Kathleen O'Connell

2 hours ago, nanushka said:

Not really, assuming that the recording is of similar quality to those used for most of the spring and fall digital seasons — i.e. recordings made primarily for promotional/archival purposes and not originally intended for commercial release. Those recordings have been perfectly watchable, but I don't think they're of the quality that a Netflix or a Disney+ would be looking to acquire.

Netflix, for instance, has very rigorous production standards for the content provided by its various partners, whether that content is in-licensed or produced for Netflix. For instance, a partner producing content for Netflix must use one of the cameras that Netflix has authorized for video capture and further must use the settings Netflix has specified for that camera. (Note that Netflix will make some exceptions for documentary footage.) It was a big deal in the camera world when Netflix authorized the Panasonic S1H—a mirrorless camera that can be used for either stills or video that is cheaper than industry standard cinema cameras (such as those produced by Red Digital ) and that you might see on the street in the hands of a vlogger or someone shooting content for their YouTube channel. 

I don't know what equipment NYCB uses to film performances nor what its post-production process is, but it could very well be that they don't conform to the major streaming platform's standards. 

It could also be that NYCB wants to test the pay-per-view model and thought Marquee's platform offered a decent opportunity to do so. Pay-per-view might also be the distribution model that is most acceptable to both the rights holders and the performers' and stagehands' unions. 

A lot (most?) of Marquee TV's content that isn't "ticketed" is also available as either DVDs or online purchase / rental elsewhere, so a lot of the digital rights issues regarding wide distribution have likely already been dealt with. (Marquee TV doesn't appear to have much in the way of exclusive content.) 

I'm delighted to see that NYCB has been able to pull off a program of new works during a lockdown. 

PS: I don't know the work of Jamar Roberts, but I do know the work of Bell, Miller, and Tanowitz, and I'm eager to see what they've been able to do given the constraints they've had to work under.

48 minutes ago, dirac said:

The Jewels excerpts were still substantial portions that gave you a good taste of the ballet and I would say Balanchine's excerpts were better chosen than some of the current ones. They are only pieces of the ballet but they stand alone decently enough. I don't think this is true of many of the excerpts of this digital season

I absolutely agree!

On 10/11/2020 at 1:20 PM, Peg said:

Sara is keeping very busy!  Also this:

Joyce Theater  

Choreographer Molissa Fenley’s celebrated solo work, State of Darkness, will be performed by a new generation of New York’s acclaimed dancers, including Sara Mearns (NYCB), Lloyd Knight (Martha Graham), Shamel Pitts (Batsheva) and Casandra Trenary (ABT) . You canwatch this unique collection of solo performances, broadcast live each weekend (Oct 24-Nov 1) from The Joyce stage and available for viewing until November 7. For tickets - https://www.joyce.org/stateofdarkness   

It's kind of pricey, alas. You have to buy tickets separately for each dancer's half hour performance. At $13.00 per, that's $91.00 for the whole series. I don't know how many people would actually want to see seven different dancers' take on Fenley's work, but I'm surprised the Joyce isn't offering some kind of discount to see all seven.

Anyway, you can watch Fenley perform the work herself here: https://vimeo.com/46187147

Warning: she dances topless. 

On 10/14/2020 at 7:29 PM, canbelto said:

Serenade also has a much darker ending than you'd initially expect when the curtain goes up.

I presume Balanchine switched the order of the Tchaikovsky's third and fourth movements to set up that darker death and transfiguration ending. Personally, I find it rather jarring to hear the fourth movement finale—including the recap of the opening themes—three-quarters of the way through the ballet rather than at the end where, musically at least, it belongs.

On 10/14/2020 at 7:26 PM, nanushka said:

p.s. I personally can't stand the Duo ending.

I agree! I sometimes wish they'd do it without the spotlight to see if it would read differently. 

52 minutes ago, Fairandlove said:

2) That would show that this case was brought for financial gain and not on the principle of holding all accountable.

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.

4 hours ago, Fairandlove said:

 If her goal was to hold men accountable for viewing her images, why did some of them get sued whilst others got away with no consequence?

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.

13 minutes ago, Fairandlove said:

Right so either Waterbury exaggerated this story or the lawsuit is erroneous. Or both.

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?

41 minutes ago, Fairandlove said:

There are still lots of inconsistencies in her story.

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. 

On 10/12/2020 at 7:40 PM, Fairandlove said:

Her photos were never shared on a website like MySpace so that comparison is not even justified. 

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.) 

On 10/11/2020 at 2:04 AM, dirac said:

I would prefer to think that Waterbury was misled into thinking her case was better than it was.

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.

4 hours ago, Helene said:

And that would never be Eboli's dream in the first place.  Her dream would be more palatial and include servants.  What a stupid message that all women dream in their heart of hearts to be 1950's American housewives.

Yeah, no, it's not working for me either. Eboli wants power, not appliances. 

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.

1 hour ago, Helene said:

But ABT is America's company! [/sarcasm]

 

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. 

38 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

What's interesting is that conductor Kirill Karabits and the chorus and orchestra are off site (but also being streamed).

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.

48 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

If the Met were to stream its entire video archive, would viewers bother subscribing to Met Opera on Demand?

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.

7 minutes ago, Helene said:

I can not imagine the Met wanting any partners associated with their brand, unless the partners could guarantee similar quality.

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.)

37 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

At this point it's mostly repeats, which may be a strategic decision.

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. 

12 hours ago, Leah said:

Seems like if they needed a ballet partner ABT would be the logical choice, no? 

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. 

36 minutes ago, pherank said:

It's great to have a video to go back to and review.

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. 

2 hours ago, BalanchineFan said:

Which ballet is it, (Brahms Shoenberg third movement, perhaps?) that is pictured in the media control room?

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.

3 hours ago, cobweb said:

Thank you Kathleen, you are always a source of great information! 

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. 

53 minutes ago, cobweb said:

the same series that we saw in the Digital Spring Season, apparently shot from somewhere in the back of the orchestra or first ring.

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. 

57 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

Possibly a season by a stable company of resident dancers may be easier to manage than a constantly changing roster of international singers coming through the Met's revolving doors. 

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.