Reviews of the Century.Great Moments from the pages of Dance Magazine These excerpts from historic Dance Magazine reviews retain their original spelling and punctuation. Photos are from Dance Magazine Archives unless otherwise noted. APRIL 1961 AILEEN PASSLOFF & DANCE CO. FASHION INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY FEBRUARY 5, 1961 BY DORIS HERING Girls with shredded hair and bitten fingernails ... men with beards or their shadows ... musty sweaters and tangled mufflers ... a row ... of minks, styled coiffures, sequin se·quin n. 1. A small shiny ornamental disk, often sewn on cloth; a spangle. 2. A gold coin of the Venetian Republic. Also called zecchino. tr.v. calots. This was the audience assembling for Aileen Passloff's concert. The curtain went up, and suddenly the audience was transferred to the stage--in a dance called Cypher See cipher. . Here the figures were all in black, cleverly varied in line by designer James Waling wale n. 1. A mark raised on the skin, as by a whip; a weal or welt. 2. a. One of the parallel ribs or ridges in the surface of a fabric such as corduroy. b. . ... And the dancers, sometimes in twos, sometimes alone, created an image of brooding futility.... NOVEMBER 1961 KIROV BALLET SEPTEMBER 11-30, 1961 METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE BY DORIS HERING ... a good deal of the best in Russian ballet Russian ballet is a form of ballet characteristic of or originating from Russia. This includes the Vaganova method, the Mariinsky Ballet (Kirov Ballet), and the Bolshoi Theatre, among others. has happened outside of Russia. The Diaghilev Ballets Russes Ballets Russes: see Diaghilev, Sergei Pavlovich. Ballets Russes Ballet company founded in Paris in 1909 by Sergey Diaghilev. Considered the source of modern ballet, the company employed the most outstanding creative talent of the period. grew out of the static staging, the hack music, and the turgid turgid /tur·gid/ (ter´jid) swollen and congested. tur·gid adj. Swollen or distended, as from a fluid; bloated; tumid. turgid swollen and congested. design concepts of the late Nineteenth Century in Russia. The New York City Ballet New York City Ballet, one of the foremost American dance companies of the 20th cent. It was founded by Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine as the Ballet Society in 1946. , with Balanchine as the link, dropped the Parisian "chic" of latter-day Diaghilev and formed a contemporary elegance of its own. Both companies were built upon the movement scaffolding of Russian pedagogy. And what about the two major companies inside Russia--The Bolshoi of Moscow and the Kirov of Leningrad? Artistically, neither has evolved far enough since the early Twentieth Century. True, the Bolshoi has worked out a distinctive acrobatic movement style and its mime has acquired some of the more effective elements of the Moscow Art Theatre Moscow Art Theatre Russian theatre specializing in theatrical naturalism. It was founded in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavsky (as artistic director) and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (administrative director) with the goal of replacing old-fashioned histrionic acting and . But its approach to staging and to design is of the period when ballet and opera were handmaidens. The Kirov ... has used restraint as the key to its style, both in dance and in mime. But with the exception of Shostakovitch Seventh Symphony, it has not created a comparable simplicity in its staging and decorative aspects. If it is fair to judge from the repertoire of three full-length classics and two variety programs that the company brought to New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , it, too, gives dance an operatic context. The Kirov Ballet Kirov Ballet, one of the two major ballet companies of Russia, the other being the Bolshoi Ballet. In 1991 it was officially renamed the St. Petersburg Maryinsky Ballet; however, on its frequent tours abroad it is still called the Kirov Ballet. might almost be called anachronism a·nach·ro·nism n. 1. The representation of someone as existing or something as happening in other than chronological, proper, or historical order. 2. . SEPTEMBER 1963 PENNSYLVANIA BALLET COMPANY PAOLI, PENNSYLVANIA JULY 12, 1963 BY DORIS HERING ... It is impossible to tell from this single appearance just what the Pennsylvania Ballet's eventual style will be.... More important is that from Philadelphia, a city rife with dance factions, an attractive company has emerged from the planning stage and has presented four tastefully chosen works. Symphonic Variations by company director Barbara Weisberger is one of the most apt choreographic versions of the familiar Cesar Franck music that we have ever encountered.... E. Virginia Williams staged The Green Season, originally done for her own Boston Ballet.... With artistic advisor George Balanchine in the audience, the company performed his Pas de Dix.... The opening of Lincoln Center on Manhattan's West Side began a transformation of that neighborhood (and, some would add, the city's arts). The New York State Theater The New York State Theater is part of New York City's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts complex. The theater occupies the south side of the main plaza (at Columbus Avenue & 63rd Street) that it shares with the Metropolitan Opera House and Avery Fisher Hall (home of the New was not the first of the giant halls to open, but for the dance world it was by far the most important. JUNE 1964 NEW YORK CITY BALLET NEW YORK STATE THEATRE LINCOLN CENTER BY EDWIN DENBY During the first two weeks at the New York State [Theater] ... the company added two pieces to its repertory, Balanchine's Clarinade and a revival of Tudor's 1943 Dim Lustre lustre In mineralogy, the appearance of a mineral surface in terms of its light-reflecting qualities. Lustre depends on a mineral's refractivity (see refraction), transparency, and structure. . It also presented Midsummer Night's Dream, and twenty-six other ballets, most of them respaced for the much larger stage. The house has always been full, and has become more and more lively. The company started well, and hit its stride in a week.... I wouldn't have thought it possible, but with more space to cover to the same musical phrase they have stepped up their speed and sweep of style.... ... Ten years ago, fans used to applaud demonstratively de·mon·stra·tive adj. 1. Serving to manifest or prove. 2. Involving or characterized by demonstration. 3. Given to or marked by the open expression of emotion: after Four Temperaments to save it from being taken out of repertory. It has always been a key piece by which to judge the company. On the new stage it is gloriously danced by everyone.... A particular delight at one performance was seeing [Maria] Tallchief dancing at top speed with marvelous musical details of phrasing. [Jacques] D'Amboise too was at his grandest.... It is a pleasure that [Suzanne] Farrell, [Gloria] Govrin, [Patricia] McBride, [Patricia] Neary and [Mimi] Paul, each of them a phenomenal young dancer, are each so strikingly different. Lovely Farrell is at her loveliest in Meditation.... McBride, a beautiful woman in every style of ballet, and with the extra gift of a perfect stage smile, has been the season's all purpose heroine. Her triumph came however in an anti-beauty part, the Novice in The Cage.... The new Swan Lake set looked to me like a very expensive, dark ditch on top of a high mountain, but maybe it's the end in elegance.... APRIL 1965 MERCE CUNNINGHAM AND DANCE COMPANY HUNTER COLLEGE PLAYHOUSE FEBRUARY 12, 14, 1965 BY MARCIA MARKS When the enfant terrible is good, he's very, very good.... He opened his program with beautifully lucid remarks, which he proceeded to demonstrate with beautifully controlled movement. He was saying, "Dance is concerned with each single instant as it comes along," when four dancers--Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber, Barbara Lloyd, and Albert Reid--came along in Field Dances. Cunningham explained that each dancer had been given a series of movements that he or she could use at will within a specified time. John Cage's accompaniment was also restricted only by time. The result might have been chaos is less able hands, but these were disciplined, pleasantly rambling field dances.... The most marked characteristic of all the dancers was their extraordinary intensity. It acted as the vital annealing annealing (ənēl`ĭng), process in which glass, metals, and other materials are treated to render them less brittle and more workable. element in each work, similar to the way intensity underlies Chinese painting, to which Mr. Cunningham's work bears more than slight affinity.... SEPTEMBER 1965 NEDERLANDS DANS THEATER JACOB'S PILLOW JULY 17-20, 1965 BY DORIS HERING In conception, the Nederlands Dans Theater Nederlands Dans Theater (Dutch Dance Theatre also known as the NDT) is a contemporary dance company established in 1959 breaking away from the more traditionally oriented Dutch National Ballet (Het Nederlands Ballet). ... is a remarkable organization. It might be termed a lively experiment in "democracy at work." Instead of having a single, autocratic director, as do most ballet companies, it has two directors (Carel Birnie and Aart Verstegen) and two artistic directors (Hans van Manen Hans van Manen (Nieuwer-Amstel, Netherlands, 11 July 1932) is a Dutch ballet dancer, choreographer and photographer. He is a son of a German housemaid. He studied under Sonia Gaskell, Françoise Adret and Nora Kiss. Hans van Manen wrote many ballets. and Benjamin Harkarvy). Artistic and business decisions are arrived at by majority rule.... The dancers are trained in the ballet-cum-modern idiom so prevalent in this country (and not yet proved ideal when the two are on an absolutely equal basis). And the principal choreographic influences in these two programs were Martha Graham (in Glen Tetley's Pierrot Lunaire); Jerome Robbins (in van Manen's Opus 12, Symphony in Three Movements, and Omnibus); Antony Tudor (in Harkarvy's Septet), and George Balanchine (in Harkarvy's Recital for Cellist and Eight Dancers).3 |
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