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Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Waiting waiting
Waiting for results. Usual delays getting placings & marks onto the internet. Apart from the places for the top 6 in competitions, so far there are only blanket placings for all those who reached a certain round. Stefan & Zeudi reached round 3 of the Amateur Rising Stars Latin & round 2 of the Ballroom. At the time of wriitng, I can say that they have also reached round 2 of the main competition, the Amateur Latin.
Stefan, on the phone, half an hour ago, didn't have any more information than is on the internet. Even though the results are a bit disappointing, he says, the dancing is going very well. Sends thanks, to well-wishers in New Zealand. Next big competition is IDSF International Open Latin at Cervia.
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Meanwhile, the weather is cold and wet here, and I've finished reading André Levinson's writings on dance in Paris in the twenties, and Alexandre Benois's memoirs of the Ballets Russes, moving onto Cyril Beaumont's descriptions of the Diaghilev ballet productions in London.
I have got about half-way through this. It is extraordinary eye-witness documentation of performances. He notes details of performers, costumes and decor, and some offstage memoirs of people and events as well. He recalls the effects of specific productions and of the way that particular dancers performed in particular roles. He had access to greenroom and backstage. I wonder about his methods: surely he must have kept and annotated programmes; and he must also have made notes and drawings. Certainly, for production of books on individual ballets, and for 8 inch high cutouts of dancers he borrowed costumes, sought out photographs and had artists make drawings.
A great moment, perhaps the great moment, for the Ballets Russes in London was by all accounts 1912 to 1913, When Bolm, Nijinsky and Karsavina were at their best. After WWI, he certainly admired Lydia Lopokova in La Boutique Fantasque and in Petroushka, but there is a certain bold tactlessness, even as a friend, about his criticism to her huband of Lopokova's performance in The Firebird. He remembered, too well, Karsavina in that role. Just as he remembered (and described) the earlier performances of Petroushka, with Karsavina, Nijinsky and Kotchetovsky, when he later saw Massine, Lopokova, and Zverev dance it.
Stefan, on the phone, half an hour ago, didn't have any more information than is on the internet. Even though the results are a bit disappointing, he says, the dancing is going very well. Sends thanks, to well-wishers in New Zealand. Next big competition is IDSF International Open Latin at Cervia.
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Meanwhile, the weather is cold and wet here, and I've finished reading André Levinson's writings on dance in Paris in the twenties, and Alexandre Benois's memoirs of the Ballets Russes, moving onto Cyril Beaumont's descriptions of the Diaghilev ballet productions in London.
I have got about half-way through this. It is extraordinary eye-witness documentation of performances. He notes details of performers, costumes and decor, and some offstage memoirs of people and events as well. He recalls the effects of specific productions and of the way that particular dancers performed in particular roles. He had access to greenroom and backstage. I wonder about his methods: surely he must have kept and annotated programmes; and he must also have made notes and drawings. Certainly, for production of books on individual ballets, and for 8 inch high cutouts of dancers he borrowed costumes, sought out photographs and had artists make drawings.
A great moment, perhaps the great moment, for the Ballets Russes in London was by all accounts 1912 to 1913, When Bolm, Nijinsky and Karsavina were at their best. After WWI, he certainly admired Lydia Lopokova in La Boutique Fantasque and in Petroushka, but there is a certain bold tactlessness, even as a friend, about his criticism to her huband of Lopokova's performance in The Firebird. He remembered, too well, Karsavina in that role. Just as he remembered (and described) the earlier performances of Petroushka, with Karsavina, Nijinsky and Kotchetovsky, when he later saw Massine, Lopokova, and Zverev dance it.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
So far, so good
Blackpool results, latest --. from www.danceportinfo.net -- alphabetical list of 2nd round is all we have: so far so good, Stefan & Zeudi are still in -- top 141, in Rising Stars Ballroom & top 206 in Rising Stars Latin -- more to come on both competitions. Tonight will be the big night for both Rising Stars competitions. It's obviously best to be in the Winter Gardens-- see the Blackpool weather forecast http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/%20Blackpool_UK_c.html
& here fine weather for the Sunday carpark markets. German Sourdough this week has light crust & excellent crumb. Last week's was a tooth breaker. Blinded by sun shining on road I narrowly avoided a hitting a traffic island while turning right.
& here fine weather for the Sunday carpark markets. German Sourdough this week has light crust & excellent crumb. Last week's was a tooth breaker. Blinded by sun shining on road I narrowly avoided a hitting a traffic island while turning right.
Rising Stars
Stefan & Zeudi rose as far as top 150 in Ballroom (Round 2) & Top 85 in Latin (Round 3). The exact placings have not been posted yet on the Blackpool website. Dancesportinfo.net has given them a provisional +0 for both competitions.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Windy Saturday
& showery, a day not to hang out washing, not yet, maybe
afternoon, & the last Saturday to see Callum Innes' paintings in daylight
at Jensen's Gallery, but is it so windy that Toyota Echo's get blown off the harbourt bridge?
afternoon, & the last Saturday to see Callum Innes' paintings in daylight
at Jensen's Gallery, but is it so windy that Toyota Echo's get blown off the harbourt bridge?
Friday, May 27, 2005
Blackpool time again
Blackpool Dance Festival, the Big One, a whole week of Ballroom and Latin competitions, starts 10 am sharp tomorrow morning [UK time]. Stefan phones me this morning fom The Lancaster, where I stayed with Stefan & Zeudi last year, 10 mins walk along the promenade from the venue, the Winter Gardens.
Flying from Italy to Liverpool was a good idea, he tells me. The train journey from Liverpool takes only an hour and a half, better than flying to Stansted and then four hours or more in trains. Arriving with Italian friends at the same time as Liverpool FC fans whooping with victory back from beating AC Milan in the European final was a bit strange tho. In Italy AC Milan's loss was 'worse than the Pope dying'.
He's asking me what time he's dancing tomorrow morning, because, although he's in Blackpool and I'm in Auckland, I've got access to the internet to find out, & he hasnt. He thinks it may be 10 a.m. Yes, it is, 1st qualifying round of the Amateur Latin Rising Stars. They are dancing in the Rising Stars Ballroom & both the main competitions for Latin & Ballroom. I hope to get frequent text messages through the week. The website is www.blackpooldancefestival.net
Flying from Italy to Liverpool was a good idea, he tells me. The train journey from Liverpool takes only an hour and a half, better than flying to Stansted and then four hours or more in trains. Arriving with Italian friends at the same time as Liverpool FC fans whooping with victory back from beating AC Milan in the European final was a bit strange tho. In Italy AC Milan's loss was 'worse than the Pope dying'.
He's asking me what time he's dancing tomorrow morning, because, although he's in Blackpool and I'm in Auckland, I've got access to the internet to find out, & he hasnt. He thinks it may be 10 a.m. Yes, it is, 1st qualifying round of the Amateur Latin Rising Stars. They are dancing in the Rising Stars Ballroom & both the main competitions for Latin & Ballroom. I hope to get frequent text messages through the week. The website is www.blackpooldancefestival.net
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Visiting Guy Von Sturmer
Going to visit Guy also means that I go looking at books in 2nd hand bookshops in Devonport. Cyril Beaumont: The Diaghilev Ballet in London (revised edition, 1945, with illustrations) was the avowed purpose, I had noticed it last time I was there, but there was Virginia Woolf's Books & Portraits, 1977, with Angelvca Garnett's dustwrapper, both at Hard to Find -- & Evergreen had Clive Bell's An account of French Painting, 1931, with 27 references to Poussin in the index..
Tucked inside is a postcard, pristine condition, from the British Museum.The Nativity, Add Mss.35312, f.42. French, XV Cent. inscribed on the blank verso 'With love from Jonathan. Christmas 1931'. The scene enclosed in numerous fine tendrils & some fleshier foliage is properly an adoration of the Christ child by his parents, angels and shepherds. There is an ox lying down, looking up at the Christ child, with right forefoot tucked under him, like a dog; an alert ass head and shoulders; two adoring angels, one in green, the other with blue & white wings; behind them St Joseph hands joined in prayer beneath his chin; & out the back three shepherds in brown clothes, one hooded. A gold glory shines down on them all. Under a rustic wooden shelter, with holes in the roof, the Virgin, wearing a fine blue mantle, is seated on a vermillion drapery, praying over the child in a manger, that is a wicker basket of sorts. Behind all these, there is a distance of gently sloping hills a few trees & a castle.
Guy poured me a latte-sized cup of tea. The day was fine and the light in his study area was good for the photos I wanted to take. The best of them, with some words about Guy's painting is on http://Tony_Green.typepad.com
In Takapuna, the North Shore Hospice op shop had a copy of the autobiograpohy of Grace Moore at irresistible op shop price. Grace Moore was the singing star of a movie of 1934, which popularised operatic singing, One Night of Love. Her record of the title song [on the A side] and Ciribiribim [definitely B-side I decided when I found a copy in a junk shop recently] were popular & broadcast frequently in Britain well into the 1940s. I remember hearing it in 1940 during WWII while I was evacuated from London & immediately declaring that when I grew up I was going to marry Grace Moore. It was the sound of the voice that so impressed me then. I certainly didn't know she was older than my mother. I was certainly out of luck as far as marrying her went. I could not have anticipated that she would die in a plane crash in 1947.
The book is a rich mine of gossip about stars of the opera and of Hollywood. Dipping into it there is Grace Moore with her light lyric soprano in a concert with the great heroic tenor voice of Giovanni Martinelli, dining out with Cole Porter and with Gloria Swanson in Paris, studying Louise with Charpentier & telling us about Fanny Heldy who was -- I never knew this, listening to her on records with Fernand Annseau! -- opera singer & jockey. She must have been an unusually thin singer.
Tucked inside is a postcard, pristine condition, from the British Museum.The Nativity, Add Mss.35312, f.42. French, XV Cent. inscribed on the blank verso 'With love from Jonathan. Christmas 1931'. The scene enclosed in numerous fine tendrils & some fleshier foliage is properly an adoration of the Christ child by his parents, angels and shepherds. There is an ox lying down, looking up at the Christ child, with right forefoot tucked under him, like a dog; an alert ass head and shoulders; two adoring angels, one in green, the other with blue & white wings; behind them St Joseph hands joined in prayer beneath his chin; & out the back three shepherds in brown clothes, one hooded. A gold glory shines down on them all. Under a rustic wooden shelter, with holes in the roof, the Virgin, wearing a fine blue mantle, is seated on a vermillion drapery, praying over the child in a manger, that is a wicker basket of sorts. Behind all these, there is a distance of gently sloping hills a few trees & a castle.
Guy poured me a latte-sized cup of tea. The day was fine and the light in his study area was good for the photos I wanted to take. The best of them, with some words about Guy's painting is on http://Tony_Green.typepad.com
In Takapuna, the North Shore Hospice op shop had a copy of the autobiograpohy of Grace Moore at irresistible op shop price. Grace Moore was the singing star of a movie of 1934, which popularised operatic singing, One Night of Love. Her record of the title song [on the A side] and Ciribiribim [definitely B-side I decided when I found a copy in a junk shop recently] were popular & broadcast frequently in Britain well into the 1940s. I remember hearing it in 1940 during WWII while I was evacuated from London & immediately declaring that when I grew up I was going to marry Grace Moore. It was the sound of the voice that so impressed me then. I certainly didn't know she was older than my mother. I was certainly out of luck as far as marrying her went. I could not have anticipated that she would die in a plane crash in 1947.
The book is a rich mine of gossip about stars of the opera and of Hollywood. Dipping into it there is Grace Moore with her light lyric soprano in a concert with the great heroic tenor voice of Giovanni Martinelli, dining out with Cole Porter and with Gloria Swanson in Paris, studying Louise with Charpentier & telling us about Fanny Heldy who was -- I never knew this, listening to her on records with Fernand Annseau! -- opera singer & jockey. She must have been an unusually thin singer.
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
SAY SO
This blog begins, because I can't comment on Ron Silliman's blog unless I'm a blogger.
My usual blogs are 'Accumulations' http://Tony_Green.typepad.com & 'Pousin's Humour' http://Tony_Green.typepad.com/pouhu [with an underscore thus: Tony_Green}.
'Accumulations' for short local art news items & the poems called 'Accumulations'; 'Poussin's Humour' for my various writings about the French 17th century painter, Nicolas Poussin.
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Recent reading: about ballet in the early 20th century.
It began with buying in an online auction Arnold Haskell's biography of Diaghileff. Then I acquired in 2nd hand bookshops Bronislava Nijinska's Early Memoirs [518pp will do nicely for my next long plane trip] & Alexandre Benois's Reminiscences of the Ballet [I am reading now]; & from the University library Tamar Karsavina's Theatre street ; Joan Acocella's edition of Nijinsky's Diary; & André Levinson's Dance, Writings from Paris in the Twenties, with an intropdution by Joan Acocella. In all this, the themes of twentieth century modernism keep appearing, -- expression, form, national folk art, primitivism, autonomy of the medium, originality and tradition, not only in memoirs of the developments of Daighilev's Ballet Russe, of Benois, Bakst and Fokine, of Nijinsky, of Anna Pavlova, but also, and especially, in the critical writings of Levinson, his fomalist argument produces insightful technical descriptions.
The event of the day was Atlas Concrete bringing a truck down our communal drive [which serves 4 houses and 8 flats]. The concrete was for construction on the building site on the other side of the drive. We had understood the contractors were not going ot use our drive for that. Two of my neighbours complained to the driver about using our drive without permission. A young builder came and swore at them. They came to fetch me as reinforcement. But the foreman explained the situation to us and it does appear the operation was all quite legitimate. Meanwhile my cup of tea got cold.
Variation on dreaming I am dreaming last night. In my dream, I was searching for a bag I'd left somewhwere, cdnt remember where, got lost etc. I asked myself, isn't this really a dream? and everything seemed so much in its usual order in broad daylight that I answered: no it's not. So I was a little surprised when I woke up and found it was still night, tho the moon was near full and its light coming in my bedroom window. And furthermore the bag I lost on Friday last week was found again.
My usual blogs are 'Accumulations' http://Tony_Green.typepad.com & 'Pousin's Humour' http://Tony_Green.typepad.com/pouhu [with an underscore thus: Tony_Green}.
'Accumulations' for short local art news items & the poems called 'Accumulations'; 'Poussin's Humour' for my various writings about the French 17th century painter, Nicolas Poussin.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Recent reading: about ballet in the early 20th century.
It began with buying in an online auction Arnold Haskell's biography of Diaghileff. Then I acquired in 2nd hand bookshops Bronislava Nijinska's Early Memoirs [518pp will do nicely for my next long plane trip] & Alexandre Benois's Reminiscences of the Ballet [I am reading now]; & from the University library Tamar Karsavina's Theatre street ; Joan Acocella's edition of Nijinsky's Diary; & André Levinson's Dance, Writings from Paris in the Twenties, with an intropdution by Joan Acocella. In all this, the themes of twentieth century modernism keep appearing, -- expression, form, national folk art, primitivism, autonomy of the medium, originality and tradition, not only in memoirs of the developments of Daighilev's Ballet Russe, of Benois, Bakst and Fokine, of Nijinsky, of Anna Pavlova, but also, and especially, in the critical writings of Levinson, his fomalist argument produces insightful technical descriptions.
The event of the day was Atlas Concrete bringing a truck down our communal drive [which serves 4 houses and 8 flats]. The concrete was for construction on the building site on the other side of the drive. We had understood the contractors were not going ot use our drive for that. Two of my neighbours complained to the driver about using our drive without permission. A young builder came and swore at them. They came to fetch me as reinforcement. But the foreman explained the situation to us and it does appear the operation was all quite legitimate. Meanwhile my cup of tea got cold.
Variation on dreaming I am dreaming last night. In my dream, I was searching for a bag I'd left somewhwere, cdnt remember where, got lost etc. I asked myself, isn't this really a dream? and everything seemed so much in its usual order in broad daylight that I answered: no it's not. So I was a little surprised when I woke up and found it was still night, tho the moon was near full and its light coming in my bedroom window. And furthermore the bag I lost on Friday last week was found again.
