Once upon a time I collected photos of each Chosen One performing in a different ballet. Wasn’t too hard to do. But finding them in their own skin, their own choice is hard to do and wanna know why? About 11 Chosen Ones want nothing to do with me. Eventually I will name them. Today, these women control the atmosphere.
Marie-Claude Pietragalla
Joanna Drabik
Karen Mesquita
Daria Pavlenko
Priscilla Albuquercue
Maude Sabourin
Renata Versiani
Taryn Kaschock Russell
I don’t give up easily. If I feel up to it I will dig around for more. But I am more focused on my personal confession and comedy blog. I am saying too much there.
Millicent Hodson’s name will be forever attached to and revered for the reconstruction of Le Sacre du Printemps though I am loathe to call it a reconstruction: restored. That’s the word for it but God help anyone who tries to use that word legitimately. Except for me, I use it and I am sort of legitimate, right?
I sometimes forget how graceful she is for example: she mentions only the dancers or companies that produced anything worth seeing – that’s how I see it. Many years ago I asked about the Birmingham Royal Ballet and she brought up working on Riot at the Rite and Zenaida Yanowsky who played the Chosen One in the film (and with the BRB). I heard it as grace. They probably were… awful. I have no proof and no dancers have ever responded to me.
It is possible I am blackballed though I can’t be certain.
I found this old poor quality clip from her rehearsal with the Mariinsky (what?!). I was stunned that it was not perfectly shot but in 2008 Russia, you maybe had to ration film although, again I can’t be certain. I tend forget Millicent is a dancer and my God this clip outdoes even Margarita Simonova with motion of spotting in this wild turn (it’s probably termed another way but, again I can’t be certain).
Millicent Hodson has had one illustrious and industrious career. It’s takes all I have just to turn the laptop on and write meanwhile she is writing books on planes between time zones to work with ballet companies and speak at lectures and that is where I first met this tiny powerhouse.
I had moved that morning and had a tooth extraction the evening before so I think the photos were horrid. Though, yeah I can’t be certain.
Anything historical you wish to know about this ballet is found here in a spectacular interview with Millicent and Kenneth Archer. They met in London while researching the ballet and counting thousands of circles and squares to be accurate with costumes, fell in love and got married. And that was in the 80’s when the world was getting divorced. They are still married and clearly still in love. You can see it when you meet them.
Wrapping this post up makes me realize how jealous of Millicent Hodson I am. She is one of my 4 heroes. Without her, I would not have begin this archive or written this post which feels like a good one though I can’t be certain.
You know Marie Chouinard pissed herself on stage in her first performance, right? Well, she did. So where do you go from there? Considering I called her stupid in the title, you know this is not going to be a puff piece.
I tried. I did. Especially with Body Remix because it was evident that Marie Chouinard is a sound artist. I found one minute that was ok. That’s it up there.
And that’s where it ends. Why didn’t anyone stop her? I mean she is just terrible and, as I had feared, she went full nipple when she had her dancers stop wearing those shiny things in that aforementioned thing of which there is 20 seconds.
I’m not sure what this is, don’t care. I MUST acknowledge she is brilliant with audio. Maybe even up there with Janet Cardiff. She should have stopped there.
You can’t imagine how hard I tried to like this chick.
I just….I….just look at her Le Sacre du Printemps:
Someone should have stopped her. I live in fear that she will team up with Jan Fabre and kill that zeitgeist in some horrible way and sell it as art. Gawd.
How did this ever fly? A ballet that ends with people walking up stairs. To quite possibly the most beautiful 2 minutes ever to close a masterpiece. How was Stravinsky OK with this?
Enter this stupid play. Oh? It is choreography? What the hell? It is the most anti-climactic thing I’ve ever seen on a stage with perhaps the exception of German performance art. And to the The Firebird closing minutes which are almost Divine at least angelic.
Every time I look at this I feel a little less guilty about slapping Fokine’s great-granddaughter in her face at a German bar . I didn’t do that but it would have been funny right?
This choreography is like the equivalent of watching people loading groceries into a minivan.
le sacre du printemps: the collections 