Stravinsky - The Firebird / Royal Danish Ballet (Glen Tetley)

Rating:
Summary: The Fire Blight
Review: "The Firebird" is a famous ballet that was first presented in 1910 by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris. The music by Igor Stravinsky is famous. Perhaps you've heard of "The Firebird Suite." It's comprised of selections from the ballet score, and it's often performed by orchestras without the dancing. The story behind the original ballet is of an exotic bird with magical powers, but this 1982 production by The Royal Danish Ballet, with choreography by American Glen Tetley, bears little resemblance to the original other than the name and the music.

The promotional copy on the back of the VCR dust jacket explains the revised story: "The Firebird is kept in an enchanted garden where she is guarded by a Victorian family, lead by a father figure. With the help of her lover, the Firebird liberates herself from the family's strict traditions and bonds, and with each pas de deux she becomes more and more human. As in every fairy tale, good triumphs over evil. Her lover overcomes evil, in the form of the garden's guardian, and is at last reunited with his Firebird."

Glen Tetley said this of his production: "For me the Firebird is a symbol of our innermost dreams and longings for freedom and true love. We have all got a Firebird inside us. At the same time, the Firebird is a mythological figure which represents the struggle between captivity and freedom, between good and evil." The Firebird, who was originally conceived of as being an exotic bird, has now become a completely erotic one.

If you scroll back up to the top of the product page, you can see a picture of the final pose from the ballet. These cover pictures often tell you a lot about the character of a ballet, but in this particular case, the picture is very unrepresentative of the work as a whole. The dancers spend only about five minutes dressed that way. For most of the ballet, the ballerina is dressed in a skin-tight unitard, as are many of the men.

This is a cross-over ballet which includes both classical and modern steps. (The original production of this ballet was choreographed by Michel Fokine, who disliked modern dance.) The ballerina spends a lot of her time here dancing seductively with her lover. When she's not doing that, she's usually writhing around sensuously on the dance floor. If you would like to check out one of Tetley's other works, then see "Field Figures" with Rudolf Nureyev and Deanne Bergsma on "I Am a Dancer" (1972); it begins with the two dancers "fully engaged" on the dance floor. Simply put, Tetley's choreography does not suit my personal tastes because the sexual element is too overt.

Be warned that there are other problems with this tape. There are times when the music is too soft to hear, as other reviewers have complained about previously. The run time of this video is only fifty-five minutes, and I do not consider it to be a good value for the money. For those of you who love classical ballet, I encourage you to visit my member page on Amazon.com by clicking on "rss28" above, where you can find many other worthy ballet titles to spend your money on.

Rating:
Summary: The Fire Blight
Review: "The Firebird" is a famous ballet that was first presented in 1910 by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris. The music by Igor Stravinsky is famous. Perhaps you've heard of "The Firebird Suite." It's comprised of selections from the ballet score, and it's often performed by orchestras without the dancing. The story behind the original ballet is of an exotic bird with magical powers, but this 1982 production by The Royal Danish Ballet, with choreography by American Glen Tetley, bears little resemblance to the original other than the name and the music.

The promotional copy on the back of the VCR dust jacket explains the revised story: "The Firebird is kept in an enchanted garden where she is guarded by a Victorian family, lead by a father figure. With the help of her lover, the Firebird liberates herself from the family's strict traditions and bonds, and with each pas de deux she becomes more and more human. As in every fairy tale, good triumphs over evil. Her lover overcomes evil, in the form of the garden's guardian, and is at last reunited with his Firebird."

Glen Tetley said this of his production: "For me the Firebird is a symbol of our innermost dreams and longings for freedom and true love. We have all got a Firebird inside us. At the same time, the Firebird is a mythological figure which represents the struggle between captivity and freedom, between good and evil." The Firebird, who was originally conceived of as being an exotic bird, has now become a completely erotic one.

If you scroll back up to the top of the product page, you can see a picture of the final pose from the ballet. These cover pictures often tell you a lot about the character of a ballet, but in this particular case, the picture is very unrepresentative of the work as a whole. The dancers spend only about five minutes dressed that way. For most of the ballet, the ballerina is dressed in a skin-tight unitard, as are many of the men.

This is a cross-over ballet which includes both classical and modern steps. (The original production of this ballet was choreographed by Michel Fokine, who disliked modern dance.) The ballerina spends a lot of her time here dancing seductively with her lover. When she's not doing that, she's usually writhing around sensuously on the dance floor. If you would like to check out one of Tetley's other works, then see "Field Figures" with Rudolf Nureyev and Deanne Bergsma on "I Am a Dancer" (1972); it begins with the two dancers "fully engaged" on the dance floor. Simply put, Tetley's choreography does not suit my personal tastes because the sexual element is too overt.

Be warned that there are other problems with this tape. There are times when the music is too soft to hear, as other reviewers have complained about previously. The run time of this video is only fifty-five minutes, and I do not consider it to be a good value for the money. For those of you who love classical ballet, I encourage you to visit my member page on Amazon.com by clicking on "rss28" above, where you can find many other worthy ballet titles to spend your money on.

Rating:
Summary: Firebird
Review: I also had problems with the sound on the Firebird video. I thought it was just my copy but after reading the review prior to mine I realize that it was just poor sound quality.

Rating:
Summary: Not traditional, but a good production all the same.
Review: I think some of the other reviewers were unnecessarily harsh with this video. I too was disappointed that it did not follow the traditional story, but once I got over that I enjoyed it. The dancing was very fine and the choreography fit the music admirably. Neither costumes nor dancing were vulgar as several others claim. The sound quality was not wonderful, but neither was it dreadful.

Rating:
Summary: not the firebird story
Review: It is astonishing that so fanciful and delightful a ballet could be reduced to such a pedestrian spectacle. Not even the music survives intact. Poor placement of the microphones destroyed the continuity of the sound. The choreography owes more to Cirque du Soleil than to Fokine. The principals are certainly flexible; it would have been interesting to see if they could dance. This tape went straight from the VCR to the trash-can. Only a devout masochist would watch it twice.

Rating:
Summary: Unmusical, pedestrian, dreadful
Review: It is astonishing that so fanciful and delightful a ballet could be reduced to such a pedestrian spectacle. Not even the music survives intact. Poor placement of the microphones destroyed the continuity of the sound. The choreography owes more to Cirque du Soleil than to Fokine. The principals are certainly flexible; it would have been interesting to see if they could dance. This tape went straight from the VCR to the trash-can. Only a devout masochist would watch it twice.

Rating:
Summary: not the firebird story
Review: Not only was the quality of the musical reproduction very poor, but this was not the story that was used by Stravinsky in the writing of the music commissioned by Ballanchine. What a disappointment!