dirac

"Artistry" was once an term actually used within figure skating competitions, although certain notions of artistry may cause a snicker or two if you're not a fan. They've called it a variety of other things during the years. Curry was a great innovator but the shift towards raising the entertainment and performance level of skating gained widespread impetus with the rising influence of television, the rising level of competition and bigger talent pool, and the concomitant de-emphasis of those aspects of the competition that didn't make for entertaining television. Curry was a frustrated dancer who tried to create a sort of ballet company on ice, nor did he like anything about the sugary skating shows of the time. His troupes did some interesting work but didn't last as a template for professional skating for personal and other reasons and also because the methods and structure of a ballet company don't mesh well with the way professional skaters are produced and also it just wasn't the way the wind was blowing. The "Afternoon of a Faun" is lovely if a tad literal, with that special grace and refinement that was only his. Healy, She does not appear to have been making the same degree of progress in both fields. The musical cuts were customary at the time and continued to be so for some time. Curry had cuts in his beautiful and masterly (if dated in some respects) program, although he used the same piece of music (which can be quite as jarring, although Curry handled it better than others. Cousins, like Curry, selected and edited his own music with a view to offending the ear to the minimum and he was and is quite musical. You could choose almost any other LP of the era as your HE, but I should suggest Dorothy Hamill's LP from the same year. It's by no means horrible and neither is the music choice, and America's Sweetheart is just fine, but it's lacking in structure and choreography; it just goes on and on until it stops. As Buttons rhapsodized in this commentary, Curry's program "has a beginning, a middle, and an end!"

She studied ballet longer and more intensely and plainly she was better at it. The skill sets required of ballet dancers and skaters are as different as they are similar so there's not necessarily any paradox. I remember Cranston's comments. Not entirely flattering.

Exactly.

Thanks, cubanmiamiboy. I hear it's good.

They were the Big Featured Wedding on the right hand side of the page in a box, like Bushnell and Askegard. I just love reading these things, especially bearing in mind what the couples do to get listed and what they want the NYT readership to know about them. Vanessa Zahorian and Davet Karpetyan were also featured in today's listing.

This looks wonderful, innopac, and I hadn't heard of it. I'm going to look for this movie. Thanks!

Sorry to hear this, although it came as no surprise. Very sad.

Thank you for posting this, innopac. Looks interesting.

A certain kind of feminine character is no longer fashionable these days - the Ophelia type, the girls whose frailty makes them unsuited to the realities of life and that frailty is part of their femininity. Greater autonomy for women and the rise of feminism probably play a role in that, but not necessarily so. High spirits and defiance are forms of strength and I should think the brutal facts of a peasant girl's existence would work against all three, but if you give Giselle too much of such qualities her human fate and her spirit fate make less sense, to this viewer anyway, unless there's some revising involved. I"ve never seen a Giselle where class didn't play a role, though. About reconstructions in general, I tend to have mixed feelings, and sometimes the word is used misleadingly, as in some Nijinsky "reconstructions" where there was hardly anything to work from. In an art like ballet that is made and performed by living people, with a text that by its nature is somewhat fluid, never "set" things change - bodies change, sensibilities change, and you can't go home again. On the other hand I'm always curious to see them, although not necessarily more than once, and I wouldn't want companies to put too much time and energy into them. Nice topic, cubanmiamiboy, thank you.

Thanks, miliosr. Quite the sea change with the arrival of Brando. I love that shot of Rita Hayworth. What can you say but... wow.

Alas, I lack your broadmindedness, Mashinka. I have read and enjoyed some of Sewell's work. Unfortunately my female brain is unable to take in many of his finer points. Judging by this article, perhaps the publishers have a point about his autobiographies. It is odd the sort of remarks that people still feel it is safe to say in public about the intelligence of women. "Most of his dogs have been bitches, he jokes." Most amusing. Pardon me while I wipe away tears of helpless laughter.

Thanks to both of you for all those links. The Deakin gallery is marvelous, Quiggin. Apparently there were fifteen recognized children. There’s something Gordon Craigish about him, although he was a fulfilled artist and Craig was not.

First Twombly, now Freud. I hope there isn't a number three on the way. At least both men lived long lives. I particularly like Freud's portraits of Blackwood. Robert Lowell was clutching one when he died.

Great links, leonid. Thank you. A tradition the BBC can be proud of.

Many thanks for the heads up, CM.

I know. But if it is proven beyond all reasonable doubt that the Artistic Head of an arts organisation, a public servant of an organisation with strong links to the Danish Royal family and funded mainly by taxpayer's money has been sharing/forcing cocaine upon his employees, who in some cases may be teenagers, does anyone here think that he'll keep his job? ...The real problem is that there's a vast gulf between cocaine use and true addiction, by demonising and making something essentially in house so stigmatised, public and scandalous it will stop dancers who may have real problems coming forward to get the help they may desperately want and need. In that case the AD in question probably would lose his job, and probably he would deserve to do so, in all honesty. There are certain things the boss just can't do. But like you I find it hard to believe. If there is an inquiry, which there likely should be at this point, I hope it's as discreet as possible, but the board may have squandered that option. I also find the conflation of drug use and drug addiction (and the way people and press refer to "abuse" when often they just mean "use"), endlessly irritating, and counterproductive.

We don't know what their motives were, but to say that they could have been motivated by a concern for the company is at least as legitimate as implying, by repeated use of the word “gossip” that they are up to no good. I don't think anyone has called for sackings or the pressing of criminal charges. The goal of an investigation, I should think, would be to address any problems in the working life of the company, not necessarily to produce someone’s head on a platter. It's true that such things do happen, not always justly. But by the same token a thorough inquiry could resolve any questions in a positive way to the benefit of all, or most, concerned. The company above all. Thanks for those links, checkwriter.

Dirac The real reason for this is because Murdoch was part of the central Illuminati Cabal establishing a New World Order, but he broke away from his brethren wanting total world domination of the media and looked close to achieving this. So the other Leaders of the Illuminati, sensing one of their own was about to destroy the balance of power by becoming greater than any of them, engineered his downfall along with the Masons, the Bilderberg Group, the Lucis Society, UN, Rothschilds, the Vatican and coven of Baphomet. You left out the Trilateral Commission!

Respectfully, Simon, I know of no one here who is baying for anyone’s blood. Some people here take a poorer view of cocaine use/abuse than you seem to do, specifically in the workplace, and some also think that a more thorough investigation of the allegations in the report seems desirable, given what we currently know. Regarding rules of evidence and "innocent until proven guilty" - leonid, this is a discussion board, not a court. We can express opinions and speculate within bounds. In any case, no one here has rushed to judgment against Hubbe.

Quiggin writes: Not to send the thread off topic, but in the beginning it didn’t seem as if this affair would do much more than cost some people their jobs and possibly affect James Murdoch’s place in the line of succession. Even people who’ve been following Murdoch for a long time seem to have been taken aback by the way this thing has snowballed, not least Rupert himself. Amazing story. I think the Post story said that Jacobsen had “oriented” the board as to the report’s contents, but the board didn’t actually see the report until Heine sent it to them direct, and then after what appears to be a cursory investigation, they sat on it. Most definitely, this doesn’t look good for the board. Thanks for posting, KayDenmark. I’m sure that makes for a pleasant working environment.

For me as a New Yorker, that line was the great scandal of the story, so patently untrue it made me laugh. Perhaps it was just his misjudged way of admitting that he had "inhaled" at some point, perhaps only once, during his time in New York, in case that subject ever comes up in court one day. But Peter Martins must be thrilled by what that statement implies about him and the dancers of New York City Ballet. Martins must have rolled his eyes into the next county at that one. Thanks, kfw.

My understanding is that the anecdote was reported at one remove. Several dancers said that several other dancers reported snorting with Hubbe. It seems clear from the context that the dancers reporting the story could not have been present, since the four dancers who spoke to the paper said they had no direct knowledge of Hubbe using. The fact that the story is not firsthand carries its own potential issues, but no one is saying to my knowledge that the dancers availed themselves of the drug while Hubbe looked on.

Also, I believe the four dancers under discussion spoke to Jyllands-Posten anonymously. I don't know how many other company members or staff mentioned drug problems to the consultant as part of the study?? This may be a matter of all smoke and no fire, but judging by what I’m reading, further investigation does seem warranted.

Quite right. Anonymity has its pros and cons, but without it many whistleblowers would fear to come forward and speak freely. I can think of reasons to question some of the details that were reported in this instance, but the bare fact that these people spoke anonymously does not mean that their statements are automatically suspect on that basis. The report was not focused on drug use/abuse, but on the general state of the company.

I don't know of anyone here who is trying to "do down" Hubbe, leonid. A few have tried to point out that widespread cocaine use is not a good thing for any organization if such is happening. What information we have is not conclusive either way. Nor has anyone said that company politics are playing no role here. That person is "no longer associated with the company." There could be any number of reasons for that, I should think.