Helene

The first thing that this may be caused by is conflicting cookies. (I've had this issue before.) For Firefox on a Mac, 1. Go to Firefox/Preferences from the main menu 2. From the "Privacy" category on the left, click the Saved Passwords button. 3. Highlight and delete duplicate cookies for ballettalk.invisionzone.com and/or dancers.invisionzone.com. For Firefox on a PC: 1. Go to Tools/Options from the main menu. 2. From the "Privacy" category on the left, click the Saved Passwords button. 3. Highlight and delete duplicate cookies for ballettalk.invisionzone.com and/or dancers.invisionzone.com. For IE, 1. Go to Tools/Internet Options from the main menu 2. From the "General" Tab, click "Settings" under "Temporary Internet Files," 3. Click the "View Files" button. 4. Highlight and delete the duplicate cookie(s) for @ballettalk.invisionzone.com and/or @dancers.invisionzone.com For Safari, 1. Go to Safari/Preferences from the main menu. 2. From the Security tab, click the "Show Cookies" button. 3. Highlight duplicates of category with "Member_id" and "Pass_hash" in them for ballettalk.invisionzone.com and/or dancers.invisionzone.com. You may also have to delete any of the session cookies. For Safari, if this doesn't work, please delete all cookies for each board, and login again. I'm having trouble replicating on Safari, which I admit I usually ignore in lieu of Firefox. Please tell me if this works. I haven't found anything in the documentation that woud suggest that this is a problem with the new version; however there may be a setting that got re-set, blanked out, or otherwise reverted during the upgrade process.

I will look to see if there's any documentation on this issue in the new version.

We're scheduled to switch servers starting at 9AM, Thursday, 30 March (tomorrow). Please expect Ballet Talk to be down for 3-4 hours. When the site is back up, please log any issues here. They may do a complete re-install of the software, which means we'll lose our UI modifications. I will try to have them restored as soon as possible!

The Russian National Orchestra, conducted by Mikhail Pletnev, is in Seattle as part of the Visiting Orchestra series. Last night they played a concert of Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky. Most interpretations of Rachmaninoff's Vocalise are "Bolero"-like: a slow build towards a climax. The Russian National Orchestra's rendition of Vocalise was shaped like a tone poem, with clouds gathering, brooding, and then rushing by, leaving behind an ominous stillness. The young (late 20's) pianist Alexander Mogilevsky was the soloist in Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto #3. Not that there was anything wrong with the faster and more bombastic sections of the work, but he owned the soft cadenza in the first movement, and played the entire slow movement like a dream, literally and figuratively. The last work in the printed program was Tchaikovsky's Suite No. 3. It was great to sit in a concert hall and focus on the orchestra playing this piece, with its full brass and percussion sections at full tilt in a hall with great acoustics. While some of the tempi in the "Theme and Variations" movement would have made even Merrill Ashley sweat bullets, it was beautifully shaped. The Concertmaster played the violin solos with sensitivity and passion, and I am officially in Audience-Love with the oboist, who played his solo meltingly. The generous encore was the "Garland Dance" from Sleeping Beauty, and I had children through adult ballet dancers swarming in my head in the spring greens and pinks costumes in what I remembered of Balanchine's choreography. Although I've often seen orchestra's applaud their own after the concert, there were so many congratulatory looks and handshakes among players during the concert, that I wasn't sure if I had transported suddenly to a jazz concert or to a Sephardic bar mitzvah!

For Balanchine works, regardless of what we think the state of the rep at NYCB is, the Balanchine Foundation is controlling the work and actively recruiting the next generation of stagers. Villella, Farrell, Andersen, Tomasson, and McBride are among those running companies and training programs to keep the rep alive and well, and von Aroldingen and Russell are among those staging his works around the world. If Royal Ballet doesn't perform Ashton on a regular basis, who will keep the style and rep alive?

Is it possible that you accidentally checked the "Never save for this site" for BT, the last time you logged in? I had that problem once on my machine at home. This should be listed in the Firefox "Preferences" page. If so, you can remove this from the blocked list, log in, and then save it for future use. I believe in Firefox the browser setting overrides the checkbox. (I'm at work, where we're not allowed to install alternate browsers, so I can't test this.)

Treefrog, for posting this. Bliss' use of rhythmic changes is so unusual.

From the reviews that have come back from St. Petersburg, it doesn't sound like there'd be much "schlepping" in a Cojacaru performance Now that would tempt me to a second Thanksgiving in a row in London...

I forgot to ask what browser you're using.

Can you tell us when this started to happen? Has anyone else experienced this?

Charles Askegard has been married to Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City, since 2002.