Alexandra

Yes, I see your point, but if I were teaching, I'd NOT link them because the times, the causes, so many other things were different. Even within slavery, the difference between slavery in ancient Egypt, Rome, and the Colonial Americas are different. I think that's part of what he's getting at in the article, too, that education today too often encourages students to look at the things they can relate to rather than having them probe and find out what's going on beneath the surface. Why the article struck me was because I saw the things he talks about with my own students, but I also think it has to do with audiences' reactions to performances. We have to be able to relate to everything -- "audiences want to see themselves on the stage," etc. I read the article that way -- his "Stuck in the Present" is also that we're "stuck within ourselves."

I'm afraid I don't see a link between slavery and the Holocaust except they're both bad. They're very different. But I do agree that it might be better to try to make students understand how the people were affected -- whether slaves or Holocaust victims, or kings, knights, soldiers, repressed peasants, whatever -- than trying to tell them that slavery was like having to clean up your room every day or being put in a concentration camp was like being bullied in the schoolyard. Children have such magnificent imaginations, they don't need much encouragement, and it would seem better to have them use those imaginations to look OUTWARD instead of looking INWARD. Any teachers here? What are you seeing in schools as far as teaching methods, reading habits, expectations of students, etc? (Others' comments welcome too, of course.)

Jennifer Dunning writes about dancing in the movies in the NYTimes: Invitation to the Dance (Hollywood Version)

Good points -- and wise ones -- ConstanzaElizabeth. Thank you!

I hope we have more replies on this -- it's two good questions. One -- if you've ever seen a masterpiece, how did you react? How did you "know" it was a masterpiece (new work, or first confrontation of an old one) Two -- I'd be curious, as a critic, what readers want from criticism in this regard. Do you want to read about the critic's feelings and reaction to a work, or about the work? (In a way, of course, all criticism IS a very personal reaction to a work; it's just a matter of focus and emphasis.)

I'm glad you've discovered Four Ts; it's one of my favorites. Whenever I see it I'm struck by how new it looks -- I can't imagine what it looked like in 1946 (with or without the original sofa-like costumes, which I would actually like to see in action some day). My ideal Evergreen Ballet Evening would be Ashton's Scenes de ballet, Balanchine's FourTs, and Nijinska's Les Noces.

I agree that blogs encourage "It's all about me." I looked at the Movable Type site once; they have a nav bar with recently updated blogs. One of my favorites was called "Like Krypton on Stupid." No self-esteem problems there! When reading criticism, I don't usually find reviews that are All About the Critic very interesting or very useful; I'd rather know what the work looked like, and what the writer thought about it. Otherwise, it casts art in the role of a Rorschach (sp?) test, and I think it's about more than that. How does one react to a masterpiece -- that is an interesting question, and thank you for raising it, kfw. I saw "V" and liked it, but didn't think it a masterpiece. But I thought Morris's "Allegro" WAS a masterpiece. It's one of the few times I can remember when I parked the analytical part of my brain. There were bits of it I didn't like (the cutesy ones) and I remember saying, "Stop it. Just enjoy it." And I did. I could tell you afterwards WHY I thought it was a masterpiece, and that often is simply finding both words and logic that will communicate that thought to other people ("the structure was solid," "the musicality was acute," "one idea flowed from another as though each were inevitable" etc.), rather than being able to really say what the work was, or why it was great, or at least why one thinks it's great. But as for how I felt about it, or how it changed my life, or listing the thought processes in a review -- :yawn:

Thank you for reading it!!!!! Hope you liked the photos I have seen that video. Kronstam was head of the school during that time and is in it, teaching, and at auditions. It is fascinating to see them grow up -- and drop out, one by one, and see how few are left. By good fortune, they picked a good group of students. Schandorff was an aspirant in about 1989, I think, so it would have been from the early 1980s.

She was injured during a "Manon," Giannina. There were posts about it here, but I can't remember when Two or three months ago? As I remember it, she was walking off stage and slipped!!

I'm also a big Silja Schandorff fan. I would imagine Rose Gad being interesting in this role, too; I don't know if she's cast in it, though.

Thanks for that -- that's a good, solid example. I'd like to wait about a day or two before contacting them, so if anyone else has any example, please post it. Also, could you post your browser and operating system? (Netscape 6.1, Mac, etc.)

That's a great mix! Don't expect rotten eggs

Have either of you noticed any pattern? Is there one forum it skips, for example? Or does it seem to be completely random? One thing that occurred to me -- is it skipping topics that were posted while you were on the board? It doesn't do email notifications of replies to topics when you're on the board, and I wondered if that was what was going on. (Not a pleasant feature, but one I'm sure we can't change.)

But there is a consistent contemporary worldview of "It's all about me" and that affects the arts. If I don't dance or don't have a child who dances, I'm not going to read about/go see dance. I was brought up to be interested in everything. Anecdote: I have a clear memory when I was very young of being taken to an open house at the opera singer, Rosa Ponselle. (This was the 1950s, when American families Did Cultural Things Together on Sundays.) I asked if we knew her; I didn't know why we would go to some strange woman's house. They explained to me that no, we don't know her personally, but she's an important person who lives in Baltimore, and therefore part of our world, and we should be interested in her even if we hate opera, which they did. I thought the bullies on the playground analogy to the Holocaust in the article cited was a chilling one -- it limits the imagination so. If you are trained to view the world through your own eyes, it's a very, very narrow world.

I posted this on Ballet Moms and Dads, but thought I should put it here for information and eventual discussion as well. I just saw a preview of this. It's about very young gymnasts, not ballet. It deals with pressure on the young athlete, time and money pressures on the familly, as well as issues involving children and competition. Whatever It Takes: In Pursuit of the Perfect 10 The intense pressure faced by young gymnasts CNN, this Sunday (August 10) at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

He would have grumbled a lot -- you should read him on Wagner; he hated him, but he produced his operas and produced them well -- but he'd have done a nice "Baiser". Some of the most interesting sounding Bournonville ballets were tossed. One was "The Mandarin's Daughters," with the dancers dressed as Chinese chess pieces, dancing on a chess board. It wasn't a narrative, demicaractere ballet. I could imagine that to early Stravinsky. Now, "Symphony in 3 Movements"? I somehow can't quite imagine it

We could do a fun mismatch -- Balanchine/Rachmaninoff, Ashton/Stravinsky (I know Scenes de ballet is a glory, but would they have been happy in a long-term monogamous relationship?) MacMillan/Glinka.....

I haven't -- that I've noticed, anyway. But if others have, please post, and I'll ask Jay to look at it.

I think it stands for Personality Quotient -- but what it means is, how many people know you, what's your name recognition among the masses.

I think the article is referring, though, to the newest of the new art. The last graph quoted above is saying that the world has been turned upside down. 100 years ago it was the graybeards who acted in a flock; now it's the young.

Thanks Marc -- and thanks for the link to www.kirov.com. I didn't know that site was back up; it had been inactive for quite some time, I believe.

In Barbara Newman's "Striking a Balance," Tanaquil gives no hint that her career was shortened by a devastating illness. She talks about "when I stopped dancing" as though it had been her choice.

There's definitely an age bias. They go for the oldest first and work down. I don't think many, if any, have gotten it before 50. But everyone mentioned so far is over 50. They are slow on dance. My favorite response, ever, of an Honoree was Paul Taylor's. Asked if he was surprised at the award he said, in a published interview something like, "Actually, I thought I'd be given it before this."

Yes. "Guest teacher" can mean coming in for a few weeks to take the classes when preparing for a Balanchine ballet, say -- or for the few weeks between seasons. Or it can mean teacher in residence for a year to see how it works out onlytimewilltell (OTWT)

Here's a link to the Kennedy Center Honors page on the Ken Cen web site. http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/spe...levents/honors/ Note there's a tab at the top "Past Honorees" so you can check to see if your candidate has already been Honored.