Kathleen O'Connell

We all know it's not really great if The Trocks haven't blessed it with a send-up, and Cage/Cunningham is no exception. Patterns in Space is a hoot, although the on stage musicians never fail to steal the show. (Choreography after Merce Cunningham / live music after John Cage per the credits.)

I wouldn't expect Cunningham to be a ballet company staple. But ballet companies aren't the only dance companies out there, nor is the audience for dance limited to those who only like ballet. There are Cunningham works that a ballet company might tackle with some reasonable expectation of success, e.g. Duets, Summerspace, Septet, maybe Antic Meet. But frankly, I think his work would be better served by companies and organizations that make their home in other dance forms.

I think it's more than OK if Cunningham's work just doesn't work for someone (it doesn't work for Robert Gottlieb for example), but I for one hope that it will continue to be taught, staged, and performed regularly for many, many decades to come. It deserves to be more than a vintage rarity, although one could make that claim for any number works that have unjustly slipped into obscurity—and that, unfortunately, applies to many art forms, not just dance. (We almost lost Herman Melville, for instance. By 1876 all of his work was out of print and he was considered a minor writer until the 1920s-30s, when there was a major revival of interest in and critical appreciation of his work.) Cunningham didn't want his work to die with him. He may have dissolved his company, but he did create a very active and robust trust to "actively share his legacy and offer it to future generations." In addition to maintaining the materials and licensing structure necessary to restage Cunningham's works, the Trust also offers "classes and workshops in Cunningham's technique, repertory, and choreographic methods to dancers and the public, keeping interest and practice alive," which is equally important. Thirteen bucks will get you into a daily class taught by a former Cunningham company member. Many Cunningham dancers are now choreographers in their own right, and while they aren't, by and large, "mini-Merces," his art lives on in theirs. (Pam Tanowitz didn't dance with Cunningham, but she did study with Viola Farber, one of Cunningham's original dancers. The throughline to Cunningham is evident in her work, even though she definitely has her own voice.) One of the side benefits of the Cunningham Centennial was putting Cunningham's choreography into the bodies of dancers who never worked with him—including Sara Mearns, who appears to have embraced the opportunity to dance his work with fearlessness and joy: "After performing her third solo, Ms. Mearns went into the hallway and cried. (She isn’t the type to hide her emotions on or off the stage.) “It was out of pure joy,” she said. “I put everything I could into it and I took chances, and I couldn’t believe it when I came off. I haven’t had that feeling in a very long time.” Will ADs, dancers, and audiences hold on to their Centennial enthusiasm for another decade or another century? Who knows? But for the moment, at least, he lives on.

Along similar lines, Elliot Caplan documented the creation of and rehearsals for Cunningham's 1993 work CRWDSPCR. Cunningham used the choreographic software program LifeForms to create the dance. From the notes to Caplan's film: At age seventy, Cunningham became the first choreographer of international renown to create work in dialogue with software technologies, when he was forced to explore the limitations that severe arthritis imposed upon his own freedom of movement. Cunningham's use of the computer has been described as an extension of his interest in integrating vernacular movement into the context of the dance. In CRWDSPCR, dancers aim at exact angles with their arms and feet, changing phrases quickly and methodically, as though transitioning from one keyframe to the next. These movements seem directly influenced by the shapes and rhythms of the LifeForms figures. You can find the complete film in the CRWDSPCR dance capsule. Here's a brief CRWDSPCR performance clip: And here's about a half hour of rehearsal footage:

I would like NYCB to keep on performing Cunningham's Summerspace and not just dust it off once a decade for special occasions. While they're at it they can add Paul Taylor's solo back to Episodes. Yes indeedy. We're going to forget how to watch Tudor if no one dances him anymore.

Here's a longer extract from Beach Birds for Camera* You can access the full length version in the Merce Cunningham Trust's Beach Birds dance capsule. (You can also access videos of many of Cunningham's notable works in their respective dance capsules. Biped is among them. The Trust's capsules are an amazing resource.) * Beach Birds for Camera is a variant of Beach Birds. It was filmed in two different settings. The first portion of the film is in black and white; the second is in color. You can read more about the film here. Cards on the table: I adore Beach Birds—the movement, the stillness, the music, the costumes, the whole thing. I think it is very beautiful, even when it's not conventionally pretty. But then I'm a Cunningham and Cage fangirl, and consider it a privilege to have been alive when both of these great artists were creating new work. Dance goers who are new to Cunningham—especially those whose primary lens for dance-watching has been fine-tuned for ballet—might find a work like Duets an easier point of entry into the Merce canon. (Duets is in ABT's rep, and I believe, in Washington Ballet's as well.)

OK - I took dive into some videos and I think I've figured out what bugs me about hops on pointe: the persistent and unresolved bend in the leg and the backward tilt of the foot behind the pointe. It just never looks right somehow: I think of ballet's basic energy trajectory as being up-and-out and there's something about hops on pointe that seems to violate that expectation. That, and they look painful.

Sigh. I don't really like those either, but I was thinking mostly of poor Giselle having to do a whole diagonal of them. The hops in Ballo do seem to fit into the just-shy-of-a-circus trick flavor of much of the ballerina's choreography.

Well, that's my response too, and the closest I've ever come to being on pointe is four-inch heels. It's hard to enjoy watching someone do something that looks so painful, and for so little aesthetic benefit to boot. Like traveling arabesques, they flatter no one IMO.

Odile's 32 fouettés. If I could go back in time and erase them from ballet history, I would. Bonus: Any variation in any ballet by any choreographer that showcases hops on point.

If I'm not mistaken, Watts originated the role. Leland replaced Mazzo.

Believe it or not, you have to look under Robert Schumann's "Davidsbündlertänze."

I'm going to hazard a guess that Macaulay's social media posts have more reach than his reviews, which may well have been locked behind a paywall for much of his presumed audience, and will likely remain there. But IG's algorithm, in its relentless quest for user engagement, will happily give his careless attempt at cuteness more prominence than it deserves.

Congratulations! I know you're looking for classical music, but Talking Heads' "Naive Melody" — the tenderest little "we're spending our lives together" pop love song ever (yes! from Talking Heads)— might be nice for the party: Home is where I want to be Pick me up and turn me around I feel numb, born with a weak heart I guess I must be having fun The less we say about it the better Make it up as we go along Feet on the ground, head in the sky It's okay, I know nothing's wrong, nothing Oh! I got plenty of time Oh! You got light in your eyes And you're standing here beside me I love the passing of time Never for money, always for love Cover up and say goodnight, say goodnight Home, is where I want to be But I guess I'm already there I come home, she lifted up her wings I guess that this must be the place I can't tell one from the other I find you, or you find me? There was a time before we were born If someone asks, this is where I'll be, where I'll be oh! We drift in and out Oh! Sing into my mouth Out of all those kinds of people You got a face with a view I'm just an animal looking for a home and Share the same space for a minute or two And you love me till my heart stops Love me till I'm dead Eyes that light up Eyes look through you Cover up the blank spots Hit me on the head I got ooh!

Many, many years ago I read an interview with Heather Watts in which she discussed the (to her mind at least) lackluster first five years or so of her career. She approached Balanchine for guidance and he recommended that she go watch (if I recall correctly) Gelsey Kirkland in T&V. "I wasn't even good enough to be in the corps of Theme!" she remarked to the interviewer.

She was indeed! But then she was great in everything. I could never understand why her career didn't get more traction—to my eyes, she was a more interesting dancer than some who made it to the soloist (and even principal) ranks. Not just technically strong—actually interesting. She was in my fantasy cast for a lot of things. I will miss her.

I'm not disagreeing, but it wouldn't be the first time a company's artistic leadership (and not just ABT's) appeared to be unfazed by something that looks less than ideal (at the very least) to the audience.

Maybe the artistic staff thinks she looks just fine?

I've often wondered if NYCB's 21st Century T&V ballerina casting has been more or less dictated by the requirements of its male roster. When Ashley, Nichols, and Kistler were dancing the role, the company had a luxury contingent of taller men to partner them like Sean Lavery, Adam Lüders, and Igor Zelensky. Lavery certainly put the lie to the contention that the male role is better suited to a shorter dancer: I think he was something like 6'3" and all legs.

During the first decade or so of my NYCB-watching career, I only saw taller dancers like Merrill Ashley, Kyra Nichols, and Darci Kistler perform T&V's ballerina role. Nothing against Fairchild, Bouder, and Peck, but I wouldn't mind seeing some of the company's taller women get a shot at it—and would very much have like to have seen Teuscher dance it.

Honestly, it doesn't matter what Macaulay meant. It's rude for anyone to refuse to refer to someone by their name, and worse than rude for a person of Macaulay's public prominence to do so. He's a journalist: part of his job is learning how to pronounce the names of the artists he writes about. He's also a human being and part of that job is according every other human being the dignity that is their right, rather than treating them as vessels for his wit.

Woo Hoo! Olga Tokarczuk! I really enjoyed Flights, and Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is the next book up in my TBR (to be read) pile. There's a good article about Tokarczuk and her work in a recent issue of The New Yorker: Olga Tokarczuk's Novels Against Nationalism. There's more than a little controversy around Handke because of his friendship with Slobodan Milosevic. Handke delivered a eulogy at Milosevic's funeral, and said once in an interview that he considered him a "tragic" man. I think many people would consider that to be a rather generous assessment.

There is another: Richard Danielpour's opera Margaret Garner, for which Toni Morrison wrote the libretto. I saw it in 2007, when New York City Opera was still alive. Sigh.

I tried that thought experiment myself. Then I went and watched some videos. I think there may be just too much recognizable Japonaiserie in the movement vocabulary to keep it from seeming like "a work that comments on a culture by someone who isn't a part of that culture," as On Pointe so aptly put it, even reduced to leotards without the wigs, costumes, and sets. (And the more I look at it, the cheesier it seems.) Anyway, here are two clips to compare / contrast. The first is of Miami City Ballet with costumes and sets. The second is a clip from a Sarasota Ballet rehearsal in practice clothes with no sets. The clips are from different sections of the ballet, but some of the motifs from the first are repeated in the second. Note that the ballerina in the Sarasota clip is Asian. (I don't know the Sarasota dancers well enough to know for sure who she is - perhaps Ryoko Sadoshima, who was born in Japan.)

Honestly, I think Bugaku is a ballet we can do without. Simply presenting it with an Asian cast won't address all of its flash points: Asians aren't interchangeable, just as, in some contexts—whether benign or charged—Western Europeans of different ethnic or national origins aren't interchangeable. Furthermore, Bugaku does more than riff on the style of another culture's dance traditions: it appears to be saying something about the way that culture structures the intersection of hierarchy, gender, and lust. Stripping off the wigs and the kimonos might not be enough to take away the taint of, for lack of a better term, the Western gaze. Not every work by a genius is a work of genius. I think we have enough Balanchine to let Bugaku go. ETA: Just to be clear, I'm not criticizing anyone's interest in seeing Bugaku: ballet devotees are rightly curious to see and evaluate as many works by a creator of Balanchine's stature as they can. In this instance I think there are other matters that need to be taken into consideration. For the record, I've both lived in Japan and, as an employee of a large multi-national company, done business in a number of Asian countries. That's the filter through which I see Bugaku.