Books

Haunting

November 7, 2022

Artur Babajanyan, Arshak Ghalumyan, Arman Grigoryan, Vahe Martirosyan, Arsen Mehrabyan, Tigran Mikayelyan:
“Forceful Feelings”
118 pages, colored and b/w photos
confident Markenkommunikation Winterthur / Switzerland
October 2022

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2022 by Ilona Landgraf

“I can’t do this.”
Thus opens Forceful Feelings – a book by six Armenian-born dancers: Artur Babajanyan, Arshak Ghalumyan, Arman Grigoryan, Vahe Martirosyan, Arsen Mehrabyan, and Tigran Mikayelyan. This sentence heralded the disbanding of their company – the Forceful Feelings of the title – spelled out by their oldest member, Tigran. This was July of 2019, minutes before the curtain rose on a performance at the Pjazza Teatru Rjal in Malta. It was the last show Forceful Feelings would ever perform. The book, compiled by their mutual friend François Chappuis, assembles individual memories that trace back the paths that led to this finale.
The six boys, as they call each other, have a lot in common. Each of them was trained at the Yerevan National Ballet School and pursued a career in the West. Each of them struggled, some to the point of questioning whether a career in ballet was worth it at all. No one gave up. They were supported in their work by their close friendships (from boyhood) and the unvarying support and guidance provided by their parents. Artur’s father, for example, did not allow his son to quit after failing a few exams: “It’s okay to drop out. But not this way! Prove one thing before you quit: prove to them that you can dance. Don’t let them decide that. It’s not the circumstances that choose your fate – it’s you.” Artur took the challenge, throwing himself into the training – and it paid off. In 2003, he had already trained in Zurich. (more…)

A Revealing Autobiography

February 7, 2018

Marina Grut:
“My Dancing Life: Spanish and Ballet Across Three Continents”
317 pages, colored and b/w photos
The Book Guild Publishing, August 2017
ISBN: 978-1912083541
February 2018

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2018 by Ilona Landgraf

Marina Grut – a South Africa-born dancer, dance mistress, and choreographer – has already written three historical books: one on the history of ballet in South Africa, one on the history of the Bolero, and a third on the history of the Royal Swedish Ballet. Her fourth book deals with another important history: her own.

Grut (née Keet) was born in 1934 and received her first ballet training in Cape Town. At the young age of sixteen, she took over a local dance studio in Stellenbosch, her family’s hometown, commuting daily to Cape Town to continue her studies at the University Ballet School under Dulcie Howes. In 1956, Grut quit ballet to instead focus on teaching Spanish dance. Three years later, she married a doctor of forestry from Denmark, traveling with him from Sweden to South Africa, Rome, Washington D.C., and London. Wherever she went, Grut indefatigably promoted Spanish dance. She taught, lectured, excavated regional dances, and organized performances. One of her main achievements was the development of the Spanish Dance Syllabus for the Spanish Dance Society in 1965. It became the standard for the training and evaluation of students of Spanish dance. (more…)

An Appreciation

January 23, 2018

Frank-Manuel Peter:
“The Painter Ernst Oppler – The Berlin Secession & The Russian Ballet”
176 pages, 220 colored and 7 b/w photos
Published by Wienand, September 2017
ISBN: 978-3-86832-391-7
January 2018

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2018 by Ilona Landgraf

The Ballets Russes caused an earthquake upon arriving in Paris in 1909. It’s much less well known, however, that Russian dancers – primarily Anna Pavlova – created a stir in Germany (then a ballet diaspora) just days before. Although the first tour of the Imperial Russian Ballet to Berlin in 1908 had been cut short due to limited public interest, Pavlova and her colleagues were enthusiastically celebrated by critics and audience alike one year later. Tickets for their first performance at Berlin’s Royal Opera (today’s Oper unter den Linden) were reserved for those in the cultural elite: authors, critics, actors, and members of the Berlin Secession, a group of artists that opposed the academic art politics of the Wilhelmine era. For painter Ernst Oppler, the performance on May 5th, 1909 was a turning point in his career – a career that would become the focus of “The Painter Ernst Oppler – The Berlin Secession & The Russian Ballet” by Frank-Manuel Peter, head of the German Dance Archive Cologne. (more…)

The Post-Diaghilev Generation

January 4, 2018

Michael Meylac:
“Behind the Scenes at the Ballets Russes – Stories from a Silver Age”
288 pages, 78 b/w photos
I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd., October 2017
ISBN: 9781780768595
January 2018

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2018 by Ilona Landgraf

Last year in early spring I met Michael Meylac at a performance of Cranko’s “Onegin” at the Bolshoi Theatre. Passionate about dance, Meylac quizzed me about the German companies and told me about the book on the Ballets Russes he was about to finish. He pondered which title to choose. We had no opportunity to continue our conversation, so I didn’t get to know more about the project.

Meanwhile, the book has been published.
Actually, I had expected a monograph on the Ballets Russes similar to Sjeng Scheijen’s biography of Diaghilev. I was wrong. “Behind the Scenes at the Ballets Russes” is a collection of interviews – thirty-two in total conducted between 1989 and 2007. Only one interviewee was not a dancer, the secretary of the Marquis de Cuevas; all others performed with the Ballet Russes companies.
Meylac, born in Leningrad, today’s St. Petersburg, is a distinguished Russian literature professor and philologist. Yet, the Soviet authorities disapproved of his work on foreign-published dissident writers and sentenced him to seven years imprisonment and five years in exile. In 1987, after four years in the Gulag, he was released and later settled in France. There he worked as a Professor of Russian Literature at the University of Strasbourg, sharing time between Europe and Russia. (more…)

A Vocation

August 31, 2017

Rose Eichenbaum:
“Inside the Dancer’s Art”
220 pages, color and b/w photos
Wesleyan University Press, July 2017
ISBN 978-0819577009
August 2017

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2017 by Ilona Landgraf

Originally, Rose Eichenbaum trained to become a dancer. Her plans were thwarted by family duties, but her longing to re-enter the dance world remained. She did return – not wearing dance shoes, but instead equipped with a camera. Having discovered her talent for photography while a young mother, Eichenbaum studied with renowned photographers until her first own pictures were published in a children’s book in 1987. Eight years later, she began to photograph dance, circling her career back to its origins. Six years of work went into her debut book, “Masters of Movement”, which portrays around sixty American choreographers from various dance genres. A significant amount of time spent on taking photos, but Eichenbaum additionally conducted interviews with each and every choreographer – and those interviews are treasures to read. (more…)

Stuttgart Ballet’s “Walking, Talking Historical Person”

April 18, 2017 2 Comments

“Reid Anderson – Having it”
240 pages, b/w illustrations
Henschel Publishing House, April 2017
ISBN 978-3894877903
April 2017

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2017 by Ilona Landgraf

Reid Anderson celebrated his 68 years anniversary on April 1st a few weeks ago. His birthday present was a book: Reid Anderson – Having It, From Dancer to Director, initiated and edited by Vivien Arnold, Stuttgart Ballet’s Director of Press, Dramaturgy and Communications. Its authors, Angela Reinhardt and Gary Smith, are both very familiar with Anderson’s career. Smith covered Anderson’s childhood and teenage years in Canada, his training at the Royal Ballet School in London and his time as director, first of the Ballet British Columbia, then of the National Ballet of Canada. Stuttgart-based Reinhardt contributed the Stuttgart chapters of Anderson’s life, one as a dancer of John Cranko’s company, and the second, ten years later, as director of the company, a post he still holds.

The book, available in German and English, was introduced to the public by Anderson and Tim Schleider, Head of the Culture Department of the Stuttgarter Zeitung and the Stuttgarter Nachrichten, in a matinée talk in Stuttgart’s opera house on April 1st. (more…)

Tracing the History of the Bolshoi

November 24, 2016

Simon Morrison:
“Bolshoi Confidential”
512 pages, b/w illustrations
W.W. Norton & Company, October 2016
ISBN 978-0-87140-296-7
November 2016

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2016 by Ilona Landgraf

Prompted by the abominable acid attack on Sergei Filin in early 2013, Nick Read and Mark Franchetti put the spotlight on what was going on behind the scenes of the Bolshoi Ballet. Their film “Bolshoi Babylon” was followed by a substantial book this October: “Bolshoi Confidential”, penned by Simon Morrison, professor of music at Princeton University focusing mainly on Russian and Soviet music. Morrison is an assiduous writer and the author of a number of books, two of them about Sergey Prokofiev. As it was for Read and Franchetti, the assault on Filin is also Morrison’s springboard. Yet he considerably widens the perspective on his subject.

The history of the Bolshoi, initially called Petrovsky Theatre, began in 1776, when Catherine the Great granted the Russian Prince Urusov exclusive rights for theatrical presentations. Urusov teamed up with the Englishman Michael Maddox, “either a mathematician or tightrope walker during his youth”, but financial straits forced him to surrender the reins to Maddox. Morrison takes us from there through almost 250 years of meandering, tumultuous evolution.

A stupendous amount of details and anecdotes illustrates how the Bolshoi overcame Napoleon’s invasion, then artistically prospered under imperial reign before being massively restricted in its artistic vitality by the Russian Bolsheviks. Three times destroyed by fire, the theater building has always been reconstructed on nearly the same place. It became bigger, more imposing and, though slowly, was equipped with the technical innovations of the time. Since 1825 it was commonly called the Bolshoi – meaning “Grand” – Theatre. (more…)

Anita Berber – Icon of Scandal

August 11, 2015

Lothar Fischer:
“Anita Berber; Ein getanztes Leben” (“Anita Berber; A Danced Life”)
208 pages, plenty of color and b/w illustrations
Hendrik Bäßler Verlag Berlin, December 2014
ISBN: 3930388855

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2015 by Ilona Landgraf

Anita Berber needed scandal like her daily bread, commented young Klaus Mann, who was trying to become as famous a German author as his father Thomas. Mann met her in Berlin in 1924 when Berber, just 25 years old, already had become a legend. She was a stage and movie actress, a fashion and hat model, and a danseuse whose nude performances created furors. Mann continues: “Debauched middle-class girls copied Berber’s style, every prostitute aiming to be a cut above the others wanted to look like her. Post-war eroticism, cocaine, Salomé, ultimate perversity – such were the terms the mirage of her glory was made of. Besides, connoisseurs knew that she was an excellent dancer.”

In December last year the German art historian and author Lothar Fischer published a biography of Berber. “Anita Berber; Ein getanztes Leben” (“Anita Berber; A Danced Life”) is his third book about this arguably scandalous woman, the two former publications dating from 1996 and 2006 being out of print. (more…)

The Paragon of Perfection

November 13, 2014

Sybille Zehle:
“Jürgen Rose”
480 pages, plenty of of color and b/w illustrations
Verlag für Moderne Kunst, August 2014
ISBN: 3869844337

by Ilona Landgraf
Copyright © 2014 by Ilona Landgraf

“Of all set and costume designers he’s the only one not merely competent in all fields but ingenious,” Sir Peter Jonas states about Jürgen Rose. Rose would master everything, ballet – classical or modern – conceptual and decorative theater as well as dramatic and popular operas. “That’s one point. The other is much more important for professionals,” Jonas, said, “and like a gift from God: Rose doesn’t grow old fashioned. He has no expiration date.” Jonas, general director of the Bavarian State Opera from 1993 until 2006, highly appreciates Rose’s designs. He was by far not the only one! Rose was very much in demand, everyone wanted to work with him: Hans Lietzau, Rudolf Noelte, John Cranko, John Neumeier, Marcia Haydée, Dieter Dorn, Otto Schenk, August Everding – to name just a selection.
At age seventy-seven, Rose looks back on around 300 set and costume designs for operas, ballets and theater productions. He gained laurels as a stage director and, for a quarter of a century, inspired students of Stuttgart’s Academy of the Fine Arts in finding their own language as future stage designers. Earlier this year stage director Dieter Dorn and Jürgen Rose, a seasoned, longtime duo, welded together by more than twenty years of collaboration at Munich’s Kammerspiele, followed by eleven years at Munich’s Residenztheater, staged Richard Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung” at the Grand Théâtre de Genève to acclaim. Professional to the core, Rose’s life was – and presumably still is – the stage. An outstanding figure of German culture! (more…)

Setting an Example

March 9, 2014

Barbara Newman:
“Never Far from Dancing: Ballet Artists in New Roles”
204 pages, b/w illustrations
Routledge 2014
ISBN: 978-0-415832151

Dancers have two lives. One is on stage in the limelight, and the other follows their final curtain call. Out of sight, out of mind – being no longer in the spotlight often means sinking into oblivion. What becomes of former stars? Do they experience a transition? These were the questions that fueled Barbara Newman setting out to interview some of the 20th Century’s most luminous ballet stars. Newman’s recently published book “Never Far from Dancing: Ballet Artists in New Roles” is a compilation of her conversations with retired ballet performers. It makes intriguing and enriching reading.

Already in the 1980s and early ‘90s, Newman had investigated how dancers thought and felt about their work. The results can be found in her first book, “Striking a Balance”. Now, thirty years later, she spoke with eleven of her then twenty-seven interviewees again. Each of them remained dedicated in one way or another to their chosen art.
Four of them – Alicia Alonso (the oldest), Monica Mason, Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux and Nina Ananiashvili (the youngest) – were at the helm of ballet companies when these interviews took place in 2008 and ‘09. Four others, former ballerinas, were connected to dance to a certain degree – from full-time engagement involving a packed schedule (Beryl Grey) to minimal involvement (Lynn Seymour). Still others (three men, all Brits) varied: Donald MacLeary had just stopped being répétiteur at the Royal Ballet, whereas Desmond Kelly was embarking as Elmhurst School of Dance’s artistic director in Birmingham (he retired from this post in 2012), and David Wall (who died last year) was transmitting his knowledge as ballet master for English National Ballet. (more…)

A Treasure Chest of Russian Stage Design.

December 11, 2013

“Masterpieces of Russian Stage Design 1880 – 1930” (Vol I)
“Encyclopedia of Russian Stage Design 1880 – 1930” (Vol II)
John E. Bowlt, Nina and Nikita D. Lobanov-Rostovsky and Olga Shaumyan:
Antique Collectors’ Club, 2012/2013

When it comes to Russian stage design, naturally one person has his finger in the pie: Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes. Even years after his death in 1929 he made great projects happen, aiming to preserve and promote Russian design. London’s Diaghilev-exhibition in 1954 – how could it be different? – was the ignition spark for Nina and Nikita D. Lobanov-Rostovsky for what developed into an impressively vast collection of Russian stage design. Russian Nikita D. Lobanov-Rostovsky’s enthusiasm about Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes was so infectious that the cosmopolitan Nina, daughter of a French diplomat, not only became his fellow collector but also his wife.
UK’s Antique Collectors’ Club took on the task to publish two volumes about the collection. “Masterpieces of Russian Stage Design”, released in 2012, recently was complemented by a catalog raisonnè. (more…)

Searching for Misery

October 22, 2013

Deirdre Kelly:
“Ballerina – Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection”
272 pages, b&w illustrations
Greystone Books, 2012
ISBN: 1-926812-66-2

Sex sells – and especially well if accompanied by scandal and suffering victims. This truism is used by Deirdre Kelly, a Canadian journalist, author and dance critic, in her book “Ballerina – Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection”, published in the autumn of last year. What looks like a knowledgeable overview of the role ballerinas have played in the course of time is actually more a collection of sentimental, glossy magazine stories.

In about 200 pages Kelly paints a historical line from dance at King Louis XIV’s court to our time, but despite 250 or so references and considerable notes she seems less interested in insightful and comprehensive analysis – which exist already in Jennifer Homans’ excellent “Apollo’s Angels – A History of Ballet”. Kelly pieces together a patchwork of individual fates. Again and again she expresses her conviction that danseuses are tormented, ill-treated and exploited creatures, true martyrs in the service of art. Indeed, she persuasively depicts the situations of ballerinas of the French Ballet de cours, the Age of Enlightenment and the Romantic period. The Paris Opera’s murky backstage did degenerate into an institutionalized brothel, with career prospects dependent on the influence and number of the danseuse’s male protectors, fittingly called “les abonnés”. But things aren’t put into perspective. Not in accordance with the facts, for example, is that from circa 1840 on male roles in France were danced en travesti because so many girls stormed the ballet schools and had to be kept busy later. That the fatal accident of the Paris dancer Emma Livry in 1862 – her costume was set aflame during a dress rehearsal and she died as a result of her serious burns – led to the decline of the Romantic ballet in Paris and the subsequent artistic stagnation, is simply wrong. In this and similar instances, Jennifer Homans’ book is more reliable. (more…)

A Life’s Voyage

March 29, 2013

Christina Gallea-Roy
“Here Today – Gone Tomorrow, A Life in Dance”
338 pages, b/w and color illustrations
Book Guild Publishing 2012
ISBN: 978-1-84624-690-6

They met each other by coincidence at a rehearsal in Germany of the American Festival Ballet before a tour to Spain: Alexander Roy, who had performed his first ballet steps in bombed-out Magdeburg, Germany, and Sydney-born Australian Christina Gallea. What started as a collaborative dance career at the end of the 1950s grew into a lifelong artistic and personal partnership. They ran their own company and were successful worldwide.
Lady Fortune was surely by their side.

Christina Gallea Roy’s memories of the hurly-burly decades on the international dance scene are recalled in her book, “Here Today – Gone Tomorrow, A Life in Dance”, an engaging, worthwhile read. An instigator for it was the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is actively interested in documenting independent dance companies.
Based in London, the couple toured around the world with International Ballet Caravan, which in 1973 was renamed Alexander Roy Ballet Theatre. They appeared in East and West Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Malta, Southeast-Asia, North and South America, and once even in Bombay. (more…)