canbelto

I also wish I could have seen many of Mr. B's greats (suzanne, patty, eddie, tanny, allegra, jacque, maria tallchief, etc.) live. Just because from what exists of their dancing it's so sharp and immediate that it's hard to believe they were known as the "company without stars."

I assume the recent departures of three principals (Fairchild, Scheller, Krohn although Krohn is still working with the company) cleared up some budget for apprentices as apprentice salaries are much lower. Joaquin de Luz's recent Instagram post seems to indicate he is retiring as well. And also, Peter Martins was making quite a hefty salary. He's gone so ...

Kirkland also was hand-picked to be the Marie in the NYCB Nutcracker but was "fired" because she didn't think the boy they had chosen as Prince was worthy of her. For better or worse this sort of withering criticism of everyone (including herself) was there from the start.

Here's one song from The Greatest Showman:

Speaking of Kirkland another snippet of her Giselle has popped up:

Pierre Lacotte's La Sylphide is a total pastiche imagining of the original La Sylphide. It's not like the Bournonville version in which Bournonville was remembering how the ballet was as he danced it with Marie Taglioni. For instance there's no way Effie would have danced on pointe as she does in Lacotte's version.

I've been listening to the soundtrack of The Greatest Showman. Some nice tunes.

Danchig-Waring was an amazing Apollo. However I don't know how he is post- injury as he has danced very little since his return and I did see a Nutcracker with him recently where he was much slower and more effortful of a dancer. So I hope it was just some rustiness and not a permanent decrease of his capabilities.

Many videos were supposed to have been Kirkland. For instance Balanchine sent her to Berlin to do the second movement of Symphony in C but she withdrew and so Allegra Kent was filmed instead. Ditto Turning Point.

I want to see Auguste Bournonville. He was apparently an amazing dancer and the fast footwork and dizzying array of jumps was his speciality.

Well I can only speak for myself in that I disliked Gelsey's book not because I didn't believe most of what she said (I did). I just disliked it because I have a hard time with books in which the narrator has not a single nice word to say about anyone. Not her family, not her colleagues, not anyone. I just found the bitterness too much to take.

I know the last time I saw it Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild did it. That won't be happening anymore obviously ... Megan and Tiler will probably do it with one of their usual partners.

Not so much a thawing of relations maybe as the fact that the way the ballets are programmed, Tiler Peck is needed for Four T's so she can't dance Divertimento.

That's cross-dressing which is not the same as transgender, but whatever.

Bouder probably has more in common with Melissa Hayden than, say, Sara Mearns. Hayden was a ballerina known for her strength and versatility. Her big roles: Stars and Stripes, Firebird, Raymonda Variations, Divertimento #15.

http://www.nycballet.com/casting First week of casting is up. Not many surprises but there is a brand new Cortege cast going on.

Dancers (past and present) might be speaking to lawyers running the investigation and they might be talking to the NYTimes. But they have every right to not want their names out their and their lives dissected by the general public. And the investigation has every right to protect the identities of the dancers who have been speaking to investigators. Just because it isn't splashed on the front page of CNN doesn't mean it didn't happen.

One of Roy Moore's accusers house got burned d8wn this week. Police are treating it as an arson case.

I think it's pointless to rehash what Balanchine or Robbins did compared to Peter Martins. Balanchine was born in 1903 and died in 1983. It's 2018 and standards of behavior and attitudes towards women/sex/work/marriage/children have changed. I don't think for example that Harvey Weinstein's behavior differed significantly from the notorious casting couch movie moguls like Harry Cohn or Darryl Zanuck. It was said of Darryl Zanuck that "Zanuck worked his way through actresses on the sofa in his office faster than the credits rolled on his flicks" and that he has his afternoon 4 pm office shutdowns which was his "happy hour." But Harvey Weinstein has to answer to 2018 attitudes towards sexual harassment, and so does Peter Martins.

Rosemary Dunleavy is the ballet mistress and does a lot of the day to day class/rehearsal stuff especially with the corps.

I think many swans are black when young ...

First of all, some women for Bill Cosby did go to the police: Others did seek out financial relief, which Cosby paid. And: So it's NOT true that these women only came out when the Vanity Fair article and Gloria Allred got involved. The fact that you think all of the Cosby women were lying when some of them did go to the police and nothing was done speaks volumes. My issue is not whether Peter Martins is a rapist or not. I agree that so far the circumstances don't support that he actually raped anyone. But to think that women make rape accusations to make a quick buck or to get on the cover of Vanity Fair or because they didn't get Titania in MSND is ...

I'm more discussing how you always assume bad faith on the "supposed victims" (your words, not mine) and how you bring up racism in the accusations against Bill Cosby and greed, when I'm saying that greed and racism are unlikely to be motivating factors for any woman to accuse anyone of rape, since rape victims are often dragged through the mud by defense attorneys and the process is so degrading that many simply prefer to stay silent. Maybe I just have totally different life experiences than you. I've worked with children who were raped by their fathers and when they told their mothers, their mothers gave them up to foster care or made the girls sleep with their fathers. "Better you than me" is what they've said. I've seen the damage and pain and trauma this causes. So I actually have empathy for women who were sexually assaulted but because of a variety of circumstances were afraid to go to the police because they weren't the "perfect" victim. And I'm going to say this once more, loud and clear, and if you don't get it, you never will: No woman ever thinks "I need to make a quick buck, I'll accuse someone of rape."

Hmm I often find that with ballets like Raymonda or Bugaku that the energy the performers bring to the plate often tips the balance between "offensive" and compelling. When I saw the livestream of the Bolshoi's Raymonda I was frankly appalled by the brownface Abderakhman and the visible disgust Maria Alexandrova had towards the Abderakhman. I have however seen other Raymondas where it's clear Raymonda is turned on by Abderakhman, and the ballet becomes much more complex and ambiguous than "Muslim villain tries to rape Hungarian princess." I have also seen productions where the chemistry between Raymond and Jean de Brienne is so non-existent that the wedding pas looks like an arranged trophy marriage, and the entire balance of the ballet is tipped towards those thrilling moments Raymonda had with Abderakhman. Glazunov further mixes things up by making the second act music by far the most exciting and teeming with life.

I think Martins' New Years "retirement" could have been a boardroom conversation where it was decided that if Martins didn't want a full-blown investigation to continue, he could step down and the findings of the investigation would be kept private.