News roundup

Company dancer Kit Holder to create new work
09 February 2012
Alexander Campbell to guest in Hobson's Choice
09 February 2012
Five pieces of choreography based on bird movements
27 January 2012
David Bintley wins classical choreography award for Cinderella
26 January 2012
The Lowry’s Youth Dance Ambassadors
12 January 2012
Five on-stage horses
02 December 2011
Barry Wordsworth becomes Music Director Laureate
28 November 2011
1991-2011 Nutcracker posters
21 November 2011
Five onstage Movember moments
18 November 2011
True Light, a new work by Alexander Campkin
09 November 2011
Birmingham Royal Ballet's first audio described performance
16 October 2011
Elmhurst Announces Appointment of New Artistic Director
19 September 2011
Royal Ballet Sinfonia collaboration with Birmingham Cathedral
19 September 2011
Five mighty mice
24 August 2011
Five pieces of art inspired by the Company
29 May 2011
An unusual guide to Coppélia
29 May 2011
Cinderella interactive timeline
18 March 2011
Five splashes of sunshine!
03 March 2011
Fancy Feet: five ballets danced in unusual footwear
10 February 2011
The darker side of Marion Tait
03 November 2010
Nao Sakuma interview
12 October 2010
In the Upper Room gallery
12 October 2010
Jenna Roberts
08 September 2010
Pointes of View
02 September 2010
The Low Down on the Upper Room
02 September 2010
Romeo and Juliet gallery
10 August 2010
Concerto from the wings gallery
15 July 2010
Romeo and Juliet model box gallery
18 June 2010
Jamie Bond interview
28 May 2010
New ideas for Cinderella
14 April 2010
20 year celebrations
15 January 2010
2010 SW tour introductory notes
13 January 2010
2010 N/E tour introductory notes
13 January 2010
Carol-Anne Millar
04 December 2009
The Sugar Plum Fairies part two
02 December 2009
The Sugar Plum Fairies part one
27 November 2009
Dual controls
01 October 2009
We can be heroes
11 September 2009
Christopher Rodgers-Wilson
10 September 2009
E=mc² Costume designs
07 September 2009
Robert Parker
04 September 2009
Quantum Leaps introductory notes
06 August 2009
Cyrano Act I set designs and plot preview
30 July 2009
Video: Nutcracker technical preparations
23 July 2009
Two Pigeons behind-the-scenes feature on BBC Radio WM
18 June 2009
The Two Pigeons introductory notes
01 June 2009
Mozartiana introductory notes
01 June 2009
The Dream introductory notes
02 June 2009
Sir Fred and Mr B.
29 May 2009
David Bintley on the 2009-10 season
11 May 2009
Garry Stewart video interview
01 May 2009
Galanteries Introductory notes
30 April 2009
The Dance House introductory notes
03 April 2009
Elite Syncopations: a history
01 April 2009
Cyrano character guides
13 March 2009
Sylvia Pizzicato rehearsal
09 March 2009
The fruits of a friendship
06 March 2009
China 2009 tour blog
19 February 2009
David Bintley's Sylvia diary
17 February 2009
Enigma Variations Troyte rehearsal video
13 February 2009
Gaylene Cummerfield
06 December 2008
David Bintley on 2008's Claras
14 November 2008
Welcome to the jungle
22 October 2008
David Bintley on the story of Sylvia
22 October 2009
David Bintley on his Sylvia reworking
22 October 2008
Robert Parker on Enigma Variations
22 October 2008
Wolfgang Stollwitzer interview
05 October 2008
The Beasts within
04 October 2008
Lei Zhao
06 September 2008
Kristen McGarrity
06 September 2008
Behind the scenes: Department for Learning
18 August 2008
New faces look back
14 July 2008
Birmingham Royal Ballet on Classic FM
08 July 2008
Notes on Petrushka (full version)
04 July 2008
The history of Le Baiser de la fée
04 July 2008
Notes on Card Game
04 July 2008
Jonathan Payn on BBC Radio York, Spring 2008
18 June 2008
Ambra Vallo on Giselle
13 June 2008
Desmond Kelly
06 June 2008
The Fairy's Kiss
13 May 2008
The history of Card Game
10 May 2008
Petrushka
09 May 2008
Stravinsky: the real deal
03 May 2008
Your personal profile
22 April 2008
Behind-the-scenes: wardrobe
02 April 2008
South-West tour notes
20 March 2008
2008-09 season
20 March 2008
North-East tour notes
19 March 2008
Anniek Soobroy
10 March 2008
Céline Gittens
07 March 2008
Colin Towns Mask Orchestra
14 February 2008
The light fantastic
12 February 2008
Dominic Antonucci
11 February 2008
Japan 2008 desktop wallpaper
11 January 2008
Behind the scenes: Diana Childs
07 December 2007
Fantasy and Reality
01 December 2007
An Entertainment of Genius
01 December 2007
Beauty and the Beast
19 November 2007
Stravinsky autumn 2008
19 September 2007
Angela Paul
09 October 2007
All that jazz
08 October 2007
Cardiff2008
05 October 2007
Enjoy Strictly dancing?
03 October 2007
New arrivals 2007
24 September 2007
Tyrone Singleton
21 September 2007
Edward II
10 August 2007
Strictly dancing
10 August 2007
Take Five costume rehearsals
22 June 2007
Mary Goodhew: the making of a dancer
12 June 2007
Michael O'Hare
01 June 2007
200708 Season
28 March 2007
Carl Davis interview
07 February 2007
Pas de deux - Stravinsky and Balanchine
29 January 2007
Ballet Hoo! aftershow interviews
07 October 2006
The Acrobat and the Ringmaster
20 April 2006
Transaction Charges
14 July 2006

Video galleries

Video: David Bintley on Hobson's Choice
06 February 2012
Video: Hobson's Choice trailer
31 January 2012
Video: Hobson's Choice excerpt
31 January 2012
Video: The Two Pigeons rehearsal
23 January 2012
Video: Beauty and the Beast, Act I pas de deux
01 January 2012
Video: Three Sugar Plum Fairies
20 November 2011
Video: Clara and the Nutcracker Prince in rehearsal
21 November 2011
Video: The Nutcracker trailer
21 November 2011
Video: Five favourites from 2010-11
03 August 2011
Video: Five 2011-12 Birmingham season previews
03 August 2011
Video: The costumes of Coppélia
13 May 2011
Video: Peter Wright's productions of the classics
17 March 2011
Video: Allegri diversi rehearsal
29 October 2010
Video: Romeo and Juliet studio rehearsals
25 June 2010
Video: Theme and Variations studio rehearsals
18 June 2010
Video: Romeo and Juliet studio rehearsals
16 June 2010
Video: Swan Lake studio rehearsals #2
06 May 2010
Video: Brouillards studio rehearsals
01 May 2010
Video: Swan Lake studio rehearsals
28 April 2010
Video: Slaughter on Tenth Avenue studio rehearsals
17 March 2010
Video: Sleeping Beauty rehearsals
17 March 2010
Video: Bluebird studio rehearsals
12 February 2010
Video: Early Aladdin studio rehearsals
04 February 2010
Video: The Nutcracker Act I, studio rehearsal
06 November 2009
Video: Cyrano studio rehearsals
29 October 2009
Video: David Bintley's E=mc² diary
20 August 2009
Video: Carl Davis on the score for Cyrano
06 August 2009
Video: The Nutcracker, studio rehearsals, 2008
29 July 2009
Video: The Nutcracker, technical preparations
23 July 2009
Video: David Bintley and Robert Parker on Cyrano's nose
19 June 2009
Video: Dame Antoinette Sibley and Sir Anthony Dowell taking rehearsals
08 June 2009
Video: The Two Pigeons rehearsal
03 June 2009
Kangaroo Rat rehearsal video
24 February 2009
Chi Cao video interview part two
13 February 2009
Chi Cao video interview
27 January 2009

More online

04 July 2008

All the way through his late 20s and 30s Stravinsky was at work on ballets for Diaghilev's company: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), The Rite of Spring (1913), Chant du rossignal and Pulcinella (1920) and Les Noces (1923).

Thereafter his ballets scores came less frequently, about once a decade, and always for George Balanchine, with whom he had worked for the first time on Diaghilev's 1925 revival of Chant du rossignal. A relationship that continued so long must have had personal groundings, but there was also a close artistic sympathy, based on a shared St Petersburg background and a shared distaste for anything, be it narrative or heedless emotional gesture, to come between technique and expression. That meant a certain amount of revisionism when it came to working on earlier Stravinsky scores (Balanchine's version of The Firebird, for instance, used only half the original music, a suite the composer prepared partly with his purposes in mind), but the works Stravinsky wrote specially for Balanchine were all very much classical ballets from the first.

Two of them have classical subjects: Apollo (1928) and Orpheus (1948): Another, Agon (1957) is entirely abstract. Jeu de cartes, first produced by Balanchine in 1937 as The Card Party, only uses the colour, heraldry and symbolism of the four suits to dress up a game of confrontations, alliances and combats that is quite as depersonalised as that of Agon. There are even musical correspondences, since both works are exuberant displays of creative virtuosity (the notes are on parade as much as the dancers), both flip through diverse sections as through the pages of a book (partly a treatise on instrumentation, partly a dictionary of quotations) and both are punctuated by a bright, fanfaring refrain, this provided a introduction to each of the three 'deals' into which Jeu de cartes is divided, and then a conclusion for the whole piece.

The idea of basing a ballet on a poker game seems to have originated from Stravinsky, who was a keen card player. Cocteau's help was sought -­ and given ­- but apparently discarded, since the eventual scenario is attributed to the composer and M.Malaieff, a friend of his son's.

There are three players (composer, choreographer and scenarist) one of them holding the joker, who, according to the argument printed in the score, 'believes himself invincible because of his ability to become any desired card'.

He arrives in the first deal with an energetic, angular dance abruptly contrasting with the moderate-paced rondo in which it functions as second episode. But the result here is a draw between two of the players. The second deal is dominated by a march with a set of musical variations for the four queens: one for each of them in turn, and then a pas de quatre. The vigorous finale, however, finds them beaten by the four aces on the Joker's side. Then in the third deal the play begins with a waltz-minuet, a parody of parodies in looking back to Ravel, and goes on with a fast battle between spades and hearts where Rossini puts in a surprise appearance. The Joker leads the spades here, but it is the hearts who win.

In Stravinsky's card game the hearts always win. The hero of The Soldiers Tale wins a brief escape from the devil by playing the Queen of Hearts, the same card that 30 years later was to provide a similar respite from hell (similarly illusory) for the hero of The Rake's Progress. And Stravinsky's motto on the score from La Fontaine, about the need for constant vigilance against the forces of evil, is an invitation to accept the ballet as a moral fable.

It is, though an ambiguous one. Stravinsky himself - in this score particularly - had shown his ability to become any desired composer, in that he could imitate anything from Bach to his earlier music. The Joker's pranks are played from within the composer's hand.

John Cranko's version, Card Game, was made for his Stuttgart Ballet in 1965. He simplified the original scenario, creating a dance work filled with comedy. As Stravinsky satirised other composers in his score, so Cranko makes witty references to other ballets, notably the Rose Adagio from The Sleeping Beauty, and also a sly comment upon Balanchine's style. The ballet entered The Royal Ballet repertory on 18 February 1966 with Christopher Gable as the Joker.

PAUL GRIFFITHS

Paul Griffiths writes regularly on music; his book on Stravinsky is published by Dent.

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