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Of course some of these sessions have been described in loving detail in DanceView. And of course George Jackson is a writer for Danceview. So we can hope for a report!

You can find one here. That site is an advertisement for Alexandra Tomalonis' very enjoyable book, Henning Kronstam, Portrait of a Danish Dancer.

Greatly stretching, and technically breaking, the definition of a pas de deux, I love "The Unanswered Question" section of Balanchine's "Ivesiana."

Oh, that's a delight, isn't it? He's a favorite around my house as well. Thanks for mentioning the NY Times article in which he remembers his wife. I had never read it.

Thanks for noting that, Victoria. I was fortunate to see her dance that role once in 1979, with Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux, whom I guess she had by then married. As you said, she was warm and vivacious -- and unforgettable.

It's my impression that a good many young musicians are getting recording contracts and bookings. Many also accompany older, more established artists. Singer and bassist Esperanza Spalding, a young woman who had a spot at the Newport Jazz Festival last weekend, just graduated from Berklee in 2005.

Sorry to misunderstand you before, milosr. What you say above is true of course, but the irony is that only a very small percentage of the jazz that is played live or recorded today is free jazz, or is that difficult to follow. (Hard bop still had great popularity, albeit not what swing did). The point I was trying to make is that a great deal of jazz today is accessible if people will only take a little time to familiarize themselves with it. Miles apparently didn't want to be left behind, which explains why he changed his style of dress as well as his music. I never heard the 70's bands live, except for on recordings, but what you say makes sense to me. Too bad that, after he came out of retirement in the early 80's, his music never hit that peak again.

Thanks for explaining, Old Fashioned. I don't remember that Marsalis interview, but I do know that the Center often programs Latin jazz. I guess I don't see JALC as keeping jazz pure and untouched by popular music, which as you and dirac note had such an influence on it earlier. I see it as celebrating jazz history and keeping past traditions going. Programming for their 2009 season http://www.playbillarts.com/features/article/8019.html is quite diverse and includes a collaboration with Alvin Ailey's Hope Boykin, and an evening of . . . the Yellowjackets? They certainly fit my definition of bland and commercial.

You're mistaken about jazz at Lincoln Center, Old Fashioned. Christian McBride is there tonight. I heard Joe Locke there in 2007. Sunday I'll hear John Patitucci, Joe Lovano & Brian Blade, Tuesday Chico Hamilton, and Wednesday Roy Haynes. People of that quality play there year 'round, in the club and in the two theaters. I have to disagree re: "danceable" too. Those guys make a variety of records and as sidemen play in a variety of contexts.

But beboop was when jazz became great, with Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker (with Miles Davis), and early Thelonius Monk. "Ruby My Dear", "Caroina Moon," "April in Paris" are wonderfully danceable. For me it's after John Coltrane ("My Favorite Things"), when jazz no longer was based on popular songs, Rogers & Hart and Cole Porter, etc--playing every note except the one you were supposed to play--that it became less interesting. Eric Dolphy is probably the end of that road, though Cecil Taylor still plays... Jazz has gone in many directions, of course, but overall it's not lacking in melody and doesn't neglect popular song (ot at least the standards of its heyday). Whole Foods, Starbucks, college radio . . . and it hardly lacks for exciting younger players. All the more ironic, then, that its audience is greying.

Er, thanks for the kind words, volcanohunter. To me it's natural to move from great blue rock improvisation like that practiced by Hendrix, Clapton, and Allman into jazz, so much of which is founded on the blues, and is also improvisatory. I love it. The anecdote, that is. Baroque organ is for me one of the last frontiers.

Agreed. With bebop, jazz decoupled itself from dance/party music and went off to live in its own esoteric art world. And rock 'n' roll was waiting in the wings to fill the gap. I'm not sure beauty and excitement are so esoteric. I thought a lot of rock 'n roll fans eventually expanded their tastes to encompass jazz, eventually coming to prefer it. I know I did. Don't know why that's not happening so much anymore.

The 47-page summer 2009 issue of DanceView is out. George Jackson's Ballet Russe After Diaghilev is a reprint of a talk he gave at Harvard University's symposium on the Diaghilev's Ballet Russes this past spring. Marc Haegeman's Munich's Annual Ballet Week is about Bavarian State Ballet in Munich, May 5-7. Michael Popkin's review of NYCB's spring season, Back to the Balanchine Brand, is subtitled "A new generation of dancers is rising at the New York City Ballet." Carol Pardo's The Annual School Performance, Repertory and a Farewell is on Paris Opera Ballet this past April. Denise Sum's New Works in Toronto is on National Ballet of Canada's 2008-2009 season. Jane Simpson reports from London on Northern Ballet Theatre, Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet and The Royal Ballet. Rita Felciano reports from San Francisco on Janice Garrett and Dancers, Stephen Pelton Dance Company, Scott Wells and DAncers, Im'ijre, Choiin Theatre, and Sasha Waltz and Guest. DanceView is the print big sister of danceviewtimes, and both are published by Ballet Talk founder and site owner, Alexandra Tomalonis. Subscribe and support this site.

National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation program this afternoon (2-4 EST, I don't know about elsewhere) will include a segment entitled "Bill T. Jones Remembers Merce Cunningham." This is a call-in show. A link to Weekend Edition Saturday's Cunningham remembrance piece is here.

By Zorina there is . . . "Zorina." Copyright 1986. I hope some day to hear your thoughts on it.

Wow, Jack -- thanks! Terri Gross rebroadcast her December 1985 interview with Merce today, followed by an interview with John Cage. They're online here.

It's great to read people's early memories of Cunningham. I first encountered his work when I ran across a documentary on a UFH television station one lazy afternoon. I remember it as the late 70's but it may have been a few years later. In 1988 I heard Cage and Cunningham speak at Harvard, Merce showing a video and talking about the challenges of putting dance on film, and Cage reading a hodgepodge of texts for one of the Norton lectures, and then answering questions the next week. I bailed out of the lecture after 45 minutes, but left the Q & A session excited about the idea of hearing noise not as a nuisance, but as sound, as inherently interesting. Finally in 1993, at the American Dance Festival in Durham, I saw the dance company live. I found the first two pieces dry, but the last one, CRWDSPCR, clicked, and I've sought out Merce's work ever since. PBS NewHours had a nice tribute to Merce this evening. They have an interview with David Vaughan here and the tribute should be there later. RIP, Merce.

Stinger, when Acocella writes that Jackson's musicality and "ability to respond to the score" at age 11 are "amazing," I think we can assume that as a dance critic, she's interested. Further into the article she writes about what he was capable of as a young adult, what his influences were as a choreographer, the range of his ability as a dancer, how his conception of the nascent form of music video was instrumental in the rise of MTV, in what further way his choreography for video was innovative, who his creative collaborators were, and how, in her opinion, he failed to learn an important lesson from one of his dancing heroes. She then charts what she sees as his decline. This reads to me like a career overview, just what the editor probably ordered and just what most fans, serious and casual, would want upon his death. You write Acocella too remarks on that amazing facility. I think the two of you are on the same page.

Hasn't it also been discussed that the salaries of the dancers at NYCB are all significantly more than the dancers in other companies with comparable responsibilities? If we're looking at the whole, doesn't it stand to reason that if the dancers are among the best paid in the industry, that their administration is too? The question for me here isn't "is Martins making a greater amount than his peers". It's "is Martins making a disproportionate amount compared to his dancers." Martins apparently made almost three times as much as a director last year than McKenzie did at ABT. Did NYCB dancers make that much more than their peers at ABT???

Patricia McBride. I first saw NYCB in Chicago in '79 and McBride was in Other Dances, The Four Seasons, Vienna Waltzes and the Costermonger pas de deux in Union Jack.

That makes me wonder, did generalist magazines like Time and Newsweek ever seriously pan a ballet, or did they just alert their readers to what the ballet world considered most noteworthy? I guess that's another way of asking if they ever published serious criticism.

Yes, please! I hope someone will post memories of Adams, and of that first cast of Agon.

I found a few references to her in an article by Anna Kisselgoff in the Times on 11/13/73, collected in Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey. And later Elsewhere in the book, in an inteview with Tobi Tobias in Dance Magazine, 1974, he says

I like the new look, but it doesn't display right in the browser I usually use, Opera. The logo displays over the links on the left, other links display scrunched in between the regular text, and on some pages some of the letters display only partially, like they would on a typewriter with an ink ribbon in need of replacement.

I have a friend, a former dancer, who is very excited by the support that Richmond Ballet in Richmond, Virginia is giving choreographers, Jessica Lang among others. Having seen only one new work one time I don't feel I can comment on their quality or their status as ballet vs. modern dance, but this past fall they had premieres by William Soleau, Todd Rosenlieb, and Gina Patterson. Does anyone know these names? The company boasts of having commissioned 50 works in 25 years of existence. Alexandra? Anyone? Someone here must know this company.