http://www.sfballetblog.org/2010/03/old-vs-new/ Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:10:39 +0000 hourly 1 http://www.sfballetblog.org/2010/03/old-vs-new/comment-page-1/#comment-983 Daphne Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:39:25 +0000 http://www.sfballetblog.org/?p=1934#comment-983 I absolutely adore Petrushka and loved the SF Ballet performance I saw of it last week. I went back to look at the photos of Nijinsky dancing the title role; what a sad foreshadowing of his own end. Putting Forsythe and Fokine on the same program was provocative. While we might consider Forsythe's ballet to be more modern, in other ways is now more conventional than Fokine's. It conforms more to what we expect to see when we go to the ballet in 2010: supremely athletic dancers pushing the limits of what the human body can do. In Petrushka, the strange juxtapositions of scenes showing cruelty, indifference, love, and desperation, yet stylized and removed from the "real" world to a fairy-tale-like setting, left me unsettled and moved in a way that many contemporary ballets do not. Thank you Charlene for your view from behind the curtain! I absolutely adore Petrushka and loved the SF Ballet performance I saw of it last week. I went back to look at the photos of Nijinsky dancing the title role; what a sad foreshadowing of his own end. Putting Forsythe and Fokine on the same program was provocative. While we might consider Forsythe’s ballet to be more modern, in other ways is now more conventional than Fokine’s. It conforms more to what we expect to see when we go to the ballet in 2010: supremely athletic dancers pushing the limits of what the human body can do. In Petrushka, the strange juxtapositions of scenes showing cruelty, indifference, love, and desperation, yet stylized and removed from the “real” world to a fairy-tale-like setting, left me unsettled and moved in a way that many contemporary ballets do not. Thank you Charlene for your view from behind the curtain!

]]> http://www.sfballetblog.org/2010/03/old-vs-new/comment-page-1/#comment-969 Donna Chaban-Delmas Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:41:03 +0000 http://www.sfballetblog.org/?p=1934#comment-969 When I was a child through my teens, I studied with Miriam Lanova whose studio was the block above Union Street in the old Sherman-Clay Mansion. On Saturdays, she and her husband, John, (then SF Symphony's French Horn first chair) would take all of us students to see the ballet movies shown at the Palace of Legion d'Honeur; we would all sit in the dark theatre with tears rolling down our cheeks. Most were British films, and of course the most influencial was "The Red Shoes." When I was a child through my teens, I studied with Miriam Lanova whose studio was the block above Union Street in the old Sherman-Clay Mansion. On Saturdays, she and her husband, John, (then SF Symphony’s French Horn first chair) would take all of us students to see the ballet movies shown at the Palace of Legion d’Honeur; we would all sit in the dark theatre with tears rolling down our cheeks. Most were British films, and of course the most influencial was “The Red Shoes.”

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