Quiggin

I think this is the important issue. Borrowing from the "orient" is different from borrowing from French court dances and ancient Greek games where the balance is not assymetrical and is from a natural source of reference for us in the west. The choreography of Balanchine's Bagaku indeed is fascinating and strong and you can understand why Villella and Farrell would want to revive it, but in this Miami clip it looks like a parody of Orientalism, almost Gilbert and Sullivanish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QomyCafiWhM

On Pointe: You might want to go light on ballets with violent and racist and sexist images during a period, like ours, which offers an overabundance of the these. Hollywood and video games have provided us with an enormous archive of people being killed and blown apart into thousands of pieces willy nilly and the internet privides easily accessible pornographic images that used to require a discreet visit to a porn shop on the edge of town. These images often translate into violence against women. The stage should offer a respite from them. There are surely other subjects for a genuine artist, alert to the issues of the time and ways of being in the world, to use to " disrupt, query, confront, disturb" (:balletforme) – as well as to illuminate.

Ashton Fan, by "Peter Sellars" I was thinking of any quick thinking New York downtown – or London – director who could remold the ballet. The Taylor version worked because it was internally consistant, intimate, was its own thing and yet at the same time referred to the original. Thank you for your discussion of the problems with MacMillan (and Williams). It's the kind of overwrought ballet I can never bring myself to see anymore. (Nice article by Jann Parry at Dance Tabs about Le Rossignol – too bad that won't be seen instead of the heavy-gun ballets.) The only problem with taking the word "slave" out of at least some literature, you make people think the service was voluntary and everyone was happy and so the terrible history is seamlessly corrected.

Someone like Peter Sellars might be able to find a way rethink and recast Petroushka – after researching varying portrayals in 19th century art (an extensive genre) – or starting from scratch. Paul Taylor did an interesting version I saw here in San Francisco called the Le Grand Puppetier. Taylor used a piano roll reduction of the score (it was one of the ballets Stravinsky himself transcribed to piano player). What was especially nice about this version is that it was done on a smaller stage which gave it a great immediacy – it seemed to slash right in your face. The stages it's now usually presented on are somewhat larger than those of the original Ballets Russes and give it perhaps a somewhat harder and overly complex look. A description by Frederick Winship in the UPI archives: https://www.upi.com/Archives/2004/03/14/Choreographer-Taylor-reworks-Petrouchka/3724421090003/?spt=su

Petroushka is an odd case. The objectionable character is a moor ("The Moor"), not a blackamoor, which is at least slightly different. The Moor's main characteristic is that he is "stupid and spiteful, but richly attired" (:1919 Ballet Russes program). He carries a scimitar, with which he eventually kills Petroushka. The Dancer "is captivated by his sumptuous appearance" and "succeeds in fascinating him." Samuel Beckett saw the ballet several times (with Woizikowski and Massine), and was fascinated by the "Moor with his earthball." (In "Murphy" Beckett likens the irregularly beating heart of his main character to "Petroushka in his box".) You could say that the ballet does resonate in other art forms though its characters, which are more than just types. In a San Francisco Ballet performance a few years ago, the Moor was played by Daniel Deivison-Oliveira, quite nicely, with a bit of dry comedy, but keeping inside the character he created, not patronizing it. It showed that the part can be acted without a stereotyping presentation.

Why is there the assumption that Marcelo didn't have legal counsel? I would think that ABT would have made him have full legal representation before he signed anything – if only to protect them against being challenged in the future.

Thanks, Drew, for laying all of this out so clearly. I too was surprised that they could act as journalists and advocates at the same time.

This seems to imply that there can never be any sexual harrassment or abuse of a guy by a guy. As I remember high school it was filled with little incidents of harassment and humiliation, if not overtly sexual, of lower classmen by upper classmen. And it seemed to continue throughout society wherever there was a significant inequality in status – and especially behind the scenes in Hollywood. So I don't buy any of this. And we don't know anything of what Marcelo Gomes was implicated in and may never know. The comment “I am profoundly disheartened by this matter,” by the ABT rep is very sobering.

On Twitter it consisted of a copy of the ABT statement and for the most part of Alastair Macaulay in dialogue with Apollinaire Scherr, who thought it was too early to use the word "sad," and over the wording of the press release, which she thought was unfair. Macaulay in his reponses seemed to be trying to clarify the language about what we knew and didn't know. A couple of other critics reposted it. Any one of the original participants could have requested it to be deleted, perhaps he or she thought it was too early to speculate. At least that's how I remember it.

I do agree with Gottlieb about the danger of overdoing the Verdy role in Emeralds, of lingering too long and lovingly over each phrase, as the Paris Opera dancers sometimes do. Gottlieb in the Observer -

Stravinsky himself was uncomfortable with The Cage. When he gave permission to City Ballet to produce it, he thought Balanchine was going to be the choreographer and was surprised when it turned out to be Robbins. Robert Garis says that when Stravinsky saw The Cage, he may have thought that "Robbins had made a ballet with the wrong meaning... and may have disliked having the intensity of his allegros in the Basler Concerto distorted, overread, and overemphasized to imply the menace and horror of Robbins' scenario..." The Cage also comes out of a period of general misogeny in the arts in the early fifties – when men, in the general emptiness of the post-war period, seem to think women could stifle their creativity. Look at (or rather don't look at) deKooning's awful Marilyn series, or Norman Mailer's writings. Robbins have been playing with, and egging on, that sentiment that to create his own mask – to protect his own sexuality.

Some comments have been posted above about Balanchine's "womaning" vs Martins. It didn't involve acts of violence – and symbolic violence – to women, and men, in the company.

Thanks for the Financial Times link. I liked what Baryshnikov says about Brodsky regarding their walks: Towards the end of the piece he talks about how demanding theater is for him at this stage of his life – and that he is cursed for having been born under Stalin and ending up under Trump. "So unfair ... But I don’t want to talk about it. I’m trying to live my own life.”

Yes you're right there is a difference in degree, but the statement of remorse would have been so much stronger without that final paragraph. It's as if their art is going to keep them from meditating and feeling some sort of penance for their part in Levine's actions, even if it was only subliminally noticed by many of them. I feel art shouldn't be an escape of beautiful shimmering surfaces, it should be an engagement. I also posted the comments because they seem to have a higher degree of denial of the importance of what has happened than those that were made to articles about Lauer and the others.

Here is part of the statement that the Met musicians released – in a way not so different from Nelsons: Many of the comments that follow the musicians statement make light of the investigation and support Levine – http://slippedisc.com/2017/12/met-musicians-issues-statement-on-james-levine/#comments

Off topic, but I was so surprised to see that Lorin Stein recently resigned from the Paris Review for having established an unhealthy work environment there. From the photo spread of the rather nice Paris Review loft Refinery29 did several years ago, it looked as though the staff were all very attractive young women, except for one young man (with a weighty copy of Charles M Doughty on his desk for literary ballast), and I thought where are the little crowded offices piled with books, and where are the crusty old sharp-penciled editors like Mary Norris or Brendan Gill at the New Yorker who used to work in such offices in the old days. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/books/lorin-stein-resigns-the-paris-review.html http://www.refinery29.com/2013/07/50842/paris-review-office

The NY Times posts an excerpt from Girls of the Golden West, "the ballad of Ah Sing", sung by Hye Jung Lee, as one of the "Eight Best Classical Music Moments of the Week". Anthony Tommasini reviewed it earlier this month in the Times, giving it a solid thumbs up. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/15/arts/music/best-classical-youtube.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=thumb_square&state=standard&contentPlacement=7&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2017%2F12%2F15%2Farts%2Fmusic%2Fbest-classical-youtube.html&eventName=Watching-article-click&_r=0

Mayor Ed Lee was supposed to be a kind and good person to work with, most recently reaching out to Mission District Supervisor Hillary Ronen to help quickly set up a shelter for 150 homeless persons. He was an accidental mayor, chosen at the last minute out of the blue during a Supervisors meeting (at the time vacationing in Hawaii as I remember), as a replacement for an previously agreed replacement for Mayor Gavin Newson when Newsom left San Francisco to become Lieutenant Governor in Sacramento. For many of us Lee did seem to see things through pro-tech colored glasses. As a side note it was interesting to read that the San Francisco School Board recently nullified a 1906 policy that Asian students could only be educated at a special "Oriental" school on Clay Street in Chinatown. That policy had been dormant since the 1920s but was amazingly still on the books.

The current board members are listed on the NYCB website. Many seem to be heads of financial corporations, a few are philanthropists. I would assume that strict corporate governance rules would guide their thinking. Bill de Blasio is also listed as an "ex officio" board member meaning the position comes with his elected office, as is Gale Brewer's as Manhattan Borough President. A few of them might be as hands-on active as Anne Bass seemed to have been – in the beginning helping to retire Lincoln Kirstein (:Duberman) and at the end in a kind of proxy fight with Martins over a student she favored at SAB (:NY Observer). What a meeting the next one will be! https://www.nycballet.com/About/Board-and-Staff/Board-of-Directors.aspx

Possokhov's work in San Francisco I'm afraid isn't anywhere close to avant garde modern art, it's warmed up 1950's this and that (Cheever, Nabokov, Salinger, Margritte). Meanwhile in the past 40 years we've had J-L Godard, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, Tadeusz Kantor's Krakow Theater , Richard Foreman's Onotological-Hysterical Theater really tearing up the rules book and trying to get at something new. No word of this here.

So that's why Jeffrey Edwards left the company suddenly. There were many roles I used to enjoy seeing him do in the early nineties and all of a sudden he was gone. There's also a mention in the Kelly Cass report of Martins verbally humiliating Peter Boal in class on the same day and immediately afterwards crossing out their names from all performances for the following two weeks. Yes, why was that allowed to continue way back then.

Actually I too was shocked by Kathryn Morgan's use of word rape and had to replay that section of the recording to make sure I heard it correctly – it seemed almost surreal. I hadn't pictured that being the charge against Martins and now that charge is floating out in the electronic netherland. All against KM's good intentions of calming things down, adding balance, and speaking out somewhat in support of Martins. Helene is probably right about the new team being one of conservators – that no changes will be made during their time of interim leadership, though I initially thought so. I wonder who is leading the decision making in the background, in the roles Lincoln Kirstein, Eddie Biglow and even Anne Bass, 40 or so years ago, were playing.

But – I guess we're both citing Duberman: Martins "was indignant that Gottlieb hadn't killed the piece" – it seems Martins felt that Gottlieb as editor was responsible somehow for the article, maybe even in genesis (though perhaps I'm reading more into it here), also evidenced by reports that "Gottlieb was 'trashing' him" in comments to others.

Martins might not have been a great steward of Balanchine's legacy had there not been a great deal of pressure from the board and from the press to maintain the Balanchine legacy above all else. Also many people working diplomatically behind the scene such as Kay Mazzo, Suki Schorer etc (I'm speculating on individuals) and, in the early days, Bob Gottlieb doing programming before he was let go because of Arlene Croce's criticism of Martins in the New Yorker (Gottlieb was editor and Martins held him to be responsible for what Croce said). So perhaps the credit should be spread around to many other stewards working quietly in the background. And maybe the look of the Balanchine ballets at City Ballet would have been different – though less uniform – had the company been opened to the influence of Farrell, Villella and other distinguished alumni. To my eye – from video clips, I haven't seen the company in ten years – it looks as though the emphasis is on a clean finish of details, especially in the arms and fingers, a certain crisp style that doesn't have to be the only style. In a Conversations on Dance podcast, Gonzalo Garcia talks about being coached by Jacques d'Amboise in the Apollo he did while he was still a member of San Francisco Ballet. He cites d'Amboise saying there are many ways of doing Apollo, that current manner where all the lines have become "so precious and necessary" was not the big thing then at City Ballet – that the focus rather should be on the musicality and angles would follow.

I don't feel a loss with Balanchine tailoring choreography for his dancers – adding steps they do well, dropping them later, like changing the frame of an painting. Gargouillades must be physically impossible to do for certain dancers, but you wouldn't want to lose those dancers because they might do other things so convincingly. Violette Verdy's gargouillade in a sequence of steps from Tchaikovsky pdd below via John Clifford's (very Bruce Webery) Instagram site. And below that a step Balanchine put in Symphony in C for Clifford. The since abandoned white spats really help highlight the choreographic details. Clifford also has some clips of coaching sessions with members of the Hungarian National Ballet working through T&V.