Jump to content
This Site Uses Cookies. If You Want to Disable Cookies, Please See Your Browser Documentation. ×

Kathleen O'Connell

Senior Member
  • Posts

    2,201
  • Joined

Everything posted by Kathleen O'Connell

  1. Asking for money damages doesn't mean the suit was brought solely for financial gain rather than out of a desire that someone be held accountable or to make a larger societal point. (If I recall correctly, Waterbury asked for money damages specifically to cover the cost of therapy.) Since this was a civil rather than criminal action, money damages is just about the only meaningful punishment that can be imposed. Merson's firm wouldn't take on the case merely to extract an apology in any event.
  2. There are plenty of reasons why Waterbury and her lawyers might have chosen not to sue every man who saw the photos Finlay took of her: 1) If they only received the photos and neither solicited them nor passed them on to others there may not be much that Waterbury can sue them for. 2) They may be "judgement-proof," i.e., even if Waterbury were to win her suit and the judge awarded her money damages, they might not have the financial wherewithal to pay. 3) Friends, colleagues, and acquaintances might have creditably told Waterbury that they knew of men other than the named defendants who'd seen the pictures, but she might not have enough first-hand evidence to bring a claim against them. Suing people is expensive; one must pick one's counterparties carefully.
  3. I honestly don't think we can say either of these things without access to all of the evidence. The public documents represent only a fragment of the whole. Just to make sure I understand your point: what is Waterbury exaggerating?
  4. The complaint is Meerson's presentation of her story, and it is a poorly crafted one. I keep meaning to look for some other examples of his firm's work product to see if it's uniformly as sloppy and haphazard as this complaint is. I remember wondering at one point whether the firm was even really trying. I don't doubt Waterbury's claim that Finely photographed her without her knowledge and consent and that he shared those photographs with his NYCB colleagues without her knowledge and consent.
  5. If I've parsed the complaint correctly, the photos were shared via a group text. While they weren't as publicly available as they might have been on a MySpace page, it would nonetheless have been trivially easy for any of the men who received them to share them widely and for those photos to fall into the hands of people with no inclination or incentive to treat them with discretion. Since nothing shared digitally ever really dies, those pictures are probably still floating around in cyberspace waiting for someone to scoop them up and post them somewhere. (The list of politicians who wake up one morning to discover that their private texts are all over the internet is long and distinguished.)
  6. I would, too. And it wouldn't surprise me if she had been encouraged to think of the proceedings as a campaign for justice and the greater good, especially given the climate during that particular moment. Women speaking out against sexual misconduct were hailed for their bravery, and money's not the only salve for one's wounds.
  7. Yeah, no, it's not working for me either. Eboli wants power, not appliances.
  8. I've been dipping in and out of the Zurich Opera's Maria Stuarda while I flail away at some tedious admin, and I've been enjoying it. Two thumbs way, way up for the masked supernumeraries. I'm not sure how effective those masks are in protecting them from whatever virus particles may be hitching a ride on the aerosol clouds the singers are inevitably producing, but it's a nice public health reminder anyway.
  9. I don't think they're ready for HD prime time quite yet, but I'm going to give them props for at least trying to be a touring company. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was a teen in San Antonio, ABT gave me one of my earliest looks at a fully-staged, live ballet performance.
  10. Thank you for the link! I just watched for a few minutes switching between the various live views and it's really kinda cool. I'll try to catch the whole thing before they take it down.
  11. Well, if they wanted to view an opera more than once and at the time of their choosing—including spreading it out over more than one viewing session—they might. Yes, it's possible to download the free streams and save them to watch later, but I have to assume that most of the on-demand subscriber base isn't going to do that, either because they don't know how, don't have the requisite disk space, or can't be bothered.
  12. Yes, absolutely. The Met not only has 14 years of experience with HD broadcasts to draw on, but also its 90 year history of live radio broadcasts. Whether explicitly stated or not, part of its mission has been making its performances regularly available to butts that are in seats somewhere other than its own theater. It's a legacy they should want to protect. That being said, circumstances might allow them to burnish that legacy with the right partner with the right institutional support. (By "institution" I mean a foundation or public arts agency.)
  13. Huh. Good to know. I've only been checking out the free offerings since the first week in May and so far I've only encountered a few repeat casts.
  14. Hmmm ... maybe. The Met would likely need more than one dance partner in order to keep the pipeline of dance performances full. One advantage the Met has is the sheer volume of new content in generates via its weekly HD and radio broadcasts to bolster—and refresh— its sizeable back catalogue. It's been posting a free performance from its on demand catalogue every night for going on thirty weeks with only a handful of repeats in the mix. (They have five different videos of Aida, Othello, La Bohème, Don Giovanni, and Carmen to choose from and at least three for a long list of operas one tier down on the warhorse scale. ) That's something ABT can't deliver. The Met has no incentive to add partners unless they pull in more subscribers, and a few ABT ballets won't do that. Neither would a few performances from any other single dance company, for that matter. (I don't think we need to assume that the Met needs to look only to ballet if it wanted to add dance to its on demand offerings. The audience that only shows up for La Bohème isn't their on-demand subscriber base; they can offer more than Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty.) Just performing in the Met's theater for five weeks out of the year isn't enough. The fact that more theaters have upgraded their own recording capabilities means the Met could look beyond its own venue for partners. As an aside, I'd also be concerned that ABT would be tempted to sideline its homegrown talent in favor of dancers with international cachet in order to match the firepower of the Met's starry roster.
  15. Of course the beauty of a streaming platform where the videos could live forever is that you wouldn't have to download them to review them later—you could just stream them again on the device of your choosing. Whatever the platform, it would need to support offline mobile viewing to be even remotely viable. I know a surprising number of people who consume tons of video content on their phones, tablets, and laptops, and that includes movies and TV shows they're streaming on platforms like Netflix or Hulu. It's possible to design streaming platforms that allow for downloads to enable offline viewing but make it difficult to keep those downloads forever or pirate them.
  16. Brahms-Schoenberg was my guess, too. I always thought that the colors in Opi's New York City Ballet line of nail polish looked like an homage to Karinska's Brahms-Schoenberg costumes.
  17. I tucked away a whole file of (digital) clippings on this because I was pretty pumped about the renovation's upgrade to the theater's media capabilities and the promise of some sort of publicly available video output, which, alas, never materialized. I'm not surprised: the decade or so since the media center was installed has been one of tremendous disruption in the media landscape generally and most performing arts organizations are still charting their way through the wreckage. Yes, there are labor and rights negotiation issues, but also simply figuring out who and where the audience is and what they (and/or the universe of arts funding organizations) will pay for. I keep hoping that someone puts together a consortium of performing arts organizations; federal, state, and local arts councils; libraries; colleges and universities; foundations; and individual philanthropists that can fashion a meaningful arts streaming service that would 1) provide reasonable income to the participants, 2) actually be worth the subscription price, and 3) be distributed via a platform that made the videos more difficult to download and pirate than YouTube or Vimeo. I mean this as no disrespect to the various companies that are trying to put something together on their own, but there are only so many dollars most of us can plunk down for a limited run digital season.
  18. The 2008-10 renovations to the Theater Formerly Known as State included "a completely new communications and technology backbone for the facility and the creation of a media center to allow for recording and broadcast." Here's a picture of the media suite from the linked page. From a November 2011 New York Times Article entitled "A Digital Future Not Quite Here for City Ballet": More than a year after its completion at a cost of several million dollars, a sleek media control room equipped to help the New York City Ballet record its performances for digital archiving and for theater broadcasts has languished unused. The so-called media suite was installed as part of a celebrated $107 million renovation of the ballet company’s Lincoln Center home, the David H. Koch Theater, largely completed in 2009. Outfitted with the latest technology to capture, edit and store high-definition images, the room was promoted by City Ballet as a potential source of revenue that would bring the theater “into the 21st century.” But that future has yet to arrive. Per the article, NYCB blamed the delay on labor negotiations. I suspect that figuring out how to turn HD videos into a reliable revenue stream was also a factor. Just because you film it doesn't mean they'll come. ETA: I believe that some of the cameras—or at least the housings for them—are mounted on the front of the first and second rings.
  19. Maybe, but first the theaters have to be allowed to open and then the audience has to feel safe enough to show up. The Met does have to do a ton more advance planning with respect to casting than a company like NYCB. It is not uncommon for a singer for a lead role to be signed up years in advance, especially if they are a prominent artist in high demand. The Met may have decided that there is too much uncertainty regarding 1) whether or not they will be allowed to open, 2) whether the right singers for the operas they've scheduled will be available, and 3) whether any of non-US based singers they may have signed up three years ago will even want to risk coming to the US given how dismal our management of the pandemic has turned out to be. I can imagine a star international singer getting an offer to sing this spring in the US and thinking, "No thanks, not this year" or scanning their existing contract for a clause that will allow them to cancel due to Covid-19.
  20. To the best of my knowledge, no, aside from the archival performance videos available for viewing in the NY Public Library's Performing Arts research collection.
  21. Most likely Sterling Hyltin. My mental model for tracking who's dancing what in Liebeslieder is to name the roles after who originated them since there seems to be no other convention such as "The Waltz Girl" or "Rubies Tall Girl" or what have you. So, here are the originators: Diana Adams – Bill Carter Melissa Hayden – Jonathan Watts Jillana – Conrad Ludlow Violette Verdy – Nicholas Magallenes I've seen all of the dancers BalanchineFan referred to dance Liebeslieder, but never that exact cast. From my experience, here's who generally dances what: Tiler Peck = Violette Verdy Rebecca Krohn = Diana Adams Sterling Hyltin = Melissa Hayden (the Nein, Geliebter role) Megan Fairchild = Jillana Unity Phelan has indeed danced Hayden's role, as has Lauren Lovette. Although I've seen the men move from one role to another when the ballet is recast, I don't recall seeing any of the women move from one role to another, which is not to say that it doesn't happen of course. I think we've all had the experience of finding a particular dancer's stamp on a role practically indelible. For me that's Whelan in Hayden's Liebeslieder role. (Teresa Reichlen as the Rubies Tall Girl and Heather Watts in the Midsummer Divertissement are two more.)
  22. Take my money! I'd like a recording featuring Whelan and Hübbe performing the second half pas to "Nein, Geliebter." I cried every single time I saw them dance it. Here's a clip of Laurent Lovette and Jared Angle performing that duet in 2019:
  23. If I recall correctly, the principal women wear pointe shoes for both the Waltz and Scherzo and the corps wears pointe shoes in the Scherzo as well. I am honestly drawing a blank as to what the Waltz corps has on its feet, but I think it's slippers at least.
  24. Me too! I'm sure this sounds heretical to anyone whose only memories of Watts comes from the last half decade or so of her career. No one has moved me as much in the Divertissement pas de deux as Watts did. I'm an Ashley fangirl, but I've always been grumpy about the fact that it was her performance of the Divertissement that got broadcast, not Watts'. I wouldn't be surprised if Balanchine omitted the Emeralds solos if he thought they wouldn't translate well to the small screen. (I don't remember if Paul's solo was included or not. I'll check my DVD at some point because now I'm curious ... ) It's important to remember that TV screens were w-a-a-y different back then. They were smaller, the broadcast quality was low-def, and some of us didn't even have color, even at that relatively late date.
×
×
  • Create New...