On Dance
GRESKOVIC, ROBERT
On Dance EXPLOITING THE STAR SYSTEM byrobertgreskovic of the many rules of thumb bequeathed by the late impresario Sol Hurok to ballet producers, one seems to have become especially golden. It...
...Now, in the second half of his second decade of performing internationally, his range is narrowing...
...The first was Giselle, staged by Mary Skeaping, who restored most of the music and some of the dances cut since the piece's 1841 premiere...
...To call Rudolf Nureyev the central figure of the London Festival Ballet's debut season at the Metropolitan Opera House this summer is to understate the case grossly...
...Perhaps "balletobrash" would suffice to indicate the Berlin Opera's combination of a balletic veneer and pushiness...
...Since it set early 20th-century Paris swooning over sultry harems and opulent boudoirs, the ballet has paled, although Nureyev nevertheless managed to exude passion as the Golden Slave...
...Mirta Pla as Swanilda in Coppelia was so determined to do every step completely, she seemed a mechanical doll in all three acts instead of just the first, where she is called upon to be precisely that...
...Whether such a formula is really crucial to bringing in the money remains unclear to me...
...Most of the Cuban dances in the New York season regrettably emphasized the dancers' eccentricities, making me wonder if they will ever be overcome when they are practiced so often...
...So instead of being impressed by the complexity of his moves, we become exhausted trying to follow their many parts...
...As they spin, bound and pose along their way, the dancers pass through vague facsimiles of academic positions, causing the viewer who is accustomed to dancing as a fine art of definite articulation to shudder at the contorted results...
...Unhappily, this had quite the opposite effect of the one intended: Rather than the breadth that true elevation and ballon give to a jump's peak, the extra exertion produced a sense of lurching that goes against the grain of a grand jete's arc...
...In his dancing as the Prince, moreover, he displayed an out-of-scale thrust and attack in the overly athletic design he had given the part...
...The three summer examples leave one wondering what would happen without all this focusing on big names...
...In the more or less standard repertory pieces, the technical shortcomings proved even more disconcerting...
...They emphasized jumps, and in desperate efforts to sustain elevation, they invariably gave an extra push at the apogee...
...The company was here two weeks...
...The company's version of Giselle, staged for it by Anthony Tudor in 1963, had little or nothing left of Tudor's stamp...
...As for the company, it was downright disastrous—except for Eva Evdo-kima and Vladimir Gelvan, who were present as secondary guest artists and at least qualify as ballet dancers, uninteresting and incomplete though they are...
...There needs to be a special label for ensembles such as this one (certain Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian troupes display the same characteristics...
...and the sets, too, were recreated according to the original design...
...But none of the women can convey these qualities with Alonzo's wit, ease and delicacy...
...Unhappily, Panov possesses even fewer skills as a choreographer than he has left as a dancer...
...The men, who unlike the women have no direct model, were even quirkier and less comfortable with a classical vocabulary...
...In addition, except for Rosario Suarez, the ballerinas do not have expressive torsos...
...Audiences could learn to pay attention to the dancing and discover in an ensemble some special stars whom they could watch grow brighter as part of a total configuration...
...He took to this secondary character part like a starving animal to table scrap, violently forcing himself on it...
...whereas Nureyev and Panov were guest artists, separate from their surroundings, Alicia Alonzo (now nearly 60), remains the stellar figure of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, which she founded some 30 years ago...
...It could be carved over the portals of booking offices thus: "Never present an ensemble not led by a superstar...
...The outcome was worthy but no revelation...
...She displayed many of these features in her New York performance, and in her capacity as teacher and model for her company, has managed to impart some of them to her female "offspring...
...In the first 10 years of his appearance in the West after his famous defection, he gained a well-deserved reputation as a fine dancer and a great star...
...Aurora Bosch as Grahan in Pas de Quatre (staged by Alonzo after Jules Perrot) and as Myrtha in Giselle delivered grand jetes that were intolerably jerky, as if she were riding a bucking bronco...
...When they try to hold on to balances and center turns, they tend to keep the concentration inward and to freeze the upper body, preventing it from throwing off whatever feat is being attempted...
...The problem is compounded when he performs his own choreography...
...But she is not an ingratiating performer—her attack is choppy and forced, and her physique is unexceptional (thickish legs, heavy feet, square jaw, hard chin...
...The husband and wife team received international attention during their two year (1972-74) attempt to emigrate to Israel from the Soviet Union...
...Indeed, in a Village Voice interview, Valery told of using his initial years outside Russia "for working to get back my form...
...Pace Sol Hurok...
...The first program consisted of Pan-ov's own full-length version of Prokofiev's Cinderella...
...What is clear—at least from the recent New York appearances of three companies—is that trading heavily on big names insures nothing artistically notable...
...these Cuban females tell us about a center that is broad and short...
...The second production was She-herazade...
...My own feeling is that both ballet-goers and the performers would benefit...
...Nureyev danced in every performance (of the full-length ballets in repertory, one, Romeo and Juliet, was choreographed by him...
...Jorge Esquivel, Alonzo's exclusive partner, is the best male dancer in the company and, despite his thick thighs and heavy butt (traits shared by almost all the men), had an easy phrasing that made his work more lyrical than that of his fellows...
...Without some knowledge of previous Soviet stagings of Cinderella, one would be at a complete loss to comprehend the narrative logic...
...Besides Romeo—incidentally, unevenly choreographed by Nureyev?the repertory centered on two productions...
...The men, whose muscle tone in tights resembled pudding, sailed through air turns with feet so carelessly positioned that they looked like frayed wires...
...The rest of the ensemble was not as awful as the Berliners, but it was not very commendable either...
...His physique has not appreciably changed—if anything, he is in better shape now than in certain earlier periods—yet the toll of his exhaustive schedule has made much of his work seem laborious...
...Transitional steps that were once transparent and fluid are increasingly specific and elaborate...
...One has merely to recall England's Royal Ballet to realize exactly how uninspiring London Festival was...
...His efforts provided a Quasimodo figure crossed with the Creature from the Black Lagoon—a portrayal ranging from the laughable to the embarrassing...
...The women seemed to work for kicks and turns with no noticeable turnout...
...Galina, then Ragozina, was a soloist nowhere near as respected...
...he had the lead in three of the four ballets on a quadruple bill...
...Consider, for example, the Berlin Opera Ballet, featuring the local debut of Valery and Galina Panov...
...Consummate ballet dancers thrill us by describing a central axis that is fine and long...
...From the two programs I saw him give, though, I can only surmise that the form he has gotten back is merely a ghost of the one that gained him acclaim during his Kirov days...
...In what I can only describe as an irrepressible desire to execute the impossible perfectly, Nureyev has often shown—as he did in Romeo—a dogged determination to do a string of finicky steps and still finish the sequence in a very correct (usually 5th) position of the feet...
...And, given the dancers' nonskills, the single element demanding comment is Panov's Hilarion...
...Imprisonment and a hunger strike threatened to destroy the career of Valery, who had achieved a stellar reputation in Leningrad's revered Kirov Ballet...
...His wife, in the eponymous role, showed she has a dependable, rather limited technique with a certain physical facility (she has an easily mobile hip...
...Further, the more age and fatigue have worn him down, the harder he has tried, and with this additional effort has come a drier delivery...
...Her legend as an international ballerina is written in terms like "strong legwork," "extraordinary turnout," "articulate, fast footwork," "smooth turns," and "unshakable balances...
Vol. 61 • September 1978 • No. 18
