Kathleen O'Connell

For the record, unless it's been buried on some inappropriate line item on ABT's most recent IRS 990, Kevin McKenzie hasn't gotten any bonus money, much less millions of dollars. Per Schedule J (Officers, Directors, Trustees, Key Employees and Highest Compensated Employees) of ABT's 2013 990, which includes a column for bonus and incentive compensation, McKenzie's total 2013 compensation was $307,691. Here's the bottom line from Sched J: Kevin McKenzie - Artistic Director - $307,691 Rachel Moore - CEO - $300,654 Alexei Ratmanksly - Artist in Residence - $247,283 James Timm - Director of Marketing - $179,117 Julie Kent Barbee - Principal Dancer - $185,466 Paloma Herrera - Principal Dancer - $185,197 Kyle Ridaught - Director of Development - $175,275 ABT's total wages and compensation -- including benefits and payroll taxes -- were $22.9 million, which is slightly more than half of its total functional expenses of $42.3 million. I don't believe wages and compensation includes guest artist fees -- but dancers we might think of as "guest artists" might be characterized as "employees" depending on the nature of their contracts.

A big thumbs up for the decision to program Paul Taylor's magnificent Sunset! I know ABT performed it about five years or so after Taylor premiered in 1983, but I don't know if any other companies have tackled it. It's nice to see a ballet company get out of the Company B rut. Company B is a sure-fire audience pleaser and well deserves its place in the repertory, but Sunset makes me cry every time I see it. (Not that making me cry is somehow the final determinant of greatness ... but it's special when a work touches your heart as much as it delights your eye. I've been known to cry during Company B, too of course.) Here are two video clips: Christopher Gillis & David Parsons Vail Dance Festival 2013 It's easy to see from the second clip especially that the work will likely get "balleticized," but I think that's OK. I prefer Taylor danced by Taylor dancers, but most of all I prefer that Taylor is just danced, period.

I'd laud them for having a smartphone app, except that it costs $1.99. Whatever are they thinking? Hello?!? It's marketing, not a valuable public service! (NYCB's mobile app is free.) Now if they were to package their video dictionary up into a nice little app, that I might pay for.

Ugh. That website. I do give ABT props for posting their IRS 990 on the "Financial" page. So few arts organizations are that transparent about their finances even though they actively solicit donations from the public. It almost makes up for how much clicking around it takes to find The Ballet Dictionary and Repertory Archive. ABT's repertory archive doesn't look as slick as NYCB's but it's actually much more useful, since one can sort it by title, choreographer, and composer.

Per this post in Faye Arthurs' always enlightening blog "Thoughts from the Paint" it appears that a stomach bug wreaked havoc on the casting for NYCB's recent run at the Kennedy Center. Silver lining? Some dancers got to try on new roles, albeit under what can only be charitably described as less-than-ideal circumstances ... I was dancing Balanchine’s Symphony in C all week. It closed an iconic Balanchine triple bill which began with Serenade followed by Agon. On opening night my regular partner Devin Alberda succumbed to illness right before the show, so I rehearsed with a brand new partner—the very game David Prottas—during Agon since David had to perform in Serenade as well. Poor David, who had never danced in Bizet (the dancer shorthand for Symphony in C) before, was flying blind that first show. But he did a great job of jumping right in. We ended up together for the entire week because by the time Devin recovered someone else was out, so he ended up changing spots too. It was quite the juggling act. Later in the post, Arthurs runs through some of the reasons why a senior corps dancer like Prottas might never have danced the role before. She also points out something that I can't believe I haven't noticed in 30+ years of watching Symphony in C: the height of the corps dancers in each of the ballet's sections relative to the heights of the principals. It's details like these that make her blog such a worthwhile read.

Well, they did manage to get an announcement up on Facebook about 5 minutes ago. I don't know what ABT's media and communications policy is, but I would have expected a FB post and a tweet to hit their feeds at the same time that the press release went out. (I can't find the press release, so many thanks to Dale for posting.)

Interestingly enough, I found out about this via Twitter - not from ABT's official feed (@ABTBallet), however, but rather, through Jonathan Capehart's (@CapehartJ) retweet of this tweet from Laverne Cox (@Lavernecox). I think this speaks volumes about 1) the kind of reach and resonance Copeland's story has and 2) ABT's grasp (or lack thereof) of social media.

Ugh! It would be one thing if you were demanding all of your money back because you didn't like the casting or something. But if there are empty seats, I really don't see why they can't accommodate you. Plus, it sounds like the left hand (the ticket agent's supervisor) told you one thing and the right hand (the box office agent) told you something different, which is not a good thing for all kinds of reasons -- not the least of which is inconveniencing a valuable audience member such as you!

You can stream the full episode on line here: Mark Morris Dance Group: L’Allegro, Il Penseroso ed il Moderato The video will be available online until March 26, 2018.

Not strange at all! Here's a reading of Евгений Онегин (Yevgeniy Onegin) in its entirety. The poem itself begins at around 2:15. Several folks have superimposed selections from Pushkin's text onto extracts from Martha Fienne's English Language film Onegin, which stars her brother, Ralph Fiennes as Yevgeniy Onegin and Liv Tyler as Tatyana Larina. Here's an example: Письмо Татьяны к Онегину (Pis'mo Tat'yany k Oneginu - Tatyana's Letter to Onegin). You can follow along with the text here. ETA: here's the text in Russian with a parallel translation into English. And ... here's another reading superimposed onto cuts from Fienne's film. You can find Fienne's film online -- including a version dubbed in Russian ...

Lara Tong

I thought you might have some hard data to hand since you seem interested in the topic of dance company diversity in general. I'm open to your case, but it would be helpful if you provided the data to support it rather than suggesting that I look at a couple of dozen company rosters myself. What do you think an appropriate percentage of dancers of East Asian origin might be? Should we expect a dance company's diversity to roughly match that of the US in general? Of the company's geographic region in particular?

Do you have data on the percentage of non-caucasian dancers in other ballet companies? I'd be interested to see it if you did.

I'm sorry to learn this. I didn't like everything Cedar Lake did, but I certainly appreciated the opportunity to see works by choreographers who aren't much showcased in New York. The company was polished and professional, and the dancers were often exceptional. Arrghh! I'm already using the past tense! Their building is located just off The High Line in a rapidly developing neighborhood; my guess is that it's a valuable asset, even if it's now worth more as a tear-down than as an existing structure.

I second tomorrow's concern regarding ballet companies chasing after the same few hot names for new ballets. I understand why they do so, and I understand why choreographers might grab at every commission they can get wherever and whenever they can get it. But it's a tricky thing balance the requirement for new ballets (and I think that requirement is absolute if the art form is to retain its vibrancy) against the risk of diluting everyone's brand, to put it in crass marketing terms. And thank you, choriamb, for the Ashley Issacs link! She's one of my favorite dancers -- maybe someday she'll be one of my favorite choreographers, too ... or maybe one of my favorite ADs who hires women choreographers.

That was the same Calatrava-themed season that gave us a fistful of expensive ballets* that ran the gamut from awful to disposable, with only one really good one, Ratmansky's "Namouna." * For the record: Melissa Barak - "Call Me Ben" Peter Martins - "Mirage" Benjamin Millepied - "Why am I not where you are" Christopher Wheeldon - "Estancia" ETA: Whoops! I forgot Mauro Bigonzetti's "Luce Nacosta"! I loved Calatrava's set and Marc Happel's costumes, but loathed the ballet. "Call Me Ben" was a mess, but I give Barak props for struggling mightily to do something novel with a score she didn't want to use. (And I would kill to have that chic little tweed number Gilles Mendel whipped up for Jenifer Ringer.) Millipede's ballet showed the folly of building a ballet around a costume gimmick, although it was at least watchable once Janie Taylor returned to it. Who remembers "Mirage"? "Estancia" was just nonsense from the get-go -- it depends on a costume gimmick too, come to think of it. Watching Gina Pazcougin portray a beautiful creature whose spirit must be broken if our hero is to prevail just about ripped my heart out. PS: Yes it all cost a fortune and there isn't a lot to show for it, but I'm still glad the company took a flyer on the project.

Not that I'm wild about sports analogies, but shots on goal is a thing. Even Balanchine and Robbins had their share of misses, and I think every dance company has to expect that only a relative handful of its commissioned works will live for the ages. There are any number of women not named Twyla Tharp who are choreographing good work NOW. Why should a company that proudly trumpets its commitment to new commissions be given yet more time to hire one of them? NYCB seems happy to fund a disposable Martins ballet or two a year; would the company really be less well-served if it commissioned new ballets -- disposable or no as the case may be -- from someone with lady parts?

Ugh. Estancia. Because what a girl who lives in the middle of effin' nowhere really wants is a manly man who breaks horses and shuns decadent city folk.

Sigh. Pam Tanowitz and Emery LeCrone could both give NYCB new works more closely aligned with its heritage and style than several of the male choreographers the company has turned to in the recent past -- Elo, Bigonzetti, or Preljocaj, e.g. And if the company wanted something more visceral / cinematic along the lines of those three, there's Crystal Pite.

Yes indeed. It's a generous gift. I might grumble about the naming rights hoo-ha, but that hall is in need of more than cosmetic renovations and his donation will make them happen.

Looks like the Plaza will now have two theaters named David. "I'm heading off to Lincoln Center now." "Where to? the David K?" "No, no - tonight's show is at the David G." Maybe the Lincoln Center folks could persuade another billionaire David to throw some bucks the Met's way and give the Plaza a David three-peat or hat trick or whatever. Perhaps David Tepper will step up to the plate. He's relatively small potatoes as billionaires go (with a net worth of $10.4 billion, he's only #121 in the Forbes rankings), but he does live nearby in Livingston NJ. I suppose I understand the desire to have your name in big letters on the side of a marble building, but I wish that just once one of these guy would say "Oh, no, thanks! I'd like the building to be named after [fill in name of groundbreaking artist, eminent humanitarian, or inspiring leader here]."

That seems to be standard for all productions of SB... But not for ABT's previous version, which, despite its enormous, ripped-right-out-of-a-Thomas Kinkaid castle seemed oddly underpopulated! There were only two children and eight couples in the garland dance, for instance, and what looked to be about a 2-to-1 ratio of fairies to courtiers in the Prologue.

What irked me about ABT's soon-to-be previous version of SB was that I wasn't even really that far over to the side; I certainly would not have thought to describe it as far right. If a seat isn't labelled "partial view" one should be able to see everything, or at least everything important, especially if one is paying full price. I took it as a sign that either 1) the production team didn't care enough to make sure the set design actually worked in the theater or 2) management didn't care enough about giving their patrons good value for their money.

This seems to be the prologue, with the cradle. I hope this set doesn't commit one of the errors of the current production, which is pushing too much of the action towards the wings -- including, crucially, the cradle in the prologue. At the Met, if you're anymore than halfway in on the house right side section of the orchestra it's almost impossible to see what's going on around the cradle.

I like "citoyen" myself, except for being required to stipulate said citizen's gender ... well, that, and the fact that the people in favour of "citoyen" had a tendency to lop people's heads off. Details, details... Oh, alright then, just call me Madam!