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Perhaps one that will inadvertently spur Amar to seek help if he needs it, or to at least forgo something which could limit or destroy his career. And speaking of the unforeseeably poignant, if you own a copy of Martins pere's "Far from Denmark," turn to the first page of the Introduction and note the photo to the left.

Alexandra's review for Danceview is available here. I'm almost positive I saw Neal and Fagundes dance this as well. That would also seem to be the case from George Jackson's review in Dance Magazine.

Yes, it seems that way until you remember that there many instrumentalists and singers who definitely can be said to be 'unmusical' while even being called musicians! You said it. And by way of related though off topic perennial puzzler of an illustration, what are all those people making all that putrid pop on the radio?

Insufferably cute Nutcracker characters, the Seizure Fairy, and an urge to run out of the theater! Is it art in general you people don't like, or just ballet? But seriously, thanks for all the fascinating responses. I think I'll stop trying to like the Cygnets now. perky, I understand why you don't like those bits of Duo Concertant, and I've seen a performance or two where I felt the same way, but in general I find the scenes touching. atm711, I don't really like the national dances either. Mother Ginger I do enjoy. That unicorn in ABT's current version, though . . . . mutter mutter.

Jonathan Rosenbaum writes in the Times: An interest in the so-called big questions of whether or not God exists, and of how to live a good and contented life when in doubt of God's existence or convinced of God's' absence, is apparently "self" absorption in Rosenbaum's view. The "larger" world is not that of the posited creator but of what has heretofore been understood as creation, and in the modern world the questions humankind has always considered primary are less noteworthy than the task of changing the language of cinema to say something "new," a category of self-evident superiority to the old. Bergman's neuroses and resentments were particular and not common, unique and not universal, so that his popularity was a triumph of the chic, not a sign of moral seriousness.

MacCauley writes that "transcendence" is what it's all about. I rather doubt he dislikes transcendence. I agree with carbro that he thinks the Bolshoi can mount a better production. While he notes, for example, that the ballet was seen widely in the West in 1978, it's only in "the last several years," as versions have multiplied, that he's begun to think that ignorance was bliss. As I read that, he's finding fault with some recent versions.

Today in the the Alastair MacCauley @ NY Times thread, canbelto objects what she and others see as MacCauley's "contempt" for La Bayadere. I love Swan Lake, but I've never cared for the Cygnets. At best their dance strikes me as a technical feat, impressive in its uniformity, but with little poetry. It doesn't help to characterize the swans as women for me either. At worst, as in "Backstage at the Kirov" (I just know someone's going to say that's the best version ever recorded), it strikes me as ungainly. I recognize that this is heresy , and I'm wondering if there are any other heretics out there. Confession is good for the soul. Are there moments in any classic ballets, or in ballets you otherwise love, that puzzle you and leave you cold? (And can anyone help me appreciate the cygnets?)

Patrick, two relics of the class system that I never personally experienced but in imagination hold dear are in depth classical education and noblesse obligle. What determines Good taste with a capital G, the taste worth passing on as more than personal, accident-of-birth/history preference? Character perhaps most of all determines what one holds valuable; but previous to that, education obviously serves to contextualize one's surrounding culture. Words that warm my heart.

You can say that again. I'm the one who introduced the term here, but I don't really like it unless it's understood to be tongue in cheek. Moral issues where they arise aside, as far as I'm concerned the only thing wrong with aesthetic "vulgarity" is that some people don't recognize it for what it is, so that mere entertainment drives out art, the merely pleasurable drives out the work that is spiritually sustaining. But does the connoisseur of haute cuisine . . . imperfect analogy on the way . . . not appreciate a grilled hot dog? That's his loss. Apologies for the misconceived and therefore potentially misleading category.

The NY Times has an interesting piece today entitled Bergman, Antonioni and the Religiously Inclined: Also, Virginia Hefferman's Screen-Arts blog in the Times mentions a 1968 Bergman spoof called De Duva. It's available for viewing there, and for downloading for free elsewhere online. I didn't find it as amusing as I'd expected, but the mock Swedish alone is a hoot.

I've opened a new thread, Guilty Pleasures, in the Aesthetic Issues forum.

We'll see about that.

Hey, at a hundred bucks a ticket, that's what I have to tell myself. So called, guilty pleasures? I bet you can't out-vulgar the Ramones.

papeetepatrick, my apologies, I didn't mean you specifically. I substituted "you" for the more awkward "one." Anyhow, while some Londoners are probably constrained by cultural norms from giving standing ovations, I can still understand Brantley's pleasure in escaping the particular knee jerk, culturally prescribed reaction he usually finds. I prefer to use "snob" as a pejorative, to distinguish it from simple aesthetic judgment. I don't fault the diagnostician for finding a problem he doesn't personally suffer from. Brantley didn't say that everyone's judgment is compromised by exorbitant prices. Perhaps. But in regards to ballet, while standing ovations have become standard in the U.S., few longtime balletomanes think performance quality has increased on average.

papeetepatrick, thanks for the discussion-enlivening, forthright pan. I like Brantley's "promiscuous." If you give a standing ovation to everyone, what do you give to the truly outstanding performer who really wins your heart? I also like his "tribal-consumerist." That sounds like human nature to me, and I don't think one has to be a snob to recognize it. Yes Brantley is privileged, but that doesn't invalidate his criticism or turn his irritation into snobbery.

Miss Manners said it perfectly, I think. But after a performance of La Boheme last night that was good but not great I had a nagging feeling we might have hurt the performers' feelings. Driving away I realized it was because despite the cheers and applause, no one had stood. So now that, as you said, Standing O's have become de rigeur, to begin to use them thoughtfully and sparingly might feel uncomfortable for awhile. In his NY Times London Theater Journal Ben Brantley writes that the absence of the standing ovation is one pleasure of London theater-going:

I often remember and laugh at a reaction I never saw but only read about in an Anna Kisselgoff NYCB review: a little girl yelling to the Mouse King, "go home!"

The combo is what they danced at the Kennedy Center's Balanchine Celebration in 2000.

Oh that's good to hear! I'll have to rent that one.

Broadcast obituary notices are so instantly recognizable by style and tone of voice that I think my “aww” escaped my lips this morning before the second syllable of Bergman left the radio speakers. I’ve never cared for the phrase “death is a part of life,” but in regards to the man who was so taken up with death and the question of God’s existence, death seems like an appropriate final act, the time when either his questions are answered or his agonized questioning is stilled. So my sadness is mixed with hope. May the writer and director of “The Seventh Seal” and “Cries and Whispers” enjoy for eternity the joy and peace he was denied on Earth, and may the man who gave us “Fanny and Alexander” enjoy an eternity of wonder and play.

Yesterday in a new thread, Bart recommended Michael Popkin's excellent article on Lincoln Kirstein, in the latest DanceView. Michael mentions the 100 commemorative photos that were recently on exhibit at the State Theater. For me the most fascinating of those photos were shots of the interior of Kirstein's country home in Weston, Connecticut, taken by Jerry L. Thompson for a proposed follow-up volume to "Quarry: A Collection in Lieu of Memoirs." That earlier book featured Thompson's photos of Kirstein's, art-filled, East 19th Street NYC townhouse along with a Kirstein essay that, as Thompson says, starts from the pictures but goes on to make connections and "kindred associations" (Kant's phrase) in all directions. In the current, July issue of The Yale Review, Thompson has a 16-page article entitled "Lincoln Kirstein at Eighty," a tribute to the man and a description of what it was like to work with and for him in his final years. Kirstein's country home was crammed full of books, as could be seen in Thompson's photos at the State Theater. The range of subjects is remarkable, everything from, for example, Edward Lear to number symbolism, from traditional prayer books to cabalistic studies and treatises on Satan, from Pascal, Wittgenstein and Marcus Aurelius to dinosaurs, gardening and natural history. What Thompson doesn't say and perhaps didn't ask Kirstein about is which of these books and interests might have belonged to his Kirstein's wife, Fidelma, then confined to a nearby nursing home. Thompson marvels not just at Kirstein's range of interests and accomplishments, but also at the "power of association" evident in his writing and his conversation. He links this with Kirstein's belief in artistic "apostolic succession," the inheriting and bequeathing of technique ("digital mastery," a phrase that will be familiar to many of Kirstein's readers). For Kirstein this was as religious as it sounds. "The word religion,' Kirstein explained, comes from a root meaning 'to connect.'" What this meant was that Kirstein opposed the then fashionable emphasis on artistic genius, on an individualism that in his view elevated personality at the expense of referenced, acknowledged tradition. (This, of course, is a main element is his quarrel with modern dance). Thompson speculates that Kirstein's instinct for assimilation and connection aided him in his lifelong dealings with artists, not only to facilitate but to inspire, to serve as a catalyst, for example, to Walker Evans, broadening and enriching the photographer's understanding of his subject matter. It was also this emphasis on connection that made Kirstein dissatisfied with Thompson's initial shots of the 19 Street paintings, sculpture, and bric-a-brac in isolation. The object of both photographs and essay became, in Thompson's words, "to find, through the contemplation of these chosen, familiar things, an objectified representation of the whirling mental activity, the storm of thought that was his habitual state of mind." I shouldn't summarize everything here, but a subscription to The Yale Review costs $29 online, and the printed journal is hard to find in many places (I found the article online at a university library). So I'll permit myself one more quote, one of the touching vignettes with which Thompson honors his friend and collaborator: The great man is "standing over the poet Gavin Ewart," in from London and his guest for dinner. "As his huge form looms over Ewart, who is sitting on the sofa talking to the ballerina seated next to him, Ewart looks up questioningly: What is it, Lincoln? Kirstein answers, I'm trying to think what might please you."

And a shaky performance of that great song it was too.

verityjane, the program is also for sale in two volumes on VHS, although I have a feeling that the talk between the ballets isn't included. If you make a purchase through the Amazon link at the top of this page, you'll benefit this site.

I have to wonder about that, ZB1. Financially enticing perhaps, but fulfilling? I found the recent Times article on Tidwell touching enough to make me tune into the show, but I didn't last more than a few minutes and didn't see Tidwell. Perhaps his routine is a cut above the norm there, but I like what Robert Weiss, former NYCB dancer and now artistic director of Carolina Ballet is quoted as saying in an article in today's Links: The article continues:

miliosr asked an interesting question on the MacCauley thread in Writings on Ballet. I've moved it here for further discussion: