#léonide massine

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[musicalfilm]

moira shearer as “olympia” in the tales of hoffmann (1951)

[chaptertwo-thepacnw]

[scherzokinn]

BALLETS RUSSES MEME DUMP

but it's just my best ones i have more but im lazy rn

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[art-dance-ballet]

*

Starring * Moira Shearer * Robert Helpmann * Léonide Massine * Robert Rounseville * Pamela Brown * Ludmilla Tchérina * Ann Ayars Cinematography Christopher Challis* Edited by Reginald Mills

Music by Jacques Offenbach

THE TALES OF HOFFMANN (1951) dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

[kayflapper]

Alexandra Danilova and Léonide Massine as Can-Can Dancers in "La Boutique Fantasque" (1919.)

[desimonewayland]

Robert Delaunay

Football

Watercolor on paper, 1917-18, as part of a ballet decor project with Léonid Massine director of the Ballets russes.

[noneorother]

Season 2 is the tales of Crowley Hoffmann, *part 2*

I guess this has to be a series now too. Part 1 l Part 2

I'm doing a series on the (frankly) astounding amount of parallels between the Powell & Pressburger movie The Tales of Hoffmann and S2 of Good Omens. I really recommend part 1 first. 7. Green is evil So if you've wondered to yourself why Hell has changed so much, colour-wise in S2 vs S1, I have come with answers! Here's a fun comparison between the two hells :

Now let's looks at the the evil admin exchange in the Tales off Hoffmann :

(The Tales of Hoffmann, Lindorf takes the contract in The Automaton Ball)

Whenever something evil happens in "The automaton ball" sequence, the light changes to this sickly green. Colour is THE important symbolism in Hoffmann, so now we know green is evil. 8. All the main characters are present and accounted for I've already covered in part 1 how Crowley is Hoffmann, Aziraphale is Stella, and alluded to the fact that Lindorf (main bad guy) is the Metatron. Here's a more comprehensive list of all the characters, because they're all there. N.B. The same actors play multiple roles in The Tales of Hoffmann. Gabriel is Schlemil/Spalanzani/Franz Léonide Massine actually plays 3 characters in the movie : Franz, a housekeeper who sings the only funny song in the opera:

He also plays Spalanzani in Venice : A high ranking double agent who's been crossed by the bad guy Lindorf before, and who is currently hanging around Stella in Venice. He also plays Schlemil in The Automaton Ball, who helped make Stella the automaton and helps put on the ball. He strikes a deal with Lindorf to sell Stella.

Muriel is the assistant Andreas

Andreas doesn't have much of a role in the story, they are mostly worry free and eager to please. They are there to be bribed by Lindorf to give him the key to Stella's dressing room, and the note for Hoffmann. I say they because even though this role is played by a man, this getup is EXTREMELY ambiguous for 1950s England.

Now look at the last scene of both the movie and S2 of good omens.

Shax is Nicklaus

In both casting and character, Shax is obviously Nicklaus. The all red outfit is a dead giveaway, but even the haircut in hell is similar. Nicklaus is Hoffmann's buddy, but they don't actually move the story forward or help him much. The fact that they're everywhere in the story but not really DOING much except casting doubt is pretty telling.

Beelzebub is the muse

Now we get into characters where's it's kind of important know know both the opera and the movie. The only character we seem to be missing in the movie version is Beez, but don't worry, I've got another male character now usually played by a woman dressed in Charlie Chaplin drag and their name is "The Muse". Basically, the muse in the opera is there to make sure Hoffmann does his job (being a poet) and isn't interested in the girl anymore (Stella).

Jacques Offenbach: The Tales of Hoffmann, The Muse & Lindorf, S2E6 Beelzebub

The Metatron is Lindorf

Lindorf is a major bad guy in both, but movie Lindorf has had all of his lines removed at the beginning, so he's the bad guy in the sense that he's doing all these bad things, and is the antagonist in every minisode and in real life. But we never really find out why. His evil genius speech is cut out of the movie, but is very much there in the opera. He's a shapeshifter, and takes on the form of 4 characters in the movie, all of whom hurt Hoffmann by ultimately taking Stella away from him.

Here's Lindorf spying on Hoffmann in the prologue. And the reveal at the end when he comes to take Stella to "the temple of the gods"...

Here are his other three forms in the minisodes. By the way his name in the last one, I shit you not, is DR.MIRACLE. In each minisode he plays a pivotal role in removing Stella from Hoffmann, first by legal contract, second by convincing Stella to double-cross him for a shiny reward, and third by trapping Stella in a time loop and then straight up killing her and sending her to heaven (she gets resurrected no worries).

So my question for now is : Does the plot of season 2 ALSO follow the movie?

_____________________________________

Obviously, there's always more. Next post it's analysis time baby....

[scherzokinn]

As a Ballets Russes fan, I can confirm Léonide Massine is the scrungliest, littlest guy™:

even in portraits by contemporary artists, he's scrungly~~~

Besides, he choregraphed arguably the scrungliest character in ballet history, the cubist Picasso horse from Parade :

Irene Handl (Brief Encounter, I'm All Right Jack, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes)—It's Britain, any time between 1940 and 1980. There's a charlady, or a tealady, or a Woman Who Does, or a housekeeper with a cockney accent. Sometimes she's aggrieved at everything The Hero does, sometimes she's blithely unaware of how she's holding up The Plot, mostly she just wants a nice cup of tea, or to make everyone else a nice cup of tea. That's Irene Handl. Plus, true fact, besides being everyone's granny on screen, she was President of the Lewisham Elvis Presley Fanclub. Rock'n'roll!

Leonide Massine (The Red Shoes)—I don't know much about ballet, but I know there are positions. And whichever positions he's doing is probably called Le Scrunge. That plus his bedraggled wig and costume?

This is round 1 of the contest. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. If you're confused on what a scrungle is, or any of the rules of the contest, click here.

[additional submitted propaganda + scrungly videos under the cut]

Irene Handl:

Leonide Massine:

[milksockets]

'léonide massine, as the poet and tamara toumanova in berlioz ballet symphonie fantastique' in the best of beaton - cecil beaton (1968)

[shakespearenews]

I believe the first ballet to A Midsummer Night’s Dream was Marius Petipa’s version for the Maryinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg in 1876. It was this that Michel Fokine in 1906 adapted and amended for students of the Imperial School. The cast included Vaslav Nijinsky, and it proved one of the very early works of Fokine to capture the attention of the impresario Serge Diaghilev. Fokine later reworked the score into Les Elfes for his own company at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1924. In 1933 Col. W. de Basil’s Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo staged David Lichine’s first ballet, Nocturne, using not Mendelssohn but Rameau music, with Alexandra Danilova as Titania, Léonide Massine as Oberon, and Lichine himself as Puck.

But the four most interesting versions for me are George Balanchine’s for New York City Ballet in 1962, Frederick Ashton’s for Britain’s Royal Ballet in 1964, John Neumeier’s for the Hamburg Ballet in 1977, and Christopher Wheeldon’s for the Colorado Ballet in 2000. All, except for the Ashton, are full-evening ballets. Wheeldon’s version not unexpectedly owes something to both Ashton and Balanchine. Neumeier’s version—which is by far the most adventurous and original and incorporates modern music by György Ligeti—has also been staged by the Paris Opera Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet.

[the-cricket-chirps]

Henri Matisse Self-portrait, 1918

Matisse with Léonide Massine, preparing the ballet ‘Le chant du Rossignol’

ca. 1920

[my18thcenturysource]

OF COURSE!

This is from The American Ballet Theatre production of Gaîté Parisienne from 1988.

Also: the level of ICONS in that photo.

And here some MORE photos from his production:

[lillamolntuss]

you look like vaslav nijinsky

you look like léonide massine

you look like serge lifar

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]