Kathleen O'Connell

Absolutely nothing at all! I do think the outcome might have been different artistically (but not necessarily any better) had Fleming been drawn to the music rather than brought to it. Fleming (who is now 50) is likely in the late afternoon of her operatic career and may be feeling around for what comes next. Not that indie rock covers is it, of course, but the new album may have been an experiment in completely detaching her voice from her accustomed genre just to see what else she could do with it besides show tunes and jazz standards.

richard53dog: I absolutely agree that when Fleming is on she's transcendent. (That "pretty" in the opening phrase of "Ain't it a pretty night" is thankless to sing, and Fleming makes it sound as easy as a sigh. Thanks for posting the link!) But to me, judgment--conscious or otherwise--is part and parcel of genuine musicality. So, when Fleming turns an aria into a taffy-pull, I'm inclined to judge her basic musicality harshly. Anyway, I don’t mind Fleming singing not–opera; I do mind that she sounds like she’s pulling a Meryl Streep — i.e., impersonating a pop singer rather than figuring out where her instrument, her sensibility, and the music could meet on equal terms. Back to Tommasini: There’s crossover and there’s crossover. Fleming’s is the PBS pledge drive bonus–CD–with–membership version of crossover; the alternative is engaging with music that genuinely intrigues you and trusting that the audience will find you. (The narrative laid out in Tommasini's article is one in which two record producers found Fleming and pitched her on doing a pop crossover album rather than one in which Fleming found Arcade Fire or whoever, loved the music, and decided she had to perform it, come what may.) So, I found it intriguing when I stumbled across this review of string quartet Brooklyn Rider’s latest album on Pitchfork*, of all places: Which prompted me to dredge up Alex Ross’ 2004 New Yorker article about the divide between popular and classical music, from the perspective of “a thirty-six-year-old white American male who first started listening to popular music at the age of twenty.” Tommasini's article focuses on "crossover" as a record-label genre; Ross tries to figure out how we got to a place where it seems necessary. * Pitchfork focuses primarily on indie rock, but covers other popular music genres as well. It’s as derided for its writers’ sometimes self-conscious, mannered reviewing as Fleming is for her sometimes self-conscious, mannered singing. PS - I like Dominant Curve too. You can listen to clips here:brooklynrider.com

Sigh. I'm not a huge Fleming fan. I thought her jazz album stank for exactly the same reason that I find her classical singing generally grating: she's not particularly musical. Her undeniably gorgeous instrument tempts her into a degree of self-indulgent phrasing that a more modestly endowed singer wouldn't even think to try. (Tommasini's take: "Ms. Fleming has fared well with her own ventures into jazz, scatting away and shaping phrases with the subdued beauty of Betty Carter." He and I must agree to disagree on the extent to which her phrasing exhibits "subdued beauty.") The clips from her new pop album sound way too slickly over-produced and tidy for indie rock. Yes, Arcade Fire's members variously play piano, violin, viola, cello, double bass, xylophone, glockenspiel, keyboard, French horn, accordion, harp, mandolin and hurdy-gurdy in addition to guitars and drums, but they hardly sound like studio musicians backing a vocal track. And why covers? It seems as if no one ever thinks to cross over with original material, except maybe Elvis Costello and Paul Simon. My current favorite guilty pleasure crossover track: David Byrne and Rufus Wainwright singing the duet "Au fond du temple saint" from Bizet's opera The Pearl Fishers. Neither Byrne nor Wainwright even bothers to approximate classically trained singing, but they (Byrne especially) deliver the duet with the kind of overt emotionality that 19th century opera demands. Byrne doesn't sing the material like he respects it; he sings it like he loves it.

Sarah Kaufman weighs in. She has a seven year-old daughter, as it happens.

Ah - I see Mads Mikkelsen has been cast as Stravinsky. He was very broody -- and sweaty -- in Flammen & Citronen. It appears from the trailer, clips, and "making of" featurette now posted on the film's website that Mr. Mikkelsen's Stravinsky will be plenty broody, but not so sweaty. Was Stravinsky a broody guy? For whatever reason, I've always imagined him as in possession of a certain cosmopolitan joie de vivre ...

The assumptions behind ad campaigns like the MCB one we discussed yesterday give fresh cause for anxiety. Not only do the men have to worry about whether their dancing meets the AD's standards, now they have to worry about whether they're sculpted enough to meet the standards of the company's ad campaign. If the new audience doesn't stay, does that mean the six-packs weren't up to snuff? The ballerinas have probably been fretting about being stunning since they were 8 anyway, but I do resent the PR folks using that adjective. Surely a woman who's devoted lord knows how many years to her art deserves to be showcased in a way that celebrates what she does, not how she looks. And they all look beautiful on stage anyway.

Lordy! does this sound lame. I must be missing some cardinal rule of marketing, but why are they even announcing this? It sounds like Don, Peggy, and Sal pitching a client. Just do it, already. If the ads don't speak for themselves it's better not to have shown your hand. Sigh ... pictures in the newspaper -- even (especially?) of hunky, shirtless danseurs -- aren't "a new entry point to the art"; the theater is the entry point. You want to get them into the theater? Hand out free or ultra cheap tickets to a genuine event. Fall for Dance packs them in performance after performance. They lined up around the block for free tickets to the R+J dress rehearsal. They jammed Times Square for the live big-screen broadcast of the Met's opening night. Maybe most of those who showed up were fans already. Maybe they'll only come back again if the tickets are free. But their attention was duly gotten and they saw the stuff for real. Bart, I agree that a snail mail brochure of yet another danseur doing that jeté isn't going to do much to build a new audience. The little girl who's going to cut out the picture of the pretty ballerina in the tutu and paste it on the cover of one of her spiral bound notebooks is ours already.

That's exactly what Mick Jagger thought More Mick as Mover quotes here: MICK'S BODYTALK | MICK JAGGER: THE GREATEST PERFORMER IN HISTORY

I don't know which is shabbier - sinking to sock-puppetry or letting your spouse take the rap for it. That Figes was so inept at covering his own e-tracks makes the whole spectacle even more pathetic. If you're going to savage your rivals, do it with style.

I am convinced that architectural firms award restroom design to summer interns, or, if none are available, to the rankest novices on the staff, or if there are no novices, to the architect least inclined toward the practical. Not one of them seems capable of figuring out, in the interest of efficiency and good traffic flow: 1) how to design stalls so that the doors will stay in alignment, close, and lock; 2) that we need big, strong hooks on the doors for our bags and coats and shelves for programs and the like; 3) that we need a place at the sink for the selfsame bags and programs (a tiny little excuse for a shelf or a perennially wet counter top really won't do); 4) where to put the paper towels and trash baskets (clue: far away from the sinks isn't helpful, especially if it means having to cut through the line of people waiting for the stalls -- and how hard would it be to put towels by each sink anyway?); and 5) that facilitating primping and grooming actually moves things along faster -- if they are under the delusion that a wet counter top or shelfless sink discourages lip-stick re-application, hair fluffing, tooth brushing, contact-lens care, etc., not to mention digging around in our bags for whatever, they need to guess again. And re those DHK theater bathrooms -- who picked out the material that the stall dividers are made of? That stuff will never, ever look clean.

There are days when I think NYCB is really a Robbins company now -- the dancers often look better and happier in his ballets -- and there's a certain strain of NYCB alumni choreography that seems to owe as much to him as Balanchine. Leotards, sharp edges, and the absence of narrative are neither necessary nor sufficient to make a Balanchine ballet, but people sometimes carry on as if they were. A lot of choreography that's alleged to be influenced by Balanchine strikes me as being only superficially like the Agon pas de deux -- i.e., alike in the leotards, in pushing the body to extremes, in complicated partnering -- but so different in rhetoric and structure as to be like Balanchine in the way that carob is like chocolate. "Square Dance" and "Episodes" aside*, Balanchine rarely used the kind of mix-and-match score that Robbins did in all those piano ballets and even in "Glass Pieces." The whole suite of dances to a bunch of short stuff genre seems Robbinsonian to me, not Balanchinean, as does the refusal of hierarchy. In a Balanchine ballet we see each dancer and what they do in relation to a central couple (or, more likely, in relation to the central ballerina), but starting with Robbins (and maybe Kylian, too?) gets harder and harder to find the queen bee. Everybody's nobody in "Fool's Paradise" in a way that they aren't in "Agon." Liang's new work "Ballo Per Sei" is a lot more like "2 & 3 Part Inventions" than it is like "Square Dance." * I know everyone will come up with examples that I've somehow missed ... Midsummer, for instance. * Edited to add DUH! "Vienna Waltzes" and "Union Jack" - but maybe not "Western Symphony" and "Start & Stripes" ...

More linkage, this time with video: From WNYC's culture page: Maintaining Dance Machines In 'Come Fly Away' There's a brief write-up (by Sarah Muller) of the dancers' daily routines plus a video with clips from the show and interviews with Karine Plantadit and Charlie Neshyba-Hodges (who is sitting in front of a very impressive collection of Pez dispensers ...) A review from NY1, also with video clips from the show: NY1 Theater Review: "Come Fly Away" A bevy of clips on the "Come Fly Away" page on Broadway.com And finally, also from Broadway.com, the "Word of Mouth" review by Deanna, Joe, and Phyllis. One thumb up, two thumbs down. I love these guys. Phyllis' "meh" shrug near the end really is worth a thousand words. Go to Broadway.com's for higher quality video.

Sarah Kaufman, the Washington Post's dance critic, has won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for criticism: One of her pieces, "Ballet Must Make Room Onstage for More Than One Genius," prompted a lengthy (and very interesting) discussion among BTers here: The Fell Influence of Balanchine I don't always agree with Kaufman (I had more than a few reservations about "More Than One Genius,") but I think it's terrific that a dance critic, and a thoughtful one at that, won a Pulitzer. Congratulations to Ms. Kaufman!

False eyelashes AND mascara? I stand in awe.

Not quite. Tweeting doesn't really allow, as yet, for the kind of elaborate image creation and control you describe. It is another and seemingly more direct way of communicating with the public, though. Tweeting is like texting to a distribution list not entirely within one's control. Not that any distribution list -- electronic or not -- is ever within one's control. Once an utterance is out there, be it in ink or in bytes, someone you'd prefer never to see it will find it. Not quite

Apollinaire Scherr expands on her Financial Times review of "Come Fly Away" in a post over at her ArtsJournal blog, Foot in Mouth: Twyla Tharp's "Come Fly Away": subterranean homesick blues She addresses the divergence of critical opinion about the work's merits, and offers a few tart words on the Macauley / Isherwood contretemps: She also amplifies her own assessment, and specifically addresses some of the main complaints about the work -- the perceived "flatness" of the characters, the lack of a storyline, and the busyness of the choreography. Scherr frequently uses her blog to add an addendum to one of her FT reviews -- either to provide additional detail, mull over insights that she hadn't fully worked out before her FT deadline, or to address issues raised by the performance that wouldn't be appropriate for a review -- and her posts there are always worth a read.

On-topicish: I just found this deep in the bowels of my RSS feed reader: Atwood in the Twittersphere It appears that Canadian author Margaret Atwood is an avid tweeter: How charming is that? I've duly added her tweets to the feed reader ...

I'll see your Accocella and raise you a Jowitt Just to keep things interesting, there's a divergence of opinion among dance critics, too ... Here followeth the linkfest: Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice - positive: On Broadway, Twyla Tharp Gets a Kick out of Sinatra Robert Johnson, The Star-Ledger - positive Tharp Offers Thrilling Take on Romance Through Dance Sarah Kaufman and Robert Greskovic reviewed the fall 2009 Atlanta try-out , when the work was titled "Come Fly with Me." Kaufman, The Washington Post - positive When Tharp Meets Sinatra, She Does It Her Way Greskovic, The Wall Street Journal - positive Where Tharp and Sinatra Shine Here's Terry Teachout's (negative) review of the Broadway version for The Wall Street Journal. Teachout is the WSJ's theater critic - in this case, the theater critic / dance critic divergence is the mirror opposite of the NYT's (Although it should be kept in mind that Teachout and Grescovic didn't see the same show: one saw the out-of-town preview, the other the final Broadway production.) A Masterpiece Made Manifest (Note that the review's title does not refer to "Come Fly Away," but rather to a revival of "The Glass Menagerie.") Just as a reminder ... Apollinaire Scherr's review for The Financial Times was positive: "Come Fly Away, Marquis Theatre, New York" Tobi Tobias' review -- posted to her Arts Journal Daily blog "Seeing Things" -- was not: "One More for the Road" Edited to add a link to Robert Gottlieb's review for The New York Observer: She’s Done It Her Way

Some other reviews are in as well -- these from dance critics rather than theater critics: Apollinaire Scherr's review for The Financial Times is very positive: "Come Fly Away, Marquis Theatre, New York" Tobi Tobias' review -- posted to her Arts Journal Daily blog "Seeing Things" -- is not: "One More for the Road"

I vote for the dead critter! Although that clown-car carriage full of countesses does run a close second ...

New York State -- the whole tri-state area, in fact -- is rich, rich, rich in recently disgraced public officials. Perhaps some of their best friends can be persuaded to pull out their check books to see to it that said officials' reputations are buffed up a bit before they are sent off into history. The City Center folks are thinking of the artists too, by the way: Is the current stage floor not sprung / suitable for dance? If that's the case, it shares priority with the sightlines.

Yeah! Per The New York Times: I'm not sure about the "so loved" part, but I know I will like it a lot more if my view of the stage isn't blocked by the head in front of me. A little more leg room would be nice, too ...

Claudia la Rocco has posted an interview with Lourdes Lopez regarding Morphoses future on her WNYC Performance Club blog. In it, Lopez fleshes out her planned "curatorial model" with a bit of detail. There's also a link to a WQXR "Artsfile on Line" interview of La Rocco regarding Wheeldon's departure from Morphoses and the company's porspects now that he's gone.

Ah, remember when Balanchine insisted on casting Merrill Ashley and Karin von Aroldingen in "Emeralds" season after season - now those were the good old days of Jewels-kvetching ... I know that I edit my own memories of NYCB performances past into a personal highlights reel that omits the less-than-awesome moments -- and I suspect I'm not the only person who does so. I've probably cobbled a dozen performances of "Jewels" together into a Platonic ideal that no single performance could ever live up to. (The fact that I don't really like "Jewels" all that much doesn't help, of course.)

I blew right by it too - thanks for the link! I loved this quote from Morris: Emphasis mine - can you tell I'd rather do anything today than attack the huge stack of administrivia that I'm supposed to be clearing a path through. My brush with genius: Mario Batali was one of the cooks at a local pizza joint in the town where I went to grad school. Who knew.