dirac

I agree with pretty much everything Manhattnik says about the dancing above. The opening credits announce "The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, Gerald Arpino, Artistic Director" – a little unusual, normally you'd just see "The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago" listed with the actors - and it's pretty much All Arpino, All the Time, except for a reference here and there to "Bob." It would have been a nice gesture to include some of "Bob's" choreography, I'd have thought. As for the nondancing bits -- and that's all they are, bits -- Altman deploys his customary techniques to not much purpose. Situations are presented but not resolved, allegedly in imitation of "real life" but Frederick Wiseman's documentary about ABT somehow managed to make real life a lot more interesting than this. The movie isn't awful, you can sit through it and enjoy isolated parts.

I liked her rooftop dance with Tommy Rall, too. She danced better in "Kiss Me Kate" than in any other movie I've seen with her. Miller's style always seemed a trifle robotic to me – it seems to be an occupational hazard with women tap dancers, Eleanor Powell had the same problem to my eye – but having Fosse, Rall, Bobby Van, et al., in the vicinity seems to have been an inspiration. The "From This Moment On" number is interesting for the reasons sandik mentioned – most of it was done by Hermes Pan in traditional big musical style, but Fosse was allowed to set his dance with Haney, and as soon as the two of them slink on you know something new is brewing (it's noticeable even if you don't know Fosse is Fosse).

Balanchine not only thought about reviving it, he had definite plans to do so in the seventies, with Karin von Aroldingen and Bette Midler. A musicians' strike truncated the season and so it never happened. Too bad.

I read that Timmy's coaches and choreographers, past and present, have done everything in their power to help him improve his posture, and I don't doubt it. I fear he's just a hopeless case. He does have a pretty jump when it's working, though. With other skaters, you hold your breath when they go up for the quad, but when Goebel is in good form you can just relax and enjoy the jump -- he tosses it off. This in itself helps his presentation, IMO, although it can't compensate for all the other stuff.

This is a theatrical release from 1978, starring Paul Sorvino as a Breslinesque columnist who falls in love with a dancer, played by Anne Ditchburn of the National Ballet of Canada. It is currently being shown this month on Showtime's family channel and is worth catching if you're curious – it doesn't show up too often, I hadn't seen it for years. The dancer moves into the apartment next door to the columnist, and as it happens she is suffering from something, I forget the name, that inflames her tendons and is affecting her central nervous system and will cause her to fall off the perch if she doesn't stop dancing and let the doctor operate pronto, but she is dancing the lead for the company's forthcoming debut at Lincoln Center, etc., etc. The ballerina has extended conversations with her parakeet, whose name is Orville Wright. It's that kind of flick. Movies like this can be a lot of fun if they work, which this one doesn't. There are some nice shots of the city, however. Be warned that "Slow Dancing in the Big City" is pretty awful -- although it exerts a weird fascination for this viewer-- so don't expect much. It was directed by John G. Avildsen, fresh from "Rocky," but he was not to enjoy the same success as with his previous outing, to put it mildly; this one bombed and for good reason. Sorvino and Ditchburn are an unexpected pairing, not in itself a bad thing, but it doesn't pay off here. Sorvino's constant New York yak-yak is intended to be charming but comes off as annoying, and he has weight issues that require him to stay in a trench coat for most of the movie. (I say this with regret, as he's a favorite of mine.) Ditchburn has a tiny affected voice and a tiny affected pout, but although she's no actress I'm not sure I don't prefer her to Neve Campbell – at least she's a real dancer, and I am an advocate of casting dancers as dancers even if they're not going to win any Oscars. The big ballet is a modern/ballet fusion called "Forest Dreams" choreographed by Robert North to a score by Bill Conti, and it's not good but not a total disaster. Ditchburn has a solo of her own composition on the apartment rooftop, and does a frantic barre to Carole King's "I Feel the Earth Move" in her boyfriend's ritzy apartment. Hector Jaime Mercado is the ballet's male lead, and I spotted Helene Alexopoulos in the rehearsal scenes. Florence Fitzgerald is listed in the cast.

Tell me about it, hockeyfan 228. It was the glory days of Wide World of Sports and Jim McKay, and not only was there not much skating, but what you did get was often chopped up -- the middle of programs, but not the beginning or the end. You saw an itty bitty clip of Orser and someone would say, "That was a promising young Canadian, Brian Orser! We'll be seeing a lot more of Brian!" Uhhh...could we see more of him, like, now, fellas? Just a little bit? Please? As for the Sorrows of Janet, those are the breaks.

I would attribute the gradual reduction and then elimination of figures more to the increasing influence of television ratings than anything else. There was no way to make them telegenic. I don't know that Lynn would have won in a walk, necessarily. She could not reach the top spot on the podium under the rules then obtaining, and there's no question she would have a better chance today. However, Karen Magnussen and Julie Lynn Holmes were not pushovers.

Thanks for the gender clarification, hockeyfan228 -- sorry! Orser won both the short and the long -- he was stunning-- but of course there was no way to pull up from seventh in the figures and win the gold. It's true that the free skate was usually Hamilton's strength; as a rule he had to pull up from second or third in school figures and had no problem doing so! This time he was first in figures, so to all intents and purposes he had the competition won right there. I don't think Hamilton was nearly as unimpressive as Petrenko, though -- only he'd been ill all week and it showed. I remember him coming off the ice and you could hear him tell Don Laws, "I'm sorry." Maybe the judges did hold him up a wee bit, but he'd been awe-inspiringly dominant over the preceding three years and I see no harm in judges taking such things into account when it's the Olympics at stake. Orser was already a favorite of mine although foreign skaters didn't get much US airtime in those days. I was rooting for him in '88.

Even if Petrenko's performance in the long program was the worst in thirty or forty years, that would not mean Wylie ought to have won the gold instead. Nobody was very good among the men that year. Wylie himself made a number of significant errors. (I bet Boitano was sitting in the stands kicking himself for not staying in another four years and copping himself two golds.) Reasonable people can disagree about who ought to have won; I dispute only the notion that some kind of scandalous injustice was committed. I agree with Funny Face hockeyfan228, while Hamilton was far from his best in the 1984 free skate, I hope we are not suggesting that Scotty didn't deserve his gold. Them's fighting words, mister.

I thought Wylie did far better as a pro than Petrenko, although Petrenko was the better skater in general. Wylie used to strike a lot of Curry poses, but he didn’t have the height or long lines for them, IMO. He certainly got enough mileage out of the Curry connection, but he had an equally good model close to home, as Robin Cousins was living with the family.

Well, Oksana was always a bit of a drama queen. djb, I do see your point, and I've seen the same thing. It's like an actor suddenly coming out of character, and it can be jarring.

I wouldn't say that Wylie's international ranking was the only reason he didn't win the gold. There were several reasons, and his lack of a national or world title after years of trying may very well have been one of them. I don't say you can't build a case that he ought to have won, because you certainly can – but he wasn't egregiously "cheated" out of anything. I say this as one who always admired his edging, footwork, line, and flow. The great thing about his performance, for me, was seeing an athlete with a troubled career achieve a personal best on the greatest stage in his sport, and be rewarded for it. He really came into his own as a pro. djb, I wonder if we should be so hard on skaters who look chagrined or "pat themselves on the back" after a poor or good performance? After all, the pressure is intense (and many of the skaters are just kids). I think they should be forgiven a little emotion!

I'd echo what britomart has said, but I don't think I can put it any better! As an aside, I used to read much literary theory from academic sources with great interest and profit, and learned a great deal from those of my professors who were well versed in same.

It's never too late, dansuer85. True, Cabriole, but in general the men mature later than the women. In times gone by before the rules about amateurs earning money changed, most top women skaters retired from competition after one, or sometimes two, Olympic cycles -- usually between age 19 or 21 at the outside. So I don't blame Cohen if she is feeling some pressure at this point. (In re Wylie, although he didn't make the horrid mistakes he was often prone to, his Olympic program was far from perfect, contrary to legend.) I would love to see Arakawa pull it together. There's a lady with a lot going for her -- beautiful edging and a powerful, airy jump, and I really like her program this year.

dancermom, I'm sure Funny Face was referring to the one and only Kurt. (Now, there was a man who had lousy luck at the Olympics. )

Kwan may take off on the flat of her blade occasionally, but I would suggest that she doesn't do it often. Cohen's flutz is actually not as bad as it once was, it seems to me. I liked Sarah a lot better than many people, but the underrotation and flutz issues were very serious for her -- really obvious even on television.

Thanks very much for that report from Russia. It sounds as if we've seen the last of Slutskaya, more or less. Maybe I should note for the record at this point that all points of view on skaters are welcome – if there's no debate, things can get dull indeed. I mention this only because figure skating often seems to inspire very strong emotional reactions, and people will take criticism or praise of a given skater VERY personally. I think Kwan's Tosca program is all right, but far from her best -- the level of difficulty is not that high, and there are long sections where little is going on. She may have to raise her game a bit to prevail at worlds. Suguri is indeed lovely to watch.

Arthur Laurents says he had no idea he had written in "West Side Story" "the supreme encoded queer Broadway musical" but James McCourt says, well, he did it anyway. Page Six reports, with a picture of a beaming Laurents. (Nice to see him looking so chipper, by the way): http://www.nypost.com/gossip/pagesix.htm This dispute raises an interesting question or two, it seems to me. Laurents takes "encoded" to mean that the alleged I-love-Tony subtext was something he (and the other begetters of the show, Bernstein, Robbins, and Sondheim) put in there, or had in mind; McCourt responds that "encoded" refers to how the show is perceived ("it doesn't matter what they think they were writing"). Further on down in the column, for those who are interested, Tony Kushner faces off with John Simon.

I forgot to add to what Drew said about music, much of which I agree with, that there can be a big difference between music that is good and music that is good for skating. I can see why skaters often turn to movie music, because it is simple to follow and yet has lots of sweep and flow. (Also, you need a big beefy orchestration that sounds good over a public address system.) I really think that these days we don't have too much to complain of, though. The cuts in music these days are nothing compared to the brutal hacking of disparate pieces of music that was commonplace a decade or so ago. The vogue for "Tosca" does puzzle me -- it's not really great music for skating, and difficult for skaters to express well. Kwan gets as much out of it as anyone. This is nowhere near her best program, though.

A few brief comments. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Cohen's technique is not obviously superior to Kwan's in several respects. This is not to say she is a bad skater, or a perfectly legitimate world champion candidate capable of outskating Kwan on a given night. But I don't know where this "greatest woman skater ever" hype is coming from. Although Kwan is better in some areas, Cohen in others, Kwan is still in technique and presentation the better all-around skater. Lengthy explanation available upon request. That said, there's no reason why Cohen can't improve – I've never seen her skate better than she did in her short program, and she may still beat Kwan at worlds. She actually seemed to be at ease out on the ice, unusual for her. In the long program, she still doesn't seem to be listening to the music, among other things. As for "disliking" Cohen, it is true, as Drew points out, that athletes are competitive types. I'd also add that the bar for "bad" behavior is considerably lower for women athletes than it is for men. That said, I never fail to marvel at Cohen's consistent gracelessness in defeat (she's not too gracious in victory, either). I also understand she still has a tendency to get into Kwan's face during practices. Not an attractive trait. I'd also add that no one, as far as I can tell, is "attacking" Cohen. She's consistently praised over Kwan these days, often for virtues she does not possess. I don't mean to minimize those fine qualities Cohen does have, but since the weight of opinion on this board regards her has the greatest thing since sliced bread, I feel an obligation to be a little contrary. Good news for Cohen: On both nights, the judges gave her very high marks very early in the evening. That was not only a message to Cohen, but one to Kwan, I think: You better be brilliant, Michelle. Well, we know what happened. Jenny Kirk: Glad to see the Giant Beehive Bouffant gone. It's most unfortunate that she didn't skate clean in the long. She had a clear opportunity to shoot past Cohen and sweep into second place, and wasn't able to do it. It's too bad, because the ability to take advantage of openings like that frequently marks a future champ, and I hope this is not an omen for the future. Regarding Olympic performances: It's been observed frequently that, because of the intense pressure, skaters rarely perform their best at the Olympics. The exceptions like Boitano prove the rule. Look forward to seeing a healthy Ye Bin Mok next season.

He's a good photographer. I'll give him that. I love his pictures of Kent, a number of which are reproduced in her book (the woman looks stunning even while heavily pregnant, drat her). And his shot of Villella and Kent in "Bugaku" is almost iconic. Let's hope his family benefit from said resurrection.

Well, I was thinking a nice firm tap with the mallet, nothing fatal. In any case, I feel certain that after hearing the whole story, no jury could possibly convict.

I generally find the "dramatic recreations" now endemic on television documentaries to be a minor and sometimes major annoyance, but for once the device served a genuine and useful purpose. (Although I still think it's silly to have, for example, a closeup of the actor's eyes when the voiceover is talking about Degas' failing eyesight. I'd rather see more photographs of the artist himself, even if they're not closeups of him blinking.)

I think perky makes some good points about Kent. It's difficult in today's very changed environment to imagine the kind of pressures that were put on women not only to marry, but in all aspects of their lives (they haven't all disappeared, I should note). When I read her book, I was particularly struck by the episode in which she visits a therapist to talk about her failing marriage, and upon hearing that Kent is pregnant, the therapist tells her to head back to her husband like a good wife. That would not happen today. Without entering into too much facile psycholanalyzing, I had the impression that Kent, rather than asserting her rights and self-interest, resorted to indirect forms of resistance against the demands of her mother, husband, and Balanchine, some of which were self-defeating. I'm sorry she didn't whomp Bert in the head with a polo mallet, but it's a matter for great regret, not only for Kent personally but for the art of ballet -- that Balanchine and she didn't come to a better understanding. She had a great career, but it could have been even more. Regarding Kirkland, I think it's a simplification to say she blames others, not herself. There's been too much denunciation of Kirkland merely as a Bad Girl. Melissa Hayden remarked to Robert Tracy that Kirkland " got too much too soon without the right kind of support." It's been observed that men generally turn anger and resentment outward toward others; women are more likely to take it out on themselves -- one way or another. Kirkland does her share of blaming, and although obviously very bright seems to be unusually lacking in self-awareness. However, it's quite clear from her book that she was forever dissatisfied with herself – her looks weren't right, etc. – leading to dissatisfaction with others. That's a misfortune – and as in Kent's case, there were artistic repercussions as well as personal ones. Farrell Fan, people re-read fascinating but infuriating books all the time, don't they?

I can shed no light on any of the above, but didn't MacMillan do a Las Hermanas, too?