papeetepatrick

I'd still like to know something about the Sleeping Beauty things he brings up vis-a-vis ABT and Royal Ballet. Anybody surprised to hear what is the most positive report I've yet heard on the Burger King production? Did it surprise no one else to hear a performance of Royal Ballet called 'dispiriting' by comparison to the Burger King? Not that I don't trust certain BTers more on how awful it is even improved, but this did give me second thoughts. I think plenty of critics I know have gross body language(s) and many write as if they had red faces (one was appearing just last week, it seems), but I'm not sure that's always seriously affects the work. Christopher Hitchens always has a red face, but even though so furious half the time he almost seems as if to become violent, I'd still rather read him than a lot of the fools. I think I'm allergic to all professional critics--men and women alike.

Oh yeah, this caught my eye, and surprised me, because I had gotten this very sensation from one of the Kirov DVDs I watched sometime during the year--not sure if it was the Kolpakova or Lezhnina, but the Queen seemed to show so little gried of any kind, whether or not royal and pallid, that I thought maybe she already knew that it was just going to be a long time and decided to be matter-of-fact about something she couldn't reverse. So this sensation of the Queen's almost dismissive attitude about 'poor daughter's' curse is not only at ABT. Anybody notice this in various productions? I tried to not think about it from the Kirov because there wasn't anything else I didn't like, so I just chalked it up to my not knowing the conventions. But I did not think the Queen had any serious grief at all on one of these DVDs. "Which makes it the more frustrating that large parts of this “Beauty” tapestry are threadbare. If there is a single moment that should pierce the heart in this story, it’s when Aurora, after pricking her finger and dancing in fatal delirium, falls down lifeless. But here the Queen makes her way with ladylike decorum to what she assumes is her daughter’s corpse; her subsequent display of pallid, polite royal grief is bland. In ways like this Ballet Theater’s “Beauty” keeps saying, “Oh, but you don’t believe this story, do you?”

It's obviously according to what one is looking for how you perceive this article. I thought the long, mostly favourable account of ABT's SB in that matinee performance, esp. comparing it to RB's--which I've never heard anybody else do, although maybe they do; my impression is that RB's SB is close to sacred, including here at BT, and that the ABT one is something people put up with--was very interesting. Certainly very unpredictable and thought-provoking. That silly last sentence is the kind of thing he seems to like to do--just flippant crap, doesn't mean anything, maybe that's like 'Aren't I cute' or something a child would do. But, frankly, although I don't have the insider's knowledge to judge it in many important ways, this was often a very well-written piece, and the profiles of the male dancers and their less-impressive (in number) female counterparts is all right. I thought the way he contrasted a couple of Corella's performances was useful for someone like me who isn't usually worried if somebody is too dazzling. The Kirov things he wrote were more negative in some ways, or it seemed to me; but I'm sure I didn't read all of them. I don't see what the big deal is if he thinks somebody smiles too much. Almost everybody went on about Somova's 'vulgarity'. I mean---I don't like him (how would that be done with any of these critics?), but sometimes he's not bad at all.

That's all very interesting, aurora. And makes me realize that, although I've never been interested in these things for myself, I may have actually been offended by one once (and not the 'sexy' piercings, those just don't interest me): about 7 or 8 years ago a girl about 18 on West 12th Street was riding her bike with a skirt hanging down (pretty dangerous) and a white man's shirt. This is all right, but I then saw she had pierced cheeks--right in the middle--with tusks about 3 inches long curving out. She didn't look like a freak (I don't mind that, whatever it is, anyway I may be sometimes perceived as one for different reasons), but like this devil. I just wouldn't have been able to talk to her, because it didn't seem like a decoration but rather this hostile creature, and it was not like a ring or any other kind of piercing. On the other hand, I was truly offended at a theater performance in 2002, in a small theater on the Upper West Side. A girl maybe in her 20s and more less traditional, had one of those things in her hair to keep it in place--it is a stick about a foot long or more and sticks way out. I think this is so obvious not to wear in a crowd I could hardly believe it, and even though I didn't say anything, that made me angry. I don't believe someone can judge whether something like this is going to be stuck in someone's eye or not. I've never seen it before nor since, though, so at least it seems mercifully rare--but I would think someone should be told that such things were dangerous. Do you know this hair stick? Anyway, even the girl with the rhinocerous tusks didn't make me angry the way this one did, although I couldn't have befriended the rhino girl because she was trying to look mean. Pardon me here, as this is even off-off , but it was some kind of decorative body ornament. Nobody's personal piercing, etc., could annoy me unless it too was puncture-liable. I tend to prefer the old-fashioned kinds of tattoos, sailors, etc. I have a pretty friend who recently had a butterfly tattoed around her ankle to celebrate her new line of handbags--she loved it and I thought it was all right, but looked like a label, almost like a price tag.

Thanks for that, Sandy. Even though we're , that does remind me of being at an airport line in 2002 and talking to a nice and also nice-nice lady from Seattle who must have been one of THE Bill and Melinda Ambassadors--and she made a hilarious point of contrasting their 'homeliness despite wealth' to the British Royal Family, of whom she did not approve! I was very amused. I may revisit the 6 Balanchine Ballerinas to see Kent in that again, because I don't know whether it was I who changed in 2 years or she who changed in 8--but I hadn't been interested enough to even turn it on till the discussion got going. What had seemed rather vague and not quite decisive about her in the earlier film now seems very specific, sharp and certain. Writing the book would surely be part of what made her ability to focus and articulate so striking and crystal-clear.

I thought it was marvelous, too. Thanks, canbelto! And yet I had thought her much less compelling and perhaps a bit flighty and even lightweight, in the '6 Balanchine Ballerinas' film from 8 years previous. Here she is sometimes eloquent, and handles Rose's questions with real skill, and she also does some of the difficult questions much better than some of the other ballerinas. On the other film, Melissa Hayden comes off more impressively to my mind. She also looked about 40, and that hardly ever happens at 60 (this was 1997), including with ballerinas. Not at all self-indulgent, rather self-possessed (which I hadn't thought nearly so strongly in the aforementioned film), confident, and--best of all--not at all in awe of any other ballerinas. This is a woman who knew who she was in more than one way, and she engaged totally with Balanchine when she did, but was not hypnotized by him. I was really impressed. No, no, no. I can't see what's more cynicism-breeding about Park Avenue and its suburbs than all that Microsoft... I mean--doesn't it just pervade Puget Sound?

Thanks, DeborahB. I like all your posts about NYCB. Keep it up and keep enjoying!

Do I ever rescind this! Either side of this kind of character better by Judy Holliday or Gwen Verdon. I think Ms. MacLaine may be for me the opposite of an acquired taste. Ricardo Montalban good in endless boring scene; this is mostly pretty tacky. Thank God Holliday didn't drop out of 'Bells Are Ringing', not that that was any great shakes. But she almost did, and said Ms. MacLaine would be right for it.

The obesity (and diabetes?) from printscess's narrative need a lawsuit, but not to sue MacDonald's because already been done and no fairy confections, I guess, or even the ABT Burger King--rather Payard Patisserie, patisserie to the stars, NYCB ones that is... In court, they will be told that Stevia is 50 times sweeter than sugar and healthier than Splenda and that they should have used it!(nevermind you'll ruin a decent custard or creme patissiere, with either of them just like you will with soya milk).

I wasn't going to say anything, since I only know this one, the Perm, and the ABT, but I like this POB one a lot, and know others have said they don't care so much for it. But I'm an Aurelie nut.

Very nice, this reminded me of Margot Fonteyn too, in that filmed 'Corsaire' with Nureyev. I think those are the same kind of sautees.

I just read 'Wuthering Heights', never had. Peculiar to read something associated with a much younger age than one is now and not knowing what to expect. Somehow I'd never known what the story was, just keywords like Heathcliff, Cathy, moors, that's it. Now I'm going to watch Olivier and Oberon. Great book, though.

I also just saw this, and think it sounds like the best updating of an old show I can remember. The use of Spanish is brilliant. I like what Laurents said about the movie too, I agree it was mostly 'horribly acted', and it's one of the old ones I never watch again--has a top-heavy quality on top of the bad acting; the best part is the overture. It has not become better over time, but considerably worse.

I agree, 'boring ashram' is a redundancy, perhaps even a tautology. 'Incredibly boring ashram' is truly de trop...But they are also 'whimsically upbeat', and anybody in them had better agree that they are if they want to stay alive. Universal Ballet could probably get the effect: I met one of their founder's 'married couple', and the girl told me in front of her husband that she would have never chosen him if left to her own devices (but we were in a private living room in New York, not headquarters). But I'm not sure Rudolph and Mary really living happily ever after is enough 'wages of sin'. They need to do a lot of 'karma-yoga' and have to talk about and pretend how much fun it is (just stand out of the line at Integral Yoga store, even by accident, and you'll find from a clerk just what a peaceable kingdoms they've all got in mind); as well, Mary may not sing any of the Liszt waltzes, since impure compared to the wealth of folk-music that Liszt 'corrupted.' There can no reference to the old publicity-drenched suicide pact, of course, on pain of capital punishment.

Oh well, volcanohunter, you're becoming my tutor, as there's no way I'm going to miss this...will report back in a week or two. although I'm never going to like anything Ms. Crawford does as much as Lena Horne being all tropical in 'Love' in 'Ziegfeld Follies. "Lena said they told her 'Lena, go out the-ah...and smol-duh... That's something Lena and Cyd both had--they could smol-duh : I saw this just now, and India Adams sounds good for neither, although the chorus sound does work better in Torch Song (may be the outfits). They actually do then seem like the girls in 'House of Flowers', especially in the opening song 'Waitin'. Was interesting to see this grotesque Joan Crawford moment. The only thing to make me as much of a Joan Crawford 'completist' as I need to be for the duration is clips of 'The Secret Storm', which are supposed to be on You Tube but I can't find them. Truly a strange creature. Thanks for putting me onto this, Volcano, I hadn't seen this one, and Cyd's hosting of the Gene Kelly section shows her as a very handsome and elegant woman of about 72, I guess--strangely, she looks a little like Nancy Reagan here, and I had never seen the 'Heather on the Hill' piece but once. Debbie Reynolds is also really charming and beautiful in the section she hosts.

In Mayerling, all the well-loved decadence is proceeding apace, until Bratfisch won't go far away when Rudolph tells him to. Not only are the glamour and glory of suicide prevented, they are even caught in flagrante delicto and become victims of coitus interruptus--nor will they be allowed another chance at any better choreogarphy; and they will they never get any more morphine....Early Bolsheviks, who have broken off from the ranks of the Hungarian separatists, now no longer favour Rudolph in particular-- and thus arrive to force multiple polygamies on the Crown Prince and his father Franz Josef, and the epilogue is not a cemetery but an incredibly boring ashram, where Mary has to work in the laundry room and sing Kollective Farm Songs. Rudolph has k.p. duty, and also has to teach Marxist workshops, which have paying upper-middle-class students Viviana Durante and Irek Mukhamedov.

Almost, but the colour is more quiet, as in all the ladies' dresses. There aren't any bright reds, greens or even blues, but rather all these peach and canary (is that a colour?) and pastel colours. When there is something in the red family, it is always cerise, like banquettes at some French restaurants. And when all the couples are dancing together, it is such a strong masculine-feminine contrast, with much pulchritude on both sides, that even when they're just doing the simpler waltzes, it has a very subtle sexiness about it. The filming is strange-looking by now, because you have to really look hard to make out individual dancers. It's the only filmed ballet I've seen in which I would sometimes need to read 'with artists of the Royal Ballet' to really accept that these were real, live dancers; it's like film somehow transformed it into a literal dream, but there's the thrill at waking up and knowing that, of course, they are real dancers and there is some charm in the fact that they aren't listed and so those of us who don't know old RB casts don't know who any of them are. Another thing I experienced on watching it repeatedly is that, even though they are fine dancers, when some of them are technically imperfect, it doesn't matter, only adds to the atmosphere of ease and pleasure--like that wonderful unexpected sense of 'being at home' I've always experienced when in London (and never any other place I've been to that I wasn't living in.) So, for me, perhaps more only somewhat 'MGM musical', but more London--St. James Park, Claridge's, the Connaught, i.e., elements of kitsch but never brash.

Does anybody know this? Because I just watched it, and found it a pure delight. That this isn't incredibly popular must be because Oberon is a countertenor, but his music is also some of the most charming. Now, this is the funniest version of the play I know, and the music enhances in the most aggressive way all the comedic aspects--and the best are without question Oberon and Titania, although there is some very funny stuff with the carnies in the Pyramus/Thisbe at the end. Oberon singing about how the juice will cause 'hateful fantasies' is much funnier when sung to funny music than when just spoken, and Titania's lovemaking with Bottom is hilarious, Ileana Cotrubas has not only a wonderful voice but a face so expressive of such zaniness that I was laughing constantly in a way I don't remember for an opera. The divine countertenor in this gorgeous production is James Bowman. I'd love to hear reports of anyone who's been to a performance at Glyndebourne. It seems utterly enchanting, if this is representative of the quality. Stunning sets. I've never heard people talk about this, though, and it must not be performed that often. Well, I would love to see this live, but I imagine Glyndebourne is the very best place to see it.

This is on 'An Evening with the Royal Ballet'. I adore it, and on discovering it around the same time I joined BT, I have watched it about 20 times. I'd seen Balanchine's once, with a superb performance by Farrell. That one also includes the 'Valses Nobles et Sentimentales', as well as 'La Valse' (the Ashton is only 'La Valse') and those were some of the first discussions I had here and queries of many people. Jane Simpson said some things about it, including that there is also a MacMillan 'La Valse', which I've not seen. The Farrell performance was the most brilliant of anything I ever saw her in, but I can't remember the rest of it that well. I love the relaxed tempo of the Ashton, all that wonderful British sense of comfort with a sense of Proust 'lost-memory' to it, because they whirl in as if from a dream and at the end disappear back into it. The costumes are so tasty, those men's costumes with the tails are especially out of sight--well beyond dashing. And the sets in that old film are so 50s you can't believe it, all those ice cream colours that suggest that rambling old hotels by the sea in England or France with giant dining rooms and ballrooms, etc., that one has read about. For us rococo types, I guess. I'd like to know how productions of it at the Royal have evolved over the years.

Hi Makvala, and welcome to Ballet Talk. I don't remember how long it takes to be able to start pm's, but I'd like to know the names of some of the opera sites you use. If you would mention them here (if that's allowed), please do, as I'd be interested in taking a look at some of them. Enjoy your adventure in learning about ballet, which this site is very good at assisting. Mods, please specify if this is okay, and also if an email can somehow be gotten to someone who doesn't yet have pm's.

Yes, Acocella is excellent, and I also like Deborah Jowitt, because she said things other people weren't saying, and doesn't seem self-conscious, while being very knowledgeable. Is it the total outlandishness and outrageous decadence of such a remark that makes it somehow endearing? Thanks for reporting it, though. I think this kind of remark should be the province of the artist like Balanchine or Beckett themselves, not because it's any more true when they say it, but it still seems like an 'earned irresponsible flourish'; whereas when a critic says it, it just sounds to me like the most preposterous and pretentious posturing one could hope to never hear. Because it is grounded in absolutely nothing of substance, and reminds me of once looking through a Judith Krantz novel and seeing the sentence 'Jews are like Paris'. My girlfriend at the time and I howled over that one, got a lot of mileage out of it. Macauley's 'cute remark' is on no higher level--senile. It is interesting to me that certain arts critics get to the point when their idea of daring is to see what the most jaded possible thing is they can possibly manage to float. But I'd never take anything of Macauley's seriously again after hearing such tripe. That remark qualifies as the single silliest remark I've ever heard a critic make--it is as if he were channelling Oscar Wilde--and even makes me long for the halcyon days when the Queenan article was still fresh--two long days ago. Queenan almost seems green and just got off the bus by comparison. Oh well, Ada Louise Huxtable has always been worthwhile.

New York City Theatre sounds like the nicest name for it, since the article said it hadn't been state property since 1965, but rather city--and since they are not New York State Ballet and New York State Opera. Although I am about the only one who thinks David H. Koch Theatre is just fine. The gift is so enormous and needed that the price of 'vulgarly' naming it after someone who gives that much cash seems incredibly small to me. I don't think he was 'just buying his name on the place', although he has cancer centers and others with his name; and he does serve on many non-profit boards, including ABT. But what if he was? The mess has got to be cleaned up. Agree with canbelto on how tacky 'little Met' it looks. As long as NYCO and NYCB are both going to stay, it wouldn't make sense to use Balanchine/Rudel/Sills etc. unless names from both were used. I understand people can be sentimental about these things, though, and I could hardly bear it when the zingy old PanAm Building was renamed MetLife (with a much uglier logo, too, which makes the prospect looking up Park Avenue seem especially battered.) In any case, I can't see deploring the 'Era of Bloomberg' too strongly, even if I knew he more or less bought his way in; because he is anything but an incompetent mayor, and there are many improvements over the 'Era of Giuliani' (I'm not being political, I'm talking about cultural eras.) Anyway, the building itself is being more or less respected, which the much better Juilliard Building has not been in many ways (the inside has practically become opaque, although the library has not been restructured, and it is especially beautiful). That graceful walkway that went across 65th street was so much like an organic connection from the conservatory to the great houses of music and dance. I can't believe they took it down, it was so elegant. I imagine that, as a billionaire, he may find amusing his AMNH David H. Koch Dinosaur Wing (could even be a pterodactyl wing, I guess.)

I'd be interested to know how far such things have ever gone, yes. If they don't have backgrounds in the particular art, many don't interfere all that directly, do they? Anyway, if it's a common problem (I doubt, but don't know), that would be interesting. Isn't it mostly a matter of serving on the boards. I noticed Juilliard was president of the Met Opera from 1892 till 1919, and I knew a lady in the Met Guild, but I don't know what that was exactly(she was Old New York). The old days were less strict, as we all also remember that Frances Schreuder got onto the NYCB board by just sending in a check, and that was the end of the purely pay-your-way practice.

I see nothing inappropriate or particularly upsetting about this. There's also Avery Fisher Hall, he was a businessman, albeit a violinist and I've got one of old Fisher record players still. There's the Lila Acheson Wallace Library at Juilliard and the Lila Acheson Wallace World of Birds at the Bronx Zoo. There's Alice Tully Hall. For someone who thinks 'State Theater' is something to cherish, maybe it matters. I personally think 'Philharmonic Hall' as a name is a much greater loss, there is nothing distinguished about 'New York State Theater' per se. When was there a 'generation that gave without things like this'? Some remained anonymous in the past, some do now. If he gives $100 million and wants his name there and they agree to it, I see no bad taste whatsoever. It's not like the American Airlines Theater, which is particularly odious. There's the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion in Los Angeles. The moneyed patrons get cultural centers names after them, and I don't see why 'old money' is in better taste for naming the places than new (I don't know about Mr. Koch's money vintage, but if he's nouveau, that's cool.), in any case the Rockefellers' money's origin is merely not as visible as it once was. Juilliard itself is named for its founder (or the man whose funds were used to realize it), a wealthy businessman. And Lincoln Center was never not business-oriented, nor never independent of wealthy businesspeople. It never meant to be.

This was mainly about my phrase 'informs me that Lang Lang is suspect', and 'inform' is clearly meant ironically, not literally. There's nothing wrong with warbling. Kiri Tekanawa warbled superbly, and the public loved it, whether or not knowing she was good or not. But also it's possible, with the tone of the piece, that he does mean these are not the best performers. If the public 'doesn't care how well their warhorses are played', they nevertheless know which showboaters, whether or not both musically able and commercially savvy, to choose from and gravitate to. If they therefore can't tell the difference, they must sometimes choose the less great performance if they choose only or mainly the showboaters; because if they both do choose (by being susceptible) and 'can't tell the difference', then it is surely the case that they may have chosen the less ideal performers by choosing only the showboaters. Because sometimes showboaters may be the best, but they are not always the best. But this gets into much more hairsplitting than I'm willing to do further. It can go either way, for example, showboating and salesmanship are not necessarily the same thing. Many showboaters are small-time--they can be lounge pianists or singers. So all these terms have different meanings to us, and how we see the text someone wrote in its details will usually follow from our perception of the whole piece. Since I think it's a dreadful piece, I can write about it freely and without respect to certain minutiae, especially given that he was throwing sledgehammers everywhere, certainly not the least bit worried about attention to details. In writing about it, I'm not going to respect it as I would someone's piece I thought was incisive and/or meaningful. The Rolling Stones remark alone already has different interpretations, because his writing is not indisputably precise. Anyway, I agree with most of what Kathleen said, not all of it, but too much of a chess game type thing for me beyond this. Maybe she will take it up tomorrow.