Helene

I just got a notice from the Massachusetts Review that Deborah Jowitt's piece, "Sex and Death" has been published as part of their "The Offending Classic" series: https://www.massreview.org/node/9341 The series overview gives the context for her essay.

This "from the vault" compilation is available on demand through November 27. From the era before nearly everyone had a high-quality digital camera on their phone, the energy of Morris' original dancers, including himself, is so distinctly palpable, it brings me back many, many decades:

This looks like the whole call:

It was a program in their 2020-21 Digital Season, to which I've subscribed. I don't know if the entire Zoom call is accessible to the general public. But there is a link to Promenade Sentimentale on YouTube:

In an interview with Twyla Tharp that was part of PNB's digital Rep 3 program, Peter Boal said that, typically, they'd raise 12m in revenue, and this year they are projecting 2m.

I really liked all four for different reasons. First, Waterbaby Bagatelles is my co-favorite Tharp ballet -- the other is Afternoon Ball -- so any chance to see any of it is a privilege and joy. In his interview with Tharp, Peter Boal gave a brief description of how they put it together: the three women were filmed separately, and the editors did a great job of putting the footage together, and Kiyon Ross was in their pod, and they were filmed reacting to him, not the gaggle of men who followed each other in short, brilliant solos. My only complaint is that there wasn't enough of it. I wou

It depends on the company. Some factors would be whether they're able to monetize digital offerings, how much advance subscription revenue they first raised and then were able to keep without having to refund it, endowments, and local government contributions, in kind and cash, as well as rent forgiveness from public and private landlords.

I just saw tonight's stream of the Mark Morris Dance Group's digital season program, and it it ended with an exceptionally beautiful work called "Promenade Sentimentale," set to Debussy's "Claire de Lune." What balm it was.

There's a remarkable range of people responding to Trebek's passing on Twitter. I think journalist Tommy Tomlinson tweet was especially pertinent:

Caniparoli choreographed a new work for PNB in 2009 called "The Seasons" to the Glazunov score. It was one of the last original neoclassical ballets commissioned by PNB. According to the Seattle Times review, it was the fifth Caniparoli ballet PNB performed, but, I'm not sure whether any of the other four except Lambarena was choreographed specifically for PNB.

That was primarily about NYCB though. The Children of Balanchine in their own companies kept the standards high. So there were seedlings and offshoots thriving elsewhere, when it looked like the Mother Ship had taken a detour. Croce famously bludgeoned NYCB by comparing their Balanchine performances to PNB's tour performances at BAM. I'm not even sure if she mentioned NYCB in that review, I think from 1987 or so.

For a while, in the moment, some critics were writing as if Robbins would be the Macmillan to Balanchine's Ashton, that Robbins' choreography was fresh and modern compared to the dated and old Balanchine. I think time has shown otherwise. There was no Ashton Trust at the time, or a thriving, multi-generational industry staging his ballets, there was no equivalent of the Ford Foundation grant that cemented Ashton's influence in the schools, not the continent-wide expansion of companies run by his disciples and performing his rep, and there was not the same worldwide demand to stage his wo

Lobasova became known widely after having been chosen as a young NBoC dancer by Ratmansky to dance his Juliet opposite Guillaume Cote's Romeo. I remember seeing a documentary about the making of.

Instagram and Facebook made changes to their sites that have, essentially, shut off embedding. Our software provider, IPS, is evaluating what it would take to support embedding for both sites again, and they'll decide where it fits on their priority for future patches or versions.

PNB just linked an article about Lindsi Dec and Karel Cruz's new studio, the DeCruz Ballet Studio, which they opened in San Antonio this past September. My favorite quote is: I remember Dec saying in a Q&A that being in Seattle, she missed the sun.. She'll certainly get as much sun as she wants in San Antonio!