Or how to turn your toes in and your back on Swan Lake

It was a long time ago when I began a Blogger Called This Is Not Swan Lake (igorandmore was the link as I was quite devoted to Stravinsky and just tuning in to The Recovery of Le Sacre du Printemps). BTW…I will never call it a reconstruction.

RECONSTRUCTION: a thing that has been rebuilt after being damaged or destroyed. plural noun: reconstructions.

RECOVERED: find or regain possession of something stolen or lost.

Le Sacre du Printemps was both stolen and lost and by definition later recovered by Robert Joffrey, Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer. So suck it.

I’ve played that ecovered tune from the rooftops – and the gutters – on an old violin that turned out to be worth a fortune. I had no idea that I would become the “digital archivist” of Sacre. This is a humbling term given to me by Millicent Hodson. But really…what the hell? Why was nobody documenting this ballet? I became obsessive and at the same time I had insomnia and for some reason I was prescribed a pill that kept you awake.

You can’t get that anymore. It was a big pharmaceutical fuck up. Of course it wasn’t the “stay awake awesome have fun type of thing” it was more the “stay awake what’s wrong with me why can’t I sleep oh my God what am I going to do what am I going to do I’ll keep myself busy by looking up Stravinsky stuff.”

 That was actually on the label.

And so it was there in those rolling time zones that I bumped into people and situations that would change my life in ways I could never imagine.  From the ballet’s champion Millicent Hodson to 2 rude English ballerinas to the remarkable Marie Stravinsky to the Chosen One warriors like  Ana Lacerda  Alba Tapia Priscilla Albuquerque and Gaia Straccamore and then to dancers like my friend  in FInland Kirsi Tiilharjua to Anna Simondi of Zurich  and the entire archive catalyst Heather Aagard who, all 3 together,  were criminally not photographed in the most difficult solo in dance…from all of that and thanks to them I  became the finest version of myself. I had something to be truly and quietly proud of.

I don’t believe they know this.  They changed my life.  And from there, I would do the same. 

My old blog tagline was “selling ballet one f-bomb at a time”  and somehow I ended up becoming syndicated in a rotation of ballet sites back in 2008.  I was in the top 10 which proves you can indeed sell ballet with f-bombs.  

My Youtube channel contained the only video of the 1987 Joffrey debut of Nijinsky’s recovered ballet and the place music theory students had to go in a Stravinsky course.  It was amazing to watch commenters learn something from me then teach the same thing 3 comments later to another. See?

I am a genius.

Yours until someone else wants me

Fatova