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Rather than start a new thread entitled "Writing negatively about choreographers - how far should dance critics go," I'll slip this in here: I was gobsmacked to read Robert Johnson in the N.J. Star Ledger saying that . Idiot? Are insults now acceptable criticism? I've read few of Johnson's reviews previously. Has he been known to pop off like this? I think it's unfortunate and unprofessional.

patrick, Haggard does still perform. It's been interesting to hear different views re: the seating chart.

sandik, Jones' company danced what I presume was an excerpt of what was announced as Fondly Do We Hope, Fervently Do We Desire. It had three sections, if memory serves, and each had a speaker along with a dancer or dancers. The first must have concerned the slave trade, as the barking speaker described parts of the body. Edward Albee introduced Jones, and Claire Danes spoke after the filmed tribute, which included clips of Jones dancing alone while words like "collision" and "belonging" were shown on the screen. Of course Arnie Zane was shown as well. One more thing: I would have loved to have seen Jones - surely the least well-known and celebrated of the five honorees - seated next to the president and Mrs. Obama. Instead, McCartney had that honor, with Oprah next to him, then Haggard, Herman and Jones. I don't know who gives seating assignments, CBS or the Kennedy Center, but it was as if the honorees had been ranked, and I felt bad for Jones.

I’ll pass on a few impressions. For McCartney, Gwen Stefani and her band sounded good – or at least the band did – but looked ridiculously glitzy on Penny Lane, which is not about glamour. Steven Tyler sang She Came in Through the Bathroom Window and Golden Slumbers and others from the 2nd side of Abbey Road. James Taylor and Mavis Staples (yea!) followed them with Let it Be and Hey Jude. Dave Grohl and Norah Jones were good foils for each other vocally on Maybe I’m Amazed. Video here: http://www.billboard.com/column/viralvideos/gwen-stefani-steven-tyler-salute-paul-mccartney-1004137323.story#/column/viralvideos/gwen-stefani-steven-tyler-salute-paul-mccartney-1004137323.story I’m willing to believe that Bill T. Jones has done important work, but – this may be my fault - I found what I saw here dull and pretentious. Angela Lansbury gave a lovely introduction to Jerry Herman, and Chita Rivera, Carol Channing, Christine Ebersole, Kelli O’Hara, Lansbury herself and others performed. I was most touched by the tributes to Herman, whose work I hardly know, and Merle Haggard, whose work I love. Vince Gill introduced “Hagg.” Kris Kristofferson dueted with a young woman whose name I didn’t catch on Silver Wings. Willie Nelson sang Today I Started Loving You Again with Sheryl Crow. Gill and Brad Paisley sang Workingman’s Blues, and Kid Rock and Jamie Johnson(?) did Ramblin’ Fever. Even the prez was dancing a little. Willie’s harmonica payer, Mickey Raphael was in the band. Willie’s hair hasn’t quite grown out again, but at least it wasn’t the girlie bob it was earlier in the year. Julia Roberts introduced Oprah and Chris Rock had a good line about looking up and seeing the most powerful person in the world. “And next to her, Barack Obama! She got him a job, he didn’t get her one.” Even better was the political joke reported by the Washington Post but cut by CBS, which I shall not repeat because we wisely don’t talk politics around here. Jennifer Hudson sang I’m Here.

You can hit the pause button and then attend to something else while you wait for the whole thing to load (as indicated by the line at the bottom filling with yellow). Once it does, you should be able to play it all back without it stopping. At any point while it's playing through the first time, you can move the cursor back to the beginning and watch the part that's already played. You may have to hit the play button more than once, or hit it before you hit the full screen icon, to get it going. Good luck!

Thanks, 4mrdncr. The link to the audio is here.

Actually, it might make him look better, if the wimmenfolk appear to be ganging up on him. I'm sure he would receive a square deal from the ladies, however. I'm sure as well that they would have been perfectly polite to him, but no less sympathetic to Ringer, in their questions and their facial expressions, than they actually were this morning. Their very courtesy would have made him look all the more the ogre. Unless, of course, he'd done what he didn't do in his blog post - actually apologize.

Even if, contrary to what rg suggests may be the case, the Times doesn't have a blanket policy prohibiting such appearances, I think the reason in this case is easy to guess. Macaulay, if he'd appeared, would have been put on the defensive, and not just for his critical judgment, but for his manners. He's already been given space in the paper to defend himself. Putting him on a show geared to women, with women hosts sympathetic to a woman perceived as a victim, would clearly make him, and by extension the paper, look even worse.

Don't forget to watch for it on PBS, though. Most of the HD broadcasts seem to show up there eventually.

As the Event I saw in 2003 in Richmond, Virginia, the audience was seated. Perhaps it was just an event. I hope to have seats again in February, for what will be another E/event. Here is a link to a review, with photos, of the Event Christian attended.

[ . . . ] Another example I can think of is when Arlene Croce noted that Gelsey Kirkland "had put on a lot of weight all over." She got rapped on the knuckles by Suzanne Gordon for that one. A bald statement like that can be quite as harsh to the recipient as if it is made (or cushioned) with humor. Kirkland, too, had her eating problems. I'm not sure that a frank statement of "she's tubby" would have helped out Macaulay - in fact he might have got worse. Macaulay did say that Ringer and Angle danced "without adult depth or complexity," but even if he hadn't mentioned their dancing at all, I wouldn't have faulted him. Presumably if they'd been especially good or especially bad he'd have said so, but he noted what he thought was most notable, and that's enough for me. Still, he didn't have to criticize them in the witty manner in which he did, or use slang like "tubby" that likewise can sound like ridicule. Simple descriptions like "overweight" or "too heavy" would have told us as much, and far fewer people would have thought he was being mean.

Please do, Cristian. And you've reminded me to buy a ticket for a Cunningham performance in February. I think I've told the story here before of the first time I saw the Cunningham company live (and he danced a limited fashion himself in one of the works), in 1993 at the American Dance festival in Durham, NC. One would expect to find a pretty experienced audience at an established summer dance festival, an audience that knew what they were in for, but as my wife likes to stay, we started out sitting in the middle of a row, and by the end we were the row. The next time I saw the company, at the same festival, she happily accompanied me to a morning panel discussion with Merce and a couple of original company members, but skipped the performance, and for her attempt at avoiding pain ended up being dragged by her sister to Wal-Mart that evening. I like to tease her that there's a moral to that story: a little poetic justice. Anyhow, do let us know what you thought. Some Cunningham dances I've loved from the first and watching others was like listening to challenging music. It took all my concentration, but eventually . . . you know how astronauts in training are taken up in planes that climb high at a steep trajectory, so that the passengers experience G forces, and then the plane freefalls and they experience weightlessness? When I finally "get" the choreography, that's a beautiful feeling.

Wow, that's great to imagine, Patrick. Thank you. According to the Balanchine Trust's website, Davidsbundlertanze premiered in June of '80, Mozartiana in June of '81. I'd hate to have to choose between them.

Over on the Replying the Nutcracker Chronicles - NY Times thread, papeetepatrick writes I've heard the same thing and I wonder if others here also feel she matured. I didn't see her until she danced Mozartiana in D.C. in 1995 in a Suzanne Farrell staging, but I loved her in that. In The New Criterion Laura Jacobs wrote

Fascinating memories and perceptions there, patrick. I've never thought of Farrell as looking big in that broadcast, and Croce said something to the effect that she'd lost some baby fat after returning from Belgium. But you're right in that dress, she does. Happily, Farrell isn't one of them. She looks great.

I may misunderstand him, but it looks like he was critical of Bouder in that same review, saying that compare to Ringer and Angle she has . That doesn't sound like something wanted in a Dewdrop. It sounds to me like he's saying she pushed too hard and wasn't soft when called for. I think that, for better or for worse, audiences expect to see slim dancers.

I don't see anything self-important about it, but I have to reluctantly agree that the comment was out of bounds. The observation was valid and important, and it was made in a clever and entertaining and topical way, but the way in which it was made also crossed the line into ridicule. In today's terms, it was "snarky" and snark is pretty well accepted and celebrated. So it's nice to see so much outcry this time, and maybe that will do some good.

Fresh Air with Terri Gross interviewed Portman today: To Become A 'Black Swan,' Portman Had To Go Dark. That doesn't strike me as terribly intelligent. I passed up a free ticket for this film last month, and now it's back in town again. I'm still not going.

It makes me think perhaps his articles and reviews are generating ad revenue by getting lots of hits online. His descriptions, in his review of NYCB's opening night, of how Balanchine matches choreography to music, will send me back to my DVD soon.

No, I feel your pain. There is good information in that second sentence, but it goes on and on and ends up pretty darn awful. Still, she's not attempting actual dance criticism.

Thank you for posting, Anthony. This is a fine resource, and I hope it will be much used.

I don't mind purple prose from Bentley when she's writing about ballet. From some writers, it reads like cliches in the place of smart description and analysis. From her, for me, it reads like emotion layered onto smart description and analysis.

In her delightful From London column in the Winter 2010 DanceView, Jane Simpson writes of the Victoria and Albert Museum's Diaghilev exhibition, that

I think the column is well-written and courageous, and is very impressive for someone who spends most of her waking hours in a theater.

That's interesting. It's my understanding that when choreographing, Balanchine often used dancers as collaborators when it came to difficult steps and combinations that extended their technical abilities and the ballet vocabulary. If memory serves, more than one dancer mentions asking Balanchine to retain phrases that at first seemed too hard. But I don't remember an instance when a male dancer working alone so strongly shaped a role in a new ballet.