felursus

What were Darcy and her husband thinking: "Phoebe Forbes", indeed. I see it coming-"Phoebes Forbes". She's going to hate it and curse her parents!

When I turned on my TV on the morning of Sept. 11, I was faced with the image of the burning Tower I. As I was busy eating breakfast I didn't immediately process what the commentator was saying, so my initial reaction was that they were publicising a remake or a "bump-off" of "Towering Inferno." This was truly reality imitating art! Now we are about to bomb Afghanistan from the dark ages (which they are already in) to the stone age. The TV will show lots of images of planes, bombings, colorful tracers - as they did during the Gulf War. It will look just like the violence we see in movies and on TV. Kids, who don't remember the Gulf War, will think it very exciting. It won't seem "real" until they start bringing back the bodies in bags. Even then, I'm not sure the kids will be able to distinguish the reality of so many dead (on both sides) and the unreality of a movie. There are movie directors who want to impress upon us the violence of war and the problem of the modern-day John Wayne "ride in and hit 'em hard" syndrome, who know they are attempting to shock us with an ever-increasing cycle of violence. But as we have become innured to yet another multi-vehicle crash/fireball, another shoot-out with assault weapons that leaves countless dead and lots of body parts strewing the ground, another scene that graphically portrays throat-slitting, body mutilation, etc., they have to find more and more extreme ways to shock us. I think Americans are so used to being "shocked" by celluloid portrayals, that we are completely desensitized to the real thing. i don't mean to imply that people aren't horrified and shocked by the WTC disaster. Here in NYC everyone either knows someone who died or knows someone who knew people who died. The hardest part is that there aren't many bodies - and I doubt that there will be. The fireballs caused by the jet fuel will probably have incinerated most of those still missing. But we still crave "action." Just wait a year: there will doubtless be both a movie and a "made for TV special" - or two - on the subject. They will make sure everyone sees the bodies jumping and falling from the Towers - as those of us who saw the events live or the initial, live broadcasts did. They will make sure to show firemen getting hit by the piles of debris. We will see the priest (sorry, I can't remember his name) who stopped to give last rites to a fallen rescue worker also being overcome. There will be lots of blood and severed body parts. We will see much-bloodied heros rescuing or attempting to rescue people. We are going to need all that blood and gore to keep our desire for revenge alive once the bodies start coming home.

Yes, I know one friend who had decided to donate her entire opera-going budget for the year to the United Way's September 11th Fund. She then realized that, as she works as a tour guide, she may not have any money for her rent let alone opera-going. she made a small donation and is watching her savings. I think a lot of other people will be feeling the pinch. Many industries are laying off a lot of workers. A lot of people are feeling uncertain about their future. The only field likely to hire a lot of new workers is the insurance industry. A close friend is a workers' compensation analyst, and two of her company's biggest customers were in the WTC. Her team have been working 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. without breaks since the disaster - and on the weekend as well. She doesn't get a penny in OT for this. She no longer has the time or the energy to attend arts events. [ 09-22-2001: Message edited by: felursus ]

On Tuesday, I got up late and had just made my breakfast omelette and switched on the TV at 9:01 to see the fire in the first tower that was hit. I had just about digested that when I saw the second tower get hit. I then spent two unbelievable days glued to the TV and feeling that it was totally surreal. The first day there was no transportation, and on the second only minimal transportation, so I couldn't get very far from my home in northern Manhattan. I rang two hospitals - ones I could walk to - volunteer, but these hospitals are so far uptown that they weren't getting any of the victims. I discovered that neither my husband nor I can donate blood, because they won't accept blood from anyone who has lived for 6 months or longer in Britain between 1980 and 1996 (because of mad cow disease). Too bad: my husband is Type O-. So I stayed at home and watched TV and finally couldn't take it any more and yesterday went to the Jersey Shore with some friends. It was a beautiful, golden day. On the way over the GW Bridge I had my first glimpse of the hole in the skyline - a hole filled with smoke. As you drive south in New Jersey you get a good view of the skyline, and yesterday it was a sad view. Once at the shore, we spoke to several locals who had come to enjoy the fine weather. Upon finding out that we were "escapees" from Manhattan, they offered condolences. It felt very strange. On the way back we again traversed the GW Bridge - this time in the dark. Usually that is one of the most magnificent views of Manhattan. The highway lights look like a necklace around the west side of Manhattan. Last night, the "toe" of Manhattan (I have always thought Manhattan vaguely resembles a foot on pointe) was dark, as there is no power down there at all. The Empire State Building, usually lit either pure white or in seasonal colors, was also dark. Tonight, in my local park, we held a candlelight vigil. People spoke of their experiences and thoughts concerning what has happened, and we sang songs - very softly. Everyone brought a candle, and most people left them around the park flagpole or around the central green, now surrounded by a fence (because of new turfing). The fence looked as though it was wearing a crown of candles. There were two make-shift memorials to the WTC: a poster showing the buildings and some writings, poems, etc. in several languages. They plan to repeat the vigil every night for a while - to help each other get through this awful experience and to pray for peace. [ 09-14-2001: Message edited by: felursus ]

I'm fine, everyone. We live Waaaaay uptown, north of the George Washington Bridge. I spent the day mesmerized in front of the TV. I missed the beginning, but I had turned it on (just to catch the a.m. news, mind you) before the second tower was hit. The whole thing is so surreal that I'm still partially convinced it's a very, very bad dream. On the otherhand, they found a van full of explosives under the GW Bridge, and if that had blown up, I would really have felt that, as I'm only a couple of blocks away. My husband's office is also no where near the WTC. He did have a long walk home, though, as there was no public transportation, and taxis were at a premium. I certainly am glad to hear that the other New Yorkers are fine. Re: donating blood. The Amsterdam Ave. site is the Red Cross. The reason the hospitals started turning people away was that they had no more room to store blood, and Bellevue actually ran out of the bags to put the blood in. They are now saying to hold off on donations UNLESS you are type O, the universal donor. They particularly need O- blood. I had wanted to volunteer at a hospital, but the ones that really wanted more volunteers were too far away for me to get to, and the one near me wasn't getting any of the patients from the incident on Tues. I'll call again in the morning.

Thanks, Gianina. I was beginning to think that she had somehow glued the shoes onto her legs. Markova used to sew herself into her shoes, but with bare legs Guillem could hardly do that. My glasses are pretty powerful, but then I WAS sitting in the 4th Ring.

There was always the time Arthur Mitchell stepped on Jillana's hand in "fog" during A Midsummer Night's Dream. He was Puck and she was Helena. She waslying on the floor pretending to be asleep while Puck arranged the lovers correctly. I heard he broke one of her fingers. I think that qualifies as a real "disaster". Then there's the story of Markova as Giselle. She had to go down a trap door at the end of Act II. The elevator went down and up and down and up....until the curtain, mercifully, fell. There was an occasion I witnessed when, just before the start of a Royal Ballet performance of Sleeping Beauty at the Met, someone accidentally pushed the curtain button. It rose to reveal dancers draped over the thrones, lying on the floor, stretching, or practicing assorted steps. Most of them reacted quickly and jumped up and ran off before the curtain could be lowered again. The audience had a good laugh.

Thanks, Mel for that information. But anybody who knows swans will know that they aren't just pretty and graceful: they are really MEAN. I've been chased by one (he wanted a roll I had in my hand), and it was truly scary. He could run really fast on land as well! Someone should create a ballet on the subject of a helpless creature being hounded by a vengeful swan! (Have you ever heard one hiss?)

Fonteyn used to do the hops backward. She wasn't much of a jumper, but boy could she balance on pointe!

Actually, my favorite disaster occurred during a performance of Nutcracker by Northern Dance Theatre some years ago. The set had two tables on wheels set at angles about 3/4 the way upstage on either side. During the party scene they contained "food" items (including an edible cake) and small toys. During the tree-growing scene they reversed to reveal the same toys much enlarged. When the pas de deux music starts (after Clara has killed the mouse king), the tables were supposed to pull off. For some reason one got stuck and then overturned scattering rubber chickens, "salads" "cakes" "puddings" and the like all over the stage. Fortunately the vast majority of the items landed upstage of the tables, but some made it downstage center. The choreography called for Clara's older sister, now transformed into a Snow Queen to dance a pdd with the transformed Nutcracker, while Clara oohed and ahhed from the sidelines. The Clara, rather cleverly, oohed and ahhed as she gracefully picked up "magical chickens" and tossed them off stage. The pdd couple managed to fit their choreography into the downstage portion of the stage, while the lighting board operators killed the lights on the upstage portion - allowing the stage manager to sweep up the debris and the stage hands to manually remove the offending table. This was the occasion of my one memorable encounter with Ross Stretton. He was sitting next to me in the wings, and as we both laughed helplessly, he grabbed my arm so hard that I was black and blue for a month afterward.

This reminds me of the choral group my husband and I organise: it started out being a group put together for one performance a year (at St. John the Divine for their annual New Year's Eve Concert for Peace. The Cathedral insisted that we have a name, so we became incarnated as "The New York Festival Singers". That was to distinguish us from another (and somewhat overlapping in membership) group called: "The New York Festival Chorus," that goes down to the Bahamas to bring choral works to the islands. In the ballet world it's easy to get confused. If one wasn't around or never happened to read up on it, one wouldn't realise that the Chicago Joffrey Ballet was a reincarnation of the Los Angeles Joffrey and the New York Joffrey. And aren't there a couple of companies still out there that parcel themselves out between cities? It's easier when the company has a definite city name in it's title: New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Houston Ballet, Miami City Ballet. The minute someone starts a New York Festival Ballet, one cant' tell if the same director started a company in Jersey City and moved it to New York when offered rehearsal and performing space. Then there are all those "Royal" Ballets. It is very Anglophyllic of us to all have come to a silent agreement to consider any reference to a "Royal Ballet" as referring to the one based in London. But in Denmark they refer to their company as "The Royal Ballet", as they do in Sweden and a number of other countries. We seem to have chosen to put the country name in front of all the other national ballets except the English one. It's much easier with the English National Ballet - but then you need to know your history and know that once upon a time and not so very long ago they were called The London Festival Ballet. Imagine a ballet lover from Mars trying to figure out who was who and where and when? :rolleyes:

It's not Odette's mother who turns her into a swan, it's Rothbart - in revenge for???? or is he a fairy tale version of a child molester or serial rapist?? Would a royal princess have as many as 32 ladies-in-waiting? But if they aren't Odette's friends from before her transfiguration, then who are they/ :confused:

Those changements have been part of the RB choreography for a very long time. Perhaps someone may enlighten us as to where they originated?

I think it would be nigh on impossible for anyone directly associated with ABT to reveal themselves, because unless they ARE Kevin McKenzie or Louis Spisto in mufti, they could be endangering their livelihood, as it is a fair bet that either Kevin and/or Louis or a personal friend of theirs may well be reading this board. I have no personal axe to grind, but I would say, purely from my experience in the world of the arts and of the world of work in general, that if a large number of people who had been with an organization for a prolonged period of time are suddenly resigning, that is a clear indication of a problem. With reference to McKenzie's leadership style, I will say that in a discussion I had with one of the men in the corps, he commented that he had been there several years, but that Kevin still didn't remember his name. Now it's not as though Kevin were Cecil B. DeMille and was dealing with a cast of thousands. And this was not the first time I had heard similar complaints. As an audience member, I think the policy on ticket prices is foolhardy. The young and students can't afford to pay $20 for a standing room ticket and go more than a couple of times. When I was young the relative price for dance was MUCH lower (thank you, Sol Hurok) If the younger generation doesn't get "hooked" on dance, ABT will have succeeded in killing off the audience of tomorrow. :rolleyes:

That horse in Don Q made a habit of doing his business on stage. Later on they got smart and put on someone with a dustpan and broom. I remember once in Giselle, Jennifer Penney's skirt was ripped (Act II), and it kept unravelling. Everyone in the audience (and onstage) were just waiting for the inevitable disaster to strike. At some point when she was offstage someone cut it - leaving her with a NYCB-style short tutu. Another time Giselle's shroud wound up downstage center. How to get it off? The wili's were all kneeling facing the audience. The center girl leaned over and picked up the shroud, bundled it up, and quite quietly passed it to the next girl, who then passed it to the girl nearest the wings. She managed to toss it off. Then there was the occasion Merle Park showed up on stage in Nutcracker (beginning of Act II) in one leg warmer. To make matters worse, it was bright orange! I think it was the titters in the audience that alerted her. There was an unchoreographed exit and rapid re-entrance. When I was ASM for the Nureyev and Friends performances at the Colisseum. one night one of the flymen had to answer an urgent call of nature and thus got his cues mixed up. Instead off taking out the white drapery in the "country" scene, he put in the chandelier. Nureyev, one could see, was mad as hell. Fonteyn was as cool as a cucumber - she merely held the drapery out of the way until it finally was taken out. There are always disasters that the audience may/may not realise are happening. Such was the case when Ann Jenner came down with appendicitis during Sleeping Beauty. When Aurora was carried out to be put to bed, she was carried out to an ambulance. There was a quick change of cast. In fact, even that was a precarious thing, because the substitute dancer, Brenda Last had 1) never danced in that production 2) had just started back in class after being out with a foot injury 3) hadn't done any pointe work since returning to class 4) was around only because she was in the audience 5) as she was a member of the 2nd company they didn't have a stock of her shoes at Covent Garden 6) of course she had never had a costume fitting for that production 7) as she had come to the theater to be in the audience she wasn't warmed up. Somehow all these issues were resolved in the space of an extra-long interval. We all got lots of overtime that evening.

As things are very quiet these days, I thought I'd ask this burning question. Does Rothbart have a grudge against the fathers of all the swans - or only against Odette's? I know there was some discussion earlier about whether the other swans were Odette's companions who were with her when she was transfigured or whether they are other girls and Odette was just the most royal so got the title of queen. If they are companions, then we only have to worry about one grudge (companions' feelings don't count anyway), but if they were all changed separately, it opens a can of worms. Thirty-two seems an awful lot of companions for one girl to have! (Unless she went to public school in NYC!)

Speaking of Mason in Swan Lake, she also had fabulous arms. At the end of Act II, when she has been transformed back into a swan, she bourreed off with her back to the audience and the best imitation of Plisetskaya's swan arms I've seen. It was always FUN watching Mason dance. She put her heart and soul into everything she did. Yes, she was a great Myrthe - maybe the iciest I've ever seen. At the time the RB had two great Myrthes - Mason and Bergsma (best bourrees ever). She also had a great sense of humor - even at her own expense. I once saw her take what must have been a rather painful tumble - there must have been a slippery spot on the stage, because two other dancers slipped right there, but Mason actually went down and had the wind knocked out of her. She managed to get up and continue her solo, but one could see that she was LAUGHING. The RB is lucky to have her still with them. She has a lot to teach the young dancers of today.

I was fortunate to have seen Kolpakova dance with the Kirov when they first came to New York in 1961. At the time I was simply overwhelmed by her artistry. Her technique and ability to portray the characters she danced were simply exquisite. Sizova, whom I also saw in the same season, was a more virtuoso dancer, but Kolpakova brought true clarity to her roles. I'm not sure if there are any good films from the early 60s - the time when she was at the height of her powers, technically speaking. I have seen her in Giselle, Sleeping Beauty, Raymonda and many smaller roles: Les Sylphides, Nutcracker excerpts, etc. (I don't have the programs handy to help me recall everything I saw her do in two visits by the Kirov to NY - 1961 and 1965- I think it was. I guess a visit to my storeroom to dig out the programs might be in order.) At the time Kolpakova was usually partnered by her husband, Vladilen Semyonov.

Summer sings - just came back from the Brahms' "Requiem" and "Naenie" tonight; reading; listening to classical music and opera (I went to Tanglewood to see/hear Deborah Voight's debut there also making her debut in Strauss' "Salome"; Politics; playing with my 3 cats; hugging the airconditioner to try to stay cool when it hit 103 degrees the other day (for those of you in Arizona and similar locations, you have NO idea of what that's like with high humidity on top of it); trying to get my computer to cooperate with me; taking care of the excessive number of houseplants we have managed to accumulate; catching up on al the TV programs I had to tape because I wasn't going to be at home (but at the ballet) to watch them. :rolleyes:

Well, how about a series of "made for the ballet" ballets - just like the "made for TV" stories we see all the time - and based on a "true story", of course. Then we could do "Headline News" ballets - ones that depict the headlines fresh off your morning or evening newspaper. Fitting for either category could be something like: "The Trial of OJ". There would be lots of bit parts for an entire company. The ensemble gets to play the jury (remember they were sequestered and thus very, very frustrated), the spectators, the corps of reporters and the public eagerly lapping up each juicy bit. Solo roles for OJ, the ghost of Nichole, the defense team (each needs a star turn), the prosecution team, and the judge. Perhaps this ballet could include audience participation: just like the play "Edwin Drood" the ballet could pause at the point where the jury has to make it's decision and the audience gets to pick the ending. Thus each night there could be a different ending: innocent, guilty, innocent by reasons of insanity, hung jury, and a few more creative, hypothetical endings. Is this horrible enough for you? I won't inflict a John Cage "Score" on you: the stage manager would quit after filing a suit for harrassment (I don't know of any full-length ballet to a Cage score). A few minutes is all the SM would be able to tolerate. Now Philip Glass is certainly a possibility! Perhaps mixed-media would also work. Any suggestions for choreographer? If we can pick one no longer with us, MacMillan might do a credible job. Any ideas for casting??

I forgot to add the part about them voting each other off - oh, and the "tribes": anyone got some creative ballet-oriented tribal names? The reward, instead of being a million dollars, is a life-time, secure principal contract with the company of choice.

That's a good one. I once virtually had to carry him: scene - The Royal Opera House; Time - June or July (i.e. light outside very late); Occasion - can't remember; I was an usherette on the Stalls Circle level. He and his party had seats in the stalls. They came late. He was very drunk and because they were late they could not be seated but could be put into the Stalls Circle. They were blinded by coming from brilliant summer sunshine into the dark opera house. He couldn't walk very well - ergo....

Misty Copeland was dancing with the main company during their NY season this spring - she was listed as doing something in the corps, but as I didn't know who all the other girls were, and I haven't seen a photo of her since the big brouhaha over her now several years ago, I didn't recognize her.

Here in NY we see performers in restaurants all the time after performances. People with good manners leave them alone. After all, it is their time to spend with friends. It seems to be the acceptable thing to congratulate them as they are leaving the restaurant, however. Autograph- seeking is frowned upon. My husband used to work in a building in which Robert Redford had rented office space, and my husband saw Redford quite frequently. They were even alone in an elevator on more than one occasion and had conversations on neutral topics. My husband never indicated that he had the remotest idea of who Redford was. It seemed to be appreciated.

"Survivor, the Ballet" has piqued my interest. The audience could write in the challenges: 32 double fouettes in shoes that don't belong to the dancer and have no ribbons or elastic (I'll allow the drawstring to be intact), etc. There could also be emotional challenges involving non-renewal of contracts, loss of roles, being forced to do a role for which the dancer is under rehearsed - with an important critic in the audience, of course, etc.