New promo videos

[kfw]

These are clearly new official NYCB promo videos, though I don't see them up on the company's site right now, and to my mind they're a great improvement over what's come before. No incessant jump-cutting here:

1) Rebecca Krohn talks about dancing

.

2) A shorter video in which excerpts of the Krohn interview are interspersed with excerpts of her dancing the ballet with Sebastian Marcovicci.

[bart]

They also have a promo, with Megan Fairchild, for Dances at a Gathering. It actually has a decent amount of dancing in it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxvhM3uL77g...feature=related

[Jack Reed]

What I like about both these promos is that the completely uninitiated viewer can get some glimpses of the ballets; if they can't get any more, that may be because of concerns about giving away control over the choreography. I'm not familiar with the earlier, yet more cut-up promos, but these are still too cut-up for me -- maybe they could cut away from the stage and then cut back to the same point of view, interrupting and thereby still keeping control of the choreography without disorienting the viewer so.

What I don't like, though, is the presumption that the viewer is to approach the ballets by identifying with the dancers -- most of what the viewer hears is what it's like to dance these ballets. For instance, Fairchild's remarks ignore the central communal aspect of Dances at a Gathering, not that an excellent dancer has to be an excellent facilitator of dance appreciation too; Fairchild deserves respect and then some for her lovely dancing alone, but the chosen moments of video also don't make this core aspect plain, and an opportunity to offer the viewer a way of entering the world of this ballet is lost here.