kfw

One would think that Amar and Nilas, sitting in a car together, were friends (didn't Amar dance with one of Nilas' pick-up companies?)? What kind of friendship is that?

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.

"Afternoon of a Faun," Robbins's ballet about two young dancers who experiment with steps and budding passions in a dance studio but are more interested in their own reflections in the mirror, was danced very poignantly, and very well, by Lynn and Huys.

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.

It seems odd that a dancer could lack musicality... for me they are in a very real sense a silent musical instrument of movement.

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:

Riddled with wounds inflicted by Mr. Bergman’s strict Lutheran upbringing and diverse spiritual doubts, these films are at times too self-absorbed to say much about the larger world, limiting the relevance that his champions often claim for them.

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.

The Kingdom of the Shades scene remains the ultimate test of a ballet company's corps.

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.

We need to struggle with these issues if we are to build a better world.

Words that warm my heart.

The concept of "guilty pleasures" is somewhat relative.

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:

It is an interesting question why so many people serious about religion, believers in particular, feel such a loss at the death of Bergman. His view of religion was anything but benign. He recalled his ultimate loss of faith with great relief. His personal life was not a model. Nor did his films respect proprieties.

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.

Can we make a different/new topic for these so called "guilty pleasures"?

It is really fun (I think!) to hear about peoples interests besides the ballet. I'd start the topic myself, but I think it would be neat if we could move these starting posts over there as well...(does a mod need to do this?)

I'm sure my vulgar interests trump everyone elses

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

Can we make a different/new topic for these so called "guilty pleasures"?

It is really fun (I think!) to hear about peoples interests besides the ballet. I'd start the topic myself, but I think it would be neat if we could move these starting posts over there as well...(does a mod need to do this?)

I'm sure my vulgar interests trump everyone elses.

We'll see about that.

[ After all, we both have superb taste, and--in addition--

Hey, at a hundred bucks a ticket, that's what I have to tell myself.

I have what is often considered some very vulgar taste as well...

So called, guilty pleasures? I bet you can't out-vulgar the Ramones.

With all due respect, I told you what I do, which is I do it or I don't. Also, I thought cubanmiamiboy's contribution was excellent, because it pointed out the difference in 'Cuban tribal-consumerists' as opposed to 'London tribal consumerists', the latter with whom Brantley wishes to identify. Just because Londoners are reserved about standing ovations doesn't mean they're not 'tribal consumerists' too.

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 have nothing against snobbery. Snobbery is probably like everything else,

we have different tastes in our snobbisms. You and I are clearly both snobs, so it's hardly a problem.

I prefer to use "snob" as a pejorative, to distinguish it from simple aesthetic judgment.

The Adorno passage I was talking about was how the person buying the expensive ticket to Toscanini enjoyed the 'spent money' more than the music in its 'pure form'. This would mean that everyone suffers from such 'human nature' except for the paid critic who, in Marxist terms, suffered no contamination from the 'exchange value'--

I don't fault the diagnostician for finding a problem he doesn't personally suffer from.

since such would then certainly apply to those who bought the Kyra Nichols Farewell Tickets off eBay for $500 or paid $700 for Barbra Streisand tickets; they had better be adjudged as incapable of making an objective decision; and this delusion ought to surely grow in direct proportion to the amount paid

Brantley didn't say that everyone's judgment is compromised by exorbitant prices.

What about: 'Was it worth a hundred bucks? NO!!' Happens all the time, and unless the research is done, one may assume that it happens possibly as often as his smug little formulations.

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’ve never entirely understood what motivates the promiscuous s.o.-giver, though I suspect it has to do with some tribal-consumerist urge to justify exorbitant ticket prices. (“Was it worth a hundred bucks? Sure, I gave it a standing ovation.”)

Worst: All versions I've seen of the mouse/rat battle;

Most fascinating viewing offstage: watching the faces and body language of first-time kids in the audience;

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!"

Did the Joffrey do the '57 version or did they do a combination of the two with the '57 costumes and the '76 male solo inserted? It's my understanding that is what they did. If so, it's a pretty strange mash-up.

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

Bergman had his doubts, troubles, and torments but he did manage to enjoy many of life’s joys and pleasures, sometimes at the expense of others.

I rented his last picture, Sarabande, on DVD and on the ‘making of the film’ extra segment he appeared to be the liveliest and most vital person on the set; I thought he was good for years.

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."

*What does it mean when that very artist plays that very song for a US President's Inaugural, as was the case in '92? No matter that it was a changing of the generations, talk about cognitive dissonance!

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 don’t want to accuse Danny of selling out, but in my view that’s essentially what he’s doing, in the name of money, exposure, and popularity. Although I can’t blame him for it – given how underpaid and underappreciated ballet dancers tend to be, I can understand why “So You Think You Can Dance” might be a more fulfilling project, at least in the short term.

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:

"I don't understand So, You Think You Can Dance? either. It's really popular, but it's really sleazy … Beauty translates into a certain kind of goodness, a certain kind of morality.

The article continues:

It's an idea developed by Neo-classical French philosopher Denis Diderot (1713-1784), who thought artists had a social responsibility to educate the public through the innate morality of beauty.

"It does educate," [Carolina Ballet principal and guest choreographer Attila] Bongar said. "(Ballet) shows people how (things) should or shouldn't be."

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

While Macaulay lavishes praise on ABT's productions of The Dream and Symphonie Concertante in his 07/15 season review [and strongly implies that this is the way forward for ABT], he admits in the last sentence of the second to last paragraph that the Dream/Concertante double bill didn't sell well.

This got me to thinking about the suggestions I see on this board from time to time about how ABT should do more Ashton, more Balanchine, more mixed bills at the Met, etc. Is there really an untapped audience at ABT for this vs. the multi-act story ballets?

I'm asking this in all seriousness and all politeness (separate and apart from Macaulay's points about improving the existing productions for the multi-act story ballets, which could probably be a topic in and of itself.)