dirac

I seem to remember that San Francisco Opera did it awhile back, but I missed it.

Thank you for the heads up, innopac. I love Guest's books and it's great that this one is back in print.

Doesn't say much for his judgment, does it?

Welcome to Ballet Talk, Vanya!

I find the spectacle of Rourke depressing. What a wonderful young actor he once was. Sigh.

I thought I would ask BTers what they think of this. It should be noted we aren't talking about students, who are doing a lot of 'duty reading' and rightly so, but those of us who have hung around long enough to have fully formed tastes. Do you still do any reading out of a sense of obligation these days?

Sounds like good prep for your trip, rebeccadb. Is "Persian Fire" fiction or non-fiction? EricMontreal22, I've only read "The Swimming-Pool Library" of Hollingsworth's novels, but that's a terrific book. I confess I'm able to do without "The Great Gatsby," maybe because it was force-fed me in school. "Tender is the Night" is a messier book but I prefer it.

We can only speculate why he didn't act on his ideas, but his last pieces, were for the Tchaikovsky Festival in 1981 (including Mozartiana, his last major work), and the last Stravinsky Festival in 1982. His final illness began during that time. Many of those choreographies seem (we can't say for sure) to reflect thoughts on death and resurrection..... In his final years when his health was failing he worked mostly with dancers he already knew well. He was talking about Aurora for Kistler (much as he had done with Farrell in the sixties). I remember Nichols remarking in a Ballet Review that while Heather Watts and she were learning and rehearsing “Theme and Variations,” where the master’s presence might have been helpful, Balanchine was spending all his time in Kistler’s rehearsals. She is the last of the interviews in Robert Tracy's "Balanchine's Ballerinas."

It is the sort of thing we try to avoid at BT, but Stowell’s affair with the mayor has been noted in print and the fact is relevant to the statements Stowell is making for publication regarding the mayor. If Stowell was publicity-shy about it he could always say, “No comment.” I was amused by Stowell’s suggestion about “forcing” the mayor to stay in office when from all indications it would take a SWAT team to get him out.

I missed him the last time he was in my vicinity, but won't make that mistake again. He's awesome.

It is sad. You can't really say Updike died untimely at 76, of course, but he seemed good for years.

Considering the quality of some transfers, an improvement in that alone seems pretty deluxe to me! True. Some of those early transfers of old movies are really, really bad.

Thank you for telling us about the performance, Hans (and thanks to rg for the additional information). Did the dancer have much to do?

That means they’re going to cave, probably. It’s not impossible that there will be meaningful funding in the future, but the same objections can quite easily be raised again. The point McCaskill and her allegedly smarter colleagues are missing is that funding to arts organizations and individuals can and does put people to work or keep them gainfully employed. (This also applies to some of the other items you quote her as mentioning, but that’s a discussion for another board.) The Federal Arts Project was part of Roosevelt’s WPA and thousands of talented artists went to work on paintings and murals, mostly in government buildings, to cite only one example. We are also talking about a very small amount of money, in relative terms, that can be put to use quickly and productively. She's wrong on policy (and wrong on tactics, too, but that again is a subject for another board). Thanks for keeping us updated, Old Fashioned.

Wasn't that nice? Lovely photograph, and it took up most of the page.

innopac asked me to post this link to a column by David Brooks in the Times, with this quote: Could such observations relate to the world of ballet as well?

A longer obituary here. Getting older, in his own words.

I doubt if a curio like The Goldwyn Follies will get the deluxe treatment, but many reissued DVDs have better transfers than the older ones.

Foley is absolutely free to suggest that such and such a book should not be required reading and offer reasons why, but I'm not sure that's really the point. He seems to be saying that these books should no longer be mandatory elements of the curriculum because they are just too darned old and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn moves too slowly for our fast paced high schoolers of today. His central difficulty seems to be with one offensive word contained in these books, the presence of which he finds himself unable to explain or justify in ways that his pupils and their parents can understand. He would rather avoid the whole problem and have the option of teaching Larry McMurtry instead of Twain. It would seem to me that such explanations and clarifications define the task of the teacher of classic literature, and the problem here lies not with Twain, Steinbeck, and Lee, but elsewhere. (Of course, an English teacher who thinks Shakespeare wrote "Old English" is plainly beyond anyone's help.)

John Updike is dead at age 76.

Good points.

Hello, vagansmom. Nice to hear from you. According to this fellow, because Obama has been elected, there’s no need for Huck Finn in high school classrooms any more. 'Tender is the Night' is a beautiful book.

You’re quite right, sidwich. Embarrassing error on my part, too, since I’ve seen the footage of McDaniel accepting her award I don’t know how many times. Very sound point. I guess the kinds of cases I really have in mind, apart from the examples mentioned above, would be Jamie Foxx getting nominated as Best Supporting Actor in “Collateral” when his role is equal with Cruise’s, and Foxx was by any definition a star. And many of our most recent winners in the Best Supporting Actress category, for example, have been stars like Zellweger and Blanchett. So you have a situation where the stars are hogging all the categories, not just the big kahunas. Must be the current fashion. Seems to me that even if you’re the longest of long shots you could jot a few things down before the big night. Although if Richard Jenkins somehow manages to win Best Actor and becomes totally incoherent, I’ll excuse him.

Money's book is wonderful, BTW. I really recommend it.

Thanks for the heads up, volcanohunter. Yes, indeed, any Balanchine on film is good news. I don't much care for the movie, but the ballet is worth checking out, if only for the horse. The Goldwyn Follies also has George Gershwin's last film score before his death, if I remember right.