papeetepatrick

Yes, mine is doing it now. Actually, I don't care unless it affects whether you get the message or not--does it? Right now, I've got -1 messages, but I've had plenty of pm's since the upgrade. I just noticed this one yesterday (when I did not get a message.) Otherwise, I appreciate the impending instructions on how to reset it.

http://www.onealsny.com/1-about-ourstory.htm Here's a good description of O'Neal's Baloon, which was itself called 'Saloon' at first, due to a blue law, necessitating the change which resulted in 'Baloon'. Patrick O'Neal, the actor, and his wife, Cynthia, had been chiefly responsible for making it this dancers' place, there is detailed description of the mural. I skimmed the article, but movie buffs will remember Cynthia O'Neal in her uncanny performance in Mike Nichols's 'Carnal Knowledge', in which she played the tough and beautiful Cindy--toward the end of the film, she is first seen playing tennis. It's quite a startling, one-of-a-kind performance, and yet she made no other major film appearance. She was one of Nureyev's best pals in the early 70s.

BW--I've been pushing Wright's 'The Looming Tower' for most of the year--it's brilliant and really gets you up on the Al Qaeda facts. Right now, just finishing, relatedly, Thomas Powers's 2002 collection Intelligence Wars, which is essays over several decades about the CIA, NSA, and all pertinent other intelligence agencies. If you haven't already read it, it's superb.

kfw--sometimes do try the venerable Lenox Lounge at Lenox between 124th and 125th, because they have a wonderful soul food restaurant, the Zebra Room, and always good players, even if not necessarily as famous as the Vanguard. Always take a cab, of course, as there is some drug traffic around there--but once you get in there, it takes you back to the old days, or as old as you can get now: since Small's Paradise closed in 1988, none of the Golden Age clubs are still there in their same housing, e.g., The Cotton Club. The Showman's is also oldish, but I don't think it's quite as mellow and elegant as the Lenox. The Vanguard and the Blue Note are always good, of course, and both just down the street from me.

I thought this would be a good place for those of us very interested in Musical Comedies and Shows, and who have discussed them at length on various threads, from the Sweeney Todd one to the Fred Astaire one, to consolidate some of our thoughts on the music that is bound to be the essential ingredient in this kind of entertainment. Dirac and sidwich and many others have a wealth of knowledge about these kinds of shows and the scores, and it occurred to me after dirac mentioned to me that she'd found an old LP of the old Harold Rome 'Gone With the Wind' score. And I have, since coming to Ballet Talk, not only learned more and more about ballet, but have started going to shows again and listening recently to the scores of many shows I wish I'd seen, and just didn't. I especially regret not having seen the original 'Nine' with Karen Akers and 'The Life' of only a few years ago. Posters can go all the way back with their favourite scores from back in the day of 'The ziegfeld Follies' and all the way forward to 'Spring Awakening' and 'Grey Gardens'. I think there has even recently been in the Encores! series a revue with some Ziegfeld Follies numbers in it with Kristen Chenoweth, but I'm not sure, I was still waiting to see a review. The thing about the way this thread can work is that you can write about musical shows from anywhere and, since it should be primarily focussed on the score, favourite scores based purely on listening to recordings is fine too. I know growing up without LPs of 'West Side Story' and 'Gypsy' and 'Funny Girl' would not have been the same as it was having them and wearing out several discs. My feeling about Broadway has become a little more positive just from having seen 'The Apple Tree' , 'Anne of Green Gables', '110 in the Shade' and planning to see Patti Lupone in 'Gypsy' for Encores! I see that there is more variety than I thought, and that, even if I can't get much interest worked up for more than one listening of 'Grand Hotel', I also have discovered that quite a wider variety of shows is still being produced than all the talk of friends from out of town, most of whom just want to just see 'Phantom' and 'The Lion King'--although I did meet several tourists at '110 in the Shade' who were exceptions, including one kid whe 'sees all the musicals' and claimed that the 'girls are hot' in 'Legally Blonde'. So that maybe more than just the tourist dollar is being explored (of course,it is possible that that is only because that part is already well-taken-care-of that this happens, I don't know.) Movie scores are cool, too, and we've discussed some of these. It's always irresistible to compare the stage and screen versions, especially from the records. So we can do this here.

Oh, that looks like it may be a real solution, and that will mean there are maybe 4 places where you can even get good draft Guinness. This is more practical--than Iridium and a whole jazz club-- for the purpose O'Neal's used to serve; and it doesn't need to be too elegant, maybe the emphasis should be on brash and somewhat rushed and occasional touches of classic New York Rudeness! In this case, pedestrian food is not desirable, but that's mostly what we got at O'Neal's, and that's not why anybody went there. Probably the location, but literary salons have often grown up for just awhile--like where Susan Sontag and Brodsky used to argue a lot, I think, in the mid-90s. Admittedly, ballet lovers are a smaller group, but that is the best idea for some real kind of balletomane club, even though it ought to be on the Upper West Side so that it has a better chance of lasting, and there would be bound to be some dancers come from time to time.

O'Neal's Baloon, mentioned by carbro, used to be somewhat like this, with a big painting of some NYCB stars on the wall, and Peter Martins and other NYCB dancers would often be in there. I imagine there are slightly more diffuse versions of this in the immediate Lincoln Center area still, but I don't think it's something that could be planned--mainly because the stars would go only if they didn't think the place was too touristy (even in the local sense of balletomanes), and anyway, people can't ever be expected to interact, or it seems like a workshop. Cafe life has to be informal. Best to just have 'your gang' as also described, and meet some new balletomanes, here at BT or elsewhere. Also, even Lincoln Center does not have quite the festive excitement it did when younger, which has nothing to do with the great performances still coming from there. If they could get something that was profitable in that same place where O'Neal's was, it might happen again to some degree, but like stars in all fields, the 'star aura' is not there in the same sense it once was, even in the cases in which the actual artistry and expertise may have well surpassed what used to be done. Nureyev used to cause a stir just walking down 57th Street, but even though many people may think dancers much greater are working now, there aren't any that people chase around in the same sense. As for the rest of the restaurants in that area, I wish they had better food and didn't charge so much for it, so I go straight to the subway usually.

Yes! Exactly that! And Cook was simply inspired, bristling with fire there--I've never forgotten how glorious he also was in that performance, so thanks for mentioning it.

The only time at the ballet was McBride in 'Liebeslieder Walzer' in 1985. At opera, only 'Die Meistersinger' (Bernd Weikel's singing) production at Met in 1995. In dance, Virginie Mycene as the Bride in 'Appalachian Spring' in April, 2005 at City Center with the live orchestra made me cry nearly uncontrollably, and recently Audra McDonald's wrapping up '110 in the Shade' with all that infectious happiness as the rain came down onto the stage brought me to tears.

I agree, of course, but in the early part of Giuliani's administration, he went way too far, with some 'quality of life' project in which people were fined $100 for throwing a single piece of personal junk mail into a city garbage can, and the same if they put their feet up on subway seats. In the early 90s, the late Saturday night subway cars would sometimes be total homeless shelters filling a whole car--I think that's gone. All very big cities have this problem to some degree, I think. It just has to do with repeated traffic. I remember noticing in 1987 how different old, supposedly decrepit Liverpool was from London: You saw all these very old beveled glass doors that had been there, unbroken for decades, nothing had had to be replaced. In London, you'd see liquid cleaner bottles in the Thames from Battersea Bridge. New York is far more bombarded than London, and it's always going to look like it to some degree. I never think Central Park feels like leaving the city, for example--I think of it as a leafy but dusty version of the concrete!

You must not have been here that long, because the subway was updated and enormously improved in the late 70s and early 80s. Those who were here in the 70s know the monumental achievement Mayor Koch can claim with all these new subway cars. Half or more of them had no AC in the hot summers, and the lights went out in them constantly--you never see those restful dark trains anymore. I never took the subway in D.C., but the Toronto one is superb, and always the Paris Metro was a pleasure, except late at night when you'd miss the 'portillon' as it slowly closed before you could get to it, with the unkind 'Service est teminee' intoned mechanically. The London Tube also used to be nicer, and still was in the 80s. I was last in Paris in 1997, and the Metro was still fine. Boston's subway is also nice, but those of us who have been in NYC a good while know that we are not really due an update on the subway, even if we could live with it: We definitely remember the sweaty, bad old days. Carbro--I admit the humid summers are the single thing I dislike most consistently about the city, because they make me lose energy. I hate to also point out that, while you are correct about the long reduction in violent crime beginning with the Giuliani years, it has made quite a comeback, which was announced perhaps 6 months ago in one of those big multi-city surveys--so we mustn't take quite as much for granted at night as we had been. One of the strangest phenomena, however, is Morningside Park, as recently as 15 years ago considered to be so dangerous that Blue Guide warned tourists to stay out of it even in the daytime, is now strangely benign: A friend of mine and I went there for over an hour last Thursday, and it was the first time I'd been all the way in it. It's much wilder than Central Park, with naturalized daffodils and columbines (yes!) all over the place. Even so, I'm not going to recommend this to any but the most adventurous, as I've gotten in some very dangerous situations exploring on foot alone up that way. I sometimes go to the wonderful old Lenox Lounge, which is one of the last very old Harlem clubs, and Billie Holliday sang there--but at night I always take a cab, no matter what my companions say.

Oh, I don't have any respect for that survey, and don't care what it thinks. New York is easily the most fabulous and perfect thing in the history of the world, and I even lived in Paris a year. I also love Los Angeles more than almost anything, and have been there 9 times in the last 5 years. It's the only other place I'd really choose to live in, but you need big dough so as to live well in the Hollywood Hills or Beverly Hills (at least) and not get lost in questionable behaviours. I've also been to Papeete, Tahiti twice, which has a real Ballet de Tahiti, even though it's mostly around the middle and the tamure and there aren't any pointe shoes. I think they have the right to call it that, though, because if you see the ladies and boys move down the street there, you know a sort of heaven...I saw a boy in a bikini outside an evangelical church service I was attending, the ladies sang a capella hymns...and anyway, they performed at Carnegie Hall as the Ballet de Tahiti. I saw it with a Swiss girl, with whom I broke up afterwards, because she was such a prude compared to the Tahitian girls onstage. She's since become a nun. Perfect cities I've been to include Lausanne, Switzerland, which I think contains some fairly major ballet, and Toronto, which I thought nearly flawless, but not deeply moving. I don't like Washington D.C., esthetically all that much, and find it graceless, except that I by now find it the most interesting city in the world, because the CIA is close by, and there is every kind of terrifying government intrigue and corruption to study there. What else is there? Edited to add: I didn't mean to sound condescending about Washington, but I can see it maybe sounded that way. Even though I don't like to live where everything feels like Heavy Government, I do find many individual places in Washington very beautiful, and would be just as happy to see the Royal Ballet there as in New York or London. New York, Los Angeles and Papeete are my favourite cities, but New York is the best of all. I'll DIE if I ever have to leave! It's also the MOST BEAUTIFUL CITY IN THE WHOLE WORLD! It also has the best ballet, because the Kirov is coming in 2008, and the Royal is close enough in Philadelphia, not to mention all the usuals...

Thanks so much, carbro. I think moderators may have been having to fix mine sometimes, since I didn't really know exactly how it worked. Now that the system won't take it without getting it exactly right, I have had to learn how to do it--much better knowing, of course. I used to think my posts got fixed by the software itself somehow!

Lets' see if this works, I mentioned having trouble with the quotes on another thread, so I've just toyed with your last post to see if I can arrange them to work. Edited to add: If I just pasted the 'quote' it would not work, and said that the number of my quotes did not match and to fix it, but I couldn't. If I used the whole first part of your quote with the name in it, it came out. But I noticed others can just do the plain 'quote' which I could do on the old system, and could arrange it easily enough, but now I can't. Actually, this is not a big deal, I can always figure a way around it by using the long opening quote, probably, or just quoting it 'manually'. This was just to record it on this thread that I had that specific trouble. Don't know if anyone else has. Second edited to add: In above editing, I referred first to what I now called just quote in quotation marks by pasting the automatic quote for the balloon things, but even pasting them in a regular paragraph caused that message to pop up when I tried to resubmit.

Thanks so much, Old Fashioned and Bart--and that article is fabulously interesting, colorful and well-written. I remember Esquivel well when he partnered Alicia in their last years dancing together, and was also interested that the company tours around the island--I should have realized this, but didn't, since, as mentioned, it's not a vast area. Edited to add: I also remember the perfection of the corps in 'les Sylphides', they truly were sylphides. I had been surprised at how this company would have been so flawless in this work.

Carbro said: 'The world's last remaining vestige of Marxism, Cuba' Well, now, I think you may want to reconsider that a little. China (even though chock full of capitalism)? North Korea? Vietnam? Venezuela? And there may be some significant ballet and dance in these countries, but I know nothing of it, so would be interested to hear if someone is knowledgeable in this area. They do (at least that company), and I thoroughly enjoyed many performances of the Cuban Nacional at the Met in 1979. Yes, since the 'classless society' has always turned out to end up 'so-called', the fact that ballet (probably stemming from the Russian Kruschchev bonds during the Bay of Pigs/Missile Crisis period) flourishes in at least one major company proves the lack of 'classlessness' all the more. I think it's interesting that Marxist experiments always end up with as many classes as liberal societies, but that they are more colorless. They were socialistically tied much more to Russia than China. I wonder if there is a lot of other ballet in Cuba, or if it's mainly the one important company. Anybody know something about other ballet and dance in Cuba?

I doubt he did, though--or if he did, he would have hated it. Marxists are less interested in ballet than any other art, in my experience and from having looked at and read extensively many Marxist blogs in the last 2 years. They are even very specific about it--their disapproval and loathing--when I have brought it up. That there was ballet in the USSR surely has only to do with that it was Russian and already there is my guess. They had to use it just the way they had to employ a lot of White Russians in the bureaucracies if they were going to get various necessities, e.g., the KGB, up and running at all. They didn't throw out the jewels either.

Absolutely. That's why that 'Cinderella' musical from about 1997 was so repulsive. You were seeing something that ought to be called 'Rainbow Coalition', not Cinderella.

Sander0 said: 'I don't see that race matters, except as one tries to be historically accurate and mixing it up would be a jarring and "inaccurate"... but for pure form and movement.. even using classical technique... race is should be a non issue...any and all can and should be welcomed' Bart said: 'Does "innacurate" have to be jarring? In ballet, the mere fact of dancing on point, wearing tights, never talking is certainly historically "inaccurate." Classics have been produced in periods other than the time in which they are supposed to have occurred, or were originally danced.' I think that's two kinds of 'inaccurate' though. My guess is that Sander0's 'historically innacurate' would be in a serious dramatic work in which, for example, there was real subject of racism. There's been talk of reversing races in stories narrated in some way or other, but this would be the novelty and not used much. As in a movie like 'In the Heat of the Night', or any film about segregation, slavery, civil rights history, you have to use the actors of the races. Of course, the likelihood of ballets about racism is not great, and it doesn't even sound of much interest to me personally. Modern dance about race history, etc., might occasionally have something worth looking at, but if so, it sounds best if blacks are cast as blacks, whites as whites, Asians as Asians. As far as ballet being 'historically inaccurate' because of point, tights, etc., it's probably just an extreme example--that's true of all the arts to some degree, and is at least equally true of opera. If there is not race and/or racism as a subject, I agree it should be a non issue--and the idea of a ballet about racism sounds woefully lacking in any potential potency. Almost any other medium would be better--because the traditions of toe shoes don't have a thing to do with the traditions of racism, although some sort of half-effective thing is imaginable. The only one that would be obviously interesting is the subject discussed herein--racism in ballet--but a movie about it with some dancing still sounds better. Bart said: 'I've been attending ballet since the 50s,... During this long (long, long, l-o-n-g) period of time I've seen administrators, teachers, and audiences in American opera, theater, film, circus, you name it, do a better job in this than the equivalent people in American ballet.' Yeah, I agree, and that may be the most imoprtant point. The nature of ballet, its inaccessible and comparatively precious qualities, probably made this inevitable. It's just like in art history, some arts are just developing into the full expressions of their periods, while others are already at a Mannerist stage. In any case, ballet is going to have to go the way of all the other arts in terms of getting to that point at which you don't think about the skin colour any more--that's more important than any rococo considerations that are perhaps more related to Interior Decoration, with the occasional exception. [The new software makes the quotes somewhat difficult. I couldn't 'fix it', so I've just quoted like this.]

I think we wish it had, but I can't agree that it has run out just because it is totally ridiculous. Anyway, I wrote recently about the current Roundabout production of '110 in the Shade', in which mixed races worked perfectly, in some surprising ways, and somewhat more extensively than just its sublime star, Audra McDonald. This is a show about TEXAS some 50 years ago, and Audra McDonald plays the white daughter of John Cullum and has 2 white brothers. The kid brother Jimmy has a white girlfriend played by an African-American as well. So we are not only talking about a show that would never have dreamed of having black actors in it at the time (this is the early 60s, even before such things as 'Hallelujah, Baby!' and Pearl Bailey in 'Hello,Dolly!' doesn't really count, since she was paired with Cab Calloway, as I recall. Diahann Carroll with Richard Kiley in 'No Strings', a few other notable examples, perhaps though...), it is even a show about the Deep South with a white sheriff falling in love with a white woman played by a black woman. All of it totally works, without even the slightest sense of discord. What I am saying is that I wouldn't have really believed it till I saw it. And just now I remember that in my original post on the show I said nothing at all about this, because I had completely forgotten it. This made me interested in casting of a black Juliet, which I now see would never seem jarring to me if the individual was right. What I have liked less was that trashy TV Cinderella of a few years ago, in which there seems to be a token from every sizable-voting-bloc race, and you don't notice anything but the race, when it's so obvious that, in fact, they were literally put there to show all sorts of colorblind demands which are rendered impossible by not being based on who is merely the best qualified (nobody is more qualified than Audra McDonald to do almost anything she's cast for, for example.) And that 'Cinderella' casting reminded me of my objections to not making Oktavian look as much as possible like a man--because it is an insult to the audience to see something that looks Lesbian, while demanding that you never think it anyway, that if you can't help believing a little of what you see, then you have a dirty mind (it's because Oktavian already sounds like a woman, being sung by one, so it's too much of a stretch for 'him' to look like one too.) This may be a little off from what could work in ballet, but I have a hard time believing it. I think it's good to use legit terms like 'negritude' in their proper historical context. Reminded of the old This Week when Sam Donaldson and Stephanopoulous were discussing the stupid controversy over the word 'niggardly.'

Me too. Seat number only possible if you go to the box office or call, I think? that's why I don't order online unless it's for out of town. I liked the attitude, because I always feel that anything I'm enthusiastic about will sell out immediately, so if I hadn't called the box office and found out things were pretty lethargic (not the old Maria Callas days) I'd have had the pleasure of meeting you, since I think you said you were first in line. However, I was still able to get Center Aisle on Row R to see 'Rubies' and it was just this past Thursday, so those still looking should still be able to find something, but not wait too long.

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Well, no more discounts, but this I highly recommend. Very whimsical, and about 7-8 minutes before the end, the climax seems too silly to believe, but then it builds very suddenly and is moving, despite all. Ms. McDonald is glorious in it, has a wonderful beauty and sings deeply and movingly. Oh yes, my first time to see her, and she is most special indeed, you were right to tell me that, Carbro. I get the same sense of relief I was talking about when I saw Chenoweth--and there's plenty of room for them both. I'd like to see Ms. McDonald as Queenie in a revival of 'The Life', as those songs deserve her treatment, but I doubt this will be in the offing; most people have already forgotten that show, I think, even though it managed to last over a year here. 'Is It Really Me?' is here sung like you've never heard it, because she has a way of making it seem organic, as if this were something more than a rather lightweight musical, albeit with some nice songs, and at least one terrible one ('The Red Hat', with little brother and his gf Snookie) Beautiful sets, especially a most clever way of doing Starbuck's tent. Main problem here is Christopher Innvar as File, the handsome second male lead (despite the way the character makes a success for little good reason): Fortunately, he doesn't sing too much because, even though the timbre of his voice is quite beautiful, it is so wobbly on some notes (not even high ones) that it is as much as a full half step or even more flat. He's in the opening number 'It's Gonna Be Another Hot Day', a fairly pedestrian affair, but his voice on an A Flat or A is so off it's painful. Nice to see John Cullum and imagine how dashing he was in 'On a Clear Day' (which comes across so well on the record). He would have been good as either File or Starbuck back in the day, but Steve Kazee is effective as Starbuck here as well. I think the Roundabout is a very sweet theater, and I got into lots of conversations with nice kids, and even a tourist or two.

Thanks, I agree, and had not immediately noticed that that will be all-Balanchine--should be stupendous, even in that theatre. Good Seats in City Center are definitely in dearth supply, as we all know... I guess I'll try the phone first, and if I don't get through in five minutes, then do it online. This is just plain thrilling, especially after I was recently lamenting not finding it practicable to travel to Russia (nor terribly wanting to) to see the Kirov. I hope the Royal will see fit to re-visit us too, even if we get the same sea-level arrangement (if it's good enough for the Kirov, it's good enough for me and anybody else, if I do say so myself).