Kathleen O'Connell

No. 1) Oh, call me an elitist, but I think it's legitimate to preserve as artifacts works that are explicitly -- and in this case, perfectly -- of their time so as to have a window onto the intellectual, spiritual, and moral framework of that time. Bournonville's great work tells us -- no, even better, shows us -- what ideas excited and troubled early 19th century Europe. That's something a thoughtful early 21st century person ought to know, and what better way to help us learn than by continuing to give us Bournonville's ballet more or less intact? (And please note that I wrote "more or less": I'm not demanding step-by-step, prop-by-prop, gesture-by-gesture fidelity.) Yes, that means developing audiences with both an informed taste and a curiosity about intellectual history. Simply changing James' and / or the Sylph's gender doesn't make Bournonville's concerns more "relevant" to a 21st century audience, although it does tell us what Hübbe thinks we're anxious about. 2) Simply substituting same sex attraction for James' fatal infatuation with the Sylph and what she represents creates something of a moral muddle. Bournonville's ballet explores the fraught tension between living in the world and longing for the ideal: James' desire to possess the Sylph leads to tragic consequences because it is in some sense wrong -- at the very least it is crudely human. (The Sylph herself is amoral in a very non-human way.) But there's nothing wrong with same-sex attraction; putting it at the center of La Sylphide doesn't amplify the work's meaning for us -- it makes it a different story altogether. So why not just make a new ballet? 3) I like works that riff on classic touchstones -- West Side Story and Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, e.g. or, to take an example from literature, Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea -- but they're new creations in their own right despite their borrowing from / commenting on their precursors. As described, Hübbe's Sylphide seems to fall into the uneasy space between the kind of "updated" production one sees in opera and a genuinely new work. Of course, I'm saying all this without the benefit of having actually seen RDB's new production. It could be that Hübbe and his team will handle the material with more deftness than I'm imagining they will.

Sábado Gigante ... ? Still going strong after 50+ years ... It runs the gamut from this guy showing Don Francisco a few new moves to this guy. And of course, a Diva or two. It's admittedly longer on half-clad women than opera stars.

Cuban National Ballet has embraced diversity, and, IMO, is proof in training as the foundation from which to select dancers. I don't know if dark-skinnned women are weeded out along the way for that reason, though. Also Complexions Contemporary Ballet, which is explicitly multi-cultural / diverse. From their "About" page: Yes, I know, it's contemporary ballet and not purely classical ... but note that Monique Munier (formerly of both NYCB and ABT) danced with them for a time. Alonso Kings' Lines Ballet and Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet might fall into the same category, although their names don't telegraph multicultural in the way that Complexions' does.

Not to mention Homans' own NYU colleague, Deborah Jowitt. I don't know if Jowitt still teaches dance history at NYU, but her "Time and the Dancing Image" was hands down one of the best dance books I ever read.

Here's a giant Misty Copeland Under Armour billboard on Lafayette Street heading uptown towards Astor Place. Not a great shot, but you'll get the idea ... Edit: Ugh ... issues with source file. I hope to get the image up again later today ...

I think it’s important to make a distinction between works that are legitimately provocative — that are challenging in their materials, their form, or their subject matter — and those that are at best ill-conceived, ill-wrought, or badly performed and at worst merely trade on shock value. The former have a more just claim on our time, attention, and patience than the latter. That being said, it’s the theater, not a sacred duty: no one is under any obligation to stay if they would prefer not to, masterpiece or no. Years ago I went to a noted pianist’s Carnegie Hall performance of works by Beethoven and Schoenberg. In an unusual move, he’d programmed all of the Schoenberg before intermission and all of the Beethoven after. It was interesting to note that a significant portion of the audience left at intermission: either they’d come for the Schoenberg (yay!) or they just didn’t like his playing. (I’m guessing the former. This particular pianist is highly regarded as an exponent of 20th century composers, and justly so: under his hands, the Schoenberg works gleamed like jewels.) I stayed, but wish I’d left — his way with Beethoven was like fingernails on a chalkboard. I think the sonata in question would have been better served had I listened someone else’s recording of it through my tinny little earbuds on the subway ride home.

Robbins: "Circus Polka" to show off the kids from the school??? Hench would be The Ringmaster, of course ... Not a lot of time left to get something like that organized, though.

Still I agree that adding choreography to Beethoven's larger-scaled works is usually overkill. (Choreographing the Ninth in particular is like over-egging the pudding, gilding the lily, and putting a fifth wheel on the cart all at the same time.) Some choreographers have been more successful with Beethoven, however -- but they've chosen carefully. Paul Taylor's magnificent "Orbs" is set to music selected from the late quartets. Mark Morris has used Beethoven a lot: "Maelstrom," which was commissioned by the San Francisco Ballet, is set to one of Beethoven's piano trios; "The Muir" is set to some of Beethoven's settings of Irish and Scottish folk songs; "Visitation" is set to one of the Cello Sonatas. Christopher Wheeldon's "Klavier" is set to the third movement of the "Hammerklavier" sonata. DD Dorvillier's "Danza Permanente" is more or less a literal transcription of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15 (the glorious "Heiliger Dankgesang) for four dancers, which is performed -- all 45 minutes of it -- in silence except for the dancer's footfalls and a few brief soundscapes. It was, um, interesting ... You can watch a clip here.

I'd hoped I'd made it clear that layoffs are always fraught ("miserable" is how I characterized them). I certainly didn't mean to imply that large is always better (especially since I never used that word), nor to equate "clean" with either fast or large. "Clean" means well planned and professionally managed. Perhaps I should clarify what I mean by "fast" while I'm at it. I certainly don't mean a summary execution where the laid-off personnel are marched out of the office with all of their tchokes in a cardboard box an hour after they're told they're being let go. (As California pointed out above, there are situations where that happens, but the provisions of the WARN Act would in general effectively grant those employees an extra 60 days of severance pay.) I do mean that management should avoid the kind of situation in which there is a general announcement (often for the benefit of Wall St.) that there will at some undefined point in the future be lay-offs, but months pass before the employees are told who will be laid off and who won't, what kinds of separation packages will be available, how the layoff decisions will be made, etc. etc. etc. I've been through a bunch of those, and they're awful.

Does Roy Kaiser still have any company responsibilities as "Artistic Director Emeritus," or is his role "ceremonial" (for lack of a better word)? The company's press releases covering both Kaiser's decision to step down and Corella's appointment don't go into any detail regarding Kaiser's role as ADE.

This. Nothing says you didn't measure up like getting laid off a year after the shakeup. Many mass dismissals aren't nearly that impersonal by any means. Companies can get away with all manner of personal business under the cover of a layoff. In this case, IMO the dramatic fashion in the way the Pennsylvania Ballet people got canned draws attention to their alleged deficiencies: "The situation was so bad we just had to get rid of these people pronto. No time to waste!" I've been involved in enough layoffs -- on both sides -- to know that it's miserable no matter what. I'm still in the "do it clean and do it fast" school, with the proviso that everyone deserves a decent safety net and their dignity. I think we can agree that the PAB layoffs were mishandled in the way they were made public if nothing else. I don't know enough about the company, the people involved, or the relationship between Corella and the departing staff to be able to comment on whether the layoffs were warranted, or ill-considered, or too hasty, or too sweeping.

This. Nothing says you didn't measure up like getting laid off a year after the shakeup.

Well, if it needs to be said, I will say it: it sucks to get laid off and it especially sucks when it's splashed all over a newspaper before a formal (and gracious) announcement has been issued by the company. That to me is the real shocker: someone from the company's administration should have had an announcement prepared and in Corella's hands and ready for the press before the laid-off staff members were told they were being let go. A professional organization does not let its new leader say something dismissive like "I'm sure the people were great, but ..."; it coaches him to say something along the lines of "Jeffrey and Tamara (always names, and always first names) have served this company with distinction for many years, as our wonderful dancers and ambitious repertoire make abundantly clear ... yadda yadda yadda" In fairness, we don't know what else Corella might have said during the interview nor what the context of his comment was, but as printed it sounded as if he'd barely met Gribner, Hadley, and DeGregory before he decided to replace them. I don't know much about how a ballet company works: it may be that telling someone at the beginning of the season that you're going to replace them before the end of the season so sours the relationship that little good work can get done. A swift departure -- with a generous severance package -- might be better for all concerned.

I have no qualms about ditching a performance that's not worth my time. I don't care how much I paid for my ticket, sunk costs are sunk costs -- no need to compound the injury by squandering precious minutes I'll never get back. I do always wait for an intermission unless I'm on the aisle and can get to a door without disrupting everyone else.

At the very least they should have been prepared for a shakeup given that Roy Kaiser's departure followed relatively quickly on the heels of the PAB Board's adoption of Michael Kaiser's turnaround plan. I haven't been able to find a copy of M. Kaiser's report, but I gather from this Philadelphia Inquirer article that it was critical of the company's artistic planning in addition to its marketing and development. The same thing happens routinely at corporations and sports teams.

Just to underscore one detail in your excellent post: the FY2014 budget and the FY2015 budget request for the National Endowment for the Arts is only $146.021 million. Note that this includes the administrative costs of the agency (about $15 million). This is significant as it reminds us that Federal government support for the arts is in serious decline, putting even more of a burden on cities and states, as well private sources. http://arts.gov/news/2014/president-obama-releases-fy-2015-budget-number-national-endowment-arts OOPS! My bad!!! That's a quote from the article I linked to! I'm going to modify the original post to make it clear that that's Dawn Fatale's writing, not mine!

While we wait for our NYCB subscription tickets to arrive … Way back in March, Parterre Box’s own Dawn Fatale* posted a long, three part article that analyzes the Metropolitan Opera’s current financial, operational, and audience-building woes and proposes a number of ways to address them. Although opera is its own beast – and the Met in particular is practically its own order of charismatic megafauna – some of its issues echo those of other struggling performing arts organizations, including of course, ballet. It’s a long read, but hey, it’s August … Some teasers: Part 1: the met: what’s really wrong? This section of the piece is primarily concerned with the Met’s funding issues and does a bit of “forensic accounting” to unpack both the Met and its Union’s claims regarding the sources of its deficits. Part 2: the met: can it be saved? This section analyses the Met’s programming and production choices and proposes some alternative approaches to generate a more coherent company style and greater audience engagement. Part 3: the met: what is to be done? This section examines the limitations of the Met’s current casting practices, the opera-going experience at the opera house itself, and outreach. Would any of it work? Is it even practicable? I have no idea (well, I have some ideas), but there's a lot there for a lover of any performing art to mull over. * A nom de plume, in case you don’t know your Verdi backwards and forwards. It comes from the first line of this aria from Don Carlos. “O don fatale, O don crudel!” [“O fatal gift, O cruel gift!” The character, the Princess Eboli, curses her beauty, which has brought her and everyone else in the opera a world of hurt.] Disclosure: Dawn Fatale is an acquaintance. We worked for a time at the same company, although we were more likely to bump into each other in a theater lobby than at the office. ETA: In my subtitle, I referred to Dawn Fatale as a "fan": I want to make it clear that the estimable Ms Fatale has, as they say, forgotten more about opera than I will ever know. It says a lot about the current state of arts journalism that an article like this one had to be written for love.

The great Scottish folk singer Jean Redpath died on Thursday at the age of 77. From her New York Times obituary: Ms. Redpath, who recorded some 40 albums, combined voluminous historical knowledge, a winning stage presence and a voice that could be both bright and melancholy to become perhaps the most prominent Scottish folk singer of the postwar era. She once sang for Queen Elizabeth II in a command performance, but she began as one of the gaggle of young singers who arrived in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. For a while, according to histories of the era, she dated Bob Dylan. They slept on the floor of an apartment at One Sheridan Square with other folky hopefuls like Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. “I nearly blew a gasket blowing up so many of those rubber mattresses,” Ms. Redpath was quoted by Robert Shelton in his book, “No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan.” Here is a YouTube clip of her singing "The Banks O' Red Roses" ETA: Here's a whole Jean Redpath playlist. Go here to listen to selections from her many albums. I set up a playlist of some of her songs on Spotify. If you have a Spotify account, you should be able to listen to it here. Most of her songs are of a melancholy turn, but I threw in a few jolly ones, too.

From the "Facility Rentals" section of the Lyric's website: "90 feet from furthest seating point to stage" with capacity for 1,932 persons. 90 feet is about 1/3 the length of a standard New York City block (uptown not crosstown). The Theater Formerly Known as State seats 2,586. New York City Center seats 2,257. I don't know how far it is from the back of the house to the stage in either venue ...

Mine too. That one I do plan on seeing again ...

Wow, really? I didn't know that anyone from the board was (still is?) responsible for programming. Were/are any other board members doing this at NYCB? Any other companies where this has happened? From the intro to The Paris Review's "The Art of Editing" interview with Gottlieb: I remember reading somewhere that no one else connected with the company really wanted to take on the task of figuring out how to schedule the season's ballets. If I recall correctly, some of the challenges included figuring out the optimal program from the standpoint of how many dancers would need to be available, how many musicians, avoiding too many subscription repeats from season-to-season, etc. Gottlieb was very definitely a hands-on board member, which is much to his credit. I don't know if board members today are allowed to do much more than haul out their rolodexes and raise money.

Tapfan -- I hope you'll believe me when I tell you that I at least wasn't being dismissive of your views! I took them seriously enough to argue with them, and I'd be surprised if that wasn't how others felt too.

Tapfan, I think I need to offer some clarification of my earlier posts. 1) I don't agree with your assessment of Balanchine nor with your contention that NYCB should focus more on staging new works than on maintaining its Balanchine and Robbins legacy. But that's OK -- that's why there are discussion boards. I hope we continue to disagree; that's what keeps things interesting around here. 2) I think you'll find that many people who post here -- including the NYCB fans -- like a diversity of dance. It so happens that Balanchine isn't my favorite choreographer; that would be Merce Cunningham. With the possible exception of Pam Tanowitz, none of the active choreographers that I'm most drawn to at the moment have much to do with ballet. (For the record: Pam Tanowitz, Wally Cardona, and Tere O'Connor. A couple of years ago, I'd have put Trisha Brown on the list, but she was forced into retirement for health reasons.) If I never saw "Vienna Waltzes" or "Union Jack" again, my life would not be materially altered for the worse. I close my eyes for the last three minutes of "Duo Concertant," which I find unspeakably mawkish. (My apologies to the dancers; it's not you -- it's that gimmicky spotlight.) 3) Robert Gottlieb. I wasn't using him as a club to beat anyone with. In general, I don't think there's much merit in hauling out a critic to defend one's assessment of an artist or a work of art on a discussion board like this one, although the criticism itself can certainly be a fruitful jumping-off point for a lively conversation. Gottlieb has long been one of NYCB's bitterest and loudest post-Balanchine critics; he's spent the last couple of decades railing about what he's perceived as the company's sorry decline, and most of the folks who read the NYCB forum here would likely know that and will have formed their own opinion as to whether he's right or not. (Although he writes dance reviews for the New York Observer, Gottlieb isn't a professional dance critic in the way that, say, Alastair Macauley is. Gottlieb is by profession an editor; he edited The New Yorker from 1987-1992 and was editor-in-chief at a couple of major publishing houses. He was on NYCB's board when Balanchine was alive; I'm not sure when he departed but I gather his relationship with Peter Martins was strained.) 4) Petipa was a great choreographer, but he wasn't the Shakespeare of ballet. Really, that title belongs to Balanchine. I can't have been the first to make that comparison, but here's my reasoning: -- Both were men of the theater, specifically, popular theater. They were as interested in entertaining as they were in creating art. Not for them Milton Babbitt's "Who Cares if You Listen." -- In comparison to their contemporaries, both produced a body of work that is astonishing in its size, its scope, its sheer variety, and its overall quality. -- Both were landmark innovators who nonetheless continued to work within the bounds of their respective traditions. -- A choreographer can quote Balanchine the way a writer can quote Shakespeare and know that someone's going to get and appreciate the reference. My point in comparing Balanchine to Shakespeare wasn't to declare him "the greatest of all time" but rather to put his achievement in the context of that of another great man of the theater -- and to suggest that it will be a while before someone who might be deemed his equal emerges. But we should enjoy Sheridan and O'Neill in the meanwhile. 5) I don't know if Balanchine is the greatest choreographer of all time, but I believe that he will prove to be the greatest ballet choreographer of my lifetime and I consider it a privilege to have been alive while we was making ballets.

That sounds about right. I suspect that the Magicians books have the most juice if middle school is behind you, but the magic that Narnia and Hogwarts may have had for you is still fresh in your memory.

The audience is on a learning curve too: it's by watching that we learn how to see. I'm the first to admit that there has been plenty of good -- even great -- work that I didn't appreciate until my eye had taken in some magical critical mass of it and the light suddenly went on. Recent example: Crystal Pite. I'm not ready to drop the mantle of greatness on her, but once I noticed how "cinematic" her stage pictures are I had a way into her work that's led me to appreciate what (I think) she's up to. Mauro Bigonzetti, however, eludes me still ...