Category Archives: Uncategorized

Watching American Ballet Theatre dance Tudor’s The Leaves Are Fading in a 1984 performance, broadcast over Japanese television during ABT’s season there in the fall of that year.  I’d forgotten what the full impact of this ballet can be.  It’s not … Continue reading →

In May 2010, Mikhail Baryshnikov gave me what is probably the best interview of his life.  MB is not only a great artist but was a personal fixture during my formative years in dance and ballet. I watched him up close … Continue reading →

Boehner’s latest hissy fit has had, at least for the moment, the effect of saving Obama from himself.  Reading his weasel words today at the town hall–I didn’t have the stomach to watch–about how we couldn’t afford good programs that benefit … Continue reading →

I’ve watched politics since I was a child–we’re talking Lyndon Johnson here–and I cannot quite recall a President selling out his own party as Obama has.  Far-fetched as this may seem, I think that the Dems have two options at this point: to … Continue reading →

Having just come from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Winter’s Tale, I can only say that the folly as well as the venality of what our President is apparently doing can only be called Shakesperean.  To all intents and purposes he … Continue reading →

Some complimentary, as well as some really vile and objectionable comments on Criticaldance.com about my City Arts piece on the Mariinsky Ballet, written by people who, let’s say, prefer to keep their agendas close to their chests. I’m accused of plaigirism … Continue reading →

This Sunday I’ll be in Houston, lecturing on my long interest in Broadway as part of the summer lecture series of the Bayou City Concert Musicals.

I always suspected, reading Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes even as a kid, that Tallulah Bankhead’s performance as Regina Giddens could not have been as unrelievedly diabolic as legend would have it.  The script itself wouldn’t have permitted that.  And … Continue reading →

After the Royal Danish Ballet’s opening night last month (their first visit to Manhattan since 1988!!), I was interviewed by Louise With of the Danish newspaper Borsen, who quoted me this way: “On the whole it was very good. And the best … Continue reading →

Ballet dancers are today so generally overworked and often so palpably under-rehearsed that improvement has to be a matter of perpetual back-and-forward sliding. So it was good to see that Alexandre Hammoudi’s act1 solo in Ratmansky’s The Bright Stream at ABT last … Continue reading →