Kathleen O'Connell

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.

Sandik, are you saying that ballet no longer has the freedom to start smaller touring ensembles - either focused on the work of a single choreographer or on mixed rep -- because regional companies now fill the space that a smaller touring company might? In other words, if you want to see the latest from a given modern choreographer, you pretty much have to wait for his or her own company to come around since there aren't regional mixed rep modern companies that mount works by many choreographers in the way that, say, PNB does? It's an interesting thought. From Morphoses' 2008 Form 990: Aside from the sheer number of world premiers (we can leave aside the matter of quality for now) and the fostering of dancer / artist collaborations (and I'd be interested to know how deep that collaboration actually was at the dancer level), this description sure sounds like an ambitious regional company; in fact, it sounds like a major company. Here's the organizational mission, just for the record: Sigh - I know it's a function of having to put stuff on grant proposals and the like, but change just four words and I could have written this as my departmental mission statement when I worked for a big multi-national corporation ...

A very good question ... and possibly one that Wheeldon and Lopez should have discussed more often when setting this whole thing up. Out of curiosity on this very point, I started trawling the dance company IRS Form 990s and other filings posted on the New York State Attorney General's Charities Bureau website (www.charitiesnys.com). It's a fascinating exercise. A factoid: in terms of revenue, Morphoses and Complexions were about the same size in 2007. Morphoses had total revenues of $1.47 million ($729K in contributions /grants and $740K in performance income); its expenses totaled $796K - i.e. it socked away $674K. Complexions had total revenues of $1.3 million ($652K in contributions /grants and $689K in performance income); its expenses totaled $1.14 million. (Someone at Complexions has real fund raising mojo: contributions /grants shot up to $1.2 million in 2008.) One can see via the filings how much Complexions paid its dancers in 2007 ($522K) - what isn't available is how many were under contract and for how many weeks. (Thirteen are listed on its current roster, along with a ballet master and assistant ballet master.) Morphoses' 2007 and 2008 "Performer Fees" were $305K and $273K, respectively. I assume that some or all of this was for dancers. IIRC, there was at least some live music on its 2007 programs - I don't know whether musicians are included in "Performer Fees" or whether they are included in "Direct Production Fees" ($122K / $193K) or "Artistic and Performance" ($37K / $51K) Travel expenses were $112K / $113K . Keep in mind that 2007 was Morphoses' first year; it was Complexions' 13th. Morphoses' 2008 990 (go here) contains a multi-page summary of the year's activities - where it performed, who it commissioned works from, etc - and some prose about its mission. Deborah Jowitt has some comments on Wheeldon's announcement here.

Wheeldon was in a position to make the experiment and it failed, as often happens. But I don't think he and his backers were wrong to try. I don't, either. It must be tough for Lopez to see all that hard work go down the drain but without Wheeldon the troupe has no raison d'etre. Dirac, I wholeheartedly agree that Wheeldon was right to give it a shot. It may be that he was never able to settle in his own mind what Morphoses’ mission really was. Or it may be that as a practical matter he wasn’t able to bridge the gap between what he wanted Morphoses to be and what circumstance forced it to be. Or, it may be that like Dr Casaubon in Middlemarch, he was surprised to discover that being married (in Wheeldon’s case, to his own organization) wasn’t as profound a state of being as he had anticipated. But he wasn’t wrong to try. (Let's hope that Lopez doesn't feel obligated to soldier on with Wheeldon's original project the way Dorothea Brooke felt obligated to finish Casaubon's "The Key to all Mythologies.") Wheeldon appears to have put a lot of faith into the notion that working with a dedicated company of dancers would allow him to be creative in a way that working with a pick-up troupe or with an institution like NYCB did not. He may have been right, but it’s hard to see now how he was going to get that company without some sacrifice, at least at the outset—e.g., by committing most of his creative energies to it, or by committing himself to a less stellar roster of dancers who could reasonably be expected to commit themselves to him for the requisite number of weeks per year, or by basing himself in just one city, or by basing himself in a city that wasn’t already stuffed full of dance companies, or by electing to focusing on creating dance rather than curating it etc, etc, etc. I think Morphoses sans Wheeldon might have a future if it sorts out what its mission is, gets the right AD, and finds some financial supporters that want to make it happen. Perhaps it could be an “incubator “of sorts (stealing shamelessly from Biotech): Lopez contacts a promising choreographer and says “I’ll give you the infrastructure, you give me a ballet. Here are 10 good dancers, rehearsal space, a production team, and tour schedule. You don’t have to worry about any of that–just give my dancers something to dance and the audience something to watch.” Maybe that audience is in college–town auditoriums instead of City Center. Maybe it’s in smaller cities. Maybe Morphoses only comes to NY when it’s got something than NY needs to see and isn’t getting from anyone else. (There are ballet choreographers whose names aren’t Wheeldon, Ratmansky, Millepied, or Elo …) Maybe it forges alliances with folks like Leon Botstein: “Let’s augment that Bard [insert name of less-well-known or “difficult” composer here] Festival with some dance.” Or am I being hopelessly optimistic?

Nothing Wheeldon did for Morphoses really looked any different than what he did for other companies. None of Morphoses' non-Wheeldon rep really looked any different than what was being made elsewhere: "Softly as I Leave You" didn't need Morphoses to happen, for example. Morphoses' gesamtkunstwerk aspirations were tepidly realized at best. So what was the point? Perhaps having "a cadre of full time dancers to work with ... who know just how you like them to move, the way you want them to cut shapes in space, the way you ask them to respond to music" would have resulted in something startlingly new, but I'm starting to wonder. Lopez is quoted as saying she has the resources to hire 8-10 dancers; Wheeldon says that isn't enough. Is this a reasonable objection?

When I first started seeing NYCB regularly in the late 70s, the dancers did seem very adult -- but then they were all older than me, or at least my age. Now that they're all young enough to be my children and then some, they look like kids. It's that simple.

Agreed! I saw Saturday evening's performance, and Anderson's Carabosse was truly, terrifically demented -- not purely evil so much as off her meds and dangerously deranged. Reichlen (Lilac Fairy), Gilliland (the Queen) and LaCour (the King) -- all very tall and regal -- looked like Borzois startled by a Jack Russell terrier on fire and in for the kill. It was over the top in exactly the right way, and I loved it. I've enjoyed watching Anderson in the corps the past few seasons -- I hope the company gives her more to do soon. Fairchild was a delightful Florine - musical, swift and precise without any brittleness at all, and sweet without being cloying. My husband's comment during the curtain: "She's got it all going on." Someone dropped a garland towards the end of the waltz, but a couple of quick-thinking little ballerinas deftly got the thing up off the stage and into the right pair of hands like real pros. Well done! All in all, a fine night at Koch Theater!

I realize this is off topic, but a recent (sort of) rascal at the 2004 free ALL BALANCHINE day at Symphony Space, Rasta Thomas was the epitome of this potrayal. He had been coached by Jacques d'Amboise, and IMHO, he was amazing. His face was so alive with character. He is one gorgeous dancer, although IMHO totally on the wrong aesthetic track. (Too bad for us.) You might find George Jackson's danceviewtimes review of Thomas' 2004 performances of Apollo and Prodigal with Dance Theater of Harlem interesting. It's here. Here's a quote to whet your appetite: A terrific Apollo from Thomas wouldn't surprise me in the least.

The NY Times has three other dance critics who do cover contemporary dance with diligence and respect: Gia Kourlas, Claudia La Rocco, and Roslyn Sulcas. Here's one of the paragraphs in Macauley's piece that triggered the outcry: The field may indeed be "too large for anyone to keep complete track of," but the NY Times has four people in position who could collectively watch, report, and assess - and three of them already do. Macauley might have found a graceful way to delegate the "downtown" decade wrap-up to them. (They might not be any more impressed with it than he is, of course.) One could argue that the senior dance critic of the paper of record should be in a position to provide an informed assessment of dance in all its variety, but if something is genuinely "too large for anyone to keep complete track of" then there should be no shame in calling in reinforcements.

My goodness! Four Sunday matinees in a row - they could practically build a subscription program out of those farewell performances!