Morris Neighbor

Since Mark Morris moved his company to my neighborhood and I've borrowed his name, I feel obliged to offer a bit of a defense. First of all, there is no evidence that he is hostile to classical ballet. He has, in fact, been commissioned to do works for several ballet companies, including ABT and NYCB. While he joked on film about reading the score, it's worth noting that he can read music while Peter Martins can't, tying Morris more closely to the Balanchine heritage than NYCB's present director. (Unlike Mr. B, however, Morris does not write his own piano reductions of a score for rehearsals. The parallel is far from perfect.) Having seen many of his works, I can assure you that Mortris blends classical and modern techniques (dancers do appear en pointe), creates with a wonderful musicality, and hires, almost exclusively, dancers with classical training. Second, he was asked to create a 7-minute piece d'occasion, not the new Sleeping Beauty. Rehearsal time was limited, performance conditions (from the filmmakers point of view) far from ideal. So Morris made a noble effort. I doubt that he or anyone involved in the program mourns the fact that Non Troppo is unlikely to get a second performance. In addition, I would like to echo the many tributes to the background sections of the mini-bios. The astonishing Alonso, for example, is worth a whole evening of PBS programming, and the way she created world-class dancers in the less-than-promising atmosphere of Castor's Cuba is worth longer study. Similarly, Malakhov's tale reminded me of Alexendra Danilova's memoir of her life before and after the Russian Revolution -- going from the pampered darlings of the Tsar to gifted kids struggling to find food, while rehearsing in unheated studios. An opportunity missed, alas, but like everyone else, I'm delighted that something about dance reached a national audience. Finally, I am distressed to learn that tolerance is viewed exclusively as a concern of "coasters." I had hoped that Matthew Shepherd did not die in vain.

A few thoughts on "Born to Be Wild." As Alexandra noted, the piece was clearly conceived for a broad popular audience. The perfomance highlights -- other than the commissioned Morris piece, of which more later -- come entirely from 19th-century "applause machines." All four men (as many of us have seen) have the style and technique to bring down the house at will, so there's no news here. The film also spends a lot of time trying to undermine the myth that all male dancers are gay. Ethan Stiefel tells us how great it is "to work every day with women in excellent shape"; we also see him riding his Harley and get to meet his father, the ex-cop. ABT's Artistic Director, Kevin MacKenzie, has always exuded masculinity (even in tights), and the five o'clock shadow he sports in the filmed interview only enhances the image. Jacques d'Amboise offers several trenchant comments, though I suspect he was invited as much for his NUU YAHWK accent and famous children (Christopher runs the Pennsylvania Ballet, Charlotte stars in every Broadway musical's second cast, and three other kids have real jobs) as for his dance knowledge. Near the end of the film, we also get to see Jose Manuel Carreno's wife and daughters. Enough already! Mark Morris is openly gay, Angel Corella is ambiguous, and another ABT dancer, Marcelo Gomes, recently came out on the cover of The Advocate, a highly respected gay newsweekly. In short, both gay men and straight men have had and can have wildly succcessful careers in dance; it's a field in which sexual orientation is really, truly irrelevant. That said, I felt the mix of brief biography, performance snippets and rehearsals for the new piece made for good television. Individual sections were certainly brief, but also concise. We got a good sense of the different backgrounds and sensibilities of the four men, a taste of the dancing that has made their reputations, and previews of the climactic work, including some telling insights into how a new dance is created. Nevertheless, I found the Morris piece disappointing, at least as it appeared on television. Rather than staging the dance in a studio with wide-ranging cameras and extensive consultation with the director (as was the case with this film's rehearsal footage and the classic Choreography by Balanchine shows, still available from Nonesuch video) the Morris dance was staged in a theatre before a live audience, with obvious limitations on where and when the cameras could roam, and how many "takes" the director could request. The technical staff was first rate (led by Judy Kinberg, a veteran of Dance in America), but budgetary constraints seem to have kept her and her colleagues from doing their best. Nonetheless, this is a well-paced and engaging video essay in the art of male classical dance. It's a wonderfully entertaining hour that celebrates the art we all love. Show it to your friends (male and female) and try to convert them!

Yes, this is the first airing, at least on American TV, and, as noted above, it runs a bit under an hour.

Another useful reminder: most PBS stations will re-broadcast the show later in the week. In New York, it will be repeated at 2:30 on Sunday afternoon, February 9th. Again, I'd suggest checking with your local PBS station or its web site. Of course, this being PBS, the show will surely re-appear several months down the line, but when is hard to predict.

Having recently purchased a DVD player, I see a great future for this technology in the dance world. There's the obvious "Fast Forward" choice -- an easy way to skip Jordan's longueurs -- and the possibility of multi-lingual soundtracks. Even more interesting is the chance to record the same movement from several perspectives at once. The viewer can choose a point of view, go back and forth, switch point of view at will, and analyze every move. In practice, this would mean that a battery of digital cameras would record the same performance; software would integrate the different views on a single disc. This is not pie-in-the-sky, by the way; the technology exists today. Clearly, this would be vastly superior to the "archival" tapes most ballet companies depend on, which are usually recorded by a single camera in the back of an autorium or in a rehearsal studio -- tapes that require the additional interpretation of a dancer with first-hand knowledge of a work to re-create key details. A well-planned DVD recording could be at least as useful to future Balanchine dancers as written scores are today's Mozart musicians. And digital discs outlast tapes by decades. I hate to see this discussion close on a negative note, since the future of dance film and dance video is very exciting indeed.

While I did not see the Tombeau being discussed here, as a long-time fan of City Ballet I can appreciate the difficulty of encouraging young dancers with amazing technical skills -- young women and men who have won contracts with a world-class company because of those skills -- to look beyond technique to interpretation. To a certain extent, the change is inevitable. I remember a forum in which Alexandra Danilova took questions from the public. I alluded to the many roles in which Madame D. won acclaim for her style and interpretation, rather than physical technique, and asked if she felt the shift to technical skills was undermining the art of dance. She responded with an elaborate Slavic shrug. "The girls today," she said, "they can do things I would never imagine. But if we do not PROgress, we RETROgress." True enough, but somewhere along the line, NYCB really should get dancers to look beyond the steps. I recall another forum in which Kyra Nichols described her experience in learning the title role in Firebird. At an early studio rehearsal, she noticed Maria Tallchief standing in the door. She arranged to meet with Tallchief the following day for detailed coaching, and felt her dancing was immeasurably improved. To be sure, many superb Balanchine dancers are available to the young tyros at SAB and NYCB -- Kay Mazzo, Sean Lavery, Suki Schorer, Victor Casteli and Merrill Ashley in particular -- though the absence of Farrell is clearly felt. Hand-holding sounds demeaning, but Farrell, in her biography, pays enormous tribute to Diana Adams, as a mentor and role model. I can't help wondering how much support these gifted young dancers feel from their elders.

As the first poster to suggest that "Eight Easy Pieces" and "Eight More" are "entertaining minor works," I would like to thank Michael for his provocative comments. As I certainly know, having seen them on many occasions over the past two decades -- they date to 1980 and 1985, respectively -- they are among the most enduring and engaging of Martins' works. This fact alone suggests that they are much more than trivial bagatelles. There's also the fact that Martins has always been drawn to 20th-century music, finding far more choreographic inspiration in Stravinsky, Ives, and Michael Torke than in Schubert or Beethoven. Clearly, this is a choreographer playing his strongest suit, and the results are a winning trick. Now that business about "good for showcasing younger dancers" -- that's not my doing. That's how Martins uses these ballets in his company's repertory. Maybe he underestimates his own creations; if he cast them with senior dancers, he might force all of us to reconsider. Maybe Martins is simply patterning himself on Balanchine, who regularly used the Adagio in Symphony in C -- anything but a trivial bagatelle! -- to introduce young ballerinas. (I was in the house when the 16-year-old Darci Kistler boureed downstage into stardom, following the toe taps of Tanaquil LeClercq, Allegra Kent, Suzanne Farrell, Kay Mazzo, Gelsey Kirkland and others.) Or maybe it's just a convenience in trying to organize such a huge repertory: these pieces for "the kids"; others for the marquee names. NYCB usually performs 40-45 different works in the course of each 13-week season, so scheduling is a massive headache and simplification is always welcome.

The 31st annual Dance on Film Festival wound up today at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theatre, under the joint aegis of the Dance Film Association and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. I caught two of the six internationally flavored programs: the "American Moderns" program, which highlighted the works of Molissa Fenley, Sean Curran, and Elizabeth Streb, and the "Stravinsky/Balanchine," of which more in a moment. The Fenley and Curran films offered illuminating (if conventional) insights into the creation of dance. Streb, on the other hand, is very articulate and offers a wide-ranging rap on the nature of dance, the role of women, and on and on. We also get to meet the dancers willing to take on her very risky manoeuvers. For what it's worth, no one in her company has suffered a serious injury, perhaps due to the intense physical discipline she imposes on her dancers. The much balley-hooed Balanchine/Stravinsky film proved to be a major disappointment. It is, essentially, a detailed scholarly monograph, written by Stephanie Jordan, and published on video. Jordan offers a lot of interesting insights, but they are buried in a deep, deep bed of boring theory. When even the dancers she has engaged to demonstarte her points look sleepy, you know she has gone over the line. The primary focus is certainly important: the shifting and often amazing uses of rhythm by Blanchine and Stravinsky. But after the 7th or 8th demonstration of polyrhythm in Agon, especially the contrast between music and dance counts, I got the message and didn't need anothr 15 or 20 demos fo the same points....

I saw Sylve last night in Symphony in Three Movements, and the biggest compliment I can pay is that I didn't notice her. She is a one-time protegee of Patricia Neary, one of the first dancer/teachers to take the school of Balanchine to Europe, and the student has clearly absorbed all the lessons. Even in this totally ensemble piece (aside from the central "Chinese" pas de deux, the ballet is organized into three principal couples, five solo souples, and 16 women), she danced as if she'd spent her life at SAB, and several years with the parent company as well. She could join the company tomorrow and no one would object!

If all else fails, you can phone your local PBS station (Look for it in the phone book under its call letters, like "WNET" and "KQED.") or check out its own web site (just type the call letters in a Google or Yahoo search). In addition, a tape is likely to be available after the airing, but that will depend on the various copyright restrictions.

Ah, Victoria, you are always one jetee ahead of the rest of us! I just got news of the program from the Morris company (whose splendid home is a few blocks down the street from my apartment) and rushed to post news here. I can add one useful detail: go to www.pbs.org to check the air time on your local station. In the largest markets, it will run Monday, February 3rd at 10:00 PM Eastern & Pacific and 9:00 PM Central time. But each station sets its own schedule. A pedant at heart, I have trouble with the assertion that the current ABT corps of great male dancers is "unprecedented in the history of American ballet" -- hey, the company's own history includes the likes of Nureyev and Massine and only one of the featured stars is American by birth and training -- but press releases are notorious for hyperbole. I would also like to point out that director Judy Kinburg won her Emmies for the legendary "Dance in America" and "Choreography by Balanchine" broadcasts; she is uniquely gifted in bringing dance to TV. I will be watching what promises to be one of the best dance programs on national TV in a decade.

Thank you, Nanatchka, for the post, and thank you, Nancy Davla, for so exquisitely capturing the agony and the ecstasy of the balletomane. At the same time, my pedantic soul must point out that "the moonlight of Serenade" is a relatively modern addition to a ballet created in 1934 and originally performed in white "Greek" tunics. The moody lighting was first seen in 1948, the clouds of blue tulle in 1953 (I rely on Nancy Reynolds' Repertory in Review). In other words, Balanchine conceived this as an abstract piece -- Agon with a more accessible score -- but created, in both cases, a work of haunting and universal impact, no matter how many casts may dance it. So I will, inevitably, compare new casts with favorite casts, until I reach what a philosophy professor called the "Ding an Sich" -- the essence itself. But I don't take a German dictionary to the theatre!

My thanks to Mel for his welcome clarification (I think I got the stripped-down version from Clive Barnes, but it's so easy to blame everything on him) and to Cargill, Leigh, and Alexandra for comments on the mother-in-law question. I only wish I could come up with another topic that brought so many fascinating responses! First of all, let me stress (as I mentioned before) that a great artist can break all the rules and still create a memorable work. Just compare the ballets of Balanchine's acolytes to those of the master. But to keep the conversation going ... What is the role of the score in a narrative ballet? Should a choreographer take an existing musical work (with or without an explicit program) and build on it, or is it better for the dance-maker to create a narrative framework and commission a composer to meet his or her narrative needs? In other words, should a choreographer risk "trivializing a great work of music" [e.g., any dance set to the Mozart Clarinet Concerto], or commissioning what music critics might call "a trivial work"?

Estelle -- I greatly appreciate your comments. Your anecdote brings new hope to widowers of a certain age like me. It is sad to hear, however, that commercialism is raising its ugly head in French broadcasting. I have always admired the willingness of French taxpayers (like most European taxpayers) to support great arts institutions. In America, as you may know, government support of the arts is spotty. On the national level, conservatives (like the present administration) consider this a waste of money and slash, slash, slash. Under Reagan, Federal arts funds were cut nearly 70%. New York State -- where the economically important tourist industry depends heavily on theatre, dance, and museums of every variety -- continues to fund arts at a high level. In fact, over the past 40 years, New York State has devoted more dollars to arts than the federal government, or any other state. But the basic rule in America is, "Whoever gets the most money wins." Classical music has virtually disappeared from the radio because the audience is too old to appeal to advertisers. Cable TV "news" is dominated by extremist idealogues whose shouting matches create much (audience) heat but no (informative) light. Fortunately, we have a few eccentrics who will spend money for reasons other than profit. Lincoln Kirstein -- heir to a department store fortune -- for instance, effectively created the New York City Ballet because he admired Balanchine's work. The future is a bit foggy, but not utterly dark.

As the son of TV professionals, I can add a very important note to the "bleeping" issue. PBS is broadcast on the public airways; the network and all of its affiliates are subject to FCC regulations which, among other things, forbid the use of "seven dirty words." These are common expressions for sex and bodily waste; those who want to guess will get them all. Any station that airs them can have its license revoked, unless it makes extensive and costly legal appeals. Underfunded PBS stations have no stomach for this fight and therefore choose to bleep. HBO, like all cable-only services, is exempt from such regulation, since their programs are distributed not over the public airways but over privately owned cable networks. Anyone who buys a TV can get broadcast stations, so their programs need to be vetted (goes the legal argument), but subscribing to cable is a consumer choice. Adding HBO is an additional choice. Therefore (goes the legal argument) anyone who bought HBO is comfortable with Sarah Jessica Parker spouting four-letter words. The broadcast networks try to push the envelope -- since they are losing adult viewers to more daring cable series -- but with the Republicans in charge (Colin Powell's son is the current Chairman of the FCC) it's a tough fight. As for choosing shows to broadcast -- I believe that part of the decision is left to the Lincoln Center constituents. Lincoln Center Theatre would choose Contact on the basis of its popularity alone, but the fact that more than one touring company is roaming the country right now also played a role. The PBS show gave the touring companies free publicity. At the same time, I must point out that while LCT produces at least five shows a year, this is the first time in many years that I saw one of its productions on PBS. I assume they are not part of the original agreement and took this as a gift. Finally, there is the new dynamic of public broadcasting, whether TV's PBS or radio's NPR, has become more and more obsessed with numbers. Most of the trend has to do with the networks' increasing dependence on "enhanced underwriting" -- ads by another name -- but the rest has to do with the ambitious young executives who lead many public stations. Armed, in most cases with MBA's, they are obsessed with numbers. The goal is the highest ratings possible. It was such an executive, eager to make payments on a million-dollar townhouse, who killed half the classical music programming on our local NPR affiliate, WNYC-FM. It was in this context that the NYCB chose repertory for its "Diamond Project" broadcast. Lincoln Center Theatre chose a proven hit for the same reason. The Metropolitan Opera never chose to telecast Mozart's "Abduction from the Seraglio," let along the Brecht/Weill "Mahagony." TV and radio are all about ratings. I'm delighted to hear that great performers are making their way to the country's rural areas via public broadcasting, conventional repertory or no. But it will never be a path for innovative artists to grow under the present rules.

It's easy to spot the story ballets that crowds love (and I love, too): Giselle, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Balanchine's Midsummer Night's Dream and Nutcracker. But if we're wondering where the future will go, we ought to look at the pattern of these beloved libretti to see what a successful ballet includes -- and what it excludes. Balanchine once once issued a useful ukase: "There are no mothers-in-law in ballet." Journalists call it the "KISS principle" -- Keep It Simple, Stupid. All the ballets I mentioned above have accessible, direct plots, involving the most powerful human emotions: love lost and love redeemed. (Though it's worth noting that Mr. B did manage to compress Shakespeare's entire play, subplots and all, into about 50 minutes of gorgeous classical dance. Not all rules apply to geniuses.) Without doubt the worst exercise in theatrical dance I have ever seen was a "new interpretation" of Romeo and Juliet by an achingly pretentious Frenchman whose name I have blissfully forgotten. Set to a "sound collage" of Prokofiev and acid rock, it was set in an authoritarian future world where sex was forbidden. The young lovers, we were told by a program note, were leaders in a neo-Marxist revolution.... The only reason I came back after intermission was my firm belief that it could not get worse. It did. I was there because a friend was intrigued by the description and the photos, which implied high art with erotic overtones. The work proved how sexless a lot of nudity can be, especially in the absence of art. On the other hand, we have one of the fall's most intriguing Broadway debuts. Twyla Tharp is staging a show based on Billie Joel songs, which have been strung together to create a sort of libretto. A similar effort with ABBA songs has given us Mamma Mia, a less sophisticated effort that's proved enormously popular at the box office. Tharp, who staged another loosely structured, evening-length work on Broadway -- The Catherine Wheel -- has always worked to connect the world of popular music to the world of dance. She failed with Singing in the Rain. but she has the chops (as jazzmen say) to make it work. This may be it, and a new generation of dance dramas could follow. Contact, another Broadway show created by a choreographer (Susan Stroman), ran for nearly three years. And it was just supposed to be an experiment!

It's always difficult to adjust to cast changes in favorite works, especially with a small company of unique dancers, like PTDC. Like you, I have especially fond memories of the company of the mid-70s, when I first began to follow it closely. I even got to see one of Taylor's last peformances, in the evening-length American Genesis on Broadway. Appropriately enough, he played both God and the devil. Some of the departures, of course, were involuntary. Robert Kahn, a leading dancer of that era, was told to stop by his doctor, since the physical demands of the Taylor repertory (e.g., the Cloven Kingdom quintet, of which Kahn was an original member) was doing serious damage to his back. Then there were the victims of AIDS, most egregiously Christopher Gillis. And from the film Dancemaker, I get the impression that Taylor is perceived as less than a benevolent presence by his dancers. He wants to keep them on edge for the best of reasons -- if they get complacent, their performances can get lazy. But firing dancers on what seems to be a whim, or watching promising talents leave in search of "safer" alternatives, is a cost entailed in the process. That said, it's worth noting that some stability has returned in recent years. Looking at my program from March, 2002, I note that nine of 16 company members had been there for at least five years; counting time in Taylor 2, 11 of the 16 had this extended exposure to Taylor's work. The two senior dancers (Patrick Corbin and Lisa Viola) have been with him for more than a decade. I lack the energy to track down all my old programs, but I believe this is the largest group of relative "veterans" since the late '80s. Let's hope a new period of stability is with us, since Corbin and Viola just keep getting better, as do dancers like Richard Chen See and Silvia Nevjinsky, who were quite spectacular last spring. And a note to Ninotchka: I regret overlooking Bettie de Jong, perhaps because (influenced by Taylor's memoir, Private Domain) I see her as PT's alter ego. Her title is "Rehearsal Director," but she actually runs the company on a day-to-day basis. She's kept the repertory in shape year-in and year-out. I've been to a few open rehearsals, and she's the one who goes on stage with a legal-pad full of notes every time. No detail escapes her eye, so every detail is right in the performance. I admired her work on stage and I admire her work behind the scenes even more. When it comes to the impact of changing casts, I remember a seminar I attended many years ago with Alexandra Danilova. Offered the possibility of asking a question, I pointed to the difference between stars of her era -- known for their charisma, wit, and gift for intepretation -- and today's dancers, with their prodigious technical skills, and asked how she felt this change affected the dance. My response was an elaborate Russian shrug: "The girls today, they can do things I never imagined possible. If we do not PRO-gress, we RETRO-gress." It's difficult, to be sure, but I try to follow this advice and not spend too much time looking in the rear-view mirror.

Nanatchka -- I hear you and share your memories. In fact, one of the biggest challenges facing the Taylor company is how to preserve the vast Taylor oeuvre with a relatively small company. The creation of Taylor 2, a smaller secondary company devoted to repertory, is part of the process, as is recording many works on VCR. Part of the process is, alas, dispensing with live music. As a "Friend of Paul Taylor," I've asked for more live music, but the fund-raisers invoke "prohibative costs." Mark Morris manages to find live performers for all of his performances, but this seems to be beyond the Taylor folk, since so many repertory pieces require a full orchestra. Like you, I've found that works absent from the Taylor repertory for several years take on provocative new life when re-staged with completely different casts. To my knowledge, no one involved in the original productions of Snow White, Last Look, or Esplanade is still dancing with the company (though Carolyn Adams, Susannah York, and others show up at rehearsals to coach the new dancers), so we are likely to see a bracing re-imagining of these works. Seeking to replace a single dancer -- say Carolyn Adams in Nightshade -- has proved so difficult that I'm glad to see Paul waiting to hold a re-staging until he can start over with an entirely new cast. The current dancers are dazzling and deserve both challenging roles and rave reviews of their own. I look forward to the spring season which (as usual) includes my birthday. I always know I'll get a treat. -- MN

The Paul Taylor Dance Company has set the repertory for its spring season (March 4 - 16, 2003) at City Center on 55th Street. The company will offer six performances of "Promethean Fire," the piece set to Bach that won accolades at this summer's American Dance Festival, as well as five performances of "New Work (World Premier)." Details to come. There will also be five performances of last year's Great Depression pageant, "Black Thursday," (set to popular music of the 1930's), plus recent hits like "Cascade" (1999, Bach) and "Offenbach Overtures" (1995, Offenbach - who else?). Revivals will include 1983's "Snow White," a whimsical piece to a commissioned score by Donald York, and 1977's "Images," a haunting essay on Debussy. Finally, there are two of Taylor's breathtaking masterpieces: the apocalyptic "Last Look" (1985, Donald York), which George W. Bush and John Ashcroft should be compelled to see, and the exultant "Esplanade" (1975, Bach again), which has won Taylor several million fans. Further info at http://www.paultaylor.org or http://www.citycenter.org. If you want to order tickets, there are many different plans, involving both discounts and surcharges. At this point, call (212) 581-1212 for all the details. Tickets are available now, though a block has been set aside for Taylor supporters. Discounts for buying multiple performances are available by phone or mail, BUT NOT ONLINE. Enjoy!

Diane raises a lot of important questions. I know from my contacts in Frankfurt that the city has many resentments. For instance, before World War II, it was an independent city-state, like Hamburg and Berlin. It even refused to stage a parade for Hitler unless his handlers paid all the expenses.(They refused.)After the war, it expected the same status, but the allied forces, dominated by the US, saw only the massive destruction of the war (inflected by allied forces, led by the US) and chose to make it part of the state of Hesse. Even worse, they chose to place the state capital in the minor spa town of Wiesbaden (undamaged because it's a minor spa town). Given the division of the country, Frankfurt was the rational choice for the "temporary" (almost 50 years) capital, but again it was sent to a minor spa town (Bonn, which at least was the birthpalce of Beethoven). Frankfurt is still Germany's major banking and transportation center, but its political influence remains limited, especially since the restoration of Berlin as the national capital. I have no way of proving this, but I suspect that many Frankfurters see sending Billie back to New York as an appropriate response to being dissed so often by those folks in North America. The Bush Administration may have accelerated the trend by so conspicuously ignoring European opinion in matters of foreign affairs. We all hope that culture is above the political fray, but not all hopes are granted.

Truth to tell, I love the whole parure, but "Rubies" is clearly the work whose energy and originality stand above the rest. "Emeralds" depends a lot on the skill of the principal dancers (I've seen some dreary efforts as Mr. B -- as Merrill Ashley later put it -- "insisted on teaching me to dance slowly." Certainly a dancer of her skill needed "Andante" as well as "Allegro," but that's another topic!) "Diamonds" is delightful, but "Ballet Imperial" is clearly a superior tribute to Petipa.

As one who has visited the German scene as an academic (I once helped run an educational exchange program) and a dance buff, I am grateful for Diane's comment. For reasons both cultural and historical, every German town feels obliged to have its signature arts institution. Don't forget that the modern German state emerged from a mass of duchies and city-states, each of which still has its collective ego. In this context, it is not unsurprising for Frankfurt, a city that resents the treatment it has received from the country at large (the unquestioned financial and transportation center of the country, it lacks both political clout and cultural prestige) to endorse an international artist of Forsythe's stature. Now comes the political dimension, mentioned in Forsythe's letter but overlooked by other commentators. Some 80% of the Forsythe's company's budget came from the taxpayers of Frankfurt. (As a matter of contrast, the New York City Ballet gets a bit more than 10% of its budget from the taxpayers of New York City and New York State.) In short, the life of the company depends on money voted by representatives of the people of Frankfurt, most of whom are mid-level executives of banking corporations. If they've tired of Forsythe, the money will shrink. Frankfurt has never been governed by a prince, but by an elected council, so Forsythe is in a bad situation if he's lost public support. When it comes to American choreographers seeking "freedom" in Europe, the poster boy is Mark Morris, who agreed to succeed Maurice Bejart in Brussels. Funds flowed, the company grew, and his first major work in the new house -- "L'allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato," to Handel -- was a great hit. Management made no effort to limit his work, but disillusion soon set in. The city is very conservative and very Catholic and the critic for its biggest newspaper (Le Soir) attacked Morris (openly gay and agnostic) for his lack of traditional values. Morris left at the end of his contract and settled in Brooklyn, just down the street from my apartment. Forsythe faced a much more cosmopolitan city, but the political concerns were similar. When money is tight, how much do you give to dancers and how much to the police? The Mayor does not want to be seen as a barbarian, but she does have to balance the budget. The question is unknown in America but common in Germany. As for the actual Forsythe statement, which was extensively quoted in today's New York Times, I suspect that we are seeing an inept translation from the incredibly stuffy language of the city's largest newspaper, Die Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, which either received a (bad) translation from the Ballet's press office or (more likely) prepared its own ponderous text from an English-language letter written by Forsythe. As several contributors have noted, good English is widely spoken in a city adjacent to the largest US military base in Europe. In any event, Forsythe may yearn for the freedom (artistic, though not financial) of an independent American choreographer, as opposed to the freedom (economic but not artistic) he has enjoyed in Europe. What will become of his work? This is hard to say. The recent prolonged dispute over the Martha Graham copyrights (a court battle that still continues, though the dancers have won most of the battles) shows how complicated these question can be. Maybe Forsythe wants to see his die simply to avoid this sort of tawdry side show!

"Restraint"? I never knew that word existed on the Internet! ;) Surely the whole object is to find the most rewarding ways to waste time. Enjoy!