602
RO ,BERT GARIS
they immediately become uninteresting. H0nningen as Carmen and
Gelker as Miss Julie are both capable performers who showed every
sign of having given careful thought to characterization. Yet both of
them were thoroughly uninteresting and unconvincing because their
dancing in itself was blandly neutral, with no distinctive expressive
nuance. So you couldn't help noticing that H0nningen was no more a
rowdy French slut than Gelker was a neurotic Swedish aristocrat-both
of them obviously were extremely nice, good-looking, healthy and well–
brought-up girls, but if they had danced more vividly you wouldn't have
noticed that. We don't think of our Jillana as a "great actress-dancer"
but she has that effect (which is all that matters ) when she dances the
Coquette in
Sonnambula
at Lincoln Center, because she performs all her
special contraposto dance movements with bold inflection. This gets her
immediately inside the role and then the acting seems to take care of
itself: Jillana's malicious gestures as she spies on the lovers or as she
whispers to the host have exactly the witty boldness of semi-caricature,
semi-parody that
is
the characterization. Yet Jillana is personally a very
friendly and normal-looking beauty; she puts the characterization over
because she dances the movements sharply.
24
writers appraise-and fondly
remember-a modern literary giant
T.S. ELIOT
THE MAN AND HIS WORK
Edited
by
ALLEN TATE
Appreciative essays, personal r eminis–
cences. poems of tribute. and literary
criticism by
1.
A. Richards. Sir Herbert
Rea d. Ezr a Pound. Stephen Sp end er.
John Crowe Ransom. Conrad Aiken:. C.
Day Lewi s. Fr ank Kermode, Cleanth
Brooks. and others. 16 pages of photos.
$6.50. now at your bookstore
DELACORTE PRESS
A Seymour Lawrence Book
