Mel Johnson

Really, my point in commenting on this matter has been to counsel against water-cooler jurisprudence. We may feel better to have vented on our opinion of the case, but in reality, all we do is figuratively promote photosynthesis by providing warm carbon dioxide. If you feel that you have a vital information for these proceedings, then file an amicus brief or move an intervention and tell it to the judge.

However, for a meaningful resolution to the matter under discussion, proper authority is a sine qua non. We may attitudinize all we like about whatever matter, but beyond our own selves, we have little or no ability to make our decisions stick. Society seems to be making a hard turn into Egoism. The tendency today has moved toward mobocracy, where being the greatest boor receives the greatest attention, and the loudest shouter is esteemed the winner of any discussion. I don't know if any of us is a member of the bench of California or Switzerland, but I somehow suspect not. We may express our opinions of whatever topic, but nothing can be settled save the identification of our own concerns. For the longest time, the term "democracy" was viewed with suspicion, as it carried with it the connotation of chaos and a lack of social order. Just because we have an opinion on the matter does not give us any especial right to be borne out in action by a competent authority. Laws and procedures have been constituted among humankind in order that justice be properly served and that society does not rip itself apart from its own passions.

Actually, the "familiar" version of the quotation refers to a rather nethermore part of the anatomy, and the saying ends, "and most of them stink!" I just cleaned it up for a family discussion board.

There is an issue of flight, and under what charge the warrant and extradition request is made. Is it for statutory rape, or for flight? An Appeals Court judge in the original jurisdiction has stated publicly that there were "irregularities" and "misconduct" involved in the original proceeding. Because of changes in the effective laws in both the US and Switzerland, the issue of ex post facto enters in. I know virtually nothing of Swiss law, but it strikes me as an international doctrine that one cannot be prosecuted under a law which was not in effect at the time of the original act. The "gifted artist" argument is a non-starter. But the argument that the original jurisdiction has been dilatory in its pursuit of a fugitive isn't bad! To claim that a convicted individual no longer has any rights before sentence is imposed is, at best, weak. The proper venue for a final determination in the case would be a court of law with appropriate jurisdiction. We can jaw it to death, but none of us has all the evidence before us, and while we have rights to opinions*, and the right to express those opinions, but we lack enforcement authority, except for our own conduct. Whether to greet Polanski cordially, should the occasion arise, or to cut him dead is within all our jurisdictions. *opinion - rather like noses; everybody has at least one, and most of them smell.

Anybody want to bet that the DA wants to run for something, and only pressed the matter in order to have a nice, showy notch on his six-shooter?

The Powers very likely involved are the ones that hold the reproduction and display rights to the visual material quoted. They are asserting their right to determine where and how their property is to be shown. It's a grey area of copyright law, but the owners are pretty well supported for claiming the right to have an unauthorized posting taken down. Some don't mind; they may feel that any use of their video is cheap advertising!

I still have to return to my earlier point about strong leadership with regard to national companies' identities, and the Birmingham discussion exemplifies my point. Leadership is stronger there than at Covent Garden, it would seem, and the identity of the company seems more unified. Perhaps a revised hermeneutic for the Royal Ballet(s) is in order. Birmingham is a national ballet company, Covent Garden is an arm of State? Alas, we cannot order up genius. Even though we may pine for an Ashton, a Balanchine, a Bournonville, a Staats, we can't do much more than to afford talented possibilities an environment in which genius may be nurtured, and then, maybe, develop.

It must be noted that Marjorie was one of the heroes and heroines of the "Joffrey Renascence" of 1965, when Mr. Joffrey mounted a company and returned it to the stage under the Joffrey banner after the Harkness coup of the previous year. She was an ornament to the Joffrey, and danced beautifully in all of the schools of the Joffrey's eclectic repertory. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. May she have rest eternal, May light everlasting shine upon her.

Simon, I can trace the consternation with "intruders" in the Royal Ballet's ranks right back to the policy of retaining Rudolf Nureyev in the rather chimerical title of "Permanent Guest Artist". I didn't like that status then, and I still think it worked mischief against the company's longterm best interests. In the 60s, the title of "corps de ballerinas" was held in common by both the Royal and the (then)Kirov. Both have slipped since then, and nobody seems to have taken their places. While it is, on the whole, a good thing for Britain to manifest its membership in the EEC by following the Brussels Accords on Employment, those policies have worked against ballet companies throughout Europe and have diluted essential qualities which made the Danes the Danes, the French the French, and the English the English. As a citizen of one of the most ethnically-eclectic nations on Earth, which is at the same time one of the most xenophobic, I can both sympathize with and deplore the homogenization of world ballet. Strong direction in the several centers of ballet is needed, and I just don't see any strong leaders coming to the fore.

But let's simplify, and talk about the root issue behind this thread - students of a company-affiliated school not going into that company. 'Twas ever thus. Students from La Scala went to dance in Paris, Parisian students danced in London, School of American Ballet students joined American Ballet Theatre - it happened everywhere, continues to happen, and will continue as long as human nature is involved in selecting where an employee will work, and on the part of both the hirer and the hired.

There really is no standard MSND. Balanchine's and Ashton's version are probably the most well-known worldwide, but neither is so widespread that most companies would have one or the other in rep. Then there would be the potential difficulty with the Trust or the Foundation over the very use of the name "Balanchine", possibly extending even to use in fiction.

Cyril W. Beaumont wrote The Ballet Called Giselle and The Ballet Called Swan Lake, which both contain his "choreographic scripts" for the vocabulary of the dances. Perhaps changing your objective would be a good idea. Very few companies dance Balanchine's Midsummer..., and that could prove to be a distracting feature to a narrative.

Remember that in the original scoring for the 1812 Overture, the bells were the actual Kremlin bells. Those are nothing if not Orthodox bells. (As to the cannon, well, they're certainly nothing if not percussion!) In Mussorgsky and Stravinsky, they had to resort to the tubular bells of a standard orchestra for timbre, but have instructions to the percussionist to "prepare" the bells for performance, by muffling the tubes, or touching them with the fingers as they are struck in order to produce a harmonic, or other overtone effect.

Not online, but I've found several examples of news stories that covered her as a model for at least one painting exhibited at the 1889 Paris Exhibition on the Champ de Mars, and also as a "face in the crowd" at the same event.

I wonder if this were Desirée Lobstein, of whom we have heard briefly before, from Estelle. In addition to being a dancer, she was also something of a socialite.

Anyway, back to the "Allegro Brilliante" score. It's pretty straightforward Eb major tonality. Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov has passages of microtonal carillon effects, ditto the Kastchei's Castle scene of "Firebird".

Incidentally, if you refer to an unabridged dictionary, you'll find that the definitions of "mirliton" include, after "a sort of small green string bean", "KAZOO". I, too, have heard about the "cream pastries" dream and scheme, but know of nothing that came from it. A failed plan for an act I divertissment at least produced that wheezy tarantella which is the male variation in the grand pas de deux.

Sometimes, choreographers mine other Tchaikovsky ballets or even operas to build up Nutz divertissements.

Actually, the Marzipan variation is Danish. The original notation of the steps shows a lot of taqueterie and pirouettes one-on-pointe, double-on-demi, that recall how the Danes danced à la Bournonville. French, or maybe Belgian, might be Mother Ginger.

It doesn't hurt to have little sychronized metronome strobes going off out of audience view, either.

I recall that rather a while ago, Eliot Feld had choreographed a ballet to Richard Strauss' "Four Last Songs". At the very last moment, lawyers for the Strauss Estate came in and proclaimed the use of the music as contrary to the composer's wishes, as he had left a "Curse of the Cat People" clause in his will that none of his music should be used for dance save that which was composed expressly for dance. The company went on with the program as scheduled, but a front-row set of plants were armed with SONY Walkmans (Walkmen? I said it was a while ago!) and played the music into their headphones rather loudly, so that a sort of breathy near-subliminal of the music could be heard in the house, and onstage.

They are still not ordinary in any company's repertoire. With the growth of abstraction since the 1920s, ballets have been made which were all about the scenery, or all about the music, or all about ballet technique, dissecting the unified art theory of all these elements uniting to make an artistic whole. Jerome Robbins had "Moves, a ballet in silence about relationships". I don't think that any, save that one has survived more than thirty years.

And beer with breakfast, indeed, beer AS breakfast follows a great old tradition. It was very usual in the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages, and even the Pilgrim Fathers did it. One reason that they put into Plymouth in Massachusetts Bay was to replenish water supplies in order to make some fresh beer. Those Pilgrims might have been rather stern, but "sober-sided" might not have been the best way to describe them.

This project reminds me of Benjamin Britten's Let's Make an Opera, and its parody companion from the Hoffnung Concerts, "Let's Fake an Opera, or the Tales of Hoffnung."

There's a good story about this score. It seems that somebody in authority, I don't know who, very likely the Astronomer Commissar, took a great liking to the final number in it, the "Hymn to a Great City". And it truly is a good hymntune, but he decreed that it should be played in the Central Railway Station whenever the train from Moscow pulled in. Gliere, who was a very modest man and had to make this trip fairly frequently, would get out of the train in Petersburg and hear his music. He would then try to make like a tortoise and pull his head down into his collar as far as it would go, and hurry as best he could out of the station. Poor fellow!