kfw

The safest way to edit a quote

I may not understand the problem. but if I want to edit I just highlight and delete, or backspace. And if I want to break a quote up into two parts, I cut and paste, highlight what I've pasted, and then hit the quote icon. Sometimes when I break up a quote I have the problem I believe sandik has noted a few times, where the cursor won't advance past the quote box. So I've started typing a few characters - mmm, for example - below where I'm going to paste the quote. After I've pasted, I can type over them.

If you read the article volcanohunter linked to, it appears to suggest that the publicist was hired afterward. Timing, however, is not the point. Hallberg doesn't need a publicist for his career to prosper; he doesn't need to pose for lots of fashion magazines; he doesn't have to give a lot of interviews. He chooses to do all these things, presumably because he enjoys them, likes having a higher profile, and likes giving his art form a higher profile.

That’s true, Hallberg didn’t need a publicist, or a self-flattering book, in order to advance his career – which is to say that he already had all the opportunities he could handle. The same was not true of Copeland.

Any insistence that if Copeland makes principal it will be because of her having pounded McKenzie into submission with her "self-promotion" is entirely a matter of opinion.

Well, to quote Monty Python, that’s not an argument, it’s a contradiction. The reasons why some of us believe Copeland’s making principal may be somewhat suspect now have been made here more than once.

"If ballet is this great and true art form that people go on about, then it can't be something that white people own and are benevolently allowing black people to participate in IF they behave themselves in a manner that pleases some of the art's gatekeepers."

- for heaven's sake, who the heck thinks this?

If you look at the Artistic Directors, company staffs, school staffs, and ballet boards of directors, what else would you conclude?

What is the manner they supposedly have to behave in?

Hallberg got his publicity/ journalist wanting to interview him for, like all of the tag lines have said, being the first principal dancer American with a top Russian company. Not his dancing.

Edit: Besides being signed to a management company he has a publicist too? Well then, I think that puts to rest that all of those offers presumably fell in his lap with no effort on his part.

But he got his shot in Russia because of his dancing, not his self-promotion. Do we even know he had a publicist before his Russian adventure?

Canbelto, I think the difference is that Copeland's story - black woman overcomes adversity and discrimination - was a sure-fire hit.

Of course Hallberg is selling himself but the to my mind there is a difference. He was a principal in ABT & international star in the ballet world when he joined the Bolshoi all the publicity & interviews started. He was selling himself but his product was really his dancing. Copeland's self promotion has a different aspect. It feels like she is using her PR machine to get promoted to principal and many who have seen her dance, myself included, don't see her as principal material.

Indeed. Hallberg was a star dancer and the publicity, or at least the opportunity for it, came to him. Copeland has made herself a star through her self-publicizing, not her dancing. If she'd waited to publish until she'd been made principal, it's unlikely this thread would be nearing 40 pages.

However it is not so simple. If her media presence brings new audience members to ballet and girls of color into a ballet studio it is a good thing.

That's for sure.

Copeland, her team, or both(?) have corrected their mistake in crowning her the first black female soloist at ABT. Now they are touting her as the first black female soloist in two decades, which is correct. I'm not sure when they made this correction. Maybe in the past 1-2 years? Not sure.

kfw, I do object to Copeland if she is lying. However, I am unaware what she is lying about. All I've seen are speculations that her story in her autobiography is a lie by anonymous internet users on forums and blogs whom dislike her for her "self promotion" and "stealing roles" from Stella and Sarah. I do also object to the double standards exhibited with Misty.

People generally drop false claims when they're exposed as such. It's just possible Copeland didn't know it was false, but like I said, it seems unlikely. Copeland said she was ABT's first black soloist. Her wikipedia page said the same.

If some are going to get mad about her being promoted as "The First Black Soloist" or "The First Black Soloist in Two Decades" or what have you, then that needs to be across the board for all dancers. Which it is not. Another dancer that comes to mind is Joy Womack. "First American to Graduate from the Bolshoi Acadamy" was constantly used in her interviews. However she is not, and their was hardly this level of vitriol aimed at Joy, Hallberg, and other dancers for this mistake like there is for Misty.

A fair comparison, but I know next to nothing about Womack, and we don't have an active thread about her anyhow, so I haven't commented.

I will object to Copeland making the claim if she was unaware that it was not true and continued to make the claim. I do not object to her making mistakes, any more than I object to Hallberg making his mistake.

I do not otherwise distinguish between the two mistakes, regardless of anyone else's characterization of Copeland's as a victim's story or Hallberg's status, star or not.

The distinction is that Copeland is selling herself as a groundbreaker. The false claim is almost at the heart of her story. Also, Hallberg didn't even speak Russian when he went over there. It's much, much easier to believe his was an honest mistake than that hers was.

Do you call out everyone who calls Jackie Robinson the first black player in a professional white league as a liar? There's a difference between not telling the truth/lying and being mistaken.

Copeland wrote a book for a Simon and Schuster imprint. My experience in the publishing world is not recent, but my friends still there assure me that while copy-editing and fact-checking at major publishing houses aren't what they used to be, they still exists. If there were factual errors in her manuscript, then her publisher is partly responsible for putting them in print.

In other words, while Copeland wrote the book, if she said something that's not true, it's her publisher's fault, not hers. And how could she and her people not know such a central claim wasn't true? How long had she been in the company? Are her people not professionals?

I don't know if that error is in her book or not, but she told it to an L.A. reporter. Is that her publisher's fault too? It was also on her wikipedia page, which one has to assume she was responsible for, or at least read. No one is willing to criticize Copeland here for not telling the truth?

If Hallberg let a falsehood pass without correcting it, Plisskin, yes I object to it, although I'll note that he's not selling a triumph-over-victimization story, and was a star before the Bolshoi. But you didn't answer my question, so I'll ask you again: Do you object to Copeland not telling the truth?

So? David Hallberg was afforded many interviews like the Colbert Report not on his dancing, but based on being "The First American At the Bolshoi". And Misty hardly begged, for instance, Prince to be on his tour. He reached out to her first and asked. It wasn't due other " self promotion". Why everybody else gets a pass for these things and not Misty is because...?

Hallberg didn't publish a self-glorifying book. Nor are he and his "media team" - if in fact he has one - selling anything. No one objects to Copeland being on Prince's tour. Do you object to her not telling the truth?

Nureyev didn't have to promote himself; he was asked because he was already a huge star. Copeland did have to promote herself, if she wanted attention outside of the ballet world at that stage in her career, and she did it in part by making a claim - first black ABT soloist - she either knew or had every reason to know wasn't true. But she gets a pass because . . . ?

whatever people's "perception" of how she's allegedly pressuring McKenzie, it hasn't worked. He might just be milking it for all it's worth, keeping the public wondering "Will he or won't he?"

Could be, and as Tapfan points out, she's been a soloist for eight years and has been self-promoting for over half of them, so it's not like her media campaign has fast-tracked her to principal. But whether it "worked" so far or not, it's given McKenzie three clear reasons, irrespective of artistic merit, why he can hardly not promote her soon. 1) She sells tickets, and 2) he and the organization will be demonized as racist if he doesn’t (and not just by people in the ballet community), which 3) is a financial dis-incentive. He sells more tickets if he promotes her, and risks selling less if he doesn’t.

I wasn't asking you to. I simply wanted to state that I didn't think I was among your non-respondents, at least not knowingly.

Yeah, my bad, sorry. I amended my reply, but we must have been posting at the same time.

I think we all need to take a breath.

A choreographed breath.

I'm going to be cynical and suggest that the media look at Copeland and see the perfect feel-good, triumph over adversity, you go girl story to fill all that airtime and generate all those page views.

I don't see anything cynical about that. "Black Ballerina Breaks Color Barrier" is a good story in both senses of the word.

I don't view Copeland's media efforts as a sinister

"Sinister"? Why would anyone think it's sinister?

When asked a direct question, always make an effort to respond.

Thank you. I've answered about a hundred questions here myself. I don't want to answer them all again.

Kathleen, I don’t really want to reiterate all my opinions of Copeland’s publicity campaign. Of course there’s nothing wrong with social media per se. Other than that, I could write a detailed reply to your questions, which I don’t think have simple, yes or no, black or white answers. But essentially, in this thread, I already have. My own questions, meanwhile, don’t always get answers, although I don’t remember if you were one of the non-respondents.

No more shameless than Leopold Mozart or Franz Liszt or Andy Warhol or any other artist who has carefully crafted their image for maximum public éclat. One makes one's own luck, as they say. I've got no problem with artists taking their careers into their own hands.

Well, who can object to people trying to further their careers? But I appreciate the humility and disinclination to boast of the people Garrison Keillor gently mocks. Brooks: “We live in the culture of the Big Me. The meritocracy wants you to promote yourself. Social media wants you to broadcast a highlight reel of your life. Your parents and teachers were always telling you how wonderful you were.”

Who is "the other side" that's not getting their due?

Oh, David Brooks. Well, it must be so then.

It's never "if so and so said it, it must be so" with me, but I think Brooks is one of the too few public intellectuals around who tries to give the other side their due.

Artists have been engaged in more or less shameless self promotion since Leopold Mozart started dragging his little prodigies from one end of Europe to the other. Liszt raised it to a high art.

It's still shameless then?

Or some of us who have rejected specific criticism of the dancer who is the subject of this thread, because we don't agree with that criticism.

Certainly, and it's good of those of you who feel that way to defend her.

Ah, yes, those doubting "others." They are with us always, I fear.

As are those who reject any criticism of a member a minority. That's not what I call color blind.

Just out of curiosity, who do you have in mind?

I'd rather not name names here. Those things are hardly new, obviously, but seem to be more common nowadays, in part because of social media. David Brooks has written about it.

My point is that racism is hardly the only negative topic on which ballet professionals won't make criticism. On the whole, ballet professionals either don't address criticism directly, or, on occasion, either deny it or claim that it isn't as bad as it used to be and point to a program.

I disagree. She could have been passive, and had she been promoted, there will be people who would think she got it on account of race because McKenzie couldn't resist the publicity or the chance to be the one who made the first black Principal Dancer at ABT.

I'll take your word for the first point. I don't think I've said anything contrary to it. I can also imagine that some people might have doubted a black dancer no matter what route she took to principal. But she took a route that has already made others doubt as well. It's the way people do things these days - the self-promotion, the triumph over adversity story, the I-just-want-to-be-a-role-model line. In that respect, she's not a ground breaker.

I'm not sure what any of that has to do with my original points, Helene, which were that a) some people who haven't even seen Copeland dance are sure she deserves a promotion, and b) when any criticism is presumed to be racist, many if not most people won't make any criticism.

I wouldn't lose any sleep about anyone who has their own personal asterisks

Good. Because some people have said they'll have them, and it needn't have been that way.

Seems I've been too sweeping with my generalizations. I understand how you feel. Then again, Angelica doesn't seem to love Mearns, period. To each his own.

Helene wrote:

If you're talking about ballet insiders, since when has anyone in ballet world cared about allegations of racism? If you're talking about the greater ballet world, I don't see people shying away from arguing with Tapfan.

I'm talking about ballet professionals, excluding critics for obvious reasons. I think people care about allegations once they're made, and as far as I know, racism in ballet was not much discussed in the media - certainly wasn't a big issue in the media - until Copeland made it one. As others have pointed out, it's unfortunate that when Copeland gets her promotion, there will always some doubt about whether her PR and her allegations played a role - about whether McKenzie, being only human, cared.

How many people have had no shame in saying, "They just don't have the bodies." "They just thicken up/get fat/get too muscular."

Would it some shameful for, say, the head of a classical company to have said of [a specific white dancer], she'll become "hefty and barrel-chested" and so I can't use her? Then why would be it be shameful to say something similar of a black dancer if it's true? If it's said of any and every black dancer, that's another thing, obviously.

I, for one, do not love Sara Mearns.

Well there had to be someone. I'm sure you have your reasons.

There is also such a thing as unconscious racism, something outside one's awareness, but residing in the limbic system from the environment in which one grew up.

That is true. And there is also such a thing as unconscious bias the other way, also often derived from one's environment, where criticism of minorities is presumed or at least suspected of being racist.

I think it's wonderful that companies are becoming more diverse, albeit s-l-o-w-l-y.

Seems to me that most everyone does,