Lord of the Dance

Carlos Saura, director, choreographer, dancer and actor, and his leading ladies, Cristina Hoyos and Laura del Sol, in Carmen (1983)
Thanks to David for sending me down this memory lane. Dance has been my greatest passion since I can remember (in fact, one of my first memories of any kind is sitting in the Lyric Opera House at a performance of American Ballet Theatre of Les Sylphides and Les Patineurs and Graduation Ball. I was 3 or 4, I think, had a horrific earache (as I was prone to get). Watching the "skaters" spin caused me exquisite pain and only finally agreed to leave during Graduation Ball (good taste I had, even then!). I studied ballet myself rather seriously from the age of 5 until I finally gave it up after my last classes in Chicago the year after I graduated from law school, while clerking for a judge. Once upon a time, I saw perform Ruth Ann Koesen, Toni Lander, Maria Tallchief, Fonteyn and Nureyev several times, Baryshnikov, Maximova, Plissetskaya [alright, I'll check spelling later], all the greats in the heyday of Balanchine's NYCB (Farrell, Villella, McBride, Mazzo... can't even remember them all), Makarova, Ferri, Sibley, Dowell, just about everyone in the Royal Ballet (practically lived at Covent Garden for the season in 72-73 when I was in London), Ballet Theatre, Joffrey Ballet, Harkness, Les Ballets Canadiens from Quebec (I think they were the ones who did a stunning Carmina Burana)...... and many more. The best of course was Sirs Fredick Ashton and Robert Helpmann as the stepsisters in Cinderella. It was high art, not slapstick (though that, too -- leave it to the Brits to take it to that level).

Had I to do it all over, I'd either be a ballet dancer or a physicist. Anyway, this Carmen is one of my favorite dance films. Hope to write an essay here about dance someday soon. (BTW, I'm no fan of liturgical dance, but that's another, unimportant story).

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OTHER DANCE MEMORIES

Fonteyn and Nureyev:







Petrushka





White Nights



Don Quixote