Elite Syncopations (ballet)

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Elite Syncopations
Choreographer Kenneth MacMillan
Music Scott Joplin
Based onMusic by Scott Joplin
Premiere7 October 1974
The Royal Opera House
Original ballet company The Royal Ballet
Genre Neoclassical ballet
Typecomic ballet

Elite Syncopations is a one-act ballet created in 1974 by Kenneth MacMillan for The Royal Ballet. [1]

Contents

Background and productions

The piece was premiered by The Royal Ballet on 7 October 1974 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with costume designs by Ian Spurling, lighting designs by John B. Read and staging by Julie Lincoln. The ballet is for 12 dancers. It is described as having an up-beat, hip swinging aura of spontaneity, with 'easygoing rhythms'. The band, also 12-strong, sit casually at the back of the stage playing while the dancers perform in front of them, adding to the 1920s party-like atmosphere. [1]

A BBC film of Elite Syncopations was also made in 1975 and danced by The Royal Ballet's original cast, in Battersea's Big Top. [1] The piece entered the repertory of Birmingham Royal Ballet on 10 February 1978 at Sadler's Wells Theatre. [2]

Music

The 'Classic' ragtime composers represented in the production are: Scott Joplin, Scott Hayden, Joseph F. Lamb and James Scott and Robert Hampton. The centrepiece was composed by Scott Joplin. [3] Joplin also wrote a ballet called The Ragtime Dance (performed in 1899) as well as two operas, only one of which survived, called 'Treemonisha' (1902).

MacMillan added some additional ragtime tunes to complete his ballet: Paul Pratt's Hot-house Rag and James Scott's Calliope Rag for piano; Joseph Francis Lamb's Ragtime Nightingale orchestra and Alaskan Rag for piano; Max Morath's The Golden Hours for piano; Donald Ashwander's Friday Night and Robert Hampton's Cataract Rag for orchestra.

The full score list is:

Original cast

The ballet was premiered in Covent Garden on 7 October 1974: The principal roles were danced by:

Reception

Initial reception was mixed. The reviewers in The Times and The Observer found the piece vulgar and unstylish, [4] but Dance and Dancers thought it "cheerfully diverting" with "some of the Royal Ballet’s best and most distinctive principals displaying new facets of their artistry in the choreography MacMillan devised for them." [1] When the piece was presented in New York in 1976, The New York Times gave it enthusiastic praise, [1] and it has remained popular with audiences. [5] In 2003 DanceView commented, "Elite's humor is broad and the choreography simple minded. However, the work offered opportunities for dancers to let loose". [5]

Related Research Articles

Ragtime – also spelled rag-time or rag time – is a musical style that enjoyed its peak popularity between 1895 and 1919. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm.

Scott Joplin African-American composer, musician, and pianist

Scott Joplin was an African-American composer and pianist. Joplin is also known as the "King of Ragtime" because of the fame achieved for his ragtime compositions, music that was born out of the African-American community. During his brief career, he wrote over 100 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first and most popular pieces, the "Maple Leaf Rag", became ragtime's first and most influential hit, and has been recognized as the archetypal rag.

Joseph Lamb (composer) American composer of ragtime music

Joseph Francis Lamb was an American composer of ragtime music. Lamb, of Irish descent, was the only non-African American of the "Big Three" composers of classical ragtime, the other two being Scott Joplin and James Scott. The ragtime of Joseph Lamb ranges from standard popular fare to complex and highly engaging. His use of long phrases was influenced by classical works he had learned from his sister and others while growing up, but his sense of structure was potentially derived from his study of Joplin's piano rags. By the time he added some polish to his later works in the 1950s, Lamb had mastered the classic rag genre in a way that almost no other composer was able to approach at that time, and continued to play it passably as well, as evidenced by at least two separate recordings done in his home, as well as a few recorded interviews.

Maple Leaf Rag Ragtime composition for piano by Scott Joplin

The "Maple Leaf Rag" is an early ragtime musical composition for piano composed by Scott Joplin. It was one of Joplin's early works, and became the model for ragtime compositions by subsequent composers. It is one of the most famous of all ragtime pieces. As a result, Joplin became dubbed the "King of Ragtime" by his contemporaries. The piece gave Joplin a steady if unspectacular income for the rest of his life.

Charles L. Johnson Musical artist

Charles Leslie Johnson was an American composer of ragtime and popular music. He was born in Kansas City, Kansas, died in Kansas City, Missouri, and lived his entire life in those two cities. He published over 300 songs in his life, nearly 40 of them ragtime compositions such as "Doc Brown’s Cakewalk", "Dill Pickles", "Apple Jack ", and "Snookums Rag". His best selling piece, a sentimental ballad called "Sweet and Low", sold over a million copies. Experts believe that had Johnson lived and worked in New York, he would be included alongside Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb as one of the greatest ragtime composers. He wrote more than the other three combined and exemplified a greater range of talent, composing waltzes, tangos, cakewalks, marches, novelty pieces, and other types of music popular at that time.

Classic rag is the style of ragtime composition pioneered by Scott Joplin and the Missouri school of ragtime composers. These compositions were first considered "classic" by Joplin's publisher, John Stark, as a way to distinguish them from what he considered the "common" rags of other publishers. Today, any composition fitting this particular ragtime structural form is considered classic rag.

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Elite Syncopations

"Elite Syncopations" is a 1902 ragtime piano composition by American composer Scott Joplin, originally published in 1903 by John Stark & Son. One of his more popular works, it is one of a handful of Joplin's rags for which he recorded a piano roll. The cover of the original sheet music prominently features a well-dressed man and lady sitting on a treble staff, looking down upon a cherub clutching a cymbal in each hand, which reflects plainly the title of the piece. In 1974, the British Royal Ballet, under director Kenneth MacMillan, created the ballet Elite Syncopations based on tunes by Joplin and other composers of the era.

<i>This Is Ragtime Now!</i> 1964 studio album by Hank Jones

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They All Played Ragtime is a non-fiction book by journalist Rudi Blesh and author Harriet Janis, originally published by Grove Press in 1950. It was subsequently reissued in 1959, 1966, and 1971 by Oak Publications, and in 2007 by Nelson Press. According to the Preface to the Fourth Edition, by Rudi Blesh, the book was conceived and researched largely by Harriet Janis, who died in 1963. It is generally recognized as the pioneering and first serious book to document the history and major composers of ragtime in America, and has been referred to as The Bible of Ragtime.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Elite Syncopations" Archived 2012-05-05 at the Wayback Machine , Kenneth McMillan website, retrieved 22 March 2015
  2. "Elite Syncopations" Archived 2006-03-19 at the Wayback Machine , Birmingham Royal Ballet, retrieved 22 March 2015
  3. "Elite Syncopations" Archived 2012-04-02 at the Wayback Machine , Royal Opera House retrieved 22 March 2015
  4. Percival, John. "Great Scott! Another Joplin ballet", The Times, 8 October 1974, p. 13
  5. 1 2 Felciano, Rita. "San Francisco Ballet", DanceView 20.4 (Autumn 2003), pp. 29–33