Ray

EXACTLY. As dirac reported earlier, space in a column is limited, so why not use it to explain what AM calls, in his response to the "brouhaha," his most important point (which everyone supposedly overlooked b/c of the weight comments), instead reverting to easy ad hominem attacks? Blogs offer a space for informality, it's true; they also offer space to work out IDEAS.

I'd watch those dark alleys behind the theater, Macaulay. Something hits you, you fall, visions of sugarplums, dancing on your head... you turn your aching face to see the bloody (your blood!) pointe-shoed, beautifully pointed foot. "Looks like you won't be running any more marathons, critic boy. How's this for heavy?" the Cavalier asks, bringing down the not-prop mouse-king sword ...

No, he does not. I don't think that doing so in this case necessary, since it's a balanced review of a book that is written from a base of considerable knowledge and is non-controversial. Neither Homans nor Gottlieb has serious axes to grind. Oh I agree--I just think any publication should be transparent about reviewing its own writers (as is, for instance, the New Yorker, even in brief book reviews).

My impression -- based only on Robert Gottlieb's review in the NY Review of Books -- was the same as yours, canbelto.http://www.nybooks.c.../waking-beauty/ Just out of curiosity, does Gottleib mention that JH wrote for the NY Review, too? A good editor should have made sure he said that...

In "You Are Not the Only One Writing About Mondavian Zookeepers," George Saunders, the fiction writer whose short stories often appear in the New Yorker, discusses the state of creative writing teaching in the university. Aside from the institutional critique (which may not be interesting to BT-ers), he has a lot of insightful things to say about fiction writing and the creative context, such as the following, where he addresses cliches about creative writing programs--I particularly like the final sentences in re culture and tradition: "Most critiques I read re: Creative Writing programs or writing in the academy are kicking entities that don’t actually (in my experience) exist. The trope about CW students not reading, or being encouraged to be sort of ahistorical and New Agey—I don’t see that. [...] Everywhere I go, people are reading, and reading deeply, and not just in contemporary fiction either. And people seem to realize they are part of a tradition, and had better know that tradition if they hope to further it. Likewise, the trope about “producing writers who all write alike.” That trope is so well-known that it is a cliché [...]It could be argued that any time you get 10-40 people together and have a core group of teachers, some homogenization is going to happen, but, in a sense, isn’t that what culture is? The establishment of a standard and then a resulting attempt to mimic that standard, followed by a passionate revolt against that stupid repressive reactionary standard, which is then replaced by a lovely innovative pure new standard, etc., etc.?"

That's an impressive pet!!! The tiger's great too.

Thank you so much for posting this, one of the performances that I can point to when people ask me what got me started as a dancer. It's a shame though that we can only enjoy this performance, from the 1970s, in a form that looks like a kinescope from the 1950s. Why can't our venerable dance organizations, charged with preserving Balanchine's work, do something about remastering and redistributing this. Yes, I know it's about money and permissions, but it's also about institutional will: do they care? Enjoy it before the "Balanchine police" take it away--censorship is something they seem to have plenty of time and energy for.

I had the privilege of watching Suzanne Farrell coach the pdd on dancers of the Chicago City Ballet, when I was in that company (I performed a corps role in the ballet). It was one of her first times coaching, and I remember thinking she was not particularly generous or encouraging to the principal woman. Still, it was fascinating to watch--while not a role we normally associate with her (I think Arlene C reviewed her in it once), she clearly new every nuance of it and had a clear vision of what the shapes and rhythms should look like. The corps movements, btw, were not particularly innovative; I suppose you can say that, as in the corps work in Tzigane, he trusted in the simplicity of the steps.

To digress from the topic of the thread, this reminds us of how much more I'd like to know about what Balanchine saw/heard, and when, and how--beyond legend, beyond Taper.

Sounds great--love to hear that JL's foregrounding Wagner's rhythmic drive--if anyone doubts it exists, just listen to those Nibelungen anvils!

I have nothing to add to the Tchaikovsky conversation, except that it reminded me of one of my favorite musical mash-ups: the "magic fire music" from the end of Wagner's Die Walkure followed by the Panorama from Act 2 of Sleeping Beauty. (The pertinent bit of Wagner excerpted in Wagner without Words, that amazing old George Szell recording, works well for this.) So, I guess that could be a separate thread: Favorite Musical Mash-ups? In terms of a story that could (not sure about should) be a ballet, I'm thinking about all of the operas and musical works concerned with the intersection of/competition between words and music--Beethoven's 9th, and operas of Richard Strauss, to name two. Could a ballet be built, analogously, around the competing pleasures of narrative X abstraction in dance? Dance to music X dance w/out? I suppose Balanchine explores the narrative X abstraction theme in a way in Midsummer.

In his latest review of Benjamin Millepied's work at NYCB , Alastair Macaulay asks, "Has he any voice of his own? Does he have things to show us in dance that are singular? Does he hear music theatrically? Does he reveal new aspects of his dancers? What aspects of drama does Millepied dance theater have to offer?" and self-replies "Sorry, but my answer to those questions remains a blank." Looks like Peter Martins has sprouted an heir.

Ballerinabotski Avatarova

If you can get to Philly (or NYC later), I highly recommend seeing Jérôme Bel's Cédric Andrieux. Like Bel's Véronique Doisneau, it's a kind of documentary performance autobiography told in words and in movement by a solo performer, a former Cunningham dancer at the later part of his career. I know some BTers did not like Bel's Véronique Doisneau, and I'm eager to hear from others on this performance. I wonder: will it make a difference that this is told by a modern dancer, still quite young and active as a performer, from a "downtown" stage, rather than by a retiring corps de ballet member of the Paris Opera, from the grandiose setting of the Opera stage? I imagine that b/c of the Cunningham connection, Macaulay at the NY Times will review it when it comes to the Joyce on the 18th. (Unlike in the clip that's linked there, the Philly version was performed entirely in English.) As an ex-dancer I find this work so moving. I don't know of any other choreographer taking the time to chronicle dancers' lives in quite this way--through examining the sometimes mundane movement dancers have to do as part of their daily practice, as well as dancers' words. But again, I don't get the sense that it is universally liked--especially by ballet fans.

And how many ballet movies are there out there about gay men?

Thanks so much for posting this link! I had never heard Virginia Woolf speak before--what would one call that way of speaking, high RP?

The renowned literary critic and scholar Frank Kermode died on Aug. 17 at age 90. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/18/frank-kermode-dies-aged-90

While the larger points of Guelda Voien's article are valid, I take issue with some of the ways Voien frames the issue, with the way she uses Ellis Wood as a typical case (Wood's anything but), and with some of Wood's comments. For instance, Voin writes that, "Across the board, audiences are being offered smaller and, sometimes, less experimental work," and her evidence for this is a quotation from Voien: "'I used to make pieces called Hereticus,' said Ms. Wood. 'Now I make pieces called Mom.'" There's no reason to expect more experimentation in Hereticus over Mom; in fact, Wood's Graham lineage probably promises the opposite. And Chez Bushwick is hardly the cultural Elba that Voin implies it to be--I've seen some great stuff there. The Manhattan-centric model of dancemaking has been over for quite a while now; more significant, as many of the responses here are pointing out, the for-profit model of "audience development" is just not a viable one for artistic development. And of course expecting cultural "returns" on one's "investment" is ludicrous--it doesn't even work with money!

I never knew he was married to Jennifer Homans, a dance critic we haven't heard much from lately (probably for understandable reasons, alas).

Points (haha) well taken. But despite what the Trocs' overall mission might be (i.e., to elicit laughter), I know--in line with Cargill's larger claim--that some of the dancers take their (point)work quite seriously.

Bart, I saw this after I posted, yeah, I agree, it's ruminations and just really throwing out possibilities. That's useful in itself. Sorry Bart--every post about AM should be implicitly prefaced with "Macaulay thinks this is a problem...." As for the usefulness of ruminating...I can't help thinking about AM's responsibility to do more than just ruminate--he's one of only a small handfull of writers who has the luxury of being able to write about dance in a major print venue.

I'm going to disagree here, though, and stress that there's no reason men can't perform on point well. The Trocs have certainly proven that. In that sense, then, as AM asserts, gender differences are a problem becaue of pointwork. Think of sports: how many of them differentiate what they do b/c they're the women's versions or the men's? Female runners run the same runs; swimmers use the same stokes. Yes, men don't do rhthymic gymnastics (is that what it's called) the same as women, but not because they can't.

This piece by Macaulay deserves its own topic. A passage: "Nowhere more than in narrative has ballet become the land of low expectations. Audiences regularly sit through a poverty of dance-narrative expression that they would never tolerate in a movie, a novel, an opera, a play or even a musical." Do you agree that this is true? That it is a problem? If so, what's the solution?

Love the Sangria party!

Well again, we won't know until we can read it. I for one would find a collaboration b/t Shelley and Elizabeth fascinating and valuable--you seem to be implying that the collaboraiton lessens the poem's asthetic or intellectual value. Why?