Mel Johnson

YES!

Do anybody got some nachos?

F-R-E-D F-R-E-D-B-U-R-G-E-R

i can spell my own name!

Fred Fredburger

"Calling Plato. Calling Dr. Plato...."

Sounds a bit like Stravinsky/Kandinsky, in which the first player names a prominent figure in one field, and the second player must name a prominent figure in another field which:

1 ) Rhymes with the first name

2 ) Is of a comparable outlook or values system as the first-named.

For example, the eponymous figures in music and art would be a good exchange. "Charles Wilson Peale" and "Eugene O'Neill" would not. Same last names are prohibited as, "Edward Hopper" and "Hedda Hopper", which would be a bad exchange anyway, but the debatability of the comparisons is where the interesting part of play comes in.

I think ANY explanation is preferable to one that starts, "She has these really bad gallstones, see...."

...Everything the traffic will allow!

There's no business like show business, like no business I know....

♪ ♫

People are free to entertain any opinion they like. My own observations were of the figures surrounding Farrell as supporters. They form a belief set ("cult") which attribute to her ablilities and ambitions she may or may not possess. Sexism might enter into their hermeneutic, or not.

As to Farrell herself, I met her some forty-six years ago as a student, and my opinions on her remain guarded "from the picklocks of biographers".

A position as ballet master at NYCB might indeed be beneficial to the company, but as Farrell Fan and atm711 have observed, she might not be interested in such a position now. She seems to be doing fine as a "free agent".

I really don't have much faith in her ability to direct a company like NYCB continuously. Part of her success has been the cachet afforded a cult figure, a sort of "woman wronged" by the City Ballet, if not the Balanchine, Establishment. That would run out very fast once a long-term commitment were in place.

Charthel Arthur yet lives.

And the company maintained rehearsal videos of the Massines for restaging purposes. I don't think they did so with Cranko or Ashton, but Georgette Tsingurides was called in the last time they remounted a Cranko work, and Ashton has been multiply notated.

"Paging Dr. Hodson....Paging Dr. Millicent Hodson...."

Perhaps a story from work would clarify what I intended here.

We aren't the French Academy, where in Pre-Revolutionary days (and somewhat after), you could find duels all over the countryside, as the Academicians took umbrage against refutations of their theories by resorting to sword and pistol against their opposition in debate. At least modern peer review in journal articles, while still sometimes scathing, does not often end in letter-bombs and drive-by shootings.

In March of 1783, a movement arose among the officers of the Continental Army to go on an actual strike against the government unless they received a retirement package that they wanted for after the war. The author of the scheme was John Armstrong, Jr., the son of a Pennsylvania Congressman, and a principal aide-de-camp to Maj.-Gen. Horatio Gates, Washington's second-in-command in terms of seniority. Washington convened his officers and gave them one lulu of a pep talk, which ended in the measure not even being seconded when it was moved.

Armstrong was not himself deeply emotionally attached to his idea, but was concerned that Washington had meant to lambaste him personally, and sent a letter some years later, asking his late commander if that had been his intention. Washington replied to the effect that he had not known whose writing it had been, and that no personal animosity had been inherent in his denunciation. (Actually, in GW's delivery text, he used phrases like "My God! What can this writer have been thinking? Can he not be an insidious enemy from (enemy-occupied) New York?" Those sound pretty personal to me.)

Many years later, about 50 to be more precise, Timothy Pickering, who had been deeply emotionally invested in the idea, wrote to Armstrong, asking, "C'mon, now, you and I are old friends, it's been a long time. Did you actually write those proposals or not?" Armstrong wrote back, apparently still smarting under the idea that he had been laid out by GW himself, "Yeah, I wrote it, but the Boss said that he didn't know it was me, and was just going after the ideas." He wrote, by the way, in a disguised hand, and signed the answer, "John Montgars", thus seeking still to maintain his anonymity.

I think that people do get involved with their ideas, so much so that they are a personal extension of the self into the wilderness of dispute, and I, here am as guilty as anyone. In a connected world, impartiality toward one's own mores and thoughts is more difficult than in the days when a letter did not have immediately to be sent, and taken back to the desk for a second, or a third massage for clarity and impersonality before sending.

Therefore observing the limitations and drawbacks of the medium in which we communicate, I apologize to those to whom I have given offense, and to those to whom I have not, for wasting your time.

Sincerely,

How are we ? Here's how:

even though we don't know the nature of that work

which is an ad hominem attack on the credentials of the poster even to comment on the mighty issues before the House. Such discourse is not in accordance with the basic rule of discussion on the Ballet Talk boards, in which matters of evangelical religion, proselytizing politics, sexual practices and the other things you don't bring to the dinner table are discouraged. They always lead to a thread going to hell in a handbasket.

Do ask you like with posting etiquette, but kindly remember that controversy does not have to lead to one poster disparaging another.

I had quite forgotten that the visible profiles on this board differ somewhat from the ones at Ballet Talk for Dancers, but for the sake of information, I am employed by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. I occupy the curatorial position at a museum operated by that agency, and have a responsibility to interface with all inquirers of information derived from the collection and equipment at my disposal. Ever try to explain a flintlock to a six-year-old? I've done that. Or try to explain the sequence of treadle/shuttle/heddle/harness to a retired weaver who worked on power looms? I've done that. Want to know what George Washington wore for underwear? I've answered that. How do you dress wood for housewrighting? I've demonstrated that. How do you know if a diamond were cut in the eighteenth century? etc. etc. etc.

But now, with moderator hat in hand, I submit that we are way, WAY .

All I can add in rejoinder is that I work for a government agency, and we are encouraged to take an outward-looking and proactive stance against sexual harassment, which may not meet everyone's definition of the term. The examples cited above seem inward-turning, self-referential, and old-fashioned compared to the way I am taught to act. My hot button is sexual harassment against male dancers. If it hasn't already been inferred, that's the way I am.

Yes, it's about sexual harassment. Sexual harassment doesn't have to be overtly sexual in order to meet the definition. Heard of the "glass ceiling"? That's sexual harassment. Ever been excluded from a party you wanted to attend because you're single/married? That's sexual harassment. Not only does sexual harassment not have to involve sexually obvious words and actions in nature, but it doesn't have to be in the workplace, either. Unfortunately, outside of work, a grievance is less subject to mediation or other systemic or legal protection. That's why there are laws and some public speakers inveigh mightily against sexism. It's bad. It's pervasive. It should stop. And "gender" is about grammar. "Sex" is about organisms, including humans.

Perhaps we may also note for the record that many people of both sexes have suffered during adolescence and later for being ‘different’ in one way or another, and no one’s personal experience of same is being dismissed or derided.

This is the sentence that I was addressing, which I found self-contradictory, carrying as it does with an implied dismissal and a statement that there is no dismissal.

To be sure, women dancers also suffer from stereotyping which does lead to sexual harassment, but the point being addressed here is that male dancers suffer from sexual harassment based on their occupation and sex. Female dancers' stereotyping can also be addressed on its own thread, but the central topic of this thread is Radetsky's article, and the central topic of that article is sexual harassment dealt to male dancers. Radetsky has spoken out about it, and his complaint should receive an open-minded and serious reception. In a work environment, it is relatively easy (Note the "relatively". Dealing with sexual harassment is never "easy".) to deal with sexual harassment when it involves only two or three people, but here the harasser is identified as society as a whole. It is extremely difficult to counsel "society as a whole". Perhaps Radetsky's article is meant to chip away at the larger problem.

One has to wonder at Mazo's statistical base and sampling technique in 1973, or maybe he was just talking to Chris d'Amboise, who liked to announce, unbidden, that he was the only straight male in the NYCB corps. That must have gone over like a lead balloon in the Public Relations and Personnel offices; bad form to out an entire body of identifiable people without their permission. I know I groaned.

I suppose the appropriate quote to append to this discussion is Edmund Burke, on the overactive executive power wielded by King George III:

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

This idea, in modified form, is often paraphrased as:

The only thing that is necessary for evil to triumph is for the good to do nothing.

Subtly different, but the theme is the same.

Where the companies perform MAY also have something to do with how they see their missions. Robert Joffrey started his company by playing colleges and arts centers off the beaten path to bring ballet where it had seldom or never been seen before. If that's the Yakobsen goal, more power to them. If the Tatchkin company wants to play major cities, more power to them, too.

Balanchine is not a technical method of instruction, it is largely a style for stage, and most dancers trained in a Balanchine school are perfectly able to dance the classics. There are idiosyncracies and foibles created for given Balanchine ballets like overcrossed fifth positions and heels that don't always get quite to the floor in allegro which have become regularized into what many people call "Balanchine style". There has yet to be the pedagogical genius to regularize Balanchine into a unified method of ballet, with its own lexicon and singularity of movement theory, but such a one has not yet come onto the scene.

I've recently attended some workshops on things like racism and sexism, and one thing that they have seemed to agree upon over the years is that "Things are tough all over" is a standard answer that may indicate complicity in the practice. I'm shocked and disappointed to find versions of that statement here, of all places.

As far as M. Mel's cynicism goes, the examples stated are rather old, although valid. I'd like to think Newsweek, in the name of current events and keeping up to date, has modified its position over the years, as much of the general population has. We all grow and change with the times.

Would I like to believe that? Yes. Do I? Not at the moment. Now, I don't think the magazine keeps a desk just for the purpose of putting down male dancers, but I've noticed this historical bias in their pages.

Is this a nod, or the beginning of repentance and atonement? I should hope the latter, although I'm not betting the farm.

My cynical take from the other board:

Newsweek should talk!

Sometimes, I can weep for joy at even the sunniest moments in ballet. I've been known to dissolve in a welter of tears at the double curtain in "Les Patineurs", or during any given moment in Gerald Arpino's (I know, I know) "Trinity" or "Kettentanz". A beautifully executed "Agon" can do it, too. I'm like the late Walter Kerr: When the happiness level reaches a certain point, I cry!

Top tier dancers are at that career point where the aforementioned compound/complex seems to be endemic.

Now, as to representation when issues become contentious, that's what a union is for.

Same with anything to do with Japan! The go-between is so much of a cultural necessity there, that sometimes you don't notice that you've been gone between! Individuals will find it easier than groups.

We're getting a lot of input here on audience/attendance. Anybody see evidence of production values sliding because companies are trying to produce works on the cheap?