Kathleen O'Connell

Update on Ballade: Balanchine choreographed it after Tricolore premiered (in 1978, not 1979 as I incorrectly stated above), so while he may have envisioned including something like it in Entente Cordiale before illness forced him to hand the project off to Martins and Robbins, it was never part of that work. In addition, Tricolore was set to a commissioned score by French composer Georges Auric, but Balanchine didn't use Auric's score for Ballade, he used music by Fauré instead. He did use one of Tricolore's sets for Ballade, however. Per Anna Kisselgoff's 1980 review of Ballade, it was "reportedly the first of three sections of a total revision of "Tricolore" the company's not-so-successful salute to France in 1978." That total revision never happened, of course, but we still have Ballade, though the company doesn't show it to us very often.

Well, they did get Jewels ... and I'm only half-joking. Balanchine's inheritance includes models for full-evening works, which aren't the same as full-length, three-act story ballets along the lines of Sleeping Beauty or Swan Lake. (I'll get to Coppélia in a minute.) There's Jewels, for example, or Entente Cordiale, a failed 1979 attempt to combine Union Jack, Stars and Stripes, and Tricolore into an evening-long tryptic celebrating Britain, the U.S.A., and France. (The only thing that survives of Tricolore is Ballade.*) Balanchine certainly provided models for the kind of sheer spectacle classic story ballets are expected to provide—Vienna Waltzes and Firebird, for example. And finally, Balanchine did plenty of story—Prodigal Son and La Sonnambula come immediately to mind, if the story inherent in Serenade (Death and Transfiguration) or Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 (The Queen Take Possession of Her Realm) isn't enough for you. So, Balanchine provided models for full-evening ballets, for theatrical spectacle, and for storytelling. But I agree with nanushka that he didn't really leave behind a robust body of multi-act, dramatic story ballets combining all three that could serve as the foundation for a continuing company tradition. I don't think that's a bad thing: Balanchine's whole project was more or less to dismantle the three-act story ballet model and he did it with genius. The ballets he knew from Imperial Russia were touchstones not templates. Yes, A Midsummer Night’s Dream tells a story, but it's done so differently from the way that Swan Lake tells one that it seems like there's hardly a throughline from the one to the other. (The fact that the pas de deux celebrating eternal love isn't given to Oberon and Titania is a big tell.) Ditto Nutcracker. (The number of people who would wish away the first act party scene is another tell. No one would wish away Sleeping Beauty's Prologue.) The dramatic arcs in both are tightly compressed into one act. Traditional two-act story ballets like Giselle and La Sylphide need both acts to tell their stories. And although they are rich in dramatic gesture and stage business, neither Nutcracker nor Midsummer use much in the way of traditional mime. (The Nutcracker Prince's recounting of the battle with the Mouse King being the charming exception.) Harlequinade barely works as a story ballet, and IMHO, would be a much better ballet pared back to one 60-minute act. Doesn't "Just dance" say it all? Coppélia is the exception that proves the rule, but it was a joint effort with Alexandra Danilova, and only Act III is all Balanchine. [From the NYCB repertory notes on Coppélia: "In 1974, when Balanchine decided to add Coppélia to NYCB’s repertory, he took the opportunity to gently update the ballet, adding some male solos, more pas de deux, and a new third act. He enlisted Danilova to restage the dances she knew so well for the first two acts, and to coach the principal roles, originally performed by Patricia McBride (Swanilda), Helgi Tomasson (Frantz), and Shaun O’Brien (Doctor Coppélius.)."] It's a delight, but one ballet does not an inheritance make. I'm all for NYCB scrapping Martins' R+J and Swan Lake, and replacing them with new productions, but I can't quite see who will choreograph them: there aren't many natural storytellers out there. Perhaps Ratmansky could be persuaded to do a new Romeo and Juliet for them. I don't know if his reconstructed Swan Lake could really be grafted on to NYCB's root stock, though. *ETA - if I recall correctly, Ballade was supposed to be part of Tricolore, but Balanchine was ill and Martins, Robbins, and Bonnefous had to step in to do the choreography. Ballade premiered a year later in 1980. I have to do some research to refresh my memory: I missed Tricolore, but I did see Ballade when it was new.

cubanmiamiboy, you have beautifully summed up some of my major complaints about this production.

This is one of my major complaints about Kirkeby's sets and costumes for both Swan Lake and R+J: he somehow contrives to make myth and romance look dinky.

My husband enjoys dance but isn't an aficionado. The things he likes and doesn't like always surprise me: he loves Serenade but Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 he can take or leave. His response to most of the Wheeldon he's seen has been "Meh" but he gave Tere O'Connor's poem / Secret Mary two thumbs way, way up. (Well, I'm with him all the way on both halves of that particular assessment, but you could have knocked me over with a feather when he said that he'd like to see more O'Connor.) I took him to Bourne's Swan Lake expecting him to tolerate it at best, and he thoroughly enjoyed it, partly for the spectacle (it is an eyeful), but also because he found it profoundly moving.

Almost an insult? No, it's pretty much a full-on repudiation of the work's Imperial roots. It's worse than ugly: it looks like it was done on the cheap.

At the moment, there are only two ballets listed for the All Balanchine II program in the 2020 Spring season, Donizetti Variations and Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2. That's not a full program, so maybe they're looking to add something else to the mix, perhaps something to go with the Haieff, which doesn't appear to have been scheduled for the Spring.

I hope you didn't stay disappointed too long! Bourne's Swan Lake is one of my guilty pleasures: I'm the one perverse balletomane who prefers it to the original.

A few years ago I attended a performance of Strauss' Elektra at the Met. The couple next to me was stunned, stunned to discover that they had purchased tickets to an opera and not a modern staging of an ancient Greek play. I think it was their first opera, and I suspect that it didn't exactly sell them on the art form, even though it was a very good performance. PS - These were pricey Grand Tier seats, not $25 rush tickets bought on a lark at the TKTS booth ...

I am charmed to see that Aloff has included something by Ralph Waldo Emerson (On Fanny Elssler). Can't get much more American than that!

It wasn't just anyone's naked body: it was a naked body they (or a friend) had in some way possessed.

As several others have noted "revenge porn" isn't a good descriptor for what Finlay et al were engaged in. A better term might be "Non-consensual Pornography" or "NCP. Here's how it's described in a brochure put out by the U. S. Airforce: What is NCP? Also known as revenge porn, cyber rape, in- voluntary porn, and nonconsensual sharing of intimate images. NCP is the distribution of explicit/intimate images of a person without his/her consent. This includes: (1) Images originally obtained without consent by using hidden cameras, hacking phones, or recording sexual assaults AND (2) Images consensually obtained within the context of an intimate relationship. What is distribution? Distribution includes the posting of images to social media sites and sharing images directly with another person (e.g. via email). The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative has model state and federal NCP legislation that doesn't require intent to cause harm. It's worth taking a look at their Guide for Legislators.

Based on the texts between Finlay and his various interlocutors detailed in Waterbury's complaint I think we can safely say that plenty of people knew about them. The whole point at issue is shared photos, not photos no one knew about. The women may not have known about them, but plenty of men apparently did.

I think you may have misunderstood what I meant by "public mores." I meant general societal attitudes about nudity and sex—attitudes that determine whether something is deemed "vulgar"—and not whether the particular photos in question were released to the broader public.

Terms like "distasteful" and "vulgar" suggest that sharing explicit photos of someone without their consent is mostly a violation of public mores regarding nudity and sex. "Upsetting to the women when it was revealed" suggests that it's only harmful when discovered. But it's more than that: it's a fundamental violation of privacy. It's a violation of trust. It places the value of a man's ego above a woman's right to determine who sees her breasts (or her vulva or her buttocks or herself having sex), when, and in what context. That harm was done whether the women involved knew about it or not.

Oh I didn't think you misquoted me at all - I just assumed I hadn't been clear.

Honestly I don’t know the law well enough to know whether Waterbury has a case against Ramasar or not, and I certainly don’t know enough of the facts to make that call either.

I didn’t mean to imply that there was! There are plenty of examples where the public good has been well served by trial lawyers working on contingency. My point was simply this: Waterbury’s primary interest may have been exposing what she believes was both individual and institutional wrongdoing, but her lawyer’s primary interest is likely not that. The tactics he may use to win a monetary award in court might not put her in the most favorable light outside of court.

Perhaps I misunderstood your observation that Maxwell was the only victim. Did you mean the only person who might be deemed Ramasar’s victim? I absolutely agree that keeping it off of social media would be best for all concerned.

I wasn't aware of Waterbury's most recent IG posts (or of any of them, for that matter, since I don't follow her). I agree that Maxwell is certainly within her rights to report the details of any conversations the two women have had. I just think it would have been the better part of valor to state that she'd forgiven Ramasar, that she doesn't view herself as a victim, and that so far as she's concerned, claims that he's a rapist are exaggerated and leave it at that.

Waterbury may not be in it for the money, but her lawyer, who works on a contingency basis, surely is.

If Maxwell was violated, so was Waterbury. Both women had explicit photos taken by a male sexual partner who then shared those photos with others without the women's consent.

You can read Maxwell's full statement as well as Waterbury's response here: https://www.onstageblog.com/editorals/2020/1/31/member-of-new-york-city-ballet-speaks-out-amidst-the-west-side-story-controversy

Yes, this.

Absolutely. The insinuations against Waterbury weren't necessary nor well-considered. They might be relevant in a court of law, but look ugly trotted out in the court of public opinion.