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I agree, and the thing is that everyone probably agrees that whether or not they’re at their ideal weight, Ringer and Mearns are quite lovely women. Part of a critic’s job is to measure a performer against the ideal. Dancers, of all people, are understandably sensitive about their looks, and we can be sensitive for them, but to say someone doesn’t look her best (or just can’t perform at her best at her present weight) is not to say she isn’t still beautiful.

Colleen, I suppose there's room to wonder, but that's just what I read Gottlieb as saying, that she's "just too heavy" to dance "at her best," not that she's too heavy to look her best. But I think either opinion would merit expression, and that's why I only fault Macaulay for how he expressed his opinion, not for expressing it. Dancing on stage is about using the body to make visual images, and the shape of the body can't be separated from those images.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that Macaulay wasn’t criticizing her weight, just that I only objected to the way he did it.

According to the program note when Suzanne Farrell Ballet danced Diamonds in 2011: There is a photo here.

I think it's Gottlieb's job as a critic to report the truth as he sees it, not to worry about how the dancers will respond to it, or censor himself because of how male taste and expectations have historically hurt women. The ideal standard of thinness for female dancers may be a matter of taste, but ballet is an art of ideals, and if he thinks she’s too heavy to be dance to the best of her abilities, he should say so. I don't want a critical universe in which gender determines what someone is allowed to remark upon. The problem with Macaulay's remark was that it was worded unkindly. He couldn't resist the joke. Fortunately, his little one-liner backfired. Having said that, whether Mearns was at her ideal dancing weight or not (and given that's she was coming back from a long injury-related layoff, she might agree she wasn't), in the recent videos and pictures I've seen, she looks as beautiful as ever.

"Gloom and doom" trivializes the matter, as someone were taking an unnecessarily poor attitude. Shostakovich lived through great personal and national tragedy, and his music reflects it, and by all reports Ratmansky's choreography reflects both. Yes, historical realism for Ratmansky.

That's what I assume. However, I thought he took those from Pete Townsend. Other way round, I think, since Townsend was born in 1945! But I do love the idea that they're related! Adds a whole new level to Pinball Wizard. Yes, it does! I was joking of course, but I wonder if by any chance Townsend had seen Apollo. That seems unlikely, and I can't find a history of performances in England. But he was, after all, an art student.

I think the Balanchine diaspora would have occurred regardless of Martins' management style -- too many disciples, too little room, too many cooks in the kitchen, etc. Those cliches all reference the ego of the person in charge. There are other companies - Russian ones, for example - that use coaches in a way that would seem to limit the input of the AD. No there wasn't room for everyone forever, but when dancers were refused access to originators of roles . . . I don't see how that was serving Balanchine's legacy, Martins' professed goal.

That's what I assume. However, I thought he took those from Pete Townsend.

"Dionysian excesses cede place to Apollonian restraint" is beautifully put, but did Scholl really liken Apollo's strumming to, er, auto-stimulation? That doesn't make sense to me at all, especially in the context of the music.

The 2nd movement isn’t a tragedy, but of course the music is grand, as cobweb says, and mysterious too. I want to feel as if the ballerina and her partner are enacting a private drama, not dancing for the audience. Of course we don’t all express the same feelings in the same ways, and we don’t always interpret facial expressions the same way, but to my mind a smile that seemed exultant might be an appropriate response to that music, though not a common one. A cheerful smile would not.

Speaking of bad editing, Calcium Light Night always comes to my mind as "Calcium Night Light"!

I have an easier time accepting spelling errors than errors of meaning and a weakness for needless, catchy jargon. Whoever wrote "principle" was really thinking "principal." But did the NY Times writer who wrote "day drinking is the most freewheeling time . . .," and the copy editor who let it stand, really think drinking is a time? That was just sloppy thinking. And NPR's Weekend Edition now refers to the day's lead story as the "cover" story. A cover is a physical object. Then again, "top" story, which is just as bad, has been in use for a long time. And then again, I just wrote "there" for their."

Thanks a lot. I don’t think that’s a particularly felicitous photo of Sounddance – it makes me think of a bad ballet spoof – but those opening few paragraphs would make a great introduction for someone new to Cunningham’s work. And I’m surprised and intrigued to read that his notes for his dances contain “descriptive adjectives” – not the sort of language he used when he taught, and not, from all I’ve ever read or heard, what I would expect from him. I also love this bit, which is apparently copyright law, but which sounds like something Cage and Cunningham would have come up with;

A pity for the dancers, but we don't know if the Met's decision was driven by financial or artistic considerations.

The New Yorker's Culture Desk blog put up an article yesterday called Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Cell-Phone Smashing of 2013. An excerpt:

Thanks, Kathleen, I'll check back for that story. I'm jealous of anybody who saw one of the final performances!

Thanks, Sandik. The Trust has given Cunningham fans plenty to feast on since the company disbanded. The Park Armory Events were thought to have been the last chance to see his work danced by his own dancers, but many ex-company members turned up in Philadelphia for mini-Events in conjunction with the Dancing Around the Bride exhibition that ran late last year through the MLK holiday this January. I’m happy to say I saw a couple of days’ worth. There is also the wonderful I-Pad app, Merce Cunningham: 65 Years, David Vaughan’s update of his coffee table book on the company’s first 50 years.There is the 3-CD, Park Armory Event compilation - actually 2 CDs of Park Armory performances and one of repertory excerpts (mostly as performed on the Legacy Tour). And there is a 56-minute documentary, not yet commercially released I don’t think, entitled Merce Cunningham, legacy of dance, which apparently concerns the development of the Legacy Plan and the formation of time capsules of individual dances. A small portion of that digital treasure hoard is available to the public on the Merce Capsules website.

So I've read. I'd still prefer to enrich my understanding of Balanchine by seeing rare works, even if in themselves they're not as strong as new contemporary ones.

NYCB last brought Jewels to the Kennedy Center in 2004, and brought Midsummer in 2007. I think Sofiane Sylve danced Titania at the performance I saw, but to my great disappointment Sara Mearns, who was scheduled for Hyppolyta, was injured and had to be replaced. I too would love to see Coppelia, which they have not brought, or at least have not brought since they resolved the contract issue with their orchestra and began appearing again. While I'm glad they feel sure enough of the audience here to bring a mixed bill of contemporary work, I'd prefer to see rare and demanding Balanchine - Ivesiana and Variations Pour une Porte et un Soupir, for example. (I can dream). Depending on casting, I may skip the mixed bill and double down on Jewels.

try this

I am on that site and it says it starts in 90 minutes. I've tried reloading, starting over with the link for ARTE, etc. and get the same thing. Are others in the U.S. getting the live transmission? Is there another link you're using? This one works.

Thanks for the review. I don't think of the woman in the Unanswered Question as ghostly, however. That would drain most of the mystery and erotic tension out of it for me. For me she may be a specific (though idealized), unattainable woman, or she may be an unreal unattainable ideal, but there is nothing ghostly about her. She isn't a spirit, or rather she isn't just a spirit. Suki Schorer is quoted in Repertory in Review as saying "I felt Balanchine wanted mystery, something sphinx-like, Egyptian, endlessly on a pyramid. Yet I think he wanted a sexual woman there."

A very good point.

It’s true that in an ironic way Martins has helped spread Balanchine’s work by freezing out some of the finest dancers he’d taught, coached and cast, and thereby sending them elsewhere, to be missionaries as it were. But as I sometimes think when I watch Suzanne Farrell Ballet, I wish those retired dancers, when passing on their knowledge, could have done it more often and more consistently with more of the finest dancers that came after them, the ones at NYCB. I also wonder if Martins’ charm is given too much credit for NYCB’s financial health. Some of the dancers he kept away had/have it too.