dirac

"Gesticulate" is a great number, isn't it? I've always thought Keel was underrated. Thanks for the heads-up, miliosr. Don't know as I'd call "There's No Business Like Show Business" and "Let's Make Love" peak Monroe, however. I think the "Heat Wave" number is one of the most tasteless things she was ever made to do. Cole did splendidly by her in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," however. Jane Russell, too.

There's no doubt having a rich spouse can help - Beverly Sills was able to use her husband's scratch to force Julius Rudel to give her the role of Cleopatra, for example - but Portman's and Millepied's finances may be completely separate as far as we know. I remember Violette Verdy said something to the effect of "When the Opera calls, you go." it's a tough gig to turn down even when you know the hazards, which Millepied was warned about.

It doesn't sound as if the problems were purely Millepied's: If that's the kind of change that was being resisted.....hmmmmm.

They would be well employed.

No indeed. I've got my Ouija board right here and I’m dying to hear from Andre Levinson.

Hardly a high bar to jump, I fear. I liked Rickman's sly performance. Thompson did the best she could with the thankless material.

Another tough loss. RIP. It apparently came as a shock to Rickman and his friends and family, as well; the cancer apparently came on over Christmas and the illness was short - seemingly similar to that of Roger Rees (another campy Sheriff of Nottingham). Rickman's Gruber in Die Hard is arguably the best action movie villain ever, and he inhabits a top-drawer film. He was also a splendid Rasputin for HBO. Another one of Rickman's early pictures, Truly, Madly, Deeply, was better in concept than execution, but I have a soft spot for it and the role was of a kind that Rickman didn't often get to play.

I don't remember exactly, but I imagine it was probably while channel surfing. I would have had very little exposure to the high arts without PBS, and even in the changing media landscape what PBS offers is still very important (also true with regard to documentaries). It doesn't offer anything comparable to the BBC, but PBS is hamstrung by nasty political opposition - although that's not an excuse for all of PBS' failings.

There's no doubt that arts organizations need to get with the new era in many of the ways Kathleen describes. However, I wouldn't write off the idiot box just yet. Television and particularly the networks still command the attention of a lot of eyeballs. True, the networks have discarded the arts programming that originally justified their sweet deals (they'd get rid of a lot of news, too, if they could get away with it), but the arts programming that PBS still makes available is of considerable value IMO and it's available to anyone who has a television set, and there are still a lot of those around. And not everyone can afford those 500 channel packages. There were no special arts programs in my schools. I saw dance and orchestras and foreign language movies on TV, specifically on PBS. Television shouldn't replace arts education in the schools by any means - but sometimes it has done, and it may continue to do so at least in the immediate future and possibly for some time to come.

Thanks for commenting, everyone. Classical music has also disappeared from NPR and only a few classical radio stations are hanging on, and those just barely. The Met Opera broadcasts are also gone from the public airwaves, at least in my vicinity. On the other hand, the Internet has made such broadcasts by the Met and others far more easily accessible - for those who seek them out. It's always been true that the arts in the U.S. have depended on older people with the money and leisure to spend on them. The question is whether those grayheads of the future will be that interested or invested in the arts in sufficient numbers - and not so much the Millenials but their kids, who will have been raised from the cradle getting their entertainment from their gadgets, and mostly for free or almost free. It also seems to me that the arts aren't the middle-class totems they once were in this country. It's okay to be educated and upwardly-mobile and not interested in art music, for example. So is the glass half-full, or half-empty? The former, one hopes. Other opinions?

Arts organizations are having trouble making their case to deep-pocketed millennials.

Thanks, Natalia. It was a very nice float and cheers to the gallant girl who rode on it. I must say the coverage in general was disappointing this year - not as much as usual, and mostly favoring floats, bands, commercials, and network and corporate promos over the equestrian marchers even more than usual.

I'm not sure that later experience really says much about how Balanchine was considering his options earlier, or how things might have turned out if he had stayed in Paris. However, it's probably just as well he wasn't around for the Occupation, although I like to think he would have left, thus possibly ending up in the U.S. anyway. I doubt America was anything like Balanchine's first choice. Balanchine's ideas weren't exactly what Kirstein had in mind either, so it may be that both men thought they were settling for something other than what they wished for, and it all ended better than anyone could have imagined. And it took some time for Balanchine to get really established, and accepted, in the US.

Hmmmm....Wasn't Jagger's androgynous quality widely remarked on, then and now? Footage of the Mickster undulating and bopping around onstage suggests many potential adjectives, but I'm not sure that "manly" is one of them. Whereas nobody ever regarded Lennon as a pretty boy no matter what he was wearing. But then to many eyes at the time both groups looked disturbingly unlike the masculine status quo.....

A similar dynamic appears to be at work in the grief that girly-man Marco Rubio is getting for his choice of footwear. (This is not intended to introduce party politics into the discussion.) Related.

If Lifar hadn’t returned -- and elbowed him out of the job. From what I have read I think Balanchine would have loved to lead the Opera and if he had won the position probably only something like drastic wartime conditions would have led him to consider emigrating to the States and uncertain prospects there. Certainly some of his ballets would probably look different (and others would not have been made), but as Drew notes we can’t really say how they would look different. He loved his adopted country and was grateful for the new start it offered (and his adopted country should be at least as grateful to him), but his first goal wasn’t America but finding a place to make ballets, and I expect he would happily have found that place in Europe as well as the U.S. It was a time when people did find themselves in unexpected places. I think of Schrodinger, who wound up in Ireland at the behest of math geek Eamon de Valera.

I don’t see a lot “demonizing” going on in this case, unless the bar for demonizing has been radically lowered. I also haven’t seen anyone here “invoking victim status.” References have been made in the thread to historic and current inequalities. Are those references by definition invocations of “victim status”? I also don't think you need the New Critics or tea leaves to figure out the assumptions behind the Facebook post.......

I continue to think that you're being a little too literal in your comparisons, alexaa1a, but in fact some players do apologize, and do so publicly, when they've committed an illegal hit.

Helene will no doubt get around to replying directly, but we know it’s not the same “in his circle” because of what s/he wrote. The original Facebook post is quite clear and it was an insult. As I said previously, I’m perfectly willing to believe that the poster was being more thoughtless than not. But it is important for people to look at the subtext of what they may think is just a passing remark or throwaway humor, particularly in regard to people who have been subordinated or marginalized. (Although in this case it isn’t really subtext.) The point is to question stereotypes, not to accept them unquestioningly. The Pennsylvania Ballet riposte does that by pointing out that the stereotype implicit in the Facebook post is spectacularly off base. (And that same Eagles fan might want to think about the pressure football players are under to enact dangerous rituals of "stereotypical masculinity," like playing through pain or hitting too hard. Remarks like his/hers don't help.)

Internet attention is paid:

Your questions went unanswered because the first one didn't initially make a lot of sense to me and the categorical statement about effeminacy and football was -- forgive me -- funny, to me anyway. I will try to respond to your first question. The Trocks and the Facebook poster have nothing to do with each other. The Trocks make witty, knowledgeable, and affectionate parodies of classical ballet using the comic possibilities inherent in men going on pointe. The joke is with them, not on them. The Facebook poster was making casual use of a stereotype and not at all ironically. Not even close to being the same thing.

Roberta Boorse, the founder of Milwaukee Ballet, has died at age 84.

Damn straight (as it, uh, were). On second thought…..a concerted display of effeminacy by the O-line coming at a time when the defense expects a passing play might well temporarily paralyze the defenders, leaving the field open to a limp-wristed, twinkle-toed, invisible tutu-clad run, maybe by one of those guys who sell Waterford Crystal on Evine. I hereby christen it the Swish Option.

It doesn't matter if the poster had ever heard of the Trocks or not, because the association of dancing with effeminacy has little if anything to do with cross-dressing or the sources of the Trocks' humor generally.

Ballet isn't considered as only "feminine." It's considered to be effeminate in this culture (as is dancing generally). And the feminine has been traditionally subordinated to the masculine and regarded as inferior, so there are underlying value judgments involved. As I said above, I don't think the comment under discussion is necessarily offensive. I do understand why it might be taken that way. Football players are celebrated in our culture in a way that ballet dancers aren't and have never been. It's not so easy for those who have been traditionally marginalized to laugh at some things. Perhaps that's taking the company's response a bit literally. I don't think they meant to suggest that the dancers could play football of any kind, any more than they meant to suggest that the Eagles should replace Kelly with Corella (not that I wouldn't enjoy seeing that). I understand studies have shown that in some respects ballet is as hard on the body as football is. The company might have pointed that out, and added that, the career of a dancer, like that of an NFL player, can be nasty, brutish, and short. But maybe there are comparisons to football they'd rather not make. Replay, commercials, etc. But the game keeps you watching, because the spasms of action that go on between those pauses can be wildly exciting........