Helene

I'm not arguing that Kaiser has improved ballet offerings at Kennedy Center -- that is Rockwell's contention -- nor that he would be the right choice. However, from the point of view of an institution, hiring an Executive Director with an excellent fundraising and administrative track record might be the best way to ensure stability, unless there is an heir apparent with excellent fundraising skills and who would not find him/herself amidst a rift with split loyalties, which would be a risk with many, if not most, of the NYCB generation from the 60's/70's. Splitting the money from the artistic side means that if there's an issue with an AD, the AD could be replaced without significant risk to the financial base, which is not the situation at NYCB now, where the two are coupled.

From today's Links, required reading on Mark Morris' Sylvia.

An alternate institutional model is to have separate administrative and artistic sides. Rockwell was clear that were Kaiser to join NYCB, he would run the administrative side, while an artistic director would run the artistic side. Administrative management traditionally includes fundraising, marketing, finance, IT, operations, and venue management. Since one of Martins' great strengths is fundraising, his successor as Artistic Director would not need to have this strength, but could focus on season planning, casting, coaching, and the school, (and choreography, were the successor a choreographer) while Kaiser would be responsible for the fundraising side.

Dance at the Kennedy Center is the least of Kaiser's dance credentials: he served as executive director of the Royal Opera House, American Ballet Theatre, and Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre Foundation. I think the big elephant in the room is his association with Suzanne Farrell. I can't imagine a pro-Martins board choosing a successor who would be expected to give a substantial role to Farrell.

I agree with this. I only park there when I'm planning to attend the post-performance Q&A's. I should have realized that with the length of the ballet there wouldn't be any for Sleeping Beauty, but I didn't, and parked there on Opening Night. 45 minutes after the performance ended, I just about made it to the exit. I do understand the women next to me yesterday who ran out the door as soon as the final curtain dropped.

So far, the only Jewels listed on the US amazon website is Danielle Steele's. But here's hoping there will be only a one-month delay before the ballet DVD is listed for pre-order in the US.

Welcome to Ballet Talk, gynecia! Thank you for your comments about Ratmansky. (I wish I could have been there, too...) We invite you to tell us a little bit about yourself on the Welcome Forum.

Is it worse to get no coverage or incorrect coverage? I'm willing to assume that Roger Downey, who reviewed PNB's Sleeping Beauty for the Seattle Weekly didn't write the headline Just Right: Ronald Hynd's Sleeping Beauty blends tradition with delight, but he wrote the following intro: No doubt? I suppose in the sense that there's no doubt that Othello will choke Desdemona to death or that Scrooge won't ruin Christmas in the end, but when a Carabosse shows up in the middle of the christening to curse the infant Aurora to a future death, a curse that can only be mitigated by the Lilac Fairy, and even then that leaves the entire court to the fate of a determined and brave outsider who isn't even born yet, I would call that doubt. And the Lilac Fairy has her work cut out for her: she must make him understand what is behind his yearning lack of completeness, show him a vision of the ideal to inspire him to find her worldly incarnation, and prompt and prompt and prompt some more until he finally finds the girl and kisses her so the LF can wake everyone else up. I would even call that plot and tension. It would be one thing to argue that the content and style has little relevance to a 21st century audience -- a more reasonable argument would be that the exposition might be as alien to the average 21st century audience as a full Mass in Latin, so be prepared, audience -- but to state this as fact is questionable. But what is really concerning is that Downey claims that there is no moral, which belies the entire context in which the ballet was created. We might not share the conventions or assumptions -- moral or theatrical -- of a 19th century empire and a court that was the audience for the ballet, but to characterize Sleeping Beauty as if it were pure, thoughtless prettiness instead of a ritual that reinforced the audience's deeply conservative moral understanding of itself is neither historically accurate nor edifying for the readership.

And the people who write headlines for reviews: Just Right: Ronald Hynd's Sleeping Beauty blends tradition with delight. (Now I'm going to the local review thread to the Local Ballet Coverage, How's Your Newspaper Doing? thread to complain about the review itself )

Is it ever She's always so beautiful, but her beauty is rapturous in this photo.

I agree, and I think it's a shame that the hatchet job on Bass and Gottlieb undermines what I think should have been the point of the article, which is that the institutional power is behind Martins: he is the choice of the board, as it is presently constituted, and the rest of the donor/foundation money. Institutions are generally interested in institutional health because that guarantees the continuance of institutional power, and as impossible successions go, this was a lot more stable and by many institutional measures successful than a lot of alternate scenarios.Whether that would continue to be true if the Times turned on NYCB is another story, but Michael has pointed out the reasons this is unlikely. Whether that would continue to be true if the next Great Hope appeared on the scene is another, but for an existing classical choreographer gain the administrative and/or institutional experience as well as the fundraising connections overnight is impossible. Even if a brilliant potential successor appeared tomorrow, by the time that person gained the experience, Martins would be old enough to retire anyway. The appointment of Ratmansky at the Bolshoi is the exception and was rooted in institutional upheaval, while I would argue that NYCB as an institution is on more stable ground than when Balanchine was alive. Martins was weaned by an institution that existed far longer than the 35 years that NYCB existed under Balanchine. As long as this continues to be true, the only thing I think that could undermine it under the current administration would be if the Balanchine Foundation pulled permission for NYCB to dance Balanchine ballets. I think the appearance of Balanchine's equal as a choreographer is more likely. In a parallel universe that is not NYC-centric, the Children of Balanchine transplant Balanchine ballets and teaching and coaching across the planet, and the Balanchine Foundation seeks the next generation of repetiteurs, something sadly lacking in the Ashton and Tudor opuses.

I always have found the "links" function cumbersome. (It's the little icon that looks like a globe with two links underneath.) If you click it, the a first dialogue box opens and prompts for the URL, and then a second dialogue box opens and prompts for the text that becomes a link. To copy and paste meant going back and forth between two browser sessions with the open dialogue box. I realized today that if I type or pasted the text for the link into the post, then highlighted it and clicked the "quote" icon, I was prompted for the URL only, and the board software automatically inserted the highlighted text, creating the link.

Many thanks for your detailed description, Sonora!

I don't think the piece was balanced. At best it uses the standard rhetorical device of appearing to show both sides, but leaving the pro-Martins side for last, leaving the impression that his pro-Martins stance was the result of careful balancing. I think it is indicative that he says that on the one hand "Martins' detractors dismiss his skills at charming board members (especially, they cattily imply, female board members)", and then he dismisses Anne Bass' departure as "noisy," a rather catty description in itself, and adds "[h]er resignation may speak to a deeper, more widespread disaffection among other board members or to the specifics of Ms. Bass's relationship with Mr. Martins," which is hardly a subtle reference. He pretty much trashes Gottlieb's objections as the stuff of a man licking his wounds, and characterizes his actions as the result of "rivalries and hurt feelings and destructive gossip" bucket. He implies that not only is Gottlieb's defense of Anne Bass a result of this, but his support of Villella is the result of a snit, which apart from accusing him of bribery or extorsion, is about the worst accusation one could make against a critic. Those are his criticisms. Of Martins, he cites other people's criticism almost exclusively (his critics say this, his critics say that, his critics are undermined in the piece), except to say that perhaps he isn't a choreographic genius. I think it is a hit piece against specific critics of Martins in the guise of a defense of him.

I also loved this ballet the single time I saw it with ABT in the 90's. I love Mahler's vocal music and was specifically looking for the choreographic response to the music. I remember liking Kathleen Moore's performance in particular. I would love to see PNB revise this work.

Congratulations, Treefrog! I hope you enjoy the performance