Kathleen O'Connell

21 hours ago, Helene said:

The only way to have a true vaccine passport is if it were government-issued, straight from the people who issued the vaccine

When I applied for my New York State Excelsior Vaccine Pass I had to provide the information that's on my CDC vaccination record (name, birthdate, vaccine type, the date of final the dose, and where I received it) plus my zip code. This information was the confirmed against the NYS vaccine database. Had I received my vaccine from an entity that doesn't fall under the regulatory authority of New York State—e.g. a federal agency, an entity from another U.S. state or jurisdiction, or a first nation—and that doesn't report into the NYS system I wouldn't have been able to get the NYS pass. My husband received his vaccine at his New Jersey workplace and  thus can't get the NYS pass. NJ doesn't offer one yet, so he's out of luck.

Note that you have to present a valid photo ID along with the Excelsior Pass QR code when you use it: you can't just wave a printout of the QR code at the door for admittance.

20 hours ago, Helene said:

I would have loved the Liebeslieder, but I found the lighting difficult.

Pointing the camera right at that big wall of windows was ... a bold choice. I'm going to hazard a guess that the Liebeslieder excerpt was shot entirely with natural light. (I'm also curious about whether Coppola opted for film or digital, and, if the latter, if the post-production color grading was done to emulate a classic film stock. She loves film. But I digress.) 

You can thank Mark Stanley for the darking for the Peck piece.

More on the Gala film: Kudos to the powers-that-be for allowing the men to demonstrate the expressive power of things like a beautiful line, or a supple port-de-bras, or finely-tune musicality, etc etc etc rather than using them as pyrotechnic applause machines. 

Yes, Anthony Huxley has a wonderful jump, but honestly, I couldn't make myself stop watching his gorgeous hands and I can't thank Coppola and Peck enough for showing them to me.

Also I'm an Ashley Bouder fan, but I kept wanting to shove her out of the way because she was blocking my view of Russell Janzen getting all sassy with Duo Concertante's folk dance-inflected gestures. 

4 hours ago, nanushka said:

I really wish that those filming dance would recognize when a frontal orientation is important to maintain (which in my opinion is almost always, to at least some degree). These dances (with the possible exception of the new Peck — though probably even there, if it's intended to have an afterlife) were designed to be seen on a traditional proscenium stage, and the audience perspective is important to how they visually work.

Normally, I'm also in the "No fancy camera angles please!" and "For the love of all that is holy, don't cut them off at the knees!" school of filmed dance performance. But I actually appreciated the way Coppola (and Peck) chose to approach this particular project. To me, it felt as much a film about dancers in a space—and poignantly, in this case, a space that they view as a home that they're returning to at last or, even more poignantly, a home that some of them must soon leave again, and for good this time—as it was about the excerpted choreographies, if not more so. I was happy to forgo a permanent "from the stage" record of the Boy in Brown's opening solo in Dances at a Gathering in order to see Gonzalo Garcia more or less embody what that solo is about in the place where he lives. I'm not too proud to admit that it made me cry. (Ditto Maria Kowroski and Ask la Cour's exquisitely tender performance of the "Nachtigall" duet from Liebeslieder Walzer alone in the vastness of the Promenade.) 

I wouldn't want every dance filmed this way, but I loved these particular excerpts, danced by these particular dancers, in this particular space, at this particular time, filmed this way.

An aside: it's just a personal preference, but I always try to get a seat somewhat off to the side whenever I attend a live dance performance because I don't really like the flatness of a head-on, dead center view. I also like being further back and higher up in the theater. So of course I didn't mind it much when the film used those points of view: it wasn't entirely dissimilar from the way I watch dance—ahem, including the occasional selective close up with my binoculars ...

May she rest in peace, and my condolences to all who held her dear.

I was lucky enough to meet Katherine for lunch during one of her visits to NYC, and she was as delightful in person as she was in her posts here. I'm so, so sad to hear this news.

1 hour ago, aurora said:

Dirac,

that doesn't seem to be what happened with the Royal Danish Ballet, however. Which seems to have been the final straw for him.

They had his work on their schedule until this last week, and it was their investigation into his behavior as a guest with them in 2018-19 (I believe) that led to the decision to cancel his piece.

 

Queensland Ballet's decision to cancel its planned tour of Scarlett's Dangerous Liaisons is explained here and here and here.

Queensland Ballet conducted its own investigation and "found no evidence of improper behaviour by Scarlett in Australia." Although the company had "been aware of the existence of allegations" against him in October 2020, it didn't make the decision to suspend its ties with Scarlett until April 2021, when they received more information regarding nature of the complaints: "Queensland Ballet's artistic director Li Cunxin says his company did not cut ties with world-renowned choreographer Liam Scarlett sooner because it was not aware the allegations against him were sexual in nature."

I'm not surprised that performing arts companies that rely on public good will and the public purse to remain viable decided to suspend planned performances of work by an artist publicly and credibly accused of harassment and sexual predation, especially when minors or very young dancers are involved. (The subtext of the two Sydney Morning Herald articles seems to be "why didn't you cancel this tour sooner?")

Should Scarlett's work be blackballed forever? I'm not sure I can answer that question honestly myself and I'm very glad that I don't have to make that decision.

26 minutes ago, aurora said:

that doesn't seem to be what happened with the Royal Danish Ballet, however. Which seems to have been the final straw for him.

I think we should be cautious about making an explicit link between the RDB's decision to cancel Frankenstein—or any company's decision regarding engaging Scarlett or staging his ballets—and his suicide.  

As noted above, the Bayerische Staatsballett is presenting a week of live streams (Digitale Ballettfestwoche 2021). Here's the schedule for the remaining streams, which all begin at 7:30 PM Munich time (CEST) / 1:30 PM EST. NOTE: These are livestreams and won't be available for on-demand viewing after the initial stream.

You can find each day's stream here: https://www.operlive.de

Here are the remaining streams. (The link will take you to a page with more program information. It will not take you to the stream.)

Monday, April 19, 2021: Portrait Wayne Mcgregor - Kairos / Sunyata / Borderlands

Tuesday, April 20, 2021: Jewels

Wednesday, April 21: Bayerisches Junior Ballett München  (Choreography by Jörg Mannes, Maged Mohamed, Martina La Ragione)

Thursday, April 22: Swan Lake (Ray Barra / Petipa / Ivanov)

Saturday, April 24: Le Corsaire 

Sunday, April 25: 30 Jahre Bayerisches Staatsballett & Black Cake (Filmed documentary + Hans Van Manen's Black cake) 

On 4/4/2021 at 12:33 AM, pherank said:

The camerawork was mostly excellent, but I think there was a few points where the Corps dancers were disappearing out of the frame.

I found most of Emeralds filmed much too close, which may be a function of my irl preference for sitting further back from the stage than most people might prefer.  I kept wishing the camera would pull back even just a little bit to put more air in the frame, even (especially!) for the solos and pas de deux. The camera work in Rubies and Diamonds was a bit better in this regard, but not much.

And lordy, that shiny shiny stage floor is distracting.

2 hours ago, BalanchineFan said:

I'm interested to look for the Kistler recording again. I think I may have already seen it online.

The 1993 recording of Kistler and Zelensky you're likely thinking of isn't of the whole ballet, alas—just the pas de deux and the finale. It was part of the Balanchine Celebration broadcast. 

1 hour ago, pherank said:

It's true that ColorForms the film veered away form Thatcher's original conception/theme for the stage ballet - the dancer's movements inextricably influencing one another like the linked pieces of an Alexander Calder mobile.  And so we get a broader artistic experience, which in this case works well. If Thatcher goes the Yuri Possokhov route using with digital projections for his stage production, he actually could reproduce some of the aspects of this SFMOMA environment.

I think it would be fine if there were two versions of Colorforms, one developed for film (and in this case, site specific) and another developed for the stage. Some of the former's effects could probably be ported into the latter via technology, but it's OK for the stage version to simply honor what can be done on a proscenium stage—much as the film version needn't try to emulate the experience of being in a theater.

On 2/25/2021 at 3:00 PM, PeggyTulle said:

Really enjoyed Colorforms as part of Program 2, so much so I've re-watched it several times. The visual richness, quick and playful editing, and camaraderie that I think many of us are missing these days... Myles Thatcher hit it out of the park with this one. I'm curious how it'll translate to the stage in the future. 

Colorforms was absolutely worth the price of admission, but I don't think it would be half so delightful on the stage—and I mean this as a compliment to both Thatcher and Hurwitz. It's a dance made for film—a good one!—not a filmed dance performance. The jump cuts between the dancers moving through the museum in their sneakers and street clothes to those same dancers moving to the same music in costumes, point shoes, and slippers in a color-drenched space that isn't quite that same museum but vibrates in resonance with some of the colors and shapes of the art on display tells a little story about what happens to us when we engage with art. Ditto when they (literally) step through the frame into the wider world and take the dance and some "colorforms" (brightly hued paper airplanes) with them. I kept thinking about Balanchine's comment on the two halves of Liebeslieder Waltzes: in the first half it's people dancing, in the second half, it's their souls. 

From NYCB's New York Choreographic Institute, three new dances on film choreographed by NYCB Dancers Eliza Blutt, Preston Chamblee, and Claire Kretzschmar:

"For 20 years, the New York Choreographic Institute has cultivated a global community of choreographers committed to evolving classical ballet for the 21st Century. Responding to the challenges of this unprecedented year, this past Fall Session focused on talent from within NYCB - bringing together 22 dancers to work collaboratively over a two-week bubble residency at Martha's Vineyard.

With strict Covid-mitigation protocols in place, emerging choreographers and NYCB Dancers Eliza Blutt, Preston Chamblee, and Claire Kretzschmar had the space to create three original ballets on film with a group of their peers."

So far, I've only been able to watch Kretzschmar's ballet, which is set to Rachmaninoff's Variations on a Theme of Chopin. I liked it a lot—better than many of the trifles that have been thrust at us during the company's annual fashion gala, frankly—and I hope NYCB gives her more opportunities to choreograph. 

The Baryshnikov Arts Center has several months of free digital presentations lined up for Spring 2021. Each presentation will be available for two weeks.

Up first is Bijayini Satpathy, a leading exponent of classical South Asian dance.

"Classical Indian dancer Bijayini Satpathy’s first choreographic endeavor, Vibhanga, is a non-narrative solo set to a reimagined traditional South Indian music score. Drawing from the curvilinear tendencies of the Odissi dance form and influenced by explorations of rhythm, the work reveals the layered complexities of the classical movement technique."

Per Mark Morris: “She’s easily among the top five dancers I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.”

If you aren't familiar with Odissi dance, a Bijayini Satpathy performance is a good place to start. The video comes down at 5PM on February 15, 2021.

The work itself is 14 minutes long and starts at the video's 6 minute mark. (The video begins with some introductory comments by Satpathy.)

5 hours ago, miliosr said:

I don't know if it's freely available on Vimeo otherwise -- it might be.

It is! Here's the link:  https://vimeo.com/494232574

It will be available until Wednesday, December 30 at 10pm.

Here's the program:
The Moor’s Pavane (1949) by José Limón
Suite Donuts (2020) by Chafin Seym (Co-commissioned by the American Dance Festival with support from the Doris Duke/SHS Foundations Award for New Works.)
There is a Time (1956) by José Limón

20 hours ago, Peg said:

I was very glad to see this too but puzzled that I couldn’t find NYCB or ABT on the list of groups receiving $47.1MM in grants, although other dance companies(Ailey, Mark Morris etc) are there. The list includes some of the larger arts organizations such as the NY Philharmonic and most of the museums. What am I missing?

ABT did get a grant in the $100,000+ category. Search under Ballet Theatre Foundation, Inc., which is the legal name of the non-profit via which ABT operates.

NYCB is a member of New York City's Cultural Institutions Group (CIG) and therefore likely receives NYC/Department of Cultural Affairs funding through a different channel. There are 33 CIG members; NYCB is the only performing arts company among the group now that New York City Opera is defunct. (The Theater Formerly Known as State was home to both, as was, prior to that, New York City Center.) Here's a link to the CIG website.

Here's the CIG list

Brooklyn
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Brooklyn Children's Museum
Brooklyn Museum
Wildlife Conservation Society / New York Aquarium

Bronx
Bronx County Historical Society
Bronx Museum of the Arts
New York Botanical Garden
Wave Hill
Wildlife Conservation Society / Bronx Zoo

Manhattan
American Museum of Natural History
Carnegie Hall
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
El Museo del Barrio
Museum of the City of New York
Museum of Jewish Heritage
New York City Ballet
New York City Center
Public Theater
Studio Museum in Harlem

Queens
Flushing Town Hall
Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning
Museum of the Moving Image
New York Hall of Science
MoMA PS 1
Queens Botanical Garden
Queens Museum
Queens Theatre

Staten Island
Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden
Staten Island Children's Museum
Staten Island Historical Society
Staten Island Museum
Staten Island Zoological Society

Not a performance, but ... an online exhibit mounted by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts - Winter Wonderland: George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker

From the intro:

The exhibition Winter Wonderland: George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker® charts the early years of the ballet’s life, from its premiere in February 1954 to the success of the remounted production in 1964. Through treasures from the archives of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, including photographs, set models, and costume designs, the story of the work emerges, as do the thematic qualities that make Balanchine’s version of the ballet unique and so enduring: namely nostalgia, faith, love, and childhood innocence and wonder.

There are lots of interesting photos and images, including this 1954 photo of Eliot Feld and Alberta Grant as the Nutcracker Prince and Marie:

Or Rouben Ter-Arutunian's 1964 sketch of Marie and the Nutcracker Prince's reindeer-pulled sleigh for the finale (and which I would like to turn into a holiday card ...)

Or Karinska's costume sketches for the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier

19 minutes ago, pherank said:

And really no different from the tales of the Brothers Grimm

The Brothers Grimm are grim indeed. My father used to read the Grimm originals to me when I was little, and loved them—the scarier the better. I came away duly wary of stepmothers, that's for sure!

On 12/18/2020 at 3:23 PM, Drew said:

In a traditional production, she has to cope with the breaking of her Nutcracker doll  (a big deal to a child with all kinds of potential meanings), a dream with nightmarish elements including the battle of mice and soldiers—in which she intervenes—the journey through the snow to land of sweets and, though I don’t recall if this belongs to the original, waking up from out of her dream.

It is not a realistic story, and it’s not presented as kitchen-sink tale of angst, but it suggests, in a fantastical way a whole psychic world of learning about oneself and the world and some of the pains and pleasures of that process...I am not a super fan of modernized productions that make her psychic development too explicit (though I do like scary rats and I don’t mind a pas de deux for Clara on pointe with a come-to-life romantic Nutcracker) but I find them at least to be based on something in the traditional ballet libretto and in the music

I always take fantasy stories and fairy tales quite seriously. I think the music suggests that Tchaikovsky did too.

In The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, the E. T. A. Hoffman story upon which the ballet is based (loosely based, I should add) Marie (not Clara) must prevail against dark forces ranging from the seven-headed Mouse King to the more mundane but no less distressing parental dismissal of her night time adventures as mere dreams and fantasies. She gets wounded in the battle with the Mouse King, who later proceeds to extort sweets and toys from her in exchange for his not chewing up the Nutcracker. It's she who must procure the sword the Nutcracker will use to dispatch the Mouse King, and it's she who must break the curse by swearing to love the Nutcracker no matter how ugly he is. Basically, she goes through the kind of trials characteristic of a hero's journey. Mark Morris brings back the Nutcracker's humdinger of a backstory in The Hard Nut, and makes it clear that Marie is the work's moral center.

Here's a link to Hoffman's original, which really is darker and weirder than the prettied up version used for the ballet.

Thanks for starting this thread, Helene. I've started working my way through the essays in order, although I'm not sure they need to be read that way.

Here are the links to all of the articles in "The Offending Classic" series that have been posted thus far:

Tanya Jayani Fernando, "Introduction: The Classic and the Offending Classic"
Deborah Jowitt, "Sex and Death"
Juan Ignacio Vallejos, "On the Intolerable in Dance"
Joellen A. Meglin, "Against Orthodoxies"
Nicole Duffy Robertson, "Classic Sin: Ballet, Sex, and Dancing Outside the Canon"
Mark Franko, "The Offending Classic"

I thought I'd kick of a new Covid-19 topic with a bit of good news from yesterday's New York Times: New York City Cultural Groups Awarded More Than $47 Million in Grants

"In a year filled with layoffs and budget cuts, New York City’s cultural institutions got some good news on Tuesday: The Department of Cultural Affairs announced that it would award $47.1 million in its newest round of grants, which this year will go to more than 1,000 of the city’s nonprofit organizations."

Here's a link to the list of arts organizations that have received funding: NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Fiscal Year 2021 Cultural Development Fund Awardees. There are lots of dance companies, dance schools, performing arts companies, performing arts presenting organizations, and performing arts venues of all sizes on the list. 

Many of these organizations do receive regular grant funding from NYC's Department of Cultural Affairs' Cultural Development Fund (CDF), but it's heartening to see that the City has kept this year's CDF funding roughly equivalent to that of prior years and that it's added some new organizations to the list as well despite overall Covid-19 driven cuts to arts funding. 

Via the CDF, the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) makes direct grants to non-profit arts organizations to support their programs and activities. It provides arts funding through other channels as well: capital grants, the Cultural Institutions Group (which includes NYCB), and various programs that support artists (rather than arts organization). The DCLA's total budget for Fiscal Year 2021 (July 1, 2020 - June 30 2021) is $189 million, a significant reduction from last year's budget of $212 million.

Here are some other articles re the grant awards:

Broadway World: NYC Department of Cultural Affair Announces $47.1 Million in Grants, and New Measures to Support Cultural Organizations

Hyperallergic: NYC Awards $47.1 Million in Grants and Pandemic Relief to Arts Organizations

14 hours ago, Quiggin said:

Regarding the visual arts, I think Pollock the movie pretty faithfully followed the trajectory of Jackson Pollock's messy life with Lee Krasner, Clement Greenberg and Ruth Klingman. Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan and Wilhelm deKooning were also not easy characters to deal with, Mitchell especially. (The abstract-expressionists started out in the late forties discussing ideas in West Village coffee shops but later graduated to the Cedar Tavern.) I can't think of any of them that you could say were joyful. Many I've met or read about have been, most of the time, pretty dead serious about their work – Donald Judd, Barbara Kruger, Richard Serra, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Or concerned with their relationships to their dealers or their patrons (anxiety about paintings that were being resold too early or for too little). It's a completely demanding life – and the art you make never seems finished and always raises more questions than it answers.

Artists have messy lives, just like the rest of us! And, like the rest of us, they also grapple with concerns about the trajectory of their careers and their relationships with their colleagues, mentors, and employers/patrons. I think what annoys me about so many depictions of artists and art-making is the degree to which the messy lives, career anxieties, drivenness, and seriousness of purpose are pathologized. Pathology makes for sensational drama, though, so that's what we get. 

19 hours ago, Rock said:

It's so tiresome isn't it? The same story over and over - they starve themselves, they're treated horribly, they're all miserable - all of which isn't true at all. 

Dancer derangement is a subcategory of the tortured artist trope, isn't it? It's hard to think of a film, play, or TV series that doesn't depict artists of any variety as damaged, disordered, tortured, or miserable in some way or other. (We can probably add "Making the people who love them miserable" to the list, too.) A life of art-making is rarely depicted as joyful. Nor are artists allowed to have the kind of day-to-day stresses and concerns that we mere normies have: their miseries must be as extraordinary as their talents. The more lurid the crazy, the bigger the award-season buzz. (Remember 1998's Hilary and Jackie? or 2000's Pollock? Or much Ken Russell's oeuvre.)

2 hours ago, California said:

Medici (offering a one-year subscription for $51!):

There's a Black Friday special on today — you can get a one year subscription for $38.70. 

I'd be a lot more enthusiastic about their service if it were easier to watch their content on an actual TV. "Aircasting" from an internet-connected computer, phone, or tablet is OK, but kinda fiddly and less than the ideal. Marquee TV does offer the full menu of TV apps.

2 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

I would ask a few questions. How many films (if any) of The Nutcracker are in the Netflix library?

There doesn't appear to be anything on Netflix other than the Hot Chocolate Nutcracker doc California referenced above. Disney+, Hulu, and HBO don't appear to have Nutcrackers on offer either. But Amazon Video has quite a few, including some that are available for free if you are a Prime member.