sappho

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I will have much more to say about this later, but PLEASE keep in mind that one (or several) bad apples does NOT spoil the bunch, and that the enormous cultural good that the company and the school have done over many decades far outweighs any unfortunate mistakes that have been made.

What a vile comment on Mr. Clifford's part.

Catazaro writes, "I respect and admire every ballerina with whom I dance at the company, and strive every day to be the best partner I possibly can be."

And Ramasar, "I am an honest and honorable person, and have always treated everyone, including my colleagues, staff, friends and others at NYCB, with the upmost respect."

So facile. Beyond the mindbogglingly obvious point that no one gets to judge the quality of his or her own other-regarding behavior, these men are both old enough to know that 'nice' people can do terrible things and don't get a pass on facing the consequences.

1 minute ago, nanushka said:

Where was Ramasar's statement? I haven't come across one but would be interested to read.

Whoops, my bad! He's quoted here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/15/arts/dance/city-ballet-fires-two-male-dancers-accused-of-sharing-photos.html

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Mr. Ramasar said he had been disciplined for “non-work lawful activities between consenting adults” without an understanding of all the facts. “The ballet already suspended me,” he said, “but now, due to pressure caused by a lawsuit filed against it (but not me), has expelled me to appease people who have no idea what really happened. In the days ahead, I will be telling my story.”

1 hour ago, California said:

After further assessment of their conduct and its impact on the NYCB community, the decision has been made to terminate Catazaro and Ramasar. A workplace where our dancers and staff feel respected and valued is our highest obligation,

Agree with Helene, nanushka, and others that this was the right call.

Also, between John Hockenberry's essay in Harper's, Jian Ghomeshi's essay in NYRB, Ian Buruma's interview justifying his decision to publish Ghomeshi, Ramasar's statement, and Catazaro's statement, it's been a busy weekend for men complaining that they were fired or forced to resign in order to "appease" (Ramasar's words) the nameless public mob...

On 9/12/2018 at 2:07 PM, vendangeuse said:

Sappho, I got my hands on The Noise of Time last week and just finished it—I tore through it. It was a fantastic book, one I expect I'll return to again in the future. Many thanks for the recommendation.

Ahhhh so delighted to hear this!! Now I kind of want to re-read it myself. Let me know if you end up finding something particularly illuminating on the non-fiction front?

To echo a couple of comments in the other thread, Georgina Pazcoguin is a treasure and so, so underused in the Balanchine rep. Also hope to see Olivia Boisson, Meaghan Dutton-O'Hara, and Sasonah Huttenbach in more featured roles.

Happy to see Concerto DSCH  and Prodigal Son on the schedule.

Less happy to see West Side Story AND Something to Dance About AND Carousel.

22 hours ago, miliosr said:

Clifford has made a new entry to his blog titled 'The Eye of the Storm' where he ruminates some more on this topic:

http://johnclifford26.blogspot.com/

 

Oh boy. 😬 Where to begin. If I may be blunt, he's treating this story like it's a writing prompt for his application to the AD job. Quotes from the post:

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So, what did Balanchine do in each and every case?  He rose above it.  He simply was the calm in the center of every storm.  While everyone else was running around screaming "the sky is falling," Mr. B just put out the fires in the classiest possible way. 

Here he just takes for granted that the ability to calmly rise above crises and "put out the fires in the classiest possible way" is evidence of good leadership.

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When various ballerinas were complaining about his attention to Farrell he simply choreographed a new ballet for them to keep them happy.  When the NYC Ballet orchestra threatened to go on strike for the Nutcracker season (the most lucrative for the company) Balanchine asked all the dancers to strike three weeks before the season and stall renegotiating our contracts.  What this did was to, in effect, put the orchestra out of work three weeks earlier than they planned.

Same with this. The first sentence, as a standalone comment, would normally be understood as criticism rather than praise.

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When dancers had drug issues Balanchine handled it quickly before anything could get out of hand.  For instance, in the late 1960's when Pot was everywhere, some of the dancers became too loose about smoking it in public

Drug issues aren't the same thing as bad publicity when dancers are seen smoking pot. Public pot smoking is not a drug issues, and treating it as such is pretty insulting to dancers who have dealt with addiction.

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As for any sexual misconduct, that was impossible.  Balanchine revered women, so all the boys knew it would have been professional suicide to mistreat a woman, in or out of the theater.

This is a bizarrely perfunctory and flippant comment, given that he mentions earlier in the post that he's responding specifically to the Finlay case.

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As for mental health Balanchine was on top of that too.  If he saw a girl becoming anorexic he would get her help.

No introspection about what a modern AD might do in light of what we now know about eating disorder prevention. It's pretty horrifying that senior members of the dance community could be so beset by nostalgia that this sort of behavior doesn't strike them as problematic. And while most people dodge the issue by saying something like, "He was a product of his times," Clifford seems to think Balanchine's actions are worthy of emulation.

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This wouldn't have happened if Balanchine had been alive because he truly thought of all the dancers as his children...even the unruly ones. 

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Dancers NEED a father (or mother) figure as their leader.

NO.  No they absolutely do not need father figures. Ballet companies are not families. Dancers are not children; dancers are employees. Dancers need collective bargaining power, dispute resolution mechanisms, limits on working hours and performances, health benefits, and protections against workplace discrimination. They need to be able to hold their leaders accountable without penalty. They need leaders who recognize that sexual harassment and abuse are not just institutional but structural problems.

2 hours ago, BalanchineFan said:

You can require acute care for months and still hold down a job and go to school. One needn’t be comitted to a mental institution to get good talk therapy. Someone who’s experienced sexual betrayal/assault might have sleep disorders, panic attacks and/or issues with intimacy and trust.

This exactly. I wasn't going to comment further, but this one hits close to home for me. One can be 'on the roster and dancing,' so to speak, without ever letting on that one suffers privately due to past trauma, grief, sexual assault, eating disorders, and mental illness. I've been one of those students. Ambitious, intense academic environment -- much like Alexandra. One becomes astonishingly good at hiding pain from other people.

2 hours ago, cubanmiamiboy said:

5 hours ago, On Pointe said:

At some point,  adults have to take responsibility for their actions.  Ms. Waterbury had fair warning that the man she was dating was a substance abuser with a kink.  

 

Agree 200 %

Circulating surreptitiously recorded videos and images is not a kink. It is a crime.

Deriving pleasure from knowing that one is being recorded is a kink. It's very common. That doesn't make circulating those recordings without consent any less of a crime.

46 minutes ago, On Pointe said:

At any rate,  while she is very young (and in my personal opinion too young and naive to be involved in a full-blown affair),  she was a legal adult when her sexual relationship with Finlay began.  She was fully aware that Finlay wanted to photograph her nude and while engaged in sexual acts,  as the complaint mentions that she strenuously  objected to the idea,  but she did not break off the relationship.  There is no evidence that NYCB condoned or encouraged this kind of behavior,  by statement or action on the part of the company,  or that company officers knew about it. 

Ms. Waterbury claims to be so distressed by the company's negligent supervision that she is unable to participate in her usual activities and requires medical care,  possibly including hospitalization.  But apparently she is still a student at Columbia,  is still on the roster at Wilhelmina Models,  and she is still able to dance - there is a local news story on this matter on YouTube which shows her dancing in the studio.  While her distress and embarrassment are no doubt real,  the public was unaware of her exploitation until she herself came forward.  The company didn't expose her. 

This is victim-blaming.

1 hour ago, KayDenmark said:

The female dancers Amar works with know him better than we do, and they can put his recent behavior into context better than we can. It's up to them to judge if they feel comfortable partnering with him, particularly if we're talking about female principals who would presumably have the standing to say "no" if they wanted to.

They don't have the standing. The company has the final word on casting. And even if dancers could refuse, it wouldn't be a free choice insofar as promotions depend on casting. That scenario is a paradigmatic example of a hostile work environment.

A final thought: I've just looked at John Clifford's Instagram and, perhaps unsurprisingly, he's managed to make this crisis all about himself. ("Some people have recently asked me what I thought about the problems now facing the board and company and if this could have happened in Balanchine's day. Absolutely not! is my answer.") Like others, he describes what has happened as a "sad situation" all around. It's an empty, depoliticizing phrase, used far too often in commentary about sexual assault to avoid discussing specifics--deliberately or not.

I'm a millennial. I'm not in the dance world, but I am in academia, whose power structures can resemble those in the arts: a mandatory 'apprenticeship' (grad school) requiring unbelievable amounts of time/money before you're even allowed to interview for salaried jobs, heavy competition for a dwindling number of jobs (many just fellowships), a huge amount of overlap between professional and social activities, insular communities, superstars who are seen as indispensable to the profession, gender imbalances at the upper levels of the profession, huge amount of leeway given to 'boy geniuses'... and so forth.

Anyway, I hope it's not breaking forum rules to express my sadness at how many times Finlay, Ramasar, and Catazaro's artistry has been mentioned in this conversation. My sadness at how worries about their lives being ruined and what their absence might mean for the audience's experience seem to be much more passionately stated here than concern for Alexandra and the women of NYCB.

I am so indescribably angry and sad about what has happened to them. I'm also mortified that more people aren't angry. And -- and this is where the comment about academia comes in -- I'm scared, because whenever I see the reaction to something like this happening in the dance world, it feels like a preview of what might happen in my world if I or women I knew had to report sexual harassment or worse. The insistence on defending people on the basis of their contributions to the field, the denial of institutional responsibility, the worries about (statistically rare) false accusations, everything.

Don't have definitive recommendations on the non-fiction front (so much historiographical controversy!), but definitely recommend Julian Barnes' novel on Shostakovitch, The Noise of Time. A compact, melancholy reflection on the relationship between art and politics, and on the moral, political, and personal compromises required of artists working under totalitarian regimes.

Just wanted to comment on Kurt Froman's Instagram account, which features clips from the NYCB archive. His posts from the last couple of weeks are especially juicy; loads of rehearsal and interview footage, clips from infrequently-performed ballets, and videos of Suzanne.

Two comments. First, so much of the archival footage was shot over the course of Peter Martins' career. I'm amused at how much this annoys me. (More Nikolaj Hübbe videos, please!!) Seeing him in so many of these videos really highlights his predictable/unchanging stage presence; he always seems to play the role of Peter Martins, rather than adapting his stage presence to the ballet he's performing.

Second (and slightly gossipy) thing of interest: there's a recent (3 days ago) video of Suzanne talking about her fallout with Balanchine, and Darci Kistler left a couple of bizarre/salty comments on the post ("I wish Mr B. could respond !!!").

I also enjoyed it. A few thoughts:

- Michelle Dorrance is a brilliant dancer, but what the doc really highlights is her ability to energize and collaborate with others. Such a radiant presence.

- It was refreshing to see Tiler rushed/stressed/multitasking/cranky, after years of often-patronizing press accounts of her million-watt smile, charm, sunny demeanor, etc.

- My initial reaction to her comments in the NYT article about the documentary was that she seemed very young. I felt the same way after watching, but this time because her parents and grandmother feature heavily in the documentary as a sort of full-time support network. (Not sure how accurately that reflects her day-to-day situation, but it's clear that she's very close to her family.)

- The doc didn't really give any insight into how she selected her program. Unfortunate, but I suppose I can go back and look at interviews from the time.

- Tiler's dog is so cute.

On 6/20/2018 at 5:58 PM, LadyBubbles said:

You all know how we wondered about corps dancer Gisele Bethea? Well, she appears to have gotten engaged. She's very young, but congrats to her. If she plans on returning to ballet, I hope she can heal from whatever injury she's battling. No idea whether her engagement has anything to do with her absence from ABT these last few months.

Possibly of interest: Gisele no longer mentions ABT in her Instagram bio. I'm not sure how long that's been the case or if it means anything, but she's been conspicuously absent from company life for ages, no?

I also loved Hammoudi's Tybalt. Granted, I couldn't quite see his facial expressions from row T. But I was struck by his marvelously expressive hands and wrists, and the "Prince of Cats" quality of his movement: lithe, skulking, arrogant.

Stella was glorious. Still thinking about Juliet's heartbreaking, defiant backward bourrées as she retreats from Paris and her parents.