Kathleen O'Connell

2 minutes ago, On Pointe said:

Many of the allegations in Waterbury's legal filings are not factually correct.

Do we have any evidence of that other than denials from the defendants? Which claims have been disproved? 

I'm not challenging the assertion, I just haven't been following the developments in the case particularly closely and I honestly don't know if any of the allegations that matter have been confirmed or denied.

16 minutes ago, abatt said:

Waterbury is not and never was a colleague of Finlay, Catazaro or Ramasar.  Alexa Maxwell is a colleague, but she apparently consents to her boyfriend's  (Ramasar's) conduct.   In fact, Waterbury's attorney  added the bits about Maxwell into the complaint as a red herring and fodder for the press.  

If the allegations made in Waterbury's legal filings are factually correct, a number of men in the company or connected with it in some way circulated explicit photos of or made derogatory sexual references to other dancers and dance students. 

I will add that I believe that genuine remorse for the harm one's behavior has caused to others, accepting responsibility for that behavior, and making a good-faith effort at restitution is something we can encourage and embrace. So is forgiveness. Banishment is not the only course of action; but redemption requires more than regret at being caught or a mealy-mouthed "I'm sorry if anyone was hurt" by way of apology.

Perhaps "counseling" is shorthand for that difficult process.

Had Finlay texted derogatory comments about his colleagues and peers based on their race, religion, or sexual orientation, and, had the recipients of those texts willingly participated in the conversation, would we think he—and they—should be allowed to remain in the workplace?

2 hours ago, Xiaoyi said:

Thank you for the reply. In fact, I have ordered a new subscription of Orchestra C. The previous info scared the hell out of me.

I also found a picture of Row U. It seems tolerable. https://aviewfrommyseat.com/photo/68960/David+H.+Koch+Theater/section-Orchestra/row-U/seat-115/

Just FYI:

1) I don't often sit in the orchestra, but when I do I actually prefer to be further back because the rake is a little better that it is in the rows closer to the stage. (I also prefer sitting further back and a it off center to get a better view of the choreographic patterns, but that's a matter of personal taste.)

2) Also, if you ever want to see what the view is like when you are buying NYCB tickets, all you have to do is go to a date on the performance calendar, click on buy tickets, go to the section of the house that you're interested in, and then, when taken to the seating chart, click on the little camera icon in the upper left hand corner of the screen to enable a bunch of clickable camera icons spread over the seating chart. Click on one of those, and it will show you the view from that part of the house. (I hope that's clear!)

I'd rather evaluate an artist's oeuvre on the basis of the work itself and on its influence than on the artist's bons mots. In the specific case of Picasso, one also gets gems like these:

"Women are machines for suffering."

"For me, there are only two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats."

“Every time I change wives I should burn the last one. That way I'd be rid of them. They wouldn't be around to complicate my existence. Maybe, that would bring back my youth, too. You kill the woman and you wipe out the past she represents.”

"To make oneself hated is more difficult than to make oneself loved." (If the testimony of his family and the many women he used up and abandoned is any evidence, I gather he rolled up his sleeves and really dove into the difficult work of making himself hated. Ideally we could just ignore an artist's biography too, but that's hard to do.)

I think Macaulay's pronouncement that he cannot rank Walker Evans with Pavel Tchelitchew based on the evidence of MoMA's Kirstein exhibition is at best glib. Roberta Smith's response—"Who's ranking?"—redirects the discussion in a more useful direction, which is to try to place these artists in context and understand why Kirstein esteemed them rather than their (ultimately) more famous and influential contemporaries. (I'm frankly intrigued by the fact that Kirstein championed both Evans and Lynes: it's difficult to imagine two more different sensibilities.) Still, I'm glad she pushed back on Macaulay's assessment of Evans.

17 hours ago, dirac said:

No doubt some of the reactions were off-the-cuff, which is why I wish the Times would return to offering carefully thought-through work from its critics instead of these little chit-chats, which are mostly of dubious worth and interest. 

Just nodding my head in violent agreement. A little video of Smith and Macaulay walking through the gallery together and chatting about what they were looking at and their responses to it in real time might have been delightful. But I think the print (ahem, or words on a screen) product should be reserved for a more considered assessment. Oh, and I hate the article's headline: "Lincoln Kirstein: A Modern Tastemaker With Some Iffy Taste." "Iffy" isn't the term I'd use to describe Kirstein's choosing the figurative over the abstract. I wouldn't want to spend too many hours of my life looking a the work of Paul Cadmus, but it's not like it's junk and I can see where it slots into the art history timeline next to Otto Dix and Max Beckmann. (Looking at "The Fleet's In" makes me think that maybe R. Crumb is his real heir ...) I can also see the link with Lynes.

13 hours ago, pherank said:

Also there's always some truth and some poetry to what Picasso says. Even his catty comment about Bonnard – "a potpouri of indecisions" – rings true for me after having wearily just gone through room after room of Bonnardy hesitations at the Tate. 

I feel your pain.  I happened to change offices at work many years ago, and my predecessor had installed a very large framed poster from some Bonnard exhibit or another on the wall right across from the desk. There wasn't any money in the departmental budget to replace it with something different, and there was a prohibition on hanging something of one's own without permission, so I had to look at it for what felt like an age until I managed to leap through enough bureaucratic hoops to get something more suitable for day-in-day-out gazing up on the wall. I vastly prefer Bonnard's exact contemporary (and fellow Nabi) Édouard Vuillard, who doesn't seem to get the "room after room" treatment nearly often enough. 

ETA: since Evans, Cartier-Bresson, and Dorothea Lange have been mentioned in this thread, I thought I'd enthuse about their much less well-know but wonderful younger contemporary William Gedney, who works in the same tradition, along with his own great contemporary, Robert Frank. Just about the whole of Gedney's work has been archived at Duke University and just randomly pointing and clicking at the collection unearths wonders. 

Artists are certainly free to trash talk each other as much as they like, though I will note that they tend to trash talk their rivals rather than their peers in other art forms. I read your comments as somehow justifying Macauley's dismissal of Evans in favor of Tchelitchew, which is an entirely different kettle of fish altogether. 

Picasso was indeed very good at getting people to talk about Picasso. 

53 minutes ago, pherank said:

But I can't imagine the life of an artist or musician without those goofy discussions. That's how friends, alliances, and enemies, are made.

I can imagine the life of a mature artist without them. Believing that one's art form requires a greater investment in time, energy, thought, and skill and that one's journey from student to master is therefore somehow greater than that of practitioners in other art forms seems like a young person's conceit. Most artists I've met have tremendous respect for their peers in other forms and genres.

It's not like Evans and Lynes were out there snapping selfies with their cell phones. Lynes was apparently more invested in darkroom technique than Evans was, however, perhaps because of his interest in surrealist effects. As artists, their visions were almost diametrically opposed. 

13 minutes ago, pherank said:

Maybe Macaulay is channeling the old café argument that the journey of a painter from student academic sketches to a fully realized unique presentation such as this:  https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c0/3d/cd/c03dcd3054d282c5fef2acaabeb99e3c.jpg is a much greater journey, and investment of time, energy and thought (and accumulation of skills) than what it takes to photograph subjects in the field.

It's not a very good argument. 

On 3/29/2019 at 7:33 PM, Quiggin said:

Macaulay makes a misstep by ranking Walker Evans (arguably Kirstein's most important "discovery" after Balanchine) below Tchelitchew, Naldeman and Lynes.

Oh, I just laughed out loud at that one. I suppose one might debate whether Evans was a better artist in his chosen medium than Tchelitchew or Nadelman were in theirs, but Evans was a huge influence on at least two generations of photographers. I for one am not prepared to argue that either Tchelitchew or Nadelman were similarly important to their arts. Lynes was an important photographer—he was a touchstone for Mapplethorpe, for instance—but not the towering figure Evans was and remains.

Sometimes I think Macauley needs to get out more.

54 minutes ago, BalanchineFan said:

Your description reminds me of the Variations section with the partner (I can hear the music in my head... Musically each phrase ends with three notes, I'm imagining they are the "throw away" gestures you mention). I don't recall her performance in that section bothering me at all. I saw Suzanne Farrell and Kyra Nichols dance it. With Nichols I was so moved I waited at the stage door to speak to her. (I didn't do that sort of thing back when Farrell was dancing, I wish I had!)

I also agree that Mearns is SPECTACULAR in Walpurgisnacht.

Yes, the variations section is the one I'm thinking of. Tossing off those gestures with the appropriate nonchalant insouciance is tricky. 

15 hours ago, Helene said:

NYCB has long brought in men, not every year by any means, but enough not to be surprising.

The list so far. Is anyone else missing? 

Ib Andersen
Charles Askegard
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux
Erik Bruhn
Joaquin DeLuz
Lindsay Fischer
Gonzalo Garcia
Nilolai Hübbe
Leonid Kozlov
Robert LaFosse
Ask la Cour
Sean Lavery
Adam Lüders
Peter Martins
Robert Tewsley
Mel Tomlinson
Helgi Tomasson
Igor Zelensky
 

5 minutes ago, abatt said:

There was also the short-lived tenure of  Robert Tewsley.

Ah yes! He had the (dubious) distinction of portraying George Balanchine in Boris Eifman's Musagète, which NYCB comissioned in the early 2000's.  I swore that he left the company shortly thereafter just so he wouldn't have to dance the role again.

Just now, maps said:

Nikolaj Hubbe is the 5th Danish pastry or Prince of Denmark.  Bruhn [primary NYC affiliation ABT], Baryshnikov, Zelensky.  

 

Thank you. Both Hübbe and Zelensky were particular favorites of mine so I'm chagrined that I left them off the list. I forgot Lindsay Fischer, too. He wasn't around for long, but then neither was Baryshnikov.

1 hour ago, Leah said:

He’s a soloist.

arrghhh! Of course he is! Thank you for the reminder ... 

12 hours ago, Helene said:

NYCB has long brought in men, not every year by any means, but enough not to be surprising.  (Plus the occasional woman, like Sylve.)  Gonzalo Garcia came from San Francisco Ballet and Ask La Cour from Royal Danish Ballet (like many before him), albeit through a family connection.

I was around for the original "Danish Pastries"—Peter Martins, Helgi Tomasson, Adam Luders, and Ib Andersen—as well as Leonid Kozlov (Bolshoi), Robert LaFosse (ABT), and Sean Lavery (SFB and Frankfurt Opera Ballet). And of course, Joaquin DeLuz (ABT). Of the bunch of them, only LaFosse trained at SAB if I'm not mistaken.

I'm sure I'm leaving someone out; I seem to recall that there were five Danish Pastries, but I'm drawing a blank.

In any event, there happens to be a bevvy of talented tall women coming up through the ranks, so there will be plenty of opportunities for the taller men in the corps.

10 minutes ago, abatt said:

I'm surprised that Harrison Coll is still in the corps.  He's performed many leading roles with distinction. 

I agree! 

19 hours ago, sandik said:

I find this really frustrating.  A jukebox musical using Jackson's work could be astonishing (though Wheeldon would be far from my first choice as choreographer) -- whatever period you look at, the music is intensely danceable.  But an evening devoted to his life story is a different event, and even by 202 I don't think the controversy will have faded to the point that you could look past the scandal to anything else.

I suspect that a small army of protesters would gather at or very near to the theater entrance for at least the early days of the run. In the worst case, there would be pro and anti Jackson factions facing off against each other. I can't imagine that the big theater organizations would be willing to take the risk, especially in the age of viral social media, unless they really did embrace the "any publicity is good publicity" line. 

And Wheeldon would be my last choice for choreographer. (Well, last after Wade Robson for obvious reasons.) 

10 hours ago, Marta said:

Do we still not know who Macaulay's successor is or have I missed something?

I wonder if he will have a successor in the sense that there will be a (salaried) chief dance critic?

Also, just a reminder that Macaulay was for a time (the late 80s) the guest dance critic at The New Yorker. 

5 minutes ago, Drew said:

It still seems brave for a dancer of Copland's prominence (and who attracts as much heated commentary as she does) to do this and to allow the videos to be posted -- one wonders if that isn't something Conrad wanted since it brings a great deal of attention to his method.

I hope she is charging him.

3 hours ago, dirac said:

Even taking her body of work into account, it's still a bit hard for me to see. I ever thought, "Oh, here's Acocella with that again," (which has been happening regularly for me with Macaulay). 

My lord, how much longer was he going to bang on about same-sex partnering.

I did a little googling and came across a 2011review of Apollo's Angels by Marina Harss for The Nation. Among other things, Harss points out that by making Apollo her touchstone for all that is both right and proper in both Balanchine and ballet in general, Homans loses sight of (or perhaps refuses to see) the corresponding throughline exemplified by Prodigal Son. Read the whole thing, as they say, but here are some representative quotes:

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For Homans, Balanchine is the purest embodiment of Apollonian classicism and the heritage of Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. His ballet Apollo (or Apollon Musagète, as it was originally called), from 1928, is her touchstone, not only for her interpretation of his life’s work but also for her understanding of all ballet. It is the silver thread that connects the French seventeenth-century ballet de cour (Louis XIV was an excellent dancer, who enjoyed dressing up as the young god); the uplifting spirituality of Marie Taglioni’s dancing en pointe in the first real romantic ballet, La Sylphide, in 1832; the refined, courtly classicism of The Sleeping Beauty (in Homans’s words, Petipa’s “greatest work,” from 1890); and Balanchine’s most experimental creations like The Four Temperaments and Agon.

Marina Harss, "The Dying Swan: On Jennifer Homans," The Nation, 2/10/2011

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With Apollo, she writes, the choreographer had “‘eliminated’ the hard edge of Soviet modernism, its erotic and gymnastic movements and mystical and millennial overtones,” while retaining its “extreme plasticity and taste for spontaneity and freedom.”

Marina Harss, "The Dying Swan: On Jennifer Homans," The Nation, 2/10/2011

 

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Note the use of “acrobatic,” “erotic” and “gymnastic.” Those words recur regularly in Apollo’s Angels, along with “vulgar,” “extreme” and “kitsch,” all of them labels for artists whose work Homans does not approve of and who lie outside the margins of elegance, refinement and idealization that she holds to be ballet’s rightful realm.

Marina Harss, "The Dying Swan: On Jennifer Homans," The Nation, 2/10/2011

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As Homans sees it, Balanchine’s early Russian choreography (“his dancers split their legs, bent into back-breaking bridges, and opened their mouths in Munch-like screams”) was eclipsed by the rigorous, ennobling Apollo.

Marina Harss, "The Dying Swan: On Jennifer Homans," The Nation, 2/10/2011

 

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It’s revealing too that Homans passes over Prodigal Son, Balanchine’s only other surviving work from the Ballets Russes period. Created in 1929, one year after Apollo, it nonetheless drew upon the experimentation that occurred in Russia in the wake of the Revolution, when innovators like Kasyan Goleizovsky expanded the vocabulary of ballet by using extreme poses (splits, acrobatic lifts, interlocking limbs), popular dance forms like the tango and openly erotic imagery.

Marina Harss, "The Dying Swan: On Jennifer Homans," The Nation, 2/10/2011

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Prodigal Son drew freely from this ferment, employing expressionistic gestures, mime, extremes of emotion, acrobatic feats (including a mock wrestling match, a human caterpillar and backbends) and brazen eroticism, in a wonderful pas de deux that is comically grotesque and explicitly sexual (the ballerina wraps her leg tightly around her partner’s waist and holds him there as he arches his back with pleasure).

Marina Harss, "The Dying Swan: On Jennifer Homans," The Nation, 2/10/2011

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Because of its vivid theatricality and sentimentality—in the final two sections, the Prodigal does not dance at all but rather drags himself across the stage and into his father’s arms—Prodigal Son is in some ways the antithesis of Apollo. But as with Apollo, its presence is palpable in Balanchine’s later works. Experimentation with nonclassical movement reappears in Modernist masterpieces like Agon; the use of interlocking bodies in partnering is a prominent feature of The Four Temperaments; the totemic presence of a powerful, almost frightening female figure is notable in The Unanswered Question and La Sonnambula; and the evocative use of gesture recurs often, as in the second pas de deux in Stravinsky Violin Concerto, from 1972, which quotes a hand gesture from Prodigal Son. 

Marina Harss, "The Dying Swan: On Jennifer Homans," The Nation, 2/10/2011

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Balanchine was known to enjoy earthly pleasures like showy virtuosity, sentimentality and kitsch, and appreciated their usefulness in spicing up the rarefied atmosphere of classical dance. He encouraged his ballerinas to move with unseemly abandon—splitting their legs immodestly, raising their hips, against classical form, in order to get their feet up in the air into a 180-degree arabesque, eschewing “proper” form. Many found this immodest way of dancing displeasing, and Balanchine thumbed his nose at such priggishness; when a British critic fussed about his abuses of ballet decorum, he responded that in England, “if you are awake, it is already vulgar.” 

Marina Harss, "The Dying Swan: On Jennifer Homans," The Nation, 2/10/2011

Quote

I don’t necessarily disagree with Homans’s core assertions about the nature of ballet. It is inarguably an elevated form, based on a highly refined and codified technique, and aspires to an ideal (at least most of the time) that is impossible to achieve and beyond expression in words. As the luminous former ballerina Violette Verdy said recently, “We have a responsibility to the audience to give them something transcendent.” But within this framework, variety and even transgression are possible. I can’t help wondering whether Homans’s portrait of ballet’s rise and development could have been richer if her view of ballet’s history wasn’t so rigid. There should be space for more variety, greater contradiction and a healthy clash of contrasts. 

Marina Harss, "The Dying Swan: On Jennifer Homans," The Nation, 2/10/2011

I for one would not have been unhappy if The New Yorker had given Acocella's slot to Marina Harss.

1 minute ago, BalanchineFan said:

I will never argue with more performances of Liebeslieder Waltzer. Shall we launch a campaign? 

You betcha! 

I suspect that there would be a more enthusiastic audience for Liebeslieder if NYCB could somehow contrive to perform it in a more intimate venue. 

3 minutes ago, BalanchineFan said:

I was eager to see Tiler, and the debuts of Joseph Gordon, Taylor Stanley and Unity Phelan. I consider those four to be the most well suited to Brahms’ music and phrasing among this company of stellar dancers. Yes, Maria and Sterling are beautiful in LB. Truly astounding. But the four I mentioned all have an innate liquidity to their phrasing, a potential for heartbreaking musicality.  That matinee performance had me and my companion gasping for breath with tears in our eyes. It was as if Brahms, Goethe and Balanchine came back from the dead and spoke to us through the artistry of those young dancers. 

What a performance. Hopefully it will be done again before Haley’s comet returns. 

 I'm glad the performance moved you and your companion! While I might disagree with you regarding Phelan, Stanley, and Gordon's Liebeslieder debuts, I certainly won't dismiss your response to the performance or to their dancing.

I think there's no denying that Gordon and Stanley in particular are very talented and exceptionally musical dancers with a style and an artistry that are uniquely theirs, which bodes well for their future success in Liebeslieder—assuming that they get to dance it again, of course. (I'm a little less sold on Phelan in general; I find her a tad generic.) My complaint was directed primarily at the company for not finding a way to give them another performance or two to find their way into ballet. 

(And I apologize in advance for the pedantry, but the texts for all of the songs save the last were written by Georg Friedrich Daumer. Only the text of the final song is by Goethe.)

1 hour ago, California said:

Homans has founded a major center at NYU, to her credit. One interesting thing to watch: will she cover all genres in dance with the kind of interest and expertise she has in ballet?

Well, that's what I'm wondering. In addition, Homans can seem overtly hostile to the works, styles, and choreographers that aren't to her taste, dismissing them in terms that are redolent of moral judgment. So, judgmental rather than evaluative, I guess — the polar opposite of the great Deborah Jowitt, who can tell you that something isn't well made without wrinkling up her nose like somebody made a bad smell.

I will spare you my rant about "ballet is an etiquette."

I do hope that The Runaway stays in the rep. Even more, I hope that NYCB is able to develop a dancer who can, with justice, take over Taylor Stanley's role when he decides to retire it. 

Also, I'd like to see "Behind the China Dogs" again. It was my very first Forsythe.