dirac

This sentence surprised me as well, because I have tended to think of Gathering as one of Robbins most profound "serious" pieces and one which is given variety by elements of the lighthearted and the softly nostalgic.I looked through the a couple of Arlene Croce books and found that there were indeed some perceived problems of pacing, etc., in the first version of Gatherings. In a January 1970 article, Croce writes: (Parenthetically, this story reinforces the idea that CASTING makes a more than usually big difference in this ballet.) Some thing that confuses me is that Croce goes immediately to the following, which suggests she was ambivalent about the results: Maybe Lo Rocca picked up some of her negativaty from here? People like Garis and Haggin had reservations, too, although you are right, La Rocco's objections are remarkably close to Croce's quote. And Alymer mentions changes that have crept in since the early NYCB and Royal Ballet performances. .And both the early NYCB productions and the original Royal Ballet production had powerhouse casts. (There's a well known group photo of the Royal Ballet dancers, with Dowell, Sibley, Seymour, Nureyev, et al., in costume for the ballet, and I remember looking at it for the first time and thinking, "Wow.")

Hmmm. We might be casting the “camp” net a bit wide. I’m not sure I would call the Lanza-Grayson movies camp the way “Moon Over Miami” and such are camp. (And some of those Alice Faye musicals can be enjoyed on their own merits, although the presence of Carmen Miranda in any picture may well automatically qualify it as camp and the Busby Berkeley numbers in The Gang's All Here are in a category of their own.)

Thank you for starting the topic, Jayne. Normally we don't have a lot of posts related to sporting events, including figure skating, but the Olympics are a special occasion (and we did have one related to the Summer Olympics). So I open to this thread to any comments people may have on this year's Winter Olympics in general. Thanks.

Absolutely.

Personally I disregarded pretty much everything Plushenko has said. He DEFINES sour grapes and poor sportsmanship. He evidently felt he had won ahead of time and the results must have been quite a shock. Talk about having a sense of entitlement. It was not Plushenko's finest hour, but I understood his feelings. Losing is one thing. Losing to the likes of Evan Lysacek....urrrgggh. Well, he's right. The quad should be worth more, given its difficulty. But he knew the current rules going in. (I suspect it wasn't so much his scoring in the long program as the close grouping of the leaders in the short that really bugged him. Under the new system it often happens that the favorite collects such a whopping lead in the short that even a relatively weak performance in the long can't affect the final result much. Didn't happen here.) But we seem to have wandered far off topic. Or excuses, after a lackluster effort: "I didn't bring my A game today....I didn't dance my best....My knee has been giving me problems...."

There are things in Dances that are a bit too cutesy-wootsy for my taste but all in all it is a beautiful ballet. I saw San Francisco Ballet do it a couple of times and didn’t think they quite had it yet. I seem to remember that during his lifetime that Robbins was very careful about who got to dance this particular ballet. La Rocco lost me with this: 'Robbins is often more interesting when he isn’t trying to be so serious; such is the case with “West Side Story Suite.” ' His work for ballet may not be on the level of Balanchine's, but we have enough testimony on his unending ingenuity and multifarious theatrical gifts from his colleagues to merit the term 'genius,' even if his classical ballets don't quite reach the true heights. But much of that genius was expressed in his work for Broadway which unavoidably is not as well preserved as his legacy in ballet. (You can preserve bits of it, as in West Side Story Suite, but it won't work as well outside its theatrical context.)

No.

Once the new performing arts season gets underway, I'm sure it probably is. Too bad we can't stagger the season like sports - football in winter, basketball in spring, baseball in summer, etc.

I didn't find it quite that distracting, but it was certainly noticeable, I agree. A lot will depend on how well DiCaprio can do it - some very skilled actors can't get the hang of it, others do better. I have trouble seeing him as Sinatra for other reasons, though.

A clear gloss might indeed catch the light inappropriately if the gloss is too high. A skin-tone polish without a high top coat of gloss would be all right, I should think. Brightly colored nails don't usually blunt the hand, however, unless they and/or the hand are badly shaped, though - generally colored longer nails enhance and emphasize longer fingers and elegant hands and often they are used to draw attention to those qualities. Even for women with shorter fingers a well shaped nail, colored or not, can extend the line of the hand and not blunt it. But onstage they don't have that effect, they're just a distraction.

NYT obituary. (The obit does say that Grayson "introduced moviegoers" to "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" but I think Irene Dunne did the honors in the 1935 Roberta, although the song might have been performed in movies before that.)

Hello and welcome, Sampras. We love questions and besides you probably know more than you think. Are you a tennis fan by any chance or is your moniker unrelated to Pistol Pete?

I add my thanks to justafan's, Ed. This is a really enjoyable thread.

I too like Lovely to Look At (and Howard Keel), which isn't revived as frequently as the other two. It's another version of "Roberta" and has several songs not included in the Dunne-Scott-Astaire-Rogers version. Grayson was a good Magnolia although I'm sorry to say I really, really hated her in Kiss Me Kate. A lot of Grayson's musicals were on the good-but-not-great side and she worked more with the producer Joe Pasternak rather than Arthur Freed (who did produce Show Boat). Pasternak's pictures were usually very popular even though in general they are not the musicals for which MGM is remembered. I have a soft spot for the early Mario Lanza movies Pasternak produced with Grayson. I remember her saying that Lanza had really bad breath.

I would think discreet pale pink nail polish would be fine for most ballets and although no one not up front will care it’s nice to see dancers, male and female, with well kept hands. Haskell was surely right to abominate red nails in Les Sylphides. I suppose it would be all right, though not necessary, for an amusement like Western Symphony or Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (indeed it would be odd if the Strip Tease Girl didn’t have brightly colored nails). Courtesans were showy but I don’t think Jungle Red nails would be appropriate for Marguerite or Manon unless it’s in line with the custom of their times, and I’m not sure about that.

Thank you for posting this article, Krystin. I can’t say I found all the comments terribly illuminating and I wish the writer had collared a pure ballet choreographer or dancer, but I enjoyed reading it. There are well informed skating people with very different views. Some think the loss hurts the quality of the skating and and others don't think so at all. If they televised competitions like the IBC regularly I would certainly watch and it’s possible casual viewers might be attracted by curiosity and the idea of competition and stay to watch some good dancing. I would think good commentators who could discuss the dancing appropriately could be found, or commentary could be dispensed with for the most part. Off topic - he was always awful and he’s getting worse, although it might be fun to have him comment on a ballet competition, just once (“And she NAILED it!”). I sure miss Button. He's not what he used to be but on the worst day he's ever had he's better than Hamilton.

Here is a nice appreciation by Linda Holmes for NPR, with film clips.

It is not a matter of courtesy to do as requested by the artists. It is an insult to go against it. It means that the audience should have power over what is considered quite fundamental by the creators. 'one may decide to do so as a matter of courtesy tto do as requested'. No. If you do not do as requested by the artists, when it is clear that they have a strong commitment to making the performance go this way, you are being actively discourteous to go against their request. it is not some whim of the audience to decide they can be disrespectiful if the spirit moves them in some other way. I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree, Patrick, not that I think we're actually that far apart. The creators may regard something as fundamental and I may differ with them. I know of very few artists who lack a strong commitment to the performance going in a certain way. I doubt I would ever clap when I've been specifically requested not to do so, but the objection in principle in regard to refrain from doing so on the grounds of religious significance was outlined very well by Sandy.

Well put, Sandy. It isn’t quite the same because a temple is an actual place of worship and the “When in Rome....” adage most certainly applies. A theatrical performance is different, although one may decide as a matter of courtesy to do as requested.

Kathryn Grayson, MGM's go-to musical ingenue in the fading days of the movie musical golden age, has died at age 88. Very sorry to hear this. I can't claim that she was ever a favorite of mine and indeed I have an active dislike for a couple of her performances, but she was generally pleasing to watch and a very pretty lady. Rest in peace and thanks for the memories. Well, some of them.

It's definitely DiCaprio, Scorsese says.

A good point, worth emphasizing. Thanks, bart.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by “precedence.” My original point in raising the matter of political convictions was that they can be held just as fiercely, and be as significant to the identity of an individual, as religious views. (In some cases they can be a substitute.) If you’re saying that religious views are more central and more important to the way we live, that’s defensible, if certainly disputable. We may be wandering too far afield from our topic, however....

I would be grateful if there were more, not fewer, requests not to clap. In particular a general ban on standing ovations, which seem ever more frequent these days, would be appreciated.