Helene

I learned why sometimes it looks like there are no hits (views) to a topic, even when we know that the topic has been viewed. We have an optimization parameter set to take some of the burden off the server by writing hits/views to a separate table, and then doing periodic updates. That also explains why the number of hits can go from 0-65 in one fell swoop.

All of that tiny type made the site look very slick, but it's difficult to read. The type size in the quote boxes has been increased to the same size (or close) as the main site. I've tried every setting I could find to make the type size while posting bigger, but to no avail. We've discovered a work-around for at least the Firefox browser for Mac; Alexandra confirmed this isn't working for Safari: Click the little down arrow next to your username in the upper right hand corner. Choose "My Settings". Under "Posting Settings", if "Enable visual (RTE) editor?" is checked, uncheck it. Click the "Save Changes" button. The type while posting should be a little bigger; the "Courier New" should look like a typewriter. I find it a lot easier to use. Also: instead of/in addition to the "new PM" pop-up box that would get lost half the time, unread PM's, now called "conversations" are among the notifications listed in the "Unread Notifications" that appears to the right of the forums list on the home page, in addition to the "unread PM" counter to the right of the username in the upper right corner. Once the counter is at "0" again, the notifications box goes away. Unfortunately, it doesn't turn the counter off if you use the link in email, so it is a multi-part process This is the default setting. To turn this off, Click the little down arrow next to your username in the upper right hand corner. Choose "My Settings". Choose "Notification Options" from the left menu. ** Un-check the boxes next to "Inline Notification" for all of the "Private Messages" options. Click the "Save Changes" button. To turn on the pop-up box, Click the little down arrow next to your username in the upper right hand corner. Choose "My Settings". Choose "Notification Options" from the left menu. Check the box next to "Show popup when I receive a new inline notification" Click the "Save Changes" button. If you want to be subscribed automatically to any topic to which you've replied, Click the little down arrow next to your username in the upper right hand corner. Choose "My Settings". Choose "Notification Options" from the left menu. Check the box next to "Watch every topic I reply to" Select a notification option. (Frequency of notification.) Click the "Save Changes" button. ** If you scroll down this screen, you can set notifications to go to PM ("Personal Conversation"), "inline" (in the top right-hand box on the home page), or mobile, which refers to the mobile application (not your phone). PM is not an option for PM's, because getting the PM itself is enough.

Inside info, not here. But official news, always. The Kennedy Center programs look fantastic. (Maybe my cousins will be back in DC by then, too...)

Miami City Ballet's latest Facebook post reads: with a link to this article.

I know several people who would LOVE this. They would love it even more if it were called "All Puccini ... plus Carmen .... but not the Bondy Tosca." I know I'd feel a lot more comfortable saying I'd subscribed to a program called "All Verdi 1" than one called "Petipa's Posse".

We had a registration issue earlier this evening, and the good folks at IPS were troubleshooting by using the default skin set. Just in case you were wondering why the logo changed and all of the modifications disappeared for a while -o you were not going

Thanks to "3DKiwi" on the IP.Board member self-help forums, age and birthday are gone from the profile page, and in the same piece of skin code I found a way to get rid of the weird default avatar, too.

Remember how we made fun of New York City Ballet for coming up with those programs with the fancy marketing names? I just received an email from the Metropolitan Opera to market ticket packages (3-5 operas) under the following names: All Levine All Matinees 1 and 2 All Puccini 1, 2, and 3 Classic Comedies -- I'm not sure Le Comte d'Ory is a classic yet, but Florez dressed as a nun will soon be Fairy Tales and Legends For the Family French Gems Historic Dramas -- included "Nixon in China" Italian Masterworks 1 and 2 Love Stories 1, 2, and 3 Modern Masterpieces 1 and 2 Myths and Epics Opera as Spectacle 1 and 2 The Art of Bel Canto 1 and 2 The Art of the Diva 1 and 2 The Art of the Tenor Tragic Heroines -- How did they narrow down that one? Tragic Masterpieces 1 and 2 Viva Verdi 1, 2, and 3 Wagner and Strauss A few of these are a bit of a stretch, but they make a lot of sense to me. If I lived in NYC, I'd sit through "Ariadne" for tickets to "Das Rheingold", "Die Walkure", and "Pelleas".

I only dream about the ones I can't figure out yet The search function is now in one location, in the input box at the top right hand side of the page. (It will be right under the user profile info, once I can figure out how to align the amazon.com box with the logo [or align the logo with the top of the header.]) If you're on a topic, the search default will be "Topic". If you're in a forum, the search default will be "Forum", meaning the current forum. If you're on the homepage, the default will be "Forums". If you click the little down arrow -- it's light gray -- next to the default search (Topic, Forum, Forums, etc.) you'll get a drop-down box with other options: Forums -- search all forums Members -- search members list Help Calendar Blogs You can put your search term(s) in the input box, including "[exact string]", +[term/string 1] "[term/string 2]", AND, OR, etc. They will overwrite the default word "search" in the box. (If you just click the magnifying glass, it will search on the word "search" instead of displaying an error message.) To search, click the icky green icon with the magnifying glass. The default will be a list of topics/threads, and the search term(s) will be highlighted in yellow. To get the advanced search screen, click the little wheel/cog all the way to the right. That will bring up the Advanced Search screen, where you can add date ranges and the author's board name and other search criteria, and also change the sort order of the results, and the reason I always use it: to get search results by post instead of topic. The yellow highlight will appear even when all posts should include the search term(s). If you type something in the search box and then decide to change to advanced search, what you entered in the box isn't persisted, and you have to type it in again. To get to that screen used to take multiple clicks, so yay! for the new design.

Thanks to the very helpful "ct2·com" on the IP.Board help forums, I was able to find out how to stop the Location, Gender, and Interest info from displaying next to each post.

Thank you, bart -- I missed that article. Are orchestra musicians the snarkiest people around?

Was that not something Glover said literally, just as he commented on Macaulay in a later performance? That's how I read it. I've seen Glover perform where my sad ears couldn't tell what he was saying, but he was speaking.

We've got the amazon.com box back, albeit askew. The header has been redefined not to include the logo, and I need to find the name of the section with the logo, so I can try to align it. We also have links to Contact Us and Ballet Talk for Dancers. I haven't been able to find the code or setting that drives the profile info next to the posts. If things start appearing and disappearing and/or looking askew, it's because I'm working a bit by trial and error. ("Ooops, that made the post box disappear, better change it back...")

Okay, mea culpa, I am as guilty as anyone, but it's time to bring the topic back on course: Darci Kistler's retirement. Edited: on second thought, I've created a new thread to discuss "Farewell Performances and Criticism": http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=32088&st=0#entry269621 I've moved all of the posts about his criticism of Ms. Kistler's retirement there, for further discussion of the general topic of criticism with regard to farewell performances. The purpose of these forums is to discuss performances seen. Did anyone else see the performance?

In Seattle, there is Jerome Tisserand, who also studied at Pascale Courdioux in Lyon and SAB. Liora Reshef was trained in France before the PNB School, but not at POB. Anne Derieux was a PNB Soloist and Principal from 1992-2000, but I can't find any info on where she trained. Christophe Maraval, and PNB Soloist/Principal for not long enough, was trained at POB School and the Conservatoire Nationale Superieure de Paris. From the article on Maraval: I think Ms. Verdy would beg to differ. On San Francisco Ballet's current roster are Pascal Molat and Pierre-François Vilanoba (also Lille Conservatory). French-born Sofiane Sylve studied at Académie de Dance in Nice.

Seattle Symphony Orchestra has named Ludovic Morlot to succeed Gerard Schwarz as Music Director, beginning with the 2011-12 season. Schwarz's last decade or so has been controversial, with a lot of controversy gone public, but what is shocking is how quickly the board made the decision. As David Brewster writes in Crosscut, More articles: Melinda Bargreen in The Seattle Times, who has timing details and quotes Morlot: At 36, Morlot will now be both the youngest director of the three major Seattle arts institutions, and Peter Boal will get to drop the "new" and "young" tag. As both articles note, the SSO has a history of hiring young Music Directors (Schwarz at 38, Miedel at 37); Seattle Opera chose Speight Jenkins at 46, and Francia Russell and Kent Stowell were in their late 30's when they took over PNB, which wasn't nearly the institution they would grow.

I think facial expressions are fair game for criticism. An open mouth is like having a slack trailing arm. In Figure Skating, this is known as the "O" face, and it's distracting, and especially when a dancer starts with a stage face in preparation and has the "O" face in landing, the spell is broken. In my opinion, in terms of presentation everything that happens on stage is fair game for the critic, unless he or she misrepresents it, like saying that there were multiple bobbles when there was one. The audience is the readership, and it's up to the reader to decide whether the critic's observations are worth reading. I can't see Kistler doing the equivalent of Michele Molese, who at the end of "Un Ballo in Maschera" at NYCO, yelled out to the audience that his "pinched high C was for Mr. Schonberg [the NYT music critic at the time]", but she wouldn't have had a chance, because it was the end of her run, unlike Glover.

Unfortunately, I don't know yet how to remove things from the profile next to the posts. I thought I removed it from the profile that appears when you click on a name, but that doesn't seem to affect the post profile. These templates are a lot different than the last batch, and I haven't deciphered them yet.

It wasn't even so much the description, it was commenting on it after he had described it earlier in the review. That was the shock for me.

It will be back when I figure out how to add it. That and "Contact Us". And the amazon.com search box. BT4D is still running under the old version. We'll upgrade them once we figure out all of the wrinkles. (This is why we couldn't keep the board closed until I figured it out -- you'd be a grandfather by then )

I think Macaulay covered the bases in describing: 1. A dancer was a knockout from the word go and why 2. A dancer who gave deeper performances close to a year after giving her initial amazing ones 3. The dancer's characteristics 4. How the dancer was appreciated by two of the great choreographers in ballet history 5. How early injury affected the dancer's career 6. Her comeback 7. The beginning of the decline 8. The dancer now 9. The dancer in her final performance 10. The final bow For anyone doing the math, of a 30-year career, he assesses the first 13 as the peak -- and from that years of injury to be subtracted -- and the next 17 as the decline. I think it's perfectly legitimate to ask what Kistler's career meant to a ballet goer from after the peak. If a person has never seen or has only glimpsed greatness, it's hard to be invested. What knocked the wind out of me was that after describing Monumentum/Movements in the 8th paragraph, and the rest of the program in paragraphs nine and ten, that just when I thought it was safe, he returned to the M/M performance and called it "wretched". That was like a kick in the gut. He may be right, and it may be what a lot of people wish they had said, but that's as big a surprise as I've had in a while.

I'll pass on the compliments to IPS, our host provider. I think they've done a wonderful job with this release. There are some things I'll have to find -- like the old User CP/My Controls -- and when I do, I'll post about them, but for now, the blogs should be back. Please let me know if you have trouble reading them. Senior Members can create their own blogs, but so far, we've got two great ones: atm711: Ruminations Hans: Details When I used the standard URL in my iPhone, it automatically brought up the board in an iPhone-friendly format. www.ballettalk.invisionzone.com To the right of "Ballet Talk" is a light blue button. When you tap it, there's a drop-down menu, and it's big enough that you don't necessarily have to pinch the screen to make each entry bigger to select it. The options are: Sign Out ([username]) Messenger (IM's) Members (Members list, for people who are Members with 10+ posts) Blogs -- which is only bringing up "Add Entry", and I suspect is for posting to a blog, not for reading it. New Content -- old "View New Posts" Status Updates -- haven't figured this one out yet. There is an IP.Board application which I've just downloaded. It adds an app to the iPhone that allows you to list all of the IP.Boards. If you've want to aggregate all of the links to IP.Boards, like Ballet Talk, Ballet Talk for Dancers (once they upgrade), and any other boards, you can add them to your IP.Board "Community", instead of having individual icons for each board. You also can park your username and passwords in the app, so that you don't have to keep signing in.

Apollinaire Scherr saw the show, too: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/54d5fb1c-82cd-11df-b7ad-00144feabdc0.html

I'm trying to find where I can reinstate the link.

It's just temporarily frustrating until I figure out the paradigm. But IPS did all of the work so far. They had a lot of feedback from their customers, did the usability, and they changed the design to make it feel less dated. The home page means more scrolling, though, because of the two info boxes (subscribed threads and new threads) to the right that take up horizontal real estate. It looks optimized for iDevices, though, where scrolling is the flick of a thumb!