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The Winter 2006 issue of DanceView is now in print. DanceView is a quarterly review published by Alexandra Tomalonis, editor of the online sister publication DanceView Times, and founder of Ballet Talk. None of the articles in the print version appear online.

The new issue features several season reviews: Gay Morris on Amercan Ballet Theatre at City Center, Carole Pardo on Miami City Ballet, and more general New York, London, and San Francisco reports by Morris, Jane Simpson, and Rita Felciano respectively.

In addition, John Percival reviews biographies of Fonteyn and Kschessinka, and Dale Brauner interviews Jennifer Kronenburg. Most interesting of all, from my perspective, Michael Popkin explores the pictorial aspects of dance and the sometimes parallel course of painting and choreography in his article, Painting, Ballet and Choreography.

DanceView is available by subscription here.

These guys are about the farthest thing from "lazy souls" one could imagine.

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In a roundabout way, that was my point. I admire their artistry, and I'd rather not be distracted from it.

I noticed Craig Hall's tattoo a long time ago. Doesn't bother me at all, and besides it is usually covered. Sebastien's tear-drop is nice, though usually concealed by make-up.

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Perhaps someone can refresh my memory on what seems to me to be the pertinent Kirstein quote here, Balanchine's response to a mother who wished preferment for her child -- 'dance is a moral question.' To my old-fashioned way of thinking, any lazy soul can get a tattoo and "express" himself. I don't pay to see bumperstickers. I do pay to see dance expression, the fruit of dedication and perserverance.

So many people involved in ballet outside the main urban centers seem to know little of the history of the art, even its recent history.  Nor -- and this surprises me -- do they seem to feel that this is a liability

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bart, the more history, the better, I agree. But a liability for what? If they're outside the cities where the major ballet troupes make their homes, chances are they're relative beginners, no? As such they're amateurs in the original sense of the word: lovers. They derive inspiration from the main things, the movement and the music. If people unfamiliar with the art at its greatest love it nonetheless, isn't that a sign that the state of the art is vital and inspirational?

I once received a bemused email from a NYCB corps member regarding comments I'd made on this site about a rehearsal. She is still dancing, and with style, and I'll be watching for her next week.

I saw Alexandra Ansanelli in the same role in the Spring '99 season. I'd seen her only once before, January '98 in third movement Symphony in C. She was charmingly coltish there, but as the Novice I think she made quite a few people gasp that afternoon.

NYCB's site now lists several casting changes. Bouder's out for the week, to be replaced by Fairchild in Ballo Della Regina and Sylve in Firebird. Kistler is out of Monumentum/Movements, replaced by Reichlin in the first and Krohn in the second.

rg, could you describe the program and LeClerq's appearance in it? Thanks.

technically, I feel the term relates to one who follows one individual dancer/singer to the exclusion of others.

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Good point, although as dirac says, the term now often has a wider meaning. Do you favor a particular ballet company? It could be you're really a troupie!

Seriously, I don't blame you for objecting to "groupie." Best of luck.

In a chapter entitled "The Girdle of Venus" of her book on dance aesthetics, "Next Week, Swan Lake," Selma Jeanne Cohen cites Isadora Duncan's efforts to find, as Duncan put it in "My Life", "that dance which might be the divine expression of the human spirit through the medium of the body's movement." Seeking that inspiration, Duncan would stand for hours with her hands beneath her breasts, the same place where Venus wore the kestos that made her especially irresistible.

Cohen likens Duncan's concept of dance as spiritual inspiration to Augustine's concept of grace -- in both cases, the recipient, one of a chosen and relative few, is transformed and enabled to do what he or she couldn't do alone. Cohen notes that Augustine approved of dance in Greek and Roman theater because it wasn't merely decorative but a language unto itself, and for that reason rational and not just sensual. Augustine, from De Musica: "since to the attentive spectators all his gestures are signs of things, the dance itself is called reasonable because it aptly signifies and exhibits something over and above the delights of the senses."

Personally I think that the sensual always signifies something to the intellect, even if not the conscious intellect. But that's another issue.

Solor, the DVD includes a short history of the ballet's origin and of Nureyev's staging his version, with footage of him being applauded at the premiere. There are also interviews with Guerin, Platel, Hillaire, Bart and Lefrevre. But the bulk of the film consists of rehearsal footage, mostly of the principals, in the studio and onstage, with shorter clips of the staged production. Guerin is rehearsed by Ghislaine Thesmar. It's good!

New York Magazine (September 20, 2005) says NYCB's AD Peter Martins' salary is $619,000. 

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Do we know, for a published fact, what Balanchine made by the time he died?

I would however suggest that in future when a valid and powerful issue such as elitism is raised then perhaps it would be best to ignore it completely if the darker and most distressing subtexts are to be ignored so completely or cause such rancour.

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Kate, despite disagreeing with your views, I enjoyed reading them. It's always good to have one's own view challenged.

Thanks for those interesting points Sandik, and dirac/Paul. Still, ballet reflecting the social hierarchy as it evolved, the court knowing (naturally) how to make use of a popular art and pastime, and the artist knowing where his bread was buttered . . . in my opinion these don’t come near to defining the classics, even Sleeping Beauty, as politically motivated. Certainly Petipa’s political convictions were not what made his art great. But opinions do vary.

Volmar, what a fascinating subject! I hope you'll post again from time to time as your thoughts on the subject develop. I wonder if you'd want to ask permission to query the dancers of certain companies to find religious believers who would tell you what ballet means to them spiritually.

I think you're both misinterpreting my points. No one is saying that ballet must be inclusory, however, the fact that it isn't means it cannot defend itself effectively against allegations of elitism when juxtaposed against the majority of cultural and sporting pursuits which on face value are.

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Thanks for your response. I don’t think it’s correct to look at racial and ethnic makeup alone and then speak of inclusivity or exclusivity. Those terms suggest intention, but surely the proper operating intention in the ballet world is to serve the art, not to represent the larger population? For that reason, I don’t think a ballet company is the place for affirmative action.

Likewise, if good ballet is “progressive” according to cultural-political standards, fine. But why should it have to be? Why should it have to reflect societal concerns? Why can't it just bring us joy?

When you say that the cost of training to become a dancer makes the sport elitist, what’s the import of applying that term? Do you mean that the cost is somehow unfair to people who can’t afford it? I lacked the coordination to have become a dancer – does that make the art elitist? Are people who do succeed in becoming dancers not just elites as you properly distinguish the term, but elitist? I don’t mean to be sarcastic. What I’m trying to ask is, of what use is the term “elitist”? Is it only useful because it describes how non-balletomanes feel? As with inclusivity and exclusivity, “elitist” implies an attitude. Plausible incidents of intentional racism aside, do you see that attitude anywhere else in the ballet world?

That two of [DTH's] principals had to transfer there from NYCB where they were told they would not progress beyond corps is sad, but a perrenial problem amongst black dancers within the main companies.

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Kate, has anyone ever thought that DTH (or many other U.S. companies) had the top talent to compare with NYCB? In other words, how many white NYCB dancers were told the same thing?

ballet has every right to be what it is, to be institutionalised within an opera house, to be what it is, to be elitist. However, what it then does not have the right to do is demand that society as a whole take notice of it, fund it, support it. Especially if great sections of that society feel there is absolutely nothing there which speaks to or recognises them.

Great sections of society (like the slums where Acosta grew up?), or many people in society? By your logic we should then defund just about every art. Few taxpayers are going to like everything, but if inner city kids can learn to love Shakespeare, they can (and when given a chance often do) learn to love ballet. Far fewer will get the chance if we defund and let companies die or retrench.

As we all know the great Classics were politcally motivated. Agon pas de deux in its original chronological context of black Arther Mitchell and American goddess Diana Adams had a HUGE politcal impact.

Impact and intention are two different things. Of course Balanchine could predict the impact, but that doesn't mean he cast the dancers to make a statement. Likewise, I'm curious about whatyou think were the political motivations (vs. cultural ramifications) of the 19th century classics.

High art is overwhelmingly white, and any form of art or entertainment which is situated within society as we know and live it today and does not reflect the multi-culturalism of society and the attendent issues thereof cannot be seen as anything other than divorced from society. Apart from it, elitist.

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Like all good art, ballet is rooted primarily in particular aesthetic and cultural traditions, not political agendas, however important. What art or work of art can speak to or for everyone? And why should it have to? Western society is multi-cultural precisely because it is made up of specific cultures, and a society that truly "celebrates multi-culturalism" allows all of its cultures to thrive. It doesn't subject them to political tests.

The poor dancers not only get injured, they aren't even allowed tattoos and piercings? (Yes, and members of classical music orchestras suffer repetitive stress injuries and can't go electric!) Managers set standards for employee behavior! Failure to meet standards can get you fired! If you speak in jargon the outside world won't understand you! Gracious. For grad work, this paper is depressingly pedestrian and paint-by-numbers PC, a grab bag of "problems" in which serious physical health issues are listed side by side with tastes, traditions, and economic and social realities that don't fall in line with the contemporary notion that any inequality is by definition inegalitarian. Many of these issues fall under the heading that ballet is elitist, but the author seems incapable of examining them with actual critical thought.

It's ironic that as Kelso laments restrictions on personal freedom peculiar to ballet, she denies the dancers the freedom they actually have, the freedom to quit ballet and do something else with their lives. It's as, in her reading, we live in premodern, prefeminist times in which Western women have very limited life and career options, and the "harassment" of male artistic directors -- the insistence on standards, as in any profession -- is another example of what they unfairly suffer.

And if, as Kelso apparently means to suggest, the preference for thin bodies in ballet is actually prejudicial and not just potentially harmful, and the aesthetic preference for white -- or at least lighter -- skin and body shape stemming from ballet's origins in overwhelmingly white societies is racist, she needs to argue that case, not simply note it as if no other conclusion is possible. One definition of freedom might include the option of simply enjoying what one likes aesthetically without needing to apologize for it. Is it prejudicial to only fall in love with people of your own race or body size?

I also have to wonder, when she writes things like "ballet is supposed to showcase what the human body is capable of physically accomplishing" -- supposed to? --, if she's ever really developed a taste for the art.

those were the impresions of a newbie.

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A pretty darn perceptive newbie, it sounds like to me. Thanks for commenting.

Read Lincoln Kirstein in "Thirty Years at the NYCB" discussing Dag Hammarskjold's reaction to Stars & Stripes at the time.  He found it a disturbing display of nationalism.  I find it more innocent than that, but that reaction was around at the time of the premiere.

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Kirstein writes that Hammarskjold didn't understand the context and thus didn't get the musical parody. He then adds that the ballet's finale "brought out a loud and wryly enthusiastic demonstration, which was itself a parody of patriotism," a judgment he offers no defense of. It's to be expected that in times of national division the meaning of patriotic displays is up for grabs, but what I find lacking in is any grounding in the specifics of the work itself.

As for Symphony in C, I just think Scherr's off-base.  She's taking her own feelings about the moment and projecting them onto the choreography. 

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It sure sounds like that to me. When Balanchine said that after his death his ballets would no longer be his ballets . . . here's a twist I wonder if he anticipated.

One reason is makeup and the racial factor, but even if not performed in "yellow face" would it still have the same effect, i.e., the reference to stereotyped national gestures which we find in all national dances?

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I think the line is between whether the gesture is authentic and contextual -- an authentic gesture, like sticking out the tongue in Maori dance and ritual, can be given exaggerated weight, for example -- or whether it's shorthand for a cultural stereotype.

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It seems to me that a common stereotype about stereotypes is that they're automatically and by nature patronizing. To my mind, exaggerations and simplifications are just ways of drawing clear characters sometimes, so I don't have a problem with them in principle, even where they're inaccurate.

I wouldn't want to see a Blackamoor, because whites really did think of blacks as happy-go-lucky and simpleminded. But -- I'm thinking of the Nutcracker -- we never thought of the Chinese in this way, nor did we see Arabs as simply sensual. In my opinion, now that racial and ethnic prejudice is so widely and officially seen as benighted and shameful, the sort of stereotypes we see in a cheerful light in the Nutcracker are harmless, powerless shape our perception of the actual races and cultures portrayed. We're schooled nowadays not to settle for simplistic understandings of other cultures, and we're schooled enough to enjoy a dance as a dance despite a few stereotypes discarded in the real world. I’ll wager that few ballet-goers have to ask the the same question Alexandra’s students did.

canbelto, can't imagine why it would be racist to notice, even incorrectly, that something one enjoys is distinctively ethnic.

Well, it was meant as a pun: "attitude"  as opposed to "arabesque".

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Oh, of course. Sorry, to have misread you.

The NY Times also reported on February 9 that the New York Philharmonic will soon make concerts available for digital downloading.

Deutsche Grammophon, using live recordings by the orchestra, will release four concerts a year, probably through iTunes and perhaps through other Web sites, said Zarin Mehta, the orchestra's president. The first is due in about two months and will be priced at about $8 to $10, he said. It will consist of this weekend's program at Avery Fisher Hall, Mozart's Symphonies Nos. 39, 40 and 41, conducted by Lorin Maazel. Listeners will probably have the choice of downloading a movement, a symphony or the whole concert, Mr. Mehta said.