kfw

(Even in the State Theater lobby, NYCB plays the 1970s/Dance in America tapes!)

The last time I was there I was delighted to see fuzz on those screens. I've never been to a concert -- classical, jazz, or pop -- where before the show they played tapes of the same outfit I'd come to hear. In the same way, I want "Apollo" to a special occasion, not the background to buying tickets.

The arts editor certainly avoided answering the question about covering debuts!

Perhaps it's my imagination because I'm so happy to be reading a knowledgeable and highly opinionated critic again, but hasn't MacCauley been writing more often that Rockwell did? Surely Sifton largely leaves it up to him as to which debuts to cover and which to forgo for other performances.

I was disappointed that Alina C was injured, but was impressed with Leanne Benjamin. I didn't realize she was so tiny-she looked quite young, and her acting was refreshing.

That's a real tribute. Judging by an article in the Telegraph, she is 42.

Those in the first camp tend -- by personality or training -- to think of the dancer's highest function as being to serve the work -- explore it, give it voice, reveal its essence. ("The work is the star. The dancers are instruments," as Acosta puts it.) Many of the dancers developed by Balanchine during the 60s and aftwards tended to be of this type. And the Graham dancers.

I wonder if there were more such dancers when Graham and Balanchine and Ashton and others of their stature were around. We seem to be bigger than ever on self-expression these days. Or maybe that's a myth. But working with the masters in any age must somewhat reorder one's enthusiasm.

Over in the Links, innopac raised an interesting issue in re the Q&A with Carlos Acosta in The Guardian today:

"There are great dancers in Britain with great potential, but they lack vehicles for their talent. The work is the star, while the dancers are instruments. It should be the other way round."[/indent]

I was surprised to read this statement from the above interview. I would have thought that the work is paramount.

For me the the artists who are stars are the ones who give life to a work.

That's a strangely worded quote, it seems to me. If the works aren't good enough to allow the dancers to show their full potential, the works can't truly be stars. But taken together with his lament that more masterpieces are not being created, I guess what he means is that he thinks the way to get more masterpieces is for choreographers to take their inspiration primarily from the dancers.

Does anyone know who danced Apollo for Nilas?

Any reports would be welcome.

Charles Askegard

i can't tell if the past history of alastair macaulay's stints at THE NEW YORKER was sorted out.

in case it was not: robert gottlieb was editor of the magazine at the time of macaulay's two substitutions for croce.

william shawn was gone by then.

Thank you, rg.

William Shawn.

For clarification, is that in response to

I've always looked forward to Gottlieb's writing. And of course his editorship of The New Yorker overlapped with Alistair MacCauley's two stints there. Does anyone remember, did Wallace Shawn bring MacCauley in the first time, or was it Gottlieb?

or only

Do you really mean Wallace Shawn....the actor? You might me an his father, whose first name I can't remember.

Thanks, folks. I can't believe I wrote "Wallace" instead of "William."

I'm intrigued by an idea of Robert Gottlieb's in his year end, NYCB wrap up column in the NY Observer, , Ashley Bouder to the Rescue as Kyra Nichols Waves Farewell that now that Bouder has "mastered" Emeralds and Rubies, and has achieved "effortless command of the ultra-classical Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, it won’t be long before she completes her parure with “Diamonds.â€

Far be it from me to disagree with so distinguished a critic, especially when I've only seen Bouder in a half a dozen roles, but given the little I've seen and the more I've read I'm having a hard time imagining this for two reasons. The first reason is Bouder's soubrette personality, and the second is her height. In Nancy Goldner's Repertory in Review I see that Balanchine cast Kay Mazzo in Diamonds, and I remember that Iliana Lopez with her husband Franklin Gamero of Miami City Ballet shone in this, so height may not be an issue, although I'd think that in the pas de deux especially long lines would be a great advantage. And in regards to personality, Bouder has gravitas where she needs it in Serenade. Obviously she has daring like the role's originator. Still, when I think of the grandeur and mystery or, failing that, at least the reserve, that Diamonds asks for, I can't quite see it. It's so lady-like a role, and in what I've seen Bouder is still so girlish.

Balanchine was known for casting against type to, pardon the pun, stretch his dancers, and Bouder was apparently successful in Emeralds. So do you share Gottlieb's vision? What am I missing?

He also said some nasty things about Hyltin. To compliment her on one hand and then to slam her on the other just seems WRONG. She is a terrific young dancer and needs encouragement - not the panning she got.

In general I am not opposed to an honest review of a performance. Pointing out an established dancer's faults when reviewing a particular piece seems to be the job of a critic. I don't feel that way about a young dancer however. I think they need encouragement - not highly negative critiques. Positive critical suggestions seem appropriate to me - but not just negative commentary.

hbl, as you said, MacCauley didn't just criticize her, he complimented her as well. I think that's the combination we all need to help us grow. And I'll bet that's what MacCauley has in mind.

I've moved discussion of the Hubbard Street Company and its performance in Durham to a new thread in the Modern and Other Dance forum. Here at Ballet Talk we like to honor the distinction between the two types of dance. The new thread can be found here -- http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...c=25125&hl= . Please keep posting!

I've begun a new thread for further discussion of the Hubbard Street Company and its performance in Durham, and have moved previous posts on the MacCauley thread here.

I have retired Darci. I was so disheartened by her mugging through Duo Concertant during the opening week, then dismayed by the sketch she drew of her Liebeslieder role, that I just decided, That's it. I loved this dancer, used to eagerly anticipate her performances, rejoiced and cried through many. I cannot bear to see her caricature the ballets and herself. I can no longer excuse off-performances by giving her the benefit of the doubt. The scale will no longer balance out in her favor no matter how badly I try to add grains of excuses to her side.

Among the photos on display along the walls of NYST this past spring -- a tribute to Kirstein -- was one of Kistler (alongside Stacy Caddell) in Suki Schorer's class. She is bright, animated, vibrant through every inch of her body. I saw it and felt everything that drew me to Darci through the first half of her career. And I decided to let that be the last image I saw of her dancing in that theater.

That's beautiful, carbro. Thanks.

Readers can find the entire piece -- "The Soloist," The New Yorker, 1998 -- reprinted in Acocella's Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints, published this year.

My own copy has the following heavily underlined: "If there is a point in classical art where aesthetics meet morals -- where beauty, by appearing plain and natural, gives us hope that we, too, can be beautiful ..."

This reminds me of Balanchine's famous remark to a mother hoping her young student daughter would be come a star : ""La danse, madame, c'est une question morale." I've always taken this to mean that beauty comes from discipline, which in turn comes from character. In this way, beauty reflects character. How beautiful!

Mme. Hermine, those caricatures are a hoot! Thanks a lot.

The single positive here is that it would have been worse to get up early, travel to the Met, go through the gates & see that ominous standing board announcing this expletive expletive change.

You can say that again. I'm glad I took a 7 hour train trip to New York last weekend instead of, as I'd previously considered, going up this weekend for Part's Swan Lake.

Heal soon, Veronika!

I've always looked forward to Gottlieb's writing. And of course his editorship of The New Yorker overlapped with Alistair MacCauley's two stints there. Does anyone remember, did Wallace Shawn bring MacCauley in the first time, or was it Gottlieb?

I wonder if Macaulay is in the position of teachers and writers who assumed that a well-educated populace had knowledge of history, Greek mythology, Shakespeare, and Latin, only to find this assumption overly optimistic.

As someone who teaches undergraduates, I would say any such assumption is misguided, begining with the basic assumption that the populace is well-educated.

That's true, but then not everyone has the money or the interest to attend the ballet regularly. I'll guess that most of MacCauley's core readership has a decent arts and humanities education. And from that I think it follows that these readers will sense where their education is lacking and go fill it in. A good critic is a good educator.

On "dismissing some, canonizing others" -- there's the nub of it Whether or not I agree or disagree with a writer, I think s/he has the right to do this. I think one can do that -- be "fair and balanced" in the sense of not omitting a reference to someone who is Not Favored, say, and certainly writing that the Unfavored did well, or the Favorite had a bad night, when that happens -- while still being passionate. Am I being overly optimistic?

I think critics writing for the informed audience you referrred to earlier not only have the right to make those judgments in print, but know that much of their audience is eager to read them. That frankness is one thing that makes Robert Gottlieb so valuable in the NY Observer. If that's too inflammatory, then perhaps we should skip reading reviews altogether and -- nod to Leigh's bemused hopes for impassioned critics -- the fans themselves should be dueling, perhaps in Lincoln Center Plaza after the Midsummer Night's Swing season. Strong art produces (wonderfully) strong opinions.

There's more at work here than just Wolcott feeling Macaulay was too emotional, especially when he admits to practically having an orgasm when Part dances.

Yes, and another interesting point is that his wife, Laura Jacobs, whose work I love, frequently verges on the flowery, and for some people apparently crosses over. MacCauley weeps; she rhapsodizes metaphorically at length: two cognate tendencies it seems to me. Is Part's dancing also no more spiritual than an electric can opener?

Other than that, while my sympathies are with MacCauley, Wolcott's rant in pretty darn funny. Just what did Croce do in the Israeli Air Force?

Thanks for the heads up about the video clip! There was a great deal of video there... much more than just the flowers. I'm sure there was also video taken of the Nichols farewell, as someone toting a Sachtler tripod practically bumped into me leaving the theater... I suppose it could have been backstage footage, but I doubt it...

I saw a video camera and tripod set up in back of the theater. Can't remember where exactly, but I think in back of the orchestra or First Ring.

If he had mentioned her controversial nature as a dancer, if he had said something *about* her in this role, I would probably agree with you (even though I like her!)

But just calling her "dull" doesn't tell much of anything except that mr Macaulay doesn't like her.

What I want from a critic is someone who will explain what he is basing these aesthetic judgements on.

Absolutely! One should explain one's opinions and do so in a clear and graceful way. Macauley should be trying to enlighten his reading audience rather than get off personal barbs at the dancers. Snide, sarcastic remarks (see those on Georgina Parkinson and Irina Dvorovenko today) or harsh judgments without qualifiers (like "dull" for Veronika) are personal attacks and show a deep disrespect for artists who are certainly doing the best to honor their craft and give their all to the audience. The remarks make the reviewer seem bitter, arrogant and too jaded and too biased to do his job well.

Ideally a critic would explain every value judgment, but then ideally the Times would let MacCauley write as often as he wanted at whatever length he wanted. I understand your feelings without, at least as of yet, sharing your judgment of his motives. Given how dearly he obviously loves this art form -- another difference with Rockwell in my opinion -- I think it's possible and even probable that over time he'll explain more of his judgments, as he briefly did, in my opinion, in regards to Parkinson and Dvorenko (“Don’t look at him,” for example). One could argue that too much of what he said was subjective. But, again in my opinion, the frequent differences in opinions on this board among experienced balletomanes illustrate how large of a role subjectivity, or at least objectivity insufficiently articulated, plays in our judgments. To assume that his opinions stem from bitterness and the like might be -- one more time: in my opinion -- as unfair to him as he's accused of being to those dancers.

Yes, a head critic is entitled to opinions and preferences, but I find it very disingenuous for him to display them in such a backhanded way. There is no question that referring to Nichols as "this greatest ballerina of the past 20 years" on the same weekend that Ferri retired was a backhanded slap at Ferri - but it's also an insult to Susan Jaffe, Nina Ananishvislli, Wendy Whalen and a host of other ballerinas. If he truly thinks that Nichols is in a class above all others then he should have told us so overtly - and told us why. And if he had any sense of decorum he would have found a more appropriate time to make this pronouncement. Slipping in that comment at the end of his review was malicious and divisive - and told me more about his personality than I really want to know.

The same goes for his comment about V. Part in the review of Romeo & Juliet. We all understand that he doesn't like Part - that's clear, and that's understandable. She has her fans and her detractors, and for good reason. Let him criticize her technical deficiencies as he sees them, her style, whatever - but to criticize her performance of a mime role - that's just being mean. I could understand if he felt that her personality wasn't forceful enough to put the role across, or if he felt that she was overacting but she pretty much plays the role the same way that everyone has every time I've seen ABT do this ballet.

nysusan, what you read as jabs, I read as appropriate and timely expressions of opinion. I like critics to be frank as possible. Yes it would have been nice if McCauley had told us why he ranks Nichols above her contemporaries, but he only has so much space. And I can't think of a better time to rank her than now as she's retiring. He's only been writing for the Times for a couple of months, after all.

As for criticizing Part in her mime role -- and I love Part and liked her in that role in D.C. -- perhaps he singled her out precisely because she is such a controversial dancer. Again, that's what I want from a critic.

I susbscribe to four magazines and a bi-monthly audio magazine, and read the NY Times online, but I still buy the Times or the Washington Post at least once or twice a week. Free online content is great, but holding the magazine or newspaper in my hands, being able to feel it and smell it and turn its pages, affords so much more pleasure.

I'm not much of a critic and I hadn't meant to post, but thinking about the performances again was so stirring that here a few thoughts:

We saw both Saturday programs, my wife and I; we really treasure this company, the Little Company that Could, I think someone called them, and we cheer them on. Pickard was in her element in Scotch, radiant and ethereal, completely confident and secure in the drops. To my mind, she was perfection, and Runqiao Du is always ardent and noble.

Mozartiana was more of a stretch, and after the Preghiera the technical challenges did look like challenges sometimes. I thought there was a spot or too when she was off the music. But she was no less moving for it; she had the spirit of the ballet. In Divertimento Brilliante, Shannon Parsely, the other redhead and our favorite among the women, gave us much more pleasure than she did the critics. She looked a little heavy in the tutu, but she was quick when she had to be. And we've seen her enough to know that her "pasted on smile" (LaRocca's words) at least, was for real. The choreography to the Glinka, and in the evening to the Mozart, was the sort of perfect and perfectly understated Balanchine classicism that makes your heart soar.

The Bejart is kitsch, but the two young lovers, Hubbard and Prescott were so adorable I didn't care. Slaughter got two differing performances. As the striptease girl Elizabeth Holowchuk at the matinee vamped with great freedom and great sexy glee. Lisa Reneau in the evening was just as much in character but sometimes looked awkward on the floor, and couldn't match Holowchuk's abandon. As the Hoofer, Kirk Henning was a delight at both performances, drawing laughs for example as he momentarily lost rythminic complexity in his taps after receiving the warning note. But his matinee solo lacked characterization. By the evening the blank look was gone and he showed the proper fear and desperation in his face and in his voice, even leaping over the dead Big Boss with greater determination.