atm711 Posted February 3, 2008 Share Posted February 3, 2008 In today's NYTimes book review (Artists in Exile) there is a photograph of Balanchine and six female dancers at the barre---the caption reads: "George Balanchine working with his wife, Vera Zorina, at right, and other ballerinas." Nowhere in the photograph do I see Zorina--the first female at the barre is undoubtedly Mary Ellen Moylan. The photograph is on the Times web---perhaps someone with more expertise than I can access it. Link to comment
Helene Posted February 3, 2008 Share Posted February 3, 2008 The link is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/books/re....html?ref=books Link to comment
Ray Posted February 3, 2008 Share Posted February 3, 2008 The link is here:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/books/re....html?ref=books I can't ID the dancers--I'm sure others will--but I'm intrigued by this study and its review. Despite the rich topic, Lopate (the reviewer) notes that the author Horowitz's "judgments seem shoehorned in to serve his pet theories [including] that the Russians adapted better to America than the Germans did, because they came from an expansive, polyglot country undergoing innovation [...]." From the sound of it, this produces disappointing results, especially considering that many German exile composers shaped Americans' perceptions of what "movie music" should sound like (sidebar: I think movie music is woefully under-studied). In other words, if Lopate is correct, while the book's title promises that the study will focus on how these artists "Transformed the American Performing Arts," it seems to retreat into biography that examines how they were often "stifled." I'm not sure how useful this cultural study is if, in Lopate's words, Horowitz "seems something of a Eurocentric snob when he argues that America too often infected the sensitive exiles with superficiality." That seems a trite observation when you're talking about Hollywood. And Lopate quotes Horowitz as concluding "Taken as a whole, 20th-century American immigrants in the performing arts were not able to sustain a full growth curve upon relocating." I'm enough of a snob to be turned off by the use of the phrase "full growth curve" applied to creative process and artistic production. Finally, I think Lopate is spot on to conclude that "Some of the exiled artists may have gotten (to quote Weill) 'lost in the stars,' but we are the grateful gainers." Link to comment
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