Quiggin

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.

Two recent items. Alex Ross has apologized for not taking the rumors about James Levine seriously and brushing them off as a kind of "noise" and signing onto the Met/Fiedler defense: https://twitter.com/alexrossmusic/status/937701099976327173 Article cited in the Peter Martins thread by the son of a cellist in the Boston Symphony Orchestra who was warned by his parents, when he was 12 years old, to never be alone with James Levine; https://van-us.atavist.com/silence-breaking

It appears to be more than an anonymous letter according to the Times – The interviews may have been part of the internal invetigation at City Ballet. The Times should clarify that. But the implication is that granting romantic favors to the boss yielded better parts in a fiercely competitive environment. Added: The Washington Post fills in some details -

Maybe he remembers the student days of going to standing room - which is not a bad option at the Opera house. $10 gets a pretty good view (the equivalent of orchestra row 28) and a good sound mix (balcony standing sound is more articulate but sometimes too bright), I think there are two audiences in SF for opera - one very traditional, for whom the current production of Turandot (with Nina Stemme) is the standard and those who don't care about plot and would like to see the forms broken open. Los Angeles seems to be more adventurous musically these days. Take, for example, the recent evening at Disney Hall with Julia Bullock and Ryan McKinny of a mix of Samuel Beckett plays and Franz Schubert lieder (Schubert was Beckett's favorite composer - he would sing along at the piano). Even with the recent Diebenkorn-Matisse show at the Museum of Art you could see the same SF divide and conflict - the conservative Diebenkorn alongside the radical Matisse.

The new John Adams/Peter Sellars opera, Girls of the Golden West, about the vicissitudes of life in a remote gold rush mining town, has lots of beautiful singing in it. Julia Bullock is especially wonderful (Peter Sellers thinks she's new Lorraine Hunt Lieberson) but there are also J'Nai Bridges and Hye Jung Lee (the other girls) and Davone Tines who are all awfully good. Lorena Feijoo has a (too) brief dancing part as Lola Montez. Oddly the reviews of Girls of the Golden West get stronger the farther you go away from San Francisco. Those in the Los Angeles Times and the San Jose Mercury News were raves while the Chronicle's was especially sour. Two clips of Julia Bullock. In Purcell Indian Queen – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pacq0kgWuh0 and in a Julliard master class singing The Lad and the Bee of Hugo Wolf – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZxlvIXwwb

I can understand that being the case. I remember when a friend bought the same special perfume in Paris for his new partner that he used to buy for his ex-wife (with whom he was still friends) It was a bit of a shock to all of us, seemed somehow an act of disloyalty. Or like an incident from a Hitchcock film. Regarding dirac's commented on the guy coming out during his wife's pregnancy, I agree and sense the relationship might have been entered in a bit of bad faith on his part.

The Arthur Pita choreography has gotten fairly good notices – it's the cluster of ballets with violence against women at the Royal Ballet that was the issue. Pherank you're right about the old plot device but a lot of fine choreographers have passed on it – too many other much fresher things for them to work with. And Jennings does say, "Elsewhere in the British arts establishment, the question of female agency in performance is a live topic. At Covent Garden, it’s not even a conversation." Some of this choreography is by gay males – so I'm wondering what that says: a kind of internalized lessened self-regard, or a preemptive move of some sort, or a kind of beating the other choreographers at their own game? Somewhat related to this the Washington Post today has opinion piece by Allison Yarrow on the misogeny of Saturday Night Live writers – https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/11/20/al-frankens-saturday-night-live-era-was-full-of-jokes-disparaging-women/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.7e63ba2b0f47

The topic of violence against women on stage has come up again with the Royal Ballet's production of Arthur Pita's "The Wind." As posted in Sunday links, Luke Jennings in "Royal Triple Bill – and Yet More Sexual Violence" notes that – https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/nov/12/royal-ballet-mixed-bill-review-arthur-pita-twyla-tharp Hannah Furness (also citing Burke's essay) summarizes the responses – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/12/royal-ballet-accused-gratuitous-abuse-audiences-despair-rape/ So what it that makes violence against women a go-to dramatic device in contemporary ballets – at least in big opera house venues? This doesn't seem to be the case with small companies, at least as I can glean from watching clips at Jacob's Pillow. With British choreographers is it a sort of Francis Bacon existentialism intensification and activization of the choreographic narrative? etc etc

Gene Kelly sometimes swoons in a silly maleish way after a kiss or returned glance in various musicals. With the deMille ballet ("Jean and girls") at 55:00 above, you might see references to Giselle and Coppelia act III (weaving or grain). I was wondering if theses sorts of enrichening references or figures occur in the Wheeldon version. Canbelto says the sword dance is pretty much the same as the original. Added: I guess my question is: when a ballet's distinguished choreography is superseded by a new version, will the originals disappear? In this case could a suite of de Mille's dances for Brigadoon – which have seem to have a very contemporary grace and ease to them – be assembled and documented while there are dancers around who still remember them? Perhaps it should be a requirement just as distinguished buildings in some cities are photographed and documented before they give way to new office towers.

For comparsion, there's a very dim version of the 1980 Broadway revival online, difficult to see. But this bit of Agnes de Mille choreography really shines through - Begins at 51:00 (with setup) or 55:00 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTHpFFm7RAY Edward Villella in the sword dance from the 1966 tv version (with Robert Goulet and Peter Falk(!); choreography uncredited) at 55:30 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW5N7K1gFiw

Adding to Helene's list: Martins with Michael Torke Peck with Sufjan Stevens Also forgot to mention that Ravel has provided the basis of many ballets. Purcell through Sadler's Wells (& Constant Lambert's affection for his music) – and Mark Morris. Douglas Dunn's use of Mozart, Handel, Bellini, etc: https://vimeo.com/149334099 Joplin's music seemed safe and got overly familiar quickly. Maybe Glass's? – from overuse in commercials, backgrounds etc.

My somewhat subjective list would include (not in any order): Satie – used by Massine/Picasso, Ashton, Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Rene Clair (Entr'Acte) and, even once in the twenties, by Balanchine (Jack in the Box). Cage – Cunningham used him many times. But also his chance operations ideas influenced choreographers like Trisha Brown and filter down through other composers. Stravinsky – Rite of Spring alone has been choreographed, what, 100? times. Justin Peck used Pulcinella as a score for his most recent ballet. Chopin – Fokine, Robbins, Ashton. Bach – Balanchine, Paul Taylor (several times), Trisha Brown. Interesting how Doug Varone makes almost throwaway use of Chopin and Bach at Jacob's Pillow: https://danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org/doug-varone/nocturne-e-minor-opus-72-1/ https://danceinteractive.jacobspillow.org/doug-varone/the-bench-quartet/ Why: Stravinsky for complex and solid percussive lines. The others for the structure and portals through which to enter and leave the music(?).

When I read Ratmansky's comments, I thought a little along Marina Harss' comment in the same thread: I think she's being very diplomatic with the last sentence – but she's right that what Ratmansky actually does on stage seems to contradict his fusty comments off. At least in Bolt and Shostakovich Triology there seem to be many odd coupled and odd numbered passages. A bit nutty that he has it both ways.

I wanted more from Gottlieb about working at the New Yorker. Renata Adler (who was there) said he was "almost comically incurious" – compared to William Shawn – about the workings of the magazine. He talked mostly about himself and wasn't interested in the staff. His voice was "bored", his manner "languid." He said he, Adam Gopnik and Martha Kaplan (his "girl Friday") could probably edit the magazine by themselves. I agree with canbelto that Gottlieb's dance writings are far more involving. Sometimes with artists their more "personal" work is their least personal and their impersonal work tells the most about them. Avid Reader seems like something Gottlieb promised himself one day he would do and one day he did.

I didn't think of that – but of course! I immediately thought of doe-eyed Susan Sontag, especially the photograph by Peter Hujar (who you can see laid the groundwork for Robert Mapplethorpe's square format aesthetic): http://mwr.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/t-magazine/1970s-new-york-history.html My beef with Gopnik is that he takes up the space in the New Yorker that used to be occupied by more serious writers and writing in the past. Instead of hearing about current intellectual or political ideas in France, we merely hear that Jean Baudrillard, "the terror of West Broadway" (a block away from NYU???), is not so formidable in person – merely a mundane "stocky little guy" in his fifties. Also with Gopnik all high art is approached through low art and giggles first – Picasso's portrait of Gertrude Stein is not related to Ingres' Mons Berlin but to crude comic book sketches, etc. Good interview with Renata Adler at the Guardian, mentions the break with Gottlieb: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/07/renata-adler-new-york-author-interview And thanks for your good comments on romance novels.

In this past Sunday's New York Times Book Review: Robert Gottlieb's roundup of silly romance novels: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/books/review/macomber-steel-james-romance.html?action=click&contentCollection=review&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront Vivian Gornick on Adam Gopnik's new memoir, which begins in generic praise mode and then shifts tone into something very serious: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/29/books/review/adam-gopnik-memoir-at-the-strangers-gate.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbook-review&action=click&contentCollection=review&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront Gottlieb and Gopnik barely mention each other in their respective memoirs, yet they worked closely at Knopf and at the New Yorker. According to Renata Adler's account in Gone - The Last Days of the New Yorker (which generally squares with Gornick's review), Gopnik didn't have much use for Gottlieb after Gottlieb left the magazine. Odd though to see them appear side by side in same issue of the Sunday Times.

Here's a Ladbrokes odds list: Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Kenya, 4/1 Haruki Murakami, Japan, 5/1 Margaret Atwood, Canada, 6/1 Ko Un, South Korea, 8/1 Amos Oz, Israel, 10/1 Claudio Magris, Italy, 10/1 Javier Marías, Spain, 10/1 Adunis, Syria, 12/1 Don DeLilo, United States, 14/1 Yan Lianke, China, 14/1 Jon Fosse, Norway 18/1 Antonio Lobo Antunes, Portugal, 20/1 Cesar Aira, Argentina, 20/1 Ismail Kadare, Albania, 20/1 Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Hungary, 20/1. I like what I've little read of Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, and would be happy if he won. I prefer Cesar Aira to Murakami (often popular with the same readers). Aira is a wonderful old fashioned story teller, influenced by the jewel-like tales of Silvina Ocampo. I've read most of Marías, and love his philosophical digressions, and his commentary on the Spanish civil war in "Your Face Tomorrow". (The much shorter "Man of Feeling" is about an opera singer's involvement with a married couple.) And liked DeLilo for the "Angel Esmeralda" stories. Krasznahorkai is a steep mountain I've yet to climb.

Not sure if all of this travel is good for 1) company style 2) the ballets themselves that the dancers are supposed to serve. Dancing with so many different partners, do dancers develop a generic style? Do they pick up mannerisms and bad habits trying to quickly fit into a program or another company? Do they still care about being in a new Ratmansky or Peck work or a revival of Dances at a Gathering – or just accumulating quirky instagram juxtapositions. Frances Chung, who doesn't seem to travel from home base that much, says, "I continue to dance because of the community I am in" (which I take as being the immediate community).

Maybe there were so many choices of Balanchine works because they wear well on repeat viewings. There are so many twists and turns and trick endings that you are always surprised how they come out. Each is both a ballet and the critique of a ballet. Ratmansky also has his surprises and enrichenings of content. I could add Shostakovich Symphony #9 (the first of the Trilogy) and parts of Bolt to a desert island menu. (I initially picked Seven Sonatas.) I've only seen one Peck ballet here in San Francisco and intriguing snippets of Rodeo – so I guess there could be a triple bill of Rodeo (Peck), Rodeo (deMille) and Western Symphony.

What kind of island is this? Prospero's? Morel of Bioy-Casares? New Yorker cartoonists'? I'm listing ballets I've seen often without getting tired of. And Faure/Scarlatti or Donizetti/Stravinsky I wouldn't mind hearing over and over (Bizet would drive me crazy). – 1. Emeralds 2. Donzetti Variations or Seven Sonatas 3. Violin Concerto

The Parade costumes no longer exist. John Richardson who is writting a several volume biography of Picasso says the last time he saw the Manager's costume was in 1955 at an exhibit Richard Buckle put together. He said it was a cubist masterpiece – whereas the Joffrey reconstructions looked like "fake Picassos" (he was speaking as an art historian). He thought that they might have been tossed out after the show. The original choreography also apparently no longer exists. Massine on the 1964 revival of Parade (for Bejart?): from My Life in Ballet - via George Dorris' review of the Massine bio The Barnes foundation is apparently rebuilding their website, so hopefully that info will be back.

You're right about the significance of the buy out. She was a consistent voice. And she wasn't afraid to pan a book by a writer from an important publisher. My gripe I guess is that book reviewing is no longer the great art it was, wide ranging and full of interesting insights.

I'm not too sad about this. I found it difficult to read Michiko Kakutani's book reviews. As Ben Yagoda at Slate points out, they were either thumbs up or thumbs down reviews, nothing in between. And not as thumbs-down-pleasurable to read as someone like Pauline Kael. And never insightful in the put down. You would follow her thought and wait for the finishing touch, but it was always two sizes two small or would end on a cliche. Compare her reference to the overused "baggy monsters" of Henry James to Dwight Garner's where the book he's reading is "a large lumbering novel ... that strives for a bit of what Henry James called 'the big Balzac authority.'" You learn something new with Garner while Kakutani would always reach for the stock phrase. The worst for me was her "paint by numbers" condemnation. Who knew anyway what meant? A form of beginner's painting popular in the 50's long gone. Andy Warhol did a parody of it in 1962. I googled 10 or so instances. Here are three: What's much sadder though is the greatly diminished New York Times Book Review. They used to publish substantial reviews of important novels – international as well as just domestic – and reviews of books of history and philosophy and ideas. And dance. By people who had read more than one book by the author or on the subject. No more. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2006/04/michiko_kakutani.html

Interesting acerbic interchange with Anthony Tudor at 5:15, also a brief cameo by Wilhelm deKooning 10:02 in Spoleto, and Clive Barnes reviewing at the end, 13:01 & :38. Narrator seems to out-Edward R Murrow Ed Murrow. Blackwood catalogue also features what looks like a good survey called Making Dances - 7 Post-Modern Dancers. Also great clips of Thelonious Monk in the Monk documentary. more Blackwood Feld (trailer) - http://www.michaelblackwoodproductions.com/old/md_americanballetcompany.php Making Dances (begins with Valda Setterfield) - http://www.michaelblackwoodproductions.com/old/md_makingdances.php Monk - http://www.michaelblackwoodproductions.com/old/md_monk.php

Massine's light ballets were popular enough in the US and England in the 1930s, but the big symphonic ballets were controversial among critics. The debate was whether choreography should tightly follow each musical phrase with an equivalent choreographical phrase, as in Massine's work, or whether the choreography should be oblique or contrapunctal to the music, as in Ashton, Nijinska, and Balanchine (:Constant Lambert). In 1937 Edwin Denby credits Massine with being the master choreographer of the day, brilliantly inventive, able to create the equivalent of multiple voices in music with the entry of many characters at once. But he also says he doesn't enjoy his work, that there is an abstract nervousness that doesn't add up to any humaness. He thinks Aleko the best of the work (John Martin's choice is Choreartium). Denby, in "A Briefing in American Ballet" (1948), also says that being cut off from its cultural sources in Europe during the 30s and 40s was disasterous for the Ballet Russe and its style of dancing and choreography. There were no longer (as Sandik points out) the kinds of character dancers to bring off the older novelty pieces. And once you had Rodeo, Fancy Free, Billy the Kid and Merce Cunningham's The Seasons being presented, Massine's symphonic work didn't seem to have much resonance for younger American audiences. From the Massine site above, a clip of Choreartium revived by Baravian State Ballet, with a discussion in German that seems to refer to Massine's influence on Cranko and Neumeier (and intriguingly something about Thomas Mann?). (Begins at 6:10) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYB38YVv7lQ&feature=youtu.be&t=6m51s target= A good example of the almost maddening complexity of Massine's choreographic constructions - Symphony Fantastique - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KxsAoiegLM