Kathleen O'Connell

One has to wonder why he took the position if he wanted to concentrate fully on the creative side without the distraction of the administrative work.

Well, it's the kind of thing that's hard to turn down. I wouldn't have had the smarts to say "no thanks" to an offer like that when I was his age.

He should have called Christopher Wheeldon up and asked him what he thought about that whole running a company while creating great art thing. In fairness to both gentlemen, plenty of people have, still do, and will continue to both run companies and create new work (ahem, Balanchine) -- Millepied wasn't necessarily wrong to think that he could too, although the POB is admittedly a different beast from the LA Dance Project.

Trust your own eyes, Royal Blue, and enjoy what you see!

I started attending NYCB performances regularly around 1978 when I moved to the area to go to graduate school. Some observations:

1) Yes! I saw many great artists perform and I saw the premieres and/or early performances of a number of great ballets. But ... I also saw more than a few pretty indifferent performances (to put it kindly) and sat through my share of miscasting while Balanchine was alive and running his company. Who was my introduction to "Emeralds"? Karin von Aroldingen and Merrill Ashley. Great ballerinas, both; not great in "Emeralds." But so what? They were who was there to dance it, I got to see it, and the work has lived on to showcase new talents like Tiler Peck and Ashley Bouder (who was for me an unexpected delight in Verdy's role). I heard people grouse about every new Balanchine ballet, too, including "Chaconne," "Ballade," "Davidsbündlertänze,"* and yes, "Mozartiana." Robbins received even less deference. I once enthused about a performance of "Four Temperaments" I'd seen with Bart Cook (Menlancholic) and Merrill Ashley (Sanguinic) to an older fan, who snorted "Oh, if only you could have seen that ballet when the company could really dance it." I, unfortunately, was young and naive enough to immediately discount the wonderful thing I'd just witnessed on the strength of nothing more than his nostalgia. (I hereby vow never to do that to someone wowed by something they've seen on stage.)

2) There is plenty of creativity and talent to see at NYCB these days -- and across the plaza, too, and downtown, and at City Center, and wherever else on cares to look. Just focussing on NYCB, in the past few years I've seen the emergence of some pretty terrific work -- Ratmansky's "Namouna," for instance, or the marvelous second movement of Pecks "Rodeo" (forgive me for omitting the diacritical marks), not to mention my own very favorite guilty pleasure, Preljocaj's "Spectral Evidence." Anyone who has seen Sterling Hyltin in "Stravinsky Violin Concerto" or Teresa Reichlen in "Rubies" has seen these roles danced with real authority and imagination and need feel no nostalgia for the good old days. Reichlen, Jonathan Stafford, and Savannah Lowery led the best overall performance of "Firebird" that I ever saw. Claire Kretzschmar was so good in "Episodes" that I wouldn't have been surprised if Peter Martins walked out on the stage and promoted her on the spot. Maria Kowroski is the only ballerina I've ever seen who can actually make Balanchine's "Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir" work as a piece of theater. I could go on and on. (I mourn the loss of Trisha Brown, but ask me about Tere O'Connor, Wally Cardona, and Pam Tanowitz!) Are there dancers I miss? Of course there are. Are there ballets that could benefit from more rehearsal or better coaching? No doubt. Are there puzzling casting and promotion decisions? You bet! But that was true when Balanchine was alive too -- just go back in time and ask Arlene Croce .

3) "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!" (William Wordsworth writing about the French Revolution.) More than a little of my own nostalgia for the dance world of the 70's & 80's is nostalgia for my own youth and its attendant delights -- the thrill of discovery, of being present at the creation, of the sheer newness of everything, even the old stuff. But I'm nonetheless delighted that almost 40 years on I can walk into the very same theater, open the program, look at the casting for a ballet I've been watching for decades and think "Oh wow! I'm glad I'm going to get to see this!"

*ETA: I'm still grousing about "Davidsbündlertänze," although I like it much better with Teresa Reichlen, Rebecca Krohn, and Ashley Laracey than I did with the original cast. Yes - heresy! - I happen to prefer Krohn to Farrell in this particular ballet. I'm on the fence with regards to Tiler Peck in Heather Watt's role, though.

I've seen both Patricia McBride and Tiler Peck in "Who Cares." I cannot say that McBride was the better of the two. I certainly wouldn't say she was "definitive" in the role, especially after having seen Peck dance it.

To paraphrase Charles DeGaulle, the graveyards are full of indispensable dancers.

I happened to find myself standing next to Hyltin on a street corner one day and was struck by how "not tall" she was in real life. I do agree that she -- much like Jennie Somogyi before her -- punches above her weight, so to speak, when she's on stage.

I'll admit it: one of my eyebrows shot up when I saw that Hyltin had been cast in the second movement of Symphony in C. But do you know what? If my schedule allowed it, I'd be there to see her take on the role in a heartbeat. I have been pleasantly surprised by a Hyltin performance so many times now that I've simply come to expect that at the very least she will deliver something thoughtful and interesting and more often than not, something lovely, delightful, and moving as well. There's a growing list of roles in which I'd rather see her than anyone else -- Kay Mazzo's role in Stravinsky Violin Concerto, for instance, or Aurora in NYCB's version of Sleeping Beauty. (Yes, I prefer Hyltin's Aurora to Peck's.) As I've indicated up-thread, I can't quite wrap my head around a cast of short dancers in Mozartiana, but I very much enjoyed Hyltin's performance in it in spite myself. She may not execute a given role's steps with the technical chops of some of her colleagues, but she dances them with a musicality, intelligence, and lovely humanity that I find impossible to resist.

And Tosca for $20 is pretty impressive!

Alas, it appears that they are all partial view seats. There are decent seats to be had in the $35 range, however. (And that price includes all the fees.)

By Grabthar's Hammer, you shall be missed!

My husband and I had just finished re-watching Galaxy Quest the night before we learned that the great Alan Rickman had died and it somehow made his loss seem just doubly awful.

RIP

Well! A very handsome postcard announcing this production of Tosca landed in my snail mail box yesterday.

It's too tangled tale to recount succinctly here*, but It appears that NYCO Renaissance has prevailed in its bankruptcy court efforts to acquire NYCO's remaining assets and will mount its first production on January 20th 2016 (yes, next week!) at the Rose Theater. Tickets start at $20.

You can read more about the settlement in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Wall Street Journal.

Here's hoping!**

*If I can carve out some free time in the next day or so, I'll try to put together a little tick-tock on what exactly has transpired. If I've sorted things out correctly, NYCO Renaissance has actually done more than just acquire the rights to the NYCO name. The company will be re-organized and brought out of bankruptcy with the approval of the creditors, which may give it rights to the remnants of the endowment ($4.8 million).

** ETA: I probably should have mentioned what I'm hoping for. It isn't for more performances of Tosca or Carmen, but rather the championing of new operas and the revival of long-neglected but worthy ones in inventive productions. I have no idea if NYCO-R can -- or even wants to - do that.

I don't really know what people mean when they talk about arts education in the schools. Are we all supposed to try to paint or sing?

Yes. It's like reading, math, geography, history, and science. You learn to sing, or paint, or play an instrument, or make stuff, or listen, or look, or whatever as well as you can whether you like it or not. You go to museums so you can see what that's all about. Artists come and show you what it is that they do and explain what's involved. Not everyone has a parent who has the time or money or interest to guide them.

I was fortunate to go to school at a time when it was deemed important that we try our hands at singing, painting, acting, and dancing. It was fun. These weren't fancy schools in affluent neighborhoods: they were run by the US military in far-flung places like the Philippines.

Just to be clear, I have no objection to performing arts programming on broadcast media. There's value showcasing exceptional talent performing exceptional work or emerging talent performing experimental work or, indeed, any permutation of "exceptional," "emerging," and "experimental," even if the audience is small. But the value today doesn't lie where it did 30, 40, or 50 years ago when there were three major broadcast networks, NET / PBS, and a handful of UHF channels programming old movies and re-runs -- and you could be reasonably certain that a huge percentage of the population would be sitting in front of the television at the same time every night. In that environment, putting the performing arts on TV did give them general visibility. (It should also be noted that it gave TV -- "the boob tube" -- legitimacy as a medium and justified selling then-valuable public spectrum to the highest commercial bidder.)

Today the landscape is entirely different: we have a firehose content aimed at right us every waking moment of our lives. In this environment, even 500-channel cable packages seem quaint. Putting a ballet on broadcast TV and hoping someone notices is like yelling a Shakespeare sonnet into a category 5 hurricane.

The recording and subsequent dissemination of specific performing arts performances needs to be rethought from the ground up. What's the objective: Entertainment? Education? Curation? Documentation? Getting butts in seats at live performances? Who's the audience? Where are they? (Increasingly, they are not in front of the TV.) How should the 500 pound gorilla of rights and compensation issues be handled in a digital age? Who's going to pay? As disruptive as the digital revolution has been, I think it's a moment of magnificent opportunity for the arts -- I hope we don't let it slip through our fingers.

And yes, the privatization and segmentation of arts ed is a big concern, but I think you're missing one of the real benefits of arts on public television -- it's an indication that the arts are a standard part of our culture. Not something just for the affluent or the educated, but for us all.

I'm not convinced that a broadcast on PBS really sends a signal that art "something for us all." Especially if no one is watching.

Making sure that every child has the opportunity to learn about, experience, and, especially make art in some way, shape or form on a regular basis without it costing a small fortune would be a genuine demonstration that art is for everyone, not just the wealthy. Putting an opera on TV now and again means nothing if schools cut their music programs.

I know, I sound like a crank ...

If I were running an arts organization and I wanted to get a recording of its work in front of a millennial audience, I wouldn't bother with broadcast media. Heck, I wouldn't even bother with anything delivered to a computer screen via a web browser. Media needs to be streamable -- preferably on demand -- and mobile. Someone interested in classical music need look no further than their phone -- and if they're under 25, that's where they'll look.

The withering away of arts education matters far more, I think, than the absence of dance on PBS.

Well, that's more than nothing! Glad it's not a drain. Too bad there isn't a breakdown of how much of that comes from the summer intensives. I'd like to know how much tuition the actual school generates.

Without knowing exactly how many students are at each level in the JKO school or at each summer intensive site, it's difficult to nail down the exact dollar amount each program generates. But for what it's worth, here's the tuition breakout for the JKO school and summer intensives.

JKO School tuition (not including room & board):

Tuition for the JKO children's division for the 2015-2016 academic year starts at $1,100 for the Pre-Primary (3-5 year old) level and hits $5,250 for level 4 (11+). The simple average (i.e., not weighted by the number of students actually in each level) = $2,683.

Tuition for the JKO pre-professional division for the 2015-2016 academic year is $5,550 level 5 / $6,500 level 6 / $8,000 level 7. The simple average = $6,666

Tuition (not including room & board) for each ABT summer intensive site:

New York - $2,800

North Carolina - $1,600

Alabama - $1,300

Texas - $1,600

California - $1,400

The simple average (which assumes the attendees are equally divided among the five sites) = $1,740.

If you multiply that times the number of 2014 summer intensive students, you get $2.32 million, which suggests approximately half from the intensives half from the JKO school. But that is at best a wild-assed guess scribbled hastily on the back of an envelope with a big, fat crayon and it could be just plain wrong.

I doubt very much that the affiliation fees support the ABT company itself, and I don't think anyone at the JKO is befoming wealthy off those funds either. Surely the tax filings are available if it is a 501©3 non-profit. Most schools of that nature are not money makers and require funding income to cover what tuition does not. How many students at JKO are on scholarships? I do not know.

[ARGHHH. Whatever is autocorrecting my post absolutely insists that the " ( c ) " in 501©3 must be replaced with the copyright symbol. Apologies for how weird that looks.]

Unless something has changed very recently, the JKO School is part of the 501©3 that houses ABT (Ballet Theatre Foundation, Inc.; EIN 13-1882106), not in a separate 501©3 in the way that, say, SAB is in its own 501©3 separate from NYCB's.

Per Ballet Theatre Foundation's 2014 IRS 990, revenue from tuition totaled $4,435,486. (Keep in mind that this amount likely includes fees for summer intensives, not just the JKO school proper.) That represents 18.5% of the company's Total Program Services Revenue of $23.9 million. (Program Services Revenue is what a 501©3 earns from the activities it performs as part of its charitable / public service mission. In the case of a performing arts company, that's things like ticket sales, broadcasting fees, etc. Grants and contributions are not part of Program Services Revenue.) Something labelled "Program Fees - Education" generated revenues of $70,220. I seem to recall ABT's CFO William Taylor stating in the infamous "star strategy" video that the school was in fact a money maker.

Scholarships were provided to 265 recipients. Cash grants totaled $174,025. (I'm guessing stipends intended to cover living expenses or transportation.) Non-cash assistance totaled $605,050. (I'm guessing this is the value of tuition fees waived.) Per the explanation provided in the 990:

"ABT provides scholarships to ballet students. Merit scholarship students are selected from the JKO School, at JKO School auditions and during the summer intensives. The JKO School recruits dancers from across the country and around the world. Students are formally evaluated on a semi-annual basis and must reapply annually. Scholarships and stipends are granted based on merit.

ABT also assists promising young dancers across the country with scholarships sent directly to their local ballet school to assist with tuition. ABT requires verification from each student to ensure that the funds are used for their intended purpose."

From the same IRS 990, some statistics re ABT's education programs:

"ABT's student training programs include the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School (334 students); summer intensives in 6 us cities (1,334 students) and ABT studio company (14 students), a pre-professional program. ABT's teacher training program (ABT national training curriculum) had 513 teachers enrolled in its 2014 courses. To date, the program has certified 1,324 teachers in 48 states and 39 countries."

I don't know what nudged them in this direction, but I'm thrilled to see them get there!

I'm not surprise at all. Robert Darnton, one of the NYPL's trustees* has long been an advocate of making digitized collections from libraries everywhere readily and freely available to all:

"The Digital Public Library of America, to be launched on April 18, is a project to make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans—and eventually to everyone in the world—online and free of charge." (The National Digital Public Library Is Launched!)

* Darnton was one of the defenders of the controversial renovation plan for the historic Fifth Avenue building that would have involved, among other things, selling the Library's mid-Manhattan branch, moving the circulating collection housed there into the main building, and moving several million volumes from the research collection from the main building to an offsite location. That plan has been abandoned after much public outcry. Darnton's defense of the plan is here: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/06/07/defense-new-york-public-library/ (but alas, behind the New York Review of Books' paywall). Charles Peterson's impassioned objection to it in n+1 is here: Lions in Winter.

Hmmmm....Wasn't Jagger's androgynous quality widely remarked on, then and now? Footage of the Mickster undulating and bopping around onstage suggests many potential adjectives, but I'm not sure that "manly" is one of them. Whereas nobody ever regarded Lennon as a pretty boy no matter what he was wearing. But then to many eyes at the time both groups looked disturbingly unlike the masculine status quo.....

I suspect you're right that Jagger challenged traditional notions of what a masculine performing style was or should be. (And probably still does in some circles.) I always assumed his sexual potency was never in doubt, but that's an entirely different matter. I'm sure plenty of folks in my parents cohort couldn't figure out what Jagger's bevy of rapturous female fans saw in him.

A similar dynamic appears to be at work in the grief that girly-man Marco Rubio is getting for his choice of footwear. (This is not intended to introduce party politics into the discussion.)

Related.

Beatle Boots! I remember when they were fab.

Although I do seem to recall that they were "Cuban heels" when the Stones wore them ...

If they were manly enough for John and (ahem, especially) Mick, they ought to be manly enough for a U.S. Senator, freshman or not.

Hey, but shipping is only $30!

Isn't he too short to partner Sterling in Mozartiana.

I think the entire cast is too short for Mozartiana. I'm dating myself, but I still think of it as a "tall" ballet.

I yield to no one in my genuine respect for and thorough enjoyment of Hyltin, Huxley, and Ulbricht (sounds like a law firm) but I do think Mozartiana looks best on the kind of tall dancers it was choreographed on (Suzanne Farrell, Ib Anderson, and Victor Castelli).

Kathleen, the differences aren't risible.

OK. I'll rephrase that. What is it that the humorless person who has never "laughed at a difference between men and women" should be laughing at?

Someone who’s never laughed at a difference between men and women (surely not you?) would be humorless for sure.

What are the differences between men and women that are risible?

And standing up for historically subordinated and marginalized members of society is also no cause for humorlessness. Stereotypes are an age-old source of humor, and that humor isn’t necessarily malign, it’s a source of good fun when neither side takes itself too seriously.

Like the stereotypes involving watermelon, hooked noses, and limp wrists? Yes, those are extreme examples, but where does one draw the line? I'd say that someone who relies on another person's race, creed, nationality, ethnicity, sexual preference, and gender to make jokes really doesn't evidence much of a sense of humor at all, but rather, genuine humorlessness.

LOL. Are they the bachelorette swans?

Von Rothbart's Odile's back-up singers. Like Bette Midler's Harlettes.

Oy. What was I thinking with" Von Rothbart." "Odile" is a dandy name for a certain flavor of world-weary chanteuse.

I'm pretty sure I learned what a dandelion was from my mother, not a dictionary.

Thank you Pherank! I couldn't resist the one of Eglevsky as ... hmmm ...? Neptune? Whatever -- it's gorgeous, he's gorgeous. I wish I could buy them all. And yes, the Toumanova portrait is really something.