I’ve reached that point where (1) there is likely no possible way to wring anything out of these dance companies and (2) I don’t give a shit anymore. FIFTEEN years I have worked at this – accepting no money – and I can’t get anything more! DAMN THESE companies like TMRJ and Poland and BRB. Were your companies that BAD that you can’t share or are you just unimaginable assoles?
Deborah Bull
La sagra della primavera
Teatro dell’Opera di Roma 30/03/01
So I can only throw in douche commercials from the 70’s now. To see if you’re paying attention.
I was the only source when you Googled anything to do with Sacre. Now…I am trying to pay someone to fix it and it’s making me crazy because if you type my name into Google all you get is this:
Now this is my site where I talk about mental stuff that I have done and what not and people seem to like stuff where sex is involved so I add fake stories etc. But I don’t care about that blog and I should stop because I am trying to publish a book asap because I was diagnosed with leukemia.
This Is Not Swan Lake was syndicated for 2 years then the site collapsed. But I have persevered and have never stopped blogging about it and creating the only collection of videos
What a joy it is to see a Chosen One like Daria Pavlenko in her own skin, doing her own thing. With more magic than she brought to the Sacrificial Danse. The little GIF clip from the Sacre solo won me over when I first saw it. Abandon. And you see it in her own work now.
Periodically I will find photos from the epic debut of the 1987 Joffrey Ballet “Le Sacre du Printemps” on EBAY. Now, mixed in are porn photos. WTF? These photos have the name Rima Corben attached. Now I could gpo through the machinations of cleaning them up and posting a nice little gallery but I am going to just post them as is and I will not include the porn.
So if you want to see photos of the 1987 Joffrey mixed in with hardcore porn, Ebay is the place for ya.
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.
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?
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.
I have watched more crappy videos of the various courageous ballerinas who danced the role of The Chosen One over the last 12 years but I’ve pretty much stopped looking. It still boggles the mind that such a jewel in a ballet company’s Crown was filmed so poorly by nearly everyone but the Mariinsky .
Of course there are other companies -I’m certain – that have nice quality but for some reason they don’t want to release it. I suppose there is a great fear that Philistines may become educated and then where WOULD we be? Or, they just weren’t good.
And then out of the blue I stumbled upon a 1994 rehearsal video – still crappy quality – of CNB’s Ana Lacerda.
I had long thought it was impossible to get a greater lunge out of that solo then the one Zenaida Yanowsky got but I was wrong. All of the extension and perfection only turned inward and awkward it’s just stunning. There is something very special about Ana Lacerda. She is an elegant ballerina an emotional contemporary dancer a gorgeous model and on top of all that she’s a sweet person. This combination doesn’t usually conclude with the words “sweet person”. I suppose you could say simply she is an exceptional person.
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And I’m so glad that the video is rehearsal so that the dress is not covering what she’s achieving. She’s elegant, she is right on time boy right on each mark though sadly the video will show something a little different because it’s so old and the settings were a little weird.
I wish I could see rehearsal footage of each dancer just to see what is happening, what they’re doing with their body that you cannot see because of the costume.
Would that not interest you? Doesn’t this amazing stunning video of Ana Lacerda make you want that? If you are not saying “yes” then you may have wandered off the path from the Nutcracker or some other torturous thing. Cirque du Soleil.
For years I have thought I understood what it was about but really, I was on the periphery. That did not stop me from waxing ridiculous when I started this blog. On I went about Le Sacre in 2006 but I wrote from the sheer emotional crush of it- the spiritual entanglement that befalls many of us lay people. To hell with the academics.
And so I count my blessings to have been connected with Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer. I have learned a lot about the ballet from them and also how to remain inclusive with it, never condescending. Because everyone who comes at it , comes from their own direction and there we all meet anyway. Doesn’t matter if a person is short on facts or the only one who has them, we all turn our toes in the same.
Am I going to emo-blog here? Nicholas Roerich. Yes, I knew who he was but I did not know what he did. He was, as Doctor Archer explains in this little disastrously amateur video I have thrown together, the “father of the ballet”. Without his word, Nijinsky wasn’t budging on the choreography. Which I think Stravinsky may have borrowed for his own but no matter how you slice this, they are mad Russians in the end.
Also dead. They are dead Russians.
There is a lot of online stuff liking Roerich to Rasputin and I am like “hey, I am already sold”. You don’t need to sweeten it up with darkness. Well, anymore than we already have here.
So Kenneth Archer tells the tale and I butcher it all into a video. Look! Here it is now!
The tribe depends on the sun god Jarilo to warm the earth thereupon they must immediately stomp the energies into the earth. The crops will grow, the animals will flourish and the year will be plentiful. There is no free lunch with Jarilo. He wants to be paid and – what a shocker – he wants a virgin. But he is a sick god and he wants her to commit suicide. This is one sick little marriage.
Being a virgin in Roerich’s Pagan Russia was such a known liability so why not take the chance on being a slut? I mean, I did it in 1981 and I survived. Of course, the stakes were different…anyway…
Izadora Weiss and Wojciech Misiuro , directors of the Baltic Dance Theater has done what no choreographer has been able to do with the concept and music of Le Sacre du Printemps: turn it into a traumatic experience. This is not fringe or experimental. It is irresponsible. Although it is not visually the “useless whore” statement of this photo, it throws its lot in with it.
I used to do some performance stuff that was out there, lyrics about my rape set to circus music, delivering a “baby” at the prom and stuffing it in the trash making sure no one sees…it was dark comedy. Fringe and experimental, a little offensive but for the most part, no one really knew what was going on. I am funny on stage and can distract from the content. Yikes…I just realized I am a slapstick comedienne. Gross.
But what Izadora Weiss has done is use a misogynistic objectification of a woman: not Chosen but victimized and psycho-sexually controlled – to interpret the libretto of Le Sacre and really, I get it. Any woman who has been involved with a violent malevolent sadist and who would think the abuse is really because he loves her and she is the one WOULD get it because hey look…right in this photo you can see the promise of love in his fist.
Yes. There is an implied intimacy in this photo.
Weiss and Misiuro’s “Rite” is not experimental. It is calculated. This isn’t dark comedy. It is simply dark. It is horrible.
These photos alone are not easy to look at. This is not a submissive orsacrificed Chosen One. It is a controlled victim. This performance does not use domination and submission as a dark exploration of Le Sacre nor is it a commentary. It is an indifference.
It goes too far. I can’t believe I am saying this but it is worse than Preljojac’s Rite of Spring “gang rape”.
I write constantly that I strive to bring dance to the “ballet is frigging stupid” set. This ballet would most assuredly attract people who would otherwise never watch ballet. Unfortunately, those people would be sexual sadists and violent misogynists.
There are clips available online for this performance and they too will draw men in for a yank. The thought that strangers to Stravinsky’s masterpiece may play it while abusing their victims – even in a consensual psycho sexual relationship – sort of makes me want to puke.
