Ray

It's wonderful to see that our praise of this amazing dancer from the past is not overstated! Still, it evokes my usual rant about the lack of availability of ballet on video. This clip posting, in fact, comes on the heels of an Alex Ross article in the New Yorker I just read, about the nearly limitless choices that music listeners have on the Internet today. We're so thankful for this tiny clip, with added piano accompaniment (like a reconstructed bit of a silent movie!), while Mahler aficionados can hear Mengelberg's 1939 recording of Mahler's 4th as if it was recorded yesterday, in better-than-CD fidelity (only, of course, one out of hundreds of recordings of that symphonic work). Sigh!

I know I do.

Absolutely - but one of the things a good autobiography can do is allow the writer to look back and reflect on past events, which there wasn't necessarily time or freedom to do while they were happening. Ah, but there's the rub--often times larger-than-life personalities don't also possess the powers of self-reflection.

I hear you, perky, as salaciousness saturates most biographies of the famous. But it's difficult sometimes for me to read genteel commentary about events when I know what really happened. Or just uninteresting, especially if the gentility is mixed with a lack of thoughtfulness. For all her faults (and yes, perhaps, exaggerations), I appreciate Kirkland's candor. I think MT is often surprisingly candid--especially in interviews--but she also has a very selective memory--the right of any autobiographer, I suppose. But I'd much rather read a bio than an autobiography of most famous people, unless they happen to be writers.

Any Twilight-Zoneishness is due to my inadequate powers of description--the documentary is very self-aware (although now I realize it is deficient in at least mentioning its role in the development of rap). I hope someone does make a documentary on rap and Compton, too.

I fear this might lead to limited results--I always check CD covers, and listen to radio commentators, after listening to works that have been set as ballets. Even recordings/broadcasts of well-known examples, like Tchaikovsky's Serenade, often do not mention Balanchine's treatment.

I highly recommend OT: Our Town, a 2003 documentary about a high school in Compton, CA that puts on its first play in 20 years: Our Town. Compton is a beleagured community near LA that's also produced many professional atheletes--so guess how much attention the arts have gotten. It's a very moving story, just when you thought you'd seen one Our Town too many (the video doesn't really focus on the play, rest assured, but on the people and their stories). I'm not sure why this hasn't gotten more attention. If you have Netflix, OT: Our Town is available on demand.

Fine, if that's just their own words. I just had the feeling that somehow they were reciting something at times. "I'm the Swan Queen, don't come near me..."? Reminds me of watching an unnamed someone coach a Giselle in rehearsal. His first language was not English: "He wants to kiss her but ... she won't let him"--he never paused between the words "her" and "but," and always paused after "but" (to show a gesture).

3:43: a sissonne (that leads him to the fouette, below) 3:48-49: fouette en l'air (other term? grand fouette? dancers usually just call this fouette for short, and it's never confused with fouettes (as in fouette turns))--unlike the related tour jete, this one keeps you on the same leg. 4:05 pirouette en dedans 5:43 double tour 6:11 develope a la seconde, out of a pirouette Edited to add: listen to Hans, whose post came after mine--he's far more precise.

You'll need to post the link. The youtube vid I find has her dancing at 0:30. He does start dancing at 0:40, though, ending at 1:11. If that's the section you mean, there are a lot of steps packed in there! Any step in particular that you can't ID? Perhaps you can describe it a bit?

Certain ballet "coaches" too!

Well, this is why TT writes for the WSJ, I guess. "The art" stands separate, somehow, from the artists who embody it--in dance this makes even less sense than other forms--just as the capitalist individual stands separate from (and is better than) any lousy ol' community/collective/institution. (Unless of course the capitalist runs out of money....) TT doesn't explain how dispersing MC's works to the wind will preserve them better than being maintained by a dedicated company. That such an arrangement hasn't worked in the past is not a sure-fire predictor of the future. Unless, of course, you're inherently suspicious of institutions--a suspicion that fits in with the WSJ ethos.

Helene's response reinforces that for me a biography has to be about more than just the person (and her "voice") to be interesting. Which isn't to say that memoirs can't illuminate, entertain, and explain; we just have too many of them in the dance field (in proportion to good biographies).

I understand, Ray. A bio is always welcome alongside a memoir. I just thought that Tallchief's was actually more forthright than many others. I would suggest, though, that the fact of a book's being ghostwritten is less important than whether or not the ghostwriter has done his job. The goal of a ghostwriter is to make the voice of the memoirist more clear, not less so, and to help the person produce a well structured and publishable narrative, which most non-writers cannot do for themselves in the same way most people can't argue for themselves in court -- it's a different skill altogether. I agree. I guess I'm enough of a nerd that I want a hefty, scholarly bio of MT"s life and times (like we have for Robbins and Diaghilev).

A word to Ballet Talk newcomers: ordering the book through the Amazon link at the top of the page helps fund for this discussion board. I have such a strong memory of this being reviewed somewhere prominent, but can't find a thing on it. I guess I'm just losing my mind!

Generally speaking, that's what autobiographies do (or any biography - the writer is creating a narrative, where some things in a life are emphasized, others deleted or downplayed. Some are more candid than others, of course. I understand why there were some things Tallchief didn't want to go into, but her book is actually less reticent than Farrell's, for example. It's too bad Diana Adams never wrote a memoir. I gather that she had retreated somewhat from the ballet world at the time of her death, so perhaps she didn't want to, but she was one of the crucial ballerinas at NYCB and seemed a most intelligent and thoughtful observer. She worked with de Mille on Broadway, married Tudor - I wonder what that was like -- and was muse and lover to Balanchine. I'm sure it would have been a great read. Well I guess I was trying to respond to the spirit of this topic's subtitle, which asks who we think needs a "real" biography. Clearly there's no consensus here! So, to begin to articulate my definition, I don't count a ghost-written memoir as a "real" biography. Or to use the word in my post, it doesn't satisfy me.

While there's lots written about her, there's really no major, satisfactory biography of Maria Tallchief. Her own latest effort, with Larry Kaplan, selectively highlights certain details and passes over others.

Trisha Brown weighs in on the topic on WNYC's Leonard Lopate show. She has lost her space in Manhattan while Mark Morris has his own building in Brooklyn.

For those who might be interested, the entire performance of Mahler's 2nd Symphony, conducted by Simon Rattle, is uploaded onto YouTube. The performance was Rattle's last with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra before he went to Berlin, and it's phenomenal--both in terms of conducting and individual playing. Link to get started: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLD6MDvwocM (BTW you can set it to play all the clips like a slide show. Still, I'd rather have a DVD or CD of it, but alas I don't think it's been released commercially.) P.S. Have also been enjoying the clip of Dudamel conducting the Simon Bolivar Youth Ensemble in Tchai's 5th: -- even if the quality isn't as good as the CBSO clips

GoCoyote I'm not going to express my disagreement with this at any length, as I know you are "thinking out loud," except to say that there aren't too many ballets I can think of that are about technology (although certainly many more dances, ballet and modern, use technology today). I'm going instead to insist that while the aesthetic/cultural issues are complex, the political/representational ones are sadly simple: women make up the bulk of dance practitioners yet they are in the distinct minority when it comes to positions of artistic or administrative authority--too small of a minority to be explained by any "aesthetic" reasons. Change needs to come from above as well as from below in altering this; presenters like Alastair Spalding need to look harder for/think differently about who they program and why. Sadly, most presenters are lemmings, following whatever gets labeled "hot" by other presenters they look up to as "eminent."

I , too, am curious about this. You might think that ballet, with its Madams and Mims and powerful ballerinas, would produce more active female choreographers than it does. Instead the ballerinas tend, with some exceptions, to get shunted off to the school, and while they may run companies, they often don’t create ballets for those companies. Well the original Guardian article notes that "Julia Carruthers from the Akram Khan company also blames the press in an article in Dance UK News: 'We all know that the press respond quite differently to men and women, particularly … dance critics and writers. Men are clever, sexy, and charismatic; women don't seem to be.'" This is consonant with my experience in the profession: men excite ADs and boards (gay or straight) in a way women often don't. And for reasons other than their choreographic acumen.

I recently received an e-newsletter from the Fisher Center at Bard College, which is presenting Lucinda Childs's work July 9-12. In this newsletter (which I will post once I figure out how), Childs responds to a recent article in the Guardian called "Dance world 'failing to celebrate women'" (posted on Ballet Talk on May 11). Here's the interviewer's Q and Childs's provocative A: "Q: Several weeks ago, when Alistair Spalding [the chief executive and artistic director of Sadler’s Wells, the U.K.’s most important contemporary dance venue] announced the upcoming year’s commissions, not a single woman was on the list of choreographers. When Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief arts writer, asked him to comment about this fact, Spalding responded, 'It is something to do with women not being as assertive in that field. It’s not that I don’t want to commission them. . . . Choreography is still male dominated. It is something I am aware of, but I can’t make the program representative for the sake of it. I have to choose the best.' What is your response to Spalding’s comments? Childs: The artistic choices and considerations of any sponsor overlap with concerns about box-office appeal and fundraising. There are very few female choreographers that have the kind of household name that accommodate this aspect of presenting—Twyla Tharpe, Pina Bausch, to mention a few. But the ballet world has continued to promote lesser-known male choreographers rather than female, with very few exceptions, for reasons that would involve considerable speculation on my part. As for being less assertive, that’s Mr. Spalding’s opinion. I consider myself to be assertive as a choreographer because I work hard and I know what I’m doing." (I posted this under "writings on ballet" b/c she is addressing the ballet context directly.)

You're welcome, and best of luck on your project--it sounds like you and your team are carrying it out in a very thoughtful way. I'm going to make a huge generalization here, that on the whole European dancers and dance-makers often express themselves more articulately than their American counterparts. I imagine that's because they experience more of a culture of support for their voices than those the US (like your project!). And we tend to hear from dance artists (on those rare occasions that we do) in PR or marketing contexts, promoting a ballet (or ballet in general, alas), a company, or a season.

Thanks--my guess is that they're doing the same production today. Too bad PA Ballet doesn't think this information is important enough to publish. They don't have to go far for examples of good program notes--the Phil. Orchestra's are excellent.

OK, but who did they get it from? Who set it on the company originally?