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“GISELLE” REVISITED

Pacific Northwest Ballet
“Giselle” Revisited

Works & Process
Peter B. Lewis Theater
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
New York NY
January 9, 2011

by David Vaughan
copyright 2011 by David Vaughan

At the end of her important book about performance practice in the era of the Romantic ballet, “Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle” (2000), Marian Smith asks, “What would happen if an attempt were made to mount a ‘Giselle’ that conforms as nearly as possible to the version described in the libretto…?” Peter Boal, artistic director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, is doing just that, for a production that his company will present in Seattle in June this year, and he has had the good sense to invite Marian Smith as a historical adviser, together with Doug Fullington, the company’s director of education. Fulllingon reads Stepanov Notation, in which many works from the late 19th century repertory in Russia are recorded, including Marius Petipa’s last staging of “Giselle,” at the turn of the century. It is Petipa’s version (which presumably retained some choreography from 1841 with which he would have been familiar) that is the basis of most productions we see today, as staged for various companies, from the Diaghilev Ballets Russes into the 1930s, by Nicholas Sergeyev, Petipa’s régisseur, who brought the Stepanov notations with him when he left Russia. These are now in the Harvard Library.

American Ballet Theatre at 70

Works & Process
Peter B Lewis Theater
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Sunday May 9, 2010

by David Vaughan
copyright 2010 by David Vaughan

American Ballet Theatre’s opening night gala this year on May 17th is apparently intended to be just that, a gala for opening night of its annual spring season at the Metropolitan Opera. Celebration of the company’s 70th anniversary took place on a couple of evenings in the Works & Process series at the Guggenheim Museum. A panel moderated by Rachel Moore, the company’s Executive Director, with Donald Saddler, who danced in the company’s first performance on January 11, 1940; Lupe Serrano and Susan Jaffe, former principals; and Susan Jones, former dancer and present ballet mistress, discussed various aspects of the company’s history. Present members of the company danced excerpts from this season’s repertory, some of which were also relevant to points made in the discussion.

An Evening with Frederic Franklin

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE
An Evening with Frederic Franklin
Works & Process
Peter B. Lewis Theater
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
New York
January 10, 2010

By David Vaughan
copyright 2010 by David Vaughan 

What an enviable life Frederic Franklin has led! And at age 95 he’s still going strong. At a time when to be a dancer was considered an unsuitable profession for a middle-class English boy, his family encouraged him to study all kinds of dancing. At first he was a hoofer, in a music-hall troupe called the Lancashire Lads, then he went to Paris to be one of Josephine Baker’s (and later Mistinguett’s) back-up group at the Casino de Paris. Back in London, he performed in cabaret with Wendy Toye (who became a choreographer when she was still a teenager) and at the same time studied with Lydia Kyasht and Nicholas Legat. Anton Dolin saw him in the latter’s class and said, “It’s time you took your dancing seriously,” and signed him as a principal in the company he was forming with Alicia Markova. The Markova-Dolin Ballet lasted for a couple of years, at the end of which time Leonide Massine, who had left Colonel de Basil’s Russian Ballet to take over the artistic direction of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and was recruiting dancers, offered principal contracts to both Markova and Franklin. (That was the end of the Markova-Dolin; Dolin, in a huff presumably, went to de Basil.) But Franklin soon found himself partnering Alexandra Danilova, a partnership that was to last for twenty years. George Balanchine, who succeeded Massine as resident choreographer, appointed Franklin as ballet master. He then formed a company with another ballerina, Mia Slavenska. That was short-lived, but in due course he became the founding director of the National Ballet in Washington DC, then artistic advisor to Dance Theatre of Harlem. He has staged many ballets for various companies, most recently for the Cincinnati Ballet, another company with which he has had a long association. His creation of the “Creole Giselle” for Dance Theatre of Harlem was one of the most distinguished recensions of that ballet (and was recognized as such by an Olivier Award in England). And he still performs with ABT in its spring seasons at the Metropolitan Opera, as the Prince’s tutor in “Swan Lake,” and as Friar Laurence in “Romeo and Juliet”—as he put it, the “old man and old lady parts,” the latter being the witch, Madge, in “La Sylphide.”

Ashton in Paris

“La Fille mal gardée”
Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris
Palais Garnier
Paris,  France
June 25 and 26, 2007

by David Vaughan
copyright ©2007 by David Vaughan

It has taken a while for the work of Frederick Ashton to gain a foothold at the Ballet of the Paris Opéra. When Rudolf Nureyev first took over the company, in the early 80s, he wanted to present “La Fille mal gardée.” There was a contretemps of some kind, and Ashton withdrew permission. Instead, the company took on the version recently staged in Geneva by Heinz Spoerli. When “Rhapsody” entered the repertory briefly, in 1996, it didn’t make much of an impression. Then, in 2004, someone had the bright idea of putting on an “Entente Cordiale” gala, with members of the Paris company partnering dancers from the Royal Ballet—Laurent Hilaire with Darcey Bussell in Ashton’s “Awakening” pas de deux from “The Sleeping Beauty,” Manuel Legris with Leanne Benjamin in the “Thaïs” pas de deux, among others. The Royal Ballet itself had a big success with “A Month in the Country” the last time it appeared in Paris.