Kathleen O'Connell

The guys who had to put up with shit because they wanted to dance are well-represented. I'd like to see somebody who is OPENLY gay, but maybe they'll get around to that.

I could have done without all the hoisting of the bro cups over the male-to-female ratio in ballet studios, though. (Episode 8: Male Dancers)

And I'd like to see a same-sex couple. I realize that this is AOL ... but the demographic this series is targeting is commendably relaxed about same-sex marriage. (According to a March 2013 ABC / Washington Post poll, 81% of adults under 30 are in favor of same-sex marriage.)

To follow up on California's comment, Gabe Stone Shayer was indeed spectacular as Ariel yesterday. I wasn't eager to sit through Tempest again, but I was curious to see the second cast -- and in particular Shayer, who made a big impression on me as part of the ensemble in Clear a night or two ago. He is a young man with a lot of talent. Huge effortless leaps with soft landings, charming and vivid acting, and charisma to burn. He is not a slender androgynous type like Simkin, and in fact he has a somewhat thick, weighted quality, but somehow it just seemed so right as he flew across the stage. I'm glad ABT didn't hold to the hierarchy, and gave this young man a huge opportunity!

Cobweb -- I totally agree about Shayer! Although I didn't know who he was at the time, I couldn't take my eyes off of him in "Clear" (except when I couldn't take them off Thomas Forster ... ) The first thing I did when I got home after Saturday evening's performance was scour the ABT website to figure out who I'd been watching. Those jumps were a thing of beauty. And he's fast, to boot.

"The Tempest" isn't the kind of play that translates well to dance. I can see being tempted by the possibilities inherent in characters like Ariel and Calaban, but Prospero seems a choreographic bridge too far. I suspect that more than one choreographer, director, or composer identifies with Prospero and all of his theater-making (not to mention his directorial control) -- "I am SO like this guy!" -- and that he must therefore be irresistible to them.

The puppetmeister/control and struggle aspects between Prospero and Ariel/Caliban/Miranda should be catnip, though -- think of all those Drosselmeier/Marie/Prince impositions, and von Rothbart, and both Ashton and Balanchine told a complex story in "Midsummer." I'm not sure why "the Tempest" is so elusive. It also sounds like there are structural issues that repeat viewings won't "fix."

As others have pointed out, the music Ratmansky chose (Sibelius' incidental music for "The Tempest") is a huge obstacle. It sounds like a film score, not dance music -- it's lovely, but inert.

I think Ratmansky's first mistake was inserting the play's backstory as a flashback rather than taking things in chronological order. I can practically recite parts of "The Tempest" by heart and even I was confused by the flashback. Just because Shakespeare begins with Alonso's shipwreck doesn't mean Ratmansky has to. If he'd shown us the usurpation, then Prospero and Miranda's shipwreck, then the enslavement of Ariel and Calaban, then Alonso's shipwreck etc etc etc the ballet would have had a clearer narrative arc. Imagine "Midsummer" if Balanchine had started with Titania's infatuation with Bottom and only then flashed back to the initial quarrel with Oberon, and I think you'll get the picture.

And it looks to me like Ratmansky is airlifting his tribe of faintly malevolent enchanted spirits from one ballet into another ... all with punk headgear ...

Tempest ... The bad IMO - Lack of narrative clarity.

You said it. The plot of "Namouna" is easier to follow ...

"The Tempest" isn't the kind of play that translates well to dance. I can see being tempted by the possibilities inherent in characters like Ariel and Calaban, but Prospero seems a choreographic bridge too far. I suspect that more than one choreographer, director, or composer identifies with Prospero and all of his theater-making (not to mention his directorial control) -- "I am SO like this guy!" -- and that he must therefore be irresistible to them.

I neglected to mention that there are computer workstations in the 3rd floor carrells -- including the viewing stations -- from which you can access the on-line catalogue.

So, you don't have to look everything up before you go. If you're near Lincoln Center and you've got an hour or two to kill, you can just wander into NYPLPA and watch whatever strikes your fancy. Provided the Library is open, of course. Its hours are limited: 12PM-6PM on Tues, Wed, Fri, & Sat; 12PM-8PM on Mon & Thu; closed on Sun.

Is it possible to view the NYPL videos in the library itself? Or do the videos have to be checked out?

A general guide to using the NYPLPA collection of dance recordings:

1) I believe that the DVDs that can be checked out from the NYPLPA are limited to commercial releases. The items in the research collection must be viewed on site -- i.e., at NYPLPA's Lincoln Center location. To date, that that includes the streamable items that have been digitized. I don't know if the streams will eventually be made available at other NYPL branches.

2) The catalogue indicates whether the item you want to view is a film, a video, a DVD, or a streamable digitized film. For example, I did a basic search for "balanchine" and "square dance." Under "Format" I checked the boxes for "film" "video cassette" and "DVD." You can see the results here. The first item that appears is a film on video disk of Suzanne Farrell's final performance. (No, she didn't dance Square Dance at her final performance ... It just so happens that Square Dance was on the program. You can get more information on the item -- cast, performance date, wide or close shot, etc by clicking on it's entry title.) Note the green text that reads "In-library use only": If you wanted to view this item, you have to request it from the desk and watch it in the third floor viewing stations. (More on how that works below.)

3) A little further down the list is a listing for "Square Dance [Close Shot] (Film - 1993)." This item has been digitized and can be streamed on-site. If you click on the text that reads "Connect to this title online (onsite at Library for the Performing Arts only)" you will be taken to the film's web page where you will be given more information about the item and told that you can stream it on-site.

4) Some notes about the 3rd floor viewing room:

a) If you want to view one of the not yet digitized, not streamable items, you have to write down its catalogue number and give it to one of the clerks at the 3rd floor AV desk. He or she will hand you a set of headphones and send you to a viewing station (basically, video monitors set up in study carrells). Your hands never touch the media! A technician in the bowels of the AV collection loads it remotely and feeds the content to your designated viewing station. You can control playback from your workstation and communicate directly with the AV tech if there is a problem with the film (e.g., no sound, no picture, etc.) I'm guessing that one of the real advantages to the digitization project is reducing the number of items that have to be viewed with the assistance of an AV tech.

b) BE WARNED! You have to check the following items before you are allowed into the 3rd floor special collections and viewing area:

• Parcels and packages
• Shopping bags and oversized bags (including purses)
• Suitcases and large containers
• Strollers
• Briefcases, back packs, and bookbags
• Coats and umbrellas
• Laptop cases

You can bring in:

• Personal books and other reading or writing materials
• Laptop computers
• Small purses

Everything has to fit into one of the plastic bags the staff gives you. (I usually bring a clear plastic ziploc of my own just in case.)

c) You have to get special permission to view some items. Usually this just means filling out a form stating your purpose for viewing the item and acknowledging that you will only be allowed to view it a limited number of times; it really depends on the restrictions the donor or rights holder has put on the material. The few times I've had to do this, I had to view the film in a special room (the Theater on Film and Tape Archive, or TOFT) -- I don't know if that applies to all special permission films or just the ones I happened to request.

d) Be prepared for less than ideal viewing conditions: the carrells are a cramped, the lights are bright, there's a bit of a hubbub going on around you, playback can be a bit wonky, etc. But it's worth it!

Kathleen O, you may enjoy Ratmansky's delicious "From Foreign Lands," which San Francisco Ballet is planning to bring to New York in October. When I saw them perform it at Stern Grove last month, it made me laugh out loud.

Grrrrr ... I'll be out of town! Otherwise it would have gone right on my dance card.

I'd heard about this project -- here's a little something to keep us entertained in the meantime. I wish the clips ran with their original music, but the editing is pretty tight.

Oh thank you!

W-a-a-a-a-a-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-w!!! I feel good!

Ratmansky's wonderful, delirious, demented Namouna returns to the NYCB repertory this season and I am absolutely psyched to see it again. Parts of it just make me laugh out loud with sheer delight.

On a side note (and if anyone cares) -- through the wonders of the Internet, the former AGMA agreement with SFB is available online as a PDF.

Thanks for the link, pherank. If I'm reading the AGMA agreement correctly, a corps member with 5-7 years of service made a minimum of about $1400 per week under the old contract. Just for some context, a fully credentialed K-12 teacher with a BA makes about $1340 per week in the SF public school system. (My calculation based on a salary of $49,500 for a184 day work year, which works out to 36.8 weeks. You can find the SF public school salary schedule here and the contract here.)

There are other things that need to be taken into consideration, of course -- e.g., overtime, benefits, etc. The dancers get overtime; the teachers don't. On the other hand, the teachers may have access to better health and retirement plans (I know AGMA runs both a health and retirement plan, but I believe the ability to participate in them depends on the collective bargaining agreement negotiated with each arts organization.) But the base salaries appear to be roughly comparable.

Usual caveat: I'm not arguing that artists shouldn't get paid more.

It would be interesting to know what the musicians make.

My goodness Kathleen, reading those blogs was depressing. I recall that another poster (perhaps Drew) has mentioned that Opera blogs can be heavy on the snark, and passionate debates can quickly devolve into acidic sniping. The comments on some of the blogs certainly reflects that.

Nothing prepares one for a good wallow in the mud of an acrimonious "debate" like the comments section of an opera blog. There will be peace in the Middle East before there's and end to the Callas v Tebaldi flame wars -- and we're talking about two deceased women who haven't been heard live in a theater in decades.

NYCO is in danger of canceling the rest of the current season and the next season unless $20 millions is raised.

Sigh ... this even seems to have caught the folks who put together New York Magazine's very up-to-the-minute Approval Matrix by surprise. Check out this week's entry in the "Highbrow and Brilliant" quadrant (the upper right), which I assume is a thumbs up for NYCO's 2013-2014 season, beginning with the much hyped BAM co-production of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole:

"St. Anne's Warehouse finally has a permanent home -- in the Tobacco Warehouse ... Meanwhile, after giving up its home, New York City Opera seems to be brilliantly homeless ..."

Perhaps NYCO's sad plight will make it to the "Lowbrow and Despicable" quadrant in next week's issue.

Parterre Box's La Cieca, meanwhile, has a slightly more cynical take. Go here and here.

There were many things NYCO did much, much better than the Met ... its demise will be a real loss.

Porn, on average, doesn't stop people from wanting sex: it makes them want to have more of the live experience, and I don't see why this wouldn't be true of ballet on HD vs. live performances (where available).

Hmmm … Maybe NYCB should do a porno. Other than Bugaku, I mean. Coppelia seems particularly rich with promise.

Ahem, but back to one of Helene’s points: as the popular music industry demonstrates, the wide availability of inexpensive (or even free) recordings doesn’t necessarily cannibalize live events. From The Economist’s 10/07/10 issue:

The longest, loudest boom is in live music. Between 1999 and 2009 concert-ticket sales in America tripled in value, from $1.5 billion to $4.6 billion.

It is not that more people are going to concerts. Rather, they are paying more to get in. In 1996 a ticket to one of America's top 100 concert tours cost $25.81, according to Pollstar, a research firm that tracks the market. If prices had increased in line with inflation, the average ticket would have cost $35.30 last year. In fact it cost $62.57. Well-known acts charge much more. The worldwide average ticket price to see Madonna last year was $114. For Simon & Garfunkel it was an eye-watering $169. Leading musicians have also, by roundabout means, seized a larger share of the mysterious “service” charges that are often tacked onto tickets.

Fans complain bitterly about the rising price of live music. Yet they keep paying for concerts.

Many musicians treat recordings not as a money-making end in themselves, but as a way to build an audience and pull it into a venue for a live event. As “The Sky is Rising” TechDirt’s 1/30/12 report on the entertainment industry pointed out “There’s actual scarcity (not artificial scarcity) for live music … There really isn’t a way to replicate rock stars like Bono, and many fans will do (or pay) almost anything to see them.” Big acts like U2 grab the headlines in this regard, but many indy bands make a decent living playing clubs and smaller venues. I live in near Irving Plaza and Webster Hall. They’re lined up to get in every night despite the fact that you can watch just about any act on YouTube or download their recordings for nothing if you really want to.

Live in cinema broadcasts of concert music and dance (yes, I’m deliberately avoiding the terms “classical” and “ballet”) might not function as the same kind of marketing tool that a music act's recordings can, however. For one thing, a broadcast of an opera, a ballet, or an orchestral concert is much more like a live event than a U2 single is like a U2 concert. (Sporting events are probably a better analogy here, although there is real money in broadcast rights.) For another, a major ballet, orchestra, or opera company with a “home” is unlikely to undertake the kind of extensive (and punishing) year-in-year-out tour schedule that a music act will. (It’s a different story for smaller dance and music ensembles. The Paul Taylor Dance Company never rests. Ditto the St. Lawrence String Quartet.) And popular music is deeply woven into the of the fabric of daily life in a way that the concert arts are not. (And I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but that's another discussion.)

So I can see why a U.S. performing arts organization that is not the Metropolitan Opera might hesitate to race into the live in cinema broadcast market: the barriers to entry are high (you have to negotiate with rights holders, artists, producers, donors / grantors, and distributors for starters), it’s expensive to do well, the financial rewards are uncertain, and it won’t necessarily put butts in seats back home.

For most performing arts organizations, live in cinema broadcasts are unlikely to be any more self-supporting than actual performances are and few can offer the draw of twenty-five star-studded productions over eight months like the Met does. This is where PBS ought to be awakening from its Antiques Roadshow and Yanni Pledge Week Special slumber to provide a real service to the arts. Live from Lincoln Center needn’t—and shouldn’t—be a once-in-a-blue moon TV broadcast anymore. PBS might use its institutional resources to produce a nice smorgasbord of live performances beamed into theaters and high school auditoriums across the nation year-round. (The Lincoln Center theaters are never dark, not even in August.) They could follow up with re-broadcasts on their own network, with downloads on iTunes or Amazon, with streaming on Netflix and Amazon, on the menus of airline seat-back entertainment systems, whatever wherever.

A consortium of major performing arts centers might collaborate to do the same thing. Hello, hello – Michael Kaiser, are you there?

The Irish Times obituary appears here.

One of my favorite lines from his translation of Beowulf, about Beowulf himself: "drunk, he slew no hearth-companions."

I'm grateful to him for his wonderful recording of that translation, because I never much cared for Beowulf before.

There's a recording of Heaney reading Beowulf on YouTube. Part One is here. Part Two is here.

The Irish Times obituary appears here.

One of my favorite lines from his translation of Beowulf, about Beowulf himself: "drunk, he slew no hearth-companions."

Oh, sad news! I love to read Heaney's translation of Beowulf aloud -- he mined the particular sonorities of the English language for everything that they're worth and the poem fairly leaps off the page at you.

A memento mori from Heaney's Beowulf (lines 1758-68) -- grim, but gorgeous to read.

[Heaney's puts this synopsis in the margin: Beowulf is exhorted to be mindful of the fragility of life]

O flower of warriors ...

For a brief while your strength is in bloom

but it fades quickly; and soon there will follow

illness or the sword to lay you low,

or a sudden fire or surge of water

or jabbing blade or javelin from the air

or repellant age. Your piercing eye

will dim and darken; and death will arrive,

dear warrior, to sweep you away.

RIP

BUT (and to me this is a big but) - you've only seen three ballets and one of them is Swan Lake - I'd recommend you pick something else from NYCB's excellent fall programs. This isn't likely to be the Swan Lake you've always wanted to see, and there are lots better ballets to chose from.

What Swanilda8 said. It's an awful production: dreadful to look at and worse than dreadful at storytelling. NYCB has many, many better things to see. If you'd like to stay focussed on story ballets, I recommend Balanchine's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." NYCB won't be presenting it until June, but it's worth the wait.

If you want to know what to during NYCB's upcoming fall season, just ask -- I know you will get good recommendations from the Ballet Alert community!

And the stuff about pointe work as the functional equivalent of foot-binding is beyond silly.

Possibly, but Macaulay is not the first to make the comparison nor will he be the last, I suspect. To cite only one such, a passage from Joan Brady's "The Unmaking of a Dancer":

"There is a coming of age in first squeezing the feet into tiny satin shoes....even the pain they cause, which can be awful, takes on a mystical significance of its own, like the first blood drawn in battle....It took years for the fruit of such footbinding to manifest themselves, but at the time I was delighted. What a toe shoe succeeds in doing is no less radical than changing the nature and function of the foot altogether..."

Note: I suspect that what follows is in the wrong thread, but since my initial complaint about Macaulay's article started here, I'll continue here. Moderators -- feel free to move this to a more appropriate thread.

Macaulay is speaking of current all-American ballerinas, but please feel free to discuss past greats.

For me, using Macaulay's definition -- by "American-born" I think he means US-born" -- from the past at NYCB I would nominate Maria Tallchief, Diana Adams, and Allegra Kent, and from ABT Nora Kaye, Cynthia Gregory, and Eleanor d'Antuono. My inclusion of Kaye makes it pretty clear that I don't think a dancer has to dance Odette, even the one-act version, or Aurora to be considered a ballerina. I'm perfectly happy to call a Tudor muse a ballerina.

Of course, his definition eliminates Paris-born Tanaquil LeClercq and Canadian Melissa Hayden.

And now, apparently, Gillian Murphy. From a correction posted today (7/9/13) at the bottom of Macaulay's original article:

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of American-born young women dancing in six different American companies who deserve to be called ballerinas. It is at least 10, not 11. One of the ballerinas, Gillian Murphy, is an American citizen and was raised in the United States but was born in Britain.

I'd have a higher opinion of the article had Macaulay made an effort to explain just what he means by "ballerina" and then shown how the women he discusses exemplify the term (or don't, as the case may be). The whole "Can there be such a thing as an American Ballerina?" riff comes off like a quickly improvised hook on which to hang the list of dancers he happens to like.

And don't even get me started on bloviating like this: "as she matches music with movement, she shows how the immense scale of ballet can turn musicality into a vastly three-dimensional form." Lordy, what does that even mean? Or the straw men: "For many people, a ballerina must also be an embodiment of the Old World … To some, an American ballerina has always been a virtual contradiction in terms." Who are these people? Not ABT, as Macaulay suggests; if its management thought an American-born ballerina had the kind of star power that they believe Cojocaru and Osipova have, they'd be running after her with a contract and a pen whether she embodied the old world or not. And the stuff about pointe work as the functional equivalent of foot-binding is beyond silly. Sure, ballet often exploits the realities of human sexual dimorphism, but that doesn't mean that it must necessarily be "an art form whose stage worlds are almost solely heterosexual and whose principal women are shown not as workers but as divinities" -- and Macaulay knows it. And frankly, any definition of "ballerina" that doesn't include Wendy Whelan "full time" just makes no sense. Yeah, she's on my list.

OK -- rant over.

I see that by the time I’d finished writing up what follows, a lot of other folks had already posted many of the same thoughts. Apologies for repeating what others have said!

I’m of two minds. I attended the Joyce performances that Harss reviewed in her FasterTimes piece and agree with her that “Haieff Divertimento” isn’t a masterpiece. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing it again, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to do so. Nor would I expect—or want—a ballet company to keep it in its repertory at the expense of other, better choreography, even if that other choreography was by someone not named Balanchine. Money is tight, careers are short, and there are already too many limits on what audiences without easy access to major companies get to see. I don’t want those audience to get “Haieff” in lieu of “Square Dance.” (Or “Meditation” in lieu of “After the Rain” for that matter.)

That being said, I’m all in favor of someone expending blood and treasure to preserve important choreography before it’s lost forever. And I’d consider the minor work of a major choreographer “important” for the purposes of reconstruction and preservation. Done right—with scrupulous research, adequate rehearsal time, good dancers, live music, decent costumes, professional lighting, expert videography, thorough documentation, a reliable archivist, and enough of a performance run for the revived work to be more than the dance equivalent of a zombie reanimation—it wouldn’t be cheap.

It may be that this work falls to specialist companies who make it their mission (New York Ballet Theater comes to mind); it may be that it happens in the context of a festival (an annual Aspen Festival funded reconstruction, say); it may be that it’s undertaken by a university dance department; it may be that it falls to the choreographer’s trust. And it may be that the work is revived once, documented, and then archived—and that would be fine. I think it’s OK if a work like “Haieff,” once it’s been documented, lives on in an archive rather than on stage.

Should Suzanne Farrell be directing her resources towards choreographic preservation? I think I’d rather that than another curate’s egg like her company’s 2011 run at the Joyce. The recorded music flattened the whole experience. The tight confines of the stage and the intimacy of the theater had the curious effect of making the “Diamonds” pas de deux look dinky. The dancers were more than good enough to show you what a rarely performed work like “Haieff” could be like, but not reliably up to the challenges of the major works on the program. Like everyone else I appreciated and admired the many good things Farrell had been able to impart to what is essentially a pick-up troupe, but I left the theater with the odd feeling that I’d seen recital rather than a performance.

Were Farrell able to secure the resources to build a real company—even if it were a chamber company that spent a good deal of its time on the road (a signal service to the arts, as far as I’m concerned)—I might feel differently.

Personally, I'm just fine with a ballerina's opting to drop the whole arms en haut bit in the balances. There are still plenty of "difficult bits" left in the Rose Adagio -- not to mention the rest of the ballet -- to demonstrate her mettle. To me it's more important that Aurora, as a queen in the making, accepts each suitor's proffered hand with the requisite degree of charm, self-possession, radiance, and musicality than that she somehow manages to get her hands up over her head and wreck the illusion of effortless grace in the process. When I think of the Auroras that have most moved me, it's not the balances I remember.

Not ballet: Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Paul Taylor live and in their primes.

Ballet: No dancer in particular, but I'd like to be transported back to the theater for the first performances of Giselle, La Sylphide (Bournonville's), and the Sleeping Beauty to see what they really looked like and to feel what the house vibe was like when these works were really new.

Marta Becket and the Amargosa Opera House were the subject of a 1999 award-winning documentary entitled "Amargosa." You can rent it for $0.99 on YouTube or $3.99 on Amazon Instant Video. It's available through iTunes as well, but only for purchase.

Via Slate magazine's "Behold: A Photo Blog": check out photographer David Leventi's portfolio of gorgeous, large-format photos of renowned opera houses taken from center stage. From his Artist's Statement:

I have photographed each house systematically from the spot at center stage where a performer would stand. ... Lit solely by the existing chandeliers and lamps, each opera house has been composed with the first row of seats acting as a base at the bottom of the frame to just above where the chandelier meets the ceiling at the top, everything is in focus from the front to the back of the house. The upper balcony is anchored to the top corners of the frame as much as possible while the ends of the rows of orchestra seats anchor the bottom corners. Though the proportion of the spaces varies, the goal is to attain both lateral and vertical symmetry in each image, thus flattening out the space in perfect equilibrium. The resulting view is an impossible one for the naked eye, but the camera allows both line-of-sight and periphery to come together in a single frame. This gives the effect – when one stands in front of the mural-sized prints – of being surrounded by the space.

In addition to the Palais Garnier, there are photos of the Bolshoi, the Mariinsky, Teatro Colón, Covent Garden, La Scala, La Fenice, the Met, and many, many more -- each more glorious than the last. (Except for the Met, which looks utterly garish except for its pretty chandeliers, and Toronto's Four Seasons Center, which somehow contrives to be both shiny and earth-toned, and non-descript.)

Leventi's portfolio also includes similarly scaled photos of prisons, Romania, and New York City. His New York photos especially remind me of the natural light, large-format work photographer Jan Staller did for his wonderful book "Frontier New York."

... the phial of 'upgrade'...

I've danced around The Phial of Upgrade a few too many times in my career, and I can tell you that -- like Juliet -- one always does wake up afterwards but it never, ever works out the way Friar IT Guy promised.

Helene -- Many thanks for taking on this thankless task!

[Note to props department: please weld the mouthpiece to the trumpet body before the next performance. The damn thing fell out almost as soon as Lowery started her variation and it lay there in the middle of the stage just daring someone to trip over it. Lowery nudged it a bit off center and a member of the corps finally managed to scoop the thing up and carry it off, for which she got a round of applause.]

The corps member who scooped up the hazardous debris was Megan Johnson, she deserved a huge round of applause she received.

Now that I know her name, let me applaud her once again ... Well done, Megan Johnson!