Kathleen O'Connell

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.

From Pherank, above, on July 5 2013: 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: 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."

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!

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!

Colleen – I thought you were making a point about type—i.e. “prince” vs “not prince”—rather than height, hence my comment that I thought a dancer of imagination—great dancers like Martins and d’Amboise specifically—could make something of both roles. (And I certainly wasn’t trying to call you out on some kind of error—my sincere apologies if that’s how it came across. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen good Apollos be good El Capitans—I forgot Sean Lavery!—and simply wanted to note that it could be done.) I’m in the camp that doesn’t think of Apollo as first and foremost a “prince,” but I see where people who do slot the role into the “prince” category are coming from. (Especially if their first Apollo was Peter Martins or Peter Boal.) I think you could also make the case that El Capitan is the American flavor of prince and that Liberty Bell is the American flavor of queen. Getting back to height: I think there is choreography that, as a function of rhetoric, line, and form, looks better on taller (or maybe longer-limbed) dancers vs choreography that looks better on shorter dancers. I think Midsummer’s Titania and the Tall Girl in Rubies may be examples of the former. There are male roles that get a lot of their effect from the kind of explosive power that’s easier to see in a shorter dancer: I’m thinking of the Prodigal Son or the third sailor in Fancy Free.There’s also choreography that is simply easier for a taller or shorter dancer to do. There’s choreography where height doesn’t seem to matter at all. Then there’s choreography that looks different on taller or shorter bodies in a way that’s both riveting and eye opening. Ib Anderson was my first tall Oberon, and I remember going “Whoa!” The bravura was just as brilliant, but it looked bracingly different on a taller body. I had the same experience last week seeing Liberty Bell danced back-to-back by Reichlen and Bouder – same steps, different thrills! I wouldn’t want to be without either one. And Sunday was one of the best NYCB send offs into summer that I can remember -- I'm looking forward to your report!

Bouder and Veyette dialed the bravura -- and the shtick -- up to 11. They weren't just projecting to the back row of the fourth ring, they were projecting the back row of some theater in way out in Cleveland. I wouldn't want to see Liberty Bell and El Capitan danced that way every time, but it sure was a blast yesterday. Veyette has absolutely perfected the little trick of casually strolling past his madly pirouetting Liberty Bell and just happening to catch her as she opens up into arabesque. It's a tiny little moment, but it speaks volumes about the kind of guy El Capitan is. Veyette's performance yesterday made me forget all about Damian Woetzel, and if that's not a compliment I don't know what is. Bravo! I also thoroughly enjoyed Savannah Lowery's great big sunny performance in Rifle Regiment (the Second Campaign). [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.] I saw two Stars and Stripes casts this season: Reichlen / Finlay / King / LeCrone / Schumacher and Bouder / Veyette / Pereira / Lowery / Ulbricht. Taken as a whole, yesterday's performance was much more in the jolly spirit of the thing -- even the corps seemed more energized. I preferred Reichlen's sweetly sexy Liberty Bell to Bouder's brassy flirt, but the wonderful thing about NYCB these days is that it can cast dancers as different in size and style as Reichlen and Bouder in the same roles -- they also share TPC2, Firebird, Swan Lake and probably something else I'm forgetting -- and get qualitatively different but equally thrilling interpretations. King and LeCrone are both favorites of mine, but they didn't seem temperamentally suited to Stars and Stripes: there's a whiff of cheerfully innocent "look at me!" vulgarity to the proceedings that neither of them can just groove on the way Lowery does. Ashley Isaacs kept drawing my eye in Corcoran Cadets (the First Campaign) -- I'd like to see her get a shot at leading the regiment. I liked both Schumacher and Ulbricht in Thunder and Gladiator; they -- like Bouder and Reichlen -- delivered different but equally enjoyable performances. (I adored Schumacher's Puck a few seasons ago -- I hope we get to see him in the role again next year.) Chase Finlay's debut was rocky: he won't be a good El Capitan until he's a better partner and has a fully developed principal's stamina and stage-smarts. If Reichlen isn't too big for Tyler Angle -- and they look terrific together -- then she shouldn't be too big for Finlay. A comment on Colleen Boresta's observations above contrasting the different requirements of Apollo and El Capitan: two notable Apollos were also notable El Capitans -- Jacques d'Amboise and Peter Martins. I think a dancer with imagination could do justice to both. Apollo in particular strikes me as one of those genuinely "porous" roles that can accomodate good dancers of every type and temperament -- but then I'm on record as preferring my Apollos feral. (And would therefore probably enjoy watching Veyette take on the challenge.) I don't think Martins' insistence on "blond" as Apollo's defining characteristic has served the role or the company well.

I was a graduate instructor of undergraduates w-a-a-a-y back in the late 70s and early 80s, and those basic skills weren't much in evidence then either. (Hmmm, should that be "70's and 80's" ... I can never remember ... ) I'm discouraged to learn that nothing has changed, although I'm not surprised either. Years later, when I'd moved on to a career in Finance, I happened to supervise a very bright and hard-working young man who couldn't write a clear sentence to save his life -- nor his career. Despite his real talents, it went nowhere, in part because we all got tired of re-writing his memos for him. Just handing it back to him and asking for a re-write accomplished nothing: he simply couldn't figure out what was wrong and how to fix it. (You might not think that good writing skills would be important in Finance, but trust me, they are. You often find yourself in the position of having to explain something complex to decision-makers who aren't conversant with your discipline and who a bit rusty in the math department to boot. Inevitably, they want a memo -- even though 15 minutes with you, some colored markers, and a whiteboard would be better.) But I myself make silly "principle / principal"-type mistakes all the time because I've become too reliant on automatic completion and spell check. Oh, and because computer keyboards allow you to type faster than you can think. It took a bit longer to pound things out on a typewriter.

I'm going to second RUKen: if you are concerned about sight lines, don't sit in the first 10 rows of the orchestra. Frankly, I only sit in the orchestra if I can't get a seat in the first or second ring, and even then I try to get no closer than row J. But opinions on this are mixed: some Ballet Alerters like to be up close, while some of us prefer to watch from further back. I prefer a higher vantage point so that I can better see the overall choreographic patterns: I use opera glasses if I want a closer look at a particular dancer. I happen to think the best seats in the house are in row A or B of the first or second rings, but I've sat in the "C" section of the first ring (the seats that go for $80 at the subscription price) and have seen everything just fine. Interestingly enough, rows A & B of the first ring never used to be available to subscribers: they were reserved as "house seats" and only released a week or two before the performance. If I wanted a shot at row A, I'd have to try to exchange my subscription tickets for them! perhaps that's changed now that they've tinkered with the pricing. I also prefer not to sit dead center, but I'm probably in the minority here. I think the stage picture has more depth if viewed slightly off to one side. AND in State Theater in particular there's less of a chance that the head in front of you will block your view. (The seats don't seem to me to be effectively staggered in the center sections of the rings.) You'll find out what you like best after you have a couple of performances under your belt. My husband and I are subscribers, but nine times out of ten we end up exchanging our tickets -- either because of schedule conflicts, or because we don't like the program, or because we've seen something on the program just one time to many. We rarely have trouble getting what we want, although it does happen occasionally. There have been times when his schedule has made it absolutely impossible for him to attend any performances at all, and I've exchanged his tickets for a few extra performances myself. (Message: if your seat-mate can't go, you can always exchange his ticket for one for yourself to an entirely different performance. NYCB doesn't require you to exchange two tickets for one performance for two tickets to another performance: you can mix and match. Plus if you exchange your ticket for a cheaper seat, they credit the difference back to your account.) If you think you'd like to see more than one NYCB performance, you may want to just go ahead and subscribe. The tickets will cost you less and you'll still have some flexibility to see what you want. NYCB's Coppelia and (especially) Midsummer Night's Dream are well worth seeing, so I hope you do go to see them too! Enjoy the show!

Feidelson's n+1 article is now available online: you can read it in full here.

Well, I'm not much of a stickler for an overly-scrupulous "authenticity": if the best singer for a particular role happens to be a countertenor, then by all means the countertenor should sing it! It's only when "best" is assumed to mean "in possession of the right set of body parts" that I get grumpy. And I do put my foot down when it comes to the repeat of the A section of a da capo aria: the repeat is an integral part of the form and is there for dramatic and musical reasons. Lopping it off to either save time or -- even worse -- to spare the audience to presumed tedium of having to hear it all over again is a crime against art.

KFW - Many thanks for the heads up re the Armory Event DVD! I hadn't realized that one was in the works. I went to the very last event on New Year's Eve, and it was both a beautiful and heartbreaking last look at a remarkable company. Robert Swinston did a phenomenal job assembling extracts from 50 years of Cunningham rep into a coherent whole and, even more remarkably, spreading it out over three stages simultaneously in such a way that no matter where you stood there were marvels to see. And the iPad app is really terrific. We need more dance apps like that. Also, there's a lengthy and interesting article about the Cunningham Trust and the whole vexed issue of choreographic preservation by Lizzie Feidelson in the latest issue of n+1. It's not available online yet, but most n+1 articles end up in their online archive eventually. (Feidelson is the granddaughter of Marianne Preger, one of Cunningham's first dancers, and has herself worked with the Trust.)

Ditto live sporting events. Taking a family to a major league ballgame costs a small fortune. But it doesn't even have to be live. Even catching a game and a few brews in a decent NYC sports bar will set you back. A ticket to the 3-D version of Luhrman's new "Gatsby" costs $19 at the Union Square cinema. But for $10 more you could sit in one of the $29 seats at tonight's NYCB performance. (I just checked -- there's a very decent one available in the 3rd ring.) We are privileged in NYC: there are ample opportunities to see inexpensive live dance (ahem, not just ballet), and a lot of it is really good. The heavily discounted day-of tickets at the Lincoln Center atrium put all kinds of live performance in reach. (I've gotten them a few times, and the seats have always been decent or better.) And, tickets to live shows have always been expensive in real terms -- i.e., adjusted to reflect inflation and median incomes. Proportionately, it cost just as much to sit in the cheap seats in 1960 as it does today. When I moved to NYC in the late 70's to go to grad school, I think I spent something like $15-$25 for seats in the Family Circle at the Met and the 4th ring at NYCB -- and that was a lot more out of my TA's check then than it would be today. ETA: Ugh. I hope I'm not coming off as some sort of scold! Trieste, I have felt your pain. Live art is expensive to do and hard make available at a low cost. I sing with a little amateur community chorus: considering that almost everyone on stage is unpaid and performs in their own clothes, it's astonishing how much it costs us to put on even the most bare-bones of concerts.

Ideally, what should one look for in a new biography of Balanchine? What would make such a document more complete -- or at least more satisfying -- than what we already have? Are there archives that have yet to be reviewed and analyzed -- documents in Russia or France, perhaps? Is there a need for someone to transcribe, compile, and synthesize the vast trove personal recollections and observations that currently exist? I'd be interested in a book that examined Balanchine's art in the context of the intellectual, cultural, and political climate in which he worked. (Or books -- his career did encompass the bulk of the 20th century and it might take more than one to do it justice.) Since "Apollo's Angels" was an attempt at a cultural history of ballet, perhaps that's what Homans has in mind for her Balanchine book as well.

Agreed. I'd have been less irritated by "Apollo's Angels" had it been written and billed as a straight-up attempt at dance criticism rather than as a comprehensive history of an art form. I grew weary of being told that this or that work wasn't really ballet because it didn't fall within the confines of Homans' tendentious definition of the form. She's too heavily invested in selling the idea that ballet is an exemplar of a particular kind of moral rigor to be able to deliver an objective history, much less a workable definition. Anyway, when I read the opening paragraph in Pamela Erens' review of Janet Malcolm's Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers, I knew exactly what kind of book about Balanchine I really wanted: I know enough about Balanchine's life; what I really want to understand is his art. ETA: I'm not by any means suggesting that we ought avert our eyes from the uglier episodes in Balanchine's life. We don't need a hagiography either.

Honestly, if you're only interested in "must see" programs rather than a second (or third, or fourth, or whatever) look at core Balanchine rep or your favorite dancers, you should probably save your money for the 2013-2014 season, when more interesting stuff will be on offer. ("Namouna"! Yay!) If you're a Balanchine completist, by all means try to catch "Ivesiana" as it doesn't get programmed often. I'm especially partial to "Central Park in the Dark," which must be one of Balanchine's bleakest explorations of a woman's psyche, but your life will still be worth living if you don't get to see it. I'm not a Martins fan, and he's programmed a number of his own works this spring. If you catch one of the Calcium Light Night / Barber Violin Concerto / Fearful Symmetries programs, you'll have seen most of his better works in one go and will have done your duty by him. The new Wheeldon will come around again next year, but it looks as if Peck's newish "In Creases" won't. It's been programmed with "Concerto DSCH," "Sonatas and Interludes," and "Stars and Stripes," which wouldn't be a bad way to spend an evening, IMO, but isn't something you'd move heaven and earth to see. (I remember liking Tanner's "Sonatas and Interludes," which is set to one of my favorite John Cage compositions.)

The only countertenor I ever enjoyed live on the opera stage was NYCO regular David Walker, whose career never got the traction his contemporaries David Daniels' and Bejun Mehta's did. Walker's voice wasn't lavishly pretty, but it did have some actual colors in it and he was a wonderfully musical singer as well as terrific actor. Handel himself never used countertenors in his operas. If he couldn't cast his castrato of choice, he would cast a female alto or soprano in the role instead. (And note that Handel usually relegated tenors and basses to secondary roles -- royal fathers, trusted retainers and the like. Heroes and heroines were sung by voices in the soprano to contralto range. It was the convention.) Our era's apparent squeamishness around gender and singing en travesti has led many an opera director to cast countertenors in male roles that were always taken by women in Handel's day -- Sesto in Giulio Cesare and Polinesso in Ariodante are but two examples. The role of Sesto was written for soprano Margherita Durastanti. Sesto is a boy -- a teen at most -- and it makes theatrical sense to put a woman in the role; think of Mozart's Cherubino. I never could wrap my head around the beefy, bearded Daniels as a teenage boy only just on the cusp of adulthood.

Ah, the Hunkentenor! When it's a tag on Parterre Box, you know it's real.

Plenty of opportunities to see the latest cohort of newly-promoted dancers show what they can do! If you happen to be at the Tuesday or Sunday performances of Swan Lake, keep an eye out for Ashley Laracey's lovely, lovely performance in the Pas de Neuf. Bye-the-bye, the company has posted short performance video clips showcasing each principal and soloist in the "Dancers" section of the NYCB website. Very nice -- and of course, not nearly enough!

Absolutely! The tax subsidy provided to 501c(3) organizations -- including everything from the Metropolitan Opera to the dinky little community chorus I sing with -- adds up to real money. According to Giving USA, donations to charitable organizations in 2011 totaled $298.42 billion (about 2% of GDP). Assuming that the entire $298 billion was deducted from income that would otherwise have been taxed at 18% 20% -- the estimated average US Federal tax rate for all households in 2011 2010 -- that's about $60 $54 billion in foregone tax revenue. [Oops! I had to make some edits. The tax rate I pulled the first time around was published in 2011 but was based on (actual) 2008 tax data. My updated rate is based estimated 2010 tax data published by Brookings Institution's Tax Policy Center. Apologies! ] Whether there should be a deduction for charitable contributions or not is another matter ... but the tax subsidy -- or "spending through the tax code" as it's often called in policy discussions -- is real. You can find a lot of interesting information about US charitable contributions at the National Park Service website. (I can't even guess as to why it's there of all places ...) Here's a taste of what's there: 2011 Contributions By Type of Recipient Organization Religion $95.88 billion Education $38.87 billion Gifts to Foundations $25.83 billion Human Services $35.39 billion Public-Society Benefit $21.37 billion Health $24.75 billion International Affairs $22.68 billion Arts, Culture & Humanities $13.12 billion Environment & Animals $7.81 billion Foundation Grants to Individuals $3.75 billion Unallocated $8.97 billion

It was certainly the highlight of mine. I'd crawl over broken glass on my hands and knees to see her do it again. Was it really her debut? I thought she'd done it before -- if not, just wow. She debuted as "Diamond" in one of the Sleeping Beauties I attended and was the first dancer I've seen make sense of Martins' thankless choreography for that part -- it's the kind of variation that looks difficult, but to no particular effect. Even really good ballerinas can look clumsy in it, but Le Crone looked like an aristocrat.

As it happened, the two Sleeping Beauties I attended were matinees and there were respectably-sized contingents of young children at both performances. (But not enough! I wanted to see even more of them there.) They kids were all very well-behaved: the little girl sitting next to me at Sunday’s performance was such a model of deportment and engaged attention that I wanted to pull out my phone, sneak a video, and have the NYCB folks run in it on the lobby monitors before every performance under the title “Attention Grown-Ups: This Is How One Behaves at the Theater.” Savannah Lowery, a last-minute substitute for Rebecca Krohn, danced the Lilac Fairy at the Sunday 2/24/13 matinee. While I can’t say that I’d run to the theater just to see Lowery dance something, I find her sunny, unmannered, can-do earnestness utterly endearing and I end up rooting for her whenever she’s on the program. I liked her Lilac just fine. (She’s improved tremendously as a dancer and I really like her Firebird Princess, too.) Anyway, just as she made her entrance in Act IV to herald the arrival of Aurora and Désiré for their big pas de deux, this excited little voice pipes up at full volume: “OHHHHHHHHH! It’s the FAIRY !!!!!!!!” It was the most adorable thing on the planet and if a better compliment could be paid to Lowery’s performance, I surely don’t know what it is: she clearly had that kid in the palm of her hand.

Agreed! This puts me in mind of one of Murray Perahia's anecdotes about his time studying with Vladimir Horowitz. Perahia told Horowitz that he wanted to be "more than a virtuoso." "Well," Horowitz observed,"If you want to be more than a virtuoso, first you have to be a virtuoso."