Kathleen O'Connell

Nerd that I am, I loved that video -- although somehow I was expecting more moving parts ... McNally Jackson Books in Soho has an EBM, too, which you can use to print your own books or one of the titles in their print-on-demand library. I was enchanted by this note on their website: I have to confess that I've pretty much gone digital for plain-text books and publications that aren't graphics heavy. (I even started reading "Pride and Prejudice" on my smartphone when I was trapped in a waiting room without my Kindle and three people fighting over the one very dogeared back issue of People lying around ... It is a truth universally acknowledged that a former English major in possession of a good chunk of downtime must be in want of something to read ...) But some books either demand to be read on paper or can only be read on paper (i.e., no eBook yet if ever) -- and if it's out of print, perhaps EBMs will come to the rescue.

For those of you who might want to hear Paul McCartney's "Ocean's Kingdom" for yourself, WQXR (WNYC's classical music sibling) will broadcast the work on 105.9 FM and WQXR.org on Wednesday Sept. 28 at 8 pm. You can read a write-up about the work on WQXR's website here and listen to WQXR host David Garland's interview with McCartney as well. There are also video clips from some of McCartney's other forays into classical music. I'm guessing that it's the London Classical Orchestra's recording that's going to be broadcast, not a recording made during an NYCB rehearsal or performance ...

Please report back! I would love to see books-on-demand turn into a real option.

Jane - I haven't tried a print-on-demand book myself, but you might find this article from Publisher's Weekly informative: Amazon: Shoddy-On-Demand The article's author was shocked by the poor quality of the photos in the on-demand book he purchased through Amazon and ended up buying a used hardback as a supplement. (He apparently didn't realize he was getting an on-demand book when he ordered it and paid the equivalent of a fully-priced trade paperback. Amazon did offer him a refund when he complained.) Not that the RDB books you've found on Google will have the same quality problems -- but it's something to be aware of, especially since the photographs are of interest to you.

I didn't mean to disparage Gershwin's long-form compositions -- I just wouldn't trade away the songs for any of them. I do think much more highly of his orchestral efforts than McCartney's, although both of them have added undisputed treasures to the world's hoard of songs. It's funny, I could listen to "An American in Paris" all day (well, almost) but "Rhapsody in Blue" just doesn't grab me in the same way.

Your question could start an interesting thread. Is "pop" music suitable to ballet? What should come first? The music or the dance? What are some examples of successful ballets done to pop scores? Who has or could in the future write a great pop score? Can great choreography transcend and enrich a pop score? Is Gershwin a "pop" composer? What about Mozart? Was Gershwin a pop composer? Absolutely -- those fabulous standards were first and foremost pop hits. And good pop is really, really hard to do. In fact, I find Gershwin's standards are far more satisfying than "Rhapsody in Blue." In some cases - Gershwin's for instance -- it's not a question of choreography transcending a pop score, it's a question of the choreography living up to it. Lots of choreographers have done terrific work to pop tunes -- Tharp is one of them, and so is Paul Taylor. I know, I know, it's not "ballet," but there's no reason it couldn't be.

Cristian -- I believe it's Andrea Long. She danced with NYCB for about 8 years during the late 80's and early 90's then moved on to Dance Theater of Harlem.

Oh how sad! I only heard Licitra sing at the Met once, alas, but I still remember how his voice rang out in that big old barn. Shortly after his Met triumph subbing for Pavarotti, my husband and I went to Cafe des Artistes for lunch on a whim, and there he was at the next table being wined and dined by a couple of fervent impresarios hell-bent on roping into some project or other. As theater, it was as impressive as what took place on stage at the Met. Rest in peace ...

Wow -- the first thing I thought of was Cunningham's "Biped," although its projections--based on motion-captured Cunningham choreography--were the work Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar. (They write about their collaboration with Cunningham here. There's video, too.)

Bauhaus Dances Also, Robert Wilson. No, not ballet, and yes, most of his work is in theater or opera, but he did try his hand at choreography in "Snow on the Mesa" for the Martha Graham Company. He does gorgeous moving pictures, but he doesn't do movement. His imagination is pictoral rather than kinetic. "Snow on the Mesa" emulated the way Graham looks, but not how it "feels" in your own passive body while you watch it. Here's a clip -- it actually comes off better in a little tiny YouTube window than it does on stage: To be fair to Wilson (who's done stuff I really like) I've seen worse choreography perpetrated by one-time dancers -- but their failures are different in kind. Edited to add: I really do think think that there's some sort of tension and release secret sauce that only people who are experienced in expressing things with their bodies have ready access to. And ... one cup of coffee later, Quiggin, I see Wilson was on your original list -- don't know how missed it ... I was thinking "Nikolais, yeah ..."

Thanks for the tip on "Absolute Monarchs," Bart! Midway into the Kindle sample of Grimwood's "The Fallen Blade" I realized that it was going to be just another vampire confection, and I am done with vampires. And while I'm enjoying Sarah Bakewell's "How to Live"-- it's impossible not to love Bakewell's Montaigne -- I find I need to put it aside after a chapter or two. (Montaigne's particular concerns hit home in my 50s in a way they didn't in my 20s, especially when they're put in the context of his life.) So I took "Absolute Monarchs" for a test drive and so far it's been perfect late-summer non-fiction. In fact, I think I'll go polish off another chapter right now ...

I'm off my founding fathers jag of a couple of years ago, and have moved on to genre fiction. Audiobook on the ipod: George R. R. Martins' "A Dance with Dragons, " which is the fifth book in his "A Song of Ice and Fire" fantasy series. It's nothing like Tolkien or most sword-and-sorcery concoctions -- it's got way more noxious bodily fluids, and in copious amounts. On the Kindle: Just finished China Mieville's "Embassytown." Meh. Not his best. Potentially intriguing concepts about language dumped into what reads like a first draft rather than a fully-developed piece of fiction. Craft has never been his strong suit, alas. In the Kindle on-deck circle: Sarah Bakewell's "How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne" (not genre fiction) and Jon Courtenay Grimwood's "The Fallen Blade" (most definitely genre fiction).

I think the other male dancer is Gonzalo Garcia. Angle's partner is Abi Stafford.

Whew! I'm glad I'm not the only one. I hate the way hops on pointe make the hopping foot and leg look -- the bent knee and back-angled foot seem almost antithetical to the whole aesthetic point of pointe work. I liked Sevillanos' variation on the move too.

The brochure on the Guggenheim site lists the music that will be performed on p. 3: http://www.guggenhei...ss_fall2011.pdf Thank you, California.

This one? NEW DANCE COMMISSIONS The Music of Elliott Carter Interpreted New Choreography by Emery LeCrone and Avi Scher October 2, 3 Yay! Elliott Carter! He'll be just a couple of months shy of 103 in October, so I suppose the great man himself won't show up, but it would be wonderful if he did ... he was still composing stuff as recently as 2010. Leigh -- do you know which pieces LeCrone and Sher are setting their dances to?

I've never seen one live, but I do very much like the effect of the Lilac Fairy in heels in the Dutch National Ballet's 2004 Sleeping Beauty DVD (the one with Sofiane Sylve as Aurora). I wouldn't have expected this, but I think that she actually has more authority, not less, which is at least partly due to the very grand gown and headdress she gets to wear since she's not on pointe. The match up with Carabosse--who is also a beautiful (and beautifully gowned) woman in this version--is very interesting theatrically, too. They really do seem like rival queens. I wouldn't want to see the Lilac Fairy danced that way every time, but I'd definitely like to see it that way some of the time. One of the DVD's extras is a lovely film in which the ins-and-outs of the mime is carefully explained to some lucky schoolchildren. One thing that really struck me while watching one the RDB's recent performances of La Sylphide in NY is just how powerful pointe work is as a dramatic and expressive device when it's used (relatively) sparingly. I don't know why it blew me away so much this time, but Bournonville's reserving pointe work for the Sylph and her sisters made the woodland scenes seem super-duper magical, and made James' and the Sylph's relationship all the more weird, wonderful, and tragic. I liked the textural and dramatic effects of pointe / not pointe so much, I started fantasizing about a Swan Lake in which only Odette, Odile, and the Swan Maidens dance on pointe. The Princesses would look just as lovely -- and more appropriately mundane -- in heels.

DeLuz entered ABT corps from Pennsylvania Ballet, which is why I didn't consider him home-grown, in the sense of those I mentioned above who at least came through ABT's junior company. He already had experience as a professional by the time he arrived at ABT.It's very true about the nature of ABT's rep vs. NYCB's giving dancers opportunities. And that won't change as long as ABT continues to shorten its more interesting fall programming at City Center. Well, it's now down to a single week. Not likely to get much shorter than that! I'm wondering (hoping?) if the single work isn't a function of the City Center renovation schedule. The grand re-opening of the main auditorium is scheduled for October 25, 2011 so it may be that a week was all they could get.

That's what Fifth Ring is. They would be, at best, very limited view seats. I think they were meant to be akin to the score desks at the Metropolitan Opera, to hear the opera and not see the production, although I don't think Fifth Ring seats have lamps for score following. Actually, they weren't too bad for observing the patterns if you happened to be seated in the seats furthest away from the stage..

If I recall correctly -- and it's been way, way over a decade since I sat there (for a Nutcracker)-- the 5th ring is a small tier of side-only seats situated above the 4th ring's tier of side seats. I think there's something like 34 or 36 seats up there in total. No center section, just the sides of the horseshoe.

Matthew Renko! Good for him, and good for you!

For what it's worth, I just did a quick count. There are about: 873 seats in the orchestra 676 seats in the 4th ring (87 A&B center| 551 C-O center | 38 sides) 306 in the 3rd ring (260 center | 46 sides) 308 in the 2nd ring (274 center | 34 sides) 333 in the 1st ring (277 center | 56 sides) Which is 2,496 in total. per the NYCB website, there are 2,544 seats in total, so I'm guessing the balance is in the 5th ring. Shutting the 3rd and 4th rings down completely would reduce the house size from 2,496 to 1,514, or by about 39%

Bad timing for City Center, indeed, given that they've tried to do what they can to fix the theater's various infelicities. It has always been a dreadful place to see dance. Some things, like the sight lines and the lack of leg room, could be tweaked. But others - the size of the stage, the shallowness of the hall, and the steepness of the view of the stage from any of the rings, for example -- could probably only be addressed with a wrecking ball. Taylor doesn't come anywhere near to filling City Center -- the top ring is always closed off and the sides of the mezzanine are often empty as well. I wonder how they'll fare at NYST? I normally try to catch about three Taylor performance during their NYCC season, and while I probably won't see any more just because they're at NYST, I'm not going to attend fewer performances either. Even if it costs more -- the guy's not gonna live forever and the fate of Cunningham's company has focused my mind powerfully on seeing as much as I can while I can. I am wondering why Taylor mentioned NYST's acoustics, however, since his troupe rarely can afford to perform to live music anymore ...

I just got back from the Wed matinee performance of "The Little Humpbacked Horse" : Shklyarov was delightful -- a beautiful dancer with charm to burn. If I were an AD in need of an imported male principal, I sure would be running around behind him waving a pen and a contract. The guy would be total box office catnip. Loved Obraztsova's Tsar Maiden, too. Vasily Tkachenko danced the Humpbacked Horse instead of Grigory Popov, and was very winning -- TLHH is often asked to match Ivan step-for-step, and while Tkachenko isn't quite the dancer Shklyarov is, he held his own, even when Shklyarov had the charm dialed up to 11. The costumes are awful and the sets look like they were slapped together in a middle school shop class. I suspect the production was intended to look whimsical, but it just looks bargain basement. The decision to screen-print cartoonish gypsy faces onto the gypsy dancers' overly baggy t-shirt style tops is only one of several bad ideas. The Princess of the Sea's sea-weed skirt was nice, though. I wouldn't necessarily want to cut Shchedrin's score, but the ballet as it stands could either use some tightening or a bit more invention. (Sometimes it looks as if Ratmansky is at a loss as to how to fill up the sixteen bars of music he has left before the next transition.) But there's great stuff in it, too. The scene with the Tsar and the Wet Nurses and the underwater scene definitely put me in mind of "Namouna," however, which has become my favorite Ratmansky to date.

Alas, none of these patterns were very visible from where I was sitting in the orchestra (Row 0, Seat 20) -- it looked like one big melee. Worse, I couldn't see the cradle clearly -- it was blocked by the line of the corps. I only knew where it was from its (dinky) purple canopy. Seat 20 in that row is only ten seats in off the right aisle and there are 8 seats more to the right of it, so it's not an extreme side seat, or at least shouldn't be. I wonder if the folks sitting three or seats to my right even knew there was a cradle there at all. Don't they sort the views out when they make the model sets? It shouldn't be hard to do. All I could think of was that they decided to make the fairies do double duty so as to avoid having to cast additional divertissement roles. Is that too cynical? The overture and the entr'actes started out promising, but yes, the tempos sure did get pulled all over the place once the dancing started. Edited to add: I was positively SHOCKED at the amount of talking going on during the entr'actes -- talking out loud, for heaven's sake, not even whispering. Lots of phone checking , too. Because it's boring to sit in the dark and listen to Tchaikovsky, I guess ... I saw them Wednesday night and thought they were pretty wonderful. I walked out thinking that I might someday see a more brilliant Aurora than Cojocaru, but not one I loved more. I too was especially taken with the way she smiled at the departing cavaliers! It was such a lovely touch -- and a lady always says "thank you" to her dance partner before moving on to dance with another