Helene

If anyone goes to the Sunday, 9 May matinee or Tuesday, 11 May performance of Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, I'd love to know what you think of Noelani Pantastico and Olivier Wevers, who will dance the second movement. Does anyone know which Feijoo will dance Ballo? According to the San Francisco Ballet website, Lorena Feijoo dances her last performance of Diana in Mark Morris' Sylvia on Saturday evening, 8 May, but it would be possible for her to perform in NYC on Wednesday, 12 May. Or is it Lorna Feijoo, of the Boston Ballet?

Jean Claude van Dam also took years of ballet when he did martial arts, even before he made films.

Program II consisted of two films: "Balanchine Lives!" from 1997 and "New York City Ballet, 1965" a WNET production, and a Q&A with Francia Russell. The theme of "Balanchine Lives" is staging Balanchine, and it's comprised mostly of a series of interviews with Artistic Directors who programmed Balanchine ballets and the stagers who worked with the companies, as well as short excerpts of the actual staging rehearsals. Bernard Taper and Barbara Horgan were also interviewed. The film cut back and forth among the various stagers, so there wasn't an extended section for each of the ballets that were staged. It went by so fast that my notes were sketchy, and it was hard to get complete quotes, but I'll try to give the essence of what was said. The film opened with part of an interview with Francia Russell, then it segued to Karin von Aroldingen and Sarah Leland getting out of a cab in Toulouse, and trying to find the entrance to the rehearsal hall! von Aroldingen was the main stager for Liebeslieder Walzer, and Leland was there to partner her in rehearsals, and it was really neat to see them dance together. At one point they both were trying to tell the man not to look at his partner, which Leland explained something like, "it's not that you don't like her -- you're just blinded by her," which strikes me as such an American explanation. They were delightful to watch, and von Aroldingen was glowing during the staging. From listening to her talk about staging and about the ballets, it was clear why Balanchine liked her so much as a person. She talked about the ballets Balanchine created for her as "presents," but also said that the ballets were presents to anyone who danced his work. He created four great roles for her -- [Edited out "Man I Love" and added in] "Who Cares?"/"Stairway to Paradise" in Who Cares, Stravinsky Violin Concerto First Couple, Davidsbundlertanze, and "MacDonald of Sleat" in Union Jack -- which I think stand up to the ensemble roles he made for anyone. According to Russell, she inherited the rights to Liebeslieder Walzer and is a specialist in staging it, which she did in the film for Ballet du Capitole of Toulouse. Barbara Horgan explained that the rights for most of the ballets were divvied up in Balanchine's will, including shared rights to some ballets, and the Trust was created as the inheritors got together to "make a whole" out of the legacy. According to Russell (Q&A), Betty Cage inherited the rights to Symphony in C, which she gave to John Taras when he was unemployed after his stint at ABT. Russell said that he charged 3x the usual amount for the rights to the ballet, and that when PNB wanted to include it in next season's Balanchine Celebration program, he insisted on a long list of conditions as well, including using only his version, which was different than the version Russell preferred to stage, the one that PNB had performed in the past. (That's the reason that Symphony in C was replaced by Ballet Imperial on the program.) Because Taras died recently, what will happen to the rights is not yet public. Russell said she was flying to NYC tonight and was having dinner with Barbara Horgan tomorrow night, and that she would ask if anything was known, in the hope to be able to add Symphony in C back on the program. (Too bad Cage didn't create a lifetime trust for Taras, and then revert the rights back to the Trust.) Russell did emphasize that Taras was "very generous" when he gave PNB the rights for free to perform the 4th movement of Symphony in C during the opening celebration for McCaw Hall. In the Q&A dancer Jodie Thomas asked what would happen to the ballets when the copyrights expire. Russell said she would ask Horgan when they meet tomorrow. It was great to see a lot of PNB dancers in the audience watching the programs. Russell, Stowell, and Ballet Master Otto Neubert sat in my row for the films. Russell commented during the Q&A that the staging community is very close, and they know each other's quirks, so they were trying not to giggle too much as they listened to their colleagues' comments. Patricia Wilde appeared, looking like a proper Boston lady, in a high-necked cream-colored silk blouse with three fabric-covered buttons on the collar, and a pin (looked like a cameo) on her blue jacket. She said that if Pittsburgh Ballet Theater was going to do all of Jewels, she wanted it to be when she was still there. Elyse Bourne did the staging. I think it was she who said that she was of a different generation than the original dancers, but that everyone who worked with Balanchine in ary era has something to contribute. Susan Hendl staged Theme and Variations for Miami City Ballet, and she said that because Villella danced the male lead in the NYCB premiere, she asked him to help her with the male role and partnering. He was shown helping to coach during the film. She was very funny when trying to describe what she wanted vs. what the dancers had done; at one point she told them, "Anyone can 'plop.'" Patricia Neary staged Concerto Barrocco for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo; her voice sounds very much like Melissa Hayden's. Artistic Director Jean-Christophe Maillot was one of the most interesting people interviewed for the film. He contrasted von Aroldingen's approach -- "giving information to the dancers that they have to pick up and do something with" -- with Neary's -- "She has a lot of energy...is still dancing...having Pat together for a year would be death, but for a period it's like a whip." Maillot mentioned liking working with different stagers, because he said, "the spirit of the piece will be different" and said that it's good to have different intellects and aspect. Neary, taking off her pointe shoes, talked about wanting to keep up with the dancers, even though she was "old enough to be their mother, but don't tell them that." Farrell wasn't shown staging, but she said that when she saw Concerto Barrocco from the audience, she realized that the two soloists "were in danger of becoming intertwined" with their bowing, and that when she stages the ballet, she makes sure that the two women dance very closely together to reflect this aspect of the music. If Bart Cook was interviewed about staging, those parts were edited out, because he talked about working with Balanchine to round out the part of Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and seemed really tickled that he was able to make Balanchine laugh. There was ample footage of Russell staging A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1997, which reminds me of the NYCB "people we miss" thread. In the clips were Seth Belliston and Vladimir Bourakov dancing Puck, Maynard Stewart dancing Oberon, Lisa Apple dancing Helena, Konstantin Kouzin dancing Lysander, and Gavin Larsen and, I think, Rachel Butler as butterflies. Sadly some have retired and other are dancing elsewhere (sniff), although Larsen is only three hours away in Portland. In the film Russell told an anecdote about sitting next to Balanchine during a staging of Symphony in C in which he said that she was the only person who would know how it really went. She said that other people would know, but in the Q&A she emphasized how important it was for the next generation to learn to stage the ballets. She also said that Barbara Horgan will ask former dancers who have not transitioned into another field, or are unemployed, to try their hand at staging, if she thinks they have the aptitude. More On Balanchine: von Arolding quoted Balanchine as saying that the waltz is difficult because you have two legs but it's in three. Villella quoted him as saying that the floor on which they danced was the music. The second film was rather stagy, with Balanchine and his dancers watching the tape of the program. A dancer gave the intro to each of the four pas de deux in the program. Introducing the (first half of the) Agon pas de deux, Mitchell said that it was "like seeing live sculpture...becoming live before you." He danced with Suzanne Farrell. It was funny watching Villella pose like a movie star -- not quite James Bond, but... -- listening to his intro, in which he emphasized his and McBride's speed and energy. They then performed Tarantella at breakneck speed. Villella was terrific, but McBride was unbelievable, considering the pace and the intricacy of her part. For me it was the highlight of the program. d'Amboise introduced Meditation is his characteristic rambling, but energetic and upbeat style. He said that it was very Russian, and that Balanchine was "tasting a little sorrow" by making the ballet. He said that he thought there was a pleasure in the sorrow, and Balanchine replied that it (sorrow) was "not pleasure at all!" Meditation was the third ballet I saw NYCB perform, with Farrell and d'Amboise, and I didn't like it any more several decades later. If Sonatine is the "best Jerome Robbins ballet Balanchine choreographed," then I think Meditation must be the worst, but that's just me. Rounding out the program was the variations through the end of Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, danced by d'Amboise and Melissa Hayden. The most impressive part was how first d'Amboise started a series of turn sequences that started slow and built gradually, and Hayden followed with very slow fouettes that built to fast ones. What control they showed. Unlike Tarantella, I don't think TPdD works well on a small stage with the camera up close; the sweep is missing. There were some other Q&A questions that didn't involve staging. Someone asked why PNB has never done Vienna Waltzes. Russell replied that because of the expense and the number of dancers needed, PNB couldn't do it on their own. PNB and San Francisco Ballet were going to pay for it and peform it jointly on a proposed tour of LA, SF, Portland, Seattle, and, possible, Vancouver, but the project fell through. Another person asked what was the thinking behind next season's programming. Russell said they wanted to do their favorite Stowell ballet, which is Romeo and Juliet, a Stravinsky program, and to end with Silver Lining, because the entire company is in it, and they wanted to end their tenure "surrounded by the company." They also wanted to show the range of repertory. The question that is dear to my heart, but the answer to which was heart-breaking was why Russell and Stowell never staged Liebeslieder Waltzer, which Stowell had danced with Suzanne Farrell. She said that it was expensive and long, and that the ballet -- Stowell's favorite and Russell's "desert island" ballet -- was a "specialized, acquired taste." She said that even in NYC, the audience leaves "in droves," which she found "sickening." She talked about the people who leave during the pause. She said the people who love it, really really love it, but that the "bigger problem" is that the ballet has "limited audience appeal for such a long work." Part of the expense comes from the costumes, but the other part comes from the set, which is required by the trust. She said that she and Stowell have a great sadness that they've never done the ballet. Russell's tongue-in-cheek solution was to "bar the doors" and to make each audience member "watch it three times before you say you don't like it!"

1904 was a very good year -- the birth year of Balanchine, Ashton, and Moshe Feldenkrais, founder of the Feldenkrais Method (Awareness through Movement and Functional Integration). This Thursday, 6 May, Feldenkrais practitioners and organizations are planning rolling worldwide Awareness through Movement classes to honor him. For a full 24 hours, there will be a class somewhere in the world.

With the same 10x figure I would retrofit the Mercer Arena to meet code and ADA standards, and endow it to present student/apprentice productions of ballet, opera, modern dance, and chamber music.

In a post-performance Q&A after PNB's current season Balanchine program, both Russell and Stowell said that Liebeslieder is their favorite ballet. Alas, it will not be staged in Seattle during their final season. (And Symphony in C has been replaced in next season's Balanchine Program by Ballet Imperial. )

Tonight's presentation was phenomenal. First Doug Fullington introduced Diane Chilgren and spoke a little bit about what we'd be seeing. I didn't take notes, and I don't remember which of Chilgren's comments came at the beginning and which came during the Q&A, but here are paraphrases of some of them: *Chilgren got the silent tapes two months before starting production. She had scores of La Valse and La Source with minimal markings, and she did her own notation. Since she worked with Verdy on La Source, she was able to get Verdy's input and to confirm the work she did on her own. *Chilgren came to NYCB in the '70's and hadn't seen LeClerq dance; the La Valse tape was the first time she saw LeClerq. *The tape of La Valse was a pirated tape made by a fan at Jacob's Pillow in 1951. I don't think either Chilgren or Fullington said that the La Source tape was also a pirate -- it was shot from front and above -- but they both were made with hand-held cameras, and Chilgren said that a challenge was that because of that, the dancers sped up and slowed down. She had to match her playing to the tape, which she said were not the tempos she was used to from playing the pieces at PNB. *Someone asked Chilgren how she came to PNB. She said that Balanchine was artisitic director of a company in Geneva towards the end of his life, and she worked for that company until he died in 1983. At that point she decided that she wanted to return to the US. Barbara Horgan recommended PNB, and her family lives in the greater Pacific Northwest, so she wanted to return here. *Someone else asked how Chilgren became involved in dance. She said that someone -- and to this day she doesn't know who -- recommended her to NYCB, and just before she was about to do a recital at Town Hall, they called her to ask her to audition. She decided to wait until after the recital, and they called again. She went and they asked her to play excerpts from Firebird. She said after that, the Glazunov score they gave her was easy. The final part was playing for one of Balanchine's classes. She said he kept talking to her and eliminating all of the classical music she had. First she mentioned that he preferred show tunes because of the energy, but then added that he didn't like classical music played at incorrect tempi. Having passed that "test" she said that she really liked the Company and found Balanchine fascinating, so she stayed while continuing to perform concerts on her own. The first half of the program was a series of different tapes, beginning with the silent version of Tanaquil LeClerq and Nicolas Magallanes performing the Eighth Waltz (to "Valse Nobles et Sentimentales). For some reason, it elicited some giggles from the audience. Then the ballet was repeated with the piano accompaniment by Chilgren, and it bloomed, yet at the same time was eerily intimate. LeClerq was in her early 20's when it was made, and what a unique sensibility she had at such an early age. La Valse was followed by interviews with Violette Verdy, who started with one thought and kept branching farther and farther out, from Balanchine and French music and how he used it more than French choreographers, to dancing the roles he made for her using French music, to working on the reconstruction. There was footage of Chilgren recording the music as the film of La Source played, and a discussion between Verdy and Chilgren, in which Chilgren held her ground to get a word in edgewise One of the topics they talked about was trying to figure out the timing to make it seem like the dancers were responding to the music, not the other way around. One challenge they discussed was that Villella got airborne quickly when he jumped, so that it was hard to time; in one instance, Chilgren played so that on the four she was back in exact synch with him. The film itself was almost all pas de deux and solos for Verdy and Villella. There were several shots of the corps as Verdy and Villella entered, but until the finale, there was almost no corps action. The dancing was phenomenal, and the woman's role is so difficult. Not that the man's solos are a cinch, but, for example, in the second pas de deux, Verdy has to keep her leg up through various supported positions, and her leg was light as a feather the entire time. She had two solos that went on so long, it was hard to imagine the stamina it would take to survive them, let alone making them look effortless. After a short break, a French film version of "les etoiles avec les danseurs" of the NYCB performing Western Symphony was shown. The short excerpt from the beginning of the second movement, and the extended one from the fourth are familiar from the PBS Balanchine documentary. What a cast: Diana Adams and Herbert Bliss in the first movement, Melissa Hayden and Nicholas Magallanes in the second, Allegra Kent and Robert Barnett in the now rarely seen third movement (scherzo), and LeClerq and Jacques d'Amboise in the fourth. Before it was shown, Fullington mentioned that it was filmed one week before LeClerq contracted polio, and it is the last film of her dancing. During the intermission I heard someone say to Francia Russell that she was the star of the second half, which she shrugged off, but Fullington pointed out that she was one of the corps girls in the first movement, on her first assignment at NYCB (on a European tour no less). So when she came into focus, she got a round of applause. If someone told me I could have one of the three films, I wouldn't know how to decide. The footage of La Valse was so poignant, Verdy, especially, and Villella were dreams in La Source, and even though I think Western Symphony is a bit of a dog, all of those great dancers were in it...

Which would be ironic, because for years, Americans would buy tickets to the company because of its foreign roster; American dancers were considered "inferior," the same way American pianists, violinists, and conductors were considered inferior to their European counterparts.

The first week of casting is posted to the SFB website. This Saturday night the principal roles are: Sylvia Conductor: Andrew Mogrelia Sylvia: Vanessa Zahorian* Aminta: Joan Boada* Orion : Peter Brandenhoff* Diana: Lorena Feijoo* Eros/Sorcerer: TBD *=first time in role I hope you have a wonderful time and post about it!

There is more info on the SFB website about Morris' Sylvia: Program Notes and Sylvia Comes to America. Some quotes from the former: Also from the notes four dancers have been cast as Sylvia: Yuan Yuan Tan, Vanessa Zahorian, Megan Low, and Elizabeth Miner. Casting isn't up yet for this program, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Low. A quote from the latter:

Thank you for the information; I'll check their website and hope for a repeat visit. A college an hour south of Seattle sounds like Evergreen in Olympia. I wonder whether the publicity in Seattle was low-key, or I missed the ads because I was away for part of the month.

It was called "Lynn" and subtitled, "the autobiography of Lynn Seymour." It was very candid, and I loved it. I remember trying to order one from the ballet bookstore on Broadway, right around the corner from Lincoln Center, soon after it was published in the 80's by a British publisher. After months of hearing nothing, I walked into the shop one day, and there was a copy on the shelf. I took it up to the cash register, only to have the bookstore owner snatch it out of my hands, hug it close to himself, and tell me, "This copy is reserved for someone else." Luckily, it's available through Alibris, and you don't have to be favored by a territorial bookstore owner

I envy you for being able to see Miami City Ballet. Since Edward Vilella is there, I expect good ballet from Miami I hope to be able to travel to Miami to see them someday. I'm afraid that for most ballet companies that tour, the Western US has a northern limit of San Francisco.

Meg Tilly is also in her early 40's, and I remember her putting her leg behind her ear in The Big Chill.

Dance is such a contrast to figure skating, where many pairs and dance teams are married or romantically involved. I once saw Denis Petrov partner Elena Bechke (his regular pairs partner) and Ekaterina Gordeeva in one Stars on Ice number, but on the whole, skating couples practice day in/day out with the same person for years on end. One of my travel group commented on watching some of the dance practices at this year's World Championships; she said that there were a lot of visible differences in the way different skaters treated their spouses/significant others in the pressure-filled run-up to the championships. The question in skating is also the opposite: while watching couples who are not/are not known to be involved is "how could they perform like that if they're not?" While for dancers, it's pretty much the norm for the majority of partnerships.

I saw the Serenade/Carmina Burana program on Saturday afternoon. My general experience of Serenade over several dozen performances has been that the opening tableau and slow intro are where the corps show unison, and if there is a problem, it appears later on. It may have been partly the (unusual for me) vantage point in the back of the Orchestra, but in this performance, not only were the body types contrasting -- one of the shortest and thinnest girls was in the downstage right point directly in front of one of the tallest and fullest girls -- but the angles of the arms, necks, heads, and shoulders didn't look uniform as the curtain rose and the corps began its initial movement. Even Patricia Barker's entrance as Waltz Girl seemed heavy, and I wondered if she was okay, or if the grand jete exit wasn't part of this version. Not the most auspicious beginning, but once the corps started to move, the differences between its members blended into unison. Kaori Nakamura made a splendid entrance as Russian Girl, and her dancing showed a beautiful contrast between soft arms and shoulders and clear and quicksilver leg and footwork. During the quick circle of jetes in the first movement, she had a slight hestitation at the top of each jump, like a little grace note. This version emphasized the diagonals, including some hip thrusts in Nakamura's role, and she danced it as if she was inventing the role. It seemed to me that Russian Girl was the center of the ballet, or at least the protagonist, because of the way she seemed to ignite the swirling corps, and got them to follow. Kylee Kitchens danced Dark Angel. In the opening movement, she was lush, yet vibrant, and a wonderful contrast to Nakamura. I think the roles she danced in the Balanchine Centennial programs must have given her confidence, because she is so much more vivid than earlier in the season. Once Barker re-entered at the end of the first movement, her performance was right on track, with a sunny sweep to the second movement waltz, and a driving sweep in the third movement. She was partnered by Stanko Milov. I think this version has a few changes for the man, because I was more aware of his role. I remember that when the Waltz Man enters at the end of the first movement, he moves at a diagonal towards the Waltz Girl. Milov seemed to take much the same angle, looking into the wings, that Fate Man takes in the last movement, and it was a chilling moment. The way that the fourth movement was danced was the biggest change I've seen in the ballet, and I think it starts with something superficial: the women leave their hair up. (And I've always loved the hair.) Just before that, at the end of the third movement, Barker didn't have the "get the hair down" struggle, and her turns and arms were softer as she fell to the ground. When Kitchens emerged with Christophe Maraval, it was as if she was the younger version of Barker's Waltz Girl, resembling her physically more with her hair up, a more severe look. She started with a mission, more like Justice than Mercy. (Or like a dancer on an upward course before experience has a chance to knock her around a bit.) When the Waltz Girl and Dark Angel alternately embrace Fate Man and chaine to side, the turns weren't about the swirling hair -- or getting it down in the first place, as the SFB ballerinas I saw a couple of weeks ago had to do -- they were so much softer, as if there was a force pulling them back slightly as they moved away, not rushing towards and away. The entire movement was softer and by avoiding any semblance of melodrama, it was that much more tragic. For the first time, I understood why Serenade is a desert island ballet. There were two corps members who were standouts: The first was the tiny blond dancer who opened the ballet in the stage right front point; I don't recognize her from the program, and she may be one of the professional division students who supplemented the corps. While her arms tended to be a bit angular, she had lovely epaulement throughout, and her opening pose was wonderful. The second was Tempe Ostergren, who was also wonderful in Carmina Burana, and who caught my eye partly because of her resemblance to figure skater Susanna Poykio, both literally and in the clear, free, complete quality of her movement. There was a lot of superb dancing in Carmina Burana. The three couples in the opening movement -- Kitchens/Ade, Rausch/Gorboulev, and Lowenberg/Herd -- made the most out of the differences in the choreography, which doesn't seem that easy given the rather low lighting and identical unitards. Jordan Pacitti, Josh Spell, and Lucien Postlewaite are as interesting a set of three young men dancing together that I've seen since Martins cast the young Boal, Byars, and Edwards together. Somehow the differences in the way they look and move are unified in the tension they bring to their interactions with each other. Nakamura and Yin were delightful in the "Primo Vere" movement, but I can't help cringing when she has to change from ballet slippers to pointe shoes in what seems like seconds. I think the choreography for the woman in slippers is stronger than the choreography on pointe, which doesn't look as differentiated from the rest. "In Taberna" is a powerful piece of music, and while Carrie Imler was striking as the harlot -- I kept thinking that she'd make a great Gamzatti -- it was Olivier Wevers' Guy and Christophe Maraval's Monk who brought down the house. Wevers' performance was not as much of a surprise, because I've seen him dance with the same energy, drama, and vividness before, but Maraval, who is usually cast as Mr. Elegant (which he is), or at least The Grown Up, was a revelation, because this was the first time I've ever seen his Dark Side, and he's really, really, really good at being bad My problem with "Cour d'Amours" is that right after the powerful music and debauchery of "In Taberna," the music becomes childlike on both sides of a soprano/baritone duet, and Stowell has choreographed a dance for a medieval princess, complete with tiara. I think the music and the choreography are tepid by comparison to what preceeded it, and even Louise Nadeau's and Jeffrey Stanton's lovely dancing couldn't make an impact. I think that either the music should be cut until the soprano solo, or that the stage should be left to the singers, (already in character and in costume) during the first half of the movement. Because the "Adam and Eve" pas de deux (as it's usually described here) to the soprano solo can stand up to "In Taberna," and Nadeau was ravishing in it. Kudos too to the Seattle Choral Company, soprano Catherine Haight, tenor Paul Karaitis, and, especially baritone Erich Parce, who has a beautiful voice of great range, has terrific stage presence, and who looks at home on a stage full of dancers.

The NYCB casts that I have listed for performances from 1984-1989 are: Adams/Carter: Farrell/Lavery von Aroldingen/Lüders Calegari/Neubert and Lüders Kistler/Proia Fugate/Lüders Verdy/Magallanes: Nichols/Joseph Duell, Neubert, and Ziemiench (sp?) Kozlova/Crabtree and Neubert* *Some sort of gala where only four songs for two couples were danced. Hayden/Watts: McBride/Cook Watts/Moore, Cook, and Soto Melinda Roy/Soto Jillana/Ludlow: Saland/Andersen Fugate/Kozlov Lopez/Fischer

Thank you so much for the info on Lewitze and Coutereel, and "Stephen" rings a bell. I bet I wrote Lewitze down for the wrong role, and that she danced the Adams, not the Verdy part, in the performance I saw. HF

I also loved the Liebeslieder performance by SFB I saw in March, 1998. The cast was mostly different: I noted Allemann/Poussakov in the Adams/Carter roles, Berman/Faulls in the Hayden (later McBride)/Watts roles, Diana/Diaz in the Jillana/Ludlow roles, and, unfortunately, names I don't recognize, and I'm not sure I can read my writing in the Verdy/Magallanes roles: "Lewitzke/Contereel" is what they look like. I'm sure Diana danced Jillana's, and I was pretty certain at the time that it was Berman who was so moving in the forward falls into her partners arms during the deep, burnished cords of the third-to-last song. I must not be very good at matching faces in the program to dancers!

I agree with Ari's point about getting as much exposure as possible. It was only after several years of seeing every Balanchine ballet NYCB performed during that time, and reading everything I could get my hands on, that I could look at the next new-for-me ballet and recognize why the choreography was a Tanaquil LeClerq part or a Jaques d'Amboise part. Today, if, for example, The Figure in the Carpet were revived, I would look at it through the lens of the original cast. That doesn't work for every choreographer, especially Petipa's work which has gone through over a century of changes and revisions, but it works for me for the ones who were inspired by particular dancers. For Liebeslieder, I think of Adams and Verdy, and after seeing Jillana in a short clip of the ballet, of her too. Unless a dancer is marring the phrase with tricks, ignoring the music, or just doing his/her schtick regardless of the ballet, usually there is something in the performance that is right on the mark, or even revelatory.

I read Joy Goodwin's The Second Mark, in which the author describes the lives of the top three pairs in the 2002 Olympics, including Shen and Zhao, and Mao's Last Dancer, Li Cunxin's memoir, back to back. Common to the experience of all three people from China were the brutal poverty under which they were raised and the extreme training conditions under which they worked. In one way Li was the luckiest of the three in that he trained indoors and found sympathetic and wise teachers who showed interest in him as a person, but he was also born early enough to have experienced the Cultural Revolution, and political studies took up a lot of time during his early training. I was already strange for me as a child in the early sixties witnessing the sexual, political, and drug revolutions of the late sixties and early seventies; even if I was a little too young to experience them at the time, they had drastic ramifications for the society in which I became an adult. What is nearly impossible for me to imagine is what it must have been like for Li to have been isolated from all things Western pursuing a single-minded discipline, and then to have been thrown into a new culture in which personal and political freedom were equally extreme from all that he knew. Has anyone else read this book?

I hardly agree with Clement Crisp all the time. I wish I had seen the same performances that Edwin Denby did, because I think that would explain the very rare "huh?" I've had when reading him. Sometimes I wondered if Arlene Croce and I were in the same theater. Same with Tobi Tobias, Jennifer Dunning, Joan Acolella, and a number of other critics. Not to mention countless posters here whose opinions I respect and trust, even when I disagree. I respect their points of view because I've seen the context which they criticize, regardless of whether they like or admire a choreographer, dancer, or work, or whether their opinion, preferences, or taste match mine.

The "don't get its" I referred to in my post about Liebeslieder were believing that there's no difference between the Brahms Love Song Waltzes -- two song cycles written five years apart to poems of the same writer -- and that "emotionally drenched" performances are positive or even appropriate in dancing the ballet. Perhaps the latter attribute, which wasn't seen by others on this post who saw the POB production, was what made it difficult to see the development in the choreography and the character of the different couples. But if I saw, for example, Heather Watts approach La Fille Mal Gardee like Calcium Light Night, whether I liked it or disliked it, I wouldn't decide whether Ashton's choreography was good or bad or too long or too short based on it, just as I wouldn't confuse NYCB's Bournonville Divertissements with Bournonville, as much as I loved watching Suzanne Farrell, Kyra Nichols, and Merrill Ashley in it. The part that I find long about Liebeslieder is the break between the two parts, mainly because the audiences I've been part of have tended to treat this as the seventh inning stretch, literally in the case of the mid 1980's performances at NYCB, when full-voiced conversations of, "So how 'bout those Mets?" were coming from all sides.

Ms. Brown, First, I would like to apologize for attributing Zoe Anderson's review of Return to you, which was careless. (I did, however, read this review. Perhaps "ropey" is a common term in criticism.) I will correct this in the original post. I never said you disliked the Balanchine ballets that Dance Theater of Harlem performed. I questioned whether you "got" them, particularly because of the criticism you gave of Rasta Thomas' performance: "but this sun god was giving off rays of self-love in his quest for wisdom; he's an Apollo for the Oprah age," "I found him unbearably unmusical and undignified," and "his idea of the god Apollo was just one big, attention-seeking baby." I saw his performance in the ballet a few months before you did, and perhaps he's added "smirks" to his portrayal. If you thought he was "unmusical," and I didn't, that isn't the issue. In the full-length Apollo, for the first half of the ballet Apollo is a baby, he is supposed to be undignified -- ex: Balanchine's famous retort to the person who asked him how he could portray Apollo on his knees -- and he loves himself enough to reject two perfectly fine, if not perfect muses, in a rather arrogant and dismissive fashion. Since Balanchine used and saw his dancers so clearly, it is not inconceivable that he used some of the arrogance that Lifar shows in his interviews with Nancy Reynolds in Striking a Balance in the original. You did not say that Thomas started in character and never grew the portrayal any farther, or that he missed the tone of immaturity and arrogance appropriate for the various stages of the ballet, which would have suggested to me that you "got" the intention. Hence my question. Helene Kaplan

Quiggin and Leigh Witchel, Thank you both very much for the recommendation.