Foot in Mouth

The first time I saw the company, with him still dancing strong, I was 14, it was 1978, and there, at Zellerbach in Berkeley --Sounddance. I leaned so far forward in my seat--drawn into the vortex of the dance--that I fell on the floor. On paper, in description, Cunningham's kind of dance wasn't what I thought would move me. I was a repressedly moony teenager--the kind of girl who reads Sons and … [Read more...]

First, a few facts: New York City Ballet's Peter Martins is making about $629,000  a yearwhile 11 corps members are cut.   To compare Martins' salary to other executives' NOT in the arts, as a couple of people have done on Ballet Talk fora here and here, is absurd. One doesn't go into dance to get rich. When Baryshnikov was head of ABT, he had an agreement with the Board by which his … [Read more...]

So I debated whether to link to my latest review for The Financial Times--on the Emanuel Gat company, at the Lincoln Center Festival--because I may have bungled it (not for lack of trying, believe me). But perhaps you could click on the link and NOT read the review (dance never gets enough clicks)--and maybe, once explained, the bungles will make an instructive story--you know, for all of you … [Read more...]

For Los Angelenos trying to decide which American Ballet Theatre cast next week: the thing about Macmillan's ballet, like the play, is that it's the pair that counts. Half a pair of lovers amounts to none at all--and these two are fantastic together. David Hallberg and Gillian Murphy in Kenneth Macmillan's Romeo and Juliet. Photo by Rosalie O'Connor Hallberg is a swift stream of impulse and … [Read more...]

I review her debut as Sylvia for the Financial Times. In the cave with ogre Jared Matthews. (He might have bit into the part with more appetite: would have helped Vishneva's comic turn.) Photo by Gene Schiavone for ABT. It's really a delightful ballet--the delicious Delibes score as mercurial as the deus ex machina plot, sliding from trumpeting horns for huntress Sylvia and her cadre to lyric love … [Read more...]