Ray

Well, because it's Philadelphia High Culture, some in the audience will be terribly overdressed for the venue/season. But ignore them: the Mann Center can be HOT HOT HOT so wear as little as you can get away with!

This thread has the virtue of complicating how I look at (=grouse about) other patrons' behavior! Here's a new one: in front of my seatmate at the recent Beauty, two very young people decided to spend the show snuggling, effectively blocking the space between seats that allows the person behind to see through--even after she asked them to de-couple! Fortunately for her they had to -- ahem -- leave after the first half; perhaps in 9 months there will be a new Aurora on the scene. Back to applause, etc.: The recent production of Beauty aside--where appluase could barely be sustained for the first bow--I've found that the standing ovation is often overused. What happens is that the rows in front of you stand, and then you end up standing just to see the curtain calls--whether or not you thought the ovation was deserved. And, after attending music concerts, I really have come to detest balletomanes' habits of clapping every time someone does something remotely difficult (or repeated). This goes along with talking during overtures. It's bad enough in opera, but most opera-goers seem more savvy about when to hold their applause.

A long time ago, I went to a talk by the mezzo-soprano Janet Baker, who said that her goal was to connect with at least one audience member in each performance (she used more lyrical words than those; she might even have said "heal"). Her performance philosophy & practice were clearly oriented around giving something to the listener; this is something I've felt from her and many other singers over the years. So I wondered: are there any dancers who seem to embody this ethos? I've spoken before about the revelation of seeing Peter Boal perform Apollo as a generous god, but I can't say that I'd call many dancers particularly "giving," except perhaps to the degree that any virtuostic performer provides us pleasure. Do ballet or modern dance performers attempt to "speak" to us? Any thoughts, BTers? (I'm interested primarily in the viewers' POV.)

I've only ever been driven there (no, not in a pumpkin coach), but I did see a shuttle bus. So I did a little research and found this link: http://www.septa.org/news/promotions/manncenter.html Unfortunately, as with all things SEPTA, it's not a very tourist-friendly map! You'd need to get into Center City from 30th St. station if you're taking Amtrak; or, if you're taking the SEPTA train from Trenton, go to Suburban Station (one after 30th St.), and get this bus at 15th and JFK. If you take the bus (Chinatown or Greyhound--they both come to approx the same area), you'd have to walk down to the Academy of Music. It's shocking that there is no "culture bus" from 30th St. station! (The entire transit system is run by suburbanites who think of the city as only a 9-5 workplace--very Man in the Grey Flannel Suit--they would NEVER be caught dead on public transit themselves.) Shocking also that the Mann doesn't think about hiring its own bus. And while the Mann is kind of in a "bad neighborhood" it's also far from any neighborhood--and high above them! (Quite spectacular views, actually). All that said, best bet would be to try to get a group and share cabs from 30th St. station.

I couldn't tell you which to pick; if you have the means to do both, you by all means should. Also, I hope you've gotten your tickets already. When we got ours, they had a huge block of tickets set aside for VIPs. Its a gargantuan venue, so you'll want to get the closest seats you can afford. And give yourself time to get up to "the hill"--last time I was there it was pretty poorly organized. It's no Ravinia or Tanglewood. As a transplanted Philadelphian, it's another one of those Philly things that I just shake my head at--a wonderful resource that's very poorly managed, and strangely out of touch with what's going on in nearby New York and DC--and with the city in which it resides!

Any bets on who knocks whom into the pit first?

BW your point is well taken Mr Popkin wants to draw our attention to the title The Kids Are All Right and thats where we should focus our attention!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Actually, newspaper writers never write their own headlines--editors write them.

Well, it's certainly a matter of debate whether noble persons would engage in such behavior. But whatever the case, Martins's production, by all the descriptions, seems uninterested in the finer points of realism or historical accuracy.

I agree, Paul. For better or worse, that is part of Martins's legacy for many long-time NYCB-goers. What I found interesting was Macaulay's theory that this was meant to be an apology, but Martins's two protagonists didn't pull it off to any effect. I'll add my support of this view too. Macaulay's reporting here, to paraphrase from another recent BT discussion, "connects the dots," making us think about Martins's work in the personal context of not only his body of work but in the cultural context of gender and ballet. This marks a kind of watershed at the Times for how they report on dance. Film, literary, theater, opera, and even music criticism have long done this; dance critics still by and large privilege the mode of what literary critics call "new criticism"--that is, they describe dance works as stand-alone entities. This approach sets up a hierarchy of concerns, with movement and "what you can see" as primary to discuss, and contextual information (biography, connection to other works or to cultural events, audience reaction, race/gender, material conditions of a work's production, etc.) as less important Sometimes this results in inspiring criticism--Denby, Croce, Jowitt, etc.--but sometimes I find it a limited approach. That's what was refreshing about Rockwell, for all his faults--he aimed to contextualize dance in the wider world--and, now, Macaulay (who, as people have noted, may not always be good at describing/analyzing movement).

This sounds exciting, and I plan on going--but first, can you tell me where you saw this event announced? I've looked on both the KC and SF websites and didn't see it. Thanks.

Did anyone find Macaulay's review a bit, well, chaste? He says "Although the book’s first half charts a few more of Kirstein’s homosexual liaisons than it needs, Mr. Duberman is never salacious." How many, pray tell, does it "need"? After all, as Dwight Garner (the other NYT reviewer) observes, "Kirstein's own complicated sexuality provides the emotional core of this new book, which is about how a quintessential outsider -- 'a queer, Jewish intellectual,' in Duberman's words -- became the century's consummate cultural insider." So what are Macaulay's criteria for "need," besides his own sense of propriety?

Inspired by the thread on race and ballet.... As a ballet student in NY in the early 80s, I felt privileged to have been able to live in Manhattan on a shoestring, often working part time, and still get great training. But I don't know how any young person w/o means today could do what I and others of my generation did. Even at the time, however, there was a lot of implicit class snobbery at the school I went to (SAB), despite the fact that many fantastic dancers emerged from humble or working-class origins. My question to BTers is what do they think is the status of status today? Can only trust-fund babies afford to train in expensive cities like New York, Boston, or San Francisco? Does a tougher upbringing enrich the artistry of a dancer? Are there dancers today who boast of their humble beginnings? Or does our peculiarly American silence on class differences preclude a discussion of this topic? And how does class play out in other countries? And what about choreographers?

So let me get this right: if Prokofiev changes the ending of R&J it's valid, but if Mark Morris does so on his own it's "fanciful thinking" or an "arbitrary 'concept'"? Please say more about this implicit aesthetic judgment (perhaps you're just passing the buck to Prokofiev?), and more about this newly discovered ms. (fascinating!). Can we read about this somewhere?

SO well put, Bart. I think if you review a lot of BTers' discontent with new ballets you can trace it back to serious questions about ADs' artistic vision or lack therof. More now than ever before, opera has really gotten it together, whereas ballet seems stubbornly unable/unwilling to absorb knowledge from its sister arts--or even from the successes/challenges other dance companies have faced (a "they're not like us so we have nothing to learn from them" attitude prevails, so it seems). As a practitioner-turned-viewer, it's getting to be more than a little disheartening.

BTers may be interested in following this link: http://www.danceadvance.org/03archives/articles.html It's to the "archives" section of Philadelphia's Dance Advance website--not an archive really but a repository of mostly newly commissioned writings on all kinds of dance, several (and several more to come) on ballet, including a section called "Growing Up Royal: Interviews with UK Ballet Artists Who Came of Age in the 1950s-1970s," which features the following interview/articles: Georgina Parkinson: A dancer in her time/making the blueprint Patricia Ruanne: a conversation with a ballet répétiteur *Part 1: Keeping Dance *Part 2: Rudolf Nureyev and the Passion for Work Julie Lincoln, ballet répétiteur: Inhabiting the bodies of others (Dance Advance is a dance funding program dedicated to the Philadelphia region.)

Yet many choreographers use this device, and often in very moving ways--the dancing stops yet the music continues (the tableau in Lilac Garden comes to mind, for one; the shocking fall of the fire curtain in Forsythe's Artefact Suite, where we're left together in a big dark room listening to Bach, is another). Should dance always be glued to the music? Communication can happen in silences too, both visual and aural.

True enough; I guess what I'm really interested in is why it pleases us, or why it annoys us--where's the boundary? And I'm really interested in first-person accounts: does it satisfy you, artist, for the reasons you describe? And in any work in particular?

IF this topic has been raised and discussed elsewhere, my apologies (I did search for it and didn't find it): Why and in what contexts do we find repetition in ballet pleasing or cloying? "Kingdom of the Shades" is probably the most famililar example of repetition that pleases; the audience clapping at a kickline or the echappes in four little swans the most annoying. Most are probably more complex: we like the 32 fouettes, but only if they're done well; and Balanchine's use of repetition (sometimes of phrases that weave through music that changes) is also very pleasing to most of us, while others find it boring. What do you think about this? Does it also seem to you, as it does to me, that contemporary choreographers are afraid of using repetition (it's a sign of a lack of originality)?

I recently say Varone's co. at the Joyce in New York, and while not wowed by it (standing ovation? good grief!) I admired the committment to movement in an age when many modern dance folk seem to be interested in other things. I think for those of us raised on the ballet idiom, it's understandable not to see the connection b/t the music and the steps, but I do think it's there. And Lux did introduce me to Glass's The Light, which I've grown to love (I really get into Glass's repetitiveness sometimes--especially in this short work )

Which is perhaps as it should be. Local government, business, and real estate interests ought to contribute substantially. Consider the extreme case of Lincoln Center's economic impact (from the October, 2004 Study: The Economic Role & Impact of Lincoln Center, that one may find on its website): The Met Opera reports 40% of its operating budget comes from ticket sales, and is said to be in an era of unusually good fiscal condition. No "perhaps" about it: ballet companies are non-profit 501 ( C ) (3), tax-exempt entities; as such, we (taxpayers) implicitly mandate them to seek their funding through other means than direct sales, for which they pay no taxes. When nonprofits behave like for-profits, looking out for the bottom line rather than artistic excellence or community impact, then we see questionable results--i.e., the Wang Center in Boston presenting the Rockettes instead of the Nutcracker in 2003, or the countless nonprofit venues across the US presenting more and more touring broadway shows at near-broadway ticket prices (our tax dollars subsidizing the likes of the Schubert Organization, through the nonprofit venues that engage their shows). We also hold them in trust to seek subsidies for ticket prices, I believe, which fewer companies care about doing anymore, it seems to me--in this era of conspicuous giving, after all, what richie-poo is going to put his or her name on that? ("You are holding the John and Jane Smith endowed cheap ticket.")

Okay, I went to the opening night of PA ballet's "Modern Masters" program and was fairly pleased. I don't think that Kevin O'Day and Val Caniparoli count as "masters," at least not yet, but I'll go with the PR tag for Twyla, whose In the Upper Room closed the program. O'Day's Quartet for IV (and sometimes one, two, or three..) opened the program. A quiet work to Glass-y sounding music by Kevin Volans charmed me more than I expected it too--it was well crafted and mostly well performed, notably by the always commanding Heidi Cruz-Austin. Caniparoli's Lambarena, while certainly the best thing I've ever seen this choreographer do, delivered more uneven results. In mixing together ballet and "African Dance" (Africa is a continent with hundreds of different dance traditions, so I'm not sure what this means, really), I questioned why the women really had to be on point. And it was kind of funny to see the corps men try to do some of the African-inspired movement: those hips were just not going to move. Even the pricipal men looked a bit stiff, including Francis Veyette who seemed very relunctant to shimmy! Jermel Johnson was the great exception here. While he is still a young dancer--he still has to work on dancing bigger and projecting himself more--he's got amazing facility and can really move. Some of the other guys in comparison just look plain stiff. (I hope PA Ballet's working hard to keep him--I can imagine other companies moving to scoop him up.) The women took to the movement better, as a whole, though Cruz-Austin again stole the show. WHEN ARE THEY GOING TO PROMOTE HER? As with other work by Caniparoli that I've seen, I had a hard time discerning what's motivating the choreography--what's behind the choices that he made. A not displeasing work, however, although I did wonder about PA ballet's choice here, with all of the amazing Africanist and African American work that already exists in the region. Tharp's Upper Room was great to see after all of these years--what a productive mind at work there! And hearing Philip Glass always takes me back. (Though it lousy to hear it canned, as all of the music was for this program, rather than live.) The company didn't quite pull off the air of insoucience that's needed, and at one point there were either partnering or point shoe problems with one of the ballerinas. A petite female dancer really stood out--I'm not sure who she was--as really getting it right. The same could not be said for the lighting design here, which only superficially resembled what I remember as Titpton's spectacular lighting of 1986. (The lighting--levels and cues--was pretty mediocre throughout, bad tech being a Philly curse, alas.) The audience really seemed to get into it, despite the lateness of the program ending (I don't know why they don't start their mid-week programs at 7:30--with 2 intermissions, we didn't get out until after 10:30). Not sure if New Yorkers or Washingtonians should make the trip out, but if you happen to be here, you might stop in and take a peek--for the Tharp if nothing else.

I could do without Peter Martins calling Soto "exotic." Please! That's a word people in the 1940s might have used to describe Dorothy Lamour in Aloma of the South Seas (1941). I suppose in the lilly white ballet world, unfortunately, it makes sense. Like carbro, I'm eager to see more, as I'm not sure what the film's foucs will be--the mournful, elegiac Arvo Part music (Frates?) connotes that the film will be a somber affair, mourning the end of a career instead of celebrating it. And the shots of Arizona combined with that ritualistic music seem to affirm Jock as a force of nature rather than the hardworking dancer we know him to be. I hope, in other words, that there's less of this easy new-agey essentialism and more focus on his labor. I mean, for all his talents, Soto probably had to work very hard to overcome his less-than-ideal body (by ballet standards)--which, though, to SAB and NYCB's credit, never seemed to hinder his progress. A fascinating and unique career path, to be sure! He also did much, with Heather Watts, for HIV/AIDS issues quite early on in a field which has often been slow to act on "real world" issues. I hope the documentary will cover this as well as, to quote carbro, "[give] us whole phrases as danced to the music to which they were designed"

As a former dancer, I am happy to return some ballets to the mind--that is to say, there are some ballets that once I got to perform them, I found they disappointed my hopes for what could happen to the music. That list includes: Petrouchka Sheherazade Firebird Part of the problem with these 3 for me is the MUSIC--either they're played poorly for dancing or--much worse--they're danced to recordings. [no, Rite is not in this list--I've actually seen versions of it that I've liked--but modern dances, not ballets] Coppelia Parts of acts 1 & 3, Swan Lake

Perhaps this varies with the...lunar phases? Certainly when I was a dancer in the provinces I often felt that audiences came more out of duty than of pleasure. Anyway, from where I've been sitting lately, audiences can't seem to get enough of themselves clapping, hooting, standing for ovations, etc. I guess I appreciate the audiences that are too spellbound to clap! (I do agree, though, that there's really nothing like a genuine spontaneous roar of applause--AFTER a great performace.)

--Automatic standing ovations (let's save those for really special performances, OK?) that make you have to stand up just to see the dancers take a bow; --The opposite problem, in a way: audience members who RUN out before the last note is even played to get to the car to get to the suburb; --Long tortured explanations over the PA about why you should not take photographs, film, or otherwise record the dancers ("In order not to distract the dancers or others around you during the performance..."). JUST TELL US IT'S PROHIBITED; --Pre-performance speeches (mercifully, these seem to be disappearing). AND FINALLY (any insight into this one?): --Performers onstage clapping for themselves shorly after bows. When/how did this practice, seen now in many different performing genres, begin? It used to happen only when, say, the choreographer would come on stage. Now everyone claps.