Summer Ballet

Hello all. A reminder that the summer Ballet in Cinema series has three ballets left: The Sleeping Beauty, La Bayadère, & La Source. I think this is only in North America. So many of you are elsewhere so please let me know if you have anything comparable. I'll keep looking.

Also in ballet-land: I've recommended Ballet Beautiful streaming videos before & here's an enticement: 15% off for July. Enter BBJULY in the code box as you check out. I recommend Swan Arms to begin. (Also the, um, butt series:)

Hope you're neither too hot nor too cold (nor too wet). This is a summer of extremes around the world. Climate change much? (Fie upon the deniers.)

xo/Susan

(photograph/crop detail by Prabuddha Dasgupta; tulle underskirt by Vivienne Westwood. How I wish I were standing on a boulder at the crashing sea.)

The Nutcracker at the Movies

Those of you in Europe & Australia who love ballet & love seeing films in the theatre: keep your eyes & ears open for New York City Ballet's Nutcracker opening this month. (The times/places aren't listed yet.) It showed live in the States last evening. Here's the good review in today's New York Times. I'm thinking of popping up to a cinema in my neighborhood to see the Bolshoi's Nutcracker. I think the ballet-in-cinema is a positive development. While many of us have access to live ballet performance, many do not (or we just cannot afford the live ticket prices right now).

(photograph by Paul Kolnik for The New York Times)

Ballet Workers

I'll be going to this exhibit at The Phillips Collection more than once, I know. I remember a reproduction of a Degas painting & some (repro) drawings at my maternal grandmother's house. I never had the reaction that others did of "oooh pretty." I liked them very much but I remember saying/thinking: They're working so hard that it might hurt. And also it might be boring sometimes. I learned not a few years later (through a sister & later on, friends) that this could often be the case. Not that they would trade their training for anything. So there you are.

There's also a Degas exhibit on in Boston (nudes) & one at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. There are some good articles in the New York Times & a good slideshow on The Guardian. Here's the Degas label on The Guardian, too, so you can see all the article titles at once.

I hope to post more regularly as autumn marches on. But I've said that before. Part of the problem is deciding how to use the space. I've not been writing from prompts as much as I did at the beginning. Maybe I don't have to define what I'm doing but it feels like I should.

(Dancers at the Barre/Phillips Collection via Wikipedia)

Ballet Beautiful at Home

A quickie. I am slammed, exhausted, pooped. Julie the Cat is in her little house, listening to my iPod's French Pop playlist. I am not kidding. It makes her feel better. She also enjoys my Ocean & Rain playlist. I wish I could beam it out to everyone...it's wonderfully relaxing.

On to exercise: I can vouch only for the Ballet Beautiful streaming video called Swan Arms. Ouch ouch ouch ouch.There are additional videos ($8.00) & finally some DVDs for sale. I've read about people who have the videos on their smartphones! Just thinking about doing ballet videos anywhere but in the privacy of my apartment behind a triple-bolted door makes me laugh. Out loud. I assume these people aren't doing butt blasts in the park.

Of course, if you have some money to spare & are in NYC, take a class. And then tell the rest of us about it. I follow Mary Helen Bowers (the founder) on Twitter & she's quite nice.

I hope for a semblance of bloggy normalcy soon. Whatever that means. Cheers!

(photograph by Mads Teglers - from his lovely Josephine portfolio)

Swan Alone

It relieves people of all that blathering below. Now, I must go make dinner. Fresh produce waits for no one. (Especially when purchased last week. Eek. This is where French cooking knowledge comes in handy. Thanks, Julia!) Natalie Portman in Black Swan via mariakochetkova (dot) com. A landing in the Ill River by somebody3121 on deviantArt. (seriously, 'somebody')

Ballet Shoe High-Wire Act

While I rush about (good luck to me)...here is a photograph by only alice from a recent holiday in Barcelona. If you click on the photo (better yet, click through to the original photo), you'll see the ballet shoes. The question is...what are they doing there?

Snowflakes

The well-reviewed Washington Ballet's Nutcracker has only $85 tickets left. So, a still of Dance of the Snowflakes is as close as I'll get this year (after I made fun of TN forever, serves me right). The photograph is via The Washington Ballet. The snowflake doily photograph is from a DIY design*sponge post. Very clever, old-fashioned, & inexpensive. How easy? With a cat standing on my head? Reportage forthcoming.

La Danse, le ballet de l'Opéra de Paris

Just returned home from AFI where Frederick Wiseman's documentary is playing in the gorgeous Art Deco Silver Theatre. Now back to real life. [photograph via La Danse site on Facebook]

Irving Penn

Irving Penn's death in Manhattan was announced a few hours ago; he was 92. It is difficult to think of who--or what-- he did not photograph in his long illustrious career. To say he was just a fashion & celebrity photographer is not enough. (But, of course, that is the headline.)

[photographs by Irving Penn/Masters of Photography via Ballet Photography]

Sylvie in Black & White

..and one in color. I've been privileged to see most of the great ballet dancers (male & female) perform or rehearse, from the mid-60s through the present. (One of my sisters nearly went in that direction .The grueling Royal Academy examinations--yikes. My mother was nearly driven to her own mad Giselle scene dealing with the specs for examination tunic sewing.)

The Royal Ballet had not been to Washington, DC for at least 10 years (not looking it up) & I was so upset that I'd not seen Sylvie Guillem, French-born, prima ballerina of the Royal. When in London, not the season. Of course. So when word came of a tour stop here, I was very excited. The man in my life? Not so much. He was no slouch in the culture department, it just didn't get him (he said). So one asks, as one should, "Bad experience? Five thousand Nutcrackers your only exposure to ballet?" No. Never been. Aha! So you can't really say that you dislike it, can you? No, which one should we go to? I thought, OK, Swan Lake since it's important in the canon (though I'd seen 5,000 times) & because Sylvie Guillem was scheduled for several performances. I told this man that she was beautiful & French & he would be dazzled. Yeah, yeah.

We didn't take two pair of opera glasses to the performance. We were quite close, really; still, as soon as he laid eyes on Sylvie, that was it. Hogged them the rest of the evening. I don't think he's over it yet. I'm going through a clothes clear-out/reorganization & just found the pretty blue Royal Ballet sweatshirt he bought me that night. I thought they were too expensive but he wanted to thank me for his introduction to the ballet (read: Sylvie). A success.

By the way, AUREA has a good post on dance books; and artist Tina Tarnoff at Thought Patterns has a beautiful papercut of Sylvie in her etsy shop. Which I covet.

[Photographs of SG: 1) www.brisbanepowerhouse.org; 2) via www.dance.net/balletphotos; 3) baletinky.blog.cz/0708/4. Searching for original photographer names. I usually don't post unless I have them, but today, that's the way it'll have to be.]

Week's End - Zizi in Black & White

Do you know Renée Jeanmaire aka Zizi? What a life.

Since I'm going off to live mine & help a friend hand-write wedding invitations (packing a Waterman) tomorrow, there's no time right now. She was classically trained but also put her pointed toe into music halls & piped up to sing. She was decidedly not a typical ballerina. Famous for her Carmen, she worked with Roland Petit (& married him).There are many gorgeous photographs of her on artnet & everywhere I look. But they are copyright protected. These are from LIFE archives & the credits are below. I know the top one isn't a great print, but I like it. Maybe it's silly but I miss YSL.

bisou

[Dancer Renee (Zizi) Jeanmaire (L) embracing Yves Saint Laurent at fashion show, Paul Schutzer, 1962; Dancer Renee (Zizi) Jeanmaire performing in the ballet "Carmen." Gordon Parks, October 1949. Both in Paris, France.]

Pas de chat*

Guess which one I was today? Out & about all over Washington, knocking things over, upending a display at Utrecht Art Supplies. Turning around to catch something & knocking over whatever was on the other side . At the optometrist's I dropped all my bags & picked up my (big) purse the wrong way & dumped everything out onto the floor. In front of a lot of people. I did something at Macy's but I'm blocking it out. Stacks of pajamas or underthings involved. I left a wake of nonsense behind me & thought of Neil Young's Hurricane, & dancing ballerina-hippos.

I did laugh though...trouble is, I don't think anyone could tell I was thinking of a dancing hippo. I just realized it's good I didn't mention it; maybe they would think I claimed to see a dancing hippo. I just might as well go back to my coppery curls.

I shall spend the rest of the evening gracefully balancing a book on my head & channeling Sylvie Guillem. (I would include her link but it's crashed. Ha, her website fell over.) *'step of the cat' - a jump - there's a famous dance of four cygnets in Swan Lake, sixteen pas de chat...show-offs.

ciao

[Lucy at the barre, LIFE archives; lovely ballerina & her swain, Tamara Toumanova & Serge Lifar, Swan Lake, Sydney, 1939-1940 / photographed by Max Dupain/State Library of New South Wales collection which I adore.]

Overexposures

...literally.

By Gjon Mili from the LIFE archives. (Mili photos of Françoise Gilot & Henri Matisse are in earlier posts) & here is Picasso drawing a vase of flowers in 1949. The others are from the Stravinsky Festival in 1972. Oddly, they remind me of The English Patient's (film) "fresco scene in Arezzo" with Juliette Binoche & the cute Kip (I know he's on that Lost thing, Naveen Andrews? Not looking it up now.) Spending quite a bit of (unwelcome) downtime figuring out pieces of personal Italian-Tunisian-rest-of-MEastern puzzle. Also preoccupied drawing a version of Matisse's flower-petal letters. This is where fever-pain & lack of calories gets you. Not too far. (Here's a link to a quick Lightwriting from Picasso to Lichtfaktor article; it refers to Mili & Picasso.)

Re: The English Patient (see here for The Clever Pup's excellent post on Theme Thursday "Fire" -- it's what set this whole thing off, really). I noticed in a still shot of Hana's flowered dress...that it's the same (or so close there's barely a difference) pattern as the top I wear almost every day. A French friend gave it to me for what I shall refer to as my period of avoirdupois. It's the most inconsequential (but pretty) top & I am asked quite often "where did you get that? Is it European?!" So funny. Now I know I should say: it's a frumpy floral from the forties. But that would not be nice, so I won't. Honestly, I'm much more polite than I seem on this site.

I would post those TEP photos but I think it's too much for Picasa at moment....& since I'm down for the count, I ought to leave something, anything for tomorrow. Clever Pup is spouting excellent haiku to VVG. All the sites in the right side-bar are doing something interesting. I just can't get to all of them to comment or even download 'til later. [The fun Tina Tarnoff tag can't be done until/unless it receives a bit more thought than I can bring to it now. Fun is serious business!]

bacini