kfw

Was Rent ever intended as a gateway to opera?  I’m inclined not to think so.

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I haven't read that it was. But if I knew nothing of opera and loved "Rent" that's where it would lead me. It was popular with young people, after all, with people who tend to be curious and relatively openminded.

I loved your Blue Oyster Cult reference. Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away I had one of their records, and once I saw them play, opening for another band I can't remember now. It was probably some vulgar blues rock band, the type that eventually led me (to simplify a not quite so straightforward story) to straight Chicago blues, which led to jazz, which made me think I could learn to love classical music, which eventually made me curious about opera.

As Hans van Manen said in an interview "Dance is something you do with your eyes."

(It sounds better in Dutch.)

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What's the Dutch, Herman? (When I was 12 I could have done the translation myself).

The "crossover" phenomenon and resultant snobbery go back to Enrico Caruso.

I don’t turn up my nose at crossover on principle, but even with singers who have a “jazz” background, their years of classical training tends to deprive them of the right style and approach for show tunes composed after the era of operetta. I don’t mean that they shouldn’t try if they wish, but most such efforts don’t work for me.

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It's interesting that you use that example, because I've been thinking of Renee Fleming, whom I like very much, but whose jazz singing, on brief hearing, struck me as stiff and mannered.

Also on the subject of crossover, browsing a record store yesterday I picked up a promo DVD for one "East Village Opera Company." Although the members interviewed on the disc seem to think they're doing something radical, and insist, as if this validates their music, that Mozart today would be writing for electric guitars -- and I suppose he would -- to my ears the excerpted arias are rendered in dully predictable arena rock-style. I don't hear anything imaginative here, and the drumming sounds especially silly. But other opera lovers may have other reactions. All of which reminds me of "Rent" (which I haven't seen or heard). I wonder how many audience members at the Met or the State Theater came to opera through "Rent."

Those who were displeased about the Bejart programming can stop complaining. As now constituted, the program is all Balanchine and no Bejart: La Source, Duo Concertant, the pas de deux from Clarinade (music by Morton Gould), and La Valse.

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Two "minor" Balanchine ballets I've never seen, one major work I haven't seen in 14 years, and another I love ... I'll/we'll have to see this program at least twice, more if I lose my head (and wouldn't that be wonderful?) Oh, the money! FF, I'm really peeved now.

My Suzanne Farrell Ballet 2006 Kennedy Center dream season: All Bejart.

Today's NY Times has an interesting story at once sad and refreshing about a singer too proud and principled to sing pop songs.

"I said, 'My crossover is to Handel,' " Ms. Millo said. "It's one profession trying to get another profession to modern up. And it's not going to work, not with this girl."

I had to Google "1986 Oscar Foreign Film" to find the name of the thing (sometimes advancing middle age is a blessing), but "Betty Blue" is the most mawkish and pretentious "art" film I've ever seen. I rank it lower than "The Piano" (and I'd always found Holly Hunter so attractive before). No offense, canbelto, but on last viewing I still loved "Cries and Whispers."

This was one of the first ballets I saw NYCB perform, in a performance with Barishnikov and McBride in Chicago in '79. I was relatively new to the ballet and still learning what to look for but eager to see the great Barishnikov, and I remember being somewhat underwhelmed. The performances of this ballet I cherish in memory are those by Jaffe and Bocca.

I'm with Bart. In my experience, even white leotards are distracting sometimes. I'm reminded of Diana Adams saying she was mortified to appear in a white leotard in Electronics. Present a nude body and how many of us are first and foremost interested in how that body moves? That body? Presented with the nude body of a strange dancer, how many of us can immediately see a dancer? I'd think that the weaker choreography, the more distracting the nudity would be. The more beautiful the bodies, the stronger the dance would need to be, assuming dance is the subject, and this isn't known as an age of great choreography. Perhaps nudity distracts from that lack as well, but not on dance terms.

The Verghis article is disappointing -- or is it, no pun intended, revealing? -- in that none of the people she quotes defending nudity in dance attempt to offer any real explanation of why it's desirable. Stephen Heathcote talks about appropriate context vs. gratuitousness -- that "appropriate" is an admission that he's on the defensive -- but gives no examples or definitions. If the choreographer can't show vulnerablility, why will nudity automatically read that way? If the choreographer can show vulnerablity, why is nudity necessary?

The author asks why ballet shouldn't break out of its classical aesthetic and move with the times, but she never says why moving with the times is a virtue. Since when is "progress" always improvement?

Humor, choreographic patterns and surprises, and close attention to detail. Thanks everyone, for whetting my appetite. I think I owe it to myself to give Morris a try the next time I get a chance.

QUOTE:  ". . . legs unstretched, feet floppy and slappy, the upper body not lifted but just pumped there, llike any office worker.

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Sounds perfectly awful, Bart. But I know you have an eye, and Morris' work hardly lacks for critical acclaim, so I'm sure it's not. Can you explain why this appeals to you. I'm looking for an entry point here.

I've seen very little of Morris's work, but I'd jump at the chance to see L’Allegro, Il Penseroso ed il Moderato."

Here's a New Criterion article by Laura Jacobs that may spark some discussion: Mark Morris at BAM .

And -- that's a stunning set for the 1937 "Apollo".  Anyone have information about it?

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In his invaluable book "Thirty Years/The New York City Ballet," Lincoln Kirstein writes that "our models were Poussin's backgrounds from his Echo and Narcissus and The Arcadian Sheperds. . . . Stewart Chaney, an adroit and responsible designer, contrived a big Poussineque cave, over which spread trunk and branches of a huge sacred laurel."

This background was "lit to accentuate a late-afternoon glow." Stravinsky approved. Unlike the previous scenery for the ballet, by Bauchant, this "never mocked the music."

Today's Washington Post has a rueful essay by Mark Gaveneau Judge, "Also Playing: Cries & Whispers, Shouts & Backtalk," subtitled What Happened to Silence at the Movies?. Answer: It'll cost you $18.

Even in the Question Authority Age (and indeed, even today) dancers often take it upon themselves (whether taught to or not by their teachers) to be martyrs who will suffer through just about anything.  I say, good for Fugate--perhaps if more dancers had taken the same stance, Robbins would have been forced to change his behavior.

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Interesting point, Hans. Aren't corps dancers still frequently referred to as the "boys" and the "girls"? I find that hard to understand.

I remember Saul Bellow writing in Herzog something to the effect that on occasion personality just does its thing, and all you can do is stand by and watch.......

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Saul Bellow should be worked into a thread whenever possible.

danceintheblood may well have a point. In Greg Lawrence's bio of Jerome Robbins, he quotes someone -- it was either John Kander or the late Fred Ebb, I think the former -- about Robbins' notorious bad behavior, and Kander said something like, He did it because he could get away with it, he wouldn't be able to these days.  Which may well be an oversimplification, but one with some truth to it.  Toscanini acted like Toscanini because he could, but it would be difficult to get musicians to sit still for such treatment nowadays.

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I don't know, dirac, Robbins only died 7 years ago, well into the Question Authority era, and while Judith Fugate and perhaps others are on record as having refused to work with him, many others did. His behavior stemmed from insecurity, or so we're told, and perhaps knowing that gave people the strength to withstand his storms.

And now for something completely different: Glass Pieces

If I'm not mistaken, didn't K. Tracey and Z. Karz perform part of Agon for a special on Balanchine that aired on PBS back in the early 90's (maybe 1993)?  If I remember correctly, the two of them danced so beautifully.

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Lisinka1, you're correct on both counts.

I don't know when Croce's book will appear, but Amazon lists a paperback by one

Marc Raymond Strauss entitled "Dance Criticism of Arlene Croce: Articulating a Vision of Artistry, 1973-1987" due out on the 31st of December. This New Year's Eve I think I'll stay home and read!

Diana Adams is so beautiful.  I love those George Platt Lynes photographs of her. And from the tapes I've seen, she danced to match.

As I recall, Diana Adams was even more beautiful on stage. Almost too beautiful, if that is possible. Her classic and serene face was almost a distraction from her classic and marvellous dancing.

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Thanks for that, Bart. How could you stand it? How could Balanchine?

Frank Zappa was a really decent guy, if we are talking about 'rock' musicians now.  I think he was more in the genius category than Bruce Springsteen.

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I know what you mean, PetipaFan, but while this isn't the place to debate the merits of a couple of pop artists (I probably shouldn't have mentioned "Broooce" in the first place), it's worth noting that one was clever and funny and musically sophisticated, the other goes right for the gut. One spoke to the head, the other speaks to the heart; you may disagree, but I mention this only because it seems to me that artistic genius does both.

To get at least part way back to Leigh's original question, if we agree that artistic genius -- that great art -- by definition touches both body and mind, it's of course all the more remarkable that artistic talent and vision of a high order is so often acccompanied by narcissism. How can people capable of deep feeling, and thus of deep emotional suffering, be so callous as to inflict it on others? A far too simple question, probably.

Anyhow, Czeslaw Milosz, whose poetry I've come to love in the year since his death, at least acknowledged that in his devotion to his art, and in his ambition, he hurt those around him. Contrast that with another pop artists whom I won't name, often called a genius, who could ask bluntly, "when I am in the darkness, why must you intrude?"

It should be noted that mediocrities often lack manners, too.  Although, as dirac pointed out, they are more likely to be discouraged when their tantrums backfire.  It's been my experience that people who are secure in their position generally treat others civilly.  The insecure are the ones who seem to expect others to bow to their irrational whims.  Not a hard and fast rule,  but in general.

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So true, carbro. And we might wonder how many of us nice and civil people -- at least I think I'm civil most of the time! -- would turn Battle-esque under the pressure of stardom.

When I think of a nice-guy, albeit small-A, artist, I think of Bruce Springsteen.

...but is he right that no dance performance has ever made a big difference in the way that a great book or even a pop song can?  And how significant in the world do you think dance is?

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Introducing her restaging of Don Quixote last month, Suzanne Farrell expressed a wish that having seen the ballet, we would be changed. Pop songs may effect more people than ballet, but his argument would seem to presume that they have greater capacity to effect an individual than a ballet. Why? I what pop songs he thinks have changed the world, and I wonder if he's aware of how popular NYCB was with writers and artists in Balanchine's day.

There's been no announcement?  Just poof, she's gone?

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Poof? Let's not start rumors.

I saw her live only once, as the novice in the Cage, in which she was electrifying.

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I caught her in that role in the summer of 1999, with Meunier in the secondary lead part. Another patron told my wife, "I've seen The Cage many times, but never like that!"