All Done

I guess its time to retrain my blogging muscles.

Well, we had our big auction.

We usually have it off-site, but since we just moved here, we felt we needed to introduce our patrons to Dance Place as much as possible this year. So in addition to in-studio performances and open houses, we had our auction here.

So the hallways were filled with auction baskets and items and services genrously donated by local merchants. We also had a Progressive Performance where the patrons traveled from one studio to another. The dancers in the studios got to speak to audiences one on one about the dances that they were doing. To keep it intimate, we kept the groups to about 25 per studio, so that each group of dancers had to repeat their dances 5 times.

5 dances were shown (well 6, but we will talk about that in a sec).

First was the previously discussed Swan.

Second was a dance choreographed for Shannon Hunter. Shannon hurt her foot right before our Sonnets show, so she was unable to perform in it. But I enjoy watching Shannon dance. She has a womanly quality (as opposed to a girl-ish quality) that a lot of dancers lack. So I choreographed a dance for her where she never gets up off the floor. It will be part of a ballet set to early jazz recordings that we will do next season.

Third was a reconstruction of a piece set to Scott Joplin music. It was first choreographed as a trio for a series of performances with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra. It is now going into a Joplin ballet next year and has been redone as a quartet.

Fourth up was a pas de deux from La Bayadere. It was performed by Bernadette Torres and Askar Alimbetov. She was originally rehearsing it for a competition, but has decided to do two solos instead. Since she had put in the rehearsal time on the dance and had no place to show it, we decided to give her the chance to perform it at the auction.

Fifth was a showing by the Junior Company, a group associated with our school. They performed 2 dances from La Bayadere as well.

We then had a live auction where many things were bid upon, including having me go cook at someones home. And that was followed by a dance on the green... in front of Dance Place... under afull moon... by students from the school and SDB company dancer, Abby Avery.

So a good time was had by all and we raised alot of money. Never enough, but a help. And at least all of the auction baskets that had over run the office are almost out of here. There is still a lone star shaped hellium filled balloon floating by me. I'll see how long it lasts.

There is still some vanilla-lemon cake in the freezer as well, I am guessing it won't last as long as the balloon.

Now I just have to finish the San Diego Performing Arts League STAR AWARDS and I will be free for a couple of weeks.

Well, not free. Lots of administration, but no production.



Okay, I have started to turn my desk into more of a personal environment. To that end, I have started adding a few things. Here you see...



Eternal happiness or Perpetual Happiness or some kind of Long Lasting Happiness. My older brother (who I have always had a curious relationship with to say the least) has on occasion given me a gift that resonates with me. To put it simply, we do not see eye to eye on many a thing. I actually feel a bit sorry for him, as I am sure that he was anticipating having a vibrant playmate when he was told that he was getting a baby brother. And instead he ended up with a serious, solitude-loving slug. It is this realization that has allowed me to excuse his poking, jabbing and general harassment of me as a child. I was simply no fun, since I was wrapped up in my little dreamworld.

Anyhow, he once gave me this little guy. There is a solar cell, so as long as he has light, his head rocks back and forth contendedly. There is a little green thing with a bunny tail hugging him. So when I come into the office, I have this smiling head bobbing movement thingy that welcomes me.

Eternaly.

More Feathers!

Yes, after yesterday's discussion of feathers, we come to another avian discussion.

One of the pieces, I am looking at for next season is Carnival of the Animals. I think it will work well for our yearly collaboration with Culture Shock. Because of that I am sneak previewing one of the choreographic pieces.

The Swan

At our June 2nd fund raiser.

Now, swans and ballerinas go hand in hand, but I need to make a distinction here. Below is a lovely image of Anna Pavlova in the famous last moments of The Dying Swan.



I actually have a large version of this image in my walk in closet. I see it everyday as it hangs across from my authentic jackalope mounting I got in Wyoming.

There is a difference between...

The Swan
The Dying Swan
and Swan Lake

Swan Lake... is a huge 3 hour ballet by Tchaikovsky. It was premiered in 1877, but did not achieve popularity until it was re-staged by Lev Ivanov (the white swan acts) and Marius Petipa (the court acts) in 1895. It is all about a princess who is turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer and whose spell is broken by a handsome (if a bit too Hamlet like) prince. Well, they both die, but they sail off to a better place.

The Swan... is a short piece of music from Carnival of the Animals. A collection of tunes by Camille Saint-Saens. Each piece is descriptive of a different animal, randomly chosen. Along with the swan, we see a lion, an elephant, a tortoise and many other beasties. There is no story. Just small snapshots of critters.

The Dying Swan... is a choreographic miniature that was set to... the Swan, by choreographer Mikhail Fokine for Anna Pavlova. Fokine was known for rebelling against "classical" dance. Although the dance is performed in a tutu, it is not a classical dance. It is more along the lines of a improvisation on pointe. The piece shows us a swan that has been shot by a hunter, in the last moments of its life.



Pavlova (above) was known for her delicacy and exquisite lines. She was a "spiritual" ethereal dancer who also had an element of decadence in her dancing. She excelled in pieces where she portrayed dragonflies, poppies, summer breezes. Because of the strength of her portrayal (and her tireless appearances around the world) the image of the ballerina as swan became a cultural icon. As an aside, I love how it looks as if they just ripped some wings off of some poor swan and tacked them on to Pavlova's tutu. There is something so wrong, yet so right about it.

Fokine (and Pavlova) a piece that became a "right of passage" for ballerinas to come. You aren't "really" a ballerina unless you have died on-stage swathed in feathers. So here we have three Russian ballerinas...



Galina Ulanova. Known for the fluidity of her movement, this photo doesn't quite add to the Ulanova mystique. But you DO get to see how gloriously curvaceous her feet were.



Maya Pliesetskaya. Gloriously gauche. This image actually makes her seem like more of a classicist than she was. Pliesetskaya was the big rule breaker at the time. Arms and legs flying everywhere in serpentine patterns.



and Natalia Makarova. Ultra sensitive and introspective. Rather than project out into the audience, she would pull them into her performances.

All putting their own stamp on the flock of interpretations of being a big white bird. Nobody does it quite the same. Nobody dies quite the same.

Now, I do have to mention that I am not setting The Dying Swan. In Carnival of the Animals, the swan doesn't die. Given that we are doing these shows primarily for families and kids, it seemed odd to come out with this tragic death of a swan. So our swan has become an allegory for the quest for spiritual enlightenment. At the end of her solo, she soars off into the heavens.

Another Day, Another... Day

Welcome to my multi-tasking life.

This morning I had my Star Awards committee meeting at the Westgate Hotel. Made my presentation. It was brilliant! Ate a lovely fruit filled croissant.

I always feel a bit at odds in the Westgate. I don't like being waited on and I dislike heavy ornamentation. The Westgate is very lush.



I am sure others feel right at home in this type of place, but I always feel as if the drapes are too long (They are touching the floor!) and my decidedly relaxed day-to-day attire is decidedly out of place.

Not that I can't clean up well (I am known for that as well), I just prefer comfort over effect. I am sure it has gotten me into situations with funders, since I don't dress to impress. But you know, I am not here to impress people. And some people want to be impressed so badly.

Anyhow, after the meeting (where I killed) I went off to teach 3 classes at the middle school. Finished teaching all the steps, tomorrow they get places. I actually did a hinge up off the floor today in class. A jazz step that I haven't done in years. The girls had never seen one, so I had to "perform it" for them. In all my tubby glory.

It actually felt pretty good. Kind of opened up my back on one side. But it didn't feel so wonderful that I thought I should risk a second one :)

After class, I ran (drove quickly) home to spend some quality time with the pooch. I have to remind him who the master is.

That was followed by a meeting on fundraising for Luce Auditorium, the building next to the dance studios. We want to renovate it into a theater for the resident dance companies at DancePlace. We need to raise $65,000 for a study. To date we have gotten about $49,000, so we are closing the gap.

So now, I am back in the office typing away at you my little blog. The office is getting a bit costume logged, as we have a choreographer's concert coming up... as well as a school recital. Don't really enjoy wading through costumes, but that is the life I guess.



Okay, its about time I picked a dancer. So the first dancer I pick has to be...



Natalia Makarova. Makarova was one of the great Russian defectors of the 70's. Along with Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, she made the "leap" to the West in search of artistic freedom. Although ballet is primarily seen as a woman's art, it is usually the male dancers that capture the public-at-large's imagination. Even the lesser known Alexander Goudenov made headlines and movies (Witness).

So Makarova was probably THE ballerina at the time, although her partners would sometimes get more press. But not because of what was happening onstage.

She was known best for her extreme lyricism and exquisite line. She was a jumper and had lovely extension. She was not a turner. Her great roles were Giselle and Odette. But every Makarova performance was as if she were creating something new. Unlike her younger rival at the time, Gelsey Kirkland, her performances were journeys of self discovery. Both researched their roles extensively. But Kirkland would calculate her brilliant performances in a scientific manner. Makarova would release herself into her roles.

Anton Dolin once told her, "NOBODY does the Act Two adagio in Giselle as slowly as you."

To which she replied with a smile, "Yes, but if something is fast, I like it to be VERY fast. Extreme."

She was always looking to draw things out as much as she could so that she could be dancing on the edge. You can see her feeling... "How much further can I stretch this line?"



Although she came to the West for larger creative expression, she made her largest mark in the classical and romantic roles she had performed in Russia. Of her many experiments with contemporary choreography, perhaps the best was OTHER DANCES, a pas de deux choreographed by Jerome Robbins for her and Baryshnikov. Above is an image of her in costume for the piece, but the pose is not from the ballet. It is pure Makarova.

She was NOT a traditionally musical dancer. What people failed to understand about her was that HER phrasing was the most important thing to her. If the music was a bit fast at a performance, rather than push herself to stay with the music but kill her line, she would instead finish her phrase and catch up to the music later.

She did not see herself as a slave to a conductor's baton. Which caused quite a few heated discussions between ballet lovers, music lovers and people who were both.



The first two "real" ballet dancers I ever saw perform were Baryshnikov and Makarova in OTHER DANCES. Not knowing any better, I just assumed that ALL ballet dancers had the same amount of technical mastery and artistry. To this day, every dancer I see is judged by that first glimpse. I will always remember her developpe' a la second in this piece. The plasticity of the movement made think "Oh, THATS what dancing is."



This is an image the two in Sleeping Beauty. Not a good ballet for either, although you couldn't tell by the pic. Sleeping Beauty is THE most classical ballet. Not much drama in the dancing itself, so both artists found it hard to break though what they perceived as the pinnacle of academism. They were both also very short, so in a ballet that is all about grandeur of line they might have felt as if they needed to over compensate.

What Nureyev, Baryshnikov and Makarova did bring with them was an immense knowledge of an art form that had developed in quite a different way in a closed society. As much as Balanchine revolutionized ballet by his work in the US, these three revitalized ... ballet dancers through their personalities and performances. And Makarova, being a woman, was an artistic role model for thousands of girls who needed one. A job she took seriously.

Her re-stagings and coachings of classical roles were invaluable in the renaissance in female ballet dance in America.



Makarova was not just an intelligent, emotional, fascinating dancer, she was an intellectual as well. Her autobiography, complete with PLENTY of pictures is a must read for any kind of dancer.

The end of Makarova's career coincided with the fall of the USSR. Because of this she was able to be reunited in some very emotional farewell performances with her original ballet company in London and Leningrad (Saint Petersburg.)