dirac
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Adding that if you haven't seen this particular picture in a theater you haven't seen it, no matter how large your TV screen. In fact it actually comes off as slightly less of a movie than it is, because the pacing is off -- Lean gives you several more seconds than you need with a smaller screen to absorb the images, so you're sitting there on the couch wondering why you're still staring at sand dunes. I've never actually seen the restored version in a theater, so I will catch this if I can. Thanks, pherank.
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Thank you for the links, California and Kathleen.
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With the Sacklers we have the corpses piling up visibly every year the opioid crisis goes on; the death-dealing of the Koches can be ignored more easily. Stuben mentioned Christopher Leonard. He has written an op-ed for the Times here: In fairness to Charles Koch, he has always kept a low public profile. It was David and the missus who did the social climbing via arts philanthropy and other methods. (Whether they actually got anything out of the performances or not has no great relevance IMO.)
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"Good Morning America" anchor laughs at boys who do ballet
dirac replied to Syzygy's topic in Ballet News & Issues
I was especially happy with the Kimmel piece at the time it was aired: not just an interview, but a lengthy sketch at the beginning of the program and other ABT dancers took the stage as well. -
Probably little or no change, depending on what the will and trust say. The socialite trophy wife is over twenty years his junior and reportedly she was the one spearheading the arts contributions.
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Thanks for posting, Syzygy. I didn't know about it. I hope it's a good read and makes her some money. I may pick it up. To paraphrase Neil Simon, she’ll be the spryest one in the cemetery.
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I can’t really address that. I was just noting a possible different meaning behind what he said. You have a point, but maybe he thought “Here’s something for parking,” would be too bald on its own. What I actually find at least as unpleasant is his allegedly confiding that he needs sex before a performance and telling her he’ll sing better tonight thanks to her, as if all he’d received was a (non-erotic) message. That most definitely implies a service being performed. I guess opera stars don’t have groupies for this sort of, uh, thing......
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The alleged quote I saw was: I tend to think he meant what he said - he felt strange leaving money at all since that wasn't the nature of what happened as he saw it, but as the richer party he also didn't want her to have to cough up for parking ($10 in the 80s or 90s would be about twice that today).
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Particularly impressive when you consider that many people were certain his voice would blow out early because he was singing too much. The desire to stay in the game is not really surprising from an artist with a lifelong appetite to perform as much as possible, as Mashinka's Nureyev comparison suggests.
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I don't read Rolling Stone much any more, but I recently became aware that the magazine has given David Crosby an advice column titled "Ask Croz." Naturally I wanted to share this with our readers here. Need help in sorting out life issues, Ballet Alerters? Croz is here for you! Now that Crosby has his space, it seems to me that a rival columnist is called for. I’m open to suggestions. I think “Ask Keef” has real possibilities.
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Gia Kourlas Named Dance Critic of the NYT
dirac replied to fondoffouettes's topic in Writings on Ballet
True. The WaPo is solid on Washington and national news - David Fahrenthold on Trump in the last election cycle was awesome - but it's never the equal of the Times. The Times also has better arts reporting and is still willing/able to send its critics out of town. Still, as the only other paper with a full time dance critic, it's certainly entitled to our support. The LA Times used to be in there swinging, too, but it's been experiencing some bad times. -
The risk for dancers who are candid about competition and favoritism is that they get labeled as problem children, with the implication that they should just talk about how wonderful the AD is and how grateful they are for such fabulous opportunities and so on and so forth. (Noting that of course in many cases these protestations are perfectly genuine.) The quotes around “making friends” certainly seems apposite. So you’re squeamish about brown-nosing and logrolling, Simone? You’d rather be judged on how well you dance and your suitability for roles? Well, just get with the program. This can be a particularly fraught issue for people who want to be judged on the quality of their work and are wary of seeming to be bootlickers (please note the “seeming”) – Merrill Ashley talks about this in her book. Eventually she realized that her diffidence was making it appear that she didn’t like Balanchine very much when in fact she adored him, and she wisely took steps to correct that impression, even though they went against her natural inclinations. That seems a reasonable accommodation to me. Just so. It’s refreshing, actually.