Alexandra

Another press release just in, this one from ABT: AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE AT THE GUGGENHEIM PRESENTS DANCERS & COMPETITIONS, SUNDAY AND MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9 AND 10 AT 8 P.M. Principal Dancers Amanda McKerrow and Angel Corella to Perform American Ballet Theatre, in conjunction with the Guggenheim’s Works & Process series, will present Dancers & Competitions on Sunday and Monday, February 9 and 10 at 8 P.M. in the Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Guggenheim Museum. Artistic Director of Education and Training John Meehan will moderate as ABT dancers discuss how they have prepared for international dance competitions and the results of their performances. A highlight of the evening will be performances of classical and contemporary solos and pas de deux. Amanda McKerrow, the first American to win the Gold Medal at the Moscow International Ballet Competition in 1981, will dance her prize-winning excerpt from La Sylphide. Angel Corella, recipient of the Grand Prix and the Gold Medal at the Concours International de Danse de Paris in 1994, will also perform, along with fellow Principal Dancers Marcelo Gomes and Gillian Murphy, Soloist Michele Wiles and corps de ballet members David Hallberg and Craig Salstein. The 18th anniversary season of the Works & Process series, produced by Mary Sharp Cronson for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, features extraordinary contemporary music, dance, opera, and theater. Each event presents excerpts of productions accompanied by discussion among the artistic collaborators, offering insight into the creative process. The Guggenheim Museum is located at Fifth Avenue at 89th Street in New York City. Tickets are $15 for general admission, or $10 for members of the Guggenheim Museum, ABT’s Dancer’s Circle or Golden Circle and for students and senior citizens. Tickets may be purchased at the Museum admissions desk, through the box office by calling 212-423-3587 or by email at boxoffice@guggenheim.org. The box office is open from 1 to 5 P.M., Monday through Friday. For more information about ABT, please visit www.abt.org.

Just got this press release from the Kennedy Center: 85 students from DC, Maryland and Virginia have been selected by dance legend Arthur Mitchell to participate in the Kennedy Center's Dance Theatre of Harlem Residency, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Since the program began in the fall of 1993 under Mr. Mitchell's direction, nearly 40,000 students, parents, dance professionals, public school teachers, school administrators and community members from Virginia, Maryland and D.C. have participated in the program in various capacities. Each season, the DTH Residency, an intensive eight-week long program, invites young people of all dance levels to learn from one of the most influential dance companies in the U.S. Students are selected from an audition with kids ages 6-18. The DTH Residency has served as a successful training ground for young dancers and taught them that discipline, hard work and respect lead to success in school, performance and-most importantly-in life. DTH Residency Phase I classes are from Jan. 18-Mar. 1 (all 7 classes are held on Saturdays at the Kennedy Center). Based on their participation in Phase I, some students will then be selected to participate in Phase II (Mar. 15-May 18). Phase II classes will be held on Saturdays and Sundays at the Kennedy Center. After a total of 18 classes, a culminating event will be held on May 24 during the DTH company's engagement at the Kennedy Center. Jenny Chiang of DTH and former DTH dancer & current artistic director of Dance Institute of Washington Fabian Barnes will be teaching the classes. Mr. Mitchell will attend classes periodically throughout the residency. The students selected to participate in this year's residency program are: District of Columbia * Devin Allen, age 9, Savoy Elementary School, Washington, DC. * Jorden Blair, age 6, Beauvoir- National Cathedral Elementary School, Wash, DC. * Rachel Bonham, age 7, Watkins Elementary School, Washington, DC. * Tiffanie Ellis, age 11, Houston Elementary School, Washington, DC. * Benjamin Gu, age 8, Watkins Elementary School, Washington, DC. * Marcus Jackson, age 16, Duke Ellington School for the Arts, Washington, DC. * Arthur Jones, age 7, John Eaton Elementary School, Washington, DC. * Paulina Lopez-Santos, age 9, Ross Elementary School, Washington, DC. * John Manzar, age 9, F.S. Key Elementary School, Washington, DC. * Leo Manzari, age 7, F.S. Key Elementary School, Washington, DC. * Mary Manzari, age 12, The Field School, Washington, DC. * Rohjanae Mathis, age 8, Community Academy PCS, Washington, DC. * Kiva McGee, age 7, Murch Elementary School, Washington, DC. * Jillian Napper, age 13, no school listed, Washington, DC. * Lynn Poe, age 11, St. Ann's Academy, Washington, DC. * Blair Reavis-Tyler, age 8, St. Anthony's School, Washington, DC. * Dakota Ross-Cabrera, age 8, Eaton Elementary School, Washington, DC. * Aisha Settle, age 11, Kramer Middle School, Washington, DC. * Anthony Silver, age 11, Murch Elementary School, Washington, DC. * Bridgette Slater, age 9, Sidwell Friends, Washington, DC. * Kristin Smith, age 13, Alice Deal Junior High School, Washington, DC. * Sasha Smith, age 15, Woodrow Wilson High School, Washington, DC. * Demetrius Tabron, age 17, Duke Ellington School, Washington, DC. * Kirsten Van Hoose, age 13, Kirov Academy of Ballet, Washington, DC. MARYLAND Baltimore City, MD * Cristal Cooper, age 18, University of Maryland, Baltimore City, MD. * Stephanie Crockett, age 8, Dogwood Elementary School, Baltimore, MD. * Mya Hardy, age 16, Baltimore School of Arts, Baltimore, MD. Charles County, MD * Alexia McGowan, age 8, William B. Wade Elementary School, Waldorf, MD. Howard County, MD * Kaltin Davin, age 12, Mayfield Woods High School, Columbia, MD. Montgomery County, MD * Kendall Brown, age 14, Holton Arms High School, Bethesda, MD. * Taylor Collier, age 10, Norwood School, Bethesda, MD. * Rochelle Fletcher, age 16, Barrie School, Silver Spring, MD. * Marie McNair, age 14, The Bullis School, Potomac, MD. * Malaika Newman, age 9, Piney Branch Elementary School, Silver Spring, MD. * Kristine Reynolds, age 11, Forestville Elementary School, Great Falls, VA. * Stephanie Somerville, age 11, Washington Episcopal School, Bethesda, MD. Prince George's County, MD * Jameelah Baker, age 10, Marlton Elementary School, Upper Marlboro, MD. * Briana Bell, age 7, Progressive Christian Academy, Temple Hills, MD. * Alexandra Butler, age 7, Henson Valley Montessori School, Temple Hills, MD. * Erin Carpenter, age 17, Suitland High School, Suitland, MD. * Brittany Clark, age 7, Lake Arbor Elementary School, Bowie MD. * Cannel Cole, age 7, Shadyside-French Immersion ES, District Heights, MD. * Amber Davis, age 7, home schooled, Temple Hills, MD. * Joshua Edwards, age 10, St. Ignatius School, Ft. Washington, MD. * Taylor Faulkner, age 9, Robert Goddard Montessori School, Greenbelt, MD. * Mariah Goldring, age 10, Woodmore Elementary School, Mitchellville, MD. * Ashante Green, age 10, Grace Brethren School, Clinton, MD. * Daniel Harder, age 15, Suitland High School, Suitland, MD. * Courtney Harris, age 9, Robert Goddard Montessori School, Greenbelt, MD. * Herman Hawkins, Jr., age 7, Kenilworth Elementary School, Bowie, MD. * Grace Johnson, age 14, Suitland High School, Suitland, MD. * Monica Johnson, age 8, St. Columbia Catholic School, Oxon Hill, MD. * Victoria Jones, age 10, Bladensburg Elementary School, Bladensburg, MD. * Kierra McKenzie, age 11, Stephen Decatur, Clinton, MD. * Brianna Pippens, age 11, Glenn Park Middle School, Brandywine, MD. * Erica Powe, age 10, Perrywood Elementary School, Upper Marlboro, MD. * Janae Roberts, age 10, Jericho Christian Academy, Landover, MD. * Angela Ruiz, age 10, Thomas Pullen School, Landover, MD. * Angelique Smith, age 14, Oxon Hill High School, Oxon Hill, MD. * Kamille Upshaw, age 13, Thomas Pullen School, Landover, MD. * Rachel Whitmon, age 12, Hyattsville Middle School, Hyattsville, MD. Saint Mary's County, MD * Lauren Morgan, age 9, Lexington Park Christian School, Lexington Park, MD. * Meghan Neace, age 9, Lexington Park Christian School, Lexington Park, MD. * Jessica Sowles-Reinholt, age 12, Esperanza Middle School, Lexington Park, MD. VIRGINIA Arlington County, VA * Katherine Penner, age 17, Washington-Lee High School, Arlington, VA. Prince William County, VA * Anaiya Baukman, age 14, Mt. Vernon High School, Alexandria, VA. * Devin Dowd, age 13, home schooled, Manassas, VA. * Ananda Gonzalez, age 8, Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Alexandria, VA. * India Gonzalez, age 8, Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Alexandria, VA. * Morganne Harrison, age 11, Ft. Hunt Elementary School, Alexandria, VA. * LaMartha Martin, age 13, Heritage Christian High School, Woodbridge, VA. * Cecelia Powers, age 12, Hayfield Middle School, Alexandria, VA. Fairfax County, VA * Kendall Cherry, age 9, Springfield Estates, Springfield, VA. * Megan Hislop, age 12, Irving Middle School, Springfield, VA. * Katherine Kitzmiller, age 10, Baileys ES for Arts & Sciences, Falls Church, VA. * Melissa Kuba, age 17, James Madison High School, Vienna, VA. * Idil Mohamed-Bray, age 15, Fairfax High School, Fairfax, VA. * Sam Surette, age 10, Mantua Elementary, Fairfax, VA. * Karli Walker, Chantilly High School, Chantilly, VA. Loudoun County, VA * Kimberly Chinn, age 17, Potomac Falls High School, Sterling, VA. * Noelle Chinn, age 14, Potomac Falls High School, Sterling, VA. Orange County, VA * Demetia Hopkins, age 15, Orange County High School, Orange, VA. * Nefertiti Thomas, age 16, Orange County High School, Orange, VA. Stafford County, VA * Meredith Moffitt, age 12, home schooled, Stafford, VA. Spotsylvania County, VA * Travis Layman, age 16, Massapanox High School, Spotsylvania, VA. The DTH Residency has produced a remarkable number of success stories including: * Six former students are currently professional dancers (two with the DTH company) * Eight former students are currently pursuing a major or minor in dance at colleges and universities across the country * One former student received a degree in dance * Two current students whose participation has led them to Broadway and other major venues Please see attached document for more information on each student. What is most extraordinary about the success of these DTH Residency students is that they are all using dance as a tool to be involved in their communities and thus carrying out the mission on which Mr. Mitchell built his company. On the occasion of this anniversary, I hope you will consider doing a story on the students from your area who have or are currently participating in the DTH Residency. I am happy to arrange interviews with the students if you're interested in speaking with them. Please feel free to contact me if you would like more information.

I'm not sure it really is the class system (and in America, studies show we all say we're middle-class. It would be hard to find someone who'd admit they're either "high" or "low" class). Then there's how you define class -- by annual salary? Or by "background," that amorphous concept that basically means how long have you been here and how much education does your family have. I'm sure we can all think of people who have an affinity for the high arts and didn't discover them until college, or who make scads of money but whose "artistic" world is limited to pop music and movies. I do think that appreciation of art is dependent on education. For some people, pop art -- low arts -- just aren't satisfying, and that goes to the "levels" Mme. Hermine mentioned above. Classification becomes difficult because in literature, say, there are literary works and pulp novels, so there are levels of art within each art form. I think that film can be a high art -- some do not -- and I think there's a difference between a "film" and a "movie." I also agree with kfw: Shakespeare looked out for the "groundlings" (by putting in bits of broad humor to appeal to the uneducated members of the audience) but some of those groundlings may also have liked the sword fights, or the pageantry, or the sound of the words, or just being there. To go back to what Farrell Fan wrote about middlebrow, I think much of ballet now is middlebrow. The simplified versions of Petipa works -- turning everything into a ballet blanc sandwich; a three-act ballet with women in white as the second act; the simplified versions of operas. Mbjerk's question -- "Or must the work await recognition in later times to be awarded the high art plaque?" -- may be more complicated than just the passage of time. This will sound like heresy to some, but "Giselle" and much of the Romantic ballet was also middlebrow. (Bournonville complained that "Giselle" was sentimental, and it took me a long time to understand that, but I think he meant first, by Aristotelian rules, it's a soap opera.) I'd argue that it was Petipa who turned it from a story of a teenager disappointed in love to a poem of redemption, and he did that through choreography. Back in early 19th century Paris, you had "high art" at the Opera, and both middlebrow and low art on the Boulevards. It was more honest than today in a way. The Boulevard ballets were simplified (dumbed down) versions of the opera ballets, with emphasis on special effects. But they also mocked the opera ballets, mocked what they found pretentious and affected (because, one could argue, they didn't understand it). During the Romantic era, the Boulevard ballets moved into the Opera. Another complication of the "today it's trash, tomorrow it's high art" idea is that we're not talking about the same audience making the judgments. When an art form turns pop, it drives out the high art audience. The new audience likes what it sees, or they wouldn't be there. So they acclaim it; it's now high art. It's like the joke about Florida demographics: Everybody is born Cuban and dies Jewish. This whole issue is so difficult because of the class, education and taste issues that everyone has raised. And we're in a relativist age. "I don't care about high art or low art, I only care about good art." Well, duh. That's not the question. I think the safest, most polite term currently is "serious art" versus "popular art." And serious art (formerly high art) has a different intention from pop art, or commercial art. (Sadly, in this country, there's very little real folk art; that's all been commercialized, too.) It's aimed at a very small audience, and always has been. That used to be a function of education and class; I don't think we can say that now.

I can't (although there may well be some) but I do think that in the past 10 to 15 years there's a trend towards hiring as artistic directors former dancers whose artistic direction is not their strong suit; they're more skilled at either business management or PR or board courting. At first, this was a stopgap (who else is there?) and now it's become de rigeur. I know of instances of people without the PR skills getting turned down, or not getting past the search committee, because "they're just an artist" or "but she can't fund raise." (I won't post names; I have to review them ) Editing to add: Fundraising is, of course, immensely important and a skill of its own. I don't mean to denigrate it. I just mean it's become part of the AD's job description, when there are many competent fundraising professoinals who can perform this function.

Thank you very much for posting that, Brendan. I have to say, though, that statement is so general it looks as if they could have written it before the meeting.

Oh, there can be bad art, and there can be good entertainment. I think that often gets confused -- that if someone says, "But that's not high art," they're saying it's "bad." But I don't think that's the case. Old Fashioned, Balanchine said a lot of things He was a man of the theater, and as such, had to entertain, and he knew that, but I think he knew he was making art. By that, I mean he was very educated in the arts, knew what they were; he wasn't an accidental artist. Many excellent points here that I don't have time to address now, especially the education/money issue and middlebrow -- back later

Grace, all of the problems you're having sound like browser problems -- do you click Refresh/reload or clear your cache? When you view a page it's stored in the browser, so if you try to view the page again, you'll get the old page, not the new one (browsers are lazy). If you click Refresh you'll get the new page. This is not a problem with the board. The same thing may be happening with the link??? You'll go to the page that's cached in your browser, but if I go to that page, it's new to my browser and so I'll get the new page. Hope that makes sense?

Grace -- I don't think you did anything wrong; some newspapers change a link from day to day. Today's link is an archive link tomorrow. (Or you MAY have copied the link incompletely. The formatting is right; the link works. It's just that the article isn't there.) Sorry, but I didn't have time to search for the article on the Guardian site to see if it's somewhere else.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!!! I can't believe you posted this, Calliope -- Leigh and I were talking about this yesterday and thought of making it a Topic of the Week! I think, onceuponatime, there were "the arts" And then, when other things that arts aficionados did not considered to be art, but were routinely called art ("Madonna is an artist") a distinction had to be made. Opera is a "high art," pop music is a popular art. "Low art" sounds so rude..... Today, when there are no distinctions, there is definitely a school of thought that says there's no such thing as high art; it's passe. Who am I to say what is high, what is low? Others complain that the distinction is a race or class issue. This school of thought says that to suggest that tap is not a high art is inherently racist. And others of us say that yes, these, and other distinctions, still matter. I think the difference is partly intention and partly form. The high arts have a long, long history of slow evolution, building on ancient principles of how to express thoughts and emotions indirectly, through artistic expression. It takes training to create and execute them, and training and education to appreciate them. The low arts, or popular arts, are more direct, more temporal, instantly accessible, and appeal to far greater numbers of people. Who then do not like being told that what they love is not "high art." My theory on distinctions is that words have meaning. There are caps and there are hats and there are bonnets. If these three different types of headgear did not exist, we would not need to have words to distinguish them. Why should art be different? So what do the rest of you think? Alexandra Ballet Alert!: A Speedbump on the Long, Downhill Slide

Thanks for posting this -- wish I could have been there! I hope others who attended will chime in. BTW, it's too late for this performance, but there's a photo of Leigh on the main site (and of Victoria and Mel, too) in th Who We Are section. http://www.balletalert.com/housekeeping/credits.htm

Okay, Leigh, we'll let you plea bargain. Finger the other people who were there and you don't have to review it.

Mel, I think you're on to something. Now all you need is a choreographer and a composer! The Benedict Arnold story is perfect'; an anti-hero for our time. Hiawatha might not pass the PC test, but Evangeline -- ethnic discrimination! unrequited love! government oppression! how topical can you get? (And Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton might be interesting, too....) We have had a new ballet that some have seen here, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Maybe the next generation will be interested in our past.

I first saw "Stars and Stripes" at the very end of the Vietnam War and it seemed very out of time! Balanchine's great lost (in the sense of never made) ballet is "Birds in America," the Johnny Appleseed saga -- I've always imagined it would have been a kind of American "Jewels" with birds instead of gems. Kirstein, I've read, always wanted to do a full-evening ballet to something by Henry James....

Oh, Hans, someone can complain about anything !!! Why are there no Americana ballets made today? Was it just a fad -- that's one theory, that when American imported ballet it had to find an American voice, and at first did that literally, with costumes and stories, and then, when we began to dance ballet with an American accent, we had American-inflected abstract ballet. But we haven't looked to American literature often -- the late Philip Jerry did a few years ago, doing a ballet "Our Town." It didn't completely work, but I admired him so much for trying it.

Thank you for those updates, Francoise (sorry for the belated thanks!) and cygneblanc. I'm always so jealous when I read about dance on TV in Europe -- this wouldn't happen on American television. They notice dance when Balanchine or Graham dies. that's it now. It sounds as though it will be an exciting program. A general note to those with an interest in POB. Marc Haegeman has done a series of interviews with French dancers -- Maurin, Platel, Guerin, Legris, Letestu -- for DanceView, and I've wanted to put them up on the DanceView site but haven't had the time. I HOPE I'll be able to do that this week, and when I do, I'll let you all know. I think they're excellent, if I can say that about my own magazine Very detailed, capture the personality of the artist, and I think you'll enjoy reading them.

I think Mel makes a good point. Why should Russian -- or English or Italian -- folk dance material be ok for ballet but American folk material not? Not meaning to offend our Russian friends but 100 years ago, those barrel turns were considered just as "uncouth" as square dance moves. The culture differences are fascinating. You'll often read Americans bemoaning the French love of John Wayne and Jerry Lewis because they're "uncouth." Do French critics who write admiringly of these bits of Americana do it because they see something we can't see, or are they just mocking us? Is it because America lacks the same richness of folk material as other cultures -- not only Europe, of course, but Asia and Africa -- that we turn to our pop culture so often? Why does America have such a bifurcated view of high culture: on the one hand, denying that it exists; on the other hand, feeling inferior that we don't measure up? Lots of interesting questions here.

Grace, do you think that's generational? There are similar stories about Balanchine. Or that he would offer a comment that probably made perfect sense to him but was inscrutable to the dancer. I think 40, 50 years ago this was the way companies were run. You did what you were told. You were given roles, and you lost roles, and it was up to you to figure out why. So when I hear these stories about Taylor, and Balanchine, and Tudor, I wonder.... how mean were they, really? If younger dancers are used to having someone sit down and "spoon feed" them then someone who doesn't do that will be criticized. Perhaps in rehearsal Taylor was giving cues and the dancer wasn't picking up on them. Perhaps Taylor cast the dancer because he thought the role would challenge him, or correct a fault, and it didn't. Saying, "Well, Joe, I guess no matter how hard you try, you'll never be musical," won't go down any better than "I don't think you're right for the role." Choreographers and ballet masters often show rather than say. So it's also possible that he couldn't TELL the dancer what was wrong, but kept showing him -- which would lead to the charge "he was making me dance just like him." sniff Nan or Leigh may be able to give specific examples of Taylor.

Here's a link to some photos of Francie Huber in Taylor's "Piazzolla Caldera" (she's in the second and third of the three photos). Check the site while you're there -- there are some very good photos of some very good dances!

Thank you for these reviews! If Carbro can't face it, could someone else say a few words about Bigonzetti's "Vespro"? He's making the circuit as one of the Next Generation choreographers, and I'm curious what this piece looked like.

This will be a simple poll, but I'm curious. Do people only see ballet? Or do you also see modern dance, dance theater, performance art, tap, and whatever the correct term is these days for ethnic dance as well? If we get enough people saying yes, I'll do another poll that says "what kinds"? but for now, just the simple version. The choices are "Often," "Sometimes," "Seldom," "Never" -- defined as you want to define them

Welcome, Rachel! And thank you for posting that. (And thanks, too, to Ballaweenie5 for reviving this thread!) I am absolutely thrilled to have newer posters chime in, on any side of this issue. I agree wholeheartedly. I think ballet got off-track when it turned to modern dance for repertory instead of developing choreogaphers from within the discipline for all the reasons Rachel stated. I also think -- as several people, including me, have mentioned here before -- that the result has been unfortunate for modern dance as well. Rather than starting their own companies and experimenting with a personal language over a long period of time, modern dance choreographers take a few moves and try to graft them onto ballet dancers. The fact thast modern dancers take ballet classes to "improve" their technique hasn't helped. I'm for a vibrant modern dance AND ballet scene. But Rachel is right -- if ballet doesn't start creating new ballets, it will become a dead language.

There was, but it unfortunately got deleted -- we had terrible space crunches in our early years and nearly all the posts from our first three years are gone. Sniff. (another new emoticon). Which is as good excuse as any to discuss the documentary, and/or Taylor's dancers, again now I haven't seen the film recently enough to comment, but I hope others will. We used to get the Taylor company here every year, for three programs, but in the past decade we've missed a lot, both dances and dancers, so I hope that New Yorkers who have the luxury of seeing a full season every year will chime in.

I meant that the gestures look very thin, not as rich as someone brought up in a mime tradition would look (I just added a photo to the Sylphide thread of Gerda Karstens as Madge.) They don't look very alive too me, more like a lecture demonstration. I don't mean that this makes the book not valuable, just that it gives a rather dry account of mime. But it's still wonderful to have a codification of the gestures.

I was responding to Leigh's -- I understood yours, grace, to be as you wrote above. (And Leigh may have as well and was just adding. I added my comment because when people come halfway in on a thread, as often happens, it's easy to have misreadings.)

You're welcome, grace -- glad you liked them. That lost gesture is a good example of what can happen with the "telephoning" that Mel was talking about on another thread (something passed from dancer to dancer, with a bit of information getting lost or distorted in each transmission.) Brenaa was, by all accounts, a superb Bournonville stager, and he had an excellent memory -- and that gesture was being taught in the mime class as late as 1950; Kronstam first danced the role in 1956, when Brenaa was a relatively new stager. (Kronstam's James, by all accounts during this period was an adventurer, not a poet, and critics of that time went to great lengths to say how "virile" he was on stage, so I don't think Brenaa was reacting to the way the gesture was performed -- just its existence.) I can't resist putting up this photo, Gerda Karstens, who taught that mime class to Danish aspirants between 1949 and 1955 and influenced and inspired a generation of Danish dancers. She was the Madge of Madges -- and from photos, she had an Act I Madge (a frail, harmless-looking old woman) and an Act II Madge, which I offer you below: (children, be good or Madge will get you!)