Word: superbness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Swan Lake introduced Ballerinas Maya Plisetskaya and Nina Timofeyeva, two of the Bolshoi's first-line quartet of female dancers (of the first week's stars, Galina Ulanova no longer dances Swan Lake, and Raissa Struchkova is not doing so at the Met). Both ballerinas were superb in the double role of Odette-Odile-the Swan Princess and her evil counterpart. Plisetskaya danced her roles with a more contained fire, whipped her sprung-steel body through scissored leaps and glittering turns, gave the role of Odile a brittle profile that suggested the character's corrosive venom even...
There were other stars both evenings: Vladimir Levashev, who danced the role of the Evil Sorcerer with briny conviction and made his final, crippled death dance a wonderful virtuoso exercise; Nicolai Fadeyechev, who was superb as the Prince, particularly in his leaps in the Act III Black Swan variations; Georgi Soloviev as an acrobatic Jester (a happy Russian addition to the ballet). Occasionally ragged the first evening, the Bolshoi's Swan Lake was danced with fine precision at the second performance. The repetitive, copybook attitudes of the ballet corps occasionally clotted the action and wearied...
...followed his guidelines, Dulles was a superb tactician. Traveling an astonishing 559,988 miles in six years, he worked tirelessly to keep diverse peoples and leaders united in common purpose and also to educate himself; he negotiated skillfully at scores of world conferences. When he moved out ahead of public opinion, as he did in trying to push the European Defense Community and to save Quemoy and Matsu, he could yield with a lawyer's tactical skill, always returning to his theme when the times had caught up with...
...Then he spoke glowingly of Broadway's musicals (West Side Story, My Fair Lady), the cornucopia of Manhattan's super-drugstores, the infectious tempo of Manhattan's streets and the variety of its restaurants, the ingenious design of U.S. highways (better than Germany's), the superb discipline of orchestras accompanying his dancers, the "children's land of enchantment" in California's Disneyland. Moiseyev was not without a few gay barbs. He tweaked gaudy American advertisements for stiffening sales resistance; the incessant screaming of fire and police sirens in New York were annoying, and many...
...stark and tortured portrait of Tokyo's historical red-light district after the occupation, the Japanese film Street of Shame, reaches toward the superb level of its predecessor Rashomon. Dealing with the highly controversial issue of legalized prostitution, it does not bypass cliches ("Does an unnecessary business last so long?"), nor does it resist the opportunity to moralize. Nevertheless cliches and moralizing inherently attach themselves to the problem, which Street of Shame approaches warily and with artistic detachment...