canbelto

Per Megan Fairchild's instagram she says she's making her debut as Odette/Odile.

Denial is a huge obstacle for both the addict and their loved ones to overcome. Peter's reaction is not at all atypical. I hope he gets his daughter the help he needs, even if that means stepping back a bit from NYCB.

This is neither here nor there but ironically ex-addicts often feed into this misconception because so much of therapy is often based on religion. As much as I admire Darryl Strawberry I cringe when he makes it seem like all he needed was a call from the man upstairs to get his act together, when he struggled with addiction off-and-on for decades. There's no easy answers, no neat packages, for these issues. And everyone around them is affected. As I said, I hope Peter Martins and his family find the resources to help their daughter. It's probably going to get worse before it gets better.

A severe drug habit can run through even the thickest trust fund. Also they were in Maine. Probably needed a fix and realized they had no money. Very sad what addiction can do.

Well I hope Ms. Martins gets the help she needs. I hate to say it but being affluent and white gives one a huge advantage when it comes to these sorts of criminal charges. I have worked with a lot of minority youths who were sent away for long times for much lesser drug offenses.

I wish Robert Gottlieb's book had been more comprehensive because I thought he did a pretty good job dispelling some of the myths about Balanchine. Gottlieb is obviously a great admirer of Balanchine but he did talk a lot about Balanchine's life that wasn't exactly the same as the life Mr. B liked to present in the press.

My only concern with Homans as a biographer is that she even more than say, Alistair Macauley has a few ideé fixes and can't or won't deviate from them. One is her obsession with ballet as an expression of Louis XIV's divine right to rule. So much of ABT;s 75th anniversary documentary is fixated on this. I appreciate her passion for this historical origin of ballet but I hope her biography of Balanchine covers HIS life and HIS works, and isn't just a retread of Apollo's Angels.

I think Arlene Croce's criticisms of Balanchine are her BEST work however (along with her work on Fred and Ginger). I think critics are always at their best at writing about things they genuinely love, not things they genuinely hate. So as provocative as some of her criticisms of the Royal Ballet or Alvin Ailey or multicultural dance festivals were they don't have the sweep and scope and passion of her work on Balanchine. She's up there with Edwin Denby for me in terms of dance criticism. Denby being another critic who could be incredibly harsh on things he disliked.

I'd disagree with that. I think that her writings on Fred and Ginger are a major part of her legacy and for better or worse so was her extreme cultural and political conservatism that got her into the culture wars of the mid-90's. I think she's probably better known for her essays against multiculturalism and "victim art" than anything else.

Um well many KC award winners might not want to accept the award if it means going to the WH. Sad but true. I know I wouldn't go.

You only focus on the White Swan pas de deux? I think the beauty of Swan Lake is the juxtaposition of the poetic lakeside scenes with the earthiness of the "colored" scenes. To only focus on one aspect of the ballet is not really getting the ballet at all.

That planned biography by Arlene Croce that never came to fruition.

Idk what I'd classify Balanchine's training as but his epaulement looks like Imperial classical ballet at its most refined. Look at the difference between him and Eddie Villela.

It was going to be Misty's fate until she waged an all-out PR assault on ABT. She did it the right way -- hired a publicist, shopped for book deals, became a big name in the media. As for injured dancers who were dropped by ABT -- Natalia Osipova proved too injury prone, Jared Matthews' career stalled after an injury (not major), Veronika Part suffered a bunch of small injuries in her last years at ABT, Stella Abrera had an injury in her 20's and was relegated to dancing Third Shade in Bayadere until she was finally promoted at age 38, Ashley Tuttle (remember her?), Joseph Gorak, Maria Kochetkova and Polina Semionova, etc. I don't think Kevin McKenzie has a good track record of bringing dancers along after the usual bumps in the road at all.

Something else to chew on: as of now, there is not a single principal or soloist at ABT who is a mother/parent. In fact in the whole company I think only Melanie Hamrick is a mother.

Tucked neatly away in a small corner of the Misty Copeland story is that she suffered several injuries when she was a soloist and was never really the same dancer (and still isn't). ABT is maybe the worst company in the world to become injured -- unless you're Julie Kent or David Hallberg or Herman Cornejo, ABT's reaction to injuries is either "buh-bye" or "have fun dancing the peasant pas de deux until you retire."

If you see her other pictures on Instagram she looks stunningly like the young Farrell, down to the underbite and chin. Robert Gottlieb absolutely loved her. I regret not seeing her. http://observer.com/2017/07/jewels-lincoln-center-review/

Thanks for your thoughts! I also wonder why there wasn't a promotion onstage, surely it would have made the British audiences happy. I saw Tereshkina in Swan Lake and had the same impression. Not naturally the most poetic dancer but she always gives 200%. She never phoned it in.

The soloists who are consistently given principal roles are Harrison Balland Joseph Gordon. Ashly Isaacs too but she's spent so much time injured. Of the rest of the soloists I think Unity Phelan and Indiana Woodward are being fast-tracked and they deserve it. Both extremely talented.

So ... anyone see the second cast tonight of Taming of the Shrew?

Not me. I loved their Don Q and Spartacus. The Grigorovich Swan Lake is unforgivable though.

Well thankfully we did get to see them in Jewels. But I remember reading last time in an interview with Sergei Filin that the Bolshoi dancers were very unhappy with the repertoire of the last tour (their warhorses Swan Lake, DQ, and Spartacus) and it had been dictated to them by LCF. So maybe their terms and conditions for coming back was they brought what they wanted.

I agree with AM for the most part. I did think that the Katharina/Petruchio pas de deux was a bit S&M-lite -- sort of Fifty Shades of Grey without the shade, if that makes sense.

Well the livestream of the Bolshoi was also about 1 hr 45 min tops of dancing so I don't think anything was cut. My review is here: http://poisonivywalloftext.blogspot.com/2017/07/taming-of-shrew-waitress-hat-trick.html

I was at Taming of the Shrew tonight. During the first act the fire alarm went off and it was chaotic for about 10 minutes. That unfortunately was the most exciting part of the evening. http://poisonivywalloftext.blogspot.com/2017/07/taming-of-shrew-waitress-hat-trick.html