Rose Adagio was an Olympic event it is a bit much to ask that any one should be concerned about casting different types of dancers in each of the fairy variations.

 

 The ballets put forward as perfect in this thread cover a wide range of types and a considerable part the history of ballet. .Currently ballet performances show considerably less interest in period style than is the case in the performance of music.I wonder how long it will be before the balletic equivalent of authenticity in performance style becomes a significant issue. Many people on this forum seem to accept the "sore ear" arabesque in performances of ballets of whatever period. But while in the nineteenth and early twentieth century it was accepted performance practice to re orchestrate the works of Handel and his contemporaries for the modern orchestra on the basis that if it had been available to them they would have used it, that performance practice and argument would now expose a performer to ridicule. I wonder how long it will be before people start to demand period style including  period tempi for the nineteenth century classics and the works of the twentieth century.After all unlike musicology where you need to know and have access to the literary sources to begin to understand early performance practice the evidence for ballet  performance practice is, for some choreographers at least, readily accessible in the form of film and DVD. When viewed they reveal a very different quality of movement from the one to which we have become accustomed

and provide yet another angle from which to view the concept of perfection.

[MAB]

Terrific post, FLOSS.

[alison]

Fille is a lot more subtle, and while I think any dancer could dance the steps, 

 

Fille?? You think?  (Counts on her fingers, toes and then runs out of capacity for the number of RB principals who haven't been cast in it since I started watching )

[Sunrise]

Fille?? You think? (Counts on her fingers, toes and then runs out of capacity for the number of RB principals who haven't been cast in it since I started watching )

You completely misunderstand me Alison, taking my words out of context ☺. I meant that any dancer can attempt to do the steps for Lise or Juliet. But they are more likely to pull off Juliet successfully because the style is very naturalistic, compared to the specific Ashton style that is required in Fille. I don't happen to think that Fille is suitable for everyone.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Sunrise

[FLOSS]

I think that it is very easy to underestimate the technical demands that Ashton's ballets place on the dancer, Because they must be performed without any obvious effort it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that they are easy to dance. They seem simple because their complexities are hidden and their technical challenges are concealed. The fact that there are rarely any obvious displays of technical fireworks adds to the impression that they are simple and undemanding works when, for example, compared to MacMillan's ballets.

 

I sometimes think, perhaps uncharitably, that the reason why dancers want to appear in MacMillan's works is not just because of the juicy roles but because he lets the audience see, in a way that Ashton does not,that his ballets are not easy to dance. . The only Ashton ballet that I can think of which contains any obvious bravura display piece is La Fille Mal Gardee which contains the Fanny Elssler pas de deux. Despite the much vaunted improvements in technique that have taken place since Ashton's time his works,particularly his postwar works still present real challenges to the dancer.

 

The " Ashton style" is far more than musicality and a bit of epaulement. It is an understated approach to classical dance rather than a showy one and it is based on Cecchetti technique with fast footwork,subtle epaulement and placement of the head..Ashton's works require considerable stamina and a strong flexible technique. The role of Lise requires a good unforced jump and the ability to shift weight incredibly quickly in order to maintain balance. It was created on Nadia Nerina who was probably the strongest technician the company has ever had.It is said that she once performed thirty two entrechats six  instead of the usual thirty two fouettes during a performance of Swan Lake at which Nureyev was present because he had spoke disparagingly about the technical level of the company.

 

Ashton created roles on individual dancers and of course gave them choreography which created the character that they were portraying and  which showed the dancer concerned to best advantage.I think that while nearly every female dancer who has been a principal in the Covent Garden company  has performed Juliet at one time or another comparatively few have danced Lise. The reason is simply that Juliet is not that technically demanding while the role of Lise exposes technical inadequacies,

Juliet was created on Lynn Seymour a great dance actress who was a lyrical dancer rather than a technician. She had more than enough technique to dance the roles in which she was cast but she could never have danced Lise as made on Nerina,

 

MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet is fascinating because it suits those who are great classical dancers almost as well as those who are great dance actors. The ability to move an audience is the greatest asset that a dancer can bring to the role of Juliet not an exceptionally strong technique,There is no hiding place with the role of Lise you either can do it or you can't. Emoting won't save a dancer playing Lise from being found out but it will the dancer playing Juliet. 

[Melody]

This reminds me of a friend of mine who was a professional violinist but also did some conducting, complaining about the way people wrote off Sullivan's music as trivial because it was so light-hearted and gave the impression of being effortless to perform. She said that rather like Mozart's music, there wasn't a lot of leeway between performing it perfectly and having a disaster, unlike some of the showier composers like Rachmaninoff whose music left no doubt that it was very difficult to perform but actually stood up quite a lot better to an indifferent performer. I remember her saying that conducting (or playing the violin in) a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta would leave her in a cold sweat because of the need for such a high standard of performance.

 

As well as the indifference toward Ashton's repertoire by at least some of the people to whom it was entrusted, I'm wondering if there's also a problem caused by the basic abandonment of the Cecchetti style of teaching in British vocational schools (and in many other countries) in favour of the Vaganova style which seems to equip students for employment in more companies around the world but doesn't seem to sit so well with the demands of Ashton's choreography. In Luke Jennings's article a while ago about teaching at the Royal Ballet School, one of the teachers pretty much said they weren't teaching the subtleties of epaulement and so on, because they were concentrating on pure technique and extension. That isn't going to help dancers do justice to Ashton.

 

It does make me a bit crazy when I hear Ashton's work belittled and dismissed for being trivial, and hearing about what an inferior choreographer he was compared with MacMillan (just look at his blurb on the Find a Grave website, for one thing, where he's categorically described as Britain's second-best choreographer), when a good part of the problem seems to be that his whole legacy is being sabotaged (not necessarily deliberately, but still). The current trend toward look-at-me acrobatics is exactly what his work doesn't need.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Melody

[Pas de Quatre]

I do not think Vaganova and Cecchetti are as far apart as is often thought.  Both were part of the Russian Imperial Ballet, and in both styles épaulement is fundamental.  However, no matter what style is taught, it is how well it is taught that is important!

[LinMM]

I am a tad confused though.

I agree with what you have said about some of the subtleties of epaulement being perhaps lost in much current teaching etc but am not sure if this exclusive to Cechetti style........ as when I attend a Vaganova class this is exactly what is included and taught right from the barre ....but would be missing say from an RAD or BBO class!!

 

I never knew that Ashton had been described as a second best choreographer! He is just so different to Macmillan but definitely not second best! They have both had brilliant moments in their careers but to me they are on an equal footing and I like seeing both of their works regularly.

[LinMM]

Pas de Quatre we were posting at the same time so my post is in response to Melody.