Jack Reed

Gottlieb is for me one of the best critics, doing what he sets out to do, stimulating - okay, provocative sometimes - animating my perceptions of what I see. If not so rewardingly rich or deep as Croce, Tobias, and Acocella, say, neither does he come on as such a big deal - there's plenty of pretense in other "criticism" - and his panache is an integral part of it, not for show. He really cares about what's on his mind, and his writing is as energized by passion as it is contained by reason. But mainly I want to put in a word for Bejart. I can only recall seeing about three and a half of his works - the half was the "Romeo and Juliet" excerpt Farrell presented at the New Victory Theatre a few years ago - but I've long felt that if someone makes one good thing and a mountain of mediocrity, they're to be judged by the good piece, because after all when we're experiencing the good work we're not experiencing the other stuff, and in Bejart's case the good work in my experience is his "Les Sacre du Printemps". And I will add that I wouldn't even have seen it had I not learned that Balanchine had said of it, in his characteristic way, "You can't do it, but it's the best one." (But this thread is about Gottlieb, so I'll leave it at that.)

I think Carbro is right on target, but it's still MCB I travel to see... (Oct 2 2007: FWIW, updated below in Post #37)

Thanks for the nice words, Amy! Your post reads as though we saw pretty much the same performances, allowing for the differences in the ways we wrote about it, and that gives me a heartening sense of having seen with some objectivity what was really there, if it was like that for you, too.

Just to tie the themes of money and Giselle a little more tightly together, MCB says their ticket sales for Giselle broke all records and they were able to add performances of it. As Lincoln Kirstein would say, "When you got a good thing going, don't mess with it." Or was it somebody else? (Thinking of going to see MCB again makes me a little light-headed.) I do agree that "Diamonds" in place of "Midsummer" II is odd, but their schedules have changed between this time of year and actual performance season before, and could again, IMO. Similarly with regard to Villella vs. Bournonville in Program I. Some of Gamonet's dances drove me out, but Villella's have so far been better than inoffensive. But Bournonville? Even if performed no better than their Taylor or Ashton - Villella has good taste in non-Balanchine choreographers, IMO - it might make a better program.

"Noces is noble, it is fierce, it is simple, it is fresh, it is thrilling," says Edwin Denby, "It is full of interest." I agree wholeheartedly, having just seen the Joffrey Ballet's revival of their version, after twelve years. (Sid Smith, in the Chicago Tribune, says it is funereal and gloomy; I disagree, although there is certainly some lament. At least, it is the most pell-mell funeral I've never attended, but as Denby saw, it is much, much more.) As in the best music of Haydn or Berlioz, everything in it follows naturally and unexpectedly from what precedes it - naturally and unexpectedly, both. Denby puts it differently: "The movements, odd as they are and oddly as they come, often in counteraccent, are always in what theoreticians call 'motor logic': that is, they are in a sequence you get the hang of, to your own surprise, and that has a quality of directness when performed." Written in 1936, his review of the de Basil Ballet Russe staging, by Nijinska herself, pretty much still applies to this revival, to the credit of Irina Nijinska and Howard Sayette who staged it for the Joffrey originally, and again to Sayette, who did the curent staging. But he omits to say anything specifically about the aware and considerate partnership between the dance and the music, although he calls them equally fine - you can't always tell, just by looking and listening, which evokes the other; this is a consequence of the directness he does speak of. At the end, of course, this intimate relationship becomes more literal - some of the corps repeatedly reach up their flattened hands and pull them down in fists, and each time, we hear a chime, as though they had pulled bell-ropes. "Les Noces" is followed on the program by Massine's "Parade", to Satie's music with sirens and gunshots in it, and there's too litle dancing in it for me, and what there is isn't satisfying. Part of the problem is that some of the dancers have to carry around some Picasso constructions, so that only their legs are free, but even the others who are freer are too tightly constrained by the needs of characterisation. (Some of the audience has a good time with the antics of a horse-character called "The Manager on Horseback".) I suppose to some extent it evokes its time and place. What "Noces" does is to transcend those. Closing the program is the Hodgson reconstruction of Nijinsky's "The Rite of Spring", using a movement vocabulary much like Nijinska's to much less effect, IMO. In places it even seems to go blank. Cyril Beaumont says the color scheme in "Noces" was entirely black and white, while Robert Greskovic says in "Ballet 101" that the POB production was chocolate brown and cream costumes, with brown pointe shoes (or slippers, one supposes), and a set in earthen gold, blue gray, and black. In the Joffrey production, the cream has become white, and the set for the First and Third Tableaux, both in the Bride's home, is blue-gray; in the Second and Fourth Tableaux, it's earthen gold. (I suppose this is what Greskovic meant.) And there is a representation of the conjugal bed on the backdrop, visible for a time when the doors in front of it are open. Beaumont reports that the British press reaction was generally hostile when "Noces" was shown in London in 1926, but that H. G. Wells championed it, saying, "I do not know of any other ballet so interesting, so amusing, so fresh or nearly so exciting as 'Les Noces.' I want to see it again and again." Exactly. I saw it four times myself.

"Tchaikovsky's Princes and Poets" was the rubric Miami City Ballet used to bring together two excerpts from the traditional "Swan Lake" and two Balanchine settings from the same composer's Suite No. 3 for Orchestra. The excerpts were the "white" Act II and the "Black Swan" pas de deux from Act III. I saw the program in Miami Beach. I have to say that the tradional "Swan Lake" has never been my glass of tea, coming to it after Balanchine's compact, intensive setting of half an hour or so of music (and much traditional choreography) from Acts II and IV; dispensing entirely with Act I, as many Met audience members used to do, was a step in the right direction, but I was still unhappy with some slow tempos Edward Villella uses when he stages this excerpt. And whenever I see the four little swans dance, I think how wise Mr. B. was to drop that. But not everyone thinks so, and if MCB wants to be the only ballet company in town, it's probably wise to mount some trips back to the nineteenth century (which is exactly how Villella spoke of these excerpts in his usual pre-performance talk), because they're asking for it in south Florida. (The company's smash "Giselle" last year was in response to suggestion forms collected from their audience, and tickets sold so well there were additional performances not originally scheduled.) The slow tempos were mainly Odette's, and it was rewarding to see how different dancers coped. Jordan Levin, writing in the Miami Herald, found Ileana Lopez and Franklin Gamero giving a warmly passionate performance on opening night, while to me their performance was clean, clear, and a little lacking in energy, but more effective than I had expected, until the very end, when Gamero's Siegfried didn't seem much moved by Odette's exit under von Rothbart's spell, but just turned away, extending an arm to the opposite side of the stage. The following evening, Deana Seay's expected fluidity held this role together for greater cumulative dance effect, and her soft lightness made Odette more touching; what I hadn't expected was her ability to give the slowness some suppleness and nuance when it could merely have been empty. And Carlos Guerra was not only the fine partner all the men in this company seem to be, but at the very end, his pantomime made much more of how he was affected by what Siegfried had seen: Turning away from the wings and throwing his lowered arms back, he raised his face to heaven for a moment, and then, bringing his arms forward, lowered his head slowly as the curtain fell. And at the Sunday matinee, Katia Carranza, with Luis Serrano, gave the best (and last) performance, as Odette, that I saw of her in the two consecutive weekends. It's something to see the company continue to flourish under difficult circumstances; it's something more to see a dancer listed among the "soloists and corps de ballet" in this two-tier company develop into a principal before your eyes. Or was I learning to tune in to her particular qualities? Von Rothbart is not much of a part, but one dancer in it deployed his cape with commanding power, the other didn't. They were Bruce Thornton and John Hall, and although I can still see them, I can't remember who was who at this point, sorry. After intermission, the first minute of Balanchine's"Elegy" always did more for me than all of "Swan Lake Act II", which had not been helped by a corps Levin had called "muted" and "fuzzy". When the seven girls in long hair, flowing skirts and bare feet come out and start to move, they're drop-dead gorgeous; my attention is drawn in at once, and remains that way. As an elderly member of the Ft. Lauderdale audience remarked to her companion a few years ago when I first saw MCB do these two ballets in this order, "I liked the second one better. It was more alive." "Black Swan" followed after a pause, and I accept Levin's observation that Jennifer Kronenberg was unconvincing as the malevolent Odile; but even without malevolence, she gave me plenty to enjoy, with her full and showy rendering of the virtuoso side of this role, crisply turning her effects on and off within the overall shape, showing off her dance, not herself. Saturday evening, this was given a full and vibrant performance by Carranza, and Sunday afternoon, by Mary Carmen Catoya, who may be small, but who makes a large effect; for me, though, Kronenberg was the hard act to follow. The finale, "Theme and Variations", made opening night Catoya's evening, I felt. Clarity and elegance combined. It was one of those times when everything seems to come together and just rolls, and your excited pleasure builds from height to height. You suspend disbelief ("Are they actually going to pull this off?") and watch ("Well, look at them!"), and sometimes you remember to breathe. Okay, it did seem to me the boy's variation's tempos were impossibly fast, so that a little of it was cut; not Renato Penteado's fault, poor guy, and it gave me a chance to get my breath, whatever it did to his. Saturday evening's cast was led by Kronenberg and Eric Quillere', and considering how I have enjoyed each of them in the past, I wish I could see some of their performance again in memory, but it's as though I can't get those clips to run. But I think at least parts of Sunday afternoon's performance by Deanna Seay and Penteado will be with me for some time. For example, there is a place where Tchaikovsky is quietly leading us through a bridge passage to a restatement of his theme, and Balanchine appropriately has the principals do litle jumps and make little circles in the air with their feet. Seay, with Penteado in tandem, made that passage lighter than air. At a couple of the performances, I had friends with me. My hostess liked "Black Swan" best, for its energy (she saw Catoya and Mikhail Ilyin in the Sunday matinee); the others, graduate students, mostly preferred the Balanchine ballets for their variety of dance material and for their musical awareness, compared to the traditional excerpts. One woman, a percussionist who had been interested in gymnastics when she was younger and had been made to "take" ballet then, had already changed her feelings about it: "I went to the barre with a scowl. Now I love it." She had the keenest eye for technique, and at the second intermission said that Kronenberg's "Black Swan" had "a few bobbles" but was the best so far. After "T & V", she was amazed: "When I'm on toe, I'm glad if I can do this" demonstrating a couple of straight-ahead steps with her hands "but they're on pointe for two minutes at a time!" One preferred the longer ballets; another, working in film, was stimulated by the live-theatre experience and expects to continue attending concerts, ballet, and drama. Not part of Program II but given onthe same weekend was a "Ballet for Young People" matinee on Saturday. I walked in to find the curtain up and the stage taken over by the gods at play; I hadn't realized that the indefatigable Villella would be conducting a lecture-demonstration beforehand, as company class wound up. At the end, he took some questions from the audience, and one little girl wanted to know whether it hurt when the girls went up on their toes. He asked Deanna Seay whether she would answer that, and Seay said succinctly, "It doesn't hurt any more." This was followed by a performance of a single ballet, Balanchine's "Who Cares?", by students (in costume) from MCB's school, which was sometimes careful but often better than that. In previous seasons I had felt assaulted by the loud, screechy amplification in the Gleason Theatre, but this weekend it was so much better the music always conspired with the dance to increase my enjoyment, never interfering with it. It turned out the company had hired their own sound operator, who brought in speakers and amplifiers, including backstage sound for the dancers. But there was better news. Before each performance, Mike Eidson, chairman of the company's board, bragged from the stage about the company's upcoming joint appearance at the Kennedy Center with the Kirov and the Bolshoi and ABT and so on, told us there was now an "operating surplus" which would allow retiring some of the "burden" the company was carrying and bring closer the day when they could pay the dancers more nearly what they're worth [amen!], and said there would be an orchestra for "Coppelia" (Program III). (My preference is for this sort of thing to be in the printed program, but Eidson is upbeat and brief, and if you're going to do it, that's the way to do it.) He recalled being asked by the director of another American company how MCB is able to keep on improving in sometimes difficult circumstances. Eidson's answer was, "We have Edward Villella, and you don't." Take another bow, Edward.

I saw them dance at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia about five years ago, which may have been the performance Alexandra missed. Too bad, Alexandra! I had a good time. I recall they danced "Rubies" and other Balanchine, and compared, for example, to the American companies we saw at the Kennedy Center Balanchine Festival a couple of years ago, their attack was a bit soft and their flow-through was a little bit weak, but in general they did a lot of justice to the ballets. I'm glad to read that Glushak is still there. Thanks, Estelle.

Agreed, rk, and no offense taken.

I'd rather see ballet than read about it, so when I finally opened the Winter 2003 issue of "DanceView", I turned first to reviews of what I'd seen in the theatre to find out whether any of it would come to life again. Having seen the Cincinnati ballet's "Ballet Russe" program in Cincinnati last October, I want to testify to the excellence of Mary Cargill's evocation of the Beggar's solo from "Devil's Holiday" on page 3 of the issue, just a part of her too-short account of the celebration. It made the dance live again for me, as though she had a bit of Fred Franklin's own magic. (One quibble: I found a few, though too few, performance photos in the costume-design exhibit to compare with the original designs.)

rkoretzky, I'm relieved and glad to see from the list of dance companies you enjoy that you are well able to "follow your bliss" without advice from me! But you might well wonder what I meant by that reference to works made on other companies! What I meant to do in that hasty post was to describe a type of company I've seen, and then to compare the new (post-Balanchine) NYCB to it, and I see I made a mess of it. Maybe I can say that part more simply: When I've seen NYCB over the past sixteen years, their programs have reminded me of some companies I had seen, based outside the Dance Capital of the World, where the completely-danced (but negligible) ballets of a resident artistic director were supplemented by ballets imported into the company to fill out eclectic schedules, but which are typically danced as though foreign to the dancers, who appear physically able, but whose preparation apparently lacks a dimension we often try to speak of in some metaphor like "authentic" or "comprehension" or "resonance". I see now a bad pronoun reference in my post had NYCB dancing ballets made on other companies uncomprehendingly. What I meant to say was that, now, to me, Balanchine's ballets look alien to the new NYCB, as though imported into a company easily familiar with the ballets of Martins, Wheeldon, and the others. Whew! That explanation is longer than the post it's supposed to explain! I hope that helps, and that I haven't made a bigger mess. Thinking about who's responsible at NYCB made me realize how far "out of sight, out of mind" they have become for me. I really don't know much about what goes on there, because, beginning around 1986, NYCB ceased to be the reliably satisfying "good bet" I need to make trips planned well in advance worthwhile, so that I see them infrequently now, and they still continue to disappoint in the way I've just tried to describe. (MCB continues to astonish.) Yes, I suppose most of the responsibility must be laid on the boss, although I don't know what resources are at Martins's disposal, compared with Balanchine's, for example. Your saying that you have more satisfactions than disappointments is encouraging, although how one can predict the satisfactions many weeks ahead is a problem for me. And I hope you won't mind too much if I say that I take your remark with a grain of salt, because, since we are all different, we might respond differently to the very same performance, too.

Twyla Tharp Dance, a company of three women and five men, showed a short (hour-and-a-half, including intermission) program of three works in the 1800-seat Centre East Theatre, and I didn't quite get it. Maybe if I saw it again... Maybe there is less to get, compared to the last two weekends, when I saw MCB in south Florida. Tharp's program opened with "Westerly Round", a playful ten-minute piece to vaguely country-like music; the choreography was energetic and flowing but not inevitable, and there were lots and lots of turns. Maybe it's me, but lots of turns comes over as thin. There were some Tharpisms, contrary snaps of the head, a couple of strolling steps followed by a sudden resumption of frenetic movement, and so on; well, and why not? But much of her vocabulary seemed to be more generic or somehow less recognizable than years ago. With "Even the King", acccompanied at a closer distance by Johann Strauss's "Kaiserwalzer", Op. 437, arranged for a small chamber group by Arnold Schoenberg, we had situations, although no plot that I noticed: One odd man out (Matthew Dibble?), distinguished also by a uniformly gray costume as well as a follow spot, can't get a partner, and can't figure out why. The choreography develops here too, ebbing and flowing, easily incorporating balletic bits, but the groupings, entrances, exits, etc., don't seem much motivated by the music, the twenty-minute series of waltzes just marking off a series of dances. Near the end, he's had it, and sits in a clump downstage right; one of the women dances in upstage left, alone. Are they finally going to Get Together? No, the others (in handsomely colored dress, all by Santo Loquasto) also appear, for another round of changing combinations, and exit. Our man in gray gets up, walks to the lone chair (throne?) upstage, and drags it into the wing as the curtain falls. I've seen too many unnecessary dappled glades which obscure the dancing by inadequately lighting the dancers, but not so here: Jim French, the lighting designer, has contrived to project a floor of black and white diamond-shaped tiles to contribute to the evocation of a royal nineteenth-century ballroom which begins with Strauss's music, and still throws plenty of light on the dancers. Just right; a painted setting would have been all wrong. After intermission, "Surfer at the River Styx", with six dancers and at about forty minutes' length, was the Big Deal of the evening, but Donald Knaack's rythmically monotonous loud score provided no plan I could discern for the varied groups of dancers in it, and so the prolific flow of dance ideas looked arbitrary though often highly talented (lots and lots of turns here too, nearly always to the right); at least the dancers looked fine in it, owing partly to Tharp's effective organization of the stage space - expertly accomodated by Scott Zielinski's underworldly lighting, which never lit the whole stage - so that you could nearly always see them well, in contrast to the ballet premiers I'd seen last fall, in which dancers were often clumped obscurely together, and also owing to the strong line of the dancers themselves. And not the least arbitrary-seeming bit was a short, tacked-on coda, to quieter music by David Kahne, in which Lynda Sing, I believe, was carried off aloft in a split by the rest of the ensemble. Apotheosis? Of what? So in spite of the highly professional surfaces, I found little to involve me in these dances, compared to, say, "As Time Goes By", "Push comes to Shove", and "The Golden Section".

rkoretzky, for the record, MCB started up in the 1986-7 season with a repertory of seventeen ballets, eleven by Balanchine and 6 by others, presented in four programs. In regard to your "loyalty" dilemma, I offer the idea that "Balanchine's company" disappeared in 1986. That was the year the end came, about four years after he left the theatre, when, apparently, NYCB forgot how to dance his ballets, and began to look like what New Yorkers are pleased to call "regional" companies: They dance often minor ballets made on them well enough but ballets made on other companies without comprehension, just going through the motions. It's been Peter Martins's company since then, I think, though not to blame him. (That's another story for another thread.) So it seems to me your loyalty is misplaced. You might be happier forgetting that and going with your deeper sense. Have you ever heard of Joseph Campbell? Not one of the greatest thinkers, but he had some nice phrases, like this one: "Follow your bliss, and don't be afraid."

(from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) In the wake of September 11th and in the presence of afternoon temperatures in the upper 50's, this resort town looks a little like a ghost town, but in contrast to the New York State Theatre, where, as Robert Gottlieb wrote recently, Balanchine's ballets become fainter and fainter, on stage at the Au Rene Theatre in the Broward County Center for the Performing Arts Friday night, there were no ghostly ballets but thriving ones, if not always so full-blooded as in Balanchine's own time. For me, it was Deanna Seay's evening: Her only role was Terpsichore in "Apollo" ("only"!), and her movement was immediately lovely, because flowing; glowingly clear, secure; her dancing seemingly just coming into existence, without effort or even will; and so, very effective, the goddess of dance indeed. If young Apollo couldn't get it from this muse, he couldn't get it from anyone, anywhere. He was Carlos Guerra, very creditable, sometimes effective, sometimes just careful of this whale of a role. Jennifer Kronenberg was an effective Polyhymnia, and Katia Carranza's Calliope was more satisfying to me than her role as the bride in "Bugaku", which opened the program. Well, it's a more satisfying role, too. (In "Bugaku", her groom was Luis Serrano, who invested the role with some of the power and menace it requires, and got in abundance from Edward Villella years ago.) "Apollo" is a hard act to follow, and it was followed after a pause by "Glinka Pas de Trois", danced beautifully by Tricia Albertson and Joan Latham, with Mikhail Ilyin, from whom I would have liked only a bit more quickness and altitude. "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" concluded, and with all the fun there were some slight shortcomings: Iliana Lopez as the Strip Tease Girl looked a little lacking in energy and stiff in the midsection in the first duet but was better in the second (after her costume change into black); her husband Franklin Gamero kept another big male role, the Hoofer, going clearly and often effectively, but also often lacked some energy (as well as taps); and Edward Villella, as the Gangster, didn't just reprise the role I'd seen him do very effectively in recent years, but tried it differently this time, and didn't come across so well this time. But Yann Trividic's Big Boss had elan, Serrano's Morrosine was pretty effective, getting the audience to chuckle at his character's vanity by his dancing more than by his spoken lines, and Mark Spielberger and Jeremy Cox's Bartenders had the right crispness and snap. Saturday evening was Jennifer Kronenberg's as the Strip Tease Girl in "Slaughter". She invigorated the role right up to her eyebrows. "She's excellent! Sexy!," said the man next to me, "What presence!" I saw luscious flexibility and clearly maintained line. Her partner, John Hall, as the Hoofer, energized his part perhaps at the expense of a little clarity, and his tap steps were also silent. Michelle Merrell enlivened "Bugaku" more effectively than Carranza had, but while her partner, Yann Trividic, was tall enough for her, I thought he held the role together less effectively than Serrrano had. Carranza looked her best so far in "Glinka Pas de Trois", where Renato Penteado had the quickness and altitude I wanted to see. And Mary Carmen Catoya's Terpsichore was very good, but hadn't the same flow, and so not the same cumulative effect, as Seay's had had. Sunday afternoon was Kronenberg's again, this time as the bride in "Bugaku". Her performance is just what this ballet needed this weekend: I had come down from Chicago thinking this is one of Balanchine's "weird" ballets, and there is some strangeness, like at the beginning of the last section of the first part, where the five women are still crouching with their foreheads on the floor after the departure of the men, and they begin some "women talk" with their hands. But Kronenberg's dancing not only clarified the beauty of the classical movements, the ancient simpering ornamental femininity - which she carried through past the end into the applause, remaining "in character" until the final curtain - but also, especially in the pas de deux, the strength and power behind the feminine facade, and not least, the strength of female desire, to the point of appetite, not fully acknowledged in society even today but running through Balanchine's complex view of women. And this realization of the role was underlined by Kronenberg's partner, Carlos Guerra, good as he was, whose dancing had less presence than hers. (There were moments when I was reminded of Robbins's "The Cage".) "Apollo" this time was led by Gamero and Lopez, and I was pleased by their clarity of significant detail but disappointed by some details: He sat casually on his stool at the right with shins crossed, rather than with his left leg back and an attitude of attention, and his looking away and then back toward the variations he was judging was slow and delayed, as though disconnected from what he was supposedly studying. Kristen Kramer, Charlene Cohen, and Didier Bramaz distinguished themselves in "Glinka pas de Trois" in making what must be very difficult look pretty easy to do and so, very easy to enjoy. And Andrea Spiridanakos and Jeremy Cox led "Slaughter" effectively, if her clear, spirited dancing didn't quite produce the presence Kronenberg did last night. The audience responded, down to one of the smallest members: At the moment when the Big Boss has accidentally shot the Strip Tease Girl, there was stunned silence, and a small voice observed softly, "Uh, oh." On opening night, we got a couple of short speeches before the performance telling us the company, which still can't afford an orchestra, broke its attendance record of sixteen years last year - they add a performance now and then if ticket sales warrant - and is "ahead of budget" this year, retiring some of the "burden" they have ben carrying. It looks like this show will go on.

ajoyjoie, would you like to tell us what make and model DVD recorder you bought and what online vendor you bought it from? It looks like you got a great buy all right! Also, I understand new eMacs start at about $1300, and I would think they had video inputs, making a third piece of hardware unnecessary. But a friend has recently bought a DVD recorder for $300, so it appears the time has about come.

For me, it was through enjoyment of a certain kind of classical music. In my second college I ran into someone who put me onto B. H. Haggin's writings, and with his help I got beyond the kind of music-listening I had learned in the movie theatre and in front of the TV: Music as an accompaniment to something else. Haggin had written "Music for the Man Who Enjoys Hamlet", which I had begun to become thanks to the superb sequence of undergraduate "humanities" courses Chicago had at that distant time, and pretty soon I developed the ability to be "moved" by the phrase-by-phrase development of a piece of music, as I had by the line-by-line development of a piece of literature such as the play of Haggin's title. Lighter pieces, too, witty and capricious. Stravinsky's "Capriccio" for piano and orchestra. Listening closely, note by note, to the excellent London recording with Magaloff playing and Ansermet conducting would always cheer me in answer to a felt need to hear it. Haggin not only reviewed recordings and public performances of classical music, he reviewed ballet some, too. And in the mid-sixties, Balanchine's NYCB would visit the Chicago Symphony's summer season at suburban Ravinia. Haggin's reviews of the Winter and Spring seasons usually appeared after NYCB had come and gone, so I sometimes made less good choices of what to see than I might have, but one fateful day I saw a program called "Jewels". It began with a pretty ballet to music of Faure', whom I knew of, but whose music I didn't know, and that was nice enough. Then the amazing phenomenon, something I could never have imagined: While a creditable rendition of Stravinsky's fun music unrolled from the pit, dancers - including Patricia McBride and Edward Villella - moved in witty visual accompaniment. I saw steps and gestures in as indefatigable a flow of ideas as the one I heard and seemingly produced by it, riveting my attention. After it ended, leaving me with eyes and mouth wide, I gradually became aware of a noise - the rest of the audience was applauding. What a great idea! I joined in, the last to start and the last to stop. Traveling home, I still couldn't quite believe I had seen what I had seen. After while I got used to this feeling, and indeed I thought it would be nice to have something like that again. But NYCB stopped coming to Ravinia, and after a while I realized I really missed it. Withdrawal symptoms, I now suppose: I was hooked! After a few years it was clear what I had to do, and I went to see them in New York: Five performances of "Jewels" in one weekend! And, with Haggin's reviews guiding me through the repertory, many weekends followed, many years. Some friends, not understanding my "addiction", thought I was nuts or, at least, extravagant, and I suppose they had some of the truth; but I'm not really sorry, especially because that particular miraculous phenomenon, Balanchine's ballets danced as he conceived them to be danced, once so reliably plentiful, is scarcely to be found anymore. But that's another story, for another thread, or several, some of which we've already written here.

Early Sunday afternoon, the 20th of October, we heard an interview of Fred Franklin by Jack Anderson in the auditorium of the Cincinnati Art Museum a propos the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. After some other topics, the subject of restaging "Devil's Holiday" came up. According to my notes, Franklin said, There's eight or nine minutes of film of "Devil's Holiday", not enough for a revival. Massine recorded everything; I only remember what I'm involved in, I never saw things from the front. I am going to England in the Spring for a restaging of it. Georgina Parkinson called me about it. I identified footage the New York Public Library had I didn't know existed. The Slavenska-Franklin Ballet existed for a few years when Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo disbanded for the same time. I did Stanley Kowalski in Valerie Bettis's "Streetcar Named Desire". Tudor was going to do it, but then canceled. When I asked Valerie, she said, "Oh heavens no! When do we start rehearsals?" We had asked Danilova, she came and said nothing, just smiling. Mia said the parts couldn't be done on pointe; Valerie put the shoes on and showed her. We opened in [Montreal], then did it in Chicago, where Valerie said it was awful, we've got to go to New York and do it over. We did, and even John Martin said it was nice. [Marlon] Brando said, If I could have done with my voice what you did with your body, I'd have been better. [Tennessee] Williams said, "The road to success is paved with [wild? crazy?] ideas." [From the audience]: Why now? Franklin: ...money... It was a revelation to some of the Cincinnati Ballet dancers that there were four movements [of "Seventh Symphony"] to do. "Gaite Parisienne" can be cut down. [Another audience member]: Was Friday night magical for you? [Opening that night, the CB's BRdMC program concluded with clips of Franklin rehearsing CB and reminiscing and then taking applause on stage.] It took me back. I hoped it would all go. It did. Then it was just me [at the end] and I was alone on the stage and anxious. But then everyone came out of the wings. I was surrounded, and I felt better. At the end, Anderson had a few requests for the audience. Would the BRdMC dancers present please stand? A score or so people stood, and we clapped. Would any of you who have been moved or touched by Fred Franklin's working or speaking here in Cincinnati please stand? The rest of us got to our feet and gave him his applause. This "spry" 88-year-old seems to have been born to make people happy. By that standard, he's still in his prime. (Anyone whose appetite has ben whetted by this little excerpt might like to know that two taping crews worked in the auditorium, one from the Cincinnati Art Museum, one from Cincinnati Ballet (neither knowing the other would be there), so that, sooner or later, you may be able to see and hear the whole interview yourself somewhere. And if that weren't enough, 60 hours of Franklin in conversation with Mindy Aloff were taped in August, and three or four people are at work transcribing it, so that eventually that too will be available as part of The George Balanchine Foundation's oral history project. (I can hardly believe the number I just wrote. 60 hours!))

Farrell Fan, did you go to the first or second weekend last year? I recall "the band", as an enthusiastic friend called the orchestra, remarking on how they had pulled together their performance in "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue", got steadily and rapidly better. As they did this year too. Another indication that this whole operation would perform even better given more time, i.e., money, and that its current excellence is limited by that and, generally speaking, not so much by the talents of the people present.

(from Washington, D.C.) How did this run go over with the public? I spoke to a Kennedy Center administrator, who said she thought sales were averaging 90% or so. (The same one who had been telling me how hard it was to sell mixed bills of story-less ballets.) I could see only the main floor, which looked about that or better, right through. And this afternoon, at the end of the last performance, 3/4 of the main-floor audience, I'd estimate, got to its feet and stood, applauding. If they want more, they may get it...

(from Washigton, D.C.) You're welcome, kfw. Let us know what you think, too. Mel, do you think she's saying, "This is mine now and I can do what I want with it."? Her account in her autobiography is pretty clear about it being Balanchine's work, also the opening solo of "Tzigane". I think when he worked alone with her his work looked more different than it did with anyone else, but it's still his. And I think what she's done enlarges "Variations". I'm looking forward to seeing it again Sunday. Another spectacular performance this evening of "Tzigane" by Magnicaballi and Mladenov, who matches her intensity and general elan, and puts Fournier and Du's compact and efficient performance at the matinee in the shade. If I didn't have a tape of Them dancing "Tzigane" I would want one of tonight's performance. (Trivia department: Magnacaballi keeps both earrings on all the way through, too.) And in the opening "Divertimento No. 15", the orchestra's expressive shaping of phrase under Ron Matson's direction was rewarding to hear. Both this afternoon and this evening, though, it was "Chaconne" that was the biggest deal, grand and marvelous. No, not to the level of Them, but expansively and powerfully fine, maybe better this afternoon, again with good accompaniment from the pit in the chaconne proper (I've heard the opening flute melody more grandly and yet plaintively played.) Goh's power as a dancer grows, I feel; dynamite that Magnicaballi is in "Tzigane", I feel she wouldn't know what to do in "Chaconne", although I expect she could learn!

(from Washington, D.C.) There's a larger issue about the Suzanne Farrell Ballet's performances I might have said something about right away, except it was happily in the back of my mind, and that is comparison with how other companies perform Balanchine's ballets. After the choreographer's death in 1983, or after he left the theatre for what seemed, against our strongest hopes, the last time in 1982 (He had come back after his heart attack, after all.), we wondered what would become of his ballets, especially since he hadn't seemed much interested. He thought they would fade as different generations of dancers, with different bodies and abilities, came along, etc. So it was a joy to see the company continue to dance for a time as though he were still there on a stool in the second wing on the left. But then in the course of one season in 1986, it seemed to many of us, incredibly, because we didn't want to believe it, that NYCB forgot how to dance Balanchine. Arlene Croce put it more vividly: "These ballets have had their hearts ripped out!" I took this as a reference to the concept of the zombie, the living dead; the dancing had become a routine going-through-the-motions. Physical virtuosity, rarely more, often less. And that's apparently what's on view today, as evidenced as recently as the Sunday performance on SAB Workshop weekend: The performance of "Kammermusik No. 2" looked like a technical exercise, and the "Swan Lake" which had opened the program looked to me to be a shambles. (The Wheeldon and Forsythe works looked a little fresher and rounded, but still oddly dim.) Farrell's company is one of those which restores beating hearts and warm circulation to these great ballets. (Remember Homans's NY Times article's title?) These performances, with some few exceptions I've perhaps too pedantically noted, are vivacious in ways I haven't seen in my now infrequent visits to the New York State Theatre since that fateful visit in 1986 (as I recall; I don't have my program collection here in Foggy Bottom) when the only dance my friends - not ballet aficianados, incidentally, but generally cultured people who occasionally saw dance - and I were really glad to have seen was one of the solos in "Who Cares?". It seldom rises to quite the level Balanchine's company regularly achieved, raising my pulse and the hair on the back of my neck, but it is so good to see them glowing with life, sparkling, inhabited, again, raising my spirits generally. A note for the record about this "Who Cares?": I had said it was nearly complete, but I guess the only thing missing is the original penultimate number for the three solo girls, "Clap Yo' Hands", which Balanchine abandoned long ago. I liked the way it finished off that section of the ballet, but on tour in Chicago, they couldn't get the tape of the Gershwin piano recording to play properly, and maybe problems like that led Mr. B. to drop it. The costumes, from SFB, are not the originals, and in the case of the men, that's really too bad, as the original Chanel designs, with pastel green jerseys open at the neck, medium gray slacks, and the masterful touch, neckties striped diagonally in complimentary pastels used as belts and tied at the left hip, were so much more in keeping with the jazz-classic-boy-girl tone of the ballet than what we see, just fluttering scarves at the waist (and blue tee shirts). But if you never saw Chanel's designs, it's no big deal. And Gallagher looks fine here among the "boys and girls" as the corps used to be called in this.

(from Washington, D.C.) Mel, that's interesting, but isn't it a little different ethically when the original artist changes his work, versus someone else doing it? One can argue that he's still making it - few things are made all at once anyway - whereas someone else - what right do they have? Part of my answer is, never mind, look at the result, and judge that, not the means used to achieve it. We say in politics, the ends don't justify the means; but in the arts, the end is the only justification for the means. kfw, the '82 "Variations" was the only one I saw. If my memory is serving, the shadow can't distract you from Balanchine's choreography because those sections are new; what he had her do isn't there, it's where there is no shadow. dirac's post is consistent with Farrell's autobiography, where on p.260 she says he said he didn't want to do the same thing as in 1966. After the premiere of the last version, she writes, "...he said with great satisfaction, 'The music is a mess, and now, you're a mess. You look just like the music. It's wonderful.'" My feeling after seeing it twice now is that it's enlarged but, especially considering what I just quoted, radically changed. Program B went tonight, and for me, Jennifer Fournier's Andante, with Runqiao Du, in "Divertimento No. 15", was the high point: She let everything unfold so clearly, naturally, vividly, inhabiting the part without apparent effort. In Sixth Variation, in faster tempo, she looked a little stiff and holding back, not fulfilling what she did so completely. I also enjoyed the dancing of Shannon Parsley, Bonnie Pickard, and Lynda Sing; Gavin Larsen seemed less focused. I want to say a little more about "A Farewell to Music", which followed the intermission. I don't think it's very good, and so I don't like the attention it's getting. It's not very good because it doesn't sem to grow out of the music in an organic way but instead to come out of Morgan's inferences about how Mozart must have felt at the time he wrote it based on his biography. Morgan doesn't seem to me to have listened closely, or hardly at all. The worst example of this might be the short male solo which does show some anger, I suppose, but I don't hear anger in this piece. (Compare the Queen of the Night's aria in the same composer's "Magic Flute".) Lots of poignancy, especally in the repeated descending phrase for clarinet, but poignancy ran through Mozart's music for many years before his last ones. (Emotionally, he matured early, I think.) Not only that, we sometimes have to "read" what the dancers are doing, for example, right at the start they are rising on the balls of their feet and lowering their heels to the floor over and over and we read this as walking in place; then some look back, etc. Dancing is more effective for me if you don't have to translate it, or trace out the choreographer's conceptualizing. And I miss the "luminous spacing" of some choreography, most importantly Balanchine's, that of his heirs, Fred and Merce, and others, which enhances legibility not to mention the exhilaration of their dances. But the dancers' continuously flowing, clear and exact movement do a lot for this dance, and J. Russel Sandifer's golden side lighting makes for sharply-etched images on stage. So why did it get the article in the Post (thanks anyway, dirac), and why are camera shutters clicking away during it the last two nights? I suppose the answer is that it's new, new, new. Then after a pause,"Tzigane", with Magnicaballi and Momchil Mladenov. Lacking the electricity of old, but we don't really expect to see the likes of the original cast. May this one get a little reckless with it with familiarity... Well, one can hope. So far, so good. Holly Hynes' costumes put the boys in earthy brown instead of green, which I like better, but the girls are in neater costumes which make them look like "richer gyps[ies] than I was", as Farrell put it at the pre-performance demonstration last night. A slightly cut "Chaconne" to close, with Goh and Boal. Superb opening adagio, to the famous flute melody, reference to the myth a little underscored by Goh's slightly anguished expression in this Elysian but "private" part, in simple white costumes. Some of Boal's movement in "Chaconne" was more snapped and so less visible and effective than in "Raymonda Variations", or, rather, the effect is more of physical virtuosity than dance expressiveness. But this is as good a place as any to note that none of his landings from jumps are audible, here or in "Raymonda" on the other program, so virtuosity serves expression (of lightness) too. Then after the interlude of the nine-girl chorus, the principals reappear in gold-ornamented white costumes (and customary pleasant expressions) for the more formal, "public", and celebratory part, minus the original pas-de-trois I remember, where the boys carried invisible lutes and the girl was turned in attitude on bent leg, bringing the evening to a quicker conclusion.

(from Washington, DC) The first performance of program A was very satisfying to me even before "Raymonda Variations", led by Chan Hon Goh and Peter Boal, had concluded. Goh was a delight, Boal was superbly light, soft and clear, not too forceful, and the demis were fine in their variations for the most part: I can quibble about Kristen Gallagher, subbing for Lynda Sing in variation V, a thankless spot after Goh's variation IV. And the corps gave me consistent pleasure. I didn't care as much for the modern-dance novelty, "A Farewell to Music", but at least it let the dancers do something for it - a lot for it - which is more than I can say for the Adam and Caniparoli premieres I saw in Cincinnati last weekend. Or is it that Farrell has dancers who are so much better than Cincinnati Ballet's? And then came "Variations for Orchestra". When I had last seen this in the early 80's, I think the choreography for the three slow variations in eleven voices didn't say much - Farrell rolled on the floor each time, if I remember correctly. (Does anyone here remember? Maybe I can check my tape of the broadcast when I get home.) Now someone - I have a hunch who she is - has given these passages choreographic voice - or voices, to be pedantic: The dancer continues to perform (on her feet) while her shadow appears on the backdrop - wait - the shadow, which gets a little separated in time early on becomes independent in the later variations - not a shadow at all - another "voice" entirely. And after the (visible) dancer somersaults off as before, the "shadow" takes a bow. I have no problem with this "tampering" with the master's (unfinished) work (if indeed much of it is Balanchine's); what counts with me is whether the result is successful. I haven't quite made up my mind about this, but I think the concept is good, maybe excepting the cute bow-taking at the end. (The "shadow" is not credited in the program.) Bonnie Pickard was the visible dancer this evening; I saw Natalia Magnacaballi in the afternoon dress-rehearsal, and think her less effective. A very nearly full-length "Who Cares?" completed the program, led by Jennifer Fournier, Magnacaballi (my favorite in the cast), Shannon Parsley, and Runqiao Du in Jacques D'Amboise's part: That's the problem, and, poor boy, there's not a lot he can do about it, not being D'Amboise or Bonnefous or somebody. But he gives it his all, evidently, and is everything his partners, all three of them, need, as far as I can see, and that's something he can be proud of. As can all the men. Now to see if this program gets even better as it gets more performances.

(from Washigton, DC) For the record, the program also held the "Waltz" pas de deux from Gaite Parisienne, which perhaps has not been so long out of repertory, if at all? Also, the performances of La Sonnambula restored the Hoop Dance, the fourth divertissement and, IMO, the least, to less interesting music than the rest of the ballet, and so a justifiable omission. The first third of the proram held two premieres, by Adam and Caniparoli. Considering that so many came so far - the display of costumes was an additional draw - it would have been nice to have had more reconstructions instead. (I think Mary meant that the costume and set-design sketches were owned by Mr. Fleischmann, not necessarily the Cincinnati Art Museum itself.)

Would someone please suggest where it's best to sit in Procter & Gamble Hall for the Cincinnati Ballet? I'm trying to plan a trip to see their Ballet Russe program in mid-October. Trouble is, elsewhere the best seats tend to be sold to subscribers or held for supporters, so maybe I need suggestions for purchase strategies too... Last time, when I went in 1996 to see their staging of Jewels, I bought seats in the front rows of the Loge (the lower balcony) out of fear of being blocked on a flat and level Orchestra Level, but I wound up a bit far from the stage. So, is the Orchestra Level well raked up or pretty flat or what? Be as specific about location as you like; I have the seating plans from their website. Thanks.

Alexandra, FWIW, my favorite magazine and newspaper shop in D.C., One Stop, 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue, (202) 872-1577, says they carry Time Out New York and currrently have the lst-8th August issue. They're open until 9 tonight, if you're in a hurry. (I thought I'd seen it there; leave it to the tourists to tell the locals where things are, eh? Just kidding, of course.)