papeetepatrick

Those are very interesting remarks by Alonso on the 2nd Act pas de deux. They ring true, but internally contradictory for me--in that what is required and given is still so 'demi-caractere' that it does seem to be more the 'classical sobriety' and 'classical duo', and is a matter of perception if one finds this 'dazzlingly romantic'. I don't, because I find that it is indeed stiff. If this 'military' quality is wanted, it's a different kind of 'romantic', one that makes the Sugar Plum Fairy have to be less of a fairy, and 'get married' or something (but not like Brunnhilde once de-immortalized and awakened by Siegfried, which is long and drawn out, not sudden)--but more like people in the everyday military do it than Aurora and Desire. It's too small a piece within the 2nd act for me to make too much more of, and maybe does serve as a useful contrast to all the 'charm sweets pieces', but I still think the music makes it come across as another miniature--this time a 'miniature kind of grand', maybe it works if you think of them as toys too, but while the Miniature Overture is perfection, this is compromise, because the dancing itself is rapturous when the dancers are first-rate.

I like it the seasonal way. You probably grew up with it the other way, I grew up with the Balanchine and it's all about Xmas to me. One thing that ought to be revamped or discarded is the music for 'Grand Pas de Deux'. This is such pathetic Tchaikovsky, there are numerous composers who could come in and write a good one and still be a pas de deux. Nothing but a descending scale for one octave over and over and over, not even as good as Czerny, about on the level of a Hanon exercise. What's especially weird about this is that all the other pieces are characterful and charming, even if not heavy serious stuff (they're not supposed to be.) But this is like an academic exercise a student in first year conservatory would write. That won't change whether Xmas or Soviet, and people have gotten used to it. It took me till just now to realize how really anticlimactic this piece is, it's anything but grand, and the choreography (by almost anyone who makes it) is already better and just needs a new musical piece. This one has no emotion, no passion, no character, no nothing, and the dancers just do the best they can to make it seem 'grand'.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/arts/dance/30maca.html This is a very nice review by Macaulay of the new show 'Billy Elliott', which a lot of ballet-lovers are going to want to see. It's got his usual lexicon of 'supreme', 'overwhelming', and general hyperbole ("Does Billy himself know whether he has achieved beauty?" which made me howl), but he's got some interesting points from which to determine whether you want to see an Elton John show (" a great musical in which the music is never better than good..." etc.), and other useful matters like none of the choreography being of interest as such to dancegoers. As well as observations about Andrew Lloyd Webber's conservatism that I didn't know. I think he stayed in the U.K. despite Tony Blair, though (what an important point...) There are other reviews of this in the Times and elsewhere, of course, but I'll add something on my own topic's off-topic but related: Skip the 'Irving Berlin's White Christmas' thing. I saw this generic horror based on the old classic film in 2005 in LA, and it is so bad it is truly not good--Isherwood's review is nothing if not generous... http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/the...ews/24whit.html

I actually feel this way about all the Lincoln Center venues, they're just comfortable and familiar and basically friendly by now--and I have to admit I like the Promenade at NYST quite a lot too, both entering and leaving; it works well even with flaws elsewhere. That's great news that they'll really work on NYCC! I hope it works--because they definitely have an enormous challenge to meet. Complaints about Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles seem absurd when compared to NYCC, and they now have Disney Hall for the orchestra, the Pavilion still for opera and the Kirov will be there for 'Nutcracker'. I've never found the sound there to be inferior either (it may vary in different parts of the house, though, but I've been 3 times, I think), and I saw 'Vanessa' and 'Parsifal' there in recent years. Point being, they do need to fix NYCC no matter what the uncertainties for NYST and NYCO, because it is not in reasonable shape for Kirov, ABT, etc., and just as uncomfortable even when it's B'way things by Encores.

Now that I read all these new observations this morning, I realize that I've always thought the theater was very comfortable and a good place to see ballet. Also that I've never found it beautiful, even from the very beginning, but none of the buildings at Lincoln Center seem to me real masterpieces except for Juilliard (which has been disfigured inside in the last 10 years and the graceful bridge across 65th Street removed) and the Vivian Beaumont (or Mitzi Newhouse, or whatever it's called now.) Avery Fisher has always been a big barnlike thing, but at least they worked on the acoustics, which were the serious problem there and for years. The Met is a big fat opera house, it's not understated and maybe like a bordello a little bit, but so what, people have always carried on in opera houses anyway, and they were much, much worse in the old 'dressing room' area of the Palais Garnier which was full of all manner of misbehaving...so they discarded it. It may not be legroom of certain big jets, but it sure beats the Joyce Theater, which is like being in a sardine can, and the horrible sightlines of CCNY. That's the one that should have been torn down or completely reconstructed, I mean they even have these big cushions a foot thick so you can manage to see anything at all. I hate to go there, and yet do. The State Theater is no monstrosity just because it's not an architectural masterpiece. I don't find it at all disagreeable, just not inspired, exactly the way I feel about Avery Fisher, but the Met actually has something when the performance starts going; it's spacious and airy and feels clean. With all the aura of wealth, you still feel you're at something rare and you often get something rare in Mr. Levine's hands. It's not up to that level at NYST, but that's still a good place. It doesn't matter if the Met is a little tacky, but I agree with drb that that ball at NYST always bothers me too!

Maybe I didn't write it out phonetically quite right either. It's more like kwesh-un, like 'passion' and not like 'bastion'. Maybe just sloppy speech, but it could be regional, I'm not sure.

In that case, I'm afraid I agree with you more than I wish, and in many ways. I think it is even why there is next to no glamour, nevermind the celeb business with the tabloids. There's no such thing as a movie star in the old sense. I think there was original work through about 1979, and that there might be again with the shift in all areas going on right now, but that may be wishful thinking. I've continued to watch things when they hit DVD, but there hasn't been a Hollywood movie I've paid for in theaters for 2 years, and I was annoyed I went to those anyway. Edited to add: Of course, there have been many exceptions even so, and 'Milk' with Sean Penn does sound like something important. With 'A Christmas Tale' from France and 'Milk', we could have fewer still holiday films of substance.

Very nice autumn, but not too much like Thanksgiving as we know it, since I just went to the Macy's Parade, which is so Dada a l'americaine with the giant balloons between the sharp edges. It's quite amazing visually if you find the right perch--which is 33rd just below Macy's, because you see up 10 blocks and only the high-flying balloons, which don't seem to be moving. Very hypnotic, because they seem fixed there in this new unnatural environment. Only 2nd time I saw it.

I've never heard anybody complain about this but me, it's a pronunciation that has changed for many over the decades: 'question' is often not pronounced 'ques-chun', but more and more 'quession' or even 'quezzion'. Come on, somebody must have noticed this version of vernacular and colloquial downturn...just like 'a couple beers.'

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm803772672/nm0000962 So drop-dead gorgeous she was in the 80s film 'Trop Belle Pour Toi' with Gerard Depardieu, not to mention 'For Your Eyes Only' and 'That Obscure Object of Desire'. Also wonderful in 'Lucie Aubrac.' But be careful--she's possibly a little more glamour than you even bargained for... Wow! I see she did a 'Berenice' (Racine) in 2000 w/Depardieu too for French TV. I bet it was sensational.

$100 million is not chump change to billionaires, is it? For several, it's like a tithe... $1 million or maybe even $10 million, but not $100 million. There's the rub, the 'something like it'. He did this and not something else. I don't care that much why. I don't know about Koch industries (although please inform if you do have some interesting facts), which is the only part of this that I think would be relevant to whether his gift is non-applaudable (I don't know that enough about him personally to 'like' him or not. But he's clearly not Frances Schreuder, slipping onto NYCB board and using Mormon blood money to finance Balanchine masterpieces (Lord, that's still the weirdest story I nearly ever heard.). And it's never important that a benefactor be a self-made man or innovator. Otherwise, nobody would ever applaud the queen of England--she's done a good job but is hardly an innovator or self-made--and I saw people applaud her when she walked out on the balcony of the Koch Theater... I second Deborah's Happy Thanksgiving!

This IS a vulgar spectacle, and typical of Informal Staging by Martins for big in-house performance-parties. The "due to the times, the audience won't get any" is tacky beyond belief. I think Martins really believes people masochistically respond to his mediocrity. In 2004, at the Balanchine Birthday Celebration, the company was onstage with Martins and Barbara Horgan with a huge cake. Martins said "We wish we could have you all come up on stage, but we CAN'T." Well, of course they CAN'T (but neither did they WISH it), but that's no excuse for making a rude noise, overt snobbism can be so tedious, especially when directed to your own supporters. There were vodka and Payard Patisserie sweets for the audience in 2004, and if there are not now 'because of the times', then there is no reason to say anything like that to the audience. Nobody with any self-respect wants to hear such things, and it would have gone without saying. Does he know anything at all about understatement? However, as far as Mr. KOCH is concerned, I agree totally with Deborah B., except that it's no longer 'my beloved company' by a long shot. They are nowhere near the greatness they used to be. But I agree that her main point--'he didn't have to do it'--is spot on. When things can't get funding at all these days, I cannot see any reason why one should be other than thoroughly grateful for such a benefactor. So what if he's like Alice Tully and Lila Acheson Wallace and doesn't want his gift to be anonymous? Not everybody who is generous is also modest. The program does sound mostly drear.

sandik--I'm still not finished with it, maybe another 150 pages, but it is definitely phenomenal in terms of giving 4-8 pages for even the minor Hollywood films (much more for 'Metropolis' and 'M' and 'Siegfried'). McGilligan's style gets a little tiring with wanting to point out literally all of Lang's unpopular habits, e.g., every one of his exaggerated tales in which he aggrandizes himself, esp the 'Goebbels episode', when Goebbels wanted to make him run the propaganda films for Hitler; but the research and scholarship are first-rate. (He fled Germany and Goebbles because he was afraid, being half-Jewish, although raised a Catholic; but even here he turned it into a meeting with Goebbels in which he was always watching a clock so he could escape ("5 minutes too late to get to the bank and withdraw all my money', etc--then we find out he took several months and going back and forth freely to get to Paris.). The most fascinating thing about this book for me is you inadvertently get a very sharp and unexpectedly new perspective on Hollywood, because Lang the master of German film directors was forced to compromise in ways he hadn't in Germany, and yet managed to get it to work for him anyway, albeit after some setbacks and a few big flops like 'You and Me.' Edited to add: There's esp. interesting stuff about Brecht, who wrote most of the screenplay but was only credited with the story, and the making of 'Hangmen Also Die'.

Hitchcock in 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' and 'Torn Curtain', if not even more examples. C'est normale. That's extreme. I mean, Orson Welles alone--all the European directors think he's the greatest. And even Fritz Lang in Hollywood was too talented not to continue being original even though he was definitely willing to cooperate with the bottom-line when he thought he had to.

Yes, it does happen. I was a student usher at the Met one summer, and shushed some loud-talking people--several times, because they repeated this and never attempted to whisper. They reported me for it and said to me "Are you from the Bronx?" Management paid no attention to them, told me I was right. And we definitely had to reprimand the cigarette-lighter program-reader people. PLUS--certain of the more spoiled latecomers would throw huge tantrums if not allowed in after the performance began, which we never were allowed to do, at least during the operas (the ballets weren't quite as strict, as I recall.) One woman screamed "This is the rudest house IN THE WORLD!"

No, I read all of it in 1999 or 2000, and I'm glad I did, because I know what Marxists and Marxist theorists are talking about--use value, exchange value, fetishes, commodification. It's an analysis of capitalism, of course, and I wouldn't call it all that 'vintage' in some ways, given that things are so complicated in the economy that one doesn't know from free markets, socialized health care possibilities, etc., It's made it possible for me to recognize where some of the ideas have worked and where they have failed (in all the totalitarian versions. The better aspects of Marxism seem to have been appropriated by highly successful capitalistic nations in Western Europe, i.e., they are like a final luxury for rich, mature nations. The welfare states of Sweden and the others are where a successful socialism is found, much more than originating in proletarian revolutions, where they always had to hire the decadent leftovers to help them run the bureaucracies.) Marxist critiques of art, which I've mentioned elsewhere recently, are interesting although I'm no fan of most of them; some of the Frankfurt Marxists like Agnes Heller and Theodor Adorno are interesting on art, but they are always dead serious and rule out all frivolity--reading ideology into every work. There's nothing more revealing than Adorno's discussions of the 'light popular cinema' and jazz, but these people always conveniently ignore the fact the most famous Marxist state, the Soviet Union, could not do without Classical Ballet, and used it shamelessly (fortunately for us, of course), given that it's not very much like Franz Kafka...or Karl Marx...I mean, can you imagine a truly Marxist ballet? What they kept at the Kirov and Bolshoi had to do with their grip on totalitarian power, it didn't have a thing to do with, say, the workers owning the means of production or price ratios, etc. Lenin's silly talk about Beethoven's 'Appassionata Sonata' is pretty awful too. But here and there you can find things in 'Kapital' that do seem very valid, especially in the over-commodification of High Capitalism as reflected in current commercial products like mainstream film and television, which get flatter and more bloated by the week. This may change, but it has yet to.

Certainly one of the two, oh Lord! And the rocking chair! Maybe Mr. Kinkaid would be able to use this for his Thanksgiving market. At lesser flea markets everywhere... rg, is the Humphreys work on tape or DVD? If you've seen it, what's it like? Did they also use the same Shaker tune or others? I'd also like to know if Graham ever did the Pioneer Woman herself. The Pioneer Woman clearly is the more Graham-like character, only part-mortal perhaps, but the two films I've seen (and only part of the 1944 one, I think) both have Graham as the Bride, of course. I thought it might have to do with height, as the dancers I've seen do Pioneer Woman have been tall and needed to tower over (however quietly) over the others. This might be in the McDonegh, which I now have, but have not had time for yet, and the Notebooks don't include any for Appalachian Spring.

Did you see Delon in 'Swann in Love''? I thought that was sort of underrated, esp. since 'Le Temps Retrouve' seemed so overrated. I guess both of the Charluses were good, though. I can't think of anybody but Orson who's managed to do a worthy screen adaptation ('The Trial', which hardly anybody has seen) of the giganitc kind of literary masterpiece. Thanks for reminding me of 'The Passenger', which I remember liking a lot. I am now going to reserve both that and also 'Purple Noon', which I want to see again. I just noticed that Alain Robbe-Grillet was Goncourt in 'Temps Retrouve', I hadn't known at the time. Oh yes, 'Rocco and His Brothers', that's wonderful.

Oh good, that should get us on an even keel about the actors, since we like about 4 or 5 of the same ones. Anyway, I also don't 'like' any of the actors in 'Ripley', but they are all good in this. Damon is an usher at Carnegie Hall at the beginning, after the concert is over he playes the Bach Italian Concerto--but it's professional playing, so makes no sense about 'dreaming to be a concert pianist'. It's flat by comparison to the French work, which one will find plangent if one is not repelled by Delon (I guess that's who is referred to.) Admittedly, he's known for some questionable activities a la Corse, but then Frank Sinatra didn't ever lose any of his following because of mob.

It's according to what sensation you want, as regards the order--they're both good, but not equally good.

Catherine Deneuve exactly as she is now for Mrs. Ficker (unless she changed her name to Farrell). She's proved she can do this kind of thing in 'Dancer in the Dark'. Good scenes with her and Judi Dench as Romana Kryzanowska-Mejia as they struggle toward their own respective goals for Miss Farrell.

The interesting thing about most of the comments is that they seem to indicate that no movie could now be made, since dead or way-too-old actors and directors are being cast more often than living. The directors who could do different kinds of films about NYCB and Balanchine are Altman and Welles ( Welles as director IMO, although he's one of my favourite actors). That French director, Leos Carax, who did Pola X might know how to do it, or Techine might be able to do an intimate story about a couple of the characters only, but I don't know. I also like the idea of Ken Russell doing something with it--it needs to be a movie if it were really done, not just another docufiction--and Russell's irreverence might be just right. Use old footage of the actual old dancers dancing, let actors do the rest of the characters--the magic would be lost if even fine new dancers danced the old roles. Altman could have done one of his big, sprawling things and included Gelsey's episode in it with Peter Martins and Baryshnikov too, but Welles would have figured out something nobody else could have if he'd thought it interesting as cinema, because he had such a huge talent--he even makes Loretta Young effective in 'The Stranger' just because of his magnetic and powerful force. I can see that a real movie could be made, though. It will probably be by a director who loves the ballets and decides to do something. Probably only real story in it would based on the Farrell affair, so the late 60s, early 70s with all those dancers in clips of their own dancing, even if it needs to be blurred or filtered or something, but good casting for the acting with young actors. Possibly the gorgeous statuesque Carole Bouquet as an older Farrell, doing the requisite reminiscing scenes tinged with melancholy. But Michelle Pfeiffer might be exactly right for that too, being all-American in that special glamorous way. Nicole Kidman as Farrell--NOT! I like Pacino for Balanchine more than Villella.

Yes, that is probably what he meant, and I think it's wrong. You can make all these formulae, and say without Denishawn and Isadora, Graham wouldn't have been able to do her revolutionary work, and she 'lived on the capital' of her predecessors. But she produced much greater lasting work than they did. I don't mean in exactly the same way, but the real Marxist way of saying this spurious matter of Webern and then Boulez and Carter (the latter to a lesser degree in terms of serialism) 'living off the capital of the modernisms of the 20s', would be to say that 'they capitalized on the labour of the modernisms of the 20s'. If they 'had to work twice as hard', that's immaterial, as they have to work as hard as is necessary, hard or easy; and it's a matter of personal opinion that's there's 'less genius' to Boulez than to Schoenberg (as in my opinion, for example, which doesn't think there is, but that's just my opinion, just sayin...etc..) In any case, Balanchine is Romantic no matter whether also innovative and 'neo-classical', and this is shown clearly in the fact that he uses much more 17th, 18th and 19th century music than he does 20th for his works. You can call Balanchine 'modern ballet', but it is not 'modernist' in comparison to previous classical ballet in the same way that Webern, Boulez and Stockhausen are to previous music. It is a part of the 19th century as well as the 20th. That is interesting, and no doubt true, but that is not the same thing as hyperbole about 'supreme dramatists of the 20th century.' This has to do with wanting to enshrine gods, and not everybody is interested. It's a serious issue. But what you said about Balanchine's works being 'Shakespearean in their worldliness' is equally true of Martha Graham, and she goes into many areas that could be said to be much deeper--but mainly it is just different, and I find the tenacious clinging to one or the other among many people to be understandable, but not the truth. Modern ballet, even in the hands of Balanchine, could not encompass everything that formal serious dance had to reach out to, so it is possible that modern dance developed side by side with ballet, which is different from growing out of Viennese tradition, with Schoenberg starting out with tonal works that then become atonal, and finally 12-tone--you can still see the direct line from Wagner on through with some tributaries in Debussy and Stravinsky before arriving at the seeming arrogance of the high modernists. The voice of this Viennese School is so loud that people forget that there are extremely important 20th century compositions by Britten, Copland, Carter, Tippett and many others that did not have to conform to these schools to produce masterpieces, and did not feel anachronistic. This is the kind of thing that I meant about why you'd like Macaulay. There's no depth in some Balanchine (and there's not supposed to be), and there is depth in 'le Sacre du Printemps.' I'm with Shakespeare in 'comparison is odorous' even more than with John Donne with 'comparison is odious.' It's necessary, but my personal policy on comparison is to never use it except when there's no choice. I love Prokofiev more than Stravinsky, I'm quite sure, but these theories don't have nearly as much to do with art as they think. Artists are thinking about work and getting by just like everybody else, not just creativity and history (like Susan Sontag, for example, who always talked about making her place in history, and it turned out to be none of the novels, etc. Ned Rorem uses this ponderous talk as well, which is all right in either case. Nothing abnormal about being delusional about one's own work, although it's possible to be pretentious and tacky.) But there are film actors, for another example, who don't worry if their films are not all to the pleasure of the critics, they couldn't care less. They need work and will do pulp in a second, even if the critics start talking about how they've 'lost their talent and potential.' This discussion is making me like Farrell's use of the term 'spectator' more than I had before. Most audience members are spectators--only. But not all are nor have to be, and spectators can be creative during the act, as it were. That's an interesting observation, too, although not the case among musicians. But here, I was not only talking about piano sonatas, but Sonata Form, which has continued to evolve well past Beethoven, and first theme, second them, exposition, development, and recapitulation as in the textbook First Movement of Sonata Form, is not limited to solo instruments, whether called 'sonatas', but also to concertos, symphonies, and all groupings of chamber music. But as for the Chopin, the B Flat and B Minor Sonatas are the same kind of staples that the Scherzi and Ballades are, and the Funeral March is the only thing that used to be played in the funerals of the glorious Brezhnev, Andropov, etc., accompanied by the Goose Step Dance of the special Kremlin KGB Guards. God, those funerals were great...concluding with the dirt-throwing of the politburo wives...of course the Funeral March is an exception to all rules, more than Eine Kleine Nachtmusik except for ringtones, and the general population will not know that if comes from Chopin's 2nd Sonata. Keep them coming, folks, this is a productive discussion, and it seems to me meet and right if it needs to go into other aspects of culture not covered by specific critics; unless there is some objection to this, which is all right with me too, of course.

And it crystalizes out of certain cultural contexts. Balanchine was in an historically unique position to be able to draw on (and oppose to each other) two great resourses: 1) the still living works of Ivanov and Petipa which essentialized a whole history of ballet and 2) the hotbed of experimentation of the initial Soviet period, from Meyerhold and Tatlin to Vertov and Akhmatova. The Four T's and Agon come out of the latter and Symphony in C from the first. In a way the rest of the twentieth century lived off the capital of the modernisms of the 1920's. Nothing came later that hadn't already been done already. Postwar Late Modernism is really self conscious High Modernism (this is how Frederic Jameson puts it). It was difficult to write a sonata after Beethoven had written the form upwards, sideways and down, and as difficult to write a ballet after Balanchine. Wheeldon is a bit like Stravinsky (about whom Prokofiev said only rented his musical ideas) quoting wildly from here and there, especially in the Golden Hour that ends on a 4 T's note, having moved through Somnabula and Violin Concerto along the way. I agree with Carbro's "mile wide and inch deep" characterization of Wheeldon. Maybe he's also trying to cleanse the palate, doing a restricted twelve toney thing. But the cultural habitat that Wheeldon is working in isn't that great either. Genius comes neither with the mail nor out of the blue. And Macaulay's just fine. I can see why you like him. I'll only say that the sonata form was nowhere near exhaustion even after the Hammerklavier and opus 111, the Chopin Sonatas alone would prove that, and that's a miniscule contribution to the 19th century sonatas and the 20th as well. I don't see that it's comparable to ballet after Balanchine, because that does seem to be possibly exhausted now. Of course great artists can say things like what Prokofiev said about Stravinsky--doesn't mean a thing, but it is more interesting than when critics offer grandiose statements, since they're not artists themselves, except perhaps amateurs. I wonder if that's why Balanchine loved Stravinsky's work--that 'rented' effect, offering no competition perhaps? I am sure not, as Stravinsky would have had to do a con job on the entire serious-music world if he were merely second-hand. The sophisticated dig by a rival would, in fact, be that he 'didn't steal' his ideas like mature artists do, in the well-known 'Immature artists borrow. Mature artists steal.' Martha Graham has a whole chapter in her Notebooks about 'I Am a Thief' which is about this and such related thoughts as 'the richest man is the most indebted.' These kinds of rivalries among different artistic schools are obviously part of the development of culture. The reason I say ballet may have been exhausted with Balanchine (although I certainly hope not), at least in comparison with sonata form, is possibly because it is delimited in its nature, which is both its grandeur and its limitation: It's not meant to express things outside itself, which is part of what Leonid says here: While ballet is a 'high art', more importantly it is itself as a specific and singular art form. It is not meant or capable of expressing certain aspects of 'real life and experience' as does the greatest modern dance--which is why those came along; it was important to also express those things, and, of course, Graham, Taylor, Kylian, and many others have addressed this. Those things deserved to be expressed, and they also do leave ballet free not to express those things that don't have anything to do with, and which are eliminated quickly when they are found to be inappropriate. Actually, 'seeing ballet as an experience of a 'high art'' is exactly like seeing great modern dance, hearing a great orchestra, an opera, going to see great paintings, reading great books, in that they are all not 'low culture', etc., and at this point, you see less high culture in films and almost none in television that is comparable to these. I just added this because ballet's beauty includes that it is prevented from expressing certain things, and agree with Leonid that attempts to make it 'more inclusive' are not advisable, but also that that is actually what is being done with ballet as with all high arts, due to external necessity. It's not so much 'waiting for a new Balanchine' as it is also seeing that 'more Balanchine spread throughout the world' will not necessarily ever equal what Balanchine was in the great decades of New York City Ballet (it's not only impossible, it's not even desirable, unless you think a virtual replica would mean something). So this 'Balanchine growth industry' will not fill the need that the art itself has. If there are not great new creators, paradoxically the 'Balanchine growth industry' might be another way to make it 'socially and economically relevant' the way the 19th century warhorses have served bottom-line functions (though not only.) In any case, this 'Balanchine growth industry' is very limited still compared to Swan Lakes and Nutcrackers all over the place. You rarely find people who have heard of 'Concerto Barocco' and 'Davidsbundlertanze' before they've seen a 'Nutcracker' or 'Swan Lake' or 'Sleeping Beauty' (although that IS the order it went for me, and I never saw a 'Nutcracker' until 2006, after at least 5 'Liebeslieders' and many 'Apollos.') Marxist theorists talk like this all the time, especially Jameson and Jamesonians (if that's what they're called, I do know one very well, unfortunately). I don't take any of it seriously, and there would have been no artistic development in the specified periods had anyone been thinking such things. For example, here we have the term 'self-conscious High Modernism' as if it were merely a kind of 'derivative'. PoMo itself, which this kind of thinking definitely is, is all derivative while claiming not to be (sort of.) It's patently untrue that 'nothing came later that hadn't already been done..', although if it were it would mean that this kind of critique would also be something that 'came later but had already been done.' 'Neo-classical' always refers to 'classical', which would be 'classical capital' on which something lived. Marxist theorists analyze artistic movements all the time, but in the case of most of the great figures we've all been discussing here, these Marxist theorists have a harder time than they think, since not a one of the figures (except perhaps Boulez and some French Marxists) is imbued with any of the Marxism--God knows not Balanchine and Graham, who were certainly interested in Absolute Monarchy!

Definitely that's it. Some people must use them several times per spoken paragraph.