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Book Review: Balanchine: Russian-American Ballet Master Emeritus

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by Emily Kate Long

balanchineIn Balanchine: Russian-American Ballet Master Emeritus, Reine Duell Bethany gives young adults (dancers and nondancers alike) a highly readable, thought-provoking, and inspiring biography of the twentieth-century choreographer.  Over ten chapters, Bethany walks the reader thoughtfully through Balanchine’s early life in Russia, his work for Diaghilev, and his eventual establishment in the US as the head of New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet. The author traces Balanchine’s personal history and relationships, his development as a choreographer, and his work and personality as a businessman and international cultural ambassador. Throughout, adequate yet succinct historical, cultural, and social context is provided, making Ballet Master Emeritus as useful and appealing to young people interested in history or politics as ballet. For creative types, Reine Duell Bethany’s poignant, inspiring writing reinforces the importance of such qualities as faith, sacrifice, integrity, courage, and dedication in the pursuit of artistic goals.

Balanchine: Russian-American Ballet Master Emeritus would make a valuable addition to the young dancer’s library. It captures the subject in a way that is both revealing and sensitive, while placing George Balanchine and New York City Ballet in a landscape beyond the self-contained.

Balanchine: Russian-American Ballet Master Emeritus

Reine Duell Bethany, 193 pages

Remembering Maria Tallchief

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by Catherine L. Tully

Elegant and intense. That is how I’ll always remember her.

I can still recall the first time I ever saw Maria Tallchief in person. I had been dancing at her school, Chicago City Ballet, for a month or so, taking classes with her sister Marjorie and other instructors there. One day I arrived early as usual to get my spot at the barre and warm up. Students filed in one-by-one, taking their places.

I turned around to check the time and saw her sweep into the classroom. You see, she didn’t just walk in–she made an entrance. Dressed in black from head to toe, she had a cape-like wrap on and a few unique pieces of jewelry. She wore her thick hair down and held her chin high–every bit the prima ballerina.

The class was silent which was typical, but there was an electricity in the air. We were about to take a technique class from one of the most famous American ballet dancers of all time. Talk about pressure! I looked around the room and noticed that all eyes were completely focused on her with a sense of anticipation. Even the pianist seemed to be sitting up a little straighter than usual.

As she demonstrated the steps her voice matched her appearance–dramatic and strong. For the next hour and a half, I tried with all my might to memorize each detail she pointed out and every correction she gave. As she touched my hand to adjust it, I was keenly aware that this same hand had also touched Balanchine, Nureyev and countless others. It was hard to wrap your head around.

I was thirteen years old and I had never been more intimidated. Or more thrilled.

Over the next few years I would have the opportunity to learn much more from Ms. Tallchief, but the most valuable thing I ever received from her was garnered simply by watching her move. By studying the way she gestured with her hands and turned her head–just so. It’s something you just can’t capture in words, and it’s something that became part of me as a dancer from that moment forward.

She really made an impression.

To me, Maria Tallchief will always symbolize the grandeur and mystery that people are so fascinated with when it comes to ballerinas. It was difficult to be comfortable in her presence because she didn’t just act like a prima ballerina, she really was one to her very core.

And I am so lucky to have experienced that.

Summer Dance Intensives – A Guidebook

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There’s a lot to know about summer dance intensives, and both students and parents may have a lot of questions regarding topics such as which one to choose, what to do about housing and which intensives are the best match for their particular situation. And the biggest question of all may be where to find those answers…

Nina Amir is a journalist with a vested interest in the subject–she is also the parent of a dancer, and the author of “My Son Can Dance” – a popular dance blog on the web. She created a handbook that helps answer a lot of the basic questions people may have about summer intensives in the dance world. Today, we talk with her about that resource–and learn more about why she decided to write it…

ballet summer intensivesHow did the idea for this handbook come about?

Every year I receive a ton of questions about summer dance intensives—especially about the American Ballet Theatre intensive in New York. From about November or December, when the boys and their parents start gearing up to audition for the bigger intensives, through until May or June, my readership at My Son Can Dance, skyrockets. Mostly these visitors are reading posts about summer intensives. It became obvious parents needed and wanted help not only deciding on an intensive but choosing the right one for their dancers—not just the dancin’ boys but the girls as well.

I’d written a number of blog posts on the topic of choosing and preparing for an intensive that I felt could be expanded into longer articles, if you will, or chapters. Also, I thought I would be doing the community a service by compiling some of the posts I’d written into one document—an easily read handbook—and adding more information as well.

What is covered in the handbook?

The Handbook includes chapters on:

  • How to Choose a Summer Dance Intensive Program
  • How to Register for a Summer Dance Intensive
  • What to Bring to a Summer Dance Intensive
  • How to Prepare for a Summer Dance Intensive
  • How to Stay Healthy and Strong During a Summer Dance Intensive
  • How Dancers Should Conduct Themselves During a Summer Dance Intensive

Plus, it has one full chapter on “What to Consider When Attending the ABT Summer Dance Intensive in New York City.”

The new edition, which I released the last week of January, includes a bit more information than before. I’ve updated it to include the experiences Julian and I had during our additional summers in New York while he was at ABT and Complexions Contemporary Ballet, and what we learned when he attended the School of American Ballet and San Francisco Ballet summer intensives. It also includes a brief discussion of how some of these programs can lead to year-round residential programs.

Can you give readers a few tips for summer intensives that you talk about in the handbook? [Read more…]

Opus 4, No. 2: Jungian “Personality Type” Analysis Applied To Music

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by Allan Greene

One of my all-time favorite ballets, and one of the great dance creations of the Twentieth Century, is Balanchine’s “Four Temperaments”.  When I was Company Pianist with the Dance Theater of Harlem we must have performed it fifty times.  I did maybe twenty performances as the piano soloist with orchestras in Paris, Houston and the Spoleto USA Festival.  I am steeped in this work.                                   

At the time I was performing it, however, I was completely unaware of the connection between the four medieval “temperaments” or “humors” (choleric, melancholy, sanguine, and phlegmatic) and the much more recent work of the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung.  In the early 1920’s Jung synthesized ideas dealing with the relationship between physiology and personality, many of which he had come across in readings about world civilizations, into what he called the Psychology of Type (his 1921 book was called Psychologische Typen).  He noted how the differentiation of four personality types was common to the classical Greece (through the physician Galen), the medieval Persian physician Avicenna and early modern Europe. 

At first Jung drew on these historical ideas to resolve the conflict he was having with his mentor, Freud.  The two had a celebrated professional break-up in 1912, and Jung spent some time trying to reconcile with himself why this had occurred.  Out of this he created the concepts of introvert and extrovert, which have morphed into touchstones of our modern psychology.  In Psychologische Typen he extended the number of personality types to eight.

The idea for Balanchine’s Four Temperaments was not Balanchine’s (nor was it Galen’s) but, according to program notes for the American Symphony Orchestra prepared by Adrian Corleonis, came from the composer Paul Hindemith.  Corleonis doesn’t show however where Hindemith came across the idea.  It’s always possible that he was familiar with Carl Nielsen’s Second Symphony (1901), nicknamed also “The Four Temperaments”.

The essential idea in all of this is that there are four kinds of personality: one tending toward sadness (melancholy), one tending toward hesitance (phlegmatic), one tending toward cheerfulness (sanguine) and one tending toward anger (choleric).  All human beings possess one of these four personality types, and, according to pre-Modern medical science, must be treated appropriately.

It is my belief that all pieces of music, too, are constituted of recognizable “personalities”, and the best performances of them understand and animate the interaction of these personalities. [Read more…]

Opus 4, No. 1: The White Swan And A Jungian-style Of Musical Analysis

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by Allan Greene

Cue the strings.  Prepare yourself for something big.  I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.

Opus 4 is going to be big project.  It’s going to synthesize several streams of thought that I’ve been carrying around with me for a while, one going back 36 years to when I was a senior at Carleton College.  I’ve been intending to do something with these ideas for a few years, since George de la Peña, who was Artistic Director of the Joffrey Ballet School at the time, suggested I give a talk to the faculty and students on music and dance.

In order to get paid for such a talk, George had me submit a proposal to the school’s executive director.  Unfortunately, George and the executive director parted ways before my proposal was ever processed.  I had proposed doing five lecture/demonstrations on various topics, including the use both Stravinsky and Balanchine made of French Baroque poetry in Apollo, and the how the Ivanov/Legat choreography of the White Swan Pas de Deux in Swan Lake and Tchaikovsky’s music for it are interlaced to create a masterpiece.  Long story short, no money, no revelations.

When the editor of this blog, Catherine, asked me to write about music and dance, and gave me carte blanche to write what was on my mind, the first thing that popped into my head was that long-delayed White Swan project.  I had intended originally to recruit two dancers to demonstrate various parts of the dance while I played at the piano and did my Leonard Bernstein routine.  In cyberspace, however, my audio-visual aids will be a little different.  But it will get to the same place.

The more I thought about how to do this, the more I realized that my project rested on assumptions that, to be charitable, not everybody agrees with nor understands. [Read more…]

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