Saturday Night Cinema: Swan Lake (1967)

“At the end of Swan Lake, when she left the stage
in her great white tutu
I would have followed her to the end of the world.”

Rudolf Nureyev

And something a little different for tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema selection, Swan Lake. Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev star in this Vienna Stage Ballet production of the Tchaikovsky ballet, with John Lanchbery conducting the Vienna Symphony. The partnership of Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn (which lasted almost two decades) became one of the most famous in all of ballet. Together they were the perfect partnership, the most sensational partnership ever – extraordinary talent, passion and genius. Bother were megastars and both gave something to other, there was a very special chemistry between them and it was magic. Everything they did together was electrifying – “two great artists sparking off each other.”

The pair became an international sensation, each dancer pushing the other to their best performances. They were most noted for their classical performances in works such as Le Corsaire Pas de Deux, Les Sylphides, La Bayadère, Swan Lake, and Raymonda, in which Nureyev sometimes adapted choreographies specifically to showcase their talents.

Our culture does not produce a Callas, Sinatra or Nureyev, everyone is so busy racing to the bottom, no one is reaching for the stars. Let this be a reminder …..

https://youtu.be/TrODO0RfEtM

Before a properly exultant audience, a properly exultant Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev led the Royal Ballet to the triumphant finale of its ninth New York season, at the Metropolitan Opera House last night.

Rudolf Nureyev  was one of the first ballet dancers, and by far the best known, to perform with contemporary dance companies, being particularly successful in capturing the character and weight of the Revivalist in Graham’s Appalachian Spring and the slippery smoothness of the dances Murray Louis made for him.

Even so, some of his admirers (Ashton and Ninette de Valois among them) thought him so incomparable in the classics that they regretted the time he devoted to contemporary dance.

The immense airborne thrust of his Bayadre solos, the utter commitment of his Albrecht in Giselle, his ardour and melancholy in Swan Lake, his vivacity and fun in Don Quixote are among examples giving strength to this argument. If forced to choose just one dance to represent the unique excellence of Nureyev’s dancing, I would name the Prince’s solo from the last act of The Sleeping Beauty, where the superb execution of each step, the flow of each section and the way they were linked in a continuous climactic progress, reached its peak in the unhurried but steadily strengthening final mange of turning leaps around the stage, until he ended perfectly still and poised in a triumphant pose embodying the ideal fifth position which his teacher Pushkin had urged.

In some of his other roles, the improvement in male dancing that was started by his example means that others can now sometimes vie with his former easy supremacy, but in that solo I have yet to see anyone come near to matching him.

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Halal Bacon

4 years ago

mohamed was born jew if you believe DNA, and kind of a flake/crakhead/warlord

~CNN Braking News

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Michelle

4 years ago

There wont be any of this 100 years after a sharia world and it will never have existed as all music and dance is almost non-existent under islam (dervishes aside). The radio/TV will be like that in SA koranic rants and wailing camels. No wonder they are so fanatical as death is a release from islamic life.

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Daezy

4 years ago

The majesty of the Nureyev & Fonteyn partnership makes me weep. It’s beauty, emotion and their bond are just breathtaking, and I can never get enough of this majestic pair. So deep!

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Curt

4 years ago

THATS THE MOST RACIST COMMENTARY IVE EVER SEEN HERE! BE MORE OPEN-MINDED!

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Canadian Patriot

4 years ago

I am not sure what your point(e) is (Sorry for the pun.) Is it analysis or criticism? Are you criticizing ballet because it was developed by whites? Are you criticizing Ms. Copeland because she is a black woman of exceptional talent in a dance form that you seem to think is owned by whites? To stereotype individuals with black skin as “earthy, physical, and sensual” and so on does a huge disservice to black people. I suggest that humanity requires a balance between the spirit and the body which are inextricably linked. No race has a monopoly on such matters.Is it OK to insist that black people should not drive cars because whites invented them? Or that black musicians should not use trumpets because they were invented by whites? The idea is absurd.

Ballet began as court entertainment in the Italian Renaissance. It developed in France, also as court entertainment, and eventually popularized and spread to other European cities including London,
Copenhagen and Vienna. Only at the end of the 19th Century did Russia enter the picture. At that point St. Petersburg became the most important center for ballet. Fact: Ballet is always evolving due to cultural influences. It has incorporated jazz (black origins) influence, Hindu, tales of exile, Cold War memoirs, and ice skating performances. Fact: Ballet dancing is one of the shortest, least-reliable, most demanding, and most accident-prone careers because it is so physically demanding. I don’t understand why you want to put Misty
Copeland into a small black box. Her talent and achievement are bigger than that. She belongs where she wants to be and where her talent is accepted. You are correct: she can never BE ballet. No one can. She can be and is a magnificent ballet dancer. It might be a worthwhile idea to get yourself out of the ghetto and the mental constraints that you have put on yourself. You don’t know her as a person as you claim, and no one expects you to give your life for her. What ridiculous posturing.

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Canadian Patriot

4 years ago

Reply to  Canadian Patriot

It’s OK, you can stop shouting at me with your capital letters. I am paying attention. Are you not saying that blacks have to stay on the plantation, and whites…where? My white grandmother lived in a sod house on the Saskatchewan prairie where the temperature dropped to -40 degrees sometimes in the winter. Is that earthy enough for you? We have photographs here in Alberta of white women pulling plows because their husbands were too poor to buy horses and they had to break the land to validate their homesteads. Is that earthy enough? I don’t care that banjos came from Africa. If I want to play one, I will play it. If you think I will look foolish because I am white, too bad for you. The door swings both ways. No race owns anything. Your ideas are proof positive that white people do not own racism, my friend. Your attitude puts yourself and other black people in straitjackets they don’t deserve. Racism by anyone is just ugly. And it can’t be said often enough.

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Andycane

4 years ago

Our culture wouldn’t fully appreciate a great star if it were produced, and therein lies the tragedy.

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