Ray

SO true! Even the modest program notes for small music concerts are often well-researched and well-written. (I point out music b/c I hate to see dance programs that emulate theater programs--i.e., "Muffy dedicates this performance to the love of her family and her dog Fifi," etc.)

This is so sad! Yet not a year goes by without a new issue of the complete symphonies of Beethoven! Ballet is so rooted in tradition yet not positioned (inclined?) to preserve it very well. I know: old news.

True enough; yet NYCB has one of the world's best archives for dance nearby. BTW does the NYPL have any plans to digitize its film/video collection? Is that a goal for the collection?

And I suppose this is too much to hope for, although completely technologically feasible: video clips. NYCB could coordinate with the NYPL to show an old then a new clip. Let's dream big here!

Well "wrong" is in the eye of the beholder...there's a famous picture of Suzanne Farrell and Martins in the Potty Dew from Diamonds--her leg in perfect effarte devant, back arched over his arm (they are doing a promenade, I think). Don't get me wrong, though: it's one of my favorite pictures! (rules were meant for breaking and all that..).

This is getting me laughing early! That's close to one of my favorites from the eggcorn website, an eggcorn for "pustule": "my face is sore and i dont like having big pus jewels on my face."

So many eggcorns seem to based on the speaker changing the idiom of an expression, as in dirac's example. The Atlantic article began with one: a reader noted that "step foot in" often replaces "set foot in." As a teacher, I find teaching correct idiomatic usage sometimes daunting--and also unrewarding: it makes one feel sooooo pedantic to correct "thinking on X" ("thinking of X"). At least with "free rein" one gets to talk about horses (most students I've had don't know what a rein is)! And we seem to want to trim down idiomatic phrases: a great dancer "impacts" us now, rather than "makes an impact on" us. ("Critique" used as a verb is also technically incorrect: you *mount* a critique.) Whenever I teach students for whom English is not their first language, I'm reminded how tough English idioms can be. AND then there are those darn regional variations (no, I don't mean Russian and Spanish divertissments!): Do you say waiting *on* line or waiting *in* line?

Gargle yard Surly cou-de-pied Rhonda jambe (OK, maybe that counts as a drag-queen name) Efartee (a position somewhere b/t ecarte and efface) On dead-on Terror-tear Port-a-bras On dairy air I'll stop now!

Did anyone see the "Word Count" column in the Sept. Atlantic? The running theme is "eggcorns," defined as "'spontaneous reshapings of known expressions' which seem to make sense" (Eggcorns is an eggcorn for acorns.) In a general sense they are mistakes--"self-phone" for cell phone, and eggcorns usually involve oral articulations of expressions one may have never encountered in print ("free reign" instead of the correct "free rein"; "baited breath" instead of "bated breath," etc.) Sometimes, however, eggcorns find their way into print and the example the Atlantic gives connects--gulp!--to writing about ballet: "Balanchine's classes were famous for honing in on the basics"--the correct phrase is "homing in" (I have to say the magazine caught me unawares on this one !). There is a website devoted to them too which you can easily find on google. Any ballet eggcorns? Ray

True enough--nothing guarantees anything. But discouraging dancers' artistic/intellectual inquisitiveness and their participation in institutional self-determination because "that's the way it is" don't seem to have produced much for us lately either.

Well put, Winky--you've really diagnosed the root of multiple problems here! Many of the smartest women I've know in the profession have been smart enough to get away fast after they retire -- and the profession should be concerned about this.

If anyone is interested, I have a press release from NCSA, where Hayden taught most recently. Funny that I never knew she was Canadian, as was Pat Wilde (both often cited as 2 of B's characteristically "American" ballerinas!).

I like that anecdote in re ballet b/c for all the talk of dancer abjection, we're all trained to imagine ourselves as soloists! Musicians by contrast see the writing on the wall a lot sooner, I think, about the trajectory of their careers (a second trombone never gets to play a first trombone part, for example, while a corps dancer can of course move up the ladder). But still, why can't corps dancers help audition other corps dancers, the people that they'll have to work with? Is that at all equivalent to the woodwind section auditioning a new clarinetist? Are dancers just too immature--i.e., b/c they're too young--to participate in the process of running their own organizations? Something has to change; it should be CLEAR to any ballet watchers that most ADs can't do it alone (or, they cede their authority to the marketing/management arm).

I remember a ballet years ago choreographed by Val Caniparoli (sp?) for Pittsburgh Ballet that ended when the male lead strangled the ballerina! I can't remember the title, but perhaps that's for the best...

Yes! But by what means can this happen? Again I pull up the comparison with classical music: somehow musicians have managed to hang on to their traditions while they've changed a lot about how they govern themselves and guide their institutions. Can dancers participate in the same ways?

My last name was no good--Ricketts!--so I had to change it when I danced.

A belated comment on the SFB rep program. Artefact Suite blew the other works out of the water, whatever one thinks of Forsythe (and among balletomanes, I sense a distinct dislike of his work--why is this?). My thought was that that rep program would be perfectly fine in the context of seeing the company alot--i.e., if you live in SF--but that it was not the best choice for showing the company off in a city that, as John Rockwell pointed out in the NY Times, it visits rarely. BTW it was very interesting to hear the audience twitter when the fire curtain slammed down in Artefact. I felt like I was at the premiere of Rite of Spring! I know, I know, it's a gimmick....but I was unexpectely moved to find myself suddenly in a dark room, listening to Bach.

Some great responses here. But no one's addressed Bart's 3rd point, distilled from Segal's article: 3) Dancers work on an "assembly line, automatic and unyielding." They are treated like children and are disposed of as soon as they get too old, too fat, or just too ... something. I think this is generally true and part of the reason I retired from the field--specifically, I felt that for a profession, ballet ranks low in terms of consulting its own resident experts. Symphony orchestra sections always audition new members; ADs wouldn't even think about asking a company dancer what they think about potential hires. It's just not part of the culture. The lingering persistence of autocratic practices like this--practices that don't always yield satisfying artistic results--are part of what Segals evokes for me when he talks about the "decay" of ballet. And another point of decay, riffing off of Leigh's comment about the Dracula problem: what, exactly, qualifies a particular ballet choreographer to oversee a muti-million dollar comission? I won't name names but SO many times as a dancer I've wondered "who is this person and what standards have allowed him (and it is usually a him) to choreograph aside from his 'eminence' in company X"? This laxity of standards at the top is what drags ballet into the realm of middlebrow art. [Funny story: one of these parvenu choreographers told us corps dogs in the room--18 strong--to "make a star." That was a long day!] So I guess we need to recognize, as many of us have already, that Segal's article is a screed, designed to move us to thought and action. This list aside, the culture of ballet is not accostomed to productive self-criticism or institutional reexamination. Ray PS The point about Segal omitting opera is excellent, except that opera in the 19th and early 20th centuries could be highly politically charged--think many Verdi operas, Poulenc's Dialogue of the Carmelites, and even Puccini's Tosca. When we think about "political ballets" we always recur to the Soviets (or the PRC), who usually combined politics and dance in hamhanded ways.

Responding in accord with GWTW's experience--not about the dancing but the physical space in which it occured. Last night was my first visit to the Mann. Good for them for presenting the Bolshoi and its excellent orchestra! Yet many people who live in Philly have never been there and don't know much about it--the Mann has a curiously low profile in the city's cultural life. I was surprised at how large it was (it must seat almost 5K) and what a spectacular urban setting it occupies. Like soooooo much in Philly, however, there's a lot of *unrealized* potential here. It's a very user-unfriendly place--poor signage, untrained ushers--very confusing for newcomers. There's a very "thrown together" feeling to the facility, unlike the other great outdoor venues like Ravinia, Wolftrap, etc. And it sits in its neighborhood like a gated fortress, even though it's in a public park. I get the sense that they focus on repeat attendees rather than developing new audieces. And the heat: I'm not sure if fans would've helped last night's heat--the roof covering the seats is so high (the facility has an unroofed lawn too, btw). The dancers were drenched! Also, the stage must've been very dirty--bottoms of shoes were black by evening's end. Made me wonder, as I often do in Philly performances, how concerend the presenter is with keeping the dancing spaces clean (this was even a problem when the Kimmel Center opened--the stage was visibly filthy during an early Mark Morris performance).

I saw the performance on Wed., generally excellent all around. Some of the tempos were very fast--I heard they had very little orchestra rehearsal, the norm these days--and the dancers handled them so well. I think Zachary Hench was technically excellent, though I imagine some might fault his (too?)- calm demeanor. Amy Aldridge was very good, although her back attitudes and arabesques were sometimes droopy. The pas de deux in Agon was technically good, though it lacked an fullness of movement at times. The orchestra really flubbed a few spots, notably the male duet where one trumpet missed many bars of music--turning a canon into a solo. The audience noticed none of this, clapping, it seems, after every "hard" step. (I know, I should be HAPPY viewers express enthusiasm, esp. on a Wednesday night!) Did anyone read the review in the Inky? SO many innacuracies and passages that belie a lack of viewing/listening experience. For instance, the writer says that Ballo is "set to outtakes from Verdi's opera Don Carlo"--outtakes!--and for another, "the music often has too much pomp for this light and pretty ballet." I think this betrays a lack of experience with ballet music; think of other "pompous" music in Sylvia, Copelia, etc.--music that is resonant for thinking about Verdi and Don Carlo since Don Carlo was composed for the Paris Opera. Did the writer consider that the "lightnees" she identifies relates to Ballo's"Frenchness"? Or did she see the "swimming" gestures that allude to the "underwater" setting of the ballet in the narrative of the Opera? P.S. Do Philadelphians know that this it the ballet in which former PB director Robert Weiss tore his achilles (doing brises voles)? In 1981 or 2, I think. That was a harrowing performance (insert toothless greyhaired long-bearded smiley face)--Merrill did *everything* by herself, including that pirouette that stops w/a developee a la seconde; then that leg bends, in staccato stops, as she kneels (eek I hope that makes sense!) .

I'm surprised at the silence--so far--on Acocella's acerbic summing-up of the Balanchine centennial in the New Yorker. A thoughtful silence? (Perhaps I'm in the wrong area of BA?) I'd love to hear what people think. Nothing in it should surprise any of us, nor should it surprise the higher-ups at NYCB, though I imagine they will be outraged. I don't always like JA's imperious tone, but she's right in this case to place the blame for the aesthetic ills she diagnoses where it belongs: at the top. My favorite passage: "With overpartnering, one hesitates to assign political meaning. Maybe these choreographers don’t really mean to insult women. But, once the woman is [represented choreographically as] dead, it’s hard not to see her as ill-used." The review is online. Ray

I'm a big fan of reasonable and responsible writing. But I'm still not convinced Kisselgoff always delivers the evidence for her stance (the Eifman review being the latest case in point). I read the other daily critics in the Times and I have to say most of them hold my attention better than Kisselgoff does, even on topics I am only marginally interested in. I know she sees a lot of performances, but I imagine the theater and music critics do too--and the book critics read a lot of books, etc. And can you imagine the heat a music critic has to take if he or she reviews the Met Opera negatively? (I bet Volpe can be a SCARY dude!) I read her because I want to know what's going on, not because I expect any insight, argument, or investigation into the content or context of a given performance. If it is there, I am pleasantly surprised. That to me is a sad statement to make about *any* critic, daily, weekly, or occasional. Why shouldn't we expect more from one of the greatest papers in the country? Here's a related question none of us may be able to answer, fanatical as we all are: how does AK--or any major dance critic--read to a non-dance person? P.S. What to make of the fact that AK has never published in any other format (to the best of my knowledge)? That is, she has never even *tried* to go beyond the constraints of daily reviewing. Like Drew, I'm interested in what she would sound like in a more expansive venue. I *know* there's a lot of dance-watching acumen there, somewhere.

Sorry again: I realize now that "today" is copied from an earlier post. Do you happen to know what day it appeared? No sweat if not; I woulnd't have to look through that many in my local library. RR

Sorry, Alexandra, I don't find it--and I'm looking in both the June 22 and June 23 eds. of the WSJ. Ray

Can anyone defend Kisselgoff's writing to me? I mean, would she lose her job to venture an opinion? That review of Musagete was the latest example of a characteristic Kisselgoff nonreview. (If she's going to justify it, to quote Dale, she could at least probe more into NYCB's reasons for mounting the ballet.) And what is she looking at? Once in a while her years of dance-going inform her reviews well. And I guess she is dillignet--she attendend two casts of Wheeldon's Swan Lake here in Philly. But then she calls the lighting "spectacular" (whatever you think of the ballet, I think you'd have to notice how *murky* the lighting was, actually). Ultimately, I don't find her reviews to be compelling reading, either as critical prose or investigative journalism.