dirac

I used to feel that way, but taking a newbie or two to the ballet and the opera changed my mind. There's a language barrier – a literal one in opera, a figurative one in ballet – and if you don't provide first time and occasional viewers with a little help, they might be frustrated at not understanding what's going on, or missing things, and not return to try again. (Shakespeare's English is archaic, but it's still English, and if the actors know what they're doing it can be quite easy to follow.) You don't have to read the synopsis if you don't want or need to, but it's nice to know it's there.

The Ministry of Silly Walks was clearly Balanchine-inspired, as well. I agree with Dale, it's really too bad about The New Yorker. If Acocella wants to do book reviews, that's great – they're a pleasure to read. But it's very disappointing to look in issue after issue and see little or no dance coverage. Maybe they could send Anthony Lane to "The Nutcracker"?

I don't care whether Homans has completed her dissertation or not, to be blunt. If the writing was distinguished, it's unlikely that the rest of this stuff would be coming up for discussion, or let's say as much discussion. As Dale observes, someone who's getting into places like The New Republic, the Times, and the Review can obviously fend for herself. As noted, journalism has become professionalized in recent generations. A few decades ago it would have been unusual for reporters to have advanced degrees, and now it's the norm. (This has its good and bad aspects, IMO.)

I think of another Icarus number in this context. John Butler once did such a piece for John Curry's Theatre of Skating back in the late seventies. (Okay, it's not ballet, but Curry's original ambition was to be a ballet dancer and I think we can award him honorary status.) Many years ago I saw some pirated footage of a part of it. Basically, Curry, wearing shorts and a sports-bra type thingie, floated around the ice, and then Daedalus came out on the ice for a pas de deux, and eventually Curry melted down, and while I have no idea if this was intentional or not, even to my very young eyes the homoerotic flavor was rather plain. (Keith Money photographed the piece for his book, so there are some evocative pictures extant.) I don't mean to make fun of it, by the way. It was nervy of Curry to try such a thing, he got booed for it in Bristol, and no other skater in the world would have dreamed of doing it. As a teenager I was rather taken aback, though. Toto, I don't think we're in Ice Capades any more………….

Well, I was trying to be nice. I also enjoy seeing Russell Baker's byline. Doesn't matter what the topic at hand is, I always know he'll be worth reading!

Thanks, Paul – I knew I had read something about the vertical/horizontal body divisions before, but couldn't recall where. The "looking forward to Petipa" stuff reminds me of Deborah Jowitt's section on Balanchine in "Time and the Dancing Image." Perhaps I ought to note for the record that I don't know anything about Homans apart from the sentence or two that appears on the end of a given article. When her pieces first started showing up in TNR, I was just puzzled. There doesn't seem to be anything terribly new in what she writes, and the observations that are new are often a little, well, off-kilter. (I was thrown by a piece she wrote about the dance world's reaction to Sept. 11 –suddenly proffering definitions of terrorism, a subject I'd have thought other parts of the magazine dealt with rather thoroughly.) I thought she had some good points to make about "Movin' Out." I'm used to seeing articles on dance in The New York Review of Books by Acocella, Croce, Robert Craft. Kirstein used to write for it. This just isn't writing on that level, and TNYRB is a publication with standards. It's not a place where you generally see writers who need "seasoning." Disconcerting. Farrell Fan, the articles in TNYRB often wander far afield from reviews per se -- it's not at all uncommon for the writer to use the book as a takeoff point, as it were, to discuss larger issues. Maybe Robert Craft was busy, but he was the obvious person for this piece, someone able to address both the musical and dancing issues. Oh, well. Thanks for starting an interesting thread, Ray.

If I hadn't known the story of Manon beforehand, I might have thought the same thing. I thought it was because the pas de deux were undercharacterized -- neat and pretty, but you didn't know who these people were. It could have been me. I actually think it can be a good idea not to know the story beforehand -- it forces you to concentrate on how and if the choreographer is telling the story. I didn't bother to refresh myself with a review of the Medea story before seeing Possokhov's "Damned," for example, and there were a couple of places where I was wondering what happened. If I had just re-read the story, I might have filled in the blanks for myself without thinking about it.

Are we talking about romantic, or sexual? (The Agon pas de deux is sexual but not romantic, for example.)

Deshayes looks quite fetching, but I'm afraid it just reminds me of a scene from A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum.

I think the knowledgeable and helpful posters to this board are far more useful than any silly Google search. Cool pictures, though.

I haven't yet finished the book yet, but here are a few impressions. The book's subtitle "Portrait of a Danish Dancer" is appropriate in more ways than one. It's hard enough to write about a dancer that you can expect most of your readers will have seen in one medium or another, but to describe the qualities of a dancer that many of your prospective readers haven't seen is an even taller order. The text and the photographs, taken together, are so vivid that I almost came away thinking I had seen him. And they complement the text in a very direct way. When you read that Kronstam's interpretation of the Poet in "La Sonnambula" changed radically over the decades in which he performed it, you can see those changes in the pictures (and it's not just a matter of him getting older). You get an idea of his range comparing the pictures of him in his classical roles, with a back so straight he looks as if he had swallowed a tentpole, with those showing him in modern parts – hunched, twisted, crouching on the stage as if to the manner born. The backstage intrigues, the last of which ended so badly for Kronstam and some of which are reminiscent of the Nixon White House, are presented in clear detail without degenerating into dirt-dishing. And there is the pleasure of getting to know, or having the illusion of getting to know, a fascinating artist and man. (I was even pleased to note that he had the same reaction I did to the second part of "Angels in America"! )

I think he started off that way in the movies – Meryl Streep and Walken were the Young Lovers in The Deer Hunter, although there was a hint of things to come – his character ended as a Russian roulette-playing zombie.

He had a fabulous number in "Pennies from Heaven." Always liked him a lot. I don't think Hollywood knew what to do with him – looks too unusual, that singular voice – so he wound up as a serial killer, or doing fun parts like The Comfort of Strangers, where he wears great white suits and slits Rupert Everett's throat. Paramount would probably cast him as Carabosse. I think he'd make an interesting James.

Callow has done a good bio of Orson Welles. As an actor I recall seeing him only in Four Weddings and a Funeral, where he hammed it up in frightfully.

That's probably true, but surely there must be a way to achieve a similar effect without leaving the audience squinting.....

Well, since it's the holiday season, perhaps the Sugar Plum Fairy of The Nutcracker would suit your purposes? She even has a wand.

At the risk of turning this into the Dead British Actors forum, here's a review of a new biography of Alec Guinness, by the actor Simon Callow (the Guardian, 11/23): http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/biogra...,845542,00.html Also, Turner Classic Movies is doing an Ealing Studios retrospective this month -- Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Ladykillers, and many others will be shown.

The music critic Anne Midgette comes to terms with director's theatre. Column in Andante: http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=19168 An operagoer from Europe responds in the Letters column: http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=19263

Well, I'm not sure that Jacobs is really quite that harsh. She's certainly not flattering, though.

I guess the burden of posting is only on us daily laborers. A review from the Daily Trojan, USC's student newspaper. Sounds like a fun evening: http://www.dailytrojan.com/article.do?issu...ballet.65d.html

Like Farrell in the old footage from the Midsummer Night's Dream film shown in "Elusive Muse." The leg sweeps up and down, up and down in one swift fluid movement and you sit there thinking, "Did she just do that? Did I just see that?" (I can only imagine what it looked like to the audiences of 1966.) Those Sandpaper Ballet costumes gave me a headache when I sat up close. Others are crazy about them, so I thought it was me. But then I am not a big Mizrahi fan and kind of wish Morris wouldn't use him so much. Those costumes he did for the revival of "The Women" probably had Adrian turning in his grave like a cement mixer.

Errant fire sprinklers dampen (get it?) a Philadelphia Orchestra rehearsal at Verizon Hall in the Kimmel Center. A software glitch gets the blame: http://www.local6.com/sh/news/stories/nat-...203-131245.html

I already posted this on the New Republic thread, but I probably should have put it here. Laura Jacobs discusses the show and Tharp for The New Criterion: http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/dec...ec02/jacobs.htm

Loscavio was, as everyone says, wonderful. Like a sprig of lilac, with a quality of self-delight that made you smile just looking at her. That she could do those steps was just a delightful bonus. I did wonder if the ballet loses something if it's not being danced by a tall girl? Was Ashley's height and strength an important part of the original effect?

We try! Laura Jacobs reviews the show, and discusses Tharp at length, for The New Criterion: http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/dec...ec02/jacobs.htm