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Does anyone who's seen this care to comment on the choreography and the interoplated theme of peace and harmony? How is that theme displayed? Who or what replaces the Sugar Plum Fairy dramatically? Also, I understand that otherwise Moscow's version is modeled on Vainonen's. How much of an influence has his version had? Is Clara "Masha" in other Russian versions of the ballet, or is that name particular to Moscow Ballet's production? Thanks.

BW it's been reprinted by the University Press of Florida, September 2003. It is, ahem, available at a site where purchases do not support Ballet Talk, but I assume Amazon will have it soon. The price, by the way, is a ridiculous 22 bucks, so it's worth buying from an online discounter like the one in the upper righthand corner of the screen whom I'm assuming will have it soon.

Toni Bentley's "Winter Season," a diary of a season with NYCB, has been reissued, and with a new introduction in which she describes telling Balanchine about the book, and his reaction after reading it. She also includes a fascinating letter from Lincoln Kirstein in which he describes Balanchine's dances as having a sacramental function.

Treefrog, having been thrilled by a film last week that I had high hopes and low expectations for, that was my intention here, to temper expectations so that everyone just loves "The Company" when they finally see it. B) Seriously, don't make too much of what I wrote, I was probably too hard on it. When I spoke of bad dialogue and stock characters I guess I was mostly thinking of McDowell as company director. And the blurb on the festival's web site reminds me that there is some drama over Campbell's place in the company. It scarcely registered with me, but young viewers will probably have a different reaction. The film has a cast full of ballet dancers too -- lots of good-looking people!

This might be of interest to University of Virgina alumni and Ballet Alerters in the Charlottesvile area. UVA curently offers only 2 dance classes, but this group wants to establish a true dance program. The Campaign for Dance "Mission We wish to establish a Cultural Studies in Movement and Dance Program at the University of Virginia that will engage the mind and body in creative and interdisciplinary studies of the arts. The program will integrate academic study and pre-professional training, offering a context in which embodied experience is a crucial mode of research. Coursework will provide practical, intercultural, and critical perspectives on dance and movement. A clear need for such a program exists at the University. The potential for such a program to forge links among the arts, with new media, and across the humanities and social sciences is tremendous. "

I saw “The Company” at a film festival tonight, and it was a big disappointment. On the plus side, the film was made with – or made on, if you will -- The Joffrey Ballet, and it does give us lots and lots of dancing, wonderfully shot. It did renew my great admiration for ballet dancers. We do briefly see Lar Lubovitch teaching a pas de deux. Suzanne Lopez and John Gluckman, dancers/cast members who took part in a question and answer session afterward, did call it an accurate depiction of company life. The opening scenes are of Alwin Nikolais’ “Tensile Involvement,” and we also see, in performance or in rehearsal, excerpts from La Vivandiere, Trinity, Light Rain, and plenty more I can’t remember. The producer had originally planned to include The Green Table. (I wish he would have). I wasn’t especially taken with some of the choreography, but most of it was real Joffrey rep. To my mind, the big problem with the film is that it has no dramatic heart. In fact it has no drama. We see Neve Campbell’s character become involved with a sous chef, and he’s a likeable guy. They’re a likeable couple. But nothing much happens to them. We follow them throughout the rest of the film, but we don’t see their relationship grow, come to any conflict . . . nothing. In the same way, we see a dancer face off with a ballet master, the company director argue with a choreographer and with a dancer, a dancer lose a role shortly before the piece premieres, and another one blow out her Achilles tendon in rehearsal. Naturally, every thing here happened to someone in the company. Every situation is drawn from Joffrey life. But none are developed. They don’t lead anywhere. This film is like a faux documentary with bad dialogue and stock characters. Campbell and a male dancer have a pas de deux to “My Funny Valentine” (Lubovitch’s piece) before an invited audience at the Grant Park Bandshell, and it begins to rain, and we expect – or at least I expected – that someone would slip and be injured. No such luck for either dancers or audience – again the tiny bit of built-up tension just dissipates. As “Mr. A,” which is apparently how Joffrey dancers refer to Gerald Arpino, Malcolm McDowell is vain, dictatorial, and overbearing to the point of silliness. He refers to the dancers collectively as “babies.” They mock him and spoof the Alwin ballet in one of the film’s best and least clichéd scenes. Our two real live dancers told us that while Mr. A is a fictional character, there’s a lot of Arpino in the guy. Perhaps so, but he’s a tiresome cliché. I didn’t just dislike the character, I disliked the performance. In the film’s final set piece, Neve Campbell’s character is injured onstage during a performance (shot in Chicago’s beautiful Auditorium Theatre) of a long time-waster called “The Blue Snake.” If I understood correctly, this is an actual ballet which someone – Campbell, I believe – was taken with when she was ten. Children will love it, I suppose. As for the rest of us, well, it’s a kitschy spectacle in which all the dancers are costumed like bizarre creatures and some are eaten by a huge mechanical, smoke-breathing monster. Are we supposed to snort in derision here? I think so. Are we supposed to be entertained? I can scarcely imagine. Why why why displace a good ballet with this dull thing? Some people will no doubt like this film, perhaps very much. If anyone asked me for a backstage-at-the-ballet film, though, I’d loan them my copy of Frederick Wiseman’s ABT documentary. It’s real. It’s dramatic.

I don't like to write and say "thanks" very often when that's all I have to say, but I have send a great big "thank you" to both Bobbi and Leigh for writing about this program! Those of us in the U.S. will at least get to hear it next year on NPR.

vagansmom, I just now noticed your question. I love this translation. In the introduction to it one of the translators writes that "the manner of the Brothers Karamazov, as opposed to its matter, is essentially comic, and its humor erupts at the most unexpected moments. . . Previous transaltors of The Brothers Karamazov into English have revised, 'corrected,' or smoothed over his idiosyncratic prose, removing much of the humor and distinctive voicing of the novel. We have made this new translation in the belief that a truer rendering of Dostoevsky's style would restore missing dimensions to the book. That's what convinced me to buy this copy (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1990), and I haven't been disappointed!

I'm rereading The Brothers Karamazov, this time in a 1990, award-winning translation, and I'm also dipping into several histories of the Christian church.

I saw this in the bookstore this morning, and I don't find it noted anywhere here. "NUTCRACKER" NATION How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World From amazon -- A lively discussion of North America’s favorite ballet--its history, productions, and significance . . . . . . Fisher offers new insights into the Nutcracker phenomenon, examining it as a dance scholar and critic, a former participant, an observer of popular culture, and an interviewer of those who dance, present, and watch the beloved ballet. More details at http://www.yale.edu/yup/books/097468.htm

Isabel spared our trees, but we haven't had power since 5 yesterday afternoon. I love my laptop!

Diane, I sure couldn’t say, but I understand that beauty, which has been suspect for decades in some quarters of the art world, is making a comeback. Not that art should always be beautiful, and it sure doesn’t have to be pretty, but as ballet fans know, the world is still a beautiful in many ways. Pendulums do swing of course, and perhaps we’re seeing that already. I don’t think shock art much engages people aesthetically. A show like “Sensation” – OK, I didn’t see it – seems to be mostly just that, a prefab, psuedo-event “sensation.” But beauty will always engage us if we let it. Let me add the blurb from a little 1999 book by Harvard professor Elaine Scarry, "On Beauty and Being Just" -- " . . Scarry not only defends beauty from recent political arguments against it, but argues that beauty continually renews our search for truth and presses us towards a greater concern for justice. Taking inspiration from writers and thinkers as diverse as Homer, Plato, Marcel Proust, Simone Weill and Iris Murdoch as well as her own experiences, Scarry writes an elegant, passionate manifesto for the revival of beauty in our intellectual work as well as in our homes, museums, and classrooms." That's an argument that goes right to the political roots of so much rejection of beauty. And the New York Reviews of Books adds its praise. So I think we have cause for hope.

It'll cost you $35 to look silly dancing for Farrell December 3. But hey, that's cheaper than Michael Jordan's basketball camps!

Has the time come for Reality TV ballets? Everyone takes a solo and then votes someone else off the stage.

We watched Brigadoon the other night, Old Fashioned, and she is lovely, yes. Does anyone know how Hugh Laing was cast? Did I miss Diana Adams in that film?

Living in the ballet hinterlands as I do, I'll go see Balanchine danced whenever I can. But does anyone else think "The Balanchine Couple" sounds like too much of a good thing, like eating a whole box of chocolates? How can you savor anyone one excerpt? I guess programs with titles like Stars of International Ballet, that consist of many little pieces, do sell, but from the reviews they sound about as satisfying as that whole box of chocolates. Of course another way of asking this question might be, does Suzanne Farrell likely know what she's doing? To which I must reply, "duhhhhh."

Alexandra, if you don't mind me asking, where did you teach aesthetics? In other words, how dismayed should we be? Pretty dismayed in any case, I'll guess, because, compared to their peers, people signing up for an aesthetics class would be relatively knowledgeable about art. And one of these days I'd like to get your reading list. I'm currently reading Eco's Art and the Middle Ages, and a book on theology and aesthetics. dirac, I don't really understand your criticism. Sensation-style shows are very popular, after all, and they don't just shock for the sake of shocking, they're very thin gruel aesthetically. This is my favorite line from the article -- But an artist is only successful in claiming something to be a work of art when, and if, a viewer responds to it as such. As LS Lowry remarked to a young artist who was complaining that no-one bought his pictures, 'Well, no-one asked you to paint them'." I had an art history prof who whined about artists not being given subsidy or very much respect. Then we saw her work, which I found interesting in a limited, try-to-see-what-she-sees way, and I had to wonder just what great contribution she thought she made to the community. What do viewers get out of shock art? Do they respond with anything beyond disgust or bemusement? Do they stand and study the stuff? Does it engage them aesthetically or intellectually? And does it feed their imaginations and train and expand their taste so that they appreciate other art and comprehend it more deeply? I can't see that Eminiem prepares his listeners for encountering Monk, and I can't see that Hirst prepares his viewers for anybody not on his level. Spalding also writes: "if artists didn't create art today there'd be no art to look at . . " But we'd have plenty to do exploring and re-exploring what we already have. Darn it, I'm so sorry I missed that Nadelman show.

I'm looking for a copy of the PBS (?) documentary aired recently. I'm not able to copy my own ballet videos, but I can offer Martins' "Jazz" and Nureyev's "Nutcracker" (don't all email me at once), or I could send a couple of blanks. Where's the hopeful smilie?

This probably isn't quite what you had in mind, Alexandra, but for me the ideal female dancer is the ideal female. What does she look and move like? I'm reminded of a verse in Genesis that reads something like "and the sons of men looked on the daughters of men and saw that they were fair.' And we haven't stopped noticing and marveling. In other words, there is no ideal, because attractive personalities and attractive bodies, both of which we read as symbols for attractive souls, come in limitless variety. I love that variety onstage, male and female. Especially, as Jane says, when they smile! As you can imagine, I love photos and footage of both Adams and LeClerq.

http://www.aristos.org/whatart/ch12.htm

"Sweeping out the cobwebs " by Patrick J. Smith, on "A History of Russian Music: Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar" http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/21/sum03/smith.htm

http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/index.shtml Terry Teachout writes of his initial reaction, later confirmed, to Mark Morris' "V," and seems to suggest that such a reaction reliably signifies "masterpiece." He felt "immediate involvement," trust in the artist's "competence," unflagging attention, nervousness midway through that the artist would blow what was so good so far, and a loss of anxiety at the "consummation" as the artist "solves" the internal logic of his work. A Ballet Alerter wrote me off-board the other day and characterized Teachout's "blog" as self-involved. Teachout writes -- "I read [V's] quality off myself, the same way you can read the seismographic chart of an earthquake and know how strong it was. Or—to put it more simply—I knew how good V was because of the way it made me feel."" Hmmmn. Still . . . I wonder how much weight others give to first reactions, and what kind of reactions you look for. Thomas Hoving writes of an strong initial impression, an intuition, that a great work gives, and if I'm not mistaken Robert Garis writes of something similar in regards to his first viewing of Apollo.

Yeah, that has happened to me, so I use both VNP and Today's Active Threads.

Whaddaya mean no dance? James Brown!

Scroll down to "Opera troubles" for discussion of PBS' policy on broadcasting opera. ArtsJournal There is also a link here to an article on the same subject in Opera News. My apologies if any of this has already been posted.