dirac

I'd also be surprised if dancers weren't experimenting with HGH.

Wouldn’t you have some of the same concerns in a different form? Certainly in dance there would be no problems with yanking back someone’s medal or changing orders of finish, but perhaps a dancer who is using in order to improve endurance and shorten muscle/injury recovery times would presumably enjoy a benefit over dancers who are clean? (Per the article, Allen is suggesting only educational remedies and not drug testing or related punitive measures.)

The clinical director of the Birmingham Royal Ballet says there's a problem that needs to be addressed: Thoughts?

Thank you for posting , volcanohunter. I'm completely bemused by this. You'd think the Russians of all people would know better (?) I remember reading that studios would actually gear their movies toward a PG or R rating, because young people would shun a G rated picture as kid stuff.

pherank posted a link on the Dylan thread that said he was not going to show up owing to "pre-existing commitments." He doesn't seem to be turning down the prize outright, so he's still got to come up with a lecture at some point.

I add my thanks for those pictures, rg.

Thank you for posting this, pherank. Yes, it's a bad news-good news kind of thing, isn't it? From the article:

RIP. It's been a real Leonard Cohen kind of week, too.

An interview with van Manen by the late Horst Koegler, from Ilona Landgraf's invaluable blog.

Three dancers under music's orders stand held by the touch of silence for a moment posing. Now somewhere the flutes' sound lifts the enchantment. Easily unbound, they begin to move like plants and nod slowly, their three heads like blooms: their tendril hands describe the shapes of air. The slender feet on points of strength such as grass has, gently to divide the strength of stone, make them like gods miraculously borne: Sonia,Tania, Katia, svelte deities who sign to us and whom we may not greet. Theirs is a craft of quiet, they are shades of an old time when you could hear, no riot intervening, intricate and frail rhyme and music; men had leisure to ornament, only for pure pleasure, their utensils and their life; to live an hour or make a knife intent on every jewelled space. This is why they interlace their fragile hands and dance their pace of three before your ordinary face. -- Keith Douglas

I have no idea what other reaction they expected. I'd be rather pleased at this point if he blew them off entirely. Serve 'em right.

I wish I had seen her dance, Drew. I see from the article that she had contemplated a return to dance, and it's ballet's loss that she didn't. I wish her the best and hope that she finds fulfillment on her new path. I thought Ansanelli’s candor was admirable. Whatever else may be said about her, I don’t have the impression of someone who ever takes “the easy route" -- whatever that may be when you’re talking about someone rebuilding her life. Nor does she seem to be waiting around for someone on a white horse (although culturally such ideas are so deeply ingrained, even today, as to be almost unconscious, and not necessarily deserving of individual censure). It’s my understanding that many young female dancers have faced questions and problems similar to Ansanelli’s and while the article may emphasize the negative, it is true that the ballet world can also be a very tough one. It is good that today there are groups around to help dancers cope with the challenges of retirement while still relatively young and without the financial support of a pension.

Thanks for the alert, California. This looks really good.

Thanks for the heads-up, Cygnet. I mean to get to this eventually and I hope others report on it in the meantime.....

The award has indeed been generally very well received (the NY Times hasn't been this gaga about an entertainment story since Hamilton). And some writers have been sympathetic to the Committee's difficult decision:

With all due respect, he’s mistaken, IMO, although I agree that his lyrics come first. But those are lyrics, not poems (and I can’t say that what I’ve seen of Dylan’s attempts at actual poetry showed me much). Normally I’m not displeased to see Philip Roth snubbed by the Committee, but this year one could hardly blame him if he’s rolling his eyes into the next county. Can’t wait for Joni Mitchell’s reaction.

Natch. Hint, hint, Nobel committee.

True, pherank, Dylan’s work has already been amply recognized, both in critical and popular terms, throughout the world.And there are already plenty of high-profile prizes for songwriters. Like Quiggin, I hope this is a one-off........

I'm so glad the Committee chose to pass on those fame-craving poets, laboring in obscurity to master an extraordinarily demanding literary form with little hope of wide recognition absent a timely suicide. Also, Smokey Robinson, once identified by the honoree as America's greatest poet, is still around and about, with small hope of making the Nobel short list. Smokeywuzrobbed, I say.

An article on San Francisco photographer Fred Lyon, aged 92. Some great photos.

It would not be the first time that the committee has handed out a peace prize for a peace that actually hasn’t happened yet in hopes of influencing the process, but ideally perhaps you should get a peace prize for having actually made peace. But then they gave it to Obama at at a time when his peacemaking efforts had gone no further than the Beer Summit, so this is better, I'd say.

You know that I'll stay high, drinking coffee 'til I die............

Me, too, cobweb. Did anyone go (!?!)

I saw the thread title and just for a second there I thought PNB was actually going to try to exhume NYCB’s ill-fated Tricolore.....

Charmian Carr has died at age 73. RIP. Forever Liesl! It just goes to show -- sometimes one movie is enough. Related.