Really? Q. for T.S.

As you’ve more than likely guessed, we’re not too up to date with our dance. And! (exclamation point)...this is why today’s post might yield some funny results.

Spectacle has been a big part of ballet from the beginning. Ballet, opera and pageant blended at the French royal court, from the horse ballets of Catherine de Medici’s day to outdoor re-enactments of sea battles in lakes built just for shows under Louis XIV.

Neat. In fact, I like to understand a little about what’s at hand. Historicism is often lost in the 700-800 word review. Thank you, Tom.

Even in more modest, indoor shows, the costumes of some grotesque or allegorical characters resembled parade floats.

This, I cannot attest for, but rest assured, I’m not surprised, but intrigued.

Virtuoso dance values became more important in the 19th century, but spectacle remained a staple of the art. Even the great innovator and choreographer Marius Petipa celebrated spectacle during his long, influential reign at the Imperial Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia. "The Sleeping Beauty," from 1890, is among his most notable spectacle ballets and an icon of the art. It typically features dozens of elaborate, bejeweled costumes, enormous sets, lots of stage machinery and a huge cast.

How does a company such as the Milwaukee Ballet, with 25 full-time dancers and a lean budget, take on such a monster? MBC will stage its "Sleeping Beauty" from Thursday through next Sunday.

Michael Pink, the company's artistic director had the answers in an interview.

What? Yeah. I know. I’m copying and pasting the entire review. So what? Wanna fight about it?

"We bought the costumes from Ballet International, a company in Indianapolis that is now defunct," he said. "They were really rather well made. International got them from the Maryinsky."

On the cheap and cheap; nothing wrong with that, especially today.













Fig. 1 Dust Bowl

The Ballet International set, Pink said, comprised three tired-looking painted drops. He thought about renting the Houston Ballet's production, but it is so big that it wouldn't fit the Uihlein Hall stage at the Marcus Center. It also would have cost $80,000. So Pink had to get creative.

This is the economy, I guess. Whatever—fine.

"I thought that if I could put 'Sleeping Beauty' in a neutral setting, I could eliminate set changes and move the story along," he said. "I thought that would be better than some threadbare, poor-relation production we could have afforded to rent."

Bottom-line is important to a degree. Sounds average, but I’m still all ears.

Pink conceived and sketched out a "Sleeping Beauty" of his own.

Tom?! Hello?! Not gonna rail this? (Like I said, dance is a bit foreign to me, so set us straight, if you got the time.)

A white, open set trimmed with hundreds of white silk roses is a lighting designer's dream, as it can take on any hue when bathed in theatrical light. Pink worked closely on the design with lighting wizard David Grill. He also worked with music director and conductor Andrews Sill.

How’d that work out? (Wow. I’m constantly amazed at my ability to sarcastically bait the next statement. Fun, nonetheless.)

They trimmed Tchaikovsky's score from 3½ hours to two hours. [It. mine]

(Not surprised) Mmmm-hmmm.

We’re idealists, to a point. But. WTF?!!!? They just cut ‘Sleeping Beauty’ by one and a half hours? Because of money?

Shame.

Shame.

"There are yards and yards of repeats," Pink said.

Fuck repeats! In fact. FUCK repeat performances!!! They cost too much money!

"We have omitted many of them. I doubt that anyone will complain about that."

I haven’t given them my Visa number yet, so...

He’s got me there.

He's also eliminated yards and yards of processions, the point of which was to allow parading of yards and yards of expensive fabric formed into lavish costumes. That sort of thing doesn't play well these days, and it slows down the storytelling.

Like I said, I don’t know about that. So...

Really?!? Pink is gonna cut 40% of the music? Maybe this is a music-centric conceit, but isn’t ‘Sleeping Beauty’ largely a product of the music? There’s an orchestral suite, right? Might that be a reason for its success?

To Pink, the story counts.

Oh. (Again, amazed at my ability for sarcasm.)

To move the story along and to intensify and clarify motivation, he has tinkered with Charles Perrault's fairy tale and the Petipa/Tchaikovsky scenario.

..and Hamlet doesn’t die in the end.

Princess Aurora no longer falls into a yearlong slumber because she pricks her finger when encountering an old woman at a spinning wheel. Rather, she pricks it on the thorn of a red, red rose, the only item of color in her white world.

“A red, red rose?”

"It's full of dancing," Pink said of his "Sleeping Beauty."

As ballets ought to be, with music and its rhythmic-movement coincidences. “A symbiosis, my young padawan.”

"It's not just a cut-down version of a classic. It has its own integrity."

Tchaikovsky. Cut by one and a half hours; the time it takes to drive from Islamabad to Peshawar.

Watered-down booze if you ask me.

Tom?!!!?? Was it good? Does it irk you? Maybe I just don't get dance.
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Palate Cleansing Joke

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Funny.

Seriously. Funny? Okay. Funny who?

No, silly. It's pronounced Ferney-hoe.













(painting by Takashi Murakami)

Serious stuff to follow.
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Back in my day,

I had to walk to school only one sun-filled block, downhill. I get the impression that it was very different for Mr. Holland. Here's his homework, which is seemingly about an all-Brahms program given by the Emerson String Quartet, on what must’ve been a tough day for Mr. Holland to get excited.

You greet a cold, hard, wintry Sunday afternoon with either avoidance or embrace.

In other words, you commit suicide or you live. Okay, so that’s probably not exactly what he’s intending to convey. I’ll try that again. On a typically lazy Sunday, either you avoid going outside so to stay all fuzzy and warm, pessimistic about the yucky conditions, or you go outside, optimistic about the day’s potential. I’ll buy that.

Stay home and dream about the beach at Waikiki, or go hear the Emerson String Quartet play Brahms chamber music in three different minor keys.

One can avoid the day by staying home and dreaming of Waikiki, or one can embrace the day by going out to listen to Brahms. Sounds great to me. I love Brahms’ music. I’ll go out on a cold, hard, wintry day for some good Brahms. But, wait. Three minor keys? Aren’t minor keys usually associated with sadness and, or, cold, hard, wintry days? Maybe I won’t go outside if all I hope to get is a cold, hard, wintry day. That does not sound pleasant. Sorry, Brahms.

For all their sophistication and invention, Brahms’ string quartet’s are tough love, and hearing consecutively both ends of his Opus 51—one piece in C minor, the other in A minor—is an awful lot of genial determination at one sitting.

Here, I believe that “genial determination” refers to the Emerson Quartet. Their concert plagued by a nasty winter’s day, with sophisticated and inventive music in three different minor keys, making for tough love. You gotta really, really want it. I wonder what Mr. Holland wanted?

To ensure any hint of a smile off its collective face, there was the F minor Quintet for Piano and Strings after intermission...

Good. Something to make the six-mile, uphill trek on a snowy day worth it.

The quintet may be the most welcoming of the three items, but it is also classical music’s prototype for stubbornness.

Well, so much for that. I should’ve stayed home, had some hot cocoa, curled up with my absurdicon thesaurus and listened to the radio play convivial flute music, all the while dreaming of Hawaii and its long-overdue statehood.

First Brahms wrote it for five string players and didn’t like it. Then he wrote it for two pianists and didn’t like that either. Clara Schumann told him that the final version sounded like orchestra music...

Brahms: too stubborn to “stay the course.” Flip-flopper. I wouldn’t vote for him. Nor would I walk twelve miles uphill in a fierce snowstorm to listen to his music.

...indeed the piece is an awful lot of energy crammed into one relatively small piece.

It’s welcoming; it’s stubborn; it’s dense. The quartets are tough love. They’re all in minor keys. Hmmm. I’m on the fence. But, before I think about putting on my galoshes, Mr. Holland, entice me a little more for my troubles.

Brahms evidently did not wait for inspiration to compose, the result often being intense rectitude born of enormous craftsmanship.

Uninspired? Righteous craftiness? I just lit the fire, put the water on the stove, slipped into my brand new Fun Sleepwear Mario Brothers Red Mushroom Slippers, and got out the thesaurus. All that’s left is to turn on the radio and find some conviv...

In this quintet some light is allowed to enter. Measures of lyrical beauty and even jauntiness help mitigate—for both players and listeners—the virtuoso fierceness that makes the first and last movements sound so...

Halt! How could I have been so rash? There is something in the quintet that will make all of the snow trapped in my long johns melt! Let’s get dressed! We’re going out! But first, let’s finish Holland’s thought. Now, what about the first and last movements sounding so... what?

...warlike.

Fuck.

I don't know what to do.

I know. I'll make a list. Brahms and his music has been described thusly: sophisticated, inventive, stubborn, dense, uninspired, righteously crafty, warlike—and, to top it off, all behind this imposing backdrop of a cold, hard, wintry day.

Doesn’t it sound eerily like something we’ve heard before? Wait! Oh no. You can’t be serious. Could it be? Really?

It is easy to understand why Schoenberg so attached himself to the music of Brahms...

Fuck. It is.

Another backhanded insult to Schoenberg, or at least whatever Mr. Holland decides he associates with Schoenberg.

...[Schoenberg] would go on to raise the idea of high density to another level.

Dense = bad?

I don’t think I ever came across the “idea of high density,” sir. If by “high density” you mean that Brahms’ music was dense (stated above) and Schoenberg liked (“attached” himself to) dense things, thus Schoenberg liked Brahms, then I am forced to call you a sack-of-mostly-Hudson-River-water. Brahms was dense compared to Beethoven. Beethoven was dense compared to Handel. (continue ad infinitum) Hell, Bach’s music is still dense. Whatever.

I thoroughly sympathize with your Sunday afternoon walk in the five-foot high snow up the Himalayas to get to hear some good music by a good composer only to get paid to write about it. I don’t, however, sympathize with your ideological chauvinism towards certain music. If you don’t like Schoenberg, that’s fine. No one is forcing you. Nevertheless, as a member of the press, reporting on concerts and giving your opinions, it is your duty to understand the music to a higher degree than your readership, and then write about it in an intelligent and fair manner. If you can’t, or won’t, understand, or learn about, organicism, “developing variation,” or the f-ing definition of density, not to mention the history and development of ideas within a specific musical community (about which you opine often), then you are 1) doing your readership a disservice by insulting their intelligence, 2) proliferating absurd and generally negative myths about musicians and their music, 3) effectively stifling the new music culture’s ability to gain an already dwindling audience, self-perpetuating classical music’s extinction, in general. To put it another way, learn your shit or we’ll keep writing things like this.

Sorry, again, about the white-out conditions when you tried to scale that cliff on your way to see the Emerson String Quartet. I’ll have some cocoa ready for you when you get home.
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