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Thanks for the detailed descriptions, milisor!

Thanks for alerting us to the books, miliosr. Are there many photos of Part with Bolle? Would you describe them?

I received David Bentley Hart's The Beauty Of The Infinite: The Aesthetics Of Christian Truth, and with a gift certificate I have ordered the new biography by Robin D.G. Kelley of one of my favorite jazz players, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an Original. The book on Lucia Chase and ABT that atm711 mentions is now the subject of an inter-library loan request.

Thanks, innopac. This sounds like a book to get thoroughly immersed in, and a book that might lead to other books. The illustrations do indeed sound like "a feast of wonders."

Wow, congratulations on a great find, cubamiamiboy. I wish I had me one of them machines. At least there's You Tube.

Well, well, look at this: The Met Weighs the Return of Zefferelli's 'Tosca'.

Are you saying Kistler has dyed her famous golden mane? I'm wondering the same thing after seeing her this afternoon. I'm so glad this performance, in Nutcracker Walzer , was my last view of her, and not the Vienna Waltzes I saw earlier this year. She showed her age some with a bit of stiffness in the back, but she was beautifully and movingly in character.

Having recently finished The Land of Green Plums (in English), I can say all of the above is true for that novel. Set in Romania under the dictatorship of Ceauşescu, who is never mentioned by name, Plums is the story of a group of young friends, one woman and three men, brought together by the suicide of a mutual friend, who dissent from the Communist Party orthodoxy and are hounded for it by the secret police. Most eventually manage to leave the country. Some betray the narrator, and others commit suicide. The novel begins and ends with the sentence "When we don't speak, said Edgar, we become unbearable, and when we do, we make fools of ourselves." Muller has an allusive, impressionistic style that leaves the reader to fill in many blanks, reflecting the way the dissident friends, once they've graduated from the university and taken jobs in different parts of the country, have to piece together the truth from code and what's left unstated as they read each other's letters. Naturally there is no happy ending for any of these characters. Muller portrays a society both fearful and dreary.

Thanks, Pamela. When I turned on the TV during the ceremony I was surprised to see Spalding. But I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised, because she played Washington, D.C. just a few days ago and the Post noted she'd already played the White House twice. What a fast track career!

Simon, I'm sorry to misunderstand, but to misunderstand is not necessarily to twist, and the person who misunderstands sometimes has help. I didn't say you meant the work to be the jumping off point for anti-Catholic lectures. As to the first, I don't think it's any defense of de frutos or of showing the work on television, which was the topic, and that was the source of my misunderstanding. No, I don't presume I'm morally superior to someone I've never met because we disagree on one point. And as a Christian I'm enjoined not to presume that superiority would have much real value anyhow. Other than that. I'm familiar with your arguments and I'd be happy to discuss them privately if you want to PM me. But we are so far now from Ballet Talk's mission "to focus attention on ballet as an art form, to alert people to what is happening in ballet today, and to provide a place where people could discuss ballet," that I think I've already said more than enough here.

That's good. But you have cited the work as potentially instructive, or as a jumping off place for instruction. That's what I took issue with above. I'm opposed to a total moratorium. That said, if there is such a thing as morality, there is such a thing as moral superiority. Every society decides to tolerate this but not that, and those decisions are necessary and good. I'm going to leave it at that.

Of course kids need to be protected; they don't need graphic depictions. The warning is for parents to give, not de frutos.

I don't know how we'd measure which is worse, lowest common denominator pablum or obscenity, since they harm in different ways, but my objection as I've said is not to challenging material, but to material meant merely to épater la bourgeoisie, or in this case Catholics. Simon, has it occurred to you that most parents would prefer not to discuss with their "inquisitive, intelligent" children the sexual abuse of other children? That they might prefer not to explain to the child who's been channel-surfing, or the child who's been sitting next to them as they watch the dance, why a Pope figure is penetrating boys and pregnant women? My concern is for children who accidentally run across those disturbing images, and the fact that more explicit ones are available on the Internet is neither here nor there. Many teens and most younger kids don't troll the Web for obscenity. Parents are quite capable, without de frutos' aid, of a "rational approach" to whether and when to discuss these issues with their kids.

Simon it's a fair question, but not everything that provokes protest is intellectually challenging, and enough has been written about the de frutos now that, to quote a U.S. vice-presidential candidate of awhile back quoting a television commercial, where's the beef? As you say, we've mostly been discussing not ideas in the work itself, but what is censorship and what is appropriate protest. I think there are better ways to interest kids in adult issues than "vile, scatological", agit-prop.

I don't think the only choice is between vacuous and challenging. And not every insult -- certainly not de frutos' -- is challenging.

Good to know. Thank you.

I tried reading The Dalkey Archive a few years ago after a trip to Ireland, but I'm afraid it didn't grab me.

Simon, I've appreciated reading your views, and I admire your adventurous spirit when it comes to the work you go see. I too have had the experience of esteeming work I had expected to think poorly of. But when the critics describe a work as something I find offensive, and the artist says he meant it to offend, I don't think my objection to it is knee jerk moral outrage. Still, you've expressed your views very clearly and challenged my own, and I thank you for it.

Simon, I understand your concerns, but in regards to the time the piece was to have been shown, I don't find images of a Pope punching a pregnant nun any more appropriate -- any less potentially damaging -- for 15 year olds than for 5 year olds. And I don't find them appropriate, period, for Christmas, which is for Christians a joyous time of celebrating Christ's birth, with all that it implies for people of Christian faith. It's not a time when we celebrate priests abusing children. It's not a time when we forget that some priests have abused children, or we're any less horrified and disgusted by the evil of their actions. In short, it's not a time when we need to be propagandized, as if our celebrations have anything to do with sick people abusing their office and authority in ways that have nothing to do with Christian teaching and run violently counter to it. As for not having seen the piece, de frutos is not denying that it contains the offensive content noted. He has stated that he meant to offend ("annoy"). I don't need to see images of a Pope punching a pregnant to know they're offensive to me, or to judge that for some images there is no context in which I would find them acceptable. I think you have a stronger point when you note that the piece was scheduled for BBC4. But still: let the public decide. If enough people protest the deletion, perhaps the work will be shown some other time.

Simon, I'd be interested in your response to what I wrote above, that the BBC isn't banning anything from public viewing, it's just deciding not to abet that viewing. The principle of free choice in this case allows de frutos to produce, Sadler Wells to present, and individuals to choose to attend. It doesn't mandate the BBC to be a presenter, or the tax-paying public to assent to pay for its presentation. I think it's informed, principled protest of the sort that got this pulled, and not a morally laissez-faire, anything-goes spirit, that is indicative of a functioning democracy, and a society where ideas are free to circulate, and thus open to thoughtful engagement, with the possibility of criticism. In any case, in these days of political correctness, there are many things that would draw loud protest from the Left were they scheduled to be shown on publicly financed television. I guess what you mean me to agree to is that because that's not practical or desirable, parents shouldn't object to this program being shown. That's the we-can't-guarantee-success, so-we-shouldn't-even-try argument. To your facetious "perhaps" I would suggest instead that if someone wants to show work intended to mock a representative of the Christian church (rather than educate about the papacy, which I would defend) they shouldn't choose Christmastime to air it. That's strikes me as both smart strategy, and respectful, or at least less disrespectful, to boot. And I think the interests of civility should factor into the BBC's programming decisions. I'm sorry, but if you're making an argument there and not just putting down middle class parents for enforcing strict moral guidelines, I assume it's the argument identified above.

Please do, Pamela. He sounds like a fascinating guy.

Is this from the Onion (an American satirical magazine) or the Times online? An individual's freedom of speech doesn't obligate anyone else to provide a platform for them to shout from. de frutos is free to make the work and persuade whoever he can to show it. But it doesn't give him the right to have it shown wherever he wants. And many kids stay up past 9.

His version is my favorite too, and since I can't make it up to NYC in December or into Washington next week for Pennsylvania Ballet, that means making do with the 1997 NYCB film, though I'll supplement them with the Royal Ballet's very different version from 2001 and San Francisco Ballet's from last year. And I love the excerpts ABT performed on a tiny stage at the White House in 2005, which C-Span recorded. But most of all I'm looking forward to watching Virginia Brooks' delightful 2006 film, "The Nutcracker Family: Behind the Magic," on NYCB Children's Ballet mistress Gabrielle Whittle and the children at SAB, and their long Nutcracker audition and rehearsal process.

lmspear, if it would bring back memories, you could look for the videotape "A Trip to Christmas: The Bell Telephone Hour," a 1961 broadcast featuring Jane Wyatt, The Lennon Sisters, John Raitt, Jane Morgan and, yes, Edward Villella and Violette Verdy! Naturally they dance a Nutcracker pas de deux.

bart, Farrell has been presenting The Balanchine Couple since 2003, if I'm not mistaken. That's when she first brought it to the Kennedy Center. It included pas de deux from Apollo, La Sonnambula, Ivesiana, La Valse, Agon, Meditation, Don Quixote, Chaconne, and Stars and Stripes. Those performances were reviewed on Ballet Talk here. The program isn't a lecture demonstration, but Farrell introduces each piece speaking from notes. Here is Clare Croft's danceviewtimes review from 2003.