Amy Reusch

There is trouble, too, in moving the repertory on to the college scene... Have you ever seen college reconstructions that have an extremely careful "studied" look to them? The movement is so "studied" that it has no life? Nothing seems like death so much as considering a work a museum piece. The dancers look like "this doesn't feel right to me, but I know I'm supposed to move in this fashion for it to be right". I think it's wonderful for college students to study the work and perform it. I'm just not sure what the formula is to get inspired performances out of them. Inspirational coaching isn't always available. I wish the students could see it performed live by professionals before attempting to learn it themselves. It makes one wonder how works like Giselle & Swan Lake, & company have survived all these years. I suppose they bear very very little resemblence to the original productions...and yet they are still pretty alive and viable in their current forms (usually). Why? Does there need to be almost a legend built up around a work for it to continue to inspire new dancers? The Duncan dancers have all felt pretty "inspired", but I'm not sure how much of the Duncan repertoire survives... but there we're not talking so much of "choreographic" stage patterns of the corps but rather star vehicles... no? (I use a very crude meaning of "choreographic" here... basically floor plans). I guess being inspired and being inspiring aren't always the same thing, though some Duncan interpreters have made a good go of it. I, of all people, would love to say good documentation of the choreography & coaching is all that is needed, but dance doesn't live on video on a shelf, it needs an audience. I wish there were more subsidized repertory companies in the US. Perhaps we need a festival tour of reconstructed dances... competition to choose which ones make the tour and sponsorship by an organization of the college dance departments in the country. Couldn't they come together to mount an annual competition, and then host a tour through several of the member colleges' theaters of the winners of that competition? (Why can't we have an ideal reality?)

I think I must clarify "brand new choreography" not to mean 'flashy trendy brand new' but rather choreography created on them -- not new choreography acquired by their company but created on other dancers. Dancing in someone else's footsteps isn't quite the same creative process as originating a role oneself. I hope I'm now sufficently reprimanded for saying "brand new" instead of "original".

Uh oh. What on earth? It seems like an odd thing to be a virus. Oh well... at least I can get around it.

It's very exciting for any dancer to have a talented choreographer create choreography on them. That doesn't necessarily mean the stars are wishing for different movement vocabulary, like say something from the modern dance world. Is that what you meant? I wonder how often a year the typical principal gets brand new choreography to perform.

I've never had it act up with Ballet Talk's board software before, so I have a pretty strong feeling it's a bug with the new Internet Explorer version. As you saw, I can get it to work by circling around, but it no longer works as it was intended to. I'll have to wait until someone else with the IE software tries it and has a problem, I guess. However, if it really is the IE software, invisionzone is going to need to do something about it, considering how widely Microsoft's browser is used (by default more than choice, I imagine).

Okay... this is a test. I tried to put a link to another website in another post, and the buttons didn't behave normally. Right, so, what to link to? Hmmm... The entry on Ballet at Wikipedia I typed the above text, highlighted it and hit the link button expecting a little window to pop up in which I would fill the URL (as I always have done it here in the past). BUT instead, I get a little dialog box (? is that what it's called even if it's a monolog?) with a warning exclamation point in a yellow triangle saying "You Must Enter an URL" along with a little "ok" button. Well... okay... that was what I was trying to do. I wonder if it has something to do with my recently upgrading to Internet Explorer version - oh heck, I have no idea where - oh there it is now - Internet Explorer version 7. I think I may just hate upgrades. Anyone else having any difficulties? I find that if I just put the URL in the text like so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballet it will show up as a link when I submit the post.... and then when I go in to re-edit it, I can fool around with the title (or so I think, here goes a try). For instance here: The entry on Ballet at Wikipedia But that's really more hassle than most of us would bother with.

Sorry Carbro, I'll to the appropriate forum re the link thing.

Re Meditation & Suzanne Farrell, the NYCB website lists the copyright as belonging to her. http://www.nycballet.com/company/rep.html?rep=319 (by the way, the board's software about links seems a little strange... the link button didn't work but I see the URL turned automatically into a link on it's own)

Well to me, it's more of interest because of the situation of the institution rather than because of any person involved. I believe there are some other dance institutions facing the same transition problem... At NYCB, there's a serious repertory legacy for both Balanchine and Robbins. Even with Mr. Martin's successes, he hasn't been in the same position as Balanchine or Robbins. (No one was worrying whether Balanchine was maintaining his predecessor's legacy.) The company was never intended to become a museum, but no one wants to lose or dull the jewels in it's repertory. The question is, how can NYCB acquire and support a new choreographic genius to Balanchine's caliber and not worry about how well it's curating the older repertoire. It would be very rare to find one person with both skills highly developed. Mendelssohn was one of those rare types, reviving the music of Bach & Schubert as well as being a genius in his own right. (I can't think of others, but there must be at least one). I rather like the idea of having separate people for the two streams rather than trying to find one person who can look both backward and forward... I just have trouble with the model in terms of the assistant directors... a triumvirate instead? Wouldn't it just be in a state of constant rivalry, weak compared to the board? [my apologies for the redundancy with the above posts... I was interrupted in the middle of composition and when I returned to hit the "post" button, I discovered others had already addressed the same issue]

So he's premiering at Vail with a company of superstars whose commitments must preclude them becoming fulltime company members for him... which is why assumedly they don't reflect the dancers he'll be forming the company out of... But with dancers of that calliber lining up to tempt him, will he find a muse among his own dancers? And if not, if guest superstars are frequently to be featured, seems he might as well have stayed a resident choreographer? I'm still trying to figure out the dynamics of this one.

It seems an excellent idea... and isn't an organization as big as NYCB capable of it? But what then would be the General Artistic Director's responsibility? Programming the season? Choosing & promoting the dancers? Would there be jostling between the assistant directors? But it does seem like good management.... rather than choosing someone well qualified in one of those fields and thereby perforce neglecting the others Would this General Artistic Director function rather like Roy Kaiser at the Pennsylvania Ballet? I don't believe he is choreographing or dedicated to upholding a particular choreographer's repertory. But what about the acquisition of new works? I can understand wanting that director on equal footing with the other two, but it seems like this would be usurping the general artistic director.

Moses Supposes Morphoses is Wrong? It's great he's getting his own company together. It must help the choreographer's muse to have his own company. (I imagine he'll still be available for commissions from the larger institutional companies). I wish him all luck in keeping his time mostly free from the business side of the venture... hopefully Lourdes Lopez will manage to make that work for him. I have often heard good things about her. Just possibly Christopher Wheeldon has lucked out.

I don't know of other ballet's that use James Brown's music, but Pennsylvania Ballet premiered one in the 1990s by Doug Elkins that used a little... "Scrapple Divertissements" At the time, I remember Doug calling James Brown "King of the Non Sequitur", a thought I've enjoyed ever since.

Is it possibly a mistake? Not actually what Martins wrote? Both words seem so out of place in their context. Their use is almost as if the blurb were written by someone for whom English was not the native language. Is it possible Martins was misquoted?

While you're at it, also take a look at "Balanchine's Tchaikovsky: Conversations with Balanchine on his Life, Ballet and Music" by Solomon Volkov. It's not a definitive biography, but it's still well worth reading. (I wish whoever borrowed my copy would return it.)

Thanks Mel, his name had escaped me. Very nice line on Semyonov in the photo. I find it interesting that Nijinsky danced a Satyr before Apres Midi d'un Faun. I was wondering too if, feminism or no, the imagery of the hounds & Acteon might not be just a little too threatening to some power figure out there. (I have no idea of who the politcal players of the time were, or if any of them were involved with female dancers). The part of Silenus sounds like a plum for a variety of casting possibilities, Mel.

I was wondering who was cast as Endymion? If it had been that danseur who was the original Seigfried, perhaps it could have been an inside joke? How many danseurs danced to that age in Petipa's day?

It does seem that a dancer playing Endymion who was perhaps most famous for his sleeping, would dance decorously.... Thanks rg. I do enjoy the pas de deux nonsensical though it may be. Rats... now I'm picturing Endymion sleeping somewhere onstage, hopefully not being trampled by barrel turning satyr...

I believe this pas de deux has been discussed here before but I'm struggling with the search engine. Lots of interesting photos from rg but I can't find a discussion of the ballet. I'm very confused. Didn't Diana turn Acteon into a stag and set his own hounds on him when he discovered her bathing with her nymphs? I can't follow how this relationship ended up as a spectacular pas de deux... perhaps I can see Acteon's gravity defying leaps evoking a stag, but not his partnering of Diana... I realize a grand pas de deux is not expected to tell a story, but I'm still having trouble understanding them cast "as a couple". Could someone explain? My apologies if the question is childish.

Got to love the internet... FromRandy Kennedy's "Tales from the Underground"

Okay... I was in NYC over the holiday weekend... and down in the subway I kept hearing the first three notes of "Somewhere there's a place for us" from West Side Story... I would hear it and just as I was beginning to wonder if it where some sort of arts installation in the subways, the cars would careen at a different speed and the melody would be broken... Have I lost it? Or has anyone else heard this? And has it been there since the beginning and Bernstein heard it as well? Curious & perhaps demented back in Connecticut, Amy

rats.... it sounded like a very cool idea. Julliard should sponsor a joint centenary conference on the two and host college performances of the rep.

Would it be out of character for The Joffrey to take on some Tudor? They used to pride themselves on some of the historic repetoire... Is this too different from The Green Table? (I haven't seen the company live in a very long time).

I wish someone would pony up for Romeo & Juliet... I've heard so many good things about it... with several people preferring it to the more prevalent Prokofiev treatments. It's a one-act version, isn't it?

I think Balanchine, and later the Balanchine Trust, was very generous about allowing companies to perform his work... and it pays off... look how many companies perform it and how healthy his legacy is as a result. Tharp was at one time very very expensive (perhaps she still is?) and outside of ABT & Hubbard Street, few did her work...but now suddenly it seems everyone is doing it... Did I read somewhere that her son is working to seed her work in more companies? Baryshnikov merited high respect when his project for NIPAD (National Iniative to Preserve American Dance) was to perform the Judson work around the country in the theory that if one really wants to preserve an oeuvre, the best way is to perform it and keep it live in the dance world's consciousness. I do wish Petit would foster more performances of his work or that the French government would underwrite some of the costs for international companies to acquire it. I don't hold a few bombs against him... as long as he's made some gems as well.