Those Dying Swans
“The Dying Swan” is not my favorite dance – not by a longshot. It’s a schmaltzy little number that was choreographed by Fokine a hundred and twenty years ago as a concert piece to display the expressive talents of Anna Pavlova, who is said to have danced it four thousand times. Very little happens with the feet except the fast little fluttery movements on pointe known as bourrées; the dance is pretty much all arms, head, and face. Technically it’s simple, although not everyone does the same exact movements. Artistically it’s difficult.
Here’s the extraordinary Galina Ulanova performing it at the age of 46 in 1956. Note in particular the part that starts around 2:18 and goes to about 2:37, where Ulanova does something I haven’t seen in other videos of the dance: her swan struggles mightily to fly, flails and fails, and then a wild panic sets in. I’ve never seen anyone else convey that degree of animal fear in the role. And at the end, Ulanova doesn’t just gracefully fold herself down like so many other dancers. She really seems to die:
Here’s Pavlova, the original, in a blurry movie. It’s a very precious record of her style:
Here’s Plisetskaya of the magical arms, in 1959:
This last video is of Natalia Osipova from a few years ago. It holds no interest for me, although I am sure her technical skill is superlative. But there is not a single moment where she convinces me that she might be a swan rather than a ballet dancer emoting and making pretty pictures:
Seriously OT: I have been listening to a number of Victor David Hansen webcasts on current affairs lately. Then I accidentally opened one that was about a year old, and I noticed that in it he seemed to speak much more fluently, and made few mistakes in grammar or word choice compared to the current ones!
Needless to say this is concerning. And it made me wonder… could an AI model represent the analysis patterns of a speaker / thinker, if trained on the body of his works?! Could an AI represent treasured thinkers?! Are you listening, Elon?
1. Pavlova is more melodramatic (as perhaps should be expected given the era in which she performed…) she seems to fail and drop to the ground several times. The more modern dancers do a sort of kneeling motion instead.
2. The tutus make a real difference, creating a feathery, tremulous impression by amplifying the microsteps. It looks like Pavlova’s is layered gauze, but not pleated as tightly as a modern tutu. It may be the photography but it looks like the edges have been frayed or softened – or maybe the lack of ruching lets it hang freely at the edges.
Osipova is really hampered by a fender-like tutu that moves like a heavy poodle skirt. Unflattering, and it telegraphs in a distracting way when she starts and stops the microsteps. Like other modern dancers she does not flow well from one pose/variation to another. The tutu emphasizes that.
3. There are some nice touches in the choreography… some swanlike sideways bobbing of the head that Ulanova does in a naturalistically awkward way, Plisetskaya a bit more gracefully.
And they both conveyed the realization that the flock has abandoned them, each in their own, moving way. That narrative was completely missing for me in Osipova’s performance – she just repeated her unspecific reaching out to the horizon… with her back towards us.
Thanks Neo!
I never had this kind of appreciation of ballet before this
So, another Dance has begun. US Naval and US AF planes hit the Houthi in Yemen. ABOUT TIME!