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And a wonderful ballerina. Creative people are often eccentric, as we know. Thanks for your comments, Sandy. I had the same reaction, and I hope you'll tell us what you think of Kent's autobiography. If you've never seen Anne Belle's "Six Ballerina's," soon to be released on DVD, you might enjoy Kent's segment. She speaks holding a white iris.

I must apologize for my haste in quoting Mr. Macaulay without double fact checking--and making him sound more decadent and outlandish and absolutist than in fact he was. His whole statement was more limited in reach: Well so much for Richard Strauss. Among others .. Statements like that aren’t criticism, they’re attention-getting devices. In a daily review aimed at the general public, I’ll excuse it. I don't find it a surprising thought for a dance critic. If it was a pronouncement I might see it as attention-getting, but the way it's couched I find it unremarkable.

The Royal brought it to Washington in 2006 and I was disappointed on first sight, although I've grown to love the filmed version. I still find Balanchine's conception, with its central characters, far more dramatic and moving.

Andrew Carnegie built that hall, he didn't just pay for half of its refurbishing 40+ years later. I agree with Michael that the renaming business is tasteless. Isn't the opportunity to make a civic contribution satisfaction enough? Thanks for the laugh.

This is what he said: "The public likes its warhorses, but it doesn't seem to care how well these warhorses get played. They are particularly susceptible to showboaters like Lang Lang and Izzy Perlman and Nigel Kennedy; they turn out in droves to hear Andrea Bocelli warble his way through the Shmaltzmeister's Songbook" In these two sentences, 'doesn't seem to care how well these warhorses get played' is immediately followed by 'particularly susceptible to showboaters like Lang Lang'. Is that not clear that it's the same people? Sure it's the same people. But it's Bocelli he says that warbles. He doesn't say good musicianship and salesmanship are mutually exclusive, he says the public can't tell the difference.

papeetepatrick, I think a showboater is someone who seems to show off, plain and simple. I do think that to assume more is to to presume. No one I'm aware of thinks Bernstein was a poor conductor, but his demonstrativeness on the podium was surely part, and perhaps a large part, of his appeal to relatively uneducated audience members. That would seem to be Queenan's point about Lang Lang, that his personality accounts in significant measure for why he's more popular than, say, Richard Goode. That's no verdict on Lang Lang's musicianship. As for the tradition of classical music, in the short run it depends upon good musicians and composers, not the educated audience members which Queenan laments the lack of. As for jazz, up in your neck of the woods the working class can't afford the Village Vanguard, much less the Blue Note where the bigger names play. Where I live we have a great little jazz scene, and even a jazz society, but the latter holds meetings in a fancy restaurant. I see few African-Americans and no one that looks working or lower middle class (students excepted) at jazz performances here and there.

Not in my neck of the woods. My impression is that jazz clubs are much thinner on the ground than they used to be as trends in popular music have shifted, and Queenan may be right to say that some of that state dough could be redistributed. Fortunately most jazz doesn't take an orchestra to play; one of the finest contemporary jazz writers and big band leaders, Toshiko Akiyoshi, had to disband her orchestra a few years ago because it was too expensive. The few large groups that survive are mostly tribute and repertory bands.

He didn't knock them, he made a specific comparison which I think is undeniably accurate (and I'm a Stones fan). Nor did he say he wanted to cut ties with the proletariat to gain higher status or special privileges. The cultural elite he's referring to is one he says no longer exists, one that's "especially knowledgeable" about classical music. I'll leave it to more frequent concertgoers to gauge how accurate his assessment is, but we all know that we're not living in any golden age of artistic education. And papeetepatrick, he didn't say Lang Lang was suspect, he said he's a showboater.

I don't know when Miami City Ballet last danced this, but they brought it to Wolf Trap in 1992 and the Kennedy Center in 2001, and it remains listed in their active repertoire.

For the third week in a row, the New Yorker has published a dance piece by Joan Acocella (one could get used to this), and this week's piece is not a review, but a long preview of Morris' new work. Acocella's title is "Romeo, Romeo: The Ballet Gets a Happy Ending." I was taken by this passage early in the article: Not one book, but books. That's real research.

Klavier, thank you very much for your thoughtful and informative analysis of the Goldberg Variations, both as music and as choreography. Your comments made me feel like I'd seen part of the performance, and if I ever have the chance to see the ballet again, I'll reread them beforehand.

Balanchine says that Tchaikovsky "tried to catch cold, to chill himself to death, and that's not the same thing as committing suicide" when he was married. As to his actual death later on, Balanchine speculates on the story that Tchaikovsky drunk a glass of unboiled tap water in a restaurant during a cholera epidemic. This may have been a "kind of Russian Roulette," a "playing with fate." He says he believes the composer had thought about his death for a long time, that though he was devout and certainly thought suicide a sin, he wrote in a letter that he didn't believe in a punishing God, and that he wrote the "Pathetique "as a kind of suicide note."

I don't think creativity is the goal exactly. Dancers in particular, because they interpret work they didn't create, benefit from understanding that work as best they can, and that means understanding where it came from. Alexandra said this much better than I. Another way of saying it is that an educated response to music and choreography and scenario (all of which have historical context) is ultimately more interesting than an uneducated one.

Thank you very much for posting, whetherwax. I don't know why the shop you work in wants $65 for this book when it's listed for only $35. In fact, Amazon is selling it much cheaper (and purchases through the link at the top of this page benefit this site). Here's an excerpt of a review in the California Literary Review. .Another excerpt: Nureyev could be a royal pain, but

I'll bet there will be Wednesday at Front Row Center.

I don't doubt you for a second, Sandy. And their 1996 Agon here with Patricia Barker and Jeffrey Stanton is one I treasure.

That only works if the company is perceived as looking good in the work, and that the work is perceived as extension, not regression. What's also odd is that, as Alexandra mentioned, they've already danced that work here, and as a matter of fact did so during their last visit. Of course that was, if memory serves, 12 long years ago, but still. I found it dull back then. The first time I saw it danced -- by Les Grands Ballet Canadiens de Montreal at Wolf Trap -- it followed Agon, and I put my head down and closed my eyes. When these program were announced it was PNB I most wanted to see again, and if they're programmed almost anything else, especially if it had been something of Balanchine's, I would have gone.

Browsing in a bookstore this morning I saw that Jennifer Fournier is on the cover of the summer issue of Dance International. Her farewell performances begin tonight, in Ashton's "Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan," and she has been coached by Lynn Seymour. As reported in The Hamilton Spectator, the collaboration has been a happy one. I remember Fournier from performances in Apollo and Tzigane with Suzanne Farrell Ballet, and I imagine she'll be lovely and fascinating in this piece. Whoever is able to see one of these performances, I hope you'll post!

And who will be first, in the "Ballet Videos, Films, and Broadcast Performances" forum, to review the Royal's new release?

That's fascinating. Can you tell us what it was you saw in her dancing that made you intuit that?

Not to be unkind or to downplay the role that Kirkland's intelligence played in making her such a fine dancer, but her incessant analyzing in "Dancing on My Grave" makes me wonder if Balanchine made that remark with no little exasperation.

Hey, if Tchaikovsky was able to talk to Balanchine, . . .

That is most interesting and elucidates much. Thanks. Yes indeed. Thanks, Mel. What about Suki Schorer's book and the Balanchine technique videos with Ashley (not that those are exhaustive)?

Thanks for the explanation, Hans.

Thanks for the correction, Mme. Hermine. I hope you'll say more.