The Dying Swans
I’ve never much cared for the ballet “The Dying Swan.” It’s not really a ballet; more like a short vignette. It was choreographed by Mikhail Fokine near the turn of the century (19th-20th) as a vehicle for international star Anna Pavlova.
The steps are practically non-existent, consisting almost solely of a flurry of the quick movements on pointe known as bourées, meant to create a shimmering, gliding effect. It’s almost all arms, a tour de force for Pavlova, accentuating her ability to convey both swanlike movement and the pathos (close to schmaltz) of the death throes of a beautiful animal.
Despite my relative dislike of the piece, it still is a very precious thing to have one of the few extent films of Pavlova herself doing the dance. Ballet is somewhat of an old-fashioned art form, but fashions change even in ballet, and Pavlova’s century-old style looks a bit odd, somewhat like a silent movie. But it remains evident how very special she was.
Here she is, some time between 1905 (when the dance was choreographed) and 1925 (when she died). Unfortunately—very unfortunately—the film is missing the last few seconds, the actual death of the swan:
Recently I watched a clip of Galina Mezentseva doing the same piece, probably in the 1980s so it represents a modernized version (a couple of steps are added, for example) and with a slower tempo. I have written about this dancer before, here. When I watched her “Dying Swan” I found it to be a revelation, and the ending moved me, especially her absolute stillness in the final moment.
Her upper body seems made of some other material than the rest of us, far more pliant and expressive, and those impossibly long thin arms—even for a dancer—seem almost like wings that might actually be capable of raising her aloft. She is also the most stretched-out, pulled-up dancer I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something [I’ve cued it up to begin at the correct spot]:
The length of this ballet makes me conclude it was written so men could stay awake while attending the ballet.
How long the dancer can sustaining walking on tip of her feet?
Any idea?
video no#2 the starting
I know nothing about ballet other than what I’ve learned here from neo.
But that second video is great. Normally we (or I at least) think of dancing as primarily involving the legs, but she uses her arms at least as much. It’s like she has more than one elbow in each arm.
Opera with a few exceptions leaves me cold; surprisingly (to me at least) ballet touches me. I identify more strongly with the athleticness of the men dancers. Perhaps be ause I am a man and quite capable of seeing the grace of a great basketball player too. The women ballet dancers sometimes touch me and other times seem too fussy in their movements. Both of these renditions touch me perhaps because the subject is made clear by title. It is serious; it is about death and about the final struggle for life that we all face. The bourees, both the fast and the slower, make sense as the high energy background against which the struggle takes place, and the arms express the overt desperation. Thank you Neo.
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Wow!
I’d like to point out that we don’t really know the tempo at which Pavlova was performing, since the movie cameras were still hand cranked – or machine-cranked at various non-standard speeds.
Both dancers are also wearing a lovely full-skirted version of the tutu that is rarely seen nowadays. This amplifies the tremulous tiny steps into a swaying motion. Not that I’d call ballerinas hippy, but there is definitely a graceful feminine sway that is not present in the rigid modern tutu.
Thank you for these interludes of artistic beauty.
We are all looking over our shoulders and bolting our doors here, since the Arab shooter who killed 3 a few days ago is still at large in Tel Aviv…. Sure there’s some schadenfreude watching left-leaning elitist Tel-Avivis face the reality of Arab terror in their own back yards – but it’s the last in a grim series of attacks by “normal” Arab citizens that underscore the “grass roots” nature of Arab hatred.
Thanks again for these posts.