Word: basil
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...close she has come was visible last month at her Kennedy Center debut in Baryshnikov's version of Don Quixote. Very close. As Kitri, the spitfire Spanish girl who defies her innkeeper father and marries Basil, the barber of her choice, Gelsey has the kind of high-stepping, scenery-chewing part that can hurl an artist into stardom. Don Q offers some of the great bravura set pieces in the classical repertory, and Baryshnikov has seen to it that the routines spill into each other and positively spatter on the stage, threatening to engulf the aisles and even (somebody call...
...presence of Gamache, the unwanted suitor pressed upon her by her father, her eyes roll in exaggerated disdain. She transforms her snapping fan into an épée to prod this fopling across the stage and out of her sight. Her face flares in coquettish outrage at brash Basil's proffered kisses; she singes and melts at the same time. When she is onstage with the demented man of La Mancha, the tart señorita turns spindrift. She not only sees his visions but sees around them. Her poignant movements tell everyone watching what she knows: she is the earthly...
...gutsy, bold dancer with almost palpable physical courage. She flings herself into the role of Kitri. Her foot hits the back of her head when she jumps (and she leaps the night away). Her attacks are almost stabbing. Her fan flips constantly - unless she is using it to poke Basil. She so clearly relishes keeping him in line that one wonders if there isn't a bit of a shrew in his future...
...ballet should belong to Kitri- and eventually it will as it enters the A.B.T. repertory and other men take Basil's part. Right now Baryshnikov's dynamism puts things off balance, much as Marlon Brando's Broadway perfo mance in A Streetcar Named Desire obscured the fact that the play was really about Blanche DuBois. Baryshnikov is the Figaro of Spanish barbers. He flirts recklessly, he fumes, he pouts. He does a wonderful bit with two mugs, leaping and drinking out of both at once. He has a hilarious, hollow-eyed mad scene in which he stabs...
...part is interwoven into Baryshnikov's life. He danced the wedding pas de deux at his graduation recital at the Kirov Ballet school in Leningrad. Basil was his first full-length role, one he danced often. Playing it, he says, taught him a great deal: "Technical control, mime, how to use a cape, how to give a flower to a girl, how to be funny, touching, a lover . . . a lot." He is giving those gifts now to the A.B.T. dancers and, one suspects, a profligate present to the company at the box office as well...