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I don't know how he did it, but Marc Haegeman has seen it already! No, wait, that's from a review of a London performance in March. The actual debut took place the week before at the Kennedy Center. Once in a while in Washington, we get lucky.

The company website has been handsomely updated and now has capsule blurbs on principals and soloists, plus a conversation with corps de ballet memeber Amy Brandt, who is the company's shoe coordinator. And tickets for performances at the Kennedy Center October 8-12 are now on sale!

Which American dancers have ever said they've gotten this message? And there are ABT dancers -- Julie Kent, Susan Jaffe and Ethan Stiefel, just to mention a few recent names -- who have achieved national recognition.

A sidelong shot of a smiling Sarah Mearns in Dances at a Gathering graces the cover of the Summer 2008 issue of DanceView. In the first article of this new issue, Gay Morris reflects on the works of Jerome Robbins, the focus of NYCB's spring season at the State Theater. Morris notes his "tendency towards mimetic gesture," and his "great facility for understanding and capturing posture, comportment and gesture in everyday life." "The amount of vernacular detail" in Fancy Free, she writes, in a line that made me chuckle, "is almost anthropological." Gay goes on to cite Edwin Denby's conviction, voiced "early in the choreographer's career," that there are drawbacks to the use of literal gesture. Denby wrote, for example, that "it does not draw attention to the central impulses of the body that dances." Writes Gay: "Denby felt that this dependence on descriptive gesture limited the freedom of Robbins' work. . . . Gesture holds a place in dance, but if it is used solely as literal description, it can restrict more complex modes of producing meaning." Robbins is properly called theatrical, Morris writes, not so much for his "coups de theatre, those clever surprises that have to do with stage effects rather than dancing," but because his dancers are always characters, "always playing someone, even if it is themselves." I could go on quoting thoughtful passages from this and other articles, but my purpose is to whet the appetite of non-subscribers. This issue also includes Mary Cargill's conversation with former Dance Theater of Harlem and current Alvin Ailey Dance Theater star Alicia Graf, as well as articles by Cargill on The Kirov-Maryinsky at NYC's City Center, Horst Kogler on "John Cranko's Thirteen Glorious Stuttgart Years," Alexandra Tomalonis on the Proteges performances at the Kennedy Center, Carol Pardo on performances by the Paris Opera Ballet and school, and reports from London and San Francisco by Jane Simpson and Rita Felciano respectively. One thing I love about DanceView is that its writers are given the space to reflect at length. Another thing I love is its many large black and white photos. DanceView is the print big sister of danceviewtimes; each is owned and edited by Ballet Talk founder and administrator, Alexandra Tomalonis. More information and that most vital bit of information, the subscription link, can be found here.

Thanks for the information, bart. Herodotus (Penguin Classics) has been begging to come off the shelf for awhile now. I'm sure I'll consult him alongside the Landmark edition. At the moment I'm luxuriating in Salman Rushdie's "The Enchantress of Florence."

No. You can read Alastair Macauley's NY Times review and find a photo here. Farrell Fan, I'm so glad you'll get to see this!

Thanks for starting this, dirac. Everyone is writing about the man and his writings of course, but Anne Applebaum's Washington Post column "Stronger Than the Gulag" opens with a moving glimpse of history as it was lived by his Russian readers: I've read "First Circle" and (in high school) "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," and a friend gave me a copy of the Harvard commencement address when it was first published. But what I remember best of Solzhenitsyn is that most challenging and most quoted Sozhenitsyn thought that came to him while he was in the Gulag, that "the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.'

Thanks for the reminisences, Bart. "Good for you" is part of what made me begin reread "Oedipus Rex" this past weekend, but not what made me finish it. How sad then to read this in today's NY Times report on the Russian reaction to Solzhenitseyn's death:

Is it safe to guess that Villella choreographed this himself? The smaltzy music makes me laugh at his serious demeanor as he enters. Poor guy -- I guess they didn't take class to The Little Drummer Boy at SAB! But then . . . wow! vipa, thanks for pointing out those beautiful port de bras, and the intelligence with which he must have shaped them. And that attack! I never saw Villella on stage, but this is the most impressive, in that respect, that I've seen him on film.

He's great in Man Who Dances too, and he obviously allowed himself to be filmed for that. So 'tis a puzzlement.

That's interesting. Has he said why? He introduced the Balanchine ballets on "Dance in America" with scripts written, if I'm not mistaken, by Arlene Croce.

Thanks, rg! garybruce, there is also "Man Who Dances," a 1968 television special, but as far as I can tell it's not available for sale.

Ah, the sentimental impulse. I didn't read it myself till after visiting Ireland and the Martello Tower where the first chapter is set. Bloom's ramblings aside, it's not a rambling thing once you see what Joyce is doing, but for most of us to begin to understand that, we needs a good commentary. I bought or checked out a half dozen or so.

Azulynn, I think you'd enjoy the Marc Raymond Strauss book. The author "proposes" that Croce "sought nothing less than to determine specific and unambiguous prerequisites for dance as exemplified by the historical continuum of classicism in art," and he focuses on "three specific elements of artistic excellence to which Croce uniformly adheres: sympathetic musicality, Apollonian craftsmanship and enlivening tradition." He believes these derive from principles first articulated in Aristotle's Poetics . The book consists of 10 chapters, each followed by a Croce essay which, strangely, Strauss doesn't comment on. ('Gentle reader, decide for yourself now if my theories are correct,' I guess). Specific chapters focus on the formalist tradition in art, philosophy and literary analysis, the history of dance criticism up until the time Croce began writing, journalism at The New Yorker, the ethics of dance criticism and just what the job entails, Croce's use of rhetorical devices ("declarations and pronouncements"), and more. At one point he likens Croce to a participant-observer anthropologist. It's that kind of a book, and I can only wonder what Croce thinks of his analysis, and if other critics find it useful in thinking about their own work. At the end Strauss includes an apprendix on "topics in Croce's essays." How often, if he's correct, did she write about NYCB? 55 times. The runner-up, or runner way down, is ABT, at 22 times.

This probably applies to subject matter as well as style. For example, many of us love War and Peace . But how many have read (or, more challenging, RE-read) Tolsoy's long disquisitions on the meaning of history? I had to do so for a history class -- once! Since then, I flip past all those pages pages until I get back to the fictional characters. The incredibly long sections on whaling in Moby Dick probably fit into this category as well. Are there PARTS of classic novels you've avoided? Those chapters on whaling are trying, aren't they? I can never make myself skip anything, and I dutifully read these through the second time around, thinking I had to for the full Great Literature Experience. dirac, if only you'd opened this thread sooner.

I did enjoy the Golden Bowl, although sometimes the enjoyment was similar to the pleasure of reading philosophy or concentrating on a "difficult" piece of music. Sometimes the work was half the fun!

Moby Dick I found underwhelming when I first read it as a read-aloud with my wife. A second, private reading, was more satisfying, but the numerous digressions from the plot still bored me. Beowolf came alive for me, many years after reading it, when I bought a recording of Seamus Heaney reading his own translation.

Now that is tantalizing. The print I've seen is terribly washed out.

Sour grape or sour lemon, I'd say. And for the most media impact, as whipped up by some publicity hound celebrity chef.

Indeed. And Balanchine/Farrell having coffee and (what? a burger?) at that Greek coffee shop just a bit north of Lincoln Center. And Jacques d'Amboise at the West Side Y. And ... and ... and .. a lot else as well. Wonderful days. I wish that someone would put together a complilation of fan memories from this period. And then figure out a way to upload them all to YouTube. What would D'Amboise be doing at the Y?

Thanks, Bart. The quote is a special treat.

What's wrong in principle with finding a ballet, even an often programmed ballet that has lasted for decades, "ghastly," "appalling," "inane", and "twaddle"? Macaulay specifies what he dislikes about it: what he considers its as well as the fact that it There is also what he considers perhaps its .And then there is the .Agree or disagree (the ballet leaves me cold), but he's shown us the basis for his judgment, and in so doing invited readers who feel differently to examine and perhaps sharpen their own judgment. That's what I want from a critic.

Cojocaru Mearns Osipova Obratzsova

Bart, you write "photos," plural. In Taper's Balanchine biography I find one gorgeous shot of Adams and Mitchell, with a classroom mirror and onlookers in the background, and then a few pages on there are four pages of smaller shots set against a black background? Are those known to be rehearsal photos as well, or are there more Agon rehearsal shots elsewhere? (I hope it's the latter). Thanks.

You might try refreshing the page with the Apollo shot -- that worked for me. Thanks, Christian!