Truly, a BLAST from the Past ...

[Katharine Kanter]

WESTERN SYMPHONY

Filmed in France, doubtless on the NYCB European tour of 1956 (and it may well have been filmed in a studio with concrete floors...)

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

The quality of the dancing has to be seen to be believed - bearing in mind, gang, that it was the Old School Russian crowd teaching in the USA including at SAB at that time ...

As for the dancing of Robert BARNETT (the Scherzo sections starts at about 16.40 mins.), well, one would never imagine that anyone could steal Allegra Kent's thunder ... and there you have it.

Barnett is a text-book illustration of leading all movement not with the legs, but with the TORSO. Out of this world!

There's a fabulous interview by Lobenthal with him (teaching at Atlanta, Georgia! here
http://www.balletreview.com/images/Ballet_Review_41-4_Robert_Barnett.pdf

Barnett was a rancher's son who started dancing on being de-mobed from the US Navy around 1945, when he was over 20 (!). He studied with Bronislava Nijinska and later with Egorova and Prejobrajenskaya.


And here's one more for the Road:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j48OnyM9xLY
André Eglevsky (starts at 4min44 secs.) in Balanchine's Coppelia
Text-book slow ballon which few would attempt these days - those sissonnes!!! Yes, it's a tiny bit wristy, but why look a gift horse in the mouth?


BTW, some "ancient" Balanchine footage is now beginning to pop up on Y-Tube. Whatever one thinks about the choreography as such, who would sniff at the chance to see heretofore "lost" footage with dancing of this calibre?