Jack Reed

What, no posts yet? You could think no one was there but the audience! Let's see... Opening night, Chan Han Goh was lovely and light in the Sylph role in "Scotch Symphony", and Ben Huys was her very fine partner, in particular miming very well in the Sylph bits; Kristen Stevens in the Scherzo (1st movement) demi role I liked better in her upper body than below, although Ron Matson's tempos, appropriately brisk until the finale, which was a little slow, meant that she had her work cut out for her. Saturday afternoon, Christina Fagundes was beautiful in the role but lacked Goh's lightness and needs to tone down what she does with her face. Her young partner, Runqiao Du, hadn't got down the mime that opens the second movement, but that may come with time; already he has what his partners need for complete security, evidently, and that's greatly to his credit in my book. Following Goh's "Scotch" we had Natalia Magnicaballi and Du in "Afternoon of a Faun", which I thought very creditable, with Du's youth appropriate to the role and matched by a certain informality, not to say improvisatory quality, in his partner's dancing. But Saturday afternoon, Goh and Huys gave this ballet a larger and more effective performance. "Duo Concertant" follows on Program A, danced rather carefully on Thursday by Jennifer Fournier but on Saturday afternoon really enlivened by Magnicaballi. Their adequate partner was Du, looking a bit over his head. Closing the program, whether it should or not, was "Apollo", with Bonnie Pickard lush and vivid at the top of the platform right at the beginning as Leto on Thursday, but with Marialena Ruiz vague and much less effective for me Saturday afternoon. But what of that? Ben Huys was a clear and dramatic Apollo, making the rapid developments of the first scene, that Balanchine later omitted, etched like frames in a film strip. I liked Fournier on Thursday better as Calliope, although I liked Goh even better in the role on Saturday. Magnicaballi was fine as Polyhymnia Thursday, and Pickard showed in it on Saturday more of the strengths we had got just a little of, seeing her Leto. I enjoyed Fagundes's Terpsichore on Thursday even though it seemed a bit disconnected; "Apollo" seems to me to be more like that throughout than Balanchine's later ballets, but on Saturday Fournier gave a performance of Terpsichore more connected and clearer than Fagundes had done which I enjoyed even more, and was the most satisfying one I've seen by her so far. Whatever "Apollo's" shortcomings as a closing ballet - I think the last pose both a conclusion and a harbinger - the person sitting next to me volunteered the opinion that it had been "beautiful" - it never hurts to end a program with the audience feeling good - and wondered why the Post writer had been so "snotty" about it. I haven't caught up with that review yet, so I don't know, but the cast was different. Friday evening's Program B led off with a slowish and even performance of "La Sonnambula" - it lacked the contrasts among parts that this ballet needs. Even the music lacked crescendos. Goh was pretty impressive as the Sleepwalker, nonetheless, and much appreciated by the audience, and Huys was effective as the Poet. "Monumentum/ Movements", as it used to be listed in days of yore, was the high point of the run for me, especially "Movements for Piano and Orchestra". This staging showed what this ballet really is; it was a little diminished by Fournier's careful approach in contrast to Du, her more energized partner. After only a pause, it was followed by "Duo Concertant", given an altogether larger performance by Magnicaballi and Huys than she and Du had given Friday night. "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" ended the program, but it generally lacked the energy and crispness of MCB's last Spring; Edward Villella's Thug will not soon be replaced in my experience, apparently; and Fournier's modest Strip Tease Girl does not compete so well with memories of Farrell's own as some others I've seen since. But it's a good time anyway, and I didn't mind hearing someone whistling the music in a Seven-Eleven afterward. (posted from Washington, D.c.) [ 09-30-2001: Message edited by: Jack Reed ]

My first contacts with ballet were an extension of my early exploration of classical music. While I got some pleasure from some of the symphonic repertory, I liked some ballet scores more, so that I wanted to see the ballets when I had the opportunity. When I was sixteen and seventeen, I think, I saw the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo do "Petrushka" and NYCB "Firebird" (with Tallchief!), among others, and I still remember some bits. Unimportant bits, as it happened, because I lacked the maturity to take in the best of it. It didn't "take", and I didn't see any more ballet for about twelve years. By that time, though, I must have been ready, because when I saw McBride and Villella with NYCB in "Rubies", I was hooked, and a few years later, the company no longer visiting Chicago, I began visiting New York to see forty or fifty performances a year (not quite all NYCB, incidentally).

Not surprisingly, donkeys onstage can, well, extemporize the same way as horses do. My only experience of this was during a performance of "Union Jack", when the donkey that drew the cart onstage for "Costermonger pas de deux", uh, relieved himself part way through, in full view of the audience, as this section is done in front of the lowered curtain. What made the event memorable, aside from its uniqueness in my experience, was that the, uh, mishap was cleaned up by Peter Martins, no less, who entered on the opposite side, already in his sailor suit for "Royal Navy", and equipped for his task with a broom, a dustpan, and a look of grim determination. On another occasion, the curtain came down to within a couple of feet of the stage, about half a minute before the end of "Scherzo a la Russe"; we could see that most of the dancers continued to dance, but a few in back stopped momentarily. NYCB never was strong on handling props, so that we weren't suprised when the girl dancing the trumpet solo in "Stars and Stripes" did it with an "invsible" one; but they were extremely adept at getting stray objects, usually a boy's slipper, into the wings. Usually two kicks were sufficient, nobody missing a step, much less bending over to pick it up, all to giggles and a whisper of applause from the audience. Other minor glitches would occur, like two demis turning too close to each other so that outstretched hands would hit with a resounding slap and a gasp from the dancers, but a major one, like a bad fall, forcing the dancer to hobble off, sometimes provoked nervous giggles which spread around the stage and then faded. And there was one tall soloist I won't name in public who didn't seem to require anything at all to inspire her giggles, and once she started... But I missed by one day an instructive mishap. In a short ballet, a dancer fell twice and nearly knocked someone else down, which wouldn't have been so awful if it hadn't been her professional debut! Nerves, we supposed. The night I went, her alternate was listed in the program but she was cast again instead, and danced superbly, if not quite justifying the wild enthusiasm of the regulars seated around me, I thought. Asking for explanation, I learned of the bad debut the night before. There was nothing wrong with her alternate. The management was not going to let that dancer stew for two days about an inauspicious beginning to what turned out to be an admirable and quite long career with NYCB, but put her right back out there to do what they knew she could do. It was one of those times I felt the depth and the wisdom of Mr. B's little empire.

Thursday evening the 2nd of August, friends and I saw a performance of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal in the outdoor Theatre de Verdure in Lafontaine Park, during our brief visit to Montreal. Their program consisted of Balanchine's "Concerto Barocco", which had led me to suggest seeing the program, a new ballet by Adam Hougland, "Beyond", and Duato's "Jardi Tancat". "Barocco", staged by John Clifford and danced to a shmaltzy recording, disappointed me by being rather slow and placing too much emphasis on pose at the expense of flow-through. A certain softness also tended to rob the ballet of some of the life and energy it had had for me as recently as this spring when I saw it danced by Ballet Chicago Studio Company, even though the BCSC dancers had been pre-professional students while the GBC dancers were cooly confident seasoned professionals with strengths more than equal to the demands of the program. Hougland made "Beyond" in Spring 1999 at Juilliard, where he was a student, to Vaughan Williams's "Fantasy on a Theme of Thomas Tallis". In it, the cast of four women and four men all covered from neck to ankle in identical silver-gray dresses slit up the front stays massed on the left fifth of the stage, marked off by a luminous line, until the massed string orchestra subsides later for solos and duets, when one or two dancers venture Beyond the line (Get it?) into the uncrowded remaining space only to return for various reasons to the mass according to the general plan, if not the momentary content, of the music. At the end, the initial pioneer crosses into the right wings, unsurprisingly. I think eliminating the dresses and the line would let the dancers show us the dance and the space more immediately and so would provide stronger support for this ballet's conceptual burden. I thought GBC looked its best in "Jardi Tancat", in costumes (and decor) also by the choreographer which let us see the dancers' form and movement. Its burden of socially-reinforced fortitude in the face of despair lies lightly enough on its vigorous and varied movement vocabulary not to bother me, nor does it go on with this too long. The academic among my companions, though, preferred "Beyond", for its concepts to "read" and for the "gender equality" of the cast. She liked "Barocco", but it was "just pretty" and had only one boy. But the classical-music lover, thinking that music and choreography were usually made together, was happily surprised that "Barocco" was set to the Bach concerto, and it remained his favorite of the evening. And I was impressed by the general quality of the whole enterprise, not least the little theatre, which has a stagehouse with adequate lighting, a good sound system, and good sight lines owing to well raked up rows of seats of such an unusually open design that they had little area to get wet by the drizzle which had just stopped, and ventilated well, in comfortable contrast to the usual bent-board seats I've found getting harder and stickier during the evening in American pavillions. And there was no admission charge! (Cybertip: Neither was there mention on GBC's website of the series of five consecutive evenings this program was given. I found out about it on montrealonline.com, operated by the Montreal Gazette.) [ 08-11-2001: Message edited by: Jack Reed ]

Thanks for the clarification, Doug.

Coming back to Michael1's original question, I remember reading or hearing that Robert Irving, a fine conductor and for many years NYCB's Music Director, suggested some of the music to Balanchine, the "String" Symphony No. 9, maybe, but I've been unable to find documentation for this idea. Meanwhile, the broadcast of the PNB video on Bravo over the weekend reveals this early Symphony to have been orchestrated (that's why I use quotation marks) for a larger orchestra than just strings, and maybe - this is speculation on my part now - Irving had something to do with that. Not to take away from Balanchine's considerable abilities, but it seems to have been his practice to rely heavily on those around him. [ 07-04-2001: Message edited by: Jack Reed ]

...not to mention "spritely" pace! It really must have been a fine performance, with all those elves and fairies in it, to put you in such a punning mood, Manhattnik! I'm glad. Thanks for debunking Barnes, Leigh. [ 06-29-2001: Message edited by: Jack Reed ]

In defense of "Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3", let's remember that its last movement, nearly as long as the first three together, is "Theme and Variations", to superior music, and absolutely top drawer, in my view; and in support of the remark about "Elegie", I think it is better than good enough to put on by itself, as MCB has done. It draws me in.

Years ago, I learned a ballet called "Card Game" was going to be danced in Boston, and, thinking the lost Balanchine ballet had been found, I went there to see it, breathless with naive excitement. It turned out to be a non-ballet by nobody, and I fled the scene of my disappointment, arriving on the planned New York leg of my trip ahead of schedule. Practically running to the sanctuary of the New York State Theatre, I saw - "Don Quixote", every moment of which seemed to my eye to be the work of a master, if overall not his best, but all of which seemed to my ear to be unbearably ugly. (Croce's term for the score by Nicholas Nobakov, the novelist Vladimir's brother and Balanchine's friend, was "earsore", as apt an expression as any she's used.) But even with that, I felt at home again because of the quality of the movement I saw onstage. PAMTGG (for "Pan Am Makes the Going Great", the airline-commercial theme (!) its composer, Roger Kellaway, expanded for the ballet) I looked at a couple of times at Ravinnia, the Chicago Symphony's summer season site north of Chicago, when I had a fever. I mention that in charity to the ballet, but I don't think the fact of my fever fully accounts for how thin PAMTGG seemed at the time, with the corps lined up across the stage to "fly" dancers in body-surfer poses across on their outstretched arms, and other "flight" motifs. Friends in New York told me the cost of all the clear Lucite "luggage" piled up on stage meant that this was not merely a mistake, it was an expensive mistake. If a ballet is on videotape or kinescope film, it can't really be lost, but when we think about the Balanchine-Stravinsky collaborations, one we usually forget is "The Flood", which I saw in its original televsion version around 1960 and many years later in another version on stage at the NY State Theatre. Short as it was, it had only one short dance number, which was pretty effective. Otherwise, it caught up the hapless corps this time under a huge blue tarp which they were supposed to animate in wave motions, and in another scene dealing with Eden I recall a huge Serpent, animated by a dancer inside. These recollections lead to the question whether Balanchine, who easily produced lots of vibrant choreography, could only devise other stage business that creaked, but I remember seeing a "kinescope" of an NBC Opera Theatre production of Mozart's "Magic Flute", directed by him, that seemed to me to make fine use of the little screen to present an enlivened staging of that opera, without dance. And of course there are the superb early scenes of "The Nutcracker". But that's another story for another time.

I've been wondering about that myself, Wendy. I think the potential for them being better is certainly there, technically, in contrast to standard VHS tape, which doesn't reproduce as good a picture as we see when we're watching the broadcast we're taping, although S-VHS comes a lot closer. And it's said that newer technologies work in part by simplifying the data they transmit or store in ways that may not completely fool the eye or ear, if that's not too vague a way of putting it. Not having had the opportunity to make comparisons, I asked a friend who is a professional electronics engineer with an interest in home theatre about it, and he said that DVD can record video of better quality than any of the small videotape formats. But as a long-time record collector, I've learned from experience that as better recording technologies come along and old performances are reissued, the occasion to issue them again sometimes can have an inferior result. In other words, the ability of people to make a bad decision and mess something up is not to be underestimated! (And of course, copying our own tapes onto DVD won't improve the picture - the DVD can only play back as good as is recorded onto it - though it would add the advantage of the durability the DVD has over tape.) But commercial producers will usually have very high quality large-format videotape to use as sources for what they sell, so that DVD reissues can have much better picture quality than already-existing commercially-issued tapes, and I expect most of them will. My friend also said something that echoes what Manhattnik wrote about something changing soon: He expects rapid change in this field, and suggested I not bother to research it in detail until I was ready to spend the money.

A reason not mentioned explicitly so far for getting a DVD recorder and copying your videotape collection is that DVD's are likely to be a more robust medium for storing the performances we cherish than videotape is. Tape can be crumpled or stretched when a VCR acts up, the tape sometimes sheds the oxide coating which holds the magnetic recording, etc. DVD's are more like CD's; they're not indestructible but they're less prone to problems. This afternoon I heard something on the "World Business Review" program on the BBC World Service that sheds some light on the regional incompatibility problem and what may happen to it. I'm posting a link to the transcript of the program on the Links forum and giving the gist of it here: According to program presenter Martin Webber, clever consumers will tell you that you can play U.S. DVD's on European-standard players by tapping in a few numbers before you watch. But why is regional coding used? Scott Hedrick, home entertainment editor of "Variety", explained that the film studios make maybe 4000 prints of a major hit at an expense of thousands of dollars for each one. When these have had their theatrical run over a period of many weeks, they're shipped on to another region, and the DVD release appears for sale in the US. When the run is finished in the second region, DVD's appear there and the prints are shipped on to the next region, and so on. The studios want to get the most they can out of theatrical ticket sales and don't want DVD's from the US competing, so US DVD's are coded not to be playable in other regions, and similarly DVD's coded for other regions aren't supposed to be playable here. [so what? We consumers have reason to hope; read on.] With the construction of multiple-screen cinemas, films don't play there as long as they used to; and with people finding promotional material on the internet and on cable and satellite systems, the film market is becoming more global. With simultaneous global distribution of films digitally the studios' need for regional coding will decrease. [i'm not sure that when the need for coding decreases the coding will be stopped, but for someone like me whose immediate concern is about repair or replacement of VCR's so that my valuable tapes can be played safely, the idea that nothing is lost and maybe something is gained by waiting to go into DVD recording is very comforting. Those who don't want to wait will have to sort out their compatibility problems along the lines Lara explains. I hope this information adds some perspective to the picture and helps people decide how to go.]

I saw Victoria Hall dance "Diamonds" in Cincinnati, and she did bring a large, somewhat risk-taking approach to it, not to the extent that Farrell had, though; and when I went up to Farrell in the theatre and thanked her for staging "Jewels", she replied that she hadn't had much to do with it, so I don't know what role she played in the staging. Hall, indeed, was the only dancer on stage the whole evening who was really legible from the first row of the balcony in Procter and Gamble Hall, the rest of them tending to coalesce into a mass. Hers was also the only name in the program I recognised from Balanchine's days at NYCB, and I thought at the time that having danced for him (although never in that role) was the key. (The brilliant scarlet sheath she wore leaving the building later was worth seeing, too.) But I came to "Jewels" when Mazzo was regularly in "Diamonds" and, never having seen Farrell dance, it puzzled me that "Diamonds" was something of an anti-climax after "Rubies", with its high-energy cast of McBride and Villella: There were the Tchaikovsky music, white costumes, big cast compared to "Emeralds" and "Rubies"; it clearly was supposed to be the grand finale, but it didn't quite come off, and I couldn't understand how Balanchine missed the mark. Then when Farrell returned, "Diamonds" was the first thing I saw her in, and I understood! "Diamonds" WAS a grand finale! Nor was that her best night: Either she fell, or D'Amboise dropped her, for she was momentarily on her hands and knees, while he improvised a gesture and an expression of astonishment over her; she then got up by herself and produced the immense performance of that role that made it appropriate after "Rubies", and I went out thinking, "If that's what she can do on a bad night, what can she do on a good one?" But it turned out that the accident hadn't bothered her, and subsequent performances were in their unique ways (she never seemed to be perfecting a performance of a role like other dancers did) immense too. I have certainly enjoyed Mazzo in roles made for her, especially "Stravinsky Violin Concerto". Dale's comment about the bit where Martins "blinds" Mazzo at the end of Aria II is one of those interesting speculations that gets you thinking about things freshly. Hmm... Balanchine had Farrell roll on the floor during the parts of "Variations" where the music is in eleven voices. She's alone there, of course, not being subservient to anyone. But she's Suzanne Farrell, and there she is, rolling on the floor. Hmm... [ 06-15-2001: Message edited by: Jack Reed ]

The phenomenon did repeat itself, and it reminded me in fairness to mention that another contribution to the grandeur of "Diamonds" was Seay's partner, Mikhail Nikitine, whose dancing had elegance and finesse, for example in phrasing the series of turns in his variation. And the corps throughout the evening, from first note to last was vibrantly clear, from toe to finger tip. I think "Jewels" is the finest thing MCB does. Oh. Alexandra said, "...this was imperfect but God, it was alive." Why "but"? How about, "This was imperfect and God, it was alive."?... Me, I don't care about perfect. Perfect is boring.

I think "soft costumes 'worn over wire'" is a very apt description.

Just want to slip in here an omission from my remarks about Carlos Guerra - It seemed to me on Thursday night, having seen all three of his performances of "Sylvia", that the later parts of his variation were looking much better by then.

Alive? It was MAGNIFICENT! You know, when Verdy was in "Emeralds", her variation, called Spinner after her music's title, came after Paul's, because it was more marvelous and so had greater effect (the other way round would have been anticlimactic); but when Verdy left it, Balanchine reversed the order because, with the new cast, the Paul variation became more effective. But Catoya is now SO good in it, I feel the original order needs to be restored. She was just marvelous. And the rest of "Emeralds" was lovely. (I think the last movement, melancholy as it is, added when Verdy left, is not quite on the level of the rest of it. But tonight? It was, never mind.) And "Rubies", with McBride and Villella, was the ballet that hooked me on ballet in August of 1968 at the Ravinia Festival. It often hooks me again, freshly, as though I hadn't seen anything before it - coming to know and love the Stravinsky Piano Capriccio it's set to before I ever saw it set me up to be knocked over by it - and that happened again tonight. I was hanging on every note, one after another, hanging on every step and gesture, right with them, as though one of them, breathing with the music, holding my breath at the cadences during the pas de cinq where the demi (Michelle Merrell) goes through her series of arabesques with her four boys: The corps gathers upstage on our left, as though something's coming, she's inverted in arabesque, there it is!, the audience has just time to suck in it its breath, and the series goes on, as though nothing had happened... And that's only the demi and the corps! Jennifer Kronnenberg and Eric Quillere' were the principals, their lightness, quickness, and joy beggaring my powers of description, she skipping in and around as though contact with the floor were optional, an afterthought, almost; he too. After this, "Diamonds" was the needed GRAND Finale, Tchaikovsky's music, white costumes, Deanna Seay clearly and beautifully spinning out a seemingly unending flow of invention, all in good tempo, the harder for us to bear as this lavish pas de deux becomes overwhelming - twelve minutes we're told, but it seemed like four or five, not because it was rushed (it wasn't) but because we wish something like this really to be unending. But as they say in show biz, leave 'em wanting more. Yeah, they charged us up tonight, all right! It's my understanding this phenomenon is to be repeated. On schedule! [ 06-02-2001: Message edited by: Jack Reed ]

If I may offer a footnote to Alexandra's remarks on the main website about Carlos Guerra, he's 20, and these are his first three performances of Sylvia, maybe almost as hard a role as "Theme and Variations"? So maybe the bravura will come in time. Another item that came my way Thursday evening, this one from a former Royal dancer sitting next to me, was high praise for Eric Quillere's "generous" partnering in "Duo Concertante". "That I'll remember for fifty years." And this person said that, compared to Ashton's way, MCB's "Patineurs" was "not terrible". In general, she liked the joy in dancing the company shows, and praised Guerra's earnestness and determination to give it all he's got as well as Yann Trividic's musicality [in "Slaughter']. [ 06-01-2001: Message edited by: Jack Reed ]

Seeing the program again from a direct-center seat helped me to get a lot more out of The Lovers (White couple) in "Patineurs" than last night, although an easier tempo here might help, too; and tonight The Gangster (Villella) in "Slaughter" seemed to have an especially powerful and menacing "throwing his weight around" aspect to his walk that I didn't get last night.

Alexandra sure CAN, and does, successfully, argue both sides of the question whether a ballet should be danced in the style of the choreographer or the style of the company. I think, the style of the choreographer if that can be achieved, otherwise in a style that achieves artistic integrity, and this aspect of MCB's "Patineurs" pleased me very much. And it looked too sharp and sometimes a bit rushed where it might have been spun out to me too, but I don't know what different way it should be. I don't think I've ever seen it on stage before, but I do have a tape of ABT's 70s version that didn't make much of an impression. What displeases me most about "Patineurs" is that it overworks the skating-rink gimmick by going on with it at too great length, and I think that confines it; and the vocabulary seems confined too, repetitious after a while. Maybe a different way would make the length a reward for me. Kronenberg in "Duo Concertante" was the most satisfying performance of the evening for me too - although I have the tape with Mazzo, it's THEM - Farrell and Martins - I remember from many times in the theatre, but even against this background, Kronenberg was very satisfying. (Her partner Eric Quillere' seemed less "in it" than she.) Seay has been one of my top favorites in the company, but I thought last night she was carrying her smoothly polished way of finishing everything a little far, as though it were not "I show" but verging on "I am the show", and this way slowed things down, especially, in her variation, during the flute solo, but nevertheless there was a lot to like, and again I agree with Alexandra's perception about this - it was not a routine performance of a routine ballet. (I look forward to her "Diamonds" on the weekend for the grandeur of this complete finishing.) Catoya is my third favorite of the evening: I've liked her better, but here her choreography (the Girl in White) and tempo were unfortunate circumstances, I feel. I don't agree, though, that repeating yourself is an unpardonable sin - when you have a way of saying something you can't improve on at the moment, go with it, and if it's your own, take some pride in it!

The question in my mind as I watched "Les Patineurs" was whether this was Ashton performed his way, or maybe more realistically, to what degree of approximation is it performed his way? So I'm looking forward to reading what the Ashtonites here have to say about that. Alexandra uses the word "appropriately", but I'm not as clear as I'd like to be on the appropriateness of MCB's way of doing Ashton. (I think their way of doing Taylor rather diminishes the effect, compared to his dancers, for example.) MCB evidently plans to add more Ashton to their repertory, so maybe their way with his work will develop as they do more of it. [ 05-30-2001: Message edited by: Jack Reed ]

The Ballet Chicago Studio Company, teenage students of The School of Ballet Chicago, presented their third annual "Spring Repertory" performances last weekend in the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, in Chicago. Both programs opened with Balanchine's "Concerto Barocco" and closed with his "Tchaikovsky pas de deux" followed by Artistic Director Daniel Duell's "Ellington Suite". In between, program A offered "Juxtaposition" (to Mozart and Glass), by the School's Director, Patricia Blair, "Garden Fairies" (to an excerpt from Mendelssohn's "A Midsummer Night's Dream") by Duell, and "Emperor Waltz" (J. Strauss II) also by Duell, and Program B offered Balanchine's "Valse Fantaisie" (Glinka), "Garden Fairies", and the pas de deux from Balanchine's "Stars and Stripes". I chose the Friday evening performance of Program B and enjoyed it - These dancers perform a little below professional level, for the most part, but I have seen lots worse Balanchine from professionals. The main difference here is that their preparation has the right aim - clarity and flow - and they perform to music played (on recordings) in uncompromising tempos. So Julie Niekrasz and Alana Czernobil gave satisfying performances in "Barocco", with entirely adequate support from Samuel Feipel; in "Valse Fantaisie", Czernobil had to substitute for Kathryn Katsaros and lacked the bouyancy the part requires, ably partnered by Ted Seymour and the four corps girls; fourteen younger girls displayed the fluently changing patterns of "Fairies" with more cheerful expressions than most of ghe principals managed; Czernobil had a better time of it in "Stars" with Feipel, who certainly brought plenty of the right strut and swagger to his part, and who made the running lift into the wings at the end effortlessly exciting but who had gotten a little overwhelmed with all he had to do in his coda solos. After the second intermission, diminutive faculty member Lydia Freeman demonstrated what looking happy on stage while tossing off "Tchaikovsky pas" is like; and tossing herself toward the wings in the coda, she could afford to be happy, partnered as she was by the thoroughly professional Willy Shives, a guest from the Joffrey Ballet, where he last distinguished himself in my experience ably dancing both the title role and Young Billy in Loring's "Billy the Kid" on the JB's Copland program last fall. Duell's closing suite, to Ellington's "The River", like his "Fairies" ballet, showed fluency compared to his ballet years ago to Ellington's take on Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite", which kept the dancers busy pushing props around, and the movement for varied groups was well fitted to the music's movement and sometimes smoothly incorporated steps and gestures appropriate to Ellington's music but not from the classroom vocabulary. And in neither of his ballets did anyone have anything to do that made them look awkward, in contrast to what some busier, more established choreographers have done. I should add that all the performances were in suitable costume, if not always the ones we associate with the established ballets on the program, and with designed lighting lacking however adequate levels of illumination at the front of the stage, where principals suddenly turn into silhouette. Returning Saturday evening after a heavy day, I found myself thinking how glad I was that I had, as Laura Dunlop with Niekrasz this time, concluded the slow movement of "Barocco". And "Valse" went better with - well, I thought the program was correct in naming Niekrasz, but Duell told us later it had been Czernobil - whoever it was had managed to move more lightly. And while Czernobil still looked a little scared in "Stars", Feipel had got his role more nearly under control, although turns are not his strength. We just don't get enough Balanchine even of this caliber around here. At least, I don't!

Here's a switch: I used to go in late. Ruth Page's "Nutcracker" used to be headed up for the first three or four perfomances each season by a couple of Balanchine's dancers, and after checking out the whole production, which made me groan inwardly, I would go back on later nights to go in at intermission, because I had discovered that when the curtain went up, Patricia McBride would be standing still at the back more effectively than anyone else had moved in Act I. For her pas de deux with Helgi Tomasson I could endure the rest of Page's Act II; and the one-ballet-a-year crowd in the huge Arie Crown Theatre at the McCormick Place convention center would bring the house down another year when Peter Martins uncorked a cavalier's variation (unseen in New York) on the huge stage, built for automobile shows. (His dancing-thistle partner was Violette Verdy.) To see even a little bit of dancing like this without having to get on a plane and rent a hotel room was a marvel. But I have left after the first ballet even when I thought the rest of the program would be worthy. The instance that comes to mind was "Mozartiana", not with Kyra, but with Suzi; expecting that the "Fancy Free" scheduled to follow it would get a bang-up performance, I made my way to the coat room in the New York State Theatre and found a lot of my friends and some people we didn't know were there, too, none of us being in the mood for being banged up, and all of us feeling we had got more than our money's worth. "Now I could just go home?" Okay, but, maybe, "Now I can die." We felt we were already in heaven, and we wanted to stay there for as long as we could. But I have felt that the last acts of Balanchine's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Harlequinade" don't go easily with the first acts, which are complete in themselves in that the situations in them are resolved. But I stay: The invention in them, and the execution of it, was better than you got most other places, and they achieved ballet's purpose, too, if less intensely. What's ballet for? someone asked Mr. B. when the discussion had already established the costs of ballet in terms of physical rigor and financial expenditure. "It makes people happy." Who can argue with that? We're all different, and what makes us happy will be different; our different experience - not only in the theatre, but reading and listening outside it - eventually tells us when going is likely to be a good time, when not. We might miss something, but I've found selectiveness has a benefit for me: To some extent, the less I see, the more I remember.

Jeannie's not the only one here who thinks staging Bejart is a bit of a waste, compared to Balanchine; but I would say, only a bit. Agreeing with our premise that she's not going to take our advice is pretty easy: I wouldn't say that to her not only on principle, because I feel I owe her too much for what her dancing did for us and for Mr. B, but also because among the three Bejart ballets I've seen, one was pretty good: "Le Sacre du Printemps", which I went to see because I had read somewhere that "You can't do it, but it's the best one," was Balanchine's own opinion of it (He never saw Paul Taylor's setting.). On the program with it was "Salome", with Patrick Dupond in a black skirt, which was a stretch to take seriously, and years before, I saw the film of "Bolero", which seemed to me defeated by the music. So I don't completely write off staging Bejart, and I may even be ready for "Bolero" again. On stage this time. But I don't expect much as much from him. Still, if he can make one good ballet, maybe he made some others. (When the women came out for the second part of "Le Sacre", my Balanchine-trained expectations rose, to be disappointed; it seemed to me at the time that Bejart had been more interested in choreographing the men.) But the idea of a company where dancers can benefit more from what Farrell can give them is important, whether it's her own or another, as Tobias suggested. I'm not sure it matters what the experience of the dancers in it is. What does matter is whether they're open to her teaching. Don't some people learn one way, and that's it, while others are continually learning and developing? [This message has been edited by Jack Reed (edited March 16, 2001).]

I'll take Verdi over Adam any day, atm711, although Adam's music doesn't spoil "Giselle" for me. But to get back to the topic, fair to whom, or what? I agree with some of the longer posts that pettiness and bias are out, that anything that happens on stage is fair game, and most of all that explanation and detail, supporting observations, are necessary: Just as in science or engineering, where we think that measurements presented without giving us some idea of how they were made are pretty meaningless, so a critic who claims to have taken the measure of a performance owes me some explanation of how they arrived at what they say. Without that, the criticism is unfair to me, the reader. With that, not only is bias and pettiness likely to be exposed if present, but the criticism has meaning as though we were sitting in the critic's seat, looking out of the critic's head through their eyes, thinking with their mind. For me, the best critics are transparent in this way (Anita Finkel's term for Arlene Croce), and looking at the dance through the lenses of their writing helps to train us to be our own critic, responding more completely to what we see, even when it's not one of the ballets we've read about.

Having just returned from a weekend in Miami where I saw the three performances MCB gave of this program, I'd like to thank Basilio 17 for writing a review so clear and on target, reading it brings back the matinee for me to enjoy again! There's not much left for me to add, but the amplification in the Jackie Gleason Theatre was much less aggressive than what I remember from last October, which added to my enjoyment.