Ray

In glancing today at the story of a baseball player who was fired despite having pitched a huge number of games (disclaimer: I know NOTHING about the game!), I couldn't help but think: What if we kept track of ballet dancers' moves in the same way that baseball fans and the press do? What stats would be important to note? Lifetime Number of Fouetees (LNFs)? Maximum Jump Height (MJH)? Swiftest pickup of errant hair clip? In all seriousness, does anyone keep track of number of performances/roles, the way opera fans do? I imagine that we may have played this game before; if so, just terminate this thread, please!

I don't know if I'd call Roxana's liaisons with the Prince and all the previous husbands and lovers dark, except that none of them, of which there are many, are much beyond 2-dimensional. But the novel is wonderful primarily for the writing style. But it's mainly about her constant upbraiding of herself for giving in to temptation and gold and ambition and feeling guilty about it. She is a courtesan, but refers to herself as a whore, but the problem is she has little range of character. She has her sidekick Amy and then tries to reform herself somewhat by helping out her abandoned children from a distance, but there are all sorts of messes that occur with those, and it's all in the written plotting. She's not quite a sympathetic character just because she says she isn't either--she is very repetitious and it's really only Defoe who's interesting. I can't well envision any of those 18th century novels as story ballets, although something abstract and shorter could be made about Roxana, perhaps more than Moll Flanders, Tom Jones or Joseph Andrews. I just see some big pageant of too many plot twists, too much scenery and costumes otherwise. POB did 'Wuthering Heights', but that doesn't seen quite the same. A one-act ballet of Roxana sounds possible, but not all that promising to my mind. None of the characters have any real romantic texture to them, although many of them are comic. Just a one-act piece with only the Roxana Name Dance focussed on with no moralizing could be dazzling, though, now I think of it: Just ignore the inevitable tragic ending and redo it completely, with just the whore-heroine at her social peak. This would be a totally unpunished whore (at least within what is shown onstage) and that would be something refreshing, but even though it's probably been done without pointing it out too strongly before, the world is probably as yet still not interested in something like that. So a 'Roxana's Dance' still sounds more promising than the Fielding, and Moll is too comic. How had you envisioned these, Ray? With all the complicated plot lines spelled out? For some reason, it reminds of a combo of what I read about POB Caligula and the awful Mayerling--on the heavy as lead side somehow. Maybe something primarily decorative is possible for these rococo things and loosely adapted. Actually begins to sound like 'La Valse', though. As much as my limited imagination allows, I did envision radical adaptations/reworkings of these eighteenth-century stories. And I guess I was imagining a ballet w/out a traditional romantic narrative--instead, episodic like, say, The Rake's Progress (another candidate for a good ballet?). This would all depend, of course, on a masterful choreographer and dramaturg working together! And I thought of those particular Mann stories because, unlike Death In Venice, they have a comic edge to them, to pull us away from the "death is sad" cliche of the Mahlerballet. Felix Krull could offer some wonderful opportunities for the male lead to have to act out different characters (Krull is a con man)---not to mention that scene from childhood where he tries on all the different costumes. I guess a problem with all these stories is that they are often about solitary figures, and we all know about ballets with too many solos....

In my own literary research, I've been reading 18th-century whore biographies, texts that may have inspired Defoe for Moll Flanders and Roxana. Both of those would make interesting ballets; both have, w/in their narratives, ballroom scenes (Roxana gets named "Roxana" because of how she dances). Are there any ballets where the heroine is a whore? (Plenty of courtesans, I guess...) Similarly, what about Tom Jones or Joseph Andrews as ballets? Or, more contemporary, Mann's Felix Krull or Tonio Kroger (leave poor Death in Venice alone for awhile!). To return to the past, in the right hands, Twelfth Night could be a funny ballet. Apologies for any repeats.

True enough, yet I don't think she's dismissing PT's oeuvre: I read her comments as very much critiquing--and, in the case of Esplanade, praising--specific works. I think too she'd go to see PT again; Esplanade suggested to her that there was a master at work here, and I think she was aware that the works she didn't like were later works that may or may not be representative of the larger body of work. But the larger question remains: why should a "naive" viewer cut an artist slack if they're put off by an aspect of the work or performance? What's the line that an artist might cross for a viewer to reject her or him? (We've discussed this in other guises: Tudor's cruelty, Balanchine's misogyny, Robbins's disloyalty re McCarthy hearings, etc.) Is this another example of people's "bad education" in re viewing dance? That is, would most viewers put up with more questionable content in other works of art like, say, a film? I hope this won't turn into a conversation about "being PC" or not--i.e., I don't think my friend views are dogmatic; she's speaking to what moves her as a viewer, for better or for worse.

From AP: 'Brokeback Mountain' to premiere as opera in 2013 The New York City Opera commissioned Charles Wuorinen to compose an opera based on "Brokeback Mountain," the 1997 short story by Annie Proulx that became the basis for a 2005 movie that won three Academy Awards. The opera is scheduled to premiere in spring 2013, City Opera said Sunday. It will be City Opera's second Wuorinen premiere, following "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," which was based on a Salman Rushdie novel and opened in October 2004. "Ever since encountering Annie Proulx's extraordinary story I have wanted to make an opera on it, and it gives me great joy that Gerard Mortier and New York City Opera have given me the opportunity to do so," Wuorinen said in a statement. "Brokeback Mountain" is a cowboy romance about two ranch-hand buddies who start a homosexual affair when they meet on the fictional mountain in 1963.

Dick Van Dyke's "Cockney" accent in Mary Poppins.

Just to be clear, "cliche" is usually used pejoratively. Wikipedia defines it as "a phrase, expression, or idea that has been overused to the point of losing its intended force or novelty, especially when at some time it was considered distinctively forceful or novel. The term is most likely to be used in a negative context"; and, ""Cliché" applies also to almost any situation, plot device, subject, characterization, figure of speech, or object—in short, any sign—that has become overly familiar or commonplace." I wouldn't thus class the maypole dance as cliched, but conventional or traditional. (Do beloved conventions or traditions = "good cliches"?) I suppose it creates an image, though, that might make some wince! Not me. Unless it's in Carmina Burana.

Of course, but I still think it's interesting to hear the perspective of someone whose experience of Taylor doesn't start from the movement, per se, as most of ours would. So here's a more provocative question: Are we, as relatively well eye-trained dancegoers, more liable to cut choreographers too much narrative/conceptual slack if we like their movements/dancers? Or should we be bothered that well-educated people like my friend have a very small framework of associations for appreciating movement and its context, its lineage, its allusions?

I haven't seen 40-foot people yet. But recently, I did seen misty, pseudo-romantic images of flowers and limpid ponds. And raindrdops: "Drip. Drip. Drip" -- no sound, but the movement was totally out of synch with anything in the music. Unfortunately, such design ideas also come with awful choreography, so one's pain is doubled. That's when I close my eyes and think of Higher Things.Can anyone imagine video projections, however, that would actually enhance the choreography? I can't think of any offhand, but I know I've seen a few that seemed to work. Or am I thinking of still photographs?. I never saw it, but how did the Robbins (?) piece w/the backdrop film of Fred and Ginger work in this regard?

Actually, I do have to write a book That's probably why I'm posting so much!

Given Balanchine's limited grasp of English at the time -- and his dependency, really, on Lincoln Kirstein as his guide to what was literally a New World -- it does indeed seem likely that Kirstein may have chosen the words that froze Balanchine's phlosophy into a brief epigram that strikes me as being intentionally provocative and sybilline. A thought that strikes me too is that B is echoing the "cool modernism" of the neoclassicals (Stravinsky, T.S. Eliot), who were pushing back against what they must have seen as the neo-Romantic excesses of self-expressive (read: personal) "hot" modernists like Isadora. In other words, as Alexandra suggests, it's a quip with quite a past!

I just heard from a friend who saw the Taylor program here in Philly at the Annenberg Center at U Penn. With her permission, I reproduce her comments below, anonymously (the program was Changes, Lines of Loss, and Esplanade); I'm curious about reactions to them. (Just to give you context: she writing from a gay, very politically progressive place): "Paul Taylor was . . . an exercise in extremes. There were three pieces, two intermissions. The first was from this year and it was TERRIBLE. Oh god, it STUNK, was totally didactic, etc. It was this bitter, jealous, small-minded 60s-themed (all dancers in crappy pseudo-hippy gear) thang set to the music of the Mamas and the Papas. It stunk. The thesis of the dance was: the 60s thought they were so great but they weren't, and drugs are bad for you. The second piece was from last year and it was only just BAD. It was called Lines of Loss and it was about being old. It too was characterized by bitterness and jealousy. The best bit was a bit that explained, in long, didactic detail, the fruitlessness and surfacy self-obsession of homosexual love. Awesome [the writer is being sarcastic here]. But then the last piece was Esplanade, which is delightful -- like watching Singin in the Rain -- and the poor dancers, who had dragged themselves through the first two pieces, hurled themselves into it and I was charmed. So it wasn't a total waste of an evening."

Full-cyc projections. I mean, when there's a movie on with 40-foot tall people, who watches the dancers?

I wonder now....makes me want to dig up old reviews!

I have no more love for ABT's production of the ballet than you, but we may not be seeing what Etudes was meant to be, or what it is in better productions. Great passage! Thanks, Leigh. It really pulls us into an ongoing critical conversation about the work. Macaulay's concerns about the inanity of the work's structure are answered here in part by the "natural progression" idea, and the note about production details helps to understand how this ballet might come to be evaluated on grounds different from original intents.

Do we know if Macaulay is predisposed not to like Tharp? I found this review to be built firmly on his observations of the work--i.e., I didn't hear a bias against Tharp coming through. (Contrast that to Etudes in the same review, which he admits he doesn't like as a ballet.) I think we need to be careful to distinguish irrational bias from judgment based on observations. We can only disagree with the former, but we can argue with the latter (i.e., offer other observations that we think build our case).

A while back in the "ballets not to revive" thread, I listed Etudes. Many of you instantly rose to the work's defense. I wondered, then, if there were any reactions to Macaulay's recent characterization of the ballet, which went beyond just criticizing the performers/performance, in yesterday's NY Times? He calls the ballet "ghastly," and "just a sensationalist display of ballet style and technique at their most superficial" that it is "appalling no matter who’s dancing however well." He continues: "The score, Knudaage Riisager’s orchestration of Czerny études, is a kind of 'Young Person’s Guide to Hating the Orchestra'; the structure and arrangement of dances is inane. It’s much more enjoyable when it’s danced atrociously, the way I used to see it 30 years ago with the London Festival Ballet. (When the dancers jumped in grand jeté, their legs would flash out into the splits, and yet their torsos would descend.) Brief moments of Ballet Theater’s 'Etudes' were fun in this horrid way. But watching the often admirable Sascha Radetsky forcing himself rigidly through this twaddle made me miserable." Besides relegating divergent opinions to taste, how might defenders argue against his "inane structure and arrangement" or superficiality attacks?

But the standards for judging are so different--the Adam Sandler movie was deemed "better" on its own terms (i.e., in relation to other such movies); it would be a strange world if everything was judged by some single abstract standard of "goodness"! The fact is is that we expect more from ballet and ballet choreographers, especially a choreographer with Tharp's chops and the HUGE amount of resources that are available to her. I agree that we may be wrong to expect a masterpiece with every effort, but it sounds like she failed to deliver on more basic/servicable grounds (I didn't see Rabbit & Rogue, but I did see Nightspot at MCB, which I thought was terrible in many of the ways Macaulay details for this ballet). We do--and should--expect a ballet that's more than just "choreographically flashy, aurally odious, structurally baffling, expressively empty," to quote AM's review.

Putting aside the access issues and focusing on this...Bart, I don't think this is a good criteria by which to preclude broadcasting. Again, I use the Curtis music students as a good example, perhaps musicians in general, who have to perform for all sorts of audiences (with wildly varying degrees of musical competency) from a very early age. My wish, as always, is that the ballet world become a little less mystified. And, from the looks of the pic in the NY Times, I imagine the performance approached and maybe even surpassed professional levels.

I'm not talking a national broadcast here, nor would there be any question of post-production or distribution. The goal would be, as with the broadcasts of the Curtis students, to raise public awareness of the art form--an awareness that, outside of our little BT world, needs all the help it can get.

I'm sure all this is true, but if there were an institutional will, there could be a way. Unions if they're involved (and do we even know that for sure? I mean maybe the theater was designed for under 300 just b/c of this issue...does anyone know?) can be negotiated with; there are models out there. SAB is, after all, an educational institution, and we're not talking about producing money-making DVDs here. It takes someone who thinks this would be important to at least get a conversation started. I also wonder, though: does SAB have an investment in keeping this a limited-audience-only event? Knowing the ethos of the place, I wouldn't be surprised.

I love the euphemistic phrase "rich dark brown"! OK, cliched ballet images/ideas: The Degas ballerina with the black choker (which for me evokes the 1980s more than the nineteenth century). Dances to recorded popular songs (did this start with Twyla?). Carmina Burana or Rite of Spring as the expression of primal/tribal urgency Male "fighting" or "playful manly sparring" I'm sure I'll think of more!

Here in Philly students' recitals at the Curtis Institute are broadcast on a public TV affiliate. Oh for the day when the SAB workshop is televised! And why shouldn't it be--I don't believe there are any unions involved. But who knows what the Balanchine Trust would say...

Has anyone pored over "The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made" published in the NY Times yesterday? http://www.nytimes.com/ref/movies/1000best...&ei=5087%0A How many overrated movies are on that list, I wonder? I haven't gotten passed the Bs, but did see Beverly Hills Cop and Breakfast Club!

I've been imagining this story as a movie for a long time now, and it seems esp. trenchant now b/c it seems to anticipate many important features of the Internet--i.e., the proliferation of second, third, fourth-hand (etc.) knowledge at the expense of direct experience. Can you say why, though, you imagine it as a ballet? What sort of dance scenes are you imagining? (lots of solos, haha).