dirac

THANK YOU! I just watched a brief segment and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest.....

Albert Finney died last month to relatively little comment, perhaps overshadowed by several other celebrity deaths. I had read that he had been in ill health. RIP. I think only Tom Courtenay is left of the Angry Young Men generation of leading actors. Finney, O'Toole, Williamson, Stephens -- all gone. Photo gallery

Macaulay did say he would be replaced and my guess is the replacement will have the title of chief dance critic and a salary. Things have gone downhill for arts reviewing at the NYT, but not so much, I trust, that they would actually descend to the depths of using stringers only for dance pieces. Indeed. Never did a bee buzz more insistently in someone's bonnet.

Great news!

A jukebox musical using Jackson's work would benefit his estate, which is at present using its muscle to preserve Jackson's posthumous bankability.

The producers are probably calculating that by 2020 the documentary will have faded away and #MeToo will have died down. The Jackson estate is playing hardball with HBO and the Jackson kids are threatening to sue Wade Robson and James Safechuck, presumably pour encourager les autres.

Even taking her body of work into account, it's still a bit hard for me to see. I ever thought, "Oh, here's Acocella with that again," (which has been happening regularly for me with Macaulay). I guess it's true that these days we must be grateful for small favors. It is good that Remnick understands that The New Yorker is obliged to cover the dance world, and if Homans writes more than Acocella did, that in itself will be a change for the better.

As I recall Homans was pretty definite and pretty broad, although she expressed a hope that she might be wrong. The odd thing, of course, was that she wrote that at a time when several promising choreographers were reviving the scene, so her commentary already seemed out of date.

I had the same thought. I could understand the comment if she was writing and reviewing as frequently as Croce did, but often as not when you saw Acocella's byline the piece was about something else. I did not begrudge Acocella the opportunity to write on other topics but I wanted to read about dancing. Pretty depressing if you can write as little as that on your special subject and still not avoid repeating yourself. It really is too bad because I always enjoyed reading Acocella even when I didn't agree with her. I do understand that during her tenure there were long stretches when the dance scene was less than inspiriting, shall we say, and I sympathize, but I still wanted to read about what was out there. I will say for Homans that she has improved since her stuff started appearing out of the blue in The New Republic many moons ago, although she will never be a go-to writer for me. Not a particularly venturesome choice on Remnick's part, but if it means we see more reviews and features on dance in The New Yorker, then I just might consider renewing my subscription, which I dropped some time ago.

Review of a Previn classical box set.

It seems to me that Christopher Wheeldon's skin color is probably the least troubling aspect of a jukebox musical based on the life of Michael Jackson. Have these people no shame? Apparently they are carrying on even after the HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland” (which is devastating viewing). I hope everyone involved loses their shirts and Nottage's and Wheeldon's checks bounce.

Thanks for posting, canbelto. I only knew 90210 from the Ben Stiller parody but sorry to see anyone go at such a relatively young age.

vipa wrote: And from what I could tell, Martins handled the situation with Whelan tactfully enough. News that a dancer doesn’t want to hear is going to hurt no matter how it is delivered, although of course some methods are better than others. Kathleen O'Connell wrote: Yes - and if I remember correctly, after that injury the two of them shared the ballet. So perhaps there was some other reason why Balanchine wouldn’t initially give Ashley any more performances (?) As others may already have observed, Balanchine didn’t let “ownership” stop him if he really wanted to swap out another dancer for a different one. According to Violette Verdy, he once took her role in “Emeralds” away from her with the helpful explanation that Christine Redpath didn’t have enough to dance, and when Farrell returned to the company in the seventies he gave her, briefly, McBride’s “The Man I Love” in “Who Cares?” to dance (!?!)

Indeed. I wish it were a better movie. An interview from 2014:

Agreed on all counts. Could be, but the announcement does say that "the Board concluded" that it would be best to have a dual leadership (in contrast, elsewhere it states that "Stafford and Whelan" invited the artistic input of Justin Peck). I can't believe that Stafford was actually eager to cede programming of the season and the commissioning of new works to Whelan. On the other hand, Stafford will still be supervising all "artistic operations" - not sure what that means.......

38 is indeed relatively young for a job as big as this one, and theoretically Stafford could hold the position for about the same amount of time that Martins did -- not necessarily a good thing.

BBC News obituary.

The de-Isherwoodizing started early on, with John van Druten’s stage adaptation, which was titled “I Am a Camera.” I’d say the two central things that got lost were 1) the cabaret was not so much a Symbol of Moral Degeneracy as a little refuge from same and 2) the sleaziest people in Isherwood’s stories aren’t German. Thank you for the clip, Quiggin. Haney was charming in The Pajama Game. Hers was a sad story. Verdon had a marvelous face for the stage but the camera didn’t like her as much. The film of Cabaret is one of the great movie musicals and it was only Fosse’s second picture as a director. The leap that Fosse made as a filmmaker between Sweet Charity and Cabaret was truly prodigious.

I expect that there’s relatively little comment because the pros and cons of the appointees have already been discussed at length. The choice has a rather Cheneyesque flavor, but at least it’s a choice. It’ll be interesting to see how things go as Stafford and Whelan jostle for position ( a certain amount of jostling seems inevitable given the job descriptions, no matter how well they get on personally). No doubt the Times will be on the case. Fingers crossed for the Balanchine repertory.

Thank you for posting, Mashinka. Sorry to hear this, even if he was of a ripe age. Yes, the obits are rolling in. (Of course, if you are a famous person of a certain age, they generally have your obit on file. I think there was one instance where the NYT ran an obit whose author had already passed on to a better world by the time the subject of the obit had done so.) That’s a lovely story, Drew, and thank you for sharing it. Quite a life. The Guardian The New York Times CBS News Pittsburgh

Williams isn’t terribly sexy, either, although that didn’t stop her from essaying Marilyn, otherwise a good performance. I have a hard time seeing her replicating Verdon’s hot pixie appeal, but I think she will be reasonably well cast here. How did you like that production of Cabaret, Deflope?

I haven't seen The Favourite, but my understanding is that it's comedy of an acerbic sort and not overmuch attention was paid to sticking too close to the historical record. I doubt that the Queen did the deed with either Sarah or Abigail but I guess it juices up the movie, so to speak. The old BBC series The First Churchills is available for checking out with John Neville and Susan Hampshire as the Marlboroughs and Margaret Tyzack, excellent as Anne. (The production values are of course not what we expect these days in television serials, which does present something of a handicap when telling the story of England's greatest general, with the armies of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet being represented by about a dozen carefully placed extras.)

"Sanitized" is a strong word. "All That Jazz" has its share of special pleading but Fosse's self-portrait is more candid than many. It's always better for dancers to play dancers. (Fosse did succeed in making Roy Scheider look like a dancer but that was Fosse.) There will be a lot of posing with hats and snapping fingers, I expect.

She had a good relationship with both parents. I actually hope the show isn't too prurient, but that's a lot to ask for these days.

"The Monkees" was one of those shows that didn't perform spectacularly during its original run but lasted forever in syndication. We also have a thread on the passing of Davy Jones here.