Kathleen O'Connell

It seems to me that MCB has already tried an experimental connection with a modern dance company, Maximum Dance, several years ago. Nothing came of it. It will be interesting to see if Lopez can pull this off. Will MCB dancers be involved? (Morphoses is a pick-up company, so anyone can dance in any program I suppose.) Is there an audience for this kind of dance in Miami, where MCB itself has not always fit in well with the expectations of the Cuban classical ballet audience? Does anyone have thoughts about this? Or is it too early in the game? http://www.nytimes.c...?_r=1&ref=dance I think I'm Ballet Alert's official Morphoses cheerleader, so I'm hoping that the move to Miami will benefit both companies. Here are some potential positives: A Morphoses gig might give some MCB dancers, staffers, and technical personnel additional weeks of employment. A Morphoses gig might give some MCB dancers experience in a different "idiom," with the opportunity to participate in a more collaborative process than might be the MCB norm. Morphoses can likely tour more often than MCB can, and will likely be attractive to a different universe of presenters. Morphoses may attract funding from sources outside of Florida. Morphoses may bring some royalty-free repertory with it. (I don't know what the arrangements were with Wheeldon and the other choreographers who created works for the company.) Morphoses knows how to do a live stream of a performance and may have already negotiated for the relevant rights during the commissioning process. (I honestly don't know if MCB has tried live streams or not.) MCB won't have to be all things to all people, and can concentrate on the repertory at which it excels (and which its audience and board may prefer to support).

From my one visit to the renovated City Center, I'd say avoid the front of the orchestra (particularly rows AA-CC). You'll be very close and looking up at the stage -- it was fine for Encores! but probably not ideal for ballet. There appeared to be a decent-ish rake farther back in the orchestra, but I don't remember for sure. My impression was that the best views were in the grand tier (front of the second section). I also hear that the balcony sightlines have improved -- at least, in the front balcony -- but didn't investigate myself. City Center seating is better post-renovation than it was before, but still less than ideal. The house is relatively shallow, which means that although you'll be closer to the stage in the grand tier, mezzanine, and balcony than you will be in equivalent seating at the Met, you'll be looking down on the dancing at a steeper angle. It drives me bonkers, but your mileage may vary. I found that I actually prefer the front mezzanine to the grand tier and the back of the orchestra to the front, but I generally like sitting further back in any house, so again, your personal preferences may make a difference. My view wasn't blocked by any heads the last time I was there -- and pre-renovation I never saw anything at City Center that didn't feature the back of someone's head -- but that may have been a function of my sitting on the aisle. Note: in the past, there was always a rush from the mezzanine to the empty seats in the grand tier when the house lights went down. That's now impossible because of the way the big cross-house aisle between the mezzanine and the grand tier and section barriers have been re-arranged.

I think there is an "indie scene" in ballet -- i.e., companies that operate outside of the established ballet company model in terms of mission, scale, artistic vision, what have you. I'm thinking of groups as diverse as The Columbia Ballet Collaborative, Miro Malgloire's New Chamber Ballet, balletnext, Morphoses, New York Theater Ballet, Cedar Lake, etc etc etc and that's just in New York. One might argue that the whole downtown dance scene is "indie" -- and it's packed with arresting dancers (of every size, shape, and color) and engaging choreography done on a shoestring (and astonishingly cheap to see). Let me hasten to add, however, that just because it's not "ballet" doesn't mean it's necessarily easy or any more accommodating of an aging body than ballet. (They can't all be Robert Swinston. ) I wholeheartedly agree that there can and should be life after departure from one of the established ballet companies. But given the realities of making dance happen, I'm not surprised that projects like NDT 3 are rare. First of all, it costs a surprising amount of money to put on a show, even at a "cheap" venue, and even if a lot of the people involved work for free. (And in some cases they simply may not be able to for union reasons.) Live musicians cost money, but securing the rights for recorded music costs money too. Insurance costs money, and any venue worth using will demand that you have it. Just moving a piano into a hall that doesn't have one costs a small fortune. Lighting, wardrobe, sound systems all cost money. (Take a look at the nine-page technical rider for Morphoses' Bacchae to get a sense of what the checks get written for. Keep in mind that Morphoses is likely targeting university theaters, dance festivals, and small venues like the Joyce.) And the operative word in "freelance" can't be "free." If I were an up-and-coming choreographer trying to figure out how best to allocate my time, energy, and creativity and get the rent paid, I might opt to go shake the grant tree for myself. After all, if I'd been deemed good enough to make a work for retired ballerina X, I ought to be deemed good enough to get paid for the effort, too. Then there's the sheer hustle, grit, and administrative skill it takes to find the money, put everything together and get the show on a stage somewhere -- those retirees are going to have to have the kind of commitment it takes to make things happen. Art is hard.

Abi Stafford replaced Kathryn Morgan. (This change had been posted in the lobby earlier in the run.)

Just saw Tiler Peck's debut in the Act II Divertissement of Misdsummer Night's Dream. Stop whatever you are doing and buy a ticket RIGHT NOW for the Sunday matinee, when she's scheduled to dance it again. She was glorious.

Still writing at 91! I think Fahrenheit 451 was the first work of dystopian sci-fi I ever read, or rather, devoured. Rest in peace.

I admit it: my eyes rolled when I read that Jennifer Egan, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, was serializing a short story on Twitter. Surprise! "The Black Box" turned out to be a really good read. I read it in tablet edition of The New Yorker's Science Fiction issue (June 4 & 11, 2012), and in restrospect, I wish I'd read it while Egan was tweeting it out via @NYerFiction. The story is told via a series of brief, real-time dispatches-cum-field-instructions stored in a chip implanted in the citizen-spy heroine's hairline. (It's the Science Fiction issue, remember.) It was a completely engrossing read on my tablet, and reads pretty well online, too, but seems dead dead dead on the printed page. (It looks like something from the side of a cereal box.) It's still available on @NYerFiction, but the tweets are of course captured in reverse chronological order, so it's an awkward read there now. So yes, it was a stunt, but a good one. In terms of form, Egan exploited the particular characteristics of her chosen medium to perfection, but she also worked the tropes of both science fiction and espionage thrillers for everthing they're worth. (Your brain makes the movie for you unprompted.) The story is more moving than it has any right to be, and made me realize just how good a writer Egan really is. If anyone else has read it, I'd love to know what you thought. You can read "The Black Box" on line here. Egan briefly discusses the story's origins here. You can see two pages from the original manuscript; Egan wrote it in longhand in Japanese notebook containing eight rectangular blocks on each page (for making manga comic books, maybe?).

I don't begrudge them their galas either. Art takes money. In the best of all possible worlds, people with money would pay for art with no inducement other than the joy of seeing art happen. But we don't live in that world. So yeah, if it takes a swag bag and proximity to celebrities and the machers du jour to get the wealthy to pull out their checkbooks, then bring on the celebrities and the swag. (As long as the net take is sufficiently in the black, I hasten to add. There are plenty of charities for whom the return on development efforts, including galas, is trivial at best and a genuine drain on the organization at worst.) The real leaders in the philanthropic community are those who fund worthy endeavors because it's the right thing to do, and who, by their example, encourage others to do the same. But if we can't have those leaders, I'll take the machers. And I certainly don't begrudge using the gala as a showcase for new work. New ballets need to be made, and if the company can wring some buzz and bucks out of a gala unveiling, go for it. Ditto with "marketing" in the sense of figuring out how to get butts in seats. You better believe that if I were on the NYCB marketing team I'd be milking the fact that Justin Peck's new ballet is set to Sufjan Stevens' music for all that it was worth. And as long as Peck chose Stevens' music because he liked it and it moved him to make a dance, that's fine. What's not fine is making artistic choices solely for the purpose of generating one-time gala buzz or appealing to some shiny demographic. For one thing, it's a version of "the soft bigotry of low expectations." For another, as Sandik points out, it traps the organization on the fundraising equivalent of the hedonic treadmill. Worst of all, it saddles the company with white elephants like "Ocean's Kingdom" or "The Seven Deadly Sins." Whatever box-office success they may have had initially based on their headliners (the McCartneys and Patti Lupone, respectively) it's hard to imagine that either will live long in the rep. That's not the kind of long-term investment the company should be making in its art, its audience, and its patrons. Clever marketing is important -- even if the world were flush with cash, the company would still have to cut through an awful lot of noise across an awful lot of channels just to be heard. And audience building is important, too. But reverse-engineering the art to grab an audience is a lousy tactic (well, lousy for the art at least). The trick is figuring out how to tell someone you already have what they want -- heck, what they need -- but that they just don't know it yet. I'll know the odometer has turned over, by the way, when Lena Dunham replaces Sarah Jessica Parker as the gala chair ...

Well, I'm royally annoyed with myself for completely misreading the ArtsBeat item, but relieved to hear that Karinska's "Rubies" costumes are being left alone. (Note to self: it is never wise to multitask when sleep-deprived.) It all fed into one my persistent concerns: that the (perceived) need for "special one-time-only" gala celebrations and brand-name marketing tie-ins is the funding tail wagging the artistic dog. That "Valentino Red" rationale for "Rubies" does sound like a bit of a stretch to me, but at least it causes no permanent damage in terms of blood and treasure.

Thanks for the confirmation. I admit I was kind of hoping it would turn out to be a surprise Ratmanksy.

I don't even know where to begin with this one. 1) Sigh. What's wrong with Karinska's "Rubies" costumes? I don't love everything she did, but those "Rubies" costumes are pretty iconic. What NYCB's "Jewels" really needs is spiffier sets for "Emeralds" and "Diamonds" (at least get rid of those dangling beads). 2) There's no way Martins won't use what must rank in the top five most in history (and it's my personal No 1). If there aren't skatey-eight gazillion gorgeously cut skirts sweeping across the stage, the Board should demand a refund.CORRECTION: I assumed the new ballet would be by Martins, but I see in re-reading the original item, that it doesn't say who the new work will be by. A thousand apologies!

I think I saw an all Martins / Adams program at some point in the past ... I seem to recall that "The Chairman Dances" and "Harmonielehre" were on the program, but can't for the life of me dredge up what the rest of it might have been. There's probably enough Martins / Adams for a whole darn festival.

Mine too! I wasn't a huge Watts fan but she was absolutely beautiful to watch in that pas de deux. (She was a great Dewdrop, too.) Watts described herself as a "medium" in an interview somewhere. ETA: When I'm purchasing a ticket based on casting alone (vs one driven by the calendar) I always base my decision on who's dancing in the Divertissement. Unlike more traditional story ballets, Balanchine's Midsummer doesn't hand the final pas de deux -- the one that crystallizes a ballet's "moral tone" (for lack of a better word) or its picture of ideal love -- to the lead couple. A less-than-optimal Divertissement ballerina can therefore undermine Midsummer just as much as a less-than-optimal Aurora can undermine Sleeping Beauty. And I don't think I've ever seen a "bad" Titania in that sense.

I saw him too -- it took a moment for me to recognize him in his civvies ... and I was too shy to tell him how much I missed seeing him dance Liebeslieder (and Apollo and so many other things). Robert Fairchild was very, very good, but even he couldn't erase my memories of Hübbe in that final duet.

Drew, I cried every single time I watched Whelan and Hübbe dance the final duet (the one that begins with "Nein, Geliebter"). It was.

Brahms' Liebeslieder Walzer are also often performed by choruses, both professional and amateur, so it may be that your neighbor learned them that way -- that's how I first came to know them. I'm a huge Liebeslieder fan; I love it even when the singers and dancers aren't up to par. But it took a while for me to figure out how to watch the women in their heeled slippers and ballgowns, and now I think the first half is really my favorite. I thought Saturday evening's cast (M. Fairchild & Chase Finlay, S. Hyltin & R. Fairchild, M. Kowroski & J. Stafford, T. Peck & J. Peck) showed great potential, especially considering the number of debuts (five), the fact that J. Peck and J. Stafford are still very new to their roles (Stafford had only debuted the night before), and that, with the exception of Kowroski and Stafford, none of the dancers had ever performed the ballet together before. It's a shame they only got a to do a couple of performances before the work gets put back in mothballs -- I don't see it on the schedule for next year, alas ...

Quiggin -- many thanks for that N+1 link! It was refreshing to read something on the NYPL issue that neither simply wailed in horror at the planned changes nor shrugged off the real losses those changes will entail. I especially appreciated Petersen's focus on what makes an institution genuinely "democratic." As it happens, Robert Darnton (whose proposal for a national digital library Petersen discusses in part 2) has published a defense of the NYPL plan in the latest issue of The New York Review of Books. And re all the consultants: one hopes that the CityTime scandal--not to mention the the ever-expanding budgets for the NYCAPS and Emergency Communications Transformation Program projects, both still uncompleted a decade after they were begun--has inspired both the NYPL's management and the relevant NYC officials to review their proposals with an appropriate degree of rigor and skepticism.

Off topic, but I feel compelled (as if by a strange unconscious force) to say something on behalf of Freud whose ideas are far from being simply "much discredited" and who was himself, not so incidentally, a remarkable and witty writer. Of course, programmatic and bad novels, plays, and biographies are written all the time in the grip of Freudianism...and Jungianism, Aristotelianism, Marxism etc. Occasionally good ones too. My point was simply this: Freud's theories are today more influential in the arts than they are in the sciences, where they have been largely abandoned as scientific explanations of human behavior and psychology. Writers who "imagine their way into the lives of historical figures" (as you put it so nicely) through the lens of Freud -- or Jung or Marx -- tell us as much if not more about the intellectual temper of their own time as they tell us about their subjects. And I would hasten to add that good novels, biographies, and plays have been written in the grip of discredited or abandoned theories, too, not just bad or programmatic ones. Milton's ideas about women make me want to hurl "Paradise Lost" against the wall, but it is still a very impressive piece of writing.

Per Varley O’Connor: "There's not enough written about her [LeClercq] for a biography." Huh? Is that not the very reason good biographers track down family, friends, and colleagues for interviews and dig around in the archives for as yet un-mined source materials? She seems to be suggesting that she'd have penned a biography but for the the fact that not enough other people have written about LeClercq yet. I'd feel better about the project if she'd just said "I wanted to turn this woman's amazing life into a novel" or "I'm not a scholar but I needed to tell this story" or "I think a novel will reach a wider audience than a standard biography" or even "I couldn't get the kind of advance I needed to support the research a real biography would require." I know it's an unfair extrapolation on my part, but the subtext I hear in that quote is "so of course I had to make stuff up." Edited to add: I actually don't think O'Connor needs to justify writing a novel based on LeClercq's life, although I suspect she feels a lot of pressure to do so given the pushback. I don't recall William T. Vollmann going to any great lengths to justify novelizing incidents from the lives of Käthe Kollwitz, Dmitri Shostakovich, Anna Akhmatova, et al, in Europe Central although there was more than a little grumbling about his having done so and, especially, with some of the liberties he took regarding Shostakovich's life in particular. (He really did make stuff up.) Susan Sontag might have wept in frustration that her novels weren't esteemed as highly as she wished, but she would surely have brushed away complaints about fictionalizing a scandalous episode in the life of the revered Admiral Nelson like so many pesky flies. Did Don Delillo bother to justify novelizing Lee Harvey Oswald? One might argue that these authors are better writers than O'Connor, that their works aren't "exploitative" of their subject matter in the same way, that their subjects have been dead longer, or that they have the literary celebrity's equivalent of "F*** You" money, i.e., critical esteem bordering on reverence -- but that doesn't necessarily mean that they get a free pass and O'Connor doesn't. (And let me hasten to add that I haven't read any of O'Connor's work, so I can't comment on the quality of her writing or the degree to which she fastens on the sensational for fame and glory.) Nor do I think anyone needs to justify feeling queasy about O'Connor's endeavor, especially persons who knew LeClercq personally. O'Connor's novel itself is fair game, of course.

The orchestra and first rings looked pretty full from where I sat.

NYCB Spring Season Opening Night 5/1/2012 Program: Serenade, Kammermusik No. 2, Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet I mostly went to see Balanchine’s Kammermusik No. 2, newly returned to the repertory after having been in mothballs for what seems like an eon. Everyone in the cast—including the (excellent) corps of eight men—was therefore making a role debut. I saw Sara Mearns, Teresa Reichlen, Jared Angle, and Amar Ramasar. A new cast (Rebecca Krohn, Abi Stafford, Adrian Danchig-Waring, and Jonathan Stafford) debuts on Thursday May 3. If I didn’t have a prior engagement, I’d go see that cast too. The male corps, for the record: Devin Alberda, Daniel Applebaum, zachary Catazaro, Cameron Dieck, Sam Greenberg, Ralph Ippolito, Andrew Scordato, and Joshua Thew. They took a well-deserved group bow in front of the curtain. Kammermusik, choreographed in 1978, was one of the very first ballets I saw when I moved to the Metro area and started attending NYCB regularly. It was still new then, and I was lucky enough to see it danced by most of the original cast: Karin von Aroldingen, Colleen Neary, Sean Lavery, Adam Lüders. Neary had left the company by the time I got to see the work, however, and had been replaced by Kyra Nichols. Honestly, it was so early in my dance-watching career that not a lot a stuck in my head except for the costumes and the two women’s bouncing ponytails. (I was so green I didn’t even realize that the all-male corps was out-of-the-ordinary for Balanchine!) So, what did Kammermusik look like after all those years? Both like outlier Balanchine and the choreographic spring from which Peter Martins has drunk most deeply. The texture of the choreography itself is fidgity and dense. It put me in mind of Rubies, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, and Symphony in Three Movements, although Kammermusik is not really like any of those works. Like Stravinsky Violin Concerto it’s got two principal couples, but unlike it, they are for all practical intents and purposes indistinguishable. You don’t get a sense of them having distinct histories and personalities; I’m not even sure they’re “couples” in the Balanchinean sense. If I hadn’t written down in my notes who was dancing with whom, I’m not entirely sure I’d remember, and given the cast—are there two NYCB ballerinas more different in temperament than fiery Mearns and cool Reichlen?—that’s saying a lot. In this, however, the work seems the rootstock of a vast swath of Martins repertory. When I watch Fearful Symmetries, for example, I can never sort out which role was Merrill Ashley's and which was Heather Watts' and even if I could, it wouldn't be particularly useful information. Given that the two works share a composer—Paul Hindemith—I thought I might see traces of Four Temperaments in Kammermusik, and I did: in the male corps, which as certain points echos the group formations of the all-female corps in 4Ts’ “Melancholic” and “Phlegmatic” sections. But the prinicpals don’t interact with the corps as they do in 4Ts. Kammermusik’s male corps seems more an independent tableau against which the principals are projected: rather than echoing or amplifying what the principals do, the corps seem to give them context. Sometimes their movements are grotesque (think of the goon squad in Prodigal Son), sometimes they’re evocative of an ancient Egyptian frieze; sometimes they look just plain weird, and it colors what the principals are doing. Anyway, if you can, go and see it before it vanishes again. It's not major Balanchine, but it's one of those outliers like Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir or Le Tombeau de Couperin that you need to see to get a deeper understanding of the rest. Other highlights of the evening: Megan LeCrone, who I thought was just terrific as the “Bransle Gay” girl in Agon last season made another promising debut as the “tall girl” in the Allego (the first) movment of Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet. She was absolutely lovely to watch: beautifully erect, reserved yet warm. Brava! Tyler Angle debuted in BSQ’s Rondo alla Zingarese. I’m not convinced that it’s the right role for him, but I am convinced that he’s the right partner for Maria Kowroski now that Charles Askegard has retired. In fact, I think he suits her even better. Sterling Hyltin and Robert Fairchild gave the knock-out performance of the evening in the BSQ Intermezzo (second movement). It was really thrilling, hair-raising stuff. I almost typed "go-for-broke," but that implies a kind of wildness, and Hyltin and Fairchild were anything but wild. They were so on-the-music and so in sync it made your heart stop. The house went wild. Hyltin pulls off the neat trick of being knowing without seeming coarse or merely naughty. (I think it’s what makes her performance of Kay Mazzo’s role in Stravinsky Violin Concerto so refreshing: when she collapses knees-first towards the floor into her partner’s hands, she’s taking a risk, not being vulnerable.) Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette got to dance together in the BSQ Andante (third movement). It was a sweet reprise of the happy village couple roles at which they both excel (think Coppelia or The Magic Flute): you could practically smell spring in the air. And Veyette is tall enough to really show Fairchild off in a lift. Abi Stafford tried on some rubato effects in the opening Allego, and looked like a first-movement ballerina in them. Needless to say, her allegro was impeccable. There was an ad for OPI's NYCB themed line of nail polish in the program, and it looks as if they've lifted the color palette straight from NYCB's silvery pink and lilac production of Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet. In Serenade, Janie Tayor was the Waltz Girl, Ashley Bouder was the Russian Girl, and Rebecca Krohn was the Dark Angel. (Jonathan Stafford and Ask la Cour were the male principals.) I liked all three women, but I think I'd like them better if they hadn't been cast together; they didn't quite mesh somehow. I thought Stafford was a good foil for Taylor, who danced with her usual febrile intensity -- talk about go-for-broke, just this side of out-of-control dancing! She slipped and fell at one point during their duet -- the house responded with a gasp of alarm -- but recovered nicely. Georgina Pazcougin, one of the four demi-soloists, had her dark hair up in a big pouf of a bun that put me in mind of Martha Graham. I thought it looked great and I hope she keeps it. And every season should open with Serenade. Just sayin’.

That is one gorgeous tiara. It is actually chic, a term I wouldn't normally think to apply to a tiara.

Even when I had cable, I didn't watch much PBS mostly because I didn't watch much TV. And of course, living in NYC, I'm spoiled: there's so much live art to take in that there's little reason to try to catch a broadcast. (I'm one of those oddballs who'd rather see a nobody live than stay home to see a bona fide somebody on TV. But that's just personal preference.) That being said, I think that PBS should continue to broadcast the performing arts. I just think that arts organizations neither can not should rely on PBS as a performance showcase.

And just this evening, as I was in the car listening to the radio, they announced that This American Life will be doing a live show that will be broadcast to several movie theaters. We agree on this -- shall we set up a popcorn stand? OT OT OT -- sorry! Re the TAL live show: Radiolab does live shows too. I suspect the fact that both Ira Glass and Jad Abumrad (who received a MacArthur "genius" grant in September) are something akin to public radio rock stars has more than a little to do with it. I also suspect that it's easier to find material that works outside a strictly audio format for one or two shows than it is for a whole season. Re the popcorn: I'd be more enthusiastic about the entertainment value of the coming Cable / Internet slugfest if I weren't absolutely convinced that the consumer is going to lose in the end. My husband and I cut the cable cord a while back and have made do quite nicely with the a la carte streaming options available to us via our dvd player. At some point our cable company will want to throttle that -- they're not extracting nearly as much from us for an internet connection as they did for internet + cable. Edited to add: just FYI for those outside of New York City -- it is almost impossible to get a good broadcast TV signal in Manhattan proper. Until now, it's been cable or nothing if you wanted to watch network TV. Then came the internet.

I think it depends on the material. "This American Life" is, I think, best served by its current audio format, however one might choose to listen to it. If just as many people (if not more) are going to listen to it as watch it, why try to make TV out of it? I'm sure I'm missing something, but then I'm admittedly not much of a TV person. Now ballet, that won't work as a podcast.