The Pharaoh 39;s Daughter Variation
Victorio Galindo
Actually, it was better! Very stylistically coherent (no bombastic jumps for the men, just lots and lots of beats and petit allegro), understated and beautiful sets and costumes and some absolutely gorgeous choreography for the women. It was very interesting to see it in terms of what Petipa did later--Aspacia's slave acted as a sort of a Lilac Fairy keeping them apart, charming children's dances, a wonderful vision scene (underneath the Nile), nice peasants doing nice dancing. The story doesn't have much resonance, like the later Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, but it has enough to hang the dancing on. The main problem was the music, which had lots of rhythm, but made me long for Minkus.
I think that the only people who will be complaining will be those who expected it to be something that it never was and never will be. There isn't the choreographic equivalent of a "Kingdom of the Shades" or "Swan Lake Act II" in this work and at the time that it was made and for the audience it was entertaining, no such thing was expected or desired. The piece is purely an exotic entertainment to give sensual pleasure. No profundity is really discernable in the story line or in Pugni's very danceable but routine music. Pugni's score doesn't really use any faux-Egyptian motif's unlike Verdi's "Aida" (some of the sets of which were recycled in the original production).
Lacotte has a profound and fluent command of 19th century classical style. The stage patterns and combinations were very convincingly 19th century. Of course it was uneven in style as it probably was by the end of the 19th century when dozens of ballerinas of different techniques and types had done Aspicia and had Petipa refashion the choreography for them. The proponderence of petit batterie and smaller taquet steps with the ballerina and her partner performing the same steps side by side reminded me of Bournonville (who influence was early Romantic French style). This was then juxtaposed with fouetts, multiple pirouettes and jets reflecting the virtuosity imported by the italian ballerinas in their blocked shoes after 1868 or so. If there was a stylistic patchwork going on here it probably mirrors what Petipa's choreography looked like by the time Kschessinskaya was dancing Aspicia in the 1890's and early 1900's. I noticed that the real Petipa (Ramseya's solo and the river variations) fit very well with Lacotte's ersatz material. Of course Nikolai Tsiskaridze danced a lot more and with a higher level of technique than what Marius Petipa was capable of when he created Ta-Hor/Wilson. Given that a lot of Petipa has come down to us in revised, updated and diluted form, this evocation looked more consistently authentic than some recensions of "Sleeping Beauty" "La Bayadere" and "Swan Lake".
Lacotte has cut a lot of mime scenes and processions and rid the stage of some of the bric-a-brac and clutter that you see in those St. Petersburg postcards of the ballet Robert Greskovic has shared with us so generously. The show moves well and the sets are drops and scrims that are colorful but don't encroach on the dancer's space. The lion was distinctly immobile and ineffective and the monkey was dispatched before Aspicia could waken and shoot at him with her arrow but the giant cobra in the urn has a stellar future with the Bolshoi. He (or she?) showed distinct charisma and dramatic flair. The politically incorrect portrayal of blackface savage "nubians" was another authentic touch. However the King of the Nubians looked more arabic than african.
The dancing was wonderful throughout despite some congestion in the corps (due to lack of experience on the Met stage). Natalia Osipova danced the first variation in the Pas D'Action in the second act.
The only sad feeling I had was that if this project had been done 30 or 40 years ago many dancers who danced the original Petipa choreography could have reconstructed it authentically. Karsavina, Preobrazhenskaya, Egorova and Kschessinskaya all lived well into their 80's and 90's and were alive and active into the 1960's. They certainly could have given us back Petipa's breakthrough early masterwork.
John Rockwell in the NY Times (who I read after I wrote this) is pretty much on the same page with me (for whatever that is worth - Anna Kisselgoff was there last night too by report - I wonder what she thought).
Three of the five River Variations are reconstructed by Doug Fullington from the Sergeyev collection at the Harvard Theatre Archive. Ramseya's toe-tapping solo in the second act was taught to Lacotte by Lubov Egorova in the 1950's. That's it for authentic Petipa.
Originally, Lacotte did not use any of the river variations I reconstructed. Maybe he has since inserted them? He had made use of two female variations (making one a duet) and a male variation (adding a double tour at the end) in the large palace scene.
I'm not sure if it would be possible to stage the entire ballet. I haven't looked at the notation for all of it for about 7 years. When I worked for Lacotte, I only had notation for what he wanted me to reconstruct. What I had was mostly legs and feet with ground plan. Certainly you can work with that, but upper body and port de bras will be editorial.
Pharoah's Daughter is even more of a VSB. All the worst ballet chestnuts and some I've never seen before: deadly snakes and lions, all of the stuffed variety, children prancing around in blackface, a dancer in a monkey-suit swinging onstage on a vine (if we're taking this the least bit seriously, I have to say the bears fielded by ABT in Petrouchka were far more endearing and convincing), continuous if not gratuitous set and costume changes, from mummy wrapping to tutu to nightgown ad infinitum, a foppish Englishman transformed into a curiously-neutered Egyptian youth in the course of a drug-induced hallucination... yes, I'm spoiling the fun and raining on the parade, but this was starting to feel like a politically incorrect Disney musical with better dancing.
I might be able to suspend disbelief and accept all this if it were a genuine artifact instead of a recreation. I don't have a problem with how Pierre Lacotte resurrected this, I have a problem with why he did it. Maybe this ballet didn't last because it didn't deserve to. Choreography aside, it was a cardboard drama. Aspicia and Ta-Hor "fell in love at first sight," but there was never really a moment where I saw this happen, and their relationship remained unconvincing. I started to empathize with Fokine and Balanchine, who decided they could better what had come before. I'm just afraid ballet has entered a decadent, postmodern phase of sophisticated self-parody. Doesn't it deserve to be taken seriously?
There's a new review that dirac just posted in links. One of the things the reviewer says is that Lacotte's version is "better than the original," a remark I find absurd considering that he hasn't seen the original (and based on what I've seen of Lacotte's other work, I have a tough time swallowing the idea that his best is better than Petipa's worst). The reviewer also claims that Petipa reached his choreographic "acme" with Raymonda. Of course if he happens to like Raymonda, that's fine, but to flat-out state that it's Petipa's best ballet (perhaps it was his most popular in its day?)...well, I don't think I'll be paying much attention to his reviews in the future.
When were they ever --'what they used to be'? I saw them on their first visit to NY in '56 and was fed all the propaganda of how great the Company was ---"Our ballerinas would have been lucky to be in the Bolshoi corps, etc., etc." At the time we had the same comments I am hearing on this thread---the principals are great, But.....I did not see them this season (my one-person strike about the high prices), but in that first NY season there looked like there was a lot of dead-wood in the Company,--is that true today? But I suppose the stars still have it---on one of their visits I saw Vasiliev and Besmertnova (the only role I liked her in) in Spartacus--and I must admit they were fabulous, but the ballet was not to my taste.
I would correct that "better than the original" to probably say "no better than the original" because the Pugni music and the over-the-top Jon Hall/Maria Montez story are common to both. I think that the complaints about campy exoticism, lack of dramatic depth and musical quality would be common to any version using that libretto and score.
As for the choreography, I think that Aspicia's role changed with every ballerina who danced it and many famous ones did. Cyril Beaumont in his "Book of the Ballets" has a chapter on "Fille du Pharaon" with description from various balletomanes of the different ballerinas who danced the role. Carolina Rosati was 36 years old, had a bad foot and was closing out her career when she danced it at her farewell benefit in 1862. She evidently was very grand and impressive in her mime but the dancing wasn't what it was during her 1840's heyday in Paris. Henriette D'Or (Viennese of French extraction) played a princess who loved totally with abandon and she had a brilliant allegro technique. Virginia Zucchi could terrify the viewer with her fear at a stage lion that should have made her laugh. Zucchi wasn't young when she danced in St. Petersburg and her technique wasn't on D'Or's or Kschessinskaya's level. Other ballerinas who danced it were Ekaterina Vazem, Marie S. Petipa (wife of M.P.) and Marie M. Petipa (daughter of M.P. who cut all the classical variations). Kschessinskaya had sole ownership of the role after 1900 and her version would have been the one to survive had it been better notated and kept in the repertory. All of these ballerinas had very different looks and body types and techniques. All of them probably danced their own version of the choreography. Petipa probably wasn't afraid to change or replace some things that were too naive or old-fashioned or didn't reflect his development as a choreographer.
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