Kathleen O'Connell

MFA vs.NYC, the article I referenced in the previous post is now available online at Slate.com. It's credited to Chad Harbach, one of N+1's editors.

I have the latest-generation Kindle (the $139 one) and I love it for what it's good at: reading plain text--particularly fiction and narrative non-fiction--straight through from start to finish. Its smallish screen and e-ink technology are not well-suited to graphics-heavy documents; navigating around a reference work would likely be punishing; and format-dependent text (e.g., certain kinds of poetry) don't play well with its scalable fonts. If you're into exquisite typography, this is not the device for you. If you want to surf the web, update your Facebook page, or watch videos, this is most definitely not the device for you. But if you principally want to read novels, short stories, and narrative non-fiction on an easy-on-the-eyes and battery-life friendly e-ink screen, it's got a lot to offer. You can get just about any classic text that's in the public domain for free, or for a very modest charge if you'd like a few bells and whistles -- e.g., an "active" table of contents or some ebook-friendly formatting.(If you want a scholarly edition of a classic text, however, or the latest translation, you'll have to pay more.) I ponied up $0.99 for the complete works of Jane Austen, including the old (b&w) illustrations by Hugh Thomson and Charles Brock. Since the Project Gutenberg version of Harold Frederic's The Damnation of Theron Ware seemed reasonably well-formatted, however, I simply loaded that one on for free. I confess: I mostly got the Kindle to read the classics on the cheap. Yes, I know, the NYPL lends books for free, but I'm still enough of grad-school geek to want to drag the entire canon from Beowulf to Virginia Wolff along with me wherever I go. You can download free samples (usually the first chapter and sometimes more) of just about any book available in Kindle format to get a sense of whether you'd like it or not. You can also email your own text or PDF files to Amazon for free conversion into the Kindle mobi format and then load them up onto your device. (The turn-around time is nearly instantaneous.) Now, instead of printing out hard copies of articles or whatever from the web and lugging them around in a big sheaf, I simply copy and paste them into a Word document, ship them off to Amazon, and read them on my Kindle. The Kindle comes with two built-in dictionaries; if you float the cursor over a word, its definition automatically pops up at the bottom of the page. You can search for a word in the text, in the dictionary, or, if you have the wifi on, in Wikipedia (reasonably formatted for the device). I haven't downloaded any newspapers or periodicals on to it yet, though I suspect I'll try that soon enough. Like you, Patrick, I'm more than happy to abandon paper in certain circumstances. I find broadsheet newspapers like the NYT or the WSJ a real pain to read even when I'm just sitting at the breakfast table. Once we're a couple of generations along in tablet devices, I suspect that's how I'll read the newspaper. One thing I really don't like is the fact that you can't read books published in ePub format directly on the Kindle. Non-DRM protected ePub files can easily be converted to the Amazon-owned Mobi format, but DRM protected files can't be. Since most libraries only lend out ebooks in ePub format, this is a real drawback.

There's a related, lengthy essay in the latest (Fall 2010) issue of N+1, which is not (yet) available online. It's unsigned, but Elif Batuman appears on N+1's masthead as "Senior Writer," so perhaps she wrote it as well. The author posits that there are two "literary fiction" cultures in the US. One, "NYC," networks through the NY publishing industry's book parties, reads about itself in the New York Observer and Gawker, meets up at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and is primarily focused on novels written by superstar authors such as Philip Roth, Jonathan Franzen, Gary Shteyngart, Nicole Krauss, Rivka Galchen, et al. The other "MFA," networks through MFA program readings and workshops, reads about itself in Poets & Writers, meets up at Association of Writers and Writing Programs conferences, and is primarily focussed on short stories written by MFA titans such as Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, Aimee Bender, et al. Within the MFA culture, the reputations of authors who have written well-received novels, such as Junot Diaz or Denis Johnson, may rest more on their story collections than their longer works. The bias towards novels on the one hand and short stories on the other is at least in part a function of each culture's "business model." NYC funds itself through readable blockbuster novels; MFA funds itself through tuition and, in the case of state university programs, tax dollars. It's a fun read.

I'm trying to get through Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, but I must confess that I eagerly lay it aside for something--anything--else the slightest provocation. I didn't get the fuss over The Corrections and I get the fuss over Freedom even less. I'm in that sour place of being determined to finish it just so I can gripe about it with impunity.

It was "Ballet Alert", the original name of this site Here's a link to Croce's "Ballet Alert" piece in the New Yorker's digital archive, which you can access if you are a subscriber. A favorite quote: Here's a link to the introduction to Writing in the Dark, Dancing in the New Yorker, which begins with Croce explaining what prompted her to write the piece: And finally, here's a link to "What is Ballet Alert! and Why Are We Doing This?" in the Ballet Alert! Online archives. It was the very first link that popped up when I googled "Arlene Croce" and "Ballet Alert."

Oh, I'm so happy to hear that William Burden and Scott Piper are doing well on the other coast! I heard them both at New York City Opera a few years ago (before all the tsoris) and really enjoyed their performances. One of the best reasons to go to NYCO is to catch singers like them on the way up (as well as excellent singers -- such as Lisa Saffer or David Walker -- who rarely if ever appear at the Met) and it's gratifying when their careers get some well-deserved traction.

My husband and I went to see Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake at City Center last night. We were handed the usual Playbill program, replete with an article about City Center's 2010-2011 dance season, a description of the ongoing renovations, an interview with Matthew Bourne, and photos and bios of everyone on the creative team and in the (large) cast -- everything except a cast list for the evening's performance! Since there are alternate casts for the lead roles, you'd think the producers might have at least slipped a loose sheet of paper into the program listing the evening's principals. Did they think nobody cared? By the time we got home, City Center had taken down the cast list on the "buy tickets" page and there was no way to figure out who was who. I think I know who I saw as The Swan / Stranger (he was terrific, whoever he was) and The Queen, but can't quite make out from the cast photos who was The Prince. Somebody needs to call the union and get a clause added to the contract that says "Whenever I am the star of the evening it will be duly noted in the program" or words to that effect.

Here's a link to the archive: Jane Austen's Fictional Manuscripts Note that although the archive may contain all extant Austen manuscripts, it doesn't contain the manuscripts of her published novels -- these have apparently been lost. From the introduction to the digital edition: Some Austen scholars seem underwhelmed (although this could of course be a bit of academic gamesmanship):

I haven't had a chance to listen to the interview yet, but a couple of words of warning about the essay: 1) The print version I downloaded is studded with an unconscionable number of typos; it reads like a flawed transcript of dictated text. And it's not just the occasional "on" where an "of" should be. Example: "Ashton mounted Swan Lake so beautifully because he was at once emerged [sic] in Russian classicism and free from its orthodoxies." I assume Homans wrote "immersed," not "emerged." Let's hope that Random House has better copy editors than The New Republic. 2) The essay is the epilogue to a long book; it reads like a summing up rather than a robustly argued thesis. I found myself bristling at a number of points in the essay, not because I necessarily disagreed with Homans, but because she seemed to be indulging in hyperbole, sweeping generalities, and straw-man arguments. Then it occurred to me that this may simply be a function of the essay's being an excerpt that can't really stand alone. Frankly, I think it reads like the opening chapter of a different book -- i.e., a book that's not a history of ballet, but something else altogether: an analysis of the transition (I refuse to say decline) from artistic modernism to what came next. Gabriel Josipovici's recent book What Ever Happened to Modernism? is an example from contemporary literary criticism. 3) There are moments when she appears to be projecting her theses on to what she sees rather than letting what she sees generate her thesis. Example: As much as I'd like to defer to Homans' expertise (she's a trained dancer; I'm not) I think I'd need to go to the tape -- lots of tape -- before I could accept this analysis. I can't even visualize what she's talking about. I hope the book provides more by way of example and explication. All that being said, it's an interesting essay -- and there were certainly points that had me nodding in agreement. I'd love to hear what other BTers think about it.

I'm sure that I'm in the minority on this, but I've always wanted to see "Bugaku's" costumes stripped of their more obvious Japanese inflections - the wigs, e.g. (The ballerina's daisy-covered bikini must never be abandoned, however. ) To my eyes they make the ballet look alarmingly close to clumsy parody or 19th C style exoticism, whereas the choreography itself - despite the stylized gestures and images lifted from Japanese theater and visual art -- seems neither parodic (at least not by intention) nor a like conventional ballet incidentally clad in fancy dress. The movement alone says everything it needs to about the intersection of stylized refinement, ritual, and sexuality; the costumes' more obvious japonaiseries are a distraction, IMO. Maybe even a little culturally obtuse. I lived in Japan for three years when I was in my early teens and first saw Bugaku within a decade of so of my return to the US. The movement made me happily nostalgic for Japan; the wigs and robes really annoyed me (and still do). While we're at it, I'd like to re-dress "Le Baiser de La Fee" (a wonderfully weird little ballet that deserves better than the hand-me-downs that it got), at least the first three movements of "Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3," Nuts' "Waltz of the Flowers," and "Walpurgisnacht Ballet" (who wears cocktail dresses to a witches' sabbath? - they make the work look like an episode of "Debs Gone Wild").

Oh how I wish whoever codified English punctuation way back whenever had thought to appropriate the fabulous upside-down question marks and exclamation points Spanish speakers use! ¿Are they overkill? ¡Surely not! (Alas, they are not very elegantly rendered in Invisionzone's standard fonts, with the perhaps unfortunate exception of comic sans...)

Helene -- "The Hare with Amber Eyes" received a very enticing write-up in the latest edition of The New York Review of Books ("Searching for a Lost World" by Walter Kaiser) -- but it's behind the paywall, alas. It sounds like a perfect storm of people, places, events, narrative arc, and a sensitive, probing writer. I'm sold!

WNYC's "New Sounds" and "Soundcheck" host John Schaefer interviewed Sjeng Scheijen today on "Soundcheck." You can stream or download the interview here: Dissecting Diaghilev

They are: Tenderness, Vivacity, Generosity, Eloquence, and Courage

We can always pronounce it "Kotch" theater and pretend it's named after Mayor Koch. I think the "How Am I Doing, New York! Promenade" has a nice ring to it ...

That last bit raises a good question. Those of you who were there on opening night -- what are your thoughts about this? Did it work in the sense of benefiting and enhancing the actual dancing? I understand Macauley's concern, but is ballet really such a hothouse flower of an art that its tender blossoms will wilt at the mere sight of a ballerina in street clothes? I think 2500+ years of theatrical history have pretty much demonstrated that the magic of the stage is nearly impervious to every kind of assault. If two guys with a blanket on a stick and a couple of papier-mâché puppets can enchant a crowd on a busy street corner I suspect that "Ballet's Magic Kingdom"* (and isn't that "Serenade" in a nutshell?) can survive even inept marketing ploys. I wasn't there on Tuesday, Bart, so I can't answer your questions directy, but I've been put off by many attempts to make ballet more "relevant" or "accessible" or "sexy" or whatever – but mostly because they've been ham-handed and clumsy. Nothing makes you less hip than trying too hard. And, worst of all, some of this stuff—the pre-curtain chats, the little film clips a la Wheeldon—are epic fails as theater. I sat through NYCB's Calatrava featurette at least six times. Hello??? You spent how many gazillions of dollars to lure me in to see seven world premieres and you're going to make me sit through the same hum-drum film clip every single time as if you thought I was really only going to show up for one new ballet? If I had had to endure Morphoses' "My Excellent Vinyard Vacation" home movie one more time I was going to run screaming from the theater. But the minute the curtain went up, all was forgotten -- even the stuff I didn't like still worked its magic. The world on the stage may not have been one I particularly liked, but it was a different world than the one I live in day in and day out. * Ballet's Magic Kingdom: Selected Writings on Dance in Russia, 1911-1925 Akim Volynsky (Author), Prof. Stanley J. Rabinowitz (Editor)

ViolinConcerto, I miss those souvenir books too! But I think we'll have to agree to disagree on whether the way the dancers are dressed in the 2010-11 brochure is disrespectful to ballet. About the only item of clothing that doesn't look like it could pop up in a future Diamond Project production is Jonathan Stafford's layered polo shirt. (And who knows; maybe polo shirts will turn out to be the new subversive once we tire of bicycle shorts and bare legs.) To my eye the dancers look as if they've been styled to within an inch of their lives; those tastefully disshevelled looks take work. It may be a fashion editor's fantasy of what dancers look like in their workaday lives, but it's a fantasy nonetheless, and that's no small component of any performing art. I think ballet's big enough to accommodate any number of fantasies; some will be dressed in tulle and tiaras, some, in bare legs and sweat. Not everyone comes to ballet through the same door. When I was in my 20's I came for the leotard ballets, and only the leotard ballets. It took me at least a decade to wrap my head around "Emeralds" and I was probably 40 before "Scotch Symphony" made any real sense at all. I went to one ABT evening-length ballet, shrugged, and didn't find my way back for lord knows how long. People I liked and admired would make a fuss about "Diamonds" or "Theme and Variations," so I'd buy a ticket and try again. But I would never have walked up to the State Theater box office in the first place if I hadn't happened to catch a performance of "Four Temperaments" on TV. Merrill Ashley in a leotard caught my imagination in a way that Suzanne Farrell in her "Diamonds" tutu just didn't. I can't ask someone in their 20's to get turned on by something that left me cold when I was their age, and I'm not too worried that someone who comes for "Outlier" or "Slice to Sharp" or the latest moody Bigonzetti won't come back if they happen to encounter T&V along the way. I kept coming back, and they will too. And I loved anything with even a whiff of backstage to it: I devoured books like Joseph Mazo's Dance Is a Contact Sport, Pierre Petitjean's Backstage with the Ballet, or the Sorine's Dancershoes. Stuff like that didn't drain the mystery out of ballet for me, but rather, only deepened its allure. I liked knowing little things about the dancers as people and about their lives as artists, and I imagine it's the same for at least some twenty-somethings today. (Kristin Sloan's Winger blog in its early days when she was still dancing would have had me over the moon.) NYCB's current effort is a bit clumsy—the quotes in the 2010-11 brochure are disappointingly anodyne, for instance—but I think I know from recollecting my own long-ago twenty-something self what they're trying to tap into. I thought I was pretty sophisticated, but I promise you, if there had been a dance version of Tiger Beat I would have read it cover-to-cover—slipped surreptitiously behind the latest issue of the New York Review of Books or Critical Inquiry, of course.

I don't think the photos cross the line either, Eileen. Do we know that Balanchine wouldn't have approved? (And does it matter, anyway?) I'm looking at the 1980 NYCB souvenir book, a giant full-color production that is qualitatively different from the black and white efforts I have from the prior years. (And different, too, from the ones that came after. It must have cost a fortune to produce.). It is very close in style to the 2010-11 marketing brochure. There are no pictures of repertory taken during performance. There are no standard headshots of the kind you find in the current NYCB facebooks or on the website. The photos are all in color, and they have all been shot in the company's rehearsal studios. Some of the dancers are in costume, some are in practice clothes. (Robert Maiorano is bare-chested and Kipling Houston, who is wearing a deeply scooped red unitard, might as well be. His picture more closely approximates beefcake than anything in the 2010-11 marketing brochure.) Most of the shots -- including the "dancey" poses -- have been set up to look casual, even candid, with the dancers looking right into the camera. The women have all been professionally made up in the style of the day (think Debbie Harry) -- 10 make-up artists are credited in the back of the book! It's clear that the intention was to make everyone look like attractive, real people -- actual individuals -- who just happen to be dancers. (And, interestingly, no effort was made to hide anyone's age, either. The principals were shot in what looks like a flood of natural light: Jacques d'Amboise stares out at us in arresting, craggy spleandor.) And most of the dancers look sexy in exactly the way that nature intended: they're young, they're fit, they're full of life and all of the promise of the future -- and it doesn't hurt that they're wearing form-fitting clothes. Who wouldn't want to be in their company? That's what the current brochure looks like to me, too. I like the new brochure -- and I've tucked a copy away with that 1980 souvenir book so I can haul it out in my dotage and remember when.

Egregious indeed - are they waiting for him to turn 101? It would be nice if accessibility and the television broadcast weren't factors in the selection, but I imagine they think his music is far too difficult for a CBS prime time broadcast. What could be better television than honoring a centenarian who's still in good enough shape to show up and accept the award? I mean the man is still composing good music. I heard a piece he composed at 99 for the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard and it was fierce and wonderful. (Aimard leapt off the stage when he was done, raced into the audience,showered Carter with hugs and kisses, then leapt back onto the stage and played the piece again. Centenary theater just doesn't get any better than that.) When I last saw Carter, at one of the concerts honoring his 100th birthday, he was spry enough to rise to his feet with some assistance and wave joyfully at the audience and the musicians giving him a well-deserved standing ovation.

Egregious indeed - are they waiting for him to turn 101? Gack! - Dirac, I'd pushed those to the back of my mind. Even Anna Karenina can't erase the stain that is "The Secret."

My first thought was that it was a reward for getting people to walk into bookstores and buy copies of Anna Karenina. (Getting them to actually read it willingly is another thing altogether ... I'd almost be inclined to grant her beatification for that.) Oprah's book club was a big deal, but, as you have pointed out, it's not exactly a performing art.

Agreed - I don't see how a family trip to a ball game can be anything more than a once-in-a-blue-moon treat. Pricing is surely one reason why minor league ballparks are a hit with families. And in the case of live sports, you're paying a hefty premium for atmosphere. If I want to see "Serenade" at all -- be it from prime seats or no -- I have to go to a live performance. If I want to see CC Sabathia' change-up, I'm probably better off perched in front of a big-screen TV at the local sports bar than I am perched in the upper grandstand. And the popcorn is free at the bar.

Everything live is expensive. Want to see the Yankees play the Orioles tonight? Unless you want to sit in the bleachers or the very tip-top of the grandstand, those tickets will cost you between $48-$300. Those $300 seats aren't even in the luxury boxes. (The cheapest grandstand seats, which are so far away from the action that they are barely in the Bronx, cost $20.) Want to see Shakira at Madison Square Garden? That will cost you between $149.50-$39.50. (Alice in Chains is a little cheaper; tickets for their upcoming MSG show go for $75-$39.50.) Taking the family to a game at Yankee Stadium or a concert at MSG is an expensive proposition even before you throw in the cost of transportation and refreshments. My 1st ring center NYCB tix look like a relative bargain in comparison; 4th ring tix -- $35 for rows C-K center or $20 for rows C-K sides or rows L-O center -- are a bargain plain and simple. The view from there is much better than the view from the top or even second-to-last tier at Yankee Stadium. (The sound at the Garden stinks no matter where you sit.) My ticket to see Avatar in 3-D cost just $2 less than the lowest-priced NYCB ticket. It's affordable to see the ballet, just not from the very best seats -- but in a well-designed venue like NYST / Koch, the not-best seats can still be decent. How much cheaper would they have to be for folks not to cite price as the reason they don't go? I'm not disputing that the cost of ballet tickets can be high - just pointing out that the cost of tickets to anything is high, and that the arts aren't really more prohibitively expensive than anything else. Live Nation sales are way off this year, and the high price of tickets have been cited as one of the main drivers.

I'd love to do the spreadsheet on this one. The cost in terms of forgone ticket revenue would need to be weighed against the cost of other kinds of marketing -- print ads, e.g., or discounted single tickets, or the kind of free, outdoor, big-screen broadcasts the Met puts on. As it is, the Joffrey has already gotten several column inches of free press. (As has Groupon, of course ... the Joffrey ought to ask them for a discount. ) I imagine that the buzzy success of the Groupon offer is good marketing to the board and other potential donors, too. It makes the point that there is an audience for serious dance out there -- i.e., that the big donors' bucks aren't just keeping a dying art alive on life support.

Well, this seemed to have worked for the Joffrey: