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I was going to suggest that maybe we should have a discussion on "Romeo and Juliets"!

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I'd like to read this. For one thing, it might help me decide whether to buy tickets for ABT's production at the Kennedy Center in February.

What a great question, bart. When I think of dancing singing, I think of a dancer filling up every last note of the music. Even completely still, they're like Miles Davis, masterfully deploying the space between the notes as part of the music, part of the motion.

Drew, thanks for not censoring yourself. Descriptions like that aren't just the next best thing to being there, they make being there the next time all the richer. Keep on posting!

Given that the piece the company performed uses so many dancers and given that, as Dale noted, they've performed it so often, I think it was the perfect choice. But I'm also going to guess that Farrell chose it and rehearsed it herself.

But the whole performance ran about two hours and forty minutes; maybe someone who has edited out the commercials, as I understand you can do with some DVD recorders now, will tell us just how long the performance content of the broadcast is, but it's much less than two hours.  A lot was cut.

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Jack, you may find this Washington Post article interesting -- The Honors, Take 2. Thanks for your comments.

Thanks for answering despite your misgivings, carbro. After seeing Cornejo's Clara at the Kennedy Center earlier this month, I like her a whole lot.

carbro, would you recommend the DVD, or was the dancing too undercut with reaction shots? Thanks in advance.

I thought D'Amboise was a hoot and the dancing was thrilling when you could see it, but the camera might as well have been in outerspace most of the time. As for the reaction shots during the dancing, I would have bet the house against anything so amateurish. I don't think my expectations were high, but I remember the nice job the Honors did with the Villella tribute in '97, and I'm pretty disappointed.

Thanks, drb. I'm sold!

. . . "The Sleeping Beauty" with Alla Sizova and Yuri Soloviev from 1964, also Kirov Ballet. The superb Sizova is hardly known in the West, yet her interpretation of Aurora is one of the most convincing on film, while Soloviev is considered to be the best Russian male dancer ever. Also features the famous Natalya Dudinskaya and a young Natalya Makarova. A dream.

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Is that the version filmed at the Place des Arts in Montreal and released in 1989? I'm doing a little Christmas gift certificate shopping here!

NYCB currently has many wonderful Balanchine dancers on staff or hovering nearby (Karin, J-P Frohlich, Hendl, the divine Sara Leland, Christine Redpath, Merrill Ashley, Sean Lavery, Kay Mazzo, and Peter Martins himself) but people who hate Peter don't seem to acknowledge this fact. To my mind, Karin, Leland & Ashley were among the very greatest Balanchine dancers ever, in very different ways, of course..

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That's true as far as it goes, Oberon. But how could a director concerned first and foremost with preserving Balanchine's work (and is anyone otherwise concerned worthy of succeeding him?) not also want every hand on deck? Farrell was his last muse, her influence can be seen in how the company danced earlier ballets in his last years, important ballets in the repertory were created on her, and she has demonstrated for years now that she can inspire even mid-level dancers to great performances. Let's pretend you're Peter Martins: why haven't you hired her?

Thank you, everyone, for your kind words. Bart, “brilliant” is waay too kind and better applies to your own comments here, but I’ll take the compliment while I can get it! carbro, thanks for your comments too, but either I misunderstand you, or we actually agree.

For me, the beauty of ballet both conjures an ideal world and hints at the goodness at the heart of this world. In that sense, for me it's an escape, but an escape into a heightened reality. I may be wrong, but I have to think that one reason ballet isn't more popular, and that many regional ballet companies have to replace Classical and Romantic works with contemporary choreography, is that we live in these relatively cynical and unromantic times, when dark and "edgy" art and entertainment is favored over the beautiful, and the graphic is favored over the suggestive. The latter conveys more Eros than sexiness; it's more about longing -- and as such has more creative power -- than it is about temporary satisfaction. In that sense, the beauty of a classical port de bra really is marginal and detached from what's seen as down to earth reality.

I'm guessing that among many casual balletgoers, victims in my opinion of popular culture, the dance doesn't resonate like it could. It has dimensions they're not in the habit of looking for, so that for example even when they do the holiday thing and go to the Nutcracker, even to a traditional version by a fine professional company, they may enjoy it as a pretty and sentimental story, but not fully sense its depth. On a subconscious level beautiful may get confused with pretty, and there are a lot of other places to go for pretty.

In a similar vein, when older balletomanes and dancers say that today's dancers don't have individuality and the resultant degree of star power, I have to wonder if one reason is that many have been handicapped by this hard-edged culture, so that even some of the most sensitive and intelligent among them don't feel fully at home in what the choreography is expressing. If in their time off they listen to Coldplay rather than Mozart, won't they dance better to Coldplay than Mozart?

Theologian Karl Barth wrote that listening in Mozart he was "transported to the threshold of a world which in sunlight and storm, by day and by night, is a good and ordered world." Commissioned by a local newspaper to write a "Letter of Thanks to Mozart," he wrote in part that "with an ear open to your musical dialectic, one can become young and become old, can work and rest, be content and sad: in short, one can live." My guess is that ballet lovers, particularly the older ballet lovers still among us, tend to understand what he's talking about better than do people who reject ballet as detached from reality.

I think these women are girls Siegfried grew up with, for whom he has brotherly affection. 

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Thanks, carbro. That would make sense.

I'm having trouble making satisfactory sense of some of the mime and dance in Act 1. After the pas de trois a woman in blue approaches Benno and they dance a bit and then Benno gestures to the Prince. I take it that he’s beckoning the Prince to dance with her, but the Prince at first declines, then approaches her. They dance for a bit until he leaves her, apparently to the tutor’s dismay, and dances a short solo. I understand that his mother has bidden him to choose a bride. Is that dance supposed to express unfulfilled romantic desire? A yearning to retain his freedom? Both/and, I suppose.

Several women then dance and he seems interested in one then another, then troubled when one dances with Benno. I suppose he's feeling conflicted, wanting her but not wanting her. He then wanders off as the ensemble dances, and faces away at one point, all of which I guess is supposed to express dissatisfaction with his options, a desire for something he perhaps can't even identify. But what is his tutor supposed to be miming with his exasperated hand gestures? I know he’s the great Frederic Franklin, but I can’t tell if he wants the Prince to choose a girl or wants him to hold out for someone better. After the Prince dances another yearning solo, to the oboe, the tutor at first points him back towards the palace company, as if to tell him he must choose, and then seems to send him off with the crossbow. So who’s side is the guy on?

Wow, Jack! I guess you'll be high for awhile, eh? Who else danced?

I'll be at the December 11 matinee, and I too would love to know what ABT fans and others think of this Nutcracker.

And I say this with expentant dread, the more corps to a peice, the more the camera men try to get cute or artisitic.  That's why it's always best to do a pas de deux at these things -- it keeps it simple for the director who fears everybody is going to turn their TVs off during the ballet.

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Dale, we can hope. I thought the camera work was fine when Miami City Ballet performed Rubies for Villella in '97.

According to today's Washington Times: "Miss Farrell's company, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, wrapped her portion of the gala with a stunning performance of Divertimento No. 15 in B-Flat Major."

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Wonderful news, there. Thanks, Bill. I suppose we'll only get one movement of this on the CBS broadcast, but I'll take it. Er, tape it!

It's inspiring to read about a devoted teacher like Volkova. But what struck me first when I received my issue of the magazine is the beautiful cover photo of her looking at what is apparently a book of photos on a simple wooden desk, wearing a long, long dress in what is perhaps a tiny octangal-shaped room (or the corner of a larger one) with a wooden floor, with the windows giving out on what I suppose is a Thames River scene. The large latches on the windows at first glance might be birds in flight, and the quality of the paper the photo is printed on -- not the best -- enhances the photo by giving it a slightly blurry, impressionistic look. Gorgeous!

It's very good to read your comments and careful observations, Jack.

As much as I admired Ansanelli's air of innocence and thrilled to the recklessness with which she threw herself into waltzing as the Girl in White, I thought her interpretation was unsettled in puzzling ways. I mentioned earlier that during the rehearsal she was taken aback when Death presented her the black bouquet, and that she'd omitted this reaction during the evening's performance. She showed no reaction again yesterday afternoon either when presented with the bouquet or as she sniffed them while she waltzed. Moments before, she'd at least had a moment's pause when she saw herself in the mirror.

Last night, after having to take extra effort to get the gloves on properly, she gave the flowers a longer look, and she registered concern when she sniffed them, but she had simply smiled when shown her image in the mirror. Mladenov was never creepier than when he skedaddled offstage after letting his partner fall dead from his arms. And Saturday night she really hit the deck.

As for Duo Concertant, I thought Ansanelli all but ruined the first movement by looking down at the piano lid and up in the air as if she was bored. Even she got around to looking at the pianist, she turned her head and eyes toward him in a slow, stagey way, as if he was the next thing in her line of vision, not as if she was interested in what he was doing. It was very odd. She danced it well, a little softer than Magnicaballi, my favorite, and Redick was a fine partner and showed the steps very clearly. Parsley and Du were splendid in the afternoon, except that temperamentally, in my opinion, they aren't matched. She's wonderfully sunny -- she manages to tone that down just enough in La Valse -- while he's more naturally ardent, even brooding. The last movement suited them best in that respect.

In the evening I thought Clarinade had much less impact as danced by Magnicaballi and Prescott. They’d been so very fine in Duo Concertant Tuesday, and they caught the spirit here, but this pas de deux is more about extensions (and off centered balances) than steps, and I thought of Balanchine saying that with tall dancers one can see more. It's hardly their fault, but after seeing the long and tall and marvelously confident Mladenov and Mahoney-Du, they reminded me of children taking on the big kids parts. It was nice to see, when Prescott did back flips where Mladenov does cartwheels, that Farrell gives her dancers the same sort of freedom Balanchine used to allow his dancers to occasionally change steps to what better suits them.

Mahoney-Du, so icily appealing in Clarinade, was a special pleasure again in La Source, radiant and very much at home in the joyous 2nd ballerina role, lacking only the calm center Pickard brought to the part opening night. In the evening she was calmer, and glorious. For her part, Pickard, surely a longtime favorite of anyone who has followed this company, danced with perhaps more authority than ever, with beautifully secure turns and balances.

Gratitude must be flow naturally from joy, and I always feel so grateful after a marvelously danced (and so well balanced) program like this. How fitting it is to have the Farrell company here this Thanksgiving season!

tango49, it's only available in print so far, but if you want to subscribe, go here.

Yes I meant Alexander Ritter. I'm sorry not to have been more specific. Also, one of the corps dancers looked so much like Cheryl Sladkin, who was featured with Farrell's troupe in The Unanswered Question a couple of years ago, that it took me a couple of minutes to decide it wasn't her. I wonder if Sladkin has a dancing sister.

A National Public Radio piece about this film, with bits of interviews, can be found here.

Thanks for the detailed review, Helene. It sounds like a fascinating production, but I'm surprised it's in English. We have an opera company here that puts on English language productions, mostly of the classics, every summer in the boxwood garden of President James Monroe's Ash Lawn estate. This past summer they did a fine Butterfly. But I thought English translations were strictly for the provinces, certainly not for London. Is this a trend?