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Writing in American Ballet Theatre: a 25-year retrospective, Elizabeth Kaye says that Kaye then cites the example of an 18-year old Susan Jaffe, still in the corps, partnered by Alexander Godunov in the pas de deux from La Corsaire on the opening night of Baryshnikov's inaugural season. Kaye also notes that he commissioned "many contemporary works," and cites Feld, Graham, Taylor, Cunningham and Kylian as among the choreographers from whom he staged pre-existing work.

I believe it! The Flowering Tree is the Adams-Sellars collaboration I especially loved. Chuck Berry's touring "concept," or so I've read, was to hire a local band in every town he played. (He probably took a band of his own to Sweden). I was lucky to see him once with his recording pianist, Jimmy Johnson, and with Keith Richards.

Well, we thought it would be forever be named "the New York State Theater," so this may only last till the next renovation. Thanks for the review of the Peck ballet.That may be the first negative review he's ever received. I can't wait to read what others thought.

It's wonderful to read those memories of a dancer many of us would love to have seen. Thank you. Adams told Robert Tracy in Balanchine's Ballerinas: Conversations with the Muses: She then mentions Farrell and Kistler in contrast.

Thank you for that insight. It reminds me of someone (it may have been the writer of that early-90's Vanity Fair piece on the decline of NYCB - or was it Croce?) writing that dancers were coming out of SAB in great shape but rapidly losing their sparkle (my paraphrase) in the company. I suppose an awful lot of people probably made that observation.

The Goldberg Variations and Concerto Barocco in one evening would be too much Bach for me. Then again, I enjoy all-Stravinsky programs. I wonder if they'll make a special effort to advertise this program to baroque music lovers.

Er, no, but I saw him as James with the RDB in Chicago sometime in the late 70's.

Thanks, mussel! I’ve just watched (although only on a small Quicktime screen) a performance I was present in the theater for.

Thanks, Mira. I knew he took some dancers trained in Latin America, but I didn't realize that few came from SAB.

Copied from the Pennsylvania Ballet at 50 on PBS thread: I could try to research this, but did Villella hire mostly from SAB and from MCB's own school? Has Lopez brought in dancers from places Villella did not? I would expect she'd want the same high degree of Balanchine training he did. But you're not the first person here to see a difference already in the company's dancing. I wouldn't have thought they could occur so fast.

In DanceView, Winter 2001 issue, Leigh Witchel writes

I do too. The formal-dress ballet I found an unbearable bore was Martin's A Schubertiad. Perhaps it would have improved on repeated viewings. Thanks for the laugh. About the piece d'occasion with Little Buck, I guess Martins deserves credit for trying to expand his audience, but I have to wonder how many people in the existing audience expected this, or the McCartney and Valentino collaborations, to be anything more than mediocre. That's a little depressing.

Is that Channel 11's page? The PBS page says that

Jack, you should have been a critic. That all makes perfect sense of course. That's how the colors should function. The closest I can come to explaining my own preference is that the orange of Orpheus’s leotard – or copper and gold as you more accurately put it, making it seem richer already – detracts from the tragedy of the story.

I'm open to persuasion on this - did it garner praise from photography critics? - but I thought it was a pretty pedestrian idea, the execution of which threw off the color scheme of the promenade.

Didn't she already get married, in the film Russian Dolls? Congratulations for real this time. And how stunning she and her husband look in their crowns!

I'm not sure anyone except Martins and Farrell really knows the answer to that question, but you can find some background in this 1993 NY Times article. Farrell has since said - more or less, I don't remember the exact quote - that she has no hard feelings towards Martins.

Very interesting, thank you. This particular design, to me, is a poor compromise because it distracts me from the sweep of the steps and the choreography, but now at least I understand the reason for it. I'm reminded of Cunningham and Charles Atlas sometimes spitting the screen between closeups and wider shots (I'm thinking especially of the 2003 Suite by Five), but that would ruin Balanchine. Thanks for screen shots, pherank. I saved the Adams close-up.

I must not have been clear, rg. I was describing the Montreal television performance.

Thanks, rg! Looking up “Scenery by Gaston Longchamp,” I see the Oxford Dictionary of Dance says the ballet was indeed performed without scenery after 1936. In the background for this performance there appear to be curtains and swags as well as a painted backdrop of clouds. This scenery is not credited. I've seen a picture of that 1981 Phillip Johnson set somewhere. I didn't know it was rearranged (if I understand you correctly) for Serenade.

Orpheus is one of my favorite ballet scores. And I too love the swirling skirts in this recording of Serenade, but there, for me at least, the black and white recording drains some of the ballet’s atmosphere, as does that unfortunately busy backdrop. Does anyone know if the backdrop was a one-time-only, made-for-TV choice? I don’t see it in any photos, although in some you can’t tell. I don't find any written references to it.

That must have been pretty darn funny, although perhaps some people in the upper rings couldn’t see what precipitated the interruption. The New Yorker’s article itself, with lines like had me cracking up laughing. But back to the Volume 1 DVD. I saw Orpheus danced in 1992 and 2012, and I’ve seen the Live at Lincoln Center broadcast with Martins and Aroldingen and read about how the ballet is lost or all but lost on the larger stage, especially without the original cast and Balanchine’s coaching. It’s a ballet I’ve very much wanted to like but have never been entirely taken by until now. Goldner writes that the dance of the Furies is “a silly dance.” Not to me anymore, not on this recording. I’m especially pleased, after having seen all the George Platte Lynes photos, to finally see Magallenes and Moncion in moving pictures. They do not disappoint! Ironically, I think the black and white filming helps as well. To my mind, the orange of Orpheus’ leotard has always distracted from the gravity of the story.

Rather here, but speaking of onstage mishaps, I hope everyone saw the recent New Yorker piece, Pony Up, about the donkey Balanchine cast in Union Jack, and the effort - and apparently it has been an effort! - to replace him.

You are so fortunate! Bravo for Boal!

Yes, and thanks for all the great content over the years!