Ray

Yes--one can cull from one's own collection. And I'm glad he is. Makes me wonder how many others he must have!

Full of wonderful photographs, most of which seem to be culled from former NYCB-er John Clifford's collection.

I've seen them at TKTS too.

You set a very high bar for purity of intent here. I think the best we can do, as readers, is disagree with a writer's rationale, dispute her facts, or criticize her method or style. But that's not nothing.

Yes, I thought of this--what I identify perhaps too hastily as Parks's "candor" appears as something stranger under scrutiny. I mean, does Parks really expect someone who's been writing for 40 years to change her method and style? He doesn't acknowledge anything positive about her method, and I think in her case there is--again, her "positive" choices seem to be (40 years of evidence!) a result of careful thought and reflection. In other words, there could be room for an idiosyncratic choice, especially in this case. But as you suggest, it's amazing she's been there as long as she has, considering all who have fallen behind her, including her terrific editor Elizabeth Zimmer.

Unfortunately, in both cases that's Marjorie Spohn. She is in the 1968 Concerto Barocco, with Farrell and Ludlow. DARN IT you are right! SO sorry about that!!!

Thank you! Do you have any more info about that film?

She is one of the few NYCB dancers one can actually see fairly often on tape: she appears in Dance in America's recordings of Four Temperaments (she's the First Theme woman) and Divertimento No. 15. I'd have to do some sleuthing, but I bet she's in that Italian film (1969?) of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Any others people can think of? As others note, she was in the original cast of Who Cares?, but I don't think she appears in the Dance in America version of it taped in the 80s (?). Interesting fact about that tape of 4Ts: MM was slightly bowlegged, so before she begins the steps, she stands in plie so that the light from the cyclorama doesn't appear between her knees--she straightens her legs just before taking her first step. An interesting accommodation made for an extraordinary dancer!

A recent posting from Dance/USA, a national dance service organization, details the departure of Deborah Jowitt from the Village Voice after 40 years. What's interesting is that Jowitt, in a letter to the Dance Critics Association, candidly cites having “irreconcilable artistic differences” with Brian Parks, her editor at the Voice; what's even more interesting is that Park responds to Jowitt's letter (which is also included in the link above) with equal candor. His reply brings up issues that I hope can spur a larger conversation here; here's an excerpt from Parks: "After editing [Jowitt] for some time now, and reading her for years before that, I’d become frustrated that Deborah’s dance reviews were almost all generally positive write-ups of the shows she was covering. (This has been an issue for many people here at the paper, over many years.) There were virtually no negative reviews. But of course all of us in arts journalism know that every arts field has all sorts of bad or mediocre work going on, many times by established figures and in prominent venues. This work needs to be addressed and challenged by a paper’s critics, just as the good work needs to be saluted. That’s part of a newspaper’s vigorous critical practice, and what The Village Voice does in all the rest of its arts coverage, from the sections I handle, through our film and music sections. The dance reviews have not been doing this." I have mixed feelings about this series of events. On the one hand, I never get the sense that DJ's long-established practice of reviewing what she thinks she can analyze positively is done out of a sense of boosterism; she's consistently thoughtful and sensitive and, needless to say, a lucid writer who has enriched the terrain (would that more writers felt her sense of critical responsibility to the field). On the other hand, however, another part of me, agrees wholeheartedly with Parks: a critic must provide the reader an honest picture of what's going on field-wide; negative criticism can be part of a constructive learning process for artists, presenters, funders, and viewers. Part of my frustration in reading positive reviews, especially in smaller cities, is that they're terribly uninformed and go straight to the heads of the performers/creators being reviewed; they feed a "with us or against us" mentality just as much as vituperative or ad hominem attack-reviews. SO: without necessarily evaluating Jowitt's writing, what do others think about this issue, about the larger ideas behind Parks's policy? What illumination can a reviewer bring by being positively engaged with a work? Is a positive yet objective review harder to write? Is it easier to identify faults? Which do we like to read more? Should critics' practice be quantified in the way Parks seems to be doing with Jowitt?

I love this line from Gottlieb's review, re Seven Deadly Sins: "Sloth, Pride, Anger, Gluttony, Lust, Avarice, Envy? No. Taylor-Corbett's sins were deadlier: Blandness, boredom, confusion, vacuity, dreariness, pointlessness, pretention [sic]."

A link to all things Cage.

Some memories of Balanchine ballets: Square Dance IS hard for the corps, but also exceptionally rewarding to dance. I say that as a guy, though; it's much tougher for the women. Allegro Brillante is also puffy and very exposed--the corps consists of only 4 couples. This is secondhand, but I've heard that dancing the corps women in Donizetti Variations, believe it or not, is a killer--very aerobic. Also, as much as we may enjoy watching it, no woman I've known seems to like doing Raymonda Variations! As far as men, the ending of Theme and Variations is tough in terms of getting the guys to synch those double tours; the same goes for Stars and Stripes finale, too.

OK, I put this in "Ballet History and Music" because it does concern a dance score. But it's not really about dancing, so if moderators need to move it, that's of course OK... I was so impressed by a recent web feature that the San Francisco Symphony has made available, called "Keeping Score." If you go to this link, and then click on "follow the score," an animated cursor will guide you through sections of the score, with some written commentary (and probably other features that I haven't discovered yet). Wouldn't it be great if there was something comparable for ballet--especially that didn't always rely so heavily on first-person commentary from performers or directors?

I think this is a positive sign of the times. These dancers are not "kids" (a favored term for dancers by management in the old days). They are adults looking to their future. It has always been hard for dancers to stand up for themselves. Dancers want to dance and appreciate opportunities to do so, and they are aware of how short a dancer's career it. For those reasons it can be easy to just accept whatever is offered. Good for these dancers for their participation. As a former union rep in an AGMA company, I agree that this is a good sign. I can remember many well-attended pre-negotiation meetings with my colleagues, that turned out just to be bitch sessions; when the rubber hit the road the bitching miraculously stopped--and so did the participation.

I believe those were the muses--I don't remember any other changes on the program insert aside from Marcovici replacing Fairchild. Sorry to hear that he's an experienced Apollo--while it would be going to far to call him sloppy, he made some choices that I didn't think suited the role.

My quick take on NYCB perfs at KC: first of all, what a treat--to see 11 "black and whites" in 3 performances, including a few that I realized I had not seen in a very long time. So: Ashley Bouder in Square Dance: Amazing and terrifying. Certainly setting a new standard for technique, energy, and commitment; not sure about the poses that she does at one point--they're done with such high voltage (voguing for the flashbulbs!) that it's almost laughable. But you can't look away, that's for sure. Bouder in Choleric: interesting to see, as others have reported, such a small woman in the role. And while it's of course wonderful to see such clarity in the shapes and movements, part of what makes this role interesting for me is the struggle that it seems to entail for some of the dancers who've performed it in the past. (That makes me sound old, I think! Men in Agon: I had the rare opportunity to see PA Ballet's Agon fast on the heels of seeing NYCB's. A wattage difference, that's for sure (not to mention NYCB's superior emphasis on turnout). At the time I saw the NYCB version, I wasn't wowed; Whelan especially seemed to be playing it safe (but I do love watching her). But by comparison, again, there's no beating the shared sense of values that sometimes shines through at NYCB. Sarah Mearns in Barocco: Lovely, warm, interested in communicating something. Can't beat that; that's rare anywhere. So her shoulders didn't really catch my eye, as it did for Cinnamonswirl. Sébastien Marcovici was not my favorite Apollo--is he new to the role? I liked him fine in other roles. OK, that's it!

Part of the copy on their Facebook notice about this reads "Pop culture and ballet continue to collide!" I think in this case there will only be one survivor...

I always like Tchaikovsky's dances from Eugene Onegin (the Waltz and the Polonaise). These are included, along with other rousing tunes (including Glinka's Valse-Fantasie), on a disc called Ballets Russes: Russian Dances and Ballets (don't let the title mislead you, though: most of the selections have nothing to do with Diaghilev). Paarvo Jarvi conducts the Orch. Philharmonique de radio France. Virgin Classics (maybe a moderator wants to link this to amazon.com so that BA gets a cut?).

I think the kind of ignorance you're describing is certainly sad, but I think you can be both "Balanchine-centric" and well-informed (if I do say so myself!). More seriously, though, I often question my own Balanchine-centrism, as I know it is borne out of my limited (but also rich and focused) experience as a dancer. I will defend dances without music, but I don't always enjoy them (and as a dancer I was stymied by them); I can see how other choreographers compose skillfully, but only Balanchine elicits from me emotional and intellectual responses; I can see how different choreographic lineages coexist side-by-side, but my gut feels them in a coarse Darwinian fashion--as all steps leading to Balanchine. I am not a believer by nature--one of the reasons I left the dance world--but Balanchine's work tested my limits in that regard. Balanchine was not my first exposure to ballet, but the first one I cared about.

Fantastic, thank you! Watch it while you can--I'm sure the Balanchine Trust is abuzz with international lawyers now, cooking up ways to get it off the Internet.

Interesting development at the State Dept.: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/12/152881.htm

Well, I have two quibbles, aimed at Gross: (1) the way Gross began with a focus on sex veered on prurience (and made me think of Curtis White's somewhat snarky sendup of Gross in his 2002 book, The Middle Mind); (2) Gross badly misjudged Homans's age when she guessed that she must have come to SAB (which she called the "New York City Ballet") in the sixties! But it was great to hear ballet discussed for almost 50 minutes on an American radio program.

Absolutely. There's quite a difference of tone in, say, Joan Acocella's jovial teasing of Mark Morris in an old New Yorker feature (where she says something about him drinking beer or eating cake), and AM's attempt at humor in this context.

Reading AM's response, btw, makes me even more aware of the difference between the tools music critics have at hand over dance critics. Where a music critic might revert to going back to the score after a performance--seeing, perhaps, if the player was observing the composer's tempo markings--Macaulay gives us in place of analysis some defensive self-reflection: "My own history makes me intimately aware of what it is like to have a physique considerably less ideal than any of those I have mentioned." Again,I know it's a blog, where you can write this kind of stuff; but for AM it often comes at the expense of serious--and interesting--talk.