sandik

I like that better than students being described as consumers. Yes, it does! I didn't follow from the beginning, which is why I've got a little cluster of replies here. I don't mind regional variations, like the difference between standing in line in Seattle and standing on line in New York City. My particular grump is the redundant phrase "The reason is because ..." How about either "The reason is ..." or "It works this way because ..." Ah, that was refreshing!

I'm not sure if this usage comes from the online/search world, but it occurs to me that it reinforces the main topic (that is Batman or the NBA) by using it as a kind of base word for all the other variations. Written like this (Batman: the Movie, Batman: the Graphic Novel, Batman: the Soundtrack), in an alphabetized list, or in a set of results from a search, all these entries would appear together. Yes, the colon creates a false sense of importance in the phrase (like a little fanfare as you enter the room), but it does have a possibly unintended, but useful result.

Perhaps I'm living in an anomaly, but the Starbucks shops here still serve short drinks. I had one yesterday. I do agree, though, about the dwindling of small sizes. The smallest drink at McDonalds seems to be a 'regular,' and the next size up is 'large.' And the 'medium' at Jack in the Box (they don't seem to have a small, except for children) seemed to be around 20 ounces.

KUOW broke this story here Marcie Sillman is an excellent interviewer, and I'm glad she got the scoop. But what do you think this will do to the balance of women in the company?

Me too! I saw the film, and there were a couple of Gorey-esque moments in it, as well as some lovely shadow puppet work in the final credits.

I much appreciate this observation, miliosr. You are absolutely right about the claustrophobic feel of the video. It brings a hallucinatory quality of the relationships being depicted -- and their tension, their sense of entrapment and inevitability and, ultimately, their tragedy. An interesting observation -- my experience watching several different productions of this work over the years is that it works best when the cast does not emphasize their technical facility. In the tape of the original cast, Limon does not have much flexibility in extension -- those grand battement to second really hit the top of his range, and the jumps in second land with a thump, adding to the sense of frustration in the moment. He made excellent use of his own physicality in creating the role. More contemporary dancers, whose technique might be much more extensive and whose range of movement might be much more fluid, do not make the same impression as their legs sail up and their jumps land with an easy bounce. There's further discussion about this work here in a conversation about the Limon company and their celebration of Limon's centennial year.

Oh, many, many thanks! This is such a treat!

Both Francia Russell and Kent Stowell worked on this production, and Russell's contributions (most of the white acts) are pretty authentic. I like it, all told -- there are some moments that make me say "what?," but that's true of almost every production. Stowell has given the principals the space to make their characters legible, and Russell gets lovely performances out of the corps.

I didn't get to any of the Nut this year -- the snow and family schedules got in the way. Did anyone here see the production, and if so, how were they doing?

LiLing's post made me smile -- I've done some research about the effect of the Dance Touring Program (part of the NEA in the late 60s and 70s) on the development of dance in the US and it was quite phenomenal. The original impetus was primarily to get dance and dancers out of New York and into communities across the US. At that point, Hurok and other promoters were still pretty active in big cities, so the focus was pointed at towns and cities. Organizations in the community made the application to the NEA, so it started with an active local partner that usually already had a connection to their audiences. The presenters were encouraged to offer a residency, with teaching, open rehearsals, lecture-demonstrations or other events as well as straight performances, so the communities and the artists developed actual relationships. Often the local presenters were colleges, sometimes with a small dance program, so these residencies really strengthened those departments. In other cases, the DTP events became an anchor for a larger performing arts series and aided the growth of regional arts presenters. Artistically, there were several unforseen consequences. Until that time, most choreographers worked on a project to project basis, bringing their dancers together to prepare for a short performance season, but losing contact with them for a chunk of the year. With the longer contracts that the DTP made possible, choreographers could make a longer commitment to their dancers -- the residency format gave them the opportunity to make a new dance on the road while they were performing an existing program, and to maintain a larger repertory than before. And the dancers, who had spent a chunk of their time in NYC waiting tables and taking class between gigs, were finally working enough weeks as dancers to qualify for unemployment on their off weeks -- for many of them, it was the first time in their careers that they made most of their income as dancers. There were some less than cheerful byproducts of the system, which I won't go into right now, but overall it was arguably the most successful program the Endowment ran. Whenever I hear people claim that the government can't really help anyone, I always think of the DTP as an excellent counterexample.

A teacher of mine used to joke that the resume of a bad partner might read "formerly with Allied Van Lines..."

Oh, and I'm sorry to have missed it. What perfect casting! I was talking with a friend about Kitt and her place in the development of powerful sexual females. I thought it was appropriate that Madonna recorded a cover of "Santa Baby" in the 1980s (for an AIDS charity) -- each one of them a very telling performance. Madonna is nothing if not ironical -- singing the song and commenting on its contents at the same time. Kitt's version is much more forthright, dealing with the realities of her world.

Yes, they do seem to be quite frugal in their scheduling, don't they? If I see that Roy Orbison special one more time, I'm going to reconsider my membership fees.

I know that the company had some last minute discounted tickets for the 18th and 19th matinees, but I think that was due to school groups canceling because of the weather -- we do snow very, very poorly here in the Northwest, and the unexpected ice and snow is keeping most of us at home. I'm curious to know if other parts of the country have had similar weather-related troubles with arts attendance. I know that the Northwest is not the only part of the continent to have unusually powerful weather coming through.

I'm glad that you mentioned this talk -- I was at the event and was so thrilled to hear him talk about his life in dance. He'd brought an album of photographs as well, including some of him as a young dancer in England. They were as charming as the man himself.

Wow -- keeping fingers crossed for a tour!! In the meantime, many thanks for the great report.

I missed this and went looking for a repeat. No luck, but did find this description here They refer to this as "THC Classroom," so perhaps it's designed to run without commercials.

There's a great little video about Ailey and the company on this website -- well worth the watching.

Unfortunately, this is the question that the company has been grappling with ever since Limon died. The dance world lost JL realtively early -- well before any other the major ballet choreographers whose works have now passed into various forms of trusts. In some ways, representatives of the other artists whose deaths came after Limon's learned from the difficulties that group had with defining themselves, their mission and their resources.

It sounds quite juicy, but I'll have to look out for it -- my local library doesn't have it yet. I did see, though, while I was searching their catalog, that he wrote a book on the blacklist -- looks interesting as well!

And now week two casting is posted here Imler, Gilbreath, Rausch, Lowenberg, and Dec dance Flora, and Nakamura, Korbes, Rausch, and Chapman dance Clara.

I understand that Walter Terry had a similarly optimistic viewpoint when he was walking into the theater -- even if the first act was a total dud, supposedly he still believed that the second act could redeem all. A great quality in a critic.

I'll have to look for this -- I'm very fond of his films, but didn't know he was such a harsh individual. I'm almost done with The Wisdom of Whores, by Elisabeth Pisani, about epidemiology and AIDS research. Full of information, and very engaging. Great writing about medical research for those of us who are not in the sciences.

I know what you mean -- I used to have to beg videotape from colleagues if I needed to do some research on an artist or a company that was coming to my town -- now I can spend that time trolling YouTube!

I agree with Helene on this, but wanted to add a caveat -- while the histories of prominent dancers and dance institutions are at least partially documented, the real dearth lies on the local/regional level. Small ensembles and local schools are an integral part of the larger dance community, and are often underrepresented in available archives. For a concrete example -- the Ballet Russe companies have been the topic of many historical projects, but the schools and companies their alumni founded are not documented nearly as well.