Afterimages

Done The Tablet Ashton review. What I really should say, but don't (although I hint at it in a final paragraph), is how often now I leave the Opera House without a strong sense of having been nourished by what I've seen. The more I do class, the less I enjoy reviewing in any case. Part of the problem now is that my eye is now drawn to performance details that usually do not - and should not - trouble a reviewer; or, to put it another way, that there are moments of appreciation that just don't make it into words (I can't shape the words and don't really want to).

I need to be a bit careful too about this: the experience of being nourished by a known work is different from the first rush of excitement you get from something new. With a known work you need to do your own work; get to know the detail; develop your own set of personal afterimages; filter and reinterpret th ballet and make it your own. This is damnably hard with much classical dance. It is not as easily available as opera - fewer recordings and DVDs. Take Symphonic Variations. It hasn't been in rep for five years at the ROH. There are 4-5 performances this time. There is no commercial recording. Granada taped it in 1973 - and bootleg copies do the rounds of company rehearsals. So you either attend the Opera House with religious fervour when a work is in rep, seeing every change of cast in the attempt to build up a secure sense of afterimages, or you rely on your own dodgy sense data and instant judgement. And I hate that.

I found an article by Clive Barnes in which he traces the origins of some words used in dance criticism. Interestingly Arlene Croce was not the first writer to speak of 'afterimages'. It was Fernau Hall. Barnes claims for himself the phrase 'plotless ballet' The Barnes piece is on one of those websites that's like a lake in the Burren which disappears when the rain stops. So I've copied it here

I've also noticed that Google has had a trawl through the site (it seems to have done it last Tuesday, on the evidence of the 'cache' page), so that this is no longer part of the web's terra incognita. Still, the whole point of writing is that some human experience should be visible and in shared space, not just private and atomised.

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