Alexandra

balletaime, my use of the word "shill" was intended to be ironic -- I've recommended it so often I'm always afraid someone WILL think I have an interest in it! (Irony is hard to get across on the internet, of course! )Yes, I know "Ballet Chronicles," an interesting collection. Bart, to be fair, I think it's always harder to point out specifics of WHY one likes something or thinks it's good. It's as difficult as trying to prove a negative. (Not meaning to discourage anyone from trying!)

I remember raggedy performances from the '70s, but not in every ballet. He's on record on the PBS biography, in the voice over talking about "Divertimento," that in that ballet he wanted clean lines (and the dancing, while not the best I've ever seen in Divert, is very clean, very classical). He didn't want a regimented corps in the sense of a neat corps, like the Royal Ballet in the 1960s, where every arm and leg was at the same angle, I agree, and in the fast finales, especially, you could see an exuberant messiness. In other works, especially, again, the Stravinsky ballets, there was a geometric rigor. (I also remember some dismal performances of "Serenade" in the mid-'70s, but then a year or two year the ballet was renewed; there was always a sense of one person overseeing things.) Like Carbro, I remember that the dancing "always looked alive, spontaneous to the moment and important." The performances I've seen in New York the past few years have been more mellow than exciting. Spontaneity is very hard to maintain for 25 years. I'm with those who see as one of the differences that once the company was dancing to please someone -- i.e., Mr. B -- and now that's gone.

Bart, I think what you, Ms. Pilarre and Ms. Howard above have said pretty much do it I think it's important you the performance let you see the ballet clearly, see the choreography. Sometimes critics will write about the "architecture" -- especially of one of the leotard ballets. Because the lines have to be so vivid and so accurate, like a building. And, like a building, if they're not, the structure (be it building or ballet) will sag, collapse, crumble. I will give one example. The "Theme and Variations" that I saw here a few weeks ago was just plain soggy. I got no sense of courtliness or grandeur. The women in the corps looked raw and green. And in the two performances I saw, they did not have the technical strength to dance it. They didn't have the speed, they didn't have the strength to have the speed, they didn't dance the steps cleanly. The decline in technique is something I've been told by former dancers with the company. I think when you have the opportunity to see a lot of ballets throughout a season, or across seasons, it's easier to make accurate generalizations. It's hard to know causes. Schooling? Company classes? Lax attitude by ballet masters? Not enough rehearsal time? Miscasting? Differences among stagers and coaches? All of the above? The Robbins ballets we saw looked very well-rehearsed and very clean. I could quibble with some of the casting, but I could see the ballets, and I don't ask for much more these days.

1990 was a long time ago. There were several ballets danced in Washington this season and last that were very noticeably below the level at which they were danced during Balanchine's day. It's not just a comparison to the past, it's a comparison to a standard. There are performances at different companies that DO meet the standard. The dancers are different, and the ballets may be danced very differently. For example, no one is like Merrill Ashley in "Ballo." No one has that texbook crispness. But there have been many satisfying interpretations of that ballet, and performances by the cast as a whole that meet the standard of technique, musicality and all the unquantifiable things that go into making a ballet. This is a discussion that's difficult to have amongst people with different experiences with the company. If you saw NYCB regularly before 1980, you may well see a difference now. If you came to the company after 1980, and love it, you may say, "Oh, it's just fine" and then obviously anyone who disagrees must be "wallowing in nostalgia," "have an agenda," or "memory problems" (they must be OLD, mustn't they?) But one thing that I've seen happen over and over and over -- on this forum, and in real life as well -- the first time you see a ballet that you know well danced poorly, then chances are you understand what other people are saying and will find yourself saying the same thing. I think Rachel Howard said it quite well -- and I'm not "outing" her as a young critic, because she has a picture on her web site It is possible to come to Balanchine 25 years after his repertory was alive and under his hand and see the differences. It's also easy to get used to what one sees regularly as "the ballet" and not be aware of changes in levels of performance, until one sees something that either jogs a memory or makes something one read make sense. I shill for this out of print book regularly. If you're interested in Balanchine, keep an eye on www.alibris.com or other used book sites for Nancy Reynold's "Repertory in Review." It covers the entire NYCB (and predecessor company) repertory until 1976, lists the original cast, has extensive quotes from NY and other reviews, interviews with dancers, etc., all to the purpose of getting to what was the work, what was the intention, what did it look like when it was new, and how did it change.

This is part of the question. Why should we expect men to be uninterested in something that's considered feminine. We do not expect women to be uninterested in things that are masculilne. (Balanchine's definition isn't the only one, but that's another question.)

The issue of contemporary dance companies and training is a peripheral one to the topic but I just want to clarify: my statement was in relation to Bart's question about ballet companies in France being turned into contemporary dance companies, not fusion/hybrid/ballet moderne generally. (Although I think whether one needs a full academy schooling in ballet to dance Kylian et al could be discussed. There are dancers in Netherlands Dance Theater who are not graduates of ballet schools ) Also, there's a difference between a few years of ballet training or training at a conservatory that teaches both modern and ballet and ten years of academy training. That's what I was addressing -- having an academy attached to a company is a heavy expense. Back to the main topic, I was struck by something Daniil wrote: "Of course now we could argue that most men don't like all these "hidden" things in art like metaphors, hidden messages, small different things which change a message completely." I think this part of The Change. A hundred years ago, someone would have written that women were incapable of understanding metaphor and subtlety, that only men possessed the intelligence to comprehend the abstract. Something has happened!

Good question about modern dance. One quick thought is that, for many people, modern dance -- or contemporary dance that isn't ballet -- is less threatening: no history, no things that look ritualistic. I remember the thing that confused me most on the first program of ballet that I saw was "Le Corsaire" pas de deux. They'd dance for a mintue and eveyrone would scream. Then he'd dance for a minute, then she -- what were they doing? Everybody in the audience seemed to know what was happening, and I didn't. That can be intimidating to some men. (And of course, we're talking about THEM, those guys who don't go to the ballet, not anyone here!) I've had male friends who were "genuinely bored," as Bart put it, by ballet. We talked about this, and they didn't see the point of it -- it was "decadent," all this fuss over line and musicality. They did take the point that someone could say the same thing about baseball statistics But remember, this too is recent. The great theoretical works about ballet -- about all those arcane, picky little things that contemporary audiences find off-putting -- were written by men. One other anecdote. In 1992 I gave a Bournonville lecture to the local Scandinavian-American Association. They met monthly and the lectures ranged from Swedish economics to Norwegian modern art. These were not ballet people. I showed them a video of "La Sylphide" and, not really knowing what I was doing, I started doing a "play by play," pointing out things that most dance people would know. After it was over I stayed and talked to the audience in a more informal setting, and several men -- all middle-aged -- came up to me (making sure no one else was around) and said things like, "I've been dragged by my wife to the ballet for 30 years and I've hated it. I never thought there was anything to it until tonight." One man was quite angry. "why didn't I know about this?" he said. "I had poetry in college, and music and art. No one ever talked about ballet." If these men are typical, they don't know about ballet, they have prejudices about it (Bournonville is great to show to men, because the men have real dancing to do, they don't wear tights, and they're "real people" (even if they're trolls ) I've always wanted to start SMOG -- Straight Men's Outreach Group. Get a van and a bullhorn and go through neighborhoods saying, "Lookee, lookee! Girls in see through dresses turning themselves inside out!! See Giselle go mad! See the Wilis dance men to death." (Not meaning to offend gay men; they don't need a balletmobile. Most aren't intimidated by ballet.) Re the trend in Europe to move from ballet to contemporary dance, I think that the reason is economic. Contemporary dance companies are cheaper to run -- they're smaller, you don't need to have an academy training people for ten years, you don't have pointe shoes, in many cases you don't have to have an orchestra. Also, in Europe where the state supports the arts, after 1968 (?; I'm winging it here!) when the attitude turned from the old one of "Our state theater presents the best art, the face that we want to show the world" to "our state supports art and artists," quite understandably, modern/contemporary dancers said, "HEY! How come all the money is going to ballet companies?" There was lobbying for a different distribution of funds. (At the one performance of Paris Opera Ballet I've attended, the audience seemed half and half, but I won't swear an affidavit on that. At local modern dance performances here, I think the audience is more mixed than at the ballet, but, going back to the gay/straight divide, my perception is that many of the men in the audience are gay. The subject matter of much dance companies -- male or female -- is gay. I've heard this discussed by dancers as a problem; straight dancers feel unwelcome (as gay dancers would have for decades). This is all anecdotal and other cities may be different. One further faux demographic I'll throw into this mix is that I've been told that in Japan 95'% of the audience for ballet is female.

Daniil, I'm sorry to learn this is the case in Europe as well! I'm one of those Americans who lives in the fantasy world where Europeans are so much more advanced than we are What Bart said rang true with me, although I was hoping it wouldn't I'm reading into what you wrote about art and literature in the 1950s and '60s as: men will read books by men but not books by women. [Women, of course, have had to read books by and about men all their lives (and I have no objection to that! I read Dostoyevsky in high school. I diidn't get to Austen until I was in my 30s. I doubt that little boys today would read a book with a girl heroine; Harry Potter would not be the phenomen it is if it were Mary Potter.] So, is, at the root of all of this, a deep contempt of women? When women enter a profession, men skidaddle. (Teaching, office work; medicine is the next one. And ballet was the first in the early 19th century. When ballerinas began to get attention, men left the Paris Opera. Within one dancer generation, the roles of male dances were greatly reduced.) Now it seems that if women enter the theater that means men (some men, nay, most men ) won't deign to follow. I think the gay/straight thing is a big part of this, too, but after all, the word "effeminate" has a specific connotation -- they're like women; is there anything worse you could say? Tossing match onto gasoline-soaked rags and fleeing.....

I like that definition of technique I think sometimes we think of who does the most, or who is the flashiest, but to be really perfect, to have "ideal clean execution". Now THAT's a dancer. I wonder if anyone but a dancer can really judge this? (Gina, I hope you don't bow out!)

Can you explain what you think Reagan and Thatcher had to do with ths, Herman? Thanks. I can't speak for Herman, but I think that the Reagan-Thatcher era was the beginning of It's All About Money. Remember "Greed is good?" The 1980s is the beginning of the MBA boom and the decline in Liberal Arts. (I don't mean this as politics, but as history.) Of course, the 1990s started out to be about "getting back to basics" and how money didn't matter, and it somehow didn't work out that way..... Herman, I hadn't started to worry about young women yet, but now I will! But what I meant to get at when I started this thread is that once men WERE the audience -- young bachelors went to the theater. Married couples went to the theater. In "My Fair Lady," Professor Higgins laments, in "Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?" that one can't take a woman to the opera or ballet -- I think it's because they're silly little creatures who can't deal with complex thought. The men I know in their 60s and 70s who go to the ballet also went as young men. A few that I've discussed this with say that they were taken as children. On Sundays (in America, at least) this was Arts day. You went to a concert, or a museum, or a ballet. (And thanks for the tip about meeting men in museums )

Arne Bech He was a Danish dancer from the late '60s through early '80s. "He was a textbook," one current Danish principal told me. He always did the pas de six -- the role without the solo. He was technically perfect. And totally, absolutely, bland. Today he'd undoubtedly be a principal

That's interesting! -- maybe she liked the stage better in D.C. Or maybe she was one of those dancers who struggled in class, but it didn't show on stage? I don't mean to doubt your observations at all, Gina, but I'm just curious because I saw her quite a lot in both "Swan Lake" and "Don Q" (as well as "Giselle" and other rep pieces) and don't remember her having trouble with turns. Perhaps that's because I usually saw her with Ivan Nagy (if she needed support from a partner!) I do remember traveling fouettes, but I don't think I thought much of iit because so many people traveled! I have a story about dancers and turns that's relevant here, and goes to an aspect of dancers with less than perfect technique, but ample artistry. When I was interviewing dancers about Henning Kronstam, I got a wide range of opinions about turns. He was very tall and not a natural turner. HE would say he always had trouble with pirouettes. And then I'd talk to a few dancers who said what they remembered most about him, besides his jump, was the perfect turns. Back to Kronstam No, turns were always a struggle. More dancers. One explained to me that Kronstam didn't do a lot of pirouettes, but always, consistently did three "as perfect as pearls on a string". (Another sniffed at the very idea of anyone doing MORE than three pirouettes; doing so would be cheap. "Henning didn't need to do more than three.") And another dancer said that he often had trouble with pirouettes in class, but very seldom on the stage. I was asking this of yet another dancer as we were watching old videos, and just as she said he never in his life did more than two pirouettes, on the screen behind our heads he did five (in a ballet where five was appropriate, I hasten to add.)

I don't have the book, but Ashton did make two ballets for NYCB ("Illuminations" and "Picnic at Tintagel") and was a very hot choreographer in New York in the 1950s, so it's not that odd that he would be included. What a stable of choreographers! (not meaning to slight the dancers)

Oh, I know you had only good intentions! What happens on the net, though, all too often, is that people just read the post above theirs, and things get attributed to one that one didn't say. One thing I didn't mention is that "ballet" is used in so many different ways -- including contemporary dance companies, especially European ones, with the name "ballet" in their title, like Ballet Preljocaj -- that the whole issue can become very confusing! Sandi, I second almost everything you wrote I think revivals have been the mainstay of the ballet side of ballet company repertories for awhile now, and as valuable as they are -- and I want more of them, before the entire 20th century is lost -- we also need new ballets. When fusion works are substitued, as you wrote, to satisfy an audience's demand for something new, rather than looking to new ballets that there's a problem, for the same reason that there would be a problem if the Limon company suddenly started mounting revivals of "Sleeping Beauty" and "Swan Lake." It's not what they do and if they do too much of it, it will change what they are.

goro, thanks a lot for your insights. I think the "metrosexual" element has a lot to do with it, but this, too, is a change. I don't think so. Before World War II, men were the core of the ballet audience. Some of them (one reads) were lured there by the chance to see flesh (costumes were skimpier in the theater than on the street) but educated people -- the men who, motivated by money and family expectations as much as for a question for knowledge, and not implying that there's anything wrong with that -- people who went to Harvard and Yale to prepare for a profession -- attended theater. It was part of your life. A family anecdote: my aunt, who turned 18 in 1920, did not like ballet, and once said that she had seen the Ballets Russes because "I'd go if that was the only way I could get a date." Women have never been dominant in math or engineering classes, for reasons that most people, including those who gave the President of Harvard a vote of no confidence , say is the result of cultural barriers and programming. But educated men were always a part of the arts world.

Thanks for the question, Balletaime. But first, to head off a possible misunderstanding -- there are a LOT of words cut in the quote you posted. I did NOT compare or rank Wheeldon with anyone and I did NOT associate his work with that quote of Diaghilev. Re defnition of ballet: In an earlier post, I pointed to the Mission Statement, which tackles many of these issues, but I'll quote from it here for the definition. It was included in the Mission Statement to let people know how the word "ballet" was used on this site. That's the standard, state of the art definition. Personally, I'd omit "usually presented wiith elements of music and design" but it does say "usually" Re Tudor: I don't think he's a subcategory. Tudor is a ballet choreographer. Some of his works are expressionistic in style (as are a few by Balanchine and Ashton) but the basic language is that of classical ballet, and he was classically trained. Tudor was also a noted teacher who cared a great deal about classical style.

Thanks for these responses! Goro, why "Of course, things that we read were not Bronte sisters, Plath, or Rand" ? When I was in high school and college both males and females read the Brontes and Austen (Rand was political, Platt was new then, so not on the required reading lists. I read her for pleasure, as I read many male novelists). Austen was read and studied for her use of the language and insights into character, not because she wrote about domestic matters. Several boys in my high school class majored in English at college with the hopes of becoming writers or journalists. That's part of the change. The men I know who are scientists also read poetry (and msytery stories) for fun, but they're older -- some in their 60s and 70s. Most of the men I know who aren't directly involved in the art form who go to the ballet with pleasure are also in that age group. Is this just television? Or has there been such a split between the genders that one doesn't read/partake in "the other's" interests? And that, coupled with the push to the MBA and computers, making colleges more trade and technical schools now, with the liberal arts having only a vestigial presence? (I noted, the last time I visited Georgetown, one of my alma maters, that the theology department now shares quarters with the business department and the latter has four times the faculty and the space as the former.)

I think it would be good to debate/discuss all of these issues, so ask away (and others, please, jump in!) It IS confusing, and it doesn't help that these terms are often used carelessly in reviews and articles. I think, too, that often there are misunderstandings when someone says, of a work one loves, "It's not a classical ballet!" That SOUNDS as though they're saying, "It's not a good ballet," but it doesn't necessarily mean that.

Paul had posted: I've been pondering this. Recently I've seen a lot of people dancing beyond their abilities, but not in a good way But this is at the root of my interest in either the very young or the very old. When a kid gulps and goes for it, even if the turns are unsteady or the landings thuddish, it can be exciting. And when a dancer at the end of his/her career is fighting for it -- the Danes say that a lot; I must have gotten it from them -- that's exciting, too. And poignant. I remember seeing Loscavio in her first "Ballo," back when nobody could do Ballo but Merrill Ashley. She wasn't a Queen yet, but damn she was a Princess worthy of the role. The example that Paul gave of Semyonova -- "THe image that comes to mind for me is a video of Marina Semyonova in Odette's variation -- she is NOT ON HER LEG, but I don't care -- it makes all the more vulnerable and so brave." -- has been making me think. I can remember dancers like Ivan Nagy, who could fill a variation without actually doing the step, or Lis Jeppesen, who could do a single pirouette in "Kermesse in Bruges" and make it look like the most magical thing in the world (that wasn't for lack of tehcnique, but because there WAS only a single pirouette in the choreography and she chose to use it rather than show us how she do four). I think that kind of artistry is out of fashion now. (As an aside, I've been puzzled to read that Nureyev and Makarova weren't turners. Back when they were dancing, they were considered wonderful turners. Several of his peers, in interviews back in the '70s, talked about Nureyev as a natural turner and learned jumper. And he could still do pirouettes in those ghastly last years when he shouldn't have been dancing. As for Makarova, she was never a top favorite of mine, but I'd say that in the many performances I saw, she was a very reliable turner!)

(Note: I'm on spring break this week, which is why I've been more loquacious than usual ) Okay, this is the question. It's about men and the arts, including the liberal arts. I was talking to two friends this week, teachers in different fields, at different universities, one (a man) in English and the other (a woman) in art history. Both of then taught classes that were overwhelmingly female. Not just a plurality, but a landslide -- only one, two, three men in classes of 20 and 30. They did not think this was odd. When did this happen? Just about all the men I know are involved in the arts in some way, and so all read fiction, go to art museums, and do not squirm when the word "opera" enters the conversation. I know that the audience for ballet has become predominantly female (and I don't thnk this is a good thing) but I didn't know that reading, writing, painting and music were equally on the It's Not a Guy Thing list. Thoughts? To the men on this board, can you talk about ballet with friends? To the parents of sons, do your children read? Or is a teenage Guy embarrassed to be caught with a book? Do they read "Jane Eyre," "Wuthering Heights," "Madame Bovary," "Anna Karenina?" Or are these Chick Lit? (women with opinions may also respond, of course!) Not looking for scientific studies, just anecdotes and opinions. I mean this for all the arts, but put it here in the hopes of drawing a bigger crowd

I think that's a good point, Ari. I think what you said about "liking it without getting it" is very true. We DO get it; we just can't articulate what we get yet I also enjoy reading someone who really "gets" an artist who's new to me, or whose secrets I have not yet unlocked.

Thanks, Bart. I'm not sure I know what you mean by "imposing superficial ballet stuff" because what I'm talking about is that the natural language of the choreographer is ballet. He can take (as Balanchine did) movements from jazz or Graham or Wigman or physical therapy, and it's still ballet because he's melding that onto a ballet base. I think what Marks meant by a choreographer who can "move out from it and expand it" is someone who can do what Ashton, Balanchine and Tudor did. Make something that is instantly recoognizably NEW and, at the same time, Diaghilev could look at it and say, "My God, that's Petipa!" I think Ashton's "Cinderella" is like that, and it was revolutionary in 1948 when the three-act ballet had been pronounced dead. To me, it's as though Petipa had left the studio the Friday before Ashton started working. And yet, if you look at the choreography closely, there's almost nothing in it that would have been in an 1890 Petipa ballet. I'm afraid I can't name very many new Petpas. Bruce Marks mentioned Michael Corder and David Bintley in that 1977 interview; I haven't seen enough of their works to comment. I think Christopher Wheeldon is definitely a ballet choreographer. There's another English Christopher -- Christopher Hampton. There are quite a few "sons of Balanchine" ballet makers around (many current artistic directors), but, to me, the works are derivative, like those posthumous Jane Austen novels that are popular now. They're very cleverly and lovingly done (the novels, anyway ) and if you adore Austen and wish she had written 2 dozens books, they may be very satisfying. But they're dead things, to me, because the creator is dead, and it's like imagining having a conversation with a dead friend. It only works when you go over ground you both know. You don't KNOW how the friend would react to your new love, or the new house, or the new brand of spaghetti sauce. You can only put into his/her mouth the words you remember. If the person could suddenly appear s/he might surprise you. I think, for the reasons you stated on the thread about "not liking it/not getting it," that the triple bill programming is a problem in allowing new ballet choreographers a voice. There are choreographers working in the classical idiom whose works aren't getting seen. They have their own companies or work for smaller troupes. In big and midsized companies, new work has to be Trendy and a Hit, and so more and more companies are programming pop pieces -- which is a different distinction altogether. If you have a repertory system, like NYCB -- which is the only company now, as far as I know, that mixes up the ballets instead of having a Program A, Program B formula -- you can squeeze in a new little ballet here and there, give someone a chance. But the way things are structured today, you need a Hit. The audience is going to buy tickets to Valentine's Evening with the expectation of seeing three things they will like It's hard to take risks in that situation. The Post's Sarah Kaufman wrote about a program like this -- billed as New! Cutting Edge!! Risky!!! -- that it was about as risky as offering candy to a toddler (since this has been the formula now for about 30 years) but we still have that rhetoric. I'm also seeing pop dance choreographers trying to make it up the ladder, from small to medium to large regional companies, and when they start tackling -- and I don't use the word lightly! -- classical composers, it's obvious to me that they've never listened to the music before and wish they didn't have to. They don't understand it. They use it as noise. They don't understand its aeshetic, or its rules or its structure. Back to the crossover choreographers, I think this is a separate genre that has its own audience and deserves its own companies (like Netherlands Dance Theater) or modern/contemporary repertory companies (like Rambert Dance Company). I don't want to see another ballet company turned into a contemporary dance company, though, because what a lot of people -- including some Artistic Directors -- don't realize is there is a tipping point, and that if your dancers don't dance classical works often enough, they will not be able to dance them, or they will dance them with a modern dance inflection, and that is not good for ballet.

Bart, I think this is a very important observation; I hope all the marketing people who read this board see it! There used to be the appetizer-entree-dessert type of programming, but now I think you're right -- it's changed to "let's do the art and get it over with" piece/our new pop culture piece/something really really popular. The whole issue of pop dance and ballet is a bit away from the thrust of this thread, so I won't go into that further, but if a company wants to be taken as a serious ballet company, then there are ways to program serious works and make them appealing -- as you've mentioned above. One way NOT to do it is something the Kennedy Center has done in opera twice this season, and that is to bill new or near-new operas as "tuneful" when they're mostly recitative "musical dramas" or "plays." The audience who came looking to be entertained -- as it had been invited to do -- was not happy. One reviewer reported that a good quarter of the audience at one opening was out the door at intermission. They may not have "gotten it," but they weren't properly prepared to do so. On the "not getting it" point, I was rereading this thread from the beginning, and Paul Parish had some good comments, I thought, on works in other art forms that didn't touch him when he first encountered them, but did later on (it's the last post on the first page) and I think that's important to remember too. There are things that appeal to us at different ages as well as different stages of our balletgoing and the investment we make in it. (It took me years to get Graham. I persisted because I felt if someone was considered one of the great choreographers in history then I felt I had to understand why. Part of the "where's the line" question to me is the difference between not liking and not getting. Unless "getting it" is a necessary condition of "liking it"? Some people may well feel that iit is. I can look at something and say, "yes, that's good, but I never want to see it again." To me, there's a difference.)

I'm glad to know that Hans Van Manen is back with the Dutch National Ballet. The company came to New York a couple of times in the late '70s and early '80s, and I liked some of his ballets very much. When the company had "the three Vans," they really had a unique repertory -- three interesting in-house choreographers (Van Manen more than interesting, but very good, in my book) and a very good core repertory of classics and neoclassics.

For a discussion of why all of this matters, you might be interested in an interview I did with Bruce Marks (trained in modern dance AND ballet and one of the very few modern dancers to crossover to ballet) in 1997. Marks was Artistic Director of Boston Ballet then, and had been a vigorous proponent of crossover dance in ballet company repertories. (Fusion dance in fusion, or contemporary ballet, companies, like the Netherlands Dance Theater, is a different matter entirely. There the dancers are trained to do that type of work.) He was beginning to change his mind. To read more: The King of Crossover Crosses Back (Note: This doesn't addrress, except in passing, whether X or Y is a GOOD choreographer, merely the current situation where crossover work is presented as the only new work in ballet company repertories.)