Kathleen O'Connell

Probably OT, but having watched the available versions of Tarantella online, can I just say what a difference McBride's jolly little skirt makes? (The dreadful schmatte on her head we can safely dispense with, however.) I think this is a ballet that needs a bit of leg to be properly saucy. Karinska's costume has a ton of flirty peek-a-boo built right into it.

Faye Arthurs has a new post up on her always informative "Thoughts from the Paint" blog. This one features a Q&A with Teresa Reichlen about dancing Odette / Odile in NYCB's Swan Lake. A sample: Q: [Arthurs] How many pairs of pointe shoes will you go through per show? A: [Reichlen] I wear 2 pairs. You only have one opportunity in our version to change shoes since there is only 1 intermission and less than a 5 minute break between acts III and IV when you also have to change your costume and headpiece. Q: [Arthurs] What is the most challenging part of the ballet for you? A: [Reichlen] Surprisingly I find the long break during intermission and the beginning of Act III before the Black Swan pas de deux to be the hardest part of the show. The break is about an hour long and my body starts to cramp up and get stiff in that amount of time. It’s a challenge to stay warm and loose without expending any extra energy because you still have half of the ballet ahead of you.

The Balanchine Police must have lost their DCMA Take-Down Notice Foo. Here's Tarantella and ... Harlequinade both with McBride. That seemingly low-hanging East Room chandelier always makes me nervous ...

Courtesy of RAI Scuola, you can find a (very poor quality) video of McBride and Villella's interpretation here. I suppose it is heretical to say so -- and it is ludicrous to make judgements based on videos alone in any event -- but I think I prefer Ratmansky. He is indeed very witty, and rather sexy, too. (Villella? Hmmm ... not so much ...)

I quoted Bujones on Baryshnikov in the context of this quote from the Herrera interview: "Now, if someone makes it you don’t know whether it’s because they really have talent or because the media helped get them there." I realize that the quote comes near the end of Herrera's complaints about social media, but the fact that she refers to it as "the media" suggests to me that she's thinking of publicity in general, not just Instagram. I don't think there's a dancer on earth who has "made it" on the strength of his or her social media profile.

Fernando Bujones on Mikhail Baryshnikov: "Baryshnikov has the publicity. I have the talent." (Reported in People Magazine, 1979.) Artists have been grousing about other artists' publicity since forever, not to mention about Kids Today. ETA: Hmmm ... now that I've re-read that People profile, I can't decide if I'm sad or relieved that Bujones didn't have access to Twitter.

I would have been absolutely OVER THE MOON and pounding the "Follow" button like there was no tomorrow if my favorite dancers had been posting little tidbits to social media back when I was 20. But alas, it was all punchcards and mainframes back then ...

Not exactly social media proper, but I found this piece on Guillaume Côté's foray into small screen video front and center in today's OZY.com email newsletter. Guillaume Côté, Ballet's Smartphone Pioneer "Why you should care"* per OZY: "Because ballet may be 600 years old, but it’s getting a new look." The look will not be new to most Ballet Alerters, but then it doesn't look anything like ABT's marketing materials, either ... * Every OZY piece features a prominent "Why You Should Care" box right below the headline image and right above the "Share" buttons.

The Nation has posted the full text of a new profile of Violette Verdy by Marina Harss. It's a lovely appreciation of Verdy as both dancer and teacher, but it's also packed with the kind of descriptive observation that can help guide our own dance-watching. Here's a sample: Verdy encouraged Laracey to sway her hips more as she walked and to take liberties with the timing, “as if you’re singing to yourself, inventing it on the spot, and you’re not onstage at all.” During the second movement, a minuet, Laracey carefully unfolded one leg in such a way that the action appeared perfectly smooth, uninterrupted. Verdy stopped her: “Remember, not too lyrical, a little more folk.” The dance’s Slavic folk elements—a turned-in knee, a hand on the hip, a little horselike prance—began to come into relief, accentuated by pauses and minute changes of timing. The steps developed a flavor. “Feel the slight syncopation here,” Verdy pointed out, referring to the way an accented step slightly anticipated and held the beat. Through these touches, Balanchine and Verdy had turned Ravel’s lilting minuet into a kind of modified mazurka. The dance alternated between French nonchalance and the earthiness of Slavic folk dance. Harss' article beautifully describes the special combination of musicality, imagination, intelligence, and heart that were the foundation of Verdy's dancing and are now the foundation of her teaching. A few quotes here won't do it justice, so just go read the whole thing!

Thanks, California! I anticipated some Irwin-esque postures, but I wasn't expecting pointe shoes ...

There had better be a video. Because I can't even imagine ... but I'm dying to see whatever it is. (I have absolutely no expectation that I will prevail in the FFD ticket scrum.) Lots and lots of good stuff on offer! YES! to Nrityagram. For the curious, this is a selection from the work they performed the last time they were in FFD. (The dancer on the left is Surupa Sen; the dancer on the right is her long-time colleague Bijayini Satpathy.)

For the same reason that SAB is given credit for training say, Ashley Bouder or Adrian Danchig-Waring, both of whom were students there for about a year before entering NYCB as apprentices? And Bouder and Danchig-Waring aren't particularly unusual in this regard: they were just the first two "one and done" dancers I found moving through the dancer bios on NYCB's website. It seems that many (if not most?) NYCB dancers attended SAB for only a year or two. That being said, 1) yes, a dancer's important early teachers should be given credit! (and which credit the NYCB website very graciously accords them); POB does look mighty prestigious on the bio nonetheless ; and 3) I'd be interested to know the extent to which Hallberg's dancing really was formed by his time at POB. Any thoughts? I have to admit that I'm completely enraptured by POB's exquisitely pliant and expressive feet ... it's about all I can look at when I watch them dance and I barely notice anything else.

Thanks for the link, pssfrb! I started clicking around Kathryn Morgan's main YouTube channel and learned that she'll also be portraying Galina Panova in the musical "To Dance" (based, apparently, on Valery Panov's autobiography of the same name), which will have its world premiere this August at the New York Fringe Festival. I'm glad she'll be performing again in NYC, even if it's just for a short run. I watched a couple of her little "Technique Tips" videos, and I can see why she's got 29,000+ subscribers. I can't speak to her videos' pedagogical soundness, but Morgan herself comes across as very open, down-to-earth, and caring. It's clear that she's putting a lot of time, effort, and heart into her YouTube enterprise: in addition to her instructional videos, she's posted a ton of nicely-produced videos on topics that run the gamut from how to put on your makeup (stage and everyday), how to deal with jealousy, and (cluing me in to a subculture entirely new to me) how she sets up her Erin Condren Life Planner. If I were a tween bunhead, I would absolutely adore her. ETA: Morgan recounts her struggles with thyroid disease here.

Stumbled across The Museum of Blacks in Ballet earlier today. The timeline and video gallery are still under construction, but the (invaluable!) Roll Call and Discussions sections are up and running. From the About page: The story of Blacks in ballet is integral to the story of dance. By creating a digital platform that compiles this less-known oral history in one apolitical online location, MOBB seeks to make this rich history accessible and inspiring by creating high-quality content, promoting larger discussions within the dance community, and providing a platform and role models for emerging Black dancers. Worth a look see for the Roll Call alone.

I put "Ballet 422" in the same category as R. J. Cutler's 2009 "The September Issue" - i.e., a documentary that's more about the process than the product, and more inclined to show the process to you and let you make of it what you will rather than explain it. (I think "Ballet 422" is a little more spare in this regard.) I happened to like both films very much. "The September Issue" used to be available for streaming on Netflix, but no more alas ... but you can rent it for $0.99 on Amazon Prime Video.

The principal ranks at NYCB currently skew "not tall": Ashley Bouder, Megan Fairchild, Sterling Hyltin, Lauren Lovette, Tiler Peck, Ana-Sophia Scheller, Jennie Somogyi, and Abi Stafford are on the shorter side; Maria Kowroski, Rebecca Krohn, Sara Mearns, and Teresa Reichlen on the taller.

Yes to both. Prodigal does address the tall women / short men issue.

Balanchine and Robbins both choreographed works for ABT (or Ballet Theater, as is was then known) -- Theme and Variations and Fancy Free, respectively. These ballets are part of the company's heritage; surely it has every right to perform them. Indeed, one might argue that there have been periods when ABT could field a better cast for either work than NYCB could: it wasn't so long ago that the conventional wisdom in certain circles was that NYCB itself lacked the speed and attack necessary to dance Balanchine well. In any event, how is any company supposed to get better at anything if it doesn't perform it regularly?

Absolutely. I'd say improvisation at some level - even if it's limited to the headline soloists, as was the case in many swing bands - is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for something to be called "jazz."

I'd have a hard time characterizing Rhapsody in Blue as Jazz proper, since the work is fully-scored and there's no improvisation. Jazz-influenced, yes, in terms of its instrumentation, use of the blues scale in its thematic materials, etc. Although Paul Whiteman, who commissioned Rhapsody in Blue, was called "The King of Jazz" and his ensemble embraced Jazz effects and often included (white) Jazz artists like Beiderbecke, he was firmly committed to formal, written arrangements and eschewed improvisation. ETA: Compare Whiteman's ensemble with his contemporary Louis Armstrong's first Hot Five for an example of the difference between a big band working strictly from fully-scored arrangements and a fully improvisatory jazz combo. Armstrong's second Hot Five did make use of some pre-arranged section parts.

How about "The audience that McKenzie is now attempting to tap into are those who are excited to see non-white bodies on stage in a lead role" or "thrilled to see non-white bodies on stage in a lead role" as an alternative to "prefer"?

Congrats to all and a big woohoo! for Lendorf!

Thanks for the tip! It turns out that Princeton has made the introduction to its critical edition available online here. Sigh. Had Princeton's edition of "The Age of Anxiety" been available as an ebook, I might have purchased it to get access to the notes and the rest of the critical apparatus. There's no room for yet another paper edition of Auden's work on my shelves, however, and the library's copy is out ...

The character named Malin, danced by Federico Bonelli at the performance I saw, is indeed a member of the Canadian armed forces. Both the Bernstein score and Scarlett's ballet are based on W. H. Auden's 1948 Pulitzer-prize winning poem of the same name. The poem is very long -- essentially book length -- and features the same the same four main characters as Scarlett's ballet: Rosetta, a department store buyer; Quant, a middle-aged clerk; Emble, a Navy recruit; and Malin, a Canadian airman. Scarlett is true to the poem's setting, Manhattan, and more or less true to the poem's story-line, such as it is; most of the text is taken up with its protagonists' philosophical ruminations, however, to which the ballet can do little more than allude, really, and no surprise there. The poem's Wikipedia page is pretty sparse; if you're not familiar with the Auden, this Glynn Maxwell piece, which considers it in the context of Bernstein's symphony, might be a better intro. (I did battle with Auden's poem when I was in grad school; let's just say it wasn't where my head was at then ...) I too liked Scarlett's ballet more than I expected to and would like to be able to see it again. I think the resemblances to "Fancy Free" are superficial once the dust settles, however.

Just came across this in (yet another) Alistair Macauley appreciation of Sara Mearns: "The ballerina Sara Mearns, now 29, has entered her prime. She has surely become the most Dionysiac artist in an Apollonian genre, very probably the most talked-of ballerina in America and quite possibly the most argued-about ballerina anywhere." [Emphasis mine.] Clearly he hasn't been perusing Ballet Alert much of late ...