dirac

A couple of reviews were posted on our Links board -- they were not too enthusiastic. I've seen the book in stores and it's also available via Amazon and other online booksellers. Unfortunately, the author's name has slipped my mind.

"Striking a Balance" is a terrific book. There's a second edition, available in paperback, with more interviews and an update on the dancers interviewed.

As far the arts are concerned, I'm a consumer as opposed to a practitioner, I regret to say. During the summer I usually head for the movies. There are a few art house cinemas fairly close by so I have an alternative to Multiplex Hell, and there's also a theatre that specializes in very old films, sometimes bringing back real rarities like Ruth Chatterton flicks, Robert Montgomery and Norma Shearer in "Private Lives," and so on. I do, however, grace the multiplex with my presence as well. This summer I checked out "Moulin Rouge," which I quite liked without thinking it very good, and "A.I.," a mess, as Alexandra noted, but a very interesting one, and I was fascinated by the slightly ghoulish spectacle of Spielberg channeling Kubrick. And it's always a pleasure to see a film shot by a director who really knows where the camera should go. (Also, I do not care for child actors, or let us say I don't care to the uses to which they're usually put, but Haley Joel Osment is amazing.) I suppose I must also confess to breaking down and going to see "Planet of the Apes." Nice makeup, but Wahlberg is such a lump.....

Didn't Glenn Gould predict that listeners would be doing things like that someday? I think the idea was considered wacko at the time.

I can only say that sometimes I think as Zimmer does, and sometimes not. I think it's impossible for us to see a work of art exactly as a contemporary audience would have. "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." I don't necessarily regard it as a failure of imagination or sympathy to be disturbed by such things, depending on the nature of the complaint and how it's expressed. I have no problem with "Giselle" or "Bayadere," but if I went to the ballet and was exposed to nothing but a continuous diet of stories about wronged women who die for love while the men feel bad I might get fed up eventually. The fact that the Wilis were left at the altar and are mad as hell about it does reflect certain old fashioned cultural assumptions about women, just as the pale frail heroines Lillian Gish used to play for D.W. Griffith do, and nineteenth century literary heroines such as Esther Summerson and Fanny Price. There's nothing wrong in acknowledging this and analyzing it, or even being annoyed by it. It would be wrong, not to say silly, to lambaste the creators of "Giselle" for not being as enlightened as we are, or to say that's all there is to "Giselle," or Romantic ballet (or D.W. Griffith, or women in 19th century literature). Good topic, Alla. Thanks!

Recently I was browsing again through Barbara Newman's collection of interviews, "Striking a Balance," and this time around I was particularly interested in her talk with Monica Mason. Did anyone out there see her dance? any impressions of her in various roles? She seems to have had an unusual career.

Below is a link to an article on the Graham/Protas decision and broader issues in the area of dance copyright, by David Finkle for the Village Voice. He also looks at how various choreographers are treating the issue -- Merce Cunningham does his own notations and videotapes, while others take a more what-will-be-will-be approach. An unsettling quote from David Gordon: "[Copyright] continues to be a vague thing, because it's hard to believe it will ever matter. All articles about the dance world to the contrary, dance is the poor stepchild. You can't sell it. If you sell your dance, you have to sell the person who does it along with it. Having fought the battle, over the years, of attempting to have dance taken seriously as an art form and not having seen great success in that venture—quite the opposite—I just wonder what we're saving, what the battle is about." http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0133/finkle.php

Another who-cares-it's August query. We had a thread along the same lines a while back, so this might be a familiar topic to some, but we have enough new people to make it worth revisiting, I think. I'm wondering what arts, entertainments, hobbies distract you when there's not much dancing on the menu? If you're a reader, what have you been reading lately? any favorites to share? If it's music you crave, what kind? (I'm trying to cast the net pretty wide, so feel free to include non-arts related interests, although if you spend several hours a day cruising the Net for kiddie porn, we'd rather not know, thanks. )

My first thought was of the Ballets Russes. On further consideration, I decided to opt for a more recent era and return to the sixties and seventies, only this time I am older, independently wealthy, and have a private plane to take me anywhere my favorite companies, or even less favorite companies, happen to be.

I think felursus is right and we did have a similar thread, in addition to the "butterfly ballot" thread (let's not revisit THAT again!). But there are new visitors to the board, and of course old timers may be inspired to think of new bad ballet concepts in the interim. What about this: "Thirteen Days: a Balletic Intepretation of the Cuban Missile Crisis." Something along the lines of "Nixon in China."

Thanks for the heads-up. Actually, on most days I'd choose Elle over Time. At least Elle won't put me to sleep with covers on How Safe Are Your Children? and Search for the Historical Jesus....

There is no link available to this article online, but James Fenton reviews a recent biography of Lincoln Kirstein's good friend Chick Austin (it's because of Austin that the School of American Ballet almost wound up in Hartford). in the current issue of The New York Review of Books. (The name of the bio, incidentally, is "Magician of the Modern: Chick Austin and the Transformation of the Arts in America" by Eugene R. Gaddis.)

Out of desperation I once swallowed several teaspoons of honey before a college performance of "A Streetcar Named Desire." It worked.

Sounds like a good libretto for "The Perfect Storm: the Ballet" if you substitute swordfish catching for war. Look, if they could make a musical out of the sinking of the Titanic... Sorry for going off topic, I just saw the movie on cable and was so inspired by the bravery of George Clooney and Marky Mark that I had to pull it in somehow.

There is a book called "What is Dance? Readings in Theory and Criticism," edited by Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen, that contains both theoretical articles on dance and pieces of practical criticism by Arlene Croce and others. I found it useful.

I recall reading about an Anne Frank ballet with choreography by an Adam Darius. It was once available on VHS but I don't know if that is still the case. I did not see it or read anything about it. Recently Ballet Florida performed a ballet on the same topic called "Anne Frank", with choreography by Mauricio Wainrot. Kenneth MacMillan did a ballet,"Gloria", thematically concerned with World War I and inspired by Vera Brittain's "Testament of Youth", if memory serves. [ 08-06-2001: Message edited by: dirac ]

I'd like to see biographies of Diana Adams and Nora Kaye. I read Allegra Kent's book and was vaguely depressed by it. It was a distinguished and unique career, to be sure, but I thought it more than unfortunate that she seemed to have a chronic need to cut off her nose to spite her face. I haven't seen a book on McBride. I'm not sure if we ever will -- she had an important career, but it may have been too placid -- no hopping from company to company, no torrid affairs or stormy marriages. You kind of need that stuff.

I can see why Vinogradov might take that view, but if by some mischance I had a relative who died of lung cancer because she believed Philip Morris' assertions that its products caused no harm, I might just say, the hell with the art....

Also,if you're serious about it, you'd be surprised at what just one basic course in drawing can do for you. It doesn't make you talented, as I can say from experience, but it would make you lots better.

The following link is to an amusing piece by Philip Kennicott that appeared in the Washington Post a couple of Sundays ago. He discusses the difficulty of writing intelligently about the nature of art, and lists a number of generalizations about art and artists that have appeared perhaps once too often. I'm wondering if anyone has encountered similar items in dance criticism? or arts criticism in general? Any meaningless adjectives that you would just as soon not encounter again? I personally have a problem with "compelling." It seems to be one of those words people fall back on when they liked something but can't think of anything more specific. Who was compelled? and compelled to what? Never mind. Anyway, here's the link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/style...-2001Jul13.html

If the names of Mr. and Mrs. Moon are in the program as "Founders and Patrons," I would think that's sufficient as a tipoff. The company isn't obliged to put a big "FUNDED BY MOONIE MONEY" banner across the page. If people are interested in the company, they'll find out soon enough. Normally any discussion of religion where the discussion may lead to someone taking offense makes me run faster than Marion Jones, but I cannot resist observing that Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism have achieved enough respectability after a thousand years or so not to require putting forth the more exotic public relations efforts that less established religions do. (I do not mean to suggest that the Universal Church is not a scam -- it might very well be, I don't know. But if we query the claims of a sect because of homophobia and pretensions to Messiah-dom, we're ruling out some pretty well-established faiths, are we not?) I will now follow Jeannie's wise course and withdraw from this aspect of the discussion........

As noted, this is a knotty question. During the Cold War, the arts (and sports, and space exploration, and so on) were exploited for propaganda purposes by both sides. The Communists were more systematic about it, of course, being Communists, but everyone was getting in on the act. In principle, I'd say that the business of examining people's motives for supporting the arts is not a particularly useful exercise; we can accept the art, with thanks, without buying anything else they're selling. However, I'm pretty certain that it would not have been right for us to welcome the Bolshoi or the Kirov during the time, let's say, of Stalin's purges or the Moscow Trials. In the sixties, I think the cultural opening followed the political sea change; it was a consequence of the thaw, not an instigator of it . ( Think of the Waldorf Conference a couple of decades earlier, which was supposed to bring American and Soviet artists together in a free exchange of ideas. But it couldn't really do that in any meaningful sense, because the Americans who attended did so of their own free will while the Soviets were there mainly out of a disinclination to be imprisoned or shot.) Re: the Universal Church, I am simply too ignorant to judge. Tom Wolfe once observed that a cult is a religion without political clout. As far as I know, we're not talking about Jim Jones and the People's Temple here, or anything else that would prevent me from seeing the company. One hears that the Rev. Moon is a con artist, but he would not be the first spiritual leader of whom that was said, alas.

I used to sketch them a lot, once upon a time. I was better with tutus than with actual people, however. [ 07-23-2001: Message edited by: alexandra ]

I think that finally you have to go by your pocketbook. To insist on formal or even semi-formal dress can be a form of class distinction (not that I am accusing anyone here of that!!). Not everyone can afford evening clothes or even rough approximations of same; I certainly couldn't when I was a student, even on those rare evenings that weren't SRO of necessity. Although my discretionary income has risen since then, it is still not the equal of, say, Blaine Trump's, or any of the other ladies who attend galas and whatnot. I'm usually reasonably well dressed if I'm coming from work or driving in; but if I'm using public transportation or spending a day in the city (I live in the East Bay suburbs) than even sensible low heels aren't comfortable for doing too much walking. I don't go in for slacks of any kind, and on windy days dresses and skirts are not ideal. (I remember descending from a bus, wearing a wide Dior-New-Look type skirt, into a wind tunnel area, prompting much merriment from onlookers and jocular references to Marilyn Monroe and subway gratings. Not my finest hour.) So I'm usually in my jeans, a nice top or sweater, and newish Rockports of the less clunky sort, and I figure that has to do. As for ballet inspired fashions, my feeling is that, as a rule, ballet-style clothing looks good on people with ballet-style figures and no one else, exceptions allowed of course.

Well, you have Petipa in the 19th century and Balanchine for the 20th, which averages out to one per century. (This is not to say that Ashton, for example, wasn't a genius; we're looking at a particularly rara avis, the creator who redefines his art for generations.) And there are those who might argue that Balanchine surpasses all others in terms of his transforming influence, which means that in several hundred years ballet has produced just....one of him. There is also the question of whether current conditions are right for the emergence of such a figure. This is not to say it won't happen (or hasn't happened).....