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PAMTGG


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Olympic security was great...

If only the airlines would take a lesson. The most frustrating thing is the inconsistency -- the rules change arbitrarily, they're different in different airports, and it's worth your life to find someone who can actually tell you what's allowed and what's forbidden.

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I vote for a Rotten Tomatoes ballet festival................

And I vote that we hold it here on Ballet Talk!

It would have to be a verbal ballet festival. We could probably now get some vivid descriptions of PAMTGG (since no one claims to remember any choreography) from some of the many members of the cast, who are still around and open to it. Perhaps a stalwart journalist or two could do a series of short, targeted interviews!

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newly acquired publicity photo, sent to a newspaper in advance of the premiere of PAMTGG.

shows Balanchine w/ Irene Sharaff fitting a costume on Donna Sackett.

dated: Aug. 1, 1971

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newly acquired publicity photo, sent to a newspaper in advance of the premiere of PAMTGG.

shows Balanchine w/ Irene Sharaff fitting a costume on Donna Sackett.

Apparently, he's testing to see whether the spikes on the headpiece might put out her partner's eyes. Sharaff looks concerned. Did the headpiece make it to the final production, I wonder?
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here's the answer to the 'did the headpiece make it into the production?' - tho' these may have been taken at a rehearsal before the premiere, etc. i suspect they are performance shots.

the photos are stamped as dated Aug 71 and marked only as New York City Ballet, but since the premiere was in June and these are from a newspaper archive, i assume they are performance shots - rather odd and not esp. artful ones with the black band at the bottom and the catch-as-catch-can angles, etc. but they are curiosities connected to a very lost ballet.

i suspect that's Tracy Bennett at the center of the photo of mostly men, Francis or Paul Sackett seems to be behind him; von aroldingen is seen with fringes flying behind the central male dancer, probably Bonnefous, whose back is to the camera, one of the Sacketts is also at the left of this photo's frame, with perhaps Steven Caras on the right; the one with jumping women shows no dancers i can name specifically. digging out my old programs might help with some educated guesses, eventually.

f.y.i.

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The Sacketts were nice kids, I liked them all a lot! Of the Ottos, there were a bunch at the School of

American Ballet simultaneously, but only David was in the company, if I recall correctly.

Oops - William made it too. But there had to be at least one Nutcracker that had the whole tribe onstage. Even NYCB isn't immune from "cute" casting.

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Oops - William made it too. But there had to be at least one Nutcracker that had the whole tribe onstage. Even NYCB isn't immune from "cute" casting.

It's possible that Phillip Otto, who I believe was Prince as an SAB student, was onstage in a "Nutcracker" with his two older brothers either in as corps members or advanced students, but with the hoards in "Nutcracker", it's impossible to avoid casting siblings together, especially towards the end of the run where the non-wounded are at a premium. He also had at least one sister in the same general age range. The two youngest were much younger than their siblings,

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here now, further glimpses of PAMTGG by way of news photos from the Chicago Tribune, '71, including an attached caption from the day, which reads: "Karin von Aroldingen leads a campy troupe of airport watchers in George Balanchine's jingle ballet, 'PAMTGG.' This newest addition to the New York City Ballet's repertory shares the company's final Ravinia bill with 'Who Cares?' and 'Symphony in C' at 2 o'clock this afternoon." the photo is stamped "1971 August 11" as well as "Aug 10 1971" which may refer to the receipt of the photo and the subsequent publication in the paper.

the photo itself is related to others known from this time.

the additional photo, w/ very little by way of identification except for dates: AUG 10 1971 and AUG 16 1971 includes a feature i hadn't noted before, that is, the acronym of the jingle written out as part Sharaff's costume designs.

of the dancers captured in this photo, likely taken from wings, of mostly male members of the cast, these men seem to be, left to right: Bryan Pitts, Hermes Conde, Tracy Bennett? and Nolan Tsani?

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a friend who follows tv far more than i do, and who hadn't heard of PAMTGG, emailed the following comment regarding the current? season of tv's MAD MEN:

<<one of the campaigns they were working on was ads for an airline that was almost exactly like "Pan Am Makes The Goin' Great". Strange to think that back in the sixties air travel was synonymous with business travel. They were looking for a campaign to encourage families to fly.>>

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I don't know if this Chrysler Corporation futurist-consumer commerical should have a thread of its own, or be considered as context for PAMTGG. The last 40 seconds might have been directed by Stanley Kubrick based on William Gaddis stage directions.

This is its companion piece about "the driving control from the future." As a fetishistic object, it could be a prototype of an iPod or iPhone:

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Thank you, Quiggin! I remember that push-button shifting innovation. It was an idea that didn't always work. Nor did it last very long, as I recall. I got my first car around that time (1957 Ford Fairlane) and never would have trusted something so flimsy as push-buttons. (I love the idea that it would be popular with the ladies because it was so simple. Pushing buttons to do all sorts of important tasks was one of the seductive design goals of the 1950s.)

I am in awe of the song-and-dance number. Those who were not around in the mid-50s may not really credit the extent to which Americans wanted to believe that they were living in a time of unprecedented Progress -- innovation, style, productive energy, and youth-enhancing freedom. "The forward look for 1956" combines show-biz with a remarkably positive and optimistic view of the role of science in human life. (As opposed to the view that science = atomic bombs and such.)

I can close my eyes now and still visualize all those big, shiny cars -- fins projecting into infinity; chrome reflecting the brilliant sunlight; mpg not even an issue in time of 20 cents a gallon premium gasoline -- on my suburban street. One dressed up to go to the car dealer. Signing the purchase papers was a ritual not unlike signing a marriage license. When the car was delivered one dressed up to have a family photo taken in front of the new vehicle, rather like a big game hunter posing with his rifle in front of a dead rhino.

PAMTTG, as I recall, lacked that essential optimism, that good-times-will-never-end feeling. There was a frantic quality, an underlying insecurity (Things CAN go Wrong) that is missing in the Chrysler commercial.

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My father had a Plymouth station wagon with the push buttons. As a child in the front seat, I was fascinated by them, and I couldn't understand why my father didn't use more of them. I wanted to push them all.

And my mom had a Chrysler 1956 with the push buttons too...! :P

That car was in full function just until she left Cuba in 1998. She sold it just before leaving, and for what I've heard, it is still up and running in my hometown... :)

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another glimpse of PAMTGG via a Chicago Tribune press photo - dated like the others here August 1971.

the only dancers i recognize with some certainty are the two men holding the "flying" dancer aloft.

they are on the left, H. Conde and on the right R. Mairano. once again the costumes' lettering connected to the ballet's title is in evidence.

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In a strange way, the the dancers to the left in rg's snapshot above remind me of that sequence in Symphony In Three Movements when the corps girls run around in a circle with arms out, airplane-like.

To touch on a point raised earlier in this thread, I think that, to be relevant, any revival of PAMTGG that Peter Martins or Benjamin Millepied might make necessarily must include those current TSA security screening procedures that, of course, did not exist in 1972.

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