Kathleen O'Connell

_{I should not have made a blatant comment about tall dancers not being good in Stars and Stripes. Sorry about that. I haven't seen Chase Finlay's El Capitan. I did see Charles Akegard in Stars several times and was disappointed in his performance. But that's just one dancer. I saw Teresa Reichlen as Liberty Bell (with Askegard) in 2009 and was disappointed in her performance as well. But that was four years ago, a long time ago in ballet ages. I will post more later (I know I keep saying that, but I'm finishing up my 'Le Corsaire' thoughts now) but Ashley Bouder and Andrew Veyette were absolutely senasational in Stars on Sunday. I may be wrong about this, but it seemed to me that when Bouder and Veyette were doing their solos, the music was even faster than usual (which is super fast to begin with). The whole afternoon was just incredible. Abatt is so right!! What a way to end the season!!!}

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!

Tons of fun at the season closer, with crowd-pleasing performances of Serenade, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, and Stars and Stripes. One of my regrets of the season is that I didn't get to see Troy Schumacher leading the Third Regiment in Stars and Stripes. Daniel Ulbricht was amazing, of course, and Bouder and Veyette looked like they were having the time of their lives. I was too!!!

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.

As a graduate instructor of undergraduates, sometimes in advanced composition courses, I can confirm (over my five years of teaching) that the inability to write clearly, manifest from the brainstorming stage all the way to proofreading stage combined with a lack of awareness that their inability to do so presents an obstacle to their success at university (and beyond), is becoming ever more widespread.

Or, to simplify the beast created by my monstrous subclauses: yes, you see a lot more bad writing/copy editing online, but I would argue that the fundamental skills are not taught effectively at a basic level.

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!

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.)

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

Kathleen, your comments about Handel and countertenors is fascinating and enlightening--the idea that we use them partly out of squeamishness w/gender of course sheds a whole new (and disappointing) light on things. That said, I really thought Christophe Dumaux as Ptolomeo was fantastic!

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.

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.)

While ballet costs a pretty penny - so do all live performances. The cheapest ticket to a Rihanna concert in Dallas is $55 after you add in all the fees. That's for a nose bleeder seat. The full festival pass to Coachella has a basement price of $349 (shipping tickets is extra). I could go on and on, but tickets to any show, festival or concert where 20-ish generation go in droves -- all are more expensive than cheap seats at the ballet.

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.

I think most of us understand that artists make things, no? That's why we want to read about them; we love the art and want to know more about the person who made it. The issue arises with those who do seem to make careers of being a--holes, and such cases exist. (Some come across as a--holes even when their biographers are trying to put the best possible face on things.) I don't think Mr. B. was one of the a--holes, for what that's worth, but his private life - insofar as he had one, really - was part and parcel of his art, more so than for most artists. The Farrell story is an illustration of that, in a sense: personal human relations are often as not messy and disappointing, but ultimately for both parties the art is what really matters. For myself, I do want to know about Balanchine's art but I think it's time for a more compleat life of Balanchine as well. I hope Homans comes up with the goods.

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.

I didn't find Homans particularly credible in her last tome in the way she dismissed aesthetics that weren't to her taste, and I have no reason to believe any of her other work will be more balanced. I'll have to wait for the book to see if I'm wrong.

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:

Janet Malcolm understands that artists make things. This may seem a more than obvious truth, but it’s startling how often it is sidelined. A fair amount of writing about artists is premised on the idea that they are better or worse or more generous or brutish or attuned to the subtle vibrations of the universe than the rest of us. Malcolm doesn’t seem to think so, and it’s very refreshing. The profiles in her new collection Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers focus primarily on thing-making – the ideas behind it, the process of it, and the way those things are received by the public – as opposed to personality. Not that personality is missing from her essays; the reader gets a very strong sense of various artistic characters and their mannerisms. But there is little here of sleazy affairs, bad behavior toward family and colleagues, or other familiar fodder of artistic biography. (Often such biography suggests that the artist’s main career is being an asshole, while the paintings or photographs or books happen somehow in his free time.)

from "Making Things Is Hard Work: Janet Malcolm’s Forty-One False Starts," posted in The Millions on May 7, 2013

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.

For that, there's one word:

Barihunks

They also have tenor crushes who are featured.

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!

The US is very good at allowing tax deductions (if you itemize) for charitable contributions to all sorts of groups with 501©(3) status, including the arts. Those are really tax expenditures of public funds, although we don't always think of them that way.

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

Reichlen's debut in Piano Concerto # 2 may have been the high point of the season, looking forward to seeing her do it again.

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.

I continue to be intrigued by Megan LeCrone

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.

I have a slightly different view of technique this morning (well, it's still morning here) Currently reading Michael Ruhlman's Ratio (about cooking fundamentals) He spends a great deal of time discussing the different between basic techniques and recipes, and I was taken with a couple of his observations.

"Technique must be practiced -- you can never stop getting better." and "Technique will ultimately determine the quality of the end result."

We have a tendency sometimes to dismiss the underlying skills with comments like "oh, that's just technique," or "she's a just a technical dancer" when I think we're really trying to get at a disconnect between skills and what they serve.

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."

Edward Gorey, author, illustrator, and noted balletomane has been honored with his very own Google Doodle on what would have been his 88th birthday.

You can view an animated version of the doodle

Here's a HuffPo article about the Gorey Doodle, with a link to the animated intro he crafted for PBS' long-running "Mystery!" series.

A reprint of "The Lavender Leotard: or going a lot to the New York City Ballet," written to celebrate NYCB's 50th anniversary, is available for purchase here. The page includes an excerpt from Tobi Tobias' review of the book for Dance Magazine. Here's a quote:

Caricaturist not of personalities, but of events and ambiances, he chronicles the company's distinctive foibles, faults which have somehow become endearing to those of us who've seen the New York City Ballet through its lean years as well as the fat. There is its inability to cope with costumes and scenery, beginning with the poverty-stricken leotard and blue cyclorama days, when the company was rich only in aesthetic--'Don't you feel the whole idea of sets and costumes is vulgar?'

Deadpan, Gorey notes the chronic and incredible misuse of scenery: the Novice, dressed in her intestinal thing, with Nora's wet-locked hairdo, says to the G-stringed male bug she is about, somewhat reluctantly, to devour: 'Just once we could use the Serenade costumes and the backdrop from Lilac Garden.'

You can find the Ballet Alert! thread detailing all the inside baseball here.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Gorey!

Just from last November. The Romantic style is still alive..!

Oh, if the

On another thread, sandik responded as follows to a post by cubanmiamiboy --

Do people think of Giselle differently than they do the Petipa classics (never mind that most of the material we know of Giselle was restaged and revamped by Petipa...)

Yes. Maybe I can't see past those long Romantic tutus and those low Romantic buns, but Act II strikes my eye in a different way than a Petitpa white act does. But the Romantic ballet that feels really different to me is Bournonville's "La Sylphide." Only the Sylph and her sisters dance on pointe, and the pointe work thus has a real theatrical purpose: you know James is communing with something otherworldly for real. Flesh-and-blood Effie and her companions dance up a storm -- but in character shoes, and it matters. By the time we get to Petipa, pointe work has lost that flavor of specialness.

Oh, this is sad news, indeed! Brown's company looked splendid at BAM on Wednesday night. Included in their number was Jamie Scott, who was a member of Cunningham's company from 2007 until it disbanded last year. (Talk about irony.) I liked both of the new works on the program -- Brown's last, alas, although they didn't look at all "valedictory." Brown's choreography has always seemed very "in the moment" to me -- like some sort of natural process that's unfolding in real time right before your eyes -- and perhaps that's the new works didn't read like "the end."

I can't bear the thought of this company breaking up any more than I could bear the thought of Cunningham's breaking up. With these dancers and with Lucas and Madden there too, I know Brown's legacy is safe for at least a little while longer.

The Winter 2013 issue of Dance View contains another in the series of "George Balanchine Foundation Interpreters Archive and Works and Process."

Leigh Witchel reports on Gloria Govrin's sessions with Teresa Reichlen (Hippolyta, A Midsummer Night's Dream), Georgina Pazoquin (Coffee, The Nutcracker), and Emily Kikta, first movement, Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet).

Every one of the articles in this series has been fascinating and educational, especially as to what the reveal about they way small and not-so-small details have changed inexplicably (and perhaps inevitably) in the years since Balanchine's death. The entire series tends to be made into a book. (And wouldn't it be nice if the Foundation could persuade everyone involved to allow a release of the videos as well.)

I was thinking exactly the same thing while I was reading the article yesterday! Well, almost the same thing: I want to compile them all into a tablet app with embedded video clips and the like -- something along the lines of Merce 65.

Other reasons for mikes besides amplification include recording the performance and transmitting the sound to any monitors that are displaying what's going on in the theater.

That makes a lot of sense. If you look up at the first tier in the center, it appears there are several cameras permanently mounted to photograph the entire stage and that's what you're seeing in the lobbies on those screens. Which brings us back to an old question: how about some live-streaming of performances? Or at least tape them and make them available later so people unable to get to New York could see some of these wonderful performances?

Sigh ... I was looking at that camera set up last night and wondering why all that beautiful dancing wasn't being beamed out to the universe. Yeah, I know -- unions, rights, bandwidth, piracy, etc etc etc ... In all seriousness, the compensation and rights issues are real ones, but surely it's not too much to hope that they can be equitably resolved.

E.g., the piano sounded "mushy" to me in the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, but there are good explanations for that. First, the entire orchestra is miked, with at least 10 little mikes on stands scattered throughout the pit -- necessary, presumably, because of the odd acoustics in that pit. I saw at least two mikes clipped inside the stringed area of the piano and perhaps there were more. But, in fairness to the pianist, we should also note that she is playing a smallish grand -- I would guesstimate that it was about 6' as opposed to the 12' of a true concert grand. That means that many strings are doubled back over each other, which limits the sound possibilities that we hear in a concert performance. Add that to the odd acoustics and miking, all of which explain the "mushiness." Did she use a little too much sustenato pedal in certain sections? Perhaps, but that's a judgment call I can't separate from the other factors.

I'm not sure that the mikes you saw scattered throughout the pit were being used to amplify the sound in the auditorium. The theater's much-derided "audio enhancement" system was ripped out as part of the 2009 renovation, during which a number of structural changes were made to enhance the sound coming from the pit. I'd be surprised if the orchestra was being piped through the theater's current sound system.