La Belle au bois dormant - 9/3 au 23/4 & 27/6 au 14/7/25

[haydn]

Ne nous égarons pas...

_________________
Un petit "j'aime" sur la page Facebook de Dansomanie : http://www.facebook.com/Dansomanie/

[Ballerina]

Du coup je suis curieuse de voir Wagman en oiseau bleu.
Mais en fait, ça fait tellement longtemps que cette belle est endormie que j'aurai forcement des découvertes....que j'espère belles.
Mais je dois attendre juillet.

[Katsu]

Wagman est un danseur plein de qualités, et je trouve très bien qu'il y ait une personnalité comme la sienne à l'Opera.

Après, son style n'est pas ma tasse thé. Il est pour moi un genre de Tsiskaridzé, sans le melon. C'est un mode d'expression artistique légitime, mais qui ne devrait pas être la norme.

L'internationalisation du recrutement, que j'encourage, pourrait aussi être un moyen de recruter des profils différents. Après tout, à l'Opéra, on manque de solistes hommes élégants et masculins.

Il faut de tout pour faire un monde, donc on aimerait aussi voir des Alban Lendorf ou autres.

[Marie-Ange]

De la même manière que la direction de l’OdP a le goût des danseuses - gentilles petites filles - … On se croirait parfois devant des spectacles d’école…

[Katharine Kanter]

"So it comes down to what are the Paris Opera and the Royal Ballet in England and Denmark doing, to keep the aspidastra flying?

The ball is in our camp.

Next chapter, later on today.[/quote]"

Next chapter.

Virtuosity in CLASSICAL DANCING has nothing to do with picking up the leg, turning every movement into the splits, or twirling ten turns. Every single gymnast on the planet can do that. And they are NOT artists.

And so, if we ask: WHY exactly, was the Petersburg school during Vaganova's lifetime, the Danish school while Brenaa and Kronstam were still around, and the French school still today, considered the finest training systems in the world?

In a nutshell, because the scientific approach to technique produced dancers who could do virtually anything, without injuring themselves (ghastly lifts and choreography aside) and without the application of superfluous force.

Giving an appearance of "aisance" and "abandon" as one used to say.

Any accomplished dancer will tell you that it is far, far harder to perform a variation with musicality, taste and expressivity, while DISGUISING all force, than to impress the audience.

Disguising force is perhaps a misleading term - it's the "least action principle" at work, releasing and then conserving power for when one needs it.

The objections many of us have raised to the BlueBird events last week, have - in the main - to do with the application of excessive, undisguised and indiscriminate force.

There were other, serious issues but let's ignore them for today.

Contrary to an ingrained belief, classical dancing is a brilliant system, an edifice of genius built by a chain of geniuses. It does NOT need updating, save to take into account scientific progress, as relevant.

Nor does good choreography need updating.

Why? Because you, the artist, are YOU. Born 200, 150, 100, 50 years after the choreographer and composer. In your mind, there are thousands of events since the date of composition, that will be conveyed to the audience by a kind of telepathy, without having to change a single step.

An example from another, related art form to avoid arguing about Mr. X and Mr. Y today: Tatiana Troyanos, one of the outstanding figures of the 20th Century.

Of Greek origin. Greece, her spiritual home, had been overrun by half a dozen different armies since 1900, looted, her best men killed. She herself came from a terrible background and was brought up in foster homes.

When Verdi composed the part of Eboli, the artist who sang the part had not to carry the crushing weight of the 20th Century's wars on her shoulders.

Therefore, it is quite possible, that Troyanos brought the part to a theretofore unattained height. Without altering anything, and without injuring herself despite the almost unbearable tension, power and grief.

There are of course other approaches to these arias, and no-one has the "final word". However ...

Whenever I listen to this, I crack up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVtW_GcIbTs
O Don Fatale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eri6GXt3-g
and Sotto ai Folti

[Jadzy]

(almost complete) Bluebird variation in "Sleeping Beauty", Inès Mcintosh and Shale Wagman, April 7, 2025
https://youtu.be/KsLX17og8vg?si=Ni_YeJoZmn6C4bBM

[NEOPHYTE]

Et en plus il est musical…!

[Katharine Kanter]

Everyone, read this, posted on Balletcoforum - we not only have Tch's metronome markings - they come from rehearsal observations OF THE DAY

https://www.balletcoforum.com/topic/31585-the-sleeping-beauty-paris-opera-ballet-2025/page/2/
"Sebastian" writes :

"I am in no sense an expert but agree with what you say and, specifically as regards Sleeping Beauty, can add some information which has been discussed here in the past. By the time Tchaikovsky wrote The Sleeping Beauty he not only used a metronome but, so scholars agree, his tempo markings can be relied on. And by a stroke of luck, some of the original tempi for Sleeping Beauty from 1890 were discovered and published by Roland Wiley in the 1980s.


These metronome markings come from a rehearsal score, in other words these are not speeds imagined by Tchaikovsky while working on the score, but the ones the dancers were actually dancing to when rehearsing with Petipa, Drigo and (sometimes) Tchaikovsky himself. To my surprise there have been conductors at Covent Garden who have never come across this information, never mind tried to use the speeds during performance.


Given the amount of research Ratmansky drew on for his Sleeping Beauty reconstructions, one can imagine he may have used the tempi markings as found on the rehearsal score. Does anyone know more about whether he did?


In any case there are many reasons why ballets have been slowing down, and not all of them are artistically founded or indeed justifiable. You are right to point this out. "

end of Balletcoforum post.



Here's rehearsal footage, which one assumes was approved or it would have been pulled from YT in 2024:

Battistoni

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXd-enYjYEU

and now for a blast from the past - an American-Indian who was a disciple of Preobrajenska

R. Hightower
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6w3ciDF07I

Now, the choreo is anything but identical.

As we've opted for a flat turnout over the past forty years, at present we can't do most of the things that Hightower pullls off there : turning out to the martinet-like degree we do today may look prettier in still photography, but wastes a fraction of a second on each movement as the leg - SO heavy - activates to furn past a dancer's normal range.

I say "normal" because no-one is turned-out to the degree we do today, without forcing.

Hightower's choreo is in fact extremely difficult. It's all about movement and in-betweeness, and not about positions. The grand fouetté positions and tours planés are scary. As she is taking them in a "grand jeté" position - on a line rather than turned out - and with the leg under 100 ° it's doable. NOT doable "fully" turned out or having to lift the leg to the point the over-worked psoas has to take over.

Depends on what you want: school-girl "perfection" on each little steppie-steppie , and pretty publicity photos, OR following Tchai's instructions - cut loose and DANCE.

DRINK OR DRIVE.

And blurring the linking steps does not mean trashing them, It means performing them as correctly as one can but BLURRED - rather like when one has to write very quickly iin pen and ink - legible, but only just.

The excitement of what Hightower is up to - the wildness - it's all in the music if one only listen. ("listen" - that was a subjunctive mood, gang ! and classical dancing is all about the subjunctive mood).

[haydn]

Les tempi sont comme partout (y compris dans la musique symphonique) de plus en plus lents, et ça en devient insupportable. Pour avoir vu sur scène (sans être totalement convaincu) la Belle au bois dormant dans la reconstruction de Ratmansky avec l'ABT en tournée à l'Opéra Bastille en 2016, je doute franchement que les tempi retenus aient été ceux préconisés par Tchaïkovski..

Si on veut du "punch", il faut retourner à la magnifique production cinématographique réalisée en 1964 avec le ballet du Mariinsky et toute une pléiade de "stars" : Alla Sizova en Aurore, Youri Soloviev en Prince Désiré, Natalia Dudinskaïa en Carabosse et Natalia Makarova en Florine, excusez du peu...

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Un petit "j'aime" sur la page Facebook de Dansomanie : http://www.facebook.com/Dansomanie/

[NEOPHYTE]

J’ai du mal à comparer une variation en live avec costume et orchestre et une répétition avec juste un piano et un justaucorps en guise de costume…

Ça donne envie de voir Bleuenn Battistoni avec costume et orchestre

C’est très sympa de pouvoir comparer les 2 versions

[keriluamox]

Les Aurore de la nouvelle génération se sont certainement nourri de l’exemple et des conseils d’une de leur plus glorieuse devancières, qui par chance est récemment de retour à Paris.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H6nBmojWkM

[NEOPHYTE]

Trop drôle 😂

[Katharine Kanter]

Well, flowers thrown at McIntosh's dainty feet from Russia :

https://www.facebook.com/100044419154450/videos/the-sleeping-beauty-ines-mcintosh-as-princess-florine-paris-opera-ballet%EF%B8%8F-onpseb/1709376473345942/

Rafail Vagabov
Инес танцует вариацию так, как танцевала Алла Шелест (за исключением одного момента) и как она учила Аллу Сизову на репетициях с Рудольфом Нуреевым перед гастролями в Париже в 1960 году. Правда, танцевала она лирично, мягко, без резких переходов и угловатых поз. Женственно.

Where her "Florine" is discussed in relation to Alla Shelest - rien que ça !!! - and Alla Sizova.

The girl is goin' places.

[Gimi]

Habituellement, avec la dernière représentation d'un spectacle, L'Opéra de Paris supprime l'ensemble des distributions; dans le cas présent, les distributions de la Première Série de La Belle au bois dormant vont-elles être maintenues jusqu'au 14 juillet ou vont-elles disparaître demain matin
Au cas où, je recopie ci-dessous, pour l'Histoire, les distributions (incomplètes pour les deux dernières dates, sans Chats) publiées le 3 avril dernier, distributions qui ne tiennent pas compte des modifications de dernières minutes que les uns et autres Dansomaniaques ont pu constater.


Je reprendrais un petit tableau indépendant pour la période du 27 juin au 14 juillet 2025 dès que l'ONP aura complété les douze distributions correspondantes.

[keriluamox]

Lors de la représentation de ce soir, les fées du pas de six avaient… une baguette magique. Avec une petite étoile au bout, de la couleur de leur tutu. C’était… distrayant.

Plaisanterie pour célébrer la fin de la série ? Il me semble pourtant que ça ne se fait que pour la dernière de la saison… Ou, à défaut de couper le prologue, la direction voudrait-elle le rendre plus lisible ?…

La première hypothèse doit être la bonne, puisqu’à l’acte III, c’est la Chatte blanche, arrivant des coulisses côté jardin, qui a chassé de scène la princesse Florine et l’Oiseau bleu… et, rentrant en scène un instant après pour son pas de deux avec le Chat botté, crachait une plume bleue.