Alexandra

I have a book with University Press of Florida and I've spoken with their editors about other titles, so I think I can provide some insight here. UPF is one of the few presses now that seems interested in dance books, and they actively look for books to reprint (as well as new titles, of course). I think some books are suggested to them by their authors or readers, others the editors may well know about on their own. Why not write, or email them, pretty much what you posted? You can find addresses at their web site (which google can find for you; sorry, I don't have it bookmarked).

Grand Priix! Congratulations, Daniil!!! (Congratulations to all the other winners, as well, but Daniil posts here )

No, I'm not coming to this one. I'll look forward to reading you all, though!

For those interested, the Helsinki International Ballet Competition is taking place as I write. There's a web site here: http://www.balcomphel.fi/english/english.html There's a white news box in the blue left-hand nav bar. They announced the names of those who made it out of the first round. (I'm following it this year because 5 current and 2 graduates of UBA are taking part. Also, one of our posters -- Daniil -- is a competitor. All of them made it into the next round. Congrats!)

All of the above! I think there's definitely a decline in criticism (at least in dance), both qualitatively and quantitatively. But did anyone ever pay attention to critics? People who are very interested in an art form would read criticism because we're addicts and will read anythinga bout what we're interested in and if the writing is good and the ideas interesting, then people will read. When it's not, they won't. Decline in space: In DC that dates from the late-1980s and was absolutely related to advertising. The Post, I was told, lost ad revenue and the Style section lost 4 pages. Something had to be cut. Why dance? Because in this city, politics is much more interesting to the editors than art. (And I really think it has as much to do with the editors as with the readers. If art does not touch someone's life, it's hard to convince him that it's important, and easy for him (or her, but only in theory ) to think that no one is interested in it. Emphasis on popular culture. The big paradigm shift is that newspapers cover what they think, or their statistics/ratings show, that readers want to read about. What used to happen is that you had people with a broad general knowledge who were interested in a variety of things who would go out there and see as much as was humanly possible and write about what s/he thought was interesting and worth writing about. Do you go to a gourmet food store and bring back peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? No. You bring back tete de veau and a nice tripe stew, and delght in how the family gobbles it up -- then you tell them what it is. That's gone. Will it come back? Perhaps when there's something really worth writing about, worth beating the drums about. Not "not as bad as much of his work." Not, "a bit better." Not, "I don't think that one's too bad," but the kind of dance that one can do backflips about. A related question is will people ever distinguish, again, between what is popular, in the sense of appealing to millions of people, and what is popular among the small subset of people who enjoy the fine arts. This number hasn't changed, despite the propaganda to the contrary. I remember reading in the early 1970s that only 2 percent of the records sold were of classical music. It's not that interest in classical music has suddenly tanked, felled by rock and rap. It's that only a few people ever cared. I do think that it's worth fighting for the notion that if you do like classical music, or literature, or classical ballet, or serious modern dance, you stand up and say, "Yes, I like it and what's wrong with that?" If 98 percent of the world wants to think that Prince has supplanted Mozart (an old analogy, I know) let them. If they want to think that McDonalds architecture is the equal to Chartres Cathedral, let them. When they start to burn Chartres, or turn it into a McDonalds, or wipe out every recording of Mozart, then I think it's worth fighting for. Does criticism have anything to do with this? I'm not sure it ever did. You have writers who write about what interests them. Whether it's in a newspaper, a magazine, a blog, or an internet message board, if it's worth considering, people will consider it. I've read posts here that I think are far more interesting, well-written and intelligent than I read in newspapers. Tobi Tobias's writing in her blog is no less valuable than it was when she was writing in New York magazine. There's a lot of junk in blogs and internet web sites, too, and the one big difference is that there are few editors -- in print or cyberspace -- who can, or will, sort the wheat from the chaff, and the reader will choose what they like without having any nutritional labels to read. That's my off the top of my head response -- thanks for posting the question, kfw.

Thanks for the thought, fandeballet, but "inside info from a reliable person who is an opera and ballet fan" is exactly what is NOT allowed under the site's gossip policy. we post only published reports or press releases. Put four "knowledgeable fans" in a room in a gossip situation and you will have approximatly 16 conflicting stories The Gossip Policy (posted on Rules and Policies forum): Gossip: What is and is not allowed on this board. We know it's enticing to know what goes on backstage, but when it's posted, it can cause problems. We've addressed this in several threads as issues have arisen, but it seemed time to have a policy. The Golden Rule is that we use the same rules for posting news that a newspaper or magazine, with trained journalists, use. 1. Asking questions or posting information about about who's seeing whom, or who broke up with whom, or whom the artistic director does or doesn't like, or anything of a personal nature are OFF LIMITS. Period. 2. Posts about watching classes or rehearsals that are not open to the GENERAL PUBLIC are private as far as the dancers and the company are concerned and that privacy will be respected. Posts describing or commenting upon such events will be deleted. 3. Regarding injuries, if someone falls on stage, or misses a week of performances, people will be curious and concerned and query posts are permissible. The moderators will try to check with the company about the injury and post if there's an official response. But we won't allow speculation on the nature and extent of the injury. We will regard the company's answer as the official word on such matters; disputes are inappropriate. We don't want to become a ballet version of The Drudge Report. 4. If you post "Company X is going to visit City B" or "John Jones will take over the lead in X's new ballet because Tim Smith is injured" or anything of that sort, please quote the source -- a weblink or article in paper, or that it's info on a poster, flyers, etc. "I heard" is not a source. (Does the person intend for his/her words to be posted on the internet? Not likely. If s/he does, s/he is welcome to come to the site, register, and post them.) Company or dancer news you've overheard from someone in the audience or as you walk by people talking backstage is gossip. What's an allowable source? If it's in print -- in a newspaper or magazine article, on a web site, in a brochure, a newspaper ad, or on a poster outside the theater, that's news. If not, it's gossip. We will delete gossip posts -- many of which are made in all innocence and with the sweetest of intentions -- leaving a message A reminder: if you take the information from a web site, please credit that web site, whether it's a personal web site or a company one -- and especially if it's another message board! We'd also ask that people who first find information on this web site credit it if posting it elsewhere. ------------------------ Addenda, May 25, 2003: We hate to do this, but the posting of gossip is becoming a problem that needs to be solved. Someone posts a rumor, and, perhaps before the moderators get a chance to see it and delete it, others have commented -- so when we do edit or delete, there are bad feelings all around. Consequently, I'm initiating a "three strikes and you're out" rule. Once is an understandable mistake; please read the rules. Twice warrants a reminder and a clarification. Third time, posting privileges will be suspended unless and until we are assured that the poster understands the policy and will adhere to it.

There has been a settlement. This is the press release (which I believe Dale has posted separately.) ------------------- AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE REACHES AGREEMENT WITH MUSICIANS American Ballet Theatre (ABT) announced today that it reached a three-year agreement with Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. ABT has been engaged in negotiations with Local 802 since mid-March. Rachel S. Moore, Executive Director of ABT, stated: “We’re delighted to report that we reached a three year agreement last evening with the musicians’ orchestra for ABT (Local 802). ABT is committed to the use of live music and we are pleased that the musicians will be on board for the opening of our Metropolitan Opera House season.” -30- Monday, May 23, 2005

Thanks for writing about the new Kermesse, Effy -- disappointing indeed. I love your point about painting -- it's so basic to Bournonville, but they miss it. Exactly!

My take is similar to Herman's. I do remember reading once (where I can't remember, but probably in Ivor Guest) that in 19th century Paris, some girls were drawn to the ballet because there they could be free. You were "owned" by your father until you were given away, as it were, to your husband, who then owned you. BUT if you got enrolled on the lists at the Opera, then the state, in theory, owned you, which meant you were free to live your own life more or less as you wanted it. So ballet attracted rebels as well as second and third generation dancers. There's another medieval tradition that kept dancing in the family and I don't know when it stopped; I think it continued through at leasdt part of the 19th century. This was that an actor (or dancer or singer) could not receive the sacraments -- could not be buried in consecrated ground, could not be married in the church. This meant that no one outside the theater would consider marrying an actor/dancer/singer and they tended to marry each other. There were some theatrical families that went back 400 years (like the Prices, who began in England and traveled all over Europe before landing in Denmark). Marian Hannah Winter's wonderful (and out of print) "The Pre-Romantic Ballet" writes of these families. A large part of the research of her book was spent in the graveyards of Europe (since these people died outside of church records) tracing tombstones, names, dates.

MacMillan resigned as director of the Royal Ballet but continued as resident choreographer, and I'm sure there are other precedents.

Thank you so much for this, dirac! Otherwise, I never would have seen it. I was one who grew up listening to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau -- "War Requiem" and "Songs of a Wayfarer" are what I remember best.

It's a hard call -- keep a veteran critic (who IS caustic, and probably whether one likes him or not has depends on whether he's skewed a favorite or two) or let in a fresh breeze. Or, translated into business terms, fire an elder and let in a younger person. Which is age discrimination and against the law. I winced at many a Simon column when I read New York (which I haven't for many years; I'd just read the dance coverage, when there was dance coverage). But I also admired him for going, week after week, to mediocre work and saying it was mediocre. I have a soft spot for critics who can't be hyped. Then on the next week -- the 21st, say, after a run of 20 pans -- he'd see something he thought was genuinely good and he'd say so. I admired that rigor. It's hard to do that. I'm glad he's still writing.

Farrell? We'd call her a neoclassical, but I could make a case that she's a 20th century danseuse noble. I think Balanchine did use emploi, and in a much more sophisticated way than the "tall boy/short boy" distinction. When we had our first discussion of emploi on this forum, a dancer who had danced leading roles in Jewels was interested in the discussion and, after reading about the genres went through all three ballets in Jewels and put each role in its proper emploi. In some ballets (the more modern or experimental ones), it wasn't appropriate, but where it was, he used it. (In an interview, Una Kai, a Balanchine stager from the '60s, spoke of Phlegmatic being a "demicaractere" role, so even in some "modernist" works he used it.) I think there's often a misunderstanding about Balanchine -- he did experiment, surely, and he loved working with American dancers because they would follow him, without saying, "I'm a soubrette; I don't do that step." BUT he also used evertything he knew about ballet, and emploi was one of the basics. There are many shades of demicaractere -- and I don't pretend to know all of them -- just as there are different subtypes of sopranos. In ballet, soubrettes can be quite sophisticated. I think the term originated to denote a saucy chambemaid, but in ballet, the soubrette can wear a little black dress. Another thing worth mentioning is that stars almost always venture way outside their employ, and often successfully, and that even within a category, there's a range that expands as a dancer gains experience.

I'd vote for BOTH "good choreography can make dancers look good" and "good dancers can make a ballet look good". And a good partner, in ballroom dancer, can make a klutz look good. Goodness rubs off, provides a shield. The old theater cliche, "She's so good I'd be happy to listen to her recite the phone book" is true, because a transcendant star can make the most mundane text (whether words or steps) interesting. Or because you just plain adore the speaker/dancer and would be happy to watch them take out the garbage. And a clever choreographer can make a weak dancer look fantastic -- by playing up their strengths and hiding their weaknesses and the simplest thing of all: putting the right person in the right place/steps at the right time. I wouldn't want to live in a world of great choreography and only bored, bad dancers, and I wouldn't want to live in a world of only terrific dancers dancing only crapola. Hmm. Which are we in now? Or to which side of the continuum are we tilting? Perhaps a poll......

I'm almost positive it is, Ari. I saw it when the Stuttgart brought it back in 1977. I would suspect something will be added to the SFB program too -- and perhaps a second program? That's not the kind of program that will entice ballet fans to come back for a second viewing, I would think. I'm curious to see Bejart's "Sacre," though. Many people, including, one hears, Mr. B himself, thought it was an interesting version. And I'm ecstatic to be able to see "Enigma" live (I know it only from a filmed version of the original-cast-save-one).

The Kennedy Center Web Site has posted the repertory for the Royal Ballet and the Suzanne Farrell Ballet (the mixed repertory programs for ABT and NYCB are not yet announced.) Suzanne Farrell Ballet - (Nov. 22-27) Balanchine's "Monumentum Pro Gesualdo / Movements for Piano and Orchestra" Bejart's "Rite of Spring" pas de deux from Bejart's "Romeo and Juliet" Royal Ballet - June 20-25 In addition to "Sleeping Beauty": Ashton's "La Valse" and "Enigma Variations" MacMillan's "Requiem" (the Faure one)

Estelle, because I think the argument could be made that "Madame Bovary," like the novels of Dickens and many others, WERE popular culture; extremely well-written popular novels, intended to be read by a great number of people and enjoyed by people with varying degrees of education and levels of sophistication, and I wanted to forestall someone saying, "But Madame Bovary IS pop culture"

Actually, "Madame Bovary" isn't really a good example. Substitute "The Faerie Queen."

Every time I've read this argument (and it's been made hundreds of times by now) it's struck me that the writer is, at heart, miffed that he or she isn't considered high brow and sees as the solution the elevation of his or her taste to be considered high brow. I find it tiresome. Two writers who deal with popular culture as well as high culture that I can think of off the top of my head -- I'm sure there are more -- are Gia Kourlas, who writes regularly in Time Out New York, and occasionally in the New York Times, and Alex Ross, the music critic for the New Yorker (who has a blog The Rest Is Noise . They are so comfortable with themselves that they don't have to argue. They just write. Both appreciate popular culture and high culture. Neither confuses the two, nor wishes to eradicate one at the expense of the other. Why waste time running around screaming that "The Simpson" are too just as good as "Madame Bovary" so there?

I liked LaCour's Sanguinic in Washington, too, and teachers and former dancers I'm in touch with in Copenhagen said, at the time that he left, that he was a loss, and one of the boys they had felt was the most promising.

Long hair, Romantic; bun hair, classical (in Balanchine). That's what I've always been told. "Suite No. 3" goes from Romantic to classical.

I think she wrote a lot about him -- and I know about the Joffrey generally -- when the company was based in New York. I don't have the new collection, just the original ones ("After Images" and "Going to the Dance" would have most of them, I think.

Read Arlene Croce on Mr. Arpino for a different take I think the ballet community is so broad now that there isn't a one size fits all answer. I think few New York critics of a certain generation would put him on their top ten list. My own view is that he's very talented at moving people around, which is certainly one quality of a good choreographer. But, perhaps because he didn't grow up watching good choreography at close hand to see how a Petipa, a Fokine, a Balanchine, a Nijinska made dances, he doesn't move people in a consistently well-structured way and there are also lapses in vocabulary -- knowing what steps can and should go together, how to mix in foreign phrases so that they fit rather than stand out like very sore thumbs. That's as close as I can come to stating my objections. There's also the matter of taste, and Mr. Arpino's taste is rarely mine. When a choreographer sends one row of dancers coming across the stage at top speed on a diagonal from back to front, stage left to right, and another one at equal speed coming the other way, and the audience is praying they don't run into each other -- well, that's bumper cars to me, not a ballet.

National Ballet of Cuba, at least, performs the 19th century classics with an integrated corps. It's not as integrated as it was when I first saw the company in the late 1970s, but it's a lot more integrated than any American company I know. (It's not the ballets that are the problem.)

A historical note. One of America's very first male dancers, trained well enough to partner Fanny Elssler in the 1840s and later a noted teacher, was George Washington Smith, whose ethnicity is recorded in history books as "mulatto." Audiences of the day accepted him as Albrecht and James. (Apologies if Smith has already been mentioned on this thread.)