So, do you like the beautiful, old-fashioned mime speeches that clearly explain the plot and are aesthetically pleasing in and of themselves? Or do you go for the more modern way of cutting out the mime, leaving us with absolutely no idea what's going on, and having Odette flap her "wings" a lot in its place?

I would like my Swan Lake with mime, please. It is beautiful, when well done, and I think it is part of the tradition. Mime reminds me of princes and princesses, fairy tales, and maybe gentler eras in our own history.

I love mime. Of course, Tchaikovsky composed music specifically for the mimed conversations in Swan Lake. It's beautiful and descriptive and the melodies pass between instruments like people talking back and forth.

I think constant dance in full-length ballets waters down the set dance pieces. It's like taking the recitative out of MARRIAGE OF FIGARO or any other opera in which recitative is integral to the work.

I would like to think the era during which mime was replaced with "expressive dance" was nearly past. I think the public is ready for mime again. And ballet composers could finally quit rolling in their graves.

As I have said many times, I adore the mime, and having seen productions both with and without, I think the mime adds so much. Odette has so much more character and individuality, she has to convince an audience she is enchanted, she has to really use her eyes, and not just flap around. It is so much more moving with the mime. And the queen should have enough time for her say, too, and Siegfried should get a chance to react as a person, not just rush off and do some droopy solo.

I could never love Makarova's "Swan Lake" because she dropped most of the mime, but not all of it. She seemed to like doing "shoot swans no" and so did it a lot. It was the only mime left. "Shoot swans no." "Swans I shoot not." "Shoot swans no." "I swear, me and my guys will never hurt a feather on their little heads." "Shoot swans no." "All right already. I got it. Stop flapping..."

Alexandra, I know EXACTLY what you mean: I used to want to go out and shoot the whole lot of them, tie down their arms - all trussed and ready for the oven!

Apart from anything else, I'd always insist on the mime on the grounds that Siegfried Must Be Told - he has to know the terms of the deal.

After all, he hasn't seen Swan Lake umpteen hundred times, the way we have! ;)

"So, do you like the beautiful, old-fashioned mime speeches that clearly explain the plot and are aesthetically pleasing in and of themselves?''

Yep. No negotiation.
I don't care about tricks (12 pirouettes, 37 fouettees, ...) I care about mime.

Mime and acting are part of ballet characterization and serving a larger goal--the other is just self-aggrandisement.

I think the great Siegfrieds were great because they made you think it was the first time they did the ballet.

I'm not sure how qualified I am to answer this because my only experience with mime is from a performance of "Cinderella" (where it wasn't necessary, since I knew the story) and PBS's ABT's Swan Lake (where it was extremely necessary.)

In swan lake, I think the mime is extremely important. I did not know the story of Swan Lake at all (yes, poor research before watching, my fault) and the mime is what helped me follow the story. Even still there were things I missed. Interpretive dance would not have helped. Flapping would not have helped. The mime was beautiful, and in my living room I was enjoying saying what I thought they were talking about. It made the story concrete.

So, the mime is necessary if the story is not know. But even when the story is known, it is beautiful and it makes you believe that the characters don't know what might happen next. To me it makes it more real.

Skittl1321, it's great to hear that mime reallly does fulfill its function of explaining and advancing the story.

I also thought the mime in the tv Swan Lake was well chosen and executed, though I'm no mime connoiseur. When Odette explains to Siegfried what happened to her and how she got in her fix, it was simple, direct, and clear. Better than a caption.

I was intrigued by your point that the mime, in a certain way, made it "more real" for you. I wonder how others, more familiar with the history of mime and the way its practiced in various European traditions, felt about it????

Your honor, counsel is leading the witness......though i do totally agree with you all.

In particular, he pas d'actions and variations lose their expressive power if they're not understood to be the equivalents of arias and quartets and NOT like rezitativ...

The Kirov's 30-year-old Sleeping Beauty has TOO MUCH BOURREEING AROUND -- it takes the wonder away from the fairies's variations if everybody's on pointe all the time... and the court doesn't fall asleep in an interesting way....

Remy Charlip used to sing the following, to the tune of Odette's mime scene:
"i'm the swan queen,
please don't kill me,
or the wicked witch will get you, dearie.'

Pretty funny when he did it, but then he's a great ham....

I always liked Streisand in Funny Girl, confronting Siegfried with "Whaddya gonna do, shoot the svans? Dese lovelies? My svansgirls?"

I sometimes think that people who say "I don't like mime" have maybe been exposed to bad or amateurish mime that doesn't explain anything. I was watching Jean-Louis Barrault in "Les Enfants du Paradis" the other night and reflected that if all mime could be performed at that level of physical eloquence people would be lining up and demanding more, not less.

Paul's comparison to operatic recitative is to the point. You need the contrast -- otherwise it's like listening to those versions of Carmen where all the dialogue is cut or set to music.

Paul,

For me it was Arthur Leeth - of Boston Ballet, who looked for all the world like Mr. Clean, singing

"I'm a Swan Queen
You're a fairy
Run away from me
You're big and hairy
RUN AWAY!!!!!"

(But yours makes more sense. . . )

The version I learned:
I'm a swan queen,
You're a fairy
That is why we'll never, ever marry
Anyway.

Not quite as literate or imaginative as either Leigh's version or Paul's.

But back to the non-verbal question at hand, mime badly done is boring. I never cared for it until Patty McBride "told" Swanilda's story so beautifully. When it is clear, musical, phrased as a conversation -- well, it is as thrilling as any dance passage. At its best, it is a dance passage.

I can tell it,
I can smell it,
From the perfume that you wear...."

I remember watching two courtiers in the old Royal Ballet Sleeping Beauty, miming:

Lady I you yesterday see who?

Lady no, wife.

How does one mime "yesterday," "who," and "Lady?"

Lady = same as "beautiful" - circle the face with the tips of the fingers.

Yesterday = Like "tomorrow" in the Princess Mother's Act I speech to Siegfried only the hand passes over the forearm instead of under.

Who = general interrogation - spread arms with hands palm up, shake head slightly.

"Anyway!"

O it's so musical.That's the best.

I'm learning so much from this thread....

I've been browsing through Barbara Newman's Striking a Balance, in which a number of dancers interviewed spoke about the mime in Swan Lake, and in the back of my mind I'd remembered that Antoinette Sibley said something true to my heart:
Donald MacLeary may have summarized the issue with mime most efficiently:

I just had the disappointing realization that I have never seen a Swan Lake with the entire Queen Mother mime speech! (I knew I was born 100 years too late.) Has anything like a dictionary of mime been published?

Joan Lawson has a book on mime -- I doubt it will be in bookstores, but it may be available through used book stores at Amazon. (Don't remember the title, but search for the author.)

I'm becoming a fan of mime -- done well, of course. One of my daughter's ballet teachers is a real Bournonville expert and he choreographed an extended mime piece for her class's spring recital. A small, mostly comic story of young love. It honestly was the one piece in the show that made the audience sigh when it was done. I felt it just went to show that, taught correctly and used in an emotionally genuine way, mime can be done well by dancers of just about any age.

In NYCB we used to sing it quite differently while backstage:

I'm a Swan Queen
You're a f__got
Stay away from me
or I will grab it!!!
Stay away....

Mime is wonderful when done well, at the same time nobody I know goes to NYCB for the mime, do they?!!

I have grown to like mime but it's a language that one must make an effort to learn and I'm not sure that the casual ballet goer wants to.

One should comsider also that dancing transcends boundaries in a way mime does not. Not all the world understands a gesture in the same way.

For example, in my part of the world when people swear (as in "I swear to tell the truth and nothing but ...") they have all the fingers extended and palm facing front. When people swear in balletland (as in "I swear I love you") they usually have only the 2nd and 3rd fingers pointing, the others closed. I can't tell you how many times I have watched Swan Lake and Giselle wondering why they're doing this strange gesture. Do they mean "Look up there" or has it something to do with hunting (as in "I was shooting in the forest etc...")? It took me a while to figure it.

Even very simple gestures should not be taken for granted: where I live, moving your head upwards means no. I have heard of other cultures where this gesture means yes. I'm sure there are many other examples of non-universal gestures.

I wont even go into mime that is difficult to understand because it refers to things or habits of the past (Giselle's spinning for example).

That said watching mime done clearly can not only be illuminating but also very enjoyable (like the mime in POB's Paquita, very clear - even for people with no imagination as myself - and funny)

The Joan Lawson book is MIME, THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF EXPRESSIVE GESTURE. (Dance Horizons, 1973). It is listed on Amazon currently.

While I understand the role that extensive mime used to play -- as in a balance of recitative and aria -- I confess to not wanting too much of it. I also lack the experience of truly great mime (though I loved the mime theater, based on a real place, in Enfants du Paradis) to make good evaluations of what I see today.

Question: how do you draw the line between (a) enough gesture to tell the necessary story and (b) simplification to meet today's aesthetic and dramatic standards?

I thought the ABT Swan Lake had sufficient mime -- well enough done -- to meet the test of both (a) and (b). Any other opinions?

Yes, the family of the Nutcracker Prince!

Actually, it seems that the company is more attentive to the few mime passages in their rep than they have been in previous generations. Funny how these things work.

Bart, yes I thought so too. For me the non negotiable scene is Odette's scene with Siegfried in Act 2 when they meet. If that scene is left out, then the version has a HUGE black mark against it.

I liked Murphy's delivery of this; it was elegant. To see a very moving version, see the Swedish Ballet DVD's Natalie Nordquist.

Actually I am even more critical about Sleeping Beauty without the mime. If the version dosen't have it, I won't even watch it,

Let me add a disclaimer. we all tend to favor what we "grew up with". With me, I was introduced to these pieces via the Western versions.

Richard

It's a good thing we don't hear the backstage singing, or out the window would go the perfume and magic of Liebeslieder, Symphony in C, et. al. We would just think, "drunken sailors in tutus."

Rest assured, that's the only drunken sailor in tutu song I recall while backstage. Most of the time, it's pretty quiet there... Well, except during Harlequinade when the kids are dancing on stage beginning Act 2. More often than not, the birds, in prep for their approaching entrances, are backstage dancing along with the kids' choreography, being silly, getting perky. No songs! Just the irresistable fun of the choreography!