Kathleen O'Connell

1 hour ago, tutu said:

On a separate note, there are now filed exhibits that directly screenshot this forum, so be careful about what you post, friends.

Fantastic. My name appears on top of a post that's not mine. 

Merson's theory of the case may be that the various defendants' association with Nguyen demonstrates that it was just degenerates all the way down.

30 minutes ago, Helene said:

There are a lot of donors to the arts, medicine, and higher education.  

On another note, if he made donations to NYCB, I hope NYCB reimburses the couple from whom he stole the money for them. 

Yes, they should pull out the checkbook pronto. 

Just now, sandik said:

Colleague of mine who worked in arts administration in Miami in the 1980s-90s said that they were awash in drug money looking to be laundered.

Philanthropy is useful for reputation laundering, too. We don't even need to name names at this point. 

9 minutes ago, balletforme said:

Is it just me or is this entire thing just getting wackier and wackier? 

I am not an lawyer but can someone please tell me why would anyone seek this guy's deposition?  And I read it and it really doesn't have anything very incriminating? It reads like a gossip rag. 

I am not a lawyer either, but I have been empaneled on more than one jury, and I will tell you that a) with respect to the civil cases, one was wackier than the next and b) with respect to the criminal cases, hardly anyone involved was a model citizen, including in once case, the victim. Some very dodgy folks were up there swearing on bibles and giving testimony. 

4 minutes ago, Helene said:

There are a lot of donors to the arts, medicine, and higher education.  

And more than one has been convicted, not just indicted. The list is long and distinguished.

33 minutes ago, tutu said:

Good lord, this guy... well, he's certainly familiar with the ballet:

It's going to be really interesting if this thing goes to trial and Merson hauls Nguyen out of Rikers to put him on the stand. I suppose Merson could suggest to the jury that it takes a scumbag to know one.

(Per the NYS Unified Court System website, Nguyen's next court appearance is on 7/18/19 for sentencing. He pled guilty to several felonies, but hasn't been sentenced yet.)

1 hour ago, nanushka said:

A new affidavit has been filed in the Waterbury case, a statement by "former young patron Winston Nguyen." I found this bit interesting...

...so I looked up the video in question. I believe it must be this one, featuring Megan LeCrone:

I'm not sure I agree with Nguyen's interpretation, but given all that's been going on at NYCB, it seems unwise to keep this out there.

Shades of the Jockey-Club de Paris. That video was never anything but problematic, and yes, it needs to come down. 

The fact that it makes the Young Patrons Circle look like a dating service is bad enough, but the images are so gendered and classist as to be offensive in and of themselves. The message seems to be that we're all just working stiffs, but if you're the right kind of working stiff you can buy access to a ballerina.

ETA: Six years on, that Blackberry is as quaint as the wind-up alarm clock. 

53 minutes ago, alexL said:

I NYCB can't even do justice to some Balanchine ballets anymore. Their latest Theme and Variations was the biggest letdown of the season. Plus, the NYCB corp were not uniform at all throughout their run of Symphony in C.

I do hope that ABT would perform more Tudor and Ashton in future.

I've been attending NYCB performances since the late 70's, and trust me, the corps has never been renowned for its uniformity. I remember gasping in shock when the curtain went up on Symphony in Three Movements during a performance that took place about mid-way into the Martins era because I had never seen that diagonal line of corps women look so straight. 

2 hours ago, canbelto said:

I actually can't stand the ABT doing any Balanchine. To me they always get it wrong, and not just in the fact that they're unidiomatic. I've seen Balanchine done with a "foreign accent" which I've enjoyed nonetheless. But to me ABT just always looks sloppy, underrehearsed and unmusical in Balanchine. 

Not all of their Balanchine is objectionable. I can tell you that I would much rather see Shevchenko in Mozartiana than Mearns. 

 (Sort of ...)

Perhaps she's not interested, but IG posts like this remind me that Marina Harss should have a more prominent voice at an established publication ... 

4 minutes ago, nanushka said:

Maybe that gets covered when the prince hits the bullseye. 😁

Not as good as dragging an actual dead critter back to the castle from the hunt, but it'll do!

52 minutes ago, sandik said:

(and I do love your insistence on meritocracy coming on July 4!)

Yeah, I was in A Mood. 

I don't know how far into the 19th century the idea may have persisted, but there was quite a long period of time during which an aristocrat was expected to have mastered the fighting arts, and to use them. Even Victoria's grandchildren flattered themselves with uniforms.

17 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

This is how Radu Poklitaru staged his version, to Tchaikovsky. Aurora is awoken not by the Prince's kiss, but by the sucking of her newborn infant. To describe it as disturbing is an understatement.

😳 

Admittedly, that particular flavor of awakening does occur in some of the earlier sources. And I actually might like to see a dance take on some of the less Disney-ready versions, but maybe not to Tchaikovsky. 

15 hours ago, nanushka said:

I take your point, but by its very nature and since its premiere (except when heroic episodes have been interpolated, as in the Kirkland staging IIRC), Sleeping Beauty has differed from many of Petipa's other works in eschewing the melodramatics of plot.

The basic developments of typical Romantic/Classical ballet plots are there — e.g. we have an Act I followed by a "mad scene" (the pricking of Aurora, comparable to Giselle's mad scene or Nikiya's snakebite), followed by a vision scene (comparable to Albrecht's night in the forest or Solor's opium dream) — but everything is gentler, subtler, with more of the emphasis on the pure dance. The plot unfolds almost without the need for human motivation and energy; there's just a pang of desire, a token gesture of masculine ingenuity ("Ah — kiss her!") — and otherwise the fairies do all the work.

 

Ratmansky's staging of Act II, Scene iv does follow the original scenario for Tchaikovsky's ballet, which itself departs from Perrault's tale in any number of ways, including prudently lopping off its second half, which covers what happens to the Prince and Princess after they marry (in secret!), have children, and deal with the Prince's Ogress Queen Mother, who wants to cook the kids up for dinner. Nor is the Prince led to the Princess by a fairy: he spies her hidden castle during a hunt, learns of the Princess sleeping within from an old man who recounts a tale told to him by his father, and sets off through the brambles to find her.  Perrault himself makes substantial changes to his folk and courtly romance sources, in many of which involve the Princess being impregnated by the Prince while she sleeps. 

There's no point in demanding fidelity to Perrault or any of his sources, of course, and I take your excellent point about the ballet's softening of some of the Romantic conventions that feature in other works (which one can also find in opera; every diva wants a mad scene.) I found Ratmansky's version a little inert, possibly because he pared down the panorama so much. 

But I'm probably just being too old-school meritocratic: aristocrats should EARN their privilege, darn it! 

2 hours ago, nanushka said:

The one stylistic element out of these that I truly love, in aesthetic terms, is the low passés (at least in this particular context). They look so gentle and elegant; they really suit the flavor of the work, to my eyes.

Oh I love those low passés too! There are any number of things I'd tweak in Ratmansky's staging (Hop o' My Thumb would go right back to the museum ...) but not those lovely, lovely passés. 

Where Ratmansky's version stumbles for me is storytelling. When you find yourself losing the thread in Sleeping Beauty, something is amiss. And things like having the Lilac Fairy more or less bestow Aurora on Desiré rather than requiring him do something to prove he is worthy of her—like chopping down a forest of briar with his sword—seems like a basic violation of fairy-tale norms. 

I'd ditch the white wigs, too. They flatter almost no one.

22 minutes ago, Fraildove said:

i will say that the position in the photo of the newly discovered notes is not ‘pretty’ 

You'll get no argument from me on that front! It looks decidedly awkward. I hope it looks better as part of an actual phrase than it does as a static image in a photo. 

2 hours ago, California said:

Ratmansky just posted on his public Facebook:

SLEEPING BEAUTY: no 'fish dives' in the Wedding pas de deux this time around. we found the original Petipa steps in Pavel Gerdt drawings stored at the Bolshoi Museum. you can see Fonteyn & Helpman taking the pose drawn by Gerdt, who created the role of the Prince in 1890. apart from the Wedding pas Gerdt also sketched all the partnering in the Vision scene and we are incorporating all of it! feels so good to finally get it right. what a treasure.

Sigh. I'm going to have to plead guilty to felony hypocrisy. I'm not the least troubled by ballerinas who substitute a musical, well-executed manège for Odile's fouettés or who elect forgo arms held en couronne during their Rose Adagio balances in the interest of embodying a composed, confident, gracious young princess. But lordy I do love the éclat of those fish dives. 

We're well into the 21st century, but No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century, by Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick, is a straightforward and eminently digestible survey of what happened in the world of dance during the last century, although, if pressed, I'd opt first to read a book Sandik recommended above, Deborah Jowitt's Time and the Dancing Image. But I find myself going back to No Fixed Points pretty often, too.

If the 580 pages in Garofola's Diaghilev's Ballets Russes seem a little daunting for the summer months, she also edited a very informative volume of essays on the subject titled The Ballets Russes and Its World. It's packed full of beautiful illustrations and it fun to flip through just for that. It's pretty pricey new, but there are lots of used copies to be had out there.

I also enjoyed Sjeng Scheijen's Diaghilev: A Life. 

39 minutes ago, ABT Fan said:

I'm shocked. I guess ABT got some returns/exchanges or took back some seats they gave away, but as of right this second there are 12 seats available in Orchestra prime for Saturday night. Everything else is sold out. A short while ago when I looked (a week ago?) it was completely sold out. These seats are $250 each but they are terrific seats. 

I've never noticed this before. Is it common for a show to be sold out and then have some seats just appear?

The newly-opened seats could be donations from ticket holders who couldn't use them and didn't want to try to sell them. (Been there; done that.) They might also be house seats the company was holding but has since released. 

15 minutes ago, mille-feuille said:

I mean long sections (32 counts worth) of fouettés, such as are found in Swan Lake, Don Quixote, and Le Corsaire. I see most dancers do them approximately on the beat, but not RIGHT on it.

I think that's one of the reasons I can't work up much enthusiasm for 32 counts of fouettés: the degree of difficulty outweighs their inherent choreographic interest. One little miscalculation, and even the best dancer can end up off the beat or worse, and to what end? 

1 minute ago, nanushka said:

I agree about clean solid singles being perfectly acceptable and often very impressive, and I also agree that on the beat — or at the very least starting off that way, in clear relation to the music (understanding that when multiples enter the mix each set can take more like a beat and a half) — is really to be expected (though not always achieved).

I really like the way Gillian Murphy chose to incorporate multiples into the mix in this video. She reserves her multiples for one particular recurring motif in the "A" section of the music, and then opts for straight singles in the "B" section, and it is just *chef's kiss*. So musical, and all the more thrilling because of it!

55 minutes ago, mille-feuille said:

In my experience doing fouettés to the beat is the exception rather than the norm! (I'll never forget Tiler Peck's fouettés as Odile... ) Using all the music with solid, non-travelling fouettés, whether they be singles or multiples, is enough to satisfy me.

Do you mean fouettés generally, or just in Swan Lake? I consider fouettés not done to the beat to be a fail, irrespective of the ballet, or how many eventually get done, or how many multiples get thrown into the mix. Like you, I'm absolutely fine with well-executed singles on the beat; they can be abolutely thrilling. (And in Swan Lake, I don't even need to see fouettés at all. If a manege of piqué turns was good enough for Maya Plisetskaya, it's good enough for me.)  I honestly can't recall the last time I saw a ballerina do fouettés off the beat, but then again I don't see Swan Lake or Don Q that regularly anymore, which could be where the most egregious violations occur. 

10 minutes ago, canbelto said:

I'm sorry Part said she gave the sponsorship to a new principal. Part's sponsor was Theresa Khawly -- Khawly now sponsors Shevchenko. 

As for the sponsorship information, it;s on the ABT website:

https://www.abt.org/support/individual-giving/major-gifts/

Sponsors are recognized in Playbill and on ABT’s website.
Eight levels of sponsorship are available, and each dancer may be sponsored by up to three sponsors:

Professional Dancer Sponsorships
Principal Sponsor – $35,000 annually
Soloist Sponsor – $25,000 annually
Corps de Ballet Sponsor – $15,000 annually

Pre-Professional Dancer Sponsorships
ABT Apprentice Sponsor – $12,500 annually
ABT Studio Company Dancer – $10,000 annually
ABT JKO Upper 2 Level Student – $8,000 annually
ABT JKO Upper 1 Level Student – $6,500 annually
Project Plié Bridge Class Student – $5,000 annually

I haven't checked every single name against the roster, but judging from the Dancer Sponsorship page in ABT's annual report, it would appear that every dancer—down to the apprentice level—has at least one sponsor. I don't know how ABT decides which donor gets to sponsor which dancer, but clearly the company has decided that every dancer gets one. Note that some donors are listed as sponsoring more than one dancer. It could be that donors who have a long history of major donations get some say in who they are listed as sponsoring; it could be that there's some kind of lottery; it could be  combination of both. I would be shocked if a dancer's contract were dependent on them somehow attracting a named sponsorship. (I'd be even more shocked if AGMA tolerated such a policy.)

There are two kinds of donations: restricted and unrestricted. Unrestricted donations are what they sound like: the company can use them however they see fit. Restricted donations come with strings attached. They can be restricted as to time. For example, a donor might say "I'm pledging $30,000. You can use $10,000 this year, $10,000 next year, and $10,000 the year after that." They can also be restricted as to purpose: "I'm pledging $30,000 so you can refurbish the costumes some repertory ballets." And of course, they can also be restricted as to both time and purpose: "I'm pledging $30,000 so you can refurbish the costumes for some repertory ballets. You can have $10,000 for that purpose this year, $10,000 next year, and $10,000 the year after that."

I checked ABT's 2017 Financial Statments (which you can find on the NYS Charities Bureau website) to see if there was any detail regarding donor contributions specifically earmarked for dancer sponsorships, but the details regarding donor restrictions aren't that granular. That being said, out of $20.4 million in contributions, $8.8 million came with time or purpose restrictions, and it could be that some of that amount has been earmarked for dancers' salaries overall. (Again, I'd be surprised if donors were allowed to direct their giving to specific dancers. I suspect that these donations go into a general pool that's used to for dancer pay generally. There are also funds for things like production support and training.) 

 Personally, I find the concept of dancer sponsorships a bit creepy, but then again, I'm not trying to entice donors to pull out their checkbooks. Alas, it's apparently not enough to put some portion of one's wealth to good use by supporting a worthy cause; one must be able to slap one's name on something—a building, an elevator bank, a person—in the process.

1 hour ago, FauxPas said:

Wendy Whelan and Jonathan Stafford if you are reading this...   Give him a call.

How tall is Gorak? My impression is that he's at best a medium. Given the bevvy of tall ballerinas - both at the principal level and further down in the ranks, wouldn't poaching a taller dancer make sense? (Ahem, like Forster.) That being said, yes, Gorak needs to find a company that is willing to invest in his development, because he is in many ways a beautiful dancer.

5 hours ago, canbelto said:

I think every time I saw The Times Are Racing Ashly was the "tap girl." Her speed and energy were infectious. Honestly I can't picture this ballet without her and Justin Peck, who will also be retiring from dancing after today.

I've seen the The Times Are Racing with the "tap roles" danced by Peck and Fairchild, Peck and Isaacs, and, today, Pollack and Isaacs. I much preferred Isaacs to Fairchild in the role, not because she danced it with more technical finesse (because, lets be honest, I don't think even Terpsichore herself could do that) but because she brought a certain feeling to the role that Fairchild didn't. To me Isaacs seemed like a seeker, someone who is set a bit apart from community on stage, and who finds her way into it by the end. It gave the ballet a bit of a narrative hook that I really like. (And I really like the ballet, too.) It was bittersweet to watch her dance this special role one last time.

Pollack was really, really good in Peck's role, by the way, and I'd be happy to see her keep it. Interestingly enough, she danced those tap steps more like Fairchild than like Peck: she has more of Fairchild's fluidity, less of Peck's foursquare attack. She was breathtakingly fast, but nonetheless seemed like she had plenty more speed in reserve had she needed it. Brava.

53 minutes ago, nanushka said:

A solo bow in front of the curtain but I ducked out after that so not sure about a bouquet. A lot of warm applause for her throughout. What a great piece to go out on! She looked like she was having a great time and feeling a lot. I enjoyed the piece. Interesting that the central PDD has so partnering/lifting of one another — that’s the same when it’s done M/F?

Per this NYT article by Gia Kourlas, Peck did tweak the choreograph a bit to accommodate two same-sex dancers:

For his pas de deux, Mr. Peck has made small tweaks so that each dancer takes a turn leading the other; learning how to be the supported one has been an adjustment for both. “There’s a constant exchange of who’s leading and who’s in charge,” Mr. Applebaum said. “So you have to switch on a dime.”

I don't recall a lot in the way of lifts or supported promenades in the M/F version of the pas, to be honest, which doesn't mean they're not there of course.