@DysonianEyes - O god Carol Hageman used to get so thoroughly pissed off at me complained I used to smah her off pointe like I was trying to stake her into the ground – horrible at it – but the hands on the swan dives were always interesting

No

Ballet is actually a Matriarchal thing although men tried to make it otherwise, paradoxically it was preponderantly Cecchetti that campioned man as an actual danseur rather than someone that merely supported the woman.

I relate more to Sarah Rubenstein? I think that was her name. She was so ridiculously gorgeous she didn’t need to dance much just stand en pose and in fact used to do private perfomances nude – who else? Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo Diaghliev (splng) Nijinsky amongst many with Cocteau as assistance set designer, Stravinsky doing the scores the Maestro had white hair dyed it all black except for a white swath and wore a seal skin coat held together with safety pins.

How pristine people become through Legend

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@DysonianEyes - Vaganova – I started out with her Method and it was too complicated. I like the Cecchetti Method because it’s simple and employs very littlel barre work – like Ballanchine’s class for a choreography session just au Milieu and then he presented the climax of the piece and worked out everything else around that.

Most experts attribute Cecchetti with the male dancing role notably the bluebird with the pas de basque and 16 or whatever brise – entrechat.

Knowing the syllabus as I do and having repeated it every week for about 17 years, the complexities of the Vaganova Method became understandable to me and also she was a student of Cecchetti. So at the time of Diaghiliev the Cecchetti Method was essentially all there was. I’m not sure but I think he was also the instructor for BR before Massine (also his student). Cecchetti was Pavlova’s personal coach. Nijinsky was his student (I’m not too hip to the female dancers of that time) but Cecchetti was the predominant influence and due to the resulting presence of Cechetti dancers and large leaps, things like that; so aside from Paris Opera Ballet (descended from Vestris) or Bournonville, Cecchetti Method was all there was

Cecchetti really got around:p

The idea behind Vaganova was that Russia, at one time, like the late 18th Century, had it’s own classical style but it was purportedly lost and only bits and pieces of it remained. Whether that’s true or not it served as the basis for her having something that might be said to be distinctly Russian

But personally the way my body is it’s more suitable to Cecchetti, The other schools are more accommodating or befitting jarette. I think it’s both.

At my age though I just don’t have the young boy testicles to do all that stuff. Just an old Stud I guess 

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@storyslut - :)  

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@storyslut - My pleasure. I’m looking forward to some good stories, but admittedly, like to look at the pictures, too

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@storyslut - 

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@storyslut - 

 @EminemsRevenge -  

Yes; now she claims in her book “Basic Principles of Classsical Ballet” that it’s embellished with a style that is eminently Russian, from remnants of such style that was lost (see above). This is always controversial because generally ballet is supposed to be universal not peculiar to various countries, nationalities or ethnic groups, which is an element reserved for folk dancing or primative dancing.

Until I found Craske’s Syllabus book for Adage and the separate text for Allegro (mine were printed in 1939 I think) there were just so many steps that I could not see because they were executed largely by people who copied them from watching others based upon what knowledge they gleaned from class. Being the radical person I am I thus discovered Cecchetti and after doing his Syllabus daily for many years I then realized the basis for these various steps and thus their proper execution - paraphrasing the Maestro after Carlo Blasis – ‘in order to correctly execute a step you have to first admit that you don’t know how to do it’. Regrettably we often find that instructors and dancers don’t know the proper execution of some choreography probably because the person that created it  technnically, didn’t actually know  what they were doing – if that makes any sense? A while back there was a .gif of a girl doing a tour and apparently it was an optical illusion so that if you watched it long enough you couldn’t tell if she was turning right or left. I was astonished at the number of people that were actually confused by this as well as the number of scientists, psychologists explaining the phenomenon. Being a dancer the mattter was simple — depending on her supporting foot let’s say the right if she was touring de hors then she was turning left and if she was touring en dedans then she was traveling right. So I think many times the seeming magic is just the art embellished by the imagintion

One thing that surprised me was a woman that owned a large studio allowed me to use it one summer and came in one day to watch me practice. I happened to be doing Tuesday adage. She said wow !! what was that ?!!? I said Oh the renverse? She said huh? 

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@DysonianEyes - A woman asked me to send her a dance tape once so I called it “Dances for the Water Closet” – And the custom of ballets titled in French, but a French friend was explaining to me the difficulty in translating that there actually aren’t words in French to describe what I was attempting to describe:p

The room is small it was something like “Danses Pour les Cabinet de loo”

Attention from nice women O yes I am lavished I Love it !!

One of my weaknesses – of course this is debatable – is that I never had separate male classes I did all of my classses with women and did all of the things they did (Rudy did that too and said it was important). I was going to do pointe and wish I did (Maurice Bejart performed en pointe before) I never got around to it. Around the time I was to get certified the 13 year court ordeal commenced I was going to have Gaylord Minden fit me but never got around to it. I don’t have the extensions women have. Developee hauteur (90 degrees) takes daily work for me – I can toss it up with e.g., renverse but just don’t have that and at the same time I don’t have the test to maintain all the men stuff I would have been bald by now :p

It’s been very cool at night, the heat came on a few times and I had it quite low

@DysonianEyes - You have the best comments and complements ever. Rudy used to do all of the class. Orignally, men did not do the Adage portion and just did Allegro exercises designed for men. At one time all they did was Pas de Deux supporting women &c

The more I looked into the history of dance I think the beginning of theatre dance began in Greece but who knows the degree of technicality? Lincoln Kirsten did a pretty good History with emphasis on primative dancing.

Vaganova says {paraphrase} “ballet exercises were invented by a genius many years ago” – I always use that expression to exemplify what a postulate is but I think it’s as good an explanation as any :p True that the Sun King codified steps for the various court dances the foot work &c of course you have the theatre traditions of Italy, Russia, &c too

What I always found interesting though was Blasis writing in his “An Elementary Treatise Upon The Theory and Practice of the Art of Dancing” that Vestris is credited with rond de jamb en l’air exercises http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Vestris

Which is incredible to me given it’s frequency and that’s quite modern. In contrast I recall reading Aristotle describing diet and using the example of wrestlers noting they didn’t live long due to training on large quantities of red meat

My suspision after reading Blasis is that dance was censored so frequently through time that it merely managed to be carried on by a small number not unlike witchcraft and other like practices  

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@EminemsRevenge - I’ll see what I can do over on your end because you get WAY more readers than me

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@EminemsRevenge - And I paid dearly for it already !! It appears with more links on my space under username blazintommyd

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