| Donald Mahler, Répétiteur, on Gala Performance and The Australian Ballet tribute to Peggy van Praagh: |
The Australian Ballet Gala Performance |
It is strange how, if one has lived long enough, some stories which had begun in the past and having made a full circle reveal certain truths not clear at the beginning. This particular story took 54 years to play out.
In 1956, I left New York and my life there to journey to Toronto where having been helped by Mr. Tudor, I joined the National Ballet of Canada. Coincidently, it was on the very same day Sally Brayley Bliss also joined the company. This was the beginning of five years of joy allied with many tribulations.
Having studied with Margaret Craske at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, I now had to take classes with our Ballet Mistress Betty Oliphant. She professed to teach the Cecchetti method but, her idea of it was largely at variance with what I had learned previously with Miss Craske who after all had written or co-authored the books from which Betty had gleaned whatever knowledge she had. The problem was that she made the work extremely dry, taking out of it all the dance quality which was actually the point of the Cecchetti "method." This did not make me a "happy camper!"
Peggy van Praagh in Gala Performance; Courtesy National Library of Australia |
Just at this moment into all of our lives came a wonderful, vivacious lady - a person of enormous knowledge and full of exciting and encouraging energy. This was Peggy van Praagh. She had been a lead dancer with the Rambert Ballet in the 1930's when Tudor was creating his first great works. She created the roles of "An Episode in his Past" in Lilac Garden, the solo in the first song in Dark Elegies and the Russian Ballerina in Gala Performance among others. In addition she had studied principally and intensively with Margaret Craske at her studio in London and was an authority on Cecchetti...
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| Bill Soleau, Digital Editor, Creates Tudor Performance Video Excerpts for Trust Website! |
William Soleau  | The next phase for the Antony Tudor Ballet Trust website is to add a Media Section where excerpt video recordings of Tudor works can be viewed by the public.
The process of editing what we have available of Tudor's work is quite a daunting task. Starting this past June, I literally had boxes of video tapes of ballet performances that were sometimes 25 years old, and copies of films from the 40's and 50's which had been transferred to tape many years earlier. My first order of business was to digitize all the video tapes so that there would be no further degradation of the images. I was primarily using Adobe Premiere to do the capturing and digitizing of the tapes using various filters and audio tools such as Sound Forge and Sound Soap to get the best quality reproductions possible onto external hard-drives in uncompressed avi format.
Once all the video tapes had been transferred, I felt a bit of relief knowing at least these old tapes of rare and iconic performances were now preserved forever in a digital format. The process then was to create a digital database with copies of DVD's of each tape categorized and properly identified with all the relevant information concerning that particular performance. There are over 60 DVD recordings of 21 unique Tudor ballets that have been preserved so far, as well as archival footage of rehearsals and interviews which had been made over the years.
Click here to view a sneak peek at video excerpts! | Now the task at hand is to create short video excerpts for use on the Tudor website that would allow users to become acquainted with not only his more popular works such as Dark Elegies and Leaves are Fading, but with lesser know ballets such as Fandango, Gala Performance and Offenbach in the Underworld to name a just a few.
I have been editing my own choreography on video for many years, as well as for the John Butler Foundation for which I am the Executive Director, however, what I find particularly challenging about creating a short two or three minute excerpt of a Tudor ballet, is that he was so precise and every movement or gesture had a meaning. There is no fluff, nothing is extraneous, so editing down a longer work into a short excerpt while keeping the integrity of the ballet intact is quite a difficult challenge.
Take Lilac Garden for instance, this is one of my favorite ballets of all time. Several years ago I had the pleasure of watching Donald Mahler rehearse the work on the Richmond Ballet where I was also choreographing at the time. Just watching this ballet over the course of three weeks was truly inspiring. The story is told so clearly and distinctly, one cannot imagine it to be any other way and yet I had to take this classic and distill it down into three minutes of video. Since I have such a deep love for this ballet in particular, I kept on changing and arranging the various clips for nearly eight hours until I was as satisfied as I could be with the end result. This has been a long process but I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I feel so honored to be helping the Antony Tudor Ballet Trust not only preserve these masterworks, but also to allow the dance public to become acquainted with these wonderful ballets, increasing their exposure to dancers and the public alike.
I hope everyone will enjoy this new media section of our site which will available in the near future. This has been total team effort from all the people at the Tudor Trust to bring this next phase of the site online and available to the public. Stay tuned..... |
| LOOK WHO'S INCLUDED IN OUR TUDOR CENTENNIAL BOOK AND DVD... |
Tudor Centennial Book/DVD |
The Antony Tudor Centennial Book and DVD are now completed.
This 137 page hardcover "coffee table" book features an impressive array of black & white photos of Antony Tudor throughout his illustrious career and dozens of written "remembrances" and photos from Tudor dancers and students.
REMEMBRANCES IN CENTENNIAL BOOK INCLUDE THOSE OF:
Pina Bausch, Sylvia Yamada Brown, Yasuko Tokunaga, Roni Mahler, Victoria Leigh, Kirk Peterson, Bonnie Oda Homsey, Mary Ellen Moylan, Dennis Nahat, Lance Westergard, Hilda Morales, Maria Youskevitch, and more!
Please click on the link below to preview and order, and remember, all proceeds go toward an endowed Tudor Scholarship at The Juilliard School! Enjoy!
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| Thank You For Your Comments! |
Tudor at Rehearsal 1961 |
"The work that all of you have done to honor and preserve the Tudor works, and to share with today's generation his genius, along with the overwhelming respect shared by all of us who were fortunate enough to work with him, is amazing and wonderful and beautiful.
I thank you so much for this, and I am eternally grateful to have been a dancer at a time which offered me the incredible opportunity of rehearsing with him and dancing his works, and learning more from him than I can put into words. That work has been such an important part of my continuing life in ballet as a teacher, and it is so very important to fully recognize and honor the life and work of someone who had such a profound influence on so many lives." - Victoria Leigh
"I opened the book to simply have a look and... great feelings and great emotions coming out of it. I cannot wait to have the time to read and look at every moment of those precious documents. As a first impression, I can sincerely congratulate you for this realization and also everybody who was involved in that project. You are an inspiration." - André Laprise, Fonds chorégraphique Fernand Nault
"The Tudor book and DVD arrived and is so beautifully done. Thank you and congratulations to all involved for their hard work on everything!" - Kathleen Moore Tovar
"I love it! What a fabulous job you did!! - Diana Byer, Artistic Director, NY Theatre Ballet
"Thank you and the Tudor Trust for this great gift and honor." - Judith Judson |
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| OCTOBER BLOG PREVIEW FROM CHRISTOPHER PALMER, TUDOR'S NEPHEW |
Susan Bates and Christopher Palmer, Tudor's Niece and Nephew | |
Thanks to the new Tudor website, we learned that the NZ School of Dance was to perform an open rehearsal of Continuo and Lilac Garden in New Zealand.
This was a perfect opportunity for my mother, Tudor's niece Connaught Palmer (née Cook) to finally see some of the great Tudor works at her back door. Mum has recently recovered from a hip replacement and the two and a half hour drive from Whangarei to Auckland with an additional one and a half hour flight from Auckland to Wellington is now within her travel capabilities. (Wellington is NZ's capital, located at the bottom of the North Island).
Adria Rolnik and Tara McBride from The Tudor Trust kindly provided us additional contact information for the NZ School of Dance (Garry Trinder). Garry kindly invited us to the performance and provided all the necessary details to help us arrange our short visit to Wellington.
Mum was an aspiring ballerina in her early years and had frequent correspondence with her Uncle Antony over the years. While she was in the city she also planned to visit with her ballet teacher whom resides in the hills overlooking the Wellington Harbour port, Lola Short-Jenkin. Lola is now 83 years old, and Lola's ballet teacher also in Wellington is now 93 - but now not teaching!
R - Connaught Cook Palmer and her ballet teacher Lola Short-Jenkin in Lola's home in Wellington |
We were informed Senior Repetiteur Donald Mahler from The Tudor Trust was coming to New Zealand to help the students "learn and understand each of the chosen Tudor ballets." This was a real coup for NZ School of Dance to obtain a man of Mahler's calibre. We were also not going to miss this fantastic opportunity.
Garry Trinder and his team at the NZ School of Dance made us feel very welcome when we arrived.
Prior to the performance I secretly had concern about the capacity of the NZ School to perform such works. I knew the complexity of performing Tudor ballets even to an unqualified, unprofessional critic such as myself! I had particular concern with Lilac Garden. Donald Mahler only had a matter of weeks to get these young students to understand the personalities of the chosen characters let alone master the choreography.... however, to great surprise my concern was proved unfounded and the performance of Lilac Garden was superb!
READ CHRIS' FULL BLOG IN THE TRUST'S OCTOBER NEWSLETTER! TARGET PUBLISH DATE: OCTOBER 15, 2010
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| TRUST ARCHIVAL PHOTOS ON FACEBOOK |
Antony Tudor and Maria Tallchief, 1941 - Jacob's Pillow | |
Do you follow us on Facebook? The Antony Tudor Trust Fan Page has been growing daily, and now has close to 350 followers.
On the Fan Page you will find links to news, blogs, Tudor facts, and our beautiful collection of archival photos.
Click here and scroll down to see our latest Facebook posts, photographs and more!
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