Helene

No, you didn't. We are trying to find any official news or convention about this, but, so far, have found nothing definitive. When we do, we'll be sure it's posted.

I saw Meese do one of those wonderful Piano Concerto No. 2 performances, and I agree 100% of your description of Meese in them, but for me, it was a great surprise and very different than the scattered performances I had seen her do in other works, where I had found her mannered. (I did not see her perform in Theme.) The way Boal has built his seasons to date, I see/have seen a very small number of major tutu/tiara ballets (apart from Nutcracker). The majority of ballets are neoclassical, contemporary, or modern. I take his comment after one Q&A this year that after the audience gets used to the Ulysses Dove works that Dove created as ballets, we'll see his modern works, as a sign that future seasons won't have a great number of tutus or tiaras. (And I've given up hope that PNB will stage an Ashton work for Louise Nadeau. I would love to see her in A Month in the Country.)

The programs that are coming up after the NYCB season ends are: February: Swan Lake March: Polyphonia (Wheeldon), Rassemblement (Duato), La Sonnambula (Balanchine) April: Celebrate Seattle Festival Carmina Burana (K. Stowell), Pacific (Morris) {SCHWA} (Gaines), Remembrances (Joffrey), Inlets 2 (Cunningham), Torque (Caniparoli) Schubert (Alleyne), Ripple Mechanics (Dawkins), Two's Company (Pimble), Bhangra Fever (Byrd) Groove and Countermove (Brown), Adin (C. Stowell), Locate (Scott), World Premiere (Gibson) June: Circus Polka (Robbins), State of Darkness (Fenley), Rubies (Balanchine), Symphony in Three Movements (Balanchine) Which roles would be a natural for her?

Thank you so much, Arizona Native, for your great reviews! Unfortunately, it's hard for me to get out of Seattle in December, but perhaps next year... I'm so glad to hear that Ginger Smith was given the opportunity to dance Sugar Plum Fairy and that her performance was a triumph. Paola Hartley and Natalia Magnicaballi have had a lock on the major classical roles, and I was hoping there would be room for such a wonderfully talented dancer as Smith. She's such a lovely dancer.

I thought she was fine, but no better than the other women who danced the role.

Looking back, I think that Agon is Balanchine's greatest work, the pinacle of his collaboration with Stravinsky, and the work that pushed ballet to the farthest point to date. I think many of his ballets that followed were great, great works, but I think Agon is as close to being a perfect marriage of music and dance as it comes. That's why I think the pas de deux, which is at the center of the ballet, is at the epicenter of Balanchine's canon. I should have said that Adams' role is one of the two central roles, the other being Arthur Mitchell's role. But I never think of Mitchell's role that way, because I've never seen a performance of it that comes close to Mitchell's performance in the kinescope, while I've seen performances close to Adams', although the excerpt of hers in the PBS Balanchine biography is still my favorite. That said, most of the time at NYCB through the 80's, live, in the moment, I agreed with Croce's statement that (Steadfast Tin Soldier and Variations pour une porte et un soupir notwithstanding) "the greatest Balanchine ballet is the one you happen to be watching."

On page 14 of the print edition of the People Magazine December 25th edition of "Star Tracks" (not yet online), there is a nearly full page photo of Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan with one of their twin daughters, Aquinnah, who performed in the Nutcracker Family Benefit, which, according to the photo caption "raised $650,000 for the New York City Ballet's Education Programs and the School of American Ballet Scholarship Fund." Aquinnah's up front and center, dressed in full Polichinelle costume and makeup. It's a great photo. Except for her nose, which is her father's, and maybe the depth of blue in her eyes (dad again), she's the spitting image of her mom.

I hated it. If felt that she tried the gymnastic approach: how high can my extensions go, and her thrusts were rooted in the thighs, rather than the pelvis, probably because her turnout looks limited. I saw it live, never having seen her before and very much looking forward to it, and was horribly disappointed. I thought she was miscast in what is probably the central role in the Balanchine canon.

Imagine how much publicity there will be when The Incident is offered as a "Special Feature."

I just found my tickets from a visit to London last fall. I saw Un ballo in maschera from the Amphitheatre, and I was miserable until the women to my left decided to leave after first intermission, and the people to their left and I expanded into the space. There are no armrests, and the seats were made for a thinner crowd than I. I saw Sylvia the next night from the Grand Tier, and it was worth eating sandwiches for lunch all week instead of eating in restaurants to make up for the 27-pound difference in price.

It's also possible to buy tickets over the Internet from the Royal Ballet site. The tickets were held at the box office, and I picked them up about 30 minutes before the performance.

Yowza. No wonder he'd be down!I remember Myrna Kamara (his partner in the photo) when she danced with NYCB. I didn't realize she was still performing.

As someone who was misquoted in my college newspaper, making a project I was working on sound more grandiose than it was, I can attest that it is very embarrassing to the subject when this happens. I suspect Milov will take a bit of razzing for this one. Edited to Add: Just today, Lauren Anderson was called "the first black principal dancer of a major American ballet company." I don't think so. From Today's Links...

Thank you very much for the review, BigToe! I miss Gavin Larsen, and I'm very glad she's within a doable Amtrak ride.

I'm alternating laughing and crying. More bravas!

December 9, 2006 Anita Cheng Dance opened last Thursday.

In Balanchine's original version of the Nutcracker, the Sugar Plum Fairy made her first dancing entrance at the start of the Pas de Deux, with the variation immediately following. Maria Tallchief, who was the original SPF, later related that after the tumultuous response to Tanaquil LeClerq's Dewdrop in the "Waltz of the Flowers" immediately preceeding her entrance, she was nervous about following that tour de force. (The variation was later changed to the beginning of Act II, after the SPF greets the angels.)

And, as I can attest to in Seattle, for starting the show within 15 minutes of the printed start time.In this case the Kirov Orchestra did a beautiful job with the Shostakovich 11th Symphony, but it was part of a program that was repeated on tour. In those circumstances, sometimes the rehearsals are live, but the orchestra does get to focus its energy on a single program and leverage the repetition to its advantage.