Word: bravura
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Ashton's new Fille is an unabashedly lyrical, bravura showcase for pixyish (5 ft. 4 in., 105 Ibs.) Nadia Nerina (born Nadine Judd in Cape Town), long acknowledged the company's most polished virtuoso. Around the 32-year-old ballerina Ashton draped a ballet rich in invention, defiant of technical limitations, blending high jinks, low comedy and pathos. Brilliantly supported by Yorkshire-born David Blair (he managed a singlehanded portage not rivaled at Covent Garden since Ulanova was toted out of Juliet's tomb), Dancer Nerina turned in a performance of superb precision, fluency and lightness...
...Mischa Elman, Efrem Zimbalist, all of whom were, like Milstein, trained by the late great Leopold Auer. In the generation that has passed since Milstein first appeared on the U.S. musical scene, he has transformed himself without fanfare from a dazzling virtuoso to a mature master, not only of bravura composers such as Max Bruch and Sarasate, but of Brahms, Beethoven and Bach. Little interested in contemporary music ("I am not a pioneer; perhaps my taste is bad"), he has won a vast audience to his sensitive readings of the classics...
...real triumph for this group from the land of collectivism was not the orchestra's collective accomplishment but the individual performances of several great soloists. Pianist Emil Gilels, well known to U.S. audiences (TIME, Oct. 17. 1955) was in fine bravura form in Tchaikovsky's familiar Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra. Even more enthusiastically received were two newcomers...
...last-act duet in which she hovered back to consciousness on feet as tremulous as a butterfly's wing. And where Plisetskaya had omitted the famous 32 fouettés (snapped turns) in the "Black Swan Pas de Deux," Timofeyeva whipped them off with a bravura that brought the house alive with a roar...
...instinct for the theatrical jugular makes even this mannikin play bleed greasepaint. Elia Kazan's direction is intense, Jo Mielziner's sets are broodily menacing, and Paul Bowles's mood music shimmers. But the only unfailing source of power and passion in the play is the bravura performance of Geraldine Page. Whether she is thrashing about in bed crying for her oxygen mask after a days-long vodka-and-goofball binge or clawing apart her hired paramour's tape-recorded blackmail scheme, Actress Page is just what the character she plays fears, "the tiger...