Kathleen O'Connell

I enjoyed it too, and so did my husband, who was always thrilled when it was on the program. I'd like to see it on the schedule again, along with Forsythe's Behind the China Dogs, a product of that same American Music Festival.

Barak decided the music she was assigned was more suited to a narrative ballet than to the abstract ballets she typically choreographed. She didn't have the skill to present her story (the rise and fall of gangster Bugsy Siegel) through dance alone and decided to have the dancers speak as well. Not a good idea: for one thing, few NYCB dancers have the requisite theatrical training and the script was awful to boot. Mostly wisecracks, it came off more like a sketch than a drama. Some of the choreography was just fine, and the costumes were gorgeous, but as a whole, it was a mess. Barak didn't know how to tell a story: she didn't know which events from Siegel's life could, would, or should be dramatized nor did she know how to make telling moments in a narrative theatrically effective. Had I been in charge, I might have asked Barak to step back, take a deep breath, and then rework it with some mentoring by someone with some experience with narrative work in a similar vein - Susan Stroman, say. There was some decent stuff in the work that might have been salvaged.

Well, Call Me Ben was pretty bad, but there are plenty of contenders for Worst Ever. I'd nominate Jacques d'Amboise's 1981 Concert Fantasy, which he choreographed for the same Tchaikovsky Festival that gave us Mozartiana. D'Amboise gamely cut it in half after the premiere for its second performance, but that didn't help. (I saw the cut version.) I'm not sure if it was performed after that, even during the festival. I actually think it was a shame that Barak wasn't invited back. The list of choreographers who have made awful ballets but who have nonetheless been brought back to NYCB for another shot at making another bad ballet is long and distinguished.

Whelan was a great ballerina despite her body, not because of it. I hope young dancers who rightly see her as a model for their own artistry realize that.

Indeed. Les cimetières sont pleins d'hommes indispensables. Charles de Gaulle (The cemeteries are full of indispensable men.)

Yes. In the context of climate change, spiffing up a theater — and putting your name on it — means nothing. Moderators: feel free to delete if I've strayed too far into the political.

I suppose that every dollar David Koch donates to the arts is one less dollar he can shovel into political dark money, so that's a good thing. That being said, I for one do not consider Koch's reputation to be much enhanced by his philanthropic largesse.

I agree wholeheartedly. I've seen Miller's Titania, Siren, and Agon lead; they were long on promise and short on that special alchemy whereby a capital B Ballerina turns mere steps into a genuine performance. She was positively radiant as one of the demi-soloist couples in the Chaconne finale, however; she looked far more relaxed, happy, and joyful than she did in her three big roles — and no surprise there, she's very young. I hope the company gives her the time and space to grow both her technique and her artistry.

Jennie Somogyi was excellent in the second Agon Pas de Trois (the one with two men and one woman) and she wasn't tall, although she did seem to dance about six inches taller than her actual height. Sofiane Sylve — a very different dancer from Somogyi in terms of both body type and style — was very good in the role as well: I think it can accommodate ballerinas in all their variety, so long as they are musical. (The Branles Gay, to which the second PDT ballerina dances her solo is a metrical thicket: the castinet ostinato is in 3/8 time but the other instruments are irregularly subdivided into meters like 7/16 or 5/16, so nothing ever quite matches up until the end.) I've seen LeCrone in the role and liked what I saw. I'd like to see Claire Kretzschmar get a crack at it, and Isabella LaFreniere too — both have been looking particularly good this season.

I'm not challenging anyone else's perception, but I honestly didn't detect anything untoward in Mearns' demeanor towards Danchig-Waring. The whole incident was over in under a minute and I read it as a mishap that generated a fumbled step or two followed by an attempt to get the ship righted and back under control. I was relieved that no one had been injured and just put the whole thing out of mind until I read this thread.

If you're referring to her dancing, the Mearns I saw in Chaconne on Wednesday is pretty much the same Mearns I've been watching for quite a few seasons now — which is to say, absolutely riveting in the repertory that's most congenial to her style and less compelling in repertory that isn't. I certainly don't go out of my way to avoid her and find that she — like any good artist — gives me much to think about even (especially?) when things don't work out. (I find that I learn the most about a particular ballet when a dancer whose artistry I otherwise respect can't make it work. Mulling over what went wrong helps me think about the music, the choreography, and the production. It sounds silly, but sometimes the costume and lighting conspire to showcase a dancer's flaws rather than strengths. ) While I wouldn't rush off to the theater just to see Mearns in Chaconne, there were elements of her performance that I really liked. I didn't pick up on any consternation directed at Danchig-Waring in particular, which is not to say it didn't happen of course, just that I didn't notice it.

I heard that noise too. I wasn't quite sure what went amiss; from my vantage point it looked as if a foot got put down wrong coming out of lift or supported turn (I honestly don't remember the particulars of the choreography at that point) and I was really concerned for a moment that Mearns might have been inured and that she (or some one offstage?) had cried out in alarm. What I miss in Mearns' performance of Chaconne is the wit that Balanchine put into the ballerina's role. (There's some in in the male role as well, but it's not quite as prominent.) To me the pas de deux — especially the snooty sashays across the stage in the opening section — look like two aristocrats mocking the pretensions of their own class, which is rhetorically rather different from peasants mocking the ways of the nobility. (There's some of this in Mozartiana as well - e.g., the ballerina's right-on-the-beat little skirt flouncing flourishes in the theme and variations section.) It's hard to put that kind of wit across if you've got everything dialed up to 11. Reichlen lets a little bit of her Rubies Tall Girl peep out during the Chaconne ballerina's variations and it adds a bit of delicious bite to the role, or at least in the Hair's Back Up in a Bun part of it.

I happen to love Lowery's can-do sunniness, but she is one of those dancers who benefits from thoughtful casting. As Helene pointed out above, she's a wonderful Hippolyta. She's also the best Firebird Princess I've ever seen — she didn't disappear into the costume, for one thing, but she was also bold, merry, and warmly human in a way that made her seem a truly fitting bride for Prince Ivan. (The contrast between her Princess and Reichlen's cool, moonlit Firebird was great theater.) I liked her in the "boots" role in Cortège Hongrois, too, and also in The Times Are Racing.

Well, it's definition #1 in the Oxford English Dictionary: A strong negative reaction by a large number of people, especially to a social or political development. ‘a public backlash against racism’ I strongly suspect that the percentage of people who think of the technical definition first ("Recoil arising between parts of a mechanism") or for whom the term evokes physical violence is pretty small. I think "backlash" is an accurate term to apply to the (imo well-founded*) anticipation that there will ultimately be a strong negative reaction to the #metoo movement and the women who have spoken openly about their abuse. * I'm old. I remember Anita Hill.

Given that Barbara Hoey is a litigator, the Chair of Kelley Drye’s Labor and Employment practice group, and, per her bio "works with human resources, in-house counsel and boards of directors to conduct investigations into complaints of alleged wrongdoing by upper level executives," I'm confident that she's well equipped to determine which standards are appropriate for the kind of investigation the Board has undertaken. When I said that Kelley Drye would have its own standards, I of course assumed that they would be based on current best practice for these kinds of investigations.

They need come forward to no one but the law firm conducting the Board's investigation into Martins' conduct. The public doesn't need to know who came forward or what the evidence was, and neither does anyone in the company. ETA: The law firm will also have standards regarding what it deems creditable evidence of harassment for the purposes of assessing Martins' conduct. Those standards may differ from On Pointe's and they might not be the same standards that would be used in a legal proceeding.

I gather they look something like this:

I honestly don't know the answer to this question. In the case of Apollo, for instance, people seem comfortable going back to a version of the work that Balanchine himself abandoned. Older ballets and operas are reworked and reshaped all the time. And I'm not just talking about the notorious "Eurotrash" productions here: for a while it was deemed wholly appropriate to lop the de capos off of de capo arias, cast baritones into roles written for castrati (when a mezzo or contralto would have been truer to the music), and eliminate the repeats written into baroque and classical musical compositions. Is it simply the temporal distance from us that makes those kinds of adjustments palatable? Could Bugaku be revived on its 100th anniversary as a leotard ballet with no one blinking an eye?

Also Van Gogh, who made copies of Japanese ukiyo-e prints and then incorporated what he learned into his own work. Jerome Robbins' Watermill dabbles in Eastern traditions, but I don't think he came away from the experiment with much to inform his later work. It dabbles in the Robert Wilson variety avant-garde of, too, and that didn't seem to stick either.

Just to be clear, I don't believe that Balanchine meant to demean Japan or Japanese culture in any way. I might even go so far as to say that he meant well. I still don't like how he chose to make use of what he found there. Because Bugaku is not abstract, it looks like it's trying to convey something about Japanese culture specifically rather than simply serving as a gloss on the characteristics of traditional Japanese dance that caught Balanchine's eye. The latter is worthwhile: who better to call our attention to some of the intriguing markers of another dance tradition than an observant and thoughtful choreographer? But the former? Well, not so much. Whatever is going on in Bugaku's central pas de deux could be going on in a Macmillan ballet. Bugaku's costumes are no more Japanese dress than Gamzatti's tutu is royal Indian dress: to my eye it's dress up rather than a true homage. The dancers wear traditional ballet dress spiked with some japonaiserie to signal that they are representing (idealized?) Japanese people, much as their ballet steps are overlaid with gestures taken from Japanese dance. To me it certainly doesn't look like an exploration of or homage to Japanese dance so much as a more or less standard western ballet with some Japanese inflected trappings. PS - I lived in Japan for three years and travelled there often on business.

Well, One might say that "balanced dances to the left and the right," "stylized movement," "ritualistic mood," "respect shown for the dance," and "the supreme courtesy of the dancers to each other" are as faithful to classical ballet as to Japanese court dance. Whatever Balanchine's motives might have been — and I do not doubt that he was intrigued by the traditional Japanese dance he happened to see, either when his company was on tour or when Japanese troupes toured the US, nor that he wanted to "pay tribute" to its "refined elegance" as the Trust would have it — to my eye Bugaku looks mostly like a pastiche stylized movement and gestures lifted from traditional Japanese performing arts (with a dollop of shunga on the side) and pasted on to a more or less formally standard ballet. It's dancers pretending to be Japanese aristocrats in pretty much the same way as La Bayadere is dancers pretending to be Indian aristocrats, but with a bit more "local color" thrown into in the movement. Balanchine had an excellent eye for the telling details of a stylized form (Agon is a good example), but I don't think that in the case of Bugaku he was particularly successful at integrating what he found into the fabric of the dance itself — into its movement logic, if you will. And the wigs, costumes, and stage set* only serve to emphasize that. The movements that make sense in Japanese dance dress, e.g., the women's tiny, nearly shuffling steps, look like a parody when done in a tutu. (Just try moving big in an elaborate formal kimono ...) I'm all for one tradition incorporating into itself the things it finds beautiful, useful, or meaningful in another tradition — indeed, it's hard to find any developed art form that doesn't include this kind of borrowing somewhere in its history. I'm less comfortable with the attempted representation or depiction of another tradition's forms and styles. * Karinska's costumes for Bugaku the ballet bear little resemblance to the costumes worn in traditional bugaku dance; they don't even evoke the Heian period. The set does resemble bugaku's traditional green and red performing platform.

Thank you, nanushka. It's important to be careful with our terms! Ephebophilia, referring to an adult's preference for mid-to-late adolescent sexual partners, would be the applicable term in this case.

Barbara Hoey is a litigator. Her clients are corporations. Per her Kelley Drye & Warren bio, Hoey "works with human resources, in-house counsel and boards of directors to conduct investigations into complaints of alleged wrongdoing by upper level executives" and "[Her] objective is to work with her clients to avoid expensive disputes while positioning them in the most advantageous way should litigation ensue." She's doing her job, but that may not be what the parties she's spoken to expected when told they were being contacted in connection with the Board's investigation into Martins' conduct. Nor may it be what the company needs, or at least, it may not be the only thing it needs. I can't say I'm much surprised that it's taken years for people to come forward with their charges. Nor would it surprise me if people with more recent complaints (or people who could corroborate those complaints) chose to keep silent now. Martins was (and probably still is) powerful; Robert Lipp, the vice chairman of the Board told the dancers he hoped that Martins could return to his role once the investigation was complete; some of the company's most admired dancers have spoken openly and very publicly in his defense; blogs, message boards, and comments threads contain more than a few posts openly suggesting that the dancers lodging complaints are losers, or neurotic, or just not tough enough to make it. If I were a young dancer unsure of my position in the company or worried that I might not be able to build a career in the art that I love and had dedicated my life to, I might not speak out either.

The item was reported in the 990 for the year ending 6/30/13 in Part VII: Compensation of Officers, Directors,Trustees, Key Employees, Highest Compensated Employees, and Independent Contractors and again in Schedule J, Part II - Officers, Directors, Trustees, Key Employees, and Highest Compensated Employees. It appears in the column used for compensation that gets reported on either the employees W-2 or on a 1099-MISC. The amount that appears there would also include Paradiso's salary as a dancer. I don't think the company was claiming he was a key employee, but he did have to be listed there if he was, as a result of the settlement, one of its highest-paid employees. PS - I'm pretty sure that organizations have to report the salaries of the five most highly compensated employees or independent contractors who are not also directors, officers, or key employees.

Well, there's borrowing and then there's the artistic version of fancy-dress. I think Bugaku is dangerously close to the latter. I don't think anyone objects to the kind of cultural cross-fertilization that happens when one tradition makes its own use of the styles, techniques, or materials of another: the cross-fertilization between West African and Latin American popular music is a perfect example — it's not called Afro-Carribean for nothing. Merce Cunningham, Mark Morris, and Doug Elkins have successfully integrated the movement of other traditions into their work in a way that honors what they saw in it that delighted or intrigued them.