In the 4th movement I think I wrote assemble-ing just to make it easier for people who might be lost when one writes glissade-brisé…although I might say the speed def I’ve seen some dancers “blurring” the glissades into mere little jumps to the side probably because of the speed.

I think that the lead girl in the 4 mov has to be a hell of a technician more than a spinner (there are dancers which have terrific turning technique but can barely deal with petit-allegro). It’s not only the spins but the combinations that are the killer. There are so many steps crammed in those brief minutes!

Thanks for sharing those anecdotes!. Having only seen Sym in C for the first time less than 5 years ago, it is hard to compare different portrayals and I guess the first time you watch it gets imprinted in your head and any other performance has to measure up to it.

Is Le Palais de Cristal really still in the POB rep? I thought the Balanchine Trust made them do Symphony in C like everyone else.

Or whoever owns Symphony in C now; Balanchine gave it to Taras, and I think Taras willed it to SAB. Maybe SAB gets the royalties but lets the Trust stage it.

It’s funny because for years when other companies did Bizet (you know the dancers always call it Bizet, so I follow because I like sounding “in the know,” and it’s easier to type), as staged by Taras, I’d see things from the way it was done in the Seventies that just aren’t there now. Like the demi-couples in the Second Movement making the “targets” for the lead couple to “skewer” with her front leg in that split lift (nothing phallic going on there!), way back when it was more suggested than actually shown — the demi couples would gracefully let their arms drift away before the lead’s leg arrived.

I always saw it as a glissade/brise combination they’d do in unison at the end of the 4th movement. Notice the only time Balanchine has everyone doing the same thing in unison is just before the curtain. He’s very sparing with unison, because once you’ve got everyone doing the same thing all at once, where else is there to go? It’s the climax.

Just one thing I’d add, is that the lead girl in the 4th Movement has to be a turning demon (Tiler Peck kind of owns it now, or she did). She introduces that godawful pirouette to the knee with the working leg flicking up, out to the side, then down and behind, all at the last turn before she lands on her knee. When all four ballerinas share the stage in their line abreast, they build up to the same turn, all four at once. I just mention it because a) I’m procrastinating and b) it’s the ballet’s real “white knuckle” movement. I’ve seen an off-kilter ballerina almost take out one or two others, and I remember Ansanelli, a terrific turner, would have trouble with the finish on her knee, having to push herself up from leaning on the floor more than once.

About ten or eleven years ago (damn, I’m old), it was the opening night of a season (fall? fall gala?) at the State Theater. They were doing Bizet, and Nikolaj Hübbe was doing Fourth Movement (I think — I could be wrong) with Yvonne Borree. Hübbe blew a landing from a double tours, and hobbled offstage, leaving poor Yvonne (one of many times it seemed her first name really was “Poor” and her middle Yvonne) to finish up by herself.

It wasn’t as dramatic as the famous time twenty years earlier (now I really feel old) when Ricky Weiss blew out his Achilles Tendon in Ballo and Merrill Ashley had to finish it all by herself (Ashley had more, and harder, stuff to get through without a partner), but it was something you don’t see every day.

Nikolaj was back dancing a couple of days later as if nothing had happened, and there was a lot of scuttlebutt that he’d faked being injured out of embarrassment at having blown the double tour. I have a hard time believing it, even now, but this was back in the day when Nikolaj and Sebastien Marcovicci seemed to be in a competition to see who could cause the infamously high-strung Borree to lose it the quickest when partnering her. It’s hard to beat vanishing in the middle of a performance.

I seem to recall I should be writing about Sleeping Beauty right now..