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- Mirrors and Scrims
How ballet repertory adapts, evolves, and reflects contemporary culture
Winner of the Selma Jeanne Cohen Memorial Prize (2010)
In this stunning new collection of reviews and essays, dance critic Marcia B. Siegel grapples with the floating identity of ballet, as well as particular ballets, and with the expanding environment of spectacle in which ballet competes for an audience. Drawn from a wide variety of published sources, these writings concentrate on canonical works of ballet and how the performances of these works have been changing in significant ways. Siegel writes with a keen awareness of the history and mythology that surround particular works, while remaining attentive to the new ways in which a work is interpreted and re-presented by contemporary choreographers and dancers. Through her readable and provocative writings, Siegel offers critical insight into performances of the past twenty-five years to give us a new understanding of ballet in performance. The volume includes over one hundred pieces on a variety of ballet topics, from specific dances and dancers to companies and choreographers, ranging from Swan Lake and The Nutcracker to Nijinsky, Balanchine, Tharp, and Morris to the Bolshoi, the Joffrey, the Miami City Ballet, the Boston Ballet, to name just a few.
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction
LEGENDS
The Rose and the Scimitar
Le Sacre Reconstructed
Afternoon of a Legend
Nijinsky's Crime Against Grace
Nijinsky in Translation
When Ballet Leaped into Today
Dance Theater of Harlem's Nijinska
Weddings
Because I Must
Balletomaniacs
Robert Joffrey, 1930-1988
The Hum of the Turbine
MOVABLE CLASSICS
Farm Frolic
Bolshoi Wrap-up
Cabrioles at Dawn
Why We Need the Classics
Shazam!
Danes at the Met
200 Years of Geniality
Kitri's Caboodle
Kirov on Tour
Swamped
Swans Under Glass
Kingdom of the Sweet
Everyone's Treat
Royal Ballet's Bayadère
Classic in Retrograde
Raymonda Redux
Beautification
Two Tales Retold
POSTLUDE AND PRELUDE
George Balanchine, 1904-1983
Edwin Denby, 1903-1983
Balanchine and Beyond
The Magic of Mr. B
Couples
Putting a Little Orange in Their Life
Ives and Robbins
Modern Dance versus Classical Ballet
Changing the Guards
Patricia McBride's Farewell
A Ballet's Best Friend
Tragic Tropes and Anti-tropes
Apollonian Ventures
Village of Dancers
Chris and Friends
BALANCHINE DIASPORA
Mozart Violin Concerto
Cotillon
Fable in a Lucite Landscape
Miami City Ballet
Ur-texts
In Search of Repertory
Guarding the Legacy
Dances Under Glass
Ballet, Big Time
Balanchine at Harvard
Links to a Legacy
Sparkle Plenty
Balanchinian Baubles
What Bodies Are For
Fateful Journeys
Decoding Balanchine
BALLET IN TRANSIT
Forsythe's Artifact
De Keersmaeker's Elena's Aria
Maguy Marin's Babel Babel
Forsythe and Marin
Tetley's La Ronde
Morris's Drink to Me
Strangers in the Palace
Too Brief a Fling
Resurfacing
Survival Skills
Planet of Cool
Mind Matters
Lovelyland
Building Blocks
Poets Lost and Found
Dancing Americanness
Evolution/Devolution
Dreaming and Remembrance
A Century in Brief
ON WITH THE SHOW
No Biz Like It
Post-ballet Performance
Jerome Robbins's Broadway
What They Did for Michael
Razzle
Center Stage
Billy Elliot
House on Hold
Crash Dancing
Braving the Elements
Hoop Tamer
Zaloomy Toons
Largely Bill Irwin
Clowns in Flight
Warm with Showers
Apple Pie
Multicult – The Show
Toes on Their Fingers and Drums in Their Heart
Tapstravaganza
Tap Meets Highbrow
Hearts on Fire, Feet on Ice
RIFFS AND TRANSLATIONS
Portable Traditions
Swan Migrations
Toe Frolic
Trockin' on
Decomposing Sugar Plums and Robot Mice
After-dinner Nuts
Nureyev's Cinderella
Grigorovich's The Golden Age
Anti-balletics
Yo, Jewels!
A Dream Awakes
See it Live
Waking Somewhere Else
Wayward Dancing
Private Domain
Mysterious Histories
Plain Folks' Tales
Reclaiming the Ordinary
Pomo Retro Rite
Notes
Index
MARCIA B. SIEGEL is the author of six books, including Howling Near Heaven: Twyla Tharp and the Reinvention of Modern Dance (2006), Days on Earth: The Dance of Doris Humphrey (1987), and the classic study The Shapes of Change: Images of American Dance (1979). She has been a resident faculty member at New York University and is an internationally known lecturer and workshop leader.
"A noble collection of probing dance criticism."
~Lisa Jo Sagolla, Backstage
""Siegel's comfort with her subject reveals itself in these articulate, critically aware, thoughtful reflections. Highly recommended.""
~T.K. Hagwood, Choice
""As a critic, Siegel excels not only for her exposition of the dances, but also for her insight into the implications carried by ballet's changing form. Her reviews are intelligent and thoughtful, and she often muses on the future of the art, the idiosyncratic influences of its practitioners and the roles of the audience in shaping it Her reviews are easy to read and she deftly leads us by the hand, gesturing to salient elements of pivotal works that have evolved ballet in new and exciting ways.""
~Peter DeVries, Dance International
""A noble collection of probing dance criticism.""
~Lisa Jo Sagolla, Backstage
""Her writings on Balanchine, especially her effort/shape analysis of his Serenade, and her remembrance of the dance critic and poet Edwin Denby are, by themselves, worth the price of the book—which, for me, is the best she's published to date.""
~Miday Aloff, Dance Magazine
"This remarkable collection reconfirms Marcia B. Siegel's stature as one of our most penetrating observers of dance. Ranging from Diaghilev to Balanchine, Forsythe, and Tharp, it masterfully explores issues of history, reinvention, and artistic change in the world of twentieth-century ballet, while evoking memorable artists and performances."
~Lynn Garafola, author of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance
"In Marcia Siegel's extraordinary new book we see how our experience of ballet is shaped over time. Ballets, from their creation to revival, critical response to influence, begin to occupy a space much greater than any particular performance. Siegel writes on dance with a remarkable multiplicity of perspectives and invites the reader's own thoughts into the mix. The results are that the history of dance forms anew in our minds and our capacity for seeing has been enriched. Reading Mirrors and Scrims is a dazzling, even Proustian experience.""
~Richard Colton, founder/director, Summer Stages Dance
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