La danse online (streaming, vod, etc...)

[Katharine Kanter]

Wow! Thank you VERY much Sophia.

BTW, Nathalia Bolshakova - what a dancer! And withal, a bundle of joy, which was, er, somewhat less than obvious Back in the USSR ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiEYceW1XU0

This Soviet-era version of the Paquita PdT was probably filmed around 1955 in a shoe-box sized studio, cramping everyone’s style, while the tempi are somewhat bizarre, although one does see what the conductor was getting at - trying to "build" ... however, he seems only to have succeeded in making the lifts in the finale AWFULLY hard.

(Please everyone, let us bear in mind that virtually everyone in the USSR was suffering from some form of malnutrition at the time – no fruit, no vegetables, soggy blobs of weird fats congealed into one’s kasha … hence the girls’ lumpy legs).

That said, there is a lot to learn.

Vadim Budarin (superb), with two ballerinas; the little fair-haired one’s batterie is a sight for sore eyes.

This version of the PdT is probably FAIRLY close to the original, and certainly closer than the nightmarish version served up by Patrick Dupond above, which should be illegal but unfortunately isn't (Where was Parliament when we needed it?).

Among the fascinating things to be learnt from the Budarin-led PdT, are the Small Details which in this version, have NOT gone Lost.

The two female variations are far more sharply contrasted than one sees at present. One assumes – need one say it? – this contrast was intended by Petipa. The first (Soldun?) is for a tiny, very fast and brilliant terre à terre dancer, the second for a strong grand allegro ballerina. Note the rocket-like sheer verticality of the latter’s grand changement battu for example.

The elasticity, elegance and artful simplicity of Budarin's variation is quite different from the effortful striving required of a dancer today. Starting at 4 min 34, you will see - possibly for the first time! - how grande cabriole battue is SUPPOSED to be performed. No, the upper leg does not kick the nose. The aim is the plastique, the exquisite body shape en effacé on landing. Carlo Blasis lives! Same for the grande sissonne battue (sissonne Perrot) - rather than flinging the upper leg open as wide as possible, the aim is flow of movement in the sissonne-manège.

Note also that Budarin dances with unstretched, or rather "breathing" knees and feet whenever possible.

When we ask ourselves "why can the Russians do things we can't?" the answer is NOT ONLY the upper-body strength. Look at their feet. They work "higher off the ground" than we do, in all the pas de liaison. I do not mean that they are turning brushing, darting or sliding steps into grand allegro, but that they get the body higher off the ground and energise the sole of the foot, so that they don't need to HAUL THE BODY off the ground before the next jump, or batterie, the way we do. That applies to the Russian girls’ pointe work as well – the raise the body so high off the hip-joint that gravity hasn’t time to crush the foot down into the shoe.

I mean this even today, despite the appalling leg-waving that has swept over Russia like Bird-Flu. Look at Anna Tikhomirova today - how can someone that tall, that thin, jump better than any man on this side of the Urals, without destroying the plastique? Well, watch her feet BEFORE she takes a jump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azpKzHsDWuM

The Russians, at least in Moscow, make NO effort to be turned-out before taking a jump, which would be counter-productive, and will often introduce an INNOMINATO - a nameless, hopping, skipping little thingggimajiggie which at some point may have been a proto-chassé - to get the body off the ground BEFORE what the French call glissade and the Russians petit jeté just before the big jump.

And Tikhomirova’s back muscles … a chapter in itself ...

[Florestiano]

[sophia]

Voilà une autre découverte : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b5wwj6D-v0

Grand pas de Paquita
Par les artistes du Théâtre Maly de Léningrad
Chorégraphie Marius Petipa, remontée par Konstantin Boyarsky

Avec Galina Pirozhnaya, Adol Khamzin
Variations solistes : Galina Polyukh, Galina Pokryzhkina, Natalia Yananis, Svetlana Fadeeva, Natalia Sakhnovskaya, Evguénia Ermolova
Direction musicale : E. Kornblit
TV Léningrad, 1958

[Katharine Kanter]

Whew! Back in the USSR, or back anywhere, really, when

Dancing was Still Fun

and one could keep one's tights on and one's legs to oneself.

Notice how the girls are taking the déboulés on DEMI-POINTE? The last example is the ballerina in the coda, at 21 mins.30 secs. So, no, Virginia, Ratmansky did not make it up.

The Cupid Variation at 13.53 is

a/ markedly different from what we do now which is basically a hgh-kicks exerice

b/ so fast, that are moments where her feet actually blur, as in her menées. When the Ancients tell you that "one could hardly distinguish the steps and his feet were a blur", All was True.

A blur, perhaps, but the steps are all there, and they are perfect ...

The demi-soloists are all dancing VERY technical versions of their soli, take a look at the "slow ballon" variation, which is one of the very hardest things to do - jumping and beating in a SLOW variation - and look at her batterie at about 12 mins 15 seconds.

In that same variation from about 12 mins 40, you will note how she JUMPS strongly onto pointe (rather than attempting to winkle or slither up, as we would now do) with her body directly on axis in the tours planés, followed by an amazing almost-jumped series of voyagés.

Professonals who know their stuff far better than the author of these lines, could go through this film, and point to such gems virtually everywhere.

[sophia]

Soirée Petipa à l'ABT (1982) : Raymonda (extraits + Grand Pas) avec Martine Van Hamel et Alexandre Godounov : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJnPO1DccXQ
Barychnikov parle de Petipa à la suite (à partir de 36').

[Katharine Kanter]

Balanchine, Western Symphony

NYCB

filmed in France in the very early 50s

Scherzo section, at 16 mins. 42 secs. with
Allegra KENT and Robert BARNETT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umTeitzn6o8

Allow me to add a caveat to the discussion above of Anna Tikhomirova and the Bolshoi jumping technique.

Watch very carefully how Robert Barnett - who was a student of the Russian greats at Paris in the 1940s and 50s - jumps using the power of the oppositions ONLY. There is a leading, relaxed side, and a tauter, "left-behind" side, which when released, "snaps round" as it were, and launches the next jump.

The back is kept as long, as extended as possible, leaning into arabesque for example to take advantage of the full power coming up from the floor through the entire length of the back.

At the end of the day, the dancer must choose between hyper-extending the leg to get it up, which will perforce, SHORTEN the back, or extending the back to its fullest and enjoy the power that lends him.

That is the so-called "OLD" jump technique, based on the Least-Action Principle - neither pushing, nor thrusting from the leg, nor hauling, just allowing the play between resistance and release to take you there - which is how people like Igor Youskevitch continued to dance like a 25 year old, when they were 45.

That speed, that element of SURPRISE, in the "old" jump technique, is what used to make dancing - or watching it - a barrel of fun.

At the present time, dancers being expected to get the leg up next the ear, they must necessarily tense the ENTIRE torso and cannot properly use the oppositions. The Russians have "solved" this, in a manner of speaking, by raising the torso as far as possible off the hip-joint, so as to unload the latter joint and free the legs for jumping and beating.

As they have unshakeable conviction and wonderful theatricality, the Russians carry the day - but at a definite cost to the body: the effort is much greater because the power is coming mainly from the leg, rather than from the resistance-release in the body. In other words, the dancers has to force it to happen, rather than LET IT HAPPEN.

Roger Tully has discussed the principle in The Song sings the Bird, rather better than the author of these lines.

[Idamante]

Une curiosité : Une évocation du concours de Varna … 1965 (Source inconnue)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Izt9mfVwLs
Natalia Bessmertnova, Natalia Makharova, Michaïl Lavrovsky et bien d'autres …

[sophia]

En ligne depuis peu, semble-t-il, le documentaire Dancing Bournonville (1979), commenté par Clive Barnes, avec des extraits, filmés en studio et/ou en scène, du Conservatoire, de la Kermesse à Bruges, de la Tarentelle de Napoli et du pas de deux de Fête des fleurs à Genzano : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPPrHaSIyhg

[sophia]

Divertissement - Bellini-Glinka
Musique : Mikhail Glinka, d'après des thèmes de Bellini (Les Capulet et les Montaigu, La Somnambule)
Chorégraphie : Boris Eifman (!)
Irina Kolpakova, Vadim Goulaev, Natalia Bolchakova
et les artistes du ballet du théâtre Kirov de Léningrad (1972)

1ère partie


2e partie

[Alexis29]

La chaîne youtube de John Clifford avec de vraies raretés !

https://www.youtube.com/user/jcliff26/videos

[sophia]

Gelsey Kirkland et Mikhail Barychnikov dansent Jerome Robbins (extraits de Dances at a Gathering et Other Dances) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ApkdFh3VPQ

[sophia]

Violette Verdy (qui aura droit à un hommage RTT fin octobre à Paris) dans trois ballets de son répertoire au NYCB : La Source, Emeraudes et Ballet Impérial : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiC1CGlUPB0

[sophia]

Ghislaine Thesmar et Michael Denard dans le pas de deux de Coppélia, un ballet dont je doute fort qu'on le revoie de sitôt sur la scène de l'Opéra, a fortiori dans une chorégraphie correcte.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYerq4Rg6Gg

[Alexis29]

Un film (malheureusement sans le son) de Thème et Variations avec Kirkland et Baryshnikov - Version antérieure à la captation mythique.

Gelsey Kirkland avec des nuances et une attaque magnifique.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsOuzo9oyYs

[sophia]