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"One is the loneliest number"


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Laura Jacobs writes about New York City Ballet in the current issue of The New Criterion. Janie Taylor, she says

comes wrapped in her own atmosphere [. . .] Bohemian kooky, like the strange girl in every high school, this wayward blonde can launch herself over the top or lose herself in dream. [. . .] Taylor is unquestionably a younger generation ballerina—if she were on Broadway she’d be doing the Mimi role in Rent. There’s an interior swan dive to her dancing that seems a response to, an escape from, postmodern urban stress. She’s the millennial version of “Midnight in Paris.” One wants to see her in anything.

Jacobs is contrarian on Wendy Whelan: "I respect Whelan’s dancing. It is honest, it is unstinting, it is unlike anyone else’s. But its poetic power is small." When Whelan was fresh out of the School of American Ballet, Jacobs writes,

She was longer limbed than the others, and she had a stratospheric lift in her attitude, made possible by her superb turnout. She worked her technique every second, never lost it, and she looked huge, like the biggest, freshest sunflower in the field. A few seasons later, she was thrilling in Union Jack (the regiment MacDonald of Sleat), thinner, but with a hungry, nether energy. And then she got thinner still, like an Egon Schiele, and lost scale too, as if her tight technical focus, in a kind of warp distortion, was sucking her energy, her projection, inward. She didn’t bring air or atmosphere onstage anymore, only her tightly contained self. She’s the most quotidian ballerina in NYCB history.
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I'd not call it an insult, exactly -- Jacobs clearly holds Whelan in qualified esteem -- but a quotidian ballerina lacking in poetry has got big problems.

It could have been worse. Jacobs might have called her 'reliable.' :)

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I've often thought something about Whelan that I think may be similar - it's not that she's quotidian as in reliable or dull, but that she's almost without metaphor. There's something brutally honest about her. You get what you get and it's what you see. Period. She's there in front of you in the here and now, and it's this stage, these steps, this ballet. As she's gotten older she's found more mystery and poetry, but she is a dancer I found easy to respect and admire, but harder to fall for - she wouldn't let me.

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As to Taylor, one wonders when this was written. She's missed an entire year and truly, you can't critique the company at the moment with any reference to her.

With Whelan things are more complicated -- Though not in the Darcy/Kyra generation, she's entered a phase in her career when the physical facility is changing with age -- A critique of Whelan really needs to acknoweldge where she was between three to about seven or eight years ago, that was a distinct period to see her. Jacobs seems only to acknowledge the very young Whelan and then something else as if it were a static quality. But she's changed all along.

Would love to read the article as a whole but won't pay three dollars to do it -- Tant Pis

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Laura Jacobs writes about New York City Ballet :
She’s the most quotidian ballerina in NYCB history.

Well, since the Encarta Dictionary says that "Quotidian" means daily, ordinary, recurring every day, I'd say it was an insult. I hardly agree with that evaluation.

She's far from ordinary.

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Well, since the Encarta Dictionary says that "Quotidian" means daily, ordinary, recurring every day, I'd say it was an insult. I hardly agree with that evaluation.

She's far from ordinary.

Jacobs also says that she respects Whelan's dancing, and that it is honest and unstinting. Those three compliments contextualize her assesment that her dancing is "quotidian," which I take to mean giving the steps full value without adding much on top. You may disagree and find much more in her dancing. (In the relatively few -- 20? -- times I've seen her, I have too). But the fact that you value Whelan's dancing more than Jacobs does not mean that Jacobs means to insult her, any more than your valuing X dancer lower than Jacobs does means that that you intend to insult X dancer.

I think most of us can agree that Whelan isn't likely to be mistaken for anyone else on stage these days, and I can't wait till I see her again. :)

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I asked about "quotidian" because it seemed to me like a definite putdown. Putting her remark into the context of other, nicer things she says about Whelan just confuses me more. Jacobs sounds like a latter-day William F. Buckley, using a ten-dollar word to dazzle the reader and obfuscate the issue, rather than simply writing what she means.

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Actually, now that I've read the entire article, the quotes make sense. The article is not about Whelan or Taylor. It's about Martins and Wheeldon. The context is everything. It's an injustice to the article actually to focus on these few brief comments that are really asides, and that are not at all central to Jacobs' argument. But anyone who has written, I'd say that anyone who has posted on this board even, has experienced that often it's the little piquant example you give that distracts the reader from the main point you are making. And after that, it's off to the races, everyone is chasing that particular hare. Here, where the thread started with only those quotes, we've got an excuse -- as in my previous post.

In fact, I agree almost totally with Jacobs' general points. I.e., as I understand them: that Peter Martins' choreography as it has developed over the years is mostly soulless, repetitive and dull; and that Wheeldon's choraeography has not consistently had much heart or real content either, that it's mostly been a facile surface without much underneath. But that's my paraphrase really. One needs to read Jacobs and unfortunately it isn't easy because you can't get at her article without paying something to the web magazine -- which does seem to inhibit discussion here doesn't it. It's too bad really it's published in only that format. Couldn't something be done to make it available on this thread? Alas, probably not, I know, I know. But doesn't that "stink" as they say? Well, the author or at least the publication does need to be paid. I only hope it's the author and not just the publication.

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Michael, it's true that most of the article concerns Martins and Wheeldon, but Jacob's criticisms, especially of Wheeldon, are the standard ones. So pulled out what I think are more interesting (and beautifully written) comments.

And as for the magazine itself, I'd pay full price for half of it -- the arts coverage.

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