Kathleen O'Connell

Austen exploitation books seem to have become a minor industry. I once browsed through something called "Mrs. Darcy" in the store and was mildly appalled. I suppose if she'd been as productive as Dickens we wouldn't be having this problem.

I hesitate to call it exploitation, but Austen seems to have inspired an incredible amount of work, some of it attempting to complete or extend the original writing, the rest of it exploring the period of her novels. I've seen Jane Austen cookbooks (with some tasty stuff), home decor books, knitting magazines, etiquette books, etc. It is indeed possible that some of this work is a result of the relatively small number of her novels, but I think a large part of it is inspired by her characters and the gift she had of making small lives read very large.

I can't find a reference anywhere, but I seem to recall Edward Gorey claiming that he loved Jane Austen because she understood just how awful daily life really was.

For myself, I would certainly trade in a lot of what's on offer at the Joyce to catch at least two of the programs.

What about the Graham program?

Is seeing the Trocks worth the time and money, or if one has watched the DVD/Youtube program, does that suffice?

Ummm, getting OT here, but, have you seen any Paul Taylor yet? If not, I'd skip Graham (and the Trocks, and the NYCB Beauty, and probably the program with Bal de Couture on it) and catch some Paul Taylor during his company's three week run at Koch theater in March. Here's why:

1) He's one of the last living, still vibrant links to a storied era in American modern dance. I'm not saying he's got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, but he's in his 80's and isn't going to be around forever. Now's your chance to see his works performed while he's still in charge. And who knows what will happen to the bulk of his oeuvre when he's gone: it could simply evaporate like the work of other great choreographers has.

2) His current company is excellent. He can choose the best, and he's done so. You owe it to yourself to see some his senior dancers while they are at their peak.

3) Lots of ballet companies have included his works in their repertoire, but no one dances them like his own dancers.

4) YouTube just won't do.

I'm going to have to dredge up that essay!

Link please.

But whereas SL is fundamentally "tragic" -- evil can only be undone through death

Undone?

Death would seem to be the final result of evil. I do not understand how redemption follows.

Well, in its simplest terms, Odette chooses death and takes Von Rothbart with her, freeing her companions from his curse and ridding the world of his evil. There are any number of traditions in which someone good has to die in order to expiate the world of sin. (Christianity for one, no?) Sometimes it's a hero (perhaps of the "tragic" variety), sometimes it's a beautiful maiden. And, there are also traditions in which death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person: think of those with powerful codes of honor.

One supplement to Kathleen O'Connell's remarks: Croce thought that Theme and Variations (now, at NYCB, the last movement of Tchaikovsky Suite no. 3) was a kind of distillation of Sleeping beauty, something I think one can see in variations like the one with a row of women, the ballerina in the center, the women all linked arm in arm, and she traced the reference to the original ABT request to Balanchine for something in the spirit of Aurora's Wedding (not the exact wording, but roughly). She also speculated once that Piano Concerto no. II had echos of or riffs on Swan Lake, something that I never really saw until I read her essay...

I'm going to have to dredge up that essay! The idea that TPC2 is a gloss on Sleeping Beauty made so much sense to me when I first heard it that I was embarassed that I hadn't thought of it myself. I'm having a harder time drawing specific comparisons with Swan Lake, however. I can see some general similarities: for instance, TPC2's second movement certainly seems intended to evoke a white act -- although it also seems to me to share as much with SB's Vision Scene as with SL's lakeside. But whereas SL is fundamentally "tragic" -- evil can only be undone through death -- SB is fundamentally "comic": the world is put to rights when Aurora gets married to the right guy. (Aurora and Prince Desiré have more in common with Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy than they do with Odette and Prince Siegfried.) TPC2's narrative arc traces SB's rather than SL's: Princess arrives, Princess is lost, Princess is found, Princess reclaims her rightful place with a consort at her side and all's right with the world.

There's one way in which T&V feels to me like a closer gloss on Aurora's Wedding than TPC2 is on SB as a whole: the danseur seems (for once) as important a personage as the ballerina -- as something more than a mere cavalier or consort.

What about NYCB's Sleeping Beauty? Is it required viewing?

This is a bad habit.

Puppytreats --

Martin's production of Sleeping Beauty is rather brisk but pretty to look at and (IMO) theatrically cogent -- much more so than his dreary, ugly, arid Swan Lake -- and it will give you a far better idea of what Sleeping Beauty is all about than ABT's ghastly version (which is not theatrically cogent). If you're counterfeiting benjamins in the basement to feed that ballet monkey on your back, you might want to run off a few more and catch an NYCB Beauty to do a little compare / contrast. That being said, although NYCB's Beauty is better than ABT's, it's simply not a must-see the way Serenade or Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 2 are. (Some folks think of the latter ballet as Balanchine's distillation of Sleeping Beauty's essence, by the way.)

I'm sure if you search the Ballet Alert archives you'll find a wealth of pros and cons regarding both productions. There's some debate, for instance, regarding Martins' decision to cram the christening, the spell, the hunt, and the vision scenes into his first act, leaving only the awakening and the wedding divertissements for his second act. ABT's current version also only has one intermission, but they've placed it right after the spell, which is, I believe, somewhat more traditional. However, their version omits or truncates some of the traditional fairy-tale Wedding divertissements and the ballet feels rather sad without them.

I think you've done well to grab a full day of Balanchine and Tchaikovsky -- enjoy, and report back!

The only dud is Couture Ball. The first two weeks of the season are an embarrassment of riches. Go to all 3 programs, if possible.

Yes, but I want to see 11+ ABT Spring performances at the Met and KC, in addition to some Joyce theatre and Guggenheim performances, so I am relunctant to splurge on several NYCB Winter performances, unless you think it is "essential" viewing. I am not really interested in the "Sleeping Beauty" or "Swan Lake", but would consider them if highly recommended. I am embarrassed to sound so spoiled in this matter. I try to watch a lot of Youtube to be economically prudent, but I don't want to miss an important opportunity, either.

I'm with Abatt: see them all. I'd even spring for multiple casts if I could. It's not often that the company chooses to adorn a couple of mid-winter repertory weeks with so many of its Tchaikovsky jewels (no pun intended). What's more, there are dancers on the roster just now who I wouldn't want to miss in this repertory. And Balanchine's one-act "Swan Lake" is a must, IMO -- at the very least it's instructive to see what he thought could be omitted.

I was there today, and Lauren Lovette was stunning. Lush, sparkling.....Chase Finlay partnered her crisply and thoughtfully. Mary Sell was great as dewdrop. I also especially loved Claire Kretchmar (sp?) as coffee. If it wasn't for the 8 year old boy exclaiming "I'm Bored!" And " I want to leave" every two minutes sitting next to me, it would have been a perfect matinee!

Sandi

I wish I could have been there to catch those debuts -- especially Lovette's and Sell's -- actually, most especially Sell's. I've always appreciated her as one of the company's ever-reliable corps dancers (and I mean that as a compliment), but had never had the opportunity to see her in a featured role until the Fall 2012 season, when she danced as one of the two demi-soloists in Baiser de la Fée. She was just terrific -- her dancing was fast, daring, fully-charged. Lovette's a known quantity at this point, but Sell was a delightful surprise. I hope we get to see more of her soon!

WNYC has set up a "Remembering Ravi Shankar" page with links to interviews and performances taken from its archives.

Among them is a 1996 "New Sounds" performance featuring Shankar and his then 15-year old daughter Anoushka -- now a star in her own right -- and an interview from 1985.

As Quiggin pointed out in the Charles Rosen thread, the great American avant-garde composer Elliot Carter also died recently at the grand old age of 103. An exact contemporary of John Cage, Carter wrapped up his final composition a scant few months before his death.

Carter was the music director of Lincoln Kirstein’s Ballet Caravan for two years (1937-39) and composed the ballet Pocahontas for the company.

Carter’s New York Times obit is here.

In 2011 two young ballet choreographers -- Emery LeCrone and Avi Scher – were each given the opportunity to set a new work to five of Carter’s short chamber compositions under the auspices of the Guggenheim’s Works & Process Series.

Their new ballets were premiered at a Works & Process program in early October 2011. Our own Leigh Witchel was the moderator.

Alas, this wasn’t one of the programs that the Works & Process folks chose to archive in its entirety on the web, but you can see some clips from the program itself and the pre-program publicity on YouTube.

A short video containing extracts from the Works & Process program, including clips from both the works and the accompanying discussions are

.

“Sneak Peak” of Avi Scher’s contribution (“It Makes Me Nervous”).

one of Emery LeCrone’s contribution (“With Thoughtful Lightness”)

a related clip from an interview with Emery LeCrone and her sister, NYCB dancer Megan LeCrone.

Brian Seibert reviewed the Works & Process program in the New York Times.

Carter’s publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, interviewed him in his Manhattan apartment in 2010. You can watch the interviews – which document his career and features clips from some of his works here.

Boosey has posted extracts from his work here.

I love Carter’s string quartets, but my absolute favorite among his works is his 1952 Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello & Harpsichord.

Rest in Peace Mr. Rosen!

I still revisit Sonata Forms, The Classical Style, and The Romantic Generation regularly, but the Rosen book I'm most grateful for is his little volume on Arnold Schoenberg. It -- along with Balanchine's Episodes -- led me to love the Second Viennese School.

"The History of the World in 100 Objects." OK, technically it was published as a book in 2011 and started life as a series of BBC podcasts, but I got it for Christmas last year, so I'm putting it on the list. ... Or you could visit the website and listen to the podcasts here.

I've been thinking about this as a gift for someone, and feeling blue that I wasn't giving it to myself, but I didn't know there were podcasts!

The podcasts are wonderful. There are indeed one hundred of them and they average about 15 minutes each. You can listen on the BBC site or download them all in iTunes. The book is essentially a transcript of the podcasts with pictures.

Sigh ... I'm almost always at least a year behind when it comes to books, movies, recorded music, TV (which I have to do via Netflix since we've turned off cable) - everything that's not live, in other words.

But I do keep current when it comes to Hilary Mantel! I'm with liebs and Bart on Mantel's Thomas Cromwell (soon to be) trilogy -- I look forward to each new volume the way the YA crowd looked forward to each new installment of the Harry Potter or Hunger Games series. (For what it's worth, I'm the same way with George R. R. Martins' Song of Ice and Fire saga, although his books are delicious in an entirely different way from Mantel's beautifully crafted novels.)

Other books published 2012 that I managed to read and liked:

Laurent Binet's "HHhH." Binet is troubled by historical fiction for what I gather are both moral and, to a lesser extent, aesthetic reasons. (Mantel appears to be entirely at peace with the genre, bless her.) So, his gripping retelling of Reinhard Heydrich's assassination by Czech resistance fighters is interrupted at regular intervals by little tangents describing the narrator's travels in the course of researching the event and / or his anxious musings on the nature of history vs fiction and the like. It's not nearly as irritating as it sounds, although he tells the story of Heydrich and his assassins so well you sometimes wish he'd just get on with it already. But I'm glad I read it. His chilly Heydrich is both puny and monstrous.

Gillian Flynn's "Gone Girl" was a blast as a summer read. It's gimmicky -- Flynn isn't quite fair in the way she sets up the plot twist that made the book notorious -- but it's lots of fun anyway. I gather it's going to be a movie, although by rights it should be a mini-series.

"The History of the World in 100 Objects." OK, technically it was published as a book in 2011 and started life as a series of BBC podcasts, but I got it for Christmas last year, so I'm putting it on the list. Neil MacGregor -- the director of The British Museum -- manages to extract a ton meaningful historical, cultural, sociological, and psychological information from even the most fragmentary or seemingly pedestrian ancient artifacts. (He includes spectacular ones, too, of course.) His tone throughout is wondering, generous, enthusiastic, even sweet. I don't think it's the kind of thing you sit down and read in one go, but if you're looking for something you can put on your phone to dip into when you're on the subway or waiting in line at the DMV, this is it. (The photographs of the objects look just fine on mine.) Or you could visit the website and listen to the podcasts here.

I read Robert K. Massie's "Peter the Great" and the recently published "Catherine the Great" back-to-back. Highly recommended -- as a reading experience they're as immersive as novels. I was finally able to wrap my head around The Great Northern War (who knew Sweden had an empire), the battle of Poltava, and the many partitions of Poland.

The "meh" list: Jeffrey Eugenides' "The Marriage Plot" and Alan Hollinghurst's "The Stranger's Child." "The Stranger's Child" isn't bad, really, but it's a let-down after Hollinghurst's earlier "The Swimming Pool Library" and "The Line of Beauty."

The "I can't decide" list: Haruki Murakami's "1Q84" and Kate Zambreno's "Green Girl." Glad I read them, not sure I'd recommend them. "1Q84" feels like it needs a sequel, although I'm not sure I'm up to another 1100 pages of Murakami's peculiar world.

The only strategy that will really knock anyone over though, is to create really solid ballets, with excellent staging, choreography, performances, and, first-rate NEW music. And that's what we're not seeing very often. Maybe Martins should invite Christopher Wheeldon to create a ballet with Danny Elfman as composer. That might reach the 30-somethings at least.

I actually think NYCB has done a decent job of securing a variety of new music for its aprés-Balanchine ballets. I'm not a fan of Martins' choreography, but I do respect his willingness to put money in the hands of living composers. I respect his willingness to champion other choreographers, too, and bless him for keeping that costume shop going.

I thought Sufjan Stevens' score for Justin Peck's "Year of the Rabbit" threaded the indie / serious needle rather nicely but I do wish Martins would give up squandering the company's blood and treasure on gala bait brand-names who don't haven't a clue about live theater in general and ballet in particular.

Vipa -- This sounds like the ticket exchange program NYCB offers its subscribers. I use it with enthusiasm. My husband and I end up exchanging at least half of our season tickets, in part to accomodate our schedules and in part to dodge less-than-compelling programs. (I don't think I've ever changed for reasons of casting.) I normally make my exchanges right before each season begins, although I've had to make a few relatively last minute swaps as well. I've rarely had trouble getting into a performance I wanted to see, although it can be difficult to get last minute seats for big premieres, retirements, and debuts. It's also much easier if you don't require two adjacent seats. If you're going alone or willing to split up during the performance they can usually seat you somewhere reasonable.

PBL - I'm with Drew on sitting off-center, and this goes for the rings in the Koch as well as the Met. I'm not short, but I find that my view is blocked if I'm sitting in the center section and a taller person sits down in front of me. If I'm sitting further over to the side, it's much less of a problem. Also, I actually like the way dance looks when viewed from a slight angle rather than dead-on. I think it gives the field of view a bit more depth, but that's just me.

I don't know how ABT will handle ticket pricing at the Koch, but NYCB prices drop off the further you get from the center of the ring. Since the view is just fine from off center, those seats are a great bargain as far as I'm concerned. I've been over as far as seats 28/29 and didn't feel I was missing anything.

I advise against sitting the the actual side sections of the horseshoe shaped rings, however. There your view really does start to get compromised.

And we saw some truly miserable images from Staten Island, which was just pounded by the hurricane.

Oh, how could I have forgotten about Staten Island! I was there just a couple of weeks ago with my dad trying to find where his ship docked during WWII.

Let me join abatt, Imspear, and Aurora in thanking everyone for their concern and good wishes. I just want to add a note for those of you who live outside of the NY Metro area: reports of the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy aren't media hype. There are parts of the city where it looks and feels like absolutely nothing has happened. But for many who live in downtown Manhattan, in Brooklyn, in Queens, in New Jersey (including our next door neighbors across the Hudson), or on Long Island, this storm has been and will continue to be a world of trouble.

I'm lucky -- although my husband and I live in the downtown black-out zone, we were able to score a room in a mid-town hotel on Wednesday. I think I'm experiencing a form of survivor's guilt: here I am lolling about in the luxury of lights, heat, hot showers, flushable toilets, charged gadgets, and an internet connection while my neighbors -- some elderly, some with children -- are trapped many stories up a pitch-black stairwell with dwindling supplies of food, water, candles, batteries, and medication. And -- elderly folks excepted -- they're doing relatively OK. They can at least trudge down umpteen flights of stairs, make their way uptown somehow to a grocery or pharmacy, re-provision, and schlep it back up all those stairs. And their power will be back on by the weekend. For many others -- including those in the Manhattan flood zones -- it's much worse.

38 New Yorkers have died so far and many have seen their homes destroyed. Many will be without power for at least another week. If you're not familiar with NYC geography, it may surprise you to learn that parts of the city are quite isolated: the people who live there can't easily get out and the city is only just now getting food and drinking water to them. Many local merchants have lost much of their inventory, not to mention the days of sales they need to just to pay the bills. (The uncle of two men on my building's staff owns a small deli down the block. Every time the power goes out he has to toss thousands and thousands of dollars of perishable food. Multiply him by 10,000.) And it pains me to say this, but there has been some ugly looting in the Rockaways. There's no gas to be had anywhere. For folks in the outer boroughs, in NJ, or on Long Island who must drive or need the gas for their generators, this is a real issue. The folks who keep the city running, many of whom can ill afford to lose a day's work, commute for hours over a jury-rigged transit system to get to their jobs, and return to homes without power, heat, or water. Some now have no jobs to go to. If you're a first responder, a healthcare worker, or a Con-Ed or MTA employee, you are probably running on fumes at this point. And, as is the case with every disaster, the people with the fewest resources have been hit the hardest.

It's not Katrina-scale devastation, but it's bad all the same.

Edited to add: I don't want to sound entirely gloomy. Many New Yorkers are making the most of the opportunity that Sandy has given them to socialize with their neighbors, marvel at the strange night-time darkness of downtown Manhattan, bond over shared power strips, and lend a hand to somebody else.

Great news. The sight lines at City Center, while improved since the renovation, are still not wonderful. Koch is a much better theater.

I agree! As much as I want City Center to thrive, it's not an ideal theater for dance. Neither is the Met, frankly -- I'd be happy to see ABT decamp from there, too, although shoehorning their spring season into the Koch is probably a scheduling bridge too far.

Has anyone seen or heard of comparable acts of "artistic generosity"? (I don't mean the kind of male partnering which makes showing the ballerina part of the regular job.) It could be a special performance, a curtain call, or something else.

The key ingredient is .... using artistry and personality to take the focus off oneself in the service of a larger, or higher goal.

In the "special occasions" category: Philip Neal's farewell performance at NYCB. Wendy Whelan, his partner in "Chaconne," seemed clearly to be dancing to him and for him. (From where I sat it even looked as if she'd angled herself a bit so that she faced him as much as us during a couple solo passages.) It really did look as if she were saying "this is in your honor."

I'll second both "Dersu Uzala" and "Solaris" and add Sergei Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible" with Prokofiev's wonderful score. I think I've mentioned this before, but many classic Russian films can be watched in their entirety on Mosfilm's YouTube channel. Click the "cc" button in the lower right hand corner of the YouTube screen for subtitles.

Didn't Karin von Aroldingen receive gymnastics training as well? I always thought that part of the Stravinsky Violin Concerto pas de deux that Balanchine choreographed for her (and Bart Cook?) had echoes of a balance beam routine.

Maybe it's the upside of what seems to be a hotter and drier than usual summer, but the local blueberries and peaches have been SPECTACULAR this year. (So good, that by rights that entire sentence should have been in all caps.) Normally I'd be baking them into muffins or pies or something, but this year I haven't had the heart to do anything but snarf them down within minutes of buying them.

The folks who run the cooking demo at the Union Square Greenmarket were handing out samples of summer squash latkes a couple of weeks ago. They were awesome, so I took a recipe and have been making them instead. We'll probably be tired eating them (the latkes) by the time the zucchini and yellow squash are gone, but I will definitely mourn the day when the blueberries and peaches are over ... I just can't get enough of them.

While I"m on the subject, why are the men in beach volleyball wearing baggy shorts and T-shirts? If the women are wearing bikinis, the men should be wearing little Speedos!

Word.

I'm sure that Speedos would be just as comfortable to play in as the women's bikini bottoms.

Re those bikini bottoms: you might find this little photo essay amusing: What if every Olympic sport was photographed like beach volleyball? Be sure to scroll down. Not many speedos, but then the author is making a slightly different point ...

Serious historical fiction is a joy. Mantel's are possibly the best written historical novels I've ever read. She has an earlier novel about the French Revolution, A Place of Greater Safety -- focusing on the relationships among Danton, Robespierre, and Desmoulins. You can see the origins of the narrative style that makes the two novels about Thomas Cromwell so astonishing.

Re Gore Vidal: I also like the historical novels and am thinking of rereading Burr, with its roguish, though charming, almost tragic leading man. Have you read 1876? A lot of rogues in that, too. Both novels have amazing resonance given what is happening in U.S. politics today -- one of the low points of our long history.

I read A Place of Greater Safety, too. It was really good, but Wolf Hall just blew me away. I think I read 1876, but since I can't recall any of the details, maybe not ... Perhaps I'll go with that one rather than re-reading an old favorite.

• Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, credited with being the first detective novel in English. I'm pleased to report that little of real consequence has changed in the genre since 1868.
  

One of my favorites. Do you know who was the narrator, Kathleen?

The version I'm listening to uses a different narrator for each of the witnesses. I've just finished Gabriel Betteredge's section, which is narrated by Patrick Tull (who did all the Aubrey-Maturin novels). I've just started Drusilla Clack's section, which is narrated by Davina Porter. I think a bunch of the audiobook heavy-hitters will eventually get their turns. So far, the narration has been excellent and I'm really enjoying it.