Fonteyn on characterization

I used to pore over photographs of Karsavina and Pavlova, trying to learn from them what Ashton meant about the importance of eyes, and how characterization is embodied in the angle at which the head is held.

Autobiography by Margot Fonteyn. 1989. Page 49.

Ashton on eyes

Ashton's tutelage is imprinted everywhere: in the low, Pavlova-inspired arabesques, and in the animation of her fingers, wrists, shoulders and, especially her [Fonteyn's] eyes. 'Dancers today don't understand what eyes are for,' he would complain. 'with your eyes properly used, you can distract everybody from your technique. You draw the public to you through your eyes' . . . .

Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton by Julie Kavanagh. 1996. Page 437.

The role of the pianist

The pianist's contribution to the dance lesson is all too frequently taken for granted, and its importance not always fully realized by either the teacher of dance or the pianist himself. An awareness of the importance of his contribution and at the same time of his consequent responsibilities is therefore one of the pianist's first requirements. It is no exaggeration to say that the success of a lesson may often depend just as much on the pianist as on the teacher. Just as a poor teacher can be 'carried along' by a good pianist, so a poor pianist can limit or even ruin the work of the best teacher. Page 9.

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It is highly desirable that a pianist's knowledge of dance should not be confined to the mere observation of movement, but that he should have some experience of the music and movement relationship through actual participation in dance himself. Certain aspects of this relationship can only be fully appreciated through movement. Page 15.

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Second, the pianist who has had some experience of movement observation is in a better position to satisfy the particular demands made of him. He will be better able to judge a suitable tempo for his playing, and to see where the strongest point of a movement occurs or where one phrase of movement ends and another begins. He will be better able to recognise the qualities of movements, whether they be strong or light, sudden or sustained, direct or flexible, whether they flow evenly or unevenly, whether they are large or small, high or low, rising or falling. Above all, his experience of movement observation will enable him to feel the rhythm of the movements he is watching. Just as the dancer might be said to feel music with her body, so the dance pianist hears music with his eyes; that is, he instinctively translates the movement he observes into sound. Page 43.

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Second, it will be evident that merely keeping in time with music is only one aspect of rhythmical movement to music. A factor of supreme importance is that of control of weight. In dancing a waltz an unrhythmical dancer may put equal stress (i.e., equal weight) upon each of the three beats (just as a poor pianist might), whereas a rhythmical dancer would vary the weight element, usually giving more weight to the first beat. Page 43.

Playing for Dance by R M Thackray. 1963.

Edward Gorey on The Nutcracker

Tell me how anyone can sit through thirty-nine Nutcrackers in one season. Convince me.

At first I thought, my God, this is the most boring ballet in the history of the world. Then I began to go more and more. People say, oh nothing much happens in the first act, but the second act is lovely. For me it's the first act that's so marvelous. It's an aspect of Balanchine's genius that nobody has paid much attention to. That party is one of the most enchanting things ever set on the stage. The relations between the children and the adults, everything--are breathtaking. It's a Platonic party, the essence of every family party--the way it should be and never is, the party that no one has ever attended. Every year it gets a little bit better.

Naturally, on of the reasons for going to Nutcracker is to watch the mice carry on--somebody's doing something crazy and new and different every night--and the tree grow, and the bed whiz around. And these days Shaun O'Brien, as Drosselmeir, gives a performance that holds the whole thing together; the instant he comes on you're riveted. The choreography for the Snowflakes is heaven. No one notices it because it's so pretty and they're busy watching the snow come down. And set back in time the way it is, it's nostalgic in a lost-world-that-never-really-existed way. Of course it's a very ambiguous ballet--frightening and funny and strange and beautiful--like most of George's work.

Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gory on Edward Gory edited by Karen Wilkin. 2001. Page 19-20.

Earnings of Russian dancers 1973

Plisetskaya's ruble income is now handsome indeed. Her basic salary is the equal of a high government official's, and, as a People's Artist, is supplemented by a system of bonuses for every performance over four each month. Her average monthly earnings equal those of six or more highly skilled engineers -- but not much more than, say, an American college professor's. It is their opportunity to earn not rubles but foreign currency that makes a small clique of Russian writers and performers fantastically rich by their own country's standards. But these earnings too are a fraction of their counterparts' in Europe and America. What reduces this part of their income is not the Russian standard of living in general or the ruble's minuscule purchasing power, but confiscatory government policy.

Although the Soviet booking agency, StateConcert, demands standard fees for the Bolshoi's Western appearances, it pays Plisetskaya no more than fifty per cent, and often as little as ten per cent, of what similar artists would command for similar work. I did not determine the precise percentage on any specific tour, for although Plisetskaya talks about money with her usual candour -- no qualms about asking the price of this or announcing what she paid for that -- she declined even to hear out a question about her foreign earnings. Once again, this was a reluctance to involve herself in delicate political subjects: as in the case of her own family history, she is not free to comment on the state's disposal of her earnings.

Despite Plisetskaya's silence, however, it is known, if never mentioned in print, that when the Bolshoi is on tour in America members of the corps de ballet are paid five dollars per performance* -- substantially less than the Metropolitan's cleaning ladies employed for those four-odd hours. Leading soloists can earn four or five times as much, and it is said that Plisetskaya commands double the fee of the next highest dancer -- but still under one hundred dollars a performance. Since Margot Fonteyn's fee is roughly $2,500 per performance, StateConcert's profit on Plisetskaya can be imagined: not the ten per cent agent's commission usual in the West, but over ninety-five per cent.

Plisetskaya's case is not unusual: State Concert pays Sviatislav Richter, for example, roughly two hundred dollars from the fee it demands for his foreign appearances.

*This is in addition to their hotel room and one meal a day -- a huge one, when the company is touring under contract to the Hurok Agency. While touring abroad Bolshoi personnel continue to receive their ruble salaries in Moscow, but this too is astonishingly low in most cases: new members of the corps receive some 120 rubles a month, just above a bare minimum urban wage.

Russia close-up by George Feifer. 1973. Page 73-4.

Bruhn's response to music

Commenting on his very particular response to music, Bruhn says it is a response that must be felt individually. "You've got to hear the music for the first time every time you dance to it. If you hear the same thing every time, then you never feel the need to go back for more. The idea is that if you hear more, then you find more of yourself in the music. For me, music is a constant rediscovery. Once I know a role technically and know the outline of the character, then I always go back to the music, because that's my guide. That's when I know how much I can stretch a certain set of steps within so many bars. Of course, you must begin and finish in time with the music, but within that span you must literally 'walk' on the music. You must breathe it and live it and make it a part of your very being. Without that, all is lost!"


Erik Bruhn, Danseur Noble by John Gruen. 1979. Page 25-6.

Erik Bruhn on musical phrasing

Also, I had a facility for musical phrasing. Dancers who are just 'square' will never squeeze the dynamics out of the music and build up to any sort of climax. My fun in having survived the same daily classes for ten years at the school was that I could play with the phrasing of any given step.

. . . . Later on I had a vocabulary I could choose from when doing a certain role. I would experiment with the musical phrasing and, in that way, I could color the steps as well as the character I was portraying. I could actually make the steps fit the character.

Erik Bruhn, Danseur Noble by John Gruen. 1979. Page 24.