dirac

Could be..... I guess I don't see any contradiction. Balanchine was a professional, and as I mentioned he respected Rodgers & Hart even if at the time he wasn't doing the work he really wanted to do. And yes, he thought Slaughter was worth reviving (even if opinions differed on that).

I think Rodgers and Hart are swell and I understand Makarova was charming in On Your Toes. But that's hardly the work for which she'll be remembered. I wouldn't care if I never saw the Black Swan pdd again for years but it's still classical ballet and I prefer to see classical dancing when the occasion is the celebration of a classical dancer and particularly when the venue is a national television broadcast. (If Makarova had done extensive work in modern dance then such an excerpt would have been perfectly appropriate, too.) Balanchine respected Rodgers and Hart but he worked on Broadway from hunger. No doubt he benefited from the experience as Broadway benefited from his presence but he never confused it with his true vocation.

I thought it was nice that they stuck to pure classical dancing and didn't dumb it down or try to goose the audience with an old pop number. Not so much for this viewer. Yes, when the camera really zeroed in you could see that Kent was somewhat older, but the pairing didn't look like Romeo and Aunt Juliet.

Tiler Peck was marvelous, easily the highlight of Makarova's segment. One didn't get to see enough of Part's fouettes to judge them properly - a really unforgivable cutaway. I agree it was important to include Other Dances, since contrary to the impression given in the show Makarova never did acquire a large repertory of roles personal to her, even after her arrival in the West. I wasn't inclined to judge her that harshly on such a brief segment in front of a national television audience - both she and Corella wore Excedrin headache expressions that didn't help much - but I too wondered about her flexibility, enough to wonder if perhaps her back was bothering her?

The actor Charles Durning is dead at 89. He could do just about anything, including song and dance.

I read that in a review as well. I guess the Trocks feel the need to keep up with the times.

That makes sense. A nice parlor game in the making, Quiggin. I wouldn't mind seeing a couple of movies with Robert Graves. Not to nitpick, but wasn't Stevens in insurance?

Thanks. Wikipedia has an interesting and (I assume) accurate historyfor the hymn.

Hello, Ed, it's good to hear from you as always. Non-violent resistance is a fascinating subject. I have the impression that it works better in some cultures than others - there are circumstances where the opposition would be only too pleased to be able to mow you down unimpeded. Gene Sharp's name keeps coming up in my reading these days, I had never heard of him until Occupy. I know what you mean. On the other hand, given the bylines one usually sees in the NYTBR, the Times probably doesn't have that many critics handy who can tackle all the literary and artistic aspects of the book, including the translation, and Simon can do that. (Review here.) Currently reading Paul Preston's "The Spanish Holocaust," which is mainly about the Franco terror.

Vivid reporting.

Thank you for telling us about the performance, YouOverThere. It's nice that you have even one professional a cappella chorus! How long was it, BTW?

I sampled the book via Amazon's text search function and while some of the prose is certainly empurpled it looks on that basis to be worth the time of anyone interested in the subject. Reasonably priced, as well. I've placed my order and will report back in this space.

Thanks, Barbara. I haven't read Irving since The Hotel New Hampshire, no particular reason, just didn't feel the urge to grab his next one off the shelves.

This inexpert ear felt similarly after listening to a recording or two of his, although I came to appreciate his Goldberg Variations.

Thanks for starting this thread, abatt. The article notes that the renovations are focusing on the "guts" of the theater rather than the audience's side:

I don't know, Kathleen, going by your post it looks as if you managed rather well this year. Thank you, vipa. I've never read Erdrich but there must be someone else here who has?

Another that comes to mind is the ball in the 1949 Madame Bovary with Jennifer Jones, where Vincente Minnelli's swirling camera and the rhythms of the waltz convey Emma's disturbance, plainly erotic in nature. (The movie as a whole is hopelessly overscaled in the MGM fancy manner but it's worth checking out.) Very likely, abatt. I tend to agree with cubanmiamiboy that they went a bit overboard with Knightley's costuming, but a high-profile period picture tends to be a slam dunk for such nominations. I wouldn't be surprised if Law winds up with a nomination somewhere along the line. Box office will play a role there.

It would have been interesting to see Vivien Leigh tackle the role around 1941 or so, with Olivier. She wasn't quite ready for it but she was a maturer performer than Knightley. There would have been no problem with romantic chemistry and the screen would likely have had its best Vronsky.The story would have been a bit too close to home, probably. (Leigh was married at 19 to an older man and had a daughter at 20; she left him for Olivier and it took years to push through the two divorces.) Apollinaire Scherr digs the swami dance (note the following is not a direct quote from Scherr, but a quote of a quote): Maybe, and there's no harm in experiment, but IMO you can still make magic with a plain waltz and the sexiness of the dance as described by sandik is not really that difficult to dramatize.

I agree. Nice topic, bart, thank you. Surprised we haven't had more replies - surely there's more artistic generosity out there?

These are great, Natalia and YouOverThere. It's so nice we have BAers to draw our attention to such things.

I don't think that's quite the case, cubanmiamiboy, but for me the issue was not so much Knightley's chronological age than the immaturity of the portrayal. Anna is in her late twenties, but that was older then than it is now. She's a settled married woman, with a child, who acts as the hostess for a prominent man and runs his house. She's the kind of woman that Oblonsky calls in as reinforcements when he's screwed up his marriage. Sorry I missed that movie. I don't think AK's choreographer would have tried the swami dance stuff in a film with a naturalistic setting, though.

I had the same thought, Natalia. (It also seemed to be the only dance anyone at the ball knew.) I thought perhaps the movie’s choreographer had researched some social dance I didn’t recognize, but evidently not.

This played briefly in my area and I missed it, I'm sorry to say.

MakarovaFan and Drew, I have only the vaguest recollection of the BBC series with Pagett. I do remember that she was beautiful and touching but can't recall how she handled the more difficult aspects of the role. I'm willing to trust you both, though. Garbo isn't at her best in either version (she did two, one a silent version with a happy ending (!?!) which miliosr discusses on another thread. Even when not at her best she still outclasses the field. I also thought Fredric March was a good Vronsky, not terribly sexy but otherwise very much the cavalryman Mashinka described upthread. (Vronsky is a womanizer and a tough customer but he still has to be carried away by Anna.) I saw the Eifman version, not Ratmansky's, but this story is too complex for ballet IMO. Maybe Tudor or possibly Ashton could have come up with an interesting version. And let's not forget that Anna K. was also the basis for the epochal role Bancroft and MacLaine fight over in The Turning Point.

I stopped reading mysteries a while ago. I don't think I considered that I'd outgrown them, I just wasn't coming across many interesting examples of the genre. Zouroudi sounds good. Austen exploitation books seem to have become a minor industry. I once browsed through something called "Mrs. Darcy" in the store and was mildly appalled. I suppose if she'd been as productive as Dickens we wouldn't be having this problem.