Word: ballets
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...impending demise of the Radio City Music Hall [Jan. 16] is especially sad to us who trod its boards over the years as members of the Rockettes, ballet and glee club. I was in its glee club from '37 to '40 and married a member of the ballet. We were all jealous of the Rockettes, for they were the best paid of all the cast. They learned a few routines and used them week after week, while the glee club had to memorize-in three days-30 pages or more of new music each production. Quite often...
Through the years, George Balanchine has compared his role as choreographer to the job of a cook or a carpenter. Like a cook he must be able to turn out fare for "five or 100." Like a woodworker he must know his materials: "A ballet carpenter must find dominant quality of gesture, a strain or palette of consistent movement" in the music. Now 74, Balanchine keeps providing nourishment for his New York City Ballet and matching his inspiration to his dancers' strengths. There have been two premieres in two weeks: Ballo della Regina, to dance music from Verdi...
...male corps looks occasionally as if it had wandered in from a Jerome Robbins ballet and started doing Balanchine's "London bridges" patterns. But when the tempos slow down, as they do occasionally, there are some rare images refreshed by the fact that the figures in the distance, those who give the work its continuity, are men. In one, as the two women dance downstage, three of the men glide behind them serenely, like swans in semidarkness...
Last fall, on the first day after summer layoff, the real Balanchine told her, "I would like to do something for you." It was Ballo. Her huge almond-shaped eyes glow as she remembers that morning. "He told me that a new ballet is like putting on a new coat. You have to move around in it awhile before it is comfortable." Not too long, however. Balanchine began with a structure for Ballo, but no steps. Says Ashley: "He wears these clunky shoes and does funny things with his feet. Then you move and he looks. My pas de deux...
...Merrill can't do it, probably no one can. Peter Martins, City Ballet's top male dancer (and new choreographer, whose first work, Calcium Light Night, just opened), has worked with Balanchine for a decade. Says Martins: "He could not have done Ballo five years ago. It is all Merrill. She executes steps at speeds that seem impossible. And she never takes a short cut. She is completely honest...