On Pointe

But the only reason someone would call a dancer "straight outta compton" is if the dancer is black.  It's a racist remark,  making assumptions about someone's background because she's black.  I'm not trying to beat up on you,  but tiptoeing around reality is not helpful.  The young lady who plays Neveah has said that every race-coded remark in the script has been said to her or about her in real life.  ("Neveah" is an odd choice for a black character.  That name,  which is "heaven" backwards,  is usually associated with working class whites.)

I don't know if Misty Copeland is the most famous ballerina in the US.  But her presence means that black dancers are not automatically excluded when a ballet themed story is being cast,  and that's a big plus.

On 12/17/2020 at 11:54 AM, Tapfan said:

If a ballet film or ANY film for that matter,  had documentary levels of accuracy, it'd be unwatchable as a drama. Who wants to see a film where EVERYONE is a dedicated, mentally brilliant, hardworking, goody-goody and there are NEVER any artistic differences, petty resentments, people with bad body images,  bad teachers, no budding sexuality or  teacher's pets, no overbearing stage parents, personality conflicts or racial bias?   

That's pretty much the rap against the SAB documentary on Disney+.   One reviewer said the Nutcracker kids were so poised and self-possessed that they sounded like little thirty year olds.  There hasn't been much commentary about the series,  but what I've seen indicates they were expecting more angst and drama,  as though Black Swan and Tiny Pretty Things were more realistic than what actually goes on in ballet.  If these kids are serious about getting into NYCB - and they are - it would be beyond foolish for them to reveal any doubts,  fears or weaknesses on camera.  But most of the younger kids are very realistic about getting too big to be in Nutcracker and possibly not being invited to continue out of the children's division into the advanced classes.  I just wish there had been more dancing,  and to be honest,  better dancing.  The current crop of students,  with exceptions,  didn't look that good to me on camera.

7 hours ago, dirac said:

The central character is a Misty Copeland type...

What is a "Misty Copeland type"?  If you mean that she's Black,  why not just say that?

On 12/12/2020 at 8:32 AM, Helene said:

Now the story is in the NYT (Sulcas):

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/arts/dance/Chloe-Lopes-Gomes-Ballet.html?referringSource=articleShare

The company's statement is simply lipstick on a pig without a clear and forceful way to remove ballet masters and anyone else whose can continue to abuse and transgress.

Reading the ignorant comments on the article is truly disheartening.  I should have known better than to look at them.

The Berlin Staatsballet knew that Ms. Lopes Gomes was black when they hired her.  If they were so enamored of uniformity,  they shouldn't have cast her in Swan Lake.

I was truly shocked to learn of Ann Reinking's passing.  I worked with her at the beginning of her career and at her peak.  She had an incredible work ethic.  Once when she was hospitalized while working on Broadway,  she would check herself out to do her performance and then go back to the hospital afterwards!  Her relationship with Bob Fosse is well known,  but she revered Gwen Verdon even more.  She danced in an old pair of Gwen's shoes that were so worn they had to be pieced together for almost every performance.

But most of all,  Annie was devoted to the care of her son,  who underwent many operations and procedures to treat a severe congenital condition.  He was the center of her life.  May her memory be a blessing to him and her husband and family.

12 hours ago, dirac said:

I'd suggest that Black Swan isn't a ballet film - it's a horror story that happens to take place in a ballet company, but it could be set in almost any intensely hypercompetitive professional environment and its most obvious cinematic antecedents aren't ballet movies but Polanski's Apartment Trilogy and All That Jazz.

Another melodramatic film set in the ballet world is Specter of the Rose,  written and directed by Ben Hecht in the 1940s.  The male lead is a Nijinsky-like star who has fallen into depression after the death of his first wife,  whom he is suspected of murdering.

11 hours ago, Dale said:

For the first time, Ratmansky's staging of the female variation will include the original 1892 choreography by Lev Ivanov from notations by Nicholas Sergeyev.

I found this statement a bit confusing.  Did Ratmansky do a version of Nutcracker with different choreography for the SPF?  It sort of reads as if he re-discovered the Ivanov choreography,  which is certainly well known.  With only tiny differences,  it's the same solo I learned decades ago,  which I have always preferred over any other,  including Balanchine's.  

I thought the pdd was beautifully danced.  Boylston and Whiteside tend to be over-exposed and not particularly protective of their "brand",  so it's nice to be reminded what excellent classical artists they are.

I finally took a look at ABT's program and found myself exhausted by the wokeness of it all.  I suppose there is an audience for all this virtue signaling,  but it probably won't fill the Met.  The choreography that was on view was underwhelming to me,  perhaps to be expected under the circumstances of the pandemic.  But really,  ballet is a visual art form.  All those diverse individuals smilingly pushing ABT's new agenda of "inclusiveness" is great for a brochure,  but I really wanted to see ballet dancers dancing ballet.  If ABT wants to jeté into the 21st century,  they could hire at least one brownskinned black female dancer.  While they have several black-identified women now,  all of them could pass the "paper bag test".  (A real thing - in the old south,  any black person with skin darker than a paper bag had seriously limited prospects in education and employment.)

The audience is not always clamoring for new work.  A little classic choreography,  well danced,  is persuasive to those of us who actually like ballet.

4 hours ago, sohalia said:

Agreed with the above comments on some of the programming and the website redesign. Although now that they've changed the website, can we please update some of the dancers headshots? Bouder's and Gerrity's in particular are killing me and have been there for years. They deserve better.

How about new headshots for everybody?  Over the years I've been struck by their mediocre quality.  New York is headshot central.  NYCB can do better.

It's fascinating how this story has made its way around the net,  with more erroneous details added with each post,  like a game of telephone.  It's a very touching story,  but that Spanish organization could be accused of exploiting Ms. Gonzalez.  I also think it's unlikely that Uliana Lopatkina gave them permission to use footage of her performance.  Is it  acceptable to use unethical means to achieve a "virtuous" outcome?  I don't think so.

2 hours ago, Helene said:

Waterbury's followers didn't care about fact-checking, like many followers of all kinds.  And  it wasn't necessarily what they thought Ramasar did specifically to her: it was her representation of how he treated women, and what his chat said -- quoted by mainstream media from the suit -- not just Waterbury.

Okay,  so what did Ramasar say that gave any indication of how he treated women?  AFAIK,  he's known as a considerate,  respectful colleague at NYCB.  He isn't the one who referred to women as "sluts" or "farm animals".   A lot of those kids at WSS follow and post on Broadway message boards,  where the comments are ridiculously over-the-top about Ramasar,  including a hefty dose of racism.  One has to wonder why these youngsters feel entitled to police the thoughts and private communications of adults.

On 10/23/2020 at 2:13 PM, Helene said:

But I still don't understand why she would either file a claim or portray herself as a social justice warrior, when there was an audit trail of texts and social media that could be made public easily and which would undermine her to the court and to her followers and supporters.  A one-woman picket line isn't very effective.

Waterbury's followers don't care anything about the facts.  Some of those demonstrating in front of WSS had no real idea of what it was that Ramasar supposedly did to her.  They're like the masses of SJW who supported the "mattress girl" at Columbia University.  She even got college credit for her stunt.  The young man she claimed assaulted her was cleared of all charges,  but his education and life on campus were made hell.  (Must be something in the water up there in Morningside Heights.)

Waterbury has garnered a certain modicum of fame and psychic income from her crusade,  and it's likely to linger even when her case against Finlay is over.  I doubt that she'll be awarded much money,  though.  She should have taken the twenty grand and kept it moving.

According to the counterclaim,  Waterbury got Finlay's password by telling him she needed to file a paper at school.  She already had his keys.  Finlay could be called negligent for giving his keys to an unstable person,  but that's foolishness,  not a crime.

2 hours ago, Helene said:

From her own suit, she thought that his friends were her friends. 

I've always thought that Waterbury's vengeful campaign against Ramasar was driven by her discovery that he didn't really see her as a friend or peer,  but more as a kind of groupie.  

2 hours ago, Helene said:

Plus, they continued on as if there would be no consequences to him having a girlfriend who was able to break into devices.  If she indeed has those skills, she could have made serious money as a consultant while never leaving her couch, as many companies pay people to try to break into their systems as a security measure.

But she didn't break into his devices.  He foolishly allowed her access to his apartment and computer.  It's likely that Ramasar and Catazaro had no idea about what was going on in their relationship and were blindsided by Waterbury's suit.

Finlay probably did try to break up with Waterbury.  But ending a relationship with an overwrought,  physically abusive partner can be difficult and dangerous,  for men as well as women.  

19 minutes ago, dirac said:

In reading the Finlay filing I was reminded of the incident where the former Mrs. Tiger Woods, Elin Nordegren, upon learning of his multiple infidelities, clawed his face and went after him with a golf club, causing him to exit the house abruptly and crash his SUV. She claimed she had busted the SUV's window with the club in an effort to help her husband, but it didn't look that way to the cops, who wouldn't let her ride in the ambulance with him. Woods did and said the appropriate things to protect his wife. However, it was by all reports uncharacteristic behavior by Nordegren under great stress and an isolated incident. It was wrong, even so, and it's hard not to think that Nordegren took for granted that whatever her husband's problems keeping it in his pants, he would not retaliate in kind when she attacked him or risk hurting her trying to protect himself; he did the only thing he could do if he couldn't calm her down, which was get out of there.

 Male-on-female domestic violence, in comparison, tends to follow a repetitive pattern of seduction and battery designed to control the woman physically and psychologically over time. Female-on-male domestic violence tends to be more driven by impulse or self-defense. If even half of what Finlay alleges is true and reported in context, I would say that Waterbury doesn't fit into either category:  She needs help. If it's true that she lied when she claimed Finlay had been physically abusive when in fact the reverse was the truth, that's........not good.

I will say she gave him at least one piece of sound advice: 

Wise words, Alex.

A more recent example is the Amber Heard - Johnny Depp debacle.  Heard claimed publicly that Depp had physically abused her,  but admitted privately,  on tape,  that she had attacked him.  It put Depp in a terrible position professionally and the effects linger on,  even after Heard's admission. 

If Waterbury had real friends,  maybe they would have advised her that her relationship with Finlay was too hot to handle for such a young girl.

Does anyone know,  is it possible for Finlay and/or his married friend to bring criminal charges against Waterbury?

Balanchine borrowed the great Mary Hinkson from the Martha Graham company to dance with Arthur Mitchell.  One has to wonder what might have happened if NYCB had had its own black ballerina in house back then.  

6 hours ago, Helene said:

The only aspect of the case that the judge allowed to go forward  regarded images she claimed he took unknowingly and shared without her permission.   It really doesn't matter what other photos he had of her with her permission or forgiveness, or if she was the world's worst girlfriend ever: the question is whether the photos she found on his computer were taken without her knowledge and shared without her consent. 

If I read it right,  the countersuit states that Waterbury not only knew about the photos,  the two of them enjoyed viewing such photos together,  and she asked Finlay for similar photos of his private parts.  So apparently the existence of the photos of her wasn't unknown to her and weren't taken secretly.

Finlay should have gotten ahead of this story.  By not doing so,  he allowed her to win the PR war and paint herself as a wronged innocent instead of the bunny boiler she seems to be,  according to his account of her slugging him and him having to call the police and an ambulance to get her out of his apartment.

5 hours ago, FPF said:

I don't understand all the legal ins and outs of this case, but it looks to me like Chase Finlay is appealing some of the decision. Among the many "interesting" claims this appeal makes is that Waterbury assaulted Finlay.

Details: https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=1w8RR10q1obR_PLUS_l_PLUS_goRiN3Q==

Well that made for interesting reading,  and for me,  not one bit of it was a surprise.

41 minutes ago, cubanmiamiboy said:

I think every time a big scandal happens within the ballet world that somehow seems to hint at its inner world the company image gets indeed tainted. Being Bolshoi with the acid attack, being a ballerina speaking out -( Kirkland, Volochkova, Womack, Morgan among others), being an AD being removed due to sexual conduct-( Martins)- bits and pieces of the enclosed world of ballet is revealed as a Pandora's box for the rest of the world to peak and be scandalized at. And those stories stay somehow in people's minds. Tell me that if after the acid attack your vision of how the Bolshoi was the same...

I think it's reaching big time to compare the Bolshoi acid attack with the Waterbury case.  James Levine and several orchestral players were accused of far more egregious behavior than Peter Martins,  but I've seen little evidence that the Met and the New York Philharmonic are considered "tainted" by their audiences.  It's likely that only hard core ballet followers are still talking about Waterbury and Finlay.  "The dogs bark,  the caravan moves on."

55 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

The chat didn't have a negative impact on the company's public image?

In my opinion,  no,  it didn't.  It may have negatively impacted the public image of Finlay and Ramasar,  but I don't believe it hurt the company's image.

Chase Finlay is a grown man.  However wealthy his parents may be,  they are not financially responsible for his wrongdoing.  Why bring up his parents without bringing up hers?  Surely they could see that their daughter was flying a bit close to the sun,  but they have been absent from this case.  

1 hour ago, cubanmiamiboy said:

Gelsey Kirkland's point relayed heavily on this. She believed that, besides her own, NYCB and its directives-( Balanchine at the time)- were indeed very responsible for turning a blind eye to situations. 

Unless the conduct affects work,  or negatively impact the public image of the company,  employers have no justification for meddling in the private lives of employees.  There are many situations in life and work where turning a blind eye is prudent.  

1 hour ago, Helene said:

 

So is everyone in south India.  That doesn't stop shade discrimination, as vividly displayed in ubiquitous skin whitener ads on, or in marriage ads in the India Times, where the stated preference is for light skin.  (I obviously can't read the press in Hindi, Tegalu, or any of the many local languages, so I can't speak to what they are saying.)

Being Caucasian or part Caucasian (in the US) doesn't help anyone who is perceived as not white.

I don't think Ramasar is being vilified any more than the other men because of the color of his skin: I think he's getting more attention because he is the most visible of all of them, aside from Longhitano's recent 15-more-minutes-of-fame stint as a protector of white real estate privilege.  If he had decamped to a European ballet company instead of Catazaro, and Catazaro was cast as Tony or the Russ Tamblyn character, I think Waterbury would be picketing West Side Story because of Catazaro, and no would be paying much attention to Ramasar.

The. Indian Matchmaker series on Netflix reveals a fascinating look at the role of colorism in Indian society.  A number of western companies,  like Unilever and L'Oreal,  market skin lightening products in India with commercials that are very frank about the advantage of having lighter skin.

I've seen a number of articles about the Waterbury case that have had a photo of Ramasar but none of Finlay or Catazaro.  The media know what they are doing.

1 hour ago, canbelto said:

The fact that Chase Finlay got to disappear to wherever with no consequences is the definition of white privilege. He should be in jail. But nothing's going to happen to him. He's just going to be another white male predator society protects.

More than likely Finlay and Waterbury will come to some kind of financial settlement.  But even in today's climate,  he shouldn't be in jail unless and until he's been convicted of a crime.  It's been established that showing revealing photos of your girlfriend to a few friends,  while reprehensible,  is not revenge porn.  Finlay never uploaded the photos to the internet or "published" them in any manner. 

9 minutes ago, canbelto said:

 

And @On Pointe, Amar Ramasar is white. He's Indian and that's considered Caucasian.

Ramasar is half Puerto Rican and half Trinidadian,  both ethnicities that generally have some African ancestry.    But realistically,  nobody looks at Ramasar and sees a white guy.

1 hour ago, canbelto said:

I would add that all this sympathy for the defendants is exhibit A of white privilege. Somehow white males are always the victims.

One could say that the attention paid to this case is exhibit A+ of white female privilege.  Similar to Missing White Woman syndrome,  Waterbury is the perfect subject from the point of view of the media,  where disproportionate attention is paid to the travails of young,  white,  blonde upper middle-class females.  Throw in the glamor of the ballet connection and the story is irresistible.  The vilification of Amar Ramasar is the icing on the cake.  While he is technically not African American,  he's dark enough to fill the role of the big,  hypermasculine black male threat to white womanhood that runs in the background of American culture like a stealth malware program on a computer.