chiapuris
Jan 7 2009, 07:33 AM
QUOTE (cubanmiamiboy @ Jan 7 2009, 06:22 AM)
This is another pic of Mme. that i would like to identify
Any help will be appreciated-(choreography, music, costume design, etc...)
thanks!
http://home.comcast.net/~thomas.o.lee/Alicia.jpgI can't help with identification, but it is a stunningly beautiful photograph!
Mel Johnson
Jan 7 2009, 07:56 AM
That looks a great deal like the first Chagall costume for Firebird.
indeed, FIREBIRD seems the best guess.
somewhere previously i posted a photo of Markova in BT's Chagall-designed Firebird and the headpiece looks very similar.
right now i haven't located the posted scan, if/when i do i can put a link here.
credits below:
Firebird : Chor: Adolf Bolm; mus: Igor Stravinsky; scen & cos: Marc Chagall. First perf: New York, Metropolitan Opera House, Oct 24, 1945, Ballet Theatre.
here's a scan of a full-figure photo Alicia Markova as the Firebird in Ballet Theatre's 1940s production.
but it's clear that, if the link is AA in THE FIREBIRD, by this time, the costumer, or the individual dancer(s), dropped the upper-arm and ankle bracelets.
cubanmiamiboy
Jan 7 2009, 06:46 PM
Thank you all for the references! (specially to rg for the always great photographic help...
)
atm711
Jan 8 2009, 06:50 AM
If it is 'Firebird'---I never knew she danced the role. I have been looking around but haven't found any reference to her performing it.
pmeja
Jan 8 2009, 07:11 AM
This?
Peter and the wolf (ca. 11 min., b&w) / recorded in two performances in 1940 ; choreography, Adolph Bolm ; scenery and costumes, Lucinda Ballard ; danced by Ballet Theatre: Eugene Loring (Peter), Alicia Alonso (bird), Karen Conrad (duck), Nina Stroganova (cat), David Nillo (wolf), and others.
i don't know the PETER/WOLF design scheme. i will say the tutu isn't an exact match for that on Markova as Firebird and that the feathered headpiece worn by Alonso is similar but not a precise duplication of that on Markova.
Mel Johnson
Jan 8 2009, 10:57 AM
If I recall the Ballard costumes correctly, the bird headpiece had a very obvious beak, just as the duck had a very obvious bill.
cubanmiamiboy
Jan 16 2009, 09:33 PM
A beautiful pic of Mme. and Youskevitch in the BT's old production of the Nutcracker.
https://www.allposters.com/-sp/Alicia-Alons...s_i3835359_.htm
Vanya
Feb 1 2009, 07:33 PM
QUOTE (silvy @ May 8 2003, 03:24 PM)
Hi - I have got hold a video called "Alicia", featuring world famous prima Alicia Alonso. I was particularly impressed by her Black Swan in which she turns FIVE EN DEHORS PIROUETTES (unsupported, of course), at the beginning of her variation.
I mean, I know that she was a virtuoso, but cud it be THAT VIRTUOSO? Or maybe the video was altered somehow...
Apart from that, I admired the fact that the focus of her performance was artistry all along the ballets she danced, not only virtuosity. Maybe after one virtuoso display she did very simple steps, so you was that her objective was NOT to show how good she was, in the tecnical sense.
She seemed to have a perfect sense of what a truly prima was, and of the difference between a virtuoso and an artist.
Can anyone still clarify this issue of the 5 pirouettes for me? I find it hard to believe!!!
thank you!!!!
silvy
Silvy-I can absolutely attest to the fact that Alicia could turn. I was a member of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba and saw her do some amazing pirouettes numerous times. After class one day she did NINE pirouettes on pointe. She just got "stuck" on balance, as it were. I was standing not more than ten feet away at the time and counted every one of them.
Vanya
bart
Feb 1 2009, 08:37 PM
QUOTE (Vanya @ Feb 1 2009, 07:33 PM)
Silvy-I can absolutely attest to the fact that Alicia could turn. I was a member of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba and saw her do some amazing pirouettes numerous times. After class one day she did NINE pirouettes on pointe. She just got "stuck" on balance, as it were. I was standing not more than ten feet away at the time and counted every one of them.
I hope cubanmiamiboy is reading this!
Vanya, welcome to Ballet Talk. A number of us have interest in -- and even a certain amount of experience with -- the period in which Alonso danced in the U.S. as well as Cuba. We hope you'll be a regular part of this and other conversations.
cubanmiamiboy
Feb 2 2009, 11:41 AM
Yes, welcome, Vanya!
I never got to see Mme. at her peak. I started watching her live performances when I moved to Havana in 1991, and she was in her ealy 70's, even thought she did perform in regular basis. I'm sure you remember all that period: "Casiopea", "Dido...", "La Diva"-(about Maria Callas), "Cleopatra eterna" and of course, the entrechat sequence from Giselle Act II that she got to perform until the end, just for the heck of it and that of our pleasure.
cubanmiamiboy
Apr 18 2009, 11:29 PM
Here there is the performance final curtain calls that took place in Havana, November 2, 1978 to pay tyribute to the 35 th anniversary of Mme in the role of Giselle. Paying respects onstage were her beloved partenaire Igor Youskevitch and her very first Albretch, Anton Dolin, who crowned her and knelt before her, after which she did the same to him. After that we're presented with the famous series of entrechats/batteries that she was still able to perform well until the end of her active career and became her most loved moment of the ballet. The clips range from the 60's, 70's, 80's and even 90's-(there is one not included, which we can see in the movie of the Ballet Russes, from 1958 of that same sequence with Youskevitch)
Enjoy it!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnT41OOsGd0...feature=related
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