Kathleen O'Connell

Bedside: We by Yevgeny Zamyatin in a new translation by Natasha Randall. We, written in the early 20s, was apparently one of the first modern dystopias and a model for both 1984 and Brave New World, although it wasn’t published in Russia until the 1980s. The action takes place 1000 years in the future in “The One State,” a city made entirely of glass. “Glass” as in you can see – and be seen -- through the walls. You only get to draw the blinds if you’ve registered in advance for an hour-long intimate encounter with that special someone and can produce the required pink ticket by way of documentation. Heartily recommended (the book, not the pink-ticket system!) Cued up: The Exquisite by Laird Hunt. Ipod: The Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles and read by Derek Jacobi. Somewhat abridged, unfortunately, although I will admit that not every line is compelling, even in Fagles’ headlong translation, and some of them can certainly be dispensed with without doing great violence to the fabric of the work. (That being said, one of my favorite bits – a simile comparing the blood running down Menelaus’ wounded thigh to the purple stain carefully applied to a bridle’s carved ivory cheekpiece – has been omitted along with the battle scene it was buried in.) The Odyssey and The Aeneid (read by Ian McKellan and Simon Callow, respectively, both translated by Fagles, and neither abridged) are cued up next. I read these all 30+ years ago in college (in Lattimore’s and Fitzgerald’s translations, although I did manage to stagger through a few verses in the original). Listening to Jacobi’s wonderful rendition has been an absolute blast – much more fun than the first time around! I’ve been particularly struck by alien and yet at the same time utterly contemporary bronze age age Greece seems to me now. It mostly seemed alien when I was 20; now it seems like where I work, but with different bling. Just finished: The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud. Chick lit for bluestockings. (Or, alternatively, The Corrections with real estate. Four Manhattan apartments plus one in Brooklyn, a summer house in the Berkshires, and another in the Hamptons. What is more New York than the quest for real estate?) An enjoyable comedy of manners with some genuinely lovely moments, but not nearly so profound a take on pre-and post 9/11 New York as it was hyped to be. (The hype is not the author's fault, of course.) Wait for the paperback. Two niggling complaints. 1) Too many Britishisms in the mouths of 30 something Manhattanites. The ones I know don’t “ring off” the phone, “fancy” the guy they hope to date, or (intentionally) consume anything at “tea-time.” 2) It feels as if it’s been written by someone who’s visited New York, but never actually lived here. The depictions of 9/11 and its immediate aftermath especially read as if they were (artfully) pieced together from various eyewitness accounts, but not actually experienced. (Note to Leigh Witchel: knitting features prominently in the depiction of one of the characters.) And just before that, Imperium by Robert Harris. While Cicero prosecutes assorted criminally corrupt officials and runs for the Roman senate, his slave secretary invents shorthand! What are you waiting for? No, really, it’s almost as much fun as Burr! There’s even some real estate ...

I just wanted to add that I was not at all unhappy to see Gold cast in 4Ts -- I hope my original post didn't suggest that I was. He’s a dancer I’ve watched with pleasure for many year and I was interested to see what he would do with the role. In the end, I didn’t find him wholly persuasive in it but I’m glad that I got a chance to see him give it a shot nonetheless. Yes, the height disparities were unfortunate, but the performance of 4Ts that I saw was problematic for plenty of other reasons -- putting a taller dancer in Melancholic or a shorter dancer in Phlegmatic wouldn't have salvaged it.

As usual with Gottlieb, I’m in violent agreement with about half of what he says and utterly baffled by the other half. Weese “bland” and Bar “uningratiating”? Perhaps his palate has been jaded by Sylve’s rather more gargantuan effects. (It is of course a matter of taste, but I much prefer Weese to Sylve in Tchai 2.) One issue I have with Gottlieb’s criticism is that his assessments of dancers often read like personal attacks on their characters rather than as analyses of what their dancing is actually like in terms of technique and artistry. By the time he’s done extolling Whelan’s “modesty” it’s practically taken on the coloring of a moral failing – yet to my mind, her scrupulous modesty and honesty are among her glories and are what make her dancing in fact unconventional. Yes, casting Gold and La Cour together in Four T’s was probably ill considered, but Gottlieb’s assessment of the effect created thereby is perilously close to ridicule. He turned what might have been a valid point about NYCB's current casting conundrums into a mere cheap shot.

Interesting. It must be a quirk of scheduling, but so far this season I think the only ballets I've seen with long-established casts are Liebslieder and Mozartiana. In almost every other case there have been many, many debuts, and even the corps looks new. It really feels like the odometer is rolling over ... I do agree that NYCB has talent in the ranks. Some of the debuts have been quite successful -- Bar in both Sleeping Beaurty (Lilac Fairy) and Agon, for example. She's got plenty of talent and glamour to spare, and I think there are quite a few roles in the rep she could shine in.

Can we distinguish between two different genres here – one an analysis of an artist’s performance and the other a profile of that artist as a person? One could argue that the facts and circumstances of the artist’s personal history have little or perhaps only circumstantial relevance to the former, but more relevance to the latter. The Croce passage Anthony quoted is obviously of the first type, and indeed no appeals to biography are required for Croce to make her points. Acocella’s profile is more of the latter type – although she does touch on the Farrell’s manner of dancing and her manner of coaching (which is another type of “performance” if you will) she’s also presenting Farrell as specific person, a person different from the persona she created on stage via performance. I don’t think we need to know anything about Farrell’s or any other ballerina’s personal history to “get” the created persona – it is what she dances. To know more about Farrell the person -- the person who is of interest to us because she is an artist – personal history and its implications may (and I stress may) be more relevant. Lobenthal’s charge against Acocella appears to be that her profiles of living artists read as uncritical recitations of received dogma because she doesn’t employ the necessary degree of detachment from her subjects – had she done so, she would have examined Farrell’s contention that she didn’t much mind her parents’ divorce – “connected the dots” -- and (I think this is what Lobenthal is arguing) would have come to a different conclusion and relayed it to her readers. I really do think Lobenthal is off the mark in his specifics here, but I agree with his (unremarkable) point that an objective assessment requires greater detachment than a mash note, and that one might expect something more than a mash note from a critic of Acocella's (or Croce's) stature -- if for no other reason than the fact that their mash notes may be hurled down form the heavens as thunderbolts of authority. Well, I'm really out of my depth on this topic -- time to head off for an evening at the ballet!

Ray -- No apology necessary! I wholeheartedly agree that professional writers owe their readers more than facile enthusing about an artist's "mystery" or unquestioning reverence in the face of deemed greatness. Enthusing about "mystery" is as lazy as clucking over biography as far as I'm concerned. I think it's lazy when I do it, too, frankly, although I'm obviously not as well equipped as Acocella, Croce, or Lobenthal to think and talk about the experience of watching dance. I look to good critics to show me the way.

I love Farrell as much as the next person here. And while I too appreciate the "mystery" of her art I learn nothing new by being told over and over again that her art is mysterious. So Lobenthal's point still stands: these people are not gods or saints who may not be critically analyzed, they're human beings, subject to the same laws of physics, psychology, and cultural forces as the rest of us. I'm not a big fan of armchair psychologizing of *anyone*, much less my favorite ballerina of all time (see, I can do it too!); but between the "trashy novel" and the book of saints there's a continuum of registers in which we can write about our cultural heros. Kathleen is right to say that "the facts...demand something more"; but more for me means that I want to hear from a wider range of approaches than are available to us now. Ray -- Let me clarify my comments, because I think what you're saying has merit. I'm not advocating any of the following: That interpersonal dynamics, life events, pathologies, etc. do not play a role in the formation of our mind, behavior, character, abilities, or even talents; That the discussion of any of the above are off limits; That there are only two alternatives: hagiographic appreciations and trashy novels; or That "art" and its production are irreducible mysteries that cannot be explained. I'm especially not advocating the latter. I think art *can* be explained and that what makes an artist exemplary can and should be analyzed and expressed clearly enough for an interested person to understand. It's hard to do. I think Acocella generally tries to do it. The heart of my objection -- and I should have made this clearer -- is Lobenthal's using Acoella's not connecting the dots that he wants to see connected to support his charge that her profiles are overly deferential. Furthermore, he appears to suggest that Farrell herself either lacks an appropriate degree of self-awareness or is being deliberately untruthful and that Acocella should have called her out on it. It's a serious charge to bring in the context of a reivew of a collection of magazine articles. (They're just magazine articles, for heaven's sake, not scholarly treatises.) Farrell's family history and the effect that this might have had on the dynamics of her relationship with Balanchine may be fruitful areas of investigation, but they should be handled with thoughtfulness and tact, not casually dropped into a 250 word review and left there without further support or explanation. What are "father issues"? What are the "earmarks" of Farrell's "unfinished business" with her father that Lobenthal sees in her relationship with Balanchine? I think one can reasonably infer that Lobenthal at the very least finds them problematic. Going down this path warrants careful treatment to avoid coming off as idle gossip or titillating speculation.

Here’s the quote I take issue with: Well I say, “Good for Acocella!” If Farrell says that she didn’t much mind her parents’ breakup, then do her the courtesy of taking her at her word. Armchair psychologizing of this particularly facile and clichéd variety does nothing to help one understand Farrell’s art nor does it give one any meaningful insight into her creative partnership with Balanchine. That special relationship only “[bears] the earmarks of unfinished business with her own father" if the daughter happens to be a great dancer and her father happens to be a great choreographer and there happens to be “unfinished business” in the first place. I say that Farrell's relationship with Balanchine bore all the earmarks of two remarkable artists colliding like charged particles. Listening to Farrell describe her relationship with Balanchine in Elusive Muse, I was struck by her very moving narration of how powerful their connection was when they were working -- i.e., that the relationship was special -- that it happened -- because of the depth of their creative kinship (or whatever mystical thing you want to call it) and the private realm they were privileged to enter when they were practicing their art, not because of Farrell’s absent father. (Her very present mother -- now that's another story ...) Farrell’s description of what it was like to perform Don Q with Balanchine left me rapt with wonder. How would Farrell’s relationship with Balanchine – and here I mean the important one, the one that gave rise to that performance – have been any different had her father not been absent? The dynamics of this potent relationship are certainly of interest, but throwing it into the "she had unfinished business with her father" bucket seems reductive in the extreme. (I wasn’t aware, by the way, that Danilova, Tallchief, Leclerc, Adams, et al had “father issues” and that this was a meainingful component of Balanchine’s attraction to them – I had naively assumed it was their talent.) This kind of facile blather passing itself off as critical analysis just drives me around the bend -- it reduces art to a by-product of biography. There were lots of interesting things going on between Balanchine and his various muses --"intersecting vectors of psyche and creativity," if you will -- but "father issues" was certainly the least of them. (The potent combination of hard work and long hours together -- i.e., the mundane components of your typical office romance -- shouldn't be dismissed.) Yes, the facts of Balanchine’s life, including his relationship with Farrell, certainly lend themselves to lurid conjecture – a fabulously trashy novel is just laying there begging to be written (Eifman has already done the ballet) – but the facts of the miraculous art demand something more. OK. Rant over.

Bart, I'm with you on Western Symphony! It has always just rubbed me the wrong way and I can't say why. Re lists -- there is also Borges' infamous reference to "a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge" in the "remote pages" of which "it is written that the animals are divided into a. belonging to the Emperor b. embalmed c. trained d. pigs e. sirens f. fabulous g. stray dogs h. included in this classification i. trembling like crazy j. innumerable k. drawn with a very fine camelhair brush l. et cetera m. just broke the vase n. from a distance look like flies"

Interesting thread, Ray -- thanks for kicking it off! From a member of the audience: I learned to listen to Anton Webern in State Theater. I was in my very early 20s when I first started attending NYCB performances regularly, and although I loved and listened to classical music and was an amateur musician myself, I really knew next to nothing about 20th century music. I knew and liked some touchstone works, of course – by Debussy, Stravinsky, some Strauss, some Bartok – but can honestly say I had never even heard of Anton Webern. (Nor Paul Hindemith, for that matter, but his music isn’t really so formidable. An underappreciated composer, I think ...) As luck would have it, I think I saw Episodes three or four times my first couple of seasons, and loved it, and loved the music too. (I loved all the leotard ballets instantly. It took me a decade or so to wrap my head around tutus.) I don’t think I would have loved it had I just heard it – having a map laid out in front of me made all the difference. "Seeing" it made me want to hear and learn more, and I did. I learned to love Tchaikovsky too, by the way – right around the time I learned to love tutus – it just took longer. Ballet music I listen too (a lot) just for it’s own sake, but that I might not have even paid much attention to if I hadn’t “seen” it first in State Theater: Adams: Fearful Symmetries Bizet: Symphony in C Cage: Sonatas and Interludes Hindemith: Four Temperaments Ives: Central Park in the Dark and The Unanswered Question Mendelssohn: Symphony for Strings No 9 Pärt: Tabula Rasa Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin Stravinsky: Agon and Apollo Tchaikovsky : Serenade for Strings And of course, Anton Webern! If my husband and I have a song, by the way, I think it's Apollo Musagete -- am I a lucky girl, or what! They never play it in restaurants, though ...

What a great program! One thing to tuck into the back of your mind for Agon: in 1953 or so, Lincoln Kerstein sent Stravinsky an early 17th century French dance manual (Apologie de la danse by François de Lauze) which he and Balanchine subsequently used as a quarry for Agon. Look past the black leotards (and listen past the music's 20th century compositional techniques) for echoes of Renaissance court dances and courtly manners – even in the famous pretzel Pas de Deux. The title means “contest,” but it’s clearly a very ritualized one – more like a tournament than a battle. In the first and second Pas de Trois and in the Pas de Deux, the dancers burst on to the stage to a fanfare as if we were the spectators in a tournament ring. One thing I particularly like is the way in which each of the dances in the second Pas de Trois ends with a frozen pose that looks just like something from a tapestry. Cocktail trivia: Agon was the first of Stravinsky's compositions to use a full 12-tone row -- it's in the Coda of the first Pas de Trois. Enjoy!

Hmmm ... I think Mr Martins is attempting to use the excuse of Mr Kirstein's centenary to separate me from my wallet. The Greek Program! Apollo, Episodes, *and* 4ts on the same night! Agon everywhere!

It doesn't quite work because he cut it too much. If you don't have time to see a ballet and have to leave early because you have something to do first thing in the morning, maybe you should opt to go see the ballet on the weekends, even a matinee, so that you can (or could, I know you live in manhattan now) see the entire work. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh but when you get ballet tickets, you have some idea of how long the ballet lasts--and should be able to commit to it. I live in brooklyn, and it often takes me up to an hour to get home, but that's how it works--I don't expect others to deal with truncated ballets or ones where the intermission is oddly placed, so that it suits me. And I'm not unsympathetic to the pains of a commute--I do a 2 hr each way reverse commute 2-3 days a week--I know how much 'fun' commuting is ;) I'm straying off topic here – apologies! The issue with commuting isn’t so much the time it takes as it is the timetable: if the last train or bus leaves at 10:20 (as mine did), you’re not going to be able to stay until the end, period. No level of commitment can overcome the iron rule of the last bus to [fill in your destination here]. It was the thing I resented most about commuting, not the time it took (although I resented that too, and resented getting up at 5:00 am every morning even more.) Matinees are not always an option. If the choice is between 2/3 of Margot Fonteyn dancing on Wednesday evening and a whole Sheesno Fonteyn on Saturday afternoon – well, I know how I’d do the math. In any event, it’s a performance, not a sacred ceremony: Zeus does not hurl thunderbolts if you leave before the end. (Provided that you don't climb over eight people to get to the aisle, of course ... in which case may Medusa's glare turn you to stone.) Should every ballet, opera, concert or play be condensed to the Reader’s Digest version to accommodate commuters? Of course not. But the rigors of bridge-and-tunnel life are a reality for many ballet-, opera-, and concert-goers and their families: a nod to them from time-to-time is OK by me, especially if it gets people into the theater and puts dance in front of them. I have the luxury of a Manhattan apartment, no kids, a very indulgent husband, and flextime, but not everyone does. And didn't Balanchine himself rejigger some of his ballets (Chaconne and Diamonds, e.g.) to shoe-horn them into Dance in America's format and onto TV?

Speaking as a Manhattanite a relatively short subway ride away from Lincoln Center, I think putting the break between The Spell and The Vision (and adding back about 15 minutes of music) would make for better theater. However, speaking as a former commuter who often had one eye on her watch, one on the train schedule and another on the agenda for the next morning’s crack of dawn conference call, putting the break after the vision scene does allow one to see a good chunk of the ballet and make a graceful exit, thus avoiding a disruptive and indecorous scramble for the last train out to the ‘burbs. As abbreviated as is it, Martins' Beauty is still too long for some commutes. By the time Martins’ version of Beauty premiered, I had moved to the city, but a part of me cheered his attempt to craft a commuter-friendly evening of theater – the part that had never seen the last act of any number of things live. It doesn’t quite work (the two performances I saw this year seemed unduly rushed) but I appreciate the effort nonetheless.

Sandik, By “ensemble” do you mean a group of anonymous dancers (what I think of as a ballet corps proper) or groups of dancers generally, including an ensemble made up of dancers who may have been presented to us as soloists or couples elsewhere in the ballet or an ensemble that is somehow clearly a community of individuals? Thinking outside of ballet for a moment, Mark Morris has done all three. I agree that an individual or a couple set against an anonymous corps definitely “reads” like a ballet, even in another genre (Morris’ Dido and Aeneas being a case in point) but I can’t put my finger just yet on why that is. Something to do with hierarchy, perhaps? It is indeed a very interesting question!

Re Wheeldon and the corps: I gather I was one of the few people whose response to Evenfall was entirely positive. Yeah, there was kind of a hole a the center where the male principal should have been, but I found the corps so engaging and affecting that I just didn’t care. It even occurred to me that the hole in the center might have been the point. In any event, I left the theatre wishing that Wheeldon would take a crack at something along the lines of Le Tombeau de Couperin, which is one of my very favorite ballets. (Martins’ crack at it in Friandises – make that two cracks – didn’t really work for me, which was a shame because the dancers in the cast I saw were clearly giving it their all.) Lately, I’ve found that Wheeldon’s work for groups of dancers is more expressive and emotionally immediate than his work for soloists or couples – After the Rain and Quaternary being the exceptions. Let me hasten to add that I don’t think emotional immediateness is a necessarily a requirement of a good ballet. It just struck me that Wheeldon’s choreography for couples placed in the context of a corps is somehow more “effaced” than the choreography for the corps itself or for couples dancing alone. An American in Paris is another example – I can barely remember the central couple (which is a genuine issue in that case, I think). I loved the look of Evenfall, by the way – it reminded me of one of those fabulous deco ocean liners or grand hotels that feature in early Fred Astaire movies. Anyway, I'm interested to see what Wheeldon gets up to in his new venture. I just wish it were in a venue other than City Center. I don't think I've ever had a clear view of the stage there, even in the allegedly good seats. I long for a NYC dance and opera venue akin to the Juilliard Theater, and I promise to build one if I win Lotto.

Lordy. All I can think of is "Xerox the Document Company" (Or rather, it was all I could think of until Leigh brought up "Toad the Wet Sprocket" -- yes, Leigh, you will indeed burn in hell!) Maybe Martins helped him choose the name. We can at least be thankful that the spaces were retained even as the punctuation was jettisoned -- i.e., that we haven't been presented with some variant of MorPHoseStheWheeldonCompany. How does one say "Morphoses" anyway? Mor´phoses or Mor-pho´ses? In any event, it sounds too much like Morpheus, which will be a gift to any critic rendered somnolent by a dull program.

I’ve seen Fairchild in quite a few ballets now, and I like her a lot. I like her best when she doesn’t have to be adorable (in Intermezzo, say, rather than The Steadfast Tin Soldier). I thought her performances in Intermezzo and Baiser demonstrated that she has the potential for considerable dramatic resonance and no need to rely on pyrotechnics, mugging, or overblown gestures to have an impact. (It must be a real challenge to put a performance of Baiser together – I mean, who ARE these people? Like Scotch Symphony, it has all the trappings of a narrative ballet but makes no narrative sense at all.) I’m going to offer just about the highest praise I can: I’d happily head over the State Theatre to watch Fairchild in something she might not seem ideally suited for just to see what she’s going to do with it. (I put Weese in the same category.) I’d like to see her in Liebeslieder, Davidsbündlertänze, the Midsummer Divertissment, or Central Park in the Dark (but please, not In the Inn). Maybe Mazzo's role in Stravinsky Violin Concerto. The only fly in the ointment is that she is often partnered by De Luz – I don’t think they’re ideally paired. Their styles are very different, but not in a way that’s reliably complementary.

Hmmm ... I’m not sure I’d say that they’re asked to “make the projection of their personalities secondary to the projection of choreography,” but rather, that they are asked to project their personalities through the choreography. “Emoting” would then indeed be beside the point and something of an artistic failure. In the case of Balanchine, at least, the ballerina role is a fully realized persona, if not exactly a “character” per se, and some dancers are better at realizing that persona (or versions of that persona) than others. On the face of it, I wouldn’t have expected that the difference between the successful realization of the ballerina at the heart of Theme and the successful realization of Aurora would be so vast a chasm as it sometimes appears to be, but I gather that it is. (I like Weese in both roles, by the way.) But I digress ... Per Kirkeby! I absolutely loathe the violently inert sets and costumes he did for NYCB’s Swan Lake. A bare stage and a blue cyclorama would yield a more fertile environment in which to tell a story. It’s not that his sets and costumes are ugly, it’s that they’re pointlessly ugly.

I believe Wheeldon has actually used "Alina" in one of the movements in the ballet he choreographed for the San Fransico Ballet that shown during the Lincoln Center Festival -- the third movement, if I recall correctly, danced by Maffre and Possokhov at the performance I saw.

Well, I finally OD’d on Founding Father biographies and appear to be on something of a “speculative fiction” jag. I’m just finishing up Iron Council (the third volume in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag trilogy, along with Perdido Street Station and The Scar) and knocked off the first three of Terry Pratchett’s gazillion or so Discworld books (which are truly, hysterically funny if you’ve been exposed to anything in the standard-order fantasy oeuvre and have worked for any length of time in a bureaucratic organization, whether public, private or academic). I also duly marched through all three volumes of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, as well as Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Diamond Age and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Anansi Boys. (Still can’t get through Cryptonomicon ...) I heartily recommend them all to anyone who likes this sort of thing. I suppose I’ll have to pick up something a bit more learned and respectable after Labor Day. Donald Kagan’s The Peloponnesian War is still lurking on the nightstand along with William Vollman’s Europe Central (which is really just too heavy to hold up in bed – I may have to dissect it into smaller units to get through it). Capote’s In Cold Blood is teed up on the iPod. (I do a lot of my "reading" via my iPod during my walk back and forth to work or when I'm ironing or washing the dishes.) I’ve been tempted by Fiasco, Cobra II, The Looming Tower, Dying to Win and assorted related titles, but just haven’t had the heart to go there right now ... Recommendation: do read the official 9/11 report if you get the chance (and check out the excerpts from graphic novel (!) version on Slate). I never thought I’d have the opportunity to refer to a government committee report as a “page-turner” – but this one really is! Bart: I was never able to get much past The Guermantes Way before I ran out of steam, despite really liking Proust – maybe I’ll try the new translations. I’ve been told that Proust’s French is actually much more straightforward and less elaborate than Moncreiff’s English.

One of my favorite Arlene Croce quotes ever was her observation that Karinska's costumes for Emeralds look like they've been "dipped in cement." I've never really been able to work up much enthusiasm for them myself. (I suppose this is heretical, but I can't work up much enthusiasm for Jewels, either, except for Emeralds, oddly enough, which adore ...)

“Whatever It Is They Did It Better in 1965” Night (alternates with “Sheezno Fonteyn” Night) “Well *I* Saw the Premiere” Night (alternates with “We Clap for Scenery” Night) “Oh, Go Ahead, Wear Your Comfortable Shoes!” Night (alternates with “I Can’t Believe You Can Walk in Those Heels” Night) “Fifteen Dollars for Third-Rate Champagne in a Plastic Glass!!!” Night (alternates with “Perrier Jouet. Freixenet. Whatever. Just Give Me Two.” Night)

I suppose this should really be posted under “August Silliness.” Notable difference between NYCB and SFB ballerinas: WHERE were the false eyelashes? Did they leave them at home? Couldn’t anyone give them directions to the nearest Ricky’s? Is this a left-coast / right-coast thing or a genuine glamour deficit that will keep SFB from achieving the world-class status it might otherwise deserve? Clearly I’ve been living in NYC for far too long – I thought false eyelashes were required just to get up on pointe. (Isn’t that how the Trocks do it?)

Oh, this is such sad news! Playing in my head over and over now is her beautiful, radient voice singing “Schlummert ein": Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen, Fallet sanft und selig zu! Go to sleep, weary eyes, Close gently and blessedly! J. S. Bach, Cantata No. 82, “Ich habe genug”