Helene

I don't think a roster with Graf, Smirnova, Zakharova, Merkuriev, Richardson, Shirinkina, Shklyarov, Matvienko, and Malakhov is slim, and the others I either have seen and liked, like Lamb and Underwood, or don't know. However, not knowing/having seen dancers is no reason to think I wouldn't like or love them. I tend not to like gala rep so much, but there are names on there I wouldn't miss if I were in NYC.

Well, MCB has hired Michael Kaiser as a consultant.

The Kennedy Center has made its trade-offs: next season they are presenting/producing the Mariinsky Ballet, Suzanne Farrell Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Ballet West, National Ballet of Canada, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and Ballet Across America. What should they have dropped in order to have presented "Bolero"? Intermissions that last for long fund-raising hours aren't an option at the Kennedy Center.

Barring a very public mad scene or deliberate attempts to undermine, as opposed to withholding, all of this is why I think the Board will be the one to end up with the mud on its face. Perhaps that's one of the reasons the Villella supporters are so willing to speak on the record, exposing how they were out-maneuvered and a weak opposition; at least they won't be tarred by the decision. Going into the past season, the Board had all of the ammunition they needed, as you describe: Nothing like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. When they allowed an angry, hurt former leader to continue to lead, albeit with his wings clipped, it's not like they didn't know their man, having complained that he was willful and recalcitrant in his refusal to think about succession -- even Balanchine did that, but, perhaps, Villella learned something from the infighting that went on at NYCB around that topic -- or to budget along their more conservative lines. They knew the ego, they knew the temperament, and they knew who was loyal to Villella, on the Board, in the administration, and in the Company. If they were surprised by any of this, then add that to the list of blunders. If it was a correct trade-off based on the risks of severing quickly and having transitional management while the search for a successor was on, then the Company is likely in worse shape than we think.