zerbinetta

I'm not saying that we haven't had any good works since Mozartiana, but when Chris Wheeldon, whose creative well is a mile wide and an inch deep, is feted as ballet's great choreographer of the 21st century, we're not doing so great.

Ooh, good one, carbro!

Oh Meh.

We pray to you.

Or not.

Inspiring!

And it's almost half a haiku.

The use of "ironic" what what is meant is "coincidental".

"no problem".

Inevitably there will be one.

There are some ifs here. Can you do your exchanges now? If your exchanges are for what will be likely to be well sold performances and you can exchange now, I'd go for that.

If you can't exchange until the time when you can make your own, it's probably better to wait.

As far as casting changes, normally Ananiashvili and Vishneva will stay with the dates announced, injury excepted.The same sort of goes for Corella. These three have engagements in between. This is probably also true of Bolle.

I'm surprised Mayor Bloomberg hasn't already weighed in on this, Paul. He cares about the state of cultural entities in the city and has been personally generous with donations.

It's a relief that they have turned to Michael Kaiser. He's been there and done that. He also might be able to get Placido Domingo to help. Domingo got his start at NYCO.

This topic actually started several days ago under Paris Opera Ballet. Any way these two threads could merge?

I took the "financial deficit" argument to be one last plea from Mortier to make this project he'd worked so hard on for almost a year work.

He may not have turned out to be a good fit but he may also have energized a company that has been positively morbid since the departure of Paul Kellogg.

Other great artists figure out how to 'make do' (and sometimes very well) when they don't get all the money they demand, and I needn't name them.

It was not a case of Mortier "demanding" the money; he had been promised the 60 million by the board and that was among the terms of his contract. The board then decided he'd have to make do with 33 million, barely enough to cover a typical season at NYCO. The board broke the contract, not Mortier.

If they weren't going to get behind him and finance the deal he was promised, what was the point of his coming?

Susan Baker (Board Chairman) is quoted as saying the old style NYCO is "financially broken". It will take a major fundraising General/Artisitic Director the likes of Sills or Domingo to bail out the company. This is not a commodity thick on the ground, especially in these times.

I fear for the future of NYCO.

It was incredible in the theater. We will see it again next week when we can pay less attention to the titles and focus where we wish.

I've just used the handy ballettalk Amazon link to order the DVD of the original Sellers production. I am a Sellers fan and perhaps seeing it the way he imagined when he was writing it would address those issues which bother bart.

Well, it is live if you see it at the initial broadcast, just at one remove. Any glitches are there for all the world to see. I don't know if they "fix" these later or even if there have been any.

So did you go to Dr A?

Thanks rg.

I myself wouldn't be interested in the Met subscriptions ($149.99 a year, $14.99 a month, with a discount for Met donors above a certain level). But individual performances (reservable for up to 30 days) at 3.99 and 4.99 (for HDLive performances) are extremely reasonable ... and possibly addictive.

By the way, the Met's third HD-Live performance of the season -- Dr. Atomic -- will be playing in theaters around the world (and live at Lincoln Center) tomorrow afternoon starting 1 p.m. E.S.T.

Perhaps addictive enough to lead to a subscription, which makes this a truly clever offer. The level for Met donors is failry low ($250 perhaps), if I remember the e-mails, and would include a subscription to Opera News, among other perks.

The Dr A is a wow. Amazing Alan Gilbert and Gerald Finley; slyly funny Eric Owens. How it will translate to the screen is another question but the Met HDs I've seen so far work really well on the big screen. It will be interesting to see how well they translate to the small screen.

The works I remember enjoying, back when, were November Steps, a Zen-ish piece and Symphony in D, which was quite funny. Sorry I missed the Bach. I don't know that he's done it lately but perhaps it's one of those pieces that needs that one special dancer. Whose music was Clear Lake?

I like and agree with your "shrewd trendy" designation but it's a mighty tenacious trend after 40 years.

I also thought the relationship between the two men was of a more physically intimate nature than that of most brothers, But this had no effect on my enjoyment (lack of) of the piece.

Perhaps if I'd seen it with Sibley, Dowell and Eagling I would have enjoyed it more. For sure I'd have enjoyed it more. But I suspect I would have been yearning to see the same threesome in Monotones II.

If you put Paul Taylor and Mark Morris in a blender, set it to liquefy and remove the genius, you'd likely come up with a recipe for Lar Lubovitch.

He's musical; once in a while he's funny. He chooses the music well. He's tasteful. But the vocabulary is so limited, the choices so predictable, the emotional subtext so banal. He's likable, never pretentious or manipulative. But there's no variety, no brilliance. It's something of a mystery to me why the group is celebrating its Fortieth Anniversary Season. Apparently to fairly well sold houses.

Thursday night's program started with Concerto Six Twenty Two, set to the great Mozart Clarinet Concerto. I remember liking the adagio section (duet for two men) twenty years ago. Maybe it was better danced than last night or maybe I've wearied of Lubovitch since. A very communal piece with lots of swirling and undulating lines of dancers generally set on a diagonal stage right to left. And then some more of same. And then some more ..

The second piece was North Star, set to music of the same title by Philip Glass. I had seen this before. Unfortunately I didn't realize this until halfway through the first section. Lubovitch has choreographed the percussive baseline and only rarely acknowledges the melodic line laid over. Because the baseline is so predictable the choreography follows suit. More undulating lines, right to left, sometimes with dancers going into deep plie. Right about here I had a flashback to being on a sailboat in BVI when a zesty storm broke out and the horizon disappeard. Same queasy feeling in the tummy. Now and then someone would be hoiked up on the shoulders of others. Then again. Then I would say to myself "Isn't it about time for yet another hoiking?" and sure enough here it comes.

The reasons I attended at all involved the third piece. I was assured by a friend (part of the greater critical world of dance) that Lubovitch's later works were more varied and interesting. And Rasta Thomas was in it. It's titled Little Rhapsodies and set to Schumann's Symphonic Etudes. Choreographed 2007. Not a bad piece but a total riff on Robbins' Other Dances and set on three men, piano onstage. Rasta was worth the ticket. Such a commanding, intense, powerful dancer. Also notable was Atilla Joey Csiki for his classic line and lyricism.

I opted out of Dvorak Serenade as it is also on the Saturday night program, for which I unaccountably also have tickets. Whether I will be able to report on this or not will depend on my degree of masochism when the moment arrives.

While Tudor cheats by using Pachelbel's Canon, this was a winning lyrical piece for three couples.

I don't follow. How does Tudor cheat by using Pachelbel's Canon? Because the Canon is so familiar?

I don't know that it was so "familiar" 32 years ago when it was choreographed.

What happened to Leonid's post? It was interesting & insightful (as usual) and made a valid point for MacMillan admirers. I read it just before heading out to Dr Atomic and intended to answer it later. But it's vanished!

Leonid's point, and I hope I'm getting it right, was that MacMillan was merely reflecting the situation of women in the stories depicted in his ballets. With all due respect, I say perhaps. The choice of stories was MacMillan's and he inevitably chose those with "Woman (although generally Girl) who disrupts lives" themes and we are left feeling both sorry for her and feeling that she got what she "deserved". She should have behaved herself; she should have listened to her menfolk. This makes me uncomfortable.

Surely strong women or tragic women of the 20th Century could have appealed to him. Simone Weill (great pas de deux material with Camus), Sylvia Plath (pas de deux husband, editor, etc). MacMillan choreographed during the height of the feminist movement which was ripe with interesting women or, if he wanted to do costume feminism, Abigail Adams, Simone de Beauvoir, Emma Goldman are all promising choreographic possibilities.

But these were never his choices. MacMillan's chose to portray women the way he saw women and I find it repellent.

But then perhaps the pro and con MacMillan factors should just agree to disagree.

Was Hightower not American Indian? Chocktaw, I think.

Ergo, the name.

A cacophony of critics?

It's on my list of least favorite ballets. Egregious misogynistic treatment of women, not uncommon in MacMillan.

just one silly thought that came to me at the end of the night Lane/Simkin might grow up to be Reyes/Cornejo - not exactly but maybe you know what I'm getting at.

First we had the grown-ups in Ballo & then the kiddies in Flames. I honestly don't see a comparison between the Lane/Simkin pairing and the Reyes/Cornejo pair. Reyes is a small woman who dances big; she is extremely musical and communicates at all times with her partner. Lane is a small girl who dances small. Everything is pretty and restrained and small. She never looks at her partner. I am yet to be convinced of her musicality. She also has a tendency to fall off pointe at crucial moments. Reyes takes chances; Lane does not.

If you look at the Youtube clips of Cornejo at 17 doing James in La Sylphide, you can see that he was already an artist. No forcing or playing to the footlights here; just pure beautiful dancing. Simkin is still young and one can only hope he gets the proper coaching to develop beyond being a crowd pleaser. Cornejo's jump is high and beautiful; Simkin has ballon but his jump is not pretty and his feet tend to sickle. Cornejo has elongated his line so that he looks longer than he is. Simkin needs to learn to do this.

As for Ballo - different eyes, different take. No, Wiles was not perfect but I found her delightful - bold, witty, musical and seeming to enjoy herself enormously. Hallberg can do no wrong in my book. Keep in mind this role was choreographed on a much slighter dancer, Ricky Weiss, and later done to perfection by Ib Andersen. Hallberg must have at least six inches on those two. Also the stage is far too small for him, as are the wings. After one exit, I was expecting to see a bloody nose on his next entrance. He dances with such a beautifully controlled brio and is there a more beautiful jump around?

Yes indeed the four soloists were tip-top, especially Copeland and Seo.

I sat through another Interminable Path due to a different cast than last week's. Again, Copleand and Sep were mesmerizing.

It's been a while since I saw Brief Fling and it's such a fun piece. Really well danced by all. Copeland seemingly can dance anything. And tonight she danced almost everything. I'd like to see her do the lead in Ballo soon. She's musical and articulated and communicative. She'd be wonderful in it .. or anything else.

I thought this worth mentioning: Yesterday I received a call from Kayvon of the CB subscription department. He explained that there was some shuffling about in the seating in my area for one of my series. Although I hadn't asked for an upgrade, he noticed that I had done so in the past. My ideal seats were now available if I wanted them.

This is not only above and beyond in my experience, it is creative thinking on his part.

So you have his name. If you want his direct phone number, PM me.

And if anyone has the e-mail of John McPeak, PR Manger for CB, I'd love to have it so I can write him about this exemplary employee.

Thank you, FauxPas. I was thinking about him and wondering what/how he was doing.

Did Herman dance last night???

Thanks (I think) for the report, zerbinetta. Sorry for your disappointment, which I share even though I wasn't there.

No Danny was disappointing. The choreography was excruciating.