Kathleen O'Connell

I gave up when he used the term "colored dancers" while opining about diversity. We stopped using "colored" when we took it off the water fountains 50 years ago. I don't expect the next AD to be a Social Justice Warrior, but I do expect that AD not to be tone-deaf when it comes to matters of race, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. (And lest someone cite Clifford's age by way of excuse, he is only about seven or eight years older than I am.) OK. Now I will go be cranky elsewhere.

You know, I'm interested in what Clifford has to say, but Lordy I can't wade through all those IG posts. How many little video spiels are we up to now? Do the comments add up to a 6500 word essay yet?

Ah, yes. Those things that older men of a certain generation did that were quite common. It was predation then and it's predation now, no matter how nice they are to you after you say no.

Whew! Glad you enjoyed the performance! And yes, if I recall correctly, Stanley took a (well deserved!) solo curtain call at the performance I attended as well.

Fortunately there is an active discussion about what apology and atonement for sexual harassment would ideally look like. And although sexual harassment isn't as horrific as genocide, some of the insights that have come out of successful Truth and Reconciliation efforts can inform our thinking around what constitutes appropriate restitution for its victims adn redemption for its perpetrators. In her brief article "How Not to Apologize for Sexual Harassment" Madeleine Aggeler provides a brief outline of what redemption would look like: "It’s easy to issue an apology. It’s harder to implement change. In the coming months and years, these men will be judged not on their statements of regret, but on the actions they took, or did not take, to undo the damage they did and to change the society from which they profited." It's a start. I linked to some current "how to apologize for sexual harassment" way upthread. I'll provide some links again for convenience. How to apologize for sexual harassment He harassed her. She called him out. He broadcast his apology. She accepted. (The link below contains a recording of his apology.) Dan Harmon revealing how he destroyed another human being because she didn't return his affection.

Already? How time flies! I remember her seeing her as the lead in Concerto Barocco very shortly after she joined the company — she might even have still been an apprentice — and thought she was lovely in the role. And lovely she remained! She'll be missed too.

Nooooooo! She's been one of my corps favorites for a long time and I'd always hoped she'd get promoted; whenever she got a solo opportunity she looked just terrific. Well, I wish her the best, of course, and I certainly hope she can pass on the qualities that made her a bright spot in the crowd.

I'll feel just awful if you regret it! I think Runaway is the real keeper from the Fall Gala ballets, although Gianna Reisen's new work "Judah" confirms every bit of promise in "Composer's Holiday." I had to keep reminding myself that she's just 19. From what I've seen touring the reviews, critical opinion is split on the new Abraham. Marina Harss was mostly positive: http://dancetabs.com/2018/09/new-york-city-ballet-fall-gala-the-exchange-judah-the-runaway-new-york/ It may depend on one's ability to tolerate Kanye. ETA: I'm not a huge fan of Fearful Symmetries, but the mostly all-debut cast listed for the 10/6 matinee looks mighty interesting.

I actually liked the new Abraham work a lot, although of course your mileage may vary! It's worth the price of admission just to see Taylor Stanley, but I think it flatters the rest of the cast, too, especially the men. I love the ruffs; I love the headpieces. The only costume I'm iffy on is Ashley Bouder's; it makes her look just a little too much like a fuzzy caterpillar. One thing I liked was the way Abraham interleaved a phrase of not-ballet with a phrase of most-definitely ballet, rather than trying to atom-smash them together into some kind of new dance compound. When the dancers were given ballet steps to do, they by and large got them in complete phrases and did them the way ballet dancers would. And they got real steps: like Pam Tanowitz, Abraham seems to have more respect for the possibilities of petite allegro than Christopher Wheeldon does. The dancers' movement had a different inflection in the not-ballet passages, of course, although it was fun to see a characteristic bit of Abraham resolve into a beautiful, poised croisé. Check out the samples on the work's repertory page on the NYCB website: https://www.nycballet.com/season-tickets/18-19-season/winter/feb-10-2019-new-combinations/new-abraham.aspx They appear to have taken down one of my favorite bits of "flash footage" wherein Roman Mejia unleashes a demented barrage of petite allegro to the equally demented "I Love Kanye." ETA: I will make every effort to see The Runaway again, although I probably won't get a chance this season, alas.

And never has been. Martins actually tidied things up a bit.

From the interview: "AW: I was literally just checking my email. I had slept over the night before, and he had to leave for the airport early in the morning. He had given me the password to his computer — I have the text where he sent the password to me. A message popped up on screen and it was…pretty vulgar." I dunno. It doesn't sound to me like this was necessarily the first time Waterbury had asked to use Finlay's computer. Nor does she say when he texted her the password: it could've been that morning, it could have been some other morning. Or, it might have been the first time he wasn't around to enter the password himself to unlock it for her. Or, she might have forgotten it and had to ask for it again. Or, he might have changed it and forgotten to give her the new one before he left. I'm not sure why it matters. He appears to have given her the password willingly and she used it. Am I missing something?

Oh if only someone had danced phosphorylation at me when I first took biology!

Cool site! It looks like some real care went into building it!

I had no idea this existed! For once social media has added more to my day than it subtracted. TIL (Today I Learned) that Science magazine and the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) sponsors an annual "Dance Your Ph.D." competition. From the competition website: "The party is just getting started when the dreaded question comes: “So, what’s your Ph.D. research about?” You launch into the explanation, trying to judge the level of interest as you go deeper. It takes about a minute before someone changes the subject. At times like this, don’t you wish you lived in a world where you could just ask people to pull out their phones to watch an online video explaining your Ph.D. research through interpretive dance? You do live in that world! Not only can you have such a video, you can win $1000, achieve geek fame on the internet, and be recognized by Science for your effort. This is the 11th year of the “Dance Your Ph.D.” contest sponsored by AAAS and Science, challenging scientists to explain their research without PowerPoint slides or jargon—in fact with no talking at all. It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting your Ph.D. or you completed it decades ago. All science should be explained with dance." Here's a link to last year's winner: Here's a link to a playlist of all of 2017's entrants:

NYCB Principal Adrian Danchig-Waring will host three free Robbins Centennial events at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (NYPLPA): 1) Monday 11/19/18 at 6PM: Robbins' the Dancer: "Joined by NYCB colleagues and other special guests, Danchig-Waring will screen and discuss rare, historic footage from Robbins’ own dancing career, including Ballet Theater’s “lost” production of Antony Tudor’s Romeo and Juliet, a 1944 performance of the original cast of Fancy Free, plus poignant footage of Robbins’ demonstrating and coaching in New York City Ballet rehearsal studios late in his life." 2) Monday 12/10/18 at 6PM: Robbins' New York Portraits: "New York City Ballet principal dancer Adrian Danchig-Waring, along with the company’s resident choreographer Justin Peck and scholar Julia Foulkes, watch and casually discuss Glass Pieces and New York Export: Opus Jazz. Pausing, rewinding, and zooming in, they will marvel at and analyze, react to, and remember the choreographic genius of Jerome Robbins and his enduring fascination with New York City." 3) Monday 1/14/19 at 6PM: Robbins' Judaica: "Throughout his life, Jerome Robbins’ struggled with alienation, faith, and his Jewish heritage. New York City Ballet Principal Dancer Adrian Danchig-Waring hosts a final evening celebration of Robbins’ ballets, this time focused on Robbin’s Jewish themed works Dybbuk and Les Noce. While screening performance footage from the Library’s collections, Danchig-Waring and other special guests will pause, re-watch, and discuss, dissecting the traditions, innovations, and individual flourishes embedded in some of Robbins’ most deeply personal creations." The events are free, but you need to get tickets in advance. Each of the links above will take you to the Eventbrite page for that program, where, beginning one month before each event, you can reserve tickets.

If given a choice between dealing with my email on my phone and dealing with it on a computer with a keyboard, I would choose the computer every time, and I'm pretty adept at typing on glass with my thumbs.

Well ... if I had to catch anyone in fish dives — much less Ashley Bouder at full velocity — I'd look a bit tense too. 😉 I'm glad Ball did well. He's a terrific Puck — not just technically, but in terms of the persona he creates (less cutesy and more faerie) — and is excellent in the Emeralds pas de trois too. I'd like to see him break out into other kinds of roles.

Jewels - Wed 9/19/18 This performance was really all about the debuts, so I'll take them in order of appearance. Emeralds — Tiler Peck & Taylor Stanley (debut); Unity Phelan (debut) & Adrian Danchig-Waring; Sara Adams, Meagan Mann, & Sean Suozzi. Probably one of the best all-around performances of Emeralds I've seen in a while. Both debuts (Stanley and Phelan) were all that might have been asked for and more, and the rest of the cast brought their A game. With regard to Stanley, I can only ask "what took them so long?" — his elegance, musicality, and beautiful pliancy, plus his ability to evoke reverie and an inward gaze while still being very much present (a quality he shares with Wendy Whelan) would seem to make him a natural for the world of Emeralds. He's not one of the company's demon pyrotechnicians, but I like his approach to bravura steps: rather than just punching them out, he folds them into the music and the contours of his line. He was an excellent foil for Tiler Peck: there's a passage in the opening section where the ballerina takes her partner by the hand and runs across the stage in front of the corps, swirls around him a few times, and skims off in the other direction with her danseur still in tow. Often enough it looks like a bit of running hither and thither to fill out the music and whip up a nice froth of tulle. Without any kind of undue fuss, Stanley made something more of it: it really looked like he was letting her lead him into some secret, magical realm, — a place where only she could take him. Unity Phelan's debut in Mimi Paul's role was just gorgeous, especially her Sicilienne solo, which was was hands down the best dancing I've seen from her yet: she was musical and focussed, with a genuine perfume and an interpretive and stylistic throughline that I haven't seen from her before. If I hadn't known it was a debut I would have thought her solo was the product of more than a few seasons of thoughtful refinement. I cannot say enough good things about it, and frankly, I thought she pretty much walked off with what I had expected to be Tiler Peck's show. Phelan was also lovely in the "Walking" pas de deux (with Adrian Danchig-Waring), though I still prefer Ashley Laracey (again with Danchig-Waring) in that pas. Laracey and Danchig-Waring dance it like they are already halfway through the portal to the vanished world that Emeralds becomes in its final, elegiac moments; they are so other-worldy that they put me in mind of Ashton's Monotones, of all things. Phelan's approach had a bit more flesh-and-blood yearning to it, but was still a lovely interpretation. My only reservation about last night's performance of Emeralds concerns Sean Suozzi. I have no complaints about his dancing per se, but his style is and always has been a bit brusque. It serves him very well in his best roles — e.g., Agon and the hat and boots guy in Cortège Hongrois — but seems out of place in the world of Balanchine's Emeralds. Rubies — Sterling Hyltin, Andrew Veyette, and Claire Kretzschmar. Sterling Hiltin was absolutely terrific: fast, funny, expansive, and endearing. Andrew Veyette did a decent job of emulating bravura. He seems to have recovered from whatever was so grievously amiss last season, but has lost some of the easy flair he brought to this role half a decade ago. As was noted further up-thread, Claire Kretzschmar debuted as a last-minute substitute for Isabella LaFreniere as the Tall Girl. (Fingers crossed that it's nothing serious! LaFreniere had to scrub her big debut in Firebird a few seasons ago; I hope she doesn't have to scrub this one too.) Simply by virtue of her dynamism, verve, and bold attack, Kretzschmar should be an ideal Tall Girl, but she's just not quite tall enough to be a natural fit for the role. Some uneasiness in the big, unsupported arabesques aside (which I will chalk up to Surprise! You're debuting tonight! nerves), she danced well, and was just as saucy and cheeky as I would have liked. She wasn't notably taller than some of the women in the corps, however, and sometimes got lost in the crowd. I'm not sure the choreography can really accommodate an Almost-Tall Girl who otherwise nails the steps, even if she does so as vividly as Kretzschmar surely can. I've seen her take center stage with authority, though, so I'm hoping she and the ballet masters can get this one sorted out. Diamonds - Cast: Sara Mearns & Joseph Gordon (debut). Bravo, Joseph Gordon! He rightly brought the house down with his solos, which were more than a display of pyrotechnics: he danced his bravura jumps and turns like a poised and confident Prince rather than hurling himself through them like a circus showboat. Although Gordon did comport himself like a prince — albeit a young one — and certainly seemed to be a capable and gracious partner, I think he and Mearns are something of a mismatch: they looked a bit like the Marschallin and Octavian, and I was half expecting Sophie to put in an appearance. They nonetheless seemed to have a genuine rapport, and I think much credit is due to Mearns for making sure Gordon's debut was a success. I want to see them both in Diamonds again, but maybe with different partners. And of course, I'd like to see Gordon in about 50 other things, too! So, last night it seemed like everything really is beautiful at the ballet.

She danced in the corps of Diamonds last night with the apprentice "+" after her name. Apprentices listed in the program as dancing last night: Naomi Corti, Lily-Frances Cosgrove, Jonathan Fahoury, Ally Helman, Mira Nadon, Maxwell Read, Davide Riccardo, and Lily Zerivitz,

What a nice feature! Knight is a total stage animal, and I mean that as a compliment. (He also happens to have a fine line and a strong technique.) He's only been in the corps for about two years, but has already made a great impression in a couple of featured roles, notably in the Third Variation of Four Temperaments. Tonight in Diamonds he looked like the happiest man in NYC, and considering that he was sharing the stage with Silas Farley — one of those dancers who brims with joy night after night — that's saying something. I'm looking forward to watching his career grow.

Very well put, kylara7.

I agree that the company needs to look first to its policies and to its commitments under its agreement with AGMA, but testing its available options against legitimate employee concerns about the workplace isn't just PR. ETA by way of clarification: The company may have determined that its legally available options ranged from doing nothing, to sending a strongly worded letter, to what we used to cheerfully refer to in my workplace as "a come to Jesus meeting," to rehab, to demotion, to suspension, and finally, to firing. Before Waterbury's complaint was made public, company management might have believed (perhaps rightly) that a suspension was the most feasible sanction it could impose without sending the organization into a tailspin. Once the nature of the transgression was made public and its contours were more than just idle gossip, it may have decided the workplace would be sent into a tailspin if it didn't dismiss Ramasar and Catazaro. I don't know what the company's thinking was, and I certainly don't know what the right answer is without knowing more about who did what to whom.

Oh, I think we needed the break.

I suspect that it will be difficult for any union that believes its primary mission is to defend its members from the depredations of their employers to re-orient even a little bit of its focus towards workplaces made toxic by some of the very people it has been charged to protect. I remember one of my grad-school professors telling me way back in the 70s that we would get around to solving the problem of sexism once we'd solved the problem of capitalism.

😀💐