Kathleen O'Connell

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.

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 ...

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.

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.

Exactly! Sandik, I think you just said what I was trying to say, but couldn't seem to articulate! If I'd seen your post first, I would have just stopped typing ...

Was that Caslavska's hair? Damn, she deserved to medal just for that -- although I do love those little Eastern-bloc pigtails. Better ... but I remain unconvinced. The 60's-90's dancing looks like Dolly Dinkle and the current dancing looks like the half-time show on the Tinytown High basketball court. I think the "dancing" demeans these superb athletes. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not trying to ridicule these obviously accomplished women -- but the lowliest member of the corps of just about any regional ballet company does the dance moves better. What distinguishes top gymnasts like these from everyone else, including dancers, is the power and fearless aplomb with which they dispatch--and recover from--their gravity defying gymnastics maneuvers. It annoys me no end that they have been expected to incorporate into their routines material in which they'll likely never look better than second rate (through no fault of their own, I hasten to add) -- especially because I can't get over the suspicion that the music and the dancey bits were imposed to make the sport seem more "ladylike." Watching Caslavaska with the music turned off brought home to me the fact that eliminating the music and dance elements from floor routines needn't make them artless. So much could be done with the internal rhythms of each pass and its attendant preparation and recovery, and I'm sure there are ways to score that. Caslavaska especially was as thrilling hitting the mat as she was in the air -- no dance required. OK, rant over.

I agree. One of the biggest differences in physical ability, though is that women are pretty much limited to tumbling, turns, and leaps, and probably a few presses, while men have the upper body strength to do planges and whatever they call it when they swing their legs around as if on the dungeon torture device pommel horse, although the total amount of time the men do these moves probably equals the amount of embarrassing "dance" movement the women do. I'd be OK with them (men and women) just standing there for a couple of seconds looking serene and composed while getting focussed for the next pass. Stillness can be a good thing to see too. I LOVE that stuff on the pommel horse, btw, but I think it looks oddly attenuated on the mat.

Understood. I think they should change the scoring criteria. Call me old-fashioned, but I think those criteria are sexist. I can see why women's gymnastic events are different from men's -- that's driven by the real differences between the genders in matters like upper body strength, flexibility and the like -- but I can't see why women gymnasts have to be performers in addition to being athletes, especially if male gymnasts aren't expected to do the same thing. It's as if the sport's early organizers were afraid to let women just glory in their physical prowess. And frankly, even the dancing in the 80's routines Dvora Meyers is so nostalgic for looks pretty lame. But the tumbling runs never do.

I just don't get the author's nostalgia for "dance" (I use the term advisedly) in women's gymnastic floor routines. These women look absolutely beautiful just doing what they do -- why impose some sort of gender-based requirement that they be graceful to music. Can the music, can the "choreography," can the shiny togs, and let them tumble full stop, just like the men.

Audiobooks via my iPod classic, the one electronic device I absolutely could not live without: Paul Murray's Skippy Dies. It was fantastic -- one of those books that really is both hilarious and heartbreaking. I highly recommend the audiobook, which is beautifully narrated by a full Irish cast (the action centers around a Dublin boarding school for boys). Hilary Mantel's Bring up the Bodies. Every bit as good as Wolf Hall, the first book in her trilogy of historical novels about Thomas Cromwell. Even James Wood, who normally has no time for historical fiction (or genre fiction of any kind for that matter) approves. Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, in a new translation. Also fantastic. (The first translation directly from the original Polish into English, apparently; the one that's been available to date is an English translation of the first French translation. Because of rights issues, the new translation is only available in ebook and audiobook form.) I first read Solaris a bazillion years ago in college, and I can't believe how much I missed the first time around. One really interesting thing: Lem was able to project (presumably) plausible future technologies that enable travel at or near the speed of light, anti-gravity drives, computer-controlled environments, etc., but completely missed digitization! The future world of Solaris is charmingly analogue: the space station where the action takes place is crammed full of paper books, magnetic tape, and complex calculations done by hand on pads of paper. (With a slide rule, maybe? I think mine is still lurking in a box in the back of a closet somewhere.) I've started re-watching Andrei Tarkovsky's great film adaptation on Mosfilm's YouTube channel. (All the films are subtitled. Click on the little red "cc" box in the lower right hand corner of the viewing box.) Alistair Reynolds' The Prefect. Fun space-opera-cum-police-procedural, but it ain't no Solaris. 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. Ebooks: How to Think Like a Neanderthal. No, not a self-help book. It's a reconstruction of what Neanderthal life -- and Neanderthal psychology -- might have been like based on the archeological record. I think the authors, two professors of psychology and anthropology at the University of Colorado, are on thin ice in a couple of places, but it was mostly very informative and thought-provoking. Picking my way through the two volumes of Susan Sontag's journals that have been issued to date, Reborn and As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh. I'm finding that the private Sontag that emerges from the journals is rather different from the oracular public persona. I used to see her in the audience at concerts and dance performances, and she always looked so forbidding -- and never like she was actually enjoying herself, though going out to see a performance or a film was apparently one of the great joys of her life. For some strange reason I was absolutely crushed to learn that the famous white streak in her hair was fake. In honor of Gore Vidal, who died just yesterday, I think I'll re-read Burr, Lincoln, or maybe Creation or Julian. Burr was the best time I've ever had with a book, hands down.

Hmmm ... it looks as if some of the repertory is missing as well. Um, where have "Dances at a Gathering," "In the Night," "Divertimento No. 15," and "Scotch Symphony" gone?

Thanks for the heads up, susanger! It looks like a real improvement in terms of both navigation and content. I like the fact that the repertory listing is accompanied by video clips, too, as well as a list of upcoming performance dates where relevant. My only beef: why oh why must these sites insist on bombarding our browsers with all that annoying java scriptage ... ugh. Something like 32 scripts tried to load when I first clicked on the site. For those of us who either must or choose to routinely block scripts for security reasons, it's a real pain. And I'm always sad to see names missing from the roster, even though after 30+ years of following the company you'd think I'd have grown used to it by now. It always feels like a friend -- or at least a friendly face -- has suddenly moved someplace far away before I could say goodbye.

I thought "August" might be clue enough ... but I've added a wink, just in case.

James Whiteside's tape posted on YouTube! Depending on your office environment, maybe not quite safe for work ... Eat your heart out, Beyoncé. And Please tell me I'm not the last person on the planet to have seen this. My husband alerted me to it after he came across it on MetaFilter. Sadly, it never occurred to me to google "JdDubs" after I watched Boston Ballet's Whiteside promo video in the "ABT's Male Principal Problem" thread. That'll teach me. And speaking of Beyoncé, and also via MetaFilter, here's "Single Ladies" dubbed over the Bob Fosse / Gwen Verdon video that appears to have given her some inspiration. Edited to add a just in case ...

Anything so long as they don't have to wear those gawd-awful feather earmuffs. But really, I prefer above-the-knee.

So soon?! I have nothing but good memories of Hendrickson's dancing -- I'll miss him! I saw what must have been one of his last performances of Puck in "Midsummer" and he certainly didn't look like someone who ought to be thinking about retirement. He was one of my favorite Pucks -- mischievous, but also sweetly merry. I was always hoping he might turn up in "Rubies" someday ... All the best!

OT OT OT! Just to be clear, by "lo-fi" I mean work that doesn't trade on extreme virtuosity, magnificently honed physiques, or mood lighting. That doesn't mean that the dancing isn't really hard to do or that no thought at all has been given to sets and costumes. In no particular order, choreographers whose work I've seen in the past couple of years that I will make every effort to see again (none of whom -- with maybe one exception -- would likely be appropriate for MCB because it's a ballet company and they are not ballet choreographers): Lo-fi: Wally Cardona, Keely Garfield, David Parker, Pam Tanowitz, Ivy Baldwin, Deganit Shemy, Tere O'Connor, Andrea Mitchell, Kate Weare, Monica Bill Barnes, John Jasperse. Tanowitz is the ballet "maybe." Bless her, she stood up at a pre-performance talk and openly declared her love for petit allegro -- the love that dare not speak its name as far as most contemporary ballet choreographers are concerned, it seems. Slightly less lo-fi: Doug Elkins, Larry Keigwin, Stephen Petronio, Camille Brown, Pierre Rigal Ringing changes on traditional forms: Rocio Molina, Pichet Klunchun, Nora Chipmaure, Akram Khan, Shantala Shivalingappa And Trisha Brown still does it for me. I saw the revival of "Astral Converted" at the Armory last week and loved every minute of it. (Unlike some reviewers I thought it was over too soon.) I'm sure there are worthy people I'm leaving off the list ... And I'm still coming to grips with the flavor of dance championed in this country most prominently by Cedar Lake Ballet. Usually labelled "European, it's definitely not lo-fi, but it's starting to grow on me. There should be videos of all this stuff on line somewhere. If I get a chance later today I'll throw up some links in a new thread.

I didn't mean to suggest that NO new operas were composed or staged, only that few opera companies, if any, view it as their mission to commission and present new operas as a matter of course and, more important to me, as a means of exploring its possibilities as an art form. (I realize most of them have as their mission just trying to stay alive, so kudos to the regional companies for getting at least some new work in front of us. The Met sure isn't interested. NYCO was, which is why its sad decline is so troubling.) You'd think opera's potential as a vehicle for multimedia spectacle (and I mean that as a good thing) in conjunction with advances in technology would have prompted something more interesting than the Met's new clunker of a Ring cycle. Or, since it's amenable to more intimate productions as well, that there might be a flourishing scene of chamber-scaled operas for club-style venues. I've long thought that there is a connection between an art form's vitality and the amount of disposable work it generates and then cheerfully trashes. I'm concerned that we've reached a point where it's a dispiriting tragedy when a new opera flops. And of course I'm not suggesting that ballet companies can let their heritage works fall in to disrepair or that they shouldn't work diligently to preserve their special stylistic sauce. But neither of those goals are incompatible with being more than a permanent collection.

Well, in the case of MoMA at least, it’s become something different than it was when it first began. It’s now an institution more treasured for its permanent collection—i.e., for a half century of art (give or take a few decades) now trapped in amber—than for its feints at championing the new. It’s relevant, but not in the way that it was. And while an art museum might be be able to thrive on its permanent collection, how many dance companies really could—or should? As much as I kvetch about the quality of most new ballets, I’d rather have them in all their mediocrity than see happen to ballet what happened to opera. Talk about a museum! It’s like a whole art form just ground to a halt. Putatively avant-garde restagings of centuries-old works do not a vibrant genre make, and the few genuinely new compositions that make it to the stage (much less survive in the rep) are only the exceptions that prove the rule. So, I for one am inclined to look favorably on ADs who don't want their companies to turn into permanent collections—which is how I interpret "museum"—even as I wince at some of the results. In ballet maybe. There’s some good, non-reactionary stuff happening in other precincts of the dance world, though -- and in terms of "flash," much of it is determinedly lo-fi.

For a little color commentary, here's a link to a 2006 New York Times article about the NYCB apprentice experience, spotlighting then-apprentices Kathryn Morgan and David Prottas. Helene: NYCB doesn't list apprentices on the company roster printed in the program, either. Apprentices are only shown in the cast list for the ballet they're dancing in, with a little "+" next to their names. Maybe it's a union thing.

Just a quick note about my compare and contrast exercise above: it wasn't intended as a value judgement, and I hope it didn't come across that way. "Theme and Variations" and "Arden Court" do happen to be more impressive works than either "Vespertine" and "Bacchae," but they're also more impressive works than the vast universe of lesser "House of Balanchine" and "House of Taylor" efforts. In other words, I'm not categorically dismissing Lidberg, Veggetti, or the other choreographers who work in that style -- I just wanted to show what I meant by "a different idiom." Quiggin: I thought "Bacchae" was most definitely a riff on the Euripides drama -- an exploration of some of its themes, let's say, rather than a retelling of the story. Some of it was exciting to watch -- for instance, a long solo for Frances Chiaverini (the Dionysus figure) that was itself a kind of riff on the movement style of a wooden puppet that appeared earlier in the work. I found it very moving, too, not just a physical tour de force. Unfortunately the dramatic connection between Chiaverini's solo and the puppet's wasn't as clear as the movement connection, and it was on that level that the work didn't hold together for me. Re the music: a clutch of younger choreographers seem to have turned their attention to postminimalism, broadly defined. In lesser hands, both the music and the choreography tends to a kind of anodyne, melancholy prettiness that I find inoffensive but uninteresting after the first few minutes -- but then I think that about mid-list Baroque, too. ETA: OK! I found with an extract from Chiaverini's solo -- it starts at about 1:40. There are also extracts from a duet for Chiaverini and Danchig-Waring (depicting aspects of Dionysius and Pentheus, one assumes) and from a solo for Gabrielle Lamb as Agave.Enough on "Bacchae" in an MCB thread, I think ...

Basically, yes. I did a quick tabulation of MCB's active repertory, and here's what I found: 46 ballets by Balanchine; 8 by or "after" Petipa (including an "after" by Balanchine); 8 by Paul Taylor; 6 by Tharp; 5 by Robbins; 5 or 9 by Villella (depending on how one counts all the "Neighborhood Ballroom" items); three traditional "afters" ("Coppélia," "Giselle," and "Grand Pas Classique"); 2 by Bournonville; 2 by Liam Scarlett; and one each by Ashton, Cranko, Limon, Trey McIntyre, Ratmanksy, Tudor, and Wheeldon. So, MCB's rep tilts heavily classical and neo-classical -- and I'd argue that in terms of presentational style and strategies for moving the body through space, the Taylor and Tharp works Villella has selected are less alien to that tilt than post-Wheeldon Morphoses. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, let's go to the tape. Compare this: With this: Arden Court With this: Vespertine | (Lidberg)And this: | | (Veggetti)ETA: Here's a clip. Veggetti and Lopez talk a bit, too. (Although I'll add that in the end the choreography in it's totality didn't live up to the talk. The work as a whole was just saturated with chic, however -- like one of those Ian Schrager hotel lobbies.)ETA 2: I can't seem to leave this post alone. Here's another with the very excellent Frances Chiaverini demonstrating how the sound-generating platform works. There's also some Adrian Danchig-Waring, but, alas, not enough.To me, the fact that Lidberg uses pointe shoes matters less than his manner of continually spinning the body down into itself, which is pretty much the opposite of what classical and neo-classical ballet does -- or Taylor, for that matter, despite the "weight" in his style. The effect created by massed bodies in the Lidberg and Veggetti works is different, too. (Wheeldon appropriates some of these tactics in his own choreography, of course.) Works in the "Vespertine" and "Bacchae" idiom also rely on arresting stage pictures to a greater degree than most of MCB's classical / neo-classical rep does. Not that costumes, sets, and lighting don't matter, but, as the clips show, "Bacchae" is somehow less without its dramatic lighting and set, whereas "Allegro Brillante," say, would probably work in practice clothes. it's just a different kind of theatricality. Does that clarify what I meant a bit?