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Posted by Arul Francis on June 02, 2007 at 18:41:54:
In Reply to: flying "gracefully in the face of tradition" posted by arul francis on June 01, 2007 at 18:28:58:
There is that fine line between being a great artist and being a celebrity. And maybe it is a subjective thing which is in the eye of the beholder, but personally, I find celebrity-chasing such a turnoff. It really sours the whole aesthetic experience for me when I get a sense of "prima donna". I mean, they can still be a great dancer or whatever. Like Baryshnikov and sylvie guillem, I know they are great dancers but I just can't stand to watch them wallow in their narcissism. Whereas Maya Plisetskaya and Uliana Lopatkina, I just love watching them because they are great dancers, but they are also something more. You can feel that they are selfless, that they put their art above them, that they will never ever chase stardom or personal celebrity. I watched the Kirov when they came here to Berkeley and they had two leading dancers, Vishneva and Lopatkina, and you could just tell that Vishneva was a primadonna and totally into fame fame fame, like Valli or Malavika, and it was such a turnoff after a while. Whereas Lopatkina, I mean, you could tell just from her dancing, that she was an artist first and not a celebrity and not into stardom. It really makes such a difference.
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