Helene

(Oh, that could get ugly ) I just don't like Sturm und Drang. I'm never going to like the Friar bits, which remind me of Eifman. By the way, I agree 100% about the new seating charts. The old ones were impossible to decipher, given how many pricing sections there are.

Alright, I won't either then While I think Maillot's "Romeo et Juliette" is very good theater -- I would rather watch it 1000 times before seeing the Macmillan again -- the choreography isn't that great -- although I would rather watch it 1000 times before seeing the Macmillan again -- and the choice of clips was good marketing strategy in more ways than one, and not only to the new target audience.

(Resist temptation to respond. Resist temptation to respond )

That kind of consistency is a curse. I remember that one of my father's common gripes was about how he'd hear Richard Tucker sing brilliantly, and the next day, the reviewer would give him one line at the end, a mention that he had sung typically well.

I think this is one of the triumphs of the Met broadcasts on Sirius/XM/Rhapsody: when I was on the Opera-L list, the curtain hadn't even hit the stage before the emails would start to fly to discuss the previous act. In those days, you knew you were part of an audience by feel. With the Internet, there's an immediate, direct response.

On a New York City Ballet thread, there was a discussion about how not taking company class (at least all the time) might have affected Sophie Flack's career. When doing a Google search, I found this interview in Time Out New York with Tom Gold, just before his retirement, and he comments on company class: http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/dance/...d-all-that-jazz I found this a fascinating read. Given the limited number of hours in a dancer's day, especially at the end of the season when dancers are overworked and replacing fellow dancers who are injured, it makes a great deal of sense for them to invest that time in a daily class that keeps them at their best, which is not the same thing as being politic.

I would not be surprised if most new websites were built to be compatible with three browsers which make up the vast majority of the market: Internet Explorer (7 & 8), Safari, including for iPhone, and Firefox. Sometimes it's a deliberate decision, as testing and development are cost-prohibitive for the last x% who use other browsers exclusively, sometimes testing and/or development for other browsers is postponed until after the launch, and sometimes there's an intention of getting to it, but it ends up in V.Never.

The piece was "Valse Triste". It was broadcast on Dance in America in a program with several other Martins pieces -- a Beethoven violin and piano piece for Kyra Nichols and Adam Luders, the slow movement of "Ecstatic Orange" for Heather Watts and Jock Soto, "Sophisticated Lady" for Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins, and "Barber Violin Concerto", with Merrill Ashley, David Parsons, Adam Luders, and Kate Johnson. I'm pretty sure McBride danced it for her farewell program. I'll have to try to remember where I read the Kirstein quote. It, too, may have been in "Dance as a Contact Sport". He may have been referring to the period when Farrell left NYCB, and Balanchine was bereft.

If I remember correctly, it was PNB that sent out a questionnaire about the old website. I assumed changes would be coming, but I didn't realize that it would be this quickly.

PNB's website has just changed to a more modern design: http://www.pnb.org/ I can't find the amazon.com search box anymore. (Because I manage the Ballet Talk amazon.com commission account, nothing I buy is credited to Ballet Talk ; I purchased through the PNB site instead.) The website change has to be very recent, since I used the old site to buy a Kindle book very recently. The rosters are updated (without any promotions, which Peter Boal said in a Q&A would be announced the week before the start of the season. He also said there wouldn't been a gala excerpts program this year.) Louise Nadeau is no longer on the roster, Ezra Thompson is listed as the sole apprentice, and at least several of last season's apprentices are in the corps: Andrew Bartee, Kyle Davis, and Sean Rollofson are the men. Without last year's program, I can't remember which of Amanda Clark, Emma Love, Margaret Mullin, Leah O'Connor, Abby Relic, and Carli Samuelson were corps and which were apprentices, but they are all corps for next season. I now understand the bio info on the website: Amanda Clark, Emma Love, and Margaret Mullin are the women who were promoted from apprentice to corps. As background for the dancers and artistic directors (current and emeritus) are black and white clips of rehearsals. By clicking on the photograph, there is a bio for each dancer, with featured and leading roles listed, and a tab for a photo gallery. The new site looks great!

For me, WQXR was George Jellinek's "The Vocal Scene", Boris Goldovsky's program on Thursday nights -- I remember listening to it on the car radio (my dad's) on my way home from my Girl Scout meeting! -- the Met Opera Broadcasts, and the Sunday night opera. I, too, found the programming pretty staid, much like Seattle's KING-FM, which also does local arts broadcasts (Seattle Opera, live; Seattle Symphony and Seattle Chamber Music series, recorded live and broadcast later.) When I was growing up, though, there were three stations dedicated to classical music: WQXR, WNCN, and WNYC, and the latter had two back-to-back new and contemporary music programs in the afternoons, hosted by Tim Page and John Schaeffer. In an online discussion in The Washington Post in 2002, Tim Page spoke to this: (I couldn't find the Budiansky article on the Atlantic website.) and http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/z.../page022002.htm

The first time I saw her was after she came back from maternity leave; she would have been in her late 30's at the time. Although I think her child was adopted, and that she wasn't returning after childbirth, her speed astonished me, and she left some of the younger dancers, who were barely alive when she was made principal dancer, in the dust. Lincoln Kirstein credited her with saving the company. Joseph Mazo, in "Dance as a Contact Sport", described her extraordinary energy and stamina, letting out a little whoosh of breath backstage after an enormously difficult variation, and heading back out again, while her fellow dancers were doubled over, completely out of breath. I always thought she was very true to herself as a dancer. Not that PATRICIA MCBRIDE came before the choreography, but that her dance essential qualities -- speed, joy in movement, and grace -- were always present, regardless of the work.

That is the finest tribute to him that I've heard or read.

I know that Walter Cronkite was not in the arts, but he was too important a figure for his death on Friday to go un-noted. From the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...mp;hpid=topnews http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...id=opinionsbox1 From The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/us/18cro...tml?_r=1&hp http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/arts/tel...praisal.html?hp Rest in peace, Mr. Cronkite.

I don't get to see SFB that often, but when I have, his dancing has been wonderful. I will miss him, but I wish him luck in the next phase of his career

I saw her live once, in "The Leaves Are Fading", but she was a shadow of herself then, compared to this. My favorite parts of this clip are the first 1:50 and the last 1:30. The mime at the beginning and end is so intense from both, and mime is the only place, apart from the solo, that Dowell registers to me, apart from the short snippet where he's on the floor after the lift and is emoting to her. In the solo, to me he only shows up the lack of imagination in the choreography; a less academic approach -- although it was very beautiful -- is the only thing that pushes through it. (It's clear that Dowell would be amazing in a version that had serious choreography.) Apart from that, Kirkland steals the entire show. I couldn't keep my eyes off her, except when the camera didn't oblige.

Frank Hobi was Ruthana Boris' husband.

Until there is official information -- interview, dancer's blog or website, newspaper or magazine article, etc. -- we won't know the breakdown.

Many thanks for the news, and I hope I can make it to the US performances. Re: the signature line, which is a quote from a very wise person on the Opera-L discussion group, it is an aspiration. The first and probably biggest step is to know that there is a difference.

Le festival d'ete de Quebec opened last Thursday, and as part of it, Jordi Savall and his Le Concert des Nations performed at the Palais Montcalm. The program was called "Tastes of the Musical Galant form Lully to Boccherini", with music by Lully, Biber, Corelli -- the concerto Balanchine used in "Square Dance" -- Avison, Rodriguez de Hita, and Boccherini. This concert sounded so much better than even the wonderful one in Berkeley, which was in a church with no sound-proofing whatsover and rather weak acoustics in general. The wood-lined Raoul Jobin Hall in Palais Montcalm is not only gorgeous, but its acoustics are very live. It is very sound-proof: Palais Montcalm is next to Scene Metro in Place d'Youville, one of the three main festival stages, and as we left the building, we heard the very amplified Mexican singer Lila Downs and her band. Each of the pieces was rich and strong, using multiple techniques. (In the Boccherini, the cellists strummed their instruments like guitars.) Mr. Savall spoke in beautiful French to the audience. If I got the gist of it correctly, the first encore was a traditional French dance song played at weddings and celebrations, and the second was dance music from an opera, but he turned his head when he said its name, and I missed it. For their final encore, they repeated a movement of the Corelli, and "Square Dance" was once again playing in my head. Starting with the Corelli, the strings were split into three, with the high strings split in two and the cellist, viola da gamba, and bass in the middle. Enrico Onofri was phenomenal on the violin concertino. It's rare to hear that much passion and pathos in most string playing in this period; he played it as if he were singing.

Thank you so much for your review of Corella Ballet, sunday! I hope to return to Spain and to see the company someday.

Rest in peace Mr. Goding.

Here's the link: http://www.artsjournal.com/foot/2009/07/go...nd_gillian.html

I'm thrilled that it was Part.

Apollinaire Scherr reviewed the Murphy and Hallberg for her blog "foot in mouth": It sounds like quite a cast. I wish I'd been able to see Murphy live when I was in NYC a couple of weeks ago, but "La Sylphide" isn't her rep.