Jack Reed

Treefrog, you posted just what I wanted to know! Thanks! Question is, how did you find this out? And, I was also confused by the ABT press release at abt.org, thinking - okay, wishing - on the basis of that alone that Ananiashvili might tour with the company and then absent herself from it for whatever reason. Now I see from this forum that she's already absent. It just goes to show ya, yet again, to read Ballet Talk first, when you want to know what's going on! Cliff, thanks for your posting the information in a form more user-friendly than ABT's own flyer. May I just add a footnote to your post for those who haven't seen the flyer, for completeness' sake? While Cornejo's dates are to be determined, his role is determined; he's in the Peasant Pas de Deux.

I'm coming to this late, supportivemom, and my idea is not exactly the kind of suggestion you asked for, but, perhaps seconding a request by your young dancer, sooner or later, as resources and circumstances allow, do look at another performance of a ballet you've - I was going to say, already seen, but I will say, looked at, maybe even a repeat of the same production, by the same company, but with another cast, if you had a pretty good time with it the first time. See what you see the second time. With me, this kind of experience expanded enormously my awareness of performance and allowed me to begin to distinguish between the performance and the ballet. Even the same dancer will perform differently on different nights. If becoming sensitive to these nuances seems a little expensive, okay, sure, wait. But someday, do! And with an expert commentator along! A dancer! I've had the pleasure of that experience only recently. How I envy you! Have fun!

I enjoyed seeing the images, rg, thanks very much for posting them; but, in light of the remark of Markova's you quote, to the effect that Balanchine posed her armlessly for another photo, do we know what relation the pictures you posted have to the actual stage choreography?

I keep everything! Movers love people like me! I keep my dance programs in expanding files, like the center part of an accordion, in chronological order, and when the files fill up, I slip them into sturdy boxes. I find they're pretty complete after about 1971. I would like to have my program for a Ballets Russes Petrushka around 1955 which I remember a little of, but mostly I wish I could remember more of what my programs prove I did watch. Why keep old programs anyway? For me, part of the reason has to do with wanting to repeat the ephemeral experience of dance, one of the arts which no sooner exists than it disappears. Isn't that part of your reason, too? We don't want it to end, we want to hold on to it, don't we? (Doesn't talking about dance try to address a similar need, among others?) So we hold onto the program. For the same reason, I write changes and comments on the cast sheets, to hold onto more of the experience. Sometimes looking up an old program brings a surprise beyond the resonance with memory. Recently I saw Balanchine's Apollo by the Joffrey Ballet at Ravinia, and I remembered liking better one by MCB I had seen there years ago, from a more distant seat at that. I found out their cast had included Franklin Gamero and Ileana Lopez, names which meant nothing to me at the time but which have come to mean more in recent years. And as with any archive, a collection of programs may helpfully answer a factual question, as when Mme. Hermine asked recently what NYCB danced the day Balanchine died, on this thread about what Lincoln Kirstein said then: http://balletalert.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17903 (I could probably mail photocopies of the casting pages, or the whole program, for the NYCB performances on that day, if anyone would like to send me PMs about that, but be advised I have written changes on them.) As to archiving, I think Mel and Alexandra have it right. An old friend, an electronics engineer, says, leave on paper what is on paper. If it's scanned and saved to a hard disk for fast searching, back up to a second hard disk which is used for that only, being unplugged and set aside most of the time. Haven't we all lost some hard disk files, never to read them again, or am I the lucky one? But hard disks might be searched faster than CDs. My friend says the permanence of data on recordable media is controversial, and doesn't compare with paper. Data on unused hard drives seems to stay there, while the dyes which are the basis for optically-recordable media like CD-Rs and DVD-Rs change over time. Leave a CD-R in the glove compartment of a car on a sunny day, where my friend has measured temperatures of 170? F. (77? C.), and you can have a blank disk by evening. This is an extreme example, but it serves to illustrate what can happen in a short time. (Mass-produced CDs and DVDs aren't subject to erasure because they are not recorded individually but molded, much like Lp records were.)

And thank you, hockeyfan, for that account! It went beyond making me want to have been there; reading it, there were moments when I felt I was!

Now nearly anyone in the USA curious about what Elizabeth Streb has been up to can see a little of it. CBS is repeating "The Late Show" with David Letterman from 23rd November. At the end of the program, some of her dancers flatten themselves against a transparent barrier and hurl themselves through some glass panels; in between, they execute some air turns. All this is informed by an esthetic which is, shall we say, perpendicular to my own, so I'm not exactly recommending it, but you might like to pop a tape into the VCR New Year's Eve while you've got more important things to do...

Ballet Chicago Studio Company presented their modestly named Highlights of the Nutcracker, which omits only a couple of numbers from the full score, three times this past weekend, and the surprise for me, considering that BCSC's Artistic Director, Daniel Duell, is a former NYCB dancer from Balanchine's time, is that his production doesn't owe more to Mr. B's than it does. The little angels file about the stage in the beginning of Act II as in Balanchine's version, some of "Dewdrop", and much of the "Sugar Plum" adagio (after the beginning) and the coda are familiar, but Duell is his own man: His biggest innovation is a lovely "Snow Pas De Deux", set to the "Pine Forest" music, with its surging crescendoes, beautifully danced with her simple purity Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon by Kaia Tack (15!) with William Miglino (17). And late in Act II, the "Sugar Plum" Pas De Deux follows the classic four-part pattern. I liked best Alicia Fabry Saturday evening, especially for her consistently strong line and good turnout, and she was superbly partnered by Ariel Cisneros, a guest from the Joffrey Ballet, whose variation included a step I remembered from the rarely seen Balanchine one I saw many years ago when Peter Martins and Violette Verdy opened the annual run of Nutcracker otherwise by Ruth Page at Arie Crown Theatre. Sunday afternoon Fabry was a little less sparkling, and Saturday afternoon Tack (with Miglino's fine partnering again) made this a different, simple pleasure to see. That Ballet Chicago is more school than performing company shows in Duell's imaginative use of his limited resources: The matinee casts of the Dream scene included "Baby Mice", some of whom looked not much larger than real mice and not long out of their diapers, but who could crawl, join hands in lines of wildly uneven height, and jump in ways less coordinated than making the whole proceeding look at some moments like teetering on the brink of chaos, which produced an appropriately frightened effect in this onlooker. Probably owing to the chronic shortage of men in American dance, there were no little boys in the party scene, and in particular, no Fritz, and so it fell to Marie (aka Clara) to horrify the Sugar Plum Fairy and her retinue early in Act II as she retold the battle story, as well as to lead the children's games numbers in the party scene. (I especially liked little Becky Thode in this role.) Nor was there a tall, strong male Mother Ginger for the Polichinelles in Act II. And when Jose Angel Rodriquez took on the role of Nutcracker Prince and defeated the Mouse King (with Marie's help), he wore the Karinska costume for the Stars and Stripes pas de deux. But Duell's stage action, always under Tchaikovsky's direction, never flags or sags, Rodriquez's crisp, controlled energetic dancing as the Soldier Doll in the party scene and as one of the Russian Cossacks in the Act II divertissements was good to see, and Fabry's one elegant Dewdrop was a particularly memorable pleasure, in addition to the two pas de deux. And Margo Ruter's taut phrasing of the "Arabian" (or "Coffee") dance made her performance the most effective of the three we saw, for me.

Friends gave the nearby 57th Street Holiday Inn a rave last June. I haven't been there myself (yet), but getting a room on the back, i.e. away from the heavy traffic on 57th itself, might be worthwhile.

I can't think of any exceptions to the rule, carbro, but I like to give myself an out, in case I need it.

carbro, I'm sorry I posted in such haste that I didn't digest what you said about the silk curtain in Orpheus, which already answered Amy's question authoritatively. The last impression I'd want to give is that I consider your contributions negligible when actually as a rule I feel benefitted from reading them.

It was the rights to the film of Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream that were lost in a poker game, according to Mindy Aloff: http://danceviewtimes.com/dvny/aloff/autumn04/110104.htm I certainly agree with Paul about Denby's writing, except that Denby's concise evocations are too exciting to me to read before bed! Croce too saw Balanchine's ballets as "New York" ballets while still writing for the National Review; she saw his "beehive" ballets as "working" in New York, because New York was a beehive [swarming with activity]. Stravinsky's conducting at NYCB was certainly before my time (in the audience) there, but later on Robert Craft would conduct a premiere. I think this was only for such a special occasion as that, a premiere or maybe an opening night. The effect of the silk curtain in Orpheus was uniquely lovely in my experience, but much of the rest of the ballet was powerful, too. The silk continued to be used at least into the early 80's or so, and probably still is today. I don't remember when I last saw the ballet in the theatre, but I do remember a pretty good television broadcast of it, so you may someday see it yourself, Amy.

Maybe Gottlieb takes for granted that you are seeing the choreography, that it has become familiar; he says, "Since when has Mozartiana been a grin fest?", which reads to me like he assumes some familiarity with it. But we do sometimes speak of a dancer's having shown us something freshly, or a side of something we didn't see before, without our having any sense that the work has been violated or corrupted or whatever. I think I see the ballet "first", but I see it through the dancer's performance, each time. By the way, the link above has a new destination, but this one goes to the original subject of this discussion, and might continue to do so for a while: http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=9848

I was there too, Mme. Hermine. I watched the matinee and evening performances and caught up with SAB on Monday. Your quotation agrees with my memory as far as you go, and I remember a little bit more. Evidently, Robert Gottlieb was also there, and part of what I remember matches up with what he says in his new book, George Balanchine, The Ballet Maker: "Appropriately, it was Lincoln Kirstein who, fifty years earlier, had brought Balanchine to America, who spoke to the audience from the stage, saying to us, ' I don't have to tell you that Mr. B is with Mozart and Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.' If any thought could have helped, it would have been that." I think those who helped many of us the most, though, after they themselves recovered, were "the dear dancers", in Paul Taylor's phrase (about his own dancers, actually), who danced on for a few years more as though Mr. B. were still in the second wing on our left. The other part I remember Kirstein saying from the stage is something to the effect "...that this [gesturing to the stage on either side of him] should continue" but this may have been a little later. The matinee program was Mother Goose, Kammermusik No. 2, and The Four Seasons; in the evening, it was Divertimento No. 15, The Magic Flute, and Symphony in C. What Gottlieb, the insider this time, says explains some of what we saw: "At the matinee, von Aroldingen managed to dance Kammermusik No. 2 - Peter Martins had asked her if she wanted to dance, and she knew that she had to. That evening, Suzanne Farrell went on in Symphony in C. Martins was hardly dancing any longer, most of his time devoted to running the company, but when she asked him to dance with her that night, he readily agreed." What we saw and heard that evening, you may remember, was a half-dozen announced substitutions, but in the second movement of Symphony in C, when the solo oboe began to sing, we saw with the additional effect of surprise that Farrell's partner was Peter Martins, whose appearace had not been announced. (They had, FWIW for the sake of perspective, performed the role together as recently as the preceding Thursday.) So, okay, yeah, it's a slight topic, but it was a momentous occasion, and highly charged emotionally. Later, when that charge had dissipated, someone would wisecrack about what Balanchine was up to where he had gone: "Probably he's driving the angels nuts with all those battements tendus he's demanding!'

My take on Ballet Maker is that Gottlieb came in very late in Balanchine's life, and so he has to rely on the stories told by those who were there earlier. He's read much more widely than I have (even some unpublished manustcripts), and I'm glad to read the telling passages he's chosen. There's enough "new" facts there for my interest, but what really makes his book a good read is Gottlieb's perceptive commentary. Unusually and (I feel) accurately empathic, Gottlieb's seamless narrative gets the reader inside Balanchine's skin to a remarkable degree. Isn't that what a biographer is supposed to do? In so encompassing the life of a complex and sensitive person of such large talent and great accomplishment, this little book is immense. But if it's still not enough, there's a five-page critical appendix on sources, forty-eight named specifically, for further reading. Gottlieb's own Vanity Fair article is not mentioned there. (BTW, I got that issue of the magazine free soon after its publication just by calling and inquiring how to obtain back issues! So if you want to read it, give that a try.) There's so much here, the only other thing I want is a good index, but there's none at all.

Merrill Ashley and Nancy Goldner spoke to the audience for Ballet Chicago's Remembering Mr. B program on 30th October at the Dance Center of Columbia College here. Here are some of their remarks before the performance of Concerto Barocco: Nancy Goldner: Mr. B. did not shy away from humor among the many kinds of ballet he made. Stars and Stripes doesn't make political statements. ... It's about American athleticism... 2/4 march and classical ballet. ... As Merrill says, one musn't go into the region of caricature, it must be pure and with a touch of humor. There was a little scandal in the press about using Sousa. "Outrageous." Balanchine said, "I like Sousa. Sousa makes me feel good." With Bach, in contrast to Sousa, no one got upset. Made in Spring 1941, Concerto Barocco premiered in Rio de Janiero in 1942. It was prepared for a touring company. Balanchine had no permanent company; if he got a job with one, fine, but he spent a lot of time on Broadway and Hollywood. The six-month touring company was concocted by Lincoln Kirstein, and the tour was intended to give Balanchine some time with the same dancers; Kirstein thought Broadway and Hollywood were terrible. It was conceived of as a good-will effort, helped by Nelson Rockefeller, and called American Ballet Caravan. We don't have any diaries of the tour except Kirstein's, about getting stranded in the Andes by a blizzard for two weeks; at one point they had to return to Washington, D.C.; in one country, all the girls under eighteen were arrested, got out of jail, went to the theatre and danced Barocco. Merrill Ashley: They had to dance to wind-up Victrolas. John Taras said Balanchine had a recording with Menuhin. Balanchine liked the tempo, but the Victrola would run down and Taras would have to crank it up again. NG: Contrast the hardships of the time with the purity and eternal values of Concerto Barocco. Choreographers need stability, money, etcetera to do their best work. Or did they? Another ballet from this time is Ballet Imperial. What did choreographers need? MA: Some do their best work first. Jerome Robbins did Fancy Free, Peter Martins did Calcium Light Night, the best they did, I think. Maybe they need hardship. In Concerto Barocco, there are places you hear the rhythm... It starts in fifth, very important for him. Theme and Variations does, too. Arabesque, passe', walks on pointe, but he used them another way, with a jazzy twist sometimes, by making the dancers bend a lot. In Petipa, you stay vertical. Balanchine put in movements and gestures to make dancers bend. He made it more American. NG: In the beginning, you see him playing with tendu. MA: Balanchine had a wonderful sense of humor... It's easier if you have names for the steps, where you stop and go back: The chicken step, the trouble step, lampshades, grasshoppers, butterflies. These names make it more distinctive. Balanchine often goes against the time signature; it creates unusual accents. I don't know any other choreographer before Balanchine who did that. He heard the music differently, and he liked surprise so the audience doesn't know what's coming. In the third movement, the girls arms, when they're hopping on pointe, move, some on three, some on four, and when you get to twelve they're together. NG: He put some things in the early section so he could make a big thing of it later. In the adagio for the man and woman, the ensemble is always extremely involved with what's going on. Balanchine makes a community of dancers on stage. Every time she is lifted, the ensemble responds, four times, more each time. Acknowledging that the ballerina and her cavalier are coming through: "Yes, what you're seeing, we see too. Yes." Small things have significance. Something else: This dance has a seamless feel to it. But right in the middle, Balanchine stops as the man walks off and the two women walk on and they go back to the beginning, and they do this interlinking promenade. It's a disruption. It's not abrupt. I think it's a radical and dangerous moment in the structure. I think the opening measures are repeated and repeated and at this moment he chooses to show it. MA: It was an honor to be in the corps, it used the senior members of the corps, and they never leave the stage; and they don't stand at the side doing nothing but get a tired arm or leg from holding one position [audience chuckles]. You feel special. ... Doing the principal gives a special feeling, a feeling of weightlessness because you're lifted so often. I don't talk about being in heaven very much, but dancing this ballet I felt I was in heaven. I thought I was going to burst out of my skin with pleasure.

On 30th October, Merrill Ashley and Nancy Goldner spoke to the audience for Ballet Chicago's Remembering Mr. B program at the Dance center of Columbia College here before the dancers performed Valse Fantaisie and Concerto Barocco. Here are some of their remarks before the first ballet: Nancy Goldner: Balanchine and music... He was so inspired by music. We connect him with the great composers, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Bach, Brahms. But he favored musique dansant: Faure, Chabrier, Glazunov, Glinka ("minor Russian composers"). Balanchine made eight ballets to Glinka. He used Valse Fantaisie four times, very unusual. The 1967 version will be seen tonight. Merrill Ashley: This was part of Glinkiana. I had just joined NYCB. He chose four senior corps girls for Valse Fantaisie. Usually right and left dance symmetrically but in Valse Fanaisie they all dance on the same leg, not mirror images. It was made for Mimi Paul and John Prinz (Clifford? Clifford). Paul was known as an adagio dancer, so this was a challenge. I still have this image, it was so striking to watch her in this. NG: Did she resist? MA: Maybe silently. Every dancer wanted him to do a ballet on them, they wanted to please him, but this was different from what she had done. It was like me when he made Balade, he wanted me to be lyrical, even at speed. NG: Mimi Paul had a certain kind of intensity. Maybe that she had to struggle made her a little fierce. MA: Notice how much space people cover. Balanchine wanted people to dance in a sweeping way. It's not difficult in technique. If it doesn't have that sweep, the quality of the ballet gets lost.

After generating mixed reviews on both coasts, would the Bolshoi be too tired, bored, or injured to produce good performances here? I went to the 12th November (Gracheva, Skvortsov, Belogolovtsev) and 13th November evening (Antonicheva, Filin, Klevtsov) performances of Raymonda, partly because, while Glazunov isn't Tchaikovsky, it isn't Minkus, either, and partly because I had such a good time watching ABT's Raymonda in New York in June. (The second reason turned out to be silly.) I was impressed right away by the excellence of the Bolshoi orchestra, and only wished it weren't made to sound thick and shrill when loud by the totally unnecessary amplification inflicted on pit orchestras by the Auditorium Theatre in recent years. But when the curtain went up, I was delighted by the excellent strong lighting, which was weaker upstage, giving a very agreeable impression of depth, but making everyone rounded and present, not flattened. The drops reminded me of pastel chalk drawings on dark paper, and the corps tutus in the Dream scene, with their thin layer of gauzy black over white harmonized very well with the drops, making the most handsome stage picture of the evening. (The Dream was lit in blue here, not in the green that annoyed Rita Felciano in the Bay area, according to her review on Dance View Times.) As the evening unfolded, both I and my dancer companion on Saturday prefered the choreography of Acts I and III to most of II: "Broadway," my friend said, although it had its moments. So, could they still dance? I had a better time watching Antonicheva and Filin than Gracheva and Skvortsov; while Gracheva had lovely moments - lots of them, actually, it's such a big role - Antonicheva seemed to me consistently better - clearer, crisper, more enlivened. And Filin's consistently clean line, already noted here, gave his dancing big effect. "He's good!" said my companion. Much of this company, we noticed, looks "loose" in the sense that limbs are not so energized and controlled from the center of the body, but Filin is one of the superb exceptions. And Belogolovtsev seemed to me more effective than Klevtsov in what is, after all, an unsympathetic role. But Krysanova! What vitality! What bouyancy! Luckily she and Antropova as well as Alexandrova danced both evenings. My companion's sharp dancer's eyes noticed Krysanova "rolls through the foot" going on and off pointe, while Antonicheva seemed to move her foot from the ankle. I think this helps to account for this demi's bouyancy. As my companion remarked at the end, "What kind of a company is it where the demis are better than the principals?"

My order's in for Gottlieb's book, too, having used the link at the top of the page. Meanwhile, Roma, have you read the Vanity Fair article on NYCB Gottlieb wrote some years ago? Maybe it has the substance you found the book lacks. As for the Teachout book, I am allowing myself to be guided by Mindy Aloff's review in the 24th October LA Times - your local friendly public library may be able to furnish the article if you don't want to go to the expense of subscribing - and passing it by.

The anecdotes and memories of Balanchine in the book are not only "countless", they're not indexed, either. A pity, because they're not by any means all technical, contrary to what you might expect.

Thanks, flipsy, for sharing your take on the performances. Reading it helped to bring it all back again, with a sense that it really had taken place, and that my mind wasn't playing tricks. Not entirely, anyway. (I willingly submit at least partially to the magic of good dancing.) And I was glad to read a more concise and focused account than my own.

(from Miami Beach, Florida) Attention must be paid to Deanna Seay's performance in Divertimento No. 15 Saturday evening. Her luscious, langorous phrasing should put her behind the music right away, but it never happens: She gives more in the same time - the music is recorded - by spinning out the phrases and linking them into larger, supple, long-arching ones, as though for her, her entire time out from the wing were one phrase. This gives quite different cumulative effect from the crisp and sharp presentation of detail within phrase of Catoya Friday night and Carranza this afternoon, and I feel really fortunate in not having to choose among them - I could have them all. Overall, Saturday's and Sunday's Divertimentos were not the intoxicating experience Friday night's was, but Seay's literally fascinating performance - you could not look away - she seemed to infuse the space around her with some kind of compelling energy - was more than enough compensation. Nothing like second and third looks at The Reassuring Effects of Form and Poetry from better seats to clarify it to some extent at least, though clarification of its motivation in the music still seems to me to be missing. In pre-performance remarks, Edward Villella said McIntyre wanted to make something "uplifting", so maybe I'm listening in the wrong place for motivation. "Uplifting" seems like a stretch to me, but the ballet is certainly upbeat, and watching it - or rather, watching the dancers in it - makes me happy, now that on third viewing I ignore that the music and the ballet proceed along parallel tracks, frequently coordinated to be sure - let Dvorak strike a high or loud chord, and someone's limb or body will go up or out - but without much other causal connection. Nothing looks inevitable, when you've seen it, versus the masterworks opening and closing the program. So, for me, not enough musical motivation and an abundance of busy, fussy movement, all executed, by all casts, superbly, with utter mastery. And from better seats, the dancers look all the better. The audience (which pretty well fills the main floor, BTW, the upstairs seats being invisible from below) doesn't seem to share my reservations, and many people are on their feet to clap at the end. Dancers busy looking fabulous is by no means nothing. The crowd loves Piazzolla Caldera too, especially Saturday night. I enjoyed it even more from a better distance, and although these are ballet dancers, this is not Taylor "lite": The effect is powerful as it goes along, the audience starting to applaud prematurely sometimes, and falling silent - even the matinee crowd - as Taylor moves on, carrying us with him. Through these superb dancers, he has us in his grip, and he does not release us until the end. If it's not quite the equal of his own dancers' effect, when do they come to Miami? Miami should feel grateful, and MCB should feel proud.

(from Miami Beach, Florida) Last night's program in the Jackie Gleason Theatre led off with a performance of one of Balanchine's great masterpieces, Divertimento No. 15, that was excellent right through - flawless and not "perfect," too -"perfect is boring", and there was not a routine or boring moment anywhere in this - this cast shines with genuineness and individuality. It was led by Mary Carmen Catoya, whose flashing quick legs and feet in Variation VI revealed the allegro details almost as though by a stroboscope, and she showed us she can mold and modulate phrase in moderate tempo, too! The end of the variation is choreographed with outstretched arms, palms up, but this gesture seeemed, from her, to be a personal remark: "There you are!" Jennifer Kronenberg's Variation III was distinctively fresh and true at the same time - not idiosyncratic but a re-creation. Renato Penteado's Variation V was superbly clear and masterfully realized. Not to slight the others by mere mention, they were Patricia Delgado, Tricia Albertson, and Katia Carranza. The other two boys were Jeremy Cox and Didier Bramaz, and all five greatly distinguished themselves in the great Andante. If this performance was just slightly subdued compared to some of many years ago, it was neverthelesss vivid and glowing, richly rewarding to see, on such a high level, it left me pleasantly a little unhinged during the intermission: I really wanted to remain in its world awhile longer. Instead, we got Trey McIntyre's new The Reassuring Effects of Form and Poetry as the program resumed. I did not find it reassuring, and a man behind me remarked to his companions afterward that "Something's missing". McIntyre had invented pointlessly and endlessly tricky choreography to Dvorak's direct and straightforwardly flowing e-minor Serenade for Strings. What seemed to me to be missing was motivation deriving in some way from the music, as had been happening for a heavenly near half-hour before intermission. And the new ballet suffered too by another comparison, in that it sometimes lacks Balanchine's "luminous spacing" (Denby's phrase) which gives us "more" by lettting us see the dancers consistently, though I must say I have seen much worse examples of clumping dancers together than I did in this piece. I hope the dancers enjoy the challenge of executing the tricky bits with apparent ease. At least, the way they look in it is always somewhere on the scale from fine to beautiful. The program ended with another masterpiece - or so it looked by that time - from a lesser master, Paul Taylor, Piazzolla Caldera. I guess it's nearly inevitable that when Taylor is danced by dancers other than his, whom as it happens I had seen just a couple of weeks ago, although not in this, the effect is a little less: Taylor's dancers have more powers fully to realize what they do, and they are more into the floor while MCB's ballet dancers are lighter and more held up. Regardless, it was a satisfying performance of a superb piece, and was well led off right at the start by Carlos Guerra, downstage center, whose quality of movement seems to enlarge him and gives what he does throughout much of the increased effectiveness it neeeds. For me, the high point comes in the late section titled "Celos", in which Kronenberg dances with Guerra, Cox, and Luis Serrrano. In this, as in some earlier numbers, one way Taylor's mastery is manifest is by his having dancers crawling on each other or closely hooked together, and yet remaining articulated individuals. No thick clumps here. When I saw Taylor's company dance Piazzolla Caldera near Chicago a few years ago, I wondered whether Edward Villella would consider it for MCB. Thank you, Edward. And for that intoxicating Divertimento No. 15, thank you, God.

"Dance Capital of the World", all right. Reminds me of the cabbie who took me to Balanchine's funeral. We had a friendly argument about whether he had had a hard life or not. The cabbie knew a lot of details. And then there's an association with the man himself, speaking of subways: Seems the duo-pianists Gold and Fizdale, friends of his, were setting out with him for some place in Manhattan and proposed a way to go. "No," he said, "Subway much better." I wonder if Ms. Kreuter knew that. Thanks, Farrell Fan!

Now that you mention it, I do vaguely remember a speech from the apron by a man in a suit holding a microphone, but I'm sure Arpino did not appear at any time. Speeches like the one you mention I tend to let go by me at the time, as they have more or less the opposite effect to, say, an overture, which whets our appetite; Arpino I would more likely have remembered, as he is the person whose judgement, presumably, primarily determines what we see. But I think your being a little uninvolved with the performance points to some weakness in it; ideally, it should grip us by its effects, on its own, without our "help", and I seem to remember such performances by the Joffrey at City Center in New York in the 70's. Imagine, for example, if, at the end, Petrouchka's ghost doesn't just berate the old Charlatan, as he is sometimes called, but, on the last sequence of complaining trumpet notes, turns toward us, and, as the Charlatan steals off in fear, the ghost berates us directly, for thinking he is just a puppet. I don't recall this happening Saturday evening, and I don't recall seeing a policeman being called in earlier, when the crowd is concerned, and being satisfied that it was only a doll after all; the appearance of a cop underlines the seriousness of something that happens. But my memory is not perfect! These are just examples, for me, of a performance of a big, psychologically sprawling work, that had some weak spots.

The best thing about Laurencia pas d'action for me was that the dancers were much less bothered by the pointlessly tricky choreography than I was. Like Treefrog, I really enjoyed how well it was danced. That was the point, I guess. From Treefrog's comments, I would like to have seen Kitten's Apollo, not that Calmels was terrible (I saw the evening performance on the 23rd, Saturday), far from it; his grandly confident way, not to mention his physical stature, suits him to the role, but the whole performance still left a sense of wanting more to happen, as some of us said when talking about the Ravinia run. Victoria Jaiani's Terpsichore was again the closest to a full realization of the role, the others being more careful and held back, especially in contrast to the fullness of Laurencia. I have some quibbles about the lighting, which certainly covered the Auditorium's stage, at least, but went greenish for the Muses' variations, and then lit the four figures on the steps to Mount Olympus at the end. The usual silhouetting better conveys the infinitude of the finale, IMO. Speaking of finales, which is your favorite Apollo, the original, or the modified version? A friend and I decided, I think, the original ending is better but the birth scene is expendible, so we would like to have the stair but skip the brief first scene. As for Petrouchka, I think it's supposed to overflow the stage! Anyway, I thought it was distinguished by Willy Shives's vivid realization of the title role. Maia Wilkins and Brian McSween gave good doll-dance portrayals of the Ballerina and the Blackamoor, but Shives gave his part more of a rag-doll quality; they were all as though "danced" by other forces, rather than, like the classical dancers of Laurencia, showing us their dance, but Shives's "Petrouchka" was all the more hopelessly, desperately pathetic for what he infused it with. For me, then, quite an achievement, and quite an experience, even a haunting one, in keeping with Benois's forecurtain and overall concept. No, we don't identify with any of this! But, if we're susceptible, we may be given pause by it, as the fair crowd is when the "love triangle" erupts from the tent in the fourth tableau. How can these puppets act like this? Or are they just puppets? Hmm... How mysterious... And finally, we can be frightened by it, as the cynical Old Showman is by Petrouchka's ghost at the end. He's already shown the credulous crowd that what they saw struck down is just a puppet! But up there, over the theatre, berating him! How? What? In the theatre, we suspend disbelief sometimes, and we are taken in, in the good sense. Willingly, in my case. And I want to add that I found Leslie Dunner's conducting of the two Stravinsky scores to be effective, especiall by contrast with the screechy recording of Apollo we had at Ravinia.