Kathleen O'Connell

GRRRRR .... I know there's really no connection, but this makes me resent every dime squandered spent on R+J's sets and costumes even more. There are very few NYCB corps dancers that I don't recognize by sight onstage (just the newest SAB crop, really) and few that don't have something genuinely special about them. I can't think of a single one of which I'd think "oh well -- no great loss," so this really is a very sad development for the dancers, the company, and the audience.

First of all, congratulations to Adrian Danchig-Waring on his well-deserved promotion. I for one have thoroughly enjoyed watching his career develop over the past several years and hope we get to see more of this fine dancer for many seasons to come. Well done! And ... my husband and I were tickled to see that his promotion (accompanied by a very nice picture) popped up in the "Highbrow & Brilliant" quadrant of New York Magazine's Approval Matrix. (Dunkin' Donuts' waffle-bacon-and-egg sandwich scored big in the "Lowbrow & Brilliant" quadrant, in case you're interested.)

I saw Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at the Met way back in 2000 with Catherine Malfitano and Vladimir Galouzine. The production was by Graham Vick, who updated the setting to the Soviet Union in the 50s-60s. The staging was somewhat controversial at the time, but I thought it was very effective. (It was dismissed as Eurotrash by some, but it didn't really have the kind of gratuitous and overthought intrusions that characterize classic Eurotrash.) It's a grim and acidly sarcastic opera: Vick's production effectively stripped away the kind of picture-postcard peasant village prettiness that might distract one from that fact and put both the characters' plight and their depravity in a context that made them simultaneously appalling and comprehensible. The Met was going to revive Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk next year, but I gather budgetary constraints have put that plan on hold. Too bad. It will probably be a decade before I work up sufficient enthusiasm to drag myself off to yet another bloated production of La Boheme, but I would have handed over some serious $$$ to see Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk again.

Oh no! So soon as that? I'll miss seeing him dance, but I look forward to seeing more of his photography. Froman's elegant and committed dancing has saved more than one performance for me by giving something to watch when the leads were carrying on as if they'd had their hearts set on being shift managers at a midtown Kinkos, but had to settle for being principals at a world-class ballet company instead.

It must really hurt to have to settle for something like that.

In The Four Temperaments their looks don't have to be stony, but they should be at least contemplative. The themes figures are sort of Janus ones--or Janusaries for what is to come. They face opposite directions and they go off on different sides of the stage. And what is to come is fairly intense. There are Balanchine ballets that can take smiles--and whole movements that are smiles in themselves. A clarification: at the performance I saw, SF's three Theme couples were smiling at each other, not engaging in the kind of aggressive wooing of the audience that Accocella points to. Since they're dancing together and the music isn't uniformly solemn, the smiles didn't strike me as inappropriate to the situation.

That has to be just plain spite, doesn't it? Accoella is surely the only person on the planet who would actually object to being given Mr. Salstein's phone number

Interesting! I noticed the SFers smiling in the "Themes" section of 4Ts during their visit to NYC in the fall of '08 and thought "Oh, isn't that nice!" I thought it was such a pleasant break from NYCB's stony stares. I wouldn't necessarily want to see it that way every single time, but during that performance, at least, I rather liked the effect ... Chacun a son gout!

I hope to post some more about the 1/27/09 performance later today, but in the interim, a question: was this Mearns' debut in Stars & Stripes? Per the NYCB website's casting list, her debut was scheduled for 1/31/09, so I'm wondering if her debut got pushed up a few days. I don't generally think of Mearns as a bravura ballerina (I don't think she's likely to medal in gargouillades), but I really enjoyed her performance Tuesday evening: in some ways I prefer her performance to Bouder's.

I gather I am the only person in the world other than NYCB's chief accountant who actually likes block programming. I get crazy with too much choice, to quote Joni Mitchell.

NYCB Sunday 1/25/09 I had forgotten that this program was titled “A Tribute to Nureyev,” and was thus mightily puzzled when the afternoon began with Bell Telephone Hour clips featuring Nureyev dancing the Flower Festival pas de deux with Maria Tallchief and the Le Corsaire pas de deux with Lupe Serrano. Then up went the screen and out ran K. Morgan and A. Peiffer ready to begin … um… Flower Festival in Genzano Pas de Deux. Talk about tough acts to follow! Anyway, they both acquitted themselves more than honorably: Peiffer tossed off some crystal clear, feather light beats; Morgan was as poised, deft, and sweetly lyrical as she always is; and they were both charming. I crossed my fingers and hoped for a revival of Bournonville Divertisments soon. On to La Stravaganza, which I actually enjoyed more than I did the last time I saw it (2002-ish?). I think I might enjoy it even more if we could dispense with the pretentious Moderns vs Vermeers claptrap, which is either over-obvious or completely pointless – I can’t decide which. Keep the backdrops, re-dress it, and see if it makes either more sense or less sense that way: either would be fine. A ballet shouldn’t have to rely on a costume gimmick to make its points. (This is my gripe about The Cage, although in that case I suspect that the insect mise-en-scene is really there to cushion the impact of the point Robbins is beating us over the head with.) First things first: all of the dancers were terrific, and Tiler Peck was extra-special terrific. She, Kaitlyn Gilliland, Benjamin Millepied, and Adrian Danchig-Waring looked the most comfortable in this idiom and helped me see things I might otherwise have missed. But honestly, I could single out every one of the dancers for something special, and that’s saying a lot for a ballet that doesn’t present very many opportunities for standout individual achievement. (The dancers spend a lot of time moving in unison, sometimes in groups of six, sometimes four, sometimes Moderns alone, sometimes Vermeers alone, sometimes Moderns and Vermeers together. At the beginning at least, the Moderns move in a more fluid, “classical” contemporary idiom to Vivaldi and the Vermeers move in a more angular, “mechanical” contemporary idiom to Musique concrète – which is supposed to be the thought-provoking, unexpected reversal, I guess. Whatever. At least they actually move.) I liked the opening and closing tableau: five of the Moderns join hands and form an intertwined chain in constant, rippling motion. At the beginning, Tiler Peck wends her way through this chain; at the end, she emerges from the wings to observe it, having had some kind of exploratory encounter with one of the Vermeers (Millepied). For some reason it made me think of the opening of the Inferno, when Dante finds himself “lost in a dark wood,” and I thought it was touching this time around. There is also an interesting section in which two Modern men dance with two Vermeer men, and which I found to have considerably more emotional resonance than the bit where Modern T. Peck rolls around on the floor with Vermeer Millepied after pawing him for what seems like about five minutes. (“Pawing” is probably not the right word. “Re-awakening him with her touch” or “exploring his Vermeery otherness” or “confirming our human connection across the centuries" or something along those lines is presumably what’s going on. It appears to be a recapitulation of an unfortunate section earlier on in which the Modern women, standing in a line, run their hands all over their stone-cold still Modern Men in the stage right gloom for, like, forever while the Vermeers do their their thing center stage. At this point I was either imagining too much or not enough.) My takeaway: as clap-trappy as it is, the dancers actually move in some relation to the music and one feels something when they do. Better this than say, River of Light (in which there is no relation between the music and the movement at all) or the infinitely more annoying Oltremare (talk about claptrap!), although if La Stravaganza vanished from the repertory, my life wouldn’t be materially altered for the worse. After the Rain Pas de Deux. It’s perfect. There’s nothing else to say. Well, OK – one more thing: it’s one of the few works in the NYCB rep in which Sebastian Marcovicci remains genuinely effective. I’ve liked him in several roles (I’ve always admired his use of his hands), but he appears to have bulked up quite a bit over the years and his neck is going to look like a linebacker’s if he keeps on like this. There’s no air under his dancing anymore. Lifecasting. Brace yourselves for the rant. Choreographer’s Note from the Program: “Drawing on the dancers’ individual movement dynamics, coupled with the scores of Reich and Ikeda, has inspired this work.” Let’s leave aside the fact that this is not even an English sentence – Lee had at his disposal eleven of the most individual and distinctive dancers on the NYCB roster and didn’t manage to make anything of it. “Individual movement dynamics” my you-know-what. Bouder, Kowroski, Hyltin, Gilliland, Pazcougin, R. Fairchild, Ramasar, Hall, Carmena, Danchig-Waring, and Tworzyanski: look, you could put these eleven dancers in a studio with any one of us and a recording of the Barney Song and we could somehow manage to give each of them something individual and telling to do, even if the only words in our ballet vocabulary were chassé, pas de bourrée, and assemblé. Or even if all we could say was “do one of those twirly thingys and then stick your leg up in the air.” Hyltin, Pazcougin, Carmena, Hall, and Tworzyanski were completely wasted: any five dancers pulled from the corps would have made the same impact. (This was a real shame with respect to Tworyanski since we don’t get many opportunities to see this fine dancer in featured solo work.) Let me stress that this was not the dancers’ fault: it was Lee’s. I can understand the allure of creating a ballet on these dancers – it’s like someone handing you the keys to the Maserati and suggesting that you take it out on the Taconic for a spin -- but if you’re going to use a Hyltin or a Pazcougin or a Carmena, you’ve got to give each of them something to do, not dump them into an anonymous ensemble. And if you’re going to use Kowrowski or Bouder, for heaven’s sake show us something new about them; we already know that Kowrowski can tuck her left foot behind her right ear. Danchig-Waring got one shot at unfolding a slow, gorgeous arabesque and then spent the rest of the ballet coiling and uncoiling his torso while propping up either Gilliland or Kowrowski or both of them. (D-W’s long limbs, baroque line, and phenominally supple thoracic spine are the gifts Lee’s idiom has been asking for – couldn’t he have found some way to really exploit them, along with his fine jump? I started to suspect that the only reason Lee found him interesting was because he was tall enough to partner the tallest women. “Where’s Adrian? Quick – run over there and hold up Kaitlyn.”) R. Fairchild got a couple of solo opportunities, but they were so (seemingly) brief, so embedded in the relentless, undifferentiated hubbub that they were over before they could register. He’d unleash a stunning, perfect turn and then vanish into the mass. Look, when someone can turn like that you make a fuss over it. Letting him do it twice while eight other people are dancing something else is not making a fuss, even if you throw a spotlight on him for a second. Is the concept of solo variation so old-fashioned that we can’t have them anymore, even though we’re blessed with dancers who can make us really see? Is the concept of two people – two specific, individual people -- dancing together and making theater out of it (you know, a story in Balanchine’s sense of the word) so hopelessly out of sync with our (alleged) hook-up culture that it’s not even worth exploring anymore? I don’t much care for Martins’ choreography, but he at least understands that our brains need variations in rhythm and texture, and, from time to time, something -- no, someone -- to focus on to make sense of things. His couples aren’t often happy ones, but they are at least pairs of individuals. Over the past year or so, I’ve probably seen too much in the Lifecasting mode, by which I mean six or eight or twelve outstanding dancers trapped in an anonymous ensemble in which they, as unique individuals, hardly matter, distinguishable only by their costumes. (Thank heavens for David Hallberg’s bustier – may we call it a cuirasse? – in Stallings’ Citizen: at least I can remember that he was in it. I promise you, if Bouder hadn’t been the only woman in Lifecasting whose costume was color-blocked with turquoise instead of yellow, you’d have hardly known -- or cared -- that it was her.) I’ve also seen too many ballets in which the dancers don’t move so much as manipulate themselves; in which the women are apparently unable to move at all under their own power and must be shuttled from one end of the stage to another or must have their limbs stretched into configurations they apparently can’t be expected to achieve on their own; in which ballet’s vocabulary is not re-fashioned so much as abandoned in favor of its most extreme effects; in which the only break from a massed group doing too many different things at once is a massed group lying on the floor doing nothing; in which music is reduced to a soundtrack rather than being the engine of the dance, as if we were watching a figure-skating championship. The whole time I was watching Lifecasting I kept wondering what Ratmansky might have done with these same dancers. He used a similar ensemble in Russian Seasons, but managed to suggest that there was a reason he used those dancers in particular (although I take it his choice was at least somewhat dictated by availability - in which case he can clearly make a virtue of necessity): he didn’t just tap into the spark at the heart of Sofiane Sylve, he found it in Abi Stafford, too. (He gave her this ridiculous, wonderful, endless, unsupported balance: everytime she does it all I can think of is “see you in the Rose Adagio, bitches.”) And speaking of Abi Stafford, let’s move on to Theme & Variations. There is much in Stafford’s dancing to admire (and I genuinely like her), but she doesn’t strike me as a tulle-and-tiara ballerina, at least not yet. She’s what I’d call a naïve dancer – I don’t mean that she’s personally unknowing, of course, but rather that she dances as if ballet had been invented yesterday. She looks fresh, but also unresonant. This quality works very well in some ballets: I thought she was wonderful in Symphony in Three Movements, for instance. She danced as if she found the steps intriguing in and of themselves and didn’t try to impose anything at all on the exotic gestures. She just did it, and it looked as transparent and refreshing as spring water. Ditto in The Chairman Dances and Glass Pieces. (She even looks glamorous in that 80’s aerobics headband; poor Rachel Rutherford looked as if she would just die if one of her friends saw her in it.) She adds a spark to the ensemble without disrupting its dynamics, and she looks unexpectedly good in things that Heather Watts, of all people, looked good in: Watts’ role in Robbins’ Piano Pieces, for instance, or her role in Davidsbündlertänze. (Watts’ interpretation was something along the lines of “Clara is having a teen mood”; Stafford’s is more along the lines of “Clara can play faster than you can – deal with it.”) I bet she’d be very effective in Martins’ Concerto for Two Solo Pianos; Ansanelli looked like a vicitm in that ballet – Watts never looked like a victim ever, and Stafford wouldn’t either. Of course, Watts wasn’t really a tutu ballerina herself – she was a Dewdrop, not a Sugarplum – and that may be the link. In the world of T&V, however, ballet was most definitely not invented yesterday and “naïve” is not an option. Stafford does all of the steps, but somehow contrives to make it look like a classroom demonstration of all of the steps. It’s as if she has every word in the ballet vocabulary down cold, but hasn’t moved on to making sentences out of them yet (let alone to mastering the rhetoric of the tutu). Part of the problem is her phrasing: like several dancers on NYCB’s current roster, she tends to dance completely inside of the phrase, rather than through it, and, to complicate matters, she’s often ahead of the music (especially in adagio), as if she’s eager to get one combination over and done with so she can show us the next one. Leigh Witchel sometimes refers to “one damn step after another” choreography; Stafford is kind of a “one damn step after another” dancer. You see individual steps but not necessarily a whole dance. Her physique (and her foursquare musicality) may work against her in more lyrical passages: she’s well proportioned, but her limbs aren’t long (compare her arms with Whelan’s, for example) and tend to lever off of her center rather than unfurl from it -- some effects may simply be harder for her to put across than others. But even in allegro she could deploy a bit more rubato (that was Weese's -- and lately M. Fairchild's -- particular gift). She dances with the kind unfussy directness you’d see in an expert horsewoman, say, but she hasn’t figured out how to turn on the glamour when the foxhunt is over and it's time for the ball (fussy indirectness isn’t the answer, of course). She appears to be trying to impose “personality” on her dancing via an unvarying, incessant smile; but the smiling needs to come from the same place the dancing comes from -- it can’t be glued on like veneer. I once watched Stafford execute an entire duet with the same fixed smile on her face from beginning to end: it never varied, no matter what she or her partner happened to be doing; it didn’t suggest that she was transported by joy – it suggested that nothing was going on inside. And I don’t believe that for a minute. As to the rest of the cast: I think everyone could have used another week of rehearsals or an infusion of enthusiasm or both.

' Definitely not a happy performance of T&V -- everyone looked as if they were dancing in someone else's shoes to music they'd never heard before. I was actually concerned at one point that one or both of the principals might have sustained an injury and that they were struggling to just get through the thing. They've both danced better, and I'm sure they will again though. I'll post more about the program tomorrow -- right now my husband and I have a date with Battlestar Gallactica.

Flipsy, I am totally with you on the honesty, commitment and boldness front. I just got back from today's NYCB matinee: there was plenty of boldness and commitment on display, but it was in Preljocaj's La Stravaganza, alas, not Balanchine's Theme & Variations. I've seen people mark a ballet with more engagement.

I went to last night’s (1/24/08) performance fully prepared to embrace Miami’s dancing as The Return of Authentic Balanchine©. I had a mighty fine time, but that’s not what I saw. Some things were "authentic" (I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this way of thinking about how people dance Balanchine) and some -- e.g., the upper bodies -- not so much. (Which is not the same thing as saying that they weren't good.) Let’s take J. Delgado’s Square Dance pas de chat: it was an awesome display (and in last night’s performance it looked exactly like the picture Flipsy cites, so it’s an awesome display Delgado can apparently repeat at will, not just a fluke), but authentic Balanchine? I’m not so sure – I think I have to differ with Flipsy on this one. I’ve been watching NYCB for 30+ years, and I’ve never seen a pas de chat done quite like that, even by Merrill Ashley. In order for her toe to cross her thigh, Delgado has to keep the knee of her trailing leg below the knee of her leading leg at a point where they should in theory be on the same plane. Personally, I think sacrificing the line of the knees to get the toe that high both muddies the forward trajectory of the step and takes some of the openness and air out of it -- but your mileage may vary. Would Balanchine have liked it? I can’t say, of course, but it’s not what I’d look to first as a marker of authenticity. (Delgado is nonetheless a delight and I loved her in the role.) I wonder if any company really can claim to dance “authentic “ Balanchine at this point? I’ve seen Balanchine ballets danced by NYCB, ABT, the Kirov, San Francisco, and now Miami and while each one of them captures something that I remember from Balanchine as it was danced by NYCB in the 70’s and early 80’s, none of them dance it exactly as it was then. And I suspect that NYCB in the 70’s didn’t look the way it did in the 50s & 60s, and that at least some portion of the audience found that troubling. As an ensemble, Miami’s dancers did some things I really liked (and that I hope the NYCB dancers I saw in the audience took note of and will think about). 1) For starters, they danced in all three dimensions; all too often (although less often now than in the 90’s) NYCB’s dancers appear to be trapped between two panes of glass, scurrying along hither and thither in one plane as if State Theater’s stage were an ant farm. (This is what dancing Martins will do to you, I think.) 2) They danced with real clarity, but also with forward momentum. I’ve seen other companies (ABT for instance) pull steps out of Balanchine’s choreography with equal clarity, but also pull back on the momentum while doing so. 3) They made something out of the transfer of weight; one of the things that’s bugged me the most about NYCB since about the early 90’s has been the devolution to a style of movement I think of as “skittery” – the women sometimes flit across the stage with all the impact of water bugs on a pond. 4) They moved their feet by moving their legs – i.e., where the foot went was a function of where the thigh went, if that makes any sense. 5) I liked the way they used their upper bodies, but it struck me as Not Authentic Balanchine. The corps danced with equal energy and musicality, if not with equal finish and facility; that's fine by me. Some individual performances taken as a whole didn’t seem as successfully “Balanchinean” as the ensemble overall. Andrea Spiridonakos’ soft focus attack as the Tall Girl in Rubies just didn’t work for me in that role (NYCB has a couple of dancers who can deliver it better at the moment) and Haiyan Wu was too pretty and too careful in the second movement of Symphony in C to convey the special perfume of that role. The dancers were definitely musical, but not necessarily rhythmically subtle: I can imagine this company producing a Tiler Peck, say, but not a Miranda Weese or a late-model Janie Taylor. Despite my carping about the pas de chat above, I loved J. Delgado and I liked Square Dance best of all. She’s a terrific dancer and a ray of sunshine all rolled into one and I hope I get to see her again. I really liked Jeremy Cox, too. He didn’t approach the great male solo in the Sarabande in any way like its originator, Bart Cook, nor like its other great interpreters, Boal and Hübbe. It kind of looked like Balanchine filtered through half-speed Kylian, but I liked it all the same.

When I saw Michelle Wiles in T&V during ABT's 2008 City Center season, my first thought was "Hmmm ... that's about how Abi Stafford would tackle it" (I've never seen Stafford in the role). I guess now I'll have a chance to test my hypothesis.

Yes to both Revelations and Esplanade, and yes the "Americana" theme definitely runs the risk of being lame or kitschy or both at once, if such a thing is possible. There was a telecast of Revelations (with Jamison) many many moons ago and it's surely time for another. I think Esplanade may have made its way to the small screen as well; it's one of those works that may work much, much better in the theater than on TV simply because of the sheer thrill and physicality of the catches and of the dancers hitting the floor, but it does make everyone happy, as it should.

Lordy! How did I manage to leave Robbins off of the list! Americana Triple Bill I: Fancy Free, Rodeo, and Stars & Stripes Americana Triple Bill II: Appalachian Spring, Company B, and either Nine Sinantra Songs or Eight Jelly Rolls

I'd start with a gala tribute to "stamp-worthy" American choreographers, but wouldn't limit it to ballet. In alphabetical order(and I'm sure I'm omitting someone obvious from the list): Alvin Ailey George Balanchine Merce Cunningham Martha Graham Mark Morris Paul Taylor Twyla Tharp Once we get the obligatory, tribute type stuff out of the way, I'd like to see another command performance featuring Urban Bushwomen, Savion Glover, and the Trocks.

Stimulus opportunity! Monthly Presidential performing arts broadcasts, inlcuding live HD simulcasts in movie theaters and school auditoriums, Hulu streams, and You Tube videos. Send a DVD with each Tax Refund check. The list of potential command performers is long indeed. Although Renee Fleming is not a particular favorite of mine, she'd be a well-known and glamorous first choice to kick the series off. Nico Muhly and / or Matt Haimowitz live from Le Poisson Rouge would be fun ... I remember a televised performance of Mikhail Baryshnikov and Heather Watts dancing something from Rubies in the East Room of the White House. (And I do hope I'm not mis-remembering!)

I have very mixed feelings about attempts to incorporate art into civic ceremonies -- I appreciate the sentiment, but too often the art itself is pretty pedestrian, and in the end, just seems pasted on. Let the Marine Band play (it's their job), swear the guy in, listen to his speech, and move on to the parade. The peaceful transfer of power is momentous enough on its own, and simple dignity is the best expression of its grandeur. Well, maybe one more thing should be on the agenda: Invite Aretha Franklin to sing some civic hymn or other so long as she promises to wear a fabulous hat! I loved that hat: a perfect, bold expression of the exuberant joy of a remarkable day.

Well, every now and then when it looks like they're phoning it in, I do kind of want to remind the dancers on stage that they're being watched "Hello! We're here! We braved the elements just to see you!" Just for the record, no one was phoning it in at NYCB's Tuesday (1/13/09) Coppelia -- everyone was just terrific. Well done!

Now if only some clever engineer could devise an "Ignore" button for the theater! Is that certain dancer you love to hate on the program? No problem -- just remember toggle the "Ignore" button before the house lights go down and it's like their variation never happened. Of course, we have the low tech version of that now, otherwise known as the "Hmmm ... I think I'll move the binoculars a little to the left and see what my favorites in the corps are up to ..." maneuver. It must work -- I was rifling through my programs from last year and was shocked by the number of performances I had somehow managed to totally obliterate from my memory: "I saw HER in THAT? Really? Wow -- I just don't remember it at all!" In all seriousness, and OT (moderators -- apologies if this is thread-jacking and please do whatever is appropriate if it is): I do think that persistently casting dancers in roles for which they are no longer (or never have been) suited is Not A Good Thing. (There will always be those one-or two-off, pinch hit situations where someone who probably shouldn't be dancing a certain role gamely goes on nonetheless, and allow me to extend a big "Thank You!" to them for that right now.) Yes, I admire the company's demonstration of gratitude and respect for beloved and long-serving artists, but they are not giving the tickets away, and I think it's wrong to routinely foist sub-par performances on the audience when there are alternatives. It's also wrong to drain the repertory of its vitality (I can't think of quite the right term, so "vitality" will have to do) by relegating certain roles to aging (or inadequate) dancers; what was once vivid fades into the dance equivalent of a sepia-toned photograph -- lovely to look at through a haze of nostalgia, perhaps, but the immediacy and the details have been lost. (I've been seriously concerned about Duo Concertant for a while now -- it almost seems as if it's been set aside for dancers in the twilight of their careers. The ballet could use a bracing blast of, say, Pazcougin urgency or Villalobos fresh air. Or Taylor lightening -- now that would be a treat.) Finally, I think it's a disservice to a formerly great (or even just good) dancer to ruthlessly expose his or her deterioration, even though it may seem a kindness to allow them to hang on to a role beyond their powers. It's harder and harder for me to remember how glorious certain dancers were in their prime because the images of treasured performances are slowly but surely being eroded by the nightly evidence of their decline. Don't get me wrong -- I have nothing against older dancers (or less technically assured dancers) getting cast in roles that might, in the cold light of day, be a stretch given their current abilities, provided that they are still able to put the role over through superior artistry (or even charisma). But there's a point at which nostalgic miscasting is no fun for anyone: not the audience, not the company, not the dancers.

I think anything that put actual $$$ into artists' hands to be spent on the art itself would be a good start. And I would define "art" pretty broadly: I flipped through the NYT's little slideshow on NYCB's costume shop today and was very thankful that someone still sees value in giving these people the wherewithal to practice their craft.

Michael Kaiser sounds the alarm! "While government bailouts are being offered or considered for financial institutions, the auto industry, homeowners, and so many other needy and worthy sectors, one group is quickly and rather quietly falling apart: our nation's arts organizations. In the past few months, dozens of opera companies, theater companies, dance organizations, museums and symphonies have either closed or suffered major cash crises ... The arts have historically received short shrift from our political leaders, who all too often seem happy to offer bland endorsements of our work without backing those words with financial appropriations. But the arts in the United States provide 5.7 million jobs and account for $166 billion in economic activity annually. This sector is at serious risk. Because the arts are so fragmented, no single organization's demise threatens the greater economy and claims headlines. But thousands of organizations, and the state of America's arts ecology, are in danger. We need an emergency grant for arts organizations in America, and we need legislation that allows unusual access to endowments. Washington must encourage foundations to increase their spending rates during this crisis, and we need immediate tax breaks for corporate giving. As John F. Kennedy said, "I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for our victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit." As we print billions of dollars in bailout money, isn't it time to ensure that we are saving our soul as well as our economy?" Here's the link to Kaiser's 12/29/08 Washington Post Op-Ed Article: "No Bailout for the Arts? Let's hope someone with access to our nation's checkbook is listening.

I'm trying to wrap my head around Kowroski and Marcovici in Chaconne ... and Veyette as Franz. I'm sure they'll all acquit themselves more than honorably, but it's not the casting that would have immediately sprung to my mind, at least. And I'm delighted to see that Bar is back!