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A palate refresher — 8 Comments

1. Plisetskaya embodies a level of art which makes one believe in God. I don’t understand how I’ve not heard of Plisetskaya until neo.

   Mariinsky, in the second video, was quite impressive, though not as soulful. I suspect there is a story to Mariinsky. I’m intentionally not “reading ahead.” I’d rather hear neo tell it.
   ________________________

   I saw a film of Japanese Judo master, and never once saw him stop to think. And I watched the film over and over. The guys he was fighting stopped to think and got thrown. He was acting out of being something. His opponents, on the other hand, were acting out of knowing the answers. You see, you can’t throw somebody unless they’re set in some way.

   –Werner Erhard

2. Dear Dear Neo:

   You don’t know how much this means to me!

   I am so grateful to see this beautiful ballerina! Seeing her is almost the same as having G come back and post a new poem!

   FWIW: I have another ballet story for you. When the boys(men) were coming home from WWII I had to wait longer than most for my dad. I had never met him, but I had been told he was a good man, and I should just be patient and wait for him. When the day came, we met him at the station when he arrived home “from the hospital in Holland”. I remember my new red wool coat. The temperature was cold and the train made a lot of steam which felt warm on my face. He stepped down the stairs and hugged me, and took my hand, and we began. . .
   It was less than 2 weeks after he arrived home that he took me to my first ballet class. I was three going to be four in a couple of months. He was the only dad in the classroom. He sat in the front row with the moms. They put us at the barre. We learned the five steps and practiced a plie. I was so happy–it was just my dad and me –and the ballet. Unfortunately, it did not last long but beautiful ballet, and this memory still makes me feel the sunshine on my face coming in through the windows. Thank you again!

3. huxley:

   I was fortunate to have seen Plisetskaya dance in person when I was a child. It’s the sort of thing you don’t forget.

   From her Wiki profile:

   Her early years were marked by political repression and loss. Her father, Mikhail Plisetski, a Soviet official, was arrested in 1937 and executed in 1938, during the Great Purge. Her mother, actress Rachel Messerer, was arrested in 1938 and imprisoned for a few years, then held in a concentration camp together with her infant son, Azari [ru]. The older children were faced with the threat of being put in an orphanage but were cared for by maternal relatives. Maya was adopted by their aunt Sulamith Messerer, and Alexander was taken into the family of their uncle Asaf Messerer; both Alexander and Azary eventually became solo dancers of the Bolshoi…

   Despite her acclaim, Plisetskaya was not treated well by the Bolshoi management. She was Jewish at a time of Soviet anti-Zionist campaigns combined with other oppression of suspected dissidents. Her family had been purged during the Stalinist era, and she had a defiant personality. As a result, Plisetskaya was not allowed to tour outside the country for sixteen years after she had become a member of the Bolshoi.

   Ezrahi writes, “the intrinsic paranoia of the Soviet regime made it ban Plisetskaya, one of the most celebrated dancers, from the Bolshoi Ballet’s first major international tour”, as she was considered “politically suspect” and was “non-exportable”. In 1948, the Zhdanov Doctrine took effect, and with her family history, and being Jewish, she became a “natural target . . . publicly humiliated and excoriated for not attending political meetings”. As a result, dancing roles were continually denied her and for sixteen years she could tour only within the Eastern Bloc. She became a “provincial artist, consigned to grimy, unrewarding bus tours, exclusively for local consumption”, writes Homans.

   In 1958, Plisetskaya received the title of the People’s Artist of the USSR. That same year, she married the young composer Rodion Shchedrin, whose subsequent fame she shared. Wanting to dance internationally, she rebelled and defied Soviet expectations…

   World-famous impresario Sol Hurok said that Plisetskaya was the only ballerina after Pavlova who gave him “a shock of electricity” when she came on stage. Rudolf Nureyev watched her debut as Kitri in Don Quixote and told her afterwards, “I sobbed from happiness. You set the stage on fire…

   She said of her style that “the secret of the ballerina is to make the audience say, ‘Yes, I believe.'”

4. Anne:

   That’s a lovely story.

5. Neo – thank you again.

   There are a *lot* of people onstage – and I find their behavior influenced my impressions. When some of the men flirt with the ballerina it helps the impression that she is (re)acting, even with “dry” dancers that are focused on moving from variation to variation.

   As a former New Yorker of a certain vintage, I was happy to get a glimpse of Gelsey Kirkland, spirited as ever… But I really liked the performance labelled “1992 Perm” (05:15) – she really seems to be dancing for the joy of it: luxuriating in her slow pirouettes in the beginning, with no mugging for the audience. And here, too, the moment’s flirtation by the male lead gives emotional motivation for that looong run across the stage to set up the final pirouettes.

6. neo:

   I’m hardly ballet-literate but even I have heard of Nijinsky, Nureyev and Baryshnikov.

   I was just wondering how such a transcendent dancer as M. Plisetskaya didn’t make it to my radar. Perhaps I overestimate my radar. Being in poor favor with Soviet authorities isn’t necessarily a recipe for oblivion in the West.

   It seems to me she could have had a serious underground reputation in the West. To an extent, she did, judging by responses from such as yourself and Hurok.

   Nureyev was also the wrong sort of a Soviet citizen, a Tatar Muslim, and faced repression. However, unlike Plisetskaya, he defected to the West.

   For Plisetskaya, a patriot in her bones, defection was not an option. Perhaps it was better for her that she did not become an underground legend in the West.

7. Hmm…checking Amazon for Plisetskaya DVDs.

   It’s a pricey lot: $25-$30.

   I’ll stick with YouTube for now. But I am hooked to see and learn more.

8. huxley:

   She was legendary among anyone who followed dance. But not a household word, like Nureyev. He was more of a pop star. Not one of my favorite dancers, although I saw him in person quite a few times.

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