Jack Reed

Thanks, nysusan, I hadn't understood from carbro's comment that access was so restricted. Actually, it seems a little odd to let people see items they can withdraw anyway, or do I still misunderstand something? But maybe they make a policy of "asking questions" just to keep crazy fans like me from showing up regularly. bart, easy does it! I want to see this available, too, but compare Jackson's remark with my last long paragraph. Also, here's the list of permission-givers as printed in the program: On further thought, maybe Jackson has heard more than I have. Hmm. At any rate, there's not much we can do but keep our eyes and ears open for further showings, right? Oh, and pray!

Hunh? What's the problem, nysusan? Sounds pretty cool to me! I'd be there regularly! Meanwhile, don't overlook George Jackson's superb review on "Dance View Times": http://www.danceviewtimes.com/2007/09/beyo...ument.html#more

(from Washington, DC) bart, Balanchine said things like "Ballets are like butterflies. I say last year's butterflies don't exist." But what did he do? When we looked over the schedule for one of his company's seasons, we had to reflect that Balanchine had the best butterfly collection anyone ever saw!

More recently I've been told that this is one of the events for which a (free!) ticket is required, so anyone planning to attend should allow time for that. How much time I don't know myself, sorry. It's general admission, though, and I'm told the theatre will probably open about half an hour or even longer before curtain times, and allowing time for cueing up to enter might not hurt.

(from Washington, DC) Natalia's impressions are certainly mine. Today I wondered when the line on the sidewalk would start to form for the NYC showing. Meanwhile, shall I see if I can share some more of it with you? Farrell having finsihed her brief remarks, the theatre darkened, dim titles rolled unsteadily up the screen -- I thought, nice touch, that, recently-added titles looking original, or were they original? -- to help us get used to the somewhat primitive technical basis of the film. Whatever, the sound track then started up, and I don't say the music because there was quite a loud buzz and other problems, which took some getting used to: The music lacked body, became rough when loud, there was a surprising amount of noise from the stage (remember there's a lot of movable sets in the first scene) and from time to time, muttering from somewhere, as though an unrelated conversation had somehow gotten in. But even though the buzz was usually louder than the music, I did get used to it, and hardly heard it except when I checked to see if it was still there, because it was absolutely steady, and so I could tune it out after a while. I'm going on about this at such length, because I don't want anyone to go to see it all keyed up by my and Natalia's enthusiasm and be shatterred by the shortcomings of the recording -- you do get past this, if you have any ability to concentrate in a relaxed way, you can hear through the noise and distractions, not least because the rewards you get when you do so are considerable. And in Act II, it mostly cleared up, except for some roughness in loud passages; good-enough sound, with body, so you could hear the music, right through Act III until Don Quixote is caged, when the buzz came back. The Prologue being pretty dim, those of us who have seen the recent revival a few times found that we were helped a lot by that -- we had a sense for the action at each moment of the music, which turned out to be less different than I had believed from hearing about some recent editing. But what was different already in the first several minutes was, to no one's surprise, Balanchine's performance as Don Quixote. All the recent Dons I've seen are faithful to the text seen here, and they all infuse it with some persuasive characterization, different in each case; it's Balanchine's movingly effective moment-to-moment modulation of his movement that puts the Don's action on a different plane. The others have tended to be more even and steady; they show us the story, the internal and external parts built into the choreography, but Balanchine "speaks" the part so you feel the character. For example, when the Don is on one knee at the front, suited up in armor, facing his neighbor Sancho Panza, who has some business, as though he'd forgotten what he's supposed to do next, Balanchine reaches up and toward him, beseeching him, three times in several seconds, but not the same way; each time, the gesture is more urgently imploring, the fingers of the hands more animated, and then Sancho touches the Don on the shoulder with his own sword, initiating his knighthood. Throughout the active passages -- The Don has a lot of standing in Act II and lying down in Act III -- Balanchine is inhabiting his part, enlivening it, without making it busy. (For those who know the clips from his 1954 Drosselmeyer, I was more reminded of his actions on the clock at midnight than when administering first-aid to the toy nutcracker.) He is shown in "closeup", as Farrell said, although I would use the word "partial" because it's rarely just his face we see, but his upper body, and I felt this was effective, because we see enough of the scene to know he's not moving about much, and not dancing, and so we know we're not missing that. In no time at all -- this production moves right along, with tempos possibly a bit faster than the revival in many places -- we arrive at Marcela's solo. The scene has lightened, and we can see well here. (Much of the film looks a lot like the two pages of somewhat gloomy photos I remember (maybe incorrectly) from Reynolds's Repertory in Review, including one of the animated giant knight.) Natalia caught this well -- what a phenomenon Farrell was! (And is. I mean the woman we are fortunate to have still among us, coaching, presenting, speaking.) But keeping still in the role, everything clear, even those fleeting, split-second pauses that mark off phrases. Abandon, yes, careless, no. Taking risks, yes, upstaging her dance, not that I could see. True, always true. No hint that she could falsify ever. What a vision! And so, as she finally disappears upstage, she casts a glance back at Balanchine/Quixote, and he has arranged it so we are with him, transfixed and longing. But here there was something frustrating -- those "closeups" Farrell had spoken of: In her dancing, the camera cut to a closer point of view so we could tell there was still dancing to see, because we could see her limbs out to her elbows and knees or so, and they were certainly moving, we just couldn't see how, and so we were less affected than if the longer shot had been maintained, and I felt that when this happened (about a dozen times in the film), high points were somewhat blunted. I don't know the thinking behind this -- if it "worried" Farrell, as she said, though I wouldn't say it "destroyed" the dance, it just interfered with our seeing it for a moment now and then -- could she have said no, because the film was hers? Maybe not, because she was not doing the project solely with her own resources, and many people and organizations were involved, with about twenty individuals identified in The Kennedy Center's Millenium Stage program, and they may well have been in positions to say yes. I hope some credentialed press people can dig something up for the record about this on the occasion of the New York showing. But my memory of her great Act III solo is that it is pretty clearly shown, and one of the wonders of the age. Which age do I mean? Any age! Yes, I strongly suspect that these soloists, the ones in the Act II Divertissements and in the Act III scene i ballet, would surpass NYCB's current soloists and principals. (I just "suspect" becasue I haven't seen much of NYCB in recent years, because the rewards aren't there. The rewards are here, in this film, dim and raucous or not.) This looked like the NYCB I began to see regularly in 1973, and to say so doesn't seem to me like cynicism, but to describe what looks pretty obvious. It was when these Divertissements were going on that the audience in the Terrace Theatre began to applaud with the audience in the New York State Theatre back in 1965. We got an eight-page program (for a free event) which included, in addition to credits for the individuals and organizations I refered to at the end of the last paragraph, a full cast list identifying these soloists; rg has kindly posted these in another thread via scans of the original programs, no less: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...=25356&st=0 (See Post #14.) By the way, the Terrace Theatre seats about 500, and was pretty full, though a few left along the way. Commercial issue? PBS broadcast? A few of us lingered after the performance and talked about this. There's a problem with money. Would you have guessed it? "The unions" were mentioned, and I don't want to be misunderstood: I don't think we really left the era of sweatshops, if you count the ones under the open sky -- I'm referring to agribusiness, and Roosevelt's need to exclude it from the National Labor Relations Act to get it past the agricultural states in the old South. (I hope I've got my history essentially correct.) Organized labor has done a lot for us.* But if those with the right to ask fees set them so high nothing happens, the point of it is not clear, because they're getting nothing. On the demand side of the market, would more people buy dance videos if the average quality were higher? To be continued, I hope, because I'd really like to increase my understanding of the situation, but this is probably not the forum for it! Natalia, if you read this this far down, do you remember anything more you'd like to share? Please do. And anyone else who was there! *Not to say it never did anything wrong, or never betrayed its members. (I don't want to be misunderstood.)

(from Washington, DC) Now I've seen it. The film we've been hearing about, yes, yes; and the ballet! What the visits to Farrell's revival turn out to have been preparing me for, although I didn't know it at the time. But I suppose I might have anticipated that: After all, what could be more revealing of this ballet than Farrell's own performance in it? So, intellectually, I might have anticipated it, but now I have the actual experience, and I don't think I could have anticipated that if I tried. Yes, it's that good: This film, with all its supposed technical faults, shows this ballet better than any of the ballet material I've seen on screen for some time - I'm thinking of the Live from Lincoln Center "Mozart Dances", the "Nureyev: The Russian Years" documentary, and the POB "Jewels" DVD. Without color, or stereo sound, sometimes without even an image on the screen, this film gives a more powerfully effective experience of a ballet than any of those and quite a few others besides. To a great extent, the reason is the power of the performance, sure, but we can see it most of the time, and that's never a given; it's not so much diminished by the recording as is too often the case. I feel I have much more to say than I'll get said in this post, but I'll try to start with the beginning: Before the premiere showing in the Terrace Theatre of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts here last night, Jaqueline Davis, the Executive Director of the New York Public Library's Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center spoke for Michelle Potter, the Curator of the film, who was ill. She told us the restoration was finished in June this year, used material shot by Bert Stern in 1965 using two cameras, on which the music was out of synch. Some of the film was quite dark,and the sound was afflicted with buzz and hum despite the efforts of the sound lab. Suzanne Farrell spoke next, pointing out that Balanchine's performances were rare, so that there were lots of closeups of him. She had never seen the film until Balanchine died, and it became hers. She was worried about cutting to closeups and "destroying the dance". "If that's bad, blame me." [As though we could!] Farrell described with some affection, I thought, a few details of Balanchine's appearance: In Act II, he gets restless as the applause goes on, trying to look into the wings, as though wondering, "Where is she?" [after one of the Divertissements]. In Act III, after Dulcinea has laid the improvised cross on Don Quixote and is kneeling by his deathbed, "he takes my hands and pats them -- very sweet -- even though he's supposed to be dead." It was strange to see yourself so big on screen. This is very special. Thank you for coming.

(from Washington, DC) I think I can empathise with christine174: The MCB and TSFB forums felt quite cozy, and I could quickly check what was going on about my favorite companies. This is not a criticism, but just a thought in passing, because I have great respect for the intelligence (not to mention the industry) of the people who run BT. We're going to seee how it works, anyway, and that appeals to my pragmatism

Thanks, Helene. I've never been to a Kennedy Center Open House, so I'm going early, but here's a link to my post about when TSFB will appear: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...mp;#entry210503

This thread might have been a better place for my brief notes from the Duberman and Farrell appearance mentioned above, itself too brief, that I posted in a TSFB thread, but here's a link: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...mp;#entry207355 (see Post #16)

I've had e-correspondence with my professional-engineer friend, who is a member - actually, one of six managers, staff to the chair of the DC section - of the SMPTE; that's the Society of Motion-Picture and Television Engineers, and who's had a look at this thread, and I'm posting here his comments, which I've edited - he made a few asides and went deeper into some of it than we need, I think. I don't have hot news here: This has been yet another time when the general intelligence and good sense on this board, not to mention the obvious technical competence of some of the contributors to this thread, like 4mrdncr, have sized up the matter at hand well, but my friend had some more definite things to say in the direction of the tentative conclusions reached here, and did have a new worry to contribute. I'll put that right at the beginning: "[R]emember that any digital storage depends more on the future availability of properly functioning equipment and software to play it back more than any analog format." [DVD being a digital format and videotape as we know it being analog.] First, a couple of definitions: codec is short for coder-decoder, an electronic circuit or computer program designed to reduce the amount of digital data it takes to transmit [or store] audio or video. JPEG is storage format for digital images, devised by the Joint Photographic Experts Group, that uses a data-compression scheme to reduce file size. MPEG stands for Moving Pictures Experts Group, another committee formed to issue standards for codecs or data-compression schemes. "JPEG2000 is a very good codec, used for digital cinema (there's no "M")." Does this sound even more like overkill? "I find it hard to believe that a well-made DVD dub of a tape doesn't satisfactorily duplicate the image quality of the source. Only professional broadcast master quality tape recordings might exhibit an image quality that might challenge DVDs." He sent me a list of pro video-tape formats: "From the National Association of Broadcasters brand-new Engineering Handbook (10th Edition): Pro video quality is available from these digital tape formats, and are the ones that can give a better picture than a DVD: D1 DCT Digital Betacam D5 DVCPro and DVCPro 50 D9 Betacam SX. Consumer analog tape formats aren't going to do it." Regarding the longevity of DVDs, he said, "Commercially released DVDs are pressed, like records. Recordable DVDs use optical exposure of the disc to a laser to 'burn' a 'pit' on the disc. These can run into data loss problems when exposed to direct sunlight for awhile, or to high heat, like leaving them on a radiator, in an attic (during the summer) or in a car (again during the summer). If reasonably cared for they should not lose their data for quite awhile." "I do agree that the original tapes should be kept, just as nitrate films are often kept for a long time after a copy is made. The DVD's life span, if cared for reasonably, is not a problem. It will last as long as tape, which itself requires careful storage. Professional-grade archiving issues are quite stringent, and further investigation is warranted." [but] "we'll all be dead and gone" before these recordings "lose their data." In summary, DVDs are up to the job, except in extreme circumstances - in case you have a recording which fully utilizes the capabilities of one of that list of pro tape formats. So why the fuss? Regarding the "Alert" posted by rg, with whose comments my friend agrees, he remarked "I believe the author and his sources have an agenda that someone needs to find out about and expose."

Thanks, Leigh for anticipating my question, which was going to be, is there a rule of thumb for how long a thread will remain reply-able? People like me who have second thoughts will need to have them more promptly, I guess. For example, I put words in Balanchine's mouth in the TSFB forum last June I'd like to take back. But Hans's comment reminds me of another one, which Farrell Fan's comment illustrates. The forum is entitled "Recent Performances" but FF is anticipating something by three months. And bart is anticipating performances of Jewels this coming season, and wants to start discussion of that (those) ballet(s). So... maybe "Current Performances" or the like? With a subtitle informing visitors of Leigh's and other moderators' "housecleaning" intention come season's end? But I remember when Alexandra was more present here, we'd see a re-arrangement every few months, so it seems like old times, and welcome back!

If I'm not mistaken, the complaints about not "getting" Morris and being bored refer to the television broadcast and not to a theatrical performance; this time, unfortunately, there was an enormous difference between those two. I wouldn't expect anybody to get anything given the treatment this program got over the air, except the music, which was pretty well played. (Ax is an old favorite, and I will listen and maybe even try to watch my recording of the broadcast, but anyone moved by the occasion to think of buying some recordings of this music ought to consider the old Ashkenazy-Frager recording of K. 448, the music for "Double".) As for this visit to the "ballet-vs.-modern" debate, I think bart expanded very well on my passing metaphor about the dancers "swimming" in the music; I'm not sure he agrees with me, but I agree with him! There's a lot to like in Morris's work, and I may not have expressed that very well, though I did say the evenings in the theatre gave me pleasure right from the beginning, and rose to some heights from a beginning which drew me in. bart catalogs Morris's considerable virtues impressively. But, carbro, I also feel "the lack of refinement and nuance" less in Merce's work, and Taylor's too. (Taylor's "little" Dante Sonata comes to mind: Through seeing dancing, we "get" that these people are not having a good time of it, and -- this is the miraculous part for me -- they're not going to have a good time of it, ever, but stay on this level, one of Dante's "circles" to be sure, but we get this from the performance. A small miracle.) BTW, I wish I had seen that Sugar Plum demonstration! Any video of it at the NYPL? And as for Jewels, bart, I don't actually regret not discussing that ballet here, because there must be a thread or several here where we have been doing that already (I'm a little pressed for time to look). Maybe I detect an eagerness on your part to do so, because of the imminence of MCB's performances? I was just thinking of maintaining some clarity among the threads here, so readers can find what they want. Helene, I thought there was less "ballet" in Worden this time around, so you may be happier next time they appear in your part of the world. In fact, overall, it seemed like a more homogenous company this time than two years ago.

Now having read through Jacobs's article, I think it might be more constructive if I try to be a little more specific than just to take a swipe at it, but since this is not a thread on Jewels anyway, I'll just say that while there's sharp observation and a little good evocative writing in it, I really found the phantasmagoria too much: That's just an early example; for me, it gets worse. I liked the occasional down-to-earth comments by Balanchine (who famously resisted interpretation) and Verdy she quoted, but she pushes them aside too eagerly. For the most part, I'm sorry, bart, but I think that, on this occasion at least, Jacobs builds a castle, a castle in the air, not Balanchine, and I'd suggest other writing about Jewels. (I do embrace her basic idea of mystery, though.) But as I've noticed, this thread is about something else, or was, and I'd like to record that when the curtain finally went up here on Morris's Mozart Dances Friday night, the 24th, the dominant pleasure for me for the first moments was that I could see the dancing without all the fancy interference put in the way by "Live from Lincoln Center"! And as I watched, I remembered that for some, Lauren Grant's initial identification with the solo piano (later it gets more complicated) in "11" looked mechanical, although I took this simplicity in the beginning as introductory, but when we got into the first-movement cadenza, the whole thing lifted into the air for me, and pretty much stayed there, at a varying altitude, for the rest of the evening; the middle movement of "Double" was certainly a high plateau (as it was in the TV broadcast, apparently because all the dancers were together, although jammed into the sides of the frame); but then "27" was more complex, and I didn't get into it so well until the third time I saw it (from row Q, instead of Z and then X). But I missed the refinement and nuance of ballet, even when I enjoyed the way Morris's dancers "swam" in the music -- It's not so bad to be a "slave" to a great master -- Mozart -- and anyway, Morris shows himself to be not such a dumb slave as an inspired listener, impelled to get up and "dance" with the old boy. (I also take Morris's title as double meaning.) Being one of the BTers who have put some dance on video, I don't see what's so hard about doing this better than it was done on PBS this time. It's always been my own goal to "disappear", and let the viewer see the dancing by showing the space and letting the dancers dance in it. When I video-taped a ballet-school performance in a theatre, I didn't just frame the stage and sit down; when the dancers were going to use only part of the stage, I showed that. We see a lot of television and film, and we can adapt to and orient ourselves to a space we are shown, if we're helped to do so, but if odd angles are thrown in, or worse, if "partials" -- shots showing only part of a dancer's body -- are mixed in, our orientation is upset: If a partial is followed by a shot of the full stage, it aggravates the familiar "ants" problem, and if it's the other way around, having adapted to the stage space, suddenly it looks like a giant, a fifty-foot dancer. So I never showed less than half the stage width myself, and I also liked best those moments on "Live from Lincoln Center" when we could see some space. I also liked the soft transitions, dissolves, in "Double", because they helped to make the televising "disappear", which would have been reason for me to use them throughout. When I did it, I attended many rehearsals, so I knew where the dancers would be at each point in the music, and I could plan my sequence of shots accordingly. I was alone, and I wonder whether the big budget of a production like "Live from Lincoln Center" might have been better spent on a much smaller crew putting in their man-hours doing the same thing, and making a simpler, more satisfying result.

A couple of thoughts on reading through the thread: The POB DVD of Jewels is not bad as a warm-up for MCB's performances -- I'm assuming they'll be on about the previous level, or, more likely, considering how the company has advanced in recent years (I'm thinking especially of La Valse, Dances at a Gathering, and "Ballet Imperial", actually Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 with its earlier version's title), better even than that -- because it's really not just an attenuation of Jewels as any video wold have to be -- video can't make the effect you get in the theatre, but the best of it can take you in that direction -- however, the POB video, I insist, isn't among the best, and when you go into the theatre I think you will pleasantly surprised, maybe even shocked, continuously, right through the evening. So if you only look at that, you'll go in "set up" for something different, and much nicer. Even if you have a second-rate seat, you'll have it all evening and not be distracted by the video's indecisiveness about how they were going to go about it, and mainly, you'll see dancing which is not exactly like Balanchine's company did but is very much in that line, certainly to the point of thrilling, while the POB dancers don't give you that, although they do give you something else nice in its place. bart, have you also looked at what there is of Jewels in the "Choreography by Balanchine" pair of DVDs (most of "Emeralds" and the "Diamonds" pas de deux)? That is authentic Balanchine, that is like Stravinsky playing or conducting Stravinsky, let's say, or Copland conducting his own music. Try comparing that with the POB performance, to the extent you can see it. Yes, I do remember a little seeing MCB's Jewels previously, and without recourse to my notes, I remember Emeralds and Diamonds as being more successful for me than Rubies was, whoever it was in the Verdy role really recreating that, really infusing it with life, but McBride and Villella, especially that dynamo Villella, are hard to follow in my experience. Indeed, it was their performance at the Ravinia Festival in the 60's that hooked me on Balanchine-ballet; I hadn't learned well enough yet how to listen to music, and so the Faure' ballet went past me - ho, hum - but Stravinsky's Capriccio happened to be a minor favorite of mine, so that I felt I already knew every witty note and phrase, and as I followed the dancers' every accompanying witty step and gesture, I was completely sucked in. B. H. Haggin's enthusiastic comments, the only ones I knew then, had not prepared me for the actual experience (I don't think the POB DVD does either). (NYCB stopped coming to Ravinia soon after; eventually I figured out what was missing from my life and started making regular visits to New York, from 1973 until 1986, to restore it.)

My thanks, too, drb, for the Jacobs link, and especially for your observation. In fact, don't you sometimes get more from the review you don't agree with? Just skimming Jacobs, I think she misses the boat, but as a swimmer myself, I think that's healthy exercise. And part of what makes Balanchine great is that it admits of different interpretations, up to a point, not only by the performers but also by the watchers. (I think the maker himself, teacher that he was, was okay with that.) But I do have something to try to say about Villella's remark about Farrell that Jacobs puts in her "final note": Although that was back in 1998, five years after Farrell was fired (again) from NYCB, what I've seen onstage in recent years makes me think that if she had been considering herself apart from the others, "first among equals" as stagers of Balanchine, she may be right. Her own troupe, without enough budget to hire the best dancers on normal contracts -- they get 11 weeks with her, about a third the usual, I think -- looks in important ways more like Balanchine's company did than any other I see. Even Villella's, thrilling though it is. (I'm really looking forward to seeing their Jewels in Ft. Lauderdale this season.) I like to think of myself as smarter than to pick a fight with a former boxing champ (which Villella was), and I hope I haven't gone and done it now. We'll see. In any case, you can only disagree with someone who cares about the same thing as you do.

Here's some information from one of my contacts at the Kennedy Center: The Suzanne Farrell Ballet company will be performing on Saturday, September 8th in the Family Theater. Because the purpose of the Open House Festival is to provide free entry to the public, there will be a large number of people in and around the Kennedy Center. The Suzanne Farrell Ballet performances will be less intimate, and obviously, shorter in length, only from 3:30–4, 4:30–5 & 5:30–6 p.m. Suzanne Farrell has not released more information on the performances except that they are a “preview” of the fall season.

Well, my contact got back to me with this information about the film, confirming the blurb Natalia posted and Dale's post: The documentary that will be screening on Wednesday, September 5th is a Millennium Stage event but will be shown in the Terrace Theater. As for the documentary, it does show the entire 1965 production of Balanchine’s Don Quixote with Balanchine and Farrell performing. I never knew this film existed! What a fascinating prospect!

I'd bought Duberman's book largely from a desire to understand The Succession (from Balanchine to Martins) at NYCB, and so I was glad to read in Popkin's article that Duberman had somewhat skimped everything after 1963, for various good reasons, because I was unsatisfied by what I had found there. The book contains such a mountain of detail I don't know if I'll ever read all of it, and so, dipping into it via the index as I did, I wouldn't have noticed this change in treatment pre- and post-1963 if Popkin's article hadn't told me. (Using Duberman's index, I stumbled on some mistakes which seemed ironic in the light of all the great marshalling of detail that went into the book: "Calcium Night Light" for Calcium Light Night, the title of Martins's first ballet for NYCB, and "Caligari" for ballerina Maria Calegari's last name. I thought these were easy mistakes to make for some one not some kind of ballet specialist, and the list of Duberman's books on the back of the dust jacket didn't include anything in ballet, but his editor is Robert Gottlieb, who is a ballet specialist and then some, but I guess an editor is not a proofreader, and I hoped these little errors represent the worst ones in the book. But then one evening at the Kennedy Center, Duberman described himself as a balletomane: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...23240&st=15 See Post #16. Hmm.) Popkin and Duberman agree regarding further work on the period since 1963, Duberman detailing his sources explicitly for the purpose of assisting later investigation and publication. Maybe when all of us who felt traumatized by The Succession are out of the picture, more will be revealed about it. Meanwhile, we learn from Duberman that Balanchine had Martins in mind for some time, after d'Amboise. The very idea of d'Amboise taking over is new to me. (If fans talked about it at the time, I've forgotten.) But what a prospect: D'Amboise and Farrell got along well, in contrast to Martins and Farrell, and had d'Amboise taken over, she would have been there at NYCB helping keep Balanchine's repertory alive and well, instead of demonstrating her impressive abilities more fleetingly elsewhere. Why Balanchine made that choice, knowing these things as I think he must have, is a mystery to me.

By way of continuing the discussion of scheduling this show, we're getting it in this particular boondock once only, Monday, 20th August, at 10PM. But then, we get three performances on stage the following weekend in the Harris Theatre. So, is the local PBS audience different from the local dance audience? I can't figure it out. It'll be a nice warmup, I hope, botched camerawork and all. (Thanks for those comments everybody, they'll lessen the shock when I watch the broadcast.)

I agree entirely with Natalia, though I add for those contemplating travel, Farrell's dancers will appear onstage just three days after the premiere screening; here's a link to another of our threads: http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=25364 Personally, I'm leaning toward a visit to DC for this happy conjunction, as well as Thanksgiving week! As to the Don Q documentary, the information above is fascinating to me in the light of what one of my contacts at the Kennedy Center told me, namely, that the newly-produced film, which does run about 90 minutes, has clips, "lots of clips", of the first performance(s?), but is not a complete record of, and only of, the ballet; rather, it's "a documentary on the making of Balanchine's Don Quixote". Farrell and some one else (the producer, I think; sorry for the memory lapse, will post again if it clears) will speak for about ten minutes (each, I guess) before the showing, more or less as we might expect. I should probably add, though, for the sake of our constant striving for accuracy, that this contact is someone whose job it is to deal with contributors and who may be, therefore, a couple of degrees removed from those who may have the best knowledge of the film.

I thought "remaster" means, essentially, to go back to the "master" (first) recording, and make another, typically "intermediate", copy from it, from which in turn, many copies are made, directly, for sale or other distribution. (Is this too abstract?) The purpose in the context of our discussion is to take advantage of some improvement in the process that's come along since the first edition was distributed, or, especially in the early days of sound recording, to replace an intermediate copy which had deteriorated from use. A slightly different context I've run into, for example in videotape editing, which was not accomplished by splicing pieces of tape together like movie film, but by rerecording, using recorders made to be synchronized, so that the machine playing the tape was the "master" and had the master tape in it, and which controlled the receiving machine, which was called the "slave" and recorded the desired sequence after other material already put on the tape. But "remastering" in this context is the same, going back and doing it over to do it better.

As so often, another topic here with greater interest for me than I feel I can take the time for right now to give it my "all", but a couple of thoughts in passing, anyway: One question in my mind at the moment is whether the limitations imposed by the video compression in the typical DVD recorder in SP or XP mode, say, are more severe than the limitations of the original recording process? The chain - stretching back from us all the way to the performance - is as strong as the weakest link, right? And the weakest link might be the first one - your soft-image off-air VHS tape, let's say? I recently played a commercial DVD in wide-screen standard-definition (i.e. not HD-DVD or Blue-Ray high-definition) and was impressed with the sharpness and clarity of the image compared to some standard-definition TV programs, apparently made in studios with old equipment, not to mention comparison with fuzzy VHS tapes made at the best speed. So this medium is capable of very fine reproduction, and represents a strong section of chain to my mind. To try to sum up: Unless I've missed something (and I haven't yet read the linked-to articles in the "warning" announcement, nor have I run any of this by one of my professional-engineer friends, highly competent with video now as he has been with audio for a long time, while I am only a CalTech flunk-out) - unless I've missed something, common sense says there's not a lot to get upset about here, and - my second point - a good way to get a handle on that is simply to look at your results - make a DVD of your tape, and play that alongside a replay of the tape, and see if the image suffered, always bearing in mind that there may be a question here about whether your TV, or more likely, its state of adjustment, is a strong link in that chain, or whether it's concealing differences. But, yeah, don't pitch the tapes - there may be ways to get better results you're not aware of, now or in the near future. I have also recorded on 3/4" U-Matic cassettes, big bulky cassettes, about 150 hours' worth, and even if I can solve the technical problem of playback on my obsolete old recorder, which puts white spots in the image for an instant here and for another instant there ("zits", another engineer friend calls them) and make good copies, I'll be keeping the tapes. In a back room. Thinking by analogy, I'm really glad RCA Victor didn't pitch the master discs they recorded the Philadelphia Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini on in 1941 and 1942 after the first transfer to a newer medium - they seem to have done it again, for the third time, from the originals, and it's the best sound yet. But sometimes "unofficial" sources of old recordings yield up superb transfers in the right hands, too. Sources like some of us.

Dale, I'm not clear on what Farrell agreed with. That television is a great marketing tool, or that she would love it if MCB went on television? (Personally, I'd love to see either or both their companies on TV, if it were done well, of course.)

Right. Actually, dirac's note of caution has a basis in Gottlieb's review. Notice his choice of words. Speaking of the future (specifically, Nichols's), he ends with: "...the company may have one too." [my emphasis] Among the virtues that make Gottlieb well worth reading is his care, as though he's his own editor, too. But while I try never to miss something he's written, especially in ballet, I would point to Joan Acocella's dance writing as closer to Croce's. I'm glad to have both, though; I think they're somewhat complementary, even when they disagree. Especially when they disagree. Together they've helped to animate my perceptions like Croce used to, and now we have Macaulay at the New York Times, too. (For how long, I wonder?)

I'm not sure what you mean by "comprehensive", Figurante, because, as has been noted, Denby stopped writing criticism before Balanchine stopped making ballets, although he continued to watch them, but I too consider his our best ballet criticism, and Looking at the Dance is the first book I recommend to anyone who wants written help in getting more from watching ballet. Looking at the Dance first, and not one of the other collections, because of the arrangement of the essays, putting first what such a reader needs first, in particular that little essay called "How to Judge a Dancer" which begins, "When you look at ballet dancers dancing you are observing a young woman or a young man in fancy dress, and you like it if they look attractive, if they are well built and have what seems to be an open face. You notice the youthful spring in starting, the grace of carriage, the strength in stopping. You like it if they know what to do and where to go... "But you are ready too for other qualities besides charm. The audience soon notices if the dancer has unusual control over her movements, if what she is doing is unusually clear to the eye... Now you are not only watching a charming dancer, she is also showing you a dance." [ellipses mine] This is better than a great gallery lecturer pointing out elements of composition in a painting, say, because Denby lets the reader supply the painting: You can apply the lessons of these four pages to any and all the ballets you watch. Denby died soon after Balanchine did, but he - like Balanchine - is with us still. I'm not sure what you mean by "bootleg" either, but if it's a little gossip you mean, then I can testify that Bernard ("B.H.") Haggin told me that Denby took little interest in assembling the book and went to Europe while Haggin did the work. There are other, more complete collections of Denby's writings, including the poetry, in chronological order, but if they're available and Looking is not, then I suggest to people to use a photocopy of the Table of Contents in Looking when they start to read his dance criticism. I think that ought to be included as an appendix. Haggin did a good job, as far as he went; Denby wrote more after 1949, of course.