Ray

I hadn't noticed that--thanks for pointing it out--but knowing PBS I wouldn't be at all surprised if that were the reason for the cutaway.

Shen Wei is a modern choreographer who I think is very sensitive to color.

Ray, I can identify with your frustration, as a dance lover. But I can also imagine the producers thinking of this as a joint music/dance production, and realizing that a certain percentage of the audience might be there for Emanuel Ax and Yoko Nozaki. After all, it's "Mozart Dances" (ambiguosly phrased) rather than "Dancing to Mozart." I can see your point, but if that was their concern, I wish they would have billed the program so as to clarify what it was -- or else billed it as "Mark Morris' "Mozart Dances, interrupted by shots of Emmanuel Ax." He's fun to watch, and I especially enjoyed the sonata footage, but Morris put him in the pit, where ticketholders in many of the best seats can't see him even if they want to, and I wish Live from Lincoln Center would have given us the work he conceived and not tried to make it all things to all people. Thank you, kfw; very well put. I mean we should think of the analogue in music or opera: what if they just stopped playing the music or singing in the middle of a piece to cut away to something else? I really got the sense from whoever was doing the editing that "the dancers are repeating movement, so it's ok now to cut away to Ax." Again, think opera--the Queen of the Night in Magic Flute repeats quite a few vocal lines! Plus I wasn't crazy about the camera work even when it was focused on the dancers--too many closeups at inappropriate times, to my taste.

Great, provocative stuff, Helene! Thanks for unearthing that for our deliberations.

At Jacob's Pillow last month, I saw an interview with Freddie Franklin, whom I've always found to be very articulate, if not quite as reflective about the profession as I would like. Maria Tallchief is also surprisingly candid and down-to-earth in interviews. (In "real life" I'd use another, less kind word.) Christopher Wheeldon also seems good at talking about his own choreographic process.

Sure...I guess...although I don't know a single living soul that doesn't interpret the "merits" that she sees. Anyway, that's the nature of my inquiry into your reactions to MM: the "presentation" seems to me to stand very well on its merits (which, pace Acocella, are formidable). I just want to try to understand your reaction because my gut reaction was pure pleasure; the faults I found were more nitpicky and became apparent to me only after deliberation (and, again, my natural inclination to interrogate work that's so universally praised.) In short, we had exactly the opposite initial reactions and I'm curious as to why. P.S. You say "I don't know how to place value judgments on movement," but I bet that's not true: a slap has a different value than a pat, right?

Again, Sander, I won't argue taste--if I had a wall big enough, those gorgeous "smudges" would be right up there on it! I'm just trying to understand what about MM's movement, especially in relation to the music, struck you as -- dissonant? It's a reaction that's blindsided me, as, again, MM is more often criticized for being a slave to the music. While I've never seen MM described as "neoclassical," that appelation is implicit in a lot of the discussion around MM's work. Yet you see it as--boring chaos?

First off, this quotation from Stevens-- "Dancing comes from a non-verbal place, and few dancers are eager to spend their precious downtime discussing their art with outsiders." --is such a stale generalization that only promulgates the mythology of the mute, elite "athlete of god." Give me a break already. Anyway, I would say that dancer's aren't generally articulate b/c they aren't called on to be, and the tradition of dance reinforces a dance-now-ask-questions-later ethos. This is true in "mainstream" modern dance as well as ballet. It's interesting that European dancers often seem more articulate about their work than Americans. So it could also be a cultural thing--i.e., better education for all in Europe, even dancers. Any ideas?

Sander, I find your reaction a bit puzzling--not the "what's the buzz" part; I too am prone to be skeptical when there's SO MUCH hype about one particular artist, usually at the expense of so many others. (In this regard Acocella's critism in the latest New Yorker was refreshingly critical.) And as for bored by a choregrapher's work, that's a matter of personal taste, to be sure. But it's your sense that MM's approach is somehow so idiosyncratic as to be unrecognizable. Have you seen Paul Taylor's or Lar Lubovitch's work? There are to my eyes many points of similarity--in the dance/gesture vocabularies, phrasing, and musical impulses. And with all of the daisy chain formations, and the direct responses to music, there are in my mind so many explicit allusions to Balanchine. I see what you mean by MM's "goofiness" (another Taylor allusion?), but the choreography is to my eye highly structured and musical--sometimes slavishly so, some think ("as if it's a crime," MM retorts). In short, MM's work is not commonly considered to be wildly form-breaking--and I think there's critical consensus on that. So perhaps you need to articulate, for me at least, a moment where you were particularly confused or confounded. And why is it unsatisfying for a dance to remind you of abstract art? I can think of more than a few Balanchine works I could say that about. BTW I hated the way they filmed it for PBS--all those cutaways to the musicians, as if the movements of their playing were as important to see as the movements/formations of the dancers!

I don't disagree. What I object to is critics taking refuge in "standards" that they don't do enough work to articulate or contextualize. Your brief comment above, Leigh, said reams more than most critics do, including Gray: you gave reasons why a certain dancer's proportions matter without recoursing to uncritical, "timeless" notions of "purity" or "perfection."

Well, some humans in the West, at least.

Yes, I think you're catching my sense of unease with such terms. Yet my unease is within, too, because while I value diversity among dancers I also derive pleasure from seeing the uniformity of "exquisite" bodies at a performance of, say, the Kirov's Swan Lake or Bayadere (a topic I'm sure we've covered in other posts).

I bristle when critics use terms like "perfect" and "pure" or "purity," especially in an excluding way, as the above example seems to. How small is too small? What's the correct proportion, exactly, of one body part to another? Sometimes it's such a vague "I-know-it-when-I-see-it" definition--which is strange for something that seems to have such a precise geometrical basis!--other times these descriptions are so arbitrarily exact it sounds no more enlightened than dog breeders talking about the "proper" height of the haunches. Clearly, as seen by the thread on changes to technique over the years, these ideals, supposedly etched in stone, change with the times. A different question: why are notions of "classical perfection" important to us as viewers?

Some figures whom I was shocked that college-educated young people didn't know: Marian Anderson J. Edgar Hoover Tony Kushner Also: ++That Bono is Irish ("isn't he Italian?")! ++Martin Luther King freed the slaves

Here's another contribution to our conversation about women in leadership roles (actually we've been highlighting some British women, so this fits right in): a news story about Lynn Seymour from the Greek publication Kathimerini (June 8): http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/news/content.asp?aid=84294 From text (but the link has a hat):

Funny, that's the reply I would make to Klavier when he said that Liebeslieder was boring!

Yeah, if they excerpted the act two dance/pas de deux I'd be happy.

That's another one that proves Bart's part of these points--the dancer transforming the ballet, although I think Coppelia is quite charming. But Pat McBride in Balanchine's 'Coppelia' is one of the most delicious things I've ever seen, and Peter Schaufuss as Franz in the National Ballet of Canada was pretty smashing. I guess it's what you have to sit through to get to the good bits that bores me. Firebird can also be extremely boring, which I find strange as the music is so great.

If we're going to be heretical about Balanchine, Stars and Stripes pas de deux puts me right to sleep, as does most of Western Symphony. Coppelia is the no. 1 boring classical ballet for me.

Bart, you should get this on stage--perhaps if not as a choreographer (although for all I know you are Christopher Wheeldon writing in disguise) than as a dramaturg! I can see your point about NA being just "a young girl's fantasy," but so, one might argue, is most of Nutcracker. In that sense, NA is not unlike the Gothic authors it parodies, who operate all on the surface, dragging us through many pages just for sensations' sake (i.e., nothing about character is "revealed" in most gothic novels in the late 18th-early 19th Cs). An oversimplified reading is that NA wants to tell us that the surface of life is just fine, not full of barely concealed horrors. Actually, I didn't imagine that any Austen could be balleticized until I read Bart's scenario of P&P! And I'm with Katherine on Clueless. Interesting question. There's a problem with Northanger Abbey, though. Catherine Morland's fantasy's about horrible Gothic secrets at the Abbey -- which would make for wonderful theater-ballet -- turn out to be a young girl's fantasy. It's a case of "less here than meets the eye." (As opposed to "La Sonnambula," for instance, where mystery and menace are slowly revealed.) It would be hard to create dramatic interest out of the situation, and the characters may be a little unfamiliar for the audience.Why not go for the big one? Pride and Prejudice. You could reduce it to the stories of 4 couples: Elizabeth and Darcy, Jane and Bingley (without his sister), Mr. Collins (untimately with Charlotte), and Lydia and Wickham. Each represents a distinct character type, as well as a unique way of resolving individual aspirations and differences into a viable relationship. I'd actually have all the action take place at the country ball. Or, rather, 2 acts at two country balls. I know; I know: in the novel several of these characters have not been introduced at the time of the first ball. But think of the opportunities for dancers. The 2 act =2 ball format allows for development as in "Liebeslider Walzer." In Act I You introduce each group of characters (the Bennett party, Darcey/Bigley, etc.) as they arrive -- you establish what and whom they like and don't like -- you pair them off, re-pair them, and pair them off again. Pas de deux, pas de trois, moving on and off stage amid the dancers, tete a tetes among the corps: lots of opportunities. There's also a chance for character dancing by Mr and Mrs. Bennett and Lady Catherine de Bourgh (minus her daughter). The Act I dancing can reveal the illusions/delusions and the resolution as well. The Act II finale -- perhaps at another ball -- would allow us to see (briefly) what has happened (or will happen by the end of the novel) to each couple: Mr. Collins, whose character does not develop at all, despite his repeated failures and humiliations, continues to dance self-importantly around a stable, resigned, but altimately supportive Charlotte. (I can see her actually promenading him, as he does elaborate port de bras in a strange arabesque.) Lydia finally becomes the boss in a strained by ultimately companionable relationship with Wickham. (Image: keeping him on a short leash.) Lydia and Bingley have a sweet little Ashtonian pas de deux of domestic happiness. It's short, sweet, and just a bit smug. Elizabeth and Darcey have the big dramatic/romantic pas de deux (not without some flashes of brief disharmony). All ends happily, or at least in a kind of resigned, cosmic resolution, as all the couples join in a waltzy country dance. Just before the end, Elizabeth and Darcy leave the dancing, slowly mount a central staircase, look down at the dancers, smile at each other, and quietly depart. Curtain falls as the others continue swirling around the stage.

Has anyone ever choreographed a Jane Austen ballet? WHAT would/could that look like? Which novel would be best suited for such (mis?)treatment? My vote, if there was a gun to my head, would be for Northanger Abbey. Hey if they choreographed The Great Gatsby, anything's possible!

OK this is more of a music question, I guess. WHY do some of the variations in Beauty seem to end so abruptly? Tchai. is usually so good with long well-rounded endings (sometimes they seem almost excessive, like the end of Theme and Variations), but some of the jewel variations are just plain odd in the way they sound so truncated. Any ideas? I don't mind them, really, but they always give me a jolt.

"Natural"? What is going on, when something like this is said by two of the women who actually have gone the furthest in expanding their dancing careers into poewrful leadership positions? Well, perhpas these women are old enough to have been shaped by an era that, in Cargill's words, was part of "a much more male-dominated culture." [Not sure about this; Ananiashvili was born in '63--perhaps a cultural thing?] I can remember dealing with more than a few female dancers (and male too, to be sure) who really genuflected to a man in a position of power--very irritating during union negotiations!--no matter how idiotic and boorish he might have been. Perhaps it should not be surprising that ballet, with its traditional onstage roles for men and women, breeds a culture that believes in them offstage as well.

The angels entrance on the Nutcracker II Act ...God, it just gets on my nerves... Mother Ginger. UGH! And in Sleeping Beauty, Puss 'n' Boots--I was secretly glad that ABT's version excised it, even though it didn't make balletic sense to do so. And if the mime stuff from the traditional Don Q disappeared I'd never complain; I still have Cervantes on my bookshelf. Finally, the sorcerer scene in Coppelia (Act II?) is just too long. In airing my dislikes, though, I realize I am not staying true to a big part of the original post--what doesn't make sense and why. All the scenes I've mentioned don't rub against the spirit of their respective ballets quite the way kfw describes the Cygnets as doing. I'll keep working on it!

Good point--news organs tend to have a very shallow/stereotyped view of historical traditions, especially when it comes to the arts; in this regard, they often follow what's fed them by the sources. But while I think it's silly to tie quality to gender in any absolute way, I think the dance world is poorer at this juncture for having fewer women in charge. To generalize, women know more about dance, especially ballet, because they dance more and work harder--they have to. And--and this is my opinion--there are far, far more crackpot men than women in charge of dance companies, festivals, and presenting venues. Now of course that doesn't mean all women are capable of becoming choreographers or directors, or that there aren't some crackpot women out there, but fewer qualified women than men seem to have the opportunity to run the show or are disinclined even to try.