Quiggin

The problem may not so much be the drug use (and who knows what the queen's position would be – hasn't she worked for the company as a set designer?) but Hubbe's mercurial management style. Here are some readers comments from the Jllyands Posten online: It may be a case (and I think there was a proposal somewhere of this) of having a second ballet master as co-administrator.

Drug problems aside, this may have been fueled by resentment about all the quick changes Hubbe made – and Hubbe's intense charisma, which can be seen as mercurial and autocratic by those who don't really cotton to it. According to an article in Reuters of June 17, 2011: The Royal Danish management seems to have made a somewhat curious choice in its selection of the person who made the report. Helle Hedegaard Hein works with the Copenhagen Business School and her online powerpoint presentations revolve around the "Primadonna" type at the workplace: Managing the professional primadonna On the other hand she has a paper in English in which she identifies the four key types as: Prima Donna, Performance Addict, Pragmatist, Paycheck Worker. Here the Prima Donna type is the one for whom – Their work is their calling. Governed by extremely strong values and ideals. Work is a primary source of meaningfulness, satisfaction and identity. Willing to make personal sacrifices for the sake of a higher purpose.: Stepping into character All of this would make a great early Bergman comedy, if it weren't also a bit sad.

Thanks, checkwriter, for directing us to the links. The report had been about general working conditions. From the interview between Henrik Sten Peterson and Torben Benner of "Politiken" - via google translate -

Actually this isn't really a "News of the World" / media sort of thing. It appears to have begun as an RDB internal report, was not acted on, and now has become a political hot potato. Maybe the stresses and preparations of the tour distracted everyone from dealing with whatever problem there might have been early on. In general individual cocaine or pot use is fine, but where it becomes part of the culture of an organization, it creates problems, with everyone on different mood gradients – upwards or down. At least that was my experience in working at such a company...

It'd be great if Streep would take a SCTV improvision approach and slip back and forth between Julia Child and Margaret Thatcher – also Karen Blixen. Who played Rupert Murdoch? and more importantly, who is going to play "steel lady" Rebekah Brooks in the sequel?

I checked out John Martin had to say at the historical New York Times site. This was written during Martin's pro-Balanchine period which began with "Agon." Martin positions "Figure in the Carpet" within "what historians will one day call [City Ballet's] international relations period." These eight ballets included Argentina (Taras/Ginestera); Brazil (Moncion/Villa Lobos); Columbia (Balanchine/Escobar); Cuba (Balanchine/Orbon) Mexico (Contreras/Revueltas); Uruguay (d'Amboise/Toscar). Balanchine had also "made a present of an half dozen of his ballets to several European cities through the agency of the State Department." "Figure in the Carpet" was sponsored by the Shah of Iran, Mahommed Reza Pahlevi (whose monarchy had recently been strengthened by certain Western powers interventions). Balanchine had been given the program for the ballet from Persian carpet designs "based on garden symbols, prayers for water fertility and life itself" by the director of the Fourth Congress of Iranian and Archaeology – under the patronage of President Eisenhower and the Shah. "The five scenes signify the desert, the sky, the palace, paradise and finally an apothosis of the carpet itself to Handel’s great fugue. Here there will be fountains on stage pouring forth live water. The ballet lasts for an hour and employs virtually the whole company." (NYT, March 13, 1960) Martin's review of April 14, 1960 ("Ballet: A Novelty Debuts") probably makes you realize why the ballet was dropped, and why it slipped from Balanchine's – and Bart's – memories. And something as to the why of the short shelf life of many cold war/international relations ballets. It debuted with "Pas de Dix" and "Stars and Stripes," and completed the season with "Episodes II" and Robbins' "Fanfare."

Anthony_NYC: Yes more uncompromising, and unsentimental. Sloper's limitation is that he can only be ironic and in the right, and at points seems a bit frustrated with the limits James has given him. Catherine, though dull, develops more and has great moments of insight. Clift in "Place in the Sun" is amazing just not for his beauty but that he is always doing something new with the part. I think Stevens really lets the camera go on filming him a bit longer than he would with any other actor. According to Wikipedia, Cooper was supposed to be in "Red River" but was afraid that Clift would upstage him. I tried to watch it again but couldn't deal with all the killing of faceless and nameless figures. The general "settling" of the west, and the rationale, doesn't play quite the way it used to.

Aunt Lavinia and Morris have a very strange relationship in the original story – something of a draft version of Madame Merle and Osmond later in Portrait of a Lady. All along Catherine senses Aunt Lavinia's "innocent falsity," and when she finally realizes what was going on: "it was like the solid conjuction of a dozen disembodied doubts and her imagination, at a single bound, had traversed an enormous distance." When Morris comes back into the story at the end, he is beared and bald, but still handsome, and while "it was the old voice; it had not the old charm." He had lived well and he had not been caught, that was all that defined him. The film version - from the clips I've seen - is very good, and seems to have come on the heels of series of late forties movies in which the husband or love interest or trusted one is potentially one's enemy: Suspicion, Rebecca, Notorious, Shadow of a Doubt (Uncle Charlie). Why was there so much of this? Was it that the War and the campaign's not to trust one's neighbor - "Loose Lips Sink Ships" – had permeated all private interactions. (Javier Marias develops this theme in Your Face Tomorrow.)

"plucky" - "sassy" - "mincing" The Times used to use horse metaphors a lot in the nineties - "filly-like" and "coltish" - and even once saying that a dancer (Lindsay Fischer) had finally "earned his spurs." "Iconic" is used everywhere and is pretty deadly. It wants to mean classic. In architecture I always think of it an iconic building as so rudimentary – such as the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco - that you can conjure up all its meagre effects in your mind without ever having to visit it. Whereas with good architecture - or art - you are always surprised by what it has to say each time you see it. I think "frisson" is used in art criticism where two genres or two techniques are used and certain overtones come out unexpectedly. "Plangent" is beautiful sounding - but it slows down the sentence for me and I have to think about it. OT: I'm sad that "sea change" became a cliche and its meaning was reduced to "complete change" rather than the original more evocative transubstantiation into "something rich and strange." I blame the on US mid-term elections of 1996 when Republican spokesmen used this term over and over in interviews to signal the final overthrow of the Roosevelt era. Particular ways of turning in air, unique to a dancer, seem hard to describe - writers seem to pass over those in silence. * canbelto: Yes, Nikolaj Hubbe most recently, at least by two reviewers – which sort of diminishes him.

Roberta Smith on Twombly. I always enjoy reading her art reviews – she really knows the gallery scene and is unashamed of liking old fashioned painterly painting. An Artist of Selective Abandon

Actually Francis's statement was one of the least art-speak ones I could find - Roland Barthes wrote two famous essays about Twombly that are much more difficult. One ends: And I tried to balance that with the words of Brice Marden, who is also a fine painter. Even Varnedoe's writing takes wings when he writes about Twombly. What I was concerned with is the lush, overly lyrical late work would become what is identified with him, rather than the gritty groundbreaking work of the fifties or the bleak seventies pieces - the stuff that stung a bit to look at - that you had to go back to again and again to figure out what was going on. The hellishness of Black Mountain, working away from abstract expressionism were very important. And then of course Warhol & the Pop artists came on the scene with a much simpler, faux-naive ending to the abstract expressionist era – and Rauchenberg and Twombly were somewhat sidelined.

Twombly has been paired with Poussin well before now. Writers are always attracted to his work because at times it's almost like writing – but they try to make him out to be more lyrical than he was in his best early work. It was quite aggressive and slashing – he used a nail to stratch on the plates of his prints. Graffiti were then often scratched on walls in obscure, out of the way places. Twombly and Rauchenberg had gone to Black Mountain College in the early fifties, a very intense experience for everyone. Richard Francis, introductiion to the catalogue for the Mayor Gallery in London in 1982: Brice Marden, in conversation with Kurt Varnedoe 1994: The only thing is that at least during the seventies, he didn't really leave town. He kept coming back to studios on the Bowery or Canal Street and began painting these interesting grim, gray paintings of geometric figures, boxes – influenced by Minimalism, steely gray New York light and the general austerities of that time.

Travelling between Greek islands over rough seas the best place to be was on deck where you could keep your eye on the horizon and feel the spray on your face. Downstairs all the passengers were lying on the floor next to their backpacks while the crew were carrying plates of the richest food and gleefully eating it up.

wikipedia smoking entry simon g This thread also begins to separate people by class and to ostracize certain groups, in a very polite way of course, and to stigmatize dancers – whom Ballet Alert professes support.

Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz) and Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray) are probably the two strongest and strongestly identified with Crawford. She worked a lot through the fifies - Best of Everything, Sudden Fear, The Damned Don't Cry and a General Electric Theater directed by John Brahm. And her post Hush Hush image was softened up a bit when she became head of Pepsi Cola, and its spokesperson (in the great Skidmore Owings and Merrill Pepsico building at 59th & Park Ave, always much cooler than Lever House!). I think Gavin Lambert has a story in "Slide Area" that anticipates "Mommie Dearest." Lambert also wrote a biography of Norma Shearer, and Fitzgerald is supposed to have written "Tender is the Night" and "Crazy Sunday" with her in mind, not a small thing.

Jonathan Raban: FT: Soft City Rather than with new identities of our own we presently seem to define ourselves by unmasking others' identity choices or being annoyed with their weaknesses, especially that of the Smoker (whose new status in the city would have greatly interested Baudelaire and Rimbaud and Manet). If we were really concerned with foul air in cities, then boycotting drycleaners, not driving cars, shutting off window air conditioners for a few hours of the day – in general slowing down one's life – might do the parks and commons more good. And smoking's not so much a "personal choice" that falls equally on everyone – one's social situation, metabolism, vulnerability to images, need for a physical stimulus have a lot to do with it. And terribly difficult to kick, despite one's pluck and character and couragousness and all those great american building blocks of success.

I was wondering too about the companies in Central & South America – and which ones in particular have benefited from the Cuban ballet, its dancers and teachers.

I've sort of lost track of the cycles of this thread ... but when did dancers have to become good role models for other dancers? Were Allegra Kent or Suzanne Farrell great role models – or Nureyev? The most interesting dancers in our local company probably have the greatest character flaws, including, but not limited to, being smokers. (By the way the characters in the book I've resumed reading, "Your Face Tomorrow" (2002-2009), do a fair amount of smoking: "Wheeler took a few puffs and looked with bemusement at the lighted end, doubtless unaccustomed to the feeble, insipid cigarettes I usually smoke.")

Here's the source of the Balanchine story I remembered. It came from "American Ballet Theatre / text & commentary by Charles Payne ; with essays by Alicia Alonso, Nora Kaye, Erik Bruhn ... [et al.]" which is full of great information about the formation of ABT and ancillary material on New York City Ballet. Here follow two sections on the "new," mid-forties "Giselle" done when Anton Dolin was away dancing for the de Basil company. choreography (first paragraph paraphrased): costumes: Here are some of Erik Bruhn's comments about ABT's "Giselle" when he was dancing it in 1955 with Alicia Markova: Apparently when Youskevitch danced it, Markova/Giselle died in her mother's arms, while Albrecht, although remorseful, lets himself be led away to rejoin his fiancee Bathilde — consistent, Bruhn says, with Gautier's instruction, "his head resting on the shoulder of the beautiful Bathilde, who forgives and consoles him." But when Bruhn danced with Markova, she said she preferred him "to play it as Dolin had, that is for me to continue holding her in my arms until the curtain fell," so that the audience's attention and sympathy would remain with her. He says he later realized that the emphasis depended on which of the two, Giselle or Albrecht, was in control – and that this was still going on in the 70's when Natalia Makarova was dancing in two similarly contrasting interpretations - with Baryshnikov's, in whose arms she died, and Ivan Nagy where she died in the arms of her mother. Sorry for all the text and if it's been cited before – but I did find all these variations fascinating. And maybe it's best that there is no "true" version (though great that Doug and PNB did find and establish a base point).

There is a reference to this in an ABT brochure – "American Ballet Theatre, 1940-1977" I think. Balanchine remembered this "Giselle" embellishment from his childhood in Russia. However, it didn't work dramatically and was soon dropped. Lifar tried to do a production with so many flowers that the floor became slick and dangerous (:Crisp?). Denby also has an description somewhere of an amusing distribution of flowers.

It's really no longer glamorous to smoke in the way it used to be and most European countries have smoking bans – Germany appears to be the exception. I believe that part of the impetus for the bans had to do with the costs to national health systems. Wikipedia list of smoking bans I remember our design class teacher always sitting on a stool as he lectured, in a crisp white shirt and bow tie and a cigarette in one hand that he would switch for a piece of chalk when he went up to the board. A friend who worked at Time in Chicago said that the floors were covered with piles of cigarettes before each deadline. (In the last minute madness she once made the mistake of letting an issue of Sports Illustrated go to press with the old price of 15c on it instead of 20c). Cigarette smoking seemed to have become a part of the rhythm of modern life – the drug to keep production flowing. It's supposed to be as hard to give up as heroin is. I seemed to have grown up with no curiosity or animus towards it – I guess I associated it with my parent's generation, their drinks and their party noise. I don't fault dancers for smoking. It seems to have an element of melancholy and solitude to it now. The compulsion to text has taken its place, a small decafinated pleasure that seems to dull rather than sharpen the mind. Yes, Sternberg more than any director liked to use smoke as a visual element in his films, against black backgrounds – anything moving slowly through air: smoke, feathers, black lace, they mesmerized him. After some time of watching that stuff, you'd want to get out of his class as quickly as possible for one where a bare bones neo-realist or Sam Peckinpah film was being shown and discussed – and where cigarettes were scarce due to rationing or black market sourcing, or took a long time to roll.

The Bournonville jump looks as if the man has been caught in a binoculars or telephoto lens – foreshortened or stalling – but it's always exhuberant and charming, and the turns are gracefully banked, like skateboarding around a curve. The movements do lack something of the descriptive quality or ultimate tragedy of Petipa or Balanchine – but Bournonville seems to have an overall more optimistic view of life. Even "La Sylphide" produces a happy marriage and some lovely dances between James and his muse before the scarf incident. And I'll also say that Sorella Englund was a great character performer, magnificiently flinging the gold coins away that James tries to buy his way out of his troubles with. I enjoyed "the Lesson" a lot despite myself (which I saw in Berkeley, not New York). It seems to be of the same type or vintage as Robbins "Concert" or "Afternoon of a Faun" – and probably dated as some of Ionesco's other works may be, but the fact that it was so well preserved and brilliant acted made it pretty amazing theater. And I was perhaps swayed by Nikolaj Hubbe's talk where he pointed up the considerable skills "the Lesson" required, that each actor approached it differently, and that holding onto yourself, your sanity, toward the end is difficult. He borrowed a term from Uta Hagen to characterize this. (You could see why he is such a charismatic teacher himself.) The cast I saw were Maria Bernholdt, Alexandra Lo Sardo and Mads Blangstrup. It was the first time they were doing it – and with hardly any dress rehearsal because of problems getting the sets to fit on the Zellerbach stage – so it had the intensity of an improvised performance. Mads Blangstrup was particularly brilliant as the ballet master, his hair slicked down and his body compacted into a repressed and prim hour glass shape. The Nordic Choreographers night I also enjoyed a lot – the sweet and the severe – everything seemed to fit well into the program. Shelby Elsbree, Tim Matiakis were great to watch, as was the shy magic of Alban Lendorf in "Les Lutins," and in "Salute" Julien Roman - who for a brief unsettling moment during bows almost stepped off the apron of the stage into black nothingness, then pulled himself back - put in a beautifully detailed and charming performance.

The real thing is more extreme – here's a description from a recent show on the West Coast: But the gallery directors who write these descriptions are very charming and smart and sensible in conversation and put up very handsome shows. Part of the evolution of this style is from having to write grants and coming up a standardized vocabulary to describe art objects that are "difficult characters." There's also the temptation to throw everything you know, all your favorite philosophical terms – all the spices in your cupboard – into one powerful statement of intent (of which I've been quite guilty). You'll see Wittgenstein, Jung and Rilke cited side by side – who come from completely different universes and would have had no use for each other in real life. But dance criticism, too, has its own long list of descriptive terms that no longer correspond to experience of dance, or with expired shelf lives. * My own favorite wayward pitch came from an upscale coffee roaster in San Francisco (they also have a store in Brooklyn):

I think it's true about "Rubies" being the most variable in effectiveness. When I saw it with Gonzalo Garcia here in San Francisco, close-up in and on a smaller stage than State Theater's, I saw it in terms of the layering of dancers, with Garcia barrelling down the middle alley and acting as a strong counterpoint to the other dancers, somewhat as he did in "Apollo." Last year or so Maria Kochetkova and Taras Domitro danced it (against Sofiane Sylve) precisely in tandem, two happy red shadows of each other. And in the short video clip of Miami Ballet a few years back, it looked as though the corps were dancing with as much importance and snappy finish as the soloists (which they didn't in SF) – at least in the part where the girl is caught and turned about between four cardinal points. But "Rubies" is a red box of a ballet – like the room in "Petrouska" – while "Emeralds" is so big and Shakespearean and about so many things – the porousity of love and coupledom, solitariness, the quiet play of pan and nymphs in a field, and some sort of troublesome reconciliation with the major gods ...

They say that when people start talking about the sets and how good they were, you know the play was a failure. You could say that when costumes – fashions are costumes; am's without the cartesian I's yet in them – become the subject matter of museum shows, then something has failed. Actually I think that the beautiful Balenciagas and Diors come off better in the classic Vogue and Bazaar photographs than they do on the manikans, which always look strangely assembled, have skin the texture of freshly spread stucco and seem as if they are going to topple over at any moment.