Petra

Maybe the baboons held the keyboard in their left hand and 's', being close to the left side of the board, was continually pressed... Well, that only works if baboon hands are the same size as mine

According to the Bolz Center for Arts Administration Alumni page (http://www.bolzcenter.org/alumni_profiles/000032.php) , Kristen Brogdon from the Kennedy Center dance deparment also manages the Suzanne Farrell Company. Why is this company so elusive?

Does anyone know the touring schedule of the Suzanne Farrell Company? I gather they'll be performing in DC, at the Balanchine Symposium (Michigan?) and in California. Anywhere else??

I'm much too busy getting ready for our imminent move to Philly (just 1 motnh away) to even think about taking a holiday at this time. It will take me 2 or 3 months after arriving to obtain a work permit in the USA and things at the moment are so crazed, I'm actually looking forward to a few months of enforced unemplyment :rolleyes:

I notice that noone has been considered to play Odette/Odile and Siegfried - Oh well, maybe the prducers are planning an American Idol audition tour to find some unknowns

Angel2be, your compulsory reading list sounds amazing. I read those books when I was about your age, and they are all excellent - each in its very different way. The way my summer is going, I'll be lucky if I manage to slot Harry Potter V in. Oh, of course, I could cut down on my Ballet Alert reading. Then again, no, that doesn't sound like a very good idea

Michael, I have been reading all the threads about the Balanchine centennial season with great interest and as an outsider, I found the most encouraging and positive matter to be the intense emotional reaction from all posters. I cannot comment on the significance of the programming itself, but these threads obviously mean that there are many people who care deeply about NYCB, Balanchine and the mutual cultural treasure created by Balanchine and his company, and who just won't let "the powers that be" do whatever they will with this legacy. This is a very difficult time for art (and especially the performing arts) everywhere. To be able to maintain this level of intensity and identification is quite astounding (but I don't think that was Peter Martins' intention:) )

The Israeli press has also reported the cancellation of the Montpellier Festival as the Bat-Sheva Company was supposed to perform at the Festival in 3 different programs. Naomi Fortis-Bloch, the managing director of Bat-Sheva, said to the press that on the one hand they are very sad but on the other hand they support the artists' protest.

By my quick count, there will be at least 4 All-Balanchine evenings (excluding his full-lengths) - perhaps you should be grateful for small mercies

Dolphingirl, those are interesting books you've read this year. What kind of school do you currently go to? (I thought your sister was "unhealthily addicted" to TV, but maybe I'm confusing posters? )

I received the brochure for the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center (TAPAC) subscription seasons for dance and music (excluding opera, which gets its own brochure) yesterday. The dance season for 2003-2004 is as follows: - Galili Dance Company - a modern dance company based in the Netherlands but the director (Itzik Galili) is Israeli. - Phillipe Blanchard Dance Company - a Swedish modern dance company Both the above are part of a Dance Europa Festival. I assume other companies will be coming and performing in smaller or less "opera house" style venues. - The Kirov !!!! will be performing Romeo and Juliet (chor. Lavrovsky) and Le Corsair (chor. Piotr Gusev based onMArius Petipa). R&J is part of the subscription series. Corsair isn't. Personally, I would have programmed it the other way round - I think it's much easier to draw a casual ballet goer to R&J. - Bat-Sheva Dance Company - program includs a company premier by Mats Ek. - Tosca - the opera, sung live, will be used as "an integral soundtrack" (that's what the brochure says - is this unusual? are soundtracks not integral to the dance?) for a modern dance work choreographed by Renato Zanella, director of the Ballet of the Vienna Opera. It looks good, and I really hope that the Kirov comes (as some of you know, I won't be here to see them) but I'm not holding my breath. This year's no-shows (for the TAPAC subscription series) include the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and La Scala in Sylvie Guillem's Giselle. A 5 performance subsricption costs between 120 US$ and 250 US$. I'm not sure what the policy is re. no-shows. I know that a replacement is usually performed, but go compare Merce Cunningham to Bat-Sheva or the Kibbutz Dance Company (especially for an Israeli audeince who can see these companies often and even at less expensive venues) and I don't know whether you can get your money back.

Ohad Naharin was the highly successful director of the Bat Sheva Company for over 10 years - he has just resigned as artistic director - and his choreography forms a large part of the repertoire. Alexandra, I know that his work is performed by ballet companies but it is definitely modern... His style is usually very fast and athletic. I don't believe I've ever seen Passomezzo though. The dancers' names, Yael Schnell and Jesper Thirup, sound familiar to me as Bat Sheva dancers but I'll have to check my programmes at home to make sure.

rkoretzky, you have to go to the Palais Garnier. I've only been once (and I saw the San Francisco Ballet, as POB was in the USA:) ) but that was the highlight of my last trip to Paris - even more than the cutprice Kookai suit I bought then ;)

Thanks for your replies. My book is second hand. I think it was bought at the Strand in NYC. I haven't read any of Denby's writing but it sounds like his style was completely different from Terry's. Alexandra, I like your term "booster" but I quite like the way he "boosts". His agenda is very much in the open and although I find it hard to believe that once upon a time there was an area in which America was not top gun ( ;) ), there must have been a need for this boosting. Now that I think about it, Terry's writing style is very 'Americana' - open and warm and lively and no-nonsense. Interesting how someone's writing style can reflect the style of dance that person likes.

This is such a wonderful thread - this is why I come to Ballet Alert - for the memories and the passion and everybody's ability to convey their feeelings and thoughts in the most evocative way. Leigh said that the scary thing about NYChistory is that the city feeds on itself. But that's what's fascinaing and exciting about the city. That's also what's scary and fascinating and exciting about ballet. There is always this delicate balance between wanting to know what went before and wanting to create and interpret in a wholly new and individual way.

I haven't voted yet - the more I think about it, the less sure I am. In terms of name recognition, Duncan and Graham are more well known than Cunningham, but I think that at this point in time (and from where I'm writing) Cunningham's legacy (he's not dead so that's not really the right word:) ) is stronger. But probably the most influential choreographers at the momentwould be Jiri Kylian and Pina Bausch.

I recently received a book called "I Was There", a collection of Walter Terry's writings. He covers dance in all its aspects throghout the 20th centure, from the [Henry] Ford Ballet especially established for the 1940 World Fair (yes, really) to Nureyev dancing Graham in 1976. It's a fascinating book. I am constantly dipping into it and reading "just one more" item. I am not very familiar with the development of American ballet, so it is very illuminating. Also interesting is the social - cultural commentary. He was a great supporter of American ballet, and in his early days the term "American ballet" was obviously oxymoronic. As I had never heard of him before, I would like to know how Walter Terry is perceived today in retrospect. Is there a writer who held opposite opinions to his? Did anyone meet him? Thanks for any replies.

In my family, we can have lively, impromptu arguments about anything. I don't really recall reading being encouraged or discouraged in any special way. I could read (English) long before I went to school, and my 1st grade teacher would ask me to read to the class or to a group if she wanted to concentrate on another group. During some elementary grades, we had library hours, but at that age, I think "everyone" went to the municipal library after school anyway. Literature, both original and translated, is a compulsory subject for matriculation in Israel, so are Essay-writing (yes - the exam is to write an essay on a given subject) and Bible Studies. So I think most Israeli high-school matriculants, and obviously not everyone matriculates, are fairly literate. Of course, just because someone's literate doesn't mean they love reading.

Aren't we all a nostalgic bunch? More books I loved - "Friday's Tunnel" and "February's Road" by John Verney about the very enterprising members of the very eccentric Callendar family. Child detective novels with a twist!! I read Josephine Tey too. Her book "The Daughter of Time" sparked a Richard III obsession with my older sister - an obsession which lasts to this day, and I was "forced" to read numerous books - soft history and hard history - on the subject.

I'm still involved (busy is inapproriate here) with my winter reading - Mrs. Dalloway (rather, the portrait of Virginia Woolfe on the cover) stares at me accusingly every night and I still can't get through the first 60 pages. I see there are quite a few Henry VIII and his VI wives fans here -a nice beach book is "the Other Boleyn Girl" by Philippa Gregory, about Anne Boleyn's sister, Mary Boleyn. I haven't heard of "The Da Vinci Code" - what is it about? and by whom?

Like many other Ballet Alerters I got much of my arts education (and all of my love for the arts) at home. My mother taight drama and my father lived in London during the Nureyev years, so there was a great love for the arts in general and ballet in particular. I started ballet when I was 4 and continued until I matriculated and was conscripted into the Army (not a joke). At elementary school both in South Africa and in Israel, there were art classes and arts and crafts classes and to a varying degree, very basic music classes. Israeli folk dancing was not exactly taught at school, but it was a part of school life either in gym lessons, or as part of break/recreation activities or included in school shows for the end of year or holidays, etc. I went to a performing and visual arts high shool, but at the time there wasn't much artistic interaction between the departments. Most of my classmates were not interested in any aspect of ballet and dance besides the actual dancing and composition/improvisation classes. I was the only one who stayed awake during 'History of Dance' classes.

Another very moving and eloquent account of the Holocaust years - suitable for teens - is "The Endless Steppe" by Esther Hautzig, about a young Jewish girl called Esther who is deported from Vilna to Siberia by the Red Army. Although the surname of the heroine in the book is not Hautzig, I have always assumed it to be autobiographical.

How could I forget the Anne books?!! Are the Andrew Lang books the Golden Book, Blue Book, etc.? If so, they were always referenced in the E. Nesbit books, and I never found them in book shops.

Calliope, I didn't really understand what you meant about "stoopid smart". Can you clarify.

1. I'm sensing an age divide here (but I'm willing to be proven wrong). Perhaps those of us who have TV references older than us (as I said in my earlier post, I have these pre-birth memories of the Moon Landing) find the TV medium easier both to digest and to ignore and therefore it is less irritating and 'in your face' for us. 2. There is some excellent stuff on TV. You have to look hard for it but - Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an epic work of art (IMO and the 6th season has only just begun to be broadcast on Israeli cable TV), BBC's early '90s 2-season series 'This Life' was wonderful. I don't think Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls, WEst Wing are on this level but they are well-crafted entertainment - I agree with Dale, why would watching them be any less 'worthy' than going to see a mainstraeam Hollywood movie... 3. A true confession - I didn't 'get' the reference to the Comic Book Guy:o