Word: ballets
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...windows of a rehearsal room at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, rows of little female heads glisten in the sun, their chins just making it up to the sill. They are lucky children, for they are watching New York City Ballet Choreographer George Balanchine rehearse his newest principal dancer, Mikhail Baryshnikov. The session is long and hard, and it is going very well. Baryshnikov leaps into the whimsical salutes of Stars and Stripes. He and the choreographer pause to discuss some points, speaking in Russian-a common language for both. Later, Baryshnikov, 30, whips through a fast, intricate sequence from...
Misha Baryshnikov left the American Ballet Theater last May in order to dance the works of Balanchine and his partner, Jerome Robbins. Rumors flew that Baryshnikov would dance in with his new company in New York during June. It was probably a good idea to begin in the summer season at Saratoga Springs, for if there is any respite from the demands of superstardom, it can be found in this quiet, informal arts center. The performing area is a pavilion that seats 5,100 (many more people can see the action from some distance on the lawn). Saratogans take pride...
...Turning Point-Herbert Ross does a great job directing this story of the ballet, faded hopes and lost youth. Shirley Maclaine, as the one-time dancer who gave it up, and Anne Bancroft as her friend who went on to fame, provide the firepower, and Leslie Browne and Mikhail Baryshnikov supply the looks and the dancing talent. A fine film, and Bancroft has never been better since The Graduate...
Except for a handful of items like the scene from the ballet, The Red Detachment of Women, the material presented is not heavy on ideology, though if the program notes are to be believed, some of the song lyrics contain clunkers like "When you drink tea from our Red base you will never forget our revolutionary tradition." But that sort of material cannot possibly offend anyone. Even if one could understand the language, the comical effect of the lines could easily be regarded as counterrevolutionary...
...sorrows (and the private visions and fancies individuals indulge in as compensation) - the raw materials of a vital art - are banned as irrelevancies. Artists, if they are to continue to function publicly, must either embrace the gaseous platitudes of revolution or bury themselves in popular, native tradition. Chinese ballet, for instance, was hobbled when authorities decided to erase any Russian influences. Folk singing and dancing seem to be much safer areas to cultivate. So is something like the Peking Opera, which relies on timeless myths, harmless fairy tales, for its plots, and prizes acrobatics and mimetic movement...