papeetepatrick

I don't think anybody was talking about the most IMPORTANT kind of performance in ballet--live performance--but the televised broadcast. That is less important, but talk of 'telegenic' never refers to live performance, 'Live from Lincoln Center' is still television, subesquently to be shown in recorded form.. And the performances by those not considered 'telegenic' were praised, if I reacll correctly. 'Being thankful' for a PBS broadcast of ballet doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about 'camera angles', when that's what's involved in any television show. Critique is necessary, and not just by professional critics that have more clout. What's more, I only used one movie star for comparison, and did one example of a dance critic talking about a major dancer. And even that's not so pertinent in today's film actors, is more the case with the old days , esp. 30s and 40s stars, and going in some cases into the 50s and 60s, before not being so important. Okay, I finally found out it's on Sunday just after noon, so I'm going to check out this business.

You may like their looks, think they're beautiful, but there isn't anything 'too personal' for most of us about talking about somebody being 'telegenic', any more than there was about Marilyn Monroe being 'photogenic' or 'cinematogenic'. And in her juxtaposition of 'Appalachian Spring' productions about 10 years apart. Deborah Jowitt says of Matt Turney 'she's a real beauty', and 'the camera loves her'. That is definitely part of it, even if not the main part of it. It is a legitimate observation. Edited to add? Sorry to ask here, but i missed the show on Channel 13 last night, can't find the original post with the schedules, and can't find it in the WNET TV Guide? Is there going to be another broadcast on WNET? I might as well give it a shot if I have time.

That's cool, I didn't know that. I will definitely watch it again, because that sounds rare. I saw it only once as a teen on Saturday Night at the Movies. I wish he'd just use her again, I couldn't believe how effective she was--and I thought that was a lot harder to do than Kate Hepburn, because you've got all that mannered business to work with there (not that that's all that easy either, mind you.)

The dubbing (or not) business is always awkward, isn't it? Didn't someone besides Piaf dub Cotillard? I think Spacey sang the bobby Darin songs in 'Beyond the Sea' (I thought it sounded good, and that the movie was incredibly underrated, should go on our Underrated Thread, but I may have already put it.) I know Sissy Spacek did Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter, which worked; can't remember if Jessica Lange did Patsy Cline or not. I'm trying to think of examples of any singer bio when the original voice was used. I'm sure there must be, but don't know enough of them. Doris Day marvelous as Ruth Etting in 'Love Me or Leave Me'; of course, we don't know what Etting sounded like though.

I already told Cristian how much I enjoyed this, and must say so again here--which will bump it back to the top, where it belongs

Thanks, Sandy, appreciate it. With this medium, we don't nearly always know the dimensions of what someone else is thinking, so we do the best we can--and it's true, none of us can be 'polished' in this kind of rather informal writing; a lot of it is instinctive, or just guesswork. Edited to 'also add that it may not be always that the arts all parallel each other in terms of number of geniuses per century, etc., i.e., dance may not follow music may not follow painting, just because they all share in certain other period characteristics.

That's the single most interesting remark from my point of view, even though the discussion has been lively. Since she is talking about anything but a 'waning', this is the best refutation of what she claims, and doesn't have so much to do with personal attachments and tastes, however important those are. Makes sense, and you would be one of those likely to know it. Thanks, that helps.

We are talking about these things to some degree as well as a number of others. My point was about the composers. It is habitual to decide on some of these cateogories of 'greatest'. So no, I did not mean to be patronizing, but I did know something that perhaps someone else didn't. In that case, since my formal education has been musical, it hasn't anything to do with 'someone's appreciation', as that routinely people will put either Mozart or Beethoven above the other, and declare the other invalid, and they will not realize that Schumann and Haydn in many cases achieve the heights of genius as Mozart and Wagner. Simple as that. Well, there are useful analytical approaches, but I personally am not interested in any because they might be the 'latest'. As for being able to 'read music, but not hear it...' it's possible to read music, hear music, as well as be involved with some intellectual readings of things. I'm not always successful at the latter, but I definitely am capable of both of the former; we do the best we can in fairly informal blog-like comments.

But you WOULD talk of a 'shakespeare cult', by the definition I gave. You don't have to respect my derfinition, but that's the one I'm sticking with. How could there not be a 'Shakespeare cult' if there is a 'Mozart cult', which there most definitely is, and a 'Wagner cult', which there even more obviously is. I'm talking about a fierce 'inner circle of devoted supporters', and that exists with Balanchine. I never said it shouldn't, but they are not immune from penetration from without, any more than the 'Mozart cult' can definitively 'defeat' the 'Beethoven cult' (and they 'would'). It's an attitude fans get. Some get past this, some don't. Fandom is okay, but it can be too extreme to remain immune from detractors, as we see from this thread. That should come as little surprise, nor should it be surpsiring that some of it is boring.

Now, we do not 'think nothing of looking back on Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, or Wagner as somehow a head or two above the other incredibly talented composers of their eras', unless we want to overvalue. None of these are necessarily (or they are in some areas of music, not in others) above Haydn, Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Verdi, and quite a number of others in the same two centuries, plus there's some Debussy coming out at the end of the 19th, and that can't be left out as being up there with those four masters. Comparison is either 'odious' or 'odorous', according to whether you prefer Donne or Shakespeare; although I admit it has to be done sometimes, but nearlyu as often as we casually do it. This kind of categorization never has anything to do with the reality within the Arts themselves, but people find comfort in valuing artists in this way, I guess. In any case, even with the first 4, that's still 2 per century, not 1 per century. Anyone can think of these things any way they want to, so that part really is just subjective and what might be called radical fanship. If you're 'exposed enough', as vicious New Yorkers , you're going to see there are always more than 'one per century'.

Okay, we disagree. If there's no Balanchine cult, there's no Streisand Cult, no Mariinsky Cult, no Maria Callas Cult, no Martha Graham Cult, no Nureyev Cult, no Derrida Cult, no Sontag Cult, no Sinatra Cult, no Garbo Cult, no Krishnamurti Cult (he's another example, just like Balanchine and Farrell, who always claimed not to 'be a Cult', and the denial of the perfectly normal Cult Status for great artists is always telling: It's an attempt to remain a cult without the apparent 'vulgarity' of it. Benjamin wrote of the 'bad cult of the film star', so yes, that may not include in its material expression 'classical artists', but it does identify cults around personality. And cults exist even when their 'leaders' tell people it's not there. It has to do with whether or not the cult is overstated or understated and even hidden. But if there is an exclusive group at the core of literally anything, there is a cult, and the resistance to this is because of snobbery and bad connotations with religious and other cults. Inner circles around a great figure always form a kind of cult. I guess you could call him a 'dancer's dancer', because we don't see him as a dancer primarily, but in his demonstrations to his dancers, as to Villella on 'Apollo', and how Villella understood by Balanchine's own physical movements exactly what he hadn't understood. But it always gets back around to things like this, and ultimately I end up on the side of miliosr and Kaufman because the pedestal is endlessly protected from all sullying by any other artists, considered without exception to be inferior. What the cult members don't realize is that they do Balanchine a disservice by enlessly deifying him above all others, and that it turns people off who love Balanchine like I do. And people are not going to buy it at some point. They ARE buying Balanchine still, and notably, but they do this partially because of the way the Balanchine Machine operates. There's a 'Buckingham Palace Machinery' that's used as an expression quite frequently, and it if's good enough for the Queen of England, then it's good enough..... If anything, it might well lead to an eventual movement as far away from Balanchine, who is fashionable now (dread word that, 'fashionable', that's a fact too), and like all fashions, won't last. So that I was using the term 'cult' as something that has to apply with anybody with a huge following, which Balanchine has, even if Helgi and the others sell the tickets in San Francisco. People did not program Balanchine all over the world so that some audiences would attend hiw works and be 'dutiful',. They program him because he DOES have appeal.

After a few days of this discussion, I still sympathize with the dissatisfaction, but don't think it all that mysterious. Some of what bart said about economics plays into this, and the fact that Balanchine's legend DID continue to grow after his death; and it was already big enough while he was alive. At some point this translates into a kind of fame and mystique that the public is willing to pay for because they've heard more about it. There's also a glamour about Balanchine (leaving aside the more serious merits of his and other masters' choreography, since that's been done to death anyway) that doesn't exist to the same degree in Ashton and Tudor--at least in the U.S.. It probably has to do with the glory days of the New York City Ballet when Balanchine was still alive and creating, but also New York City Ballet still for most people means 'Balanchine', and they've always had the support and money when others don't. PLUS they get to stay in one place for liong periods of time. All this exposure spreads Balanchine far and wide. When ballet begins to spread to the provinces, there is not going to be that much room for maneuvering all that wildly, so it's natural to go to the biggest blue ribbon name, especially when that name also DOES supply the goods, even if one would like to see some Ashton and Tudor when one is more knowledgeable. What Sandy wrote: "Perhaps monotony can only strike in a place like NYC where one can get exposed so frequently".is, in fact, true. He's fallen in love with ballet primarily because of being fascinated by Balanchine at PNB (or I think that's what he's saying, in any case, through Balanchine's works. I was glad he mentioned this, because we New Yorkers ARE pampered with cultural luxury, and it's understandable that those outside this should not be expected to sympathize that much. Just so long as I can keep it, it's small price to pay. Yeah, it's nice here And, while, in an ideal world, some of the other work really ought to be more available, Balanchine certainly is not a bad way to start. It's even interesting that with all these NYCB offshoots, Balanchine has rooted itself all over the U.S. (what the Mariinsky or POB does with it is not the issue, I think). But that's not the whole story. It's not just about Balanchine's works, it's about the Balanchine Cult, and this is bound to be irritating even as 'Balanchine nation' may or may not be a natural, or 'the least bad' evolution, for the dissemination of ballet. There's a Martha Graham Cult as well, and these are inevitable with two artistic tyrants like this ('tyrant' is meant in the good sense, but there's no point in pretending both weren't as ruthless as they come--they had to be). What the most hardcore Balanchine fans have to accept, since it's fact, is that there is supernal quality in his work, but also, Balanchine SELLS. That needs to be understood as a fact, without any of these very sentimental anti-commercial 'pure art' (even thought it IS 'great art') fantasies. Balanchine is a hot property right now. It's just like Barbra Streisand. She SELLS. And it doesn't take away from the magnificence of her artistry, even if the fees in Vegas, other places in recent years, etc., seem s litte ridiculous sometimes. Sports stars ditto. That economic hurdle has to be finally taken into consideration even after all the quite well-thought-out protests are listened to. People will pay for a prestige item, and Balanchine is a prestige commodity on top of everything else. I can see what miliosr and Kaufman are saying, but i just don't know enough of Ashton and almost none of Tudor to say much. What I know of Ashton I'd like to see, but probably imagine I'd rather see it with the Royal Ballet (I'm sure I could get over that). In any case, I don't think imitations of any of these masters, whether one or the other, is the problem. The problem is that there needs to be something that makes the imitations irrelevant. Until then, they'll seem irritating, no matter who is being imitated, if that's all there is. Quiggin, those aren't the Nietzsche aphorisms I was thinking of, but they're good too. He is dangerous and always makes you rethink something. The one I was referring to I can't get close enough to to find by googling. It may come to me, but mainly had to do with the idea of 'giants' no longer holding sway. That probably is always lessening. I probably don't think that's wonderful, but a lot of 'humanists' do.

Interesting. As a trailer, it's an ad for the movie, but all the fragments look like ads themselves, whether for chocolate, cars, silk shirts. I didn't see a single moment I thought inspired. Couldn't be dragged to the DVD. Thanks for posting, though.

Excellent point. But there can be no return to a Modernist Period as such, so your point is good because there are still some Romantic works of art in all fields, etc., and some of them work. Still, could be along the lines of miliosr's remark about 'singular successes', but that's all right with me. Just so we get something good at least from time to time, I'm become so innured to things that really please me being rare, Piano's work is wonderful (I finally got over to the Morgan a few months ago), but even if you call it 'modernism', it's part of the holdouts who still love that bygone period, PLUS who are able to afford it. Pastiche/hodge podge seems to me one of the characteristics or symptoms of post-modernism, although there have been some worthy works done within it already.

I wrote something about High Modernism and post-modernism based on remarks of miliosr on the SK thread, and now can say definitely NOT, the question might be 'the next genius', but there can be no new Balanchine, he whose last period could be called High Modern. There IS no more 'modernism'. YOu have to use the word 'contempoarary', since 'modern' was outmoded with a period which has passed paradoxically, whereas 'modern' used to be whatever was current. Modernism had much more discipline and severity and structure than the amorphous messes one sees after its collapse, and collapse it certainly has done. So that miliosr's legitimate query about 'whether the ballet form has exhausted itself or not', whether it will find new geniuses may still be possible. But what we have now is the normal evolution of things, when you look at the other arts and disciplines. There's not going to be any towering central figure like Balanchine or Graham, who were both modernists, because that is over. We may not be thrilled about Peter Martins's choreography, and not much more thrilled by Wheeldon, but it's not abnormal for the general cultural environment we live if today, and have done for some 20 or more years. To have that kiind of genius would mean to go back to a period which has gone. I don't know that there can't be a ballet genius, but there will be no 'next Balanchine'. So that I think part of miliosr's implied query is answered: Ballet may or may not be exhausted (probably not), but High Modernism a la Balanchine has been, you don't see it anywhere, and all this current 'nostalgia for modernism' in theory and philosophy and literary circles is all about this loss of discipline that modernism still at least had just like classicism and romanticism. There is a much bigger mess of chaos in the post-modern, post-structuralist world. And High Modernism is gone in music, except for diluted imitations, why wouldn't this happen in dance just like the rest? Well, that is what is happening. So if someone wants to wait for 'genius', he will probably find some, not just one. but there won't be some fierce central figure like Balanchine or Graham, because they depended on things that hadn't been unearthed yet, and that they then did unearth. There is NOTHING left to unearth, just little tendrilly efflorescences which the Balanchine ex-dancers do with their half-baked choreography. I personally don't have much of an opinion on imitating Tudor and Ashton instead of Balanchine, but I think that something like the extreme concentration on one figure as Balanchine is now is actually ALSO a part of this post-modernism. You can see it for some years now in museum exhibitions, the gigantism and overly lavish hyped-up things, there are many other examples. But a choreographer with huge power like either Balanchine or Graham would need to be in another period than the one we are now living in, and seem to be planning to for the foreseeable future. A new perception is therefore needed, because the idea of a 'next Balanchine' has no reality. These 'nostalgias for modernism' going on right now will go the way of all nostalgias, which is to say, short shrift after a little tearful shufling around here and there.

THAT is a clue to the problem too. There's not nearly enough talk on BT about Post-modernism, and it's an unwieldy mess, but it has to be done. I'm not going to outline it, as it's easily accessible, but it DOES follow modernism, so that 'contemporary' has to serve for what is at any given current time. The word 'modern' was outmoded by the period now called 'modernism', which has passed, was severe and disciplined, and there is even talk in theory and philosophy circles right now of 'nostalgia for modernism', but which has been long-gone. If Balanchine's imitators are imitating his 'high modernist' period, they are really just being properly post-modern with all the mediocrity that that usually (not always) implies. I'll put a little more on the 'waiting for the next Balanchine' thread, because you would need a kind of True Modernism to have another 'Balanchine genius-giant' or 'Marttha Graham genius-ginat', and it's not going to happen. Modernism is OVER, and we don't know what's going to happen. But you cannot do real modernism any more.

Agree and well-said, I do love much (most) Balanchine, but I think Barnes's remark very snob-appeal type of thing. Critics in all the Arts love those kinds of grand-gesture elitisms like that. They slip them in every chance they get, as if 'making history', it sometimes seems.

Well, NO, I'm not waiting for him/her. Precisely for the points miliosr already brought up, it's up to the form itself to declare its need for something specifically 'ballet genius'. Or NOT. If there can be one, wonderful, of course. We could only not love it if we hated ballet, and we don't. But there should be signs before s/he appears that something might explode onto any artistic scene. I don't see what it means to 'wait for the next ballet genius'. Of course, I guess I can wait without giving it any thought, and that I wouldn't have any choice about. It sounds a little bit like Heidegger's 'only a god can save us', though. All the traditional arts have changed, and the world we live in has only vestiges of the worlds that produced towering geniuses. I think Nietzsche said something along the lines ot the Giant Man of the Great Man or something like that being 'over', well, always when people say those things in a big new pronouncement it takes a while to kick in, but when movies started, all sorts of people thought them impossibly vulgar and low, cf. Walter Benjamin's 'The Work of art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction.' Even if you don't agree with him (I don't), these continuing media advancements, including all the silly ones, have huge effect. The question really might be, can a really thriving ballet audience survive? That has to remain, and it may or may not. I don't have any idea. Many old forms are disappearing are becoming radically alteres, and ballet and opera are old forms, and then maybe some are not disappearing. In the meantime, even the mediocre ones are at least there, although personally I can't drum up that much interest. I'm fairly sure there will be 'dance geniuses', I don't know about 'ballet geniuses'. Might have to do with the economy and whether a committed ballet community can survive.

Arizona Native--I don't think I responded to Cristian quite properly. Frankly, I DO like to see actors, dancers, singers in 'real life', out of their character. It doesn't spoil the magic for me at all. And I've known a lot of dancers over the years, and liked many of them, still do. I just think that, like musicians and actors, they do often themselves prefer each others' company, because they understand each other well. But I also know that, when it's possible to make the connection and there is time to reach a bit further than usual to communicate, it's quite rewarding. I think the main thing is figuring out how it's going to be a mutually beneficial and pleasurable exchange, and if it is, then that's the ticket, of course. Probably it's the matter of scheduling more than anything else that makes it difficult to get to know people in all sorts of artistic disciplines, but I certainly know that having known some dancers well has been as important as anything else in making me appreciate and love dance. We probably pulled back a little too far because of the discussion of obnoxious fans, which is true of any field, I guess. It's equally important not to be too shy when one has the opportunity to enrich oneself with personal contact with artists. All the writers I've met have only meant even more to me by having had some personal contact and conversation with them. Same with dancers, painters, singers, and the rest. The obstacle is usually just 'the business' and being able to 'talk shop', etc. Like the way you introduced that new element into the discussion, as it made me remember all those ballet associations I had without ever having thought about it, like my ATM card!

I agree, because she praises Balanchine's work a lot in the article. That's why her title was ill-chosen. But I think that remark is pretty clunky on its own merits--DO it, don't SAY it, as they say; in this case, if you say it, it just comes across as cornball and cheap nostalgia about the 'getting its humanity back' --or the lack thereof. It also rather rhymes with that 90s cliche, pronounced by Monica Lewinsky among others, about how 'I just want to get my life back'. Gross. I'm so glad I haven't heard that for awhile. But when she says 'Of the more than 400 ballets Balanchine created in his 79 years, roughly 75 are still actively performed. And they are, for the most part, so exquisite it's hard to complain about seeing them over and over. Who can tire of the radiant stasis in "Serenade," the spacious, deconstructed architecture of "The Four Temperaments," the mass precision of "Symphony in C"?' this proves that she does have something to say, since she's clearly not a Balanchine-basher if she can say that. She should have called the article 'The Oppressive Cult of Balanchine and Its Refusal of All Critique', instead of 'The Curse of Balanchine'. Because I don't think Balanchine himself would care for this cult. Agree there too, although only because I did see a lot of Balanchine before any other ballet, which is the reverse of what most do, I think. It doesn't mean that I ever tire of the ballets of his I most love, of course, and there are a good lot of them. But there is definitely too much hype, and I basically thing the article is important.

That's a good point, and also unless you are also a ballet dancer, they might not be as interesting as people to someone else, and may prefer their own, so they can mostly talk about dance and related issues--I've definitely run into this, and it's usually a quick realization of little in common, unless it's time off, a vacation period, etc. Of course, there are a lot of exceptions to this. Ballet dancers are also more disciplined, like opera singers and classical musicians, and aren't probably usually as colorful as characters as some pop entertainers, but those also usually prefer others 'like them'. Nureyev is an exception, in that he's a fascinating character as well as great artist. Then way back to the old days with Pavlova maybe, and some like Danilova, but i can think of some of my favourite ballet dancers being almost exclusively interesting and adorable onstage. Opera singers too. I love Kiri TeKanawa, but if I got a chance to spend some cafe time with Catherine Deneuve, I'd much prefer that, because she'd be funny...

No offense, Mahinka, I'm sure you've seen plenty of it and that there is, but mightn't it be your greater experience with them? This is a sincere question, as I would have thought rock stars and movie stars would have more the sociopaths. Actually, hadn't heard of the very worst sort of ballet stalker till Leonid wrote about this idiot actually going into the men's room with Nureyev. I confess to wanting to know what he said to her to shorten her visit...it may well have cured her of her fandom for good! I mean, we hear about Stephanopooulous or Meg Ryan or Jodi Foster or that troll that got into the queen's Buckingham Palace bedroom, but even though I've been around ballet somewhat over the years, I never heard of ballet stalkers till today. Although with Nureyev, I should have already thought of it.

Well, worse, actually, she was a stalker and psychotic clearly--fans don't usually try to disturb their idols. i think narcissism doesn't particularly lend itself to obsessive fandom, I know mine doesn't--rather leads me to a certain amount of admiration by imitation--this can be writers like Joan Didion (the only person I ever asked for an autograph and simply had to talk to at a lot of readings (but I then did go to so many that she got nervous and may have thought I was a stalker, so I stopped for 4 years) or my buddy Nick Land in China, who I'm nuts about (but since he knows me, he appreciates it), or when I played the Boulez Second Sonata in 1981, there was a page in the 3rd Movement in which I finally got a sense of flexibility that reminded while on stage of Suzanne Farrell's flexible limbs, it was the best part of the performance. Most of the examples I wrote on my last post are from the past, except for more recently the Martine and Schaufuss I still admire them--how better to admire them then to imitate them if it inspires you? It doesn't have to be only 'in performance' that these dancers' art inspires you--all the better that you keep thinking of them as aesthetic models to refine your own life. The way Martins describes the way a dancer wears his body is something anyone should aim for to some degree, if they're athletic--you won't become a ballet dancer, but you'll present yourself more impressively. Dancers think about their looks all the time, why shouldn't you? Of course, that's narcissism, but I don't care, and anyway it is obvious that many great dancers are narcissistic, and it doesn't bother them at all (nor should it.) I do disapprove totally of ANY kind of fandom in which someone is followed EVER. My best friend was once obsessed with Garbo, and used to sometimes look for her, but once she spotted him, and saw that it frightened her a bit, he never did it again--but I still couldn't believe he'd even gone that far. And then there is celeb fandom, as Susan Sontag and Philip Glass (in the Paddock/Rollison book) or Barbra Streisand following around Andre Agassi (I finally understand this last, but didn't for the longest time, it seemed embarassing at the time, but she's a great woman and hardly harmful.) As for Nureyev, he used to do a lot of aggressive and determined approach to good-looking young men (including one I knew well), and was quite brazen about it, so it works both ways. I don't feel sorry for him, really. I'm definitely not a balletomane, though, because I am not as fiercely concentrated on it as a number of people here, and because other kinds of dance and dancer and other arts mean as much to me. My absolute greatest genius is Martha Graham, and I will never love Balanchine or any classical ballet choreography as much as I do her work. Same with Barbra Streisand, a few writers, film directors, composers, etc., whom I love as much as classical ballet. I do have other balletomane tendencies. My education in ballet has proceeded apace since I've been at Ballet Talk, and I regularly give sermons about Alla Sizova, for example, to my best friends, and make them watch her. Same with Nureyev and Fonteyn. But some of the TRUE balletomanes, that is in terms of being in the audience a great deal of the time, are very different from me, which is why I know they are the really true ones: Flying from one city to another very frequently for performances, going to perfs. night after night, year after year, valuing above all other Arts. I don't. . My main point in my way of appreciating ballet is that it's become a part of my own life and art, but I think the true balletomane is always going to a lot of performances. I don't actually want to go that often, but when it comes down to it, I think the true balletomane is much more concerned when a dancer retires, for example. The fact is, it is another kind of 'ballet love' to import and incorporate what you learn from it into your own other arts, just as ballet dancers go to museums and look at paintings to learn from them, just as they become knowledgeable about music (when they do), and when they read books. But I basically think the way a balletomane is mostly understood is someone who is following every new development in the ballet business and going to many, many perfs. a year. Yes, I want to be at a distance from any artist of any kind I admire, unless I have something to say to them that they are also going to have some interest in, beyond the usual fan oozing and unctuousness. That's for the birds. As for dancers I've known, in most cases I like those at a distance too.

My ATM card password has for about 10 years had Suzanne Farrell's initials in it--and mine as well, but there are highly charged numbers as well which refer to me--so you'd have a hard time figuring them out, or the order, so there will be no success by those with pernicious intent. Although someone else is my muse, and is a man, also a dancer (but not exactly a ballet dancer) but not even my book collaborators know who that is...I wrote a zany, campy song once about 'frenchification' and 'New York City Ballets' (that one is so good I really won't put it down, because someone would steal it, and it finally goes in my next year's book, the first chapter of which was inspired by 'La Valse'.) I've had framed photos on my walls in the past of both Farrell in 'Nijinsky Clown de Dieu' and 'Vienna Waltzes' and Peter Schaufuss in who cares what--that animal.. I consciously try to walk with a Peter Martins swagger sometimes, not quite as tall but several years younger... I used to wear ballet shoes as house slippers.. True Friggin' Confessions this is....

http://www.imdb.com/find?s=tt&q=wuther...mp;x=17&y=9 Well, here's a list of productions over the years at IMDb, which I was pretty sure there'd be, English TV things and the lot, probably. I think if you love the book, you'll hate the old 'classic movie', I consider it a travesty, plus think they were doing fine film versions of novels even back then, not only 'GWTW', but Pride and Prejudice, Rebecca, Anna Karenina (Garbo version only IMO), and How Green Was My Valley (a little later I guess for that one.) Maybe someone else will have a recommendation for some of the other versions, I just haven't seen any of them. Anyway, I consider this to be Olivier's worst movie, easily.