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Golly, who would want to sit through any performance without being emotionally engaged? I applaud at HD broadcasts because in one way or another I'm moved, and because, as I wrote earlier in other words, applauding and hearing applause makes it more of a communal thing. Nothing pretentious about that.

Well, that is cute! But I never really understood my father screaming at the tv when he watched football. I do. Maybe I got it from my father, or from my father talking to other drivers on the road, but it just comes naturally. As to applauding at HD performances, for me it's about being in and part of an audience.

Yeah, that should make for quite the combination. Someone remind me not to post before I've had my coffee. I should have said I bought tickets last week despite the posted date of the 18th.

Don't dawdle, folks. The Fandango link Eileen posted said they went on sale on the 18th, and I bought tickets last week.

Those are all of the Haieff, with different casting for the leads than at the Kennedy Center. Thanks, Amy!

Bill T. Jones and his company have been in residence at the University of Virginia this week. Sunday there was a Virginia Film Festival showing of "A Good Man," the film on the creation of Jones' "Fondly Do We Hope/Fervently Do We Pray," which PBS will show tonight. Tonight in town the company performs "Serenade/The Proposition," with an original score that "draws from" Mozart's Requiem. These paid events bracket three free ones, two open rehearsals and a workshop performance of "Story/Time." "Story/Time" is a 70-minute long dance during which Jones sits at a table stage center and reads 60-some one-minute stories as the dancing proceeds. The electronic score was composed and performed by a young UVA professor, Ted Coffey. The dance was inspired by John Cage, who was mentioned in a couple of the stories, and specifically by Cage's 90-minute work "Indeterminacy." Jones said he wanted to see what Cage knew back in the 50's "that I might have forgotten." A company assistant used a computer program to determine which of the 100 (if memory serves) stories to use. Jones hopes to publish them all in book format. In one of the stories Jones describes writing while listening to Cage, but "losing Cage" as he did, and being bothered by it. When a woman later described her own difficulty in taking in both dance and story at once, he asked her if she remembered that story. Before the performance, Jones conducted an exercise he'd done with school kids at one of the rehearsals, asking us to raise our hands after what we thought was a minute had passed. The concept of indeterminacy, and of how we bring our own meaning to our perceptions, seemed to be the point of the exercise as well as the dance. There were three large digital clocks in back of and flanking the stage, and there may have been another at the back of the auditorium, as Jones would sometimes briefly pause, looking up, as he read. Besides the table and chair Jones used, on which were several green apples the dancers used eventually, the set consisted of a moveable scrim and a couch. The stories, which Jones read well in his deep and resonant voice, sounded (with one exception) like diary entries, although he composed them for the piece. The exception was a violent story he referred to in a Q & A as "the melodrama," about a landlord who bursts in with his "goons," demanding payment. That story was repeated three times with slightly different choreography, and for the third time the actors (this was one of the few stories for which the movement clearly illustrated the story) were referred to by their actual first names. A company assistant used a computer program to determine which of the 100 (if I remember correctly) stories to use. Jones hopes to publish them all in book format. One story included a line or two from the song "John Henry," which Jones sang in a beautiful voice. He did insert one story not chosen by the computer, a story that took place here in Charlottesville: "So we are pushing back against Cage." A couple of stories recounted encounters with homeless men on the street. A few (?) featured his grandmother or other family members. One or two recounted hearing political stories on the radio. Some had a sexual theme, including one that described a weird porn video. One featured Virgil Thomson and another told of dinner with Cage and Cunningham and a tour of their home by Cage, in which Cage showed them where he slept and where "Mercey" slept. Another was about seeing Glen Ligon's "Watch and Listen" retrospective at the Whitney. I can't remember the exact words, but it was clear that this duality, like Cage's indeterminacy, was at the heart of the dance. Having seen little or no modern dance except for Cunningham in the past couple decades, I'm not qualified to judge the quality of the choreography or even describe it very well, but I found some of it moving, much of it striking. I was impressed with the dancers. In conversation with the school kids, Jones said that his associate artistic director, Janet Wong, is responsible for some of the choreography, as are the dancers. The printed program says the same. For two or three stories late in the dance, two dancers, a man and a woman, were naked. At the point strong lights shone into the audience from onstage, dimming the stage picture. The score was largely abstract; Jones noted that Coffey was influenced by David Tudor. He also said that an entirely abstract score would, in light of work by Cage and Tudor the like, have seemed old-fashioned. I was quite fascinated by Jones' personality as revealed in the film, rehearsals and discussions. He comes across as a very direct man, hard on himself and his associates (and willing to apologize when appropriate), but playful and essentially polite and respectful. He made a culture wars comment after the film that I found almost laughable, but I relate that only to say that by the end of the week I had developed a real respect and liking for him, and an interest in his work. "Story/Time" has been developed In residency at a number of other schools as well, and at the Walker Arts Center, and I think Joes indicated that it's not yet finished, Has anyone else here seen it so far?

We're lucky the company brings relatively few Martins ballets to Washington. Fortunately, I happen to like John Adams. A new ballet by one of the two most acclaimed choreographers working today and a celebrated work by another makes #2 a strong bill in my opinion, and the Balanchine/Gershwin and Robbins/Bernstein pieces on the same program ought to please a lot of people.

Distracting camera work and hard to hear music - it's hard to believe this was really PBS in 2011, and sad to think how much better a record we might have been given. What an apt description, except that they never had a soundtrack by David Byrne.

That's how I feel. For one thing, the looser fitting set of costumes reminds me of pajamas. I have several MCDC videos (purchased online and at Westbeth) not currently for sale on their website, which makes me wonder if the company has a lot of material it hasn't released yet, but will slowly make available once this final tour is over. I sure hope so.

One distinctive thing about Cunningham's work is that there are no connections to the choreography. Music, choreography and sets are created separately.

I feel the same way. For my taste, the grin suits the exuberance in the music and the choreography, and she does tone it down a bit in the stately opening of the second movement. Despite the camera work, which often puts us too close or too far away from the dancers, seeing this performance on the screen does more for me than NYCB's did at the Kennedy Center this spring. You Floridians are fortunate!

Reminds me of Bouder's, who of course does SD at NYCB.

Thanks, sandik. I'll be seeing Antic Meet, Squaregame and Sounddance in December. Is Julie Cunningham dancing this weekend? She was missing in Richmond, Virginia in February, but she's still listed on the company's site.

The dancers are listed at the very end of the dance portion of the broadcast, but only in small type while the host is shown speaking. They're listed by rank, even down to the apprentice level, but not by ballet. I'm very happy to have this recording, but I thought the backdrops for both Square Dance and Western Symphony, by their colors and their busyness, made the dancers hard to distinguish clearly. And I hated all the jarring above-the-waist shots in Square Dance. I also wish the director had taken a look at NYCB's 1991 (?) recording of Western Symphony, where close shots - but not head shots - of the principals at key moments give us a lot more personality than we saw last night. Overall I was thrilled by the performances, especially that of Delgado in Square Dance. I wanted my emphasis, more stretch in the male solo in that ballet, more of what I remembered from Manuel Legris in the Balanchine Celebration. But that may be my problem. I've only seen that ballet a couple of times live, and his interpretation may grow on me.

Good to read your report, Natalia. That costume can be seen here along with Macaulay's review. I liked it, actually, but to each his own.

Sofiane Sylve did it in D.C. in 2006.

Encourage diversity, but don't accept and promote on the basis of diversity, or at least primarily on the basis of diversity. Let diversity be the tie-breaker when other factors are equal. Has this EVER happened in the world of dance? The question was, "should it?"

That sounds like perhaps the company wanted audience members to be allowed to bring in refreshments bought in the theater. They don't sell candy wrapped in cellophane there . . . do they?? Sorry for your rotten experience, but I'm glad it at least occurred during a performance you weren't excited about. Next time, whack that lady with the baby rattle! ;-)

She's been dancing lead roles with the company for years. I have particularly fond memories of her in Ragtime, and now, from yesterday's rehearsal, in Baiser de la Fee.

There is an anecdote in Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear, the new book about a year behind the scenes with Pacific Northwest Ballet, where Peter Boal recalls learning Prodigal Son just after Balanchine had died, and according to Boal, "nobody really knew what the coaching was like." So for six hours he watched the video of Balanchine coaching Baryshnikov. But when he asked Martins to bring in Villella to coach, Martins wouldn't do it. (He hired Villella himself. Villella: "I cost one beer.") Of course there are other stories, old now, of frustrated dancers not being able to work with Farrell and others. What a shame.

Thanks, Jack! I'm sorry to hear Magnicaballi's missing, however. I'd really been looking forward to her Diamonds.

Well, of course. :-) Unless it's acknowledged that white skin has been preferred, diversity won't even be seen as an ethically preferrable option, other factors being equal. Again, if dancers of colors are being rejected on the basis of their skin, I'll call that racism. But when I go to the theater I want to see the best dancers, and in that respect I'm colorblind. I don't assume that if the company is all-white, it shouldn't be. I don't presume to know who auditioned and who didn't and whether a white dancer beat out an equally good dancer of color. I don't presume racism. If I'm not mistaken, the word of mine you objected to was "prescribed." I don't prescribe. To my mind, that's heavy-handed and presumptuous. And it's judgmental. I hope we can agree on this.

Encourage diversity, but don't accept and promote on the basis of diversity, or at least primarily on the basis of diversity. Let diversity be the tie-breaker when other factors are equal.

Of course it can be great. But if diversity is the goal, then halfway measures won't do, and the ideal, the real goal, is wide diversity and equal representation. So shouldn't NYCB have another Puerto Rican and/or Native American principal to replace Jock Soto? What about an Taiwanese-American male to replace Edwaard Liang? And how about Hispanic dancers? Wait, let's not be racist and say "Hispanic"to describe Chicanos, Cuban-Americans, Puerto-Rican Americans, etc., as if they're all alike. It needs them all. And what about sexual preference? Everyone knows that many dancers are gay men, but does the company have any lesbian dancers, and in the interests of diversity, shouldn't it have more than a few? If you start along that road, where should the company be allowed to stop? Don't forget that precisely due to that history of white privilege, there is an extra high percentage of white dancers in the talent pool right now.. Following bart's idea - and, bart, I don't mean to presume we see things just alike here - if there are talented dancers in all those categories, and schools and companies are open-minded, they'll take their places. But a ballet company isn't an affirmative action program, it's an arts organization. It's goal isn't diversity, it isn't to rectify centuries of social injustice - it's to put the very best dancers and choreographer onstage, diverse or not.

I remember him - Christian Holder, actually :-), the actor Geoffrey's nephew apparently. A big guy, wasn't he/isn't he? Marvelous stomping around the stage as Death in the Green Table on the first ballet program I ever saw. Going Off Topic for just a moment, here's an essay he wrote for Dance Magazine in 2006, Remembering Joffrey.