Ari

Lynette, the restriction on actors appearing in New York (or at least on Broadway) is imposed by Actors' Equity, not the INS. The union wants to protect the jobs of its own members. Similar restrictions apply to American actors in Britain.

The June 27th performance that Amanda was referring to is probably the matinee. My guess is that the Georgians will perform that evening (NYCB no longer gives Sunday night performances).

The INS has really gotten tough on granting visas since Sept. 11. They do a microscopic examination of each candidate to screen out any possible terrorist connections. It's become a problem for artists in the last year or so. There have been many other instances of dancers, choreographers, and ballet masters whose visas have been delayed.

I think it's the word "museum" that makes some people recoil. When you think of museums you think of old things (dinosaurs?), and everyone's aware that dance has to be of the moment in some way in order to work onstage. "In some way" can — and should — mean the way those in charge of rehearsals communicate the freshness of the ballet to the dancers. But some people think that preserving a ballet negates this possibility. Actually, it was Balanchine himself who helped propagate this idea by saying that future generations wouldn't want to dance his ballets because the dancers would be different ("they'll all have a hole, and they'll be proud of their hole"). As to your expressionistic choreographer, Alexandra, I'd say that his style was too far from the NYCB style to coexist. We've seen this with MacMillan and the Royal; the dancers began dancing Ashton in a MacMillanish sort of way, and that contributed towards the decline of the Ashton repertory. But at the same time, I think it's important for NYCB not to define their kind of ballet too narrowly, and that is I think what Martins has done. He's honed in on one aspect of Balanchine's choreography, distorted it, and claimed it as the company's style. Also, I think it's important for house choreographers to try their wings at approaches different from that of Balanchine, or else the heritage will become oppressive.

For those curious about Don Q, here is a previous thread in which we discussed it: http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...anchine+Quixote

That sounds more like a tribute to Petipa, Ivanov, and the Kirov than Balanchine, Mary.I certainly agree about bringing back the dancers who originated the roles to come back and coach, however. And, as others have said, an effort should be made to restore lost or seldom performed Balanchine ballets to the repertoire — and keep them there. And instead of the no-brainer "national music weeks," we could have programs organized in ways that make us look at Balanchine's work afresh. How about bringing back some old versions of existing ballets, just temporarily, to see how they look today? This would be a way of stimulating discussion of the heritage, and how we want to preserve it. Instead of guest stars, how about guest companies (not including the Georgians — Balanchine was a Petersburger who never set foot in Georgia until 1962). This would be a chance to showcase those fine regional companies who dance Balanchine so well. They wouldn't have to come for a full program, just for individual ballets. This would open New Yorkers' eyes to companies they don't ordinarily get to see and provide NY exposure for these companies (and support the work being done by NYCB alums). And of course, exhibits, panel discussions, talks by former dancers, showings of rare film footage, all that kind of fun stuff . . .

Does the inclusion of Bournonville among the "influences" mean the return of Bournonville Divertissements? And how many excerpts will there be? The last time the company did this — many a long year ago — they left out some diverts.

Actually, dirac, Croce never attacked Barnes in the pages of The New Yorker. Her criticism of his writing appeared in the early days of Ballet Review. The New Yorker may discourage this kind of thing.

Thank you for starting a thread on this interesting article, Mark. A link to it also appears in the Links thread of Monday, June 23, where other links to articles, reviews, and news can also be found.

Grace, another author your mom might like is Chaim Potok. He wrote a number of novels set in the Jewish Hasidic communities of Brooklyn. He was a natural storyteller; as soon as you start to read him, you feel like getting cozy in a nice chair and just settling in. His novels create a warm, positive feeling about the world, while not ignoring the dark side. His best-known book is The Chosen, which is very good, but my favorite is My Name Is Asher Lev, about a young Hasidic boy who has great gifts as a painter.

Have any of you John Thaw fans seen Kavanaugh, QC, which is sometimes shown on public television? He plays a lawyer who frequently takes unpopular (or, at least, low-paying) criminal cases. Each 90-minute episode is a complete story. They vary in quality, but can be very good. One of the best things in it is a colleague of Kavanaugh's (played by Nicholas Jones, brother of Gemma) who is a pompous, ambitious snob. He's the comic relief.

There are, I think, two issues inherent in what GWTW has identified: first, how do you break free of what has gone before if it is all you've ever known, and second, how do you advance into new territory without abandoning the old forever? For instance, if you've been trained in the, say, Cecchetti style (just to give an example), and you want to do something new, but everything in your body is telling you not to do this, how do you move forward? Do you have to abandon Cecchetti altogether in order to do new work? And, if you do, does that mean that you (or your dancers) can't dance in the Ceccheti style any more because they've now trained their bodies to do non-Cecchetti things? The latter is a big issue with several major companies these days, if not all of them. The Royal, for example, abandoned — yes — the Cecchetti style because they found it too restricting; their dancers were having trouble keeping up with what was happening in the rest of the ballet world. But this meant that the old Royal Ballet style, which was based on Cecchetti, was lost, and with it the Ashton style, which was the company's glory. The same issue faces the Kirov, with its Vaganova heritage, and NYCB, with its Balanchine heritage.

You don't need a special TV in order to play DVDs, Ed. Just hook the DVD player up to the set and you're good to go.

Ah, Michael Batchelor. I saw him several times during the Royal's 1981 season in New York and liked him very much. He seemed in the Dowell line — elegant, classical, lyrical. And the most beautiful legs I've ever seen on a male dancer. I was very sorry to hear, not long after these performances, that he decided to quit dancing altogether. And I hadn't realized he died. So sad.

Here are the links to the links, BW. http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...+Ballet+Theatre http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...+Ballet+Theatre

Has your mother read Amy Tan's novels, Grace? They are all about a Chinese-American woman and a Chinese woman who are related (usually mother/daughter but sisters in one book) and who struggle to understand each other. Or rather, the American one learns to come to terms with her Chinese relative, and in the process discovers something about herself. Tan's first book, The Joy Luck Club, is still her best, but the others are enjoyable, too. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden is also fascinating. The title character goes through much tribulation but triumphs in the end.

At the Kennedy Center, ABT is doing the full-length Bayadère. They always do a mixed bill, too, but the ballets aren't announced until very late.

This is opera, but it was funny. The late Princess Diana was visiting New York and went to a performance of the Welsh National Opera at the Broooklyn Academy. The local CBS news anchor said that she attended a performance of Verdi's opera, Flagstaff.

Tales From the Vienna Woods was actually made on von Aroldingen and Jacques d'Amboise, but he got injured shortly before the premiere and Lavery took over. I don't think d'Amboise ever danced it. In performance, though, it's definitely had the flavor of an older woman/younger man episode.

Like many here, I learned to read before entering school, and always had my nose in a book. Whatever reading we did at school was nice, but irrelevant to my own reading activity. Still, I recall reading being encouraged at both elementary schools I attended. BW, I remember those book fairs, too! They were great. And I loved the Scholastic Book Club, which offered cheap paperback books of good quality, including many adult classics. They were, I believe, offered through My Weekly Reader and its successors, a periodical that we received at school. We always had to do book reports. I remember one teacher telling us that the boys had to read more fiction and the girls had to read more non-fiction. In seventh grade I began attending a private school that had a rigorous standard in literature. In seventh grade (that's about age 12 for those of you with a different grading system) we read Julius Caesar and Great Expectations; in 8th, we read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (in up-to-date English), the general prologue to the Canterbury Tales (in the original), The Man Who Would Be King (which we all hated), The Merchant of Venice and Pride and Prejudice. The school's approach to Shakespeare was to take it very slowly, line by line, explaining everything — language, metaphor, themes, etc. That meant we got the most out of it and understood everything. I wonder whether students who weren't introduced to Shakespeare this way have ever really understood him.

Cyd Charisse and Fred Astaire starred together in The Band Wagon and later in Silk Stockings, could they be the films Terriergirl and Pamela were thinking of? She also starred with Kelly in Brigadoon and It's Always Fair Weather.

Watermill, the only article in the Chronicle about this that I can remember stated merely that they were leaving SFB for a smaller company. The dancers declined to state which one.

I liked the Knoeble books, too. One of them was about a president who developed psychological problems while in office and was forced to resign. I remember thinking, a president resigning? How ridiculous. That'll never happen!

That reminds me, another favorite of mine was a German novel called Emil and the Detectives. It was about a group of boys, but there was one girl too, and I was thrilled that the boys all liked her and accepted her as one of themselves. She was a bit tougher than most girls in books at that time. Unfortunately, when Disney made it into a movie, they changed all that, and the girl became a subject of scorn.

My mistake, Raines was indeed Executive Editor, but the arts section was under his bailiwick and it was he who made the decision to focus more attention on popular culture at the expense of high culture. We had a discussion about it last year: http://www.balletalert.com/forum/showthrea...t=Howell+Raines