Mel Johnson

Don't they because Ashton is relatively recent, so contemporary observations must seem relevant that wouldn't for the 19th century, not too stretched for 'legitimate revisionist history'. Most 19th century characters, like Giselle or La Sylphide, may seem as if without a hardened enough ego or just defeatist and suicidal, even stripped of fairy status when applicable, couldn't they?

I don't know; could they? While at first this seems to fall under the "no-Freud" rule (If it's from before Freud was common coin, no Freud.), I think it really falls under the "don't judge a book from its cover" rule of social engagement. (Don't try to psychoanalyze somebody you've only met just today, and for less than two hours).

It might be intellectually useful to observe characters in various dramas, but to tell you the truth, we rarely have enough behavior to follow. Using psychological techniques may help us to understand the Romantic movement, say, or the pre-Classic period here, but it rarely enhances our enjoyment. If it does for you, bully for you, and I would be the last person to deprive you of enjoyment, but I just don't think it works.

Alain is a stock character - the village idiot. Ashton got him from music hall, the same way he got Mere Simone from pantomime. The dance artist makes him a plausible human being. I've seen Alains who were terrifically sympathetic, about like the Chaplin Little Tramp, and I've seen ones who were just sort of bratty. It's all in the interpretation by the artist, and his making a connection with the audience.

We don't have a lot of time to observe this character; we could more successfully diagnose Lucy Ricardo, because we have a lot more behavior to analyze. My question would be why?

Because it's farce comedy.

Let's not overthink this. This is farce comedy. Alain is just another in a long line of unappetizing arranged bridegrooms. Think of poor Arturo Bucklaw in Lucia di Lammermoor: Lucy takes her first look at him, and says, "Gran Dio!"

Are you looking at a distinction between whore and courtesan?

Price tag and carrying costs, mostly, I would say.

Of course, the show as a whole goes back to Bordeaux in 1789, and the original seems to have contained dancing, dialogue, standup comedy, songs, and other performing arts. We could as easily class it as a musical comedy as a ballet. As the corps exits in its farandole, they preserve a little of the singing in the Ashton. The other version which survives is after Ivanov and Gorsky, and was preserved in versions by Ferdinand Nault and Alonso. Its music is by Peter L. Hertel.

I doubt that even the most determined Scottish Nationalist envisions an engineering project so great as to sever Scotland from Britain and to remove it from the area, which extends from the Orkneys through Great Britain, and into north coastal France, Lesser (or Little) Britain. Scotland could perhaps cease to be part of the United Kingdom, but geography is geography.

Bond is supposed to be British

When did Scotland cease to be part of Britain? Perhaps you mean English?

I don't have a copy of Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day handy, so I can't check on whether the Flanagan character is an actual historical person, or a Zanuck-invented "Greek chorus" for the movie. Would this migration have been in place long enough for a 30something "career private" in the British Army in 1944?

Cecchetti is definitely the Bluebird in the polonaise, and has his entry at the restatement of the dance's opening theme. Fairy Carabosse has her entrance during the B period of the music, together with her rats and her chariot made from a wheelbarrow. It is definitely my impression that they got a character actress-dancer to do the old fairy, except that now she's a GOOD fairy, because she's happy she's invited to the wedding! Forgiveness makes everything beautiful again!

Something to remember about the muppeteers: A lot of them were musicians first, before they started working with Jim Henson, who was himself a musician. No wonder they got the moves right!

With all personal respect to those ladies and others, as has been pointed out, their works are rather localized, and don't begin to address the larger issues of establishing a true technique and a complete curriculum for training with its attendant syllabi. Everybody out there is operating on "the last time I talked to Him about this," and the very strangest of them maintain that He still talks to them, AND THEY'RE NOT KIDDING! Mme. Blavatsky would be soooo happy!

I feel that I must back Hans up on this one. SAB has no syllabus; it has a sort of curriculum, based on the presence of hierarchic stratified class levels, but there is no place I know of to which someone (not necessarily everyone) may go to find out what standards and vocabulary and degrees of expertise are adhered to in the various levels. Mystique is part of the Balanchine legacy. There is supposed to be a "hidden knowledge", a gnosticism, involved with how the teaching and the technical standard work. The closest I can see to standardization is for a faculty to be assembled of fairly synoptic teachers, and the teaching to carry on from that point. That there is no unified "Balanchine technique" is a statement warranted by the lack of a distinctive vocabulary, the school and company making use of nomenclature based on Cecchetti as modified by the Imperial Russians. The Paris Opéra School is just as secretive, but it at least maintains a set of distinctive nomenclatures, consistent within itself. Balanchine is a style; it needs codification by as great a genius as Balanchine in the pedagogical field. No candidate for this office has yet emerged, or even seems to be riding out there on the horizon.

Yes, it was Nadia. She was one POWERFUL dancer, and she let the entrechats-sixes into the Black Swan coda as a commentary on Nureyev's interpolation of the same device into Giselle earlier that week. I don't believe that she did it more than once. That it is still remarked upon to this day is an indication of the effectiveness of her protest. There's nothing quite like peer group pressure.

Connery is always something of a special case. As 007, the Scottish accent was fine; after all "Bond" can be a Scottish name, but in The Longest Day he was playing a soldier named "Flanagan". Same accent. Now there were "Scotch-Irish", but I don't believe that there were many "Erse-Scots" since the days of St. Columba!

The opportunity to stage it was hastened by John Lanchbery's discovery of a violin-repetiteur for all the 6/8 numbers in the Herold score. That's one reason there's so much of that rollicking time signatures in his finished version. I always thought it was fun that he took the ballet's subtitle "Useless Precautions" and chose to introduce the main characters (after the chickens) with the "Piano, pianissimo" opening from another show with that subtitle - Rossini's The Barber of Seville!

But on the other hand, when we consider Balanchine's long record of using Mozart as a choreographic floor, maybe all he meant was, "I like Wolfgang."

But wait a bit! Eglevsky staged it for ABT in 1984? If I recall correctly, he had greatly curtailed his work schedule after December 1977; dead, you know.

And Cyril W. Beaumont's The Ballet Called Swan Lake treats extensively of the Petipa/Ivanov production and its road to Britain.

That simply remakes my case. Theaters in NYC attached to educational institutions and churches are even more closely watched than black boxes. A few decades ago, AF of M national president Jimmy Petrillo tried to shut down the Cathedral of St. John the Divine over jurisdiction. It didn't work.

Vitale Fokine used to call the linkings among the corps in this ballet "the string". Primarily, it meant the corps arrangement at the end of the Nocturne, but there were other "strings" besides.

And yes, this does look like a mistake, but you have to wonder why this picture got out. The dancer who seems to have used the wrong arms appears to be smiling broadly. Did somebody shoot a "What's wrong with this picture" photo?

We're talking about the Sharp here, not the State Theater, but even though the Sharp is rated at 128 seats, there are other forces at work. In NYC, black box theaters are built and utilized with an understanding from the several unions in ancillary disciplines to theater, music or dance that, "OK, you can run it, as long as you DON'T...." (Follows a list of things you can't do, many of which would be involved in recording or broadcast of a student performance.) And you will have a very, very hard time bucking these restrictions. The unions don't care about the good of humanity, the benefit to art, or anything but the protection of musicians' "rights" (some of which are special privileges). You cross swords with Mary Landolfi at your own peril. The AF of M plays rough.

Sorry, the Trust doesn't hold even a candle in influence and raw power to IATSE and Local 801 AF of M! For one thing, they couldn't. It would require a pyrotechnician. And music is recorded? You still have to hire two musicians to be "walkers" in any union house in NYC, even for a straight play. One producer actually put them to work playing in the men's room!

Oh for the day when the SAB workshop is televised! And why shouldn't it be--I don't believe there are any unions involved.

Does the theater have more than 299 seats? You better bet that there are unions involved!

General conventions in theater as a whole that are getting stale:

• The Meaning of Life
  
• The Meaning of Death
  
• It Sucks to be Me
  
• It Sucks to be You
  
• It's All the Fault of the Government
  
• It's All the Fault of Society
  
• See How Clever I am at Stringing Component Parts (words, steps, notes) Together?
  
• Meaning doesn't matter
  
• Feelings don't matter
  
• Everything is a Crock