Ray

If anyone's interested/in town, classicist Grace Ledbetter will present "Ballet and The Greeks: Balanchine and Stravinsky's Apollo" at 401 Cohen Hall, U of Pennsylvania (in W. Philly), 4:30-6pm on Thurs., Jan. 19.

It's also a bit ironic, though--few have amassed such a large number of loyal and devoted acolytes, disciples, fans, and followers.

More significant to your original questions, whatever the biographical origin of this particular image, I think B incorporated images of departure and loss into many ballets--think of the ending of Emeralds, for instance.

Minor point, but Élégie is Tchaikovsky's name for the entire movement, which is actually the 3rd of the piece (Balanchine places it last).

This isn't quite a blog, but a compendium of articles about ballet and other dance forms, edited by Lisa Kraus (writer for the Phila. Inquirer and former Trisha Brown Dancer)--it's worth checking out: http://thinkingdance.net/ Moderators, relocate this if you need to.

I think this sounds great, but--to quibble--Wilde's tragic later years get so much attention (they were featured in Stoppard's Invention of Love, for instance). I'd LOVE to see a treatment of "young Oscar."

If you copy the link and paste it into your URL bar, it won't do that.

That's an understatement. It makes me very sad that no one--not even in the press, really (those who had the space to write about it, of course)--challenged this final wish in a significant way. In my opinion, it's a case of devoted followers not stepping back and looking at the bigger artistic costs to our culture. If we're lucky, some of the works will be performed by a handful of excellent modern-dance schools like Julliard (who will make the time as part of their pedagogy); but I fear that will be it--at least for those of us in the US.

Brenda Dixon Gottschild's Joan Myers Brown & the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina: A Biohistory of American Performance will be released on Jan. 3, 2012 (Palgrave; 370 pp); here's a link to a short interview with Joan Myers Brown and author Brenda Dixon Gottschild.

Of note re this discussion, from The Colbert Report: Nation! Bid on ballet shoes signed by David Hallberg and Stephen Colbert, and worn by Hallberg on The Report. All proceeds will benefit The David Hallberg Scholarship Fund for aspiring male ballet dancers.* LINK. *I don't see Charlie Rose doing this!

I'll take Steven Colbert over Katie Couric any day, thank you!

I love this dance, but my hands-down favorite is--was--Sounddance. In many respects evokes the dynamism and mystery of the finale of B's Four Temperaments (a ballet MC admired, btw). Gutwrenching to watch it performed for the very last time ever by the company at Kennedy Center a few weeks ago.

I am excited about seeing the outcome of these efforts, but I do wonder about what the larger frame will be holding these interviews together, and/or a critical/contextualizing/focusing point-of-view. Will there be any? If not, I fear that this film will hold little interest for those beyond us balletomanes. And as much as I love Balanchine, I hope this doesn't become just another hagiography.

Although one might argue that part of Balanchine's enormous contribution was to expand each step's "inherent" quality of each step. This lift, I believe, is supposed to trace an arc while it covers space. Or--simultaneously--that his contribution was to reveal more sharply what "classical" meant (i.e., not just wearing pointe shoes and doing ballet steps).

You can see how it is done here: http://video.nytimes...erformance.html (Wendy Whelan demonstrates at about 1:40). The "crotch" shot seems necessary in Nutcrackers at that moment in the music. The traditional pdd has the big pas de chats en l'air that always seem just as awkward to me. I agree--there's actually something un-classical about that kind of partnered pas de chat: in the classical vocabulary as I understand it, partnering should enhance the quality already inherent in a movement. Pas de chats are fast and brilliant snapshots, so partnering them should (again in the classical vocabulary) involve a fast "throw" to be true to the spirit of the movement, while grand jetes already contain the illusion of an extended and ever-extending trajectory--the lift just traces that out in slow motion.

It is a toughie, I'll admit that, but I think it's meant to be a smooth part of a dance phrase, even while it marks a climax in the music. But yes, tough to pull off, and crotchy, especially on film. The traveling arabesque just entails the ballerina pique-ing firmly onto a little square of marley, which is then pulled from the wings.

Here's ; if you can identify the time (minutes:seconds) where the lift occurs in the vid, then maybe I can put in my two cents (or, see if these dancers do it better). I'm thinking you mean the lift at 3:52.

Is she doing a grand jete while he lifts her?

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I just came across this title: Balanchine the Teacher: Fundamentals That Shaped the First Generation of New York City Ballet Dancers (2008). The authors are NYCB stalwarts Una Kai and Barbara Walczak. I don't recall any discussion here of it; has anyone read it? The subtitle is compelling. How does it compare to Suki Schorer on Balanchine Technique (2006)? I'm happy to be directed to an already-existing thread on it (I really did look for one).

That's a good point, Stage Right. A reviewer/critic also has to consider the bread-and-butter interests of the reader who wants to know how to spend his money, I suppose. I think this ethos has hurt her on the "other end" of audiences too, those who read her longer or scholarly works. Her substantial biography of Jerome Robbins, for instance, was criticized for not venturing a strong claim or thesis, for refusing to connect dots. Again, I can imagine that this was probably motivated by of strong sense that the material should speak for itself, and that the writer's job is just to provide context and "thick description." I don't think it does, so I like those critics agree that she should be more argumentative, and could "take a stand." After all those years of dance viewing, she's earned the chops to be audacious.

Like Sandi, I'm very happy to see more people in far-flung fields consider ballet (or even just dance) as a worthy topic of study. I just read, in fact, a paper written by a literary scholar of the middle ages about the medievalism of Raymonda. It's pretty fascinating; when it appears in print I will let people know.

You might also be interested in these interviews with Georgina Parkinson, Patricia Ruanne, and Julie Lincoln.

Some very generous readings here of what I still take to be a poorly chosen pic for the unfortunate dancer's moment in the spotlight. It doesn't help that, in contrast, the women in the background have straight knees and pointed feet.

This is not the dancer's fault at all--WHO decided that this was a picture worthy of inclusion in the NY Times?