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Cincinnati Ballet.


CINCINNATI BALLET The Cincinnati Ballet is a ballet company founded in 1958 in Cincinnati, United States. External links
The Cincinnati Ballet website
 ARONOFF CENTER This article or section needs sources or references that appear in reliable, third-party publications. Alone, primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject of this article are not sufficient for an accurate encyclopedia article. , CINCINNATI, OH OCTOBER 8-9, 2004

Cincinnati Ballet created the world anew (choreographically) by reviving Leonide Massine's monumental Seventh Symphony, to Beethoven, produced by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo

Ballet company formed in Monte Carlo in 1932. The name derived from Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, which dissolved after his death in 1929. Under René Blum and Col. W.
 in 1938 and not seen in America since the 1948-49 season.

Johanna Bernstein Wilt, the company's ballet mistress bal´let` mis´tress

n. 1. a woman who trains ballet dancers.

Noun 1. ballet mistress - a woman who directs and teaches and rehearses dancers for a ballet company
, reconstructed the choreography from old rehearsal films; Frederic Franklin, the Ballet Russe's 90-year-old former star who was featured in the ballet's premiere, meticulously coached file cast. Because no films survive of the finale, the company offered only three of the work's four movements. But they formed a satisfying whole.

The ballet opens as a character called the Spirit of Creation animates the universe, bringing air and water and birds and beasts joyously alive. These characters look like storybook sto·ry·book  
n.
A book containing a collection of stories, usually for children.

adj.
Occurring in or resembling the style or content of a storybook: storybook characters; a storybook romance.
 illustrations, but the sophisticated choreography sends them rushing along intricate curves and down bold diagonals.

In the second movement, mourners enter with a somber tread that suggests Central European modern dance of the 1930s. One group supports a lifeless young man, given no name in the program. Nevertheless, the sculptural choreography makes him the crucified Jesus. So, too, a grieving woman is surely Mary, and a hunched-up man is Judas. Ill 1938, some ballet-goers pronounced this scene blasphemous blas·phe·mous  
adj.
Impiously irreverent.



[Middle English blasfemous, from Late Latin blasph
; in Cincinnati, it was eloquent.

Massine turns from the Bible to Greek mythology in the third movement: a festival of Greek gods with the ballet's most purely classical choreography. Originally, Seventh Symphony ended with the destruction of the world. But because that finale is unrevivable, it now concludes with bliss.

The Cincinnati ensembles had the requisite speed and abandon for the first and third movements. With his broad arm gestures, Dmitri Trubehanov, as the Spirit of Creation, appeared to be summoning divine powers from the depths of his being, If group movements in the lamentation lamentation,
n a prayer expressing affliction or sorrow and requesting defense, retribution, or comfort.
 scene occasionally lacked weight, Kristi Capps looked crushed by grief as the Mary figure, and Benjamin Wardell's grotesque twistings made him a believable Judas.

The company brought me to Cincinnati to lecture on the historical context of Seventh Symphony. But its exciting performances made history live.

FOR MORE INFORMATION www.cincinnatiballet.com
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Article Details
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Author:Anderson, Jack
Publication:Dance Magazine
Article Type:Dance Review
Date:Jan 1, 2005
Words:354
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