The story was written by a Russian columnist, Lydia Pashkova. Yuri Grigorivich (the Bolshoi Raymonda choreographer and the author of The Authorized Bolshoi Ballet Book of Raymonda) says of Pashkova, “[h]er works were not brilliant; they were entertaining.”I’ll try my best to summarize. The setting is a castle in medieval Hungary. A young noblewoman named Raymonda awaits the arrival of her betrothed, Jeanne de Brienne, who is off fighting in the crusades. In his absence a
This morning, the New York City Ballet celebrated the 4th of July with a two hour rehearsal of Union Jack, Balanchine’s ode to Great Britain—oops. After that bit of treason we returned to our Raymonda variations. Balanchine wrote—in Balanchine’s Festival of Ballet: Volume II (co-authored by Francis Mason)—that the plot of the original, full-length Raymonda (1898) choreographed by Petipa was, “nonsense,” and, “difficult to follow.” Story ballets are rarely based upon great pieces of literature, nor are they paragons of feminism (or even character development!). They mostly involve virginal women trapped in odd bodily forms—swans, sylphs, etc.—until some gloomy squire comes to their rescue via swords and marriage. Raymonda is no different, but it is really a mess.
The story was written by a Russian columnist, Lydia Pashkova. Yuri Grigorivich (the Bolshoi Raymonda choreographer and the author of The Authorized Bolshoi Ballet Book of Raymonda) says of Pashkova, “[h]er works were not brilliant; they were entertaining.”I’ll try my best to summarize. The setting is a castle in medieval Hungary. A young noblewoman named Raymonda awaits the arrival of her betrothed, Jeanne de Brienne, who is off fighting in the crusades. In his absence a
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Raymonda is one of those ballets that people love to call “a confection.” To all appearances it is as girly as ballet gets: we corps and soloist dancers sport Pepto-Bismol pink tutus with garlands in our hair, while the principal couple dons turquoise blue satin. Glazunov’s melodies lilt and repeat themselves often, and the music is even and predictable and lovely. However, all this twee fluff camouflages the fact that it is one of the most technically demanding ballets in our repertory. And at the end of day two of rehearsals, it wasn’t getting any easier. As is par for the course in Raymonda, several girls ended their solos sprawled on the floor. I have always thought that Balanchine was being rather tongue-in-cheek with this ballet, but the more I dance it and watch it, the more I think it is downright hilarious! It begins with a long and dramatic overture before the music trickles almost to a stop and the curtain rises upon a stage of Photo by Paul Kolnik Today was the first day of City Ballet’s Saratoga rehearsal period, and while the rest of the country watched the US play in the World Cup, I spent the afternoon with twenty panting, flushed women. The cause? Balanchine’s Raymonda Variations. It is so damn hard! Raymonda is probably the worst ballet to have to rehearse on the first day back after a layoff; however, it is the perfect ballet with which to kick off this blog because it has represented so many firsts for me over the course of my career. The ballet’s second variation was my very first ballet solo. Patricia McBride coached me in the role for the Chautauqua Festival program when I was thirteen years old (and only in my second year on pointe—which seems soo risky to me in hindsight). I still wear the earrings that she gave me as a merde gift for performances today. Ironically, I can’t wear them for a ballet like Raymonda—they are huge and dangly and more suited to accompany big dresses like the ones in Vienna Waltzes and Thou Swell!
Raymonda’s first variation –“the hopping solo”—was among my first solo roles when I joined the New York City Ballet too. I danced it often, beginning in my first year as a corps member, and I loved it. That solo marked the beginning of my specializing in a lot of our repertory’s solos based on hopping on pointe (like Generosity in the Sleeping Beauty, Spinner in Coppelia) which unfortunately also lead to my big surgery. Eventually, I developed a necrotic cuneiform in the middle of my arch on my hopping foot. After some painful years of ballet while several doctors tried to diagnose my “[Dancers] are creative the same way that paint in the pot is creative. We are the means to the end….We are not the beginning or the end of creation. We are the innocents of beauty; we wait and listen and pray for guidance."
--Toni Bentley Toni Bentley writes exquisitely well about the many paradoxes of being a professional ballet dancer; and I have thought of this passage from Winter Season quite often during my many years of dancing with the New York City Ballet. Like paint on a canvas each dancer in a company represents a particular facet of a choreographic work—some of us are watery mauve stains, some are impasto globs of blue. We are often many different shades and brushstrokes within the same ballet, or within several different ballets over the course of an evening. There is tremendous liberation to be had in such a position. We are not creators; but we have the privilege of embodying monumental acts of creation. To perform Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco or Serenade is akin to inhabiting Michelangelo’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel. It is an honor and a joy. It is often a transcendent experience and probably the closest to the divine that I will ever come. It is, at best, to feel fully alive, to be piercingly present in time and space. But there is also a decidedly negative cast to Ms. Bentley’s words. And though I think dancers are far more creative than pots of paint, I understand what she means. Can one truly be considered to be |
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