Word: helpmann
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Burning) Brown is made to look like a shorn Harpo Marx so that she can play Hoffmann's male companion. Even the performers who appear to advantage represent a disturbing clash of acting styles, e.g., Singer-Actor Rounseville plays for movie naturalism, while Actors Robert Helpmann and Leonide Massine, who are ballet dancers with little dancing to do, go in for stylized operatic mugging...
...role. Most of the other voices are dubbed in, however, with generally good results. The dancing in "Tales of Hoffmann" is all good, but it suffers by being fragmented; Frederick Ashton's choreography consists chiefly of short interludes, beautifully danced by Moira Shearer, Leonide Massine, Ludmilla Tcherina, Robert Helpmann, and the Sadler's Wells Chorus. Miss Shearer's best work is shown in the "Dragonfly Ballet" of the prologue, and in the automaton's dance of Act I. Helpmann appears successively as Lindorf, Coppelius, Dappertutto, and Dr. Miracle--Hoffmann's magnificently sinister enemy. He turns up unexpectedly with such insistency...
...snowflakes in The Nutcracker, more experienced Sadler's Wellsians laughed at the serious little girl who spent half an hour in the wings, warming up for a five-minute role. But Margot was a perfectionist, then as now: she still rehearses the entire third act duet with Partner Helpmann just before each performance of Sleeping Beauty...
Once in a Blue Moon. Among her closest friends are Helpmann, Ashton, Dancer Pamela May, the U.S. Ballet Theatre's Nora Kaye and Les Ballets de Paris' Roland Petit (TIME, Oct. 17). With such people Margot enjoys after-theater suppers or whipping up a home-cooked meal and bringing out some really good wine. One of her extravagances is expensive clothes, but, like most ballerinas, she darns the toes of her own ballet slippers (she brought 40 pairs...
...unpredictable. On one of her rare appearances without the company, she told Helpmann she would positively not make a speech at the supper given in her honor after a command performance in Copenhagen. After Helpmann had tactfully told the guests that "Miss Fonteyn is too moved to speak," she stood up and talked for six minutes. She loves to jitterbug. Helpmann says that after dancing with her in ballet for 14 years, he only really got to know her after jitterbugging with her until dawn one time last year...