SAY SO

I can now spell Fantasia Baetica, because the Chopin Society programme from Sunday is here in front of me.

Wimbledon occupies TV time from 12 to 8.30 every day, with a summary from 9.30 tp 10.30. I didnt stay around for all of that yesterday -- off to National Gallery to meet David Packwood. I didt know what he looked like. So when a large man appeared in the Poussin room with my Poussin book in his hand, I thought I'd found him.

I took him to the Pompidou in Irving Street which always has excellent cheesecake and good coffee. There we sat and talked about his Poussin project for two hours loud enough to be heard over the coffee machine by the manager and the waitresses -- or so I noticed turning round at one moment to see them making gestures to one another. They saw me looking and were a bit embarrassed, but the scene ended in general laughter.

Maybe the best part of the conversation and the cause of even greater laughter was his revelation to me that when he asked one of the Brit art historians [who deservedly should be forever nameless] why my book wasnt in their library, he got the reply: We've banished Tony Green to New Zealand.

Meanwhile, back at the books: I've just bought and have been reading the Memoirs of Ksschinska -- the powerful premier ballerina assoluta of the Maryinsky, who had been in love with Nicolas II when he was the Tsarevitch, subsequently protected by Grand Dukes and finally married to the Grand Duke André. Her glittering career of jewels villas parties triumphant personal successes was accomplished in the company of a seemingly endless array of Grand Dukes Duchesses and the crowned heads of Europe. Abruptly the Revolution of 1917 took everything, villas, money and jewels, and sent her into exile in what she repeatedly calls the Emigration -- among whatever remained of the Romanoffs and their associates of the old regime. It is a surprisingly chilly rarely intimate account, rather a list of people, possessions and favourable reviews. Prokofiev on Prokofiev, bought yesterday, looks more interesting.

Weekend travel blues -- St Johns's Wood Station closed, Jubilee Line out of action -- tube, buses very hot and crowded. Sleeping after lunch yesterday went on longer than I intended so I walked to Baker Street Station fairly fast -- 16 mins -- to go by tube to Prince's Gate to hear Paul Roberts play piano for the Chopin Society.

On tube sitting opposite, a young man Federer look-alike -- I resisted saying Hi Roger, having a nice day off?

The Chopin Society assembled in the drawing-room of the Sikorski Museum, Polish flags and military memorabilia everywhere, and in the corner a copy of Delacroix's portrait of Fred himself. Fine 19th c rococo style stucco on ceiling, Baby Grand, but quite sufficient for the drawing room packed very tight with about 60 chairs.

I was talking with the person next to me, when a woman in the row in front turned and asked if I wanted piano lessons, an Australian, originally from AdelaideMary Leonard. She gave me her card, tho I did explain that I was strictly an out-of-town visitor.

This was the best of the afternoon Time Out listings for Sunday: Ravel -- 4 pieces from the Tombeau de Couperin -- de Falla -- Debussy -- Albeniz. Paul Roberts, who is a scholar as well as a pianist, introduced the pieces - and played with vigour & rhythmic verve. The oidd thing was that there was only one Chopin piece in the programme, the Fantaisie Impromptu, but sounding strangely like more Ravel. The de Falla was especially striking: the rarely played Fantaisie Baitica [I've left programme at the flat can't remember spelling for sure] originally composed for Arthur Rubinstein. The friendly Chopinians then served a splendid buffet with wine or tea or coffee -- all home made. I watched as a rather fat man who got in early piled a little paper-plate high with sandwiches sausage-rolls and quiche & went out to the terrace balancing it carefully. And it was the birthday of a pianist member Paul Furtwangler. We sang a hearty Happy Birthday, & about six Polish women members then sang the Polish equivalent.

Alice, on Saturday night, reported that she came 2 /5 in a small invitational competition, with her best overall score, 33.25 / 40. It cd have been better, but there was a real problem with inadequate springboards. She told me she had focussed hard on the performance and that had helped her with her pre-competition nervousness. Thanks to Sophie for advice!

Stefan phoned to say they will perform in MonteCarlo, 2 shows, just before going to Bournemouth, thanks to an invitation arranged by Peter Maxwell, & there's also to be a private show for Prince Albert.

After the big birthday on Monday, it was the big gymnastics trip for me to Hemel Hempstead. Alice was in good form. You shd see the muscles. If I had abs like that...!

It was of course stinking [literally] hot, especially up in the gallery at the gym. I took video of some practice moves and of all her routines, looking strong and accurate. She doesn';t expect to do better than 6th in the British Championships [July 9th].

Sophie & Jonathan motored up for dinner at Alberto's in Hemel -- noisy, but the food was good.

Alice is looking after the house while Sally & Leman are away, struggling to know how [inexperienced] to water the garden properly. The roses are doing well, so she must be doing something right, but then so are the nettles.

I got back to the hopelessly sweltering flat in London late. I was not much use for anything yesterday except watching on TV Henman lose, & young Andrew Murray win, at Wimbledon. Thunder forecast for today.

Remembering Robert Creeley's discourse upon teeth in 'Presences', I hit on this in James Thurber [Lanterns & Lances] p117:

"'Take teeth, then,' I told her. 'Last year in London, somebody asked me why Americans thought teeth were so funny. I explained that it is not teeth, but the absence of teeth, that we regard as funny, and also, the absence of hair.'...If the falling apart of the human body is funny, then death should be the biggest laugh of all. I think I saw this concept forming when the edentulous mouth was first deemed to be uproarious."

I can't work out why I can't reply to e-mails or send new e-mails on this cafe-machine.

While mother was suffering a session of TV watching Tim Henman behaving poorly, I was out of there after Andrew Murray won his first Wimbledon match. Another young hopeful: claimed as quickly as possible for Britain or even England, but he's Scottish, and has to keep on insisting on that to the press. Reminds me of Australians claiming Colin McCahon as 'Australasian'.

The event of the day was the gathering at Granny Mary Neale's house in Cookham Rise for her 90th birthday, with six bouquets, 50 [?] cards, 2 birthday cakes and a Balloon marked 90, in her little sitting-room: a merry small family party in the afternoon. The phone rang every ten minutes, with more birthday greetings, some of them sung. Sophie & Jonathan had taken her to lunch at the poshest part of The Compleat Angler in Marlow.

The result from the Rising Stars Latin at Cervia was a bit disappointing. 25th, missed the round of 24 by 1 mark As before, plenty of encouragement from friends and supporters and fellow-dancers, 'we daqnced very well' - but 'the worst possible judging panel'. That's how it goes. & Stefan had anticipated 3 weeks ago something of the sort would happen ther. Stefan & Zeudi refuse to be discouraged: just working hard & waiting.

Mrs Gaskell. Cranford (Chapter 7) : 'she had had a cousin who spelt his name with two little ffs - ffoulkes- and he always looked down on upon capital letters, and said they belonged to lately-invented families....When he met a Mrs. ffaringdon, at a watering-place, he took to her immediately; and a very pretty genteel woman she was - a widow, with a very good fortune; and 'my cousin', Mr. ffoulkes, married her ; and it was all owing to her two little ffs'.

cheers, fflap.

Sunday -- to Grosvenor House, with cousin Jean to the Antiques Fair. My mother's new friend Mrs Koetser had asked me to see her son's stand at the show, which I did. Nice little 1650s Van Goyen -- v sketchy, grey-brown, a sledge at the edge of a river -- and other good Dutch and Flemish paintings. Then we moved onto the much larger Antiques Fair at Olympia, half-empty, but with some quite interesting things to see, especially some early 20thc Russians & a Miro collage in a stand of a gallery from Barcelona. On the way to that we stopped off at a smaller Olympia Hall, the Allergy Show, organised by Jean's son & his partner, this was crowded with families, and we were told it was much busier the day before: Snake-Oil City-- everything you can imagine being marketed to allieviate the widespread common symptoms of allergies.

The big news Monday was Michael Campbell's vicotry in the US Golf Open. Then it was family day, Sophie & Jonathan & Alice all gathered at my mother's flat. We went out to the High street for lunch at Cafe Rouge. The rest of the day was taken up with Wimbledon on TV. The early rounds focus on British players, because so few of them last into the 2nd week. & it seems necessary to be shown why.

It was also the day for International Latin at Cervia. Stefan on the phone in the evening sounded satisfied to have made the round of 48, placed 38th. The politics always figures in these competitions & his view was that the top 20 places were all 'taken', leaving only 4 more places in the round of 24. This kind of information, of course, never figures in the rankings or ratings. Tonight it's the Rising Stars Latin. I'll post the result here asap.

Heatwave continues, though there was a brief thunderstorm in London yesterday morning, which began the moment I came out of the launderette.

I'm still recovering from sleep deprivation on long haul from Auckland to London & overnight Singapore.

Heatwave in London. Wimbledon next week: we're all ready to consume 2 million strawberries -- The Guardian says that's enough strawberries to stretch from Wimbledon to Reading.

On the plane I did a read through of [almost] all of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine. Almost, because I did skim & skip bits. Clive Bell's rather loose essay on French art [1931] is next up. The Poussin part is strange but interesting. More to come on this.

Sat & watched with my mother: horses at Royal Ascot on TV yesterday. 3 Y.O.F's Group 1 Coronation Stakes ended with a tight finish with Maids Causeway taking it out on the line in spite of shedding a shoe on the front right. Limping but seems to be ok. The Queen wore a blue hat.

I had a list of tasks for the morning, and had to take my books back to the University Library. The wind blew cool on the upper deck of the Seaflyte, a bit too cool. After I'd got everything done, I remembered that the Auckland Art Gallery is hosting a show of William Hodges paintings -- and chalk drawings -- of his travels with Captain Cook to Capetown and to the Pacific, and his later paintings of India. One art-dealer friend I met as I'm going in, tells me that he thinks Hodges is better on the small scale and not so good on the grand scale of the landscapes he painted on commission for the Admiralty. This is, I guess, the modern preference for the sketch. I enjoyed the paintings, quite a few of which I haven't seen before. Yes, the smaller oil paintings are sweetly painted, but the larger paintings are also impressive.

But what perturbs me is the insistence of the wall-texts that the paintings are somehow caught within a classical tradition of landscape. At worst this leads to an appraisal of Hodges painting as suddenly inspired by the 'Pacific light' to break out of an era of rigid formulaic landscape. This would be almost plausible, if it didn't miss almost completely the complexity of mid-eighteenth century landscape painting. Richard Wilson, who taught Hodges, was clearly aware of Venetian mid-century painting and also of Aelbert Cuyp, as well as the range of Roman 17th century painters, usually thought of as classical. Could he paint a Hadrian's Villa like the one in the Gallery's collection without being aware of Marco Ricci's landscape paintings? Wouldn't it have been impossible in mid-century England not to have known of Joseph Vernet's harbour scenes? Several of Hodges' seem to me to re-work some 17th century Dutch painting, Cuyp almost certainly. There's even a Ruisdael look about the waterfalls. And the fluid calligraphy of many of them is closer to Francesco Guardi [ though coarser ], than to Claude or Gaspard. In England there was no lack of interest -- though the wall-texts suggest otherwise -- in chiaroscuro and effects of light, or effects like rainbows, in Joseph Wright of Derby's paintings for one major instance. However, the rhetoric of show -presentation is just a familar annoyance and it is not difficult to ignore it when the paitnings are as good as these.

At the far end in a smaller room was one of three smaller complementary shows, McCahon waterfalls, several from private collections. That revived my attention. Especially a small triptych of them, painted in white and black, leaving bare areas of board for a third colour brownish-red.

By the time I got to the show of works from the Chartwell collection in the New Gallery I was beginning to tire; and going upstairs to the Hei Tiki show I could do no more than wish I had more time and energy for what looked as if it could be a good show for a full day.

'Quicksilver' p31 [retrospect nearly 70 years laterof 1905]

'Soon after I arrived in Paris, my uncle took me to an exhibition of very modern painting -- no doubt it was the Salon des Indépendants, and it was full of gret impressionist masterpieces. but we hated it heartily, and my uncle said: 'It's a mockery'.

at what was announced as the last appearance of Sarah Bernhardt -- 'of course, she was to make a few other last appearances later on'

pp.30 -31 'When the great Sarah came on to the stage and started speaking I nearly burst out laughing, and so did my aunt -- though she was a woman who had very little humour -- because the vocie sounded so cracked and so funny. Yet after a few seconds you did not hear the crack in the voice, yoiu just heard the golden voice, which was something of incredible beauty. Everything she was saying became so convincing...'

John Geraets keeps in touch by postcard. The latest from Pokhara [dated 22 May '05] arrived 8 June, that's pretty good -- with a photo of the lake & behind that snow topped Annapurna Ranges, each peak named and with its height in metres. 'quiet people, thunderous rains, and it's wonderful!. I've managed to encourage Karen into the water with a blow-up meditation cushion 'floatie' so we take our daily lake swims and are so glad to be physically active and well again' He mentions 'good books to read' , doesn't mention what he's writing. They'll be heading for Kathmandu any time now.

Sophie & Jonathan are in touch frequently by e-mail from Spain, esepcially nice messages abt food in San Sebastian.
'
Hit the town for some pintxos, first place OK the second one a lot better but the bar we went to today is VERY good, fantastic combination of flavours, eg thin slice of fried aubergine, thin slice of cheese, jamon, more aubergine and roast green pepper on bread. or how about a crostini with two salted anchovies and manchego cheese and a sundried tomato and half a cherry tomato. YUM.
And a good menu del dia too. Duck legs with pear puree, hake BEAUTIFULLY cooked, so tender and delicious in a light vinagrette, puddings of creme caramel, fig icecream and fresh nectarines etc etc etc etc.

-----------------------------------------------------

More about Marie Rambert today on http://Tony_Green.typepad.com -- poetry & reciting & improvisation

Quoted by his wife, Marie Rambert, in her autobiography 'Quicksilver' [Macmillan 1972, p116] from Ashley Dukes' play 'The Man with a Load of Mischief':
"Men reason to strengthen their own prejudices and not to disturb their adversaries' convictions".
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Quicksilver' is written throughout with lively humour - Marie Rambert is always generous to others and always modest. She also had a real gift for anecdotes, usually ending with a great punch-line.
Her achievements are legible in the book , but there's no cockiness. There's no disguising the many difficulties she faced, but no complaining, no excuses, no defensive tactics. She sees the virtues in her colleagues, is aware of her faults.
She was open minded about dancing, not a purist, nor a partisan. She admired isadora Duncan. She practised Dalcrozian Eurythmics and then she became a Diaghilev dancer. She worked with Nijinsky on his great modernist ballets. Though she doesnt say so, it's clear that she made a significant contribution to them. She tells how, while on the ship, travelling to South America with the Diaghilev company, she didnt realise quite how much she was in love with Nijinsky, until he suddenly married Romola.
Shortly after this, WWI brought her to England and there she was one of the creators of British modern ballet. She taught many of the most significant dancers and choreographers and gave them opportunities to produce new works. What it all came down to was love of her art and sticking at it, without cheapening it at any point by chasing after money or public adulation. What a pleasure to hear about this life, after reading Grace Moore's book.

Lynn Garafola's 'Diaghilev's Ballets Russes' is the best hing I've seen yet on this v interesting corner of modernism -- the book is not just about the ballets and dancing, but about the economics and the audiences. The appartus of notes appendix and bibliogrpahy is also first-rate.

Back to Gracie, not Fields, but Moore.
Following up with a read through Grace Moore's autobiography, I was impressed by how well it shows the effects on an artist of cross-over from one genre to another. For 'genre' read economic sphere. There's Broadway and the demands of touring, then there's the continual attempts to fulfil the ambition to sing in opera at the Met, then there's Hollywood, movie-stardom and celebrity concert tours, with one-night stands in the opera houses of Northern Europe.

The money comes into the story mostly in terms of the later passion for buying houses, lavish entertainment & staff of secretaries, limos & chauffeurs, &, noteworthy moment, determination to get the pure white Royal Copenhagen porcelain dinner service like that reserved for the King of Denmark. There's not much analysis, but the raw data is interesting.

Whoever actually wrote this rather standard star-biography did a fairly efficient job of stressing the positives and drawing a littel veil over the negatives. Quarrels and temper are always seemingly justified. She did break some glass, but never threw telephone receivers. A Polish tenor upstaged her, Sir Thomas Beecham was suspicious of her as a singer, and is said to have spread malicious gossip, Lady Cunard cut her dead at her Covent Garden debut, a Polish tenor upstaged her -- why exactly? As for Beecham he was rude & his tempos were too slow in Louise, so says the book. She sang once with Dino Borgioli, who is misprinted as Brogioli, [the Duke in the old Columbia complete Rigoletto with Stracciari] --and the author's version of "Les Six" is Milhaud, Honegger and Stravinsky.

She is, in the end presented as all heart, making up for whatever limitations of voice, small range of operatic roles & the cashing in on the movie-stardom, in which she turned opera to use as standards alongside sentimental songs. Common enough practice. But Mengelberg could not for the life of him understand why she would actually want to sing Ciribiribin. Audiences kept on demanding it after her hit-movie, 'One night of Love'. What she did achieve, in difficult circumstances of approaching WWII was an 83 minute movie of Charpentier's 'Louise' with that fine tenor Georges Thill. Repeatedly she is seen as in contact with Mary Garden, socially and then professionally and studying the role with Charpentier, tho her French at that time was apparently rather shaky. The date for this appears to be 1938, tho in the autobiography it sounds as if it's the last months of 1939 only just in time before the outbreak of war. This, it is claimed, in the book was the first filmed opera. When I get a copy I'll report.

Meanwhile why did I, aged 4, dream of marrying her, rather than Deanna Durbin, apart from the fact I heard her record of 'One Night of Love' before I ever got to see musicals on the screen. I only wish she'd recorded 'Ciribiribin' with Mengelberg or with her friend Toscanini -- that would've been something else.

Laughter this morning , lots of it, discovering that in the computer-rating system of Dancesportinfo.com. Stefan & Zeudi, after Blackpool, are now higher rated in their secondary interest Ballroom, than in their speciality Latin. The trouble with the computer-ratings is that they have no way of taking account of the 'political' judging -- to give it its polite name -- in all dance competitions. The computer just has no idea of what was going on behind the scenes in Croatia or Slovenia or anywhere else, that had a bearing on results there, let alone the possibly wayward results at Blackpool.

I quote from a forum comment on Dancesportinfo website: " @Bozenka This does not explain the strange results at Blackpool. Not just the Amateur latin was strange, a lot of good couples were out very early in other events too. It´s of course a big lottery when you have 20 or even more couples on the floor, but this does not explain everything. The russian champion out after the 48, that is just ridiculous."

Ridiculous if you expect Dancesport to produce results that are based on objective judgments. The absurdity of that expectation is currently being exposed in NZ's Dancing with the Stars, where the least able dancing 'star' [according to the judges] has survived to the semifinals on the basis of organising a large body of public votes [which count 50-50 with the judges].

Yet among dancers and judges there would be a moderately sound consensus about the relative standard of dancing of the top fifty in the world to the next fifty or so, give or take a dozen either way.

In exactly the same way an All Black coach or coaching panel can pick a test squad of 25 players, leaving another twenty-five in a reserve of obvious talent. There will always rightly be questions raised about the borderlines between the two. Quality shows, but it is not something that can have a meaningful precise number attached to it.

There is, I have noticed, a view among musicians that competitions are ruinous to music-making.

Stefan & Zeudi: Adult Ballroom, 148th -- just missed the cut for Round 3.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
from my notebook

Joan Acocella writing about the Classical stanceof André Levinson [Intro. to Levinson's Paris Writing's on Dance, p10] :
What he sought was not pure abstraction -- it is questionable whether such a thing exists in dance -- but a measure of idealization, a cutting away of detail in the service of a purer, stronger symbol".

Levinson on dance's autonomy [p.32]:
The ballet dance ...is not determined by any external motive. It includes its own law, its own logic, and any departure from that logic, pertaining to a body, moving in space with the aim of creating beauty by organized dynamism is perfectly apparent to the spectator.

Levinson on dance as motion [p.42] [Levinson also wrote film criticism. & see Deleuze {Bergson} on movement in film]:
The dance is motion is a harmony of living forms, masses and outlines, whose relations to each other are continually varied by that "motion which causes the lines to flow". We are exceedingly ill-equipped for the study of things in flux - even for considering motion itself as such. We cling to things at rest as though they were landmarks in a turbulent chaos.

Levinson on dance as independent of other arts [43]:
The intrinsic beauty of a dance-step, its innate quality, its esthetic reason for being...never is it shown to lie in the contours of the movement itself, in the constructive value of an attitude or in the thrilling dynamics of the leap in the air. All the other arts are foisted on the dance as instructors.

with over 500 pages to play with, Sortes Frank O'Hara is a possibility, & right off, I get p.403, not really to tell my fortune, as what coincidence might befall this text [it's titled as above and addressed to Vincent Warren:

'Shade of Fanny Essler! I dreamt that you passed over me last night in sleep
'was it you who was asleep or was it me? sweet shade
'shade shade shill spade agony freak
'geek you were not nor were you made of ribbons but of warm moving flesh & tulle'

this is decidedly an erotic dream, tho the intertwined limbs are Fanny Essler's, and there's an absence of fleshly contact between Frank & Fanny. It's Frank's tights not his legs entwined with her legs, & as for his crotch it's covered with a big sash - + a comedic touch-

'and a jewel in my left ear for luck
(to help me balance)'

good to know that, way back when he wrote this, Frank can tell she wasn't a geek.
No luck with googling Kamin's Dance Bookshop... but here's a quickie on Fanny Elssler http://8.1911encyclopedia.org/E/EL/ELSSLER_FANNY.htm . Any guesses as to which history of ballet Frank had been reading?

Into town today -- wind on the harbour got up this afternoon -- showers etc. I borrowed Lynn Garafola's book on 'Diaghilev's Ballets Russes' from the Music Library. Before lunch I went to Holiday
Shoppe to see Fiona Chan and get travel insurance sorted. I cdnt resist going up the stairs to Jason's Books & came away with a Collected Frank O'Hara [pbk, 1995, the 1st hardback edition was out of print before I cd get a copy]. Maybe this will be good airplane read instead of Nijinska. But I like to read poetry aloud.

Lunch at Rueben, new management. Guy von Sturmer had trouble getting his eggs cooked as he wanted them. I had a tuna sandwich. He thought I might get arrested reading poetry aloud all the way to London.

After lunch Guy & I went to see Geoff Thornley's show at Vavasour/Godkin, the main purpose of this expedition. The results are on my other blog at http://Tony_Green.typepad.com -- photo & text.

SAY SO says Stefan & Zeudi's results were all so-so, nothing above or below reasonable expectations in such large competitions -- Amateur Rising Stars: Ballroom 104= ; Latin 88. Amateur Adult Latin, 113.
They'll be back!

Next up: 19./20.06.2005 IDSF INTERNATIONAL OPEN LATIN Italy, Cervia
21./22.06.2005 IDSF INTERNATIONAL OPEN STANDARD Italy, Cervia

Also at Blackpool New Zealander Harley Baas with partner Tatiana Ostrapovitch had good results: Amateur Adult Latin, 72 -- Amateur Rising Stars Latin, 49.

Enjoy your coffee break, Leah.

Stefan & Zeudi: Amateur Latin, top 143 [Round 3] -- much as expected. Amateur Ballroom result not yet announced.

. ------------------

Writing for publication means lots of long waits. It must be nine months since I wrote an essay for Maddie Leach's post-publication on her Take Me Down To Your Dance Floor piece. It is likely to be another two or three months or more before it is published. & the review I wrote with a fairly tight deadline for Landfall about six months ago still hasn't appeared. I'm lucky I don't have to produce evidence of publication activity to a university committee that looks into promotions, leave, or tenure. Nearly everything I write [or photograph], faute de mieux, currently goes into the ephemeral internet, but at least it's [almost] instantaneous.