John Gibson:
The Nurse's Materia Medica - Paperback
2012, ISBN: 9780632069903
"The Stuttgart Story" by John Percival - ephemera"Wizardry in Wuerttemberg"9 x 12 inches, 2 pagesNoted British ballet critic John Percival died June 20, 2012 at his home in London. John w… More...
"The Stuttgart Story" by John Percival - ephemera"Wizardry in Wuerttemberg"9 x 12 inches, 2 pagesNoted British ballet critic John Percival died June 20, 2012 at his home in London. John wrote for Danceviewtimes for several years.John Percival was the main critic for the Times of London for decades. There is a very nice interview with him on Ballet.co.uk.Percival was one of the finest critics writing in recent years. He was a teacher by example. He could pack so much detail into six lines yet still keep the writing individual and vivid. I realized after I'd been writing for a few years that I'd subconsciously been using the structure of his full length reviews in Dance and Dancers, where he was a mainstay until that magazine ceased publication.He had a love of dance as keen as his eye, and an openness to all genres of dance that was rare in those days. He also had a way of being honest about a new struggling choreographer's work without pulverizing him with wit. He remained a strong voice in support of Ashton's work.His skills as a critic did not diminish with age.-----------------------------------John Percival, born March 16 1927, died June 20 2012John Percival, who has died aged 85, was probably the most influential observer of the explosive development of 20th-century British dance.John Percival was born in London on March 16 1927 and educated in Walthamstow. He saw his first ballet when he was 16 and determined to be a critic. On going up to St Catherine's College, Oxford, where he read English, he found like minds in four other undergraduates, who would later also become prominent dance critics.Among them was Clive Barnes, who would go on to write for The New York Times. The pair edited Arabesque, the magazine of the University Ballet Club, and presented a small touring company, which gave Percival a valuable insight into the business end of dance presentation.Both he and Barnes found roles with London County Council, and Percival's day-job remained in London local government until he retired in 1991. In the evenings and at weekends, however, he worked as a freelance critic for various papers, reviewing the early phase of the fast-rising Sadler's Wells Ballet and the many foreign companies visiting London after the war.He and Barnes soon became frequent contributors to the new monthly Dance and Dancers, a magazine which, from 1951 until its closure in 1995, was the major publication of record about the British dance scene. "Always we wanted to encourage people to enjoy dance, and in particular to draw attention to what we especially admired," Percival said.He saw the first performances in Britain of the New York City Ballet, the new French ballet of Roland Petit, the Bolshoi, and the Martha Graham and Pina Bausch contemporary dance troupes, and he took a keen interest in Britain's regional ballet. By 1960 he was an established voice, and in 1964 he was appointed to The Times.During his time there he enthusiastically advocated American modernists such as Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp, and highlighted young British experimentalists such as Jonathan Burrows, Siobhan Davies and Michael Clark. But he became infamous during the hostilities that erupted at the Royal Ballet in the 1970s.A strong admirer of the choreographies of Frederick Ashton, then the Royal Ballet's director, he was much less supportive of the rising Kenneth MacMillan, and when MacMillan succeeded Ashton in 1970, Percival became known inside Covent Garden as "poisonous Perce".Percival maintained that it was only MacMillan's full-evening story ballets that he considered overrated, but lines became bitterly drawn, with Percival and Barnes perceived as having a powerful influence on the American reception of the Royal Ballet's all-important tours there.However, Percival was equally trenchant about MacMillan's successors, considering Anthony Dowell a "disastrous" director in the 1990s. He said he could not help being forthright, as his standards had been formed in the outstandingly fertile period of the Fifties and Sixties.While writing for The Times, Percival became editor of Dance and Dancers in 1981, and was its Chairman and Director in its last years. In 1994 he moved to The Independent as dance critic and became London correspondent for New York's Ballet Review and the online American magazine DanceViewTimes.John Percival wrote books on Nureyev, the choreographers Antony Tudor and John Cranko and the ballerina Marcia Haydee, and published studies on male dancers and new trends in classical and experimental dance, as well as contributing to the International Encyclopedia of Dance and Ballet and to many German dance publications.He was adviser to the Nureyev Foundation, served as President of the Critics' Circle, and appointed MBE in 2002. Apart from dance, he described his pleasures in life as eating well and reading thrillers.He married, first, in 1954, Freda Thorne-Large; and, secondly, in 1972, Judith Cruickshank, who survives him. There were no children.When the young Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West, Percival befriended him and later became his first biographer , revealing the conditions in Soviet Russia from which Nureyev had emerged and illuminating for the public his artistic motivation.As The Times's chief dance critic for more than three decades, Percival also shaped opinion both in Britain and America, wielding considerable clout in the heated debates of the 1970s about performances of the Royal Ballet under its choreographer-director Kenneth MacMillan.Percival made enemies with his robust views about what he saw as the decline in the Covent Garden company. After one particularly hostile review, the Royal Opera House chairman even felt moved to write to The Times to complain about what he saw as a plot to destabilise MacMillan and replace him with Nureyev.--------------------------------Passion Play by John Percival, September 10, 2005 John Percival takes a close look at legendary choreographer John Cranko, whose Onegin runs through September 18 at Houston Ballet.John Cranko's Onegin is the best narrative work of one of ballet's master story-tellers. Born 1927 in Rustenburg, South Africa, Cranko produced his first creation, a personal interpretation of Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale suite, in Cape Town aged 16. Moving to London on the first available ship after World War Two, he danced and made ballets at Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden for both Royal Ballet companies, was soon named resident choreographer and commissioned also by New York City Ballet, Ballet Rambert, the Paris Opéra and La Scala, Milan. Outstanding among his early ballets were Pineapple Poll, the big hit of the Festival of Britain, and the three-act Prince of the Pagodas, for which Benjamin Britten composed the score.It was the success of Pagodas that led the Württemberg Theatre, Stuttgart, to invite Cranko in 1961 as its ballet director. Before his accidental early death in 1973 he transformed Stuttgart Ballet into one of the world's leading companies. Part of his success lay in recruiting and maintaining a team of exceptionally fine dancers, chief among them the great dramatic ballerina Marcia Haydée. She created leading roles in many ballets by Cranko, Kenneth MacMillan, Glen Tetley, Jirì Kylián, Hans van Manen, John Neumeier and Maurice Béjart among others. The diversity implied by that list is something that Cranko always encouraged and developed, for Haydée and the company as a whole. Having, for instance, made a star of her as Juliet, and then invented the tragic character of Tatiana for her in Onegin, he went on to reveal a command of comedy (which she had thought beyond her, but he insisted) in The Taming of the Shrew.The story of Eugene Onegin and his doomed love for Tatiana is one that had long appealed to Cranko - at least since the 1940s when he made the dances for a Sadler's Wells production of Tchaikovsky's opera on that subject. It fitted perfectly with his wish to make highly theatrical ballets about recognizable people, and to please the widest possible public. The opera and the ballet both derive from the verse novel by Russia's great writer, Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), whose varied works have inspired many choreographers from his own time on, among them such successes as The Prisoner of the Caucasus, The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, The Bronze Horseman, Aleko and The Queen of Spades. Before moving to Stuttgart, Cranko had already proposed an Onegin for the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, to star the husband and wife partnership of Ronald Hynd and Annette Page, but the management turned down his idea of having a score adapted from Tchaikovsky's opera. The same objection was raised in Stuttgart when Cranko first suggested Onegin there, but this time he overcame the problem by having less familiar Tchaikovsky music selected and arranged for his purpose by the German composer Kurt-Heinz Stolze.The ballet was admired from its first performances in 1965, but gained immensely from the revisions which Cranko made on reviving it two years later. He deleted an unhelpful prologue and substantially developed the title role for a new interpreter, Heinz Clauss, recruited from the Hamburg Ballet, who proved a worthy match for Haydée's exceptional qualities.Adapted by Cranko from Pushkin's original, the libretto shows Tatiana falling in love at first sight with the dandified poet Onegin, in spite of his amused and condescending manner towards her. Rejected by him, and understandably grief-stricken when Onegin kills her sister's fiancé in a duel, Tatiana marries her admirer Prince Gremin. Years later, Onegin meets her again, and now it is his turn to fall in love and hers to reject him, however sadly.Cranko realized that this story provided vividly dramatic roles for five leading characters, seen against the backdrop of an ensemble that changed in each act: first the peasants who work on the farm of Tatiana's mother, Madame Larina; then the guests at her party; and finally the assembly at Prince Gremin's ball. His handling of the action, however, is surprisingly domestic: even at Madame Larina's party he concentrates on the individuals rather than seizing the opportunities for large-scale dances. And the scenes which end both Act 1 (Tatiana writing her love letter to Onegin) and Act 3 (Onegin's final rejection by Tatiana) never have more than two dancers on stage at once.Onegin himself, Tatiana's sister Olga and her betrothed Lensky all have fine roles for acting, solo dancing and duets. However, it is for Tatiana, inspired by Haydée's supreme artistry, that Cranko primarily made the ballet, creating a truly tragic character of impassioned depth and rare understanding. Even for that unrivaled dance-actress this was a challenging part, and ballerinas all over the world who have had the honor of succeeding her in it have found the role as demanding as it is rewarding.John Percival, an international freelance critic, has been watching dance for more than 60 years and writing about it almost as long.-------------------------------Requiem is a one-act ballet created by Kenneth MacMillan in 1976 for the Stuttgart Ballet. The music is Gabriel Fauré's Requiem (1890). The designer was Yolanda Sonnabend, who had first collaborated with him on 1963's Symphony.Reviewing the Stuttgart premiere for The Times, John Percival rated the piece as MacMillan's best ballet to date, and criticised the Royal Ballet for failing to secure the piece for itself. When the work was staged at Covent Garden in 1983 Percival again praised it, though he was less convinced by the company's dancing, much of which he found too reserved. In The Observer, Jann Parry wrote of, "A beautiful ballet, reminding us that MacMillan can use a corps de ballet as a community rather than a crowd of extras."--------------------------------Cranko also staged the ballet at Stuttgart on 6 November 1960: see John Percival, Theatre in my Blood: A Biography of John Cranko, pp. 130-32. The ballet scored something of a success in Stuttgart (due in part to a major overhaul of the original choreography), Cranko immediately being invited to take up the position of ...----------------------------------Choreography by John Cranko First performance: Stuttgart, Wurttemberg States Theatre (States Theatre Ballet), 16 March 1961, under the title of FamilienAlbum. Dancers and the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Josef Dunnwald. Bibliography: John Percival, Theatre in My Blood: A Biography of John ...-----------------------------------Percival, dance critic for the The Times in London, analyzes Cranko's life and work, from being the youngest choreographer for the Royal Ballet, to his death at the age of forty-five in 1973; utilizes information from family, friends, and co-workers. -------------------------------From the Stuttgart Ballet website: 'John Cranko was born on August 15, 1927 in Rustenburg, South Africa. He received his dance education mainly at the University of Cape Town, where he also choreographed his first ballet to Stravinsky's Suite from The Soldier's Tale. In 1946, he continued his studies at the Sadler's Wells School in London and shortly afterwards became a member of the Sadler's Wells Ballet (subsequently The Royal Ballet). In 1947, Cranko made a sensational choreography to Debussy's Children's Corner for the Sadler's Wells Ballet; from 1949 on he devoted himself exclusively to choreography, producing extremely successful ballets - mostly for the Sadler's Wells Ballet. In 1955, he choreographed La Belle Hélène for the Paris Opera Ballet and in 1957 he created his first full-length ballett, The Prince of the Pagodas, for The Royal Ballet. In 1961, John Cranko was appointed ballet director in Stuttgart by Walter Erich Schaefer, the General Director of the Wuerttemberg State Theatre (today's Stuttgart State Theater). At the beginning of his time in Stuttgart, Cranko created short ballets and gathered together a group of dancers, among whom were Egon Madsen, Richard Cragun, Birgit Keil and, most importantly, a young Brazilian dancer named Marcia Hayd´e who was to become his prime muse and inspiration. The breakthrough for Cranko came in December 1962 with the world premiere of Romeo and Juliet, which was highly praised by critics and audience alike. In Stuttgart Cranko created many small choreographic jewels such as Jeu de cartes and Opus I, as well as his symphonic ballet Initials R.B.M.E., but it was with his dramatic story ballets such as Onegin, The Taming of the Shrew, Carmen, Po´me de l'Extase and Traces that Cranko secured his place in the pantheon of great choreographers. In addition, he encouraged young dancers in his company - including Jiri Kylian and John Neumeier - to try their hand at choreography. Cranko's gift for nuanced story-telling, clear dramatic structure and his exquisite mastery of the art of the pas de deux conquered New York audiences, 3, Great Britain: Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1970. Paperback. Small mark to edge. For this second edition the book has been revised throughout. Sixty-three new drugs have been added, and a number of little used or superseded drugs removed. 248 pp.(We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions ,and all types of Academic Literature.) . 2nd Edition. Leatherette. Very Good. 12mo - over 6¾" - 7¾" tall. Paperback., Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1970, 3<
