On Pointe

Classical Arts Showcase was the cable channel, but sadly it seems to have disappeared. You never knew what would pop up - ballet, modern dance, silent movie excerpts, "soundies", arias, instrumentalists, and oddly, figure skating, but only if it was done to classical music. It was privately endowed, so maybe it ran out of money.

There are not many old programs about ballet, but two of the best were the Bell Telephone Hour and Dance in America. Dance in America is shown on PBS, the American public broadcasting system, so it should be possible to access those programs. I don't know who holds the rights to the Bell Telephone Hour. The Ed Sullivan Show, which was a fabled variety program, often featured famous ballet dancers. That show aired before the invention of videotape and the shows that survive are kinescopes that are not of very good quality. You can view a great deal of televised dance at the Performing Arts branch of the New York Public Library at Lincon Center. But many dance performances these days pop up on YouTube, official recordings and non-official bootlegs shot by amateurs. You can see everyone from Tamara Karsavina and Ellen Price to a just-released piece on Justin Peck.

The Met is a huge commercial enterprise that welcomes the general public. Of course some significant art collections are in the homes of rich people, and the public will never see them. But many private art collections in the US can be visited if you make a formal request.

One of the biggest privately owned art collections in the world, possibly the biggest, is the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I worked there a number of years ago, and nearly every day, some tiresome British tourist would complain about having to pay when the big museums in London are free to American tourists. (Mind you, you could pay whatever you wanted to get in in those days, even just a penny.). The city leases it the land in Central Park that the Met sits on for one dollar per year. As the most visited attraction in the city, the Met generates tremendous income for the city of New York and its tourist-dependent businesses. And rich people get a safe and secure place to park their art collections, so it works out all around. For a brief shining moment, taxpayers who don't itemize got to take a small charitable deduction on their taxes. But most people who pay a mortgage do itemize and their charitable deduction is good from the first dollar. Depending on your situation, you can give a pretty good chunk of change to the organization of your choice without negatively impacting your take home income, for example LDS members who tithe. It's interesting that the LDS church (the Mormons) are enthusiastic supporters of the arts, including ballet. And they have a sense of humor - they run a full page ad in the Playbill for the Broadway show The Book of Mormon.

No, it's the direct result of the pandemic. Many organizations are still struggling to recover, not just theater companies.

It would be strange if it was true, but it isn't. State goverments all over the US give film production companies generous tax breaks if they film in their state. Some cities and states maintain public schools dedicated to the development of fine artists, musicians and performers. During the depression, the Federal government employed thousands of artists who would have been unemployed, and during the cold war, the US State Department sponsored international tours of American theater and dance companies. I have friends who spent a decade or more of their lives performing just Porgy and Bess in Europe. But the US tax system is probably the greatest "back door" method of government support. Money donated by taxpayers to legitimate arts organizations is money that gets directed to companies and causes the taxpayer cares about, instead of being spent on weaponry and "highways to nowhere". And the taxpayer gets a deduction of their taxable income. Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, gave the Dance Theatre of Harlem $10,000,000, a transformative sum the company would never have gotten directly from the government.

Didn't Balanchine observe about Bournonville's choreography, "he entertains with steps"? Very high praise from choreographer to another. To me, nothing is more dispiriting than some turgid piece of art without an ounce of entertainment value, like today's new operas, and most contemporary jazz. Dance has the capacity to thrill and uplift its audiences. I hate when it settles for boring us, in the quest for some supposed profundity. Entertainment is not a dirty word.

There really is no excuse for this. The house should be and could be 80-90% full at every performance. Tickets for the fourth ring should be about the same as a movie ticket, which these days is not that cheap. But at that price point, the theater would fill with many more dedicated fans, and those who are merely curious about the art form. NYCB needs to light a fire under its marketing department.

Wendy Whelan is still dancing. She'll be Chicago on October 19 for a performance of Carnival of the Animals, which is a political piece about the January 6 insurrection. harristheaterchicag.org

Erik Bruhn, Rudolf Nureyev and Calvin Royal III get my vote, three very different looking men, but all very attractive.

As a child, long before I took my first ballet lesson, I was enthralled by Maria Tallchief. She was the first ballerina I had ever seen dance live. I was struck by her incredible presence and her striking Native American features. I read everything I could find about her and collected photos of her. She wasn't very old when she retired from performing and settled in Chicago, so I think its doubtful that osteoporosis had robbed her of much height when I would see her with her very young daughter. There were very few 5'9" ballerinas around back then, and I don't recall any book or article mentioning that she was unusually tall. But that was a long time ago, so maybe I have forgotten. I'll never forget the day she came into the Capezio shop where I worked after school. Her daughter needed ballet shoes. At the time, there was a big poster of Tallchief with her dazzling smile on the shop wall. She didn't even glance at it.

I encountered Maria Tallchief a number of times in Chicago where she lived when I was a teen. No way was she 5'9". Maybe 5'6" at most.

I tried to find the Larry King interview you seek, but instead came across this instead. Hope you enjoy it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3J53_BFjcPY

Anna Pavlova was in a unique position, due to her brilliance as a self-promoter as much as her dancing. Yes, even in the few films that exist of her, you can see that she had extraordinary charisma. But she made her reputation as the star of her own company, touring the world, introducing ballet to audiences that had never seen ballet before. Turned in legs and sickled feet meant nothing to them. Pavlova's stage magic transcended technique. It's hard to describe it, but unmistakable when you see it. Why would anyone want to "discard" that? It's the essence of performance. Yes, it was in the 60s. The "whoop" was Plisetskaya acknowledging their vulnerability, their humanity, and the fact that she didn't get dropped. And it was joyous.

From the 1952 film, Moulin Rouge, the can can, messy, but alive: